Sussex Style July 2015

SUSSEXst yle JULY 2O15

HIGH SOCIETY DO YOU FIT? MEET THE BUTLER BORN TO SERVE CAROLE MORIN TALKS SUICIDE REBECCA FERGUSON

SINGS THE BLUES

John Lewis at home and Waitrose Now together in Horsham

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contents

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Suicide and glamour

Marilyn Monroe, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf and the creation of myths

contents

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contents

On the cover

Singer-songwriter Rebecca Ferguson. Image courtesy of Sony Music

90 Indian inspiration Trading Boundaries’ Jenny Thomson on her Indian love affair

12 Editor’s letter 14 Out and about in Sussex

O ur round-up of top events

23 Style list

This month’s must-have products

26 Brighton mums

The perils of buggy lust 28 School gate confidential Facebook gossip nightmares

30 Dan Raven

What is a posh accent today?

40 High society or vile society?

Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies: a satire for our times

42 Romans do it better... in Bignor

Faded glory at Bignor’s Roman villa

46 A rake about town

Join Michael Atters on one of his infamous escapades

50 Inger Moss

Dressing for the races

52 Beauty notebook

Bulletproof beauty for a long day

32 Class rules

54 Skincare

34 High society and high jinks

57 Health and fitness

Emma Caulton on class

A history of bad behaviour in the upper classes

Mechanical cleansing devices

The “posh” body

60 Lady sings the blues

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W e interview singer Rebecca Ferguson

66 Food news

Wine triumphs and French cooking for kids

68 Sussex’s finest

Publisher’s pick of top restaurants

72 Christmas in July Too early to plan for Christmas? Think again...

74 Born to serve

Goodwood’s head butler David Edney

78 Raspberry gin sorbet

T he sophistcated summer cooler

80 Seduced by suicide

C arole Morin explores her obsession with Virginia Woolf’s death

84 The woodsman

Sussex’s most luxurious kitchens with Mark Antony Hill

94 Interior notebook

If it’s quirky and indulgent, it’s here...

102 Finance

Jo White on giving to your grandchildren

103 B uilding your dream home

Choosing the perfect builder

104 In the footsteps of the gods A serene break in Greece’s Thessaloniki

109 Book club

Studies of class and manners

110 F or queen and county

We meet East Sussex’s Lord Lieutenant

114 Minxy

Our glamorous

columnist on high-heel trauma

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inside

What the butler saw

David Edney has worked at Goodwood House for 18 years and is now head butler.

He talks to us about being a key part of one of the UK’s greatest houses; the nature of impeccable service; and how he manages Goodwood’s calendar of world-class events.

Seduced by suicide

Lady sings the blues

It’s five years since Rebecca Ferguson shot to fame as a finalist on The X Factor. This month she showcases her latest album Lady Sings the Blues at the Love Supreme festival.

She talks to us about the perils of fame and the joy of jazz.

Novelist Carole Morin has always been fascinated by suicide. She explores the deaths of Virgina Woolf, Sylvia Plath and Marilyn Monroe.

What drives a person to kill themselves? And, Morin controversially asks, is it perhaps the most glamorous type of death?

In this issue...

The woodsman

Mark Antony Hill works with the world’s most beautiful woods and is fast becoming one of the county’s top craftsmen.

His world-renowned bespoke kitchens are purchased by Sussex’s elite and provide the perfect mixture of style and practicality.

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Romans do it better

In the footsteps of the gods

Thessaloniki is known as Greece’s second city, but as Lizzie Enfield finds, it has everything Athens can offer and more.

She jets off for a blissful week of shopping, culture, history and the most delectable cuisine.

How did Sussex’s high society live centuries ago? David Bennun takes us to South Downs National Park near Chichester, and uncovers an intriguing story of ruined grandeur and archaeological detective work at the Bignor Roman Villa.

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HARMONY IN CONSTRUCTION, RENOVATION AND RESTORATION.

Get in touch!

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Welcome...

High society... let’s face it, we’ve all dreamt of attending a grand ball and mixing with the rich and famous. But what does any of it mean today and more importantly, how can you experience it in Sussex? In this issue we show you how.

David kicks things off by looking at how ideas of class have changed. He traces things right back to the start with a visit to the faded glory of Bignor Villa, showing us that the Romans really did do things better.

The grand occasion has always been a magnet for the upper classes and this month is one of the most glamorous events in the Sussex calendar: the Qatar Goodwood Festival. Inger Moss gives you the low down on hats, while we catch up with Goodwood’s head butler, David Edney. Is it really all Downton Abbey grandeur?

Step behind the scenes of one of the country’s most magnificent estates.

Meanwhile, Michael “Atters” Attree is certainly no stranger to hobnobbing with the elite. We join him on one of his infamous jaunts. Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy and outrageous ride.

This month we interview singer Rebecca Ferguson, who has been to her fair share of celeb bashes. But in a candid interview – ahead of what promises to be another spectacular occasion, the Love Supreme Festival – she tells us why she now prefers to avoid them.

All this plus delectable recipes, top health and beauty tips, culture, travel and inimitable advice from your favourite columnists. So sit back, unwind, pour yourself a glass of champers and stay chic.

Alex Hopkins EDITOR IN CHIEF ALEX HOPKINS SUB EDITOR DAVID BENNUN CREATIVE DIRECTOR BETH DONSON PR DIRECTOR CLAIRE WATERS BEAUTY EDITOR SARAH MANN YEAGER FOOD & DRINK EDITOR SAM BILTON HEALTH & FITNESS EDITOR BEN MARSHALL PUBLISHING DIRECTOR SEÁN KANE HEAD OF FINANCE RICHARD JUDD COMMERCIAL MANAGER JACQUELINE NICHOLSON ADVERTISING MANAGER MICHELLE DE LA MOTTE-RICE ACCOUNT MANAGER JOSIE KELLY CONTRIBUTORS MICHAEL ATTREE, EMMA CAULTON, BEN COPPER, LIZZIE ENFIELD, CLAIRE JONES-HUGHES LAURA LOCKINGTON, CAROLE MORIN, INGER MOSS, DANIEL RAVEN, JO WHITE PUBLISHED BY GREEN DUCK MEDIA LTD • SUSSEX STYLE™ • COPYRIGHT 2014-09 • ISSN 2049-6036 SECOND FLOOR, AFON BUILDING, WORTHING ROAD, HORSHAM, WEST SUSSEX, RH12 1TL T: 01403 801800 M: 07528 521988 SUSSEXSTYLE.COM FACEBOOK.COM/SUSSEXSTYLEMAGAZINE TWITTER.COM/SUSSEXSTYLEMAG

All rights reserved. except for normal review purposes, no part of this magazine may be reproduced without written permission of the publishers. No artwork or editorial content may be used in any other form or publication without the publisher’s consent. Every care is taken in the preparation of this magazine, but the contents are only meant as a guide to the readers. The proprietors of this publication ARE publishers, not agents or sub agents of those who advertise therein. They cannot be held liable for any loss suffered as a result of information gained from the publication. Copyright 2015 Green Duck Media Ltd - Sussex StyleTM

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out & about in

SUSSEX Sussex comes alive in July, with arts, culture and events of wonderful quality and variety: major exhibitions of great artists, wonderful music, literature, beer, jousting and fields of flowers

sussex events

1. Parham Garden Weekend, 11-12 July The ultimate day out for all you avid gardeners.

Here’s a perfect opportunity to get expert advice on your horticulture questions. Visit a staggering array of specialist nurseries and stands for plants, toolsl and products – and then reward yourself at the real ale, cider and beer bar. parhaminsussex.co.uk

2. Love Supreme, 3-5 July The superb line-up for this major jazz festival includes Chaka Khan (right), Lisa Stansfield and Rebecca Ferguson (profiled on page 60).

IMAGES: 4. LAGOON 2 1997 © BRIDGET RILEY 2015. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, COURTESY KARSTEN SCHUBERT, LONDON. CHAKA KHAN IMAGE SUPPLIED BY AIR MTM MEDIA TOURS MANAGEMENT

lovesupremefestival.com

3. Hastings Beer and Music Festival, 2-4 July Sample over 100 real ales and ciders from the UK in Hastings’ beautiful Alexandra Park as you enjoy a fine line-up of musicians and bands. This year’s highlight is the Battle of Hastings Prom. hbmf.co.uk 4. Bridget Riley – The Curve Paintings 1961-2014, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, until 6 Sept A major exhibition surveying the artist’s use of the curve motif in a career spanning over 50 years.

The show launches a year of celebrations marking 80 years of the Pavilion as one of the first and most significant modernist public buildings in the UK. dlwp.com 5. Arundel Jousting Tournament, 21-26 July Become a chivalrous knight for the day as you step back in time under the shadow of magnificent Arundel Castle, don full plate armour and try your hand at some jousting. arundelcastle.org 6. Lewes Speakers Festival, 17-19 July The literary legends come out for this popular festival.

The bill includes Louis de Bernières, AC Grayling and political heavyweight Dennis Skinner. lewesspeakersfestival.com

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sussex events

7. Sickert in Dieppe, Pallant House Gallery, 4 July – 4 Oct Chichester’s Pallant House exhibits over 80 paintings documenting British artist Walter Sickert’s lifetime fascination with the seaside resort of Dieppe in France. The broad range of material on show captures Dieppe’s stunning architecture, harbour and fishing quarter, shops and café culture. pallant.org.uk 8. Festival of Chichester, until 12 July The annual four-week arts extravaganza is one not to miss.

There’s a huge range of events to cater to every taste.

Highlights include international violinist Jack Liebeck with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, folk singer and ace guitarist Martin Simpson, poet Jo Shapcott and Oscarnominated screenwriter and novelist William Nicholson. festivalofchichester.co.uk

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10. Eastbourne Festival, 4-26 July An exciting three weeks of art and culture including music, visual arts, comedy, theatre, science, talks, workshops, artists’ open houses and much more. eastbournefestival.co.uk

11. Lordington Lavender Open Days, 8-12 July Relax and unwind in the most tranquil of surroundings.

The lavender fields are now in full bloom and open to the public for just five days at the only commercial lavender farm in Sussex. lordingtonlavender.co.uk

12. The Wind In The Willows, 12. Herstmonceux Castle, 19 July Enjoy this popular children’s classic brought to life in open air theatre at the idyllic Hersmonceux Castle. Refreshments are available or, better yet, bring your own picnic. herstmonceux-castle.com

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IMAGES: 7. WALTER SICKERT, AU CAFE CONCERT, VERNET’S DANCE HALL, 1920, OIL ON CANVAS, PRIVATE COLLECTION

9. Petworth Festival, 15 July – 1 Aug This two-day event provides the perfect mix of classical and chamber music, jazz, comedy, young musicians and outdoor theatre. Expect plenty of family entertainment at venues including St Mary’s Church, Bignor Park and Leaconfield Hall. petworthfestival.org.uk

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sussex events

13. Eastbourne Extreme, 18-19 July Go on, try something a little more daring! Kick off your summer holidays with an adventure-filled weekend at this intense free sports festival featuring a huge line-up of air, land and water-based pursuits.

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14. Ardingly Antiques and Collectors Fair, 21-22 July This annual antiques fair has quite rightly become the largest in the South-East. It features up to 1,700 stalls housing thousands of goods, from fine antique furniture to exquisite ceramics. This year also features the new Blue Zone devoted to architectural salvage. iacf.co.uk/ardingly 15. Qatar Goodwood Festival, 28 July – 1 Aug The highlight of the July calendar. This year’s event is particularly special as Goodwood has announced a 10year partnership with Qatar, which is the single biggest sponsorship deal ever done for the benefit of British racing. This makes the Qatar Goodwood Festival one of the most significant and valuable meetings in the world. The partnership results in over £2 million being invested into prize money for eight key races as well as a commitment to increase this year-on-year. Total prize money on offer for the week now totals £4.5 million, with Qatar once again demonstrating their passion and support for British racing.

Goodwood.com To list your event email info@greenduckmedia.co.uk

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IMAGES: 15. RICHMOND BARR, GOODWOOD, BY MIKE CALDWELL. EASTBOURNE IMAGAE: ARNDALE/SHUTTERSTOCK

visiteastbourne.com/extreme/

16. Judy – The Songbook of Judy Garland, Theatre Royal Brighton, 7-11 July A breathtaking show highlighting the legendary life and career of Judy Garland, starring her daughter Lorna Luft. Created in arrangement with the Judy Garland Estate, this is the only officially recognised Judy Garland show in the world today. atgtickets.com/venues/theatre-royal-brighton/

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style list

The

style list

From luxurious velvet sofas to elegant tea sets, high-tech kitchen appliances, and even sleek jewellery that monitors sun exposure, here’s this month’s pick of the finest products

1. Rado HyperChrome watch, £3,650 Lightweight, scratchresistant and above all, exceptionally comfortable. A musthave for the discerning gentleman.

Rado.com

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style list 3

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2. JUNE by Netatmo, platinum colour, €129 This ingenious, stylish wrist gadget measures your sun exposure and lets you know when you need to top up your protection.

Netamo.com 3. The KitchenAid Artisan Cook Processor, RRP £849 Boil, fry, stew, knead dough, chop, mince or emulsify at the touch of a button. Includes six pre-programmed cooking codes for more ambitious recipes. kitchenaid.co.uk

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4. Wedgwood Wild Strawberry Metal 3-Piece Beverage Set, Limited Edition.

Prices vary The definition of English elegance at tea time.

Wedgwood.co.uk

5. La Source lamp table, £185 Ultra-sophisticated lamp table, made in Holland.

Available in a choice of 16 stunning colours for the backplate, and as part of a much larger range of glass occasional furntiure.

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6. Luxurious velvet Lytton Sofa, Mallard, £1,349 A stunning velvet sofa upholstered with gorgeous Harlequin fabric from Brewers’ Amazilia Velvets collection. Available from Brewers at Home, Eastbourne. brewers.co.uk 7. Bespoke wooden wallet, £165-£355 Beautiful hand-crafted wallets from The Wooden Wallet Company. woodenwallets.co.uk 7

WE LOVE

8. A mahogany-cased grand piano

by Steinway & Sons, New York, model No 10543. Sold for £6,800 Bellmans auctioneers, Wisborough Green. Bellmans is a treasure trove of similar magnificent items. bellmans.co.uk To be included in next month’s style list email info@greenduckmedia.co.uk

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brighton mums

The new mum-craving

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IMAGE CREDIT: SUSLO/SHUTTERSTOCK

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Another “Stokke® Mummy”, Chelle uying a buggy is probably the most critical purchase for new IF YOU CONSTANTLY CRAVE McCann, often reviews buggies on her blog The parents. When some cost as NEW WHEELS TO PARADE Mumington Post. After experiences with many different brands, she is concerned with substance much as a second-hand car, it’s THE KIDS AROUND IN, YOU over style. “You can tell the difference in quality crucial to choose a model that MAY BE SUFFERING FROM between pushchairs by looking at whether it’s got lasts from birth to pre-school age BUGGY LUST, WARNS cheap-looking plastic wheels. Funnily enough I and can accommodate subsequent siblings. But look at how the brake works. I had three buggies manufacturers are constantly launching more CLAIRE JONES-HUGHES with brake issues,” Chelle explains. lush designs and practical features. As with Mel lusts more after the colour than the brand. “Every now and buying a car, the buggy starts to lose value and appeal the moment you again I have a moment, hankering after a new colour. A few years after wheel it off the Mothercare display. For some, one is just not enough.

Sussex mum Lauren Kearney writes the popular lifestyle blog Belle I’d bought my green Stokke®, they brought out a special edition in yellow du Brighton. She recounts how she became obsessed: “If you hate your – my favourite colour. I had to be very restrained!” Her love of buggies buggy, like we did our first one, you’ll have a miserable first few weeks turned into a business, partially motivated out of frustration about the with your child.” Her and her husband accepted the offer of a second- colour choices in toy strollers. “It’s still mainly pink for girls, blue for hand buggy from a friend while Lauren was still pregnant. “Bad idea! It boys,” she complains, which is why their designs are non-gender specific.

For her second baby, merely a few weeks old, Lauren plumped for had wonky handles, it randomly veered off to the left and right and I the royal buggy of choice, the Silver Cross. After years of innovation didn’t know how to fold it up or down. It was just a nightmare.”

Lauren confesses to having owned seven buggies in just two years. and style, the brand had slightly waned, perceived as old fashioned and “It’s like craving handbags. But you don’t need a handbag when you have clunky. But the vintage look for prams has made a comeback in the last few years and the company has successfully built on their heritage with a baby, you have a changing bag, so you turn your craving to buggies.”

Mel Sramek-Bennett co-founded a company called Pimp My a range of modern buggies and prams which retain a hint of the classic Stroller with her sister, making toy buggies. She’s what we call a “Stokke® look they were known for. Their latest design has them teaming up with Mummy”, devoted to the Norwegian-made stroller. The Stokke® Explory Aston Martin for a buggy that will set you back - brace yourself - £3,000.

“I’ve never lusted after a buggy and then hated it. But I always find was launched in 2003, gaining in popularity towards the end of the decade. A graphic designer by trade, Mel had a longstanding preference little niggles in each one,” Chelle tells me. Could these ladies’ obsessions for Scandinavian design influences when she spotted the Stokke® in a be more to do with the pursuit of the perfect buggy rather than fickleness? magazine before children were even on the horizon. “I said to myself, if “There’s no one perfect buggy to suit all parents,” says Chelle. And until there is, the quest of parents afflicted by buggy lust will never end.

