Royal London, International Capital of Regal Schadenfreude by Our Man in the Fog, somewhere between Heathrow’s perfume-drenched duty-free and the £18 pint zone The moment the plane drops below cloud cover, the city unfolds like a gilt-edged pop-up book: Big Ben’s scaffolding finally gone, the Shard pretending it’s Tokyo, and somewhere behind those red-brick chimneys…
Rick Davies and the Quiet Implosion of the Anglo-American Dream By Our Correspondent in the Departures Lounge, Terminal 3, Somewhere Overpriced The name Rick Davies still rings a faint, ironic bell across five continents—usually in the key of B-minor and accompanied by the clink of an airport lounge ice cube. To the casual observer he…
Jacob Bethell: The 20-Year-Old Who Reminds Us the Empire Still Owes Rent By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, somewhere over the Atlantic Somewhere between Bridgetown and Birmingham, the ghost of Lord Nelson is quietly updating his LinkedIn. The reason? Jacob Bethell—Barbados-born, England-polished, and now Mumbai-hardened—has become the accidental poster child for every post-colonial fever…
Harare, Monday – In the grand tapestry of geopolitics, nothing screams “existential urgency” quite like a cricket match between two countries whose combined GDP is roughly the annual coffee budget of a mid-tier Wall Street trading floor. Yet here we are, watching Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka lock horns in a T20 series that, on paper,…
England vs South Africa: Two Former Empires Attempt Sport While the Planet Burns By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, Somewhere Over the Indian Ocean LONDON—If you squint through the smog and the smugness, Tuesday’s Oval showdown between England and South Africa looks like a simple cricket match. Two teams, 22 millionaires in whites, a…
England vs South Africa: Two Nations, One Cricket Match, and the Illusion of Global Significance By Our Correspondent Who’s Learned to Love the Absurd London—For 48 hours this weekend, the planet’s most urgent diplomatic crisis is not Ukraine, Gaza, or the slow-motion implosion of the Antarctic ice shelf, but whether a red leather sphere can…
