Page Turner

GH lunches with a legend

Roger Page: for a bookseller, there could hardly a better name. If you know him, you’ll be nodding; if you don’t, you really should. Since 1972, Roger Page Cricket Books has been a touchstone for cricket readers. I first bought a book from him when I was at school. Yesterday I joined a luncheon group of eight celebrating his ninetieth birthday, at which, I’m pleased to report, he seemed alert, ageless, and resolutely open for business.

No, he’s not stopping. No fear of that. Did I remember that classical music broadcaster on the ABC? Did he mean John Cargher? Yes, that’s the one. But did I remember that Cargher died only three days after the last episode of the radio show he did for forty-two years? I did not, but Roger is exactly right. So he’ll keep going thank you, although he had given his invaluable assistant Marion his birthday week off. If you’ve ever bought from Roger, you’ll know that Marion’s wrapping is always immaculate. The bubble wrap is generous. The typewritten receipt is folded sharply in three and sealed in an envelope. Marion, now eighty, has been working for Roger for thirty years; she continues, he was pleased to say, to laugh at his jokes.

Roger has needed a good sense of humour: though he was twelve when his family emigrated, he continues to favour England, defiantly and disappointedly. ‘I wore black for three months after the Ashes,’ he confided. His earliest memory is of the village in Cambridge to where his family were evacuated during the Blitz, and he spent a good deal of the war in a Roman Catholic convent in Dorset - with impeccably bad timing, his parents had bought a little house in Walthamstow on 1 September 1939.