Brian Viner
Brian Viner swapped London for the Herefordshire countryside, and his column ‘Country Life’ documents his attempts to chase the rural idyll. Chiefly a sports writer, he pens a weekly sports column and interview for the paper. He is the author of Ali, Pele, Lillee and Me: A Personal Odyssey Through the Sporting Seventies.
Brian Viner: If even Monty is giving fielding masterclasses, have England simply peaked too soon?
The Last Word
Recently by Brian Viner
Brian Viner: What Kate could learn from Dame Barbara
Friday, 19 November 2010
Almost certainly with a great big rustle of chiffon, the romantic novelist Dame Barbara Cartland has surely been turning in her grave this week at the news that the future Queen of England is descended from labourers and miners, not to mention British Airways air crew. Romance is all very well, but it would have upset her idea of the natural order of things, as so exquisitely set out in her 1962 Etiquette Handbook: A Guide To Good Behaviour From the Boudoir to the Boardroom. Moreover, the old girl felt somewhat proprietorial about Prince William, whose step-great-grandmother she so proudly was.
Brian Viner: Wales prepare a party in Cardiff but no Springboks will ask for a 99
Saturday, 13 November 2010
The Last Word
Brian Viner: The message-board clique is not for me
Friday, 12 November 2010
One shouldn't name-drop, I know, but as the Duke of Edinburgh said to me just eight months ago, the secret of a happy marriage is not to have the same interests. "It's one thing not to argue about," said Prince Philip, after I had asked him whether he shares the Queen's love of horse-racing, and he had answered, rather bluntly, in the negative.
Brian Viner: Redknapp escaping punishment was just – not least because his witticisms are a must
Saturday, 6 November 2010
The Last Word
Brian Viner: Why Scousers are in the ascendant
Thursday, 4 November 2010
This has been a great week for the frequently-maligned scouse accent. On Tuesday, BBC Breakfast constructed a jolly item out of a study – a study! – that revealed Liverpudlian to be the accent most appreciated by the nation's plantlife. Apparently, a lily talked to soothingly by a scouser grew 10.2 inches in the same time that one addressed in cockney grew only 6.7 inches. Loving encouragement in Geordie yielded only 5.5 inches of growth, and the lily practically recoiled from a Birmingham accent, growing a mere two inches. I hope that Prince Charles, our most celebrated talker to plants, takes note. If he dispenses with the Queen's English and takes up Queen's Drive English, Queen's Drive being Liverpool's residential ring-road, his garden will flourish.
Brian Viner: Even at 70 Pele, the perfect 10, is still the undisputed king of Planet Football
Saturday, 23 October 2010
The Last Word
Brian Viner: This throne is the greatest leveller
Thursday, 21 October 2010
On Monday it will be 250 years since King George II died on the toilet. It is not what he would have wished to be remembered for a quarter of a millennium after his death, for he also spoke six languages, and was the last British monarch to lead his troops into battle. That was during the War of the Austrian Succession, at Dettingen in Bavaria in 1743, an eventful year for the king. A few months earlier he had been present at the inaugural London performance of Handel's Messiah.
Brian Viner: If only us Evertonians weren't in the mire too, we could sit back and enjoy Liverpool's plight
Saturday, 16 October 2010
The Last Word
Brian Viner: Why every sports fixture is a gamble
Thursday, 14 October 2010
On the concourse outside Wembley Stadium on Tuesday evening, prior to England's footballers taking on 11 Montenegrins in a Euro 2012 qualifier, a gang of men in fluorescent pink bibs busied themselves picking up litter.
Brian Viner: The Ryder Cup made McDowell man of the moment. But is he really man of the year?
Saturday, 9 October 2010
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1 Lebanon, my Lebanon: A stirring new photography book sparks Robert Fisk’s memories
2 Paul Barker: A meritocracy? What an awfully 20th-century idea
3 Robert Fisk: An American bribe that stinks of appeasement
4 John Rentoul: Ed saved Gordon to get his job
5 Johann Hari: The religious excuse for barbarity
6 Moazzam Begg: We settled so we could get our lives back
7 Editor-At-Large: Mess with my GP's practice, Mr Lansley? Over my dead body!
8 Julie Burchill: For Kate's sake, let's hope her prince is nothing like his dad
9 Joan Smith: China will come off worst in a Nobel prize fight
Emailed
1 Robert Fisk: An American bribe that stinks of appeasement
2 Lebanon, my Lebanon: A stirring new photography book sparks Robert Fisk’s memories
3 Editor-At-Large: Mess with my GP's practice, Mr Lansley? Over my dead body!
4 Paul Barker: A meritocracy? What an awfully 20th-century idea
5 Johann Hari: The religious excuse for barbarity
6 Katherine Butler: The compelling plot behind Ireland's woes
7 Howard Jacobson: Let’s see the 'criticism' of Israel for what it really is
Commented
Columnist Comments
• John Rentoul: Ed saved Gordon to get his job
Miliband could have helped unseat the former leader, but what good would that have done his own chances?
• Editor-At-Large: Mess with my GP's practice, Mr Lansley? Over my dead body!
Andrew Lansley is fast shaping up as my least favourite government minister
• Joan Smith: China will come off worst in a Nobel prize fight
What most people remember about the 2008 Beijing Olympic games is the spectacular opening ceremony
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