I ever have kids, that’s the buggy I would get.”

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school gate confidential

The dangers of the FB parent

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IMAGE CREDIT: RASSTOCK/SHUTTERSTOCK

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Very proud of my boy,” she posts, accompanied Facebook friend posts, by a video of him speaking. Her misguided “Bragging mum moment FACEBOOK: IT’S THE 21ST attempt to share her pride and educate her coming up. Charlotte got CENTURY BLEND OF online community about his condition has full marks for her book SCHOOL GATE CHATTER, seemingly afforded the boy little privacy with her report today. #proudparent.”

CHURCH GOSSIP AND hundreds of Facebook friends on his personal Fairly harmless, except these ‘bragging moments’ are shared two or three LOCAL PUB BANTER. WE’RE development. And while I support the notion it is important to normalise the range of learning times a day. Needless to say she is hidden from ALL IN EACH OTHER’S my feed, which is a shame, as in person we have BUSINESS – AND PARENTS difficulties children are born with, I can’t help feeling the boy has had no say in what is made a great connection. It seems social media has ARE AMONG THE MOST public about his life. turned us into lemmings blindly documenting ANNOYING POSTERS This also raises the issue of parents who post our privileged, Western-hemisphere existence. details of their children’s medical treatments.

Parents on social media have managed to steal every last drop of smugness from the world today and hijack our One of my Facebook friends has tracked every single operation her twins feeds with it. The gushers who share how much they love their partner have had since birth, including the hospitals in which they received the and kids several times a week – yeah, we got it the first time, thanks. treatment. She’s posted pictures of them as babies with tubes out of their The over-sharers who reveal every single detail of their messy divorce noses and bandages on their tiny bodies. If the medical history of an and child custody battles – I wonder how that will play out in court, adult is confidential, then why do parents deem it acceptable to share “My Lord, we submit Facebook status A, B and C into evidence”. The their child’s medical procedures online?

The tabloid media boost their circulations with tales of reckless domestic divas who show off their embroidery, knitting and cakes in photos where the gin and anti-depressants are conveniently out of shot. Facebook usage, fuelling parents’ fears – most recently with rumours of The ranters, the drama-lovers, the braggers, and don’t forget the trolls, a chilling meme called Game Of 72, where youngsters are daring each bleat from the safety of their keyboard or smartphone. Can you type, other to go missing for three days. While the media point the finger at the technology, few voices are willing to note that parents themselves are “First-World problems”?

The most worrying aspect of Facebook is parents’ lax approach to not setting the best example. I have seen people post pictures of their privacy. They are freely talking about personal details of their children’s kids in school uniform, standing in front of the school sign. Plus I’ve lives, forgetting that even if their privacy controls are set to the maximum noticed parents using the checking-in functionality that pinpoints your Facebook will allow, that doesn’t prohibit people taking screenshots and geographical location actually at the school gates. A skilful predator who really wanted to target them would be able to piece together information sharing information.

For example, one Facebook friend frequently posts statuses about her on where the child goes to school and in some cases where they are son with a learning disability. “Isn’t Ethan doing well with his speech? treated medically, as well as where their parents work and live.

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dan raven

Posh… perhaps…?

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IMAGE CREDIT: FRANK FIEDLER/SHUTTERSTOCK

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WHAT DOES THE WORD

he origins of the word “posh” are “POSH” MEAN – AND WHY to – whenever I found myself talking to someone with a scar, or a proper job, or just anyone who tantalisingly mysterious. Some DO ACCENTS STILL might be looking at me and thinking “Get you, say it derives from an acronym SEEM TO MATTER, Fauntleroy!” or similar. that used to be stamped on WONDERS DAN RAVEN People nowadays tend to think that the luggage of wealthy cruise changing your accent is like telling the world ship passengers – “Port Out, Starboard Home” – which supposedly arose from the fact that the cooler, you’re ashamed of your origins, and that this is just as wrong as being more expensive cabins would be to the port side of the ship on the way ashamed of your race or sexuality. I don’t know, though – perhaps this out and the starboard side on the way back. But there is no evidence for is just because I’ve dabbled myself, but I’d prefer to think of it as just this, and in any case I can’t help thinking that such a thing could only be another way of being friendly. It’s like meeting someone halfway, innit? true in a world where the sun never moved. The meaning of the word If you were to live among, say, white South Africans for 20 years without can be just as slippery: if we use it to describe a car or restaurant, it usually ever once allowing yourself to sound like an adenoidal drill sergeant, it signifies approval, but if we use it to describe a person, it usually means would be like saying to all of your South African friends and neighbours we think they’re a ludicrously overindulged waste of space. And I know “I am among you, but I’ll never be one of you”... and that’s just going to this from bitter personal experience, because I spent four long years of remind them of the bad old days, isn’t it?

With hindsight, then, I have no beef with my mum for making my life being called “posh” about 19 times a day by fellow students at St Leonard’s Church of England Primary School in Streatham, London. me talk posh. Apart from anything else, she was right – Received I wasn’t posh really (at least, not then) – my parents both came Pronunciation can still be a huge advantage when it comes to getting from working-class backgrounds, and they didn’t seem to have any more jobs, credit, respect from customer service operatives etc., no matter how money than anyone else’s parents. But my mother was part of that last much we might like to think things have changed. And Brighton these generation to believe that no one who didn’t “speak well” could ever hope days is full of people who make me sound like Frank Butcher anyway, to get anywhere in life, so she brought me and my sister up to sound, so in that sense I suppose I was at least heading in the right direction. I basically, like little Victorian newsreaders. And there seemed to be just hope I don’t start subconsciously to emulate my new neighbours the nothing I could do about this, no matter how much I practised in front same way I did my old schoolmates, and so get even posher; if my next of Grange Hill, because I was as rubbish at accents then as I am now. column starts with a ceviche recipe or some “glamping” tips, you’ll know But still I tried, just as I try now – without even consciously wanting what’s happened...

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society

CLASS RULES

I

had dinner with an Earl once.

Lovely chap, but with the table manners of a pig. He troughed and I, being a fastidious middleclass type who knows exactly which piece of cutlery to use when and how, was shocked. He had been educated at the very best establishments in England (Eton and Oxford), but no one had taught him how to wield a knife. Maybe it doesn’t matter if you’re in the peerage.

Similarly, in my experience, public-school types have a fondness for the stodgy food of the nursery and the boarding house. It is the middle classes who tend to be the foodies replicating Thai and Moroccan dishes in their kitchens, inspired by adventures overseas and eager to impress their neighbours and friends. And austerity has given us Jack Monroe – single mum, blogger and campaigner, creating delicious recipes on a budget.

Taste in all its forms appears to be the foundation of our social classes. A recent survey by the BBC suggested a new class structure of seven categories (from elite to precarious proletariat) based on criteria such as income, house value and the status of friends and colleagues.

They got it wrong. It felt like a patronisingly uncomfortable fit. Instead it was the glorious Grayson Perry (the Essex-born, Turner Prize-winning artist with a country retreat on the Sussex coast) who nailed it with his excellent Channel 4 series, In the Best Possible Taste. He said: “Class is something bred into us like a religious faith... A childhood marinating in the material culture of one’s class means taste is soaked right through you... A lot of the interesting stuff happens when we think we are not even making a decision. It’s those default settings we all have which often say the most about us: where and when we eat... the kind of curtains we buy, what television you watch, how you bring up your children.”

Class forms our own identity and shapes our assessments about others based on accent, dress, language and even names. I am sure (years back) I secured an interview at posh publishing house Condé Nast

because I had double-barrelled my name when I married. I was not who they thought I was: not a grand deb, but a feminist unwilling to lose her maiden name.

Does class matter? Well, the privately educated still dominate the top professions. Only seven per cent of the UK public attended private school and yet current data shows 71 per cent of senior judges, 62 per cent of senior armed forces officers and 55 per cent of Whitehall permanent secretaries are privately educated (and more often than not male, but that’s another matter.) The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission has described those educated at public school and Oxbridge as creating a “closed shop at the top.”

Every so often politicians propose a supposed utopia of a classless society. David Cameron suggested this himself in the run-up to the election, talking about creating opportunity beyond the traditional privileged groups (while being firmly of the “ruling” upper class himself.)

It sounds positive. But is it? And in reality do we want to lose the colour and character of our social class system? Surely society would benefit from greater representation across all the social classes from top down?

Our class system is already in shift. Who is working-class now? The lower class is rarely referred to as working-class as they often don’t, while the “property-owning” middle class frequently rent. And they are the ones likely to be working all hours to maintain the financial expectations of their flat white lifestyles. I know internationally renowned architects brought up on council estates whose work has been positively informed by the experience with an innate understanding of community values.

Equally I know tattooists from traditional middle-class backgrounds.

Where class becomes predictable is in politics. In this year’s general election, ABC1s tended to vote Conservative (and Lib Dem), DEs voted Labour, the strongest support for UKIP came from C2s, and the only party truly classless was Green.

“Taste appears the foundation of our social classes. As Grayson Perry says, class is something bred into us like religious faith” 32 | S US S E X S T Y L E . C OM | JULY 2 0 1 5

IMAGE CREDIT: SERGEI BACHLAKOV/SHUTTERSTOCK

What class do you think you are? And should it matter today? Emma Caulton looks at our shifting class system

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HIGH SOCIETY HIGH JINKS

&

“The social ladder was constructed by men whose bloodiness and ruthlessness brought them land, power and eventually, titles”

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society

Does being a member of “high society” make hedonism and bad behavior more permissible?

David Bennun investigates

MAIN IMAGE: MR DOOMITS/SHUTTERSTOCK. IMAGE: IMAGEDB.COM/SHUTTERSTOCK

I

t may be the single most recognisable British image of the last ten years. Or at least, the most recognised. Which is odd, because it is not an image from the last ten years. It is now almost 30 years old, and its continuing fame depends almost entirely upon circulation on the Internet. It cannot be printed in magazines or shown in television; its owners made it commercially unavailable in 2007. The BBC’s Newsnight responded by commissioning a painting of it. Which seems particularly apt, given its subject and context.

It shows nine young men - scarcely more than boys - as they variously stand, sit, lean and lounge upon a set of Victorian stone steps. All wear expensive evening dress – dinner jackets with tails, bow ties, waistcoats – which the monochrome reproduction does not reveal to be coloured, respectively, black, blue and biscuit. Nor can it impart the information that each set of clothing will have cost in the region of £1,000. The attitudes and expressions of these men recall the description by Percy Bysshe Shelley of the monumental statue of his imaginary King Ozymandias, with its “wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command.” These attitudes and expressions might, it’s true, have looked much the same were the men Teddy Boys (whom they somewhat resemble), or Bronx toughs of the Depression era. But they are not, and that is why the faces and body language are so telling. They are not a veneer, not an exhibition of upstart defiance. They speak of those who are born to rule, and know it. This is the 1987 membership of The Bullingdon Club.

George Osborne, today’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, does not appear in the picture, although he is often assumed to. His haughty young mug stares with bland disdain from another, similar photograph taken five years later. The two most notable principals of the 1987 image are Prime Minister David Cameron, and Mayor of London Boris Johnson. Both old Etonians, both at the time participants in what could kindly be called an informal dining society, but what might be better described - and indeed, effectively was in last year’s film of that title, albeit one claimed by its producers to be entirely a work of fiction - as The Riot Club.

The Bullingdon Club represents the reality of high society to a T. It is a place, or rather a notion, wherein privilege, money, mischief (or

worse) and impunity coalesce into a singularly distasteful whole - most notably, in this instance, the vandalising of its chosen venues, combined with on-the-spot compensation for the damage. Its own history reflects the history of high society, and is worth noting on that basis: its reputed origins as a sporting club in the late 18th century; the maintenance of its cricketing connections into the the early 20th century largely as a pretext for the antics of its rich and well-refreshed brotherhood; its odour of sufficient wealth to purchase for that brotherhood - gentlemen by title but not by conduct - indemnity from their own obnoxious behaviour; its propensity for destruction and bullying.

It is the Bullingdon Club – or at least, everything the Bullingdon club represents – that one thinks of in regard to the celebrated couplet by comic poet Hillaire Belloc: “Like many of the upper class/He liked the sound of breaking glass.” (“A line I stole with subtle daring,” added the scrupulous Belloc, “from Wing-Commander Maurice Baring.”) It is the Bullingdon Club which appears in Evelyn Waugh’s first novel, Decline and Fall (1925), in the none-too-cryptic guise of the Bollinger Club, whose fellows, on a drunken spree, “debag” the book’s unfortunate, blameless, innocuous, lower-born protagonist and cause him to be sent down from Oxford for fleeing his persecutors in his trouserless state, while they themselves escape any such sanction.

Yet this is not what we collectively associate with the phrase “high society”. Rather, the words evoke charm, elegance and grace. They comprise the title of a 1956 film which encapsulates that image, and which represents one of the last hurrahs of a Hollywood studio system that over a thirty-year period did so much to enshrine it. This is a film JUL Y 2015 | SUSSEXST YL E. CO M | 35

The two most famous former members of Oxford’s notorious Bullingdon club: MP and London’s mayor Boris Johnson (top) and Prime Minister David Cameron (bottom)

that features Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Grace Kelly – the last in her final starring role before she left the industry to take up a career as an actual princess. Hollywood’s high society is not unlike Noel Coward’s; a realm where all is witty and debonair. Where beauty reigns and baser instincts are reined in. Where one greets heartbreak as one does champagne, as something which comes with the territory and will evaporate soon enough in a medley of bubbles. In Hollywood’s version, Louis Armstrong provides the music, in person.

This is not the high society of perhaps the most famous depiction of that concept: F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. It is a curiosity that this much filmed novel seems to draw its continued allure from its exterior rather than its substance. As a précis of the very idea of high society, The Great Gatsby could not be more damning. It is explicit in its portrayal of the corruption, shallowness, selfishness and class-ridden nature of the whole business. Its title character is a vicious gangster who uses his plunder to reinvent himself as a socialite, and is surrounded by sycophants who exploit his largesse while sneering at his origins. The genuine Brahmins, Tom and Daisy Buchanan, are self-absorbed to the point of sociopathy, using, discarding and even (albeit inadvertently) killing those social inferiors they deem little more than chaff. Its narrator is so thoroughly disillusioned by what he witnesses, he turns away from it for good.

And yet The Great Gatsby remains remains the touchstone of those qualities mentioned above: charm, elegance, grace. It is remembered not for its darkness but for its brilliance. And in this it reflects something we must all on some level recognise, but many of us do not want to accept: that high society is a deep and murky pool with an iridescent surface, and that often we prefer to be dazzled by that surface than contemplate what lies beneath it.

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How has this come about? Is it simply a facet of our nature to want to believe that all that glitters really must be gold? Possibly. Most human beings lead lives that are at best mundane and more often grueling. The power of fantasy, the deep need for it, shouldn’t be discounted, nor derided. But there may be more to it that. We can go back far into our national and cultural history and see a pattern emerge and sustain itself.

The gap – the chasm – between how the elite comports itself, and how its social pursuits are portrayed and perceived is older than we can know. Consider the centuries of myth collected in Le Morte d’Arthur (1485) by Thomas Malory, and how the tales of the Knights of the Round Table contrast with what we understand about the nobility of the Dark Ages. Jay Gatsby was far from the first gangster to ascend the social ladder; the ladder itself was constructed by men whose bloodiness and ruthlessness brought them land, power and eventually titles, in a hierarchy they determined, then attributed to God. For all its fantastical elements, Game Of Thrones probably offers a more accurate picture of the true nature of early mediaeval high society than any traditional account of Lancelot, Galahad and Guinevere.

The images and ideas we see in a film such High Society descend in a line, perhaps not unbroken but nonetheless distinct, from the concept of courtly love: a chivalric ideal of the amours and social habits of the aristocracy that was devised as entertainment, a form of fiction, but came to supplant in the popular mind the less refined reality of debauchery (sexual and otherwise), carousing and intrigue that have always characterised the social lives of the cream of society. After all, why wouldn’t you, if you could get away with it? And while privilege has always conferred upon its holders luxury and opportunity, its chief benefit is unaccountability.

Even with the passing of the Dark Ages and the arrival of the Enlightenment, this remained the case. We chuckle and celebrate the indulgences of Charles II, the prototype aristocratic “lad” and “ledge”, without thinking too much about what they tell us about the British society in which they occurred. The 17th and early 18th Centuries appear to us to have passed in in a series of immaculately tasteful drawing rooms, to the gentle strains of string quartets performing chamber music, in scenes out of Jane Austen. Yet this was the era of the Hellfire Clubs, in which the political and social elites of the day (or at least the male part of them) assembled to disport themselves disgracefully and with thoroughgoing shamelessness and relish. (Sound familiar?) When we come to the Jazz Age, we find that emblem of high society refinement, the songwriter Cole Porter, writing in his 1934 song, I Get A Kick Out Of You, that “some get a kick from cocaine,” as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Which, in that milieu, it was. The lyric was toned down for the film version of the musical in which it appeared, Anything Goes - a title more apposite for its subject than anyone cared to let on.

Which brings us back The Bullingdon Club, and the licence afforded its alumni by their social standing. David Cameron has never denied newspaper stories alleging his youthful use of cannabis. The now defunct News Of The World published claims by a former prostitute that George Osborne had taken cocaine with her. (Another notorious picture, purporting to show this, has been widely circulated online.)

Neither man’s political career has been damaged by these stories. And maybe that’s how it should be. But would the same leeway have been afforded less patrician politicians? High society, it seems, is somewhere you can get high as a kite, act as you please, and pay no price for it other than what you can easily afford. And that has always been its way.

MAIN IMAGE: TONY BRINDLEY/SHUTTERSTOCK. IMAGES: LANDMARKMEDIA/SHUTTERSTOCK.

society

“In the Bullingdon Club, privilege, money, mischief and impunity coalesce into a singularly distasteful whole�

JUL Y 2015 | SUSSEXST YL E. CO M | 37

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T

he defining moment of true love and happiness, the first glimpse from a long sweeping drive set in immaculate parkland of ancient cedars. Goodwood’s great Regency house has been a wonderfully intimate and romantic setting for family celebrations for over 300 years.

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Imagine the remarkable, the essence of Goodwood – a sense of fun and daring do. Perhaps a vintage aircraft in front of the House or a fairground carousel, dress the beautiful rooms with full size trees that nearly touch the ceiling for a sense of inspired arrival. Be creative with your menus – perhaps Revival style vehicles serving relaxed food outside the House whilst guests enjoy glasses of Champagne or for winter, game sourced from the Estate served with rich red wines.

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culture

HIGH SOCIETY VILE SOCIETY?

David Bennun revisits Evelyn Waugh’s satire of the well-born and the nouveau riche, and finds it as relevant today as it was when it was written

I

t is now 85 years since the publication of Vile Bodies, the second novel by Evelyn Waugh. Waugh is today best known for Brideshead Revisited (1945), his account of upper-middle and upper-class life between the wars – a book whose continued renown rests largely, whether fairly or not, upon the masterful adaptation by Granada Television.

Vile Bodies, which was written in the middle of that period and deals with much the same segments of society, is a very different book indeed. For one thing, it is not coloured by the religious themes which define the later work. (Waugh underwent a bitter marriage break-up shortly before the 1930 publication of Vile Bodies, and converted to Catholicism later that year.) More obviously, where Brideshead’s portrayal of its doomed, golden children is suffused with an elegiac melancholy, Vile Bodies, written in the moment it depicted, is waspish, hilarious and savagely satirical.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the novel’s vignettes of its Bright Young Things (the term was coined to describe the socialites of the 1920s, has seldom fallen out of currency since, and became the title of a recent film that drew on Vile Bodies) is how easily they translate to the present day. One prominent online summary of the book avers that, “[Waugh’s] tribute to London’s smart set... introduces us to society as it used to be but that now is gone forever, and probably for good.” I could hardly disagree more. Far from being a tribute, Vile Bodies is more by way of a burlesque. And the world it describes will be familiar to anyone who follows or even occasionally glimpses the society pages.

The high society of Vile Bodies is one where aristocrats and chancers, the nouveau riche and the high-born, the predator and the prey, meet, mingle, pursue liaisons, throw off sparks and generally behave like overgrown toddlers in a gilded nursery. Ostensibly it is a 40 | S US S E X S T Y L E . C OM | JULY 2 0 1 5

romantic comedy. It follows the fortunes of Adam Fenwick-Symes, a young writer (not entirely unlike Waugh at that moment) adrift in the turbulent world of le tout London, as he attempts to secure the means to marry his genteel fiancée, Nina Blount. But Adam is not, as one might expect, the ethical centre of an otherwise amoral social whirl. Rather, he is carried along in its currents, weak, indecisive, seemingly altogether without the will or scruples to withstand its forces.

Much of the pleasure in Vile Bodies lies in its secondary characters - types, to be sure, but painted in exquisite miniature by Waugh’s sure hand. Agatha Runcible, wild child, party girl, might then inhabit a flapper dress or today a clinging sheath and heels, but she is unmistakable in her hedonistic energy, unquestioning entitlement and heroic cluelessness. One of the funniest set-pieces of the novel involves her barging into breakfast at Number 10 Downing Street in the costume of a “Hottentot”. (And if such distasteful fancy dress seems a relic of another age, remember it’s only 10 years since Prince Harry went to a party in Nazi uniform.) Miles Malpractice is an extravagant queen, quite possibly related to the real one, guided only by his appetites, including that for mischief, who is eventually forced to flee the country for reasons undisclosed, yet unlikely to be anything but awful.

In many ways, Vile Bodies is a novel of its time: although satirical, it is also riddled with snobberies and prejudices of its own that fall uncomfortably on the modern ear. But it is unnerving just how much it is a novel of this time, too; how its giddy decadence and pretty, vacant cast of characters may be found duplicated on any given night in moneyed London. And it is more disquieting still to wonder if, without giving too much away, the eventual fate of those characters, and of their society, might yet be duplicated by our own.

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Romans do it better

‌IN BIGNOR

David Bennun uncovers a story of ruined grandeur and centuries of archaeological detective work at the Bignor Roman Villa

T

here are two remarkable aspects to the history of Bignor Roman Villa, which stands - or rather, largely doesn’t - some way north of Chichester, in South Downs National Park.

The first is the villa itself: what it was, what it represented, and what remains of it.

The second is the story of how it was rediscovered, documented and (in the case of what remains of it) preserved. Both of these aspects are detailed in a comprehensive new study, Bignor Roman Villa, authored by David Rudling (Academic Director at The Sussex School of Archaeology and Director of Excavation at Bignor from 1985-96) and Dr Miles Russell (Senior Lecturer in Prehistoric and Roman Archaeology at Bournemouth University), and published by The History Press.

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IMAGE CREDIT: THE HISTORY PRESS

sussex history

Photographs and illustrations from a new book about the history and rediscovery of Bignor Roman Villa detail both its past splendour and present-day attractions

To understand the nature of the site, first one must try to cast one’s mind into the Roman worldview. Fortunately, this is not too much of a stretch; it is one that very much underpins our own. Western civilisation and classical antiquity are so closely linked that classical style and thought have long been the touchstones of the former. Both for better and worse. With Britain’s industrial age came a wave of neo-classical revivalism which produced much of its greatest civic and residential architecture. The classical style was also the basis of the plans drawn up by Albert Speer for a rebuilt Berlin in a future Nazi empire that, happy to say, never came to pass. Speer devised, to satisfy the hubris of Adolf Hitler, what he portentously labelled “the theory of Ruin Value”; that is, the rather obvious notion that the greatness of a civilisation may be deduced from the structures whose traces are left behind.

We may assume that those who commissioned, built and lived in the Roman villa at Bignor had no such fatuous ideals.

It was constructed to convey a message not to the future, but very much to its present. At the peak of its grandeur, in the Fourth Century, and only a few years away from the end of Roman rule in Britain, the “villa” was more of a complex - a walled estate which sprawled across four acres of land. It was, so the authors tell us, “designed to impress through extravagant displays of art and architecture. ‘Being Roman’ was all about show and the capacity to flaunt wealth, especially within houses, both rural and urban – the larger countryside examples being like their later eighteenth-century ‘stately house’ equivalents.

Such large establishments were designed not only to take in the best view, but also to be seen from a distance: a dramatic statement in stone, timber, plaster and tile forever altering and transforming the landscape.”

This is underlined by their account of how different it is to visit Bignor today. Where once the villa would have loomed above the surrounding countryside in an imposing, indeed intimidating fashion, now only a sign directs one to a site otherwise hidden in hills and fields. To understand truly the scale and scope of the Bignor villa, it would be better today to see it from the air than from the ground; the aerial views offered in the compendiously illustrated book give a truer picture of how it must have dominated its environs.

JUL Y 2015 | SUSSEXST YL E. CO M | 43

The principal surviving attraction at Bignor is the abundance of richly detailed and magnificently constructed mosaics, of which the book also offers ample pictorial evidence. Perhaps the best way to think of these is as a parallel to the lavish oil paintings which would have decorated (and in many cases still do) the stately homes to which the authors refer. One of the many ways in which classical civilisation has influenced our own is in the deployment of art not merely as a means of expression, but as a signifier of status.

More lately, we see this manifested in corporate surroundings. Our contemporary equivalents of Bignor Roman Villa are not so much private homes as corporate towers, in which expensive art – either specially commissioned or bought for outlandish sums at auction – broadcasts to the awestruck and suitably humbled visitor the wealth and importance of the institution to which they have been permitted ingress, The mosaics at Bignor are prime of examples of a development then surely novel in the isolated outpost of empire that was Britain.

It was one of these mosaics that is crucial to the tale of how Bignor Roman Villa was rediscovered. One summer morning in 1811 – the year in which the future George IV assumed the Regency, with his father, George III, incapacitated and his country in the thick of the Napoleonic Wars – another George, surname of Tupper, was at his usual and usually rather less historic work.

Thursday July 18 would be an exception. He was steering a team of horses through the fields he farmed when his plough struck a large stone, or so he thought.

Tupper went to clear the obstruction, and found he couldn’t.

Digging soon revealed the reason why: he had uncovered what would turn out to be a water basin from the fifth of the villa’s 65 rooms. As he kept clearing away the soil, Tupper encountered, “the 44 | S US S E X S T Y L E . C OM | JULY 2 0 1 5

sussex history

IMAGE CREDIT: THE HISTORY PRESS

The pools and mosaics at Bignor offer a glimpse into Roman Britain unrivalled in Sussex and scarcely bettered anywhere else in the country

“To understand the nature of the site, first one must try and cast one’s mind into the Roman worldview, one that underpins our own”

tessellated face of a young man ... naked except for a bright red cap and fur-trimmed boots, an immense eagle and, further afield, a series of scantily clad dancing girls ... Tupper had revealed, for the first time in nearly 1,500 years, an amazing collection of high-quality Roman floors.”

It was posterity’s good fortune that Tupper’s landlord, the owner of the field, was one John Hawkins, a wealthy former lawyer, and an early adopter of his century’s favoured interests for the educated gentleman: Hawkins was a Fellow of the Royal Society, widely travelled, and a collector of ancient artefacts. He commissioned an expert, Samuel Lysons, to conduct an archaeological dig, one which would continue for the next eight years. In 1819 Lysons, who had been in illhealth throughout, died. His brother Daniel then completed the Reliquiae Britannico-Romanae volume detailing the work and discoveries thus far.

Remarkably, much of the land was thereafter returned to agricultural use. Not until 1925 would any substantial archaeological work be carried out again, and that only a limited dig. At last, in 1956, Professor Sheppard Frere began excavations in order to check and augment Lyson’s “Great Plan”, showing the layout of the flourishing fourth-century villa. By now the site was owned by Captain Henry Tupper, a direct descendant of the ploughman George. Once Frere had completed his work in 1962, the latter-day Tupper opened a small museum on the site of two of the rooms, to display some of Frere’s discoveries.

The villa remains in the hands of the family; it is currently owned by Thomas Tupper, who in the Seventies and Eighties (the latter under the supervision of book author David Rudling) oversaw the re-excavation and restoration work, and the setting up of the current facilities, that today make Bignor Roman Villa such a notable attraction. The full story, and all the historical backdrop, is laid out in the new book with a wealth of detail that will fascinate any enthusiast. While for those with a more casual interest, the ample illustrations may be a spur to go and see for themselves the mosaics which rank among the finest, and best preserved, examples of Roman life and culture to be found anywhere in this former colony of that extraordinary empire.

JUL Y 2015 | SUSSEXST YL E. CO M | 45

All set for a night on the razzle: Atters (left) prepares to cadge his way around the members’ clubs of London’s West End

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society

A RAKE ABOUT TOWN Michael “Atters” Attree’s trips up to London have become notorious for their shenanigans.

Join him on a tour of Soho’s top private members’ clubs

t’s last Friday, and I am commencing my typical night out in Soho. That evening I found myself at some pedestrian charity private view, cadging free drinks (for a change).

Sadly the only totty there (of any note) was clinging to some hawk-eyed knuckle of pork in a kilt. A cheeky spot of frottage with this belle looked impossible. Worse still, her opening gambit to my (forced) introduction was, “You’re terribly camp – are you gay?” Eureka! I simply played the poof card. Believing me to be a homosexualist, her suitor was duly dispatched to procure snowball cocktails. “Well!” she exclaimed, “you’re hardly going to try it on with me, are you?” In earnest I agreed and began mocking shaving ads, sock suspenders, Jeremy Clarkson and men as a whole.

We got along like sisters and laughed away as I gaily aped the male machismo. Oh, how we roared at the irony as (nonplussed), she let me cup her bosom. How we both howled as I merrily continued to cup (and wobble) her bosom. Then (in an almost oppugnant tone) she mumbled, “You’re not gay, are you?” Well, damn it all, it was a charity event! The security that evening was splendid. As if countering a presidential assassination, they deflected a pouncing sporran and a flying tray of eggnog, then expertly bundled me out through the kitchen. A little affronted, I made a B-line for the French House on Dean Street, a Soho hostelry frequented by ageing artisans, alcoholics and

theatrical self-abusers. Most patrons of “The French” are either barred from or too penniless to drink with their clones at “Groucho’s” up the road. On arrival I informed the staff I was en route to something far better. Another private view? No... a working dinner with my agent... no – ah! A contract signing with my publisher. (That always sounds good).

Once ensconced at the bar I nod to my “friends”, all of whom skilfully fail to notice (except the ubiquitous “poet” sneering in a corner).

“Ah, Hillary darling! A box of your finest matches!” (Such requests can save face and wallet for up to 10 painfully silent seconds). Before long I was chatting to acquaintances and ritually reintroducing myself. These old soaks can’t remember the last three minutes, let alone my witty performance last Friday.

Mr. Ha, ha, ha was on typical form (his conversational abilities being only a “Ha, ha, ha!”) Now five malts in, he’s the living embodiment of Mr. Magoo, steering a steam engine. Once that delirious hand starts whirling, it’s wine-glass carnage. Having reintroduced myself (again), I asked what he did in general.

“I’m a Ha, ha, ha …. underwater Ha, ha, ha … carpenter. Ha, ha, ha …” Thirty years I’ve been drinking with this lot. Not once has it offered up any totty (let alone sense). The way things were going, I’d have preferred a night in with two warm water-filled balloons plopped inside a brassiere (that’s if I’d been blessed with such creativity.) Hungry and irritated, I headed for Bar Bruno, (Wardour Street’s last veteran café) to line my stomach’s shreds. For years one of Soho’s original milk bars, the New Piccadilly Restaurant (now defunct) was Atters HQ. However JUL Y 2015 | SUSSEXST YL E. CO M | 47

I always found owner Lorenzo’s inebriated garbage indigestible (so I’d just stop listening to him and order some food.) Bar Bruno proved an amicable replacement. At mid-ejaculation of bap-yolk I spotted fashion guru Amechi wearing two “neo” burlesque bigwigs, one on each cuff.

Touchingly he flounced up bearing gifts of flattery. “Darling! Darling!

My most favourite human in all the world…”. Mwa! Mwa! Mwa! Mwa! “What-ho Amechi! Any fun ahoy?” “No... But there’s always Gerry’s.”

Yes, there’s ALWAYS Gerry’s, so we all strutted back to Dean Street.

Hooting, I headed for Gerry’s. Whispering, they headed for Blacks.

Little has changed at Gerry’s “den of Equity” since 1955, including the bores that frequent it. During some banter with Joan Le Mesurier (widow of John and Tony Hancock’s last lover), she recently recounted how a pipe-puffing chap approached her husband there years ago. John said, “Joan, this man bores for England”, then addressed the fellow with “I believe you’ve taken boredom to the Antipodes this season”.

Mesmerised by John’s velveteen delivery, the man failed to note he’d been insulted. By my arrival, it was midnight, and the French had only just swept its slurry down Gerry’s ill-lit steps. When I arrived, a shapeless babbling puddle was flamboyantly reintroducing itself inside.

Nodding inanely I swaggered to the bar and sat with my etheric chums: Frances Bacon, Lucian Freud, Daniel Farson, Jeffrey Bernard, Charles Manson and of course that sneering bloody poet (alas, that part of my vision was real.) In a becaped swirl, Amechi bounds in and heads towards my pleading puppy eyes, sails past and ingratiates with some 48 | S US S E X S T Y L E . C OM | JULY 2 0 1 5

withered old crone “Darling! Darling! My most favourite human in all the world…”. Mwa! Mwa! Mwa! Mwa! I riposte with my usual “Barman!

A box of your finest matches!” To the club’s unanimous joy (and mine), a clocked-off train of strippers arrive and clumsily chuff their way down stairs, noses freshly “powdered”, knees pole-bruised and all up for a night on the razzle. Rule number one: when in a room of strippers, always sit near a tipper (a technique I mastered at the Sunset Strip up the road). I plonked myself next to a desperate ghoul whose features resembled a municipal urinal, and waited with glee as he bought them all a drink. “Allow me to help you distribute,” I oozed (necking down a few on the way). Naturally the dollies thought I’d procured the round.

Bingo! Free frottage and kisses ‘til dawn. How they saucily writhed and groped at my wallet. How I saucily writhed and groped at their thongs (one felt curiously corpulent) and fun was had by all. Well, just me actually. Everyone else had their wallets stolen. By now the hapless cocks had doodle-dooed, heralding dawn. Suitably ashamed (i.e. not in the slightest) I left triumphant with my wallet “intactus” and made my way to Victoria for the 4 a.m. to Brighton. In true Mr. Benn tradition, when I awoke I thought the whole night had been but a dream. I was about to return my (heavily) soiled S/M costume, when something clammy fell from its pocket. Why? A twee memento from that magic faraway land... A fob watch chain fashioned from a G-string.

Ha, ha, haaaaaa.

Michael Attree is editor at large of The Chap magazine

ALL IMAGES BY PETERCLARKIMAGES.CO.UK, EXCEPT FAR RIGHT: MICHAEL ATTREE

society

Atters in full flow: “Thirty years I’ve been drinking with this lot. Not once has it offered up any totty. Let alone sense. Some of these old soaks can’t remember the last three minutes, let alone my witty performance last Friday.”

JUL Y 2015 | SUSSEXST YL E. CO M | 49

inger moss

the place to be seen with hat-hair. t’s that time of year again, time to get THE QATAR GOODWOOD DON’T pick the hat first (nor the shoes excited, despair, get excited, despair….

FESTIVAL IS THE for that matter). The dress should be the base Obviously mostly get excited, as it involves SOCIAL HIGHLIGHT of your outfit. You then add the shoes, bag and dresses, hats, shoes and bags! We are going OF JULY. SO WHAT head-piece. to Ladies’ Day at the races and even though SHOULD YOU WEAR, You want to look elegant and stylish. A the picnic and the fizz are important, let’s miniskirt or a strapless dress is a no unless you’re not beat about the bush: first and foremost we ASKS INGER MOSS going to Aintree (in which case it’s a must). At want to look fab! some races there will be a dress code, so it might You might already have your eyes set on an amazing Polo Ralph Lauren little lace number, which would be a show- be an idea to check that out first.

When choosing your dress, go for a shift dress, not shorter than stopper if the weather was cooperative. We already know it’s not, and if it’s wet, cold and windy your money probably would be better spent on just above the knee and a good fit. As with the hat (and shoes) it’s important to be comfortable – it can be a long day – and bear in mind a Max Mara coat.

If these designers are out in your price range, which in my case they the unpredictable weather, so include a cardigan and/or a jacket/coat are, don’t worry too much. Most high-street brands can offer sufficient for layering. If the dress is simple you might want to put a bit of glitz or options in great dresses and coats. Personally I would spend my money pattern on the jacket, shoes or hat.

It is always tempting to go for killer heels when dressing for an on a fab hat, a quality handbag and great shoes. All of these will be worn, and more importantly all of these will be seen, whatever the weather occasion like this, but remember you’re likely to be standing for a long time and the ground can be soft, so rather than wearing stilettoes, a decides to do on the day.

There are plenty of websites offering a vast selection of hats and block heel or wedges will be the sturdier and more comfortable pick. You fascinators so there should be something for everybody. Whatever should still be able to find a great collection, wheather you go high-street you choose, though, make sure you are comfortable. It should not or designer.

To finish it all off, matching nails and lipstick always looks good; only look great, but it must fit you perfectly - and remember, when you choose to wear a hat there is no way back: Ladies’ Day is not then add some fab designer sun glasses and you are ready to go!

“Don’t pick the hat first, nor shoes. The dress should be the base.”

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IMAGE CREDIT: ANNA ISMAGILOVA/SHUTTERSTOCK

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A day at the races

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beauty notebook

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e a b u f t y o o r p

HOT DAYS AND DAY LONG SOCIAL EVENTS ARE A DIFFICULT COMBINATION; SO TO ENSURE YOUR MAKEUP ‘STAYS THE COURSE’ WE HAVE GATHERED TOGETHER THE TOP FIVE FACE FIXERS TO KEEP YOU LOOKING FLAWLESS UNTIL YOU CHOOSE TO REMOVE IT 1

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WE LOVE

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4. PORTABLE PORE-FECTION Mally’s Evercolour Poreless Face Defender £38.99 QVCUK.COM boasts a clear, featherweight formulation that helps to diffuse the appearance of pores and fine lines while locking your make-up in place. Gently press it on with the sponge over your makeup to diffuse shine and keep it looking fresh.

1. BACK TO MATTE Kiehl’s super absorbent Oil Eliminator 24-Hour Anti Shine Moisturiser £21.50 provides an outof-this world clean-skin feel by reducing the sweat and surface oil. Visibly reduces the appearance of pores and shine and with continued use, skin looks less shiny and pores appear smaller.

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2. UNCRUSH YOUR CURLS After a long day under cover your hair could use some help. We have all suffered ‘hat hair hell’ at some point but this can be swiftly dealt with by a quick spritz with a mini can of session hair stylists number one favourite Batiste Dry Shampoo £1.55. Its the perfect size to slip into

3. IN A FIX Clarins clever transparent waterproofing gel containing waxes, hectorite clay crystals and silicone which seals your lashes. Apply Double Fix’Mascara £20 over your favourite mascara and in an instant it becomes 100% water, sweat & sebum proof. Think see-through raincoat for lashes!

5. LAYING THE FOUNDATION Clinique’s Superprimer Face Primers £20 create a perfect canvas for makeup application due to lightweight silicone formulas. Available in a wide range of colours to address specific beauty issues they all perfect the look of pores, blur lines, reduce wrinkles and help foundation stay the day.

MAIN IMAGE: MILLES STUDIO/SHUTTERSTOCK

5

Sparkle for Spring

Spring is all about renewal and there’s no better time to reinvigorate your body. Posh Beauty Salon & Medi Spa has everything you need to give you that beautiful glow for the year ahead.

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ounded on a passionate belief in high quality treatments and impeccable customer service, our hand-picked team of expert therapists and medical practitioners are committed to providing both pampering and the latest in non-surgical aesthetic skin care.

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skincare

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DELICATES HAND WASH ONLY DOES YOUR SKINCARE REGIME MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR PRODUCTS? WE LOOK AT THE BEST MECHANICAL CLEANSING DEVICES TO HELP ENSURE IT WILL

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1. Clinique For Men Sonic System Deep Cleansing Brush £79 With its oval brush head and charcoal-infused bristles, this masculine-looking gadget helps target cleansing to a man’s more rugged facial contours. Pair with Charcoal Face Wash (£18) to eliminate dirt, debris and dead skin cells, promoting a more even and closer shave.

Best for: more oily male skins thanks to the extra exfoliation and oil-absorbing charcoal properties. It’s waterproof and can be seamlessly slotted into the shower/shave regime.

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2. Olay Regenerist ThreePoint Cleansing System £39.99 This offers a great way to cleanse more mature skin.

With its own dedicated anti-ageing cleanser, it promises to be four times more effective than manual cleansing and performed well on test. It slots seamlessly into the Olay regime, or into your own preferred skincare routine.

Its gentle exfoliation allows for greater penetration of follow-on products.

Best for: those with antiageing concerns or who want to test the waters without a substantial initial outlay. www.boots.com

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3. Magnitone Pulsar Eclipse Face & Body £149.99 Powered by Vibra-Sonic technology, gentle electromagnetic pulsed vibrations open up clogged pores and whisk away dry dead skin. This deluxe limited edition comes with three different brush heads, carry pod and a host of extras. The Magnitone promises firmer, clearer and smoother skin in a week. It boasts two speeds and an additonal “pulse” mode for more congested areas.

Best for: those needing an all-round machine with a particularly good extra soft sensitive brush head. www.magnitone.co.uk

4. Clarisonic Aria £139.50 The Aria uses patented sonic micro-massage motion technology to work with your skin’s natural elasticity and get deep into your pores, promising results six times better than manual cleansing.

One of the first of this type of cleansing brush, it is hard to beat for proven effectiveness. Clarisonic also produce their own cleansers but it works just as effectively with your own choice of skincare brand.

Best for: almost all skin types, although ultrasensitive types might find it a bit vigorous. www.currentbody.com

MAIN IMAGE: EDUARD DERULE/SHUTTERSTOCK

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ook on any laundry label and that’s the instruction you will find. For years, this perceived wisdom has held true for faces as well as fabrics but a host of mechanical cleansing devices are now on the market and challenge that particular notion. If you’ve ever felt that your super-expensive serums and moisturisers are just not cutting it then it may be time to change the way you treat your skin rather than what you put on top of it.

While professional facials are a luxurious treat, the daily-use gadgets will help maintain your therapist’s work and may even allow a couple of extra weeks between salon visits.

These vibrating, rotating and often sonic machines rid the skin of dirt, impurities and most importantly the build-up of dead skin cells, all of which allows anything that is then put onto the skin to penetrate more effectively, rather than just sitting on the top acting as a “glue” to hold the old flakes in place.

Equally beneficial to dry and blemish-prone skin, all the machines cleanse pore deep, and stimulate blood flow to the area, resulting in smoother, glass-like surface. After use, serums and creams absorb in record time, plumping and firming the skin, and make-up glides on effortlessly with no clumping on dead skin cells.

In fact, with the increased luminosity achieved you may find you are able to go foundation-free in a matter of a few short weeks.

All of the gadgets on trial promise a brighter more radiant complexion with improved tone and texture as well as improvements in clarity and a reduction of pore size, blemishes and pigmentation.

We have gathered together the best on the market and put them through their paces to help you pick the one that’s right for you.

“If your super-expensive serums and moisturisers are just not cutting it, it may be time to change the way you treat your skin rather than what you put on top of it” JUL Y 2015 | SUSSEXST YL E. CO M | 55

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health and fitness

THE POSH BODY

IMAGE CREDIT: KARYNA CHE/SHUTTERSTOCK

From obesity to emaciation, Ben Marshall looks at how the history of body shape is linked with that of social class

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as there ever been such a thing as a posh body? The short and horrible answer is: yes. The human form is as open to politicisation as anything else, just ask any feminist.

However the posh body – or rather, the ideal body, the posh historically being the only ones with enough time and money to aspire to the ideal – has not been a constant, particularly with regards to women. The arbitrary physical standards set by the collective forces of pop culture, fashion, and, of course, men has meant that what was once a posh body is now a poor body. The feminist writer Doyin Oyeniyi argues, “Historically, and sadly, currently, men are often the determining factor when it comes to how women view their bodies. Even if women ultimately make the fashion and body shape decisions, they are swayed by what they think is more appealing to men.”

Men, in combination with economics, have been the two biggest factors in determining what was and is ideal. In terms of the posh male body, not very much has changed for centuries. The idealised man had a large upper body, pronounced pectorals, lats, biceps and triceps and a flat

stomach. Statues of the Greek male beauty Kouros that date back to the 7th century BC could easily appear on the cover of today’s Men’s Health.

This is not so with women. There was a time when fat was in and thin was out. Obesity was the privilege of wealth and being thin meant being poor.

In simpler societies, before slumming became a romantic pose, there was nothing attractive about not having enough to eat.

The ideal Renaissance woman, for instance, was more voluptuous than at any other time in history. Paintings from this era depict women who likely would be considered overweight by today’s standard, but at that time these full-figured ladies were the epitome of posh and sexy. The expression “blondes have more fun” is believed to stem from the Renaissance, because the Italians believed that the lighter the hair colour, the better, more beautiful and more virtuous the person. (The fascination with Lucretia Borgia was in large part down to the fact that she was a blonde poisoner.)

As for make-up, pale ivory skin was considered sexy, and vermilion was used to tint the lips to a deep red colour. All this made for a look that suggested abundant leisure time. Toiling in the fields would have meant olive or red skin, and a thinness that went with a life of impecunious hard work. To be fat was to be part of the leisure class. Thin indicated you were on the road to the poorhouse or to consumption, which meant your body was being consumed, not that you were the one doing the consuming.

Then agriculture was revolutionised and the values began to be flipped. By the Victorian era, large bottoms and tiny waists were all the rage. Sexy meant having the smallest waistline humanly possible, and to achieve this women wore corsets wound so tight they could hardly JUL Y 2015 | SUSSEXST YL E. CO M | 57

health and fitness

“The arbitray physical standards set by pop culture, fashion and, of course, men mean that what was once a posh body is now a poor body”

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Ask Ben

Dear Ben, I have been trying to get six-pack abs for the last year. I do more than two hundred crunches a day but don’t seem to be making any progress. What am I doing wrong?

Best regards David Sheim, Eastbourne Hi David, Firstly congratulations on your 200 crunches a day. That’s one hell of a feat of endurance.

Sadly that is about all it is. The first thing to ask yourself is why you want your six-pack. If it’s simply to look good on a beach this summer then the good news is you already have one, we all do, it’s just that most of us have our sixpack hidden by a layer, or sometimes several layers of fat. To have a visible six-pack you will need to cut back on carbs and start on some high-intensity cardio training. I suggest 30 minutes a day, that’s sprinting for one minute and walking for another over the course of 30 minutes. Basically 15 minutes of running.

However my view is that a six-pack should only be the happy side effect of working on a strong core. Your core is just about the only bit of you not protected by bone. Throughout your life it will undergo tremendous strain, which is why so many people (particularly those in desk jobs – and let’s face it, that’s most of us) develop horrendous and recurring back problems once they hit their thirties.

I would therefore recommend that you cut back on your crunches (three quick sets of 20 is more than enough) and combine them with squats, deadlifts, leg-raises and the a good two minutes of the plank every day. If that sounds too much then start with some light Pilates and build up to the other stuff. A strong core will not always result in a six-pack (although combined with a good diet it is very likely to) but it will certainly mitigate against any back problems you may have in later life.

The best of luck to you, David, and don’t forget to let us know how you get on.

IMAGE CREDIT: LEREMY/SHUTTERSTOCK

breathe. Some women would even deliberately break ribs trying to get their waistlines down to an inconceivable 12 inches. However, it was also important to show you had plenty to eat, so layered petticoats, hoops, and bustles became popular, all of which magnified the woman’s bottom.

By the 1950s no one in the West was starving to death and the poorest person could now grow fat. Weight no longer meant leisure. The ideal woman began, decade by decade, to get thinner. In the 1970s this movement towards super skinny was at least accompanied by an emphasis on health. The aerobics exercise craze of the 1980s further emphasized fitness for women. Women were expected to maintain a certain weight, but still appear toned, albeit without being overly muscular. With all these body stipulations, it’s no wonder that the prevalence of eating disorders skyrocketed throughout the decade.

By the 1990s models like Kate Moss further perpetuated standards of extreme thinness. It was in the Nineties that a strung-out and emaciated appearance became the posh body look. We had turned around entirely, from obesity to emaciation. That the heroin chic look had about as much to do with being healthy as the heroin habit it was named after did not stop it being posh.

We are now, mercifully, in a much better place, at least as regards health. Toned bodies like that of the beautiful young athlete Jessica Ennis are all the rage. However the politics of weight are still very much with us. The hard-working poor used to be thin. Now with ready meals widely available and jobs shifting from the factory to the desk, it is entirely possible to work hard and get fat.

Exercise – i.e., gym memberships and weekends spent at expensive Swiss boot-camps – means leisure time.

So how to navigate this political minefield? Well firstly even the fittest, strongest and most toned of us should acknowledge the unpleasant truth that in the West, weight stands in for class, at a time when explicit classism has become a political faux pas. When Europeans sneer at how fat Americans are, and American coastal elites sneer at the rest of the country for being fat, it is a class put-down. Obesity is one of the few remaining class signifiers, aside from cigarettes, that it’s safe to hold a moral crusade over.

The War on Fat, as it has been called both here and in the US, echoes the old obsessions of 1920s Prohibitionism, a paranoid concern about the inability of the lower classes to care for themselves; one that verges on and often spills over into bigotry.

A posh body today means a healthy body. But the very first thing we should do is stop calling it a posh body.

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JUL Y 2015 | SUSSEXST YL E. CO M | 59

profile

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Rebecca Ferguson: “For years I struggled with fame, and after I got the first year out the way I started to retreat”

IMAGE BY SIMON EMMETT

In 2010 Rebecca Ferguson’s dream came true when she was runner-up in The X Factor. The last five years have been difficult, but as Alex Hopkins finds out, the singer is now living life on her own terms

Rebecca Ferguson begins our interview by apologising. She has a sore throat and says she’s sorry if she coughs from time to time. “But other than that, I’m fine,” she continues in her strong Liverpudlian accent before letting out a girlish, slightly nervy laugh.

The singer will be playing the Love Supreme Festival this July, showcasing numbers from her third album, Lady Sings the Blues, which is her interpretation of songs by troubled jazz singer Billie Holiday, predominantly taken from Holiday’s 1956 album of the same name.

Ferguson is best known for being the runner-up, to Matt Cardle, in 2010’s X Factor. Since then she has garnered critical acclaim and significant commercial success with her albums Heaven and Freedom. But covering songs so closely associated with the legendary Holiday is her most audacious feat yet – and one that seems to have paid off: the reviews, while not being raves, have been positive, praising Ferguson’s exemplary vocals and the feeling she injects into standards such as All of Me and Stormy Weather.

Fans of the 28-year-old’s previous work will be familiar with the husky, melancholic timbre of her voice. She sings about relationships and their breakups with a soulful tenderness. There’s a depth to her work and she has co-written much of her material. Unlike other products from the reality TV show there’s a darkness to Ferguson’s lyrics which, one could certainly argue, finds it home in Holiday’s back catalogue.

“I think initially it was the sound of the music that attracted me to Lady Sings The Blues,” explains Ferguson, who is quick to admit that she understandably had concerns about covering music by such a monumental figure.

“But I listened to the album again and again and fell in love with it. It felt like that was where my voice fitted. At this stage I feel my voice has to be constricted Over her short career Rebecca Ferguson has also had her a bit with pop music, whereas with jazz difficulties. She made headlines by dating fellow X Factor contestant it’s free to do whatever it wants.

