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The state of Rugby Union in England

It is a well-known fact that the sport of Rugby Union across the board is in plenty of financial and other trouble at the moment. There is talk of making it a “summer sport” in the UK – and even the floating of the idea of it trying to create a merger with Rugby League in order to [...]

September 26, 2024 // 0 Comments

Cricketing national identities

Reading articulate and well-informed books on post-War Caribbean cricket led me to the scarcely original theory that cricket is not played in that many countries but each has an identity  and style of its own. The West Indies dominated cricket for 20 years under Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards but no [...]

September 25, 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

Cineworld

The heading above should have been Lee as I intended to see that film on its release date at the 5-00pm performance. However, on arrival at my local Cineworld, I was informed the projector had broken down and I had to go to another performance. It reminded me of the story about a reviewer who [...]

September 14, 2024 // 0 Comments

Tempus Fugit, as we always knew it did …

From time to time on this organ – or indeed sometimes (in real life) quite by chance, perhaps when either undertaking some trivial domestic task or reading a newspaper – one has occasion to reflect upon the passing of time. I had experienced one of the latter on Monday when glancing at [...]

September 11, 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

Classic Movies/Sky Arts

This series, presented by Ian Nathan, has returned. No Dr Bonnie Greer, but instead a young American critic and film historian Christina Newland.  Neil Norman is also a regular but Steven Armstrong, the Sunday Times film critic, features only occasionally. The choice of movies is odd. The first [...]

September 6, 2024 // 0 Comments

Fulham programmes over the years

Over the past few weeks I have been clearing out my  garage. In one corner is my collection of Fulham programmes over my years of support, nearly 55 now. These were exactly the sort of stuff you amass in a garage: you don’t want to throw them out but you rarely read them. So I decided, before [...]

September 3, 2024 // 0 Comments

A day at Arundel

Yesterday I attended a “friendly” cricket match at Arundel’s Castle Ground between Sir Tim Rice’s Invincibles XI and the Weekenders. I have put “friendly” in inverted commas as the Weekenders were taking the match seriously and competitively. I say this as I was in [...]

August 31, 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

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