When A.K Met The Don
Martin Chandler |Published: 2012
Pages: 18
Author: Markland, John
Publisher: The Gannochy Trust
Rating: 2.5 stars
There is a whole book, The Don : a Bibliographical and Referential Journey, that is concerned solely with an attempt to compile a definitive list of the writings that exist on the subject of Donald Bradman. The late Stephen Gibbs produced a second edition of his weighty tome, there are 628 pages of it, as long ago as 2009. Inevitably Gibbs’ monumental work is already out of date, and this booklet is by no means solely to blame.
So is there anything new in When A.K Met The Don? Perhaps surprisingly there is, a single previously unpublished photograph of Bradman’s wife, Jessie, and there is a little light shed on an obscure corner of an otherwise well known episode in Bradman’s story.
Anyone who has read one of the numerous biographies of Bradman will know that in September 1934, after having an undiagnosed stomach problem for a couple of years, he underwent an appendectomy. There were complications and in those days, before antibiotics made routine infections all but harmless, real concerns as to whether the great batsman would survive.
Jessie took a month to get to England to be with her husband, having chosen to decline an offer to be flown here, and the couple stayed in the UK for a few weeks before returning to Australia. For two days in November they visited Perthshire in Scotland. There they were entertained by A.K Bell, of the famous distillery family, and a great philanthropist.
I am sure there will be a few hardened Bradmaniacs who will have made it their business to acquire a copy of this interesting little volume, but the casual enthusiast will be much better off buying something like Irving Rosenwater’s biography of the great man. If a copy of When A.K Met The Don is nonetheless required it is not easy to track down, but does appear occasionally and is not particularly costly.
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