The Chap Issue 107 by thechap

ISSUE 107

SPRING 2021

EXPAND YOUR MIND, REFINE YOUR WARDROBE

Josephine Baker “I wasn’t really naked. I simply didn’t have any clothes on. A violinist had a violin, a painter his palette. All I had was myself. I was the instrument that I must care for”

ROARING TWENTIES Are we set for another golden age of music, dancing and hedonism?

PHARAOHS AND FLAPPERS Ancient Egypt’s influence on the fashion and design of the 1920s

THE MARX BROTHERS The winning formula of the zany siblings

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ISSUE 107

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Editor: Gustav Temple

Art Director: Rachel Barker

Picture Editor: Theo Salter Circulation Manager: Susan Brennon

Sub-Editor: Romilly Clark Subscriptions Manager: Jen Rainnie

Contributing Editors: Chris Sullivan, Liam Jefferies, Alexander Larman

LIAM JEFFERIES

CHRIS SULLIVAN

ALEXANDER LARMAN

DAVID EVANS

Liam Jefferies is The Chap’s Sartorial Editor, in charge of exploring new brands, trends and rediscoveries of forgotten gentlemanly fashions. Liam’s expert knowledge covers the dark heart of Savile Row to the preppy eccentricities of Ivy Leaguers. You can follow him on Instagram @sartorialchap

Chris Sullivan is The Chap’s Contributing Editor. He founded and ran Soho’s Wag Club for two decades and is a former GQ style editor who has written for Italian Vogue, The Times, Independent and The FT. He is now Associate Lecturer at Central St Martins School of Art on ‘youth’ style cults. @cjp_sullivan

Alexander Larman is The Chap’s Literary Editor. When neither poncing nor pandering for a living, he amuses himself by writing biographies of great men (Blazing Star) and greater women (Byron’s Women). His book about Edward VIII’s abdication,The Crown in Crisis, was published last year. @alexlarman

David Evans is a former lawyer and teacher who founded popular sartorial blog Grey Fox Blog nine years ago. The blog has become very widely read by chaps all over the world, who seek advice on dressing properly and retaining an eye for style when entering the autumn of their lives. @greyfoxblog

DARCY SULLIVAN

SUNDAY SWIFT

PANDORA HARRISON

JOHN MINNS

Darcy Sullivan writes about artists, aesthetes and algorithms. His articles have appeared in The Comics Journal, The Wildean and Weird Fiction Review. He is press officer of the Oscar Wilde Society and curator of the Facebook pages ‘The Pictures of Dorian Gray’ and ‘The Arkham Hillbilly’.

Sunday Swift is The Chap’s Doctor of Dandyism. She writes on dandyism, gender, popular culture and the gothic. Her writing has appeared in academic journals such as Gothic Studies and in popular books on cult television. She is currently working on a book about dandies in television and film.

Pandora’s dark history includes curating gothic fashion for the V&A Street Style exhibition in London, and contributions to the Gothic Dark Glamour exhibition and book curated by The New York Fashion Institute of Technology. She is a self-styled neophyte occultist, currently studying the tarot and oracle cards as a means of self development.

John Minns has been a collector, buyer and seller of antiques and collectables from the age of nine, when he first immersed himself in the antique world by foraging London antique markets in the morning before school, then selling his finds to his eager school pals. His passion is still as strong today.

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DE WINTER & STURM Marie de Winter and Ferdinand Sturm have been editors-in-chief of the German 1920s magazine Le Journal of the Bohème Sauvage since 2019. They travel through time and space to report about international vintage movements and bring together birds of a feather in joint activities.

NICOLE DRYSDALE Nicole is a self-taught home cook who has been working as a freelance recipe developer and food stylist for the past 10 years. She will be sharing recipes culled from her grandmother’s recipe notebooks; she is also a member of a ladies’ cricket team and is learning to play the double bass. One day she hopes to have a pet ferret which she will call Mrs Washington. @nicolethechap

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THE CHAP MANIFESTO 1 THOU SHALT ALWAYS WEAR TWEED. No other fabric says so defiantly: I am a man of panache, savoir-faire and devil-may-care, and I will not be served Continental lager beer under any circumstances. 2 THOU SHALT NEVER NOT SMOKE. Health and Safety “executives” and jobsworth medical practitioners keep trying to convince us that smoking is bad for the lungs/heart/skin/eyebrows, but we all know that smoking a bent apple billiard full of rich Cavendish tobacco raises one’s general sense of well-being to levels unimaginable by the aforementioned spoilsports. 3 THOU SHALT ALWAYS BE COURTEOUS TO THE LADIES. A gentleman is never truly seated on an omnibus or railway carriage: he is merely keeping the seat warm for when a lady might need it. Those who take offence at being offered a seat are not really Ladies.

4 THOU SHALT NEVER, EVER, WEAR PANTALOONS DE NIMES. When you have progressed beyond fondling girls in the back seats of cinemas, you can stop wearing jeans. 5 THOU SHALT ALWAYS DOFF ONE’S HAT. Alright, so you own a couple of trilbies. Good for you - but it’s hardly going to change the world. Once you start actually lifting them off your head when greeting passers-by, then the revolution will really begin. 6 THOU SHALT NEVER FASTEN THE LOWEST BUTTON ON THY WAISTCOAT. Look, we don’t make the rules, we simply try to keep them going. This one dates back to Edward VII, sufficient reason in itself to observe it. 7 THOU SHALT ALWAYS SPEAK PROPERLY. It’s really quite simple: instead of saying “Yo, wassup?”, say “How do you do?” 8 THOU SHALT NEVER WEAR PLIMSOLLS WHEN NOT DOING SPORT. Nor even when doing sport. Which you shouldn’t be doing anyway. Except cricket. 9 THOU SHALT ALWAYS WORSHIP AT THE TROUSER PRESS. At the end of each day, your trousers should be placed in one of Mr. Corby’s magical contraptions, and by the next morning your creases will be so sharp that they will start a riot on the high street. 10 THOU SHALT CULTIVATE INTERESTING FACIAL HAIR. By interesting we mean moustaches, or beards with a moustache attached.

CONTENTS 8 1920S V 2020S

How do the Roaring Twenties compare to the current decade?

10 SARTORIAL LOCKDOWN

We asked readers to submit evidence of the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on their wardrobes

16 ASK THE CHAP

‘Wisbeach’ ponders queries from readers on matters sartorial

FEATURES 22 INTERVIEW: ANDREW WILSON

Gustav Temple meets the first biographer of Patricia Highsmith to discuss the author in the year of her centenary

32 A NNA MAY WONG

Sunday Swift on the first Chinese actress to break into Hollywood

37 B OHÈME SAUVAGE

ur German correspondents Marie de Winter and Ferdinand Sturm O rush into the nightlife of the Roaring Twenties

•

SPRING 2021

84 SARTORIAL FEATURES 44 ADJUSTABLE COSTUME

An interview with Mr. Kakuzi Kodaka, founder of the Japanese reproduction vintage menswear retailer

54 GET THE LOOK

The Roaring Twenties

58 P HARAOHS AND FLAPPERS

Egyptologists John and Colleen Darnell examine the connection between ancient Egypt and the fashion and interiors styles of the 1920s

64 J AKE’S THING

Liam Jefferies meets the made-to-order menswear specialist bringing mid-century Ivy stylings into the 21st century

68 CLARE BRADLEY

Minerva Miller discusses practical glamour and the lost art of mending with 2020’s Sewing Bee champion

76 GREY FOX COLUMN

David Evans consults two fashion experts to look at how styles of the 1920s were influenced by world events

LONGER FEATURES 84 JOSEPHINE BAKER

Chris Sullivan traces the sensational career of the girl from St Louis who became the reigning queen of 1920s Paris

94 THE MARX BROTHERS

The unique impact of four New York siblings on the early world of talkie cinema and their continuing legacy

