Footprints

Description

Out now!

A bumper collection of the work of award-winning West Country journalist and author David Foot, Footprints spans the full range of his work – from cricket, football and boxing to theatre, local history and murder.

With an observant eye, a fascination with human nature and a felicitous way with words, David Foot – who died in 2021 at the age of 92 – wrote with insight and freshness on a wide cast of characters: from cricketer Viv Richards and rugby star Carwyn James to actor Peter O’Toole, politician Harold Macmillan and poet Siegfried Sassoon.

Footprints is both a collection of writing by a superb wordsmith and also the intimate story of how a boy from humble rural roots in Somerset overcame setbacks to become a writer not only of beguiling prose but of wisdom, compassion and humanity – a writer, in the words of one reviewer, ‘of deep perception and rare sympathy’.

Praise for Footprints

Footprints is a joy, with pith and poetry juxtaposed in almost every paragraph. For those who like cricket, or simply good writing, it is a must.
Derek Pringle, The Cricket Paper 

This posthumous selection reminds us how insightful and sympathetic a craftsman David Foot was, a writer to rank with Cardus or Robertson-Glasgow. If you buy just one cricket books this December, make it Footprints.
Paul Edwards 

I can’t think of many books which have made me think so deeply about life, writing and the writing life.
David Woodhouse 

Reading Footprints is the next best thing to meeting David Foot himself. And he was sensationally good company: wise and humorous, gossipy, gently scatological and unfailingly helpful. He died in the age of Covid, and his funeral was necessarily a small affair. Now, with the publication of Footprints, we have an appropriate thanksgiving – a sort of memorial service in literary form.
Paul Weaver, The Cricketer (awarding the book a full five balls) 

The great cricket writer and man of the West Country is memorialised in this loving compilation of his best work. 
Jon Hotten, Wisden Cricket Monthly

An enchanting collection, gentle and quietly wonderful.
Anthony McGowan, Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack