The Old Un’s Notes in glasses’. Indeed, in 1956, she married Arthur Miller. It turns out that women will make passes at men who wear glasses.
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Specs appeal – Marilyn Monroe
Have Oldie-readers who wear glasses ever thought where specs come from? The answer lies in a new book, Through the Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Life of Spectacles, by Travis Elborough. Elborough, himself bespectacled, traces the history of spectacles back to late-13th-century Florence. In a sermon at Santa Maria Novella church, given between 1303 and 1306, Friar Giordano da Pisa declared that it had been ‘20 years since the art of making spectacles, which have made for good vision, one of the most useful arts on earth, was discovered’. Elborough takes his history up to Marilyn Monroe, who played the extremely shortsighted Pola Debevoise in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953). In real life, Monroe was short-sighted but was rarely seen in specs. When she was offered the part in Millionaire, she was reluctant
to wear glasses on screen. Still, she confessed in her autobiography that she had ‘always been attracted to men
How do you find new love during a pandemic? The Belgians have the answer. They were granted a knuffelcontact – or ‘hug buddy’. Affection-starved Flemings used the knuffelcontact rule to visit their paramours without having to bubble with them indefinitely. It even became the Flemish word of 2020. ‘Flemings love to cuddle,’ said the Word of the Year competition’s judges.
Among this month’s contributors Sasha Swire (p33) is the daughter of Sir John Nott, MP for St Ives, and wife of Hugo Swire, MP for East Devon. Her book, Diary of an MP’s Wife, is an indiscreet account of life as a political plus-one. Gareth Neame (p14) is a BAFTA, Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning TV and film producer and executive. His credits include Downton Abbey – the film version was number one in Britain and America. Graham Little (p24) is a Northern Irish TV producer, writer and presenter. He has worked in television for 20 years. He’s represented Ireland at elephant polo and sumo-wrestling. Earl Spencer (p10) wrote Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier, Killers of the King and To Catch a King: Charles II’s Great Escape. His new book, The White Ship, is out in paperback now.
Health authorities in neighbouring Netherlands advised citizens to arrange a seksbuddy (no translation needed) during its lockdown. Meanwhile, in Italy, visits to congiunti were permitted – congiunti denoting anything from distant relatives to people with whom you have a close relationship. So while we Brits were left fiddling our thumbs, things were a lot more congenial across the Channel. The hardest part about picking your knuffelcontact, seksbuddy or congiunto? Being sure you make the right choice. It is now 60 years since the death, on 2nd July 1961, of Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), best known for A Farewell to Arms (1929) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). Not all his works were universally applauded at first. Of The Sun Also Rises (1926), one reviewer said that it ‘begins nowhere and ends in nothing’. The New York Times called To Have and to Have Not (1937) – later a classic wartime film starring Humphrey Bogart – ‘an empty book’, adding that ‘Mr Hemingway’s record as a creative writer would be stronger if it had never been published.’ Of Across the River and Into the Trees (1950), the Saturday Review of Literature said, ‘It is so dreadful … that it begins to have its own morbid fascination.’ Some of his fellow The Oldie July 2021 5
