Sport

Sir Ian Botham is a hero – and a fool

28 November 2015 9:00 am

In 1981, when I was ten and Ian Botham was 26, I thought he was God. Now, the week after…

The most dangerous word in the digital world is 'send'

14 November 2015 9:00 am

Those who forget the pasta are condemned to reheat it, tweeted Jon Ronson, a man I’d never heard of until…

It’s not just the Russians – there is no morality in top-level sport

14 November 2015 9:00 am

Why do transgendered people need separate toilets? I thought, according to the prevalent orthodoxy, that the new gender they had…

Should the first modern Olympic drug cheat get to keep his gold?

14 November 2015 9:00 am

A marathon of cheats Russian athletes may be stripped of the medals they won at the 2012 Olympics, but what…

Just what Tom Watson needs: a Bananarama tribute band

26 September 2015 8:00 am

Available for parties Labour deputy leader Tom Watson said that leaving his party to join the Liberal Democrats would be…

A World Championships that puts Sebastian Coe on 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…

Why nothing in sport beats thrashing the Aussies at cricket

15 August 2015 9:00 am

Why nothing in sport beats thrashing the Aussies at cricket

Mario Balotelli (Photo: Jamie McDonald/Getty)

I've loved football for decades. Now I dread the start of the season

8 August 2015 9:00 am

I’ve spent years defending football from middle-class disdain. But I can’t do it any more

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

The madness of the Beijing Winter Olympics

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…

Where ‘big ask’ came from, and why it still sounds barbaric

8 August 2015 9:00 am

‘That’s unnecessarily crude,’ said my husband, turning momentarily from the television and improving the shining minute by setting the whisky…

Just how hard is it to sack a lord?

1 August 2015 9:00 am

Safe house Lord Sewel is unique in leaving the House of Lords in disgrace. Until the House of Lords Reform…

Australia’s amazing, exhausting sporting comebacks

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…

Croquet is a sport that makes you want to cheat and kill

18 July 2015 9:00 am

I have always been what I suppose one could call a weed, and a cowardly one at that. I never…

Hallelujah! The England cricket team is fun again

4 July 2015 9:00 am

At long last, the England cricket team have rediscovered their love of the game

Rachel Johnson’s diary: Why I told my book party I was coming out as a lesbian

27 June 2015 9:00 am

My husband says I only write books in order to have a launch party. Not so. I also write books…

Why sport and sham morality go so well together

27 June 2015 9:00 am

Why sport and sham morality go so well together

Dear Mary: Should I follow Cilla Black’s lead on disabled loos?

20 June 2015 9:00 am

Q. I was at the theatre recently and bumped into a well-known Liverpudlian crooner coming out of the disabled lavatory.…

Roger Federer helped me through my nervous breakdown, says William Skidelsky

13 June 2015 9:00 am

Good writing about sport is rare — and good writing about tennis is that much rarer — so it’s conspicuous…

Pliny the Younger on Fifa

6 June 2015 9:00 am

In any huge enterprise (like Fifa), where does the rot begin? Pliny the Younger mused on this question in a…

Ten steps to save English cricket

16 May 2015 9:00 am

If you watched England’s three-day Test defeat by the West Indies in Barbados the other day to the bitter end…

Fatherhood is killing me

25 April 2015 9:00 am

Not a day passes when I don’t look on my father’s record with shock and awe. I’m not talking about…

Sam Waley-Cohen’s Grand National notebook

11 April 2015 9:00 am

‘How’s your shoulder?’ someone asked recently, and it was only then I realised, for the first time in a while,…

In praise of Ben Moon: the man who took rock-climbing to new heights

21 March 2015 9:00 am

For anyone who knows or cares about rock climbing — a minority sport if ever there was one, albeit pretty…

A print of girls in a gym from 1884

2,500 years of gyms (and you’re still better off walking the dog)

7 March 2015 9:00 am

My favourite fact about gyms before reading this book was that the average British gym member covers 468 miles per…

I miss the days when French rugby was great. Thierry Dusautoir must, too

7 March 2015 9:00 am

It used to be such a treat of a winter weekend, sitting down to watch France against Wales in Paris…