Bernard Whimpress

Bernard Whimpress was born in Adelaide, South Australia and still lives there although his life has not been as dull as that. After originally dropping out of university, spending several unproductive years as a public servant, hitting the hippy trail (overland Delhi-London) without taking perception-altering substances and failing to become the new Kerouac, he entered journalism by publishing a newspaper on Australian football and later edited a magazine dealing with the same sport. His first book, The South Australian Football Story (1983), saw a move to history and two books on cricket followed in the next two years. However, by his late thirties he was failing to establish career momentum and bore similarities to the William Hurt character in The Big Chill who admitted 'I ain't into this completion thing'.

Then came a change. He re-entered university in mature age undecided about whether to pursue psychology or history but after majoring in both ended up taking a PhD in the latter. In the last thirty years he has completed a few things, like 45 more books (mainly on cricket) although with a couple on heritage buildings in his home city, others on memoir, photography, art history and even poetry. He curated a sports museum at Adelaide Oval, and taught university courses in Aboriginal, sports and world history, and sports journalism. Among his more important books are Passport to Nowhere (1999), Chuckers (2004), The Greatest Ashes Battles (2009), The Official MCC Story of the Ashes (fifth edition, 2017), On Our Selection (2011), and biographies of Australian Test cricket captains Joe Darling (2018) and George Giffen (2020).