James Hamilton on Sport History and Psychology
Sooner or later, the national anthem is going to have to make way at internationals for songs more closely related to the individual countries of the UK. If we stop making her listen to that awful Georgian dirge, perhaps the Queen will come along once more. She used to be at the Cup Final, every…
P.G. Wodehouse spent the dying days of World War II shuttling from one address in France to another. His had been a travelling life, so this wasn’t in itself any sort of obstacle to getting the writing done. Nevertheless he used a letter to an old friend in England to complain that, where once a…
Clive’s mentioning of Patricia Barber’s rendering of “You’re The Top!” reminded me to post this passage from Robert McCrum’s Wodehouse biography. “Anything Goes” is the greatest musical of the twentieth or any century, but its creation was anything but smooth: Towards the end of his life, Wodehouse published an account of the day when (Cole)…
It was just a silly idea that I had for a novel. It would have to get past the Wodehouse trustees to have any chance of publication. Perhaps if I made old Plum a leading character it would soothe their feelings. So I’ve been reading Robert McCrum’s brilliant Wodehouse: A Life – the paperback edition…
(Click to enlarge) Andrew Pitcairn-Knowles (1871-1956) was one of that lost British type, the cheery, never-take-no-for-an-answer, not-quite-eccentric-thankyou pioneer. Photographs of him show an open, confident man, whose face says “buy me a beer,” or would do had he not been a pioneer of health farms as well as photo-journalism. The raging beauty in the front…
It wasn’t so long ago that this blog had readers at the Guardian, the Times, Time Out London, the PM programme, Radio 5 Live, BBC Online and, I am told, within Blair’s kitchen cabinet. A year plus of disruption and the consequent reduced frequency and quality of posting has done for most of that I…
The “internet” symbol on my router lit up last night for the first time. It still won’t actually CONNECT me to the entity of that name, but that must come soon, and when it does, I’ll be back properly. They’ve demolished the nineteenth century pavilion at the Edinburgh Academicals ground. When you are surrounded by…
Before: After: I’ve always admired the kind of man who can find himself a hairstyle and just stick to it. I hope that’s what I’ve done. But I can never match the expression with which I came into the world, although I feel it on the inside most days. I was born at eleven o’clock,…
I’m not one for heroes, but there are those whom I admire, and some of them threatened to go on for ever. There aren’t many who can shock, depress and upset you by dying at the age of 96. “Hard Times” was always my favourite of his, and of that, the interview with Jerome Zerbe….