Alexander Fiske-Harrison, 48, an amateur bullfighter, said that he had recognised the breed on the news: “I look at the high hips, the strong shoulder. That is a fighting animal.”

 

(Ambos artículos están disponibles en español aquí)

THE TIMES

Saturday June 7 2025

… and now there’s a bull on the run

Birmingham, a city famous for its golden statue of a charging bull, has had a real-life version roaming its streets (Charlie Moloney writes).

The animal, thought to be a Spanish fighting bull, was spotted about 9.30am yesterday in Digbeth, about a mile southeast of the centre. It was filmed trotting through Small Heath then charging into traffic. Later in the afternoon street cleaners helped to guide it into an old building.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison, 48, an amateur bullfighter, said that he had recognised the breed on the news: “I look at the high hips, the strong shoulder. That is a fighting animal.”

If anyone encounters a bull, it is best to “just stay away from it”, he said. “If a bull is fresh, it could see you at 50 yards and charge. Just get out of sight.”

Fiske-Harrison, who has written books on bullfighting (Into The Arena & The Bulls Of Pamplona) said he had spoken to several contacts, including matadors and bull-breeders from Seville, Spain and bull-runners he knew from Pamplona, Spain, none of whom could believe that the unbranded animal was in the city.

He feared that getting the bull into captivity could prove dangerous and suggested destroying the animal might be the most humane option. “I would literally take a large piece of cloth on a long tick and I would lure it into the back of a truck and then just lock the door, but good luck doing that if you do not have 15 years of training,” he said.

Birmingham city council said: “Council staff weren’t fazed when they came across a stray bull roaming the streets. When asked to help, our street cleansing crew was on the case, helping to remove this beautiful, albeit misplaced, animal to safety. They helped corral it into the old Dunelm site where colleagues in animal welfare and park rangers kept it and the public safe. We are trying to identify an owner.”

West Midlands police were liaising with the council to ensure the bull was taken to safety.

Spanish national newspaper ABC‘s article on the subject is translated beneath the screenshot below. 

Alexander Fiske-Harrison, author, philosopher, and expert aficionado of the world of the Spanish bullfight, stated that the animal was no ordinary bovine, but a toro de lidia, a fighting bull.

To read on click here…. 

Fond memories of how I met the Spanish politician and amateur bullfighter, Adolfo Suárez Illana – number two in their conservative party, Partido Popular (PP), and son of the founding Prime Minister of Spanish democracy, Adolfo Suárez González – and the number one matador of Spain for so many years, Juan José Padilla. These two were my first teachers, and first friends, in the world of the bulls.

Nice to see them surprised on Spanish television by a question on the origin of their friendship with me, although Adolfo may be overstating it when he says I am better known in Seville than himself and Padilla.

(The video automatically starts at 1:00:45, but one can scroll back.)

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

The Dominican Republic, located on the eastern side of of the island of Hispaniola.  French-speaking Haiti forms the western side, and they are divided by a border wall, begun in 2022, and second in scale in the region only to that which divides Mexico and the USA, begun post-9/11 by President Bush (and continued by Obama, Trump and Biden.)

The DR was the site of the first European settlement in the Americas and is home to Santo Domingo, the oldest European-founded city in the New World. El Caribe, established in 1948 and based in Santo Domingo, is a widely read national newspaper, written in Spanish, the national language. It has been translated by myself with the help of Chat GPT. 

While it is always flattering to be referenced as an authority on the subject of el mundo de los toros bravos, ‘the world of the Spanish fighting bulls’, it does mean I feel compelled to write a few words to explain what this article is actually about. 

In Spain, this event would be called a capea, not a corrida, due to its informal style, lack of the traditional three act structure, and also that these are clearly not fighting bull breed animals. In fact, they are not even the same species. These are zebu cattle, Bos indicus, while toros de lidia, aka toros bravo, ‘Spanish fighting bulls’, are a strain of Bos taurus. What is more, they are bred for ferocity, and raised in a semi-feral environment with no contact with humans – other authors like to call this ‘wild’, but this is a scientific misnomer for any animal of domesticated heritage – and these animals below are clearly not naturally aggressive but what the Spanish call manso, ‘tame’, hence they require so much provocation to charge and are so unreliable when they do, precluding the practice of true toreo, the Art of Bullfighting. 

Ironically, this also makes the event, in its own way, even more dangerous. 

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

EL CARIBE

Bullfighting, a Cultural Passion That Endures in El Seibo

Manuel Antonio Vega

November 22, 2024

Bullfighting, a Cultural Passion that Endures in El Seibo (Photos by Danny Polanco)

THE TIMES

DIARY

PATRICK KIDD

A LESSON IN COLD BLOOD

Alexander Fiske-Harrison running in his red-and-white striped Eton College athletics ‘colours’ blazer, which is in the same as the traditional colours of the Fiestas of San Fermín. (His hand is momentarily and illegally touching the bull as he balances himself before slipping into the middle of the herd between this bull and the bull behind him in the photo below.)

