Roger Alton

Spectator Sport: Following the captain

Strange to be writing about sport when outside it feels like Salem, where vengeful witchfinders prowl the highways and byways of the media and political landscape looking for someone or something, anything, to burn; where screeching harpies of press and internet call for the closure of papers they don’t like; and where sanctimonious preachers declaim from their leader columns that the intolerant consensus of the left must rule.

• From magazine issue: 23 July 2011