Good Arthur Milton

In those fresh, expectant springtimes of long ago, the last week of April was the very quintessence of the changeover — the week he would have bid adieu to the raucous wintery fever-pitch of Highbury and its stately marble halls, sling his football boots into his London landlady’s cupboard, and whistle chirpily down to Paddington and the train back to Temple Meads, home, and the mellow warm westerlies of a pastoral Gloucestershire summer. Although the news was a dreadful shock, it was touchingly apt, somehow, that it was in the telling last week of April in which good Arthur Milton died. Next birthday would have been his 80th. He embodied that ritual of the seasons. We shall never see his like — ever — for Arthur was obviously the last of an exceptional line: only a dozen men have ever played professionally for England at both football and cricket. Gentle Arthur was one of the giants of my boyhood. A giant he remained even when childhood’s callow, eyes-wide worship grew into warm man-to-man friendship. We last spoke a month ago; still pin-sharp and full of the joys, he said he was even relishing a start on the memoirs I’d been joshingly urging him to get down to for years.

Is it just my generation? There was a lasting and valorous chivalry in the craft-versed cigarette-card heroes of our youth. They taught we urchins pride — and, boy oh boy! what pride we had in them. I recall, vividly still, the flush of it 56 years ago when our fellow was picked on the wing for England at Wembley (Matthews dropped, Finney injured, wow! third in line!) and then, when England called again, the chanceless debut century in the Headingley Test.