102 W ORLD WHISKY

Gustav Temple takes a voyage around the world via five single malt whiskies that do not come from Scotland

106 COOKING FOR CHAPS

Don’t be scared of making a soufflé, says Nicole Drysdale, also providing further recipes for a perfect social occasion

Cover photo: © Rex Features/Shutterstock

ISSUE 107

110 B RIGHT YOUNG CITY

Chris Sullivan on how the end of WWI and the Spanish Flu pandemic brought about the birth of nightclub culture in 1920s London

120 E RIC RAVILIOUS’S HELICOPTER

Gustav Temple heads for the Sussex hills in search of the landscape of Eric Ravilious

REVIEWS 128 L ISA HILTON

Alexander Larman meets the author of several books about femmes fatales to find out how she deals with reviewers identifying her with her subjects

132 BOOK REVIEWS

The third volume of Rupert Everett’s memoirs, plus books on London clubs, Patricia Highsmith and an Agatha Christie homage

136 BERTRAM FIDDLE

Darcy Sullivan discovers the weird world of Seb Burnett and his most chappish game character

142 HOTELS: A USER’S GUIDE

Torquil Arbuthnot provides a handy guide to each type of hotel accommodation, from the socially dangerous to the mercifully unaffordable

148 THE CHAP TAROT

Pandora Harrison presents the fourth instalment of her series of Chap Tarot cards and how they can illuminate the curious

152 TALKING PICTURES TV

Sarah Cronin-Stanley on the television channel she launched six years ago with her father, which now reaches 3.5 million viewers a week

157 ANTIQUES

How Bakelite first came into production in the 1920s and its influence on fashion for several succeeding decades

162 CROSSWORD

With all this talk of the ‘Roaring 2020s’, how do the third decades of each century compare so far?

Spanish flu pandemic February 1918-April 1920. It didn’t actually start in Spain, but due to Spain’s neutrality in WWI their press wasn’t censored and it was first reported there.

Prohibition legislates in the US against the production, importation, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages from 1920-1933. Result: speakeasies.

Coronavirus pandemic starts spreading widely in March 2020. The true facts about the virus are reported accurately by people on social media.

Lockdown legislates against the purchase of alcoholic beverages from pubs, even as takeaways. Result: a different kind of speakeasy.

Mickey Mouse is created in Walt Disney Animation Studios in 1928. The goal of the character is to be a fun guy who gets up to amusing adventures.

Henry Ford introduces the Ford Model A in 1927 at $385, so that “no man making a good salary will be unable to own one and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces”.

Disney announces new Mickey Mouse Funhouse series in 2021: “The goal of the series is to demonstrate imaginative play for children and encourage age-appropriate themes like social and emotional lessons about friendship and creativity”.

Elon Musk introduces the Tesla Cybertruck in 2022 at $70,000, with bulletproof windows that cannot be smashed with a sledgehammer.

Oxford Bags nearly cause riots on the streets when they reach a staggering 44-inch width on the hem. Questions are asked in Parliament.

American Gangsters have stylish nicknames like Al ‘Scarface’ Capone, George ‘Bugs’ Moran, Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano, and Jack ‘Legs’ Diamond.

Albanian gangsters operating in the UK have less stylish nicknames like Albert ‘Diti’ Memia, and they don’t dress so nicely.

Skinny Jeans achieve staggeringly narrow proportions, leading to cases of infertility in young males. Questions are asked in Parliament.

Charles Lindbergh flies the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight in 1927.

Sigmund Freud’s influential paper The Ego & The Id is published in 1923.

Nobody has flown on any transatlantic flights except Tom Cruise, when he returned the US after expressing disgust at crew members not obeying social distancing rules: “We are creating thousands of jobs, you motherf—ers. I don’t ever want to see it again. Ever!”.

Madonna releases a heartfelt lockdown message in 2020 from a rose petal-filled bathtub, “It’s the great equaliser and what’s terrible about it is what’s great about it.”

Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin during the 1920s, after preventing the growth of bacteria when accidentally contaminating an experiment.

The silent movie era ends with the first talking picture released, The Jazz Singer in 1927.

AstraZeneca creates a vaccine for coronavirus after accidentally receiving £65.5 million from the government.

First silent version of a James Bond film released, No Time To Die, delayed from cinema screens three times so far since April 2020.

S artorial Lockd

SEND PHOTOS OF YOURSELF AND OTHER BUDDING CHAPS AND CHAPETTES TO CHAP@THECHAP.CO.UK FOR INCLUSION IN THE NEXT ISSUE

What are chaps whose natural propensity is to peacock about, aggravating the constabulary and receiving compliments (and having the occasional over-ripe apple hurled at them), supposed to do when they are confined to barracks, due to some ghastly influenza pandemic? Unable to be restrained, what they do is continue peacocking about within the confines of their habitations, taking endless pictures of themselves, some of which we present here.

Frank Annable, with only a teddy bear for company, takes to his favourite chair with some stirring reading matter, and reflects on the erstwhile sartorial glories he and his wife enjoyed, in this case, the Burgh Island Boxing Day Ball of 2019 (below).

Anita Stratton anticipated our feature on Anna May Wong (see page 32) by donning her bespoke dinner jacket by Mark Powell and raising a glass of fizz to the late actress. In Hector Jimenez’s (right) mind, and indeed his knickerbockers, it has always been and will always be 1927. The sunny weather is becasue Mr. Jimenez hails from a region of California that makes him, literally, ‘straight out of Compton’.

Once a dandy, always a dandy. Jonny Haart has used the hours of lockdown to shift his clothing collection from the late 19th century to the early 20th century. Steady on Jonny; at this rate you might reach the early 1940s by the early 2040s.

Robin Shrubshole carefully removed all the books by Dan Brown and Jilly Cooper from his bookshelves, and replaced them with books about concrete and Russian politics, so that he appeared intellectual. He needn’t have bothered, as his clothing and pipe do the job perfectly.

The sort of occasional British winter sunshine that Russ Nash and chum Tim Baggaley are enjoying requires a few more layers than in Compton, California. Their dress code also implies that ‘town’ and ‘country’ attire is now meaningless, since there is nobody about in either.

Mark Dyer refused to stay at home. Spotting a loophole in the government diktats, stating that chaps who own Rolls Royce Phantoms can do what they like, he took “the old bus” for a spin and threatened to drive it off a cliff if the nearest tearoom wasn’t opened instanter.

Photo: Xavier Buendia

Gustav Temple went west during lockdown. Coat: Wah Maker Waistcoat: Bobby & Dandy Vintage Hat: Cotswold Country Hats

Dandy Breton simply said (in French):

“Sod the 2020s, I’m going back to the 1920s, when there was no influenza pandemic and everything was tickety-boo.”

the Chap... By Wisbeach

A brand-new advice column, in which readers are invited to pose pertinent questions on sartorial and etiquette matters, and even those of a (steady on) romantic nature. Send your questions to wisbeach@thechap.co.uk

F. Agri (Fuglebjerg, Denmark): Personally, I have always been inclined towards plain woollen and knitted ties, but I admit to having been fairly impressed by one fellow at a bar who wore a tie with a pattern of little fox heads on it. Indeed, I might have bought a not dissimilar specimen already, were it not for the fact that I seem to recall Jeeves being averse to a tie with horseshoes on it, in one of Wodehouse’s splendid stories. I should therefore like to lay this conundrum before you, in the hope that you will have the resources available to furnish me with proper guidance. The Chap: Sir, we understand your dilemma! Non-geometric patterns present a whole world of potential fauxes pas. The devil is in the detail, and rarely is the importance of detail in such stark contrast to the object’s seeming simplicity. A general rule of thumb is: if it has a face, it has no place. We do not wish to use our neckties as a way of displaying our allegiances to cartoon characters, motor cars, or the flora and fauna of the world that we admire. It is quite simply a question of how the motif is displayed. A tie plastered with an entire

tiger would naturally bar entry to all but the most undesirable of clubs. However, a discreet design, where the animal motif, in your case a fox, has been turned into a repeat pattern, we feel is acceptable. Overall, the effect one is seeking is that the animal pattern, from a distance, resembles a geometric design that could just as easily be abstract. There are countless patterned Tootal ties that even Jeeves would have approved of. As far as we know, they never manufactured one with horseshoes on it.

