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Author Archives: Jimmy Burns
South Africa World Cup
Few events in 2010 have the potential to go down in history as one of the achievements of the year while as likely to end in tears, as the football World Cup in South Africa. Arguably the world’s so-called ‘beautiful’ game -founded by colonising Europeans and with a global activity today dominated by the influence of multi-national sponsors, media giants and the hold that richer nations have on the lucrative transfer market-has taken much too long to reach this degree of ownership by the developing world. This is the first …
CINCO AÑOS SIN LADY DI
Los turistas que este verano visiten Londres por primera vez quizá no caigan en la cuenta de un cambio importante en el paisaje de la capital inglesa, un cambio que es representativo de cómo han quedado arrumbados los recuerdos de una legendaria princesa que, tiempo atrás, cautivó la imaginación del mundo. Una tienda que hace esquina, a unos pocos metros del palacio de Buckingham, sustituyó, no hace mucho tiempo, las viejas reproducciones de jarros y postales de Diana, princesa de Gales, por un surtido de recuerdos exclusivamente dedicados a su …
Diplomats to the core – how Oxford continues to ‘inoculate the world with Balliol’.
5 July 1997 It is 6pm and a group of young men and women are filing in orderly fashion into one of Oxford’s more discreet academic buildings for a lecture on the global politics of environment by a former UK ambassador to the UN. Well groomed, well dressed, and soft spoken, these students from around the world cut a very different image to those who have been crowding into the university’s most popular pub, The King’s Arms, to celebrate the end of their finals. For these are no ordinary students. …
Counter-terrorism spy to take over as MI5 director-general
Published: March 8 2007 02:00 A career spy with a track-record in international -counter-terrorism is to take over as the new head of MI5, the Home Office announced yesterday. Jonathan Evans, the security service’s deputy director-general, will next month succeed Dame Manningham-Buller who announced in December that she was retiring after serving four-and-half years. Mr Evans, aged 49, joined MI5 in 1980, working on counter-espionage operations during the last stages of the cold war. In the late 1980s and the 1990s, he worked as a senior MI5 officer in Irish-related …
George Best, Un futbolista genial
El Manchester United le captó con sólo 15 años. Tenía 17 cuando debutó con el primer equipo en la final de la Copa de Inglaterra. Fue internacional por primera vez con la Selección de Irlanda del Norte (1964). Cuatro años después ganó la Copa de Europa y fue elegido “Mejor Futbolista de Europa”. A partir de ese momento comenzó su declive. Comparable a otros maestros del siglo XX como Johan Cruyff y Pelé, su figura se aproxima más a la de Diego Armando Maradona, debido a la trágica combinación de …
El más tímido de Los Beatles
Cuando a principios del verano del 2000, se supo que George Harrison se encontraba en una clínica suiza sometido a un tratamiento de radioterapia para combatir un tumor en el cerebro, poco tiempo después de que se le hubiera extirpado un pulmón, millones de personas de todo el mundo se quedaron sin apenas respiración. Posteriormente, su hospitalización en una clínica de Nueva York para someterse a un tratamiento a manos del prestigioso doctor Gil Lederman ha desencadenado un movimiento universal de solidaridad y preocupación. En 1997, le diagnosticaron al cantante …
Life with Captain Bob
MAXWELL’S FALL By Roy Greenslade Simon & Schuster Pounds 4.99 Among the least edifying spectacles of the aftermath of Mr Robert Maxwell’s death was the speed of the overnight conversion of his flagship newspaper, the Daily Mirror, from docile servant to exposer of the publisher’s many sins. The newspaper that had proclaimed Mr Maxwell a ‘giant with wisdom’ was to go out of its way to condemn him as a devil. The Mirror’s exposes ranged from stories of widespread buggings of senior executives to mock-up photographs of Mr Maxwell with …
Superstar for the Nineties
Published: 30 November 1996 The musical Jesus Christ Superstar, first performed 26 years ago, is being revived on the London stage. It provoked cries of blasphemy when it first appeared. An author and journalist who was inspired by it then went to see the new version. I was 17 turning 18 when, back in 1970, the portrayal of Jesus Christ as a rock star first stirred my imagination and fuelled my enthusiasm in a way countless catechism lessons, sermons, and picture-book lives of saints had not done during my childhood. …
Survey of India – Sleeping giant stirs.
The rural masses show their consumer power, writes Jimmy Burns. Kherala, in the state of Haryana, some 50km south of Delhi, fits the image of the age-old village whose traditional values Mahatma Gandhi sought to preserve. But take a closer look and you’ll discover the modern age tentatively knocking on many a front door. Set well back from the main highway to the capital, the bulk of Kherala’s population of 4,000 live in squat huts made of crude cane and cattle dung. But most of the huts have TVs, electrical …
Argentina coach Diego Maradona writes another chapter in a turbulent life
By Jimmy Burns Published: 15 November 2008 Late one evening in September 1996, I sat sharing a table with former Argentine football star Diego Maradona in San Lorenzo’s in Knightsbridge, wondering if I was about to have my nose broken. I had just handed the world’s greatest football player a signed copy of the first edition of the unauthorised biography I had written of him, instinctively knowing that he might not like it, but feeling nonetheless that this was a necessary defining moment by which I could measure his willingness …