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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

April in Spain/John Banville

John Banville is an established Irish writer of both criminal and general fiction. This novel is a blend of the two. The story is of the Eire State Pathologist John Quirke going on holiday with his Austrian psychoanalyst wife Evelyn to San Sebastián. There, by chance, he recognised April, a friend [...]

September 12, 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

Thoughts on a great England victory

In the Great Debate of Farrell v Smith George Ford was marginalised. He was not yesterday: with some glorious kicking he personally amassed 27 points.  The drop kick is an effective but underused weapon. I was there in the Stade de France when the South African fly half Jamie de Beer  destroyed [...]

September 10, 2023 // 0 Comments

Rugby World Cup Preview

The first observation to make about the Rugby World Cup is that the four best Rugby nations (France, New Zealand, Ireland and South Africa) are all in the lower section. Whilst France v New Zealand is a tasty opener I’m looking forward more to the Pool B encounter between world number one Ireland [...]

September 8, 2023 // 0 Comments

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