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...
Sport
In Anthony Burgess’ short story The Endless Voyager, a businessman throws away his passport and wallet mid-transit and, unable to enter any country, spends the rest of his life shuttling from airport to airport. He eventually goes mad. Today, of course, such a traveller might stave off purgatorial insanity by ... Read More...
Sport has innumerable social functions. Joseph O’Neill’s book Netherland described the rough-and-ready New York immigrant version of cricket. But what about cricket as a duty for public schoolboys, as necessary and unavoidable as end-of-term exams and places at Oxbridge? Here Jon Hotten - who also blogs as The Old Batsman - ... Read More...
Today's Row Z feature is provided by James Hamilton, a writer and former sports psychotherapist who blogs at More Than Mind Games. For his first Dabble, James examines a question we must all have pondered, shaking our heads in disbelief at the post-match witterings of coaches from Ron Atkinson to Steve Bruce, ... Read More...
Joseph O’Neill’s much praised (and, Gaw and I agree, pretty overrated) Netherland pitches into the crowded market of self-consciously literary psychological post-9/11 novels with an interesting ‘USP’, namely New York cricket. But the cricket played in NY little resembles the gentle, gentleman’s game that some, especially Americans perhaps, might envisage. It is a ... Read More...
The above picture shows a solitary peregrine falcon sending a flock of starlings into turmoil. It won the 2005 Wildlife Photographer of the Year award for Manual Presti. When I first saw it I was oddly reminded of my favourite sports picture - this one below of Maradona playing against Holland ... Read More...
In Anthony Burgess’ short story The Endless Voyager, a businessman throws away his passport and wallet mid-transit and, unable to enter any country, spends the rest of his life shuttling from airport to airport. He eventually goes mad. Today, of course, such a traveller might stave off purgatorial insanity by dabbling ... Read More...
In Anthony Burgess’ short story The Endless Voyager, a businessman throws away his passport and wallet mid-transit and, unable to enter any country, spends the rest of his life shuttling from airport to airport. He eventually goes mad. Today, of course, such a traveller might stave off purgatorial insanity by ... Read More...
