As a venue, the expansive informality of the restaurant atmosphere within On Broadway provides a perfect platform for the staging of British playwright John Godber’s outrageous comedy, Bouncers. There’s something appealing about watching a play that explores the dynamics of nightclub culture in a performance space smack in the midst of Cape Town clubland. Thematically, […]
Howard Barrell Six million potential voters – one in four – are excluded from voting on June 2. This leaves the way open for the African National Congress to win a two-thirds majority in Parliament with the support of just more than one-third of potential voters. These stark figures emerge from a study by the […]
human life It all started in the mid-1980s when an excited gleam appeared in the eyes of a number of molecular biologists and biochemists. This was the outward sign of a dream that one day the entire human genome (the 70 to 100 000 genes that add up to a blueprint for a complete human) […]
Gabriel Garca Mrquez on the crusading Colombian who could be the new Pope Cardinal Daro Castrilln Hoyos sleeps in the bed that Pope Pius XII died in. The painting of the Immaculate Conception hanging above the bronze bedhead once belonged to Leo XIII. His apartment, lying 30m from the border between Italy and the Holy […]
Alex Brummer in Omaha, Nebraska A record 15 000 shareholders in Berkshire Hathaway – the world’s most eclectic investment group – gathered in Omaha, United States, recently in the hope of catching the sage words of their chair and CEO Warren Buffett at the group’s annual meeting. The crowds attending the meeting at the Ak- […]
Jon Henderson Rugby Fritz van Heerden, Leicester’s Springbok lock, has taken to English life. He starts each working day with the 10km drive in from Little Stretton, a tiny village to the east of London where he is a regular church-goer. “I like it there very much,” he says. “It’s so quiet and peaceful.” Having […]
THURSDAY, 11.30AM: MARCELLO RIOS, who was ranked men’s tennis world number one last month, lost his opening match of the German Open 2-6 7-6 6-3 to a resurgent Wayne Ferreira of South Africa. The top-seeded Chilean didn’t go down without a fight, though, hurling himself and his racquet about the court in a most entertaining […]
Name: John Sulston Institution: Sanger Centre, Cambridge Field: Mapping the human genome Above the reception desk at the Sanger Centre, John Sulston has installed an electronic display, showing the genes of humanity streaming from the sequencing machines in Sanger’s laboratories to the Medical Research Council’s computers nearby. Look at it for a few minutes and […]
screen Norman King Oliver Reed began his film acting career through friends he made drinking in pubs, and has died at the age of 61 while out drinking with friends in Valetta, Malta. But while in front of the camera, he was a professional whose distinctive looks and fine speaking voice made him a striking […]
Salman Rushdie tells Sam Wollaston why his new novel is about the greatest band in the world – from India On a warm August evening, Salman Rushdie walked on to the stage and looked out over a sea of screaming fans. It was hard to see much beyond the first row, the photographers and security […]