Ian on Sunday

What Newspapers Do

Some years ago the London Times, on an exceptionally dull day for news, carried a story which it headlined “Small earthquake in Chile: no damage, no injuries.”

Extraordinary People – Professor Nick Hammond

There have been a handful of men who have made a deep and unforgettable impression on me: my father, first and always; Jock Campbell, Chairman of Bookers in the 1950s and 60s; Martin Carter, whose poetry time as it passes burnishes to a yet brighter gleam.

Extraordinary People – Walter Chin

There are some people who are so much part of the world you know and feel secure in that when they die, meaning that they depart forever and will never again be part of that dependable world which you have known for so long, you feel a special loss that goes deep and you experience a sense of almost desperate longing that the death you have heard of will prove not to have happened and that the person will in fact be back in his place after all and that normality has returned.

Extraordinary People – Colin Campbell

When some years ago Colin Campbell, an old Etonian and quintessentially English, died at his home in Blackhorse Lane, South Mimms, in Hertfordshire at the age of 86 his death went almost completely unnoticed in Guyana.

Extraordinary People – Godfrey Chin

In one conversation with Godfrey, amidst the multitude of evocations that continually cascaded out of his extraordinary memory, he told me about bird-whistling competitions and donkey-cart racing in Guyana long ago and described to me the hundred and one manifestations of that condition of bewitched infatuation in a man or a woman called typee.

Take note

Reading prevents your life ever narrowing down to the humdrum, the routine or the boring.

Extraordinary People – Arthur Goodland

Cheerful, bespectacled with thin gold rims, chubby-fat, cherubic Arthur Goodland, kindness in the very soul of him, lover of beauty in nature, art and woman-kind – one would not automatically at all see in him the extremely well-trained chemical engineer and hard-driving top executive in a highly successful company and industry. 

The Idea of Excellence

I interrupt my series on Extraordinary People to reflect on the concept of excellence which is involved, one way or another, with any life which is exceptional or exemplary.

Extraordinary People in My Life

Rex Nettleford I found people liked to recall the royalty of his name and nature but thought that King was too high and mighty so they named him a prince of men and that somehow seemed right.

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