Foreword, 25.10.2024 May the 9th 2024, The Upper Mound Stand, Lord’s “This is my son William; he opens the bowling for the Authentics and has made the occasional appearance for the blues.” my father said, introducing me to Mark Nicolas, president of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) for 2024. “A pleasure.” I confirmed, before taking a seat amidst cricket’s great and good to take in the annual Varsity Match. Talk swiftly moved to the ever-prevalent question of whether th

Our newly elected Labour government continues to be a tale of two feelings - happiness in what we have, and sadness in what could have been. With the recent European Political Community meeting, held at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, Keir Starmer’s message of ‘resetting’ our relationship with the European Union couldn’t have had a better start. In fact, with the pictures of Britain’s Starmer and France’s Macron strolling around tranquil gardens, you’d be excused to think the

Joe Biden has had a tough few weeks, so it feels only fair to give a little attention to his strengths – although we do acknowledge that the Lobster ’s observations will not give the Democrats the boost they need. Nevertheless, his policies regarding cyber security in particular merit examination. The president has been hard at work combatting the encroachment of TikTok, as he signed a bill in April which could ban it from the country after 2025. The reason behind this radi

The seed of tragedy is sown upon one’s decision to be great. The declaration, so often made in youth, seems to correlate, if not causate, years of toil which crack at one’s resolution until, for many, it begins to recede entirely. Still, the urge for greatness is unsurprising. For when upon entry to adulthood the world opens itself up to you so entirely, greatness seems only a subtle stretch beyond mundanity. The decision to martyr oneself for something—anything—seems a noble

The Labour election campaign was pretty perfect. From day one, the Conservatives fumbled from one disaster to another - rain on arrival, D-Day botched, the betting scandal - whilst Labour managed a steady, focused campaign. The Conservatives were just kicked when they were down. However, to some, the one area which seemed to shake Labour was Gaza. Before the campaign, when then-Leader of the Opposition Keir Starmer failed to call for a ceasefire in the region, Labour’s standi

How the media is helping frame Donald Trump as a stone-cold survivor. Back in 2020, while serving as President, Donald Trump contracted COVID-19. When he returned to the White House, the BBC reported on his recovery. This is the scenario: an elderly, affluent man contracts a virus that has been fatal for many yet recovers. He subsequently claims immunity while speaking to the American public: 'As your leader, I had to do that. I knew there’s a danger to it, but I had to do it

Spoiler Warning: ‘The Bear’ Christopher Storer’s masterpiece, The Bear, has released its most anticipated third season, but the ten episodes served to us fall short of their predecessors. Following the employees of newly opened restaurant ‘The Bear’, we watch as Carmy begins to butt-heads with Sydney and Richie over the direction of the restaurant. The pace is slower, but instead of continuing season 2’s tight focus, season 3 becomes somewhat disjointed and unsatisfactory. H

“It’s a two party system, you have to vote for one of us!” are the wise words of Kang and Kodos in The Simpsons 1996 episode ‘Treehouse of Horror VII’. The two aliens are running as Democratic and Republican candidates, but are unmasked at the last moment. Still, despite the fact they’re aliens, the people must vote - it’s a two party system after all. The scene is great, but even funnier is the moment someone in the crowd pipes up, declaring “I believe I’ll vote for a third

If there is a holiday which President George W. Bush is unlikely to forget, it is the one he took during August 2005. On the 29th of that month, Hurricane Katrina, spreading over 650 km and at speeds of over 200 km/hr, hit New Orleans. Mass destruction and unprecedented flooding ensued, resulting in over a thousand casualties and an estimated $100 billion in damages. On that same day, Bush was enjoying the sun at his Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, Texas. He would continu

What makes a classic? As an answer – or to avoid the rather puzzling question – you might name some: Anna Karenina , Nineteen Eighty-Four , David Copperfield . And then move on to more straightforward literary topics: what’s your favourite Shakespeare play? What do you think of Salman Rushdie’s new book? But let’s return to the matter of the classic for a moment. Mark Twain puts it pithily: a classic is ‘a book which people praise and don’t read.’ It’s a painfully ironic

What is most interesting about “The Waste Land”, is its relentless reliance on elements of the past. Of course, as much could arguably be said about any work of literature or history, and its intent seems perfectly reasonable given that, to put it simply, Eliot laments the present in favour of a more meaningful past. But it also seems to raise important questions about the nature of literature and its relationship to history, and the extent to which every literature is not in

April is perhaps the best month to drive around the battlefields of the Somme. Whilst not experiencing the ‘Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain’ of which Edward Thomas speaks, the persistent drizzle this time of year does give a feel for the bleakness of life in the trenches. After picking up a volume of Thomas’ poetry a few weeks ago, I decided a second trip to this region was very much in order. I first visited the Somme on a school trip, as is relatively commo

I have spent the past three years searching for an easy answer to the question, ‘How does one write?’. I yearn to find some way to cheat the system, to write well, and be done with it. On my hunt, I have found more material than I could even read, and as I have not sifted through it all, I will not bore you with it. I will instead introduce the one piece of writing advice I am sure you already know, the age-old adage: write what you know. The simplicity of this line is a ble

As with most Olympic Games, the United States made a clean sweep of the 1924 edition. Yet the real victors of the competition might well have been the French, whose event hosting was later gloriously immortalised in the 1981 Chariots of Fire . Exactly one hundred years later, the birthplace of the modern Olympics will once again welcome all nations to its capital. On paper, the occasion will be even grander: the International Olympic Committee (ICO) has almost doubled the num

Have you ever wondered why lobsters are commonly associated with wealth? We certainly have. Why is it that in Hemingway's A Moveable Feast , the narrator enjoys a meal of lobster with mayonnaise rather than tinned sardines with his cold glass of white wine? Presumably, the abundance of lobsters in The Great Gatsby adds to the opulence and excess of the Jazz Age elite and the parties may have seemed less alluring to readers had the culinary scene been populated by leek and po