John Sturgis

John Sturgis is a freelance journalist who has worked across Fleet Street for almost 30 years as both reporter and news editor

Have I been cursed by a white deer?

It was standing completely still, about 40 yards away, partially obscured by a clump of hazel: a pure white deer. It looked almost iridescent in the gloom of an overcast winter day. My dogs were straining at the lead but otherwise all sense of movement ceased for half a minute, maybe longer. I managed to decapitate it

Glenn Hoddle and the birth of cancel culture

Most England managers lose their jobs over bad results: Roy Hodgson was sacked after being humiliated by Iceland, Graham Taylor for losing a must-win qualifier against Holland, Kevin Keegan quit after a bitter home defeat to Germany. There have been exceptions, though: Sam Allardyce went for bragging to an undercover reporter how he could do

Sven-Goran Eriksson made English football

The former England football manager Sven-Goran Eriksson has terminal cancer, he says he expects to be dead before the year is out. In an age when such grim diagnoses are usually kept private until their morbid predictions have come to pass, it was characteristically candid of the 75-year-old Swede to go public like this, even

Why are writers obsessed with Tunbridge Wells?

It’s just a moderately sized town in Kent, but Tunbridge Wells seems to have a literary status disproportionate to its size. And, perhaps as a corollary, it seems to occur in fiction much more frequently than considerably bigger towns of otherwise greater significance. Or certainly this has been my impression over a lifetime’s reading.  I

Ten novels about flooding

Shropshire was named this week as an unlikely entrant in the top ten global dream travel destinations for 2024 – alongside more predictable contenders like Mauritius. This news received extensive media coverage, most of which featured serene, summery images of Ironbridge, the Georgian engineering marvel that is the county’s most recognisable attraction. There was something wonderfully

The strange return of Cilla Black

She was an unlikely contender for fame from the outset, with a pub singer voice and a nose so  prominent she would later have it surgically reduced. But, with her Scouser-next-door persona and trademark cropped hair, Cilla Black was in the right place at the right time: she rode the popular wave created by Beatlemania and

How to survive the post-Christmas slump

Elizabeth David was a cookery writer who led the British palate away from the grim days of stodgy, post-war rationing towards the adoption of a fresher, more Mediterranean diet. But she saved the most resonant advice of her six decade writing career for an observation on how to survive a typical British Christmas. Describing the festive

The strange life of Alvin Stardust

He had mutton chop sideburns, a vast quiff and was dressed in black leather, even down to murderers’ gloves, over which he wore enormous silver rings, which he then wiggled in a beckoning fashion while staring suggestively into the camera. Nevermind hiding behind the sofa during Dr Who – for me, in December 1973, as

Britain’s curious pub naming conventions

The big London restaurant opening of the autumn has been The Devonshire in Denman Street, Soho, close to Piccadilly Circus. There was a run on bookings as soon as the reviews appeared. Giles Coren in the Times wrote: ‘What a place. What. A. Place.’ Jimi Famurewa’s review in the Evening Standard appeared under the headline: ‘Nothing beats a good

The importance of London’s lost cinema

King’s Cross in the eighties was the scabbiest, dodgiest, scariest and most alternative place in central London – and the crumbling Scala cinema was its beating heart. Memories of this long-shut venue are being revived by the imminent release of a feature-length documentary tracing its brief, colourful history. The film is named after the cinema

Against all odds, I’ve started to like Phil Collins

This isn’t easy for me. In fact, it is perhaps the most difficult public admission I’ve ever made. I’m worried about how people will react, how friends and colleagues might reconsider their opinion of me after reading this. But I can’t keep it locked up secretly inside me any longer. I have to admit it.

Save our unmessed-with pubs!

From the outside, it appeared derelict – not an uncommon thing to find when visiting an unknown establishment based solely on a listing in an old copy of ‘The Good Pub Guide’. But a chap walking past with his labrador reassured us: ‘She usually opens at noon.’ When we returned an hour later it was

My quest for a legendary punk mix tape

In the early 1980s, I was a young teenager being drawn into the small music scene of a provincial town. The moment was post-punk – bands like Joy Division, The Cure and Echo and the Bunnymen were driving my interest – but I was also fascinated by the punk movement that had immediately preceded it.

There’s nothing as sad as a bad pub revamp

The Flower Pot in Aston, near Henley, was one of my favourite pubs in the country, a charming, eccentric time capsule cluttered with esoteric decoration: dozens of cases of stuffed fish and animals, angling paraphernalia and Edwardian art; there was even a resident parrot.  It was always rammed, with everyone from vicars to Hell’s Angels

Did my wife, 56, really need an emergency pregnancy test?

A team of nurses was trying to ascertain whether my wife was pregnant. It didn’t seem very likely. She’ll be 57 in a couple of months, went through the menopause over a decade ago and has been on HRT for several years. And she hasn’t had IVF. Insofar as one can be certain about such matters,

Arsene Wenger is no philosopher

It’s now five years since he finally stepped down as the manager of Arsenal FC after two decades at the helm – an occasion marked by the recent unveiling of a statue outside the Emirates Stadium of a triumphant Arsene Wenger holding aloft the Premier League trophy. The occasion made me reflect on his tenure at

Stop paving over front gardens

It’s a pretty typical 1930s-built semi in the outer London suburbs: four bedrooms, living room, dining room, kitchen, average back garden and unusually large front garden with a lawn and mixed shrub borders. Or rather that’s what it was until it changed hands earlier this summer and the new owners had different ideas. Now that

Alone in Dartmoor’s haunted woods

Wistman’s Wood is one of the UK’s last remaining temperate rainforests. It came within Prince William’s purview after he inherited the Duchy of Cornwall, the largest privately owned portion of Dartmoor National Park. He has since visited the site, a seven-acre strip of oak woodland on the eastern slopes of the West Dart Valley, posing

Admit it, the French are better than us

The French, according to the enshrined belief system that I grew up with, are work-shy layabouts. They never turn up for a job on time as they’re too busy drinking wine for breakfast. And once they do finally start, they break off almost immediately for a two-hour lunch with more wine before dithering about a