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Worrell/Simon Lister

This biography serves as an illuminating follow up to Who Only Cricket Knows.   Frank Worrell was the first black cricketer to captain the West Indies for a full series. A member of the three Ws triumvirate Caribbean; Clyde Walcott, who like Worrell went to Combermere school, and Everton Weekes [...]

August 10, 2024 // 0 Comments

Great British failures

The failure to win gold by Team GB’s Matthew Hudson Smith was the 3rd such one after Adam Peaty and Josh Kerr. You would not have guessed it from the soft post-event interview – and now Peaty is blaming the food. He is pathetic. Footballers are overpaid but they have to put up with much [...]

August 8, 2024 // 0 Comments

The Olympics assessed

We are now more than a week beyond the opening ceremony ruined by rain which set the tone for an Olympiad not living up to expectation. Scarcely a day goes by without some scandalous happening – the latest being the barring of running Goddess Sha’carri Richardson to the stadium for the [...]

August 4, 2024 // 0 Comments

Tristan and Isolde/Glyndebourne

Yesterday I returned to Glyndebourne for the second time in a week for their production of Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde.  They are arguably the most famous lovers in opera, that is, if we regard Romeo and Juliet as less the opera of Gounod and more the theatre of William Shakespeare. So [...]

August 3, 2024 // 0 Comments

Art appropriation

Looting of artworks existed long before the current cultural appropriation movement. Napoleon was probably the biggest looter in history. Still under 30 when he conquered Italy, he never actually occupied Venice but one of  of his art commissars drew up an inventory of art works to hand  over [...]

August 1, 2024 // 0 Comments

Who Only Cricket Knows/David Woodhouse

This is a book prize-winning account of the 1953-1954 tour to the Caribbean led by Len Hutton and managed by Charles Palmer. The title is an adaptation from Rudyard Kipling by the Marxist writer C.R James which reflected one of the tensions of the tour – nascent Caribbean nationalism – [...]

July 31, 2024 // 0 Comments

The Merry Widow/Glyndebourne

Franz Léhar’s operetta, written in 1905, is actually a musical and really marked the end of one genre  (the operetta) and beginning of another (the musical). The story is simple. Hanna Glawari (Danielle de Niese) is the rich widow from Pontevedro, in Paris for a party at the Pontevedro [...]

July 27, 2024 // 0 Comments

The Crusades/PBS

I was taught history to a high level at my school, so much so that a fellow pupil who later achieved a first at Oxford said he was able to rely upon his school tuition in the first year of university. However, in the teaching of the Crusades, I do not believe we had an accurate assessment. The [...]

July 26, 2024 // 0 Comments

The Paris Olympics

Suddenly the Olympics are here. With the Rugby World Cup and the Euros we have not been deprived top notch international sporting competition this year. However, the array of summer sports in Britain have been spoiled by the appalling weather. Paris and France are appropriate stages. Baron de [...]

July 25, 2024 // 0 Comments

Schauffele’s Open

Xander Schauffele won his second Major of the year, seeing off the challenge of Trystan Lawrence and Justin Rose. Yorkshireman Dan Brown, who up to the tournament some might have thought wrote The Da Vinci Code, faded away as did West Ham supporter Billy Horshel who had led on the third day. He [...]

July 23, 2024 // 0 Comments

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