Yearly Archives: 2010
Vince Cable’s Gaffe
With most cabinet ministers now heading to their Christmas hideaways, it will be interesting to see to what extent the Telegraph stories of subversive Liberal Democrats within the coalition has the life-span of an unpopular panto or has , as they put it in the world of newspaper hacks, ‘legs’ i.e. endurance. In a sense the damage has already been done on two fronts. Firstly if has left Vince Cable as a lame duck cabinet minister- his reputation for speaking out on matters others fear to tread fatally compromised by …
Snow Prayer
So you haven’t been able to buy presents , quite on the industrial scale of previous years, or you might have missed an extra day or two at work, or the car you were driving is now abandoned on some minor road somewhere between Bath and Oxford, or your flight to some place in the sun has been grounded, and you’ve slept your last night , not in a manger, but on the hard floor of a crowded terminal. Well I can’t remember the last time I woke, as I did …
Irish Diary
I was in Dublin last weekend, talking about my latest book Papa Spy at the Cervantes Institute, in an event jointly organised , and charmingly so, by the Hispanic department at Trinity College with a helping hand from former FT colleague Manchester-based Alice Owen, who works as a free-lance publicist. There was a great turn-out of new fans and old friends, led by author and former Irish Times journalist Paddy Woodworth, who knows a fair bit about Spanish culture and history and generously agreed to be ‘in conversation’ with me. …
Football’s Globe Trotters?
FC Barcelona are making their Spanish League wins look so easy that they are in danger of becoming football’s equivalent of the Harlem Globe Trotters. For those of you unfamiliar with the HBT, they are the legendary basketball team that became just so skilful and so much better than any of their rivals that at one point they decided just to focus on exhibition matches- with a bit of theatrics thrown in- as there was no point in pretending there was any competition capable of beating them. They became very successful, …
My Book of the Month is Giles Tremlett’s Catherine of Aragon
Catherine of Aragon is not a name that slips easily off the lips of most English schoolboys, unless they’ve been educated as Catholics, still a minority breed. Few early students of English history have failed to memorise where she was in the Tudor pecking order: ‘divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, and survived. ’ Oh yes, Catherine was the one who was divorced first. Of Henry V111’s eight wives, it is Catherine who has endured in the collective memory of the English people, arguably for the wrong reasons. Catherine was mythified …
A night to remember
Now and again one has the luck to be present in a football stadium where something very special and historic is in the air. To be at the Nou Camp on Monday night was to have the privilege of witnessing the best team in the world playing its best, football at its most sublime, surrounded by the warm glow of 98,000 cules joined together in collective ecstasy. Barca’s 5-0 thrashing of Real Madrid was a magnificent achievement played with a style and team ethos that was a perfect symphony of …
Football for the couch
My wife had to suffer me as a couch potato on Saturday night as I switched on my satellite TV and watched first Almeria vs Barca followed by Real Madrid vs, Athletic de Bilbao. It hurts me to tell you that having briefly sacrificed my marriage, I temporarily fell asleep in the first match, and temporarily switched to a movie while watching the second. Why? Well, the first match was not a match in its true sense at all, not a friendly, not an exhibition, not a competition. It …
My Maradona talk
See you at Canning House, 2 Belgrave Square, London SW1 at 6.30 this evening:”Maradona: A Very Argentine Myth”.
A Royal Day to Celebrate
This is an English version of an Opinion piece which I have written for Spain’s El Mundo newspaper as part of their coverage of the Royal engagement. Like the crisp autumn sun that broke through the heavy mist shrouding much of England on the same day, the royal announcement brought in an instant a sense of clarity to the nation’s citizens. One can say what one likes about the British Royal family, but history has shown its capacity to bring as much fortitude and hope as division and sadness- and this …
ROUND-UP NEWS
UPCOMING EVENTS – HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE 18 NOVEMBER MARADONA: I shall be drawing on my experience of researching, writing and updating several editions of Hand of God- my biography of Diego Maradona for a talk entitled: “MARADONA: A VERY ARGENTINE MYTH .” The talk will cover his life and times from birth in the shanty-town of Villa Fiorito to last summer’s extraordinary appearance at the World Cup. Venue: Canning House, 2 Belgrave Square, London SW1X (telef: 02072352303) Time: 6.30 pm The event is being organised by The …