What are the big themes in wine today? High rates of duty loom large, as does their impact on prices. There are some concerns for consumption, but no one seems too keen to keep a lid on it (not least among the Fourth Estate). Discovering the next big thing becomes ever more competitive as the
When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister in 2007, the Labour party was split into three camps: those who genuinely adored Brown, those who believed he could change (elected as New Gordon, govern as New Gordon?) and a deflated Blairite rump that had given up the ghost. It is not immediately clear which of these camps
The intrigue of the Liberal Democrats’ conference has centred on the party’s split personality. A Sunday Times/YouGov poll disclosed that as many as 50 per cent of Lib Dems believe that it was wrong to go into coalition in the first place, leading one to assume that only the small clique of ‘conservatives’ around Nick
Close the nominations. Unless someone publishes proof of Shergar pulling a plough in the Yemen, it must be a good bet for William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2011. Twirlymen is the absorbing maiden work by Amol Rajan, a journalist at the Independent. His aim is to celebrate spin bowling’s impressive survival in the
The hardback edition of D.R. Thorpe’s Supermac is 626 pages in length (not including endnotes and index), 24cm x 16cm x 6cm in girth, and weighs in at more than one kilogram – on first appearances, not a book for a beach holiday. Or so I thought, because despite the corporeal hardships of reading this
Turning it over with my bare toes, it had the look and feel of finely ground coffee, typical of the island’s volcanic black beaches. I could not help but smile to myself: even the white coral sand was a myth. As a youngster, I fell in love with a 1930s book series called The Bounty
It is an old cliché that films of books must be inferior to the books themselves. It is not always true. For instance, read Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park and see whether you disagree (the writing is pedestrian and the plotting is incoherent, which is why the movie has a different storyline). Then of course there
Here let us sweep The boundless landscape; not the raptur’d eye, Exulting swift, to huge Augusta send, Now to the sister-hills that skirt her plain To lofty Harrow now, and then to where Majestic Windsor lifts his princely brow. In lovely contrast to this glorious view, Calmly magnificent. James Thomson, ‘Summer’ from The Seasons, 1727
