From the vantage point of a bar-stool in downtown Lagos, a taxi rank in Buenos Aires, and a noodle stall in Chengdu, the name Gareth Southgate still ricochets across the planet with the hollow ping of a ball skimming the crossbar. To most of humanity—those who regard football as either a periodic bout of mass…
Blackpool Zoo: Where the Empire’s Last Menagerie Paces Off-Season By the time you reach Blackpool, the Irish Sea has already warned you that the British Empire ended in drizzle and discount fish-and-chips. Still, one must pay respects to the final, stubborn outpost of Victorian hubris: a 32-acre rectangle of Lancashire coastline that continues to incarcerate…
The Women’s Rugby World Cup is back, and this time it has the geopolitical subtlety of a flying winger. From 12 October to 16 November, twelve nations will gather in England and Wales to trade bone-rattling tackles, concussion protocols, and the occasional diplomatic incident. The fixtures, released yesterday by World Rugby with the usual fanfare…
Queen Elizabeth II died exactly when the planet needed a two-week televised funeral more than, say, a functioning biosphere. From Lagos to Lima, screens flickered with scarlet-clad guards and plumed horses while inflation, drought, and war politely waited their turn. The BBC called it “history unfolding”; everyone else called it an exquisite displacement activity. In…
Every 16 September, Mexico shouts itself hoarse in the name of freedom, a ritual that looks suspiciously like a national hangover cure. At eleven o’clock sharp, the president steps onto the National Palace balcony in Mexico City, rings a comically outsized bell, and yells “¡Viva México!”—a phrase that, after 213 years, still hasn’t solved the…
Cricbuzz: The Digital Colosseum Where Eleven Nations Pretend Cricket Still Matters to the Rest of Us by Our Man in the Pavilion Bar, Nursing a Warm G&T and Existential Dread Somewhere between the fall of the British Empire and the rise of TikTok attention spans, cricket convinced itself it was still a global sport. Enter…
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale – A Requiem for Empire, Served with Tea and Schadenfreude By Our Man in the Cosmopolitan Wreckage So the bells have tolled at last for the Crawleys, and the final credits of Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale have rolled over a lingering shot of Highclere Castle at sunset, looking every…
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…
