Category: M’s Miscellany

ONE of the world’s most-loved hymns was first heard on this day 250 years ago. Amazing Grace was written by John Newton for a sermon he gave on New Year’s Day 1773 … Continue reading250 years of Amazing Grace

ON the last page of the booklet within the 1994 Beatles double CD, Live at the BBC, in the smallest possible print, is this: I’ve just done a quick Google … Continue readingHow I made a Beatles album (with a little help from my friends)

I’D like to take you back 56 years to an afternoon that changed my life. It was the spring of 1965, I was 15 and in the fifth form at … Continue readingShakespeare and me

IT IS 100 years today since the first Rupert episode was published in the Daily Express. Here it is: When I was a child my father worked on the Express and brought home the … Continue readingA century of Rupert Bear

SIR Harold Evans, the legendary newspaper editor, has died in New York at the age of 92. I had the privilege of meeting him in his heyday. I was on … Continue readingHarry Evans – brilliant editor, decent human being

A FEW years ago I visited Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory. There I learned that it had suffered greatly in the Second World War when the Japanese mounted the largest … Continue readingVJ Day: The town that forgave

THERE is a silver lining to the coronavirus fiasco, which is that the public can now see that there is no such thing as ‘the science is settled’, as the … Continue readingThe science of nonsense

READING in yesterday’s Times that Lord Glendonbrook, the former owner of the airline BMI, is to fund Gilbert & Sullivan productions around the country gladdened my heart. The G & S operettas were … Continue readingConfessions of a G & S Dragoon

ANYONE who watched yesterday’s Australian Open tennis third round match between home challenger Nick Kyrgios and world No 1 Rafael Nadal, of Spain, was privileged. I yield to no one … Continue readingWhy I love Nick Kyrgios

HOW refreshing, when ‘celebrities’ are queueing up to demonstrate their Leftie credentials and denounce Brexit, to find one real star not afraid to take the opposite line. The latest issue … Continue readingBravo Rupert, the Brexit Bear