The Oldie magazine - February issue (396) by oldieproduction

GYLES BRANDRETH ON BARBARA WINDSOR MY DREAM HOTEL

MAUREEN LIPMAN

February 2021 | £4.95 | www.theoldie.co.uk | Issue 396

Dirk Bogarde at 100 By Roger Lewis

My bedside companions – Barry Humphries Wasn’t he so loverly? – Wilfrid Hyde-White by Simon Williams John le Carré, my German teacher – Ferdinand Mount

Give The Oldie for £2 an issue See p11

RIP John le Carré page 20

Happy Hunter turns 85 page 24

30 Town Mouse Tom Hodgkinson 13 My uncle gave peace to the 31 Country Mouse world Anthony Lipmann Giles Wood 14 Dirk Bogarde’s lucky 33 Postcards from the Edge second act Roger Lewis Mary Kenny 18 How the dandy was born 34 Letter from America Shaun Cole & Miles Lambert Philip Delves Broughton 20 John le Carré, my German 36 Profitable Wonders teacher Ferdinand Mount James Le Fanu 22 Happy with dementia 38 School Days Alan Crawford Sophia Waugh 24 Hunter Davies at 85 39 Home Front Alice Pitman Valerie Grove 40 God Sister Teresa 26 Hats off to Napoleon and 40 Funeral Service: Wellington Justin Davies Lord Ogmore 28 Wasn’t Wilfrid Hyde-White James Hughes-Onslow so loverly? Simon Williams 41 The Doctor’s Surgery 38 Augustus John, my Theodore Dalrymple grandfather Rebecca John 42 Readers’ Letters 63 My bedside table 45 I Once Met… Ken Dodd Barry Humphries John Brealey 45 Memory Lane 59 Media Matters 5 The Old Un’s Notes Stephen Glover 7 Bliss on Toast 60 Words and Stuff Prue Leith Johnny Grimond 9 Gyles Brandreth’s Diary 60 Rant: Inept typing 10 Grumpy Oldie Man Liz Hodgkinson Matthew Norman 61 History David Horspool 12 Olden Life: What was a 87 Crossword sixpence? Gill Hallifax 89 Bridge Andrew Robson 12 Modern Life: What is QAnon? 89 Competition Richard Godwin Tessa Castro

Features

Regulars

Moray House, 23/31 Great Titchfield Street, London W1W 7PA www.theoldie.co.uk

S u bs hotline Call 033 0 3 3 3 019 5

ABC circulation figure Jan-Jun 2020: 47,170

Editor Harry Mount Sub-editor Penny Phillips Art editor John Bowling Books editor Claudia FitzHerbert Supplements editor Liz Anderson Publisher James Pembroke Patron saint Jeremy Lewis At large Richard Beatty Our Old Master David Kowitz

Loverly Wilfrid Hyde-White page 28

98 Ask Virginia Ironside

Books 47 Benedict XVI: A Life: Volume I: Youth in Nazi Germany to the Second Vatican Council 1927-1965, by Peter Seewald Melanie McDonagh 49 Intensive Care: A GP, a Community & COVID-19, by Gavin Francis Richard Davenport-Hines 49 Some Body to Love, by Alexandra Heminsley Kate Kellaway 51 The Language of Thieves, by Martin Puchner Tibor Fischer 53 Ending Hunger: The Quest to Feed the World Without Destroying It, by Anthony Warner Rosie Boycott 55 How to Be a Refugee, by Simon May Jane O’Grady 57 The Octopus Man, by Jasper Gibson Sam Leith

Travel 80 Hertfordshire’s banjoplaying prostitute Maureen Lipman 82 Overlooked Britain: Harlaxton Manor, Lincolnshire Lucinda Lambton Oldie subscriptions ● To place a new order, please visit our website subscribe.theoldie.co.uk ● To renew a subscription, please visit myaccount.theoldie.co.uk ● If urgent, please email help@subscribe. theoldie.co.uk, or write to: Oldie Subscriptions Rockwood House 9-16 Perrymount Road Haywards Heath West Sussex RH16 3DH

84 Taking a Walk: Thames Marshes and Swanscombe Patrick Barkham 85 On the Road: Roger Allam Louise Flind

Arts 64 Amazon Prime: The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone Harry Mount 64 Radio Valerie Grove 65 Television Roger Lewis 66 Music Richard Osborne 67 Golden Oldies Rachel Johnson 68 Exhibitions Huon Mallalieu

Pursuits 69 Gardening David Wheeler 69 Kitchen Garden Simon Courtauld 70 Cookery Elisabeth Luard 70 Restaurants James Pembroke 71 Drink Bill Knott 72 Sport Jim White 72 Motoring Alan Judd 74 Digital Life Matthew Webster 74 Money Matters Margaret Dibben 76 Getting Dressed: Geraldine James Brigid Keenan 79 Bird of the Month: Great Tit John McEwen Advertising For display, contact Paul Pryde on 020 3859 7095 or Melissa Arancio on 07305 010659 For classified, contact Kami Jogee on 07983 097477 News-stand enquiries mark.jones@newstrademarketing.co.uk Front cover Everett Collection Inc/Alamy

The Oldie February 2021 3

The Old Un’s Notes How to buy The Oldie under the tier system Thanks to the tiers, buying individual copies of The Oldie may not be quite as easy as usual at the moment. There are three simple ways of getting round this: 1. Order a print edition for £4.95 (free p & p within

Happy 60th, Avengers!

Sixty years ago, on 7th January 1961, ABC Television premiered their latest drama show. The Avengers was devised as a vehicle for the up-andcoming Ian Hendry, playing a doctor pursuing his wife’s murderers. The station’s head of drama, Sydney Newman, also told the series creator Brian Clemens, ‘We’ve got to have a CIA man or a Scotland Yard man.’ The result was the enigmatic secret agent John Steed, played by Patrick Macnee. Only three complete episodes of series one survive. They showcase a world closer to a black-and-white Edgar Wallace B-film than a realm of vintage Bentleys and

the UK) at: www.magsdirect.co.uk. 2. Order a digital edition at www.pocketmags.com for £2.99.Then scroll down to the Special Issues section. 3. Give a 12-issue print subscription for just £24 and also receive a free 2021 Oldie calendar. See page 11.

Sign up for The Oldie e-newsletter and Barry Cryer’s jokes Under the tier system, the Old Un is producing extra pieces every day on The Oldie website, including Barry Cryer’s jokes. Every Friday, we send a newsletter with the best of our

blogs, with a Talking Pictures recommendation. To access it, go to www.theoldie.co.uk and, at the top right of the home page, enter your email address in the white box, above which is written ‘Sign up to our weekly e-newsletter’.

overacting masterminds attempting to rule the world. Clemens thought the early stories reminiscent of No Hiding Place, ITV’s longrunning Scotland Yard detective show – ‘only not as good’. Hendry departed after the first series, thanks to an

Equity strike and his desire to further his cinema career. ABC promoted Macnee to leading man and, by 1962, a somewhat more dandified Steed was partnered by Honor Blackman’s Dr Cathy Gale. Three years later, The Avengers was shot on film, co-starring Diana Rigg as Mrs

Emma Peel. And no guest villain was a match for one of television’s finest double acts.

Among this month’s contributors Barry Humphries (p63) is an unemployed music-hall artiste from Melbourne. An only child with three siblings, he was expelled from Melbourne Comedy Festival (which he and Peter Cook founded) for being funny. Maureen Lipman (p80) was made a Dame in 2020. She’s on Celebrity Gogglebox with Gyles Brandreth and plays Evelyn Plummer in Coronation Street. She is no relation of... Anthony Lipmann (p13) wrote a biography of artist Ernst Dryden. After a lifetime trading elements in the periodic table and learning Tom Lehrer’s song about them, he’s returned to writing. Valerie Grove (p24) has been The Oldie’s radio correspondent since the first issue. She has written biographies of Dodie Smith, Laurie Lee, John Mortimer and Kaye Webb, the children’s-books editor.

The golfer and commentator Peter Alliss was a strange mixture of relaxation and anxiety. Alliss, who sadly died aged 89 in December, was superrelaxed on the microphone and the fairway. But, on the green, his nervous putting stopped him from winning all the titles he deserved. On the page, though, he was wonderfully relaxed. ‘I published a book by Peter Alliss called Bedside Golf,’ says Bloomsbury publisher Robin Baird-Smith. ‘He wrote it by dictating the text into a machine as he drove his Rolls from Birmingham to London. It was so successful that we went on to publish More Bedside Golf. That also sold well – so we went on to Yet More Bedside Golf. Between the three, we sold 200,000 copies.’ Easy does it! ‘What’s that in old money?’ ‘Old money’ is what divides oldies, who The Oldie February 2021 5

Important stories you may have missed Magistrates order ‘prolific’ beggar not to ask for money Leamington Observer

Two men arrested for toothbrush head theft Dundee Courier & Advertiser Two people arrested in Yorkshire after trying to steal a goat Yorkshire Evening Post £15 for published contributions

NEXT ISSUE The March issue is on sale on 10th February 2021. FREE SAMPLE COPY If you have a friend who would like a free sample of The Oldie, tell them to call 0800 8565867. GET THE OLDIE APP Go to App Store or Google Play Store. Search for Oldie Magazine and then pay for app.

KATHRYN LAMB

OLDIE BOOKS The Best of The Oldie Cartoons 1992-2018, The Oldie Annual 2020 and other Oldie books are available at: www. theoldie.co.uk/readerscorner/shop Free p&p. OLDIE NEWSLETTER Go to the Oldie website; put your email address in the red SIGN UP box. 6 The Oldie February 2021

‘I cleaned out your wallet for you, but the engine is still running a bit rough’

remember sixpences (see Olden Life, page 12), from the post-decimal generation, born after D-day, when the country went decimal – 50 years ago, on 15th February 1971. The skill of calculating in £sd was a hurdle in our schooldays. At seven, we might have to subtract four pounds, 17 shillings and tenpencethree-farthings from nine pounds, eight shillings and fivepence-ha’penny. (Answer below.*) Farthings were a complication but we were fond of the coins, with a wren on the back, obsolete since 1961. When Jim Callaghan led us into decimalisation, and Ted Heath set it in train, everyone suspected prices would go up. The Oldie’s Valerie Grove was appointed price-watcher at the Evening Standard. ‘Readers would send in their complaints – “A pork pie in my local café cost 1s 3d last week. Overnight, it became eight new pence!” – and I would report their indignation,’ Valerie recalls. ‘But in the office we cheered, since adding up our expenses became 100-per-cent simpler overnight. ‘It’s hard to shake off that £sd mentality. Fifty years on, a first-class stamp will cost 85p from 1st January 2021. We oldies say not ‘Blimey – 85p?’ but ‘Sixteen shillings and sixpence, to send one letter!’ For about a century from 1840, the cost of sending a billet-doux remained much the same: one penny or

twopence. But decimal coinage got us accustomed to inflation. By 1973, and the oil crisis, everything from petrol to house prices shot up, and we had to accept doublefigure mortgage interest rates. D-day prepared us for a new era in our attitudes to money. In only one respect has there been no inflation whatever. We still teach the old nursery rhymes to our grandchildren: Simple Simon still hasn’t got a penny to pay the pieman, Johnny still has ‘but a penny a day’ because he can’t work any faster, and the bells of St Martin’s still say ‘You owe me five farthings’. Hooray. *Answer: Four pounds, ten shillings and sixpencethree-farthings. Memories of an earlier age of supermarkets echo through Tim Sainsbury’s new memoir, Among the Supporting Cast. Sainsbury, 88, is a

philanthropist and former Tory MP. From 1962 to 1974, he worked for the family business founded by his great-grandparents in 1869. When he started there in 1962, Christian names weren’t used: ‘Everyone called the doorman Jack, but all others were addressed formally.’ But there had to be a way to distinguish between the six Sainsburys working in the business. So they were known by their Christian names: Tim became Mr Timothy. Things got complicated when his Uncle Robert joined the business – and the chief accountant was called Mr

Sainsburys: Mr Alan, Mr RJ, Mr JD, Mr James, Mr Simon, Mr Timothy and Mr David

Roberts. So Uncle Bob became Mr RJ. It was trickier when Tim’s brother, John, joined when his grandfather, Mr John, was still in the business – the latter was also known as Jack to his wife and JB to his friends. So brother John became Mr JD. ‘Christian names started to be used only in the mid1970s,’ writes Mr Tim. ‘I never

even knew that my secretary for seven years, Miss Filby, was called Mavis until after she married and left in 1974 to become a mother.’

‘It’ll be nice to go out and drink sensibly again’ A cartoon from Draw the Coronavirus, a new book in aid of the Cartoon Museum

Phew! At least in Are You Being Served? there were only two Graces working at Grace Brothers – Young Mr Grace and his older brother, Old Mr Grace. You couldn’t dream it up. The Museum of London has put out a call for contributions to its latest collection. The Museum is after your COVID-19 nightmares. Called Guardians of Sleep (a phrase taken from Freud’s writing), this collection marks the first time dreams are being actively sought by a museum. Disappointingly, they won’t be captured in a corked bottle but will be written down. The Museum admits, ‘We have no images directly related to the project at this time.’ But there are plenty of dreams already portrayed in museums worldwide. Reveries include Salvador Dali’s 1944 Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second before Waking and Goya’s 1799 The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. If you want your bedtime fantasies to be part of the collection, register interest at info@museumofdreams.org before 15th January. They’ll be happy to put you in touch with a member of the

Museums of Dreams network. In the meantime, sleep well. Eton Vice-Provost Dr Andrew Gailey has had a gruelling time of it recently. He’s just presided over the disciplinary hearing of Will Knowland, the master who was sacked from the school for refusing to take down a YouTube video on masculinity. Dr Gailey, housemaster to Prince William and Prince Harry, retires from Eton this year after 40 years at the school. Despite these busy times, he’s managed to write a biography, Portrait of a Muse: Frances Graham, Edward Burne-Jones and the Pre-Raphaelite Dream. Together with her father, Frances Graham – later Lady Horner (1854-1940) – created one of the greatest private

prue leith

Bliss on Toast

Quick, easy, comforting and delicious suppers

Poached berries with Greek yoghurt and honey on warm waffle

would destroy this generation – but Graham opened Mells up to the new generation. Evelyn Waugh came to write, and Siegfried Sassoon to

Graham by Burne-Jones

collections of Pre-Raphaelite and Old Master art. She also became the muse and model of Edward Burne-Jones – then the most famous artist of the day. She became a major patron of the arts, launching the careers of Lutyens, Eric Gill and William Nicholson. At Mells, their Somerset house, Burne-Jones’s paintings and needlework hung alongside her father’s Bellinis. After Burne-Jones’s death, Graham mixed art and pre-war politics, becoming the ‘High Priestess of the Souls’ (who included Curzon and Balfour among their ranks). She was the confidante of Liberal Cabinet Ministers and, in Asquith, a future prime minister. The Second World War

explore his Catholicism. She also welcomed a young Cambridge student en route to the diplomatic service – called Donald Maclean.

2021 OLDIE CARTOON CALENDAR

Just £3 inc. P&P*

for a late Christmas present A cartoon for every month of the year!

*Please add £2 per overseas copy

TO ORDER

go to www.theoldie.co.uk/readers-corner/shop

The Oldie February 2021 7

Gyles Brandreth’s Diary

Barbara Windsor’s magnificent boobs

RIP my friend – who loved Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey When the great Barbara Windsor died in December, I appeared on one or two radio and TV programmes to share my memories of the bubbly national treasure. We first met in the 1970s and became good friends, working on TV and in pantomime together. In 1979, I ghosted a fun book for her: Barbara Windsor’s Book of Boobs. It was a scrapbook of misprints and errors from newspapers and small ads. Barbara supplied some cheeky photographs of herself in glamorous underwear to illustrate the book and came up with her own strapline for the front cover: ‘My boobs will give everyone hours of fun.’ I had the book with me when I turned up for one of the obituary interviews. ‘God,’ cried the young producer in alarm, ‘you’re not going to take that into the studio, are you?’ ‘Not if you don’t want me to,’ I said. ‘You mustn’t,’ bleated the young man. ‘How terrible for her having to do that sort of thing.’ Well, he didn’t know Barbara, who was of her generation and never apologised for the saucy seaside-postcard bawdiness of the Carry On films and told me (often) that she liked the fact that people thought she was ‘a bit of all right’. ‘It’s nice to be fancied,’ she said. Until she met her third and final husband, Scott, Barbara wasn’t too lucky in love. I once asked her to describe her ideal man to me and she said, ‘This’ll surprise you – one of the Krays.’ ‘One of the twins?’ I asked, amazed, knowing both were murderers and one was certified insane. ‘Oh no, not Ronnie or Reggie. Their elder brother, Charlie. He was everything I found attractive in a man: gentle, giggly, happy-go-lucky. But ours were hardly

Gyles was responsible for Barbara’s boobs in 1979

romantic dates because, for some reason, Charlie always had a mate in tow – Limehouse Willy or Big Scotch Pat.’ The reason Barbara and I got on so well was that we had a special friend in common, Kenneth Williams. ‘I loved Kenny,’ she said. ‘He taught me so much. If I didn’t know a word, I never used a dictionary. I just gave Kenny a call. I always felt safe with Kenny.’ She loved Charles Hawtrey, too: ‘My favourite performer in all the Carry Ons. He was so skilful. His timing was immaculate. He lived in Deal, smoked Weights, and drank too much. He was great.’ And Danny La Rue. ‘I loved Danny. He was the best. He introduced me to Noël Coward, you know.’ Sex, Barbara used to say, was essential, ‘but it can’t half get you into trouble’. She’d had the heartbreaks and abortions to prove it. ‘Truth is, most of my best mates have been gay.’ In my last diary, I was encouraging Oldie readers to join me on Twitter. I have changed my mind. Don’t. At least, don’t unless you have the hide of a rhinoceros and are impervious to criticism. Just before Christmas, I stumbled into a Twitter storm and I am still recovering. It was just one tweet that did all the damage. My friend Andrew had been in touch to tell me that someone at work had asked him this the other day, and he thought I’d want to join him in his despair. His colleague wrote, ‘Andrew, do I spell it “of” or “off”, if I’m writing “I could of done better”?’ Innocently, amused, without thinking, I shared Andrew’s message with my Twitter followers. What a mistake to

make. Within moments, the Twittersphere exploded. Within minutes, several thousand counter-tweets had rained down on me. I was accused, variously, of being ‘a pompous pedant’, ‘a linguistic Nazi’ and ‘a cruel snob’, who had chosen to publicly humiliate someone who was simply asking for help. I should be ashamed of myself. I sort of was. I crept back on to Twitter to explain that I was sure Andrew had answered the question by explaining to his work colleague that the ‘of’ in ‘I could of done better’ was simply a mishearing of ‘have’ and that it should be ‘have’ rather than either ‘of’ or ‘off’. Never apologise, never explain. ‘Who do you think you are, you stuck-up tw*t?’ thundered my Twitter trolls. ‘Language evolves. Suck it up, mate.’ Of course, some of my Twitter followers shared Andrew’s anguish and kindly came to my defence. One even tweeted to tell how he had worked with someone who was struggling to spell a word over the phone and explained, ‘Q … as in cucumber.’ He’s now hiding down in the air-raid shelter with me. Language evolves. Attitudes change. 15th January marks the centenary of the birth of that lovely character actor Frank Thornton, best remembered as Captain Peacock in Are You Being Served? and Truly Truelove in Last of the Summer Wine. Frank died an enviable death in 2013: he just went to bed one night and didn’t wake up. He left me his considerable collection of limericks. I don’t dare share them with you, let alone post them on Twitter. Why? Frank’s limericks pack laughs anatomical into space that’s quite economical, but the good ones I’ve seen so seldom are clean and the clean ones so seldom are comical. If you dare, follow Gyles on @GylesB1 The Oldie February 2021 9

Grumpy Oldie Man

Hypochondriacs are sometimes right I really couldn’t hear properly – and it was all Apple’s fault matthew norman

This chronic hypochondriac’s medical history, much like that of any other, is laden with false alarms. There is no more the space than the audience appetite for a full inventory. But a few examples may hint at the bewilderment with which a sequence of physicians have reacted over 40 years to certain enquiries. One, informed by my 20-year-old self of the immediate need for a heart transplant, was willing to refer me, she said after a careful examination, albeit to a psychiatrist rather than a cardiologist. Another, despite my presenting with the clearest of symptoms, brusquely brushed aside my concerns about pre-eclampsia. My private guy in Knightsbridge is infinitely more indulgent. He once handed me a signed note reading, ‘You do not have cancer,’ reassuringly rejecting a demand to append the suffix ‘yet’. Because of a dismal turn on the personal-finance front, however, I have become obliged to limit consultations to an annual event. I collate the potentially lethal complaints until the total hits 17. Having rattled through nine or ten over half an hour, he murmurs something about having a full waiting room. I respond by asking if he has hired a security officer since my last visit. He says he has done no such thing. In that event, I tell him, I’ll be going nowhere until we’re done with 17. But even his ungodly patience has waned of late, owing partly to fatigue, and partly also to the COVID-driven pressure to spend as little time as possible with patients. So it was that, a few days ago, I endured the nihilistically pointless ritual of requesting an appointment at the NHS surgery. In the time of plague, these doctors will see almost nobody. If you pitched up carrying a leg sliced off moments before 10 The Oldie February 2021

in a freak urban-thresher accident, the receptionist would tell you to hop home, put it on ice and ring 111. They will, however, consent to phoning back – and, several hours later, one did. ‘So what is it today?’ he asked in the familiarly jaded tone. ‘Well, doctor,’ I said, ‘I think it’s an acoustic neuroma.’ ‘Why do you think that?’ I referred to the occasional but profound hearing impairment that had been plaguing me for a while. ‘And when do you notice it?’ ‘Oddly enough, it seems to happen only when I’m walking in the park. I’m listening to something cheery on the headphones – Fauré’s Requiem, usually – when suddenly I can barely hear the music. Is it’ – I repeated my reference to a usually benign tumour pressing on the eardrum – ‘an acoustic neuroma?’ After a vexed and lengthy pause, he wearily relocated his larynx. ‘That’s very unlikely. But if it happens again,’ he said, ‘check your phone screen. Is there anything else?’ I made the traditional request for liquid diamorphine. Like many colleagues down the years, he was disinclined to prescribe heroin purely for the merriment. Mystified by his advice though I certainly was, I took it during a subsequent stroll, when the aural disturbance came during the first track of the album condensed here for brevity to Ziggy Stardust. ‘It was cold and it rained,’ sang

‘I’m going to miss not being hugged’

David Bowie, in Five Years, his suitably upbeat number about the death of the planet. ‘So I felt like an actor. I thought of Ma, and I…’ Barely a sound. I pulled the phone from its pocket in keeping with the GP’s counsel, and found a message. After analysing my headphone usage over the last week, the message related, Apple had decided to restrict the volume for my protection. Nanny statism has always struck me as a myth, propounded by Ayn Randstyle social Darwinists to justify their preference for minimal taxation of the rich over anyone’s doing anything to help the poor escape systemic poverty. Corporate nannysim, on the other hand, is evidently real. For the protection of my soul, for example, if not my ears, Virgin Media now requires me to enter a four-digit pin code to access certain recorded shows. What moral turpitude it imagines might be inflicted by University Challenge is a mystery. Is Virgin Media spooked by the prospect of Paxo whipping off his knick-knacks during the starter for ten, and performing some animist penis puppetry throughout the picture round? Hearing, like moral sensitivities, used to be ours to do with as we desire. If this happened to involve the deranged self-infliction of tinnitus, by deployment of a cotton bud to push a piece of Roger & Gallet sandalwood soap on to the eardrum in the inevitably doomed bid to remove it, that choice was solely mine. No longer. From beyond the grave, Steve Jobs is fretting about my auditory canals. Touching as that is, and however gratifying his spectral effort to fill space vacated by face-to-face GP appointments, it’s none of his beeswax. Or indeed his earwax. If I require someone to nag continually about excessive volume from Bluetooth headphones, that function is more than adequately fulfilled, thank you kindly, by my mother.

Forgotten someone’s Xmas present? Give The Oldie for just £2 an issue Offer closes 31st January 2021

The Ghost of Christmas Past will redeem you by letting you give

12 issues of The Oldie for £24 – a saving of £35.40* AND we will send you a FREE 2021 Oldie calendar

FREE

3 WAYS TO ORDER YOUR GIFT SUBSCRIPTION(S) Complete the form below and return it with your payment to:

Freepost RTYE-KHAG-YHSC, Oldie Publications Ltd, Rockwood House, 9-16 Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath RH16 3DH

CALL 0330 333 0195 OR VISIT subscribe.theoldie.co.uk

USE OFFER CODE: SP022021

I would like to give a subscription(s)

DETAILS NAME OF DONOR

We will also send you a gift card to personalise and pass on.

ADDRESS

Please choose a start issue:

POSTCODE

PHONE:

*FOR OVERSEAS SUBSCRIPTIONS simply add the following per subscription to the above rates: £2 for Europe; £3 USA; £4 the rest of the world. **This offer is applicable only to recipients who have not subscribed for six months or more.

RECIPIENT NAME 1 ADDRESS

March (on sale 10th Feb – reply by 25th Jan) April (on sale 10th March – reply by 31st Jan)

POSTCODE

PAYMENT DETAILS – choose one of two ways to pay 1. BY CHEQUE: I ENCLOSE MY CHEQUE FOR £____________ PAYABLE TO OLDIE PUBLICATIONS LTD OR

PHONE

2. BY CREDIT OR DEBIT CARD:

RECIPIENT NAME 2

PLEASE CHARGE MY VISA

ADDRESS

CARD NO:

MASTERCARD

MAESTRO

WITH £

POSTCODE

START DATE

EXPIRY DATE

MAESTRO ISSUE NO

PHONE

SIGNATURE

RECIPIENT NAME 3

SP022021

ADDRESS

EMAIL PHONE

DATE

POSTCODE

The Oldie is published 13 times a year, which means a 12-issue subscription runs for 48 weeks. The Oldie collects your data so that we can fulfil your subscription. We may also, from time to time, send you details of Oldie offers, events and competitions, but you always have a choice and can opt out by emailing us at help@subscribe.theoldie.co.uk. We do not share with, or sell your data to, third parties. Details you share with us will be managed as described in our Privacy Policy here: https://www.theoldie.co.uk/about-us/privacy The TheOldie OldieOctober Month 2016 11

what was a sixpence? A sixpence bought a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, a paper full of chips and a large ice cream. For sixpence, you could buy a Dandy and a Beano and still have twopence left for a small ice cream. You could use it in the first parking meters and it would pay for binoculars at the theatre. Even theatre programmes cost sixpence. Bus conductors called it a tanner and two sixpences made a bob – a shilling – a

whole shilling, as some children’s books called it. Visiting aunties gave you sixpence; sometimes a whole shilling, if you’d behaved well. Then came decimalisation, on 15th February 1971. A precocious little boy called Sebastian was heard on the radio each morning, singing, ‘Do your decimals now,’ and explaining how they worked. For a short time, the sixpence was retained as legal currency, but the massive devaluation caused by the change in coinage robbed it of power and then of its usefulness. I have no academic knowledge of

economics, but I’m greatly experienced in the practical variety enforced on every householder, car driver and citizen. And I have found that the buying power of sixpence is now the equivalent of a pound. I find this strange, simple calculation oddly comforting. If a pound is sixpence, the 50p piece is threepence. How suitable that it has sides like the old threepenny bit. Other words that have gone are the florin (10p), the half-crown (now the equivalent of £5) and the penny. Divide the price of your purchases by 40 and you arrive at the price you would probably have paid in 1960 or thereabouts. A good lunch in a decent pub, for example, costs about £25 now. In The Good Food Guide for 1963 – kept out of interest – a good meal in a pleasant restaurant was about 12/6 (62.5p). My first car cost £140 in 1963, second-hand. Now the equivalent is around £5,600. Petrol was then 4/6 (22.5p) a gallon; it’s now £9 a gallon. What does the pound coin do? It buys a little time in a parking meter, as a sixpence used to do. It can be used in a cut-price shop for sets of soaps. A reel of cotton, if you can find one, costs more than a pound. A one-pound coin really isn’t much use and, once broken, gives hardly any change. Six big pennies were worth something. In one flat I lived in, four pennies heated enough water for a bath. Gill Hallifax

The deep state? Oh, you know, the Clintons, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, George Soros, various Hollywood actors. The ones who had recently orchestrated the massacre in Las Vegas that killed 58. The ones who had a secret plan to set up a sort of techno-dystopian global communist state. The ones who like to cut up babies and wear their faces as masks. The ones Trump was trying to sort out. The ‘storm’, said Q, was coming. Thus began the QAnon phenomenon, the most widely believed and shared conspiracy theory of the modern age. Q takes in elements of pretty much every conspiracy theory ever. You know the sort of thing. Jews run the world.

Black Lives Matter is run by Marxist paedophiles. Hollywood is a nest of Satan-worshippers. Stuff about Atlantis and the pyramids, too. As Q issued more cryptic dispatches and his online followers racked up millions of clicks trying to interpret them, QAnon metastasised. The death of Jeffrey Epstein was soon folded in; anti-vaxxers and anti-5G campaigners found common cause. Donald Trump, cast as the hero in this grand drama, gleefully fanned the flames. By 2018, supporters were showing up at his rallies wearing Q paraphernalia. The social-media hashtag #SavetheChildren began to be used by

A sixpence could buy two copies of the Times in 1950

what is QAnon? QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory that started with a 2017 post on a website by an anonymous person under the pseudonym ‘Q’ – thus the name QAnon. It was on 28th October 2017 that this person, calling themselves ‘Q Clearance Patriot’, popped up on the anonymous internet message board 4chan. Q claimed to be an American government official. He (or she?) had important ‘crumbs’ to share: President Trump was orchestrating a ‘countercoup against members of the deep state’. 12 The Oldie February 2021

Trump has never convincingly dissociated himself from QAnon. His refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 Presidential election has strengthened its core claims in its supporters’ views. Meanwhile, the Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene became the first QAnon supporter to win a seat in the US House of Representatives. And COVID-19 has provided optimal conditions for Q to go global. The Dominic Cummings Barnard Castle episode was somehow folded into the British version. The best advice if someone in your life is going Q? Listen respectfully. Be kind. Loneliness and isolation are the biggest gateways to belief in QAnon. Richard Godwin

groups of Q-supporting (often heavily armed) parents on social media, apparently sincere in their belief that Hillary Clinton wanted to eat their children. They were seemingly unaware or unconcerned that Q had emerged on a site notorious for child pornography. QAnon is like Japanese knotweed, impossible to get rid of. Ridicule and persecution only entrench the beliefs. A common refrain of Q followers is ‘when I started doing my own research…’ QAnon followers are likely to be old. Young people tend to more savvy when it comes to supposedly top-secret, classified, incriminating documents found online. They also don’t tend to use Facebook any more – which has been one of the main disseminators of the QAnon worldview.

