Charlie Macartney: Mayhem and Artistry

Martin Chandler | 9:08am BST 20 October 2024

Published: 2024
Pages: 717
Author: Lloyd, Peter
Publisher: Private
Rating: 4.5 stars

It has to be conceded that, having previously written biographies of Warren Bardsley and Monty Noble, Peter Lloyd would have started this one with plenty of knowledge of Charlie Macartney. Like its predecessors the book is a remarkably detailed look at the life of a celebrated Australian cricketer whose cricket career began in the ‘Golden Age’ and, in The Governor-General’s case, ended just four years before the Second World War began.

Which is not to say that Macartney played with both Trumper and Bradman. The former he played alongside for New South Wales and Australia, but he ended his First Class career in Australia the year before Bradman made his debut. His span is what it is because, at the age of 49, he was persuaded out of retirement to join Frank Tarrant’s private tour of India in 1935/36. To use the descriptions given to him by Arthur Mailey by then Macartney no longer batted like a millionaire, but his miserly orthodox slow left arm bowling was as effective as ever.

Outside of the game Macartney did not marry until he was 35, and there were no children of the marriage. He did some writing on the game and, unusually for the time, published an autobiography in 1930. But despite others in his family having some entrepreneurial flair Macartney’s CV suggests a diligent employee rather than a man with any great ambition outside the acquisition or runs and wickets. So given that he also sought to steer clear of scandal and controversy is a 700 page biography merited?

And at this point it is probably worth making the point that Lloyd’s book is not one for the mass market. In common with other projects he has been involved in this one is a lavish production. The leather binding and top quality paper almost go without saying, and there is of course an excellent index, all the necessary statistical appendices and a vast number of photographs of Macartney, the men he played with and against as well as of many items of memorabilia.

But has Lloyd managed to weave an interesting story? He certainly sets the scene well, making the observation in his initial chapter that; During his time in big cricket (1905-06 to 1926-27), Macartney decided to step away from the cauldron on at least four occasions – in late 1909/early 1910, immediately following the cessation of the Great War, for two months in the midst of the 1920-21 season, and for almost the entirety of the 1924-25 season.

Before setting out to provide an answer to the question as to what prompted those absences Lloyd pursues with his usual thoroughness all the records  available to him that deal with the lives of Macartney’s forebears and the sort of background from which he emerged. His father was the man with the entrepreneurial flair, and the sporting ability seems to have come from his mother’s side of the family.

There are plenty of contemporary reports and accounts of the cricket played by Macartney at all levels and, as is only to be expected, there is thorough coverage of his playing career. That said Lloyd doesn’t make the mistake of trying to say something about every occasion his man walked out on to the field and despite starting the book believing I was pretty knowledgeable about Macartney I soon realised I had only scratched the surface in the past.

Like any good biographer what Lloyd is really trying to work out is what made his man tick. He takes every opportunity to try and work that out despite the disadvantages of his having no descendants to consult and Macartney not having left behind him very much in the way of personal correspondence. On the other hand there is that autobiography and, perhaps more importantly, some scrapbooks that Lloyd had access to, not to mention the myriad of contemporary writings of Monty Noble, Macartney himself and many others.

To return to the question of Macartney’s four breaks from the game the suggested answer to that will come as no surprise to readers by now entirely familiar with the stories of the mental health issues that face modern cricketers. Without wishing in any way to detract from the very real issues faced today, no current players or those from the recent past have ever been exposed, as was Macartney, to the horrors of the battlefields of the Western Front in the Great War. At this distance in time we cannot of course know for sure, but Lloyd has convinced me that what was then generally described as shellshock badly affected a man whose experiences in 1909/10 had already indicated a certain vulnerability.

All in all Macartney is an interesting character who was a part of a generation of sporting celebrities whose lives were quite unlike those of the stars of today. Financial rewards were modest and, generally, Macartney and his teammates lived lives that were not dissimilar to those of their supporters, or perhaps what I really mean is that Australia’s was a much more egalitarian society than England’s?

Which is really the key to why Charlie Macartney- Mayhem and Artistry is such a fine piece of work. It is what it set out to be, the biography of a great cricketer but the story is told with such attention to detail that the book is also a vivid illustration of what life was like in Australia in the first half of the twentieth century. It is an impressive piece of work and thoroughly deserves all the plaudits that it is going to receive.

The problem with the book is that its lavish production values make it an expensive treat, and there are only one hundred individually signed and numbered copies. Many have been snapped up already by those who have purchased Lloyd’s previous work, but there are a few copies left, which are available in Australia from Ken Piesse, and in the UK from Boundary Books.