Zayn Malik of One Direction, who was six years her junior. The “Yes,” she adds thoughtfully, “that’s relationship ended after four months. Then in 2011 it was reported what I loved about Lady Sings the Blues that her former management company Modest were suing her for – I got to be me.” breach of contract. There was an ugly public exchange in which Ferguson already knew a little about Ferguson Tweeted that the company were “vile” and accused them Billlie Holiday’s life – a tumultuous of forcing her to do interviews just moments after collapsing. journey through drugs and degradation Modest filed a High Court writ seeking 20 per cent of the star’s which left her dead at just 44 – through future earnings. The matter was settled out of court in 2013. Prior studying her at college at 15. She saw to our interview, her PR has requested that I don’t ask any questions the Holiday biopic (starring Diana Ross) about her ex-boyfriend or questions surrounding “personal legal just before she embarked on the project circumstances”. Given her past issues it is perhaps unsurprising and came away mesmerised. This much that Ferguson identifies so strongly with Holiday, a woman who, is obvious as she continues to speak for many, embodies the destructive nature of celebrity. And yet, about her – in a steady, reverential tone.

Ferguson explains, she was very careful to put her own stamp on “I feel that only now have I really Lady Sings the Blues – “to apply my own life to it.” Which songs got to know her. Yes, now I can say resonated with her? that I fully understand her as a person, “Don’t Explain because it’s basically about someone who is an artist at that time. I’ve looked into cheating on the partner and you know it, but put it to the back of who she was and find her a really your mind. I could relate to that and so I put those emotions into it. interesting character.” She coughs That and Lady Sings the Blues.” slightly, apologises and pauses before She pauses before going on: “What was another I could really speaking again. There’s a real seriousness relate to? God Bless the Child. I understood this one because of to her next words: “She was somebody my new found fame... when you’ve never had money and suddenly who had a lot of dignity considering she when you’ve got it everybody wants it and in the end you find that had so many problems. When it came to people just want to be around you because of what you can offer music she was very dignified.” them.” Can she expand upon this?

She doesn’t hesitate. “I felt at the time that I was the go-to person for everyone. I was trying to get my head around fame and the fact that all of my dreams had come true, but at the same time people were looking to me and thinking, maybe she can make my dreams come true. That was quite a weight to carry.

“For years I struggled with fame and after I got the first year out of the way I started to retreat. I didn’t want to go to celebrity parties and be surrounded by that lifestyle. I just wanted to work and go home and close the door and pretend that I was Rebecca Ferguson before The X Factor.”

She draws the conversation back to Holiday, her voice brimming with passion and understanding: “I learnt loads of lessons and that’s why I related to Billie. Because in some ways she had been through 62 | S US S E X S T Y L E . C OM | JULY 2 0 1 5

IMAGE SUPPLIED BY SONY

profile

High heels and low points: success has brought Ferguson her share of difficulties and challenges

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“When you’ve never had money and suddenly you’ve got it, everybody wants it. I was the go-to person for everyone. All my dreams had come true, and people were thinking, maybe she can make my dreams come true too”

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IMAGE SUPPLIED BY SONY

profile

very similar things. Obviously she had quite a tough life, so I can’t relate to a lot of her story, but I felt a very personal connection when I was reading about her and particularly the songs she wrote herself. It seemed that she knew what it all felt like too.”

Ferguson was born in 1986 in Liverpool to Jamaican parents. In her teens she moved to Anfield and had her first child, Lillie May. A son, Karl, followed two years later. Life was conventional and she trained to be a legal secretary. She unsuccessfully auditioned for The X Factor and for P. Diddy’s Starmaker in New York. What kept her going back?

“I had this desire to sing that I couldn’t get away from. It was something that would completely consume me if I didn’t achieve it. It’s funny because I am not someone who likes attention so “Not at the time. When you leave The X Factor it’s just the much, but I just knew that I should be programme, the show. You’re very much reliant on your family and singing. I kept trying to distract myself a good team. I wasn’t educated on business and everything that goes by training for other jobs, but it pained into being an artist back then. When you go on a show like that you me that I wasn’t doing what I felt I had just think it’s about the singing, because that’s all you’ve ever done, been put on earth to do. In one way I but there’s a lot more to it, all of a sudden, like different contracts.” wanted more than just to have a 9-5 life, She sighs gently, sounding for a moment slightly sad and battleto meet a nice man, get married, have a weary. “If you never studied it you would not understand.” couple of kids. That steady, normal life.

When Ferguson appeared on The X Factor she was often shy The singing was constantly knocking and noticeably nervous during some performances. But the woman at my door, so I kept auditioning and speaking to me now exudes self-confidence. The post-X Factor media eventually they let me in.” circus meant she had to adapt very quickly and was taken out of her She refers to coming second in The comfort zone. Yet even now she admits she can still be “a bit socially X Factor as “like a lottery win”, but awkward” at events. But it’s the singing that really matters to her. something she didn’t understand at the “I’ve always felt the need to help people with my voice,” she time. The last five years have been a steep explains. “I want to convey something personally to an audience. learning curve. She went out and spent My album Heaven was all about break-ups and it was important to money and attracted “a lot of chancers”. me that both men and women related to what I had been through.

“It’s the saying that new money When I write and shape music it’s very much with a good intention.” doesn’t know what to do with new Writing songs is, she claims, a quick process. She pens the first money,” she adds. “Looking back I made verse and chorus in under two minutes and then waits another three all the mistakes that people make when hours before the rest comes to her. “It’s instinctive,” she laughs. “And they initially get success, but at same that means when it comes to album tracks I have loads of choice.” time I am not going to lie and say I didn’t At Love Supreme she is looking forward to introducing enjoy some of it. But now I understand audiences to a new side to her – her love for jazz. She talks about why I was the way I was.” Did she feel the freedom that this gives her (it’s perhaps no coincidence that she got the support she needed from the Freedom is the title of her last album) and how jazz musicians “seem team behind The X Factor? happier” because they “play as they feel.”

This degree of inventiveness and autonomy is, I suggest, where Ferguson may see her future career going as she slowly breaks free from the shackles of a closely managed, arguably more limiting pop career. Her reply is warm, but firm.

“I feel like I am at an age when I am in control. I recognise now that this is my talent, which you don’t when you get off a TV show.

I’m the boss. When you realise everyone is on your payroll and that you’re the one who’s creating the music, that’s when you start to get some ownership and freedom. I now know that I’m the person that creates my career and creates where my life goes.”

It’s the kind of bold statement of independence and selfawareness that Billie Holiday was never able to live up to. But despite her spiritual kinship with the doomed jazz singer, there is, I am certain, no chance of Ferguson slipping by the wayside.

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food news

ACCOLADES POUR IN FOR SUSSEX VINEYARDS

Several of Sussex’s prestigious vineyards scooped Gold medals in this year’s International Wine Challenge, including Court Garden, Bluebell Estate and relative newcomer, Wiston Estate, for their sparkling wines. Bolney Estate produced the only medal-winning English red: its Foxhole Vineyard Pinot Noir 2013 received Silver.

“2015 has been a record year for English vineyards, with an amazing haul of medals, and a high proportion of Gold and Silver, showing these English winemakers are true masters of their craft. You can pour an IWC medal-winning bottle of English fizz with pride,” noted Charles Metcalfe, Co-Chairman of the IWC.

Sam Bilton brings us news of Sussex wine triumphs, French cookery for kids, guilt-free ices and kitchen cleaning tips.

KIDS COOK FRENCH Written by chef Jacques Pepin’s daughter Claudine, this is a fun, interactive cookbook that gets children interested in making their own meals, better eating habits, and the importance of culture. Each classic, simple recipe is shown in both French and English and accompanied by charming illustrations.

Kids Cook French, (Quarry, £12.99)

We have three copies to give away – email your details to comps@sussexstyle.co.uk

Sussex Style loves…

WITH SUMMER HERE IT’S TIME TO INDULGE IN SOME (ALMOST) GUILT-FREE SEASONAL ICES.

HOW DO YOU KEEP YOUR STAINLESS STEEL APPLIANCES GLEAMING? After cleaning dab some baby oil on a piece of paper kitchen towel and wipe over your cooker or any other stainless steel appliance. It leaves them gleaming and smear-free.

Caroline’s Dairy near Chichester have taken the orange berries from the sea buckthorn shrub and transformed them into a delicious fruity ice cream. The berries are full of antioxidants and vitamins so there’s no need to feel too guilty about eating it. carolinesdairy.co.uk For a grown-up treat this summer why not try a cocktail sorbet from Lushice? Available in Mojito, Piña Colada, Strawberry Daiquiri and Margarita flavours, they combine fruit puree and juice and just 2% alcohol. Containing under 100 calories per 100ml, Lushice sorbets are ideal for dairy-free diets and those looking for a little guilt-free indulgence. lushicesorbet.com

KITCHEN DILEMMA

As a new regular feature, each month I will be answering our readers’ kitchen conundrums. So if you have an unidentified object in your weekly veg box or a “how do you?” question, email your dilemma to info@greenduckmedia.co.uk 66 | S US S E X S T Y L E . C OM | JULY 2 0 1 5

GRAPES IMAGE: BOLNEY WINE ESTATE. STAINLESS STEEL IMAGE: TAB62/SHUTTERSTOCK

WHAT’S COOKING

WIN!

EVEN THE DIRTY MARTINI IS SPOTLESS BAR & TERRACE

Relax in style in the Waterhouse Bar & Terrace, experience our hospitality and enjoy our ‘Perfect Pairings’.

The menu features locally sourced items for a real taste of Sussex, with Hailsham Lamb burger ‘Perfectly Paired, with a Sussex Mule or our decadent Tea by the Sea ‘Seaside Delights’ Afternoon Tea taken on the terrace.

With a car park on site, the Waterhouse Bar & Terrace is the perfect place to enjoy a family lunch with a difference, revel in a gathering of friends or savor any special occasion.

Open daily from 08:00am. For Afternoon Tea reservations please call 01273 775432 Hilton Brighton Metropole, Kings Road, Brighton, BN1 2FU

restaurants

St Clement’s, St Leonards on Sea St Clement’s seasonal menus are crafted to showcase the area’s best produce with fish from Hastings’ beach launched fleet at its heart. Produce is sourced from traditional butchers, rare-breed farms and nonintensive dairies, local farms, fishermen & grocers to name but a few. stclementsrestaurant.co.uk

The Town House, Arundel Fine dining intimate restaurant with rooms boasts our beautiful 16th century ceiling originating from Florence, Italy. Sublime. thetownhouse.co.uk

PUBLISHER’S CHOICE

Ockenden Manor Hotel & Spa, Cuckfield Ockenden Manor combines Elizabethan country house splendour with modern luxuries that include an award-winning spa and Michelin-starred cuisine. Enjoy unspoiled views over Cuckfield Park.

To book call 01444 416111

Sussex’s Finest Each month our publisher, Seán Kane, gives his pick of his favourite venues to visit across the county - and beyond.

Only the very best will do...

The Spread Eagle Hotel & Spa, Midhurst One of England’s oldest coaching inns, the 15th Century Spread Eagle Hotel and Spa welcomes you with a fine blend of traditional charm and contemporary comfort. Nestling in the historic town of Midhurst, it is the perfect setting to explore the beautiful South Downs.

To book call 01730 816911

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Gravetye Manor, West Hoathly Sample some of the county’s finest and freshest food at this quintessential Elizabethan manor, located in 1,000 acres of stunning Sussex countryside… gravetyemanor.co.uk

The Leconfield, Petworth Award wining restaurant and bar nestled in the pretty market town of Petworth in the heart of the South Downs, The Leconfield has rapidly gained a reputation as one of the finest places to dine in the county. theleconfield.co.uk The Saltroom Restaurant, Brighton This new addition to Brighton’s eclectic and ever expanding list of restaurants opened in February and is fast becoming the premiere spot to be seen. Head chef David Mothersill has created a divine menu celebrating the Fruits of the Sea. Expect everything from fresh cuttlefish to oysters, lobster, sea bass and the restaurant’s signature “Surf Board”. saltroom-restaurant.co.uk

The Kennels, Goodwood The magnificent 12,000 Goodwood estate at the foot of the South Downs is the perfect place for a memorable meal. Much of the food is reared on the estate. Book a table in the restaurant or enjoy the bar with its luxurious sofas in front of an open fire. The menus feature seasonal, fresh produce and include herbs from the estate’s Victorian kitchen garden. Service, needless to say, is exemplary. This is old fashion English elegance at its best.

Goodwood.com/kennels

The Pass, South Lodge Hotel, Horsham Experience Michelin starred dining in Horsham’s stunning country house hotel.

Head chef Matt Gillan has created a sumptuous menu incorporating unusual flavours to be savoured in this truly unique, tranquil environment. There’s a range of delectable lunch and dinner options to suit all tastes and also surprise menus available.

Southlodgehotel.co.uk Publisher’s Choice: to be featured in Sussex’s Finest email sean@greenduckmedia.co.uk

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restaurants Dean Street Townhouse, Soho, London This beautiful Georgian building, originally home to the Gargoyle Club, has 39 bedrooms alongside a traditional English dining room that seats 120, including a counter for up to 18 diners. The design cues throughout the space draw on the building¹s Georgian heritage, but with all the comfort one would expect in the 21st century.

Deanstreettownhouse.com

The Master Builder’s at Buckler’s Hard, Hampshire The Master Builder’s hotel at Buckler’s Hard, is situated on the banks of the river Beaulieu in Hampshire. A must to go to outside of Sussex and with summer here, we’ve named this hidden gem the Hampshire Riviera. Take shades and enjoy long lazy lunches alfresco style.

Themasterbuilders.co.uk

PUBLISHER’S CHOICE

The Victoria Inn, Holkham Estate Norfolk Ten stylish new bedrooms have been added to The Victoria Inn this year.

One of the oldest buildings on the Holkham Estate in north Norfolk, the Ancient House, which overlooks the National Nature Reserve, has been converted to include four spacious family rooms. The sympathetic refurbishment of the Ancient House has retained many of the building’s original features.

Tel: 01328 711008

A little further afield…

The top restaurants outside of the county The Wild Rabbit, Kingham, the Cotswolds The Wild Rabbit is a restaurant with rooms set in the heart of the Cotswolds, within the charming and tranquil village of Kingham. The building dates from 1750 and after a thorough renovation, The Wild Rabbit opened in September 2013.

As well as having a beautiful restaurant and a traditional pub bar, there are 12 very comfortable, individually furnished bedrooms and a Beehive.

Thewildrabbit.co.uk

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parties

Ding dong merrily on high IN A PREVIOUS LIFE SAM BILTON HAD THE DUBIOUS PLEASURE OF ORGANISING THE STAFF CHRISTMAS PARTY. BEING A SOCIABLE KIND OF GIRL, SHE LIKED A SHINDIG AS MUCH AS THE NEXT PERSON. BUT SAM QUICKLY CAME TO REALISE THAT ARRANGING THE ANNUAL WORK BASH IS A TORTUOUS PATH TO FOLLOW

T

o organise a party you inevitably have to deal with the people. People can be fun, friendly and a pleasure to be with. Or they can be a royal pain in the butt. With people comes politics and I’m not talking about whether their allegiances lie with Labour or the Tories. When the Christmas party plans are drawn up, grudges come to the fore and the murmurs of discontent about last year’s do reach a crescendo. This will be when the boss’s PA reveals she won’t sit with the sales manager and his wife because her husband made a drunken pass at the woman during the previous year’s event. Or the marketing assistant who has regularly munched his way through countless bacon sandwiches during the year declares himself a vegan at the eleventh hour.

Fortunately, Christmas party planning is not all doom and gloom.

While the people may be the downside of the planning, finding a venue is definitely far more fun. In Sussex we are fortunate to have many such

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venues at our disposal, such as Sussex County Cricket ground in Hove.

The oldest professional sports club in the UK, Sussex County Cricket Club dates back to 1839. Recently refurbished, the Museum within the ground is dedicated to the history of cricket in Sussex and beyond. It’s a great space for entertaining up to 50 guests for lunch or dinner and is pleasantly different from your usual run-of-the-mill hotel venue. If you have more guests attending your event, the Spen Cama Pavilion Dining Room can accommodate up to 120 guests for lunch or dinner, and the Boundary Rooms can host up to 180 people on cabaret-style tables You can’t please everyone all of the time. If you have been passed the poisoned Christmas party chalice then do yourself a favour and make sure you have a cracking venue booked for the event. If you haven’t booked somewhere already now is the time to do so before all the best ones have gone. And make sure on the night there’s plenty of booze. You’re going to need it…

WEDDINGS / RESTAURANT / BEDROOMS / MEETINGS

Dining at Pelham House ~ Delicious and seasonal Pelham House focuses on simple and delicious food, using good quality seasonal and locally sourced produce. We offer a variety of regularly changing menus.

The restaurant is the perfect setting for a special lunch or dinner. We also have several additional dining rooms which seat between 4 and 120 guests private dining.

Pelham House has a carefully selected list of wines and cocktails to complement our menus.

Diners can choose the historic Panelled Room, the charming Garden End Room or to dine alfresco on the stunning south facing Terrace.

Our Gallery menu is available from 10:00 until 22:00 for brunch, bar snacks, light meals and pre-dinner drinks and afternoon tea between 3pm and 5pm.

The Restaurant is open daily from 12:00 for lunch, and 18:00 for dinner.

To Book, or for any enquires please contact Pelham House: p: 01273 488600 e: reception @pelhamhouse.com JUL Y 2015 | SUSSEXST YL E. CO M | 73

profile

“Class, sophistication and discretion”: David Edney’s three essential qualities for a top butler

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BORN TO SERVE

IMAGE OF DAVID EDNEY BY DOUGLIE LAMPKIN/PAUL MELBER

Thanks to TV programmes like Downton Abbey we all have our idea of what a butler does. But how different is the reality?

