Ernest Parker: Not a Love Story
Martin Chandler |Published: 2024
Pages: 116
Author: Bonnell, Max and Sproul, Andrew
Publisher: ACS
Rating: 4.5 stars
With Ernest Parker the ACS Lives in Cricket series reaches 60, so you know from that the book is a cricketing biography. Does an Australian subject appeal? There haven’t been many Aussies, so the answer to that one must be yes, but the fact that Parker was a Western Australian, all of whose 16 First Class matches were played the best part of forty years before Western Australia joined the Sheffield Shield, will put some off.
Does the fact that Parker was the first Western Australian to score a First Class century increase his appeal? That fact must do a little surely, especially as there were comparisons drawn by some with Victor Trumper, and plenty of other records set in grade cricket. But on the other hand in his six innings against unarguably top class opposition there was just a single half century for Parker to show for his efforts.
Parker was also a tennis player, and one good enough to win the men’s singles at the tournament now known as the Australian Open in 1913, so that will increase interest in him for some, as will his being a qualified lawyer and one of three partners in a family firm of solicitors that eventually became part of global legal brand. Parker himself played a limited role in that growth though as, tragically, he lost his life on the Western Front in 1917.
With Parker having no descendants to track down the basic summary doesn’t augur particularly well for the appeal of the book, until you notice the names of the authors, Max Bonnell and Andrew Sproul. Bonnell has a string of previous convictions for producing meticulously researched and superbly written biographies of some of the lesser lights of early Australian cricket, and with Sproul has collaborated on two award winning books, a biography of Albert ‘Tibby’ Cotter and the story of Western Australia’s Sheffield Shield triumph at their first attempt, Black Swan Summer.
And, in the circumstances perhaps inevitably, Bonnell and Sproul have lifted the story of Ernest Parker into a fascinating glimpse into the times in which he lived. His sporting achievements were well chronicled at the time, so there is plenty of raw material there, and Parker’s family being one of the most notable in Perth in that era also meant that they were often mentioned in the press. But the book is much more than just a distillation of contemporary reportage.
A good biography leaves its reader feeling that they know and understand its subject. With no personal archive left behind and no one now alive who knew Parker any evidence to enable that to be done is surely lacking? But the answer to that suggestion is certainly in the negative as the secondary sources that are available provide an abundance of circumstantial evidence. On its own such evidence can never prove anything, but the one thing that circumstantial evidence does not do is lie and whilst a solitary piece of it lacks any real strength, the more strands of it there then the conclusion towards which the evidence points becomes all the more difficult to resist.
So Bonnell and Sproul have gone through everything they have found, on occasion reading between the lines and, taking into account contemporary attitudes, formed their ideas about Parker and then worked forwards from there, almost all that they found proving to be consistent with their suspicions. As they are at pains to point out they have established nothing with any certainty, but the overall picture of a man for whom the social mores of his time dictated that he had to live a life he would not have chosen for himself is almost irresistable.
Beyond those observations I think I will say no more and leave those interested in Parker with the opportunity that I am glad I had, to read his story without any pre-conceived ideas. Ernest Parker: Not a Love Story is a superb book and, for anyone making the wise choice to purchase a copy, it will give you as interesting a couple of hours as you will have all year.
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