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The Masters

Since the media will be full of Rory’s Masters and joining the elite group of 4 Major winners, I feel free to give an independent view point on what was a magnificent sporting contest. By backing Xander Schauffe as one of my four “picks” it was not a betting disaster but – even [...]

April 15, 2025 // 0 Comments

Masters Preview

It’s that time of the year when the golf chatter is of the Azaleas in bloom, Amen Corner and Gene Sarazen’s albatross. Yes – we are talking the Masters at Augusta, the only major played every year on the same course. It’s invitational, so the circuit attaches greater  importance to the [...]

April 10, 2025 // 0 Comments

The White Lotus & other TV dramas

The White Lotus reached its final episode last Monday and there were two fatalities. I shall not give any spoilers –  matters were resolved, but not so finally as to make another series impossible. One does wonder how actors written out of the series by their premature deaths feel. I think [...]

April 9, 2025 // 0 Comments

The cricket season begins …

Normally the cricket (four day) championship is bookended in April and September in order to accommodate an ever-burgeoning fixture list so the weather can be unreliable. Though there was still a cold wind, there was heat in the sun and a bright clear spring day. Cricket has always been [...]

April 5, 2025 // 0 Comments

The Tanner Report: Fulham 0 Crystal Palace 3 ( FA Cup quarter final)

Fulham have had different ownerships, players, coaches and managers but one feature of the club always persists: inconsistency. This season we have beaten Manchester Utd at Old Trafford, Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, Spurs at home and also drawn away but only achieved 2 points from Ipswich and [...]

March 30, 2025 // 0 Comments

Inventing Post Impressionism/Charleston

Yesterday I went to Charleston near Lewes for the exhibition Inventing Post Impressionism. The connection between Charleston and Post Impressionism is the art critic Roger Fry who invented the term. Charleston was the home of Vanessa and Clive Bell and the Sussex outpost of the Bloomsbury Group. [...]

March 27, 2025 // 0 Comments

Recent TV dramas

I was delighted that Ten Pound Poms – about the British emigration to Australia in the 1950s – is now in its second series. I can claim a connection as my parents knew an eccentric travel agent (S.G.) whose main business was the repatriation of such emigrants. Well do I remember visits [...]

March 26, 2025 // 0 Comments

Judgment at Tokyo/Gary Bass

Gary Bass, a Princeton historian, has written a magisterial and definitive work on the tribunal constituted by Supreme Commander Douglas MacArthur to try the main forces behind Japan’s war crimes during World War Two. The tribunal problems – one might even say flaws – were threefold: [...]

March 21, 2025 // 0 Comments

Greta Scacchi

One of the reasons why I enjoy the repeats of Bergerac is the casting of the young actors and actresses who appear on it. In the first series – made in 1981 – appeared a young actress aged 21. I thought at first she was Liz Hurley because of  her fine facial features. In fact it was [...]

March 20, 2025 // 0 Comments

The Tanner Report : Fulham 2 Spurs 0

The back stories to a dull game – the type you tend to get on an early Sunday kick off at 1-30 – were more interesting than the game itself. Fulham and Spurs’ best option for European competition is the Cup. Fulham might qualify if there are 8 European places in the Premiership but [...]

March 18, 2025 // 0 Comments

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