Author Archives: Jimmy Burns

Hans Küng RIP

Posted on April 7, 2021 in the Misc category

Swiss theologian Hans Küng died on Tuesday at the age of 93 in his home in Tübingen, Germany It was a real godsend to be able to see him and talk to him seven years ago when I was researching Pope of Good Promise and when his mind and body was still with him. It was the first and last time I met him and what a privilege it was to be with him. He was a prophet for the Church in our time ! This was my account of …

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Remembering Lorenzo Sanz

Posted on March 21, 2021 in the Blog, Football category

  On the first anniversary of Lorenzo Sanz’s death from coronavirus, my friend the author Ignacio Peyro pays tribute as a football fan and a gourmet, to the man who served as president of Real Madrid from 1995 until 2000. As Peyro posts with his characteristic   humorous lyricism on his Instagram account, Sanz in his heathy days always had the physical exuberance of someone had just emerged from an extremely good meal of Spanish sea food. My own memories of Sanz, which I describe in my book When Beckham   went …

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The Boys in the Park

Posted on November 6, 2020 in the Blog, Football category

Nothing like watching football played in the times of Covid to help one reflect on the sport and what if anything we might learn from it. My local beloved Battersea Park was earlier this afternoon alive with the sound and sight of young boys enjoying an outing in the glow of a gentle autumn sun, their teacher half-heartedly trying to impose some rhythm and order on their young charges’ play. Hard as the track-suited sports master tried to channel the ball and encourage a decent combination of a pass or …

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London Diary 6

Posted on October 25, 2020 in the Blog, Covid category

In these times of Covid , I woke or rather decided I couldn’t get to sleep so better get up. It was still dark. I looked out at the pavement. It was covered in gold leaves, reflected in the glow of the street lamp. And then as the wind stirred and the leaves danced- I realised that this was it-my day of being let back into the outside. For two weeks I had been without moving from my home, sticking to the quarantine imposed by government after returning to London …

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Messi in the Time of Covid

Posted on August 30, 2020 in the Blog, Football category

There was much tear-jerking comment on an Argentine radio earlier today about the love Messi feels for Barcelona, and the sadness he feels for his friend and neighbour Luis Suarez who has been told he is surplus to requirements by new coach Ronald Koeman. Appearing on the same programme I felt compelled to introduce a touch of reality on the Messi/FC Barcelona saga. The current story involving Messi and Barcelona   is one of egos, politics and greed, a less than edifying  example for  a world suffering dislocation, deprivation, suffering and …

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Swans in Time of C19

Posted on May 23, 2020 in the Blog, Religion category

London Diary : Swans 21 May  Two months on from C19 lockdown.A wonderful early morning in Battersea Park with the appearance of the first cygnet to hatch this year. For us regular park users the swan colony and its evolution across the seasons and the years has always had pride of place among the wild life that inhabits this historic green space near the River Thames in south London. But with the park providing a mental and physical life-line during the C19 lock-down, the bonding, mating and hatching of these …

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A  Test of Our  Humanity

Posted on February 8, 2020 in the Blog, Misc category

News of the evacuation at the end of January from coronavirus-hit Wuhan including 83 British and 27 EU mainly Spanish citizens was largely overshadowed,  in the British and Spanish media at least,  by coverage of the UK’s official exit from the EU. Nonetheless reports   focused on the evident sense of relief felt by some of the evacuees at getting out , as well as a sense of uncertainty about their health prospects.. The only certainty about the coronavirus itself  is that it has affected not inconsiderable numbers in China, enough …

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A necessary friendship

Posted on February 2, 2020 in the Blog, Miscelleneous category

In 1954 When I was a one year old  , my Spanish  mother took me to see a bit of Royal pageantry  near Buckingham Palace on the occasion of Emperor Haile Selassie’s state visit to the UK. So my mother told me  many years later, she arrived to find that the crowds had built up,   led by a line of uniformed English nannies with their young charges occupying the first row giving on to the main square from the side of St James’s Park. Undeterred, my mother gently moved her …

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El sentido liberal

Posted on November 6, 2019 in the Misc category

El sentido liberal   Es estos días que avanzan las fechas de elecciones en España y el Reino Unido,  dos países que por sangre de madre y padre me unen en un compartido sentido de patriotismo, quería  reflejar sobre  aspectos que me llaman la atención ya que tienen que ver con algunos valores de conducta cívica además de política. De los recién acontecimientos, quería remarcar  en dos que se vivieron por separado en ambos países a principios de  esta semana   y que por algunas horas dominaron la cobertura mediática nacional. …

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Coffee Minister

Posted on July 25, 2019 in the Uncategorized category

Coffee Minister Manuel Canelas By Jimmy Burns   Manuel Canelas is a relaxed, as well as a bright guy who is worth getting to know in  an informal environment. So I was not surprised that the place agreed for our first meeting during my recent visit to his country, was not his ministerial office but a boutique cafe of those that offer a certain style and comfort amidst the urban chaos of the capital La Paz, a genial  and fraternal venue , away from the more spooky aspects of Bolivian …

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