Bill Edrich was regarded as one of the exciting cricket discoveries of his generation just before the Second World War. Having made his debut at sixteen against the 1932 All-India side, he surged into the national spotlight in 1938 when he scored 1,000 runs before the beginning of June; and he rewarded the faith of his champions, notably his England captain Wally Hammond, with an epic innings in the notorious ‘timeless’ Test at Durban in 1939.

At the outbreak of war he joined the RAF, rising to squadron leader, and his flying skills earned him the DFC for his part in a daring daylight raid over Cologne in August 1941. Amid the grim toll of casualties, however, Edrich’s survival of the war produced the legacy of a hectic, devil-may-care lifestyle. This reckless spirit brought him into conflict with the cricket hierarchy – his omission from the tour of Australia in 1950/51 was, according to Sir Pelham Warner, ‘a very costly error’. Edrich was finally restored to favour, playing a major role in the winning back of the Ashes in 1953, and going on to captain Middlesex and Norfolk before retiring in 1971.

Over seventy-five years on from the record-breaking summer of 1947 when Edrich and his batting partner Denis Compton each exceeded Tom Hayward’s 1906 run tally of 3,518, this biography by the highly acclaimed cricket writer Alan Hill tells the story of a gallant cricketer and irrepressible partygoer, distilling the measure of his courage both as a sportsman and as a wartime hero.