Ask a number of young people who are eager to get into journalism why they want to, and the chances are a lot will say “Because I like writing” or “I like working with language”. Which may be true, but that’s not what makes a journalist. A journalist wants to be first...
The death of Queen Elizabeth II was always going to be a momentous event for the UK, at least symbolically – British monarchs have virtually no power, so a handover from one sovereign to another is more a change of figurehead and moral leadership than making any...
There’s been a belief in professional tennis over the past 40-50 years that grass is yesterday’s surface. Out of respect for Wimbledon’s heritage, grass is tolerated for 4-5 weeks a year with a handful of tournaments, but basically tennis these days is played on hard...
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...
