It's Always Summer Somewhere: A Matter of Life and Cricket - A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK & SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLE

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Having followed the Maccabees when they were active, and keeping in touch with Felix's writing on Cricket, I had been looking forward to this book. A beautifully evocative book about the three most important things in the world: love, sport and music. A deeply moving book on both the large and the small of life, and how each is used to help survive the other. This troubadour life is only for the fiercest hearts, only for those vessels that can be broken to smithereens and still keep beating out the rhythm for a new song. And if you are a cricket fan (especially an England cricket fan) you will be able to relate to so much of what is said - the lows and, indeed, the highs.

Felix is an utterly compelling author and if like me, you bought this, for a laugh, then you are in for a treat… a book that unpacks the last two decades, the sporting landscape, grief and the human condition.Edna O’Brien tells us about the time she inadvertently stole a brown georgette scarf and the lesson she took from it: ‘Morality is not the same thing as abstinence. A friend recommended this book and I listened to the audio version, surprised at how much I loved it. It was this devotion that led to the birth of the Bunnymen, to the days when he and Ian McCulloch would muck around with reel-to-reel recordings of song ideas in the back parlour of his parents’ council estate house, and to finding a community – friends, enemies and many in between – with those who would become post-punk royalty from the likes of Dead or Alive, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the Teardrop Explodes to name a few. What I was not prepared for was the beautiful writing in this very personal memoir in which Felix White explains the main influences in his life - personal, musical, and of course cricket.

I was often surprised and moved by his passionate understanding of cricket as comfort, consolation and rock and roll remedy. Felix White's beautifully, elegantly and passionately written book reminds me why I love cricket so much. An unabashed love letter to the sport that has defined Felix White's life, It's Always Summer Somewhere articulates why cricket engenders such passion and devotion through his own moving and uplifting relationship with the game. With his infectious passion for the sport and vivid observations, you don't have to like cricket to love this.However it is only in the final few chapters that I gained the sense that he feels content and I hope he does.