author
Hugh De Sélincourt
1878–1951
Best remembered for the much-loved cricket novel The Cricket Match, he wrote with an eye for village life, human quirks, and the feel of the English countryside. His work also stretched into journalism, essays, and fiction shaped by the tensions of the early 20th century.
1 Audiobook
Great Ralegh
by Hugh De Sélincourt
About the author
Hugh de Sélincourt was an English author and journalist, born on 15 June 1878 and educated at Dulwich College and University College, Oxford. During the 1910s he worked as a critic, including as drama critic for the Star and literary critic for the Observer.
He is most often remembered now for The Cricket Match (1924), a novel that helped secure his place in the small but beloved tradition of English cricket writing. His fiction often returned to the imagined village of Tillingfold, which was based on Storrington in West Sussex, where he lived.
Beyond his lighter and more comic work, later scholarship has also pointed to his importance as an anti-war novelist. Archives in West Sussex describe him not just as a novelist but also as an essayist, literature critic, and drama critic, which gives a good sense of the range of his writing life.