Stephen Chalke

Stephen Chalke (born 1948 in Salisbury, Wiltshire) is an English author and publisher. In an article in the 2010 edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack he is identified as "an author, publisher and captain of the Winsley Third XI".
He has two undergraduate degrees - one in Drama, English and Philosophy, the other in Mathematics - and a postgraduate degree in English Literature. He has taught in adult, further and higher education, but in the past twelve years has increasingly concentrated on writing and publishing. He works for the Open University.
Through his private publishing firm Fairfield Books, he has written and published several highly acclaimed biographical and historical cricket books. His collaboration with the late Geoffrey Howard, At the Heart of English Cricket, won the 2002 Cricket Society Book of the Year Award, and he has twice won the Wisden Book of the Year award: in 2004 with No Coward Soul (his biography of Bob Appleyard, co-written with Derek Hodgson) and in 2008 with Tom Cartwright - The Flame Still Burns. In 2009 he won the National Sporting Club's Cricket Book of the Year with The Way It Was - Glimpses of English Cricket's Past, a collection of more than 100 articles written for The Wisden Cricketer, Wisden Cricket Monthly and The Times. The Way It Was won the 'Best Cricket Book' category of the 2009 British Sports Book Awards.
In the 2010 edition of Wisden, he contributed a 10-page article on English cricket and the Second World War.

Publications

• Runs in the Memory (1997), Frank Keating's "Guardian Book of the Year"
• Caught in the Memory: County Cricket in the 1960s (1999)
• One More Run (2000) (with Bryan "Bomber" Wells)
• At the Heart of English Cricket: The Life and Memories of Geoffrey Howard (2001) (with Geoffrey Howard), Winner of the Cricket Society Book of the Year
• Guess My Story: The Life and Opinions of Keith Andrew, Cricketer (2003)
• No Coward Soul: The Remarkable Story of Bob Appleyard (2003) (with Derek Hodgson), Winner of the Wisden Book of the Year
• Ken Taylor: Drawn to Sport (2006)
• A Summer of Plenty: George Herbert Hirst in the Summer of 1906 (2006)
• Tom Cartwright: The Flame Still Burns (2007), Winner of the Wisden Book of the Year
• Five Five Five: Holmes and Sutcliffe in 1932 (2007)
• The Way It Was: Glimpses of English Cricket's Past (2008), Winner of the National Sporting Club Cricket Book of the Year
• Now I'm 62: The Diary of an Ageing Cricketer (a novel) (2010)
• A Long Half Hour: Six Cricketers Remembered (on Arthur Milton, Geoff Edrich, Bomber Wells, Dickie Dodds, Ken Biddulph and Eric Hill) (2010)
• Micky Stewart and the Changing Face of Cricket (2012)
• Gentlemen, Gypsies and Jesters: The Wonderful World of Wandering Cricket (2013) (with Anthony Gibson)
• Summer's Crown: The Story of Cricket's County Championship (2015)