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Read 2 days ago and current, but nothing has been published for 4 years.
If, like me, you've been waiting years for the fifth and final volume of Robert Caro's Lyndon Johnson biography the announcement of the release of "Turn Every Page" can only be taken as a hopeful sign. It's a documentary about the relationship between Caro and his editor Robert Gottlieb, who can also boast that he has been the midwife of such trifles as "Catch 22", that he's edited both John Le…
According to Two Brothers by Jonathan Wilson, when Bobby and Jack Charlton were both playing for England in the semi-finals of the 1966 World Cup, their father Robert Charlton, who had no interest in football, was at work. He was that kind of man. When David Coleman heard that he’d missed the match he made sure that Dad was sent a tape and the means to play it on. If he had been bothered he would…
We've been talking about greatcoats on the pod . In the late sixties and early seventies every male student or head would be wearing one, bought for small sums at Millett's or your local army surplus store. We often followed bands who wore the same thing, though theirs probably came from trendier outlets. I found this pic of me in a standard greatcoat of the times. This was taken in a north London…
I haven’t been watching this World Cup. I’d like to say this was because I objected to the naked corruption which led FIFA to award this tournament to Qatar. It would be more true to say I didn’t want my life dominated by the media narrative around the World Cup. I’ve been following World Cups since the sixties. The clamour drowned out the actual football years ago. So when the match was on last…
"The Turning Point" is about what Charles Dickens did in the year 1851. This was the year of the Great Exhibition. It was the high point of the Victorian Era. He was spending a lot of his time on semi-pro theatricals, on editing a weekly magazine and gearing up to write "Bleak House" , the book that would transform him from Great Entertainer to Great Novelist. He was mapping out the book in his…
I was on a school trip to France when England won the World Cup in 1966. When we returned the following week there was a mysterious-looking LP in the window of the shop near school. It turned out to be The Beatles “Revolver”. I can’t honestly remember exactly how it struck us at the time. Maybe we were spoilt. Certainly we’d grown accustomed to having our clock cleaned by pop music on a weekly…
What most intrigues me about the Bob Dylan’s automated signature story is the implication that resorting to the auto-pen is standard practice. I don’t have any doubt that a machine signs the American President’s name for them but I was taken aback by the idea that it was widely used by famous musicians, authors and the like. My modest adventures in book signing obviously have never taken into that…
Finally got round to reading "No More Champagne" , David Lough's book about Churchill and his money. This confirmed me in my view that we are mistaken when we assume that the wealthy aren't bothered about money because they've got enough. He was obsessed. Churchill was born with all the expectations of a 19th century aristocrat without any of the funds. Everything he bought was charged and paid…
.....they didn’t tell the management. I don’t mean Klopp or Guardiola. I mean the people who manage the business of these clubs day to day, the people who are closely involved in how many shirts they sell in Taiwan, the people whose annual bonus is based on the commercial deals they pull in, the people who are kept awake worrying about whether they can persuade the goalkeeper to spare ten minutes…
There's a good new edition of Matthew Bannister's podcast "Folk On Foot" in which he accompanies Richard Thompson as he revisits places in London that played a part in shaping him and his music: William Ellis School in Highgate, where he formed his first group with fellow pupil Hugh Cornwell, the house on Fortis Green Road in Muswell Hill which is still named Fairport, the Lamb and Flag in Covent…
