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Man Utd: can they come back?

Students of history will know that the surprising factor is not that empires decline but that they last for so long. It’s not different in sport. Manchester Utd took a long time – and tried numerous managers – before achieving success after Matt Busby. Liverpool dominated the [...]

November 29, 2024 // 0 Comments

One Hell of a Life/biography of Brian Close by Stephen Chalke

Personally, whilst I respected Brian Close, not least for his often reckless courage, he was never a favourite of mine – there was too much of the curmudgeonly Yorkshireman for me. Stephen Chalke is more sympathetic of “Closey”. Close had the longest first class career of any [...]

October 19, 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

A visit to Hever Castle

Yesterday my wife and I happened to be in the area of Edenbridge in Kent with a couple of hours to spare and decided to indulge ourselves with a “brush with history” by visiting Hever Castle, the ancestral home of the Boleyn family and, of course, famously Anne Boleyn, King Henry [...]

September 29, 2024 // 0 Comments

Fiddler on the Roof/Open Air Theatre (Regent’s Park)

Fiddler on the Roof is a wonderful musical of catchy songs, humour and two engaging themes of displacement and tradition confronting change. This performance does it justice. American actor Adam Dannheiszer is well cast as the philosophical Tevye the milkman clinging to his traditional [...]

September 20, 2024 // 0 Comments

Jamaica Inn/Daphne du Maurier

oAfter reading non-fiction it was a pleasure to return to a Daphne du Maurier novel I had not read. Jamaica Inn showcases Daphne du Maurer’s ability as a writer: she can tell a good story and conveys a fine sense of location and atmosphere. The story’s heroine is 23 year old Mary Yellan [...]

September 9, 2024 // 0 Comments

Joe Solomon and the Spirit of Mourant/Clem Seecharan

Port Mourant, a sugar plantation on the Corenyne Coast of Guyana, is a remarkable place as it has spawned 4 famous West Indian cricketers – Basil Butcher, Rohan Kanhai and Joe Solomon –  and later Alvin Kallicharan, a political leader Cheggi Jagan and the author Professor Clem [...]

August 30, 2024 // 0 Comments

Marriages (on film and TV)

Having been married to my Rosie – or Roz as she is known – for 45 years I do give a lot of thought to long term matrimony. The best portrayal of a long marriage is that of Horace Rumpole to Hilda. The Rumpole series are shown on Talking Pictures and, irony of ironies given that the [...]

August 23, 2024 // 0 Comments

Brief Encounter

In their Classic Movies series the Sky Arts film critics (Ian Nathan, Mel Norman and Steven Armstrong) reviewed Brief  Encounter, a Noel Coward and David Lean joint production. It raises the question as to whether or not a film made in 1945 is dated , a period piece or a timeless classic. Clearly [...]

August 11, 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

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