E. W. Swanton

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For the English mycologist and museum curator, see Ernest William Swanton (mycologist).
E. W. Swanton
Personal information
Full name
Ernest William Swanton
Born(1907-02-11)11 February 1907
Forest Hill, London, England
Died22 January 2000(2000-01-22) (aged 92)
Canterbury, Kent, England
NicknameJim
Height6 ft 0 in (1.83 m)
BattingRight-handed
BowlingRight arm leg spin
RelationsReymond de Montmorency (father-in-law)
Domestic team information
YearsTeam
1937–1938Middlesex
Career statistics
Competition First-class
Matches 3
Runs scored 67
Batting average 13.40
100s/50s 0/0
Top score 26
Catches/stumpings 1/–
Source: Cricinfo, 15 August 2022

Ernest William "Jim" Swanton

commentator under his initials, E. W. Swanton. He worked as a sports journalist for The Daily Telegraph and as a broadcaster for BBC Radio for 30 years. He was a regular commentator on Test Match Special
, easily recognised by his distinctive "fruity" voice. After "retiring" in the 1970s, he continued to write occasional articles and columns until his death in 2000.

Early life

Swanton was born in Forest Hill in south London, the only son and eldest of three children of William Swanton, a stockbroker, and Lillian Emily, daughter of a German merchant who, on marriage to an Englishwoman, changed his name from Wolters to Walters.[1][2] He was a large baby and known as Jim, a diminutive of "Jumbo", from his earliest years. His father was treasurer of Forest Hill cricket club, and Swanton claimed that, whilst still a baby in his pram, he attended a cricket match at which W. G. Grace, then aged 59, scored a century for London County against Forest Hill.

He was educated at Brightlands prep school (later part of Dulwich College Preparatory School) and Cranleigh School. He did not excel at school academically or in sport, and decided to become a journalist on leaving school.

Pre-war journalism

Swanton started at the

BBC Empire Service in 1934, and commentated on the MCC tour to South Africa in 1938–39, the first overseas tour to receive live BBC
coverage.

Swanton formed his own cricket club in 1935, the Arabs, a nomadic club with no home ground. He also played three county cricket matches for Middlesex County Cricket Club in 1937 and 1938, all against university sides. He did not distinguish himself, scoring only 67 runs in five first-class innings. He was also president of Sandwich Town Cricket Club; he is labelled as having served the role for "25 years from 1976", although he died in January 2000.

H. S. Altham had written A History of Cricket, covering the period up until 1914. At Altham's invitation, Swanton continued the book to cover the period from the outbreak of World War I onwards. This extended edition was first published in 1938. For a revised edition in 1947 it was split into two volumes, the first by Altham and the second by Swanton. There were further updated editions in 1948 and 1962.

Second World War

Swanton served in the

Battle of Singapore, and spent three years as a prisoner of war. His unit spent time in camps along the Burma–Siam railway, and he contracted polio and lost a considerable amount of bodyweight, but his well-thumbed copy of the 1939 Wisden Cricketers' Almanack boosted morale. He later described playing cricket with makeshift equipment and under conditions of extreme privation and the constant threat of brutality in an article, "Cricket under the Japs", for the 1946 edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack.[3]

Post-war career

He became cricket correspondent for The Daily Telegraph in 1946, remaining in that post until 1975. He was also editorial director of The Cricketer from 1967 to 1988. He toured Australia as a cricket correspondent seven times between 1946 and 1975, but never visited Pakistan to report on cricket, only reported on one Test match in India, and refused to visit South Africa from 1964 as a protest against apartheid. His writing style was very spare and simple, reporting what happened and why, without the flourishes of Neville Cardus or John Arlott. John Warr once described it as being "halfway between the Ten Commandments and Enid Blyton". His radio commentary provided a contrast to the romanticism of Arlott.

Essentially a traditionalist, he regretted the passing of the

Forty Club
.

He was awarded the

CBE
in 1994. He published his autobiography, Sort of a Cricket Person, in 1972, and published Cricketers of my Time, a collection of obituaries from The Daily Telegraph, in 1999.

He made his selections as one of the voters for the

Alan Davidson, Godfrey Evans, Lance Gibbs, Bill O'Reilly, Malcolm Marshall
.

His obituaries were fulsome, with Ted Dexter in The Sunday Telegraph saying "He was the standard by which other cricket commentators were judged". He helped Tony Greig in Greig's early cricketing career in England.

Personal life

Swanton married Ann Marion Carbutt in February 1958. She was daughter of

Royal St George's nearby. They also had a winter home at Sandy Lane
in Barbados. She died in 1998.

Swanton's wartime experience led him to a deep

Lord Runcie, former archbishop of Canterbury, delivered the address at his funeral. A respected biography of Swanton by David Rayvern Allen
published shortly after his death revealed many previously unknown facts about his life.

Bibliography

Further reading

References

  1. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. Retrieved 14 January 2021. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  2. ^ Arlott, Swanton and the Soul of English Cricket, Stephen Fay and David Kynaston, Bloomsbury, 2018, p. 2
  3. ^ "Cricket under the Japs". ESPNcricinfo. Retrieved 14 January 2021.

External links

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