...

The Chap: Sir, your question refers to the singlebreasted blazer, whereas we would aver that doublebreasted, with four buttons, is far more dashing, as HRH the Prince of Wales confirms. The quantity of sleeve buttons depends on whether you are a Grenadier Guard (one button), Coldstream Guard (two), Scots Guard (three), Irish Guard (four) or Welsh Guard (five). If you are not a Guards Officer you may wear as many cuff buttons as you wish. As to badges, these are only worn on club blazers and would be inappropriate on any other form of blazer. A pocket square, needless to say, is de rigeur. As to pantaloons, we would counsel the wearing of grey flannels with a blazer for all seasons, unless you purport to don chinos and thereby resemble an American office worker at the races.

Mr. B Flinkleston: I should very much like to purchase a pair of suede brogues, but have been warned by associates that they are deemed ‘caddish’. Is this true, and are there any particular styles of suede shoe that are less caddish than others? The Chap: Would a pair of leather brogues worn by Terry-Thomas not be caddish, sir? One’s footwear is only as caddish as one’s behaviour, so unless you are planning on cheating at Blackjack at Monte Carlo, then stealing into the room of a Moldavian princess to pilfer her diamond necklace, before breaking the heart of the receptionist, you may wear whatever style of suede shoes you wish.

...

Montague Gristle: Should a chap wash his ‘vegetables’ in a bidet?

Philip Wainwright: Regarding blazers, what’s your opinion between two-button front/three-button sleeve vs threebutton front/four button sleeve? Is the choice of trousers (grey or khaki) purely seasonal, or is there an element of formality involved? When is a blazer with a badge appropriate, or (more importantly) inappropriate or even pretentious? Ditto a pocket square? What else is important to know before slipping a blazer on?

The Chap: Mr. Gristle, this is a pertinent, though currently purely academic query, as the joys of foreign travel are not permitted (at time of writing). It must be said, however, that said joys do not include the contemplation, or indeed proper usage, of that

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The Chap: Sir, if it is any consolation, you are not alone. Well, naturally you are, but is this any excuse not to dress appropriately for the cricket? Even the remotest possibility that you may receive a ‘zoomface’ call at 0400 hours to discuss the latest score, should spur you to don at least a jacket, collar and tie (eggand-bacon colours, obviously), if not the lower region of your ensemble. You might also take comfort from the fact that some spectators at Lord’s don’t even manage to remain awake during daytime matches.

...

preposterous miniature bathtub in the hotel washing chamber. This contraption we recommend should only be used for the storage of champagne on ice – though not after the bottle has been opened, for sanitary reasons.

...

Philip West: I am currently suffering a sartorial crisis brought on by the unsocial hours of the Test Match coverage from Chennai. I invariably watch the hallowed sport with a straight back, adorned in jacket and tie at Lord’s or, if really slumming it, in blazer and flannels at the Oval. However, 0400 hours of recent days has caught me unshaven and slumped horizontally in a dressing gown in front of my broadcast receiver. Possibly you could suggest a remedy for this unforgivable lapse?

Paul Hogben: As a gentleman I am, of course, properly attired in all circumstances. I nonetheless harbour a dark secret that, ‘like the worm i’ the bud’, consumes my very soul: to wit, I own a brown jacket of Corduroy (see picture below). The only mitigation I can advance on my behalf is that I purchased it in my salad days, when I was green in judgment, and many years before coming under the influence of your estimable organ. I must confess, however, that despite scrupulous and often painful examination of my conscience, I have been unable to part with it and now put it on when in my Garden Retreat, on my frequent sojourns there to escape the daily hullabaloo of my primary residence. The Chap: Mr. Hogben, there is no shame in owning any item made of corduroy and your conscience may remain clear – especially if your brown corduroy jacket is worn ‘mid creeping moss and ivy’s darkest green’ in terms of colour range; ie with dark green trousers and a moss-green waistcoat, for instance. Corduroy, always in rustic colours, is too hot for summer and not warm enough for winter, and should therefore be a sartorial announcement to others that the season is turning. n

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Features •

Interview: Andrew Wilson (p22) 21 (p32) • Bohème Sauvage Dandizette: Anna May Wong

(p37)

Interview

A N DRE W W I L S O N Gustav Temple meets Patricia Highsmith’s first biographer, to discuss the enduring appeal of the grande dame of crime fiction in the centenary of her birth

his year, the centenary of Patricia Highsmith’s birth on 19th January, sees the release of the new series of the Ripley stories with Andrew Scott in the lead role. Yes, and there’s also a new film with Ben Affleck of Deep Water.

“She’d been working from the tradition of existentialist literature; she knew her Camus, her Sartre and her Kafka. But what she did so cleverly was take those very intellectual ideas and turn them into these extraordinarily suspenseful stories with very tight plots. And I think that’s one of the aspects of her genius”

That’s the book about Vic and his terrible unfaithful wife? Yes, and the swimming pool, the obsession with snails – it’s classic Highsmith! Today is Thanksgiving Day, which is appropriate for discussing Texan writer Patricia Highsmith. How patriotic was she, despite living in Europe for much of her life?

I don’t think she was, actually. She was very cynical about America and she felt betrayed by America in lots of ways. Obviously she was in self-exile in Switzerland. Her books were never that successful in America during her life, and towards the end of her life she didn’t even have a US publisher. She thought that America had had its day and it was falling apart, ruled by a consumerism that was bad for the soul. She always felt that European culture was more sophisticated and more attuned to nuance in terms of the human personality, which is one of the reasons she moved to Europe. She had grown up reading English and European literature and felt attuned to the existentialists. With Highsmith, she was also always driven by affairs of the heart. She was a romantic, always looking for the next big love of her life, even if that love happened to be a married woman. That’s why

“She had the sense of being born under a sickly star. While other girls of her age were reading Little Women, she was reading Karl Menninger’s The Human Mind, the textbook of psychiatric deviant behaviour. All the elements of her childhood would either make somebody mad or a great writer. Luckily Highsmith fell into the second category” 25

she came to England in the 1960s, to suffer because she’d fallen in love with a married woman. Even though she knew the relationship was destined for failure, being a romantic she was somewhat foolhardy. So that sealed her fate in her transition from America to Europe.

dismissed as a crime writer. She’d been working from the tradition of existentialist literature; she knew her Camus, her Sartre and her Kafka. But what she did so cleverly was take those very intellectual ideas and turn them into these extraordinarily suspenseful stories with very tight plots. And I think that’s one of the aspects of her genius.

You published Beautiful Shadow in 2003, eight years after the death of Highsmith. When did the process begin? She died in 1995 and I started writing it in 1998. I had become interested because someone had given me a copy of The Talented Mr. Ripley, and I was completely blown away by it. Then I read more of her books and became intrigued by her. I noticed that in all the interviews with her I could find, she never said anything of any note; she was kind of hiding in plain sight. I thought it was very interesting the contrast between how little she would give away and then these incredibly dark books, seeping with evil and psychopathy, exploring the dark heart of humanity and issues of morality and guilt. To write the synopsis I went to Switzerland to see her archive and discovered I was the first person to see it outside the curatorial staff. There were dozens and dozens of private diaries and journals, detailing her sex life, her relationships, the inspiration for her books. It was an incredible treasure trove. I also discovered lots of letters from really high profile biographers, but they had applied too soon after her death and the curators were still sorting through all the material. It took them over three years just to get these documents in some kind of order. So I came along at just the right time.

