Enjoying a celebrity shared by perhaps only Gladstone and Queen Victoria of his contemporaries W.G. Grace was the worlds first sporting superstar. Researched in archives from Grimsby to Australia and drawing on diaries letters and access to the cricketers own library this biography offers a radical analysis of Graces career. It also reviews the more controversial aspects of his conduct including verbal and physical altercations both on and off the field and his kidnapping of an Australian cricketer from Lords. Discussion of his private life encompasses his childhood his marriage his children his grief at the death of a daughter and later his eldest son and his career as a doctor. The book includes an extensive statistical survey by Bill Frindall.