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THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 15.08.2015

After Yves Alexander Fury on the tarnishing of a great label How to heal the witnesses of the Sousse massacre?

Beer and blood sacrifices in a hotbed of paganism The graffiti that’s really got Grace Dent going

Grace Dent THE PRIME OF LIFE

Show me an aerosol-toting, graffiti-daubing hipster and I’ll show you my nunchucks

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n my home turf of east London right now, the hip things are beginning to eat each other. I’m sure this is gratifying news for all non-London readers. It’s essentially around the Shoreditch area, where new-wave mudslinging has broken out over who exactly is ruining the wonderful status quo with their evil sandwich chain outlet, or novelty café selling only cereal. It is all quite fascinating. I watch, just like Pepys, but with better tits.

Because in approximately 33,298 incremental steps since 1990, the area has mutated from abandoned streets into a hipster Alton Towers. But it’s only in the past few months that anyone seems to have noticed a possible dilution of “hipster purity”. Hence, in 2015, the hipsters are now signing petitions by themselves, against themselves, to stop the other hipsters spoiling things.

I’m flinging about the word “hipster” here, because not only is it beautifully incendiary to hipsters, but there is no better catch-all term to sum up the whole glut of people – myself included – who choose to look daft and live here.

“They’re opening a Pret! Everything is ruined!”, one person in an Airwolf T-shirt and fractal-patterned barrecore pants will sob, seemingly unbothered by the honking Nike and Gap-infused pop-up mall; the five-storey private members club; the bespoke burger boutiques; and the “graffiti walking tours” on every corner, charging confused Japanese tourists £15 to look at globs of street effluent that may, or may not, 6 THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

be Banksy’s phlegm. Behold this kebab shop door scrawled with marker-pen stick men. It’s art. Come with me into this urine-drenched alley to see a stencilled, weeping toddler holding aloft a balloon saying “PEACE?” I don’t have a problem with Pret A Manger. A woman who is tired of Pret’s cheese and pickle baguette and vanilla chai tea is tired of life. I use independent cafés run by hipsters all the time, mainly for the spectacle of paying £3.95 to watch a flat white take 47 minutes to be prepared and then delivered to the wrong table. No, it’s the graffiti walking tours that have to go. We should never celebrate graffiti as it just bloody encourages them.

Yes, I’m sure you’ve set your Sky box – or whatever device you favour – to record BBC4’s forthcoming A Brief History of Graffiti. Well good for you.

When some teenage twonk in Barnstaple sprays “Gozzzy4evvvva” down the

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Graffiti is celebrated by those who live somewhere gorgeous, with gated security

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side of your gran’s garage, making the “evvvva” part all swirly, like a giant pair of wobbly woman’s knockers, it’s because you’ve encouraged him to think it’s the epitome of youthful self-expression.

The “evvvva” bit is Gozzy’s “tag”, don’t you see? It symbolises the feelings of disenfranchised youth in Cameron’s Britain. That’s £15 please. Now let me show you some vandalism involving a giant snail smoking a joint. That’s art too. “Evvvva”could also represent some of the helpess grunts Gozzy might make when, in my macabre imagination, I find him and set about him with nunchucks for ruining a perfectly lovely wall.

Graffiti is celebrated by two types of people: those who don’t mind living somewhere that looks like a crime scene Helen Mirren would visit in Prime Suspect, and those who live somewhere gorgeous – without graffiti but with gated security – and totally, like, completely support youth expression.

I know this has became a dreadfully grey, fusspot thing to say, but I embrace curmudgeonism. “It’s a bloody mess,” I tend to remark as I pass the latest GCSE pass-grade daubings. Sometimes one might even catch “the artist” at work.

This will invariably be an overgrown manchild in his late twenties, wearing cargo pants and some sort of stained windcheater, ruining a wall with a giant flower, bearing the biting epitaph “BUGGER THE BANKERS”.

Then, having finished shading in the tricky whorl of petals, satisfied that his art has ordained that the bankers be buggered, our artist returns to his bedroom to lament quietly why the postcode he lives in feels so neglected, and why the mother of his children is so lacklustre about weekend access. A war be upon these people. I love the smell of white emulsion in the mornings.

When I come to power, much of Shoreditch will be painted a practical but uplifting shade, such as Farrow & Ball’s Elephant’s Breath. I’ll paint some of Brick Lane myself. If any young hipster tries to stop me, I’ll begin a long, tedious story about how I remember Shoreditch in the ’90s, y’know, when hipster really meant hipster? And we didn’t have mobile-phone apps or brand sponsorship telling us what was fun back then.

“I was at the Martina Topley-Bird album playback!” I’ll shout as their eyes glaze over. “We had to come here on the No 14 bus. There was none of yer Uber back then, yknow?” While the hipsters eat each other, I’m confident most of the rest of Britain feels that what we need is a perfectly aimed atomic bomb. µ @gracedent

ILLUSTRATION BY PING ZHU / PORTRAIT BY DAN WILLIAMS

The Front Pages

The Front Pages RHODRI MARSDEN’S INTERESTING OBJECTS #75

The Joey Ramone street sign in New York

THE NOVEL CURE

Literary prescriptions for modern ailments, by Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin, bibliotherapists at the School of Life thenovelcure.com Ailment Fear of breaking the rules Cure The Bees by Laline Paull

TERESA LEE/GETTY

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his weekend in 1974, punk legends The Ramones played their first show at CBGB in New York. In time, the band, fronted by Joey Ramone, would come to be closely identified with that part of town. The photo on their debut album was taken near the venue, and the area around Bowery and Bleecker Street became, as one journalist described it, “the nexus of Joey’s downtown world”. The junction of Bowery and East 2nd St is now named Joey Ramone Place, and is the most frequently stolen street sign in NYC. The idea for the sign was first mooted by a 20-year-old fan, Maureen Wojciechowski, at what would have been Joey’s 50th birthday party, in May 2001 (he had died of cancer a few weeks earlier). Accompanied by Joey’s mother, Charlotte, she proposed the idea at a community board meeting that October; however, only two of the eight members of the board had heard of The Ramones, so

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she was encouraged to gather signatures in support. It was approved at a second board meeting, in November, and was unveiled two years later in late 2003.

According to a 2010 statement from the New York State Department of Transportation, other regularly stolen signs in the city include Broadway, Wall Street and Love Lane. Joey Ramone Place, however, needed replacing four times between 2003 and 2010, with the most recent replacement situated almost 20 feet off the ground to deter wouldbe thieves. Nick Carr, a movie location scout residing in New York, reports on Twitter that it’s currently “weirdly bent, from a recent failed attempt”.

Replica Joey Ramone Place signs appear to be available on eBay for £9.57 + £9.79 postage from the US. This may or may not be a bargain, depending on how much you love The Ramones. µ @rhodri

∂∂ The idea for the sign was first mooted by a 20-year-old fan in 2001

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ost of us are conditioned from early childhood to follow the rules.

And quite right, too – for society can’t function in a state of anarchy. But what if the rules in question are not worth following? What if the rules do not have our – or others’ – best interests at heart?

Reading The Bees, Laline Paull’s extraordinary imagining of life inside a beehive, reminds us that there may be times when breaking the rules is necessary for our own, or others’, survival. After all, it’s always been the rule-breakers who have changed society for the better.

As soon as she emerges from her wax cell in the hive’s Arrivals Hall, Flora instinctively understands what she is: a worker bee, “Flora 717”, whose job it is to clean and sanitise the hive. Programmed by pheromones, scents and vibrations, at one with the “hive mind”, she knows it’s her mission in life to “Accept, Obey, and Serve” – a chant that comes from her mouth, unbidden. But when, moments after her birth, she watches another newborn bee with a damaged wing having her neck snapped – for variations are a threat to the hive – she feels a looming terror. She is bigger than other Sanitation bees, with an unusually long tongue.

Must she, too, be killed?

Sister Sage, a powerful priestess, suspects that Flora’s irregularities might make her useful, and bends the rules to spare her. Flora proves her right – producing more Royal Jelly, or “Flow”, to feed the Queen’s larva-babies than any other bee; and killing an enormous wasp that invades the hive. But when she discovers herself capable of something only the Queen is allowed to do, she is tempted to break the biggest rule of all. Will her transgression put all the bees in danger – or be to the hive’s advantage? As The Bees suggests, those who follow the rules may get on with others; but those who break them may lead them to better things. µ ‘The Novel Cure’ by Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin is published in paperback on 3 September by Canongate at £9.99

The Front Pages

THE CONVERSATION

Denise Van Outen The former ‘Big Breakfast’ presenter on TV without rules, the sport she took up at the age of 40, and why she was never really a ladette PORTRAIT BY DAVE M BENNETT

You’ve got a short-run production of Sweet Charity coming up, you’ve just been in EastEnders, and you’re a mum.

You must like to keep busy?

Yeah, I do keep myself busy. Sometimes I think, oh, here I go again. But obviously it must be in my blood.

You had a lot of fun in the 90s. What did you make of the ladette label that would sometimes be attached to you?

It never bothered me. Everyone has their own opinion of what it is. I get why we were labelled that, because we were party girls and we were a little bit gobby. But I’m not sure that I completely fitted the bill. I never drink beer and I was never

massively into football. I think the whole ladette thing was more about girls who behaved like boys. I think I’m far more of a dolly-bird Essex girl than a ladette really. But I did have a gob on me.

Do you think it was about female empowerment?

Yes, a bit. It was the first time women were really making equal money to men.

We were making a good living and finally fronting TV shows on our own. There was this strong movement of women who were allowed to be sexy and have a bit of a laugh, and to be have opinions and be witty on TV. It was a fun time to be around.

