18 NOVEMBER 2006, Page 48

D AVID C RANE I suspect it’s going to be another 99

years before most people can face another word on Nelson, but for anyone looking the other way in October 2005 the paperback version of Tim Clayton’s and Phil Craig’s vivid and widely researched Trafalgar: The Men, The Battle, The Storm (Hodder £8.99) is a class above the usual anniversary stuff. A wonderful memoir — elegantly written, funny, surprising and moving — is Jeremy Harding’s story of his adoptive parents and search for his natural mother, Mother Country (Faber, £15.99). It’s already looking like a bad winter for English cricket, so The Match (Bloomsbury, £14.99), Romesh Gunesekara’s touching novel of Sri Lankan exile and cricketing incompetence might be some comfort.