Alex Hopkins finds out as he talks to David Edney, head butler at Goodwood House

E

very day I work here is like the first day,” David Edney, the head butler at Goodwood House tells me. “You only have to walk around the house and the hairs on the back of your neck go up. It’s just magical.”

Edney has now worked at Goodwood, the magnificent estate in Westhampnett, West Sussex, for 18 years. It’s an astonishing amount of time, but Edney has never been tempted to leave.

In his role as head butler he is responsible for overseeing Goodwood’s legendary events, which include the annual Festival of Speed, Goodwood Revival and, of course, the Qatar Goodwood Festival (formerly known as “Glorious Goodwood”) which is held this month.

Edney’s passion for his job is palpable. Within the first minute of our conversation he states that he has “the best job in the world”. His voice is firm and measured and exudes self-confidence, and as he describes his duties I can picture him managing even potentially chaotic situations with complete professionalism and a cool head.

“A good butler knows what a guest needs before they need those things,” he tells me. “You learn to anticipate exactly what they want and ‘no’ is not in our dictionary. Everything comes with experience.”

Edney’s own experience began by learning the basics of silver service on cruise ships, which included the QE2. A friend told him that there was a vacancy at Goodwood, he applied and “the rest is history”. He

is now in charge of the operations of the house and a banqueting department which delivers approximately 150 events a year.

As we speak Edney is preparing for one of the busiest times in Goodwood’s calendar, the Festival of Speed (which was held 25-28 June). With 1600 guests to serve with dinner on the Saturday evening of the weekend, it’s a daunting task for even the most accomplished butler.

But Edney shows no signs of feeling flustered.

“It’s certainly one of our biggest challenges. And you have to remember,” he is quick to point out, “that the dinner is delivered by our own team of staff. We don’t use any agency staff.”

It’s apparent how much pride Edney has in his job and team by the repeated use of the word “our” as we talk. He takes complete ownership of his considerable responsibilities and regards Goodwood as an extended part of his family. This, he adds, is an attitude that Lord March, eldest son and heir to the Duke of Richmond, and founder of the Festival of Speed and the Goodwood Revival, holds dear: “Lord March very strongly believes that when you come into his house you’re coming into his home, as either a guest or member of staff.” Edney shares this ethos.

“I like to think the staff want to work here and that they arrive with a smile and go home with a smile. Getting 250 people to deliver that dinner party on the Festival of Speed is not too much of a problem but the delivery has to be perfect, so we are very hot on training.”

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profile Goodwood House has become one of the most celebrated event venues not just in Sussex but in the country

Are there specific training courses you can take to qualify as a butler, or is it more a case of learning on the job? More of the latter, Edney explains, although he says that he was fortunate enough, a few years ago, to spend a week at Buckingham Palace where he was placed with the yeoman of the wine, silver and china – an “absolutely brilliant experience,” he adds. During his many years at Goodwood he has, not surprisingly, become a role model to staff.

“When those new people arrive you want them to look forward to coming to work and to go and tell their friends about it. I would like to think that our goal at Goodwood is to deliver the best service in the world. That’s not just a pipe dream. I really believe that.”

Once more, it’s clear from Edney’s voice that this is not just PR. He goes on to says that he has recently arranged for skills exchanges for members of his team, which include opportunities to work at places such as Blenheim Palace or on board The Cunard. The quest for impeccable service is, it seems, never-ending. But what, in Edney’s opinion, are the qualities of a top butler? He answers without hesitation: “Class, sophistication and discretion.”

“There are also lots of other skills that go along with that,” he adds.

“Social and communication skills are vital, good manners, organisation 76 | S US S E X S T Y L E . C OM | JULY 2 0 1 5

and etiquette. You need to be dependable and diplomatic. And a good knowledge of wines, spirits and food is also important.

“And then there’s personality, of course. Multi-tasking is essential – you’re always having to think on your feet, and it goes without saying that a butler needs to be well presented and perfectly groomed at all times. Let’s just say it’s not advisable to turn up to a job interview in jeans and a leather jacket.”

Images of the butler are cemented in public consciousness. Thanks to TV costume dramas we all have our preconceptions of what he should look like and what his duties involve. How does Edney think the role of the butler changed over the centuries?

“A butler these days must wear many different hats. Quite often you also need to be a chauffeur, housekeeper and butler. Here at Goodwood Lord March has his own butler and chef, but we look after him when he’s at the big events.”

So just how different is it from what we see on Downton Abbey?

“Actually, it’s still very much like that. We try to keep tradition as much as we can. The little touches are very important: dimming the lights in the evenings and drawing the curtains, making sure that the lighting on the art work is just right.”

IMAGE OF GOODWOOD INTERIOR BY MIKE CALDWELL

“Edney is now in charge of operations at Goodwood House and of a banqueting department that delivers 150 events a year”

Diplomacy is a key quality for the job. A butler is privy to all manner of private conversations as he stands behind guests at a dining table. In this situation has Edney ever felt awkward?

“No, not at all. The best service is the service that goes unnoticed.

You are there as a professional to do your job. Sometimes, when you’re standing there, you get some guidance from the diners on what they require and at others times you just know when to stand back.

“I quite often also play the role of master of ceremonies. Sometimes people want things to be announced in a very formal way and you become the big booming toastmaster shouting things out. At other times it is lower key, and it’s a matter of gently advising the guests to move from one room to the other because dinner is serviced. Timing is everything.”

For Edney the pleasure comes in seeing the guests enjoying themselves – in “making someone’s dream day come true. When a bride and groom come up that drive I still get butterflies in my stomach – after all these years. You never tire of working in such a splendid environment.

There really are no negatives to my job whatsoever.”

As we finish talking he sums up with the words he opened with: “I tell everyone the same thing: I have the best job in the world.”

And once more, the sincerity in his voice is unmistakeable.

JUL Y 2015 | SUSSEXST YL E. CO M | 77

food

Raspberry gin sorbet with lavender thins

COOL AND REFRESHING, A COCKTAIL IN A DESSERT GLASS; OR FOR A BIT OF FUN, WHY NOT FREEZE IN MOULDS FOR AN ADULTS-ONLY ICE LOLLY , SAYS SAM BILTON Serves 6 Prep: 20 minutes Cook: 30-35 minutes Freeze: 6-8 hours or overnight 150g (5oz) caster sugar 200ml (7 fl oz) water 450g (1lb) raspberries 6 tablespoons gin 1 egg white, optional For lavender thins 150g (5oz) plain flour 25g (1oz) cornflour 50g (2oz) caster sugar, plus extra to decorate 100g (4oz) butter, at room temperature, diced 1 teaspoon dried lavender petals, roughly crushed, plus a little extra to decorate

To make the sorbet, add the sugar and water to a saucepan, heat gently, stirring from time to time until the sugar has dissolved, then boil rapidly for 1 minute. Take off the heat and set aside.

Add the raspberries to a food processor or liquidiser and puree until smooth. Press through a sieve into a bowl and discard the seeds. Stir the gin and sugar syrup into the berry puree.

If you have an electric ice cream machine, pour in the raspberry mixture and churn for about 20 minutes until thick. Lightly fork the egg white together until frothy then beat into the sorbet and churn for 10 more minutes until thick enough to scoop.

Without an electric ice cream machine, pour the mixture into a shallow cake tin with a fixed base and freeze for 4 hours until semifrozen. Beat with a fork or blitz in a food processor until smooth and gradually beat in

the lightly whipped egg white. Transfer to a plastic container, cover with a lid and freeze for 3-4 hours or overnight until firm.

To make the lavender thins, preheat the oven to 170°C, fan-assisted 150°C, Gas mark 3. Add all the ingredients to a bowl and rub in the butter either with your fingertips or with an electric mixer until the mixture resembles fine crumbs. Bring the crumbs together with your hands to make a dough then roll out thinly on a lightly floured surface.

Press into a 23cm (9 inch) diameter fluted flan tin. Prick the centre with a fork and press the edges with a fingertip. Sprinkle with a little extra sugar. Cook for 25-30 minutes until pale golden around the edges. Mark into 12 thin wedges, sprinkle with extra lavender petals and leave to cool.

To serve, scoop the sorbet into glasses and serve with lavender thins.

COOK’S TIP If the sorbet has been in the freezer overnight then take the container out of the freezer and allow to soften for 10 minutes before scooping. Not a fan of lavender? Then leave it out and add the grated rind of ½ a lemon or leave the biscuit mix plain.

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in season

In Season...

’Tis the season to be berry

SORBERT RECIPE AND IMAGE FROM WWW.SEASONALBERRIES.CO.UK; IN SEASON IMAGES: SEMATADESIGN/SHUTTERSTOCK.

ONE OF THE BEST THINGS ABOUT BRITISH SUMMER TIME IS THE PROFUSION OF HOMEGROWN BERRIES AVAILABLE. NO LONGER ARE WE FORCED TO RELY ON TASTELESS IMPORTS Raspberries As far as I am concerned raspberries are the queen of the summer fruits. The plant is robust enough to flourish in Northern Europe yet it yields the sweetest, most delicate fruit. There is a underlying tartness to raspberries which means they can hold their own in sweet and savoury dishes, particularly oily fish like mackerel. If you dislike the seeds, puree raspberries in a blender with a little icing sugar before passing through a sieve. You’ll be left with a thick coulis which is delicious rippled through some vanilla ice cream or natural yoghurt.

If you have a glut of raspberries they make excellent jam which is an absolute must for a truly regal Victoria sandwich.

Blueberries There was a time when blueberries were strictly an exotic import and weren’t that easy to come by. Now they are readily available fresh, dried and, of course, in the ubiquitous blueberry muffin. With its indigo exterior, it is among the most accessible fruits (after seedless grapes and bananas) for children, having a mild, sweet flavour and being virtually seedless. They are often used as a topping for cheesecake but also work really well with ground almonds in a tart or scattered into an American pancake mix. Blueberries have long been recognised as a superfood and are a great source of vitamin K, vitamin C, fibre, manganese and antioxidants.

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Virginia Woolf, as pictured by George Charles Beresford in 1902, courtesy of the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, www.npg.org.uk

SEDUCED BY

SUICIDE On 28 March 1941 Virginia Woolf drowned herself in Sussex’s River Ouse.

Novelist Carole Morin has always been fascinated by suicide. She tells us why

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IMAGE CREDITS: VIRGINA WOOLF BY GEORGE CHARLES BERESFORD; VIRGINIA WOOLF AND LEONARD SIDNEY WOOLF BY GISELE FREUND, ESTATE GISELE FREUND/IMEC IMAGES; BOTH COURTESY OF THE COLLECTION OF THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

culture

uicide is dead glamorous but it attracts me purely as a voyeur. There’s a suicide in this country every hour, and an attempt every minute. More women try it, more men succeed. Women take pills in the bed or bath. Men gas themselves in their cars, but hanging, like Alexander McQueen in his closet, is a close runner-up. Some show-offs, like Issie Blow, drink weedkiller – a popular method in China.

And it would be hard to top Yukio Mishima, who disembowelled himself live on television. Although as Japan gets increasingly westernised, suicide has become less fashionable there. The razor dripping with blood, that evocative cinematic image, accounts for only 2% of successful suicides, which is not surprising given how hard it is to hack through a vein. Most people cut in the wrong direction. Mishima didn’t manage to extract his internal organs with a blunt kitchen knife. I’ve been fascinated by suicide since before I got my Big Teeth, when my aunt Irene the Slut came to a bad end in New York. But I wanted to grow up with millions of men committing suicide over me, not to die myself.

My first suicide was a boy called John who was not so secretly in love with me. John slashed his wrists and I got the credit. I went round after school to watch his mother scrub his bedroom carpet, on her knees, tutting over his blood, while John and I drank the vodka tomato juice that I’d brought with me in my school bag. We pored over the details of his failure, deciding that it would be for the best if he jumped off a roof next time. Razors are just unreliable. Fast forward to my crazy teens, when one of my American boyfriends, Chuck E, blew his brains out while cleaning his father’s gun in preparation for his summer job of holding up liquor stores. I got the credit for Chuck E’s suicide, which was probably an accident. This time there were no Blood Marys but I was front row at his funeral. There were other boyfriends, overdoses and car crashes but nothing prepared me for the death of my brother. We used to stay up late talking about our favourite suicides, Sylvia Plath and Marilyn Monroe and Virginia Woolf. But whereas he was rehearsing his own end, I’ve always been with Dorothy Parker, “Guns aren’t lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live.”

My brother did not leave a suicide note, unlike Virginia Woolf, who left two; one for her husband, one for her sister, now on display in the British Museum. You can almost sniff the paper through the glass.

Suicide tweets don’t have the same sex appeal.

“Her sister ran off with a poufta,” a crumblie told me, pushing her way in as I examined Woolf ’s sinister, spidery handwriting. I doubt if Vanessa Bell ran, in those big Victorian skirts.

Vanessa Bell did not go to Woolf ’s funeral.

Maybe, like me, she had trouble deciding what to wear? The shock of losing a sibling fills the mind with trivia to distract from the finality of loss. Suicide is seductive when it’s cinematic, but in real life it is rarely the end of the story.

The small sitting-room in Monk’s House, where Virginia Woolf left her suicide notes, smells like it hasn’t been cleaned since that day in 1941 when Woolfie jumped into the River Ouse wearing her fur coat weighted down with a big stone, fearing she was “going mad again”.

Her body was found three weeks later, bloated by the grey river she had swallowed. Why did she want to leave that room of her own – or that garden shed – where she stood at her writing desk? (Did Hemingway, who blew his brains out, stand at his typewriter in tribute to Woolf? I doubt it, but I like to daydream.) She’d been fed up with the war, was losing her teeth, thought her last book, Between the Acts, was shite and had been obsessively scrubbing the kitchen floor while the servants were out.

Woolf was described by ex-BBC arts correspondent Rosie Millard as a “sex-mad snob”, but her single bed with its white cover is a visual reminder of her close but sexless marriage to her publisher, Leonard Woolf. Her bedroom is an extension to their cottage, bought with the proceeds of To the Lighthouse, and has a view of her garden where she heard the birds speak to her in Chinese. This extra room is attached to the house, but separate from it.

The day she went to die, did she take a short cut through the field of nettles? Or go the long way round past the sheep? An angry dog ran towards me as I walked along the high, narrow bank of the ugly River Ouse; not tempted to jump. I’ve missed the deadline for dying young, and I hate getting my hair wet, but if I did want to suicide I’d jump from the more picturesque Beachy Head nearby.

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culture

“Eliot ordered and not me,” she wrote in her diary, “these mists of the spirit have other causes, I expect; though they are deeply hidden.”

Complex questions rarely have one simple answer. And in the end her books sold more copies than T S Eliot’s. It’s not a competition, but it often feels like it is. Woolf is not defined by her death, but by her place at the heart of Bloomsbury – by contrast with Sylvia Plath, whose death cult overshadows her work.

Both women have been treated cruelly since, Woolf being played in The Hours by a big prosthetic nose attached to Nicole Kidman; while Plath had the posthumous humiliation of Gwyneth Paltrow at her most goopy in Sylvia.

Did Sylvia leave a suicide note? Was it destroyed by her troll husband Ted? It’s easier to cast Plath as victim because there’s a villain in the story. Leonard Woolf disobeyed his wife’s instructions to destroy her papers. Ted Hughes destroyed Sylvia’s last diary and novel in progress. He didn’t want her children to read them. Or anyone else. When I’m fed up with the world and everybody in it, a trip to Heptonstall, where Plath’s corpse was transported to be buried in the village she hated, pure cheers me up. I wouldn’t like to be parked there for eternity, but the serenity of the graveyard makes me want to go on living. I didn’t want any flowers, Sylvia wrote, which is just as well as her grave is now covered in weeds, while Ted, the lesser poet who’d abandoned her for a copycat who gassed herself a few years later, is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Plath’s death, unlike Woolf ’s courageous leap into a tidal river, was oddly passive, given her control freakery over everything from bees to blackheads. She just sat there with her head in the oven waiting for death to happen. She had failed before, maddening for a perfectionist. Did she imagine like Lady Lazarus she would rise again? Of course she did resurrect, becoming the most famous dead poet on the planet with the Ariel poems she wrote during her last, dark days.

Because death isn’t enough to create a legend; talent is needed too.

Princess Diana’s face is no longer on the tea towel, but the dead glamorous Marilyn Monroe is still selling everything from Chanel Number 5 to conspiracy theories. Marilyn died in the nude, according to Elton John, and Sylvia Plath apparently hadn’t washed her hair. Al Alvarez, who saw Plath shortly before her death, could smell her unwashed hair as she walked ahead of him up the stairs. And this was before she stuck her head in the oven like a chicken. An entry in Plath’s diary about Elizabeth

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Taylor stealing Eddie Fisher from Debbie Reynolds says, “How these things affect us.”

Was Sylvia Plath affected by the death of Marilyn Monroe? Did her neurotic, passive face watch Marilyn’s corpse being loaded on to the limo, the roots in the star’s platinum hair reminding Plath of her own platinum summer when she’d overdosed and crawled under the house to die?

Virginia Woolf said, “Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.” My brother was a suicide junkie for years before curing himself. His death made the mourners at his funeral want to live.

“Who’s that? Is he married?” my ex-bestie asked, scanning the church for possibilities. While her husband, who used to wait at his garden gate to watch me come home from school, smiled at me while fluttering his surprisingly long eyelashes.

