Hugh de Selincourt was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

 and journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

, chiefly remembered today for his timeless tale of village cricket

Village cricket

Village cricket is a term, sometimes pejorative, given to the playing of cricket in rural villages in England. Many villages have their own teams that play at varying levels of the English cricket pyramid....

, The Cricket Match (1924). He studied at Dulwich College

Dulwich College

Dulwich College is an independent school for boys in Dulwich, southeast London, England. The college was founded in 1619 by Edward Alleyn, a successful Elizabethan actor, with the original purpose of educating 12 poor scholars as the foundation of "God's Gift". It currently has about 1,600 boys,...

 before going on to University College, Oxford

University College, Oxford

.University College , is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2009 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £110m...

. During the 1910s, he worked as a journalist, initially as drama

Drama

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...

 critic of the Star and later as literary critic of the Observer

The Observer

The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...

. He continued to write book reviews for the Observer long after quitting his official post in 1914.

He had also published a few light-hearted novels - the first of these, A Boy's Marriage, came out in 1907 - but after World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 broke out, his literary output took on a more serious note. As war ended in 1918, his writings too resumed their former gaiety, in novels such as Young Mischief and Young 'Un. In 1924, The Cricket Match was published. This novel stands alongside A. G. Macdonell

A. G. Macdonell

Archibald Gordon Macdonell was a Scottish writer, journalist and broadcaster, whose most famous work is the gently satirical novel England, Their England .-Life and work:...

's England, Their England

England, Their England

England, Their England is an affectionately satirical comic novel of 1920s English urban and rural society by the Scottish writer A. G. Macdonell. It is particularly famed for its portrayal of village cricket.-Social satire:...

as one of the classic accounts of village cricket in English literature

English literature

English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....

. The fictional village of Tillingfold was a recurring element in de Selincourt's work, and was based on his own village of Storrington

Storrington

Storrington is a village in the Horsham District of West Sussex, England, and one of two in the civil parish of Storrington and Sullington. Storrington lies at the foot of the north side of the South Downs. As of 2006 the village has a population of around 4,600. It has one main shopping street...

 at the foot of the South Downs

South Downs

The South Downs is a range of chalk hills that extends for about across the south-eastern coastal counties of England from the Itchen Valley of Hampshire in the west to Beachy Head, near Eastbourne, East Sussex, in the east. It is bounded on its northern side by a steep escarpment, from whose...

.

The Saturday Match (1937) and Gauvinier Takes to Bowls (1948) were among de Selincourt's final books. He died in his home in Sussex

Sussex

Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...

at the age of 72. His widow Janet died in 1955.