Whisky Galore!
Martin Chandler |Published: 2025
Pages: 136
Author: Musk, Stephen
Publisher: Red Rose Books
Rating: 3.5 stars
Having totted them up I can confirm that Stephen Musk’s name appears as author as many as 18 times on the site, once jointly with Roger Mann, twice with Mike Davidge and fifteen times on his own. Never a man to write about anything mainstream this recent title is no different.
Whisky Galore! is another book about a tour, but not one where any Test cricket was played, and although a few past and future Test cricketers did appear, there were no First Class fixtures either. Three of the Test players who featured were, to say the least, experienced, Lord Harris (twice), Jack Mason and Frederick Fane being 71, 48 and 47 respectively. The fourth Test player was the future England skipper, hard hitting batsman and fast bowler Arthur Gilligan.
The tourists with whom Musk concerns himself with are a team who came to be known as Norman Seagram’s Canadians. Seagram was a wealthy whisky distiller who, as well as paying for the trip also captained the side.
Like any book of this type Musk introduces all the tourists and then, relying on contemporary reports, reconstructs the eleven matches that Seagram’s men played. Seven of them ended in defeat, and with the exception of a game against The Band of Brothers, for whom Harris and Mason appeared, the four draws saw the tourists finish well behind in those unfinished matches.
But at the same time the matches were not totally one sided, and if none of the Canadians produced a stellar performance there were clearly some capable cricketers in the party and, judging by his record on the tour the most successful bowler, left arm spinner Bob Wookey, was clearly a decent cricketer.
In many ways the book is as to be expected, but it does have a few particular points of interest not least of which are the comments of contemporary writers, both before and after the tour. In addition however Musk had access to a scrapbook kept by one the tourists, Archie Mix. Some of the cuttings in that provide some of the material, but even more important are the many photographs that Mix had and which are faithfully reproduced in the book.
And the book closes with an interesting digression and one which illustrates one of Musk’s strengths as a writer. He may, in terms of what interests him, be rather stuck in the past, but unlike some of us who bear/enjoy that affliction he retains the ability to see opportunities to look at his subject matter through a twenty first century lens. Thus his research here confirms that without exception Seagram’s men were either born in Canada (eleven of them) or educated in Canada (the other five). Musk compares that to the make up of Canadian teams from 1954, 1979, 2001 and 2024.
Whisky Galore! might be a tad ‘niche’ but it is nonetheless an interesting account of a tour that has barely been looked at by cricket literature since it took place just over a century ago. It is available directly from the publisher or Roger Page and appears in a standard paperback edition as well as a signed hard back edition limited to 20 copies.
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