Few records in cricket can be regarded as an unbreakable – although six sixes in an over has to be one – but I find it impossible to imagine, in a two overs per side game, how any team could surpass the Australians’ monumental total on a sunny Saturday in May 72 years ago. We… Continue reading
France opens up the Causses and Cévennes – the land the sheep made
We watch Country File and Springwatch and many an informative documentary on landscape and rural life. So it shouldn’t be hard for us to open up to, and understand, a not so well-known area of France. One that is green and pure and wide and spacious, where the mood music is the ancient sound of… Continue reading →
Post lockdown cycling in New Forest medieval mosaic landscape
New Forest ponies – right to roam The bold vision of many of us who write on the subject is that travel will have to be greener after lockdown. But that is becoming more cloudy. It’s now clear it may be some time, possibly many months, before leisure passengers feel comfortable travelling by train… Continue reading →
Attenborough turns 94 – my PBS articles on one of his series
In 1997 I was asked by the US Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) to write a series of essays on the new David Attenborough series Life of Birds, which the station was about to transmit for the first time. I had met Sir David several times through my work at Radio Times and other UK publications…. Continue reading →
When Bradman’s “Invincibles” came to Worcester – cricket as national balm in 1948
“A field cannot be set to such genius, with the ability, in the twinkling of an eye, to find the exact stroke to any chosen part he may select. Bradman in true faith can play any stroke at will.“ At the opening of the 1948 cricket season, as the nation still endured a brutal… Continue reading →
The Singular Case of the Portsmouth Doctor – or Sherlock takes the train
May 1, 2020. Another in my series of easy post-lockdown trips to take in the UK. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle set his Sherlock Holmes stories all over England, but you can follow the trail of both without leaving London. If you want to make one trip out of the capital, it has to be to… Continue reading →