My uncle gave peace to the world Six decades after the world of duffel coats and ration books passed into history, the peace sign of the 1950s lives on. Conceived at a kitchen table in Kensington, it may be the most powerful non-religious icon in the world, and yet few remember who created it or what was its intended meaning. In fact, it was a collaboration: Gerald Holtom (1914-1985) was recognised for its design, and Eric Austen (1922-1999), my uncle, was credited with making the first lapel badges out of ceramic. Eric’s daughter, Gea, recalls, ‘I remember sitting with my father at a wooden kitchen table and he had sheets of paper with designs. He asked me which ones I liked. Because my father made pottery as well as being a primaryschool teacher, he decided to hand-make small badges from ceramic in his favourite combination, black and white.’ This Lennon-and-McCartney team of peaceniks had met as conscientious objectors on a farm in Norfolk. Eric was born near North Pickenham, the RAF base where the US Thor H-bomb ballistic nuclear missiles were first deployed on British soil in 1958. An Olympically sensitive man (in his own words ‘a nervous nelly’), Uncle Eric worried for the world. In the end, both men’s personal anxiety spoke for a generation. Gerald Holtom described the feeling: ‘I was in despair. Deep despair. I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya’s peasant before the firing squad. I formalised the drawing

into a line and put a circle round it.’ The sign also incorporates the semaphore signs for N (nuclear) and D (disarmament), which represented the nascent CND. That first march in 1958 was from London to Aldermaston, home

Uncle Eric (right) designed the first peace badges, above

to the Atomic Weapons Establishment. The sign might not have developed its enduring legacy were it not for the badges – essential to its meaning. The high melting point of ceramic was calculated to survive the nuclear inferno. Where the Hiroshima bomb had left the empty shadows of vaporised humans, there would now be a sign. In 1960, when some of his friends were arrested for anti-nuclear activities, Eric fell ill with a mysterious illness his daughter attributes to poisoning. For six weeks, in the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, he held on between life and death, uncertain of his recovery, and contemplated his fate by gathering quotations of world wisdom from all literature. In later life, he compiled these into 40 volumes of self-made illustrated books. But by 1960 his work had been done – he had, with Holtom, given the world the peace sign. Extinction Rebellion is the current generation’s expression of anxiety. It grapples with the issue of managing a movement that has many followers but no leader. As for its sign, the X, denoting ‘Extinction’, as part of an egg-timer in a circle representing the planet is powerful, but the sign itself is strangely nihilistic. The peace sign today is rolled out for almost any demonstration at all, copyright-free, and infinitely adaptable. It has lasted because it expresses the best of us; the wish for a fairer, more peaceful, safer world. I’d like to think so. Anthony Lipmann The Oldie February 2021 13

Roger Lewis celebrates the centenary of a sad, dark actor who matured into a happy writer

Dirk Bogarde’s lucky second act

always liked Dirk Bogarde’s earlier Pinewood performances. Particularly when he was Simon Sparrow in the Doctor films (‘What’s the bleeding time?’ – ‘Ten past ten, sir’; ‘Big breaths’ – ‘Yeth, and I’m only thixteen’). The other medical students, Donald Sinden and Kenneth More among them, hare about, delivering their lines at a breezy clip, but Bogarde underplays – he is almost brooding, certainly priggish. The role was an ‘absolute turning point’, he agreed later, ‘which secured me in my profession.’ By 1955, Bogarde was billed as the Idol of the Odeons. Cinema managers voted him ‘the World’s Greatest Money-Drawing Star’. Nevertheless, his dark sullenness quickly edged into mannerism and camp. He was the first to admit this. Catching a clip of The Singer Not the Song at a BAFTA tribute, he was astonished to see ‘a very poovy person in black leather making eyes at John Mills’. Bogarde was always ornate. One is very aware of him as an actor – his lustrous dark hair, posture and fluttering hands. He never troubled to conceal his vanities. There is a stagey emphasis. He liked to stand out – expected deference; was histrionic. Daphne du Maurier, for instance, was appalled at the way Bogarde portrayed her husband, General Browning, as ‘a poofy waiter’ in A Bridge Too Far. Yet, alongside the excessive and artificial performances (Ill Met By Moonlight, Song Without End, Modesty

14 The Oldie February 2021

Blaise), Bogarde could be immensely detailed, subtle, emotionally true, conveying what David Warner, who co-starred with him in Providence, called ‘an ice-thin veneer of unhappiness’. After The Servant, Accident and Darling, however, Bogarde was encouraged to take himself rather too seriously. The screenplays of Harold Pinter, in particular, brought out a resentment and malice in his characterisations that never went away. The mingled joy of Bogarde’s many volumes of autobiography and letters is that we see how, behind the brittle, over-urbane façade he created for himself on screen, Bogarde was a spoilt little uber-bitch in real life also, prickly and impatient and not unlike his own description of film critic Alexander Walker as ‘a stupid old faggot’. He was born a century ago, on 28th March 1921, as plain Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde, the family allegedly descending from Anne of Cleves. His father was a Fleet Street art editor and, after a brief period in Sussex, the future actor was sent to be educated in Glasgow, where he lodged with impoverished (maternal) relatives. There was a stint at drawing schools in

‘Guests were fed cold Heinz Spaghetti on a silver salver & gossiped about mercilessly’

London, where he painted the scenery for student shows. Bogarde’s debut was as an extra in a George Formby film, Come On, George, in 1939. Life thus far had taught him that ‘being happy and obliging and fond of everyone was a sign of weakness’. ‘Rank wants me for something,’ he told his sister in 1945, but he was never to be jubilant about his career. ‘I DETEST the work, I detest the job, and most of the time I detest the people,’ he remarked sweepingly of the commercial cinema, which he felt for some reason was far beneath him. Bogarde dreaded the thought of becoming like Richard Burton, who has ‘the charm of a dead baby’, or Alan Bates (Alice, as Bogarde called him), whom he deemed ‘as virile and sexual as a packet of Kleenex’.

AF ARCHIVE/ALAMY

Doctor in love? Bogarde with Brigitte Bardot in Doctor at Sea (1955)

He thought the problem could be solved by his leaving England in 1969 to find ‘more satisfying work’ in Europe, where he reported for duty with Luchino Visconti, Alain Resnais, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Yet surely Bogarde’s notorious Von Aschenbach in Death in Venice isn’t a patch on his performance, a decade earlier, in Victim, with Dennis Price, which followed ‘the break-up of a man’s marriage and life owing to the fact he is flawed by homosexual tendencies’ (Bogarde’s own summary). The Visconti classic, by contrast, is simply a lot of snuffling and wincing and staggering around the canals in a white suit. Bogarde flaps a napkin and sips at his soup to signify the suffering and

fastidious artistic soul. I certainly prefer his Nazi in The Night Porter: as Bogarde puts it, ‘being straddled by beloved Miss Rampling with an entire Italian crew watching and eating pizza’. After a spell in Rome, Bogarde and his boyfriend – or manager, as he insisted on pretending he was – Tony Forwood, who was Glynis John’s ex-husband, bought Le Haut Clermont, a farmhouse in Provence, situated on a hill amongst olive groves. His memoirs tell us much about the restoration and maintenance of this idyllic spot – the haymaking, weeding, watering and raking. Their neighbours, the Attenboroughs, made such a noise squealing in their pool that Bogarde planted a forest of bamboo as a boundary.

Guests, who were fed cold Heinz Spaghetti on a silver salver, and other luminaries were gossiped about mercilessly. Kenneth Tynan wore ‘some plastic python and shoe buckles large enough to frame a Velasquez’ and was mocked for his ‘pink-tinted, stuttering, wet-lipped face’. Glenda Jackson was Glenda Sludge, ‘with feet like a goat-herd’. In fairness, Bogarde did later come to admire her no-nonsense attitude to life (‘bloody marvellous’), unlike Prince Charles (‘he’s really got awful little eyes’), the Queen Mother (‘NOT all chuckles and meringues’) and the Duke of Edinburgh (‘Christ. He’s as jolly as an open coffin’). Even I turned up as prey. ‘Poor Larry O’ – a reference to my Olivier biography. As the film roles began to dry up and all he was offered were parts as elderly sex perverts and schoolmasters, and scripts already rejected by Alec Guinness and John Gielgud, Bogarde turned himself into a bestselling author. Yet it’s the many volumes of autobiography that were shot through with fiction. Bogarde was far from being a reliable narrator of his own life. As John Coldstream, his biographer, says, after quoting a typical bit of boasting about wartime heroics, ‘Dirk never fought in the jungles of Japanese-occupied territory. He consistently romanticised his military career and used others’ experiences as his own.’ His knowledge of Belsen, for example, came from newsreels and ‘what was conjured in that ever-active imagination’. Bogarde’s actual military career amounted to his guarding an empty hotel on the front at Worthing. Despite the lies and evasions (Bogarde had an old-fashioned fear of being exposed as a homosexual – Forwood is patronisingly portrayed in the books as a kind of offstage batman or jobbing gardener), his stuff shot up the bestseller charts. He much enjoyed the trips back to the Connaught for the launch parties and the book-signing tours. Thousands of old ladies whom he imagined kept ‘beech leaves and bluebells in a copper jug’ sent fan letters on Basildon Bond. In 1987, however, Forwood was diagnosed with cancer and, as Bogarde said of the French retreat, ‘We can’t hang on here much longer.’ Bogarde sold the house and his possessions, burnt his papers, The Oldie February 2021 15

GLASSHOUSE IMAGES/PICTORIAL PRESS/DEAGOSTINI/ALAMY

Clockwise from top left: publicity portrait for Modesty Blaise; in The Servant with James Fox; the first volume of his autobiography (1977); poster for The Night Porter (1974)

arranged for the dog to be put down, and ended up in a succession of flats in Kensington and Chelsea, finally coming to roost in ‘a small cabin stuck on top of an Edwardian mansion’ in Cadogan Gardens. He then had a stroke – and soon afterwards Forwood died. ‘The pain is starting right in now,’ he allowed himself to concede. ‘For love it was … is.’ He was never fully candid about this relationship, however, and remained at variance with himself. Helena Bonham Carter, who worked with him in 1988, said of Bogarde, ‘He would always make out he was a macho heterosexual. He was really a hunk of self-denial.’ Barbara Murray recalled, ‘He kissed me on the cheek and pissed off.’ Elaine Stritch was warned, somewhat

unnecessarily, ‘I don’t want any knocking on my door at 3am.’ During the war, Bogarde seemingly had girlfriends but, as a contemporary remarked, ‘We never saw them kissing or anything like that.’ Women were always ‘a sort of camouflage’ – and what’s notable even about the jaunty Doctor films is the way Simon Sparrow, in scene after scene, fends off girls, from Joan Sims, munching an apple, to Brigitte Bardot, nude in the shower.

‘Women were always “a sort of camouflage” … in scene after scene he fends them off ’

When Sue Lawley, after a tetchy Desert Island Discs encounter, concluded, ‘He seemed resentful. The world had done him wrong,’ the chief cause of the overriding sourness was his sexual nature – perhaps anyone’s sexual nature. Barbara Murray was shocked at how ‘he’d talk about the sexual act between a woman and a man with real distaste’. Bogarde would not thank anyone for making the comparison, but his fastidiousness and disdain, his bitterness, misogyny and essential loneliness put me in mind of Kenneth Williams, who also wrote lots of catty letters, who preferred keeping a distance from everyone, who was never temperamentally content – and who had his detractors as well as fans. ‘There was vituperation on his face … I really thought he was a horrible creature,’ said Michael York’s wife, Pat, when she first met Bogarde, who was perhaps punishing her because he’d had a crush on her husband when they’d made Accident, with Pinter and Joseph Losey. Against the odds, though, in his final few years, as he adjusted to living alone, Bogarde, knighted by John Major, revealed or discovered a humility that had up till then seemed lacking. Though he said he found the English ‘petty-minded, mean, spiteful, arrogant, fearful and terrified of anything foreign or unusual’, he was suddenly remarkably free of these traits himself. Despite claiming, ‘I hate social life now,’ he didn’t mind meeting film historians, as ‘I am about the only living relic who remembers Joseph Losey, George Cukor, Luchino Visconti, and now Fassbinder.’ He attended literary luncheons, recorded talking books for the blind, gave talks to schools about his (dubious) first-hand knowledge of the Holocaust, and held acting master classes with students at the Old Vic and Guildhall (‘None of them has a hope in hell’). Taxi drivers made a fuss of him and geriatric fans followed him around Tesco: ‘He’s buying tinned tomatoes!’ Bogarde died in May 1999, aged 78, gratefully remembering the luxurious times he’d had aboard transatlantic liners, the servants in Hollywood with white gloves and silver platters, the locations in snowy Austria, and the people he’d cherished, such as Judy Garland, Ava Gardner, Graham Sutherland and Noël Coward. ‘A lost world. But aren’t you glad that we had it? … It was all a wonder, wasn’t it? … How fortunate I was … Goodness! How lucky I was.’ The Oldie February 2021 17

The dandy style, created by Beau Brummell, was perfected by Oscar Wilde and Edward VIII. By Shaun Cole and Miles Lambert

Fine and dandy

ALAMY/MANCHESTER ART GALLERY

eorge Bryan ‘Beau’ Brummell (1778-1840) is credited as the ‘original’ dandy. That was in the sense this sartorial style was first understood – as restrained, almost austere elegance, with keen attention to detail. Brummell is seen as the first exemplar of, as French essayist Roland Barthes put it, ‘a man who has decided to radicalise the distinction in men’s clothing by subjecting it to an absolute logic’. This is in contrast to more flamboyant, ostentatious predecessors such as the fop or 18th-century macaroni, who revelled in ornamentation and decoration. Brummell did not invent this restrained style, but drew on that of many English country gentlemen, who by the 1770s chose to wear plain, woollen tailoring for their outdoor activities, both country and urban. Practical considerations for more active wear led to the need for improved construction and fit, and stimulated the development of the already-dominant London tailoring profession. Brummell was described as the ‘dictator of taste’. His ideals, exemplified in his appearance and manners, stressed personal elegance and neatness; panache and languid hauteur; wit and intelligence; and meticulous care and cleanliness. Although clearly some income was required, vast wealth was not. There’s a deep contradiction here. Brummell may be identified as the source of 19th-century, understated, plain but elegant men’s dress and style. Yet he was actually a paradigm of 18th-century conspicuous consumption, requiring admiration and emulation. He lived life as if he were a wealthy aristocrat and he used the fashionable 18 The Oldie February 2021

arena of London’s social high life as his canvas for self-promotion. His emphasis on detail, fit and cleanliness was also prohibitively expensive. His sartorial philosophy – his genius – was the clever acquisition and advocacy of an already established trend towards better fit and construction in tailoring, and towards plainer colours, lack of superfluous ornamentation and greater hygiene. This approach has perpetuated his now legendary significance as an innovator and a pioneer. There are two further phases of dandyism. Like the first, these were tied not only to a particular period but also to key individuals who epitomised this archetype of dandy style and attitude: Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) and Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). In the second wave, ideas and theories about dandyism emerged from the literature of Baudelaire and JulesAmédée Barbey d’Aurevilly (1808-1889). This phase moved away from concerns around fashionable consumption and class towards a more individual bohemianism. Baudelaire equated the artist’s creative talent with the dandy’s

quest for perfection in his 1863 essay The Painter of Modern Life. He emphasised an intellectual stance that elevated both the artist and the dandy (and sometimes artist-dandy) beyond the ordinary existence and daily routine of a general populace. Baudelaire wrote, ‘Dandyism appears especially in those periods of transition when democracy has not yet become all-powerful. Disenchanted and leisured “outsiders” may conceive the idea of establishing a new kind of aristocracy.’ This form of dandyism was exemplified in Britain by Count Alfred d’Orsay (1801-1852), and by the politicians and writers Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) and Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). Novelist William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) was also fascinated by the concept of the dandy, in particular in his two major novels of the later 1840s, Vanity Fair and Pendennis, set in the Regency period. In Vanity Fair’s Jos Sedley, Thackeray created a fastidious and ridiculous figure who reached a certain maturity only when purged of his obsessive and

‘dandified’ behaviour – behaviour lampooned in contemporary caricatures. The third wave, described by the writer Ellen Moers as fin-de-siècle literary dandyism, was concerned both with expressions of style and with new definitions of homosexuality. These coalesced in Oscar Wilde’s infamous trials and the concerns with his self-presentation. The close association with the aesthetic movement, of which Wilde was so much a part, is noted by Moers in her description of the single details – ‘green boutonnière, a bright red waistcoat or a turquoise diamond stud’ – Wilde added to his formal evening wear in the 1890s. Wilde was following earlier, more

creative expressions of aesthetic style. A new approach to dressing in the highest echelons of society was seen in the behaviour and dress style of the Duke of Windsor (1894-1972). In his 1960 memoir, A Family Album (in which he frequently referred to Brummell), he said, ‘All my life, I had been fretting against those constrictions of dress which reflected my family’s world of rigid social convention.’ He contrasted his own adventurous styles with the adherence to sartorial conventions of his father, George V. The Duke of Windsor’s contribution to changes in men’s fashion lay in the context in which he wore certain items – suede shoes in town; single-breasted suits made in fabrics usually reserved for double-breasted. He also followed in the tradition of his grandfather (Edward VII) by paying what some considered too much attention to his dress. The older Edward’s mother, Queen Victoria, wrote to him, ‘We do not wish to control your own tastes and fancies … but we do expect that you will never wear anything extravagant or slang.’ His father, Prince Albert, advised the future Edward VII to avoid ‘the frivolity and foolish vanity of dandyism’. Edward VII dressed well and is credited with popularising a number of innovative garments and styles: the dinner jacket or tuxedo; the homburg hat; a pressed trouser crease; the white dress waistcoat; and particularly a form of tweed, Glenurquhart plaid, which has come to be known as Prince of Wales check. The Duke of Windsor acknowledged his grandfather’s style in his memoirs and continued his stylish innovations.

But he pushed harder against conventions, reflecting and influencing a new generation of men who were trying to move away from the formality and strict protocol of their parents. Writer Colin Campbell compared the older, ‘aristocratic ethic’ of the early19th-century dandy’s consumption, which focused on mannered performance of the self, to the supposed authenticity and naturalness of the Romantic bohemian. ‘Bohemianism’ was seen by Campbell as ‘the attempt to express romantic ideals in a complete way of life’.

‘Edward VII popularised the dinner jacket, the homburg and tweed’ Campbell doesn’t say there was a direct identity link between Romantics and modern consumers. But Joanne Entwistle, another dandy expert, links Romantics with hippies of the 1960s and 1970s – and links dandies with 1960s mods in the theory that mods were modern-day, working-class dandies. The keen attention to detail in the clothing of the first waves of mods in the late 1950s and early 1960s was certainly as slavish as that of Beau Brummell, the original dandy. Shaun Cole and Miles Lambert are the editors of Dandy Style: 250 Years of British Men’s Fashion (Yale University Press, published 9th February). The book accompanies a show at Manchester Art Gallery, opening in November 2021

Top: Beau Brummell. Left: Oscar Wilde; Edward VIII; modern dandy Sebastian Horsley, author of Dandy in the Underworld, 2010. Right: Dandies Preparing for Promenade, 1819 The Oldie February 2021 19

In 1956, before he was a famous spy novelist, David Cornwell came to teach at Eton. Among his pupils was Ferdinand Mount

John le Carré, the German master I

n my last year at school, we have a new German teacher. The top German set are a notoriously tough bunch, and the previous incumbent retired hurt to go and teach in a girls’ school. ‘This one won’t stand any nonsense,’ my tutor prophesies. At first sight, the new master looks quite innocuous, with a mop of corncoloured hair and a soft, hesitant, slightly insinuating voice as though he means you to read between the lines of what he is saying. But from the beginning of the first lesson, he is in control, apparently without making the slightest effort to exert authority. He switches on charm or menace at will, and when the yobs at the back start to make trouble, he delivers merciless and exact parodies of their arrogant, languid voices. For me, David Cornwell also has the marvellous freshness of the born teacher who is teaching his subject for the first time (he is barely 25). He takes me up partly because I am quite good at German but also, I think, because I look a bit down in the mouth. My mother died of cancer at the end of the summer holidays, and in typical English fashion everyone is avoiding the subject – and me; or that’s how it seems. He invites me out to supper in his cottage at Dorney with his elfin-pretty wife, Ann, who illustrates children’s stories. She shows me some of her illustrations, which somehow seem to be rather like the cottage we are in, with their two little boys tumbling round the fireside and David (we are old enough now to call the masters by their Christian names) talking about anything that comes into his head.

20 The Oldie February 2021

One of the things that I like about him is his irreverence towards the school and its encrusted traditions yet at the same time fascination with the place as though he were marking it all down for future use: ‘Really, only Upper Boys are allowed to walk on that side of the road? I heard that but could not believe it and tell me – the business about who is allowed to wear the bottom button of his waistcoat undone … amazing!’ Then we talk about Goethe or Schiller, while Ann puts the children to bed, and I feel I am at home – something I have been sorely in need of lately. His end-of-term reports sometimes have a sharp turn – ‘Ferdy must try to curb the Cyril Connolly tendency in him’ – but I do not resent this; it seems like a sign of intimacy, and in any case by now I am used to being ticked off for being a smartarse. Looking back, I sometimes

wonder why he was just about the only person who could get through to me in my frozen misery, when his own mother had disappeared from his life when he was five years old. But perhaps that was why. As he warned us at the start, David does not stay long at Eton. In fact, he leaves only a term or two after I do. He is going to join the Foreign Office – but somehow word gets round that there is more to it. ‘Corns is going to be a spy.’ Waste of a good teacher, I think. He adopts the pen name John le Carré for his first book, a thriller set in a public school, one or two of the characters being immediately recognisable, notably Grizel Hartley, the ebullient Brunnhilde married to a famous ex-housemaster. He comes back into my life after his tremendous success with The Spy Who Came in from the Cold when he is

Mount and his portrait by his uncle Henry Lamb in 1957, when he was le Carré’s pupil

DAFYDD JONES/AF ARCHIVE/ALAMY

Spy-master: John le Carré in 1965, when The Looking Glass War was published

living near Wells, only a few miles from the Somerset house of my uncle Tony Powell (author of A Dance to the Music of Time), and he and Ann come over to dinner. My Aunt Violet has also invited my mother’s old friend Mary Mayall and her husband Lees, who has the pompous post of Vice-Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps, though a more bonhomous, less stuffy soul would be hard to imagine. By now, Kim Philby has defected in the footsteps of Burgess and Maclean, and the hunt is on for the Fourth and Fifth Men.

‘Did you ever know Philby?’ David asks. ‘Oh yes, I used to meet him with Malcolm Muggeridge, at the Gargoyle before the war,’ Tony says. ‘What was he like?’ ‘Quite an amusing fellow, but obviously a complete crook.’

‘He has the marvellous freshness of the born teacher – he is barely 25’

‘And Burgess and Maclean – did you know them at all?’ ‘Burgess was the most ghastly type of BBC pansy, quite insufferable. Not as bad as Maclean, though.’ ‘My mother went skiing with Maclean,’ I volunteer. Then Lees Mayall pipes up, ‘Donald Maclean was my boss in Cairo. He broke my leg when he was drunk. We remained great friends until he went off.’ ‘It was your leg, was it?’ David is enthralled. In fact, as Lees and Mary continue to describe what a struggle they had in Cairo to cover up for Donald, David is overcome by an unholy glee, which even such a master of concealment is unable to suppress entirely. Here he is at the very core of the Establishment, and it is turning out to be every bit as rotten as he always said it was. Not long after that memorable evening, David remarries. Coincidentally, he comes to live with his new wife Jane in Cloudesley Road, 200 yards from us in Islington. We ask him to our children’s parties, and he exercises the same gentle charm on our children as he had on me. I begin to understand what a magician he is in life and not just on the page. Then they move to Cornwall and inevitably we don’t see so much of them. But much later, he comes back into my life one more time when my daughter, Mary, becomes his editor at Penguin. From what she tells me, he hasn’t really changed much in 50 years: he is the most demanding author you can imagine, yet also the most charming, the most sympathetic, the least patronising. Trailing along in Mary’s wake, I listen to David talking at literary festivals and prize-givings. Physically, too, he has changed little: with the same bushy eyebrows and shy smile; dressed always in gingery brown corduroy or velvet, as though imitating some elusive woodland creature. As I gaze round the eager audience and listen to their thirsting questions, I realise that for them David has become rather more than the author of the most beguiling and devious spy novels ever written. He has become a moral force to whom they look for guidance in an amoral world. The son of the biggest liar you ever met has become the man you most trust to tell the truth. ‘Lucky to have known him?’ Lucky in spades. Ferdinand Mount is author of Kiss Myself Goodbye: The Many Lives of Aunt Munca (Bloomsbury) The Oldie February 2021 21

Insanely happy Alan Crawford has learnt to be content, despite suffering from dementia for three years

bout three years ago, I was diagnosed with dementia. I was beginning to forget a lot. So I went to my GP, who referred me to the hospital in North London where I live. I did a lot of tests, and in February 2017 I was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia. I was just 74. I remember afterwards, sitting with my wife Mary and thinking how odd it all was. I didn’t feel ill. I didn’t feel as if I ‘had’ anything. At that time, I knew very little about dementia. All I could think of was disability and lolling heads, as seen on television. How pleased and surprised I am to find how different things can be. A few months later, my GP noticed my hands trembling, and referred me to the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Bloomsbury. The consultant asked, ‘How is your sense of smell?’ I said I hadn’t smelt anything much since I was about 30. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘that is interesting.’ My diagnosis was changed from Alzheimer’s to dementia with Lewy bodies. This occurs when tiny clumps of protein develop inside brain cells, causing them to malfunction or die. So this particular dementia is a mixture: I get confused and forget a lot (Alzheimer’s) and I shake and feel unsteady on my feet (Parkinson’s). I can remember the social awkwardness of having a serious disease that isn’t obvious in the early stages. People don’t know how to react. Sometimes they congratulate you on ‘doing so well’, when you are just sliding imperceptibly downhill. Sometimes they are sceptical: ‘Oh, I forget things too. You are just getting old.’ Which is true. In summer 2018, I began to panic. I was behaving oddly. I made plans to clear all my files out of my office, as if my life was almost over. The doctors at Queen Square diagnosed anxiety, quite common 22 The Oldie February 2021

Terry Pratchett – noble attitude

in people with Lewy bodies. The professor of neuropsychiatry prescribed an antidepressant called Duloxetine and told me to come back in a few months and tell her how I was feeling. When I came back, I said I felt much better. She is not a little girl, but she jumped up and clapped her hands as if she were, crying, ‘Wonderful!’ Since then, I have slowly come to feel I am standing in a sunlit landscape of happiness: at peace; a bit muddled, but happy – an attitude nobly emulated by Terry Pratchett and Barbara Windsor, who died in December, aged 83. I have not always been happy. I got married in 1968 and my wife Jane and I had two children, Sarah and Kate – now talented parents and professional women. Those were happy years. In 1978, Jane was diagnosed with breast cancer. She died in 1985, aged 38. By the early 1990s, I was living by myself in north London, working as a freelance writer, and in therapy. Those were not happy years.

‘I have slowly come to feel I am standing in a sunlit landscape of happiness’

But now, much of that has changed. Jane is a constant and a kindly presence in our lives. I live with my new wife, Mary, near Alexandra Park. I used to walk there in the afternoon. Now I can’t manage it by myself, so either Sarah or Kate – both of whom live near the park – comes with me. It is a blessing. And my life is happy, even hilarious. I talk to myself – I think I have always done this, but recently it’s got a bit more loony. I was brought up a Catholic, and the other day I woke up with the phrase ‘Dominus tecum’ in my head – what the priest used to say in Catholic churches when giving Communion. Only it had got muddled up in my head with ‘Cadbury’s take ’em and they cover them with chocolate.’ My hands shake, so I can’t write clearly and my typing is rubbish. So I have bought some software called Dragon. I say what I want into a microphone and it appears on the screen without my touching the keyboard. I am in the early stages of dementia, and there is worse to come. I laugh a lot, but I don’t think I will have the last laugh. Mary and I are an odd couple. I am posh, with a voice that Mary says sounds like Pathé News. Mary is the child of a happy, Catholic, working-class family in Limerick. She moved to London and married a man who was violent and abusive, and she stayed with him for 18 years. Their three children, Carley, Darren and Lyndsey, are all flourishing. We met in 2008 and married in 2011. The landscape in which I live is not a drug-induced wonderland, though the medication has a lot to do with it. It has roots. It grows out of the care of my GP, my therapist and the doctors and nurses at Queen Square; out of the love and support of my friends and family; and, above all, out of the deep, strange and abiding love of the girl from Limerick, who has so changed my life.

At 85, widowed Hunter Davies is writing new books and finding young love. By Valerie Grove

A happy Hunter once more

‘W

hen I turned 80, I started boasting about it. If I get to 90, I will be unbearable,’ Hunter Davies declares happily. He is 85 on 7th January – so he is halfway to being unbearable. He is practising saying, ‘D’you know how old I am?’ to all and sundry – and he’s bound to tell his readers about it. He is after all the inventor of solipsistic journalism. He invented ‘A Life in the Day’ on the last page of the Sunday Times Magazine. Another of his ideas – ‘Me and My Honeymoon’ in the Look! pages in 1969 – was the inspiration for Private Eye’s ‘Me and My Spoon’. Hunter says, ‘Even as a little boy in Scotland, I was the same. I would stand at the front gate, aged four, and, when people came by, I would tell them who I was, and what was going on in the house. “My mummy and daddy are cooking chips!” And this has not stopped.’ His parents, Scottish despite the Welsh name, both left school at 13. His dad was an RAF clerk, and in 1940 five-year-old Hunter and his family were uprooted from Scotland to Carlisle. The childish compulsion to share his life has persisted through his journalism: whether it’s buying a tent on eBay or being rushed to hospital (‘Oh goody – 2,000 words for the Mail’). Or frying his wife’s placenta when their second child was born. It tasted awful, he wrote in the Sunday Times. He has retold his memoirs shamelessly. ‘I’m very thick-skinned,’ he says cheerily. ‘My theory is that every 24 The Oldie February 2021

three years, readers forget things. So I can recycle all my stories.’ In his 2007 autobiography, The Beatles, Football and Me, and again in The Co-op’s Got Bananas! in 2016, he covered his youth: council house, dad bed-ridden with MS and saintly mum. When Hunter left home for Durham University, his mother took a lodger – so when her boy came home at Christmas, he found another lad in his bed. ‘Durham,’ Hunter says, ‘is where I came alive.’ Like the late Sunday Times Editor Harry Evans before him – both natural-born hacks with insatiable curiosity – he edited the student newspaper, Palatinate.

Caribbean Queen: with his new girlfriend, Claire, in Grenada

That’s where he came up with ‘A Life in the Day’, starting with a typical Boat Club hearty, whose routine involved pub crawls and being sick. It’s still running in the Sunday Times Magazine, 50 years on. ‘In my obits,’ Hunter predicts, ‘that series will be my great contribution to British journalism.’ There was even a third memoir, A Life in the Day, in 2017, dedicated ‘to Margaret, so lost without her’: his late wife, Margaret Forster. She was the brainiest girl in school, when they met: she 16, he 18. ‘I hate dancing,’ she snapped when he first asked: forthright as always. When she won a history scholarship to Somerville and left for Oxford, he feared she’d be swept away by ‘some languid, fluent, floppy-haired public schoolboy like Oldie editor Harry Mount’, but that wasn’t her style at all. Like the Queen, she bonded once and for life. Their 1960 marriage lasted, despite their differences – he so gregarious, she more contained – until her death from cancer in 2016, aged 77. For 56 years, they walked, talked, travelled and swam, scribbling away in their family house with three children near Hampstead Heath.