There’s not anything like it now.

∂∂ It’s live, anything can happen – that was our excuse, anyway...

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BIOGRAPHY

Denise Van Outen, 41, is an actress, singer, dancer and TV presenter, best-known for presenting ‘The Big Breakfast’ in the late 1990s and for starring in ‘Chicago’ in the West End and on Broadway.

Raised in Basildon, Essex, she attended the Sylvia Young Theatre School. She lives in Kent with her fiveyear-old daughter, Betsy, and will be appearing in ‘Sweet Charity in concert’ at London’s Cadogan Hall from 19-22 August

Yes, TV’s gone tame. Where are the rock-star presenters?

I know. It’s all the same formula, isn’t it, with these judging panel contests. And breakfast TV isn’t much fun. There’s not a lot there for the younger generation.

That’s what The Big Breakfast was good for. Most people who watched it were teenagers getting ready for school.

It felt a bit punk, the way that it broke the rules.

There weren’t any rules. When I think about what we used to do, we could get away with anything. It was live and that was our out. You could get out of any situation by using that as the excuse – “It’s live, anything can happen”. Anything that was premeditated, you could just pretend was spur of the moment – so nobody could tell you off.

Was there any incident that sticks out for you as the most outrageous?

I had quite a few funny moments. I was asked to go to Buckingham Palace as one of the young achievers of the year.

Johnny Vaughan was presenting The Big Breakfast with me and he thought I was making it up, so I promised that I’d bring him back a souvenir. I stole an ashtray and a tissue-box cover and gave them to him, live on the show. Buckingham Palace’s legal department got in touch to say I was handling stolen goods and had to return them immediately. We sent them back – live on air – with a courier and a film crew.

You must have had a few offers over the years to come back. Is it something you’d ever consider?

No, do you know what, it’s never happened. There have been rumours but there’s never been an actual offer. I don’t know if it’d be too weird to do it now; we couldn’t really act like we did then because we’re all grown-up parents. That streak is still in me but obviously I’ve had to rein it in a bit, regretfully so.

And I suppose you run the risk of it falling short.

Yeah, you find that a lot, don’t you? It’s a bit like having an ex-boyfriend. You only remember all the good bits. Then go back out with him, and remember why it didn’t work in the first place.

On another note, I read you’ve started playing golf.

Yes, I have. I wanted to learn something for my 40th that was a little bit different, and social and grown-up. You wouldn’t believe the number of people I see when I’m playing golf that I used to see out in nightclubs. It has a real social element to it. You play 18 holes and then you end up back at the clubhouse and have a couple of drinks. I really like that side of it. µ Interview by Oscar Quine THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

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THE WAY BACK In the wake of events such as the Tunisian beach massacre, are we getting trauma treatment right?

Oscar Quine reports

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Trauma

J EF F J M I TC H EL L / GET T Y I M AGE S . A FP

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n the afternoon of 26 June – the day that Seifeddine Rezgui massacred 38 people, including 30 British citizens, on a Tunisian beach – Chris Beck received an email. A 60-year-old former intensive care nurse, she was sitting at her desk in the Red Cross office in Reading where she is an operations manager. Now she headed to her home just outside the town to pack.

“When I’m on call, I’ll always have the basics ready to go and add to them,” she explains. By midnight, she was at Stansted Airport waiting for an earlymorning flight to Sousse.

For the past decade, the Red Cross’s Psychosocial Team (PST) has been an important part of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s rapid deployment unit – a crack team of health and socialcare professionals with experience of people in the throes of shock and trauma.

PST members have been first-responders at some of the most harrowing events in recent history. From the Westgate mall massacre in Kenya to the earthquake in Nepal, if a catastrophic event has involved British citizens, the PST is deployed.

With a contractual agreement to be at the airport within six hours of a call, Beck and her three colleagues were at the Riu Imperial Marhaba hotel less than 24 hours after the killings. British consulate staff had arrived from Tunis the night before and identified people they felt most in need of psychological care – the bereaved and those who had seen others killed.

“We spent time just listening to them,” says Beck. “Their main concern was

how overwhelming their emotions were.

How they felt they were almost out of control with anguish, with fear, with general upset. Listening to that and trying to really reassure them that they weren’t abnormal, that this was very much the reaction that any person would have to something that was so sudden, unexpected and devastating.

“There were some people who had been awake since it happened. They didn’t want to shut their eyes because of the pictures that would flash before them. They would start reliving seeing the gunman, seeing people being shot, seeing people injured, so they were keeping themselves awake, which meant they were sleep-deprived as well as emotionally distressed.”

The PST’s first deployment was to another beachside struck by tragedy.

Dr Sarah Davidson was one of two staff members flown to Bangkok to provide support to British embassy staff in the wake of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.

She has since headed up the programme and says she has lost count of the number of deployments she has been part of, though it’s “at least 10”.

“The thing about trauma is that people often feel that their ideas of the world have been challenged,” says Dr Davidson.

“Tunisia, unfortunately, has similarities to Thailand in that people were on the beach, holidaying, escaping from the rigmaroles of normal life. The last thing you expect is for there to be a critical event when you’re on your sun lounger.

“Every single deployment is different. The contexts are different. I was

LEFT: tourists begin their journey home from Sousse ABOVE: T hailand in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami

∂∂ Only in a minority of cases is intervening early beneficial

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out in Haiti after the earthquake, and that was different from the tsunami, which was different from Algeria after the gas plant attack in 2013. There’s always learning about how the team could function better.”

While the 2009 evacuation from Zimbabwe, the 2010 Haiti earthquake and the 2013 Fukushima tsunami and nuclear disaster all provided formative lessons for Davidson and her team, it was that first deployment to Thailand from which they learned the most. As the numbers caught up in the catastrophe climbed, she says the situation became “utterly, utterly overwhelming”. Some 20 additional staff were drafted in over the next eight weeks.

“We had four people in Bangkok and four people based in Phuket. In Bangkok they were visiting four or five different hospitals and the same in Phuket. On top of that there were three mortuary sites where we were providing support.”

While one might expect probing questions, cathartic tears and the occasional heartfelt embrace, trauma counselling is a relatively hands-off process. A year after the Asian tsunami, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) issued new guidelines on the practice. The guidelines stated that in the immediate aftermath of a tragedy, people should be given practical support.

In a minority of cases – mostly involving people suffering from pre-existing mental conditions – early intervention counselling may be beneficial. Otherwise, it should be avoided.

Up to that point, practitioners tended > THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

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Trauma

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∂∂ Tour operators can be over-zealous in ensuring that their customers are offered diagnoses

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untrained do-gooders were more of a hinderance than a help.

“In the first five weeks after an event the responses people have that could be associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – nightmares, flashbacks, avoidance of situations – they’re normal reactions, thought to be useful in processing the experience,” Davidson says.

“What you don’t want is people coming and aggravating that response by insisting you talk in a lot of detail about what happened; that you go through things that are painful.”

In the case of Tunisia, one problem it seems has been third-party assistance packages taken out by tour providers.

Experts have raised concerns that some providers might be over-zealous in offering prescriptions of treatment while having an inadequate understanding of psychological diagnostics. Counsellors, introducing themselves as representatives of the tour providers, have reportedly contacted holidaymakers since they returned from Tunisia.

John Yeoman, 46, from Kettering, was staying in the Bellevue Hotel next door to the Riu Imperial Marhaba. On

hearing shots, he and his wife Mandy barricaded themselves in their hotel room. “We’re the fastest cowards in Kettering,” he says. “The moment the shootings started we ran.”

Yeoman is enthusiastic in his praise of Thomson, their tour provider. The company flew them home that night and issued a full refund for their holiday.

“There was a bit of a time lag between when it started until the additional reps arrived. But obviously the hotel next door was the priority and I can understand that – that’s where people died. We had reps as soon as they were available: they were with us by 8pm that evening.

Some people were a bit unhappy about that but considering what had happened I think they did OK.” A few days after returning home, Mr Yeoman received the first of what have been three calls from Thomson’s third-party counselling service. He says they announced they were calling “to discuss our needs and to remind us that the service was available to us”.

“My wife struggled a bit when we got home,” Mr Yeoman says. “I mentioned that to the counselling people and they

PORTRAITS BY FRANTZESCO KANGARIS

towards a more proactive approach. The recounting of events and the tackling of feelings head-on were encouraged.

The approach had been developed in the US in the 1980s by a fireman and paramedic named Jeffrey Mitchell. He had seen colleagues struggling to cope with what they had witnessed on duty and believed their apparent symptoms should be treated. This came to a head in the days following 9/11, when 9,000 counsellors reportedly descended on New York to provide their services. At the same time, extensive research was leading many to question whether this approach breached the first rule of medical care: “Do no harm”.

“This is something I feel very passionately about,” says Professor Neil Greenberg, president of the UK Psychological Trauma Society, who has 23 years’ experience serving as a naval doctor. “In the early stages – we’re talking in the first month – the vast majority of people do not need trauma counselling. In fact, they are more likely to be damaged by it than they are to be helped.”

On the whole, research found, people are perfectly well-equipped to deal with emotional trauma themselves. “Most people need access to good social support, which comes from all the sources you and I would normally use and trust – our friends, our colleagues, our work mates, maybe our GP, maybe a priest. But having outsiders come in, particularly if they were ‘forced upon you’ – people suggesting counselling rather than you going to get it – is a really bad idea.”

Davidson is quick to stress that the PST adheres strictly to Nice guidelines.

“We do not do trauma counselling. We’re helping people to cope,” she says, adding adds that the team instead offers a kind of triage service “to make assessments of people’s responses and provide them with additional information if required”.

