An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
My friend Tim Andrew has admirable priorities. When I told him I had tickets for this week’s Six Nations opener at the Stade de France, he texted back: ‘Final whistle to a restorative glass in the 6ième arr: 40 minutes. Can’t even get to the station at Twickenham in that time.’ That’s the attitude you
With two of the big races on Cheltenham Trials Day tomorrow attracting four runners, I am looking at the lower-profile contests for my suggested bets. Without each-way betting, I have no desire to take on odds-on shots Grey Dawning in the Grade 2 Betfair Cotswold Chase (2.25 p.m.) or Sir Gino in the Unibet Hurdle
The second-best day of the year is finally here. Obviously, nothing beats the opening day of the Cheltenham Festival – and it will be even better this year when Mambo-numberfive wins the Arkle – but Cocklebarrow Races in the Cotswolds are a short-head runner up. You can rely on the weather to be foul: if
It’s that time of year again. No sooner have you recovered from Christmas than the posh start talking about their skiing jaunts planned for the February half-term. But let’s use the term posh advisedly, because – make no mistake – skiing is now anything but. Where once flinging yourself down the Cresta Run may have
There is a short video on the internet in which the late football commentator Hugh Johns reminisces about what the game had in the 1970s that made it great. He starts making a list – ‘skill, entertainment, cut-throat football’ – and then pauses for a disparaging comment about what came after. The disparagement is mild,
Lambourn trainer Jamie Snowden continues to enjoy a stellar season in which he has landed some big-race prizes. His general statistics are impressive too: 62 winners from just 218 runners for a strike rate of 28 per cent. Snowden has plenty of interesting runners at Ascot and Windsor this weekend and I would be surprised
With the cold snap likely to play havoc with the weekend race cards in Britain, it seems more sensible for me to take an early look at the Cheltenham Festival from an ante-post point of view. It is stating the obvious but the number one rule of ante-post betting is to do all you can
It is testament to the decline of Manchester United that the sacking of their manager, Rubin Amorim, on Monday has been treated as a second-order story. True, rather dramatic events in South America have put such things into their perhaps proper perspective, but you do feel that even if it were an especially slow news
So what was the best bit of this dispiriting Ashes series? Lucky you if you’ve found one, but for me – at the time of writing, before Jacob Bethell was belatedly allowed to unfurl his brilliance – it was the moving homage to the heroes of the Bondi massacre at the start of the Sydney
After so much superb racing over the festive period, it is disappointing to see such small fields at Sandown for tomorrow’s main card in Britain. Between five and 11 runners are due to take part in the seven races at the Esher course. The quicker-than-usual ground conditions for the time of year partly account for
In July, Victoria, Lady Starmer was photographed at Royal Ascot, celebrating with friends after backing the winner of the Princess Margaret Stakes. Lady Starmer, whose grandmother lived near Doncaster racecourse, is a keen follower of flat racing, a passion she apparently shares with her husband. In 2024, the Prime Minister flew home from Washington D.C.