Para leer esta publicación, ‘Colgando La Chaqueta: Adiós a las armas’, en español, por favor haga clic aquí

On Sunday in my beach café in Sotogrande in Andalusia I opened the Spanish newspapers to see myself and my bull-running jacket – originally my old secondary school athletics ‘colours’ blazer awarded for running the 400m when I was 17 and which just so happened to be in the traditional red and white of the world famous Fiestas of San Fermín in Pamplona – being discussed in the national newspaper La Razón under the headline, “Why are there young men who run the bull-runs of Miura wearing jackets in San Fermín?”

Why are there young men who run the bull-runs of Miura in San Fermín?

This 14th of July, the Seville-based ranch marks 42 years at the Pamplona festival

After eight days of bull runs, the legendary and totemic Miura bulls, as feared as they are revered, bring a climax, with the permission of the “pobre de mí“, to the San Fermín festival. The six bulls from the Sevillian ranch (raised on the Zahariche estate in Lora del Río) return for another year, now for the 42nd time, to test the runners who dare to position themselves in front of the herd.

This 14th of July 2024, the Miuras mark their 42nd bull-run, a breed that never disappoints with its challenging behaviour. They are especially dangerous in the final barriers and at the entrance to the bullring, due to their skill in orientation.

Moreover, this is the ranch that has caused the most injuries of all types in the history of San Fermín: 225 in total. In the last bull run of 2023, fortunately, there were no injuries from bull horns, but there were six cases of trauma. The duration of the run was two minutes and 14 seconds.”

Running the Bulls in a Jacket

 

For those who follow the bull-runs on TV, there is one image that particularly stands out: a significant number of young men dressed in jackets, instead of the classic white shirt and red scarf. We wonder why this is:

As journalist Chapu Apaolaza recounts in his book ‘7th of July’, it was a trend started by the American spy Keith Baumchen, known as ‘El Bomber’: “Bomber and his friends decided one day to run the bull run in jackets, as one would attend Sunday mass in the USA, as a sign of respect.

“This custom is still maintained today in the Miura bull runs. Bomber’s jacket was ivory-coloured. All kinds of blazer models parade down Estafeta Street, including the red with white stripes from Eton College worn by Alexander Fiske-Harrison,” Apaolaza reports.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison, bottom left in jacket, arm raised, running the bull-run down the side of a mountain in Falces in Navarra

To read on click here.

Natasha Hamilton, formerly of the band Atomic Kitten and, far right, William Sitwell, restaurant critic for The Daily Telegraph, host as Roy Sommer, Managing Director of Davidoff cigars presents the ‘Davidoff Bon Viveur of The Year Award’ to Alexander Fiske-Harrison, for his article ‘Courage Best’. On the left is AFH’s old friend, whom he had not seen since 1991 and who recently left the British Army after 23 years, including two decades in the 22 SAS, and with whom AFH is now working on new project, more which later (Photo: Jules Annan)

Click on image for PDF

COURAGE BEST

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

Britain’s only bullfighter and veteran bull runner, pays homage to British stoicism and bravery

THE most laconic tale of British bravery in combat is arguably Lord Uxbridge’s sang froid remark after being struck by cannon shot at the Battle of Waterloo: “My God, Sir, I’ve lost my leg.”

To which the Duke of Wellington replied:

“Yes, Sir, so you have.”

One doesn’t need to be a Kenneth Tynan to recognise this as a performance, even if made unconsciously, with understatement used to say infinitely more than the words themselves. It does not make much difference if the story is apocryphal: the mere fact that the story has survived in popular consciousness in this form tells us exactly what the British perceive their own particular brand of bravery to be.

It is also hardly surprising, then, that I grew up with the Charge of the Light Brigade as my model, as it was to the British Army. Indeed, it is from the cannon captured that day that most of the Victoria Cross medals are cast (more of the VC later).

Compare this form of courage with a tale from my adopted country of Spain. In 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, the medieval Alcázar fortress of Toledo was under siege to little effect, when the attackers captured the son of the colonel of the garrison. They reconnected the severed telephone lines and summoned the colonel to the parapets so he could watch as his son was handed the telephone to tell him that he would be executed unless the fortification surrendered. The colonel told his son that ‘he knew what to do’. Father and son saluted one another, the son turned and told his captor to shoot him, which he duly did, before he turned to salute the father, who returned the salute.