But it seems these guidelines are not being adhered to in the case of all returnees from Tunisia. “The problem,” says Greenberg, “is that there’s an industry out there which provides counselling.

There seems to be this almost intuitive need to have counsellors attend traumatic events.”

Davidson recalls coming across a tent outside Phuket town hall following the tsunami. On display in front of it was a handwritten sign reading: “Trauma counselling: all welcome.” Davidson guesses the tent was occupied by one of the thousands who pitched up to help with the devastating scenes they had seen on television. In most cases, these

said they could phone and speak to her directly if required.” However, counselling was not necessary. “When they had the minute’s silence she made a point of sticking to it and that helped a lot.

It was a personal line she was able to draw underneath it. She’s felt a lot more comfortable about things since.”

A spokesman for Thomson said that “as a tour operator, our customers expect support from us when a traumatic incident occurs, and we work with an independent expert – CCP – to extend an offer of assistance to all of our customers. In this instance, CCP was offering proactive support to those that requested it in the form of a psychological response and advisory service on our behalf. This was to help us ensure that our customers who were on holiday with us felt supported straight after the incident and in the following weeks.”

Someone else caught up in the Sousse atrocity was Zoe Pearce, who was holidaying in Tunisia with a friend. Staying at the nearby El Mouradi Palm Marina hotel, they were on the beach when the attack happened. Locking themselves in their room, they called Ms Pearce’s partner in the UK. By 8pm, nobody had

come to their room to check that they were all right. Ms Pearce then headed down to the lobby. It was deserted. “We’d gone from a hotel that had thousands of guests in and over 500 staff the day before to looking out from our balcony and seeing that all the lights were off.

There was just nobody around.”

Ms Pearce emailed her holiday provider. She says they replied that evening telling her to arrange her own return travel. Her partner called easyJet and they put her on a flight the next morning free of charge. She and her friend spent the night locked in their room Both Ms Pearce’s partner and her sisterin-law called the Home Office on the day of the attack and were told they would receive a call when there was news. Neither heard anything back. “When I handed back the keys at the hotel, they didn’t even ask who I was,” says Ms Pearce. “I just feel that we could still be missing people.”

It didn’t help that when Ms Pearce got back to the UK, the car parking service at Stansted Airport charged her £20 for collecting her car early.

Ms Pearce visited her GP two days after returning to the UK. Her doctor signed her up to 12 counselling sessions.

Sarah Davidson (left) and Chris Beck, members of the Red Cross’s Psychosocial Team.

‘What you don’t want is to insist that people talk in detail about what happened,’ says Davidson

Meanwhile, Ms Hayward has been receiving weekly private counselling through an assistance programme provided by her employer.

Sir Simon Wessely, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, has expressed concern about the treatment being given to those returning from Tunisia. “The best advice is for people to do what comes naturally,” he says. “To talk to someone when it comes naturally: who they want, at the time they want.

“Stretching right back to the Second World War, there has been a tendency for people in authority to underestimate the people’s essential resilience. Doctors, politicians, the media, you name it, underestimate the strength of the public.

They believe they will panic in situations when they don’t, and forget that most people have good coping mechanisms in the form of social networks.”

If symptoms persist six to eight weeks after the event, treatment for PTSD should then be considered. Greenberg points to the response to the 7/7 bombings as exemplary. A “screen and treat” programme was set up whereby six to eight weeks after the event, a team of psychiatric professionals contacted people known to have been caught up in the bombings to ask if they would like to be assessed. In the case of those who had been close to the explosion, 10 to 20 per cent were found to display symptoms of psychological trauma. “At that point, people who were seen to be ill were given evidence-based treatment,” says Greenberg. “And lots of people got better”.

Six to eight weeks is where we are now with British returnees from Tunisia, and both Greenberg and Wessely fear we have not learned the lessons of the King’s Cross fire, the 7/7 bombings, and the 50-plus deployments of the Red Cross PST. “This will happen again and again and again,” says Sir Wessely. “It makes sense that we have a more thought-out, comprehensive procedure that first recognises the essential resilience of normal people in stressful situations.

But second, the need for monitoring and providing subsequent intervention for the minority when needed.”

Along with other experts in the field, Wessely and Greenberg have urged the Cabinet Office to implement a comprehensive screening procedure. Fears grow that some of those on the beach in Sousse on that fateful June day will disappear into the general population to join the 70 per cent of PTSD sufferers who bear their affliction undiagnosed, untreated, and largely in silence. µ THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

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The new pagans

BEYOND BELIEF Blood sacrifices and beer races are all part of keeping ancient deities happy in the Caucasus. William Dunbar joins the adherents of a creed apart PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALEXANDER BAINBRIDGE

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n a mountaintop 2,250 metres above sea level in Pshavi, in the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia, Ioseb Kochlishvili is performing a pagan ritual.

Eighty-nine years old, and dressed in a battered suit jacket and corduroys, this is the first year he hasn’t walked all the way up here to Iremtkalo, the “meadow of the deer”. This time he came on horseback instead.

He leans on his walking stick and steps over the wall into the hallowed ground where only he is pure enough to go. He approaches a bell tower, a stone structure of about five metres, and rings the bell to tell the riders to get ready.

This year, only three people are taking part in the horse race, but it’s still the highlight of the day. The three young men, tanked up on sacred beer (“It’s technically against the rules to be sober,” one of them tells me), gallop off to a semi-ruined

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shrine almost a mile away. There, they wait for the signal, and the hundred or so parishioners – vassals of Kopala, the mountain deity – assemble to get a view.

Making incantations under his breath, Kochlishvili rings the bell three times and then clangs it like a fire alarm. On the third peal the riders take off along the grassy ridge towards the shrine. Riding bareback and barefoot, the race takes only a minute.

Raphael Kochlishvili, Ioseb’s 22-yearold grandson, is the victor. He rides anticlockwise around the shrine three times, as ritual demands, and stands fully upright on the horse’s back to receive congratulations. Leaping off like a trick rider, he proceeds to share the rest of the sacred beer, a flat, yeasty, yellow home brew, with his friends. Offering some to our party, a foreign journalist, a linguist and a photographer, we toast to his vic-

The horse race is part of an ancient ritual dedicated to the demonkilling deity Kopala. Raphael Kochlishvili, the shrine-priest’s grandson, leads the field

tory and to the glory of Kopala, and down the beer in as few gulps as possible.

Kochlishvili senior has been presiding over the ritual at Iremtkalo every summer since 1946. He is the khevisberi, or shrine-priest, more literally, “wise man of the valley”. As khevisberi, he has a special, supernatural bond with Kopala, a primordial demon-killing hero, revered by the people of the region as a “son of God”. Every July and August, Kochlishvili and the other khevisberis officiate in a ritual cycle of animal sacrifice, beer drinking and horse racing in forest groves and mountain pastures, maintaining an unbroken link with an almost forgotten past.

“The horse race is a very old law,” Kochlishvili says. “I asked many people how old this custom was but nobody could give me an answer. Everybody says ‘when I was 10 years old, I remember the

horse race’ and so on.” In spite of only having three riders this year, he explains, the race must take place: it is a part of the ritual. “It is compulsory to hold it. Even if there are just two horses, you have to have the race.”

In the pagan religion of Pshavi, following the rules is everything. Khevisberis like Kochlishvili are there to get the ritual right, not to theorise on its origins.

“They do not have a personal knowledge like that,” explains Dato Akriani, one of the tiny number of people who have moved from the lowlands up to Pshavi, and who was initiated into the cult of Kopala 20 years ago. “They are the true inheritors and passers-on of the tradition, but they cannot explain it metaphysically. They cannot tell you why they are doing this or that and what it means. They cannot touch bears or wolves, touch chicken or eggs, or touch a woman when she has her period, but if you ask them why, they don’t know. It’s supernatural, it’s a mystery.”

A thousand metres down the mountain, in the village of Shuapkho, another khevisberi honours a mountain deity in a different set of ritual mysteries. The biggest village in upland Pshavi, Shuapkho is home to about 50 people, but it’s most famous resident is Iakhsar, friend to Kopala, son of God, and slayer of ogres.

Iakhsar’s shrine is in a grove of oaks on a slope above the village. There are

A villager tackles a vessel of holy beer. Drinking and toasting are all part of the ceremony

low walls and walnut trees beyond which pregnant or menstruating women are not permitted, followed by a disused Christian church built by the “Society to Spread Orthodoxy to the Caucasus” in the 19th century.

Near the top of the grove is the killing ground, sticky with the blood of victims.

To the left, half a dozen sheep are being butchered, their carcasses hung from special iron racks set in the ground. To the right, men are lighting candles and offering alcoholic drinks on an altar built of granite slabs that seem to have grown out of the earth. In front, a bull calf is being led up for slaughter. Worth several hundred dollars, this is a huge offering.

Pshavi is a deeply impoverished region

– whoever is offering the bull calf is a very rich man.

Our party has brought a sheep. It’s not a bull, but it is a significant sacrifice nonetheless. In the shade of the oaks, Lazare Elizbarashvili, the khevisberi of Iakhsar, makes incantations over the victim. Holding beeswax candles and chanting a spell that must be intoned with precision, he blesses our offering and invokes the deity.

Iveri, our host at the festival, and Mindia, his family’s friend and helper, lead the sheep away to be killed with the sacred dagger. It’s all over in seconds, and we toast the memory of Iakhsar.

A short while later Iveri’s sister, the formidable Maia Tselauri, is preparing to boil the mutton for us to eat. Spreading a plastic tablecloth on the ground by the church, the blood sacrifice suddenly feels more like a school fete. As a woman, Maia is not allowed to approach the sacrificial altar, but as a year-round resident, school teacher and local government worker, she’s one of the most important people in the village, and is happy to explain the festival to us.

