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Eric Midwinter MA DPHIL OBE (born 1932) was Visiting Professor of Education at the University of Exeter, 1992-2001, and, until lately, Chairman of the Community Education Development Centre, Coventry. He was Director of the Centre for Policy on Ageing, 1980-91, when the Centre was developing its new role as a policy institute, and is now Chairman of CPA. A social historian, educationist and social policy analyst, he has enjoyed a long career in the public and voluntary service. He is a Co-founder of the University of the Third Age and has been consultant to the Millennium Debate of the Age project and to the International Longevity Centre UK.

During his recent career, he has been Chairman of the Health and Social Welfare Board of the Open University - and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of the OU - and he was a member of the Carnegie Inquiry into the Third Age Committee; a member of the Advisory Committee on Telecommunications for Disabled and Elderly People; and for five years a member of the Prince of Wales Advisory Group on Disability. Eric Midwinter also completed a European Commission study, under the auspices of Age Concern England, into the feasibility of a Senior Euro-pass.

Well-known as writer, broadcaster and consumer champion - he was Chairman of the London Regional Passengers Committee, the government appointed watchdog for public transport, 1977-96 - he has also won critical acclaim as a cricket historian (he was for seven years President of the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians and he is Chairman of the Cricket Society Cricket Book of the Year Award) and is a biographer of W.G. Grace. He is also well-known as a perceptive expert on British comedy, through, for instance, his well-received texts, Make ‘em Laugh; Famous Comedians and their Worlds and The People’s Jesters; British Comedians in the 20th Century.

Author of over fifty publications, among his latest books have been 500 Beacons; the U3A Story; the award winning Red Shirts and Roses; the Tale of the Two Old Traffords; Lord Salisbury in ‘the 20 British Prime Ministers of the 20th Century’ series; George Duckworth; Warrington’s Ambassador at Large in the ‘Lives in Cricket’ series, and Parish to Planet; How Football Came to Rule the World. He was for several years editor of the MCC Annual, and he has prepared many notices of the lives of both cricketers and comedians for the old DNB and the New Dictionary of National Biography.

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