MICHAEL ARNOLD was born in England but has lived in Australia for over 30 years and is a life-long cricket enthusiast. He lived in Africa and Asia for many years as a senior executive in the insurance industry, playing cricket for such clubs as the world famous Selangor Club in Kuala Lumpur before moving to Australia in 1981. He is an avid researcher and amateur historian who specialises in cricket and military history and was for many years the Australian correspondent for the Hampshire Cricket Society. In 2011 his book The Sacrifice of Singapore: Churchill’s Biggest Blunder was an instant success, revealing as it did the real reasons for the fall of Singapore in 1942 and also uncovering previously ignored evidence of the true size of the Japanese forces.
His meeting with Harold Larwood came about quite by chance when Michael’s mother-in-law happened to mention that Larwood lived nearby. It was this initial meeting and the many subsequent discussions with Larwood that convinced him that there was far more to the events of the infamous 1932/33 tour than had been mentioned by previous conventional accounts.
A cricket library of over 200 cricket books helped in the subsequent years of research as did observing the style and habits of the local media and the Australian total obsession with sport. These were two aspects that had remained untouched by previous authors, but it had required an Englishman, living in Australia, to perceive the significance of various local factors and to realise that there were many influential issues outside the field of play that had previously been ignored.
Michael now lives in Sydney, where he runs his own insurance claims consultancy. Publication of a second military book, Hollow Heroes, is currently in hand.