Society

My old mate Jason Yapp was chirpier than ever when we met to taste his wines the other day. Never knowingly under-ebullient, Jas (despite the whisperings of a hangover) had an extra spring to his step having just bagged three gongs at the previous night’s International Wine Challenge, namely that of Rhône Specialist Wine Merchant of the Year and ditto for both the Loire and Languedoc-Roussillon. We tried some delicious wines together and these six were my favourites, all ideal for mid-summer sipping. The 2017 Domaine l’Ancienne Cure (1) is an organically farmed, un-oaked blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon from Bergerac, south west France. Bergerac can be a pretty

The call for elegies on the death of the High Street brought in a large entry that was poignant and clever, and transported me back to teenage Saturdays under the spell of Dolcis, Lilly & Skinner and Freeman, Hardy & Willis. John Morrison’s lines ‘Oh Amazon how swift you rise!/ Swamping all before your eyes…’ spoke for many, though J.R. Johnson thinks that the roots of destruction run deeper, to Buchanan’s 1963 Traffic in Town: ‘Blaming online, high rents, might just be wrong/ It was Buchanan perhaps all along’. The winners earn £25 each. Bill Greenwell pockets £30. Bill Greenwell Hear their doors and cash-tills close, Play their dirges, sing their

Last week, for the first time since 1996, and for the second time in nine attempts, England won a match that was decided by a penalty competition. You may have read something about it. The penalty shoot-out is the classic example — the type specimen — of a sport transforming itself for television. Television loves penalties because television loves drama. When drama is mixed with partisanship the mixture is irresistible: a perfect piece of entertainment. Many sports have gone down the same route: changing their essence to please television, to create entertainment and ultimately to make more money. It’s not always a bad thing. The tie-break in tennis was first

Gavin Mortimer’s article on the decline in good behaviour among rugby players  suggests the possible influence of anabolic steroids in the game. I played league for my grammar school and then union for Sheffield University Medical School Rugby Club 2nd XV for a couple of years in the 1970s. Back then, I never saw any unbridled aggression, except on the field, as part of the game. Mortimer’s article states that some players’ aggression is now being taken off the field and on to the streets. There are examples here in the United States, where I now live, of police officers, soldiers and sportsmen becoming addicted to muscle enhancing medications, which help

Donald Trump never fails to amuse. He is very, very funny. You can say that he should be no laughing matter – he’s the most powerful man in the world, his words and actions are deadly serious, and you’d probably be right. But then, I mean, just look at him — listen to him. He reduces world politics to an amazing farce, and it’s impossible not to slightly love him for it. What sane person could possibly watch today’s press conference with Theresa May and not crack up? It was a comic masterpiece. Take, for instance, when he described the relationship between Britain and France as ‘in terms of grade,

This description of Viktor Korchnoi was coined (an oblique reference to Muhammad Ali’s nickname of Louisville Lip) by Ian Ward of the Daily Telegraph during the Baguio City World Championship of 1978.   During the pre-Kasparov mid-1970s and early 1980s, world title chess was dominated by the three great matches between Viktor Korchnoi and Anatoly Karpov. During the second and longest of these, at Baguio in the Philippines, Korchnoi’s tendency to make outspoken remarks became more pronounced. There were moments when his outrageous comments came close to capsizing the match.   The drama is well captured by Genna Sosonko in his new book Evildoer, an ironic reference to the USSR’s