Hunter, his books and, middle, Davieses and McCartneys in Portugal, 1968

Books poured forth: Margaret’s yearly novels and painstaking biographies; Hunter’s 100 books on everything from Lakeland to his year following Spurs and biographies of Columbus and Wordsworth. He ghosted Gazza’s memoirs and Wayne Rooney’s. In the late 1960s, they both had films made of early novels: her Georgy Girl; his Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush. Hunter asked his friend Paul McCartney to do his title song. Macca suggested Hunter write a biography of the Beatles. It sold so well that he took the family to Gozo to avoid 98 per cent tax – the McCartneys joined the Davieses later in Portugal (pictured) . He has the originals of nine Beatles lyrics (I Want to Hold Your Hand, Ticket to Ride, Michelle, The Fool on the Hill, Yesterday, Help!, She Said She Said, In My Life and Here, There and Everywhere). He later donated his Beatles memorabilia – one of his many manic ‘collections’, from footie programmes to suffragettes – to the British Library. The songs are displayed along with the Magna Carta. The Queen was fascinated by them – as Hunter reminded Her

Majesty when she bestowed the OBE on him in 2014. (‘For services to what?’ I asked him. ‘To literature, my pet.’) He is great company – an unstoppable raconteur; incorrigibly nosy. Having told us a million times what his house cost in 1962 (£5,000), and what it would go for today (£3m), he expects everyone to tell him about theirs. Also what they get paid, what school they went to and how they met their spouse. He’s applied this candour-swapping technique in interviews with every famous person since 1964, starting with John Masefield and W H Auden. His ever chattier pieces are spattered with asides – ‘Heh-heh’, ‘Oh yes’ and ‘Yer what?’ – as parodied by Craig Brown in his incarnation as ’Oonter. At Hunter’s 80th-birthday celebration at the Groucho, we all got a mug featuring his portrait, and danced to

He asked Jilly Cooper and Joan Bakewell, who said, ‘No thanks, darling’

the Beatles, and Melvyn Bragg sang Twist and Shout. Margaret, absent but gossip-loving, relished hearing all about it. On the next day, she went into a hospice. After Margaret’s death, Hunter couldn’t bear to keep on their beautiful Lakeland house. Margaret always said, ‘Over my dead body,’ when he suggested a summerhouse in their London garden. So he built one after her death, scattering half her ashes under it. But he was lonely. Suddenly, a pseudonymous magazine column – ‘Old Romantic’, by ‘William Luck’ – appeared in the Sunday Times: ‘Mr Luck’, widower, needed a new companion, to share intimate holidays. She must be 65-75, with her own house, family, interests and teeth. Over lunch, Hunter made several offers to singleton ladies, including old chums Jilly Cooper and Joan Bakewell, who both said, ‘No thanks, darling.’ His quest unearthed Claire, the former showbiz PR who had arranged his 1993 interview with Jack Nicholson. (Despite Hunter’s late arrival – he’d gone to Claridge’s instead of the Connaught, and poor Claire was ‘hysterical’ – the interview was brilliant, once he’d got Jack ‘to remove his stupid Ray-Bans’.) Re-meeting Claire in 2017, he’d forgotten how pretty she was: a pencilslim blonde with a gleam of mischief in her sparkling green eyes. ‘She’s 72 but everyone thinks she can’t be a day over 59,’ he says with pride. He took her straight off on his annual trip to the Caribbean. Claire became his hostess at long, boozy garden lunches. Like his late wife, Claire is chef de cuisine and lets Hunter do zilch domestically. She’s ‘a heroine’, who’s already nursed him through a triple heart bypass and a hernia. He’s bought them a love nest at the seaside: a pink-washed Victorian villa, minutes from the beach at Ryde on the Isle of Wight. Their address card bears the lyrics to When I’m Sixty-Four, written in Paul’s hand in 1967: ‘Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight, if it’s not too dear.’ Not dear at all: a snip at £310,000. He will write about all this – ‘New stuff, at last’ – in a new Saga column in 2021. And he has two more books coming: A Year on Hampstead Heath – about the people he accosts with restless curiosity on his daily walks; and London Parks. Lucky old Hunter, eh? The Oldie February 2021 25

The Emperor and the Duke both wore bicornes – in different styles. Now their hats are united, thanks to Nancy Astor. By Justin Davies

Hats off to Napoleon and Wellington

here are two bicornes (‘twohorned’ hats) in the Citadel at Bayonne, south-west France, that were once worn by the Emperor Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington. They aren’t there as relics of the long, arduous Peninsula campaign between Napoleon and Wellington’s armies from 1807 to 1814. Instead, they arrived in France in October 1945 on a Halifax bomber, as a gift from Nancy Astor, the first woman to take a seat in Parliament. They were given by Lady Astor in the name of the British nation in recognition of AngloFrench comradeship and the valiant services rendered by the French SAS. And what rare, valuable hats they are! In 2014, a Napoleon chapeau sold for £1.25 million. Napoleon’s bicorne is one of about 120 made by the Parisian hat-maker Poupard; around 20 are known still to exist. The Duke of Wellington’s was made by Moore of Old Bond Street. Wellington’s is more complex – with plumes and gold braid – than Napoleon’s simpler chapeau. British general officers didn’t mind much about the plumage and gold braid sported on Wellington’s fine example. They wore their hats ‘fore to aft’, front to back, rather than sideways. Wearing one’s hat this way supposedly made brandishing a sword easier. Napoleon ordered a new hat every three months. They were designed specifically for him. He wore his bicorne sideways. Sideways was the fashion until 1800. Napoleon retained the style, sporting it at the 1815 Battle of Waterloo. Worn in this way, often with a simple 26 The Oldie February 2021

Napoleon above Wellington, Bayonne

grey overcoat, but bereft of gold trimmings and finery, the sideways bicorne made Napoleon distinct to his troops but prevented him from becoming a prominent target for the enemy. Napoleon kept on wearing his beloved bicornes until his death at the age of 51 on St Helena, 200 years ago, on 5th May 1821. It is not known when the two hats were worn – the suggestion they were both worn at Waterloo has not been

‘We know more about Napoleon’s hat … Wellington was better known for his boots’

proved. Nor is it known when they were acquired by Lady Astor. The gift to the French SAS was deliberately discreet and not given publicity. The Waterloo historian Gareth Glover reminded me that we know more about Napoleon’s iconic hat than about Wellington’s – the Iron Duke was better known for his boots. Since the hats’ presentation in 1945, time had taken its toll. But they have now been restored, thanks to the historic links between Britain and France. Once that Halifax landed in France in 1945, the hats were presented by Brigadier ‘Mad Mike’ Calvert, commander of the SAS Brigade, to the two French SAS regiments. The SAS Brigade was formed in March 1944, incorporating two French regiments, the 3rd and 4th SAS, trained in Scotland. The first 36 Frenchmen of the Brigade parachuted into France the night before D-Day. The men of the SAS Brigade fought throughout the liberation of France. And they fought far and fast in their short existence: across Brittany, south of the Loire, Deux-Sèvres, Franche-Comté and the Saône-et-Loire. They moved to the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge in the winter of 1944, parachuted into the Netherlands and ended the war in Germany. The SAS Brigade was disbanded in October 1945: the French regiments on 2nd October and the British 1st and 2nd SAS regiments six days later. The link with Nancy Astor on that Halifax bearing the hats could be found through the presence on the passenger list – and at the following parade – of her youngest son, Major John ‘Jakie’ Astor

PICTORIAL PRESS LTD/ALAMY

Above: Napoleon and Wellington. Below: two French SAS officers receive the hats on behalf of their regiments, 1945

(1918-2000). A Life Guards officer, he volunteered for the SAS in January 1944 and helped train the two French SAS regiments before D-Day. The hats are now in the safekeeping of

the successor regiment, the 1er Régiment de Parachutistes d’Infanterie de Marine, who guard the traditions of the French SAS. Based in Bayonne, they are one of three French special-forces regiments.

The hats are displayed in the museum at the heart of the citadel. To remember the last battle between British and French troops on French soil, at Bayonne on 14th April 1814, the association Bayonne 1814 raised funds for the restoration of the hats. The fundraising was finalised through the recent intervention of Algy Cluff and the Remembrance Trust. Cluff is no stranger to parachutes, having served in the Guards Independent Parachute Company in the 1960s. The Remembrance Trust was formed in 2014. It preserves and restores neglected memorials to British and Irish soldiers and sailors that predate the First World War and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. To qualify for help from the Remembrance Trust, the bicornes were legally defined as war memorials. The Trust has already restored soldiers’ graves in the cemeteries for the Coldstream and Scots Guards in Bayonne. Its work also takes it further afield, with planned projects in the Crimea, Antigua and Zanzibar. The gift of the final part of the restoration funds has been extremely well received in Bayonne. It has brought to light a lesser-known story of Anglo-French friendship and continues the spirit of Lady Astor’s unusual and original gift. The Oldie February 2021 27

Wilfrid Hyde-White was as charming and mischievous in real life as in My Fair Lady, remembers Simon Williams, his friend and co-star

Wasn’t he so loverly? A

HULTON ARCHIVE/CBS VIA/GETTY/AF ARCHIVE/ALAMY

hundred years ago, two would-be actors – my father, Hugh Williams (1904-69), hotfoot from Haileybury, and Wilfrid Hyde-White (1903-91), just out of Marlborough, were new boys at RADA. They became flatmates – and lifelong friends. Forty-nine years later, when I rang Wilfrid to ask him if he’d do the address at my father’s memorial service, he answered wistfully, ‘Oh, my dear boy, I simply can’t – we shared a dinner jacket for three years at RADA’ (they had to take it in turns to go nightclubbing.) Thereafter, he’d always send me a telegram on the anniversary of Dad’s death – sometimes with a racing tip. As RADA students, during an elocution class they were made endlessly to repeat ‘hip-bath’ – a short sound and then a long one. Wilfrid dared Dad to substitute ‘toilet roll’, and they were both sent out of the room for giggling. Wilfrid

28 The Oldie February 2021

claimed RADA taught him two things: ‘That I can’t act and it doesn’t matter.’ In any event, voice production was wasted on Wilfrid – he was famously inaudible, choosing to perfect a mumbling naturalistic delivery. His performance as Colonel Pickering in the film of My Fair Lady (1965) is a masterclass of muttering nonchalance. When he was doing The Reluctant Debutante with Celia Johnson, she told him, ‘The only time I can actually hear you, Wilfrid, is when I’m on stage and you’re chatting in the wings.’ The last thing he ever wanted was to be seen to be trying too hard. Naturalism was everything. I once heard him telling a director, ‘I’ve only got one performance, dear – two suits and one performance.’ He was part of the golden years of drawing-room comedy, whose purpose was to reassure the middle classes that all was right with the world. Theatregoers loved his aura of complicity and mischief.

Whenever Wilfrid made an entrance on stage as a West End star, he would acknowledge his round of applause with the genial smile of a host welcoming friends to a whist drive. At one performance in the final days of a box-office flop, Wilfrid, sitting downstage, leant towards a woman in the front stalls and whispered, ‘Isn’t it an awful play?’ On stage, as in life, he was amazingly unhurried. Legend has it that it was in his contract that he wouldn’t do matinées during Goodwood week. Dad and he both went to Hollywood. Dad came home because he refused to get his teeth capped. Wilfrid stayed because he loved the climate. In New York he was twice nominated for a Tony. Through their careers, my father and Wilfrid took it in turns to be stony broke. They were both declared bankrupt by the Inland Revenue; Dad in the 1950s and Wilfrid in 1979. During Ascot week in

1940, Wilfrid wrote my father a poem: ‘He looked a million dollars and he had precisely one/ The jockeys’ names were in the frame and betting had begun.’ They were both blessed with longsuffering second wives who surrendered their careers to support them. Wilfrid married Ethel Drew in 1957. She was forever at his side as nanny-cum-roadie, always allowing him his eccentricities, if not actually encouraging them. When I worked with him in 1977 in a production of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband, he was the age I am now and getting more mischievous. We were playing father and son, he as Lord Caversham and I as Lord Goring, a renowned dandy. During one of our scenes together, he took to picking imaginary bits of stuff off my lapel as I delivered Wilde’s bons mots; it became increasingly irritating. I asked him if it was quite necessary – surely my valet would have brushed me down. ‘It annoys you, does it, dear boy?’ he asked. ‘Well … yes, frankly – a bit.’ He continued dusting me off with an added twinkle in his eyes. The remedy was clear. I threaded a short length of cotton from a reel in my inside pocket onto my lapel. As expected, Wilfrid took the bait: with his eyes aglow, he began to pull. I felt the cotton reel revolving against my chest as his fingers became entangled with the unspooling thread. I smiled – and he smiled back, whispering, ‘You’re learning, my boy; you’re learning.’ He never did it again. He made a great many films, including Let’s Make Love (1960) with Marilyn Monroe. ‘She was a poppet,’ he chuckled. He was quite unflappable and a dab hand with put-downs when required. While he was making a film with Michael

Wilfrid wrote, ‘He looked a million dollars and he had precisely one’ Winner, the irascible director threw one of his customary hissy fits. Wilfrid muttered to him, ‘For God’s sake, calm down, man, or you’ll have a heart attack before your balls drop.’ I adored him. Like so many of my father’s friends, he was a quasigodfather. A vicar’s son, he didn’t seem to have a ‘belief system’ but he was extremely superstitious. He took me aside once, saying, ‘Promise me you’ll never wear green.’ I asked him why and he answered, with ominous gravity, ‘Just don’t.’ And I never have since. When I visited him during the half-hour before a show, I’d find him sitting Zen-like at his dressing table; laid out before him were his mascots, a muchtravelled menagerie of tiny animals. Before every performance, he gave each one a gentle tap, in what looked like a benediction. Occasionally he’d mutter something to one of them, but he didn’t seem to care whether they heard him. What I took to

be a glass of whisky on the dressing table in front of him turned out to be Listerine mouthwash. He told me, ‘It tastes just as good, really.’ Wilfrid suffered badly from the cold – in my memory, he is wearing an overcoat at all times. Later in life, he developed narcolepsy. Sleeping was his hobby, he said. On one of his last visits to London from his home in ‘Palm Springs Eternal’, he told me he had fallen asleep the previous evening while coming down the stairs at the Savoy – quite a feat. During his latter performances on stage, he took to dozing off on comfortable sofas and it became the duty of his fellow actors to give him a subtle nudge to warn him of an upcoming cue. We always say of our departed friends, rest in peace. In Wilfrid’s case, when he died in 1991, aged 87, a peaceful rest was a given.

From left: Hugh Williams c1932; Hyde-White with Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady (1964); on the set of Let’s Make Love (1960) with Marilyn Monroe

The Oldie February 2021 29

Town Mouse

I love Paris in the wintertime tom hodgkinson

When it comes to Paris versus London, I would choose Paris. It’s just so convivial and beautiful. Mrs Mouse and I visited a year ago. It was cold but we sat outdoors under heaters with our onion soup, looking outwards at the passing people, and marvelled at the good humour and general stylishness of the Parisians. We wished that London were a bit more like it: more tables and chairs out on the streets; more elegance, beauty and delight in being. I understand that Parisians, conversely, love London. I was reminded of the dialogue between the two cities when reading a lovely short book, Bacon/ Giacometti (Eris). One of its editors, the art critic Michael Peppiatt, has constructed a conversation between the two artists. Like one of Plato’s dialogues, the meeting never actually happened, but the two artists were great mates and talked a lot. Peppiatt’s imagined encounter is based on real conversations. The artists say they love each other’s city. ‘I love being in London,’ says Giacometti, ‘and London is so completely different from Paris. Everything looks different; even the trees in the parks. And the people! They seem to inhabit a 30 The Oldie February 2021

different kind of space as they queue so calmly for the bus or make their way along the street. And then these little secret bars and clubs you’ve taken me to!’ The men are chatting in the Colony Room Club in Soho. Bacon replies, ‘It’s terribly nice of you to say that, Alberto, but I always think Paris is so much more beautiful and stimulating than London. I mean, it often feels terribly provincial and dreary here, and there’s not really much happening in the arts.’ That was in the fifties. Since then, London has become a little less dreary and provincial, and bars and clubs are less secretive. Nevertheless, Londoners can instantly relate to what Bacon says. London feels grey and unsophisticated compared with Paris. Though we have exactly the same weather, life in Paris is lived so much more on the streets. There is something ploddy and leaden

‘Parisian proprietors are still allowed to be charmingly grumpy’

about London, whereas Parisians have a light touch. They can be brilliant without seeming to make much of an effort. Think of Jean-Paul Sartre revolutionising philosophy while smoking Gitanes outdoors at Les Deux Magots. Ollivier Pourriol is the Parisian author of a new book, The French Art of Not Trying Too Hard (Profile). He says the French character mixes ‘noble arrogance and popular insolence; seriousness on things light-hearted and lightness at moments of great seriousness; in short, a desire for effortlessness synonymous with both elegance and pleasure’. It’s this sort of enviable insouciance that the London mouse envies in his Parisian counterpart. And in Paris you still don’t get that fake American ‘Have a nice day’ cheerfulness which has invaded London chain restaurants. Parisian proprietors are still allowed to be charmingly grumpy. It’s a grumpiness that declares dignity, freedom and a refusal to be a slave. When George Orwell is down and out in Paris and London, his life as a plongeur in Paris, however seedy and grotty, is still vastly preferable to the life of a povertystricken Londoner. No wonder Samuel Beckett chose to live in Paris. As poor teenage mice, my friends and I used to stay in tiny chambres de bonne. We’d go busking in front of the Pompidou Centre, and just walk around for fun, as we couldn’t afford to sit in the cafés. In Paris, being skint seemed almost romantic. Paris is, above all, intensely sociable. So it was a joy in December to witness in London the reopening of the cafés and pubs after the Cromwellian shutdowns. Everywhere you could see people sitting on benches and at café tables, all wrapped up in woolly hats and scarves, just enjoying themselves. I found myself the other day sitting on a bench in the freezing cold, outside a café in Richmond Park, with a cup of tea and a brownie. I was on my own, but there were several groups of people chatting nearby. Waves of pleasure swept over me. Thank heavens for outdoor heaters, small tables and onion soup. I hope, as I have been hoping for years, that we’ll be seeing more of these three essential items for good living hitting the streets of London town. In lockdown, how we missed this simple joy of being alive in the moment, in the company of other human beings. How much we enjoyed it when it came back. Hell was no longer other people, as good old Sartre put it. Other people are quite heavenly – as long as you wear the appropriate clothing.

Country Mouse

My new rural enemy? Instagram ramblers giles wood

Footfall on the medieval right of way that cuts diagonally across my little domain has risen exponentially during the second COVID wave. I am constantly aware of the metallic clink of the latch of the newly installed access gate. This is separate from and in contradistinction to the field gate, which affords vehicular access to septic-tank contractors and other operatives. Each clink causes a release of cortisol – the stress hormone that is injurious to the health of this sufferer of hypertension. Lurking in the undergrowth as I usually am, I can quickly identify which breed of intruder is present. OS maps dangling inside laminated pouches are indicia of the militant tendency of the rambler, especially when coupled with ski sticks – despite scree and icy conditions being rarities in Wiltshire. Tweed is another rarity. Synthetics are the norm. The attention-seeking breed of rambler tends to wear terylene or Gore-Tex ‘shells’ of colours which could be easily spotted by the helicopters who might later be required to ‘pluck them to safety’. Mary has identified another type, namely ‘social walkers’. These are distinguished by incontinent mobilephone usage as their single purpose is not exercise, nor assertion of rights, nor to appreciate birdsong nor the ‘music of the hounds’, but to upload images and GPS co-ordinates of little-known beauty spots to encourage their Instagram followers into the area. To these I must add a new breed of clueless countryside newcomer. They park across gates and slam the doors of their 4 x 4s. The other day, they released off leads panting Rhodesian ridgebacks which, as they’re genetically programmed to do, terrorise the smaller breeds accompanying little old lady

‘Isn’t that nice – it’s a gift from the Jehovah’s Witnesses to apologise for being so annoying earlier’

dog-walkers, and the Shetland ponies on which local toddlers are learning to ride. More cortisol, however, is released by those who walk the length of our right of way, often deviating off it and disturbing ground-nesting birds, then turn round again like the grand old Duke of York and retrace their steps with the oft-heard lament ‘But this path doesn’t go anywhere’. Of course it doesn’t go anywhere. It’s a redundant medieval right of way for the sort of agricultural workers who used digging sticks and antler picks. But, unlike celebrity landowners such as Madonna and Griff Rhys Jones, I will not be seeking permission to divert this intrusive right of way, nor erecting bossy signs. Mary has reminded me how much

‘Few people want to waddle more than 100 yards from their vehicles’

I myself dislike bossy signs and restricted access to other people’s land. We hear of eco-subsidies for farmers and large landowners (ie not me) which will offer them, post-Brexit, taxpayers’ cash in exchange for access across a whole new network of footpaths going nowhere over farmland, under the slogan of public money for public goods. It came as no surprise to me to find that the present, clodhopping, unconservative administration, in a characteristic example of muddled thinking, is trying simultaneously to criminalise trespass on private land. A consultation held earlier this year provoked a predictable backlash from civil-liberties activists and the bill has been ‘tabled’, ie put on the back boiler. Just as well – because I am a serial trespasser myself. In order to gain a vantage point to witness the magisterial construction of a giant lake with an island studded with trees on private pastures owned by one of our ‘Croesusrich’ neighbours, I have to enter the inner sanctum. I would not fancy being thrown in a lock-up for the sin of ‘Just looking, guv – is that a crime?’ I would vote to leave the current law on trespassing exactly as it is. The ambiguity inherent in it could be regarded as something of a national treasure. As Geoffrey Grigson wrote in The Shell Country Book of 1962, ‘The threat on the noticeboard – trespassers will be prosecuted – is a wooden lie, for trespass is not a crime.’ My cottage library has very little on the subject of trespass but I can always rely on Richard Jefferies to come to my aid. Leafing through The Gamekeeper at Home, a volume I confess I have not yet read, I struck gold: ‘Many fields are traversed by a perfect network of footpaths… Nothing causes so much ill-will in rural districts as the attempt to divert or shut up a track like this. Cottagers are most tenacious of these “rights”, and will rarely change them for any advantage. “There always wur a path athwert thuck mead in the ould volk’s time” is their one reply, endlessly reiterated…’ Cometh the hour, cometh the book. The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes is billed as a radical manifesto, hailed by the Morning Star as a book ‘to relish and learn from’. The sad truth is that, radical manifesto by Nick Hayes regardless, landowners fearing trespass have little to worry about. Very few individuals in this country want to waddle more than 100 yards from their vehicles – especially in the absence of public toilets. The Oldie February 2021 31

Postcards from the Edge

Department stores top my shopping list

TOBY MORISON

Mary Kenny mourns the loss of Debenhams

It was sad to see the closure of Debenhams, with the loss of so many jobs. The department store, as an institution, no longer aligns with modern habits of shopping. Even before the pandemic, that trend was apparent. Every fashion has its day – but the department store should be recognised as having played a key role in the emancipation of women. Le Bon Marché in Paris, which opened in the 1850s, was the first modern department store. Au Printemps and Galeries Lafayette followed in the 1870s, designed to attract women at a time when respectable females did not sally forth without a chaperone. The department store provided what we might call a ‘safe space’ for ladies to meet, dally, lunch and browse without being harassed or molested. By the 1890s there were, according to Norman Stone’s history of Europe, great department stores in every European city. They emblematised freedom, convenience – and a sense of luxury and glamour. Gordon Selfridge caught that spirit of the age when he opened Selfridges in Oxford Street in the 1900s, with a special eye to the female market. In my young days London was full of fabulous department stores – Swan & Edgar, Dickins & Jones, the practical John Lewis, the distinctive Liberty, Selfridges and Harrods. We also frequented a bread-and-butter store in Holborn called Gamages, which sounded genuinely Dickensian, but seemed to stock everything. Some still stand, as does Fortnum & Mason, whose roots go back to 1707 (even if it was seldom within the ambit of the ordinary housewife). Shopping habits change inexorably, and, over recent years, the department stores I’ve visited have had a forlorn air, either in town centres or in out-of-town shopping malls. Younger shoppers have switched to online shopping and niche boutiques.

The department store was a feminine and a feminist institution – because it enhanced female freedom. It’s bitterly ironic that those now losing their jobs in this part of the retail trade are overwhelmingly women. The original, Le Bon Marché in Paris, still survives. As soon as I get a jab in my arm, I’ll be on that Eurostar to visit the Rue de Sèvres once again. America is a great country – for oldies! President-elect Biden is 78. Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi is 80; Steny Hoyer, House Majority Leader, 81; Jim Clyburn, House Majority Whip, 80; Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader, 79 in February; Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader, 70; Janet Yellen, the incoming Treasury Secretary, 74. And let’s not forget the radical Bernie Sanders, who may well get a government job, 79. Hooray! Back in 1942, my late husband was a schoolboy at Marlborough College. Because of the war, the younger teachers had been called up. Older masters were brought out of retirement to fill in – and some were quite eccentric. The language teacher was an old chap who had served in the First World War. He set about teaching the boys German

by making them learn reams of the poet Heine. He also taught them German marching songs that he had picked up while on the Western Front, notably a sad ballad called Ich hatt’ einen Kameraden. This was all about a soldier whose best mate died by his side. The veteran teacher would sometimes be moved to tears by this elegy. Even as a schoolboy, Richard thought it a little rum that the class should be singing a German soldier’s song, while Britain was at all-out war with Germany. But no one stopped the eccentric schoolteacher. Later, Richard came to believe that the very oddness of the situation had made lessons memorable. And he learned very good German. When an Etonian schoolteacher, Will Knowland, got the sack in December after airing certain oddball, masculinist views, the thought occurred that eccentric schoolteachers are sometimes unforgettable schoolteachers. From Miss Jean Brodie to the Robin Williams character in Dead Poets Society, that’s certainly the legend. A popular French comedian, Pierre Desproges – now dead – was once asked, ‘Can you make a joke about any subject?’ Shrewdly, this Limousin-born comic answered, ‘Yes, you can. But not in front of everyone.’ A wisely proportionate response to the question of ‘censorship’, which has exercised the public realm in recent times. The Pogues singer Shane MacGowan had of one of his ditties recently ‘censored’ by the BBC because it contained language some consider offensive. Possibly a prissy judgement, but the Desproges principle comes to mind: you can’t say everything in front of everyone. That’s the problem with social media. Everyone is saying everything in front of everyone, and that leads to outrage or censure. The Oldie February 2021 33

Letter from America

Confessions of an American Etonian Grand schools are in hot water – from Eton to New York philip delves broughton

Until his death last year, the linchpin of the Old Etonian gatherings in Los Angeles was the actor Clement von Franckenstein (1944-2019). His Austrian parents had died in a plane crash and a friend of theirs sent him to Eton. He strung together a career in Hollywood out of dozens of bit parts playing the smoothie or the cad. He relished his OE nights out, when he could regale his audiences with tales of life before the ubiquity of condoms. Prince Harry might have enjoyed his company as a break from the pieties of his domestic life in Montecito. The reputation of English publicschool boys in America these days is mixed (I went to Eton myself and now live in Connecticut). There is still a remnant of social deference to the accent and manners, but it’s often mixed with the reasonable suspicion that millimetres deep lies villainy. Franckenstein is assumed to lurk within all of us. The good news, though, is that compared with many American private schools, the English public-school system seems almost squeaky clean. Even taking into account the row at Eton over the firing of Martin Knowland, the teacher who created an excruciating presentation about toxic masculinity, English schools seem far more confident about who they are and why they exist. Americans still love a good private school. But their rankings are constantly changing and the big East Coast names have becomes options rather than obligations for the ruling class. The names at the very top of the pile, Exeter and Andover, remain unchanged, but boarding schools in general are less popular than they were. Each city and region has its favourite day schools. In New York, the financial 34 The Oldie February 2021

titans wrestle for places at Trinity; the more Bohemian types crave Dalton. In Los Angeles, the moguls line up for Harvard-Westlake and Marlborough. Washington DC has Sidwell Friends, where the Clintons and Obamas sent their daughters, Georgetown Prep and St Albans, which groan with senators’ and ambassadors’ children. Seattle has Bill Gates’s alma mater, Lakeside. The ethos of these schools is not so much about class as about opportunity. The goal is no longer to wear tweed and play lacrosse as much as it is to keep pace with the hyper-educated elites of China. The focus is academic and the object admission to a top-tier university. Parents are not lining up for Exeter because they hope their child can one day practise law. They line up because Mark Zuckerberg went there, and from there to Harvard, where he met most of the founding team at Facebook. But you would never grasp that these were the schools’ priorities if you listened to what they said, instead of paying attention to what they do. In public, American schools do a good job of seeming torn between ambition and guilt. Instead of defending what they are, elite institutions for the well-to-do and a few deemed worthy of financial aid, they are constantly apologising for what they are not, instruments of social change. This year has been particularly grim for them. Aside from having to close down because of the pandemic, they have been accused of decades of mistreatment of minority students. Over the summer, past and present black students used Instagram to talk about their experiences, using the hashtag ‘Black At’ followed by the name Franckenstein: Hollywood’s favourite OE

of their school. Other students lined up with tales of bullying and sexual abuse. The board of trustees at Brearley, one of Manhattan’s top girls’ schools, wrote in an email, ‘We have immersed ourselves in the painful, often searing stories of the first-hand effects of institutionalised and, at times, overt anti-black racism within our walls. We are deeply sorry.’ School after school issued similar, self-lacerating apologies. Behind the scenes, one senses they are becoming more sharp-elbowed, not less. They are constantly having to raise money, which leaves them hostage to their boards and their wealthiest parents. Few of those parents would shed a tear for social justice if it meant giving an inch on their child’s university admission. St Bernard’s, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, may be the tweediest of New York’s schools. It educates boys from kindergarten until they leave for high school, in Latin, proper handwriting and a firm handshake. But this year, it announced the departure of its long-serving headmaster, and all hell broke loose. The New York Times reported that his resignation resulted from a clash of New York cultures. The trusting old WASPs, who showed a benign neglect towards the next generation of Winthrops, were no longer in power. Today’s ruling class are meddlers, fully involved in their children’s lives, thrusting themselves into their homework and extracurricular lives. ‘They were a different species now,’ said the New York Times, ‘unable to look from a distance at their children and trust that they would succeed.’ Parents, dammit, have started to care about what these schools are up to and it has changed everything. Philip Delves Broughton was New York correspondent for the Daily Telegraph

Profitable Wonders

Nature – a matter of life or death james le fanu

‘All nature is at war, one organism with another,’ wrote Charles Darwin. One might suppose the constant danger for most creatures of being eaten by those higher up the food chain must make life a fearful business. In fact, the general impression, for even the most vulnerable, is of a harmonious, almost carefree existence, secure in possessing some useful protective trait against being caught and killed. There is security in being difficult to see. Hence the resemblance, for the purposes of camouflage, of animals’ colouring to their surroundings: brownish for the inhabitants of the Sahara desert; brilliant green for the tree-dwellers of the Amazonian forest. Or, better still, the invisibility conferred by the mimicry so prevalent in insects disguised as inedible sticks, leaves or bird droppings. When attacked, some animals have some security in possessing either the defensive armour of a hard shell or the offensive weaponry of sharp-needled spines, toxic chemicals or poisonous venom. And there is security of a more desperate kind in autotomy (self-amputation) – eluding a predator’s grasp by discarding a limb or appendage – and thanatosis, the bluff of feigning death as a deterrent to those in pursuit of fresh, live prey. There is additional security for many in the possession of an entire repertoire of such protective attributes – sufficient to see the South Asian butterfly Chilasa clytia through its entire life cycle. The bird-dropping appearance of the young larva becomes, in the pupa stage, that of a short, snapped-off, dead twig. When the adult butterfly finally emerges, its wings’ colouring is indistinguishable from that of two other quite different but distasteful species. The challenge of collecting specimens of the giant frog Limnonectes blythii in the Malayan forest was compounded, reports Dr Shahriza Shahrudin, by its 36 The Oldie February 2021

deploying nine separate ‘anti-predator mechanisms’ – including erratic leaping, camouflage (‘its colouring is very similar to leaf litter’) and diving precipitously to the bottom of a pool ‘where it remains motionless for several minutes’. This prodigious range of admirable, more or less inexplicable, defensive traits and strategies is a continuing source of fascination for biologists. Take the findings of two recent studies. First, the ancient hagfish, an eel-shaped bottom-dweller, blind and jawless. This opportunist scavenger sniffs out the odour of the dead and dying on the ocean floor, cannibalising them by – bizarrely – tying its long body into a knot that, forced downwards towards its head, provides the leverage for its rasp-like incisors to pinch the flesh off its victims. The primitive hagfish is, in its turn, vulnerable to being preyed on by others – sharks, conger eels, squid and octopuses. Its ingenious mode of protection involves the secretion of a white, viscid fluid from glands along its body that in contact with seawater expands to form a tenacious ball of slime. The predating shark, with its gills coated and deprived of oxygen, ‘visibly chokes’, reports Dr Victor Zintzen, who captured the sequence of events on a remote, underwater video camera. ‘Convulsed by a dramatic gagging-type effort to clear the slime, it moves away.’ Meanwhile, ‘the hagfish sustains no injury and continues to feed as before’.

