A little inaccuracy…
July 11th, 2007Have just finished Andrew Marr’s “History of Modern Britain”, having failed to see much of the TV series. If you like Marr’s journalistic and presentational style, then you will find this to be an engaging account that brings together many of the threads of British life that were difficult to make sense of at the time. As someone whose earliest political memories are of the Winter of Discontent, his analysis of a time so close to ours yet so different in many ways is well done. Good to see sections being devoted to things, rather than people, for example, North Sea Oil.
His reference to England’s failure to beat Wales in Five Nations rugby at Cardiff underestimated the gap by ten years, however. England beat Wales in the cold, hard winter of 1963, when Cardiff Arms Park was like stone. My father bore witness to that one. England did not win again until 1991. I do hope that the next edition is corrected to “between 1963 and 1991″ rather than “from 1964 to 1979″. Wales definitely lost in 1980, but that was at Twickenham, when England kicked three boring penalties (9 points) to Wales’s two exciting tries (8 points). Had that game been contested on modern rules, which now make an unconverted try worth 5 points, rather than 4, we would have won. And by the way, Paul Ringer should never have been sent off. There was a draw at Cardiff in the mid 1980’s, but that is as close England got in those years. Since then, however, the tables have been turned, with Wales not having won at Twickenham in the Six Nations since 1988. I shall be taking my son, George, to see England v Wales next month in a pre-World Cup warm-up. It will be his first visit to a rugby game - let’s hope that it will be memorable in other ways as well.
