Category: belles-lettres
A London Romance
Relocating “Manhattan” Music by Richard Rodgers Lyrics by Lorenz Hart 1925 Searching on some beach for space With roughly half the human race And insects which bite – Cancel the flight! In a London maisonette We two could find a raison d’etre, So let’s join our names By the banks of the Thames. We’ll build […]
The Brightest Daffodils Of Spring
I wandered lonely as a cloudAmongst the bookshop’s empty tillsWhen all at once I saw a crowdA host of golden daffodils:Like Guardsmen with their stiffened backs,The piles of Wisden Almanacks. Continuous as the stars that shineAnd twinkle on the milky way,They stretched in never-ending lineOn joyous publication day.Ten thousand saw I, crammed with factsOn cricket’s […]
J E P McMaster: the hero of zero
Published in Scoreline magazine, Pakistan, 2018 At the time of writing (2019), 687 players have represented England in 1004 Test Matches since 1877. (By comparison Pakistan have used 233 players in 416 Test Matches.) I think I have watched every English Test performer since 1954, including many great ones. At the beginning were Len Hutton, […]
The rewards of mediocrity
Published in the Journal of the Cricket Society December 2023 Some are born mediocre, some have mediocrity thrust upon them but some achieve mediocrity only after a lifetime of hard work. That is the central message of my intended autobiography as a bowler. It is to be called Six And Out, after the role I […]
No Agent, No Baubles…
… and no sale either, when this was offered two years ago I have been dismissed by my literary agent. Politely but unmistakably, and I was glad to be spared the usual flummeries: pressure of demand from other clients … feel unable to present your work with conviction… never known markets so hostile … None […]
How to write a rejection letter
Written for a how-to video series for businesses 2010 How do I write a rejection letter? The writer Evelyn Waugh had a simple and instant method of rejecting proposals from strangers. He sent out a printed card with the words: “Mr Evelyn Waugh cannot do what you wish.” Waugh did not care if he never […]
The Quality Of Mercer Gets Quite Strained
Two new songs by Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen Any Place I Feed My Cat Is Home (for Theo) Still a kittenThat’s his styleLife is playtimeMakes me smileStalks treats in theCarpet pileShreds paper into FoamAn’ any place I feed my cat is home. Finds a place To sharpen clawsBut not the scratch-postHe ignoresStops for grooming […]
Golden Summer 1963
published in Wisden Cricket Monthly December 2021 My Golden Summer? A tough assignment for a player in the twilight of a cricket career which never really had a dawn. But I will name the English summer of 1963. There was some wonderful cricket to watch, and I made the two all-important discoveries about cricket which […]
Mortimer’s Christmas
Santa’s deliveries will be hit this year by a shortage of reindeer. Four have left him for better positions in the haulage industry. ‘Twas the night before Christmas and in the big house The last creature stirring was Mortimer Mouse Devising some uplifting sentiments new To fill up his masterpiece Keep Squeaking Through: Motivational mush […]
The Light Fantastics
An animation project turned here into an illustrated story for people of 7+ Meet the Light Fantastics. This is Lady in Red. This is Green Go-to Guy. They live in two little spaces in a traffic light in the Big City, on a busy corner of Main Street and Crosstown Avenue. Lady in Red tells […]
Paradise In The Post
Published in Good Housekeeping ca 1984 I live in Bonar Law Mansions: the street is called Nash Terrace and that’s a false trade description if ever there was. Nash Terrace runs off Coldview Lane and so do I if I’m coming home late at night. Like so much British housing of its kind, Bonar Law […]
Meet Mortimer Mouse
Mortimer Mouse comes from a distinguished family of literary rodents which includes Terence Ratagain and Mousehole Proust. He lives in South-East London with Richard Heller, the distinguished man of letters, and kafkaa, the poetic cockroach, cousin of the famous archy. Mortimer Mouse has gained a global public for his uplifting homilies and has supplied them […]
A Plea For All Unknown Successors Of P G Wodehouse
Letter to Four Communications, organizers of the Bollinger Everyman PG Wodehouse Award Thank you for informing me that this year’s P G Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction is not open to self-published books. This letter is a plea for this policy to be reconsidered. I would be most grateful if you could share it with […]
Poor Swift (from my lockdown diary for 28 May)
In my distant schooldays I read Jonathan Swift for English A Level. I read him again intermittently for pleasure and possible literary larceny, since he is of course out of copyright. Then and now, I would sometimes have to mug up the politicians of Queen Anne and the Hanoverian succession, to make sense of Swift’s […]
For Your Listening Pleasure
Two coronaballads… A Viral Romance A fine romance with no clinches A fine romance at 78.7 inches We should be making each other feel desirous But we’ve been kept apart by this blasted virus. A fine romance, with no hugging If this is romance I’d rather have a mugging We’re spaced out like a couple […]
A Horse With No Chance (after America)
Hoping that punters worldwide might appreciate this take on the rock classic Horse With No Name by America. Check this brilliant rendition by a self-isolating couple. https://twitter.com/americaband/status/1241782311269457920 Wonderful performance of a horse’s ass, against such daily competition from Donald Trump. Pedant’s note: names of horses in second verse are from the “Fugue For Tinhorns” in […]
A Murder Of Note
The best screenplay what I have written this week. Available to investors as a fun way to make a tax loss. Xander (have always liked names beginning with X) is a handsome young pianist of extraordinary talent. He is swindled out of his inheritance by his evil cousin Coron (I don’t think viruses can sue.) […]
Everybody Gets A Chance To Shine
Composed years ago for Chance to shine at the launch of my children’s character Harry Bear MP, but never used. Revived now when the world, especially the cricket world, seems to want and need uplifting lyrics. The night may seem too dark for you to dream But a new day is waiting there in line. […]
Blair speaks!
From my 2005 play Waiting For Gordo a bleak existential drama of backbench life in the Labour Party. Spoken by my character Placebo Lackey MP, but all passages by Tony Blair I believe – passionately – that it is important – to greet the world with a celebration that is so bold, so beautiful, so […]
John Donne anticipates the UK election results declared on St Lucy’s Day
‘Tis the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s, Lucy’s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks; The sun is spent, and now his flasks Send forth light squibs, no constant rays; The world’s whole sap is sunk; The general balm th’ hydroptic earth hath drunk, Whither, as to the bed’s feet, life is shrunk, Dead […]
A Modern Marvel
Where the bespoke Bermudas ride On sated tourists, plumply thigh’d, And Palm Beach suitings come to greet The guaranteed sub-tropic heat, A Margarita’d poolside throng Delivered up this holy song: “How should we render HILTON’s praise Who searched through these undiscovered bays To find us a land so far unknown And make it the image […]
Boris Johnson through the lens of Alexander Pope
Oh! could I mount on the Maeonian wing, Your arms, your actions, your repose to sing! What seas you traversed, and what fields you fought! Your country’s peace, how oft, how dearly bought! How barb’rous rage subsided at your word, And nations wondered while they dropped the sword! How, when you nodded, o’er the land […]
A Wodehouse Favourite: Rex Stout
My tribute to Rex Stout, creator of Nero Wolfe, in current edition of Wooster Sauce, journal of the PG Wodehouse Society “His narrative and dialogue could not be improved, and he passes the supreme test of being re-readable. I don’t know how many times I have read the stories, but plenty. I know exactly what […]
A London Romance
Summer journeys down to Brighton And to other places simply Heighten our cares: We’ll save our fares. In a London maisonette We two could find a raison d’etre, So let’s settle down Right here in town. We’ll build in Mayfair And just to play fair, Park Lane too A place where we can be Chez […]