Ten years ago, London 2012 began. It was the culmination of a dream, and now a dream is all that it has become. Enraptured from an early age by the idea of the Olympic Games, of its people, its contests and its principles, I had so wanted to see one of the Games. Then, whenRead More
The other day it was the sixth anniversary of the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games. I’d forgotten the date but spotted a reminder the day after, and decided once again to look at the video of the ceremony. I’ve seen it many times now – the original broadcast, the repeat broadcasts, theRead More
The Olympic Games will be upon us soon, and I don’t know how I feel about them. It’s not the stories of political corruption, or of state-sponsored drug-taking, or even the mounting absurdities of the Games themselves, but simply that I haven’t got over the last Olympic Games as yet. London 2012 was perfect. WhatRead More
120. I remember directions marked out in pink wherever you went. 121. I remember Nicola Adams’ smile. 122. I remember the radio-controlled cars which were used to retrieve javelins and shots. 123. I remember the Olympic posters designed by various celebrated artists, and how poor most of them were, showing how very little said artistsRead More
I was in Stratford, London, the other day and went for a nostalgic look at the Olympic Park. You’re not allowed into the Park, of course, and a perimeter fence ensures that you keep your distance, but if you got to the top of the John Lewis store at the Westfield shopping centre, they haveRead More
One of the marvels of the Olympic Games of 2012 was the ubiquity of the video coverage. No more was there the experience of Olympic games of years past, when a single television channel covered as much as it could. The BBC delivered 2,400 hours of video over the seventeen days of the Games acrossRead More
It’s that time of the year when people start producing lists of their books of the year. This year the choice ought to be an easy one. The book of 2012 is one collated between 1937 and its author’s death in 1950, then not published until 1985, left to dwindle into obscurity except in theRead More
I’ve been dreaming of going to the Olympic Games since I was eleven. The 1972 Games were such a thrill, not only for the sports themselves, but for the discovery of Olympic history. My heroes were the Olympians of years past: Ray Ewry, Jim Thorpe, Paavo Nurmi, Jesse Owens, Wilma Rudolph, Abebe Bikila. I alsoRead More
Pandaemonium is the Palace of All the Devils. Its building began c.1660. It will never be finished – it has to be transformed into Jerusalem. The building of Pandaemonium is the real history of Britain for the last three hundred years. Frank Cottrell Boyce, the writer behind ‘Isles of Wonder’, the extraordinary and widely acclaimedRead More