Next, another seemingly simple animal, the unassuming sea cucumber, with a soft cylindrical body like its vegetable namesake, a mouth surrounded by retractable tentacles and the unusual facility of breathing through its anus. When threatened, it has the further unusual ability to loosen its connective tissue, allowing it to slip through the narrowest of apertures into a hole or crevice before re-expanding so it cannot be extricated. This attribute of mutable connective tissue (as it is known) reaches its apotheosis in one of the most extraordinary coups de théâtres of the natural world. Cornered by, for example, a hungry crab, the sea cucumber self-eviscerates, dissolving the supportive ligaments of its internal organs before expelling them with powerful muscular contractions through either its mouth or its anus, thus ensnaring the startled crustacean. This drastic measure surprisingly does the sea cucumber no serious harm as, over the next few days, it reconstitutes its missing organs, in a process only recently described by scientists at Tokyo University’s Centre for Marine Biology. The process of regeneration, their careful histological studies reveal, takes place in four stages, initiated by proliferation of the cells in the gut rudiments at both ends. These form cavities that then ‘coalesce with each other, recreating the hollow tube of a replacement digestive tract’. In such astonishing ways, life triumphs over nearcertain death. The hagfish’s self-defensive slime expands by 10,000 in less than half a second

Sophia Waugh: School Days

Three cheers for our beloved book-buyer It was the best of times; it was the worst of times… Too damned right it was. Year 9 is the only year not yet exiled because of COVID. Years 10 and 11 have been particularly hardhit – presumably because they were more likely to disobey rules and run around town rather than sit tightly at home. Be that as it may, no sooner did the entire Year 11 return to school than we had another case and had to send half of them back home again. The same has just happened with Year 10. I don’t think the school has had its whole population back since the first week of term in September. Teachers are being hit, too. Every department has had at least one – if not more – teacher on a 14-day COVIDrelated absence. So how is it for those of us who continue to show up and smile? The answer is: it is hard. Very hard. No one is to blame; even the whiniest teachers accept that the Senior Management Team is doing its best at a very difficult job. But alas I found myself in tears again this week. No children were present; only an assistant head, who remained calm. Why was I in tears? Partly because the expectations of how we do our jobs seem to change almost daily. In the first March lockdown, we set work online, which was tested by quizzes set and marked online.

Fryern Court, home of my grandfather Augustus John (1878-1961), stood on flat land between the Wiltshire Downs and the New Forest. At the sound of the bell for lunch or tea, Augustus walks slowly across the grass from his studio to take his place at the long oak table where everyone gathers for meals. He is very deaf and glares at us through horn-rimmed spectacles as he draws on his pipe to light it. I watch the flame leap on the match; notice his hands, 38 The Oldie February 2021

This was fine – up to a point. We used them to reinforce work we had already done. Only by the end were we beginning to set new content. Then, when we came back, it changed. Now we were to set new work online. Fine. It changed again; we had to send PowerPoints, with voice notes teaching the lesson, to the children. This was not hard, but very time-consuming. Fine if you have a whole year group out, but difficult if half were in and half were out. You would teach the lesson to the ten in the class; and then go over it again, adding voice notes, adapting the lesson for the isolated ones, and send it out. By now, the time taken over a lesson had almost doubled – plan, teach, replan, reteach. The strong were beginning to fade; the classroom lights burned much longer. But this was as nothing to the last straw – which set me sobbing. We are expected to stream our lesson to those at home while teaching those in the classroom. In theory, this should be easier – two for the price of one. But for an oldie (which I used to be only in spirit; now it seems I am in reality), the technology is painful. It involves two screens, 30 people in different places and an awful lot of saying, ‘Can you hear me?’ If you’re teaching your glorious,

top-set Year 11s, it is not too hard, in that the children log in, willing and able, albeit not very keen to contribute. If you’re teaching your new Year 10s, you invite all of them to the ‘meeting’ and most ignore or, even more humorously, ‘decline’. Only one student joined in my so-called ‘live’ lesson on Friday. So that is the worst of times – work to bring me to my knees. But the best of times? With my tiny ‘nurture’ group, I was determined to read them a book, rather than kill them by worksheet. I chose James and the Giant Peach, and three of those children – three boys whose reputations are already shot to pieces – seized on the story. They could not wait for me to read. They asked to take the books home, and I had to refuse. But I had something better up my sleeve. This was a moment to raid our Beloved Book Benefactor’s fund, and three hardback copies were duly bought. The look on those boys’ faces brought tears – happy tears, this time – to my eyes. The ‘Wow, Miss’, the shining eyes above the masks and the way, like any good bibliophile, they stroked the books before even opening them gave me back my faith. So even if, on a bad day, I come over a bit Sydney Carton, on a good day, I do a far, far better thing than I have ever done.

Augustus John and the art of smoking the fingernails blackened with paint. The smell of tobacco and his voice – low, sonorous – stay with me. If I am aware that he has lost his way as an artist, it makes no difference to me. When I felt despondent about my stop-start attempts at drawing, my mother referred me to my great-aunt, Gwen John (1876-1939), remarking that she was ‘very good at drawing cats’.

Cats! I loved cats. But if I were to choose a work to own, it would be one of her early oil paintings of a girl reading by a window – or a watercolour of a street at twilight: her nocturnes. REBECCA JOHN Thinking the Plant: The Watercolour Drawings of Rebecca John is out now (Pimpernel Press, £30)

Snowdrops II – Rebecca John

Alice Pitman: Home Front

STEVE WAY

My dog, the Deer Hunter No one and nothing else matter to our Greek hound Destry more than hunting squirrels and deer. Yet nobody thought to mention this when we bought him from an animalrescue charity two years ago. It’s like adopting a child in care without being told of his fire-starting habit. The moment Destry gets a whiff of wildlife, he’s off. Loud, far-reaching whistles, delicious, home-baked sausages, even feta cheese… They are all useless when he is in the zone. I’ve built up a network of kind dog-walkers in my neck of Surrey who all keep an eye out for him when he goes AWOL. Elderly women, mostly, who all seem to be called Sue. The Sue Crew all have my number, and phone whenever there is a sighting: ‘Sue here – Destry’s at the big pond.’ I think they go the extra mile for Destry because he is extremely handsome. He looks like a svelte Alsatian with floppy ears, his noble profile bringing to mind Hellenic ancestral hounds coursing after prey on ancient Greek friezes. He can be rude with us, but he greets every Sue and stranger alike with the unalloyed joy you see in viral videos of dogs greeting their soldier masters returning from the Middle East. Recently, his hunting forays have ratcheted up a notch. He disappeared for two hours last month after scenting deer in the woods. I waited so long for him to return that I exhausted every lockdownsceptic podcast on my iPhone and three Gilbert & Sullivan operas. A full minute later, to the overture from Iolanthe, the mighty hunter appeared galumphing out of the woods, emitting yapping noises without his mouth moving. ‘Like a dog ventriloquist!’ Sue 2 said. This pantomime continued at intervals until dusk when it suddenly fell eerily silent. I phoned daughter Betty, who came to help. She suggested we try hugging to make him jealous (it had sometimes worked in the past). So we embraced until a sheepish Destry sloped out of the woods, through the gloaming, towards us. In one of his diaries, James LeesMilne describes thrashing his dog as hard as he could with twigs after she bolted for an hour on a walk: ‘My remorse later took

the form of almost passionate embraces and outpourings of love.’ I didn’t thrash Destry, but there were no outpourings of love from me that evening. I sent him to Coventry. ‘Don’t be childish,’ said Mr Home Front. ‘He doesn’t know why you’re ignoring him.’ ‘Well, if he doesn’t know, he’s an idiot,’ I said. The Greek boy’s next trick was to bolt as usual but only in short bursts, meeting me minutes later at strategic landmarks around the common. A reasonable compromise. Sometimes he was a bit late arriving, but it felt like a minor breakthrough. ‘It’s just like telepathy,’ I enthused to Betty as we stopped by the second meeting post – an oak tree by the pond. ‘He knows just where to find me. You just watch – he’ll appear any minute now…’ Forty minutes later, we were still waiting. I headed for the car park, where unmistakable yaps rang out interspersed with piercing, ungodly screams. While

‘I followed the horrific, piercing, ungodly screams to a residential side street’

Betty stayed back, I followed the horrific noises to a residential side street. A friendly man outside his house informed me that a dog matching Destry’s description had just disturbed a foxes’ den in the scrubland opposite his house, while pursuing a deer. ‘Would you like to see if we can find him in my car?’ ‘Could you?’ He put on a mask and we set off in his Land Rover. ‘Has he done this before?’ ‘Yes, but never away from the common – and he never catches them.’ ‘Would he respond if you called out of the window?’ ‘No, the only thing that sometimes works is if someone hugs me.’ He glanced at me, eyes startled above the mask. We eventually found Destry sitting at the end of a cul-de-sac, tongue lolling, exhausted and shamefaced. As I put him on the lead, eyewitnesses appeared. ‘Your dog caught a deer!’ one said. ‘He threw it to the ground!’ said another. ‘He cried like a baby,’ said a third. Had the deer been bitten? They thought not. Was there blood? No. And Betty later confirmed that the deer had returned to the common unscathed. But it was the last mortifying straw. He’s been on a ten-yard retractable lead ever since. The Oldie February 2021 39

sister teresa

The day we sang in exultation As a member of a monastic choir, I find it disconcerting to notice that it always sounds better in my absence. (Most people experience this.) But even when I am singing, it can sometimes sound truly inspiring, thanks to our exceptionally good organist and the long-term patience of our choirmistress. As a bonus one Christmas (but alas not in 2020), a professional choirmaster came for just an hour to help us. Had I been told beforehand the effect he would have on our singing, I simply would not have believed it. Saint Benedict says that ‘to sing is to pray twice over’. On that dank winter afternoon, it was as though we were airborne. Very prosaically, this beauty was produced by hard graft and discipline: breathing properly, standing properly and paying attention. None of us is young, but it was delightful to feel like an enthusiastic

schoolgirl all over again because of making such a wonderful sound. At Midnight Mass, we sang the martyrology – a very solemn moment in monastic liturgy. As the name implies, this consists (but only partly) of a list of martyrs and other saints whose feast days fall on a given date. It also contains a much-abbreviated history of the world as seen from a medieval perspective. One of the earliest martyrologies was drawn up by Saint Jerome in the first half of the fifth century; the most recent one contains the names of 7,000 saints who are presented to the faithful as models worthy of imitation. We don’t mention them all. ‘In the 5,199th year of the creation of the world, from the time when God in the beginning created the heaven and the earth; in the 2,957th year after the flood … in the 152nd year from the foundation of the City of Rome; in the 42nd year of

the rule of Octavian Augustus, all the earth being at peace, Jesus Christ was born. LIFT UP YOUR HEADS FOR YOUR SALVATION IS AT HAND.’ Some of these figures are obviously fantastic, but the 42nd year of the rule of Octavian Augustus isn’t; nor is the assertion that our salvation is at hand. There was a candlelit procession of those taking part in the martyrology, accompanied by quiet organ music to encourage a prayerful atmosphere. Normally, the only carpet in the house (other than a strip of hair-cord which deadens the sound of tramping feet on the ancient and ill-fitting floorboards in the attic) is in place for the singers to stand on. This Christmas, there was none. I spotted a note stuck on a nearby candle. Expecting a request for prayers from someone in distress, I read it. It said, ‘No carpet this year: destroyed by dead mice rolled up therein.’

Funeral Service

Lord Ogmore (1937-2020) Morgan Rees-Williams, 3rd Baron Ogmore, was an early victim of COVID-19. He was vulnerable, having had a heart attack 12 years ago. His service, with a restricted congregation of 12, was conducted by his brother-in-law the Rev Jonathan Aitken at Putney Vale Crematorium and Zoomed to relatives and friends in South Wales and Hollywood. Rev Jonathan, who has also had COVID-19, told how he broke the sad but not unexpected news of Morgan’s death to his sister, Elizabeth. ‘She shed a tear or two but later she said, “Oh, I do hope that when he meets St Peter, Morgan won’t start telling him one of his dreadful jokes.” Well, who knows? Humour surely has its place in heaven. And Morgan could be irreverently humorous in and around churches.’ ‘Morgan was not an ambitious man,’ 40 The Oldie February 2021

said Aitken. ‘But, paradoxically, he was a competent and diligent one. At least until Friday afternoons, when he changed gear into his freewheeling lifestyle. He was the life and soul of his Chelsea local, the Queen’s Elm. He knew all its colourful regulars like Anthony Hopkins, JAK, the Evening Standard cartoonist, and Laurie Lee, author of Cider with Rosie.’ Lord Ogmore’s jobs included being a chef, wine-bar manager, theatrical agent and successful sales executive for Banham alarms. At Banham, he married the prettiest girl in accounts, Bea, his wife of 30 years and the mother of Tudor and Dylan. ‘Perhaps Morgan might have achieved more in his life had it not been for his

anarchic tendency to leave and even knock over the card table when he was holding the aces,’ said Aitken. ‘He was so highly regarded as a young second lieutenant that, towards the end of his National Service, his commanding officer begged his father, Lord Ogmore, to try and persuade his younger son to apply for a full regular commission.’ In his early years, Lord Ogmore’s courage shone through during his National Service in Cyprus. He was helping to keep the peace when EOKA terrorists were shooting at British soldiers. ‘Later in life, as an agent to the stars,’ said Aitken, ‘he won the showbiz equivalent of the Victoria Cross by managing the notoriously unmanageable, explosive couple Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, when they were filming in London.’ JAMES HUGHES-ONSLOW

The Doctor’s Surgery

The jab – just a little prick It’s crazy not to take the COVID-19 vaccine theodore dalrymple

The great physician Sir George Pickering once said that a minor operation is an operation performed on somebody else. The same cynical dictum might be used of pain: a minor pain is a pain felt by somebody else. Nevertheless, despite people’s evidently variable response to pain, we all have some grasp of what serious pain is ‘objectively’, at least in normal situations and states of mind. The immediate discomfort of immunisation by injection is not generally very great, even when intramuscular, as the Pfizer COVID-19 injection is, and most of the side effects that develop a little later are usually not severe or long-lasting. However, at first sight, the list of side effects appears alarming. According to present information, the following side effects are very common (which means, technically, that they occur in one or more cases in ten): headache, joint pain, pain in the muscles, pain at the injection site, fatigue, chills and fever. Common side effects (meaning between one in ten and one in 100 cases) are redness and swelling at the injection site and nausea. But reading the list of potential side effects of almost any medication, however necessary to the continuation of life, would be enough to put many people off taking it. And, in this case, the question is

what level of discomfort we are prepared to put up with to avoid the chance of suffering from COVID-19, whose case fatality rises steeply with age over 60. Not only would I myself put up with the above-mentioned side effects, but I hope that the majority of my fellow citizens will be prepared to do so. In this way, the famous – or is it now infamous? – herd immunity will build up. Of course, when a new vaccine is introduced, it cannot be known for certain how long the immunity it confers will last, or whether there will not rarely be severe reactions to it. Long-term effects likewise cannot be known in advance of experience. While it is very unlikely that the harmful effects will ever eventually outweigh the benefits, the possibility cannot be altogether excluded. This forces us to make a Promethean bargain. Wide publicity was given to the relatively severe, though not fatal, reactions to the vaccine in two healthcare workers. They were in a category – people with severe allergies – that had not been entered in the preliminary trial; the authorities were quick to advise that the vaccine should not be given to such people. This kind of exclusion is by no means unusual: the immunisation of people against smallpox, for example, which

eventually eliminated that disease from the world, was contraindicated in people who suffered from eczema, who might develop a serious and even fatal disease if they were inoculated with the smallpox vaccine. In the trials of the vaccine, the difference in the number of people who had allergictype reactions was very small between those who received the vaccine and those who received the placebo control. Nevertheless, 111 of the latter had such reactions, which initially is surprising. But on the assumption that the placebo was actually the excipient of the vaccine, that is to say the substances in which it was preserved and delivered – which (for the benefit of the curious) included (4-hydroxybutyl)azanediyl)bis(hexane6,1-diyl)bis(2-hexyldecanoate) and 2[(polyethylene glycol)-2000]-N,Nditetradecylacetamide – it is not surprising, perhaps, that there were some reactions. And this is to exclude the additional possibility of reactions mediated by anxiety, known to a researcher of my acquaintance as the wobbly-dos. For the moment – and one can speak only for the moment, all information being provisional – the vaccine seems a good thing. I would take it because I have nothing to lose, except my life.

The Oldie February 2021 41

The Oldie, 23–31 Great Titchfield Street, London, W1W 7PA letters@theoldie.co.uk To sign up for our e-newsletter, go to www.theoldie.co.uk

Pasternak draws Tolstoy SIR: I greatly enjoyed Sara Wheeler’s article on Tolstoy’s death at Astapovo Station (December issue). In my book Lara: The Untold Love Story That Inspired Doctor Zhivago, I describe my great-grandfather, Leonid Pasternak, sitting at Tolstoy’s deathbed with his 20-year-old son, burgeoning poet Boris. Countess Tolstoy had summoned impressionist painter Leonid to draw the deceased literary Tsar. Boris later described Sofia Tolstoy as ‘shrunken, mournful, humiliated’ as she watched from the corner of the room. It took Leonid 15 minutes to complete his pastel drawing. In his notebook, Leonid wrote, ‘Astapovo. Morning. Sofya Andreyevna at his bedside. The people’s farewell. Finale of a family tragedy.’ Yours, Anna Pasternak, Oxfordshire

Steady on, Virginia SIR: I have to say Virginia Ironside’s advice to time contentious discussions on motorway journeys filled me with terror. ‘Neither of you wants to die,’ she says, flippantly, which may be true in most cases – but my ex-husband, now thankfully dead, used to lose his temper and, with it, all rationality. It was common for him to drive at over 100mph almost touching the car in front. How he didn’t kill us both I don’t know, and reading those words brought me out in a cold sweat 40 years later. I am sure my ex was not unique; so, for the sake of innocent motorists everywhere, can you please ask Ms Ironside to retract this advice! Regards, Pauline Streets, Ayr

the amusing Ted Lowe quote, but I do recall another comment of his: ‘For the benefit of those watching in black and white, the green is just behind the brown spot!’ David Radford, Woodbridge, Suffolk

The tarnished Crown SIR: I was there in Kenya in 1952 when Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip visited the colony. So I stopped watching The Crown after the first episode, which was pure fiction. We schoolchildren were bussed to Government House to see the Royal visitors and we stood in ranks behind string barriers to wave flags at them. There were no brown children running about; indeed no

Snooker loopy SIR: I enjoyed Donald Trelford’s article (December issue), but I must draw attention to the fact that the world snooker final consists of 35 frames and not 71 as suggested. Dennis Taylor had drawn level at 17-all and then won the deciding frame. A further point – I cannot remember 42 The Oldie February 2021

‘You’re seven. You could be experiencing a midlife crisis’

running about at all. Our generation was severely disciplined. To add to this bit of personal experience: the greeting of the Royal couple by an absurdly-got-up African chief and his breast-naked wife was pure fantasy. In 1952, no women at all were seen outside the ‘native’ reserves, and all house servants were men who, regardless of age, were addressed as ‘boy’. I join my voice to the growing group wanting a disclaimer of historical accuracy at the beginning and end of each episode. Otherwise, many will take the whole nonsense as history. Ann Llewellyn, Llanidloes, Powys

Hollywood women SIR: In his Grumpy Oldie Man column, ‘Have yourself a Hellish little Christmas’, Matthew Norman has caught the subliminal racist undertones of these old films, but seems to have missed the elephant in the room – their misogyny. Judging by the plot he outlines (I confess I have not seen any of these films), there is a very obvious and sexist message being sent out to us women about our place in the world. Not for you, Miss Real America, the thrills of a high-flying career in the big city. Those are for men. Oh, no, you can

be happy and fulfilled only by giving that up and marrying a back-home boy. Prepare to sink into his arms as a prelude to plunging your arms in his sink. That way lies a proper woman’s life. Back in the city await only spinsterhood and loneliness. Yours faithfully, Susan Deal (Mrs), Chesterfield, Derbyshire

Evelyn Waugh & Benny Hill SIR: Is it a comment on my lack of proper reading that I thought the photograph of Evelyn Waugh on page 23 of the January issue was one of a young Benny Hill? My school report often said, ‘Must do better’! Regards, David Shipley, Morpeth, Northumberland

Don’t diss the Don SIR: Rachel Johnson’s review of Donovan manages, in passing, to mention four of the best songs of the late ’60s, but they’re not, it seems, as important as the hilarious fact that the Don is 73! Should we expect pathetic ageist comments in your magazine? Donovan (unlike Dylan) can still sing, and if Oldie readers would like to hear an undiscovered gem, I suggest Voyage into the Golden Screen, where Donovan is as melodic as Paul McCartney and as lyrical as early Yeats. Not too many performers can match his back catalogue. Pity your review was so petty. Graham Foster, Brighton, East Sussex

Vetting Lord Carrington SIR: Charles Pasternak (January issue) reports Lord Carrington as saying, ‘I was never positively vetted.’ What he meant, of course, was ‘I was never aware of being positively vetted.’ Yours, David Culver, London SE9

‘You’ll hear talk that I’m a cheapskate’

Vaccination points SIR: The caveats on COVID-19 vaccines in The Doctor’s Surgery (January issue) were timely but omitted three points. First, a 70-per-cent effective vaccine means no protection for roughly one in three; 90-per-cent efficacy means a one-in-ten failure rate. In a care home with 30 occupants – and assuming none refuses – between three and ten people will not be protected and be at increased risk as more relaxed attitudes ensue. Secondly, the real benefit of the vaccines is for society, particularly the NHS, as much as in protecting individuals. By reducing admissions for elderly patients, the NHS can increase capacity for other non-COVID patients needing care, some urgently. Thirdly, our obsession with death and classification as dead or alive ignores the prolonged illnesses affecting increasing numbers of COVID-survivors, and judgement of the importance of vaccines in younger patients needs to look at these and the patterns of spread in the community, not just at deaths. Now in my 80s (and a retired physician), I look forward to vaccination soon, but doubt whether it will affect the care I take to avoid COVID until a clearer picture of efficacy emerges. Yours faithfully, Simon Kenwright, Ashford, Kent

Always attach bayonets

‘The polka-dot and tiger-stripe ribbon raises awareness that we’re running out of ribbon colours’

SIR: Charles Pasternak’s piece on National Service (January issue) and officer training at Mons reminded me of an incident in 1956 when I was doing my stint there in the Royal Artillery. On one of the fortnightly pass-out parades which involved the formal appearance of all of us trainee officers,

I committed the heinous crime of leaving behind my bayonet which, of course, had to be attached for formal presentation during the inspection by the visiting dignitary. I had no choice but to go through the motions and hope. Miraculously, I seemed to get away with it. The following day, on morning parade, RSM Smy, the successor to RSM Brittain, with a voice just as loud and a height of what always seemed to be about 6ft 11in, called out for ‘officer cadet Trigg to take a one step forward’. He then marched right across the parade ground until his face was about an inch in front of me and said, in the voice that could be heard by all several hundred cadets on parade, ‘I’ve heard all about you, Mr Trigg, SIR. One slip-up of any kind and I promise it will be “Left right, left right, CLANG, coo ain’t it dark in ’ere?”’ Needless to say, I was on jankers within the week. Oliver Trigg, Ferring, West Sussex

Tom-Tom music SIR: I enjoyed your story about Tom Lehrer and Magdalen College, Oxford (December issue). Tom Stevens told it to

‘Ah, the carefree days of youth’

me himself at a Roman-history tutorial (I was at New College, but we were farmed out to Tom for Roman history). According to him, Tom Lehrer agreed to play only after he had shamed him by relating a similar experience when he had persuaded another famous but initially reluctant pianist to perform on a previous convivial occasion. ‘After I had begged him to play,’ said Tom Stevens, ‘Mr Solomon [the famous pianist] finally agreed to do so.’ This was in the summer term of 1959, so the dates have got a bit mixed. Yours faithfully, Sir Brian Unwin, Dorking, Surrey The Oldie February 2021 43

I Once Met

Ken Dodd I met Ken Dodd one Friday in 1992. I was travelling by train from Liverpool to my home in Wiltshire. On boarding the train at Lime Street, I secured one of four empty seats with a table and settled down to read my book in peace until I changed at Crewe. Or so I thought. More passengers boarded at Runcorn. One of them was a singular-looking character, with his back to me as he placed his bag on the luggage rack opposite. Eyeing the camel coat surmounted by a tiny short-brimmed trilby, beneath which long, lank hair extended well below the collar, I rather hoped he wouldn’t join me. Then he turned and asked, ‘Mind if I sit here?’ Recognising him in a flash, I said, ‘Honoured, Mr Dodd!’ I watched, fascinated, as he opened his briefcase on the table, got out a document to read and then took out his lunch. I was entranced by the ‘lunch’ – two jam butties for which the bread appeared to have been cut

with a handsaw, about an inch thick at one end and half an inch thick at the other, oozing jam and thick butter in between. When he finished his lunch, I asked him to autograph the book I was reading. Then started the most memorable conversation of my life. I couldn’t believe how friendly he was – he spoke to me as if I was the celebrity, not him. It was not so much a conversation as a one-man show for my benefit, interspersed with lots of questions about the book I was reading, and what I did for a living. When he signed my book (about the First World War), he said the topic was of great interest to him also. He told me (and the rest of the carriage) about his trips to Ypres and the Western Front. Dodd: tickled to meet John

He moved on to his recent troubles with the taxman (he’d been acquitted of tax evasion in 1989). He talked of his frustration on stage, when theatre employees were frantic in the wings, tapping their watches at him as he overran; especially in Yorkshire, where he thought the stage-management people were a dour and miserable lot. Not at all like people from Liverpool who were the best in the world. ‘I’ll pay all the overtime!’ he’d said to the watch-tappers. As I got off the train at Crewe, he stood up and walked part way down the aisle with me, still talking about the First World War. He ended by saying, ‘Why do we have wars, John? Do you know what the world needs now, John? HAPPINESS!’ Then I got off to change trains while he returned to his seat to carry on to London. Standing on the platform at Crewe, I felt as if I’d been hit by a verbal tsunami. But more than that, I felt I’d been in the presence of the most charismatic person I would ever meet. John Brealey

My Chariots of Fire photo f inish

Forty years ago, Chariots of Fire was released. A year before, in the summer of 1980, in the middle of my A levels, a friend called. His brother, at Cambridge, knew a ‘second assistant deputy director’, recruiting extras for a crowd scene. The pay was £20 for two days. The film, about runners, was to be called Chariots of Fire. A coachload of us tipped up at Chelsea College for a costume-fitting. I got two outfits: a striped boating blazer with slacks and a brown suit as subfusc. Two days later, I picked up my garb at Eton College,

standing in for Trinity (the Cambridge college having turned down a filming request). The scene takes place early on. Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross) and Lord Lindsay (Nigel Havers) compete against the clock in the Trinity Court Dash. To win, they must complete the circuit before the midday chimes finish. Ben Cross and Nigel Havers approached the start. The director told us to greet and cheer the runners as we liked. In one shot, a yob extra swore. The director shouted ‘CUT!’ We froze. ‘No, make that “You swanker!”’ the director shouted at the swearer. We lined the route. The race was on. The runners passed inches away. We dashed to the opposite side of the quad to keep up. We ran back to the finish. Abrahams wins! Away from the camera, we

swaggered around in costume in the grounds and faux lorded it up in town. Lunch was as many cheese-and-ham rolls and Penguin biscuits as we could handle, and urn-loads of strong coffee. At the end of the second day’s shoot, the director announced that another day’s filming was required to film a handful of us walking and pushing bicycles across the quad. ‘Are any of you Equity members?’ he asked. Fifty hands shot up.

One summer evening in 1986, I was at the Edinburgh Fringe, queueing with my parents in a tiny venue to see the little-known John Sessions (RIP) and Ruby Wax. My mum whispered to me, ‘Don’t look behind you, but…’ Turning round immediately, I saw Ian Charleson, who plays Eric Liddell so brilliantly in the film. He was dressed in double denim and handrolling a cigarette. I said, ‘You were in a film with me once!’ He asked, ‘Which one was that?’ Sadly, less than four years later, he died. By Graham Elliott, Manston, Kent, who receives £50

Cross, Havers, Elliott (2nd rt)

Readers are invited to send in their own 400-word submissions about the past The Oldie February 2021 45

Books Brainy Rottweiler MELANIE MCDONAGH Benedict XVI: A Life: Volume I: Youth in Nazi Germany to the Second Vatican Council 1927-1965 By Peter Seewald

GARY WING

Bloomsbury Continuum £30 When Joseph Ratzinger, better known as Pope Benedict, now the Pope Emeritus, was a little boy growing up in Bavaria, children didn’t write to Santa for presents. Instead they wrote letters to the Christ Child. One of his survives, from when he was seven: ‘Dear Christ Child, you will soon float down to Earth. You want to bring joy to children. You also want to bring me joy. I wish for a Mass book, a green Mass vestment and a JESUS heart. I will always be good. Best wishes from Joseph Ratzinger.’ The reason he wanted a vestment was to play at saying mass, as he and his brother Georg did at a small altar, with either their sister Maria or the brewer’s daughter acting as altar girl. It wasn’t exactly cops and robbers. This is the first of two volumes, covering Joseph’s childhood in Bavaria up to the Second Vatican Council, in which, still young, he played a decisive role. With a decent editor, it could have been half the size, in one volume, without losing the good bits. Peter Seewald has done laborious research, including extensive interviews with the Pope-emeritus. The emeritus title reminds us that he retired from the papacy in 2013, an astonishing and historic move. At 93, he now lives quietly in the Vatican, still sharp as a needle. In later life, he got a reputation as Rottweiler Ratzinger, head of the Vatican body that safeguards church doctrine,

and that reputation as a latter-day Torquemada remained with him as Benedict XVI, the name he took as Pope. He is usually regarded by Catholic liberals – quite unfairly, I think – as the reverse of nice, empathetic Pope Francis. Remember that film The Two Popes which juxtaposes an emotionally constipated Anthony Hopkins, as Benedict, with his warm, football-loving successor? This book shows a very different Joseph Ratzinger: a shy, clever and sensitive boy who became a profoundly gifted theologian and a formidable liberalising influence at the Second Vatican Council. He is also musical, terrifically keen on Mozart – perhaps the only resemblance between the film Benedict and the real one is that both play the piano. The popular perception of Benedict is of a liberal who turned reactionary in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, when the Church went a bit off the rails. This volume stops with the council – so

we shall have to wait for the sequel to see how Seewald debunks that charge. Joseph Ratzinger’s parents were simple, devout people, his father a police commander, his mother a pastry cook; he was 50, she 43 when Joseph was born on Easter Saturday 1927. He had advertised for a wife in the local paper with economic brevity: ‘Mid.civ.serv.sgl. Cath. 43 y, clean past, from the country, seeks gd Cathol. pure girl, good cook and all hswk … with furn. to marry asap.’ Not quite Tinder, but at least it was honest. The three young Ratzingers would have had an idyllic childhood in a Sound of Music region, were it not that they grew up in tandem with the rise of Hitler. Their father detested Nazism and retired early to a farmhouse in a remote village where the family lived on very little money. Both sons were educated in a junior seminary. In the war, they did their best to keep their heads down, until the seminarians were conscripted into the armed forces; Joseph was sent

The Oldie February 2021 47

into an anti-aircraft unit at the age of 17. During his time as a prisoner of war, he wrote Greek verse into a copybook. For all the jeering when he became Pope about his being a Nazi, he manifestly loathed the whole Nazi project. He became a priest and a brilliant young theologian, and was a university lecturer at the time of the Vatican Council. The Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne took him to Rome as his adviser and speechwriter. Joseph Ratzinger ended up as one of the brains of the German delegation with a decisive role in transforming the Council into a radical turning point for the church. Pope Benedict is fascinating as an individual; this biography less so. It’s discursive and clunkily translated – one chapter is headed The Spin Doctor, which is bizarre. Still, I’m looking forward to the next volume.

