Over the past 10 days or so, I’ve had an old adage repeating itself in my head: ‘In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.’ In other words, it’s all relative. The past 10 days have been characterised by the saga of whether Novak Djokovic will be let into...
With the benefit of the hindsight provided by more than 22 years of the Williams sisters winning Grand Slam tennis titles, it’s easy to feel Venus and Serena were always going to achieve greatness. But there was nothing inevitable about the two women’s achievements,...
The disqualification of Novak Djokovic from the US Open is one of the biggest stories in this year’s already distorted sporting landscape, but there are two big questions it throws up. I’m writing this less than half an hour after the dramatic incident which saw the...
It was a solitary line at the very end of the film that triggered my curiosity. The great and the good of British tennis were gathered in the Palace of Westminster, in the regal rooms of the Speaker’s chambers. The Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, was not...
It was the summer of 1975. I was 14 and was somewhat surprised to see Vera Lynn be made a Dame, so I asked my mother whether she deserved it. My mother didn’t always give praise lightly. “Goodness yes,” she said. “She went out with the forces and put herself in...
It’s reassuring to know people are still publishing books on tennis despite the lack of any tournaments at which to promote them. In general, the run-up to a Grand Slam or Christmas are the best times for tennis books, as interest is always greatest as a major...
It was somewhat provocative, I admit, to stand in the queue for the supermarket – the statutory two metres behind the man in front and two metres ahead of the woman behind – reading a copy of The Plague. At one stage my reading was interrupted by a chuckle. I looked...
One of the unsung heroes of British politics is Dave Brown. Never heard of him? It’s amazing how some of the most gifted and talented artists don’t get the recognition they deserve. Dave Brown is the principal cartoonist of The Independent, which still exists as a...
It is the lot of those who first see something coming to be dismissed as cranks. Those who say something is ‘the thin end of the wedge’ or any number of similar metaphors are often accused of overreacting or having a sense of paranoia. By the time they’re proved...
As provocative questions go, it’s hard to think of a more provocative or more insulting one than Adam Boulton’s on Sky News last week. ‘You’re a load of incompetent, middle-class, self-indulgent people who want to tell us how to live our lives?’ said the veteran...
