Brian Viner

Brian Viner swapped London for the Herefordshire countryside, and his column ‘Country Life’ documents his attempts to chase the rural idyll. Chiefly a sports writer, he pens a weekly sports column and interview for the paper. He is the author of Ali, Pele, Lillee and Me: A Personal Odyssey Through the Sporting Seventies.

Brian Viner: Racket of today drowns out slow brilliance of Borg

It is 28 years to the day since Bjorn Borg beat John McEnroe in what is surely still the most thrilling of all Wimbledon men's singles finals. Roger Federer's defeat of Rafael Nadal last year was a doozy, and the first time Federer had been taken to a fifth set in a Grand Slam final, but he completed that set in relative comfort, 6-2.

Recently by Brian Viner

Brian Viner: Country Life

Wednesday, 25 June 2008

'Like plenty of other naive souls, we left the city in search of a cheaper as well as a simpler life. What a laugh!'

Brian Viner: Tiger has a bad knee... the Goose, foot in mouth

Saturday, 21 June 2008

Winston Churchill once described golf as "a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an even smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose". Had the great man lived to see the best of another kind of great man, he might have reconsidered. In winning the US Open at Torrey Pines, Tiger Woods deployed the 15 weapons at his disposal – 14 of them in his bag and one of them, his preternatural willpower, in his head – as effectively as Churchill's hero, Henry V, used his longbowmen at Agincourt.

Brian Viner: Trouble in Toytown as sporting gods play

Saturday, 14 June 2008

On Monday afternoon, I motored through the Cotswolds – one never drives through the Cotswolds, only motors – with a smile on my lips and a song in my heart. It was a glorious day, the kind of still, summer's day of which P G Wodehouse wrote that one could hear the roar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadow.

Brian Viner: Elect a leader who doesn't split infinitives

Friday, 13 June 2008

There are several sound reasons to despise the TV commercial launched this week by the Republican presidential candidate John McCain in the hope of undermining his Democratic counterpart, Barack Obama. The ad shows Obama seemingly looking sympathetically at a picture of the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the accompanying message reads: "Is it OK to Unconditionally Meet With Anti-American Foreign Leaders? Elect a Leader With Good Judgment."

Brian Viner: Country Life

Wednesday, 11 June 2008

'If your house has to be haunted by someone who's 400 years old, it might as well be a serving wench'

Brian Viner: Absence really can make a fan's heart grow fonder

Saturday, 7 June 2008

On the pavement outside The Rocket, a pub near Euston Station, a message on a blackboard invites punters to "watch Euro 2008 here – at least England can't lose!" There's no arguing with that, indeed from where I'm sitting, in seat 1, row A, of my living-room, there's a great deal to be said for a tournament in which, whatever happens, not a single Englishman will direct a penalty with deadly precision into the goalkeeper's arms, or against the crossbar, or into the phalanx of photographers behind the goal, before sinking in agonised disbelief to his knees while 11 foreigners run around leaping on one another.

Brian Viner: I'm electrified by this man of 10,000 whats

Wednesday, 4 June 2008

The lengthy interview granted to Sir David Frost by Sir Alex Ferguson, screened last night on Sky Sports 1, has generated considerable excitement in the sporting world. Trumpeted by the press yesterday as the first "feature-length" interview with the Manchester United manager for almost a decade, it was undoubtedly a coup for Sky, and required viewing for anyone remotely interested in football.

Brian Viner: A bygone era of gentlemen and pulmonic wafers

Saturday, 24 May 2008

As I sit at my keyboard, on the first morning of the second Test between England and New Zealand, whatever might be the collective noun for cricket writers – a backward point perhaps – is settling down in the media centre at Old Trafford, preparing for a day of cricket, or rain, or both. As they plug in their laptops, I wonder how many of them are familiar with the name of William Denison?

Brian Viner: Germany says auf Wiedersehen prat to a great anti-hero

Saturday, 17 May 2008

Every year on FA Cup final day, the broadcasters like to remind us that the big match is being beamed live to 184 countries around the world, and will be watched by an audience of 1.6 billion people, from fishermen in Shanghai to beekeepers in Saskatchewan. This we take as affirmation that English football still rules the planet. Never mind the inadequacies of our national team, unable to qualify for Euro 2008; never mind the dwindling number of Englishmen playing for our leading clubs; the blue riband occasions in English football still capture the world's imagination. So we are told, and so we like to believe.

Brian Viner: We'll always have Paris – and our bikes

Wednesday, 14 May 2008

It has sometimes been hard, down the years, to arrive back in this country from a holiday abroad and not find immediate, grumpy fault with everything. To stop myself venturing down Victor Meldrew Avenue, as it were, I have sat on trains halted by the latest points failure just outside Didcot, or sat for hours on motorways with two lanes inexplicably closed in both directions, or joined the great mooching multitude on the London Underground for one short, horrible journey costing £4, or simply listened to a series of very loud mobile phone conversations, pointedly reminding myself of the many reasons why I enjoy living in Britain.

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