I wrote this in 2009, following the death of Bobby Robson. As manager of England, he had taken his team to two World Cups, and is best remembered for steering them to the semi-finals in 1990. But when I heard the news, it was visions of the 1986 tournament that came flooding back to me in vivid detail. I might as well have been tucking into a madeleine... Memory works in odd ways. I have a very good memory for things that happened before I was four (playing with red ants, fis

Steve Ditko has died at a grand old age. For years he lived as a recluse, troubled by mental illness and nurturing hard right political convictions that I'm happy to know as little about as possible. But in his day, he was a genuine marvel. The Marvel Method of making comics involved a tight collaboration between writer and artist, that saw both thrash out a plot, before the artist produced all the panels, leaving space for the writer to add the dialogue and captions. Fundame