Beyond the Airing Cupboard

“There were many more days of failure than success,” he writes. “So much so that failure is one of the few things about which I count myself an expert.”

The book sparkles with humour, but there are also deeper and sometimes darker themes. He reflects on that boy in the airing cupboard as he tells of his bouts of depression, and he writes with moving under-statement about the death of his first wife.

John Barclay is the most engaging of characters. Funny, self-effacing, passionate and philosophical, he has written a book of some originality.

Life Beyond The Airing Cupboard is a cricket book with a difference.

In it the former Sussex captain John Barclay recounts with great charm episodes from his life: from his childhood escape to an airing cupboard through his cricketing career and his love of fishing to several eventful tours as England ’s manager.

There is laughter aplenty as he recalls a humiliating afternoon in goal for his prep school side, a ‘pair’ at the hands of Derek Underwood and a disastrous Test in New Zealand when he is reduced to smuggling out of the dressing room the champagne he has earlier smuggled in.

LIFE BEYOND THE AIRING CUPBOARD

JOHN BARCLAY

Foreword by Mike Atherton