Michael Packe

Michael St John Packe (21 August 1916 – 20 December 1978) was an English historian, biographer, and cricketer.John Arlott, "From Time to Time: Michael Packe, late British author and cricketer" ''The Guardian'', 13 June 1986. He was the author of ''The Life of John Stuart Mill'' (1954), and four other historical works. A right-handed batsman, he played for Leicestershire County Cricket Club between 1936 and 1939,CricketArchive profile
/ref> captaining them in 1939.Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 1980
Obituaries before 1979
/ref> He also played first-class cricket for Cambridge University and represented the Egypt national cricket team.

Personal life

Born in Eastbourne in 1916, Michael Packe was the younger brother of Charles and Robert Packe, both of whom also played cricket for Leicestershire. He was educated at Wellington College and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read history. During World War II he served in the Royal Army Service Corps in the First Airborne Division, where he attained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. After the Battle of Arnhem in 1944 he was awarded the Dutch Bronze Cross; he was recommended for OBE but not appointed. In 1946 he was demobilised and moved to Alderney, where he grew vegetables commercially, wrote, and was involved in the island cricket team. He was married to Kathryn Packe, a niece of Edith Wharton. He died of a brain tumour on Alderney in 1978.

Published historical works

Packe's first book was ''First Airborne'' (1948), reprinted in 1988 as ''Winged Stallion: Fighting and Training with the First Airborne'' (). In 1954 he published the work for which he is best known, ''The Life of John Stuart Mill''. The book was generally well received. It was called by Friedrich Hayek "the definitive biography of Mill for which we have so long been waiting." Other reviewers were more cautious. Lionel Robbins of the London School of Economics criticised the ''Life'' for neglecting Mill's economic thought, for demoting prominent philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham to the status of comic relief, and for using "a method of presentation which makes it very difficult to distinguish fact from fiction." But Robbins conceded that the book "abounds in new information" and that "it is certainly safe to say that in future no one who wishes to write seriously about Mill can afford to neglect what he ackehas done." Later biographers of Mill continued to cite Packe's work; in his 2004 biography of Mill, Nicholas Capaldi called Packe's biography "a gold mine of information," although "the stress is more on the life than on the thought."

Packe's next book, ''The Bombs of Orsini'' (1957) was a biography of Felice Orsini, an Italian revolutionary who tried to assassinate Napoleon III. In 1966 he and Maurice Dreyfuss published ''The Alderney Story, 1939–49,'' an account of Alderney's wartime occupation and liberation compiled while living witnesses were still available. Packe then began work on a biography of Edward III, but the book was incomplete when he died. This last book was completed by L.C.B. Seaman and published in 1983 as ''King Edward III'' ().

Cricket career

Packe made his first-class debut for Cambridge University against Essex in June 1936, playing for the university against the Free Foresters the following week. He first played for Leicestershire in August that year, in a County Championship match against Northamptonshire. He played five more County Championship matches for Leicestershire that month.First-class matches played by Michael Packe
at CricketArchive

He did not play for his university team in the 1937 season, but did play nine first-class matches for Leicestershire – seven in the County Championship, one against Oxford University and one against New Zealand. He played just four matches in 1938, all for Cambridge University, including one against Australia. His last match for the university was against Nottinghamshire.

In April 1939 he played for Egypt against HM Martineau's XI in Cairo. Back in England, he captained Leicestershire during the 1939, playing in 18 County Championship matches in addition to matches against Cambridge University, Oxford University and the West Indies. His last first-class match was against Derbyshire.

On Alderney he served as judge for the local cricket tea
History of Alderney Cricket
and he left Alderney each year to attend the Lord's Test.

Cricket statistics

In his 41 first-class matches, Packe scored 1151 runs at an average of 18.86. He made just one century, an innings of 118 for Leicestershire against Glamorgan in 1936, described by Wisden as "brilliant". He took one wicket, that of Yorkshire's Arthur Wood in 1939.Scorecard
of Yorkshire v Leicestershire, 7 June 1939 at CricketArchive

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Packe, Michael
1916 births
1978 deaths
Military personnel from Sussex
Cricketers from Eastbourne
Egyptian cricketers
English cricketers
Leicestershire cricketers
Leicestershire cricket captains
Cambridge University cricketers
English historians
English biographers
20th-century British biographers
People educated at Wellington College, Berkshire
Alumni of Magdalene College, Cambridge
Royal Army Service Corps officers
British Army personnel of World War II
Recipients of the Bronze Cross (Netherlands)