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World Cup Hero
Ian Hamilton
‘The antitheses had been there all along but in July 1990, after Gascoigne’s World Cup triumph, they were given a new formulation.’
Don’t Cry for Gazza
Ian Hamilton
‘‘Who is Gazza?’ asked Mr Justice Harman in the High Court in September 1990.’
Actively Portly
Ian Hamilton
‘When Ian Rush was asked to explain his failure to score goals for Juventus he replied that being in Italy was like being in a foreign country.’
Finally Fit
Ian Hamilton
‘By eight-thirty, the rain was sheeting down, and the thunder and lightning seemed to be directly overhead. The police dogs around the track began to bark. Were lions whelping in the street? Had Gazza been too saucy with the gods?’
Il Commento Gastrico
Ian Hamilton
‘In the old days, when a British star went to Italy, he disappeared.’
Portly Again?
Ian Hamilton
‘English football’s most precocious and precious talent is evaporating into the skies over Italy like the fading flares of a half-spent Roman candle.’
Mississippi Water
Jonathan Raban
‘I flew to Minneapolis, rented a car and followed the river downstream for a thousand miles.’
The Visit
Timothy Garton Ash
‘His language is a little stiff, polit-bureaucratic, but very far from being just ideological gobbledygook. Through it come glimpses of a real political intelligence, a man who knows about power.’
The Highway of Brotherhood and Unity
Michael Ignatieff
‘Back in 1989, we thought the new world opened up by the breaching of the Berlin Wall would be ruled by philosopher kings, dissident heroes and shipyard electricians.’
Grandma Moore’s Cancer
Mary Karr
‘Those are only rumours of suffering. Real suffering has a face and a smell. And it knows your name.’
The Bank Manager
Charles Glass
‘In the south of France, at the edge of a cove that cannot be reached by road, lives an old woman from England.’
