Articles...
Feb 26 2008
AFTER devouring an eight-omelette breakfast and smearing her body with lanolin and chilli paste, the great swimmer might have considered for a moment her second cousin, LS Lowry, then establishing his reputation as the painter of matchstick people....
Feb 25 2008
THIS darling of the British stage, raised in Berlin between the world wars, had inviting lips, shapely legs and five husbands – as was eagerly noted by an adoring public during her career, in which she helped save a magnificent London theatre and duetted with Laurence Olivier, when he was courting the fiery Vivien Leigh....
Feb 22 2008
SHE WAS created at the age of 80 by a brilliant man, who dressed as a woman to produce a character possessed of both lacerating wit and billowing absurdity....
Feb 21 2008
HE WAS a broth of a boy, quick as the blink of an eye at mental arithmetic and a splendid representative of his school at athletics as well as team games – doubtless helped by a father who taught him to dribble a football between bricks, following the unwavering logic that you don’t want to bruise your toes more than once....
Feb 20 2008
A CHANCE conversation with the leading Liverpool councillor Margaret Simey inspired the daughter of a city grocer to embark on a journey that eventually would lead her to the roof of the world, helping the Tibetan community....
Feb 19 2008
NATURE had not blessed him with the qualities of the regular team player, so the smiling philosopher, with a lust to leave his mark on the world, looked to the wider fields of sporting achievement, breaking numerous records....
Feb 18 2008
HIS most famous work included a slightly more sympathetic – although nonetheless critical – retrospect on World War II, Bomber Command, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris. The biography, the first in post-war Britain to have unlimited access to Harris’s private papers, has been credited as Air Commodore Henry Probert’s finest work, among a resumé of detailed and highly respected books on military history, conflict and development....
Feb 15 2008
WITH the rise of the frothy-coffee fashion, this tea-drinking island of ours is not as fully powered as it once was by the cup that cheers, but this beverage still defines Britishness....
Feb 14 2008
THE neatly bearded priest was seen visiting gay clubs in London’s Soho, incognito wearing neither cassock nor dog collar. But this wasn’t an attempt to evade detection. More that, in his line of work, as rector of Soho, such apparel meant that he was mistaken for appearing “in drag”....
Feb 13 2008
HE WAS incarcerated by the Nazis and later had to have most of his lower bowel removed due to food shortages during his imprisonment, yet the motorcycle fan, owner, racer and dealer never gave up in his determination to help others....