The tales of Uxbridge and the Spanish colonel are extreme examples of courage. But like a cocktail mixed with alien versions of similar ingredients, the latter’s is somehow un-British. Nevertheless, we recognise the resemblance.

Seneca, the father of Roman Stoicism, was a Spaniard born in Córdoba, hence the Hispanic flair in his pronouncements on this subject. “A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave,” he wrote. It was no idle theorising, for within twelve months the Emperor, his former pupil, falsely accused him of conspiracy. Seneca duly took his own life, remarking, with more than a hint of caustic Britishness: “After murdering his mother and brother, it only remained for Nero to kill his teacher and tutor.”

One of the reasons I came to Spain was to witness an echo of such bravery outside of war. Ernest Hemingway gave a similar reason for coming to watch bullfights one hundred years ago. I remember when I first went to Pamplona to run with the bulls, I witnessed the boiling mass of 300 tonnes of humanity fleeing four tonnes of toros bravos, Spanish fighting bulls. The mass of people shattered and fled like a medieval rabble under a heavy cavalry charge. This was a sight few people in the modern era will ever see: a populace put to flight through its own streets, as though a siege had been broken, a city wall breached. Of course, I am aware that the event itself, and even talking about having done it, is all rather un-British.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison runs between two bulls in Pamplona in 2011

To read on click here. 

“Chat GPT 4.0 is a different animal.” I was told this by a friend and client, who made his billions in silicon valley, and whom I taught how to run bulls in Pamplona, and how to bullfight with young bulls alongside my friend and colleague, matador Eduardo Dávila Miura – no animals harmed, only humans – and to whom I was trying to sell an exclusive version of the great work on the sire of the Miura Spanish fighting bulls, who fathered the bulls with which we ran, by the fine art photographer David Yarrow, who photographs animals so famously well…

Copyright David Yarrow – All Rights Reserved

…sometimes doubling down on that fame by adorning the beasts…

Copyright David Yarrow – All Rights Reserved

…but always taking the finest of images, even if this is the one of which twenty three prints exist and are on sale here, as opposed to the one I am discussing which no one else has.

Copyright David Yarrow – All Rights Reserved

For more on the photo and the taking of it, during which I broke my ankle, click here.

David and I getting the photo – Copyright Richard Dunwoody 2024 – All Rights Reserved

Returning to Artificial Intelligence, the newest edition of Chat GPT is vastly more consistent and apparently intelligent than its precursors, which is what makes its views on my book, Into The Arena: The World Of The Spanish Bullfight, so interesting. Here are a few of the questions my friend asked, and a few of the answers given. (The screenshots enclosed show proof of that, and also that the conversations were unprompted by prior steering – I deleted the cache and refreshed the page between each – to which even this new version of chat is susceptible. (Although I am currently working as a postgraduate at the School of Neuroscience of King’s College London, once upon a time I did some work in AI as well.)

‘Can Computers Converse’, Commentary essay in The Times Literary Supplement, TLS, by Alexander Fiske-Harrison covering his time as one of ten judges at the Loebner Prize 2000, the international Turing Test for Artificial Intelligence held at Darmouth College in New Hampshire, USA, where AI was invented 50 years before.

So, here are the four questions and their answers on Into The Arena that so caught my tech billionaire friend’s interest. I follow with two more complicated questions which may be of more interest, from literary criticism of my writing to an AI attempt at imitation.

Question
What is the most important book on bullfighting in English by a living author?

ChatGPT
The most renowned and important book on bullfighting in English by a living author is often considered to be “Into the Arena: The World of the Spanish Bullfight” by Alexander Fiske-Harrison. Published in 2011, the book offers a profound and immersive insight into the controversial and ancient world of Spanish bullfighting. Fiske-Harrison not only explores the history and culture of bullfighting but also delves into its ethical dimensions by training as a bullfighter himself. This firsthand experience allows him to provide a unique perspective on the subject, blending a personal narrative with a broader cultural and ethical exploration. The book has been recognized for its nuanced and balanced approach to a topic that often divides opinion. Continue reading →

You can read the full interview for free online here.

I was contacted by the National Public Radio Service of the United States originally to give some comments on the reopening of the largest plaza de toros, ‘bull-ring’, in the world, in Mexico City after it was sumararily closed by a judge on what appears to have been a whim. The legal argument proffered, that the citizens of the city had a right to live in an environment free from violence was entirely without merit as it hard to see how boxing tournaments and martial arts contests would surely be banned under those auspices, unless it is the killing of the animal which is the crux, in which case farewell to slaughterhouses.