Is there something addictive and compulsive about reading Highsmith? I found that at times I couldn’t read anyone else, but then suddenly got overwhelmed with her darkness and had to take a break. Which ones stand out for you in the canon? Some are much better than others. The one still considered to be quite weak is A Game For the Living, which is not one of my favourites. There’s a question mark over her final novel, Small g, a Summer Idyll, published posthumously, which some people think should never have been published. I think it’s rather quaint and charming in its own way. While I was reading Small g, a Summer Idyll, I wondered whether she it was really about Ellen Hill, one of Highsmith’s lovers whom you wrote a lot about in your book. Yes, that’s interesting. Ellen Hill was such an important but toxic figure in Patricia’s life. Lots of people accuse Highsmith of being misogynistic, but the way that Ellen treated her was so heinous and controlling. Yet when she tried to commit suicide, Patricia just left her at her bedside and went partying. That could almost be seen to be a kind of murder. She saw her swallow the pills and then left her to die. She was quite shocked when she returned to Manhattan and found Ellen still alive. And she ended up using that very scene in her novel The Blunderer (1954). It’s a quite unpleasant read of themes of evil and guilt. The idea of people rehearsing the notion of murder in their heads, and whether that’s as bad as the real thing, which comes from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Rehearsing this fantasy is such a dominating theme of Highsmith’s fiction.

Is Highsmith still generally regarded as a crime or suspense writer, or has she managed to shake that off and be regarded as a writer of literary fiction? I think our view of suspense and crime fiction has changed considerably since when she was writing. In her time there was this snobbish view of crime fiction, but thankfully that has changed. Denise Mina, a crime novelist, has been shortlisted for the Costa Novel Awards. I think if Highsmith was writing today her books would be considered for the major prizes. She was really angry at being

In your book you quote a friend of Highsmith’s as saying that if she hadn’t

PATRICIA HIGHSMITH READING LIST It isn’t a good idea simply to pluck one of Highsmith’s books at random, as one might with Agatha Christie or PG Wodehouse, and expect it to be typical. Some guidance is required, and Gustav Temple offers the suggested reading list for Patricia Highsmith. 1. T he Talented Mr. Ripley We’ve all seen Messrs Law and Damon frolicking around in Italy with Miss Paltrow in Anthony Minghella’s excellent adaptation, but the book itself is still the best Highsmith to start with. There is a reason for it being the most adapted of her novels, and that is the main character of Tom Ripley, about whom she went on to pen four further novels, all of which are superb. But you have to start with Talented…, because it is in this tale that Ripley’s true character is formed, and in which his talents for mimicry and forgery, not to mention his fearless chutzpah, are all developed when given the opportunity. Highsmith herself so identified with the murderous sociopath that she often signed photographs with his name rather than her own. 2. S trangers on a Train Highsmith’s cri de coeur, and an extremely accomplished work for a first novel, setting out all the themes she would return to again and again in her fiction: the seemingly perfect crime – two strangers agree to swap murders – gradually falling apart when one of the murders goes wrong, and one of the murderers turns out to be far more mentally unstable than the other; the notion of everyone having their ‘shadow’ following them around, an amoral version of themselves who can lead them into darker territory if allowed; the battle of conscience between convincing oneself that a terrible act is justifiable and the sense of guilt that gradually arrives afterwards. 3. T his Sweet Sickness A great one to start with if you prefer your mind not to be cluttered with cinematic images. It isn’t surprising that it was only ever made into a forgotten French adaptation with Gerard Depardieu, as the protagonist lacks the panache and appeal of Ripley. He lives a double life, one in a seedy boarding house in a small town, the other in a lavish country house that he is preparing for the arrival of the love of his life – who knows nothing of this. In fact, she is happily engaged to another fellow and does not take kindly to his gradually more obsessive overtures. In today’s society he would have a restraining order slapped on him immediately, but in 1950s America the word ‘stalker’ wasn’t in common currency. When prying eyes start to peer at his double life, the body count starts to pile up, while he clings on to his fantasy as if nothing can stand in its way. 4. T he Tremor of Forgery Set in Tunisia, this is the only of her novels in which Highsmith lays bare her frankly ‘difficult’ political views. But the main event of the story is described with typical sangfroid, and is an excellent example of Highsmith’s ability to make her characters stumble into the most awful life decisions and make it seem as though they have no choice but to turn an initially comfortable setup into a complete mess. It is also a good example of her talent for creating minor characters who are as convincing as the protagonists, and showing that some casual friendships are actually a seething cauldron of resentment and hatred never truly expressed. 5. D eep Water Vic is unhappily married to Melinda, who carries on with a string of other chaps right under his nose, while Vic takes solace in his living collection of snails. So far, so Highsmith (she was an avid snail-fancier herself). Classic Highsmith often portrays domestic hell in seemingly stable suburbia, as if it were ridiculous for any married couple to be happy together. Vic graduates from snide remarks from the sofa, behind his perpetual G&T, to rather nastier solutions to his wife’s infidelity. There is a film adaptation coming soon from Hollywood, though it will be interesting to see how such an unpalatable portrait of Middle America is rendered.

written her books, she would probably have committed a murder. Her notebooks are full of fantasies and dreams of killing people, much more than what you’d expect any other crime novelist to write down. They’re not those kinds of plot-driven notes at all. These seem to come from a deep, almost psychopathic point of view. I do subscribe to the view that if she hadn’t written books, she would either have committed a crime or become mentally ill. So I think her books saved her, providing an outlet for this dark imagination.

“Minghella changed the ending of his film, to give Ripley some kind of conscience. We see him weeping inside that cabin on the ship, whereas at the end of the first Ripley book, Tom Ripley is jubilant that he’s got away with murder, as is the reader! It will be really interesting to see whether the new production embraces the amorality of Ripley”

Do you think it all started with her mother, with whom she had quite a strained relationship? Her mother telling Patricia that she’d tried to abort her by drinking turpentine wasn’t a very good start. Then when she finally met her real father, Bernard,

when she was 17, there was some kind of suggestive groping and he showed her pornographic pictures. Before that she’d written down countless murderous fantasies about her stepfather Stanley. All of this caused a sense of dissociation in her from very early on. She saw herself from the outside, which is obviously a sign of something being very wrong. She had the sense of being born under a sickly star. While other girls of her age were reading Little Women, she was reading Karl Menninger’s The Human Mind, the textbook of psychiatric deviant behaviour. All the elements of her childhood would either make somebody mad or a great writer. Luckily Highsmith fell into the second category.

themselves following them around, developed later in the Ripley novels, seems to be part of her appeal to a certain type of reader. What she very cleverly does is intensify the basic human emotions that all of us feel at some point: passion, jealousy and rage, which can sometimes lead to at least the thought of committing murder. You can open any newspaper any day and you’ll see a story of some terrible incident involving these emotions. This is the dark truth about human nature. And it’s not just people who are remote; it’s every one of us who is capable of doing this. Highsmith is very adept at exploring the triggers that could lead to a state of violence. One of the most unsettling aspects of reading her is that she kind of normalises violence. She’s got this way of enveloping the reader in this very dark world yet making it seem incredibly normal. She uses this

The idea that she explored most fully in her first book, Strangers on a Train, of everyone having a shadow, a darker version of

very flat prose style, where she’ll describe in detail the cracking of an egg in exactly the same way as she will describe somebody getting their head bashed in.

end of the first Ripley book, Tom Ripley is jubilant that he’s got away with murder, as is the reader! It will be really interesting to see whether the new production embraces the amorality of Ripley. My guess is that they will, particularly because our culture, especially on TV, has changed and there’s an awful lot more dark material. We don’t necessarily need a series to end on a happy note any longer.