“We come here to thank Iakhsar. He killed the ogres; he made the valley safe for humans. He fought against evil and we thank him for that. We give one shoulder of the sheep to the khevisberi, and the rest we feast on here, giving thanks.”

The fact that Iakhsar and Kopala were holy people who killed the many-headed, >

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17

The new pagans man-eating ogres that inhabited Pshavi in the mythical past, is basically the only biographical information we have on the deities. That this doesn’t exactly fit into the canonical tradition of the Orthodox Church, the dominant religion of Georgia, doesn’t bother Maia.

“The church is dedicated to St George,” she says, pointing to the almost empty building behind her. “The shrine is dedicated to Iakhsar. It’s like a parallel regime: God and Iakhsar, Christianity and paganism, living next to each other.”

The parallel regime is apparent everywhere. People say “Amen” after toasting Iakhsar, and most would describe themselves as Christian. While children are initiated into Iakhsar’s cult at the age of 10, many are baptised as infants as well.

It is tempting to see this as a modern version of ancient Rome, where people would worship the state-approved gods and the emperors, but also the divinities in the local rivers and woods. “The lowlands have their traditions,” says Maia, “and we have ours.”

I suggest that some Orthodox Christians might look askance at the day’s

18

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events. Maia smiles: “As long as the Church has no problem with the shrine, I have no problem with the Church.”

Back on the mountaintop at Iremtkalo, Ioseb Kochlishvili is dozing on the wall of his shrine. Like every shrine-priest, he was visited in a dream and called to serve.

And, like every khevisberi, he resisted, refusing to become Kopala’s representative and give up on normal life.

“Boxing with God,” as Kevin Tuite, professor of anthropology at Montreal University calls it, is the defining experience in becoming a khevisberi. You are

From left: shrine priest Ioseb Kochlishvili; dancing villagers; Mindia after the sheep sacrifice

∂∂

You are haunted by dreams and hallucinations.

The deity visits calamities on you, and finally you submit

∑∑ haunted by dreams and hallucinations, the deity visits calamities on you and your family, and finally you submit.

“I’m in awe of them,” says Tuite, one of the few foreign academics to have studied the religion of Pshavi. “They don’t have a fork to go with their knife or a cup to

go with their saucer, they live in what we would consider to be abysmal poverty, but they’re charismatic and authoritative.

They have a kind of gentle power.”

Ioseb, even when taking an afternoon nap, exudes that gentle power. He probably did so even before he started the

job, 69 years ago. No one knows who Kopala will choose next, but the position of khevisberi is often passed down through families.

Raphael, Ioseb’s grandson and winner of the horse race, is a modern young man with a smartphone and a Facebook account, but he has his grandfather’s bearing, and in some respects he appears old before his time.

“As long as I am physically able to do it I will maintain these traditions,” he says. “All this was established before Christianity and since that moment it has remained, it hasn’t collapsed. All these rituals and traditions and beliefs came from where we are now. They grew out of this place.”

As evening approaches, Ioseb finishes the proceedings for the day, leading a procession in song around the shrine.

Three times, anticlockwise, as tradition demands. He takes the sacred banner of Kopala and, leaning on a friend for support, he begins the long walk down the mountain. Tomorrow, he will erect the banner in front of another shrine, and continue the ritual. µ

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19

Fashion

THE SCOURGING OF SAINT LAURENT

It’s the legendary French fashion house that produced some of the defining looks of the 20th century. But does its new direction dishonour the memory of its great founder, asks Alexander Fury 20

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I

n Paris, a house has been ripped apart, quietly gutted, over the past three years. It’s the house of Yves Saint Laurent. I’m not just talking about the metaphorical house, the label that bears his name and is helmed by designer Hedi Slimane. Under Slimane, Yves Saint Laurent was rebranded simply – almost biblically – Saint Laurent. Its entire visual identity has been reengineered.

A storm of protest ensued: one label made a killing with T-shirts bearing the slogan, “Ain’t Laurent without Yves,” rendered in the house’s new typeface.

The house I’m talking about isn’t that.

It’s an actual house, one of those storied, stuccoed mansions the French call hôtels particuliers. The building is to house Yves Saint Laurent haute couture, revived 13 years after the retirement of its founder, and seven years after his death. The mansion has been remodelled, like the rest of Saint Laurent, in Slimane’s image.

Not just the image he determines – Slimane designs everything, from the Saint Laurent stationery to its shop interiors – but in his physical image: tall, skinny, monochromatic, Parisian.

Slimane was born in the city’s suburbs in 1968, the year of protesting students.

Over in the moneyed 16th arrondissement, Yves Saint Laurent would dedicate an haute couture collection to them.

The new house isn’t in the 16th – nor the 8th, where Yves Saint Laurent’s couture operation moved in 1974 (the salons are now a museum dedicated to him). It’s on the Left Bank. Saint Laurent opened his first shop there in 1966 – the first readyto-wear boutique bearing a couturier’s name: Saint Laurent Rive Gauche. In his two years as head of Christian Dior, he also drew inspiration from the black-clad Saint-Germain existentialists for a 1960 collection so radical and forward-thinking that it got him the sack.

Slimane worked for Dior, too – for longer, and left of his own accord. He headed the label’s menswear from 2000 to 2007.

And, like Saint Laurent, Slimane’s work at Dior was influential, even revolutionary.

His skinny tailoring, fitted to even skinnier models, changed the way the entire fashion industry thought of masculinity – and the way legions of high-fashion and high-street labels cut their suits.

The power of Slimane’s fashion was in the overall look – the silhouette, the specially cast models (many unknown), the soundtracks and sets. The designer Karl Lagerfeld, enamoured of Slimane’s vision, lost six stone to fit both the clothes and the aesthetic. Slimane’s former assistant, Kris Van Assche, now designs Dior Homme in much the same vein.

If Slimane can lay claim to defining

much of the wardrobe of 21st-century men, Yves Saint Laurent undoubtedly did so for their female predecessors. He is the most important fashion designer of the past 50 years. “I tell myself that I created the wardrobe of the contemporary woman, that I participated in the transformation of my times,” Saint Laurent said, upon his retirement. Those sound grandiose statements, but they’re true.

Herein lies the significance of Yves Saint Laurent. He designed the first high-fashion trouser suits and safari jackets. He invented designer ready-to-wear, giving it a prominence previously only enjoyed by couture. In the 1980s and 90s, Saint Laurent allowed colleagues to oversee those ready-to-wear lines, focusing his attention purely on couture. In 1998, he officially bowed out of ready-to-wear entirely, passing the reins of his womenswear line to Alber Elbaz, now creative director of Lanvin, and his menswear to Slimane. It was Slimane’s first job heading a fashion house.

Slimane is 47, but looks at least a decade younger. He has the wide eyes of a deer and a preternaturally furrowed brow and bears a striking resemblance to the young Yves Saint Laurent. In 2012, after half a decade focusing on an acclaimed photography career (he photographed Lady Gaga’s Fame Monster album art, and now shoots the advertising campaigns for Saint Laurent, among

Hedi Slimane, creative director at Saint Laurent, where his haute couture stands at odds with the work, and the principles, of the label’s founding father

∂∂ Haute couture is seen as a dream proposition for designers – the most rarefied form of fashion

∑∑

other assignments), Slimane returned to fashion as creative director of Saint Laurent, replacing Stefano Pilati, who replaced Tom Ford, who replaced Elbaz and Slimane.

But no one has ever designed Yves Saint Laurent haute couture, besides Yves Saint Laurent. Many saw it as the closest fashion got to art. In 1983, Saint Laurent was the first living fashion designer to be honoured with a retrospective at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Designer ready-to-wear is, arguably, his most lasting contribution to the cannon of contemporary fashion – but Saint Laurent’s heart and soul were in haute couture – he described his collections as “a love story between couture and me”.

It was in couture that he really rang the changes. His turtlenecks and duffle coats, his leather jackets and transparent blouses, were all haute couture – the first time such garments appeared as high fashion. His tuxedos were the first trousers for women to be proposed not as mannish or practical, but elegant, even sexy. He created collections inspired by Africa and Morocco, and by neo-1940s styles worn by Saint Laurent’s friends like Paloma Picasso and the drag queens in Andy Warhol’s Factory set. The latter, a collection presented in January 1971, was dubbed “truly hideous” by the International Herald Tribune, which saw it as a celebration of wartime styles (and social mores) that older journalists were eager to forget. Nevertheless, it proved enormously influential: the wrapped crepe dresses, squared shoulders and clumpy platform shoes established the stylistic template for a decade to come.

Yves Saint Laurent’s haute couture shifted both fashion and popular culture, changing the way women dressed, and how they were perceived.

And now, Slimane has taken up the mantle. Haute couture is seen as a dream proposition for designers – the most rarefied form of fashion, with thousands of man-hours of work packed into single garments. Couture allies a seemingly bottomless pit of money (it can’t be sewn on a shoestring, and makes no profit) with the limitless technical abilities of the best craftspeople in the world. Without commercial restraint, creativity can flourish. The clothes are bought by a tiny clientele: between 300 and 1,000 women worldwide, “the happy few”, as Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion for the house of Chanel, once put it to me. They are passionate followers of fashion, willing to pay whatever it costs for something truly exceptional.

When Saint Laurent retired, he took pains to thank François-Henri Pinault, > THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

21

Fashion

CEO of the luxury conglomerate Kering, then PPR, which owns Yves Saint Laurent, “for believing as I do that this couture house’s haute couture must stop with my departure”. Prior to that, Pierre Bergé, Saint Laurent’s former business partner and lover, had declared: “It is nonsense to carry on [couture] without him. Look at Chanel without Mademoiselle Chanel, and Dior without Christian Dior. It is more than nonsense. It has no integrity.