“Your dad’s a very attractive man,” my cousin’s widow said about my alcoholic father who managed to shrink every time I saw him. Soon after my brother killed himself, my father gave up dialysis to spend more time in the pub instead of living what turned out to be the last year of his own life in an ambulance going to hospital with “boring old guys”. When told he had a week to live, he shouted, “A whole week stuck in here!”

Euthanasia is the least glamorous of suicides but he begged my mother to speed things up and “send him to Switzerland”; while she, who had “taken control” of my dad when he was 19, was already looking around for a replacement.

Leonard Woolf did not marry again. He stayed in Monk’s House, the home he had shared with his wife and her books, but did not use her bedroom. Writers go on living and changing after death. In the garden, where Virginia Woolf ’s ashes are buried, you can almost hear the grating, self-conscious voice of the woman whose idea of daring was to dispense with table napkins saying, “Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.”

Carole Morin is the author of Spying on Strange Men carolemorin.co.uk

MAIN IMAGE: MARILYN MONROE: LUCIAN MILASAN/SHUTTERSTOCK. SLYVIA PLATH: BY ROLLIE MCKENNA, ROSALIE THORNE MCKENNA FOUNDATION, COURTESY OF CENTER FOR CREATIVE PHOTOGRPAHY, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA FOUNDATION; FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE NATIONAL POTRTAIT GALLERY

Why did she kill herself?

“Marilyn Monroe is still selling everything from Chanel No 5 to conpiracy theories”

“My first suicide was a boy called John who was not so secretly in love with me.

John slashed his wrists and I got the credit”

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design

One of Mark Hill’s custommade staircases.

His designs always blend in with and enhance existing architecture

THE WOODSMAN Mark Antony Hill always knew that he would work with wood. He tell us why his bespoke kitchens are the best in the business

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W

ood has been my passion for most of my life,” explains craftsman Mark Antony Hill, as he describes a seven and a half feet tall grandfather clock that he made for his end of exam piece when he was just 16. This piece is typical of Hill’s vision – ambitious in both size and structure. Since his late teens he has gone on to build his own highly successful company, Mark Antony Truly Bespoke, which is based in Horsham and has become the area’s leading joinery business.

Hill’s early interest in creating unique, elegant home interiors was spurred by his father who helped him build a workshop. At 21 Hill undertook an apprenticeship, but was soon breaking out on his own. He is now planning to expand his business further by adding a large extension to his current premises.

Bespoke solutions

An unwavering commitment to outstanding quality and a reputation for craftsmanship of the highest standards has always been central to Hill’s business model. Everything begins and ends with the client.

“Right at the start I’ll have a meeting with the customer and then pick their brain about what they’re after,” explains Hill.

“Then comes the drawing stage. I’ll take as much as I can from the information they give me to turn what they desire into reality, whether that be a chest of drawers, a TV cabinet, something for around a chimney, a wardrobe or furniture for a library or study.”

But it’s with kitchens that Hill has made his name. He takes a radical approach to the planning process and empowers his client by asking them to make a scrap book, over a couple of months, of all the things that they like. This provides him with a definitive idea of their style and the features that they respond to on both an aesthetic and practical level.

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design

Hill now competes with some of the best kitchen makers in the world. He reels off an impressive list which includes Clive Christian and Mark Wilkinson, but is quick to add that he does not copy what they do: “I try to improve on it.”

“It’s about the quality of the work. There’s only so much you can do with a kitchen - they have been pushed to their boundaries already and there’s so much competition from high street kitchens.”

What marks his kitchens out as different?

“We offer a bespoke service right from the beginning,” he proudly explains. “I go through absolutely everything with the client, from the way they cook to how they like to pack groceries in drawers and cupboards; the type of cutlery they have; whether they have a knife drawer or tea towels on display. It’s really important I understand how they use their kitchen.

“It’s not a case of how I fit our cabinets in their kitchen. We don’t do that at all. We build all of our cabinets around our clients’ needs. A lot of my clients love their kitchen and really enjoy cooking. As well as making it look stylish I need to ensure that it’s totally practical for them.”

As an example, Hill refers to the pantry cupboards he has recently created: two big doors made of the finest walnut which open up to reveal a work surface with drawers underneath for bread and vegetables. Condiment units on the back of the door maximise the space and add to the sleek, easy-access feel. User-friendliness is always paramount, stresses Hill.

“I’m working with a client now who doesn’t give a monkeys about the way his kitchen works. All he cares about is the way it looks, which grates on me because I know that if a woman walks into it she’ll suss it out straight away and ask who made the kitchen and why the drawers are in a certain place. It needs to work on every level.”

Superb storage

Creating storage solutions is one of Hill’s specialisms – and he has come up with some of the most inventive in the industry. Most recently, he’s created a state of the art knife block for a client who spent thousands of pounds on knives.

“A lot of people have very expensive knives,” says Hill, “and understandably they don’t want them rattling around in a drawer where they could get damaged.”

Hill’s solution was to grout out a tray for each individual knife.

He placed a magnet underneath the tray so you can almost throw a knife in there and it is brought into position.

“I’ve never seen this done before,” he admits. “It’s pretty unique. The block was made of beautiful solid oak and we craved every single knife into it. Everything is done by hand. The end result looks fantastic and the client is delighted. Best of all there’s still room in the drawer in case the client wants to grow his knife collection.”

Hill finds that he gets many of his ideas from the young apprentices who work with him. He praises their “fresh minds”, and is always ready to stay later in the workshop if an apprentice wants to introduce him to a new concept. Learning, he finds, is a two way process.

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A client’s requirements are central to Hill’s brief. He works closely with a customer to find out exactly what they want and then makes it a reality.

Far right: Hill’s ingenious knife drawer.

EXOTIC WOOD Hill’s wallets come in a stuning range of colours, which include: Purple Heart This is as purple as purple can be.

The more oxygen it gets, the purple it becomes.

Madagascar Ebony One of the most expensive woods in the world.

The quality of grain is incredible.

Lignum Vitae One of the densest woods in the world.

Used for bearings on ships.

Bog Oak A 700 year old wood formed in East Anglia when tress fall over and are preserved in bogs.

It has a silky sweet bog smell to it.

Introducing…the wooden wallet

It was one of Hill’s apprentices who helped him create what are possibly his most revolutionary products yet: a collection of beautiful wooden wallets.

“It was about six months into one of the lad’s apprenticeships,” explains Hill, “and he asked to stay late so that he could make a wallet out of wood. I was intrigued so stayed around to watch. He was carving away at a bit of wood and eventually I took over and by 11pm we had the first wooden wallet.”

Hill’s product is almost totally unique. There are, he says, only three companies in the US and one in Canada who make anything similar – and those all have a big leather strap across them. The vital difference with Hill’s range is that they are made only from wood and he can guarantee that your credit cards are not going to fall out. He refuses to divulge the secret to this. “You’ll have to buy one to find out,” he winks. “But it’s very clever.”

Ther are 30 wallets in the range, all made with different woods.

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Situated on Sandy Lane, The Pines is in the ancient market town of East Grinstead in Sussex. Standing halfway between London and the South Coast makes the town extremely accessible by both road and rail with the added benefit of access to Gatwick Airport.

The Pines consists of two detached houses set in generous well screened mature plots.

• Double height tiled entrance hall with oak staircase • Spacious kitchen with all appliances • Three further reception rooms with generous ceiling heights • Master bedroom with Juliet balconies, dressing room and ensuite • Four further bedrooms and three bathrooms • Double garaging with automatic doors £1,195,000 For further information please contact Tel: 01932 837690 Email: info@tkei.co.uk

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decor

INDIAN INSPIRATION

Tracy Thomson, of the hugely successful Trading Boundaries, talks to us about her passion for the stunning furniture and textiles she has been importing from India for 19 years

T

he showrooms of Trading Boundaries, at a Georgian manor house in Sheffield Green, are an Aladdin’s cave of magnificent furnishing. The vibrant collection of rare painted doors, pitara chests, mirrors, gazebos and fabrics is testament to founder Tracy Thomson’s life-long love affair with India.

“Our buying trips are always fascinating and even after all the years I’ve been travelling to India to source items, I still get excited about what I’m going to discover,” explains Thomson.

Thomson was introduced to India when she ran a property development company with business partner Michael Clifford. He was already familiar with the country; his mother was born there.

“We became aware of this amazing furniture in unusual materials in boutique stores in London,” says Thomson. “Soon we decided to try to source the furniture ourselves. We’ve been buying ever since.”

Over the years Thomson’s contacts have increased tenfold – as has her knowledge of Indian furniture. She speaks passionately about the textiles, jewellery and objets d’art she has brought back to Sussex.

By 1998 Trading Boundaries had grown to become one of the largest UK companies specializing in Indian products. It’s now a shopping destination, a café, a live music venue and a gallery set in an 18th-century former coaching inn. What is it about India that so inspires Thomson?

“It’s unique and huge. There are so many different cultures. It’s one of the most wonderful places; everybody is so friendly. A tremendous amount of haggling is required, but it’s a lovely place to do business.”

Thomson says that it’s impossible not to be entranced by the landscapes, which enrich the appearance of the objects she finds.

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“The light there is beautiful. It has an exceptional quality, so the colours are tremendously vibrant. This means that it’s easy to get carried away when you stumble across something.”

But, Thomson adds, India is not without its challenges: getting around can be difficult and you have to be sensible as a woman travelling alone. The rewards, however, make it all worthwhile. What are some of the most memorable pieces that Thomson has brought back to Sussex?

“Years ago I found the most amazing coffee table. It’s known as a Thakat table. They’re not used as coffee tables in India, but for a variety of other things. You may find them in tribal huts with water pots standing on there, or very large ones may have been used as beds in the past.

“This particular example was very unusual in that it had drawers and little money slots on top. The only time you see that kind of thing is in temples, to receive donations, so I think it must have been used in a money exchange. It also had beautiful hanging carvings in deep reds and blacks. Something like this makes a stunning accent piece in a home.”

One of Thomson’s favourite places is the North-Eastern state of Nagaland. She has often found huge pieces of teak that have been carved from the trunks of trees.

“You might get a beautiful bench and although it is extremely basic it’s stunning because it has been carved out of a single piece of wood.

Typically for that area local families have their own status symbols – emblems – which have been carved into the pieces. They sit very well in traditional Sussex mediaeval or Tudor homes.

“What we look for is detail, quirkiness, odd patterns. I’ve found a lot of tribal pieces over the years with sweet hidden compartments, which are literally where people keep their treasures.”

“Our buying trips are always fascinating. Even after all the years I’ve been travelling to India, I still get excited about what I’m going to discover.”

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UPHOLSTERY FURNITURE CURTAINS BLINDS GIFTS LIGHTING HOMEWARES

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interiors Curiosity cabinet with hidden compartment, ÂŁ345

INTERIOR NOTEBOOK In association with Miscellanea of Churt

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interiors

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finance

Sharing wealth with your grandchildren IN THE THIRD OF A SERIES, JO WHITE OF SPOFFORTHS LLP TALKS ABOUT HOW YOU CAN USE ISAS TO PASS ON GIFTS TO YOUR GRANDCHILDREN

I

t is possible to put money into a Junior ISA account for children.

This is a long-term, tax-free savings account that can be opened for children under the age of 18 living in the UK. As with an adult version of the account, you can have a cash or a stocks-and-shares ISA. Each child can have one or both types of Junior ISA. The savings limit for an Junior ISA for 2015-16 is £4,080, allowing some of the exemptions mentioned above to be used in paying into the account, as well as other funds. Parents or guardians with parental responsibility can open an Junior ISA but the money belongs to the child. If you are planning to utilise this type of account for a grandchild you would therefore need to discuss it with their parents first. The child cannot access this money until they are 18 and therefore it may be considered a good way of ring-fencing funds for their university costs or the purchase of a new car or house deposit in the future.

Before the Junior ISA there was a Child Trust Fund. It is no longer possible to open such an account; however up to £4,080 a year can be added to a CTF account each year until the child reaches 18. The CTF and Junior ISA work in a similar way and the child cannot have access to the funds until they are 18. However, they are allowed to take control of the account when they are 16. If you wanted to consider making gifts into an account for the longer term, then if your grandchild has one of these accounts it will not be possible to open a Junior ISA as well, but you could continue to add to the existing account.

If you are concerned about your grandchild’s future financial support then be aware some grandparents choose to make payments into a pension on behalf of their grandchild. It is possible to make contributions of up to £3,600 per year into a pension of a minor child. This threshold is over the annual exemption mentioned above so £600 of the gift would be potentially chargeable to Inheritance Tax if you were to die within 7 years of making the payment.

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your home

Finding the perfect builder

IMAGE CREDIT: SKYE BRACKPOOL

H

aving builders around the Find out about professional and safety house means that your standards, it’s essential they or their subeveryday routine is inevitably contractors have the correct experience in YOU KNOW WHAT YOU upset. But choosing the right specialist areas such as gas and electrics.

WANT FROM YOUR DREAM construction company can Make sure that they understand exactly what HOME, BUT HOW DO go a long way to helping you want. It’s important that you show and tell YOU FIND THE RIGHT reduce your stress levels. If your builders are the builder your expectations of the project, approachable and considerate, it will make BUILDER? BEN COPPER FROM otherwise the end result may not be what you seeing them every day much more bearable.

NUTSHELL CONSTRUCTION hoped for. Professional architects’ drawings are So whether you’re planning to renovate preferable, but if you’re not this far along the PROVIDES THE VITAL TIPS your existing home, have a loft conversion, process, try to jot down some basic ideas or extension, build a new home, or undertaking mood boards to give the builders a good idea. a project on a much larger scale such as converting an old barn or Make sure that the firm you choose is fully insured and that this renovating a period property, you need to be confident that the firm you will last for the duration of your project. Public Liability insurance not choose won’t let you down. only protects against anyone suffering an injury on site, but also provides Seek quotes from at least three firms and see what you can find out protection if they damage anything, or if they go out of business while about their reputation. A recommendation through word of mouth they’re working for you. literally speaks volumes but if you can’t find anyone this way, research Find out how busy the firm is. You would expect most companies the internet, visit a few websites and find out what others have to say to have a waiting list and you should be prepared to wait your turn. about them and why.

Everyone wants their job done quickly but within reason you should When you’ve made a shortlist, ask to see examples of their work. learn to be patient and realise that some things just can’t be rushed They should be proud to show you the projects they have worked on without compromising quality. Equally your contactor should manage before and happy to put you in touch with previous clients. If they’re his deadlines realisitically and honestly. not, they may have something to hide, and remember that written Don’t rush into a decision about the builders just because you want references may not be genuine. the job done now, as you may well regret it.

Ask about the firm’s history, for example how long it has been in Above all, you should enjoy the process of creating your dream business and whether they’ve undertaken similar jobs to yours. home. A good builder will see the project through your eyes.

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travel

THESSALONIKI

FOOTSTEPS OF GREEK GODS

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Lizzie Enfield goes in search of culture, food and shopping in Greece’s Thessaloniki

IMAGES: THESSALONIKI HOTELS ASSOCIATION

T

A spectacular vista: the view of Thessaloniki as photographed from the hills above

hessaloniki is well used to the moniker “Greece’s second city.” In the Hellenic period it was second to Athens, under Roman rule. It was Number Two to Constantinople during the Byzantine Empire and to the same city, now Istanbul, when the Turks seized power. Today it plays second fiddle to Athens again, but it’s a primary tourist hotspot.

Thessaloniki may not have the Parthenon but it does have an acropolis, 15 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, 29 museums dedicated to everything from archaeology to the avant-garde, mouthwatering menus, never-ending nightlife plus an impressive swathe of seafront from which, on a clear day, you can catch a glimpse of Mount Olympus – home of the ancient Gods.

Today, Thessaloniki is home to more students than gods (there are four universities here), breathing life and verve into the city where every area is a mix of new and old. Trendy rooftop bars look down on ancient ruins, traditional dressmakers work alongside contemporary designers. Even the septuagenarian mayor has multiple tattoos and actively promotes graffiti art.

Aristotelous Square, the largest in Greece, bustles with cafes and bars and restaurants. This is where locals gather after work, before heading to one of the many bars and nightclubs strung along the harbour front. Café Nikis 35 is a favorite.

From here a short stroll takes you past the port and into the nearby Valaoritou District, the former Jewish quarter. During the war nearly a quarter of Thessaloniki’s 200,000-strong Jewish population was rounded up and sent to concentration camps. A memorial on Freedom Square commemorates what was once the largest Jewish community in Greece. Today the area is home to numerous bars and restaurants.

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“It’s hard to get lost with the sea always there, glistening at you whenever you turn a corner”: the beauty of Thessalonoki’s seafront

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Alongside runs Ladadika. Literally meaning “olive oil area,” this was once the central market and is now a pretty maze of pastel-coloured buildings and quirkily decorated tavernas. A bicycle hangs on the wall of Rouga restaurant and nearby Karipi St. is strung with colorful birdcages.

Head upstairs to the dining area of Ouzou Melathron (“ouzo palace”) and you will be rewarded not only with fine food and drink but a good view of a model frieze, depicting the traditional crafts and pastimes of the city: bear dancing (now banned), shoe making, photography, fishing and baking.

Thessaloniki’s justifiably famous bakeries serve an eclectic mix of traditional Greek baklava, Turkish Greek Trigona Panoramatos (a triangular pastry filled with cream), and a regional Sephardic bagel – the koulouria sold from carts on just about every corner.

Heading west along the esplanade you pass the iconic White Tower.

