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Many were the jibes when Boris Johnson announced that he was ‘thrilled’ to be back on the tennis court in 2021 as lockdown restrictions eased. ‘Bloody posho poncing about on a tennis court’ or ‘how typical’ were probably some of them. Sir Keir, naturally, made sure that he was photographed on a football pitch on the same day. But here’s the thing: these days, playing tennis isn’t posh. Yes, chins love to watch it and play it – helped by tennis courts of their own – but the playing of tennis has become democratised. Reports of next-gen community tennis clubs springing up all over the country have become widespread, according

I will never forget the horror of walking into the breakfast room, jet-lagged to hell, in a hotel in Chicago, looking for coffee and a sugar hit to wake me up. I was hit with the stench of barbecue, in waves. It was being deliberately wafted through the ventilation system. Apparently this is to help get the appetite going, but it had the opposite effect on me. As I discovered during that trip, barbecue can be a beautiful thing; Chicago is known for its great smokehouses and rib tips. The fake smell, manufactured especially for hotels and the kind of smokehouses that buy their ribs in, bore no relation to

A great Test match at Headingley on Tuesday, the first of five this summer against India, brought a famous victory for England’s cricketers. Required to make 371 – a target they had surpassed only once in history – they got there at 6.30 p.m. on the fifth afternoon for the loss of five wickets. It was a thrilling occasion, to which the Indians contributed five centuries. No team, in any first-class match, had ever supplied five century-makers and lost. What a triumph for Ben Stokes, the captain, who asked India to bat on the first morning. No challenge, it seems, is beyond them. Casting an eye on proceedings were Michael

I watched most of Good Luck to You, Leo Grande when it was on TV some months back. I wondered whether to write something about it. But I can’t write about every representation of sex that offends me. Who am I – Mary Whitehouse? Thankfully Dame Emma Thompson, the star of that film, has now handed me an opportunity. Can I first say something about her? I can’t stick her. Is she a good actress? I don’t know. I can’t tell – it seems to me that she leaks her personality into every role. In Sense and Sensibility it seemed she was merging the character of Elinor Dashwood with the

The training talents of Ed Bethell and the spending power of Wathnan Racing could prove to be a lethal combination in the years ahead. Both are hugely ambitious and knowledgeable when it comes to all aspects of horse racing. Tomorrow PABORUS, the horse that Wathnan bought earlier this season from his original syndicate owners for an undisclosed sum, runs at York in the Group 3 Al Basti Equiworld Dubai Criterion Stakes (2.25 p.m.) Bethell will have been delighted to have added Wathnan to his growing list of patrons. This is racing stable of the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, which celebrated five winners at this month’s