Brian Viner

Recently by Brian Viner

Brian Viner: Murray needs to find the extraordinary to finally come out of big three's shadow

Monday, 29 August 2011

The Way I See It: Part of the beauty of sport is that it is full of surprises, a carnival of the unpredictable

Brian Viner: Flutey takes his rejection on chin but it was end of the world for Gazza

Saturday, 27 August 2011

The Last Word

Brian Viner: Don't you hate it when heroes change sides? But they're only doing their job

Monday, 22 August 2011

The Way I See It: Who'd have bet on Big Eck starting the 2011-12 season in charge at Villa Park? Big Ron seemed more likely

Brian Viner: New season dawns too soon and I'm not ready to swap my thigh pad for shin pads

Saturday, 13 August 2011

The Last Word

Brian Viner: How I miss poolside book snobbery

Thursday, 11 August 2011

We all know that you can't judge a book by its cover, but you can surely judge people by the covers of their books. Or could, until the Kindle and iPad came along to ruin that peculiar paperback snobbery that the British middle classes take on holiday as surely as they take the Factor 30 and the floppy straw hat.

Brian Viner: Cricketing blancmange may be fashionable but it can't match the taste of the Test game

Saturday, 23 July 2011

The Last Word

Brian Viner Loving, hating and just being mildly annoyed

Friday, 22 July 2011

The other day in a questionnaire on the food and drink pages of a Sunday newspaper, asked which kitchen gadget he couldn't live without, a farmer called Tim Wilson, owner of the Ginger Pig butcher group, identified his Aga, the "hub" of his kitchen.

Brian Viner: He divides opinion but Alliss brings history to glorious game after 50 years on the mic

Saturday, 16 July 2011

The Last Word

Brian Viner: Hoylake and Lytham's absence from dream Open layout sure to cause stir in clubhouse

Saturday, 9 July 2011

The Last Word

Brian Viner: Journalism – not so ignoble a trade

Friday, 8 July 2011

More than 20 years ago I spent a few days on holiday in Washington DC. At the time I was a local newspaper reporter, and one of my journalistic heroes was Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post during the Watergate expos�.

Brian Viner: Wimbledon becomes the Sundance Festival as the BBC falls victim to celebrity obsession

Saturday, 2 July 2011

The Last Word

Brian Viner: Flag-wavers, take a back seat please

Friday, 1 July 2011

As you might be aware, a male British tennis player and a Spaniard today contest a best-of-five-sets match with a Wimbledon final as the prize for the winner. You might also be aware that the last time a British man won Wimbledon, Stanley Baldwin was prime minister and Sir Cliff Richard hadn't even been born. This is partly why most of us will be rooting for Andy Murray against Rafael Nadal this afternoon; he is the flesh-and-blood representation of the Great British yearning to put behind us the annual indignity of hosting a tournament in which we field only losers, with the odd exception in mixed-doubles and, every few decades, ladies' singles. Pomp and circumstance and strawberry cream teas are all very well as areas in which we rule the world, but it would do us untold good to add a mainstream sport or two.

Brian Viner: Behind the green and pleasant courts toils the unseen army that is 'Wombledon'

Saturday, 25 June 2011

The Last Word

Brian Viner: Sports psychology's debt to Aesop

Friday, 24 June 2011

For the eighth consecutive year I am billeted with my sister-in-law while covering the Wimbledon tennis championships, a fortnight-long dose of what we left behind when we quit London for the delights of rural Herefordshire in 2002: an urban buzz, restaurants within walking distance, the regular siren call of emergency vehicles, and foxes. Lots of them.

Brian Viner: Magical McIlroy has picked up Tiger's baton to leave USA seriously hacked off

Saturday, 18 June 2011

The Last Word

Brian Viner: The joy of what's overheard

Friday, 17 June 2011

Those of us long-sufferers who regularly rely on Britain's benighted railway network to get from A to B, preferably not via C, let alone with buses laid on from D to E, all have our pet irritations. One of my latest is the failure, more often than you'd believe possible, of the seat reservation service.

Brian Viner: Camera-shy Platini cannot use Cook's long wait to justify refusal

Saturday, 11 June 2011

The Last Word

Brian Viner: At last - the music we really want to hear

Friday, 10 June 2011

Kirsty Young, the presenter of Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, considers it unlikely that "The Birdie Song" will feature when the nation's own favourite records are revealed in tomorrow morning's special edition of the venerable programme. The Great British public, asked to imagine themselves as castaways, have been registering their own choices on the Radio 4 website.

Brian Viner: Why Sheikh Mo will add his royal seal of approval if Carlton wins Derby for Queen

Saturday, 4 June 2011

The Last Word

Brian Viner: Detractors might not want to accept it but Fergie's is the model to follow

Saturday, 28 May 2011

Sir Bobby Charlton hit on something when I interviewed him earlier this week, suggesting that when Manchester United played Benfica in the 1968 European Cup final, most supporters of other English clubs unequivocally wanted them to win, whereas tonight there will be no less equivocation in the widespread rooting for FC Barcelona.

Brian Viner: Wonderful tales of Hobbs' heroics and Grace surpassed leave no Stone unturned

Saturday, 28 May 2011

The Last Word

Brian Viner: No one holidays quite like the British

Friday, 27 May 2011

With a bank holiday weekend almost upon us, followed in most schools by a week of half-term, tens of thousands of British families will, Icelandic ash clouds permitting, be jetting off today and tomorrow for some guaranteed Mediterranean or perhaps more distant sunshine. At the same time, tens of thousands of others will be risking the vagaries of the British weather, and setting off for hotels, rented houses, B&Bs, caravans and campsites in our own islands. The latest edition of The Good Beach Guide, published yesterday, shows that no fewer than 461 British beaches now meet the guide's gold standard, so unpolluted seas at least await those brave enough to wade in.

Brian Viner: 2012 legacy will come a poor last after rush for gold

Saturday, 21 May 2011

The Last Word

Brian Viner: A vision in terracotta and cypress trees

Friday, 20 May 2011

Last weekend I was taken to southern Tuscany on what MPs and civil servants like to call fact-finding trips, what journalists call press trips, and what everyone else rudely calls freebies. I had never been to Tuscany before, put off partly by a cartoon in a long-ago summer edition of Private Eye, which showed empty Georgian streets, a sign saying Hampstead and underneath it a notice saying "Closed – Gone to Tuscany".