Jonathon Green celebrates the golden age of hardboiled, noir US sports journalism... It’s a funny thing about people. People will hate a guy all his life for what he is, but the minute he dies for it they make him out a hero and they go around saying that maybe he ... Read More...
Sport
Machines are already better than humans at chess, and now computers are increasingly important in sports like cricket and baseball. Author Jon Hotten ponders the implications... Writing about the 1986 world championship match between Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov, Martin Amis said of chess: '[They are playing] the foremost game of ... Read More...
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things. Then I had my own children and I got them all out again. And jolly good fun they are ... Read More...
Susan makes an error of judgement and finds herself in Westfield... If I had a pound for every time I’ve clipped my alloy wheels on a badly designed car park entrance/exit, I’d be a wealthy woman by now. The other time this seems to happen is when my mother is in ... Read More...
Richard Briers died on Monday. By way of a tribute, here is a repeat of Jon Hotten's post about an episode of Ever Decreasing Circles and its "quiet, unacknowledged and deep-running despair", which features, naturally enough, a game of cricket... You might remember Ever Decreasing Circles, a British - make that ... Read More...
Lance Armstrong's Oprah confessional has put cycling on the front pages again for all the wrong reasons. But he's hardly the first rider to come to a bad end. Death, drugs, sex and madness - here are three cautionary tales from cycling's rogues gallery... Tom Simpson Dubbed 'Major Tom' by the French press, ... Read More...
Clutching our yellow balloons we sidled through the crowd into the windy car park. There was an excellent turnout for the nursery’s 10th ‘birthday party’. The balloons were being handed out by Natalie, the manager, while her number two Melissa filled ever more from a vast helium cylinder and in ... Read More...
In the laminate section of CarpetRight I idly stroked a plank of Balterio Vitality Deluxe 4V Wood. To my mind the plank had a somewhat nautical look and I imagined how the living room thus bedecked might resemble a frigate from the golden age of British sea power, myself as ... Read More...
Britain's triumphant Olympic year is drawing to an end - but will it still be remembered in 400 years? And is it time to reinstate the noble sport of dwile flonking in time for Rio?.. Few realise that the first Olympic revival took place not in the 19th century, but exactly ... Read More...
My household has this past fortnight been afflicted by a pox. The windows have been boarded up and I’ve been roaming the corridors wafting a carbolic smokeball. Eerie groans echo in fetid chambers. The plants have withered and no visitors come. It is the chicken pox, and both my daughters ... Read More...
