Richard Whitehead’s new survey of Test cricket’s 150 year history is a tremendously successful achievement to mark a very significant anniversary for the longest and most challenging form of the game. He brings together archival material, superb photography and player profiles drawn from The Times archives to fashion a narrative that is as much cultural and social history as it is a sporting chronicle.  The book’s structure – from the “Foundation story” (1877–1914) through to the “21st century” (2000–2024) – gives a clear framework, yet within this framework Whitehead also dedicates significant space and insight to the central rivalry between England and Australia. The six chapters focus on specific matches between all countries and includes the scorecards for a number of the most noteworthy and remarkable games.

In the sub-sections specifically devoted to the Ashes, this strength is especially evident. Whitehead does not merely recount wins and losses: he contextualises each turning point in the series with reference to class, empire, travel, pitch conditions, and evolving professionalism. The use of archival match-reports from The Times gives real flavour and immediacy, making the reader feel present at key moments. The Ashes chapters shine through for their blend of sweeping historical scope and vivid detail: one minute you are reading about the first Test in 1877 between England and Australia, the next you are considering how post-war social change shaped later series.

The illustrated format adds greatly — generous full-page images, contemporary photography, and profiles of lesser-known figures as well as legends, render the Ashes narrative both richly textured and accessible. Moreover, Whitehead’s writing is lively and assured: he writes for cricket enthusiasts without ever alienating the more casual reader. For anyone with an interest in the Ashes specifically, and Test cricket more generally, this book is a major success.

In short: a beautifully produced, intelligently structured and thoroughly engaging book that does real justice to one of sport’s greatest rivalries, in amongst the rich tapestry of all the other significant games and series involving all Test playing nations.

Richard Whitehead’s new book is an impressively vivid and richly detailed account of the 1954-55 Ashes series, in which England, under the leadership of Len Hutton, overcame a disastrous start to claim a famous victory in Australia. He combines meticulous research, match-by-match narrative and a strong sense of the social backdrop — class, personality clashes, the changing landscape of cricket in the 1950s — to deliver far more than just a sporting chronicle. The writing is fluid and accessible, and Whitehead succeeds in making the reader feel as though they are there with the players on tour: the sweaty heat of Brisbane, the tension in Melbourne, the celebration at Adelaide. His framing of the series as both a cricketing triumph and a reflection of broader cultural shifts (professional captaincy, post-war travel, the status of county players) defintely gives the book an extra dimension. Compared with Alan Ross’s Australia 55, Whitehead’s treatment is more explicitly retrospective, benefiting from decades of hindsight, archival work and memoirs: Ross, writing contemporaneously, offered a travel-writer’s view of the tour, less analytical in the social sense but rich in colour and immediacy. Ross gives us the moment-to-moment feel, whereas Whitehead shapes the series more into a coherent historic narrative. Ross emphasises the loneliness of Hutton as captain and frames the tour in its travel-and-cultural context; Whitehead retains that human angle, but situates it more firmly within the structural history of English cricket. In short, Ross is the vivid eyewitness; Whitehead all these years later is the scholar-storyteller.

Overall, "Victory in Australia" is a significant addition to the Ashes literature: immersive, illuminating and suitably grand in scope for one of England’s most memorable tours. Series wins down under occur soo infrequently and this book is a wonderful reminder of the art of the possible against all odds.

Alan Ross (1922-2001) was a distinguished poet, travel writer, and editor of London Magazine and the Observer. This book Australia 55 offers Ross's unique perspectives on the whole MCC 1954-55 Tour and battle for the Ashes, where England were overwhelmed in Brisbane, but won in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide to retain the Ashes. Cricket is given, by this great wordsmith, a wide human context and, though the form is primarily a journal of Len Hutton's Ashes winning tour spearheaded by Frank Tyson, the prose is beautifully precise.