About the Author: Harry Pearson was born and brought up on the edge of Teesside and is the author of twelve works of non-fiction. His first book, The Far Corner - A Mazy Dribble through North-East Football, was shortlisted for the William Hill Prize and is still in print. When Victorian public schoolmasters and Oxbridge-educated gentlemen were taming football, codifying cricket, bringing the values of muscular Christianity to the boxing ring and the athletics field, games that dated back to the pagan era clung on in isolated pockets of rural Britain, unmodified by contemporary tastes, shunned by the media and sport's ruling elites. There’s a habit nowadays of saying that everything old, such as the Coronation, was invented in the 19th century.

No pie, no priest (Signed) - Harry Pearson

as Pearson set out on his warm and witty journey around Britain in pursuit of the lost folk sports that somehow still linger on in the glitzy era of the Premier League and Sky Sports, he discovered how and why many have survived and met the characters who keep them going. Targeted by Victorian social reformers (read: boring prudes), however, they appeared to die out in the 1860s. Harry Pearson was born and brought up on the edge of Teesside and is the author of twelve works of non-fiction. Harry’s biography of the West Indian cricketer Learie Constantine, Connie, was longlisted for the 2017 William Hill Sports Book of the Year and won the 2018 Cricket Society / MCC Book of the Year. Two competitors in front of me,” reports Pearson from a modern match, “each dressed in farmers’ smocks, had straw stuck up their trouser legs”.Without these cookies, we won't know if you have any performance-related issues that we may be able to address.

No Pie, No Priest | Book by Harry Pearson | Official No Pie, No Priest | Book by Harry Pearson | Official

His first book, The Far Corner - A Mazy Dribble through North-East Football, was shortlisted for the William Hill Prize and is still in print.

Attending a bout of shinty, a Scottish variant of hockey that allows the ball to be played in the air, he asked a local if the game ever results in injury.

No Pie, No Priest by Harry Pearson (Hardback) 9781471198304 No Pie, No Priest by Harry Pearson (Hardback) 9781471198304

Harry Pearson was born and brought up on the edge of Teesside and is the author of twelve works of non-fiction. The match that Pearson witnessed was “hard to follow… A mass rolling maul that occasionally collapsed in a heap of limbs… That a bottle was down there somewhere seemed a matter of faith. I understand I can change my preference through my account settings or unsubscribe directly from any marketing communications at any time. His books include The Far Corner (shortlisted for the 1995 William Hill Sports Book of the Year); A Tall Man in a Low Land and Achtung Schweinehund!

Whether that was because the contestants were evenly matched, timid or plastered,” the author could not say. No Pie, No Priest combines sports reporting, travelogue and history, and features a cast of bucolic eccentrics and many deeply impenetrable regional accents. In this cracking book, Harry Pearson travels Britain taking notes on peculiar local sports, some of which sound as though they were invented by JK Rowling: stoolball, shinty, bat and trap, and Aunt Sally.