Michael Henderson

This summer, like so many others in the past decade, belongs to Roger Federer. By reclaiming the men’s singles title at Wimbledon, after giving Andy Murray a set start, the peerless Swiss revealed what true greatness looks like in sporting togs. Seven times a Wimbledon champion, 17 times a winner of Grand Slam events: his record compels not so much admiration as awe, and it will surprise nobody if, next month, he retains the Olympic title he won four years ago. He is, by general assent, the greatest of all tennis players, standing a cubit taller than Rod Laver, the Australian champion of the Sixties, who was at centre court to witness Federer’s latest achievement.

Gratefully we cast our bread upon the blue-green waters of the Salzach to give thanks to this festival city. Across the river the famous castle stands fortress over the old town. On the terrace of the Cafe Bazar one hears the tongues of France, Italy and Spain as well as Austria, because this is old Europe. Not ‘European’ as defined by the EU, European as in the Arnoldian sense, handing on from one generation to another the best that has been thought, or said, or done. There is a European way of living, and it is easy to find it here. ••• No city of comparable size (150,000 souls) enjoys so elevated an international ranking. That Mozart was born here has something to do with it, even if he longed to get away.

It is midsummer, and England are playing the West Indies at cricket. The teams have completed a three-Test series, which England won 2-0, and they are now playing five matches of 50 overs a side, a form of the game that suits the big-hitting Caribbean batsmen. You would have thought that West Indian supporters would be flocking to the ground, yet they are staying away in their thousands. At Lord’s, Trent Bridge and Edgbaston, which staged the Test matches, the West Indian supporters could have arrived on a decent-sized bus. Returning to Lord’s last week, for a one-day game against Middlesex, played in excellent weather, you could count the black faces on the fingers of four hands.

The last time I met Roy Hodgson, at Le Café Anglais, Rowley Leigh’s restaurant in Bayswater, I drew a king from the pack. I presented Roy — the West Bromwich Albion and now England manager — with Colm Tóibín’s wonderful novel The Master. Roy smiled as he laid down an ace: ‘Is this the one about Henry James? I’m afraid I’ve read it.’ Make that one-all. At a previous lunch I had given him Stefan Zweig’s masterpiece, Beware of Pity, a novel so close to my Habsburg heart that I wanted him to love it, too. It is the sort of book that defines character, never mind literary taste. ‘Magnificent,’ he told me a few weeks later.

The latest issue of The Spectator is out tomorrow, but we thought that arts blog readers might appreciate a very special preview of one of its articles. It's by Michael Henderson, and takes umbrage with Katherine Jenkins' recent comments about opera and elitism: Last month, on the most glorious of autumnal days, the world of music paid its last respects to Robert Tear. St Martin in the Fields was packed and the singing, as you can imagine, was magnificent. Sir Thomas Allen gave us Kurt Weill’s ‘September Song’, Sir John Tomlinson contributed Sarastro’s aria from Zauberflöte, and Dame Janet Baker read a poem by Emily Dickinson. It was some send-off. Bob deserved no less.

The cyclist sipping wine on the terrace of a Thames-side pub may not look much like an English hero, but anybody who loves cricket knows that he ranks only slightly lower than the angels. Thirty years ago Bob Willis bowled England to the most astonishing victory in the history of Test cricket, taking eight for 43 on a mad Monday in Leeds that held the nation entranced. Three decades later, not even the superb performances of the current England players, who are facing India at the Oval this week as the No. 1 team in the world, can efface the memories of ’81.‘Botham’s Ashes’, they call that series, with reason.