Roger Alton

Roger Alton is an executive editor at The Times. He writes the Spectator Sport column.

The Foxes have little to teach us

14 May 2016 9:00 am

A few years ago a motivational speaker brought out a smart little book called Legacy: What The All Blacks Can…

A triumph for brutality

30 April 2016 9:00 am

It’s always good to see a great con trick in action. Take Boris Johnson: not really the lovable quick-witted scamp…

Well done Danny, but Jordan will come back

16 April 2016 9:00 am

Well here’s a thing: we’ve just had the first English bloke to win the Masters. Sure, an Englishman has won…

Reasons to be cheerful, parts one, two, three…

2 April 2016 9:00 am

Well the sun is out, the sky is blue, and poor Boris Johnson is taking such a pounding from Matthew…

Jones the dragon-slayer

19 March 2016 9:00 am

The return heavyweight bout between England and Wales lived up to its billing as the most thumping rugby match of…

Two big hitters leave the crease

5 March 2016 9:00 am

Two great men have just bowed out from their chosen trades and it is bloody sad. The New Zealand cricket…

Cricket needs the West Indies

20 February 2016 9:00 am

In the north of Antigua, just by the medical school, is a neat little cricket ground. It was a bit…

Don’t cry for John Terry

6 February 2016 9:00 am

Just when you were thinking that the Premier League had become a much nicer place without José Mourinho in it,…

Three sides to our success

23 January 2016 9:00 am

In the middle of Oxford is a socking great cinema: once the Ritz, it’s now an Odeon multiplex. Back in…

Add Ben Stokes to the world’s greatest batsmen

9 January 2016 9:00 am

On Sunday morning a friend texted: ‘You watching the big bash, or the domestic stuff down in Australia?’ On one…

From the dismal to the delightful: the year in sport

12 December 2015 9:00 am

So long, then, to another thrilling year of sport in which the full range of human possibility — from the…

(Photo: Getty)

The Davis Cup will be one final flourish for Andy’s Barmy Army

28 November 2015 9:00 am

There’s nothing quite like a sporting celebration, but the lash-up after Britain’s (almost) inevitable victory in the Davis Cup tennis…

Seb Coe is a fine man… but his roasting over the Russian athletics scandal is justified

14 November 2015 9:00 am

So Smiley was right all along: the bloody Russians were the baddest of the bad. The Pound report on the…

Joubert’s the man to sort out Syria

29 October 2015 9:00 am

Not since Walter Palmer, a cudddly Minnesota dentist, put down his drill and vanished off the face of the earth…

I know who’s going to win the Rugby World Cup. I think

17 October 2015 8:00 am

England did have some clear winners in their otherwise beached Rugby World Cup campaign in the unlikely form of Lawrence…

England captain Chris Robshaw (Photo: Getty)

Give Robshaw a break

3 October 2015 9:00 am

Pity poor Chris Robshaw. England’s sturdy captain might have a knockout girlfriend and exceptional skills on the cappuccino machine, but…

Clashes of the titans

19 September 2015 8:00 am

A thumping physical confrontation testing mind, muscle and sinew to the ultimate degree, and from which there could only be…

The right track

5 September 2015 9:00 am

Sebastian Coe’s new job as head of world athletics will be a heck of a lot easier thanks to the…

Captain Cook proves good guys can triumph

22 August 2015 9:00 am

The roar of the Premier League is beginning to drown out everything else in sport (there’s even Friday night football…

The edge of the Gobi desert, some 100km northwest of Beijing (Photo: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty)

Champions of absurdity

8 August 2015 9:00 am

Jumping the shark isn’t yet an Olympic sport, but if it were the International Olympic Committee would be a shoo-in…

Australia’s comeback kids

25 July 2015 9:00 am

I have never met an Aussie I didn’t like, but, crikey, their sporting indefatigability is exhausting. Don’t they ever give…

Kyrgios is surely just what tennis needs

11 July 2015 9:00 am

Well thank heaven for Nick Kyrgios. The lavishly inked, blinged and barbered Aussie is quite one of the most thrilling…

Tiger, Tiger, burning out

27 June 2015 9:00 am

A car crash is a terrible thing, but hordes of people still slow down to cop an eyeful on the…

The Kiwi tourists are a living lesson

13 June 2015 9:00 am

A rather desultory Test series is taking place in the Caribbean where Australia are marmalising the West Indies, with a…

Thrills and chivalry at the most civilised place on earth

30 May 2015 9:00 am

If heaven is a place on earth, as Belinda Carlisle so wisely observed, then surely that place has to be…