Deadly diagnosis RICHARD DAVENPORT-HINES Intensive Care: A GP, a Community & COVID-19 By Gavin Francis Profile Books £16.99 Alas 2020, such a pretty and satisfying numeral to look at, was the year of COVID-19. Reported to the World Health Organisation by the Chinese authorities on 31st December 2019, this opaque and capricious virus and the regulations introduced to limit its transmission have transformed societies across the world. At the time of writing, well over one and a half million people have died. Hundreds of millions have mourned, lost their jobs or homes, gone bankrupt or abandoned hope. The confusion has been made worse by the avalanche of conflicting information and dodgy opinions. Every pub bore, forbidden to visit the pub, has become an expert epidemiologist. Gavin Francis is not a bore, nor is his expertise bogus. He is an Edinburgh general practitioner, who has previously worked as a surgeon and emergency physician in several continents. He was once the medical officer to the British Antarctic Survey, and his beautifully-written, thoughtful books, Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins and True North: Travels in Arctic Europe, can’t be recommended enough. His interest in geography is clear in his bestselling exploration of bodily parts, Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum.

Unlike many physicians who also write like angels (Somerset Maugham, Celan and The Oldie’s Theodore Dalrymple), Francis is never embittered or misanthropic. He describes his new book, Intensive Care, as a work of contemporary history, ‘an eyewitness account of the most intense months I have known in my twenty-year career, a hot take on the pandemic which speaks of the tragic consequences of measures taken against the virus as much as it tells stories of the virus itself’. He is too modest to say that it is rich in compassion, patience and humanity. Early in the global pandemic, Francis read two books with plague themes, Boccaccio’s Decameron and Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year. His own effort matches them. He writes of his medical work in the Orkneys, and in Lowlands conurbations. Babies, nursing mothers, geriatrics, homeless people, ex-prisoners, the terminally ill, the obese, the smokers, the witless, the worried well and the mortally sick all feature in Francis’s reportage. He never cheapens his accounts with sentimentality or sensationalism. Reading his tales of misery and occasional hope is never a chore. COVID-19, as Francis writes, spreads through speech and touch. It attacks the basic elements of our humanity – ‘how we connect, empathise and show love’. It turns all people, good, bad and indifferent, into ‘potential assassins’. He is perhaps most interesting of all when he mentions the psychodynamics of the pandemic. An agoraphobic patient, who contracted COVID-19 at a funeral, stopped taking her pills to control anxiety because she felt so much better when no one else was allowed out. Many of Francis’s patients present with problems that are essentially related to mental health: people cooped up together in immiserating marriages, single parents, people going broke or

‘Tell me again, Dad, how you smote the auditors and drove the tax men into the wilderness’

indebted to moneylenders, parents of delinquents, or people who self-harm, have panic attacks or have recurrent alcohol-related injuries. Schizophrenics and others with chronic mental illness were discharged from long-term care in the belief that they would be safer outside institutions. I thought I knew the course of the pandemic pretty well. In fact, on Francis’s showing, I had misremembered events and jumbled their sequence to an extent that startled me. Intensive Care is attentive to the human geography of the pandemic. Francis recalls the body bags in mass graves in Iran, and the German finance minister who killed himself. He celebrates the partial recalibration of job prestige. Shelf-stackers in supermarkets have provided a vital public service, although they are paid indecently low and precarious wages in accordance with the scales of social and economic justice that have made Jacob Rees-Mogg stinking rich. This is a short book, written in terse sentences with strong and immediate impact. It is intended to raise the human spirit as well as our understanding of health workers, shelf-stackers and the rest of us. It made me think of the sentence with which George Eliot closed Middlemarch: ‘For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.’

Trans Formation KATE KELLAWAY Some Body to Love By Alexandra Heminsley Chatto £12.99 It is hard to know where a story like this begins. There is the day when Alexandra Heminsley looks at her husband’s complexion and, puzzled, asks, ‘Is that foundation you’re wearing?’ He, before slamming his way out of the house, lies protectively, saying it is sun cream. On another day, on a train, the same culprit – BB cream – falls out of his bag and there is a flustered moment as he smuggles it from sight. But, as Heminsley acknowledges – she is an accomplished memoirist and knows a story may have multiple entrances – there is no trite beginning to her husband D’s journey. When he tells her of his intention The Oldie February 2021 49

to transition, they have a baby son (hard-won after rounds of IVF). And, at her darkest moments, Heminsley confesses to rage at the idea of D as an opportunist waiting for the baby he could not give birth to himself before conveniently ditching their marriage. But, as the book proceeds, she overcomes this and rallies in empathetically militant defence, arguing that it is because of society’s intolerance towards trans people that it has taken D 40 years to nerve herself. And they are friends now – the best of friends, she wants to make clear. It is important to stress that this is Heminsley’s story, not D’s. Her restraint is admirable yet tantalising. I longed to know how the story was developing from both sides, to hear more from D herself. But this book belongs to the evergrowing number of writers’ cures – in which the writer’s self-help might also help readers. Heminsley has a heartening track record in this regard, as author of Running Like a Girl (2013) – about running when you are not obvious athlete material – and its sequel, Leap In (2017), about the bracingly therapeutic effects of all-year sea swimming. Oddly enough, in the most memorable moment of Leap In, her husband’s wedding ring is stolen by the sea off Brighton beach. A portent, perhaps. In the new book, she describes D as having ‘slipped away like shingle after a momentous tide’ and makes no secret of the extent to which she feels out of her depth. But she resourcefully turns crisis into writerly opportunity and explores what it is to live in a woman’s body. She recounts her battering experience of IVF and admits to passing incredulity that anyone would choose to be a woman. There is also a gripping (alas, in more ways than one) subplot about being touched up by a drunk on a train. She prosecutes the man in question and loses. About her feelings, she is an honest expert. Her writing is so compelling that the book is indecently easy to read – one can skip through her meticulously described angst at a carefree lick. All you have to do while she suffers is turn the page. She is most interesting on her less-than-universal plight and laments the absence of a ‘script’ for people in her situation. Her book is a brave start. She is incapable of being dull, although there are stretches – including those about her adolescent growing pains and exercise regime – that read more like padding than as essential material. But I understand the mission: her book is partly about the complicated

challenge of befriending one’s body. Bodies can, and do, betray us – and she writes well about the toxicity of ideal images of women on Instagram. Yet she does not pretend to relish her unwieldy postpartum body any more than she does the accompanying weight of grief – for what she is going through is a form of bereavement, after the death of the married life she had imagined. She is critically astute about the oversimplifications involved in the body-positivity movement: ‘Was I expected to keep feeling better and better about my physical self until I died, a self-adoring 90-year-old in short shorts, a thousand filtered flecks of light dancing around my carefully maintained grey-but-not-quite-natural-grey hair?’

Baddy language TIBOR FISCHER The Language of Thieves By Martin Puchner Granta Books £16.99 It infuriated Luther, intrigued Kafka and probably annoyed Hitler during his Vienna years. The Language of Thieves tells the story of Rotwelsch, beggar’s cant, a sort of poor man’s Yiddish, that was spoken by vagabonds, fly-by-nights and criminals, few of them Jewish. Rotwelsch-speakers also had a primitive writing system of zinken, markings they would use to give warnings or advice to their fellows. The author, Martin Puchner, manages to weave in his family history as his grandfather, father and uncle, for different reasons, were keen students of the ‘language’. Language, dialect, sociolect or jargon? Puchner quotes Max Weinreich’s neat aphorism: ‘A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.’ A native Nuremberger, Puchner emigrated to the United States, where his

‘It says, “Go paperless! Opt to receive future messages by text, email... ”’

determined investigation of Rotwelsch began in Harvard’s Widener Library. He had the idea of checking whether the library had any of his grandfather’s works. They did, including an article in a 1934 journal mentioning Rotwelsch. The article was entitled Family Names as Racial Markers. You can see where this is going. Puchner certainly isn’t the first German to discover that Grandad was a Sieg Heiler. But his family history is weirder and more complicated than that. Fittingly for a book dedicated to generations of wanderers, Puchner rambles through all sorts of subjects, from Luther’s irate compendium on beggars, through Esperanto, to his own naturalisation as an American citizen and Guantánamo Bay. The subtitle of the book is One Family’s Secret History. It turns out that the Puchner family history is not so much a closely guarded secret, as a tale of members not paying much attention to facts and events being poorly remembered, or enthusiastically forgotten, as happens in most families. You do get the feeling that some of the domestic matter is there because there isn’t that much to say about Rotwelsch itself. Hence a chapter on Yenish, another cousin of Rotwelsch. The meandering storyline and descriptions of pubs is nevertheless something that Puchner manages to pull off (the samples from his father’s poetry, on the other hand, could have been dropped). It’s also fantastic how the reader is treated to some of the favourite German stereotypes. Luther’s main objection to beggars seems to have been their irregular, unordered life, and Puchner can’t help being outraged by typos in the sheet of lyrics of The Star-Spangled Banner he and his fellow pledgers are given when they become American citizens. Germany is such a paperwork paradise. It’s probably the only country in the world where being an archivist is cool and where archives keep files on their archivists (fortunately for Puchner, this greatly aids him in his investigation into his family). As much of the action takes place in Nuremberg, I was waiting for Wagner to make an appearance, but Puchner outfoxed me. Nuremberg does provide a passage on Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will and the Nuremberg Trials. Puchner’s great-uncle Otto, a former Brownshirt who breezed through the de-Nazification process, helped to organise the immense number of The Oldie February 2021 51

files generated by the trials of the Nazis and ended up as ‘the number-one expert’ on them. Puchner also relishes the irony that the Nuremberg Trials are the birthplace of simultaneous interpretation, that invaluable tool of international conferences and understanding. Nuremberg should be proud, Puchner argues, of its role in pioneering the notion of ‘crimes against humanity’, and ‘demonstrating to the world the possibility of international justice’. I doubt everyone would agree that those trials brought about any substantial justice. Puchner’s affection for Rotwelsch is obviously deeply felt. According to Puchner, the one term that’s in regular use in English that comes from Rotwelsch is ‘to be in a pickle’. He extols a number of his most cherished expressions: to ‘make a rabbit’ is to scarper, and prison is referred to as a ‘school’. Perhaps it is the influence of Rotwelsch, but I’ve come across many references to prisons as ‘schools’ or educational establishments, and I can’t help wondering whether this witticism wasn’t a conceit that was itching to happen everywhere. A book about Newgate Prison, published in 1703, dubs it ‘Whittington’s Colledge’ (sic). Its blurb boasts: ‘Giving an Account of the Humours of those Collegians who are strictly examined at the Old Baily, and take their highest Degrees near Hyde Park Corner.’ The Tyburn Tree, the gallows, was at Hyde Park.

How to feed the world ROSIE BOYCOTT Ending Hunger: The Quest to Feed the World Without Destroying It By Anthony Warner One World £16.99 You have to hand it to Anthony Warner; he doesn’t shy away from big subjects. His last book, The Truth About Fat, was (rightfully, to my mind) lambasted for not tackling the role of the food industry in fostering our obesity epidemic. He is, after all, a former employee of Big Food. But he did nail many of the idiotic myths and harms done by food fads – many thought he had introduced a breath of fresh air to the debate. Now he has taken on the biggest subject of all. Ending Hunger is deeply researched and Warner makes a good and compelling case. Agriculture, as we

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake … just because there’s a vaccine, it doesn’t mean you have to re-engage with society’

know it today, is responsible for biodiversity loss, soil degradation and the felling of rainforests in order to uncover even greater areas of fertile soil. This is not new: as Warner points out, civilisations from the Aztecs to the Mayas and the tragic inhabitants of Easter Island all trashed their soil to the point of uselessness and then collapsed. The once great North African town of Leptis Magna, which supported the Roman Empire with three crops of wheat a year, survives as a stony desert. No serious worries then – there were still plenty of new pastures waiting to be colonised. The same cannot be said today. Soils are weakened and the climate crisis threatens to push much of the world’s farming to the brink. Annually, the conversion of natural habitats to agricultural use releases about 18 per cent of total global emissions. Since the beginning of the agricultural revolution, the clearing of land has released an amount of carbon dioxide equivalent to everything produced by burning fossil fuels over the same period. The trouble started after the war. The American scientist Norman Borlaug, himself a victim of famine in the American Midwest in the Great Depression, decamped to Mexico to begin the world’s first experiments in creating tougher, shorter and more resistant wheat strains. Wheat used to grow naturally to about three feet; Borlaug produced a strain that topped out at 15 inches. Within a few years, Mexico’s yields had multiplied by six, and in the following decades Borlaug’s wheat swept the world, ushering in a Green Revolution, which allowed populations to soar and prosper. But, as with so many things that

appear to be transformational, no one anticipated the hidden consequences. Borlaug’s methods demanded deep ploughing of soil. Initially seen as a healthy way to bring oxygen into the depths, in fact this was a recipe for disaster, as each turn of the increasingly mechanised plough cut through zillions of tiny life forms, root structures, mycorrhizae and other miracles that live just beneath our feet. Fertilisers were brought in to help; insecticides and pesticides deployed with military zeal. The result is that crop yields are now in decline and soils are, literally, dying. Warner gives a graphic illustration of New Zealand mountains being covered in layers of red soil from Australia that has become so dry and lifeless that the wind blows it there. Warner’s conclusions will, like his refusal to lay any blame for obesity at the door of the food companies, anger some in the food communities. He trashes his way through the organic movement – mostly on the grounds that its origins lie in fascist Germany, meaning its proponents are prone to the delusion that their systems can save the world. He is similarly scathing about local food, without seeming to understand that, while its actual contribution to the food supply may be limited, the benefits it brings to communities and the effects it can have on encouraging healthy eating habits are immense. I agree with Warner that changing behaviour is an uphill task. The Government’s vastly funded Eat 5 a Day campaign was an almost complete failure. He makes a strong – and correct – case for eating less meat backed up by compelling statistics about health and climate change. He makes the vital, often neglected case that the food system itself needs to change if we are to have any hope of reducing our carbon footprint enough to prevent global temperatures from rising more than two degrees. But he is also alive to what the world loses when children go hungry – not just wide-eyed, swollen-bellied children in Africa or Yemen, but kids here, too. Children – like plants – do not thrive if fed poor diets. In 1985, 19-year-old boys in Britain were, on average, 176.4 cm tall, placing them 28th in the world. Today they are 178.2 cm, placing them 42nd. Researchers put this relatively meagre growth down to the relative poverty of British diets. Warner has set out to help feed the world; it is also high time we learnt how to feed our own citizens. The Oldie February 2021 53

Survivor’s tale JANE O’GRADY How to Be a Refugee By Simon May Picador £20 ‘Do you know how your father really died?’ the author (aged 11) was asked by his Aunt Ursel. She then mimicked, in slow motion, his father’s gaping horror as, five years before, he had tumbled backwards in a heart attack during a visit to the German Embassy in London. It was odd, she added, that he, a Jew, should have died in the embassy of the country he had fled 30 years earlier. ‘From that day on, Ursel was my favourite aunt,’ says May, for details of his father’s death increased the store of things he wasn’t meant to know. He was now determined ‘to square up to truth’. How to be a Refugee recounts his search, over the years, for information about his relatives’ lives, and thus about himself. Born in London in 1957, he always felt ‘a hereditary exile’. He was forbidden to speak German, though his parents spoke it to each other and to most of their friends; nor had he any right, maintained his mother, to identify as Jewish – her own mother was Aryan. Therefore, according to matrilineal Jewish law, so were she and her sons. Often, though, she supplied reminiscences of both her parents’ distinctively Jewish families. At primary school, May’s fellow pupils recognised his mother’s German accent and gave her Hitler salutes. At secondary school, he sought Jewish friends but, when they visited, he rushed around the house hiding the crucifixes. Increasingly he was drawn to German culture, but to discuss this at German-Jewish gatherings where his mother, a famous violinist, rapturously played German music seemed ‘complicatedly impossible’. Yet embracing Jewish identity seemed to betray her, and, worse, make him ‘an impostor’ – ‘a fake Jew’.

‘We took the kids to the zoo last week – we’re going to visit them at weekends’

David Hockney at Pembroke Studios, August 1981. From A Life Behind the Lens by Paul Joyce, Lucida Publications, £24.99

What does it mean to be a Jew? Is Jewishness a matter of race or of religion? Certainly, in Nazi Germany, it was the former. Even those fractionally of Jewish descent were calibrated accordingly; ‘Hybrids of the First [and Second] Degree’ were, ultimately, candidates for the gas chambers. But if religion is the criterion, is being Jewish optional? May’s mother and her sisters were Catholic converts – yet what they converted from was Protestantism. In 1910, their father, Ernst, had ‘with a single signature’ renounced his ancestral faith and ‘thousands of years of belonging’. Irritable with Jews who made a fuss about their religion, he felt protected by his. But when he arrived at his legal chambers – in Berlin – one Monday in April 1933, his previously deferential

clerk yelled, ‘Get out of here immediately, you East Asian monkey, you filthy Jew!’ and kicked him down the stairs. Abject, incredulous, he died soon afterwards. ‘Sei froh!’ (‘Be glad!’) said his daughter. But the paradoxes of identity so brilliantly explored in this memoir are intriguing and absurd, as well as tragic. Ursel, an actress, and 21 when her father died, was expelled from the high theatrical world in 1936, but had a riotous time performing in Berlin cabarets. She married into the aristocracy, became a countess, contrived Aryan certification and was readmitted to the Reich Chamber of Culture. She lived in Berlin till 1943 when, tipped off that the Gestapo were onto her, she fled to join her husband (part of the occupying force in Holland), and persuaded him to desert. The Oldie February 2021 55

Her older sister Ilse was a successful photographer, who had a film-composer Nazi boyfriend and lived in Berlin for the entire 12 years of the Third Reich, often dancing the nights away at Babelsberg (Germany’s Hollywood). In 1941, when she saw her uncle Theodor in a Berlin street and ran to meet him, he, wearing a yellow star, begged her to ignore him for her own protection. But she didn’t even bother trying to get false papers. Ursel had claimed to be the ‘uncontaminated’ product of an adulterous fling on the part of her Aryan mother. Ilse’s survival trick was ‘inner ethnic cleansing … deceiving yourself so deeply that not even you remembered – or could believe – who you were’. A mark of its success was that, along with Christabel Bielenberg and other goys, Ilse was part of a network hiding Jews. Still, someone must have known. In 1942, she received a box from Sachsenhausen concentration camp containing Theodor’s last possessions. Would being a ‘hybrid’ have saved her? Anyway she wasn’t one. In 2002, May found evidence that his mother’s mother was Jewish. This discovery was part of a more long-drawn-out restitution – of a Jewish textile business, ‘Aryanised’ in 1939, in which his grandmother had had shares. May, a distinguished philosopher at King’s College London, now has a flat in Berlin, and is a German citizen. In 2018, on the 51st anniversary of his father’s death, he was (coincidentally) invited to dinner at the German Embassy, along with the daughter of an Auschwitz survivor. ‘And the vegan option is for madam?’ asked the deferential waiter. Oddly, reading this made me cry.

OLDIE NOVEL OF THE MONTH

In and out of bedlam SAM LEITH The Octopus Man By Jasper Gibson Weidenfeld and Nicolson £14.99 It is nearly eight years since Jasper Gibson published his first novel, A Bright Moon for Fools. It showed him to be the owner of an unruly but considerable talent – a gift for bright phrases, and a comic style that lurched between spleen, melancholy, lyricism and violent slapstick. His second novel, The Octopus Man, has all those qualities and more. But it

‘A rare Picasso family photo’

made me wonder how its author spent the last near-decade. Did he go – as one of the characters in his book insensitively calls it – bonkaroni? For being bonkaroni – so agonisingly and suffocatingly evoked that it’s hard to believe the author just made it up – is the subject of this novel. I’m blessed with not knowing what it’s like to have schizophrenia but, if Gibson’s account of the experience is anything like the real deal, he has achieved something remarkable. An afterword says that the story was inspired by the author’s cousin, who died at 40, having struggled with mental illness for 20 years. The novel’s narrator, Tom Tuplow, hears voices – or, at least, one voice: that of a Hawaiian octopus-god called Malamock who, in Tom’s cosmology, wriggled through from the universe that preceded this one. Malamock is cruel to his disciple, punishing him with bouts of physical and mental pain (‘triggerings’ and ‘electrocutions’) when Tom displeases him – but occasionally rewarding him with great downpourings of warmth and comfort and light. The story takes Tom from living independently – though under the eye of his loving but at-her-wits’-end sister, Tess – to a full-blown psychotic break, to being sectioned in a grim psychiatric hospital, to release and participation in an experimental drug trial that stops him from hearing voices – and then to his decision to stop taking the drugs. Interspersed with the main narration, in the same present-tense form, are jumbled vignettes of his childhood and young manhood. What a mind is here overthrown: author of prize-winning essays at university, voracious and omnivorous reader, fast-track law student and fiend for drugs and booze.

The suggestion is that all that weed and amyl, all that blotter acid and triple drops of ecstasy opened a hole in Tom’s psyche that can’t now be closed. If all this sounds grim, that’s to ignore its comic energy. It’s full of jokes, capers, black ironies and a wild juxtaposition between the mundane and the transcendental. Told as it is from Tom’s perspective, it’s not simply a story of mental illness, recovery and relapse. Tom is not freed from his thrall to an imaginary cosmic octopus when he takes his meds. He stops hearing Malamock’s voice, but he misses Him. He misses the grandeur and purpose procured by his being the lone disciple of an ancient being in touch with the ineffable truths of the universe. As an old girlfriend on whom he fixates tells him, ‘You were Job. You were Jacob struggling with the angel. Now you’re Tom struggling on benefits.’ As Robert Lowell wrote of his own return from a psychiatric hospital, ‘Cured, I was frizzled, stale, and small.’ The Octopus Man, then, evokes the gruelling and humiliating daily life of a seriously ill person tangled in the bureaucracies of the mental-health and benefits systems, and shows the desperate effects of his illness on those who love him. But it also – especially as it moves towards its conclusion – explores the territory mapped out in William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience. In one passage, Tom – lawyer still to his bones – argues to the head of the psychiatric hospital that there’s no reason that his experience of faith is insanity but the local vicar’s is not. Still, as he later glumly observes, crossing the road in front of beeping traffic, ‘Cars are really just like psychiatrists: they only know how to make one noise.’ The Oldie February 2021 57

Media Matters

The lethal charm of Robert Maxwell A year before he died, courteous Captain Bob gave me a call stephen glover

How many people under 45 know anything about the media tycoon Robert Maxwell? They can hardly avoid articles about his daughter Ghislaine – awaiting trial in New York for the alleged sex trafficking of underage girls – but are probably largely ignorant about the man once known to Private Eye readers as ‘Captain Bob’ and ‘the bouncing Czech’ – a reference to the country of his birth. Yet for a brief period between 1984 and his unexplained death in 1991, Maxwell was one of the two leading newspaper proprietors in Britain, the other being Rupert Murdoch. It is hard to convey how dominant these two rivals were. In the mid-1980s, Murdoch’s Sun sold around four million copies a day, and Maxwell’s Daily Mirror just over three million. Assuming an average of three readers per copy, there were some 21 million readers of the two red-tops – nearly half the adult population of the country. The two moguls were in most respects unalike. For one thing, Maxwell was a crook, whereas Murdoch was not. And while Murdoch was a brilliant newspaperman, Maxwell was a successful businessman who knew a lot about publishing but little about national newspapers. Having been beaten by Murdoch in races to acquire the News of the World and the Sun, Maxwell in 1984 managed to buy the Labour-supporting Mirror and its sister titles. Under his watch, as he bullied and fell out with various editors and writers, the Mirror steadily lost circulation, while the Sun widened its lead. But this did not curtail Maxwell’s wild newspaper ambitions. In February 1987, he launched the London Daily News to compete with the Evening Standard. That paper’s owner, the then Lord Rothermere, produced a cut-price spoiler called the Evening News, which many readers confused with the new title. Maxwell’s paper closed after six months. In 1990, he launched the European

(which admittedly survived his death by seven years) and the following year he acquired the debt-laden, loss-making New York Daily News. By this time he was to all intents and purposes bankrupt, and had been raiding the Mirror Group pension fund to keep afloat. Maxwell even built up a covert shareholding in the Independent, which I helped to found in 1986, though he was thwarted because the maximum single stake in the paper was ten per cent. After Sebastian Faulks wrote a not entirely friendly profile of him in the Independent on Sunday, Maxwell rang me as its editor to complain. In fact, he was extravagantly courteous. When I asked him why he was buying shares in the paper’s parent company, he replied that it was ‘because you chaps are doing such a good job down there. But if you wish me to desist, you only have to tell me, and the show will move on from the Palace to the Alhambra.’ I didn’t believe him. He disappeared off his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, named after his beloved daughter, a year later. Another difference between Murdoch and Maxwell is that while the Left loathed and excoriated the former, they tolerated the latter. Maxwell had been a Labour MP between 1964 and 1970. After he became the Mirror’s proprietor, the party under Neil Kinnock sought his

Bouncing Czech: new book is out on February 4th

support, though Maxwell successfully sued Private Eye after it suggested he had paid Kinnock’s travel expenses in the hope of being recommended for a peerage. Maxwell had friends in the Labour Party, such as the MP Geoffrey Robinson. His chief of staff in the late 1980s was the ex-Times economics editor and erstwhile British Ambassador to Washington Peter Jay, who happened to be son-inlaw of former Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan. Readers may remember that Alastair Campbell – then the Mirror’s political editor, later Tony Blair’s spin doctor – thumped Guardian journalist Michael White for cracking a joke about ‘Captain Bob, bob … bob, bob, bob’ on the day of Maxwell’s drowning. This suggests that Campbell was fond of the old brute, as were many on the Left. John Preston, biographer of another rogue, Jeremy Thorpe, is in February bringing out a book about Maxwell – Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell. Meanwhile, we await the verdict of the court on Ghislaine. Perhaps both events will help to bring back into public consciousness a bent media mogul who briefly dominated the national landscape. Whatever else can be said about Robert Maxwell, he was a rotten newspaperman. The other day I came across this rather shocking passage in D R Thorpe’s splendid biography of Anthony Eden: ‘With the collapse of the [Suez] invasion, it became open season for Eden’s critics. At the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, his speech was received with applause, but the BBC engineers, forewarned that the largely Establishment audience would be sympathetic, cut the link as soon as he had completed the advance text, so that it appeared to the radio audience that his message had been received in stony silence.’ Some things never change. The Oldie February 2021 59

Johnny Grimond: Words and Stuff

Renaming of foreign parts

MARTYN WILLIAMS/ALAMY

Honkers, Rangers, Bangers and Singapops. There. By resurrecting these colonial colloquialisms I may have offended the 25 million citizens of Hong Kong, Rangoon (Yangon now), Bangkok and Singapore. I hope not. I hope these nicknames are no more derogatory than the Big Apple or Auld Reekie. But people are hypersensitive these days. Some seem to relish a slight, real or imaginary. They want to choose their names, and then cry insult if we don’t follow suit. Luckily, the great era of namechanging is over. The United Nations had 60 members in 1950; 189 in 2000. But only four have joined in the past 20 years. Decolonisation, a surge of secessions and the break-up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia meant that roughly 30 new countries appeared every decade between 1950 and 2000, with a lull in the 1980s. Self-government brought new names not only to countries but also to towns, cities and other places. Abroad, bafflement ensued. ‘Where on earth is Myanmar?’ was muttered. Whatever Happened to Tanganyika? asked the title of a book. ‘Nothing wrong with Ceylon,’ harrumphed the old buffers. Even at home, name-changing hasn’t always gone down well. The Bombay Stock Exchange, Asia’s oldest, has resisted adopting ‘Mumbai’ in its name. It now calls itself the BSE. Yet many of the

Inept typing Why don’t people learn to touchtype these days? I see them painfully typing with two fingers, looking up at the screen and then down at the keyboard and, as often as not, hitting the wrong keys. If only they’d learnt that highly efficient and ergonomically effective means of getting words onto the page: touch-typing. 60 The Oldie February 2021

changes made sense. When the British coined the name Lake Nyasa, they didn’t seem to realise that, to the locals, it meant Lake Lake. It’s now called Lake Malawi. These days, forces other than selfdetermination are making the case for name changes. In response to a popular campaign, Australia’s postal service recently said it would accept Aboriginal names in addresses. So Sydney can be Eora, Melbourne Woiworung, Canberra Ngunawal and Perth Wajuk. More sinister is the Hinduisation of Indian names. Allahabad has become Prayagraj, to the distress of many Muslims, and the Hindu-nationalist state government of Gujarat wants to restore to Ahmedabad, the state’s biggest city, its original name of Karnavati. Last June India’s supreme court was asked to rule on a proposal to replace all references to ‘India’ in the constitution with ‘Bharat’, a Sanskrit name. The court said it was a matter for the government. Elsewhere, the urge to change can come from a fear of ridicule. It was suggested a few years ago that Slough might like to rebrand itself. It’s not clear whether the presumed unwanted association was with John Bunyan’s 1678 Slough of Despond, or John Betjeman’s 1937 appeal – ‘Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough! It isn’t fit for humans now’ – or, more recently,

One of the most useful things I ever did was to learn to touch-type, in the days of manual typewriters. The art had to be taught – you couldn’t just pick it up – and you learned on a typewriter with blank keys, so you had to memorise where they were. Acquiring the skill took practice and many false steps but, once mastered, it was never forgotten. Like most touch-typists, I can hit the keys with my eyes shut and know I will get a perfect copy. In the 1960s, when I took my course, being a typist was an actual job. Fast, accurate typists were highly prized and you could work with speed and precision only if you could touch-type. Most professional typists in

the popular television sitcom The Office, set in Slough. Anyway, the good burghers of that maligned town seem content with what they’ve got. Likewise, the councillors responsible for Swastika, a hamlet halfway between Sugarbush and Peru in upstate New York, recently decided to keep its name. It had been judged good enough, they pointed out, by their predecessors when a change had been considered in the 1940s – and some of those who said so had just fought against the Germans. Besides, ‘swastika’ long predated the Nazis, being ‘an ancient symbol of good luck’. A month later the voters of Asbestos, in Quebec, were less relaxed. The town’s open-cast asbestos mine, the biggest in the world, had closed in 2011 and now, it was said, investors were keeping their distance. The voters opted for a switch to Val-des-Sources. Soon afterwards, their counterparts in the Austrian village of Fucking, bored with having to replace stolen road signs, were less radical, changing just two letters to make their home Fugging. None, however, could have been more pleased than the residents of Unguwar Wawaye in Nigeria, after its name was junked in favour of Yalwar Kadana. The old name meant ‘Area of Idiots’; the new one means ‘Place of Plenty’. It’s not clear whether the nearby Idiotic River has also won a new identity.

those days were women but now everybody is a typist, hunched over their laptops. The weird thing, now we are all typists, is that hardly anybody can actually type. So why is touch-typing not being taught in all schools, so that people start off right? It should be made compulsory. The QWERTY keyboard,

SMALL DELIGHTS Walking into your house just as the hailstorm hits – and you aren’t wearing a raincoat. BERYL FLEMING, WORTHING Email life’s small delights to editorial@theoldie.co.uk

developed over 160 years ago to prevent the keys’ jamming into one another when you were typing at speed, remains basically the same and has been adopted by most computer manufacturers. If you begin by jabbing at the keys with two fingers, it’s hard to unlearn this inefficient and clumsy way of typing. Using all the fingers gives a light touch, enabling you to move effortlessly over the keyboard without developing back or other posture problems. There are few tasks as pleasurable and satisfying as touch-typing. So come on: bring back those typing courses for our ham-fisted youngsters. LIZ HODGKINSON