It is a sham.” Paradoxically, Bergé is a staunch supporter of Slimane.

There are a few major differences between Yves Saint Laurent’s haute couture and that now being relaunched under his name. The house will not show during Paris’s couture fashion weeks in January and July, eschewing the practice of introducing fresh ideas to be judged alongside contemporaries. Exactly how, and if, the collections will be presented, remains hazy. Its business model, even for the zero-profit world of haute couture, is also odd. A house executive – unnamed – has said that “Hedi Slimane decides these [couture] orders case by case. Unlike a couture collection, this is an even more exclusive definition.”

Exclusive, or excluding? Because although haute couture is exclusive, it’s open to anyone with enough money. By contrast, as a Saint Laurent communique issued earlier this month states, ateliers will “produce commissioned handmade pieces for movie stars and musicians.

Hedi [Slimane] determines which of these pieces will carry the atelier’s handsewn couture label.”

But why call it haute couture, when that name comes loaded with baggage – especially at Yves Saint Laurent, and particularly under Slimane? What Slimane has done at Saint Laurent has polarised the fashion industry. He has honed an aesthetic, but in contrast with his work at Dior Homme, it’s not identifiable through the actual clothes but the manner in which they are put together.

The silhouette isn’t new; neither are the garments. Saint Laurent collections today are composed of leather jackets and tight jeans, laddered hosiery and short dresses. In direct opposition to the “exclusion” of his haute couture, Slimane’s Saint Laurent appeals to the lowest common denominator. The clothes have been compared to those found in charity shops, or in Topshop. You could argue – as Saint Laurent frequently does –that this is all a part of its heritage. Saint Laurent himself once said he wanted “to introduce the whole sense of freedom one sees in the street into high fashion;

∂∂ Yves Saint Laurent touches on wider themes – gender, sexuality, culture

∑∑

Hedi Slimane’s womenswear designs for Saint Laurent, from top, s/s 13, s/s 14 and a/w 15

to give couture the same provocative and arrogant look as punk”. That chimes with Slimane’s aesthetic and approach.

“But,” Saint Laurent added, “of course with luxury and dignity and style.” Something shredded tights do not express.

I have further issues with much of this being presented in Saint Laurent’s name. “It pains me physically to see a woman victimised, rendered pathetic, by fashion,” said Saint Laurent in the introduction to the 1983 Met retrospective catalogue. I can’t help think of that when considering Slimane’s work. Groupie is a term bandied about in relation to his slashed tights and aggressively short dresses, tugged to expose legs and breasts. There’s a brutality to them that makes their wearers look violated.

They’re unsettling but they don’t feel provocative, transgressive, or progressive.

Perhaps repetition has deadened their impact: Since the first, Slimane’s collections have all trod similar ground.

Fashion critics are kept at arm’s length, preferably further, in the new Saint Laurent. Slimane has, it seems, an aggressive antipathy towards any critical discussion

of his garments. He seldom talks to the press backstage after his fashion shows, unlike most designers. If he does, it is off the record.

But I’m fascinated by Saint Laurent’s financial success, by the glossy stores filled with handbags and T-shirts and leather jackets that look so much like so many others and are being voraciously purchased. It’s a magic formula. In Kering’s first-half financial report for 2015, released in July, Saint Laurent’s turnover posted an increase of 24.3% year on year. The year’s revenue to date – €443.1m (£309m) – is close to what Saint Laurent recorded for 2012’s entire financial year. That was the year Slimane was appointed creative director, but the year before his clothes went on sale. He has doubled the house’s turnover and sales show no sign of abating.

In 2012, Bergé denounced contemporary fashion, as a whole: “It is all a question of money and marketing. We never talk about talent – it’s not the point. We only talk about sales. Yves Saint Laurent would have hated that.”

I tend to agree.

The house of Yves Saint Laurent is seen as both fashion’s holy grail and its poisoned chalice. What an archive to mine – but what a name to live up to. That’s the crux of my issue with Slimane’s designs ready to wear, and haute couture alike. He isn’t designing clothes under his own name – he could do whatever he wants there.

He is designing for Yves Saint Laurent. That name represents something to me, and as part of a larger fashion dialogue. It represents a certain approach to clothing but it also touches on wider themes – gender, sexuality, culture – of which great fashion is always a fundamental part. Yves Saint Laurent represents a legacy. That is valuable, and it still means something to people who care about fashion over and above the money it makes, or indeed the label it bears.

I think Hedi Slimane is a very good designer. But right now, I don’t think he is designing very good clothes. That’s confusing, and frustrating, given the trajectory of his work at Dior Homme.

Here, he isn’t experimenting with shapes and silhouettes, trying to push fashion someplace new. It’s formulaic and trite – antithetical to Yves Saint Laurent. It’s like someone painting bad paintings and signing them Picasso – art critics would be livid. That’s why I care about what Hedi Slimane does at Saint Laurent.

And why I can’t bear to see it. µ THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

23

Food & Drink

I

’ve recently put a little snack section on to some of my menus which utilises what you might term “from claw to beak” on a chicken. I’m all for using every bit of the bird or animal. While it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, there’s something satisfying about making tasty dishes without using the expensive prime cut – which, in the case of chicken, means the breast. As well as being cheaper, the non-prime cuts often have rich flavours and interesting textures that really suit certain dishes.

If you buy a whole bird and make these recipes, the breast can be saved to be stuffed, turned into escalopes, or whatever recipes you normally favour.

It’s all about knowing what to do with the other bits. I was at The Clove Club a few months back and they did a great crispy chicken claw, all edible with no sign of bone or sinew. Necks on the other hand can be stuffed and slow cooked – bit fiddly but well worth it.

I’m not going quite as leftfield as that here, but will instead give you some delicious and accessible recipes that bring the best out of flavoursome cuts other than the usual breast meat.

Mark Hix Beyond breast We tend to turn to the prime cuts of chicken, but the cheaper, often overlooked parts of the bird can bring tremendous flavour to the right dishes PHOTOGRAPHS BY JASON LOWE

DEVILLED CHICKEN HEARTS SERVES 4

Any good butcher should be able to get you chicken hearts with a few days’ notice, or if you have an Asian supermarket near you they often stock them fresh or frozen (which is fine for hearts as they are all muscle and can handle low temperatures, unlike livers which will go mushy when cooked). If you can’t find hearts, you could use livers, cut into small pieces.

For the sauce 2 shallots, peeled, halved and finely chopped A couple of good knobs of butter ½tsp cayenne pepper 2tsp flour ½tsp tomato purée 1tsp Dijon mustard 1tbsp cider vinegar 250ml beef or chicken stock 20-30 chicken hearts Salt and cayenne pepper A little vegetable or corn oil for frying

Left: devilled chicken hearts Right: chicken lollipops 24

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First make the sauce. Gently cook the shallots in the butter with the cayenne pepper for a minute, then add the flour, tomato purée and mustard, and stir well.

Add the cider vinegar and stock, gradually so as to avoid lumps forming. Season and simmer very gently for about 10-15 minutes, stirring every so often, then remove from the heat and cover.

Season the hearts with salt and cayenne

pepper, heat a little oil in a preferably non-stick pan, and cook the hearts on a very high heat for a minute, stirring as they are frying until nicely coloured. Now pour in the sauce so it bubbles, reduces and just coats the hearts.

To serve, arrange the hearts on a serving dish with a few cocktail sticks, for ease of eating and sharing.

CHICKEN LOLLIPOPS SERVES 4

Chicken drumsticks can be a bit dull, especially if you have run out of new things to do with them. This is a great way to transform a simple drumstick into an interesting and easy to eat or transport snack. You can buy kimchi base from most good Asian supermarkets – it’s a good store cupboard item for marinades, dressings, homemade pickle, and so on.

8 small chicken drumsticks 3-4tbsp kimchi base 1tbsp clear honey 2-3tbsp good quality mayonnaise 2tbsp chopped coriander To garnish A handful of coriander sprigs 2 spring onions, trimmed and thinly sliced on the angle Chop the end knuckle off the drumstick and push the meat down as far as possible towards the joint to expose the bone.

Mix a tablespoon of the kimchi base with the mayonnaise and coriander, and put to one side. Mix the rest of the kimchi base with the honey and mix well with the chicken. You can leave this to marinate overnight if you wish.

Preheat the oven to 175°C/Gas mark 4. Put the chicken and marinade in an ovenproof dish and cook in the oven for around an hour, turning them as they are cooking until they are nicely glazed. You can add a little water if the marinade is burning on the tray.

Serve with the coriander and spring onions, mixed, and the sauce separately.

SWEET AND SOUR CIDER CHICKEN SERVES 4

This is a British take on the sweet and sour served in high-street Chinese restaurants. I’ve used cider in the batter, and a fine dice of apple in the sauce. It’s great for a sharing starter or as a snack with drinks.

For the sauce 2 shallots, peeled and finely chopped A small piece of root ginger (30g), scraped and grated > THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

25

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ABTA No. V4744

Food & Drink Sweet and sour cider chicken

Summer’s lease WINES BY ANTHONY ROSE

I

2tbsp cider vinegar 1tbsp clear honey 150ml chicken stock 1-2tsp cornflour, diluted in a little water 1 red chilli, trimmed and finely chopped 1 small dessert apple, peeled, cored and finely diced For the batter 100g preferably Doves Farm gluten-free self-raising flour Enough medium-sweet cider to make a thick batter 4 large, boned and skinned chicken thighs, quartered Salt and freshly ground white pepper Vegetable or corn oil for deep frying 1tbsp chopped coriander, to serve First make the sauce. Put the shallots, ginger, vinegar and honey in a heavybased saucepan and simmer until the liquid has reduced by half. Add the chicken stock, bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in enough of the diluted cornflour to thicken it, then add the chilli and simmer for a couple more minutes.

