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Brighton 0 Arsenal 3

Arsenal swept aide Brighton 3-0 with no difficulty. The tone was set in the opening minute when Gabriel’s free header from a well-flighted free kick went just past the post. Bukayo Saka and Kai Haivetz scorned more chances but Saka converted a penalty to give the Gunners the lead. Two more goals [...]

April 7, 2024 // 0 Comments

St. Paul’s Old Boys and Oskar Schindler

In the week I watched on PBS Oskar Schindler/The Real Story and noticed that its writer, director and producer was Jon Blair. The self same Blair was at my school, St. Paul’s, and fled his native South Africa to avoid conscription. Like another South African of that era – Peter Hain – [...]

April 6, 2024 // 0 Comments

The Savage Storm: The battle for Italy 1943/James Holland

Pursuing my interest in the less well known theatres of World War Two warfare I read James Holland’s account of the Allies’ Italy campaign with great interest and enjoyment. The Allies had booted Rommel and his Afrika Korps out of North Africa, taken over Sicily and in late 1943 planned the [...]

April 3, 2024 // 0 Comments

The Rumor Game/Thomas Mullen

The Rumor Game is set in Boston in 1943 and features as central characters a Jewish activist journalist (Anne) and an Irishman (Devon Mulroy) who works for the FBI. Both are conflicted. Anne wants to be more involved in exposing rising anti-semitism, chiefly inflicted by the Irish community, and [...]

March 27, 2024 // 0 Comments

Dead In the Long Room/Andrew Green

Dead In The Long Room is a novel which works on several levels: as a murder mystery, as a depiction of Edwardian literary life and as a description of the pavilion at Lords. The story is of a murder of an actor Harold Wilde during the Authors v Actors match at Lords. This fixture still takes place [...]

March 19, 2024 // 0 Comments

A superb day of TV sport

I can scarcely remember a more exciting day of TV sport. It started with a lunchtime thriller of a quarter-final FA Cup tie contested between Wolves and Coventry which the latter won with 2 goals in extra time. Next up was Italy’s 24-21 victory over Wales in Cardiff. Italy are my team of the Six [...]

March 17, 2024 // 0 Comments

Cheltenham

I have been inactive both in posting and betting for a while as I have been shut out of my Betfair account. I do not believe this to be bad luck as, speaking to another punter who was shut, he believed it done by Betfair who do not make money from those who win and retain their money. With some [...]

March 16, 2024 // 0 Comments

Thoughts on the India/England Test series

The critics of Bazball – whatever that might be -are out in force as England lost the series 4-1. In my opinion they could have lost 1-4 with a more cautious approach. I go back to the 2017 tour which ended in similar defeat – which I attended – when two Surrey spinners were [...]

March 10, 2024 // 0 Comments

More Daphne du Maurier/Radio 4 drama

The second Daphne du Maurier dramatisation by Paula O’Shea on Radio 4 (broadcast yesterday) was not an adaptation of one of her stories but rather a chance meeting late in Daphne’s life on one of her coastal Cornwall walks between her – played excellently by Helena Bonham Carter – [...]

March 7, 2024 // 0 Comments

All The Light We Cannot See/Anthony Doerr

For those who do not enjoy reading, or may be intimidated by a 500 page book, you can start – as I did – with the Netflix film starring Mark Ruffalo and Hugh Laurie. I was sufficiently engaged – and thought the film may not have done justice to the novel – to read the book. [...]

March 5, 2024 // 0 Comments

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