Just in

Men

George Eastham (RIP)

I was truly saddened to hear of the death of George Eastham, chiefly for two reasons. Firstly, he belonged to a genre of player that no longer exists: the inside forward. They were technically very skilful, slight and did not score that many goals. Secondly, aged 18, I was watching  from behind [...]

December 23, 2024 // 0 Comments

Fall/John Preston

This is the story of Robert Maxwell and what a life story it is. Born as Jan Ludvik Hoch in 1923 into an impoverished Czechoslovakian Jewish family who were largely exterminated in the Holocaust, he joined up with the British army liberating Europe, reinvented himself as Captain Robert Maxwell and [...]

December 19, 2024 // 0 Comments

Alan Bennett looking back aged 90

He would not like the phrase – and nor do I – but Alan Bennett is a ‘national treasure’.  Last night, aged 90 and in a wheelchair, he looked back on his life and body of work.  It brought back many memories. Forty Years On with John Gielgud would be up there with Shadowlands as [...]

December 14, 2024 // 0 Comments

Gabriel’s Moon/William Boyd

A newly published William Boyd novel is a big literary event especially for his legion of followers. The general critical view is his recent novels fall short of his earliest West African  ones and Any Human Heart. He is a master story teller and Gabriel’s Moon conforms to that. There are [...]

October 9, 2024 // 0 Comments

Horace de Vere Cole

There is no better company than a real English eccentric and they do not come more eccentric than Horace de Vere Cole. From Irish aristocratic lineage, he went to Eton and Trinity College Cambridge and fought in the Boer War. He was the greatest prankster of the Edwardian age. Memorably, he [...]

August 13, 2024 // 0 Comments

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

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

Farleys Farm House (second visit)

Last Friday I arranged to take two friends, D & His wife L, – whose main home is Petworth – to Farleys, the home of surrealist painter Roland Penrose who founded the Institute of Contemporary Arts and Lee Miller, sometime Vogue cover model, international photographer and innovative [...]

June 16, 2024 // 0 Comments

On the trials and tribulations of modern life

Yesterday at about 3.00pm in the warm mid-afternoon sunshine – after a relatively sedentary day to that point – my “other half” and I decided to go walking at a local coastal area of protected wildlife and other things. As we arrived we were seeking nothing more than a quiet, reflective, [...]

May 17, 2024 // 0 Comments

A Saturday afternoon watching rugby

Over several years now this organ has covered the Northern Hemisphere version of the sport of rugby union in some depth, covering everything from specific matches and trends in the financial fortunes and playing tactics of elite professional clubs to its ongoing inherent dangers and medical issues. [...]

April 28, 2024 // 0 Comments

1 2 3 … 41

Copyright © 2025 The National Rust | Design by Premonition