The sauce should be a nice thick coating consistency – if not, continue simmering until it’s thickened. Add the apples and remove from the heat.

Put the flour in a bowl and whisk in enough cider to make a thick batter, then season to taste.

Preheat about 8cm of oil to 160-180°C in a large thick-bottomed saucepan or electric deep-fat fryer. Season the pieces of chicken, dip them in the batter, and fry for a few minutes until crisp and golden, stirring as they are cooking with a slotted spoon. Remove from the oil and drain on some kitchen paper.

To serve, transfer the chicken to a warmed serving dish and spoon over the sauce. Scatter over the coriander. µ

t is still summer, isn’t it? In the south of France, midAugust is traditionally a time for thunderstorms and torrential downpours, bringing in their wake the first wistful chill of autumnal air. Here, it’s not just the changeable weather that’s baffling, on a weekend when Rooney & Co. are performing before the first ball of the fifth Ashes Test is bowled. But if my glass is half full today, I want it topped up with appetisingly dry whites to prolong the al fresco moments before the nights draw in.

In the hope of an Indian summer, my first port of call is Portugal’s breezy Atlantic coast, where the lower alcohol of brisk, light, dry whites of vinho verde can perk up your spirits like few other wines with their invigorating, lemon-crisp bite.

Light in body, breezily fresh, the 2014 Quinta de Azevedo Vinho Verde , £6.95, Wine Society, £9.99, buy 2 = £6.66, Majestic, is quintessential VV: bone dry, with a briney sea-spray of mouthwatering, citrus-crispness.

Equally bracing, the 2014 Quinta das Arcas Tapada de Villar Vinho Verde, £8, Marks & Spencer, blends the loureiro, arinto and trajadura grapes into a tonguecurling dry white with refreshing quince and apple fruitiness; the 2014 Adega de Ponte de Lima, Vinho Verde, £7.58– £7.99, Cambridge Wine, Wine Rack, shows floral aromatics and green apple

bite; and 2014 Casal de Ventozela Vinho Verde, £9.99, buy 2 = £7.49, Majestic, brings bone dry appley freshness and citrusy verve to the party.

Grown close to the Mediterranean, Italy’s vermentino is a grape variety which by retaining mouthwatering freshness chimes perfectly with seafood pasta, bream and sea bass. From Liguria, the 2014 Lunae Vermentino Colli di Luni, Etichetta Grigia, £14.40–£15.49, Bottle Apostle, Ellis Wharton, is spicy in aroma with a hint of ginger and lemon peel, the refreshing prickle exploding on the tongue with a lively citrus tang.

From Agricola Punica in Sardinia, the 2014 Samas, Isola dei Nuraghi, £13.50 - £15, The Good Wine Shop, Handford, Secret Cellar, Corks Out, Toscanaccio, Exel, is fragrant vermentino with a touch of chardonnay whose peppery fruit bursts into life with bitter lemony verve.

If vermentino is a tad exotic for you, chardonnay is at its most refreshing in its cool climate heartland of chablis, as you’ll find in the 2014 Chablis Grande Cuvée, £9.99, Tesco, whose subtly smoky and green apple scent is streaked with appetising dryness. An excellent New World counterpart, Tom Carson’s 2013 Red Claw Mornington Peninsula Chardonnay, £18, buy 2, save 25 per cent, Marks & Spencer, is a finely-crafted Victoria chardonnay in which grapefruit zesty aromas combine with a creamy-textured fruit quality whose elegant freshness wouldn’t disgrace chablis premier cru. µ

SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND NIGHT IN

DI N N E R PA R T Y

SPLASH OUT

2014 Tesco finest* South Africa Swartland Malbec Spicy, with nutmeg on the nose, this youthful red made from the malbec grape in the Cape’s Swartland region is blackberry juicy from sweet start to savoury finish. £7.99, Tesco

2014 The Islander Sangiovese, Kangaroo Island, Australia Jacques Lurton coaxes herby perfumes from the chianti grape, and cherry fruit polished by oak and vanilla on the tongue. £12, or buy 2 online or 6 in store =£9, Marks & Spencer

2013 Saint-Aubin Blanc 1er Cru, Domaine Gérard Thomas et Filles This white burgundy combines the nuttiness of barrelfermentation with textured, peachy fruit. £25, buy 2 = £20, Majestic, £19.99, Waitrose THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

27

Lifestyle

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Restaurants

Laurels and Hardy In deepest Dorset, a triumphant homecoming

BY TRACEY MACLEOD

B

eaminster’s market square is strung with bunting, as though a rogue team of set designers from a Thomas Hardy costume drama has run amok in this small Dorset town. The evening sunlight kindles the mullioned windows of squat stone buildings, and schoolboys chase each other around the memorial cross.

At one end of the square, a tastefully sub-fusc double-fronted building beckons, part homeware shop, part restaurant, totally inviting.

Can all this loveliness be permanent? Or have they had a tip-off that I’m arriving with my grumpiest friend to review Brassica, the latest addition to the town’s dining scene? Neither: it’s the eve of Beaminster’s annual arts festival and tomorrow the square will host a celebratory street party. But tonight it looks as idyllic as a Batsford book cover, even if my grumpy friend is too concerned with finding a parking space to notice. It’s going to take more than a bit of bunting and a little restaurant with big ideas to convince him that Beaminster en fête is the place to spend a rocking Friday night.

Then we walk into an airy dream of a modern bistro, as pale and interesting as a Hardy heroine, and my friend stops complaining. Brassica looks terrific: clean-lined Scandi meets rustic comfy.

The white tables are well spaced, bold Marimekko-style cushions colour-pop from the bench seating, and wild flowers bloom beautifully in every corner.

In one window, a copper counter displays an artfully curated library of food and lifestyle books. The inclusion of the Canteen cookbook offers a clue to the previous life of Brassica’s chefproprietor, Cass Titcombe. He was the co-founder and original chef of that pioneering modern British restaurant, which launched in London’s Spitalfields, then grew into a mini-chain.

Now, with his wife, Louise Chidgey, a design guru who has worked with The Conran Shop, Titcombe has returned to his native West Country to build something more personal. Brassica is clearly a labour of love; there’s nothing scalable this time round, no roll-out ambitions.

This is hands-on, boots-on-the-ground cooking, with Titcombe in the kitchen

every service, for up to a hundred hours a week, and Chidgey on occasional frontof-house duties as well as running Brassica Mercantile, the shop next door.

The daily-changing menu is modern European rather than Canteen’s retro Brit and, like the dining room, offers pleasing things wherever you look. There are sharing boards of charcuterie and antipasti; local seafood simply prepared, such as hake with asparagus and Jersey Royals.

A few dishes would fit with Canteen’s house style: veal rump steak with roasted carrots, say, or crab salad with radish and brown crab aioli. Most give a sense of that cookbook collection having been joyfully plundered: panzanella and caponata, labneh and rillettes. All the signs of a chef slipping out of the constraints of a formula and just cooking what he fancies, using fine local produce.

A starter of braised cuttlefish in a brick-red, fathomlessly deep bisque comes over like the love child of a Provencal fish soup and an octopus stew and is blissfully addictive. Mildly cured salt beef – roasted Dexter topside rather than boiled brisket – is paired with cleancut beetroot and big, shouty radishes.

Hogget (mature lamb) is laid in pink slices over herbish, sour puy lentils spiked with preserved lemon. Whole Dover sole is impeccable.

Brassica may be named for the family

BRASSICA

3-4 The Square, Beaminster, Dorset, DT8 3AS (01308 538100) Around £30 per head for 3 courses before wine and service Food µµµµµ Ambience µµµµµ Service µµµµµ

∂∂ The room becomes even prettier as the sun goes down

∑∑

of cruciferous veg, but apart from roasted broccoli with garlic and lemon, there’s not much in the way of actual brassica on the menu. Judging from her energy, though, our waitress has been on the kale smoothies, bouncing about the place like a human Nutribullet.

The room becomes even prettier as the sun goes down: the lighting is exemplary, as you’d expect from a co-owner who’s written a book on the subject. Keeping things in the family, the wine list is compiled by Chidgey’s father, a wine merchant. It’s mostly Old World, and most bottles cost under £30, including a slippery South African viognier from Alvi’s Drift, justifiably described as a bargain in the Condrieu style.

Puddings, including a dinner party-ish flourless almond and orange cake with roasted apricots, are relatively simple, a clue that Titcombe is doing everything in the kitchen with the help of just one sous-chef. But in keeping with everything about Brassica, they exude good taste.

When we leave, the cavorting youngsters on the memorial have been replaced by smoking, glowering teens. But there’s always a dark side to the rural idyll, as we know from Hardy, who set Tess of the D’Urbervilles around a fictional version of Beaminster. For local lad Titcombe, the first chapter of this return of the native looks set to be a modern classic. µ THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

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Life & Beauty ALISON TAYLOR ON RELATIONSHIPS

R E B ECC A G O N SA LV E S

DRE S S I N G TA B LE

Hot dates are overrated. Honestly

TERI PENGILLEY

R

oad trips are romantic, right? Yes that’s what I thought too, before embarking on my first long-ish journey with the boyfriend on his motorbike. Preparation is everything, apparently. You know what preparation isn’t? Sexy.

“Make sure you wear warm clothes,” he kept telling me.

“Do I really have to wear tights under my trousers?”