There is to be a new television adaptation of all the Ripley novels by Showtime, starting with The Talented Mr. Ripley. Why do you think there are so few film productions of any other Highsmith novels? That’s true in the English language, though there have been quite a few European adaptations of her novels. But I think Anthony Minghella’s Ripley completely changed everything. Before that, filmmakers were too nervous of the storylines; in fact Minghella changed the ending of his film, to give Ripley some kind of conscience. We see him weeping inside that cabin on the ship, whereas at the

Do you think Andrew Scott will make a talented Ripley? I think he will. There is something about him that is associated with the transgressive, and I don’t mean anything to do with his sexuality, but purely in the way he acts and the parts he’s played. I thought his portrayal of Moriarty in Sherlock was terrifying. I saw him on the stage in a Noel Coward play and he is able to be utterly charming one minute and then

terrifyingly dangerous the next, which is a great combination for Ripley. The challenge will be developing the character. Anyone who’s read all five Ripley novels will know that the Ripley from the first one is so different to that in books 3, 4 and 5. It’s almost like a completely different character, which in some ways is explained by the fact that there are nearly 40 years between publication of the first and the last Ripley novels.

life for himself, contrasted with the banality of his ordinary day-to-day life. And I think that the stalking of the character of Annabelle that goes to a pathological level would have a huge resonance today. There was a French 1977 production of it with Gerard Depardieu called Tell Her I Love Her. If someone wanted to start reading the Patricia Highsmith canon from scratch, where would you advise them to begin? Either start with Strangers on a Train or the Talented Mr. Ripley. I think from either of those you’ll get a sense of how you’re going to get on with her as a writer. Some people simply read one of her books then throw it down in disgust. You need a certain kind of sensibility to enjoy them. If you’re looking for some kind of comforting, easy read, then they’re probably not for you. n

“On the face of it, Highsmith was deeply unlikeable, nasty, mean, cruel and narcissistic,” says Joanna Murray-Smith, the Australian playwright of Switzerland, which premiered in Sydney in 2014, “but I kind of fell in love with her, too.” Did you develop an opinion of Highsmith anything like that while writing Beautiful Shadow? I interviewed so many people and heard how badly she’d behaved to some of them. She was clearly a very difficult personality but I did develop some empathy towards her. I don’t think you want to read 500 pages on a subject that the biographer hates. I found it very interesting to try and find the roots of that bitterness and to try and explain some of that in context. You can’t have these brilliant books written by a sweet old lady in a cottage. When I was at university in the eighties, there was this sense of literary biographies being a no-go area for literary study; there was seen as being no connection between the writer’s life and the text, but hopefully I’ve proved that, at least in Highstmith’s case, there is a strong connection. If she hadn’t had this toxic childhood and these difficult relationships, we wouldn’t have these extraordinary books.

Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith is published by Bloomsbury, available as an audio book and still available in print Five Strangers by Andrew Wilson, under the pseudonym E.V. Adamson, is published by HarperCollins in May

We both expressed a liking for This Sweet Sickness (1960). What is it you like so much about that novel? I think it’s my favourite of them all. It’s the one that encapsulates Highsmith at her most essential; it’s the kind of über-Highsmith read, if you like. It’s got one of her major themes, about people being trapped in their fantasies, and the protagonist’s obsessive fashioning of a completely separate alter ego and an alternative parallel, more sophisticated

Dandizette

Anna May Wong Sunday Swift on the first Chinese actress to break into Hollywood, and the problems she then faced being accepted on either side of the Pacific Ocean

he 1920s saw an explosion of cinematic dandies. And no wonder: in silent films, one had to project a character and a personality effectively without being able to speak. Dandies like Josephine Baker, Hattie McDaniel, Louise Brooks and Zelda Fitzgerald have remained in the public memory even a hundred years later, because they created such unforgettable personas. But one name is regretfully absent when people consider the glamorous dandizettes of the era: Anna May Wong. The first Chinese-American to make it big in Hollywood, she did it entirely on her own and against all the odds. Wong Liu Tsong was born on 3rd January 1905 in Los Angeles to second-generation Chinese-American parents. In her formative years, Hollywood was only just developing as the hub of the entertainment industry. Until then, New York was the place to be. Suddenly surrounded by the glitz and glitter, Wong started touring the film sets and begging for roles when she was just nine years old. Without her parent’s knowledge, she was occasionally successful, too. At 11 years old, she’d already chosen a stage name: Anna May Wong. She skived off school

“Asian women were cast in films in only two roles: the innocent ‘Lotus Blossom’ who loses her white lover to another woman, or the manipulative femme fatale ‘Dragon Lady.’ “Why is it that the screen Chinese is always the villain?” Wong lamented. “And so crude a villain – murderous, treacherous, a snake in the grass! We are not like that. How could we be, with a civilization that is so many times older than the West?” 33

was “too Chinese” ever to be really famous. Her family, especially her father, agreed. But they all underestimated just how ambitious Wong was to carve a path for herself as a modern woman. Roland Barthes said, “The dandy would conceive his outfit exactly like a modern artist might conceive a composition using available materials.” In the television programme Hollywood, actress Michelle Krusiec played a fictionalised version of Anna May Wong. “She was a very modern actress,” Krusiec said. “Very natural, very fluid – she was not melodramatic.” Rebecca Johnson argues that because Wong “began as a star of the silent screen, the clothes she wore became nothing less than a tool of visual expression.” Trying to avoid a stereotypical fetishisation of Chinese culture, Wong started with a look and a persona not unlike Louise Brooks and Josephine Baker: the playful, frivolous, rebellious, camp flapper. In 1922, Wong got the lead in her first big film, The Toll of the Seas, a silent drama loosely based on the classic tragedy Madama Butterfly. This was groundbreaking not only for her part, but it was also the very first colour film shot in Hollywood. The New York Times praised her: “She has a difficult role, a role that is botched nine times out of ten, but hers is the tenth performance. Completely

“Nothing upset her more than being turned down for the film The Good Earth (1937) about a family in China. The reason? She was ‘too Chinese’ to play a Chinese woman! The role went to an Austrian woman, Luise Rainer in ‘yellow-face’, something that is still a problem in Hollywood almost a hundred years later” frequently to queue up for casting calls in studios, and begged for roles from every director she met. She started as a background character in random films; the directors were charmed by her and, little by little, she grew closer and closer to the camera lens with bigger parts. Casting directors let her slip into the background because they believed she

unconscious of the camera, with a fine sense of proportion and remarkable pantomimic accuracy... She should be seen again and often on the screen.” She had excellent reviews, both on her abilities as an actress as well as her beauty. Time Magazine declared, “Tall, pretty and sinuously graceful, Wong had a smoldering effect on people, especially men; they could be driven to a purple passion trying to describe her beauty.” Although she found herself famous and working, Wong realised she was being typecast into roles with very negative stereotypes not just for women, but also for Asians. She didn’t want to be a professional Chinese American, she wanted to be a professional actress. The few Asian women who managed to get cast in films at all were only given two opposite roles: the innocent ‘Lotus Blossom’, who loses the white lover to another woman, or the manipulative femme fatale ‘Dragon Lady’. “Why is it that the screen Chinese is always the villain?” Wong lamented. “And so crude a villain – murderous, treacherous, a snake in the grass! We are not like that. How could we be, with a civilization that is so many times older than the West?” Like Josephine Baker, Wong was fetishised but not accepted because of her ethnicity, and the solution seemed to be to travel further afield. Like

