[3] After leaving Canterbury Boys' High School on 15 February 1954 he started his first job as a copy-boy for The Daily Mirror but left after two months to join the Commonwealth Bank where he was posted to the Cronulla branch.
Here he sought, to no avail, a full-time cricket related post but, thanks to a recommendation by Jack Fingleton, he did secure some work with the Australian News and Information Bureau.
The return to Australia would prove to be short-lived and he moved back to the United Kingdom departing aboard the TSS Fairstar on 19 March 1972.
His major works include My Dear Victorious Stod (a biography of A. E. Stoddart), a lavishly illustrated history of England versus Australia, Silence of the Heart (on cricket's suicides, an expansion of his earlier book By His Own Hand), The Fast Men, The Slow Men (about fast bowlers and spinners respectively), Pageant of Cricket (the only cricket book to have as many as 2000 pictures), Caught England, Bowled Australia (autobiography), The Trailblazers (the first English tour of Australia, in 1861–62), The Archie Jackson Story (biography) and Bodyline Autopsy.
[8] In his assessment, Martin Chandler wrote: "Autopsy" is a magnificent book possessing a vibrancy and objectivity that when I first read it I found quite remarkable.