Douglas Adams’s first novel was was an instant bestseller. Now dogged by writer’s block, he has turned to new projects Nicholas Wroe Soon after The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was published in 1979, Douglas Adams was invited to sign copies at a small science fiction bookshop in London’s Soho. As he drove there, some […]

Neal Collins So now it’s official. Juan Antonio Samaranch closed the Games of the 27th Olympiad by telling the watching world: “These were the best Olympic Games ever. The last 16 days have been a glorious chapter in Australian history.” You can’t help but agree. Pity he couldn’t have tacked on a quick sentence about […]

RankCountryGold Gold equivGold equiv equivper millionper million people GNP adjust NoRankNoRankNo 1Bahamas1.7545.5716.37 2Bulgaria10.0171.2573.59 3Jamaica3.7321.2282.81 4Estonia1.7551.6652.25 5Cuba20.781.8832.08 6Romania18.0110.78201.92 7Latvia2.0461.00121.69 8Belarus8.6190.86171.59 9Azerbaijan2.3410.29371.47 10Hungary13.0131.3061.44 11Georgia2.0530.40311.41 12Ethiopia5.7270.09551.39 13Lithuania3.0380.75211.34 14Barbados0.3711.10101.26 15Moldova1.0590.25411.21 16Trinidad/Tobago1.0591.00121.14 17Kenya4.7290.17491.14 18Kazakstan5.7260.36330.91 19Mozambique1.0590.05640.89 20Slovakia3.3330.67220.84 21Armenia0.7680.17500.81 22Ukraine13.0140.26390.79 23Australia38.442.0220.76 24Slovenia2.0461.00120.64 25Russia60.020.41290.63 26Czech Rep5.0280.50250.50 27Quatar0.3710.55240.45 28Iceland0.3711.10100.45 29Greece9.0180.82180.45 30Norway7.0221.7540.45 Selected 60South Africa2.3410.06620.08 61United States66.610.25420.07

The first week of the Olympics has thrown up some pleasant surprises to counter the disappointments Grant Shimmin As I looked down from the media centre overlooking the Sydney International Aquatic Centre’s warm-up pool early on Wednesday evening, Graham Hill walked by, clad in his South African shirt and with a tattoo of the national […]

Merle Colborne Little evening bags and small binoculars. Tickly throats and Black Magic. And then the final fling, piping “Encore! Encore!” and pounding one’s feet on the floor and even perhaps doing a spot of standing up. Natal was awfully English going to the opera. Now opera audiences in KwaZulu-Natal rise from their seats whenever […]

Greg Bowes It’s rare that we get ace international hip-hop acts in town and when groups who incorporate these elements do visit, the reception has been less than lukewarm. Consider the plights of Anglo-Asian anarcho-noise makers Fun-Da-Mental and slick Arrested Development, who both dished out masterful, remarkable music to mediocre receptions in the Nineties. Eargasm […]

Thebe Mabanga in your ear I recently had the opportunity to listen to scenario planner Wolfgang Grukel give a talk on his book, Ten lessons from the future. Grukel paints an interesting picture of what life will be like in 2020. When one thinks of radio in its capacity as the country’s most accessible medium, […]

Harry Pearson On Saturday I met a man from Ashington who recently moved to Portobello in Edinburgh. He said the first week he was up in Scotland, he was chatting to a local woman he’d met at his running club. By way of introducing him to the area she listed the many celebrities who come […]

Shirley Kossick The judges in Exclusive Books’s promotional “Boeke Prize” which highlights six novels, have come up with a really strong shortlist this year. It includes Wally Lamb’s I Know This Much Is True (Phoenix), which topped the American bestseller lists in 1998. This gripping story of identical twins is told by Dominick, whose whole […]

David Basckin LIFESTYLE In the eternal debate about which came first, the chicken or the egg, let me tell you, brothers and sisters, that the truth is finally known. It was the chicken. And how do we know this? Through direct observation of the real world, the only universal path to truth. It happened like […]