Baker landing in France, Wong found comfort in Germany, where she had intimate relationships with Marlene Dietrich, Cecil Cunningham and Leni Riefenstahl. Europe gave her projects America would never have allowed, such as romantic scenes with Caucasian actors. She taught herself German and French, travelling all over the continent to work. She even starred with Sir Laurence Olivier in The Chalk Circle. One film, Flame of Love, was filmed three different times, in German, French and English – each time a different leading man playing against Wong as the star. She even played a surgeon, something the US censors would never have permitted. She was no longer the Lotus Blossom or the Dragon lady. Still, critics tended to focus on her ethnicity, and very often attacked her for her AmericanChinese accent. Determined to silence them and transition from silent to talkies, she paid a fortune for elocution lessons, developing a lower voice with a touch of Received Pronunciation. This became a signature for her 1930s screen persona. She had the name, and now she had the voice. Academic Hanying Wang argues that “Chinese women wearing Western clothes signal a cultural transgression that Western men seem unable or unwilling to tolerate.” Because of this, the flapper

image didn’t work as well for Wong as it did for Louise Brooks. Anyway, Wong’s circles were now more intellectual and cultured; she needed a new aesthetic to match this more mature version of herself. She had a new voice and a new demeanour; one not dissimilar to Dietrich – cool, masculine, haughty and detached. Madam Wellington Koo introduced Wong to a silk shop, Laou Kai Fook’s. Wong adored his designs, and gave him so much work that she quipped, “Mrs Koo had to find herself another tailor.” These simple Chinese gowns were slightly high on the sides to reveal lace of pleated pantalettes, and inventions of her own combining the old with the new in Chinese fashions. This self-reinvention worked: in 1934, the Mayfair Mannequin Society of New York voted her the “world’s best dressed woman” and in 1938 Look Magazine named her the “world’s most beautiful Chinese girl.” Brilliant costumers like Travis Bandon (who designed for Dietrich) also emphasised her Chinese heritage in film costumes. One of the more famous designs was a qipao-style dress in Limehouse Blues (1934) featuring two dragons in gold sequin on either side of the dress, the tail wrapping around the train. This outfit is so iconic it now stands in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Wong’s new, more self-confident dandy persona was complete. Wong was certainly very happy with this new look, explaining that “I was no longer restless.” A contract with Paramount Studios lured Wong away from Europe with the promise of leading roles, but they still didn’t know what to do with her. She had hoped her new identity and success in Europe would give her agency and respect in America, but this was not the case. She spent the rest of the 1930s shuttling back and forth between Europe and the US, being promised that things would change, only to suffer disappointment that they didn’t. In 1959, Wong said, “When I die, my epitaph should be:

‘I died a thousand deaths.’ That was the story of my film career. Most of the time I played in mystery and intrigue stories. They didn’t know what to do with me at the end, so they killed me off.” One standout film during this period was Shanghai Express (1932), co-starring with Dietrich. The chemistry between them was undeniable and, given Dietrich’s reputation for seducing the world’s most beautiful women, rumours started to swirl about a scandalous affair between them. This hadn’t been a problem in Europe, but America used it against her. But nothing upset Wong more than being turned down for the film The Good Earth (1937) about a family in China. The reason? She was ‘too Chinese’ to play a Chinese woman. The role went to an Austrian woman, Luise Rainer in yellow-face, something that is still a problem in Hollywood almost a hundred years later. Wong was devastated, especially since Rainer won an Oscar for the role. If Wong was too Chinese for Hollywood, perhaps she’d find acceptance in China? She started planning a trip with her family to China. Ever the self-promoter, Anna used this as an excuse to turn it into a sort of press junket and made sure a news reel team accompanied her everywhere. The trip was filmed and later broadcast on television in the 50s It would be an understatement to say that the trip didn’t go as planned. People in China didn’t realise how ground-breaking it was that Wong had made it to stardom. Like Wong herself, they felt the characters for whom she had become famous were too stereotypical and negative. Wong said, “It’s a pretty sad situation to be rejected by the Chinese because I am too American, because I’ve already been rejected, pigeon-holed and fetishised because I am too Chinese.” Wong was a modern woman held back by the old-fashioned mindset of those around her. Not unlike that beautiful Travis Bandon dress with a dragon on either side of her, Wong was always in the middle of two entities, belonging to neither, a stranger to both. But this very quality is precisely what made Wong’s dandyism so unique: she subscribed to no binary, belonged to no-one but herself. When actress Lucy Liu received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2019, the only other Asian American who had done so before her was Anna May Wong in 1960, a year before her death. In Liu’s speech, she mentioned Wong as an inspiration, saying, “People talk about my mainstream successes as ground-breaking for an Asian, but Asians have been making movies for a long time.” n

Nightclubs

Time Travellers WELCOME! Our German correspondents Marie de Winter and Ferdinand Sturm sample the nightlife of the Roaring Twenties at Bohème Sauvage www.boheme-sauvage.com

hether in Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg, Zurich or Vienna, for nearly 15 years the Bohème Sauvage is by far the most important event for all those who want to celebrate the stylish and wild zeitgeist of the 1920s. Whether enjoying the extravagant stage programme or the barnstorming record entertainment, having a stimulating chat at the absinthe bar or in obscure company at the poker table, with a jaunty step of tango, charleston or swing on the dance floor: the glamourous lounge circle knows how to party as if there were no tomorrow! Exclusively for The Chap, we take a look behind the scenes of the extremely successful Bohème Sauvage and meet the hostess and

“From midnight, when the absinthe bar opened, the salon became a wild party, and in the end everyone was lying on the floor smooching. Else is a demimondaine. She is wicked and has many affairs. Debauchery and excess have interested me ever since I can remember” 37

The Grande Dame of Berlin nightlife: Else Edelstahl

“Strictly speaking, it started back in 2004,” she reflects. “I had come to Berlin to study, and of course I threw myself into the nightlife, but quickly I got bored of those cool scene parties with their just-got-out-of-bed dress code. So I started hosting little 'salons' in my flat.” She covered her walls with fabric wallpapers, put up big mirrors and refused to tolerate visitors in the typical sloppy Berlin look. In the ‘Salon Edelstahl’, ladies in flapper dresses and gentlemen in dinner jackets attended lectures, literary readings and spiritualist sessions. “From midnight on, the absinthe bar opened, the salon became a wild party, and in the end everyone was lying on the floor smooching,” the former salonière remembers with a smile and adds (in the third person): “Else is a demimondaine. She is wicked and has many affairs. Debauchery and excess, that has interested me ever since I can remember.” Where would Else be better off with this affinity than in the Roaring Twenties? But how did the private longing for wild parties in glamorous companionship give rise to the company Edelstahl Events & Productions? “Yes, I was surprised by that myself too!” she laughs. “I never aimed for founding such a company. But due to the success of my idea, I virtually had no other choice.” Nevertheless she implemented it with discipline

“The Bohème Sauvage is a glittering party in honour of the heroes of past nights, who are remembered by the heroes of today, a party for all those who celebrate every night as if it were the last, for whom no drink is too much and no dress too chic. Because less is never more and too much is far from enough!” grande dame of Berlin nightlife: Else Edelstahl. “Grande Dame? I hope I’m still 40 years away from that! I prefer to be called Fräulein,” she laughs. Well, after all, since 2006 we can count over 150 Bohème Sauvage events, with nearly 1000 guests and a large number of Kabarett evenings and burlesque festivals that she has put on. So, how did it all begin, Fräulein Edelstahl?

