Letters home - Brian Johnston

The newly discovered letters of Cricket commentator and broadcasting personality, Biran Johnston. When Brian Johnston died in 1995 it was as if a great cricketer had passed on. Standing room only at the Westminster Abbey funeral and a trio of books that raced into the bestseller lists and stayed. But what suprised Heald was how little of his life appeared to exist in written form. Apart from a few fragments, no letters from school, university, early jobs and war. Then in 1996, his widow in clearing their house, came across a box, opening it she found more than 400 letters from Brian to his mother and stepfather dating back to his 1st term at Eton and ending in 1946 as he joined the BBC. Son Barry has now transcribed and edited them. Although the letters date from long before he became famous, the schoolboy humour emerges early, but being at Eton and New College means his future network is ensured: we learn for instance that Alec Dunglass wore 1 of Brian Johnston's shirts when accompanying Chamberlain to Munich in 1938. He is also a good observer of a social scene long since past. the letters are reminiscent of Joyce Grenfell's to her mother, published in 1985 and a bestseller.