Mihir Bose's Blog, page 7

Why we may be stuck with Trump

Asian Lite In the spring of 2016 my wife and I were in a restaurant in Rome waiting to dine with my daughter who was working there then. At the next table was an American couple and with the Republican primaries having just started I asked them how they would vote when the elections came. […]

More from the Three Old Hacks

Listen to Nigel Dudley and David Smith and myself in the second podcast by the Three Old Hacks in the The smell of the crowd. We discuss how the pandemic has affected sport and its coverage in the media, and who is winning the pandemic media awards, and also Europe.     

Caste: The Lies That Divide Us by Isabel Wilkerson: heartrending but too simplistic

 Irish Times In the winter of 1959 Martin Luther King went to India. It was for him a pilgrimage, as Gandhi’s non-violent campaign to free India from British rule had inspired him. But when he visited a school in the southern state of Kerala he was “a bit shocked and peeved” that the principal of […]

Three Old Hacks

I have known David Smith and Nigel Dudley for years having worked together on Financial Weekly in the 1980s. They are two of the best journalists in this country. The three of us have got together to do podcasts. This is the first one reflecting on journalism and the extraordinary times we are living in.

Will Boris be gone by April?

Asian Lite That Boris Johnson may be out of No 10 Downing Street by April was the confident forecast made a couple of weeks ago by a friend who was an MP and knows his politics. His point was the Conservative party worships power and when it feels power may be slipping away then it […]

IPL is India’s great soft power tool

Asian Lite Last week while visiting my sister-in-law Jenny and her husband John at their home in Suffolk the talk turned to sport as it often does. Both Jenny and John have a keen interest in sport, and it is always enjoyable to talk to them about sports. What surprised me was when Jenny asked […]

My podcast from the 2020 Chiswick Book Festival

What a joy it was to be on the cricket podcast of Peter Oborne and Richard Heller. They are  such excellent commentators who carry their deep knowledge of the game lightly. 

Can you hear United sing?

British Journalism Review First coronavirus, then Black Lives Matter: sports editors are having to rethink the way they work In 1919, following the flu epidemic that killed more than 100million, a young journalist keen to be the music critic of the then Manchester Guardian was sent to Old Trafford to report on a Lancashire cricket […]

Will Russia help Trump turn the tide?

Asian Lite It may seem unlikely that Trump could win re-election but then at this stage in 2016 it seemed unlikely that he would beat Hilary Clinton and get elected. Then what helped him was the intervention in the American election of Vladimir Putin. The question is what will Putin do now and when. Should […]

VJ day – letter to the Times

The Times Sir, Today’s commemoration of the victory over Japan also marks 73 years of Indian independence, India having won its freedom from British rule exactly two years after Japan’s defeat. This was not a coincidence. Although Japan was beaten, its war in Asia destroyed the mystique of white supremacy and made European rule in […]