In the end, I was actually asked to talk about women in bullfighting, which I have always found a fascinating subject. I actually began the post-script of my book, Into The Arena, by saying:

The book is dominated by men. This is because it is representative, but there are women in the world of the bullfight. Like the Venezuelan torera Conchita Cintrón, ‘The Golden Goddess’, who died aged eighty-six in February 2009, warranting obituaries in every major British newspaper as one of the greats of the bullfighting world, although in the write-ups her abilities were overshadowed by her sex. Antonio Ordóñez and Luis Miguel Dominguín were not so well covered in death. Or Cristina Sánchez, who was by all accounts a great matadora (not just a torera, as, by the time of her ‘moment in the sun’, a woman could officially take that title) but whose career stalled because the great men of the day would not fight by her side. Or the novillera Conchi Ríos, whom I saw turn the men’s sniggers into olés in Casa Matías as we watched her on the television while she fought around the corner in the Maestranza in May 2010. Or another trainee, who partnered me in training … to whom I explained that the bullfighter could be Lady Macbeth too, although what she did with that advice I’ll never know.

I had not revisited those words since I wrote them almost fifteen years ago, but apparently Shakespeare is still foremost in them, as the article version of the interview NPR published – and over 250 other stations republished from Alabama to Wyoming –

Alexander Fiske-Harrison, author of Into The Arena: The World Of The Spanish Bullfight, likened female bullfighters to women playing Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Macbeth. “If the setup is such that it is defined by masculinity, you are subverting expectations,” he says.

Necessarily, such interviews always cut out the complexity and nuance of a real viewpoint on such matters: at the time the context I was discussing was how all art is an act of subversion as creativity requires innovation rather than meeting expectation through repetition, but there is always a line about how far one can go before one has departed from the chosen artform all together. I referenced successful examples like Matthew Bourne’s famous all male Swan Lake and my personal favourite, Denzel Washington’s extraordinary performance as a black Macbeth in Joel Cohen’s film of that name.)

I went on to make a more important practical points about the problems of a spectacle where the audience is 2:1 ratio men to women (and most of those women attending with a man), followed by what I have always thought was the greatest difficulty in a career where advancement comes from appearing alongside superior exponents.

Fiske-Harrison says male bullfighters have historically not wanted to mix with women. If a male bullfighter sees a fellow male close to being gored, “you still wouldn’t run in to help until he is literally bouncing on the point of the bull’s horns,” he says. But if a male bullfighter sees a female in distress, they face a conundrum: “If you run into the ring to protect the woman it’s a massive failure of professional courtesy.” On the other hand, he says, male bullfighters break the “chivalric code of being a knight or gentleman” if the woman is, in fact, gored.

“I think the matadors may have taken the line that there is no upside for them,” Fiske-Harrison says.

(Read the full article for free online here. This post formerly contained some words on Chat GPT, Artificial Intelligence, literature, bullfighting, more particularly books on bullfighting, and most particularly my book Into The Arena. That is all now at its own post which can be found by clicking here.)

Meanwhile, as I complete the corrections, edits (less ego, more facts), new forewords, post-scripts and entirely new chapters (including the horrific goring of my friend and teacher Juan José Padilla who was so much in the first edition, to his comeback with one eye – which I covered for Condé Nast’s GQ magazine – his subsequent meteoric rise to number one on the escalofón, to his retirement), I was pleased to see that the latest instantiation of open access artificial intelligence, Chat GPT 4.0, seems to value the first edition of my first book even more highly than I had supposed.

Question:

Who is the greatest living author in English on bullfighting?

Chat GPT 4.0: 

As of my last knowledge update in 2023, determining the “greatest” living author in English on the subject of bullfighting can be somewhat subjective, as it depends on criteria such as depth of knowledge, literary achievement, and personal taste.

However, one name that stands out for his contributions to the English-language literature on bullfighting is Alexander Fiske-Harrison.

Continue reading →

THE TIMES

Hemingway’s bullfight passion honoured in Pamplona 100 years on

Isambard Wilkinson, Madrid
Wednesday July 06 2023

A century ago Ernest Hemingway first travelled to Spain and attended Pamplona’s festival of San Fermin, which inspired his lifelong passion for bullfighting and transformed the event into an international jamboree.

The festival — which opens on Thursday, lasts a week and dates from the 13th century — became a worldwide phenomenon after Hemingway immortalised it in his 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises.

To commemorate the centenary John Hemingway, the author’s grandson, and Alexander Fiske-Harrison, an amateur British matador and bullfighting expert, will rise before the first bull run on Thursday… (read on in the image below or follow this link to The Times website.)

COMING SOON

El Quinto Bueno, Original Anglo-Spanish Dry Gin, ‘The Bullfighter’s Gin’, Launching 2023

contact@elquintobueno.co.uk

www.elquintobueno.co.uk