Revellers aboard the yacht Fitzgerald, en route to the bathing lakes of Berlin

and business sense – as her pseudonym suggests (Edelstahl is the German term for stainless steel). The locations of the events in Germany, Austria and Switzerland are no less stylish than the guests. To name but a few: the historic Wartesaal of Cologne’s central station, right next to the famous Cologne Cathedral; Berlin’s oldest ballroom or the famous Wintergarten Varieté, where Josephine Baker caused a furore back in 1929. In these interiors, whose walls are like a step back in time, “not just any kind of party” is celebrated, as Else Edelstahl emphasises. “The Bohème Sauvage is a glittering party in honour of the heroes of past nights, who are remembered by the heroes of today, a party for all those who celebrate every night as if it were the last, for whom no drink is too much and no dress too chic. Because less is never more and too much is far from enough!” Once again, Fräulein ‘Stainless Steel’ laughs and her eyes light up. She is an extremely successful businesswoman but above all a charming conversationalist who inspires with her positive charisma. The basis of all her activities is her honest enthusiasm for the era of the 1920s, and she never misses the opportunity to be personally present and approachable for her guests at all her events. “The Bohème Sauvage is a homage to the nightlife of the twenties. We all are about

authenticity, but not in the sense of historical correctness, but of originality,” she explains. Guests should not see themselves as tourists, should not disguise themselves, but should choose their wardrobe according to the occasion. After all, we are at a glamourous event! Space for fantasy is given, an eye or two will be turned blind, but occasionally admission is refused if a guest’s appearance or demeanour is too unsuitable. “You should live and love this era, from the inside out!” the hostess declares passionately. That’s why there are short dance lessons as a prelude to each evening, so that even the most dance-shy among the guests can at least manage simple steps to the music. It is performed by bands dedicated to the wild hot jazz of the 20s and the swing of the early 30s, sometimes puristical, sometimes freely interpreted, but always at a high level. A chansonnier presents hit songs and anecdotes, the chips at the roulette table are bought with Reichsmarks. Later at night, provocative interludes to the main show by burlesque dancers cause oohs and wows in the audience. While typing these lines, the authors are getting into a melancholic mood, remembering wistfully these lively ball nights lasting until the wee hours of the morning. Regrettably the Unpleasantness also has a lock on Germany. Nightly partying and

Metropolis and Bertold Brecht wrote the Threepenny Opera. Numerous innovations of technical, artistic and...” Else mischievously lowers her gaze, “...of an erotic nature, which we take for granted today, were developed and tried for the first time. Not to mention the political and social upheavals.” For those who prefer to read about these many ground-breaking upheavals and events rather than listen to them, we recommend Le Journal, the Magazin für mondäne Unterhaltung, published annually on New Year’s Eve. The publisher is of course – Else Edelstahl. Editor-in-chief Marie de Winter is currently dedicated to another, even bigger task. On the occasion of the 15th anniversary next May, she will celebrate its brilliant history in her book Rendezvous mit der Bohème Sauvage. Else Edelstahl, Équipe and guests from Germany, Austria and Switzerland will chat about these extraordinary years and reveal some personal secrets. In the summer of 2021, it will leave the printing press to stylishly refine countless coffee tables. But for now, let’s toast to future times when the inconvenience will have evaporated and the ballroom doors will be stormed by passionate, hungry, yearning time travellers! n

dancing closely with beautiful strangers is out of the question in these times. So what to do? Out into the open air with the glamorous circle and aboard the elegant motor yacht Fitzgerald! On a hot Sunday afternoon last summer, a group of stylishy dressed time travellers cruised along the river Spree, leaving the heart of Berlin towards its largest bathing lake. And guess who devised and implemented this idea? Else Edelstahl! And she did not rest on her laurels in any other way either. If you can’t celebrate the 20s wildly, you can at least report on them on all channels and bring them closer to the audience. Else’s mission is reflected in her latest project, the podcast Goldstaub (Golden Dust). Under the motto GLAMOUR, GOLD, DUST AND DIRT. DECADENCE, POVERTY, ASPHALT AND LIGHT, she and historian Arne Krasting developed the first podcast entirely dedicated to the 1920s. As lyricists and moderaters, they take us back to the time of the Weimar Republic, presenting it in all its facets, in all its madness and confusion. “Not only the nightlife was exciting back then, but it was also an extremely exciting decade overall: Berlin became the third largest city of the world and was one of the biggest centres of modernity, Marlene Dietrich performed in a movie for the very first time, Fritz Lang shot

www.wintersturm.jimdofree.com

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SARTORIAL

Interview and Photo Shoot: Adjustable Costume (p44) Get The Look: 1920s Chap (p54) • Pharaohs and Flappers (p58) Jake’s Thing (p64) • Clare Bradley (p68) • Grey Fox Column (p76)

• •

Interview

ADJUSTABLE COSTUME Using frightfully clever technological gewgaws, we conducted an interview with Mr. Kazuki Kodaka (who does not speak English), founder of Japanese menswear brand Adjustable Costume

Main photographs: Ryotaro Horiuchi

“Men have wanted to have the spirit of the samurai in Japan for a long time. I think it’s somewhat similar to the way British gentlemen think. Respect for the other person and cowardly means are not allowed”

hen did you found your brand Adjustable Costume and what was the starting point? Adjustable Costume started in April 2011. That year was the year when there was a big earthquake and tsunami on March 11th, in the Tohoku region of Japan. I remember starting in a very uneasy situation, and that’s why I felt I had to do what I wanted to do.

You seem to produce huge volumes of shirts, jackets, suits, coats, boots and other clothing items. How do you manage to produce so much? Do you have a huge workshop with hundreds of staff? We produce various items with the co-operation of many fabric stores, ancillary stores and garment factories. I do all the work, such as design production, production work, public relations, accounting, etc, by myself. There is no staff except my wife and son, and one cat. The number of production is extremely small; we do not produce in large quantities. I’m not running a big business.

What is your professional background – did you have any training in fashion design or tailoring? I went to Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo for three years. There I studied design, sewing, and business. After graduating from a vocational school, I was employed by designer brand ficce uomo/ yoshiyuki konishi, then subssequently I worked for three American casual brands: The Real McCoy’s Japan, Pherrow’s, and Dry Bones. I had a lot of experience with these companies before I became independent!

What defines your choices of each new item you make? Everything I make is what I want to wear now. It is not ‘sell now’ and with that you can never go wrong. I will obediently create the items I want to wear, regardless of the times I imagine and what the world wants.

Mr. Kazuki Kodaka

Model: Yoshio Suyama

products. Last year, all the participants wore tweed clothes at a party to enjoy ‘wild game meat’, sponsored by Old Hat Tokyo.

Sometimes you refer to a specific film or historical character for some of your products. What are the biggest sources of inspiration for you? Many of my textbooks are movies. Movies make us feel the world that we can’t really feel in modern times. I hope I can express the feelings of the pioneers who lived in more turbulent times. I think that the past and the present are not separate things, but small things like chains, connected one by one.

How many people do you see around the streets of Tokyo dressed in vintage style? There are very few used clothing styles of 20s, 30s and 40s in Japan. I think there are more denim and Ivy styles. There are very few gentleman styles, such as wearing a suit, tie and leather shoes. I want to expand this world as much as possible.

When you create a new product, do you only make it in limited runs, or does it become part of your whole permanent collection? Some items will be discontinued in one season, and there is also a permanent collection expansion. All items have a consistent image that goes well with any age group.

In England it isn’t only about the clothes; people embrace the attitudes of the English gentleman, but with a sense of fun and even satire. Is this true of our Japanese counterparts? Of course, that idea also applies to Japan. Men have wanted to have the spirit of the samurai in Japan for a long time. I think it’s somewhat similar to the way British gentlemen think. Respect for the other person and cowardly means are not allowed.

Is there a big demand for quality vintageinspired clothing in Japan? There is a demand for high quality used clothing in Japan, but good quality products are no longer in circulation. Until about 20 years ago, many were sold at second-hand clothing stores. There are no good things at the moment, due to soaring prices in the used clothing market and transactions between collectors. However, I think that the number of people who are interested in used clothing is increasing.

Are there any specific clubs or societies in Tokyo where people interested in the vintage style congregate? The cafe and bar run by Mr. Wakabayashi, Cafe Streamline in Daikanyama, is a famous gathering place in Tokyo. This is a place that overseas vintage fans will definitely visit. Their Facebook page is called CafeStreamline

Does Tokyo have its own scene of people who dress fabulously and enthuse about vintage clothing? Although it is a very small community, it is scattered in each region. With the recent expansion of the sns [social networking service] environment, it has become possible for small gatherings to interact. However, due to the influence of Covid-19, the events and meetings where we met directly have died with the coronavirus. This is sad.

