Paul Routledge

Saturday

Paul Routledge

Geoffrey Boycott’s new book would be of more use to English cricketers than a regiment of shrinks

From our UK edition

After 13 barren years Yorkshire is back at the top of county cricket, where Geoffrey Boycott believes it has a place almost of right. We took the County Championship this year, beating Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge by an innings and 152 runs. Ryan Sidebottom finished off the home side to post a splendid match performance of 9-65. He doesn’t get a mention in this book, though his father Arnie does. In a part of the world where cricket is almost a religion, this is seen as a restoration of the natural order of things. It used to be said that when the county was low in the rankings, men read the Yorkshire Post upside down out of shame. Boycott played for Yorkshire for 24 years from 1962, and captained the side from 1971 to 1978.

Paul Routledge

Straining for effect

From our UK edition

A saint of self-deprecation, Chris Mullin closed the first volume of his diaries A View from the Foothills ‘contemplating oblivion’ after his dismissal from ministerial office. A saint of self-deprecation, Chris Mullin closed the first volume of his diaries A View from the Foothills ‘contemplating oblivion’ after his dismissal from ministerial office. This was plainly not the case, as the 443 pages of his second volume, Decline & Fall, demonstrate. Whatever the fate of those he writes about with such sardonic charm, obscurity is unlikely to overtake the former Member for Sunderland South, though he will be better remembered for what he wrote than for what he did.

Thursday

Paul Routledge

Boy, can Alan Johnson write

From our UK edition

Alan Johnson’s first volume of memoirs, This Boy, is still in the bestsellers’ list, but the Stakhanovite postman has made a second delivery, timed impeccably for the party conference season. It charts his escape from the urban jungle of Notting Hill to Britwell council estate in Slough, via a succession of GPO sorting offices and eventually to high office in the Union of Communications Workers. Like its predecessor, Please, Mister Postman takes its title from a Beatles classic. The boy left in the care of his 16-year-old sister after their mother’s death dreamed of becoming a rock star.

Saturday

Paul Routledge

Not good enough

From our UK edition

Tony Blair gave his record in government ten out of ten, though an ungrateful electorate scored rather less well and his Cabinet colleagues performed even worse. Sadly, they were ill-equipped to grasp his unique qualities of leadership. Milord Peter Mandelson reached broadly similar conclusions. Their instant apologia are meant to be the last word on the subject, living obituaries on 13 years in power. So what are we to make of the verdict of New Labour’s two most respectable cheerleaders, who offer a ‘not good enough’ six out of ten for their government’s performance? Toynbee and Walker (they sound like an old-established firm of country solicitors — ‘very reliable, y’know’) are not persuaded.

Saturday

Paul Routledge

Cold comfort on the wolds

From our UK edition

Moving to a farm cottage 700ft up in the Pennines, surrounded by sheep and serenaded by curlews, and conscious of the dawn-to-dusk regime of the family next door, one begins to understand life on a small mixed farm. It is unrelenting work. No wonder Richard Benson preferred the glitzy attractions of Grub Street. But if he had not abandoned his patrimony, we would not have this quite moving memoir of change on the Yorkshire wolds, the county’s least appreciated hinterland. The undulating hills can be as bleak as Hardy’s ‘starve-acre’ Flintcombe Ash with the same flint and chalk, yet as pastoral as Talbothayes.