Kit Bartlett, one of the founder members of the ACS, died on 6 September 2019, aged 88.
Born in Beckenham, he worked as a personnel executive with London Transport. After helping to found the ACS in 1973, he was a regular contributor to its Journal, and was named Statistician of the Year in 1992 for his many years of historical research.
Kit served on the committee from 1995 to 2006, and took over from Derek Lodge as the editor of the Famous Cricketers series in 1996.
In that series, he wrote on Brian Close, Paul Gibb, Laurie Fishlock and Eddie Paynter, and was a joint author on John Wisden, Denis Compton, Tom Hayward, James Lillywhite junior and Derek Underwood.
After Famous Cricketers was succeeded by the Lives in Cricket series in 2007, Kit wrote Bill Copson: More than Miner Interest (2008).
He was also much appreciated by book editors as an unfailing and forensic proof-reader, most recently on Rev ES Carter, published in 2018.
David Jeater, who edited Lives in Cricket, said “In his formal but wry-humoured way, he was very keen on accuracy and clarity, insisting on the best standards, and on getting books out on time. He recognised that a good deal of the older material on cricket was faintly unreliable, and by his own quiet efforts contributed much to the better understanding of cricket history and to the improvement of record-keeping.”
Away from the ACS, Kit was justly proud of having seen first-class cricket at over 100 grounds. He was also an enthusiastic member of The Cricket Society, and for many years was a formidable performer (and occasionally fearsome question-setter) in the Society’s cricket quizzes.