Forty-Five Summers by Brian Johnston

Forty-Five Summers (First Edition in Illustrated Dust Jacket)

Brian Johnston's Year-by-Year Memories of 264 Test Matches Seen from the Commentary Box

Bibliographic Specifications

• Title: Forty-Five Summers: Personal Memories of 264 Test Matches Seen from the Commentary Box
• Author: Brian Johnston
• Publisher: Pelham Books, London
• Publication Date: 1991
• ISBN-13: 9780720719871
• ISBN-10: 0720719879
• Edition Details: First Edition, published by Pelham Books, London, 1991.
• Binding: Publisher's blue cloth boards, with illustrated dust jacket.
• Physical Format: Large, tall hardcover, 192 pages. Illustrated throughout with black-and-white photographs, with text laid out in boxed pages under year headings.
• Language: English

Official Condition Report

• The Book: Very Good Plus (VG+)
• Exterior / Boards: The blue cloth boards are clean, with no visible marks. The spine and corners look sharp. The fore-edge is slightly toned.
• Interior: The pages are clean and bright cream, with no foxing or markings seen. The binding is tight and the title page is clean. There is some slight toning to a few pages.
• The Dust Jacket: Present. The illustrated jacket, with a photograph of Brian Johnston against a cricket ground and sky, is bright and clean with no tears seen. The back panel is yellow with a black-and-white photograph and a barcode label. It is protected in a durable archival-type plastic cover.

Synopsis & Historical Value

Forty-Five Summers is Brian Johnston's personal look back at the 264 Test matches he covered from the commentary box. It is arranged year by year as a diary-style memoir, and he gathers his most memorable moments, anecdotes about players and recollections of life in broadcasting.

Many of those matches were commentated alongside Bill Frindall. The book is richly illustrated with black-and-white photographs, and the boxed pages with year headings make it easy to dip into.

Johnston's warmth and humour made him one of the best-loved voices of English cricket. This volume is a pleasing record of the game seen through the eyes of the man who described it for the BBC for decades, and it will appeal to cricket enthusiasts and collectors of sporting memoirs.

Author Profile: Brian Johnston

Brian Alexander Johnston (1912-1994), CBE, MC, was a British cricket commentator, author and television presenter, affectionately known as "Johnners". After the war he joined the BBC's Outside Broadcasts Department, and in 1963 he became the BBC's first Cricket Correspondent.

He was a regular member of the Test Match Special radio team until his death. He wrote two autobiographies and fourteen other books, including Now Here's a Funny Thing and It's Been a Piece of Cake.