Once part of the defences, it now houses an exhibition on the city’s history. Nearby is a fountain where children cool down in summer, and a fabulous sculpted wall of suspended metal umbrellas. A mile or so further on, the Concert Hall juts out to sea. If you’ve walked far enough you can pick up a bicycle from the bike-sharing scheme for €1 per hour.

It’s hard to get lost, with the sea always there, glistening at you whenever you turn a corner, and a source of excellent seafood. On my first night I dined at To Helleniko, a taverma/ouzeri where the walls are lined with hundreds of different bottles of ouzo (who knew there were so many?) Each glass comes with a meze of local fare; octopus, mackerel, sardines, whitebait, slices of buffalo sausage and skewers of pork, all served with the ubiquitous Greek salad.

Thessaloniki might be Greece’s second city but it’s arguably its gourmet capital. In the far north of the country, the city has always been a melting pot of cultures and this is reflected in the blend of spicy Eastern and traditional Mediterranean flavors of its cuisine.

The food markets of Kapani, Mondiano and Vlali (all built by the wealthy Jews of the city in the early 1900s) bustle with activity and scents as fish are unloaded from the harbor and stalls fill up with olives, meats and cheeses. The ingredients and flavors that come from the old Byzantine capital are transformed into recipes such as gemista (baked vegetables stuffed with rice, mint, raisins and pine nuts), yiaourtlou kebab (grilled meat in yogurt sauce) and soutzoukakia (meatballs with cumin cooked in tomato sauce). Thessaloniki is also famous for bomparia (stuffed goat intestines) and mpampes dishes (stuffed pig intestines).

Macedonia is also one of the oldest (and coldest) wine-making regions of Greece, with several estates producing a variety of fine wines.

The city center is easy to navigate by foot and strategically placed signs tell you the distance to the next landmark, how long it will take you to walk and, on some, even the number of calories you will burn to get there!

I doubt I have walked far enough to burn off all I have eaten, as I head to the Roman Forum (still being excavated) and through the

IMAGES: THESSALONIKI HOTELS ASSOCIATION

“Thessaloniki’s every area is a mix of new and old. The septuagenerian mayor has multiple tattoos and actively promotes graffiti art” triumphal 3rd Century Arch of Galerius to the Rotunda, which has been both church and mosque and boasts the city’s only remaining minaret.

A short stroll from the Rotunda takes you to the Turkish consulate; this backs onto the former home of modern Turkey’s founding father, Kemal Atatürk, which is now a museum.

Make the effort to walk (or take a taxi) up to the acropolis dubbed “the balcony of Thessaloniki” from where you are rewarded with a breathtaking view of the city and the gulf beyond. Immediately below are the university buildings; nearby, an enclosure of Nissan huts surrounded by tanks is a reminder that this is where the Greek army is based, close to the borders with Turkey, Albania, FYROM and Bulgaria.

The seven turrets of the castle dominate the acropolis. Heading downhill past a maze of timber-framed houses, you pass the Bey Hamam, Thessaloniki’s first bathhouse and the most important one in Greece.

Known as the “Baths of Paradise”, it was built in 1444 and is one of the last examples of Ottoman culture still standing in the country. Further along is the magnificent church of Agios Dimitrios. Nearby, Agios Sofia is a must for its spectacular mosaic dome ceiling alone.

If sightseeing doesn’t wear you out, you can shop until you drop.

Tsimiski Street is where you can find all the usual high street brands.

Perpendicular to it, Agias Sofia Street has recently been pedestrianized and you can find some local brands, while parallel Mitropoleos Street is full of independent local stores and small designer boutiques.

Thessaloniki is not a city that sleeps. Lonely Planet listed it as the 5th ultimate party city. Current hotspots include Urania, where DJs spin on the rooftop, Monkey Bar, Propaganda and Plan B. There is enough to keep you occupied for days but the surrounding area also boasts numerous unspoiled and empty beaches, vineyards, wildlife sanctuaries (bears and wolves roam the mountains on the border with Bulgaria) and one of Europe’s most important wetland areas, the twitchers’ paradise that is Lake Kerkini.

For a second city, it’s first-rate.

Lizzie Enfield travelled as a guest of Visit Greece: http://www.visitgreece.gr She stayed at hotels Excelsior, Thessaloniki, which has doubles from about €140: http://www.excelsiorhotel.gr British Airways, Easyjet, Ryanair and Thomson Airways fly direct to Thessaloniki.

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01273 605577 - 16 Gardner St BN1

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ub l c k o

Love, Nina: Despatches from Family Life Nina Stibbe (Penguin) In the 1980s Nina Stibbe wrote letters home to her sister in Leicester describing her trials and triumphs as a nanny to a London family. There’s a cat nobody likes, a dog called Ted Hughes, and suppertime visits from Alan Bennett, the local playwright. She is convinced that Jonathan Miller is an Opera singer and that balsamic vinegar will never catch on. From the mystery of the unpaid milk bill and the avoidance of nuclear war to mealtime discussions on pie filler, the greats of English literature, swearing in German and sexually transmitted diseases, Love, Nina is a wonderful celebration of bad food, good company and the relative merits of Thomas Hardy and Enid Blyton. You could almost be part of the family and reading these letters is an absolute and utter joy.

BRITISH SOCIETY, IN ITS MANY FORMS, IS ON LAURA LOCKINGTON’S MIND. HERE’S THE PERFECT SUMMER SELECTION OF BOOKS: WITTY, CHARMING AND EACH OF THEM A COMEDY OF MANNERS

Beaton in the Sixties (More Unexpurgated Diaries) Introduced by Hugo Vickers (Phoenix) Diaries are mostly written with an eye on publication and therefore not to be trusted – most definitely not with Mr Beaton. His are a treat.

I can dip in and out of them and wish that I too was on a private jet being whisked off to Paris, or on the set of My Fair Lady having a row with the director about the lighting on Audrey Hepburn.

Better even than the glorious name-dropping is his immaculate eye for detail. On his brief stay with Picasso in the south of France: “The wolfhound was like a grey pearl. Picasso’s teeth were like dark ivory as he smiled.” Meeting The Rolling Stones in Marrakesh, he describes Jagger as, “Having chicken breast white skin and perfect manners” And his on-andoff so-called romance with Greta Garbo is elusive and tantalising, and very, very funny.

Wild Strawberries

by Angela Thirkell (Virago) A beautiful re-issue of a book by one of my favourite authors, wherein I can guarantee you nothing really happens. That’s not strictly true: romance blooms, there’s a lot of very funny chatter over silver teapots, and the English aristocracy of the 1930s reveals itself in all its effortless oddness.

That’s the joy of her. All her books (she was prolific) are much the same. A dance party, a tea party, a handsome well-heeled young man and some eccentric aunts populate them in a most satisfying way.

You can sink into her books much as you can a warm bath, knowing the elegance of the writing, the clever sarcasm, and the wonderful characters will take hold of you, weaving their charm.

It’s as English as a summer picnic, complete with Pimms, under the spreading cedars of Stanmer Park.

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society

FOR

QUEEN

&

COUNTY

Peter Field holds possibly the most prestigious title in the county: Lord Lieutenant of East Sussex. But what does his role involve and how has he seen ideas about high society change? He reveals all to Alex Hopkins 110 | S U S S E X S T Y L E . C OM | JULY 2 0 1 5

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n paper, Peter Field sounds like one of the most important people I have spoken to over the years. His list of achievements is rather humbling: the Brightonian is a Chartered Surveyor by profession, but also served on the bench as a magistrate for more than 20 years. For over 10 years in the 1990s he chaired the City of Brighton and Hove’s Regeneration Partnership, where he was instrumental in successfully using almost £50m of government money to bring in a further £100m which contributed to major changes to the culture of the City – still visible today. And if that were not enough he sits on the board of several companies and is patron or president of some 40 local organisations. By any reckoning, Field’s career has been distinguished, with many major achievements. But of all of these, it’s his current role as Her Majesty’s Lord Lieutenant for East Sussex which he most relishes.

I know very little about this illustrious title before I meet Field, but I am aware – thanks to the internet – that a Lord Lieutenant is appointed by the Sovereign on the recommendation of the Prime Minister and that Field is the current Queen’s representative for East Sussex. The emails that have passed between myself and Peter Field’s office have had a charmingly official tone to them: “The Lord Lieutenant, Mr Peter Field, would be delighted to do an interview.”

I have responded in similarly respectful terms, with the kind of formal language I last remember using to address my formidable head of house at secondary school.

It’s therefore with a hint of trepidation that I pick up the phone, and feeling a tad like Hyacinth Bucket from my favourite Nineties sitcom, Keeping Up Appearances, adopt my finest speaking voice and ask if may talk to “the Lord Lieutenant.”

This, after all, is as close as a boy from Watford has got – and indeed is ever likely to get – to high society, let alone royalty.

I need not have worried. When Peter Field comes to the phone the tone of his voice is nothing but genial, and I am immediately put at my ease.

Even so, it feels only appropriate to ask, “May I call you Peter?”

“Of course,” he laughs.

My ignorance about Field’s position becomes apparent when I refer to his role as a “job” (he politely explains that he is not paid for his official duties), and when I go on to pronounce his title as “lieutenant” rather than “left-tenant”.

“But technically, it should be ‘lieu’,” says Field, “as it is in lieu of the land occupier.” In a level voice Field explains that the position was created by Henry VIII in the middle 1500s, because at the time the country’s Sheriffs were getting a bit out of hand and the monarch – ever controlling – didn’t know what was going on in his realm. The Lord Lieutenant was responsible for reporting back to the King.

Fortunately for Field, these days the position does not involve watching over unruly citizens who are getting ideas above their station.

But the key part of the role remains: to represent the Queen in East Sussex. What exactly does this involve?

“When you start you get your own royal charter, which is called Letters Patent,” says Field. “That basically tells me what the Queen expects of me in the course of the role, but it is also governed by an Act of Parliament – the last one being in 1997.”

One of the main aspects of Field’s role is to deal with royal duties.

Most things that have a royal connection come across his desk: Queen’s awards, arranging royal visits and honours. If it has anything to do with East Sussex – and that includes the City of Brighton and Hove – Field is involved. To an outsider, arranging a royal visit seems like a daunting task, I remark. But, as Field explains, it is remarkably simple.

“Anyone can do it. You just get in touch with Lord Lieutenant’s office – which you can do via our website – and explain why you want a visit, who your organisation is and we’ll do our best to help out.

“If someone is having some sort of special anniversary or there’s a group that have been doing something for quite a while then it’s certainly possible to get a visit. There’s obviously lots of pressure on the royals, so we try to link them up with things that particularly interest them, or with charities that they strongly support.”

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society

Similarly, I am surprised to learn that nominating someone for an honour is a very simple process.

“It just means visiting the government website and downloading a form,” says Field matter-of-factly. “Anyone can nominate anyone for an honour.” What part does he play in the process?

“I may well give a comment on a nomination if it passes through the county, so yes, I am part of the system.”

Field is also responsible for what has always historically been considered one of the most glamorous aspects of high society: an opportunity to attend a garden party at Buckingham Palace. For many people – even those who are not staunch royalists – this is perhaps the most coveted invitation of them all. Field recognises the almost mythic status that an event like this holds in the public conscious.

“Yes, I have quite a good allocation for those,” he says modestly. “I can nominate people and spend quite a bit of time throughout the year trying to identify unsung heroes, who have never had the chance to attend. I also have 38 deputy Lord Lieutenants who are my eyes and ears throughout the county, so they also bring forward nominations. I consider them all and then the invites go out.”

Field is particularly strong on these “unsung heroes” and takes every opportunity he can to champion people who have done good work in the community. His own work has included helping develop major Sussex housing associations such as Brighton Housing Trust and Southdown Housing Association.

The passion in his voice is audible as he speaks of the great charity work that he has played a role in rewarding.

“That’s what I enjoy most about the role: everybody I get to meet.

I’ve been so fortunate to meet some fantastic people who have been doing amazing things for our county for many years. It’s a delight.”

Through the Lord Lieutenancy, Field has been afforded considerable access to high society. How does he think our ideas about class have changed within Sussex – and beyond?

“A garden party is, in a sense, a little bit of old England,” he muses.

“You have the military bands; the Queen or other members of The Royal Family greet you. It’s a fairly exclusive visit to Buckingham Palace.

“Once upon a time only a certain class would attend such an event. Garden parties originated from debutantes being presented to the Queen. It was the first major event of ‘the season’, when they were introduced to society. That started to change between the wars and then you had the massive changes in the 1960s, when the class barriers began to break down. Now the notion of a garden party is more about recognition of people who are doing something in society. You get a good cross-spectrum of the whole community there.”

And this, Field readily admits, is what brings him the most joy about his role: “Seeing the absolute pleasure that a garden party or a royal visit brings to people really can’t be matched.”

“A royal garden party is, in a sense, a little bit of Old England.

You have military bands. The Queen or other members of The Royal Family greet you”

Protocol tips: how do you address members of the Royal Family?

For The Queen: “Your Majesty” on the first occasion, and “Ma’am” thereafter (rhymes with “ham”). Other female members of The Royal Family who hold the title Her Royal Highness: “Your Royal Highness” on the first occasion, and then “Ma’am”. For male members of The Royal Family who hold the title His Royal Highness: “Your Royal Highness” on the first occasion and “Sir” thereafter.

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minxy mann yeager

a tricky, sticky wicket, as high heels are elegant t’s 9.47pm and I’m in the recovery and leg-lengthening, not to mention bottomposition... no, not on my side with knees THERE’S LITTLE OUR MINXY boosting and curve-enhancing; but they are best drawn up, but lying upside down on the confined to sitting down for long periods with bed with my legs perpendicular to the DOESN’T KNOW ABOUT short bursts of activity in between; a full day wall. This is not some new-fangled fancy GLAMOUR, BUT FOR THE on a Berkshire racecourse definitely does not fit way to get racy in the boudoir, dear readers PAIN OF HIGH HEELS, that particular description. Ill-fitting shoes that of a delicate disposition, but a much-needed EVEN SHE STRUGGLES TO pinch, bind, rub and squish render the wearer remedial therapy technique I have honed over FIND A SOLUTION unable to think about anything else. Then there many years. Yet again I am trying to get the is the torture of sitting down and wondering if blood back to my brain, blood that clearly left my noggin when I decided that 5-inch spike heels priced at the national one removes them, will they go back on? And the hideous “wince mince” debt of a small African country, and now hurled to the back of the as one moves painfully about; each step an agony akin to Ariel’s plight in wardrobe in disgust, would be de rigueur for Royal Ascot. More like de The Little Mermaid.

It’s not just me, we all do it. I have watched silly fillies trotting about rigor mortis as my crippled toes, fallen arches and sore soles scream at me in pain. What started out this morning as ankles are now most definitely the Ascot paddocks or at the polo in precariously high heels. Not only are cankles; I am sure the entire quantity of champagne drunk has pooled in their feet in shreds, so is the grass.

The most blissful Ascot, Henley and Goodwood was in 2006, my extremities. As I lie staring at the ceiling, willing the circulation back into my aching feet, I muse upon the tyranny of heels and the fact the most and not just because the weather was sublime. I was heavily pregnant beautiful of these instruments of torture are almost exclusively designed by and all pretensions to fashion went right out of the window. I was in men: Jimmy Choo, Louboutin and Carrie Bradshaw’s favourite Manolo my last trimester and heels were vetoed. I was as fit and healthy as a Blahnik to name but a few. These demigods of haute couture chaussures thoroughbred horse and trotted about happily from the paddock to the obviously think we have hidden superpowers that render us able to flounce rails and back to the Grandstand with a smile on my face and flatties on my feet. In fact, my ankles were markedly less swollen at the end of the about on tiptoes all day long. Wrong.

I read that in May during the Cannes Film Festival, women had been day than they had ever been pre-pregnancy.

A successful season: I actually got to see the racing, rowing, driving turned away from the red carpet for wearing flats. Quelle horreur! The festival director said that while high heels were not insisted upon, women etc., and even trod the divots without getting my heels stuck once.

I turn my head, which is the only part of me that moves freely and must be elegantly dressed with smart footwear; let me tell you, while they without pain, and contemplate the darkening sky. It is that beautiful look divine the only thing that will smart is your feet at the end of it.

I have done “the season” to a greater or lesser extent for the past 25 shade of satiny blue, darker than navy but not quite black, which would years and one would have thought longevity alone would have given me look stunning in raw silk with fuchsia or hot orange accessories... now, I the wisdom not to make the rookie mistake of style over function. It’s wonder who does shoes in that colour?

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If the shoe fits

Cooking up a storm at KingscoteVineyards

What more perfect setting than a vineyard in the heart of Sussex could you possibly imagine to find a new cookery school, a place where you come to learn from a team of professional chefs how to hone your own cooking skills? Kingscote Vineyards are proud to announce the arrival of Kitchen Academy offering: Day Courses in a variety of cuisines, Corporate Events, Chef’s Table Evenings and Family Cookery Classes. Kitchen Academy, situated in the stunning 15th century tithe

barn at the heart of the Kingscote Estate, is run by Jethro Carr who for over 13 years has been taking his cookery school around the country gaining an enviable reputation from prestigious locations like Blenheim Palace, Kew Gardens, Abergavenny Food Festival and BBC Good Food Shows. For ‘hands-on’ cookery classes for all ages and at all levels from beginners to experienced cooks looking to broaden their repertoires. Kitchem Academy at Kingscote has it all.

www.KingscoteEstate. com

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