I thought he was joking at first, but apparently not. So I oblige, with two tops, a woolly jumper and a leather jacket.

This outfit, I imagine, is all well and good tearing down the motorway at 80 miles per hour but on the searing hot Tube en route to his work? Torture of my own creation.

I emerge from Green Park station nauseous and angry. Like really, really angry. People are sunbathing in deckchairs and I am pouring sweat and dangerously close to puking.

Not only am I wearing tights under my trousers, my trousers are leather.

I call him because I am not feeling so faint that I can’t ring to half-cry, half-complain about what a ridiculous idea it was – of his – to make me wear effin tights under effin trousers.

In effin August.

We also prepared for this trip by procuring satchel things called panniers that straddle the back seat and hang over the sides, much like my thighs.

Which raises the question, where do my thighs

go? When the panniers were empty it was fine. Packed, not so fine – unless you have the flexibility of a 13-year-old gymnast. The leather trousers with tights underneath them also make it very challenging to cock one’s leg over the sodding bike. Especially when you are BOILING HOT. “I need a drink!” I whine. To be fair, I do genuinely need a drink, thanks to the blistering heat and ridiculous leather combo. I’m now on the verge of being sick and he’s just fastened the helmet under my chin too tight. “It’s too tighhhht.” I have gone Full Toddler.

Because he’s somehow managing to remain calm, he loosens off the helmet and hands me some water.

It’s time to leave. Finally.

We get on the bike and I’m not cuddling up to him like I normally would because I’m so enraged. Enraged and immature. Then, as we hit the motorway, it comes.

The payback.

The wind force is so strong as we tear along that I can feel the helmet being sucked upwards away from my head.

Shit. I can see now why he wanted to fasten it so tight. I want to tell him it’s too loose but it’s too late. He can’t hear me thanks to said wind force.

Plus he will probably kill me. If the journey doesn’t kill me first. µ @lovefoolforever

This week: concealer

BEAUTY SPOT

You might have seen the “red lipstick trick” online, but I’d recommend finding a red, orange or yellow colour corrector to balance out dark circles, rather than a waxy formula not meant for skin.

I was always hopeless at hiding my panda eyes, because I didn’t differentiate between dark circles and under-eye bags. Dark circles are, well, dark, while bags tend to be puffy, pouchy hollows, and sadly, though the two aren’t mutually exclusive, they need to be targeted slightly differently. Knowing this has helped me, as has finding the patience to build and blend product across the area rather than smearing it on and hoping for the best. Opt for a shade that seems slightly too dark but can be blended with your foundation to create a good match.

Perfectionist serum and concealer £28.50, esteelauder.co.uk, from 31 August Use the brightening serum as part of your usual skin prep, before applying the mousse-like concealer over foundation.

Maestro concealer £28.50, armanibeauty. co.uk This is a very wet formulation which is good for dabbing on with a fingertip in order to build up quite heavy duty coverage.

Terrybly Densiliss concealer £44, By Terry, spacenk.com This plumps out lines around the eye so the creamy formula won’t collect in wrinkles; apply from the back of your hand for better control.

∂∂ The panniers hang over the sides, much like my thighs.

Which raises the question, where do my thighs go?

∑∑

Creamy concealer kit £25, bobbibrown.co.uk/ The coverage here is good, but it’s the powder I love – use it to blend and set the concealer; works well on blemishes too.

Fakeup £18.50, benefitcosmetics. co.uk This two-in-one concealer and moisturiser has a good proportion of each, which helps it glide on, and can be reapplied as necessary without caking.

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Lifestyle

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Anna Pavord Emerald smile There is a special joy to be found in exploring the lush gardens of Ireland, which have a character all of their own: relaxed, rolling and replete with narrative

I

’ve just got back from Ireland where I was one of the speakers at the Garden Festival in Carlow. It runs every year from late July to early August, but Carlow is new territory for me and I did not know either of the gardens I went to. The first was Sheila Reeves-Smyth’s place at Hardymount in Tullow, where you are welcomed in by a stupendous beech tree on one side and an equally monumental

sweet chestnut – one of the biggest in the country – on the other.

One of the reasons I love Ireland so much is its particularity. You see it in Irish silver, glass, furniture and architecture. The design, the details are just not quite like anything you see in England. I thought this as soon as I arrived at Hardymount, where the house, a handsome Regency box, has the most elegant

Altamont Gardens: home to rare plants, ancient oaks and sumptuous landscaping

rounded ends, a style I’ve never seen before. Irish gardens are different too, often much more relaxed than gardens are in England. Their owners might open them, as Mrs Reeves-Smyth does, but you don’t feel that the place has been poked and primped for the occasion.

At Hardymount, the focus is the old walled garden, which unusually lies right next to the house. Through the door in the wall, you can see a splendidly rampageous border, with monkshoods and day lilies, campanulas and daisies punctuated with groups of sky-blue agapanthus.

Old espaliered apple trees spread their branches alongside what must have been one of the original paths in the walled garden. At one point, a huge clump of Lobelia tupa stretched its red flower spikes up among the leaves and fruit of the apple trees. I’ve never grown this drama queen, but I was so impressed, I think I must. It flowers from mid or late summer right the way through to the first frosts, which usually cut it down (although not fully hardy, it will take temperatures down to −5C). Here in Ireland it would easily grow up to two metres in a season, the lippy, brick-red flowers held out all round the strong purplish red stems. The foliage is excellent, soft, almost furry in texture, with big leaves of a soft grey-green.

Mrs Reeves-Smyth is 89 and still does all her own gardening. I wonder what it is about the Carlow air, because at nearby Altamont, the other garden I visited, the legendary Corona North was planting oak trees up until a week before she died, well into her seventies. For a taste of her extraordinary life, check out the obituary that The Independent published on 13 February 1999.

The approach to Altamont is through a magnificent avenue of ancient beech trees, and at first you have the impression you are in a formal garden. The stone house sits at the top of a sloping lawn, with bulging arches of clipped yew stretching over the path that leads down to the lake. Here, Corona planted one of the first dawn redwoods (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) that Ireland had ever seen. Trees were her passion, and down in the damp glades alongside the River Slaney, she established groves of dogwoods and acers, as well as a big collection of oak trees.

Here you’ll find the pin oak (Quercus palustris), the red oak (Quercus rubra) and a Quercus libani with wonderfully glossy leaves rather like those of a sweet chestnut. Formality is entirely left behind by the time you get down into this part of the garden, where huge jumbles of granite boulders, dumped by the last >

WEEKEND WORK WHAT TO DO µ Increase stocks

of hybrid berries such as loganberry and tayberry by tip layering. Bury the tip of a shoot about 15cm/6in down in the soil, and firm the earth around it. By spring it should be well rooted. µ Pick and prune

late-fruiting blackcurrants in one fell swoop by cutting back all the stems carrying berries to a strong new shoot. On old bushes or those which do not have much non-fruiting growth, cut out about a third of the branches entirely, taking them back to the base. µ Rambler roses and other climbing roses that only have one flush of flower should be pruned as soon as the flowers fade.

With ramblers, take out one old stem for each new one that has grown. With climbers, cut just above a vigorous new side-shoot. µ Cut back helianthemums (rock roses). Delphiniums may give a second late show if you cut down the old flowered stems.

WHAT TO SEE

Anna Atkins, who was born in Kent in 1799, was one of the first English botanists to experiment with photography, often involving plants. Some of her work is in the Horniman Museum in London, complemented by a series of plant silhouettes by Edward Chell.

Until 6 December; horniman.ac.uk

THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE

33

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3430

ABTA No. V4744

Gardens ice age, still sit among the trunks of fancy maples, overlaid with moss and fringed with ferns.

Altamont features in a new book, The Irish Garden, by Jane Powers. Its images are hard to resist: a meadow of buttercups washing up to the handsome front of Salthill House in County Donegal; Carl Wright’s astonishing garden “on loan from a savage landscape” in the Burren, County Clare; the enchanting cottage orné superbly restored by potter Nicholas Mosse and his wife in the glen at Kilfane, County Kilkenny. I first went to Kilfane more than 20 years ago and still dream of perhaps persuading the Mosses to let me sleep a night in this little cottage, filled with the sound of a waterfall that, at first, they didn’t know they had.

The waterfall, silent and waterless when they first arrived in Kilfane, had once formed the centrepiece of a then fashionably melancholy woodland walk, laid out in the 1790s by Sir Richard Power, who owned Kilfane.

This was not a garden in the modern sense. It was a natural landscape, carefully tweaked at various points, to provide views that would inspire, impress and

Kilfane Glen, County Kilkenny, where an 18thcentury winding path leads to a restored waterfall and hidden glade

frighten (but only in the most delicious way). Through thickly planted woodlands of beech, sweet chestnut, oak and Scots pine, Power laid out winding paths that plunged down into a natural ravine. He made bridges to cross the stream that crashed between the rugged boulders.

Eventually, the path emerged at a hidden glade where there was the obligatory hermit’s cell and a small, thatched retreat – the cottage orné of which I still dream.

After shuddering pleasurably in the damp of the grotto, Power’s guests could take tea in the cottage, before returning by a circular route to the house.

A series of sketches, unearthed by the

Mosses, show the Kilfane glen and waterfall at its peak in 1804 – yet only 15 years later it was being described as “somewhat of a has-been”. But Power had worked hard to contrive the Kilfane waterfall, constructing a mile-long conduit to carry a stream to the top of the rockface in front of the little cottage. Getting the water to flow again was the first object of the Mosses’ restoration programme.

