Friends of Iffley Village Book Launch & Talk with Ollie Randall

In partnership with Friends of Iffley Village, local author and historian Ollie Randall will be talking about his brand-new debut book, Writers in Writes, for Iffley and adjacent local residents. 

PG Wodehouse used his cricket-playing to launch his writing career. JM Barrie modelled the pirates in Peter Pan after his cricket teammates. And Arthur Conan Doyle named Sherlock Holmes after a cricketer he’d played against. They all belonged to a network of cricket-playing writers, who collectively left a permanent legacy on English culture. Dr Randall will discuss why this network mattered, and he will explore their Oxford links – especially the war poet and Oxford professor Edmund Blunden.

Writers in Whites: How a group of literary cricketers changed English culture was published in May 2026. "Superb... Randall charts the decline of cricket as a cultural influence with just as much brilliance and assiduity as he chronicles its rise" – Ferdinand Mount, London Review of Books. "A delightful and revealing jaunt into the world of some of my favourite writers" – Alexander Armstrong. "The perfect book to take with you and your deckchair to a village cricket match this summer" – Michael Morpurgo.