Ashes To Ashes: 35 Years of Humiliation (And About 20 Minutes of Ecstasy) Watching England v Australia

by Marcus Berkmann

The Ashes may be the longest and fiercest sporting soap opera the world has known. The anticipation is always intense, expectations are high and, for England fans, disappointment is almost inevitable, as we usually lose. But it's a drug we can never kick. How have we got into this state Can we ever break free Marcus Berkmann knows he can't and has stopped even trying. ASHES TO ASHES is the first emotional history of the contest, shamelessly eschewing balance and objectivity to give the punter's view of every series since 1972. This new edition updates the tale to the victorious 2009 series, while remaining brutally realistic about our chances in 2010 and beyond . . .

352 pages, Paperback

First published June 18, 2009

About the author

Marcus Berkmann was educated at Highgate School and Worcester College in Oxford in the UK. He began his career as a freelance journalist, contributing to computer and gaming magazines such as Your Sinclair. In the 1990s, he had stints as television critic for the Daily Mail and the Sunday Express, and has written a monthly pop music column for The Spectator since 1987.

With his schoolfriend Harry Thompson, Berkmann scripted the BBC Radio comedy Lenin of the Rovers. He came to prominence with his novel Rain Men (1995), which humorously chronicles the formation and adventures of his own cricket-touring team, the Captain Scott Invitation XI.

Berkmann has continued to write newspaper and cricket magazine columns, such as the Last Man In column on the back page of Wisden Cricket Monthly, while producing a number of critically well-received humorous books.

In Brain Men (1999), he applied his sardonic observations to the world of pub quizzes, adopting a similar approach to Fatherhood (2005). In 2005, Berkmann released Zimmer Men, a quasi-sequel to Rain Men describing his transition into middle age with cricket.

Berkmann is also credited as being part of the writing team of the BBC Three comedy show Monkey Dust, and compiler of the Dumb Britain column in Private Eye magazine. In 2009, he set up the quiz company Brain Men with Stephen Arkell and Chris Pollikett.

A Shed of One's Own: Midlife Without the Crisis was serialised by BBC Radio 4 in its Book of the Week slot during 2012. A fan of Star Trek since its first British screening by the BBC in 1969, Set Phasers to Stun: 50 Years of Star Trek, aimed at the general reader, was published in March 2016.

Reviews

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

I probably wasn't the target audience, as I had only watched one of the series featured in the book, and coincidentally found the 2005 Ashes chapter by far the most interesting. However, this wasn't a book that drew in the casual observer, and the occasional humourous aside was too rare for my liking.

Although Berkmann announces at the outset that this is a book compiled from memory not fact, actually there is quite a lot of retelling of scores and bowling analyses. To avoid these completely would be silly, but to be this reliant on them was disappointing. I thought that maybe this would have been due to hazy and sparse early childhood memories, but this style was maintained throughout the book, with only the occasional levity from friends' contributions.

It wasn't entirely dry, and the 2006-7 chapter did make me laugh, but it wasn't as fun as I'd expected. It stayed too close to fact for much of it, but didn't give the background that a journalist would have added to break it up and make it interesting. I would have preferred either more creative flair or selective editing, to make it more of a highlights book than a comprehensive but accessible history, with the occasional joke.

[Faizy · Rating 2 out of 5]

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