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Britain

An expedition to two National Trust properties

Earlier this year the Boss and I joined the National Trust on a “family ticket”. For many years she had been a member of the organisation and occasional visitor to a variety of its properties. In my case, whilst I had been to a few of them over the past six decades, this was more by informal [...]

September 24, 2023 // 0 Comments

Gloucester Rugby 25 Harlequins 17

I was initially excited by last night’s visit to the atmospheric Kingsholm until I realised how many Quins players would be absent on World Cup duty: Joe Marler, Jack Walker, Joe Marchant, Marcus Smith, Danny Care, Andre Esterhuizen, Tommaso Allan and Gloucester could not call on wingers [...]

September 23, 2023 // 0 Comments

Brighton HAFC 2 AEKAthens 3

Brighton’s first-ever European game in the Europa League last night was in every sense a damp squib as they lost and the heavens opened. Surprisingly Roberto de Zerbi rested Lewis Dunk and Evan Ferguson. Dunk was particularly missed as the untried combo of Van der Hecke and Igor did not look [...]

September 22, 2023 // 0 Comments

Haunting in Venice

John Malkovich has done it once unsatisfactorily, Peter Ustinov twice and now Kenneth Branagh three times. Albert Finney, Orson Welles and Alfred Molina had one go. None of them get as near to Hercule Poirot as David Suchet on ITV. He is Poirot. Yesterday I saw Haunting in Venice in which producer, [...]

September 20, 2023 // 0 Comments

Answered prayers/Duncan Hamilton

Duncan Hamilton is rightly acclaimed as one of our best – if not the best – sports biographer. It’s not a literary field crammed with talent. Most ghosted sports biographies are dull with some revelation for the serialisation in a newspaper. Duncan Hamilton writes on major but [...]

September 19, 2023 // 0 Comments

The Tanner Report: Fulham 1 Luton O

When in the season you play a team is key. Luton are just promoted, lost their first three games and – angered that Garth Crooks in midweek predicted their relegation by Xmas – brought many and raucous supporters. Fulham are regarded as soft, the sort of game from which you might come [...]

September 17, 2023 // 0 Comments

England win O.D.I.

England won by 100 runs over New Zealand at Lords but it was a sterile, dull match. Various reasons were discussed but the accepted one was the 12-30 start. This meant the match went onto until 7-30 pm and began at lunchtime. My neighbour in the Upper Mound stand and his wider were my guests for a [...]

September 16, 2023 // 0 Comments

Sussex win (at last ).

Sussex beat Leicestershire yesterday to achieve only their second victory in the second division of the Championship. They won by 15 runs – a slim victory considering Leicestershire were set 498 and were at one stage 16-2. In the final session they needed 42 runs to win with 3 wickets in [...]

September 14, 2023 // 0 Comments

Symbolism in art

Recently I watched a programme called Decoding Turner in which a mechanical engineer and his wife advanced a theory that in Turner’s famous The Fighting Temeraire, on the prow of the vessel was concealed a picture of Napoleon. The art historian Andrew Graham Dixon peered at the picture and [...]

September 13, 2023 // 0 Comments

Wales 32 Fiji 26

Wales’s victory over Fiji was the best World Cup game so far. I had watched South Africa beat Scotland but I find the Boks to be a boring bunch of behemoths. Scotland play attractively but are over-reliant on the mercurial Finn Russell and frankly it was a pea-shooter against a Panzer tank. [...]

September 11, 2023 // 0 Comments

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