Tim Quelch is the author of Bent Arms and Dodgy Wickets, concerning the rise and fall of England's Test cricket team in the 1950s, and a book on football's also-rans: Underdog! Since his retirement from local government social care services, Tim now writes to raise funds for charitable causes, such as the Alzheimer's Society and Parkinson's UK.

In his introductory chapter, Quelch says, his deceased parents gifted him a love of cricket and popular music at an early age. "These twin passions have stayed with me for over 60 years, placing their distinctive marks upon the passage of time. This book is a testament to their gifts. It is essentially a Baby Boomer's account of growing up and older with cricket, in which the wildly oscillating fortunes of the English Test side are set against a changing cultural and political landscape with popular music supplying the soundtrack."

Stumps & Runs & Rock N' Roll is Tim Quelch's sixty-year account of growing up and growing older with cricket, spanning the period between Queen Elizabeth's coronation in 1952 and the present day. Scandals and trends, unforgettable events and heroes come and go in English cricket just as in Quelch's vivid backdrop of cultural change, while the fortunes of the Test side oscillate as wildly as his ever-shifting soundtrack of popular music.

The book features telling vignettes of famous and not-so-famous cricketers seen in action by the author throughout his life - including Freddie Trueman, Ted Dexter, Wes Hall, Derek Underwood, Alan Knott, John Snow, Geoffrey Boycott, Bob Willis, Michael Vaughan and Jimmy Anderson - whose lasting impressions merge with those of triumph and adversity, pop and politics. This is a life not so much measured by coffee spoons as by cricket scores, with many of its abiding memories impaled upon a particular melody or riff.

The book is reasonably priced and it is well worth reading. No lover of the game should be without it. The photographs are superb.