Larwood’s First Tour

Martin Chandler | 7:40am BST 07 June 2026

Published: 2026
Pages: 659
Author: Somerville, David
Publisher: Private
Rating: 4.5 stars

Recent years have seen the publication of a number of excellent retrospective tour accounts. The inevitable benefit of hindsight and opportunity of reviewing contemporary publications, sometimes with the benefit of the recollections of living witnesses make these accounts vastly superior to those that were published at the time. Add in some well researched, or perhaps just well remembered social history and you have a winning formula.

One tour that has always been an obvious candidate for such a book is the 1928/29 Ashes series. The ‘Great Depression’ was not yet upon the world and doubtless many thought the prosperity that the recovery from the ravages of the Great War brought, the so called ‘Roaring Twenties’, would never end. For England’s cricketers there was, under their dynamic young captain Percy Chapman, a 4-1 series victory over an aging Australian team.

In common with those writers who have embarked on similar projects in recent years author David Somerville has produced an outstanding book, but in doing so he has taken a very different approach. This one is essentially just a cricket book and as such competing with the books written by Monty Noble and Percy Fender, both highly articulate former Test players who watched the entire series, mean Somerville set himself quite a challenge.

To achieve his goal Somerville has produced a mighty tome – this is a large format book printed on decent quality paper, factors which in themselves make this one of the heaviest books I have ever owned. There is a commentary that runs through the book, and the content of that demonstrates just how thorough the research has been, but what marks the book out is the way in which the narrative is illustrated.

And it is the photographs that appear on just about every page in the book that transport the reader back to the era. Many are images of the pages of newspapers and magazines of the time, so the quality is often far from perfect, but there are many others that are very well produced indeed and the various articles and news stories in them throw plenty of light on what took place on and off the pitch. In addition there are many images of the various publications, many of them ephemeral ones, that appeared prior to and during the series.

Many of the images are ones I had never seen before. Some are quite remarkable and I am amazed that the one of his teammates taking an injured George Geary off the field after being struck on the head in the first game of the tour, again Western Australia, has never been published since it originally appeared. In those days the WACA clearly had no stretchers as the stricken Geary has to be removed lying on a table, with his colleagues carrying the table with Geary on it in the manner of pall bearers.

In an interesting choice of title for the book Somerville singles out England’s Harold Larwood, drawing attention to the fact that the notorious ‘Bodyline’ series was not the only occasion the Notts Express toured Australia. On his first trip Larwood made pivotal contributions with bat and ball to England’s first Test victory, albeit his performances tailed off after that. Despite that one thing I did learn from reading this one is that Larwood’s speed and hostility had started to make him unpopular with some Australian spectators before this tour ended.

In time of course Larwood left England and settled with his family in Australia. His stock has continued to rise as time has moved on and whilst this is certainly a book about the tour as a whole rather than Larwood as an individual Somerville is clearly a fan and that does show, not least in an introductory essay about him.

Throughout the book the narrative does, perhaps, dwell more on Larwood than it might were it simply a straightforward account of the tour, but that is in no way a criticism and it was a source of particular pleasure to see so many images of one of my own cricketing heroes that I had never seen before.

Privately published in Australia in a limited edition of just fifty individually signed and numbered copies Larwood’s First Tour is far from cheap, and I am not even sure whether copies remain available but certainly at one stage the book could be purchased from both Roger Page and Ken Piesse. It is certainly a worthwhile purchase for any one with an interest in the Ashes contests of the interwar period and, for those of us who treat Harold Larwood with the same reverence that David Somerville does, I would suggest it is an essential one.