Sport
The most dangerous word in the digital world is 'send'
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
Why do transgendered people need separate toilets? I thought, according to the prevalent orthodoxy, that the new gender they had…
A World Championships that puts Sebastian Coe on the right track
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
Why nothing in sport beats thrashing the Aussies at cricket
I've loved football for decades. Now I dread the start of the season
I’ve spent years defending football from middle-class disdain. But I can’t do it any more
The madness of the Beijing Winter Olympics
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
‘That’s unnecessarily crude,’ said my husband, turning momentarily from the television and improving the shining minute by setting the whisky…
Australia’s amazing, exhausting sporting comebacks
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
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
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
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
Why sport and sham morality go so well together
Dear Mary: Should I follow Cilla Black’s lead on disabled loos?
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
Good writing about sport is rare — and good writing about tennis is that much rarer — so it’s conspicuous…
Pliny the Younger on Fifa
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
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
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
‘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
For anyone who knows or cares about rock climbing — a minority sport if ever there was one, albeit pretty…
2,500 years of gyms (and you’re still better off walking the dog)
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
It used to be such a treat of a winter weekend, sitting down to watch France against Wales in Paris…
Sir Ian Botham is a hero – and a fool
Mark Mason 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…