Derek Birley

Sir Derek Birley (31 May 1926 – 14 May 2002) was a distinguished English educationalist and a prize-winning writer on the social history of sport, particularly cricket.

Born in a mining community in West Yorkshire, Birley was educated, having won scholarships, at Hemsworth Grammar School, Hemsworth, West Yorkshire, and at Queen's College, Cambridge.

Birley wrote two cricket books: The Willow Wand (1979) and the classic A Social History of English Cricket (1999), (which won the Cricket Society's "Book of the Year Award" and the "William Hill Sports Book of the Year" in 1999).

The founding Rector of Ulster College (later Ulster Polytechnic), and later the founding Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ulster, When Birley retired from education in 1991, he had overseen two decades of massive increases in provision of higher education in Northern Ireland.

A fervent English patriot and anti-fascist, he enlisted in the Royal Artillery from school in 1944, hoping to contribute to active service in the South-East Asian front. He was quickly transferred to the Intelligence Corps to be trained in Russian and Chinese, and sent to the Russian sector in Berlin, where he served 1944–1947 as a Russian interpreter.

On his return to England, he was awarded an ex-serviceman's scholarship to Queen's College, Cambridge, to read English. In 1951, he was joint winner with J.G. Ballard of a short story competition held by Varsity, the Cambridge student newspaper.

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