The Gloucestershire yard of Ben Pauling has gone from strength to strength in recent seasons and today could see it reach a new high when the trainer sends his stable star to Kempton to compete in the Ladbrokes King George VI Chase (2.30 p.m.). THE JUKEBOX MAN will face seven talented rivals, including two hot-pots from
Jockey James Best rode into the history books yesterday when he partnered Britain’s longest-priced winner, courtesy of 300-1 shot Blowers, who landed the first race at Exeter in attritional conditions. The horse was named after retired cricket commentator Henry Blofeld, who is nicknamed ‘Blowers’. Tomorrow, I am hoping the same jockey can ride arguably his
Back in the early 1990s, I was a teenage visitor to an array of dilapidated Victorian cow sheds masquerading as third and fourth division football grounds as I supported my team, Wrexham FC, on their travels. There were still many pre-Hillsborough fences in place, some of which (most notably in the away end at Crewe
Strong course form is always a major plus for horses contesting races at Cheltenham, whether it is at the Festival in March or any other meeting at the track. The trouble when evaluating the merits of the runners in the tomorrow’s big race, The Support the Hunt Family Fund December Gold Cup Handicap Chase, (1.50
I met Ben Wallace for the first time the other day. He was pretty well the only minister who came out of Rishi Sunak’s government with his reputation enhanced. I had a humdinger hunt ball hangover from hell – quite appropriate, given that he is leading the campaign to save trail hunting. He, on the
Sam Thomas was a talented jockey – riding Denman to victory in the 2008 Cheltenham Gold Cup – but he is an even better trainer. His winning strike rate with his runners is phenomenal, and this doesn’t simply come from picking off low-quality races. Thomas is never happier than plundering decent prize money at the
It was just a straightforward dinner in the bosom of the House of Lords, talking to members of the Jockey Club. What could possibly go wrong? When I rashly accepted with gay abandon the invitation to speak to them after dinner, I’d forgotten that I’d been quite punchy about the club over the past decade
There’s tetchy, and then there’s Ben Stokes ‘tetchy’ – pulling out his mic and stomping off cursing, or so I’m told, after Jonathan Agnew asked a disobliging question. Admittedly it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for Stokes, an inspirational leader on the pitch who had just seen his team skewered in two days in
It is, England cricket fans must remember, only one match in a five-Test series. They began the Ashes needing to win three Tests and the requirement remains the same despite the humiliation in Perth. There is still a reason to get up at 4 a.m. tomorrow for the next game. Lightning need not strike twice,
Trainers Harry Derham and Emma Lavelle will almost certainly leave their mark at Newbury over the next two days. Whereas Britain’s most successful trainers target the Cheltenham Festival in March with their elite horses, this talented pair are more realistic and aim their best horses at this two-day meeting. For both handlers it is their
My friend Allan Lamb calls me a ‘cricket tragic’, a back-handed compliment from a former English international cricketer. So the prospect of flying out to Australia and watching the first Ashes Test in Perth was too seductive to ignore. I knew pretty early on that the cost was going to be exorbitant. A gruelling 24-hour
Herefordshire trainer Tom Symonds has his string in fine form with four winners from his last eight runners for a strike rate of 50 per cent over the past fortnight. Even his supposed no-hoper Gaelic Saint comfortably outran her odds at Warwick yesterday when second at 50-1 in a mares’ novices’ hurdle. Tomorrow one of Symonds’s stable stars NAVAJO INDY will
And so it begins, as Donald Trump likes to say, though not usually about cricket. He was offering his thoughts on the New York mayoral elections, which is not as much fun as the Ashes. Pleasingly, the goading is reaching volcanic levels as the Perth Test gets ever closer. Who needs Trump? The West Australian
For the past 30 years Robin Oakley has taken you through the front door of the horse-racing world and kept you in the best of company. There’s not a chance of me lasting that long, and more often than not when I try to shine a light on the sport’s brilliant mix of heroes, narcissists
The Ashes start this week. If, as an England supporter, you were given the following two choices, which would you pick? First: England win the series 5-0. Second: the series ebbs and flows, the teams arrive in Sydney locked at 2-2, the match goes down to the final hour of the final day, and England
Fairly heavy rain fell at Cheltenham overnight and there is a lot more to come today. If there is anything near the predicted 30mm of the wet stuff over 24 hours, the ground could easily turn to heavy which, whether racing is over jumps or the flat, tends to make the results something of a
I’m 11 years old, and I’m crouched inside the broken shell of a former London bus. It’s my friend’s birthday party. He turns 12 today, and he has just been shot. Not by a real bullet, of course, but by a paintball. I look over at his father, who is busy reloading his gun’s hopper.
This afternoon, just shy of 75,000 fans of American football will flood in to watch the Atlanta Falcons take on the Indianapolis Colts, in what is set to be the Colts’ largest attendance for a home game this season. A few weeks ago, more than 86,000 turned out to watch the Jacksonville Jaguars face the
