A town high in the mountains between Florence and Bologna has not forgotten how South African soldiers saved its citizens from murderous Gestapo troops. First published in Business Day, 21 September 2017. South Africans get a special welcome in Castiglione dei Pepoli, a town high in the Apennine mountains half-way between Bologna and Florence. There
First published in Wisden Cricket Monthly, May 2015. There is a C.L.R. James Institute in New York and a library in the London borough of Hackney but it’s hard to find signs of the author of cricket’s greatest book in his home town. John Young searched high and low. “Tunapuna at the beginning of this
John Young meanders through Mandela and finds somewhere closed for lunch. This article first appeared in The Weekender, 23-24 August 2008. In this Mandela birthday month, it occurs to me that many people have had lunch with Mandela, many more have had lunch for Mandela (at fundraisers for his charities) and there has even been
Exactly a hundred years ago, England and South Africa were battling it out for real. And as John Young shows, the Boer War had a surprising amount to do with cricket
