Eric Midwinter was born in
Sale, Lancashire, on 11 February 1932. He was educated at a local grammar school and
St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he read history. Between 1968 and 1971, he led the team for action research in the Liverpool Education Priority Area. Between 1972 and 1975, as Principal of the Liverpool Teachers' Centre, he established an organisational structure capable of delivering continuing professional development to all teachers in Liverpool. He was Chairman of the
London Regional Passengers Committee, the government-appointed watchdog for public transport, from 1984 to 1996. He was Director of the Centre for Policy on Ageing from 1980 to 1991, when the centre was developing its role as a policy institute, and was later its chairman. He was Visiting Professor of Education at the
University of Exeter from 1992 to 2001. A
social historian and social policy analyst, he was a co-founder of the
University of the Third Age and was consultant to the Millennium Debate of the Age project and to the
International Longevity Centre UK. He was Chairman of the Health and Social Welfare Board of the
Open University, which awarded him an Honorary Doctorate, and a member of the Carnegie Inquiry into the Third Age Committee. He was also 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. He completed a European Commission study, under the auspices of
Age Concern England, into the feasibility of a Senior
Euro-pass. Until 2008, he was Chairman of the Community Education Development Centre,
Coventry. A
cricket historian, he was for seven years President of the
Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians, and a biographer of
W. G. Grace. Midwinter won
The Cricket Society/MCC Book of the Year award in 2005 for
Red Shirts and Roses, and the
Wisden Book of the Year award in 2011 for ''The Cricketer's Progress: Meadowland to Mumbai
. He was for several years editor of the MCC Annual
, and prepared many notices of the lives of cricketers and comedians for the old and new Dictionary of National Biography. He was also an expert on British comedy, through, for instance, his books Make 'em Laugh: Famous Comedians and their Worlds
and The People's Jesters; British Comedians in the 20th Century''. Midwinter and his wife Margaret lived in
Harpenden, Hertfordshire. He died on 8 August 2025, at the age of 93. ==Bibliography==