Jon Hotten looks back at one of cricket's most unusual, and possibly slightly grotesque, games... There are several candidates for the match of the year 2011 - mad collapses, last-ball draws, you know, the usual - but there can be only one winner of the award for the year of 1848, ... Read More...
About Author Profile: Jon Hotten
Writer Jon Hotten has been on both sides of the review fence. Here he reveals the extraordinary disconnect between being a reviewer and a reviewee... My friend and estimable rock music writer (amongst other things) Paul Elliott has been asking everyone he interviews if they can remember their worst review. They ... Read More...
Hood Rat - Gavin Knight's new book about Britain's gang culture - makes for uncomfortable reading. We have a double-bill for you, kicking off with Jon Hotten's review... In 1991, David Simon published a book called Homicide: Life On The Killing Streets, that followed for a year the work of three ... Read More...
Jon Hotten pays tribute to the writing of controversial cricketer-turned-journalist Peter Roebuck, who died after jumping from a hotel window on Saturday... In front of me is It Never Rains, Peter Roebuck's diary of his 1983 season with Somerset. It's waterstained and foxed, the page edges an uneasy shade of yellow ... Read More...
From the August 2010 archives, Jon Hotten appreciates a brilliant but almost forgotten gonzo writer... No-one’s ever written a perfect book have they? Jonathan Rendall hasn’t, but he’s written a couple of very good ones, and in improbable circumstances too. His first, a boxing memoir called This Bloody Mary Is The ... Read More...
John Arlott called him 'the most variously gifted Englishman of any age,' and Arlott, conjuring his musty magic from an old typewriter set next a glass of something good and red, was probably right. The sheer unlikeliness of CB Fry continues to astonish, more than half a century after his ... Read More...
In about 1996, I got a deal to write a book about unlicensed boxing. I was arrogant enough to think I could actually write a book. I wish I had the excuse of being young, but I wasn’t really. I was just younger, which is no excuse at all. What ... Read More...
A couple of years ago, I went to interview Keith Deller, 1983 World darts champion. He took the crown in one of darts’ most famous matches, an upset win over the allegedly unbeatable Crafty Cockney, Eric Bristow. In the pre-Sky, four-channel era, the final went out on one of those ... Read More...
My friend Mick Wall turned me on to Filth. Reading that sentence back I see that there are a few ambiguities in it, admittedly, but those aside, he did. ‘Have you read Filth?’ he asked one day when Irvine Welsh’s name came up. I hadn’t, but because Mick has rarely ... Read More...
Much praise has been righteously showered on Out Of The Ashes, Tim Albone and Lucy Martens’ film about the Afghan national cricket team, screened as part of BBC Four’s Storyville this week (Catch up with it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ydj1r). All of the big and obvious themes are there, but what makes it ... Read More...
