Harry Pearson
Harry Pearson was born in 1961 in a village near Middlesbrough. He was educated by kindly Quakers. An early attempt to become a journalist foundered because his spelling wasn’t good enough. After many years working in jobs that required overalls or paper hats, his life was altered for ever by reading an article about Alan Foggan in the football magazine When Saturday Comes. 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!. Harry has written for When Saturday Comes for twenty years and for many years was a weekly columnist for the Guardian.
His book Slipless in Settle won the 2011 Cricket Society / MCC Book of the Year award, the Cricket Writers’ Club Book of the Year award and was also named Best Cricket Book at the 2011 British Sports Book Awards. 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.
His book about Flemish cycling, The Beast, the Emperor and the Milkman, was longlisted for the 2019 William Hill Sports Book of the Year award, and his sequel to The Far Corner, published in 2020 by Simon & Schuster, was longlisted for the William Hill award. First of the Summer Wine (2022), about three remarkable characters from the golden age of Yorkshire cricket, was shortlisted for the Cricket Society / MCC Book of the Year. His latest book is No Pie, No Priest. Harry lives in the north-east of England.
