Ernest Sheepshanks

Ernest Richard Sheepshanks (22 March 1910 – 31 December 1937), also known as Dick Sheepshanks, was an English amateur first-class cricketer who played one match for Yorkshire County Cricket Club in 1929,[1] and a war correspondent who was killed in the Spanish Civil War.

Personal

Sheepshanks was born at Arthington Hall, Leeds, Yorkshire, England. His family had made its fortune in wool.[2] He is buried in the churchyard at Arthington Hall.[3]

Education and sports

Sheepshanks attended Eton College, where he was captain of cricket, and helped them win the annual fixture against Harrow School in 1928. He then studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1928 to 1931, where he was a contemporary of Victor Rothschild and Guy Burgess.[4]

It was in his first year at Cambridge, in 1929, that he played for Yorkshire County Cricket Club against the University, although he never played for Cambridge University itself. Sheepshanks, as a right-handed batsman, scored 26 in his only innings.[1] After following on, Cambridge scored 425 for 7 and the match was drawn.

Journalism career

Sheepshanks joined Reuters as a journalist on 16 October 1933.[3] He died, aged 27, in December 1937 at Caudiel, Teruel, Spain, where he was working as a special correspondent at the Battle of Teruel in the Spanish Civil War, covering the war from a pro-Franco position.[5] A shell landed just in front of the press car he was in; Bradish Johnson of Newsweek was killed outright, Eddie Neil of Associated Press and Sheepshanks were fatally wounded, but Kim Philby of The Times, much later exposed as a Soviet spy, suffered only a minor head wound.

Controversy

Decades later Tom Duprée, British honorary consul at Saint Jean de Luz, France in 1937, suggested Philby had set a bomb in the car to kill Sheepshanks before he blew his cover, but Professor Donald Read considered this highly improbable.[6]

References
  1. Warner, David (2011). The Yorkshire County Cricket Club: 2011 Yearbook (113th ed.). Ilkley, Yorkshire: Great Northern Books. p. 377. ISBN 978-1-905080-85-4.
  2. Charlotte Moore (14 May 1995). "PROPERTY: Five centuries of the past to play with - Arts & Entertainment". The Independent. Retrieved 20 January 2014.
  3. "Dick Sheepshanks". Thebaron.info. Archived from the original on 1 February 2014. Retrieved 2014-01-20.
  4. Lord Rothschild, Meditations of a Broomstick (London: Collins, 1977), p. 16. ISBN 0002165120
  5. Cricinfo Player Profile retrieved 27 November 2008
  6. Fighting for Franco, Judith Keene, 2001


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