national institution". Simon Rae also commented upon Grace's eminence in Victorian England by saying that his public recognition was equalled only by Queen Victoria herself and William Ewart Gladstone. The inaugural edition of Playfair Cricket Annual in 1948 coincided with the centenary of Grace's birth and carried a tribute which spoke of Grace as "King in his own domain" and his "Olympian personality". Playfair went on to say how Grace had "pulverised fast bowling on chancy pitches" and had then "astonished the world" by his deeds during the 1895 "Indian Summer". In the foreword of the same edition, C. B. Fry insisted that Grace would not have started the 1948 season with any notion of being beaten by that season's Australian touring team, for "he was sanguine" and would have put everything he could muster into the task of beating them with no acceptance of defeat "till after it happened". As mentioned in Playfair, both MCC and Gloucestershire arranged special matches on Grace's birthday to commemorate his centenary. In the 1963 edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, Grace was selected by Neville Cardus as one of the Six Giants of the Wisden Century. This was a special commemorative selection requested by Wisden for its 100th edition. The other five players chosen were Sydney Barnes, Don Bradman, Jack Hobbs, Tom Richardson and Victor Trumper. To mark 150 years of the Cricketers' Almanack, Wisden named him in an all-time Test World XI. In the 1982 serial of Doctor Who titled Black Orchid, Grace was referred to in passing as "The Master" (to the confusion of the Doctor until Sir Robert explained that he was referring to Grace). Derek Birley, who devoted whole passages of his book to criticism of Grace's gamesmanship and moneymaking, wrote that the "bleakness (of the war) was exemplified in November (sic) 1915 by the death of Grace, which seemed depressingly emblematic of the end of an era". Rowland Bowen wrote that "many of Grace's achievements would be rated extremely good by our standards" but "by the standards of his day they were phenomenal: nothing like them had ever been done before". David Frith summed up Grace's legacy to cricket by writing that "his influence lasted long after his final appearance in first-class cricket in 1908 and his death in 1915". "For decades", wrote Frith, "Grace had been arguably the most famous man in England", easily recognisable because of "his