An old friend once said of Sir Neville Cardus: "As few men I have known have done, he turned himself into his own man, sensitive, eloquent, golden-hearted in his shared enjoyment of every good thing that came his way, a man who brought style and nobility to his daily journalism, who has left us in his books so much to sustain us through a bewildering, menacing time. Here was – and still is – a superbly talented brave soul". This tribute was to a man who through perseverance, imagination and the gift of communication became one of the greatest writers on both cricket and music for over five decades.

          Brought up in the then depressed environs of Rusholme in Manchester, Sir Nelville Cardus achieved a stature which is perhaps without parallel: as a man he was an enigmatic mixture of determination and diffidence, self-doubt and self-indulgence, introspection and garrulity.

          With the aid of letters, hitherto unpublished manuscripts and material gathered from conversations with many of Cardus’s closest friends and colleagues, Christopher Brookes builds up a fascinating portrait of one of England’s greatest journalists.