George Foreman’s career was about resurrection
Heavyweight champion of the world. George Foreman spoke the phrase so often in his life that it became a happy growl. He spok...
Oleg Gordievsky worked for both sides in the cold war
The first thing Oleg Gordievsky did, having decided in July 1985 to defect, was to barricade the door of his Moscow flat. Whe...
Richard Fortey remade the world with fossils
The map on the hotel wall said “Good fossils here”, so Richard Fortey, then 14, did not hesitate. He seized his geologist’s h...
Athol Fugard spoke truth to apartheid South Africa
He could never explain exactly why he did it. He was only ten or eleven at the time, an ordinary white brat. There had been a...
Stitch by stitch, Rose Girone kept her family going
Knitting divides opinion. On one side are those for whom it is traumatic. First, the very look of a knitting pattern, in whic...
Muhsin Hendricks fought homophobia with the Koran
His mother could not end the sentence. “I heard you were divorced,” she had begun, “because you’re—” A long pause. “Gay,” he ...
Bean there, done that
THERE were rules at Pableaux Johnson’s Monday dinners. No phones: pay attention to the people around you. Don’t sit next to s...
Pableaux Johnson, peerless host and chronicler of New Orleans
THERE were rules at Pableaux Johnson’s Monday dinners. No phones: pay attention to the people around you. Don’t sit next to s...
Donald Shoup knew how to get cities going
Of all the levels of the dismal science, his was the lowliest of all. At the very mention of the words “traffic” or “parking”...
Marianne Faithfull battled labels all her life
Free love. Psychedelic drugs. Embroidered Moroccan cushions. Nietzsche. Zen. Tribal trinkets. Customised existentialism. Ossi...