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Diary

Alexander Chancellor

Wednesday, 25th June 2008

Alexander Chancellor returns from New York

I was glad that the memorial included the name of my old friend David Blundy, shot dead in 1989 in El Salvador while covering that country’s civil war, though I think he would have found the museum embarrassingly pretentious, as I did. The frail old taxi driver who took me there lamented the burgeoning grandiosity of the city itself, where flashy new public buildings and luxury apartment blocks have been ousting the poor from their inner-city homes. As American power wanes, the more overblown Washington becomes. ‘I remember when Washington was an unassuming southern city,’ he said, ‘but that was before it was taken over by self-important people.’

Wimbledon started this week under a cloud of suspicion about match-fixing in the world of professional tennis. The tennis authorities are to set up an ‘integrity unit’ to establish whether players have ever been bribed to lose matches by criminal gambling syndicates; and this year’s tournament is under intense scrutiny to ensure that this kind of thing doesn’t take place. Maybe it won’t, and maybe it never did; but what would happen, I wonder, if two players were separately bribed to lose against each other? It would be an interesting match to watch.

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Peter M., New York

June 26th, 2008 1:30pm

Blundy would certainly have found the joint pretentious. Journalism could use more of his kind.

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