Self-published by William Gunyon, 1st May, 2026; 62pp pbk, fully illustrated.
A limited edition of 250 numbered copies.
Few cricket lovers will recognise the name of Valentine Romney. Yet he features as an heroic figure in the earliest literary description of an important cricket match. A newspaper obituary remembered Romney as ‘the greatest cricket-player in the world.’
Born in 1698 to a poor family in Meopham in Kent, Romney emerged from the pre-history of village cricket to excel in Kent matches, under the patronage of the Sackville brothers, sons of the Duke of Dorset. In his prime, Valentine Romney was compelled to navigate the extremes of social inequality in Georgian England; one day a labourer on the bottom rung of the social pyramid of the Knole estate in Sevenoaks; the next day leading the Kent eleven before members of the royal family with a seething crowd packed into the Artillery Ground in London.
Romney failed to convert his fame into security, so much so that the struggles of his family offer a case study on implementation of the Poor Laws in Kent. Aided by research not previously published, this study strives to understand how the illiterate son of a rural publican became a central figure in the emergence of cricket as a major spectator sport through the first half of the 18th century.
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