A.P. ‘Bunny’ Lucas: The Best of All My Boys

Book excerpt: A late Victorian wag once claimed that all men were ‘cads, aesthetes or trade’. In his time Bunny Lucas (1857-1923) was said to be all three, but David Pracy here uses a wide range of primary and secondary sources to make the case for us to think of Lucas as an aesthete. Yet his was a life full of intriguing paradoxes. A devout churchman, he was the unlikely co-respondent in an Edwardian divorce case. Conservative in character, he entered the risky profession of stock jobber and probably lost thousands of pounds in an ill-advised investment. Famous as one of the most stylish defensive batsmen of his age, he bowled a ball that inspired a short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In a remarkable first-class career spanning 34 seasons, he was for some seven years an automatic choice for England and the Gentlemen but dropped out of top-level cricket to play for his school Old Boys’ side and for the then minor county of Essex, only to help them achieve first-class status and enjoy his own cricketing Indian summer. Born into a wealthy upper-middle-class family in a fashionable part of London’s West End, he became a great favourite with the often raucous East London crowds that supported Essex at Leyton. As Robin Hobbs suggests in his foreword, if Bunny Lucas had received the media attention given nowadays to players, he would have been a sporting super star.