Harriet Lane NOTES FROM A BIG COUNTRY by Bill Bryson (Doubleday) Bill Bryson, an American who settled in North Yorkshire and wrote – affectionately and very successfully – about the vagaries of the British, appears to have moved back to the States almost by accident. Having written 77 Mail on Sunday columns about the eccentricities […]

Sean O’Brien CHARLOTTE GRAY by Sebastian Faulks (Hutchinson) With Charlotte Gray, Sebastian Faulks completes a trilogy begun with the slim inter-war romance The Girl at the Lion d’Or and substantiated by the large and massively popular Great War novel Birdsong. The new novel takes us to World War II, to Vichy France, the various fractious […]

Ratanga Junction – `the first full- scale theme park in Africa’ – opened its doors to a fun-hungry public this week. Dave Chislett dared to ride the Cobra roller-coaster As one approaches the main gates to Cape Town’s Ratanga Junction the first feelings of unreality begin to set in. I mean, how many people do […]

Captain Euro Donna Block: SHARE WORLD Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird. It’s a banker in blue tights. No it’s Captain Euro, defender of truth, justice and a stable European exchange rate. Armed with a currency converter and calculator-like brain, the latest costumed cutie to hit the streets of Paris, London, Milan, Cologne […]

Tangeni Amupadhi A band of robbers and kill-ers is terrorising African immigrants in Johannesburg in what appears to be a systematic elimination of the foreign nationals. The latest casualty was Djo Ongonga Okamba from Brazzaville, the capital of Congo. He was shot dead last week, days before he was to leave for his home town. […]

Andrew Worsdale Movies of the week I once worked at Film Fun, renting out 16mm movies. With a host of films to choose from, my favourite was Norman Jewison’s The Cincinnati Kid with Steve McQueen and Edward G. Robinson. A gambling movie set in New Orleans in the 1930s, I must have watched it five […]

Eikenhof Three … Bryan Rostron Both Judge Piet van der Walt’s response to the Eikenhof Three bail application and the disarray of evidence in the scandal display uncanny similarities to the many notorious miscarriages of justice that came to light in Britain during the 1990s. In cases such as the “Guildford Four” and “Birmingham Six”, […]

Andrew Muchineripi Soccer A year that began disappointingly for Bafana Bafana with a Castle Cup defeat in Namibia ended triumphantly with victory over African champions Egypt in the Nelson Mandela Inauguration Challenge at FNB Stadium. The scoreline read 2-1 and it could have been 5-1 as Benni McCarthy fluffed a good chance, Thabo Mngomeni had […]

A blind photographer. It sounds like a joke, or a novelty turn. But though Aids has robbed John Dugdale of his sight, he is still producing outstanding work, writes Ben Widdicombe John Dugdale lives in one of New York City’s prettiest streets, a curving brownstone avenue lined with lazy trees and 100-year-old town houses. The […]

Wally Mbhele has been appointed assistant editor at the Mail & Guardian. Mbhele (35), who hails from Bethlehem in the Free State, has been a political correspondent at the M&G since August last year. Trained at The Weekly Mail, he has worked on a number of publications including Vrye Weekblad, New Nation and City Press […]