This is a controversial book, too, about a controversial career which opened with the publication of the Harrovians, the first realistic school story, and got the author into quite a lot of trouble. His ski-ing controversies were for many years a major interest in his life. Ski-ing originated in Scandinavia, and Arnold Lunn's demand that the Alpine forms of ski-racing, downhill and the slalom, which he invented, should receive international recognition and be included in the Olympic Games, inevitably involved him in a lively be for a Norwegian to persuade the MCC to change the rules of cricket.