Then they found the footings of the original cottage porch, familiar to them from the 1804 drawings. Although by then buried under a foot and a half of debris, they gave vital clues as to the orientation of the cottage. “The rest,” says Susan Mosse, “was easy.” I’m left wondering what “difficult” might mean to the magnificent Mosses. µ Hardymount Gardens, Tullow, Co Carlow, open daily until the end of August – +353 (0)59 915 1769; Altamont Gardens,Tullow, open daily – +353 (0)59 915 9444; Kilfane glen, Co Kilkenny is open daily until the end of August – visit kilfane.com Photographs by Jonathan Hession, from ‘The Irish Garden’ by Jane Powers (Frances Lincoln, £40)

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Games

Calculation during a game of chess involves a number of elements, including seeing the possibilities for both sides, deciding when to finish a variation since the position appears to be quiescent, and evaluating the end results. None of these is easy but it is perhaps the first – move generation – which is hardest, since it’s so easy to overlook something in a thicket of lines.

In today’s game a grandmaster lost essentially because he missed a single, slightly surprising move. It comes from last month’s 26th Czech Open, in Pardubice, which was won by the Czech number 2, Viktor Laznicka (David Navara is their number one) with 7.5/9.

In the Leningrad Dutch, Black gets plenty of central control but has to live with a wound on e6. It leads to very complicated battles, and if you can bear this weakness it can be a good way to play for a win as Black.

In the diagram, White should have played 14.Nf4 which is probably about equal. Instead the more ambitious 14.Bd4 was predicated on the intermezzo 17.Bxb6, which appeared to win

Bridge Maureen Hiron

West 87 5 AK92 7 10 5 4 2 6 AJ64

North 8 A 10 5 3 5 J5 7 A9873 693 South 8K Q J 9 8 642 5Q 7Q6 6K2

East 8 5 10 8 7 6 4 3 7KJ 6 Q 10 8 7 5

After East had passed, South opened and closed the bidding with Four Spades. One can hardly blame West too much for taking no action at the vulnerability, facing a passed partner, although the lie of the cards does mean that 12 tricks are there for the taking.

West led the ace of hearts and, when the queen appeared from South, treated it as a true card and switched to a diamond.

South could see that if he played low and East had the diamond king, a club return would see him down in double-quick time if the ace sat with West.

So dealer rose with dummy’s 36

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ace of diamonds and followed that with the jack of hearts, on which he discarded the queen of diamonds – a loser-on-loser play that cut communications between the defensive hands.

Although declarer still only had nine tricks, so long as diamonds broke no worse than 4-2, he could set up dummy’s fifth diamond for his 10th trick. In with the king of hearts, West returned his lone seven of spades.

South now had to husband his trump pips carefully. He won with dummy’s spade 10, on which he played the six from hand. A diamond was ruffed high, then the deuce of spades was overtaken with the three and another diamond was ruffed high.

The four of spades was overtaken with the five and a third diamond ruff established dummy’s fifth diamond. Now a trump to dummy’s last spade, the ace, allowed a club to depart on the diamond.

Get the Picture Answers (see opposite)

This week’s theme: Cilla Black. From top left: You’re my World; Blind Date; Step Inside Love; Cavern Club; Alfie; Anyone Who Had a Heart

East–West game; dealer East

a piece. But after 17...Qf7! the biter was bit. Pap’s position lost all coordination and he was quickly routed.

Gyula Pap v Viktor Laznicka Pardubice 2015 Leningrad Dutch 15.dxe6 Bxe6 1.Nf3 f5 16.Nf4 Bxc4 2.g3 g6 17.Bxb6 Qf7 3.Bg2 Bg7 18.Qb4 axb6 4.d4 Nf6 19.b3 Ba6 5.0–0 0–0 20.Qxd6 g5 6.c4 d6 21.Nd3 Rfd8 7.Nc3 c6 22.Qb4 Bxd3 8.Rb1 Nbd7 23.exd3 b5 9.Ng5 Nb6 24.Nd1 Rxa2 10.Qb3 h6 25.Ne3 f4 11.Nh3 Be6 26.gxf4 Bf8 12.d5 Bf7 27.Qc3 gxf4 13.Be3 Qc7 28.Nf5 Nd5 14.Bd4 e5 0–1

Your move If White exchanges queens she will stand worse.

Can she do better?

Last week’s solution Bahodir Holmirzaev v Bodur Sattarov, Championship of Uzbekistan 2015 42.Nxb7! Rxb7 43.Rxc6 released the pawns. After 43...Ke7 44.Rxf6! gxf6 45.c6 Rxb6 46.axb6 Kd6 47.b7 Kc7 48.Kf1 Black resigned.

Quiz Answers (see opposite page)

8. His was the first positive drugs test at an Olympics 9. Bitcoin 10. Aurora Borealis

pikestaff, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I think, sir, that Mr Phipps was able to see rather deeper into the position than your good self. Surprising, I would agree, but these things do happen.”

“Good heavens – so Barmy was actually right for once?”

“Yes, sir. Your play was too loose, leaving four blots at a time when Mr. Prosser has the better home board and 10 checkers in the attack zone. A better plan would have been to try to prime White’s rear checkers, effectively splitting White’s army in two.

“Many would select 11/5, 8/5, but I think this is one of those unusual positions where making the bar-point is better because it makes some of White’s sixes next time a little awkward. I fancy that 13/7, 10/7 is the correct play.”

“Good Lord, Jeeves. I never even considered that play.”

“In backgammon the obvious move is not always the right move. You must endeavour, sir, to think before you play.”

“Right ho, Jeeves.”

musician who made the record; the accused in the novel 5. John Dillinger 6. Handel’s Water Music 7. Yul Brynner

Bertie Learns to Think (with thanks to P.G. Wodehouse) The sun was high in the sky when I surfaced after a long night at The Drones, but luckily Jeeves was on hand with the necessary restorative and I slowly rejoined the world.

“Jeeves, Barmy FotheringayPhipps had the temerity to call me an ass during last night’s chouette.”

“Indeed, sir. And what occasioned Mr Phipps’s outburst?”

“This simple 63, Jeeves. Even I could spot 24/15*. It puts Oofy Prosser (who held the box as White) on the bar, catches up in the race and partially escapes one of my rear checkers. Plain as a

Chess Jon Speelman

1. Ziggy Stardust 2. The first permanent transatlantic telegraph cable 3. The Arc de Triomphe 4. Tom Robinson:

Backgammon Chris Bray

Get the Picture Annalee Mather

GE T T Y/A L A M Y

Find the well-known word, name or phrase made by each group of pictures, and the theme that unites them all. Answers on opposite page

The Quiz By Chris Maume (answers opposite) 1

The late 1950s and early ’60s rock’n’roller Vince Taylor inspired which fictitious character?

2

In 1866, the first what linked

Valentia Island, Ireland, and Heart’s Content, Newfoundland?

3

What did Jean Chalgrin design to honour those who died in the French Revolutionary and

Napoleonic wars?

4

What’s the link between ‘2-46-8 Motorway’ and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird?’

5

Which gangster

was shot dead by police as he left a cinema in Chicago in 1934?

6

Which piece of music was premiered on a barge on the Thames in 1717?

7

Which 1956 Oscar winner was born in Vladivostok in 1920 and died in 1985?

8

At the 1968 Summer Olympics, Hans-Gunnar

Liljenwall, a Swedish pentathlete, achieved which unwanted historical first?

9

Which currency was launched in 2009?

10

Which celestial phenomenon is named after the Roman goddess of dawn and the Greek name for the north wind?

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37

MONTY FRESCO/DAILY MAIL/REX

Many Happy Returns

BORN ON 15 AUGUST

The Princess Royal Viv Groskop on the Queen’s daughter, 65 today

I

f there is any royal who is the republican’s royal of choice, it has to be the Princess Royal. Because she never looks as if she wants to be part of any of it.

She rarely engages in communicating any kind of message to the public, and for the past 65 years of her life, she has largely managed to remain at a distance, private, above it all. There is something in her demeanour that suggests she’d really had enough of all this before it even started. Being third in line to the throne at the time of her birth? Yawn.

Anne’s republican claim to fame is not a bad one: she has married two untitled men and her children do not to carry a title because their father, Mark Phillips, refused an earldom when they married.

On the quiet, Princess Anne has made some major advances for the royals, both 38

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good and bad. Her 1973 wedding to Mark Phillips attracted a huge television audience, paving the way for the Princess Diana spectacle eight years later.

She became the first royal to undergo an embarrassingly public divorce. In some ways it presaged open season on the royal family, leading to the revelations about the marriages of Prince Charles and Prince Andrew. The family accepted that they were going to have to be more transparent. It’s a work in progress.

Anne has distinguished herself in many impressive ways. She is an Olympian (equestrian, Montreal, 1976). She had five points on her licence for driving at 93mph. And she is the first royal with a criminal record – an offence under the Dangerous Dogs Act when her dog Dotty attacked two children in Windsor Great

Princess Anne at the opening ceremony of the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, where she was a member of Britain’s equestrian team

Park. Behind the unchanging “ultimate lady” coiffure, Anne is nails.

Let’s not forget the kidnap attempt she survived in 1974 when a man shot her bodyguard and two other people (all survived). Ian Ball stopped his Ford Escort next to Princess Anne’s limousine on Pall Mall and fired a gun. It later emerged he had a ransom demand of £2m, which he was planning to donate to the NHS. When he asked Princess Anne to get out of the car, she replied: “Not bloody likely,” and escaped out of the other side while a passer-by disarmed the gunman.

Republicans don’t salute, but if they did... Don’t go changing, Anne. Especially not the hair. Happy birthday. µ Viv Groskop’s Edinburgh Festival show ‘Say Sorry to the Lady’ is at The Stand until 30 August; edfringe.com

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