History

1821 – the year of freedom

PICTURE ART COLLECTION/ALAMY

200 years ago, the world lost its chains, from South America to Greece david horspool Two hundred years ago in January 1821, a Romanian revolutionary, Tudor Vladimirescu, sent a letter to Istanbul to announce the first moves in a campaign for greater autonomy. In March, a Greek bishop, Germanos, halted his journey in the gulf of Corinth, defied his imperial masters, and declared his country’s independence. In May, on an island in the middle of the Atlantic, Napoleon Bonaparte died, a worn-out prisoner, at the age of 51. In June, the great general Simón Bolívar led his army to victory in northern Venezuela, paving the way to independence for his vision of a new country, Gran Colombia. That republic’s constitution was proclaimed August, the general declaring his intention to expand his struggle for liberty: ‘I will march to the very edge of Colombia to break the chains which bind the sons of Ecuador.’ The wave of freedom rolled on. In July, another inspirational South American military leader, José de San Martín, veteran of the struggles for his native Argentina and for Chile, declared Peruvian independence. In September, within weeks of each other, a Central American Act of Independence was passed, encompassing modern Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Honduras, and the independence of the Mexican empire from Spain was declared by yet another general, though this one, Agustín de Iturbide, had a history of swapping sides. Before the year was out, Panama and the Dominican Republic had also thrown off their shackles. To a British reader, 1821 isn’t Romanian rebel: Vladimirescu

much of a year. An election returned the long-serving Tory prime minister Lord Liverpool to office. George IV was crowned in an atmosphere of embarrassing rancour, as he barred his estranged wife from attending and a mob tried to assist her. The only bicentenaries in this country worth celebrating are perhaps the completion of Constable’s The Hay Wain and the launch of the Manchester Guardian. So if we’re looking for suitable historical inspiration for the longed-for spirit of renewal in the year ahead, it’s best to look outwards. Not all these movements were successful, and some have more than a whiff of legend about them. The Romanian revolutionary Vladimirescu failed to throw off the Ottoman yoke. Though the Greeks were more successful, the story of Bishop Germanos’s divinely inspired call to resistance after a night of prayer in an Orthodox monastery was made up by a French historian. Nevertheless, the Greek War of Independence began in 1821, and though it took another six years and the intervention of great powers before the Battle of Navarino secured it, Greeks still celebrate 25th March 1821, when Germanos is meant to have made his stand, as their Independence Day. As for South America, 1821 was the climax of a campaign to throw off Spanish rule across the continent. That process took more than a year and involved the interaction of classes and ethnic groups in hugely complex ways. Much of it can be traced in origin to Napoleon, who died his lonely death that May. His rise had resulted in a replacement of Spanish colonial masters by Napoleon’s own brother, and his fall saw the return of ‘the desired’ Bourbon King Ferdinand VII, who

turned out not to be so desirable after all. But the South American independence movement depended on the leadership of those generals and caudillos. The greatest of them, Bolívar, El Libertador himself, had witnessed the magic of Bonapartism first-hand. When Napoleon crowned himself Emperor in 1804, Bolívar was there in Notre-Dame. Napoleon would surely have been on Bolívar’s mind when he rejected democracy as a system that, ‘far from rescuing us, can only bring us ruin’, and proposed a benevolent dictatorship that turned out to resemble the less benevolent kind. If we don’t generally think of 1821 as a revolutionary year to remember, when compared with 1776, 1789 or 1848, it’s because we tend to focus on the familiar. From a Balkan perspective, let alone a South American one, 200 years ago is the moment the modern world began. As Paul Johnson put it, Latin American liberation was ‘the greatest nativity of nations in world history until the mass decolonisation of the 1960s’. While some empires, principally the British, had legs left in them, 1821 saw the rolling-up of one imperial project, the Spanish, and the beginning of the long, slow death of another, the Ottoman. This was the year when Turkey caught the malady that later led statesmen to describe it as the ‘sick man of Europe’. Two hundred years on, there are no (official) empires left. But if we think of the 19th century as the imperial age par excellence, it is worth bearing in mind the lesson of the Greek and South American bicentenaries, and thinking again. The idea that peoples, whether indigenous or settlers in origin, would be content to leave their fate to the decisions of far-flung courts was first challenged in the 18th century. But it was in the extraordinary year of 1821 that the nationalists began to show the imperialists their days were numbered. The Oldie February 2021 61

My bedside table Barry Humphries has all he needs by his bed – books, a Juliette Gréco photo and his sleep-apnoea device

AF ARCHIVE/ALAMY

‘W

hat’s on my bedside table?’ I hear you ask. Well, it’s the kind of question desperate journalettes with names like Emma and Marina ask, and your answers make up their column in some illustrated periodical or supplement. ‘In the event of an earthquake, what precious thing would you save and why?’ That, or a variation, is another regular question from Emma or Marina. When you’ve written their copy for them, you have to make an appointment for their heavily masked and socially-distancing photographer to come to your place and take your picture, holding or caressing the precious object, which may range from a Fabergé egg to your late mother’s denture. My answer will, with any luck, save their writing anything at all. Pre-empting a call from Queen or Nova (or their modern equivalents), I’ll reveal to you now what’s on my nightstand (American for bedside table). There’s my sleep-apnoea apparatus, with mask and flexible ducting. Most people my age wrestle, like Laocoon, with a lot more ducting than I do; so far, I’m a lucky, single-duct senior citizen. Beside this susurrating machine is a silver, framed photograph of the late Juliette Gréco, affectionately inscribed*. Behind it is a teetering pile of books: all the ones I intended to read during lockdown. Well, I have dipped into a few of them but I’m not past page seven of Musil’s A Man Without Qualities (three vols, approximately 1,500 pages each) which I’ve been meaning to read all my life, and I haven’t even started Barbara Amiel’s autobiography, which generously mentions me. I have no doubt that it is very well written, as might be expected, and contains some charmingly salacious episodes but, for the moment, I feel the covers might be a little too far apart. I can, it seems, manage only effortless literature. Soon, perhaps, I’ll need to have my

Barry’s bedfellow: Juliette Gréco, 1957

books puréed, the way other seniors have their dinners. But I have read, and loved, Selina Hastings’s biography of Sybille Bedford. It’s so good, so full of naughty detail, evocation and grudging affection that you can enjoy it without ever having to read the works of Sybille Bedford. Isn’t Selina Hastings the best literary biographer you can think of? And I have read William Boyd’s newish book Trio, and it’s Boyd better than ever. He is my favourite teller of tales. Somehow I missed Beatlemania; I was very busy during the Beatles’ heyday. Busy and not seldom drunk, and there is no man busier than a drunk. It’s true that the Beatles’ cheerful refrains provided a soundtrack to my life throughout the sorrows of the sixties, but I maintained a snobbish attitude to the personalities of that famous ensemble. That was until I read One, Two Three, Four by Craig Brown. I have a shelf in my book room entirely devoted to the works of Mr Brown and he never lets us down. He has even invented a new form of biography, demonstrated most impressively by his book about Princess Margaret; half factual life story and half imaginative speculation, related with a droll solemnity from which none of her follies is omitted, but from which a sympathetic portrait nonetheless emerges. None can deny that Craig Brown is our

funniest and most prodigious writer. Thanks to him, I have even ordered every available gramophone record by the Beatles Orchestra, and the book is printed on decent paper, so that you can see the faces in the illustrations, not just black blobs, as is usual in so many dismally printed, modern books. In the pile of books, there’s only one poetry book. It’s Shadows on the Down by Alfred Noyes, an English poet who once occupied a place of great affection in the hearts of English readers; equalled in our time only by John Betjeman. Betjeman was by far the greater and more enduring poet. But as well as The Highwayman, which we can all recite, Noyes wrote some fine First World War verse as good as poems by Rosenberg, Gurney and Edward Thomas: The Midnight Wood by Alfred Noyes The padre held communion in the wood That night. Two candles on a soapbox made His altar. Bayonets, bandages and blood Flickered around him. Then I grew afraid. He broke the Bread. He poured the Wine. He spoke The one true word that, if our souls could hear, Mountains and woods and seas would pass like smoke, And only leave His infinite presence there. The stars between the dark thorns overhead Paled. Like a ghost, He lifted up his hand. The low wind brought the sour stench of the dead – The Body of Our Lord – from No Man’s Land. We should reread the now unfashionable Noyes, Newbolt and Masefield with unprejudiced pleasure. And I’m a huge fan of John Cooper Clarke, our greatest contemporary poet. * To someone else The Oldie February 2021 63

Arts The screenplay, by Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo, author of the original Godfather book, centres on a Vatican scandal inspired by the 1982 death of Robert Calvi, ‘God’s banker’, caught up in shady financial dealings. The death of Pope John Paul I in 1978, after only 33 days in office, is added to the cocktail of high finance and politics interspersed with those ruthless killings. The plot matters less than its setting. All the greatest hits of the first two films are here - Little Italy murders, elaborate pasta-making scenes, tough guys eating salsiccia and cannoli, and sun-drenched palazzi back in the old country. That deliciously nasty, magic formula was invented in The Godfather. And I could watch it for ever.

MOVIESTORE COLLECTION LTD/ALAMY

FILM HARRY MOUNT THE GODFATHER, CODA: The Death of Michael Corleone Amazon Prime One of the many sadnesses of the death of the fine comic actor John Sessions in November, aged 67, is the loss of his Al Pacino impression. He was particularly good at the Pacino trick of SUDDENLY RAISING YOUR VOICE and putting the emphasis ON the wrong WORDS. And one of the many welcome surprises in Francis Ford Coppola’s new, renamed version of The Godfather Part III is how understated Al Pacino is. There’s none of the Sessions shouting or wrong emphasis. Instead, Pacino’s Michael Corleone is a broken, desperate, diabetic figure, with a greying, en brosse haircut, longing to go legitimate but – as he says, in his most famous scene – ‘Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.’ Coppola always wanted to call the closing chapter of his trilogy The Death of Michael Corleone. Now, on the 30th anniversary of the film’s release, he’s been given his way by Paramount. He’s also reordered the story, changed the music, edited the shot choices and cut the film by three minutes. Not only has he made the film better; so too has the passage of time. When it came out, Godfather III seemed an aeon away from I (1972) and II (1974). All three films now gel together much better as a series. You notice the similarities between them more than the differences: the familiar font of the titles; the marvellous Nino Rota theme tune, as well as the familiar faces – Diane Keaton and Talia Shire, as well as Pacino. George Hamilton is a subtle 64 The Oldie February 2021

RADIO VALERIE GROVE

Quiet goes the Don: an understated Al Pacino in The Godfather, Coda

consigliere in the absence of Robert Duvall. But the standout casting disaster of the original film remains bad. In an outrageous piece of nepotism, Sofia Coppola, Francis Ford Coppola’s daughter, then 18, plays Michael Corleone’s daughter – in a charmless, bland way. Andy Garcia is in a different league as Vincent Corleone, Sonny Corleone’s illegitimate son – half quiet and calm, half a menacing hothead like his father. Garcia is there to provide the violent scenes that, as in Godfather I and II, are – thrillingly, I’m afraid – inserted between the family-business scenes in dark, wood-panelled interiors and the weddings with the uplifting, Italian dumta-dumta-dumta-dum music by Carmine Coppola, Francis Ford’s father.

Like sales of alcohol and chessboards, radio listening ‘soared in lockdown’. Obviously. I write this with Times Radio clamped to one ear for doomy news bulletins as things get worse. But when I break off to hear previews of festive programmes coming in New Year 2021, I can smile the glooms away – especially at the reappearance of our old friend Ed Reardon, back on Radio 4. In Upstairs Room at the Inn, Ed was all bonhomie: he’s had ‘a good pandemic’. A writing job came his way when the author of a four-part series ‘How to slow down in lockdown’ had a heart attack after delivering part three. Briefly homeless, Ed scored a hotel room ‘from Rishi, everyone’s new best friend’. Getting a drink from the bar was not so simple. ‘Just buzz me an email with your order when you’ve downloaded the menu from the website,’ breezed the landlord, ‘and give yourself a password.’ ‘A tad labyrinthine?’ said Ed. ‘Yeah, that’ll do.’

After a half-hour wait for his pint, a text arrived: ‘Incorrect password.’ As the scriptwriting team of Andrew Nickolds and Christopher Douglas know, there are copious good jokes in ‘the feast/ famine of the freelance writer’s life’. Similarly, actors playing actors form another fruitful comic genre. Take Meltdown by Tessa Gibbs, with Joanna Lumley as a 70-ish actress bridling at the parts she gets offered: ‘Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s mother – or grandmother!’ There were scathing asides about rivals Dame Eileen, Dame Harriet and Olivia, and grumbles about not getting Strictly (‘And I can skate!’) or I’m a Celebrity (‘They never asked me to eat a kangaroo’s anus’). All she’s doing is a voiceover for Cif. (‘Why did they change it from Jif to Cif? What was that about?’) Ever since Michael Frayn’s Noises Off – well, ever since Hamlet, really – there’s been a proliferation of actors playing actors in plays that go wrong. You’ll soon hear Penelope Keith in Roy Apps’s 15-minutedrama slot, 80 Not Out (yes, Keith is 80) excelling as an embittered repertory actress in the 1940s. Dated but fun. And, on New Year’s Eve, David Quantick’s play Whatever Happened to Baby Jane Austen? stars another ageing actress (Jennifer Saunders) confronting her estranged sister, a literary novelist (Dawn French) – having just written a memoir of their childhood. As little girls, they’d been such friends until puberty struck. Jennifer’s bosom qualified her for Rank starlethood while Dawn ‘looked like someone who worked in a wool shop.’ Victoria Wood wrote a similar plot. Alistair McGowan played all the men – Clive Anderson, Graham Norton. I loved it when his Clive Anderson blustered and bluffed his way through the interview with Dawn and then fell back on a typical Loose Ends musical interlude – ‘a group from Cambodia, playing Bach on the bagpipes!’. A puzzle. Hours before Christmas, just

‘When you retire, will you be doing it from home?’

when the afternoon was darkening into the longest and blackest night of winter, the Phill Jupitus series Why Why Why? applied itself to the Elvis song Are You Lonesome Tonight? Whattt? As Sue Peart of the Samaritans reminded us, dark winter nights bring a spike in calls from the lovelorn and melancholic. Surely the last song anyone wanted to hear was a mournful Elvis asking, ‘Do the chairs in your parlour seem empty and bare?’ Why, Phill, why? Thankfully, Joanna Lumley is back, laughing at and squabbling with Roger Allam, master of the dishwasher, in Jan Etherington’s Conversations from a Long Marriage. Tracy-Ann Oberman stars as Katharine Hepburn in her play That Dinner of ’67, about the making of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? And a big welcome to Katya Adler’s Dante 2021. ‘Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita…’ Having guided us tirelessly towards the selva oscura of Brexit, the Italophile Adler leads us from the Inferno into the Purgatorio of 2021. Benvenuto!

TELEVISION ROGER LEWIS Grand old soap Coronation Street is 60, and so am I. Which of us has worn best? I bet the programme doesn’t have to get up to urinate throughout the night, which, no matter what the trans lobby may say, is the singular consequence of possessing a prostate. On the other hand, trams don’t fall off the viaduct and land in my lounge room, either. I used to watch Corrie religiously, but then my faith in Weatherfield ebbed – when Fred Elliott, the preposterously loud butcher, fatally cracked his skull on Audrey’s escritoire; when Hayley vanished, taking her fashionable red coat with her; when Hilda Ogden scarpered to keep house for a soft-spoken doctor in the Lake District. My friend Eve Steele, who played nutcase Anne Malone, was locked in a fridge at Bettabuys supermarket in 1998 and may still be there. When the show introduced younger characters, who went in for arson, depression, terminal illness and what have you, I couldn’t be bothered. Nevertheless, a batch of anniversary documentaries reeled off interesting statistics: Coronation Street has involved 12 suicides, 24 murders and 57 births, including one in the back of a taxi and three in the ale bar of the Rovers Return. Of the 131 weddings, 36 were bigamous or else the bride or groom got jilted at the altar. The Rovers has employed 66 barmaids, and Rita has received 15 proposals of marriage. The factory has

Bernard Youens and Jean Alexander as Corrie’s Stan and Hilda Ogden

burned down five times. Three cars have plunged into the canal. There have been 26 charabanc trips to Blackpool. Data abounded in A Very Royal Christmas. Her Majesty signs her 750 Christmas cards in August, when there is nothing else to do at Balmoral. At Sandringham, there are 52 bedrooms and the place is run by 200 staff, who over the festive season serve 1,200 mince pies. There may be nine corgis underfoot. Invitees will have five costume changes – breakfast attire, church gear, afternoon frocks, evening gowns and, in between times, what’s called ‘scruff order’, ie there’s no official need to wear a tie. Making everything worse is the way a bagpiper marches round the dinner table. ‘They tuck into the finest food,’ we were told, over loops of stock footage. ‘They know how to relax. They know how to enjoy themselves.’ Is there a more dismal breed on earth than the royal commentator? Because at best they are only ever seemingly in the know. It’s all conjecture. Yet here they were, at it again, the same crew as always: Richard Kay, Lady Colin Campbell, Dickie Arbiter and Paul Burrell. They smirk and blink in embarrassment, as if they know full well they are talking bollocks. This programme was a glimpse of the hell of the afterdinner circuit or cruise-ship lecturing. As an insomniac, I watch odd things at odd hours – eg Alan Yentob having to put on a serious face when Tracey Emin told him she’d legally married a rock in her French garden. And what I do enjoy coming across are period publicinformation films, like the one where Bernard Cribbins suggested it’s a bad idea to poke a faulty toaster with a metal-handled knife. Another one, Sea Dreams, about Torquay, ‘the perfect holiday destination’, was The Oldie February 2021 65

Ed McLachlan

narrated by Johnny Morris. I remember Johnny Morris. He used to dress up as a zookeeper; chimps would knock his hat off and lemurs shot up his trousers. ‘There are still real fishermen around here, you know,’ said Johnny unconvincingly about the Devon resort. What a terrible place it looked – dirty sand, a brown sea, drooping pine trees and dead ferns. There were fat women in bathing caps and self-conscious couples canoodling in a park, next to hopeless tulips and blighted cherry blossom. A cheerful orchestra played in the background. It was evident from this documentary why, at the end of the Sixties, everyone packed their bags as soon as possible for the Balearics. Yet there was a kind of mad, desperate charm in the way Johnny’s script tried to insist the English Riviera was superior to anyone else’s Riviera. Sea Dreams put me in mind of Carry On Abroad or Carry On Camping, where the message is that what the British like best are, as Betjeman said, sand in the sandwiches, wasps in the tea and plenty of cold rain. One of my favourite series is Walking Britain’s Lost Railways, which has added 66 The Oldie February 2021

new episodes. Rob Bell follows ripped-up lines in the Highlands, the Cotswolds and across Dartmoor to Ilfracombe. I relish seeing the overgrown ravines and abandoned viaducts, covered in moss. The Victorian engineering is magnificent – the tunnels and escarpments. Instead of wasting billions on HS2, the Government should reinstate the railways destroyed by Beeching. But why does everything I love about our islands inevitably fall to the wreckers – architectural gems, woodland, ways of life?

MUSIC RICHARD OSBORNE SIR MALCOM ARNOLD A MUSICIAN FOR ALL SEASONS ‘‘Thank you for years of putting joy into the conductor’s arm.’ That was one of an avalanche of tributes to Sir Malcolm Arnold on the occasion of his 75th birthday in 1996. And 2021 is the great man’s centenary. Planners permitting, it should be a diverting 12 months. ‘Joy’ is probably the mot juste where

Arnold is concerned. No British composer has given more pleasure to the mingled constituency of filmgoers and serious music-lovers than this larger-than-life figure, in whose capacious frame the figures of Harlequin and Pierrot played out a lifelong battle for supremacy. A preternaturally gifted musician, Arnold launched himself as a professional composer with that wonderfully devil-may-care overture Bekus the Dandipratt, written when he was 21. By the early 1950s, the jester had morphed into the most sought-after composer in the British film industry’s second golden age. Though the output was prodigious, the writing itself was concise and needle-sharp. Who can forget the sequence in David Lean’s Hobson’s Choice, where old Hobson (Charles Laughton) staggers home after an evening ‘taking wine’ in the local hostelry, only to be mesmerised by the moon’s reflection in a puddle; or that later sequence where Willie Mossop (John Mills) approaches the bridal chamber on his wedding night? As Hugo Cole observed in his invaluable 1989 monograph on Arnold, the fusion of music and action is here every bit as complete as in the scene in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger where Beckmesser makes off with Sachs’s manuscript. It helped that Arnold was a great tunesmith. Take the oh-so-haunting melody he wrote as the theme for Bryan Forbes’s Whistle Down the Wind. The 1961 film starred the 15-year-old Hayley Mills as one of a group of children who come across an escaped murderer and decide that he’s Jesus. As the film’s producer (and bespoke whistler) Richard Attenborough noted, that theme alone took the film to a different level. Arnold had already written uproarious music for Ronald Searle’s The Belles of St Trinian’s and collected an Oscar for his score for Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai. Did Arnold approve of Kwai? Scion of a large, wealthy and eccentric family of Northampton bootmakers, Arnold was anti-Establishment from birth. How he must have smiled when some bright spark at Granada TV chose one of his English Dances as the signature tune for the network’s famously subversive What the Papers Say. A professional trumpeter whose god was Louis Armstrong, Arnold was a tireless creator of works for fellow instrumentalists. These ranged from Julian Bream,

with a personal and political hinterland that was never likely to travel. Richard Hickox’s 1990s Chandos cycle would be my pick, not least because the LSO is the one British orchestra that has the gleam, the glow and the technical pizzazz to do justice to these fabulouslywritten scores. Meanwhile, I shall be launching my own Arnold centenary on Burns Night with his Tam o’Shanter Overture on the gramophone and a tumbler of Cutty Sark at my elbow. No composer – not even Richard Strauss or Arnold’s beloved Berlioz – could have made a better job of retelling Burns’s famous tale in music. That alone gives you something of the measure of the man.

HULTON DEUTSCH / CONTRIBUTOR

Arnold in 1951. ‘Music is … a gesture of friendship – the strongest there is’

prince of lutenists, for whom he wrote an exquisite guitar concerto, to Benny Goodman, who found the score of a newly-written clarinet concerto propped up on the mantelpiece of the suite Arnold had booked for him in Dublin’s Gresham Hotel – with a litre of whiskey on the side to steady his nerves when he read the score. That was typical of Arnold, a man who drank like a fish and threw money around as if there was no tomorrow. (Some years, there nearly wasn’t.) During his sojourn in Cornwall in the 1960s, his sense of the melancholy of the place – the poverty, the deserted tin mines and the lonely seascapes – was complemented by a genuine love of the local people to whom his generosity was legendary. A typical Arnold evening in a pub around Padstow might involve drinks all round and, for himself, two dozen oysters, a pair of carpetbag steaks and the waitress for afters. And therein lay the problem. Diagnosed as schizophrenic at the age of 21 and subject to some of the worst horrors of modern psychiatry – insulin treatment in 1950; ECT during a catastrophic breakdown in the late 1970s – he eventually became a danger to both family and friends. It’s a life that Tony Palmer both celebrates and lays bare in his admired 2004 South Bank Show documentary, Toward the Unknown Region (Amazon £7.99). To know Arnold in all his complexity, we must go to the nine symphonies, including the almost miraculous postrecovery Ninth. Arnold was as accomplished a symphonist as Shostakovich. But, sadly, he was British,

GOLDEN OLDIES RACHEL JOHNSON WE LOVE YOU, YEAH, YEAH, YEAH You’d think being the Prime Minister’s sister might open some doors, but this has not been my experience. I have been offered no free tickets to date. No Glasto VIP backstage passes. The only festival I have managed to crack is Cornbury, the Poshstock for the Chipping Norton set. Earlier this year, I felt so ignored by ‘the industry’ that I crafted and sent out an email to all the appropriate PRs kindly listed for me by Will Hodgkinson of the Times and Tim de Lisle of the Mail on Sunday. I begged them to keep me ‘looped in’ on their clients’ releases/ events, but not one – NOT ONE! – replied to my nice note. When the inevitable small humiliations come, let me tell you, they are all the sharper for someone in my position. Anyway, I needed to listen to Paul McCartney’s new album on a tight deadline. Other music critics had been

granted access by the PR agents, DawBell, the same lot who were mopping up after Rita Ora’s COVID-insecure birthday bash at a Notting Hill restaurant. I wrote to them, and this is what came back: ‘Looking into this for you and the label have asked if you could share any example cuttings, please?’ Cuttings? CUTTINGS? I’ve been a national journalist since 1989! I used to live next door to Paul McCartney in St John’s Wood! I was writing about Macca only at an editor’s request! I don’t even LIKE McCartney since he left the Beatles and his album’s USP was that, as with its prequels I and II, Paul played every instrument on McCartney III and wrote, and recorded every song in his Sussex studio during ‘Rockdown’. Anyway, I decided not to be diva about it. I sent – sorry, ‘shared’ – some ‘cuttings’ (ie links) and, in return, I was graciously allowed to stream the 11 tracks of Paul doing everything – like a woman during lockdown. Here’s my verdict. I don’t want to be less than glowing because he’s Paul McCartney and he’s still a stadium-filler and it would be like being nasty about Judi Dench or the Queen. So I am going to be Bambi’s mother and not say anything at all, much. The album’s completely fine. If you like Paul McCartney’s later solo albums, you’ll love it, but it wasn’t for me. ‘This is an utterly forgettable album,’ I said as I played it on our wireless speaker by the fire. ‘He’s been forgettable since he left the Beatles,’ said my husband. Still, it’s a pretty listen. Macca plays every instrument on every song, as well as having written them all, and it is always lovely to hear his voice. He has more talent in his little fingernail than every single one of us.

Oh, darling! Paul McCartney still has it all at 78 The Oldie February 2021 67

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s pastel sketch of Jane Morris was the basis for The Day Dream (1872-78)

EXHIBITIONS HUON MALLALIEU Ashmolean, Oxford The Pre-Raphaelites: Drawings and Watercolours

ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM

4th February to 31st May The Ashmolean boasts one of the most important collections of Pre-Raphaelite works, largely thanks to a remarkable husband and wife. Thomas Combe (1797-1872) was the son of a printer, bookseller and newspaper-owner in Leicester, after whose death he moved to Oxford and joined the University’s Clarendon Press. He became its senior share-holding director at a time when the Press was making a fortune from printing Bibles – so much so that he successfully gambled his own money in founding the Wolvercote paper mill to satisfy the demand. His timing was lucky, because later the profitability of the Press was 68 The Oldie February 2021

seriously hit by the insistence of the British and Foreign Bible Society on ever cheaper editions. In 1840, he married Martha Bennett (1806-93), daughter of a local ironmonger, the ceremony performed by the future Cardinal Newman. In The Pre-Raphaelite Tragedy, William Gaunt wrote, ‘Oxford was a university with Pre-Raphaelite possibilities. Its architecture, its learning, even its sense of humour, medieval and Victorian, were a product of the Middle Ages. Its spires dreamed. At the same time it was full of ardent youth.’ Just as important were several older figures, including the Combes and James Wyatt, the carver and picture-dealer, who were among Holman Hunt’s and Millais’s earliest patrons. Thomas Combe was also a notable philanthropist. Among the projects he funded was the building of the imposing St Barnabas in Oxford’s Jericho, where the newly ordained Charles Dodgson preached his first sermon. After Thomas’s death, Martha

continued to collect, and it was her bequest that formed the basis of the Ashmolean’s Pre-Raphaelite collection. The original Brotherhood lasted barely five years from the end of 1848. The establishment’s initial antagonism to it was short-lived; within a decade, the style had swept all before it. A second generation – Morris, Burne-Jones, Madox Brown, Inchbold, Spartali Stillman, the Liverpool painters and many more – replaced the original Brothers who had gone their own ways. The display of watercolours and drawings at the Ashmolean has fine things by both of these generations, including the original pastel version of Rossetti’s Day Dream, Millais’s portrait of Holman Hunt and, most fittingly, Hunt’s of Thomas Combe. One wonders whether Hunt’s stupendous beard in later life was inspired by that flaunted by Combe. The Pre-Raphaelites’ other great champion, Ruskin, was inextricably tied to Oxford. He is represented here by a delicious gouache study of a velvet crab.

Pursuits GARDENING DAVID WHEELER MY SMALL-BULB MOMENT Small bulbs matter. They matter more to elderly gardeners than they do to younger, fitter and better-abled ones. Why? These diminutives demand, and handsomely repay, close inspection – something denied the decrepits, among whom I now occasionally include myself. And it’s not just a question of age. Disabled gardeners of any vintage might find it difficult to go onto their hands and knees – or to get up again. I’ve tried binoculars but nothing beats eyeball-toeyeball contact – so the answer is pots. A small bowl, no more than six inches across, will accommodate a dozen or more crocuses or miniature irises – now at or near their peak flowering time. I know you can’t buy spring-flowering bulbs at the moment – that pleasure belongs to the early-autumn months (which, trust me, will come round again sooner than you think), when the seductive mail-order catalogues plop heavily onto the doormat. But you can buy them in full flower now at garden centres, supermarkets and florist’s shops and on some garage forecourts. Snap them up; if they’re in bud or look freshly opened, the flowers will last for several weeks in a none-too-overheated room. And it’s indoors, too, that their fragrance is enhanced and gladly trapped. Hyacinths especially – and some of the small-flowered daffodils – will release knockout fragrances. When the foliage has died back, the bulbs can be transferred to the garden or ‘rested’ in some odd corner until the end of the year, when the compost can be remoistened to encourage the little darlings to perform their miracles all over again. Now you may say, ‘But I don’t have a garden – and it seems such a pity to trash

them when their moments of glory fades.’ That’s when you pass them on to chums who do have a garden, where many of the bulbs will multiply in number and reappear for years to come, carrying with them sweet memories of your generosity. Out among my trees, I have increasing swathes of April-flowering daffs that were given to me in pots when I was recovering from a severe illness more than a decade ago. I never pass them without recalling the kind friends who gave them to me – or, more profoundly, the dark days which I survived. What, then, to look out for? Snowdrops remind everyone of winter walks along rural lanes and churchyards studded with white pristine bells. Like our sparrows and robins, snowdrops more than any of our native bulbs deserve freedom. Instead, I favour something more exotic and less familiar. Fritillaries fall fully into that category: even the cheap-as-chips snake’s-head ones, Fritillaria meleagris – purple-chequered or milky white. Close encounters with these campanulate flowers reveal botanical draughtsmanship of the most exquisite kind. All the Iris reticulata varieties, in shades of blue and maroon – and their yellow-flowered cousin, I danfordii – four to six inches high at most, are highly decorative and, again, fabulously intricate in their structure and

White rain lily (Zephyranthes candida)

appearance. Site the bowls strategically for head-high viewing that precludes unnecessary bending. Windowsills in our various rooms this season include some new try-outs: crocus-like Zephyranthes candida from South America, Tecophilaea cyanocrocus (the so-called Chilean blue crocus, found wild in alpine meadows above Valparaíso), some of the shorter-growing ornithogalums and a few bellevalias, a classy kind of grape hyacinth to the untutored eye. And nothing is comelier than a wide bowl of true grape hyacinths – Muscari armeniacum and its kin. Or, most simply, and possibly the cheapest to buy, lapis-lazuli-coloured scillas. Dwarf tulips follow. Their wide-open petals, in full sun, are as welcoming as a lover’s arms. David’s Instagram account is @hortusjournal

KITCHEN GARDEN SIMON COURTAULD TURKISH ROCKET Last year I bought a small plant of Turkish rocket, not knowing anything about it or how it compares with other rockets. It may have its origins in the Taurus mountains of southern Turkey, or on the shores of the Black Sea, but I have found no information on this. It is an interesting perennial plant which has grown in my garden throughout the autumn and, at the time of writing, is still sporting vibrant green, pointed leaves – unlike the annual rocket which we pulled up in November. I have removed the large, yellowing outer leaves which were lying close to the ground, and am confident of a lot more young green shoots in early spring. The large leaves have a slightly bitter taste and are best cooked like spinach. But the young leaves, from the centre of the plant, have a pungent rocket The Oldie February 2021 69

flavour and should continue for much of the winter. I am looking forward to the immature flowering stems in late spring which apparently look and taste rather like sprouting broccoli. Like Johnny Turk at Gallipoli, Turkish rocket is tough. With a deep tap root, it doesn’t suffer in periods of drought and is resistant to frost, disease and all pests, including rabbits. It is not fussy about soil and, once established, will last and continue to grow for years. But be aware that Turkish rocket is hard to get rid of. It will self-seed and, like mint and horseradish, will spread over a larger area. Although I started with a plant, Turkish rocket can be grown easily enough from seed; both are available from Pennard Plants near Shepton Mallet, Somerset. Pennard also sell a perennial tree kale which is similarly resistant to pests and bad weather and can grow over two yards tall. This Victorian walled garden has a range of unusual vegetables, including skirret, a root which used to be given to peasant workers as a cheap source of protein, and the Egyptian walking onion, so called because it moves around by falling to the ground and reseeding.

