This week's podcast goes sporty. We head off to Lord's cricket ground to quiz fans about the books they enjoy, while in the studio we're joined by Anthony Bateman, one of the editors of the new Cambridge Companion to Cricket, who takes Guardian cricket correspondent Andy Bull through 300 years of the game's history. They discuss why it has produced more literature than almost any other sport – not all of it good – with aficionados ranging from Siegfried Sassoon to CLR James, George McDonald Fraser to the Indian cricket historian Ramachandra Guha. Then we cycle off down a London canal to hear from Bella Bathurst about the bicycle "tribes" she discovered while researching her latest book, about the 19th-century invention that has become the 21st century's great transport success story.
Reading list:
Flashman's Lady, by George McDonald Fraser (HarperCollins)
Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes (Oxford)
The Flower Show Match, by Siegfried Sassoon (Faber)
Beyond a Boundary, by CLR James (Serpent's Tail)
The Cambridge Companion to Cricket, edited by Anthony Bateman (Cambridge University Press)
Anyone But England, by Mike Marqusee (Aurum)
A Corner of a Foreign Field, by Ramachandra Guha (Picador)
The Magic of Indian Cricket, by Mihir Bose (Routledge)
Start of Play, by David Underdown (Penguin)
The Bicycle Book, by Bella Bathurst (HarperPress)
