It is sometimes said that football is like a religion to the English. As the legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly once half-joked, football is more important than life or death. Every Sunday, churches are echoingly empty while hundreds of thousands pay large sums to sit in chilly arenas ...
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English taxpayers awoke one morning in late February to discover that the nation's gaiety had been greatly augmented. The BBC proclaimed joyous tidings""Free HIV treatment on NHS for foreign nationals""then the news was flashed from website to website, mouth to eager ear, setting ...
On Tuesday February 22nd, police were called to the Strangers" Bar in the House of Commons to remove a man who had allegedly gone berserk, assaulting several others and breaking a door. The alleged assailant was 51-year-old Eric Joyce, Labour MP for Falkirk. His victims were mostly Conservative ...
It all started, says Darcus Howe, as an insurrection of a generation of poor, primarily, black people from the Caribbean and from Africa. Then it raced like a savannah fire from its Tottenham flashpoint to other areas of London and cities including Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Nottingham, and ...
In 1653, the year Cromwell became Lord Protector of England, there appeared the first edition of what would become a classic—Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler. A country then devastated by war turned gratefully to the pastoral peregrinations of “Piscator,” “Auceps,” and “Venator,” ...
As an aficionado of the atrocious, I thought I"d sneak a peek at Rebecca Black's song "Friday." For those too engrossed in such small matters as Libya to notice, the song has been almost universally derided by "negative Nancies" as "the worst song ever made," ...
The English are in love with murder. From The Woman in White and The Hound of the Baskervilles to Lord Peter Wimsey and Hercule Poirot, the mid-market English have long reveled in tales that are simultaneously sanguinary and strangely soothing. But they may not be allowed to enjoy their virtual ...
On January 22, Sky Sports announcers Andy Gray and Richard Keys were overheard joking about female assistant referee Sian Massey. Keys said: "Somebody better get down there and explain offside to her." Gray replied: "Women don"t know the offside rule." Keys agreed. "The ...
Boles, Nick. Which Way's Up?: The Future for Coalition Britain and How to Get There. London, Biteback, 2010, 133 pages, £8.99. Nick Boles not only belongs to the new generation of British Conservative MPs, he's arguably their epitome. Boles has long been an arch-modernizer"the nemesis of the ...
Last month, Tony Blair's half-sister-in-law Lauren Booth announced that she had converted to Islam following "a holy experience" in Iran. It was the latest attention-seeking stunt from an attention-seeking clan whose members always contrive to be spectacularly wrong. Lauren's dramatic ...