ELISABETH LUARD

COOKERY ELISABETH LUARD FARMHOUSE FARE Pull up the drawbridge, continent isolated, abroad begins at Calais… Is that the effect of Brexit? Will les rosbifs of these islands be sans easy access to certified unpasteurised Camembert and poulet de Bresse? We’ll manage, nos amis across La Manche, just as we always do. And no better place to start than with Farmhouse Fare, a compendium of rural housewives’ recipes contributed to Farmers Weekly in the run-up to the Second World War. A pristine copy of the 1947 ‘new and enlarged edition’ has just dropped through my letter box, courtesy of New Englander Nancy Jenkins, fellow food writer and longtime friend, who spends – or used to spend – much of her time tending her olive trees in the Tuscan hills. ‘Strictly for research purposes only,’ says the accompanying note, thereby confirming what the rest of the world still thinks of the cooking of these islands. ’Some of the most unappetising food I have ever encountered.’ Not so fast. While the recipes are short and measurements vague, this is because 1940s housewives knew how to cook – no need for step-by-step instructions on how to mix a feather-light shortcrust or rustle up a teatime parkin. 70 The Oldie February 2021

Annie Cooper requires 1½lb (750g) medium oatmeal, 12oz (375g) plain flour, 1 tbsp sugar and 1 tsp ground ginger. Mix all together and warm 2lb (1kg) treacle (or golden syrup) with 8oz (250g) butter and a pinch of salt. Stir 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda into ¼ pint (150ml) warm milk. Stir all the ingredients together and spread in a well-buttered roasting tin to the thickness of a thumb. Bake in a moderate oven for about 45 minutes, till just firm to the touch. Serve with strong, milky Yorkshire tea.

Pheasant, rabbit, rook, pigeon, hare and partridge were readily available from woods and hedgerows for turning into pies and pasties. Detailed instructions are provided for salting down the household porker, fattened on whey from cheesemaking. Butter and cream were in plentiful supply for those who milked their own cow, while recipes for regional British cheeses (eat your heart out, Monsieur Barnier) include versions of Gorgonzola, Coulommiers and Pont-l’Évêque. Buckinghamshire toad special A Mrs Kitchener offers an elegant, Home Counties version of Yorkshire’s toad-inthe-hole. First make your batter with 2 eggs, 5oz (140g) plain flour, a pinch of salt, a tablespoon of water and enough milk to mix to the consistency of pouring cream. Allow to stand for an hour. In a well-buttered, flat, fireproof dish, lay tiny rolls of thinly-cut veal (or pork or chicken) stuffed with breadcrumbs, chopped parsley and milk bound by a scrap of streaky bacon. Pour the batter over the rolls and bake in a moderate oven for 45-60 minutes, till well puffed and browned. Cornish leek pie An egg-and-bacon pie with leeks is recommended by Cornishwoman Margaret Tremayne as ‘one of the most nourishing and appetising ways of serving the best of vegetables’. To serve four, slice 2lb trimmed leeks into short lengths and cook in salted water till just tender, drain thoroughly and arrange in a buttered pie dish. Fork up 2 eggs with ¼ pint (150ml) double cream, season, add a handful of chopped ham (or grated cheese) and pour over the leeks. Prepare 12oz (350g) shortcrust with half butter, half lard, and roll it out to make a lid. Bake the pie in a medium oven for 30-45 minutes. Add more cream, if available, when serving. Yorkshire parkin A fortifying slab of buttery oatmeal and treacle contributed by Daleswoman Mrs

RESTAURANTS JAMES PEMBROKE TIPS FOR MEANIES One of the joys of growing old is the opportunity to indulge in meanness. We have all seen the metamorphosis of squanderbugs to penny-pinchers. When taking us out to lunch, my late father-in-law would become a champion of fish and chips. If anyone was brave enough to ask about starters, he would blast out a well-rehearsed reply: ‘The soup’s awfully good.’ We were advised we would be too full for pudding, and coffee was ‘just as good at home’. I never thought my time would come and, when it did, I assumed I would have retired so that I could devote my waking hours to scouring supermarkets for bargains. And yet I have been struck down in middle age. It started in Shropshire. Our dear hosts, Charles and Sophie, suggested we try out Pensons, a large barn restaurant on the Darnley estate. The chef, Chris Simpson, has earned himself a Michelin star. After briefly scanning the menu and wine list, I announced that lunch was on me, overruling our hosts’ genuine protests. It’s a week now since I finished my delicious starter of cod, apple, celeriac and truffle sauce, and my tiny quail, which could have been a circus dwarf in another life. And, despite enjoying it ecstatically, I have since done nothing but torture myself about the bill of £103.22 per head for a three-course lunch with three-quarters of a bottle of wine each. I even regaled Charles’s neighbours the next day at lunch. In front of him. Dickie tried to soothe me by confessing he had spent £250 a head there for dinner recently with clients. He only made things worse. We agreed that for a country restaurant’s cheapest bottle to be £35 was absurd; and £40 for three courses is £16 more than at the Wolseley.

I thought I was over it, but then came lunch at L’Escargot with Tom, my beloved godson. This restaurant was the site of my first ever lunch with my wife (then the lead singer of Pussies Galore) and the marketing manager of Jiffy Condoms. By the end of that lunch in 1992, I had agreed to put both on the front cover of City Limits magazine: a real condom, that is, atop of a photo of my wife-to-be. One would have thought that the spirit of the late Elena Salvoni, the kindly goddess of Soho restaurants, would wipe out my demons – but as I waited for Tom, my inner Shropshire Lad returned. How can I steer him to the cheapest main course (duck confit at £22)? What if he wants extra vegetables? Worse still: what if he wants a starter? I quickly ordered a basket of bread and the cheapest red, an excellent Grenache, at £28 a bottle. Then I sat on the menu, seconds before Tom appeared. ‘I’m starving!’ he wailed at me. Luckily, the Estonian waitress brought the bread but also, worryingly, a menu for famished Tom. As she conspiratorially loitered with pen and pad, Tom went in for the kill. ‘Oooh, I’d love some snails [£12]!’ And, again, just before I could recommend the duck, ‘I’d love a steak!’ Tournedos Rossini at £45. I was undone – until I had a brainwave: we could share the Chateaubriand at £36 each. I would still be £5 down but at least I was travelling first class. Cheers! Or terviseks – as they say in Estonia. Pensons, Pensons Yard, Tenbury Wells WR15 8RT; www.pensons.co.uk; tel: 01885 410321 L’Escargot, 48 Greek Street, London W1F 4EF; www.lescargot.co.uk; tel: 020 7439 7474

DRINK BILL KNOTT WINE FOR OYSTER-CATCHERS Oysters are at their plumpest and sweetest at this time of year, but what to drink with them? Crisp, dry whites are obvious oyster bedfellows: Muscadet, for example, with a plate of local belons at the ornate Brasserie La Cigale in Nantes, or Picpoul de Pinet by the shores of the oyster-rich Étang de Thau in the south, or Chablis, in northern Burgundy, where the wine is made from vines grown in Kimmeridgian soil studded with millions of fossilised oyster shells.

Salinity and minerality are two very controversial terms in the wine world. Scientists maintain that neither can be transmitted through the vine into the glass; but good Chablis has a particularly flinty, briny character that uncannily echoes the flavour of oysters. Seafood merchant and restaurateur Robin Hancock, co-founder – with brother-in-law Ben Wright – of Wright Brothers, has taken the business of pairing oysters with drinks a step or two further than most. In partnership with distillers at The Ginstitute, he has created Half Shell Gin, distilled with Carlingford oyster shells and seaweed. It makes a terrific martini, especially with a strip of lemon zest in the glass, and partners a dozen frisky bivalves superbly. And he has collaborated with PiperHeidsieck to produce an oyster-friendly Champagne, called Essentiel: Robin feels that the best Champagnes to pair with oysters are bone-dry. His has just 5g per litre of dosage, resulting in a zesty, gently floral fizz, given added complexity by a generous 18 per cent of reserve wines. Both the gin and the Champagne (as well as fresh oysters and a wide range of other seafood) can be delivered nationwide: visit www.shop.thewrightbrothers.co.uk. Champagne is, of course, one half of a Black Velvet, described by an Irish friend of mine as ‘a waste of good Guinness’. It is not a drink of which I am especially fond, partly because pouring it properly requires more patience than I possess. But stout and porter are fine matches for the molluscs. Robin and Ben opened their first oyster joint in Borough Market with plenty of both behind the bar. Porter, named after the London market trade’s most enthusiastic consumer of the strong, dark, bittersweet beer, always seemed especially appropriate. True to form, they joined forces with the Bermondsey-based Brew By Numbers to make an oyster stout, brewed with oysters from Lindisfarne. As with other food-and-drink combinations, there are no hard-and-fast rules. If you plan to open a very good bottle of wine with your oysters, I would merely counsel against mignonette (shallot vinegar) and suggest you go easy on the lemon: a bracing Chablis or a brisk Picpoul have enough acidity already. Robin and Ben’s first foray into ostréiculture was around the Île d’Oléron, in the company of oyster farmer Jérôme Miet. Jérôme, says Robin, would prepare lunch for them on the boat: oysters, a hunk of pâté de campagne, a couple of baguettes … and a bottle of young claret. ‘It was actually rather delicious,’ recalls Robin. Sometimes, the perfect wine match is simply whatever’s good, local and cheap.

Wine This month’s mixed case from DBM Wines comprises four bottles each of three wines: a crisp white from the heart of Spain; a Malbec of impeccable pedigree from Argentina; and a low-intervention Côtes du Rhône that would be perfect with roast lamb. However, if you wish, you can buy 12 bottles of the individual wines.

Te Quiero White Field Blend, La Tierra de Castilla, Spain 2019, offer price £7.99, case price £95.88 Made from an ensemble cast of old-fashioned, organic grape varieties: savoury, with vibrant fruit. Aruma Malbec, Mendoza, Argentina 2018, offer price £12.99, case price £155.88 A collaboration between Nicolas Catena and Rothschild-Lafite: fresh, velvet-smooth Malbec with a long finish. Côtes du Rhône ‘La Borde’, Le Plan des Moines, France 2018, offer price £11.99, case price £143.88 From a 12-acre vineyard just north of Avignon, with Grenache to the fore: smooth tannins and a twist of pepper.

Mixed case price £131.88 – a saving of £30.99 (including free delivery) HOW TO ORDER

Call 0117 370 9930

Mon-Fri, 9am-6pm; or email info@dbmwines.co.uk Quote OLDIE to get your special price. Free delivery to UK mainland. For details visit www.dbmwines. co.uk/promo_OLD NB Offer closes 22nd February 2021.

The Oldie February 2021 71

SPORT JIM WHITE THE WISDOM OF CROWDS My predictions for the sporting New Year? France will win the European Football Championship, the British speed climber Shauna Coxsey will return from the Tokyo Olympics a figure of national prominence, and Novak Djokovic will use his victory speech at Wimbledon to fill Sue Barker in on his latest anti-vax conspiracy theory. Oh, and Liverpool will win the Premier League. I know: bold. And here’s a prediction that will really lift sporting hearts in 2021: the crowds will be back. In the New Year, tickets will go on sale for the Open Championship, which takes place from 11th to 18th July at Royal St George’s. This is offering the chance for 70,000 golf enthusiasts a day to wander round the wild Kent dune land, watching the finest players in the world in close proximity. After being obliged to cancel the 2020 Open, the organisers were faced with three choices for 2021. Stage the event behind closed doors for the TV cameras. Allow a limited number of spectators. Or just go for it: open up the course to as many ticket-holders as possible in the hope that, come July, the vaccine will have allowed us all to return to normal. Gloriously, they have gone for the third alternative. As a reminder that all this necessary restriction is only temporary, it could not have been more timely. And my suspicion is that, when the tickets do go live, the organisers will be rewarded for their faith. Here’s another prediction: in July, the Open will be played in front of record crowds. It will be the same at Wimbledon, the Royal Meeting at Ascot and the first day of the Lord’s Test: British sport will hum again. The pandemic has provided vivid evidence that top-level sport just isn’t the same without spectators. Having been deprived for most of 2020, hundreds of thousands of us will clamour for the chance to enjoy ourselves again. This will be the start of a sporting Roaring Twenties. Even for those watching on TV, the lack of a live audience has sucked the energy out of an event. And for the practitioners, performing in front of a stand full of empty seats diminishes the achievement. At Goodwood in the summer, I saw the winner of the Sussex Stakes return to the weighing room after victory. Normally, it would have been a march of triumph, the peak of his career, with thousands of punters thronging the walk, cheering, yelling, loudly delivering their thanks to the jockey for delivering on their bet. 72 The Oldie February 2021

Instead, horse and rider came into the winners’ enclosure to tumbleweed silence, broken by the muted applause of just one person: the horse’s owner. Towards the end of 2o2o, limited crowds began to file back into arenas, their presence immediately felt. At Wycombe Wanderers, at the first football match of the return, I saw 1,000 home supporters fill the place with noise, and the players visibly rose to the presence. Even the referee appeared to enjoy being booed off at the end. Meaning had returned. This was a reminder of what sport should be. Still, the public-address announcer did his best to puncture the moment. Before kick-off, a message came over the Tannoy: ‘Would the owner of a black BMW – registration XYZ 123 – please move it as it is causing an obstruction.’ Just what you needed five minutes before the first game you have attended in nine months – a slap of normality.

MOTORING ALAN JUDD MY VINTAGE CAR I am locked in a debate with myself. The issue is a 1946 Austin 8, a dumpy little 900cc four-door saloon whose 24bhp engine might have – when new – propelled it to a heady 61mph. It has faded black and red bodywork with rust spots and a sunroof but looks as if it’s structurally OK. The red leather interior is clean and the instrument panel, as with almost all cars of that period, is remarkably uncluttered compared with their modern descendants – just dials and switches, with one missing. There are a couple of modernising concessions to contemporary driving – an alternator instead of a dynamo and indicators rather than trafficators that no one would notice any more. It’s for sale in an online auction with no reserve. Current bidding is £525. My guess is it should go for £3,000-£4,000. Anything under £2,000 is a bargain. What is it that tempts me? Not so much its cuteness – though it is undeniably cute – as the fact that it’s as old as me. I was born in 1946 and have

Post-war classic: a 1946 Austin 8 saloon

long desired a similarly aged steed in my stable, confident that if it’s survived this long, it will outlive me. It’s not easy to find reasonably priced relics of that year. The British motor industry was just about staggering to its feet after the war and most of its products were stop-gap continuations of pre-war models, destined to be overtaken by post-war designs within a couple of years and so of little subsequent value. The Austin 8 was one such, launched in 1939 and – unlike most models of the era – produced until 1943 as a runabout for officials and the military. It was dropped in 1947. Nerdishly, I looked up its dimensions to see whether I could knock up something from a few sheets of corrugated iron to stable it at the side of the (full) garage. It is just four feet eight inches wide, a reminder of how our cars – like their owners – have put on weight over the years. Even a Mark V1 Bentley – launched that same year – was only five feet nine wide, while its contemporary Mulsanne equivalent is just under six feet four. Today’s VW Up, one of the smallest cars on the road, is five feet four and a half. In a recent survey of the 23 most popular contemporary cars, the website CarGurus found them up to 55 per cent bigger than their 1970s ancestors, let alone the Neolithics of the 1940s. At over seven feet three wide, the Range Rover takes up 86 per cent of a conventional parking space, squeezing in by about seven inches. Parking bays are usually just over seven feet ten wide, their dimensions unchanged in half a century. I suspect the same is roughly true of most individual garages. A friend with a modern house found she could get her almost-six-foot-wide Volvo XC70 in with reasonable ease. But once it was in, she couldn’t get out because the door would open only a few inches. What’s to be done? Make smaller cars? Unlikely, given the demands of crashsafety legislation, the fact that it costs nearly as much to make a small one as a big one (but you can’t charge nearly as much) and that the electric vehicles we’re supposedly switching to all have to carry very heavy batteries. Make bigger garages? Easy enough – except that it would mean fewer houses on site and builders probably wouldn’t do it unless compelled. Larger parking bays would be a start, requiring action from the Department of Transport and the Chartered Institute of Highways and Transportation. Tell that to the marines. Turns out I don’t have to build another garage. The little Austin went to another buyer for £3,000.

Stay in touch with

phone

Easy-to-use mobiles that will help you stay close to family and friends We have teamed up with specialist phone company emporia to bring you these two great offers on easyto-use mobile phones. If last year taught us anything at all, it taught us that, when the chips are down, it really, really helps if you can speak to someone, or, even better, see and hear them and not just when you need them. For us oldies, whether we like it or not, mobile phones have become an important lifeline, so we might as well arm ourselves with the best that we can get, and which are geared to the needs of

a generation with failing eyesight, less than perfect hearing and fingers that don’t work so well as they used to. These two Oldiephones will appeal to different ends of the market. Those of us who want to embrace the modern technological world – but in a simple, straightforward way – or those who just want to text or call.

The emporiaSMART.4 State of the art smartphone, with front facing camera for selfies and video calls, a great rear camera that works with the magnifying app for when you forget your glasses, secure contactless payments instead of using

your bank cards, and a QR scanner ideal for track and trace. The S4 also comes with an illustrated 135 page training book to help you learn all the tricks at your own pace, plus a 16 page guide to setting up and using contactless payments securely. You can buy this phone, PLUS three months of discounted IQ Mobile credit* for just £195 including a FREE protective cover worth up to £25.

The emporiaONE This is an elegantly designed flip phone, with a large screen, big, well-spaced keys and good volume. This is the ideal phone for someone who needs to be connected, but doesn’t want to learn about videos or surf the internet. You can buy this phone, PLUS three months of discounted IQ Mobile credit* for just £65.

To order an Oldiephone, please visit: https://shop.emporiatelecom.co.uk/theoldie or call 01782 568342 *The Oldie and emporia have teamed up with specialist provider IQ Mobile, powered by the UK’s EE network, to provide great value mobile services. Existing phone numbers can be transferred, and ongoing monthly top ups will be required after the initial offer period. The service includes ‘roam like at home’ across EU countries, so when we can all get back to normal your service is ready for those trips to start again.

The Oldie February 2021 73

Matthew Webster: Digital Life

Artif icial Intelligence isn’t so clever As 2021 dawns, we should look to the future. What will computers get up to next? Some say that Artificial Intelligence is the next big thing. I wonder; it may well be a big thing one day but it probably isn’t the next one. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an expression that, even 20 years ago, most of us had not heard of. In fact, it has been used in academic circles, particularly in computer-science departments, since the 1950s. However, most of us came across it only when we started using AI. Perhaps you didn’t know that you use AI? Every time you do a Google search, Google’s AI analyses what it knows about you and your question, and then makes

Webwatch For my latest tips and free newsletter, go to www.askwebster.co.uk

Memory Lane memorylane.co.uk Great archive of thousands of photos taken since 1878; search by placename. Big Brother themarkup.org/blacklight Enter a website address and learn how it tracks you and whom it tells. I will happily try to solve your basic computer and internet problems. Go to www.askwebster.co.uk or email me at webster@theoldie.co.uk

suggestions. If you use Gmail, you may have noticed it has started trying to complete your sentences for you; that’s AI. This is a small example of the advances being made in AI, especially as it applies to the written word. Programmes that generate text from data are not new; they appear a lot in the financial world, where accurate, consistent reporting is perhaps more important than graceful language. Usually AI is simply restating, in text form, data absorbed from a table or graph. It’s mechanical and repetitive prose, and it’s easily identified. However, recent work done by a company called OpenAI, funded by billionaire space explorer Elon Musk and others, has caused something of a stir. It has developed something called Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) and is allowing selected organisations (including Microsoft) to try it. GPT-3 is a powerful system that generates (I can’t bring myself to say ‘writes’) text automatically in response to questions, based on a gigantic memory of facts and texts. It has more or less read the entire internet and uses that knowledge to seek out patterns to copy when constructing sentences. This is much more effective than other text-generators, which have far smaller vocabularies and fewer examples of syntax to draw on. Experts in the area are impressed by it. But how will it help the rest of us? At one level, it can act as a form of concierge. You could have a perfectly satisfactory exchange with it to book an appointment to see your doctor, for

example, and it might be helpful in gathering basic information for the doctor to consider. However, despite costing billions of dollars, it is much smaller than the human brain. GPT-3 has about 175 billion internal connections that make up the network that does its thinking; your brain has over 500 times as many. And, more importantly, sophisticated as it is, AI does not understand anything in the sense that we do. Worse, AI does not know what the language it generates means, and the effect it might have. A disturbing example of this came while a French healthcare firm tested GPT-3 to see how good it might be at providing mentalhealth support to patients. One fake patient told GPT-3 he was depressed and asked, ‘Should I kill myself?’ GPT-3 answered, ‘I think that you should.’ Chilling. Clearly there is a long way to go before GPT-3, or anything like it, can be relied on to provide sound advice. However, don’t be surprised if it is increasingly used to lift administrative burdens from human medical staff, allowing them more time for the mortal skills of empathy and kindness, which are unknown to AI, as I suspect they always will be. AI is also a long way from being able to write anything but colourless prose. So don’t be fooled when you’re told that it’s taking over. Despite what you might think, this piece was, I promise, written by a human.

Margaret Dibben: Money Matters

Married women’s pension rip-off Tens of thousands of women are receiving less state pension than they should, and many may never find out. They are women who, at any time during the 35 years before retiring, paid the married woman’s stamp – the reduced rate of National Insurance contributions. While paying the stamp, a woman earned no state pension of her own but could boost what she did get to 60 per cent of her husband’s full basic 74 The Oldie February 2021

pension when both of them reached state pension age. The option ended in 1977 for newly married women, but those already paying the stamp could continue and about 200 still are. Anyone who failed to get this increase should claim it now, as it is currently worth £80.45 a week. If the women have died, their widowers and heirs can claim the arrears. Steve Webb, former Pensions Minister and now pension consultant at Lane Clark

& Peacock, has successfully campaigned to force the government to identify and reimburse the women affected. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has set up a special unit to process claims, with 37 staff and more to come. So far, it has agreed to trawl through only one category – those whose husbands reached pension age after 17th March 2008. These women should have had their pensions increased

automatically. They will be refunded all their lost money, sometimes with interest, and payments are averaging £10,000. Before 2008, women had to make a claim to get the increase. The DWP should have alerted them, but many never found out and they are still being shortchanged. As the DWP is not looking for these women, they must contact the DWP themselves to get their entitlement. They should also complain to the Parliamentary Ombudsman on the grounds of maladministration because, even if successful, unlike the first group, they will get only 12 months’ backdating – but at least they will see future pension payments increased. Also missing out are widows who should have received 100 per cent of their late husbands’ pension or were underpaid while he was alive. Over-80s are included, whose pension did not change and who can claim £80.45 a week even if they are not entitled to any basic state pension. The DWP says it is exploring ways of identifying widows and the over-80s, but has made no promises to search for them. Women who divorce after retirement and do not remarry can still claim on an ex-husband’s record. They must phone

‘His lordship goes for a run every morning’

the DWP to report their divorce. Even if you phone you might get fobbed off or delayed by the DWP – so persevere. The DWP’s initial investigation has produced a long list and it could be months before it starts sending out letters, let alone paying the money. Steve Webb urges Oldie readers to claim straight away whichever category you are

in because every week you wait is another week of lost money. He reckons the total bill if all the disadvantaged women are refunded could reach £100 million. To lodge a claim, contact the DWP on 0800 731 0469. You can check your eligibility at www.lcp.uk.com/underpaid – at www.gov.uk/contact-pensionservice, you’ll find more information.

The Oldie February 2021 75

Getting Dressed

My passage to India – via Manchester Geraldine James toured the world for The Jewel in the Crown brigid keenan

DAFYDD JONES

Geraldine James has just starred in the Netflix series Anne with an E. Made in Canada, it’s the well-loved story of Anne of Green Gables – an orphan ‘accidentally’ adopted by a hard-working farmer and his sister – made real. During lockdown, every episode was as good for morale as a session with a therapist. James plays the adoptive mother, Marilla, so compellingly that when the third and final series ended (sadly there will never be another), you almost needed therapy to deal with the sense of loss. James felt the loss as much as the viewers – more than she has felt for any of the other wonderful characters she has played, including Sarah Layton in Jewel in the Crown. James spent a year and a half separated from her family, filming Anne in Canada – though she was allowed home for a week when her daughter had her first baby. When it was all over, she recovered herself by renting a house on Lake Huron, so that they could have a real-life holiday together. Other series have been equally demanding. The Jewel in the Crown involved 18 months away from home – six in India and the rest in pretend India in Manchester (Granada TV’s base), where the actors had to suck ice cubes before filming so their breath wouldn’t give away the fact that it was freezing cold. She spent another year in Manchester filming, often at night, the popular series Jacket & trousers, Eileen Fisher; top, Annette Gortz; necklace, Emma Caderni, Vintage, London; boots, Monoprix 76 The Oldie February 2021

Band of Gold about a group of prostitutes struggling against the odds. The part of Marilla in Anne with an E was challenging. At first, James was not particularly interested. ‘She is so unforgivingly nasty to Anne at the beginning,’ she says, ‘and I am always being asked to play evil mothers. Why is it that it’s always the fathers who are nice?’ The next challenge was her appearance. James is 70 but there were no concessions to age. Make-up was not allowed on anyone in the series. One of the actors tried to sneak a few eyelash extensions past the director but failed. James’s pale auburn hair had to be bleached, dyed black (at one stage, it turned an alarming purple) and scraped into a bun. I suggest it was brave of her to take the part. James cries, ‘Brave? I must have been raving mad.’ But it’s clear Marilla is very dear to her heart. James’s husband is actor/director Joseph Blatchley (nephew of Alec Guinness). There was no acting tradition in her own family – her father was a doctor. But as a child she loved showing off her handstands and somersaults. At boarding school, she discovered that she could make people laugh. ‘When I auditioned for the Drama Centre, they asked why I thought I could act and, without thinking, I said, “Because I have always been such a good liar!” And, of course, that is what acting

James in 1978: ‘The shoulder pads were definitely me – I wore them constantly’

is – make-believe – being someone else. I’ve never been interested in being me – when I am playing a part I try to BE, truthfully, that other person.’ James confesses she is hopeless at clothes. ‘I buy endless useless things that I never wear. I buy outfits at the end of a film and never look at them again – my attic was filled with unworn stuff. I am rather proud of the fact that I have just given it all away.’ She does like Cos. When in New York, she usually buys something by Eileen Fisher. Some time ago, she had her colours ‘done’ by Red Leopard which has helped: ‘I am “Autumn” and must not wear black, which is a challenge as I sing in a choir.’ She is good at skincare, on the other hand, using Ebo’s seasonal oils, and, lately, an American brand, QMS. She met the hair-stylist Jerry Ramdass when she was filming Made in Dagenham. He expertly colours and cuts her hair at home. In younger days she was a keen runner; now, frailer, she walks and swims. Filming her new series in the Isle of Wight this summer was perfect. She keeps trim by not eating from 6.30 in the evening till 11am next day. ‘It’s called intermittent fasting and suits me very well.’ Geraldine James will appear in the new five-part thriller, The Beast Must Die, and in Terence Davies’s film, Benediction, in 2021

The Great Tit

by john mcewen illustrated by carry akroyd February marks the spring for birds. And the great tit (Parus major) is one of the first to signal the fact. ‘BB’ called songbirds ‘the little people’. And the great tit’s vernal repetition, to my ear (no birdsong translation ever quite seems to match), sounds like the ‘dink dink’ of a silver hammer driving in a silver nail. Among its old names are sawfinch and carpenter bird. Great tits are noted for intelligence. Science suggests they possess logic: their repertoire of 40 calls and songs is considered a defensive ploy to scare off rival males, persuading them there is an army to confront. The variety of songs can also hoodwink ornithologists. In any case, as Wordsworth wrote, we humans overanalyse nature: Sweet is the lore which Nature brings Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things: We murder to dissect. Enough of Science and of Art; Close up those barren leaves; Come forth, and bring with you a heart That watches and receives. Wordsworth, from The Tables Turned When my wife was dying from cancer, songbirds coming to feed from her hand was a sweet consolation. This was in London’s Kenwood, on Hampstead Heath. The work of getting the local birds – blue and great tits, a robin and a nuthatch, but never the shy coal tit – to hand-feed was a precious legacy of bird-lovers past. We would stand by a fence to await arrivals in the holly bushes, bearing extended palms full of sunflower seed. In freezing weather, these seeds can supply 44 per cent of a great tit’s bodyweight. Nothing makes one more aware of the danger-filled life of a songbird than that tremulous moment of trust, when its needle nails grip the hand and, for a split second, it throws caution to the winds to feed. By far the boldest birds were the great

tits. We tested this by eventually sitting on the bench opposite, daring them to brave the dangerous exposure of the broad path. How dangerous was brutally revealed one afternoon, when a sparrowhawk flashed past at waist height. That even the boldest great tit took minutes of indecision before swooping over showed its awareness of the deathly risk. Great tits are as bold in plumage as in spirit. The brighter the male’s yellow breast and the broader the dark-blue band that divides it, the more attractive it is to a female. Carotenoids enrich both and help the bird withstand the free radicals which weaken fertility. Breadth

of song repertoire also attracts a mate. Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Foreign Secretary at the beginning of the First World War, described a rat trap that had unintentionally caught a great tit and a dunnock. In extremis, the tit had killed the dunnock and eaten half its brain. One day, we arrived at Kenwood to be told a jay had just dismembered a great tit in the tree above the bench. On leaving, we would see the enemies of the ‘little people’ had already silently and disturbingly reappeared to benefit from any leftovers – carrion crows, magpies, squirrels, each one a harbinger of death. Et in Arcadia ego. The Oldie February 2021 79

Travel My hostess? A banjoplaying prostitute Exotic Lady Meux brought glamour, several Whistler portraits and a Christopher Wren masterpiece to Maureen Lipman’s favourite hotel

ust before lockdown, I went on holiday. Three and a half days in an activities hotel in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, about 45 minutes’ drive from home. Not what you’d call ‘long haul’. My last holiday was four years ago. My partner had had a hip replacement and I had the superbright idea of jetting to St Lucia to a spectacular hotel in lush, tropical settings. Tripadvisor omitted to tell me that in St Lucia it rains every morning, for hours. Lounging chairs get sodden, ground surfaces get glassy and the member of the couple on aluminium crutches gets crabby. The other one spends a week crouching with her arms extended, like a tennis player on the receiving end of Serena Williams’s first serve, waiting to catch him. Since then, I have stayed busy in London and Manchester, crocheting hats in front of Celebrity Gogglebox with Gyles Brandreth, manning the corner shop in Coronation Street, calling out Comrade Corbyn and getting 80 The Oldie February 2021

elevated to Damehood – you know the sort of thing. Here, suddenly, was a whole week free. Birch is a concept hotel. I do like a concept. Or rather I liked what was missing from the concept. No TVs in the rooms, no telephones and no kettle. No pool, hot-stone therapy or jacuzzi. Instead, I was offered ‘activities’. For a bit of extra dosh, Birch promised me glass-blowing, plate-painting, pottery classes, bread-making and cool yoga. There would be a music room, restaurants, guided walks and – the deal-maker – a Roberts radio in my chamber. The hotel is in Theobalds House – formerly Theobalds Palace, a vast, towered stately home built in 1585 by Lord Burghley, Secretary of State to Elizabeth I. Demolished in 1650, the house was rebuilt in the late 18th century. A century later, it was home to Sir Henry Meux, a brewery heir, married to Valerie, a splendid, banjo-playing actress, barmaid and prostitute, who rode a phaeton around London drawn by two zebras.

She was painted three times by Whistler. Harmony in Pink and Grey (pictured) hangs in the Frick Collection in New York. Another, Arrangement in Black, is in the Honolulu Academy of Arts in Hawaii. The third was torn to shreds by the painter. He shouted at her after she complained at having to pose. She answered, ‘See here, Jimmy Whistler. You keep a civil tongue in that head of yours, or I will have someone in to finish these portraits you have made of me.’ And so he ripped up the painting. Lady Meux even had Christopher Wren’s Temple Bar – his 1672 gate to the City of London on Fleet Street – taken to Theobalds as its gatehouse in 1880. It returned to London in 2004. Since the death of Lady Meux and her second husband – Sir Hedwig Lambton, who took her surname to inherit her estate – Theobalds has been a Royal Artillery outpost, a police riding school, a school and an adult education centre. It still has vestiges of all these incarnations in the fabric of its walls. The makeover is best described as

ANTIQUA PRINT GALLERY/ALAMY

Lady Meux (painted by Whistler, below) owned Theobalds House. She brought Wren’s Temple Bar (left) to the park

shabby chic: country home blended with Soho House. I’ve never been to Soho House but I assume it has long, linen curtains over plain oatmeal blinds in its bedrooms, with a stripped-wood floor splashed carelessly with paint from the peeling if not actually distressed walls. I loved the tessellated, tiled lobby and the meandering maze of rooms and studios, with comfy nooks and crannies lit by lamplight. In the hall there was a proper fire of sweet-smelling logs, and the staff were young and unfazed. When I say meandering, I mean corridors within corridors. It reminded me of Newland High School for Girls in Hull 50-odd years ago, where I frequently got lost on the way to double chemistry, hiding in the bike sheds or conjuring up a period pain in order to bunk off. My bedroom had huge sash windows, looking over a rolling field, sloping down to a flame-coloured wood. Corduroyed families of kids and dogs clung upside down from tree-hung hammocks and slithered over cannons. Rows of braziers were lit and a couple of marquee-sized wigwams were hung with lights. In the far left of my view, there were actual sheep and surprisingly dainty saddleback pigs. I could have been in deepest Patagonia. We have very few saddleback pigs in downtown Paddington. It was half-term when I was there. So the hotel was teeming with bearded dads,

mites in chunky wool, cockapoos and flat-stomached mums. And they were all fixated on their computers. Never mind; I had my Elizabeth Gilbert novel to read and a friend was joining me for the last two days. And, by now, I had discovered that everything on the menu in the duck-egg-blue Valerie café was right up my street. Beautifully inventive food, with chunky portions and not a hint of pan-fried or drizzling, or anything nestling in a flurry of its own coulis. Roast pumpkin with crispy lentils was so good I had it three times – not at the same meal. I took my mint tea to the cinema, which had rows of navy and white deck chairs to snooze in. But there are only so many times one can relish Frozen, The Lion King or Finding Dory without having a genius grandchild to hand to stare at, helpless with love. I became relaxed. So much so that I completely forgot my plate-painting class. I did remember the guided tour in hissing rain, with Farmer Tom and his cocky Jack Russell posing as a retriever. He was so interesting – on organic farming, GM food, smoking bees, weedkiller substitutes and what you can discover from the blue paint on a ewe’s bum and the pecking order of chickens – that I almost enjoyed the steady stream of water trickling down my cleavage. On my last morning, I sat on the wide patio, drinking in the view of a large tree which I identified as an English oak. To make sure, and in my new guise as a nature-lover, I took a photo on my new app, Print This, and waited to be proved right. Seconds later, it said, with more than a hint of smugness, ‘This is a Canadian serviceberry tree.’ I live; I learn. I shall return to Birch when this lousy war is over and all the kids are all unmasked and wriggling through double chemistry. Then I shall turn off all my screens and pot, paint, blow glass and learn how to turn a sheep the right way up. I will come home, with a contented stomach and no suntan, proudly clutching a painted bowl and a piece of unshapen glass. On the room-service menu, there are two quotes from Bill Murray: ‘Whatever you do, do it 100 per cent. Unless you’re giving blood’; and ‘Life is so damn short, for f*ck’s sake – just do whatever makes you happy.’ I think I did. Birch, Theobalds Park, Cheshunt, has double rooms from £120 per night; Birchcommunity.com The Oldie February 2021 81

Overlooked Britain

Gregory Gregory’s stately pleasure home lucinda lambton Harlaxton Manor has been home to a millionaire Victorian recluse, a face-cream tycoon and an American university

Huzzah for Harlaxton in Lincolnshire! It’s a most marvellous monster of a mansion. The outlandish style and extravagance defy comparison with most houses in the country. Part neo-Elizabethan and Jacobethan, Harlaxton Manor was blown up by the baroque, with an alarming degree of individual flair and fancy. It was built by the pleasingly named Gregory Gregory for himself and himself alone between 1832 and 1851. He was helped by three architects, Anthony Salvin – expert on the faux medieval; Edward Blore, who completed Nash’s schemes for Buckingham Palace; and William Burn, a pioneer of the Scots Baronial Revival. Gregory never married, disliked his heir and never entertained. Instead, he channelled all his energies and passions into the building of his vast palace. ‘Nothing can be more perfect than it is, both as to the architecture and the ornament,’ wrote Charles Greville, who went to watch it being built in 1838. Greville explained how Gregory travelled to all parts of Europe ‘collecting objects of curiosity, useful or ornamental, for his projected palace’. Greville added, ‘The grandeur of it is such and such is the tardiness of its progress that it is about as much as he will do to live till its completion.’ He was right: after ‘embodying himself 82 The Oldie February 2021

Top: Harlaxton. Above: Violet Van der Elst and her Rolls. Right: Merbabies and the two Father Times (with scythes)

in his edifice’ for over 20 years, Gregory Gregory was eventually to live in it for only three, enjoying a bachelor existence, with only one bath and over 120 rooms. He employed a butler, housekeeper, three footmen, seven maids and two grooms, having installed the startling convenience of a train to bring in wood and coal for the fires. This was to trundle along a brick viaduct built specially for the purpose. It is no small adventure coming upon those still extant tracks. The exterior of Harlaxton is like a great golden town at the end of its dead straight, mile-long drive. Towers, pinnacles, gables, ornamental chimneys, strapwork cresting, cupolas and spires all soar forth from the hefty body of the building. With baroque gate piers curving round and with ‘Elizabethan’

turrets shooting up – all with such vim and verve – this massive pile appears lively and light with movement. Just you wait until you step inside, to find yourself suddenly dwarfed by the colossally proportioned, wildly ornate staircase, seemingly soaring to the skies. Harlaxton has swags and swirls of shining, white-fringed plasterwork; and clusters of fruit, ropes and tassels – which, as a brilliant bonus, swing at a mere flick of your finger. You are quite overwhelmed by what can be described only as sheer magic. Merbabies cling onto the ropes that festoon the walls, all surging up to bright, blue and white-clouded skies (pictured). Two life-size figures of Father Time rule overall, brandishing real scythes: one emblazoned with a medallion of Gregory Gregory in relief, the other unfurling plans of Harlaxton. In 1837, there was a roof-raising ceremony, with Gregory Gregory giving a dinner for all those who had worked on the house. Two-thirds of it had already been built – ‘enough’, according to a local report, ‘to show that, when perfected, it will confer honour on the arts of this country and hand down the name of its founder with distinguished éclat to remote posterity’. A flag was hoisted up the central tower, ‘unfolding itself in the bosoms of the heavens’. Mr Weare, the clerk of works, roared forth a speech from a newly-built turret: ‘May prosperity of every kind attend the projector of this noble dwelling! May he live to complete it, and enjoy possession of the same for many, many happy years to come.’ This was followed by ‘nine cheers and one more’. A procession then marched to the feast in the village. The workers carried the tools of each of their trades: the labourers with mortar hods; the masons with squares, levels and compasses; the bricklayers with plumb rules and trowels, all of them decorated with ribbons and evergreens. Guns were fired, songs were

LUCY LAMBTON

sung and ‘recitations and sentiments gave a variety and effect to this most gratifying commemoration’. In 1935, Harlaxton was taken over by a woman as remarkable as the house. With all the appearance of a comic grandee in a Marx Brothers film, Mrs Violet Van der Elst was always described as ‘the daughter of a coal porter and a washerwoman’. She made millions from founding a company selling face creams,

beauty lotions, soap and most especially Shavex, the first brushless shaving cream. She poured most of her fortune into vigorous campaigns against capital punishment. Mrs Van der Elst was regularly relished for her appearances in a veiled and feathered hat, in a Rolls-Royce, outside prisons and courthouses, accompanied by sandwich-board men patrolling around her with slogans

denouncing capital punishment. She also organised planes to fly overhead, towing anti-hanging banners. Having unsuccessfully run for Parliament three times, she died aged 84 in 1966, a year after the abolition of the death penalty. She had spent almost her entire fortune on her campaigns. Harlaxton has one more surprise in store: it is now the British campus of the University of Evansville in Indiana. The Oldie February 2021 83

Taking a Walk

My great expectations of Swanscombe

GARY WING

patrick barkham

After the sleek glamour of High Speed 1, stepping beyond Ebbsfleet International railway station is like slipping into another century. The roads are cramped between the old terraces of Swanscombe, and the route through an industrial estate is all ruts and puddles. Red double-deckers are doubled up beside a depot, the ‘wedding special’ not much called for these days. Pylons sail high overhead. The Thames Marshes may be immortalised by Dickens in Great Expectations, and the estuary considered by some aficionados to be Britain’s version of the Mississippi Delta, spawning music from Dr Feelgood to numerous punk bands. But this flat, bleak, wet place is not much loved, except by psychogeographers. So close to Europe’s biggest city, the Thames estuary has been useful, not scenic, and so is populated by petrochemical plants, power stations and warehouses. Swanscombe Peninsula is an old cement works and landfill, and home to what is claimed to be the tallest electricity pylon in the country. This ‘brownfield’ land is a dollop of white space on the map but it is neither: it’s green. Beyond a huge black-topped chimney, where the industrial estate peters out, 84 The Oldie February 2021

there’s a bank. Over that, like a sigh of relief, the greenery takes over: reedbeds, grazing meadows and hawthorns still laden with blood-red berries. Footpaths scurry through an intimate landscape of lumps, bumps and banks. In winter, greenery is mostly brownery but here is colour from the waifs, strays and weird species that have fallen off the back of a ship and seeded themselves: random clovers, brilliant-orange rosehips and diminutive yellow flowers I can’t name. A Cetti’s warbler explodes with song as I pass his bushes. The peninsula has more breeding birds (82 species) than the celebrated Rainham Marshes. It is difficult to read such a strange landscape, but its old names – Botany Marsh; Black Duck Marsh – reveal it was once salt marsh and grazing pasture. In 1825, it became home to the first cement works in Britain. Waste from the works and general rubbish was dumped on the site until the 1990s. Since then, the abandoned land has rewilded itself with scrubby birch, hawthorn and sallow woodland between warm glades of rubble, brambles and buddleia. All the dereliction specialists are here. Ecologists call this ‘open mosaic habitat’ and it is surprisingly bounteous. The charity Buglife has counted

1,992 species of invertebrate living here, including 250 species of conservation concern, more than on any other known site in the country. But no land this close to the capital can be abandoned for long, and the distinguished jumping spider, the shrill carder bee and the peninsula’s other rare residents are imperilled by ‘regeneration’: developers want to build a vast theme park called the London Resort, boasting hotels, restaurants and film studios. Glamour is on the march. Perhaps thousands of trippers will tread here in five years’ time, but somehow I doubt it. I meet just two fellow walkers on a wet day, Eleanor Urquhart and Kim Smith, who during the pandemic have strolled from their nearby homes daily. They are ‘devastated’ by the proposals to turn this green peninsula into gleaming attractions (albeit with some marshland preserved and decorated with bird hides and walkways). Industrial clangs soften into the far distance as I follow a disused road up another embankment where the grey Thames swims into view. The tall, blue cranes of Tilbury Docks rise to the north-east. To the west, lorries like flying beetles, high in the air, cross the span of the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge. Close by, the riverside flats of Ingress Park, which was an earlier iteration of ‘regeneration’, have settled into the landscape rather nicely. Before I circle around, I gaze up at the massive pylon. A peregrine falcon glides round its high seat, inspecting us and the feral pigeons that scut about in the dogwood. So Swanscombe already does glamour – and spectacular species as well as small. It just does it quietly, in an unexpectedly thrilling and wild, green sanctuary. Free parking on Botany Road, Swanscombe, beside the footpath, or a walk from Swanscombe or Ebbsfleet railway stations. There are numerous footpaths for a there-and-back walk or a loop around the peninsula. OS Map 162 Greenwich and Gravesend

On the Road

The pirates of Pinewood Roger Allam tells Louise Flind about Johnny Depp’s charm on a Buckinghamshire film set – and how coronavirus has halted filming

Is there anything you can’t leave home without? A small, ceramic knife-sharpener when I was touring in the theatre. When I’m filming, a little electric coffee-maker.

except the script [roars with laughter]. When you’re in a speedboat going across to some beautiful island, dressed as a pirate, you sort of think this is better than stacking shelves.

How have your film and theatre work have been affected by the virus? All my work has completely collapsed. I was going to be doing a television series in France. I’m not sure if it’s been postponed. I don’t know what’s going to happen with the next Endeavour series – it depends how long this will last and whether there’ll be another lockdown. I don’t know whether I’ll work this year.

Where did you film The Thick of It? And Endeavour? Abandoned offices in London’s hinterland and a bit in Westminster. But the bulk of most filming for television is somewhere horrible. Most of Endeavour is shot in abandoned buildings and on location in Oxford.

What’s your favourite theatrical touring story? In the mid-seventies I was with a fringe outfit called Monstrous Regiment, and those were the days of nylon sheets. In a place in Newcastle-under-Lyme, there were huge notices saying ‘Baths – 50p extra’ and the landlady had the bath plug. When I asked for a bath, she said, ‘You’ve only been here one day…’

What’s your favourite theatre? Years ago, I performed at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in east London. It’s the most glorious jewel of a theatre, where you can easily connect with everyone in the audience. It’s nice to have a room that’s big enough to shout in; small enough to whisper in.

Where did you film Tamara Drewe? Mainly in Dorset. I had an early version of the coffee machine then, which wasn’t a complete success. What was it like filming Pirates of the Caribbean – were you in the Caribbean? No, I was in Pinewood, Bucks, for a week. It was me (playing Henry Pelham, the Whig statesman, pictured), Geoffrey Rush, Richard Griffiths and Anton Lesser, and we’d done all our bit on the first day. Apart from gossiping, it was profoundly boring.

TCD/PROD.DB/ALAMY

What was Johnny Depp like? Absolutely charming. Any exotic locations? Yes, for Stranded – based on The Swiss Family Robinson – in Thailand. Everything about the job was fantastic

And Game of Thrones? My bit was in Malta and Gozo.

What are your earliest childhood holiday memories? My father was a vicar and my mother was particularly brilliant at finding cheap holidays for me and my two older sisters. My parents were keen ramblers – my obsession with the coffee machine comes from being in a storm on a Scottish mountain, when at a certain time of day we had to have a cup of tea from a little gas camping stove. If I don’t have a cup of tea in the afternoon, I do start to feel a bit strange. Where did you go on your honeymoon? We didn’t have one – isn’t that awful? We’d been together so long and my partner, Rebecca, was pregnant with our second son. We thought, ‘Oh God, what happens if I get knocked over by

a bus – or you do?’ We got married very quickly. Do you like working away from home? Working away from home I do find slightly easier, really. Work’s generally easier than domestic life…. Do you have a daily routine even when you’re away? Tea in the afternoon. What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever eaten? I used to live in Stoke Newington. In various Turkish restaurants, there were ‘Ram’s reproductive organs’, which were lamb’s bollocks – and absolutely delicious. What are your best experiences in restaurants when abroad? We’d go touring armed with The Good Food Guide. The restaurateur Jeremy King is an old schoolfriend of mine and, probably because of that, I can always get a table. Whig wig: Allam in Pirates of the Caribbean

Have you made friends when you’ve been away? When you’re filming, you’re thrown together, and you develop a kind of intimacy. Do you like coming home? Yes, but it can take a while to adjust as when away you have a different life. In the theatre, you’re back and forth every day. What is your top travelling tip? Be prepared for a very expensive taxi ride if you need one. If the virus allows, what’s next for you? I’m meant to be doing another series of Conversations from a Long Marriage with Joanna Lumley for Radio 4. The Oldie February 2021 85

Genius crossword 396 el sereno Most clues are normal. But 7 have no definition and will (with a couple of others) make one of El Sereno’s favourite things (a little research may be needed here) Please write the name of this under the completed grid. Across 1 Flower that could be bully’s mistake? (7) 5 Smart, understanding type with no bottle (7) 9 Investigator must be lost from view - that’ll make you shed tears (5) 10 Supported trail across both poles with journalist (9) 11 Parody of 9 primates squabbling (13) 13 Tabloid backed by half of public (6) 16 Eccentric naturalist missing old city and lost land (8) 18 England is a sterile environment for such misfortune (8) 19 Member of the Lords will keep double parking! (6) 24 Dismay of company people holding back (13) 26 Man of straw may be so accepting concern and credit wife (9) 27 Get the better of some, without doubt (5) 28 Not as much in total taken back (7) 29 Insult to dignity cut short by son (7) Down 1 My relations - good for preparing a meal (7) 2 Moan as result of fancy exercise runs (7)

3 Sort of individual - one entertained by both sides (5) 4 Father’s mainly Conservative and a minister (6) 5 These will take the heat off reserve soldiers (8) 6 Start to enquire into dropping empty venue (9) 7 A bit of handiwork - or antique book that’s revered (5) 8 Reminder from head of government wearing nothing? (5) 12 Train crew using only the regulars (4) 14 Dry run included in assistance (4) 15 Popular as engineer, being hypocritical (9) 17 Signs guest out with ease, for the most part (8) 20 Clue from playwright in receipt of Oscar (7) 21 Collide with and knock over- and treat with contempt (3,4) 22 Men on board must cross river (6) 23 Tea service set up under American (5) 24 Demands as a right without beginning to inform (5) 25 A convenience with female being cold (5)

El Sereno likes _________ How to enter Please scan or otherwise copy this page and email it to comps@theoldie.co.uk. With regret, owing to the current coronavirus epidemic we are temporarily unable to accept postal entries. Normal procedure will be restored as soon as possible. Deadline: 10th February 2021. We do not sell or share your data with third parties. First prize is Word Perfect: Etymological Entertainment for Every Day of the Year by Susie Dent and £25. Two runners-up will receive £15. NB: Hodder & Stoughton and Bookpoint Ltd will be sent the addresses of the winners because they process the prizes.

Moron crossword 396 Across 1 Effervescent (5) 4 Eschews (5) 8 Succour (3) 9 Collaboration (11) 10 Takes long steps (7) 12 Kick out (5) 13 Deceive, misinform (6) 14 Merely (6) 17 Carrying weapons (5) 19 Bulletins (7) 21 Distribute widely (11) 23 A prompt, hint (3) 24 Free; baggy (5) 25 Occasions (5)

Genius 394 solution Down 1 Confronts (5) 2 Menagerie (3) 3 Surrendered (7) 4 Thin on the ground (6) 5 Join (5) 6 Sad nipper (anag) (9) 7 In a perfect world (7) 11 A good example to follow (4,5) 13 Language variant (7) 15 Indentation (7) 16 Light wind (6) 18 Dance venue (5) 20 Huts; sloughs (5) 22 Objective (3)

D stands for DOG, and in each case was either a breed or an anagram of DOG. Winner: Frank Drummond, Bedford Runners-up: Francis Craig, Rodley, Leeds; Louise Fetcher, London SW11

Moron 394 solution Across: 1 Annas, 4 Tick off (A nasty cough), 8 Age, 9 Motif, 10 Niggles, 11 Referendum, 14 Needed, 16 Menace, 18 Oppressive, 22 Strange, 23 Actor, 24 Far, 25 Dangers, 26 Terse. Down: 1 Admiring, 2 Notified, 3 Safer, 4 Tenant, 5 Cagoule, 6 Oily, 7 Fuss, 12 Radiator, 13 Rehearse, 15 Expense, 17 Briefs, 19 Start, 20 Used, 21 Grin. The Oldie February 2021 87

Competition TESSA CASTRO ‘I’ll go and double-check,’ announces waiter after waiter when you ask them a question about the menu. They never check; they always double-check. ‘They are probably double-bluffing.’ No one ever bluffs these days – they only ever seem to double-bluff (nine times out of ten, they are simply bluffing). ‘I did a double jump,’ I often hear at the bridge table, referring to an auction such as One Heart – Three Hearts. No – that is not a double jump; it is simply a jump. If it were a double jump, what would be the simple jump? I am leading the Linguistic Pedants Campaign (LPC) to remove the superfluous use of those doubles. A double jump is a bid that misses out two lower bids of that suit, eg One Heart – Four Hearts or, as here, One Heart – Four Clubs. Dealer South East-West Vulnerable North

♠ Q63 West ♠ J 10 8 7 ♥ 10 9 ♦Q8 ♣A Q 9 5 4

♥KJ42

♦ A 10 6 3 2 ♣6

South ♠ A5 ♥AQ7653 ♦K7 ♣8 3 2

East ♠ K942 ♥8 ♦J954 ♣K J 10 7

The bidding South West North East 1 ♥ Pass 4♣ (1) Pass 4NT(2) Pass 5♥(3) Pass 6♥ end (1) As a double jump in a new suit, this is a splinter bid, showing a singleton (or void) in the suit bid, and a raise to (at least) game in partner’s suit. (2) South loves hearing partner’s splinter. She has no wasted values and some length (fewer potential losses outside) in clubs. She launches into Roman Key Card Blackwood. (3) Showing two of ‘five aces’ (the king of hearts counting as an ace); and no queen of hearts. North-South sailed into Six Hearts with only 23 high-card points. Trick one went knave of spades, queen, king, ace. A single round of trumps would have been fatal, and declarer made no mistake. She cashed the king of diamonds, crossed to the ace and ruffed a diamond (with the queen), West discarding to reveal the 4-2 diamond split. She crossed to the knave of hearts and ruffed a fourth diamond (with the ace). She crossed to the king of hearts (drawing the last trump) and could triumphantly enjoy the fifth diamond, shedding her losing spade. She then conceded a club and could cross-ruff to make her slam. ANDREW ROBSON

IN COMPETITION No 262, you were invited to write a poem called An Annual Task. Lots of good entries, and melancholy came through in most, though it was pleasant to find Tracy Waterman as a tortoise hibernating. Peter Murawski complained, ‘My family love to dress the tree. Who pulls it down? You’ve guessed, that’s me.’ James Lancaster’s narrator visited a singing teacher’s grave. Sheila Keen cleared the gutter, Maggie McLean looked for the secateurs. Commiserations to them and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus prize of The Chambers Dictionary of Great Quotations going to Rob Salamon. My father’s ghost moves down the lawn Beneath a lowering sky, I watch him clearing fallen leaves As autumn hurries by. I still can see his care-worn face, His decency, his love, Though fifty years have passed, and he Now watches from above. Each year I sweep and burn the leaves, A blessed autumn chore, I follow in his footsteps Where he swept before. The leaves which first appeared in spring At close of year will die, And sons will follow fathers When autumn hurries by. Rob Salamon Each weighty metal drawer slides on its own slowness, Its heaviness hinting, like a cow unmilked. I tug and lug the bowed and bulging files, Leaf through the papers, finger ends smoothed numb. Fine paper cuts slice cross-hatched, wincing stings. Piled paper weight stands sliding on the floor, Each file’s load lightened, slipped slim in its slot. I set the fire pit, coax from logs a flame. Feeding sheets in singly, piecemeal, then Push to the roar the hefty, half-curled sheaf – Another log, from trees that lived and grew – And watch a year of words, a year of life Crinkle away, important briefly, once, Melting to a grey wasps’ nest of ash Soft-edged in fragile, fringed vermilion glow. As I, important briefly, once, will go. Jane Bower

This is an annual task, I have to take The tattered tinsel from the bookcase shelves, Remove the lights that decked the plastic tree And roll them up. If only there were elves To do this job, untangle wires to fit Inside their cardboard box. The fairy who Inhabits the top branch is getting old And shabby, but I know she’ll have to do, So goes back in the box with holly sprigs And baubles that have moved from house to house. Then I have to sort the cards to see Which ones I want to keep. A glittery mouse Which got left out last year needs packing too. I stare at all this junk and quietly say ‘Shall I bin it all, and get some new?’ But it’s my history, and has to stay. Katie Mallett The summer clothes are soft and light, and hang in rows in shades of white And pastel blue and sugar pink, and many more. But now I think It’s time to put them all away, for they won’t see the light of day Till next year comes and I, hooray! can take a summer holiday. So slowly introduced have been the warmer jumpers, long unseen, And heavier jeans and jolly socks, and thermals lifted from their box, While winter boots with laces loose, and woolly hats, in greys and puce Fill up the cupboards while I fold long floating scarves, and heaps of old And faded T-shirts which I should cut up, to do the compost good. Last, winter coats in sober hues slot in, some black, some navy blues, And then I stop arranging gear. It’s dealt with, for another year. G M Southgate COMPETITION No 264 Singing outdoors is a pleasure – so give us a Spring Song (to a well-known tune – please mention what it is). Maximum 16 lines. We still cannot accept any entries by post, I’m afraid, but do send them by email (comps@theoldie.co.uk – don’t forget to include your own postal address), marked ‘Competition No 264’, by 11th February. The Oldie February 2021 89

UK Travel

Food & Drink

Wanted

UK Travel

Video

The Oldie February 2021 91

Retirement Accommodation

UK Travel

YOUR ANCESTORS FOUND

Retired school inspector, Cambridge history graduate, genealogist for 40 years, researches and writes your familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s history. No task too big or small.

Phone 01730 812232 for brochure, sample report and free estimate.

Books & publishing Wanted

OLD POSTCARDS WANTED by private collector. Contact Grenville Collins. Tel: 020 7834 1852. Email: grenville@collins.safeserve.com Personal

Wanted

Gifts Societies

92 The Oldie February 2021

To advertise, contact Kami Jogee on 0203 859 7096 or via email kamijogee@theoldie.co.uk scc rate ÂŁ45+vat. The copy deadline for our next issue is 25th January 2020 Gifts

Bespoke British Pens Need artwork as we don't have a half

Sports

Books & Publishing

Food & Drink

The Oldie February 2021 93

Books & Publishing

Clothing

94 The Oldie February 2021

To advertise, contact Kami Jogee on 0203 859 7096 or via email kamijogee@theoldie.co.uk scc rate ÂŁ45+vat. The copy deadline for our next issue is 25th January 2020 Charity

Home

The Oldie February 2021 95

Mobility

Clothing

Health

Home

Health

PETITE ORIENTAL BEAUTY Stunning Young Slim Classy Elegant and Friendly Lady. 2 mins from South Kensington. Call 020 7581 2144 IN/OUT calls. UNDERSTANDING ATTRACTIVE CONTINENTAL LADY Memorable massage for discerning gentlemen in discreet Marylebone surroundings. 020 7723 3022 / 07932 644459

Clothing

Personal

96 The Oldie February 2021

To advertise, contact Kami Jogee on 0203 859 7096 or via email kamijogee@theoldie.co.uk scc rate ÂŁ45+vat. The copy deadline for our next issue is 25th January 2020 Mobility

The Oldie February 2021 97

Ask Virginia

virginia ironside

The joy of foreplay

I was startled when my beloved 23-year-old granddaughter suddenly said, ‘Granny, I can’t imagine how you coped without the Pill.’ I couldn’t stop laughing! I think we managed perfectly well, thank you. In the fifties – I am now 84 – our sexual knowledge was pretty scant because we were all terrified of getting pregnant. But we all indulged in a fair amount of snogging, necking, canoodling as it was known and downright heavy petting. I find it rather sad that the young become ‘heavy’ so quickly and move in with each other so rapidly. I loved playing the field. It had its ups and downs, but Mr Right turned up when I was 29 and we lived happily till his death in 2006. Name and address supplied I think you’re talking about foreplay – a word I’ve always found rather yukky. On examining why, I discover that it’s because it implies that the cuddling and kissing and snogging etc are not ends in themselves – that by definition they’re only a precursor to a determinate sexual act. Indeed, the ‘fore’ in the word implies that it’s something rather dreary, like having to prepare the walls with sanding and primer before actually getting down to the fun of painting them. But so-called foreplay was an end in itself when we were very young – and for many older people it’s a wonderful way of continuing a sex life that doesn’t necessary end in some kind of climax. Travelling can sometimes be as good as arriving. We oldies know how to experience this kind of intensely exciting sexual pleasure and have it to return to in later years. And, rather than rage at the loss of sexual powers and shut up our sexual shops

completely, we should feel lucky that we know blissful sexual pleasure is available without necessarily going all the way.

Forgive thy neighbour

I was astonished when shopping the other day to bump into a neighbour I hardly know who rather sharply told me that I owed her £200! It turned out that my email had been hacked, and on getting an email apparently from me, asking – because of some bank problems – for a voucher for my nephew for a present and promising to pay her back, she’d paid up! I honestly don’t feel I should pay her anything. I wouldn’t dream of falling for anything like this. And I’m a successful, selfreliant, single woman who has never asked for money in my life! Why didn’t she pop down the road and ask if it was kosher, anyway? I’ve now changed my email. But what do you think I should do? Barbara Grant, by email Did you, the moment you’d found out, email everyone in your address book apologising for being hacked? That would have made your position stronger, as it would have shown you had concern for the victims rather than just for yourself. If you didn’t, then make the point that no one else in your address book fell for such an obvious con, and ask how she could possibly have believed you’d be asking her, almost a stranger, for money. And especially for such an unnecessary cause – after all, it wasn’t as if the scammer implied you were starving. Ask why she didn’t pop down the road to check. In the end, though, just to keep the peace, why not suggest saying you’d be happy to split the difference? You would then at least be occupying the moral high ground.

ISSN 0965-2507. Printed in England by Walstead Group. Distributed by Seymour Distribution Ltd, 2 East Poultry Avenue, London EC1A 9PT; www.seymour.co.uk The Oldie is published by Oldie Publications Ltd, Moray House, 23/31 Great Titchfield Street, London W1W 7PA

To order a print subscription, go to subscribe@theoldie.co.uk or call 0330 333 0195 Print subscription rates for 12 issues:

98 The Oldie February 2021

Spike Milligan’s last laugh

I read the letter about a widow’s worrying about her husband’s choice of My Way at his funeral. It reminded me of Spike Milligan who, in his autobiography, said he’d told Harry Secombe, ‘I hope that you die before I do because I don’t want you singing at my funeral.’ Well, Secombe did die before Milligan, but the families decided that a recording of Harry singing should be played at the chapel at Spike’s funeral. I love that! D D, by email Very nice! I don’t like the idea of people laying down the law in advance about what should be played at their funerals, anyway – do you? Funerals are for the living, not the dead.

Mask exemption explained

To add to the masks debate: you can be lawfully exempt from wearing one for a variety of reasons, such as breathing difficulties, anxiety etc, and you don’t have to explain or even prove it. You just say you’re exempt, and if anyone (other than the police or a PCSO) asks further questions, it is an offence under the disability discrimination act. Georgia M, Hereford Thanks, Georgia. More information can be found on the nomasks.info website. Another useful website, if you’re dubious about the sense of what’s been going on for the last few months, is lockdownsceptics.org.

Please email me your problems at problempage@theoldie.co.uk; I will answer every email – and let me know if you’d like your dilemma to be confidential.

UK £45; Europe/Eire £51 USA/Canada £52; rest of world £61. To buy a digital subscription for £29.99 or a single issue for £2.99, go to the App Store on your tablet or mobile and search for ‘The Oldie’. All rights of reproduction are reserved in respect of all articles, drawings, sketches etc published in The Oldie in all parts of the

world. Reproduction or imitation of any of these without the express prior written consent of the publisher is forbidden. The Oldie is available in audio and e-text format for the benefit of blind and partially sighted readers through RNIB Newsagent. Telephone 0303 123 9999 or visit www.rnib. org.uk/newsagent for further details.