This year is your tenth anniversary – congratulations! How will you be celebrating this enormous achievement and how do you envisage the next ten years for your company? This year will be the 10th anniversary, but nothing has changed since the establishment of the company. With the cooperation of many colleagues and the support of my family, I have been able to continue. Thank you! I’m happy that I can express more of my ideas, but I’m not interested in big businesses. Making a lot and selling a lot is not the way I want. Therefore, there are no directly managed stores, and we will focus on mail order and wholesale. I hope many vintage fans will still be wearing my clothing 10 years from now. n

Do you have any connection with Old Hat Tokyo? Old Hat London was a kind of hub for people with a passion for vintage Savile Row garments, and I wonder whether Old Hat Tokyo has a similar role in the city. I have been friends with the owner of Old Hat (Mr. Ishida) in Harajuku, Tokyo. They have lent me materials for reproduction. He provided materials such as button boots and a British military dispatch motorcycle coat. The store also sells my branded

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Sartorial

Get The Look

ROARING TWENTIES Digby Fairfax delves into various retail outlets to assemble a wardrobe suitable for a 1920s chap

FOOTWEAR The ideal twenties style is a button-up boot constructed to resemble boots with spats. These are only made by a few bootmakers and are therefore rather pricy. Those from Adjustable Costume (adjustablecostume. jp) will set you back 96,580 Yen, or around £650. Stacy Adams in the US (stacyadams. com) makes a more basic version, the Madison Spectator Spat Cap Toe Boot for $135. A cheaper way to achieve the look is with a pair of plain black ankle boots and a pair of spats from Darcy Clothing (darcyclothing.com) for £65. The other footwear option is a pair of corespondent shoes, available from Shipton & Heneage for £199.

£65.00

£199.00

£395.00

£124.00

SHIRT Separate collars are de rigeur for the 1920s, as the attached collar was in its infancy. Darcy Clothing make every style imaginable, as well as the collarless shirts to go with them, while Simon James Cathcart remove the fiddly insertion of collar studs with their Goji and Regatta Blue Club Collar Shirt at £124, made from 100% cotton sateen. A spearpoint collar is another choice, with many colours available, including marine blue and navy striped ribbed cotton with mother-of-pearl buttons, from Some Like it Holy at £59.

JACKET The three-piece suit was the most common suiting style of the 1920s, and Simon James Cathcart have nailed it with their Charcoal Check Eden Jacket (£395), available with matching trousers and waistcoat. Peaked lapels on a single-breasted jacket seals the deal for the 1920s look. This jacket would also work for those who prefer to don floppy Oxford Bags (see next page).

£99.00

BOATING BLAZER For a more relaxed, outdoorsy look, head to vintage suppliers such as Savvy Row (savvyrow.co.uk) for an authentic 1920s boating blazer. The new version, in the club colours of your choosing, is available from Walters of Oxford, with prices varying from £200 to £350. The budget option, though veering more towards a mod look, comes from Atom Retro (atomretro.com) at only £99, tailored by Madcap England. £199.00 Paired with the right accessories, this will cut the mustard for a 1920s style, as long as you avoid the matching trousers at all costs.

WAISTCOAT

£149.00

The 1920s look requires a doublebreasted waistcoat, to set it apart from the single-breasted ones that arrived later, when wartime rationing limited fabric usage. Some Like it Holy make a rather dashing pinstriped wool example for £149, with the eight silver buttons forming a V at the front. The lining is authentic vintage cotton, with a blue silk back with adjustable buckle. Also available in grey French check and tweed versions in a multitude of colours.

£139.00

HEADWEAR The 1920s was a flamboyant decade and there £32.95 is no room for subtlety when it comes to headwear. The straw boater is the ideal titfer, angled for maximum rakishness. Olney is the brand most respected by chaps, and their black-banded boater is available from classic-caps.co.uk at £49. Cotswold Country Hats (cotswoldcountryhats.com) offer one with a navy and burgundy band at £32.95, while those who prefer a higher crown may head over to Village Hats (hatsandcaps.co.uk) for a striped boater at £37. Flat caps and baker boy caps have a strong place in a 1920s wardrobe, and the Edward Cap (£100) by Stanley Biggs (stanleybiggs.co.uk) provides the perfect combination in British tweed with a blend of rustic colours. Sussex Tweed’s collaboration with Geoff Stocker has yielded a splendid red linen cap with a fabulous silk lining at £80. £80.00

TROUSERS Those chasing the authentic 1920s silhouette will need a pair of Oxford Bags, which in the 1920s reached staggering hem widths of 44 inches. Some Like it Holy (somelikeitholy.com) provides a more modest 11-inch width at the hem with a two-inch turn up, in a cream flannel at £139. They have a double-pleated front, three-inch waistband with six shell buttons and three-inch belt loops and two adjustable side buckles. Due to the high cut, you have to supply a measurement taken two inches above your normal waist size. They are also available in pale blue, striped and checked designs, as well as in heavier fabrics.

Egyptology

PHARAOHS AND FLAPPERS Egyptologists John & Colleen Darnell examine the connection between ancient Egypt and the fashion and interiors styles of the 1920s

Photos of John and Colleen at the Armour-Stiner Octagon House by Rose Callahan

leopatra VII Philopator, the last scion of an ultimately bloody and incestuous dynasty that began with Alexander the Great’s invasion of Egypt, committed suicide in 30 BCE, so ancient historians claimed, with the bite of an asp. Yet prior to her death she was both an astute and capable queen – her Egyptian Horus Name was ‘Great One, Lady of Perfection, She who is Effective of Council’ – and a woman who truly knew how to party. Were she to be transported two millennia into the future, she would have felt at home among the strong-willed, boundary destroying, flamboyant flappers of the 1920s, and perhaps have enjoyed dancing along to her eponymous 1917 tune Cleopatra Had a Jazz Band. Five years before Howard Carter made the sensational discovery of the treasure-filled tomb of Tutankhamun, Cleopatra’s ‘Jazz Band’ in her castle on the Nile was winning over Mark Anthony with

“The treasures of Tutankhamun’s tomb – “gold, everywhere the glint of gold”—defied description, while the New York Times reported: “There are no figures that can estimate it. There are few minds that can conceive it.” But that didn’t stop everyone from trying to capitalize on it” her syncopated harmony. But such wild imaginings of the early jazz age may not have happened, were it not for another outsized historical character: Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1798, Napoleon led a

French force to oust the Mamlukes from Egypt, nominally in support of the Turkish sultan (whom, needless to say, Bonaparte did not fully inform); remarkably, he had the great foresight to bring along an army of savants to record the remarkable monuments they were sure to encounter. The French may have won the Battle of the Pyramids, but at the Battle of the Nile just eleven days later, British Rear-Admiral Horatio Nelson’s squadron blew the French literally out of the water (only four of their 17 ships escaped), thereby inadvertently guaranteeing that the Rosetta Stone would grace the British Museum rather than the Louvre. Napoleon promptly returned to France, but his army fought on, with the savants pursuing the work of recording the temples, tombs and wealth of objects. Napoleon may have lost the war, but the publication of the monumental Description de l’Égypte granted him the status of honorary founder of Egyptology as a scientific field of inquiry. The monumental Description de l’Égypte and the travel volumes of Vivant Denon, one of the savants, became the design manuals of the Egyptian craze that subsequently struck France and England, and quickly crossed the Atlantic.

a time of new outdoor spaces and new political winds, Egypt is older than all, avoiding the associations then attached to Neo-Classical design. The modern appealed to the most ancient, providing an anchor for what might otherwise have been disturbing changes. The coming of the Victorian age diluted the strength of ancient Egyptian motifs, subsumed in the exuberance of exoticism and the plenitude of revival styles during the second half of the nineteenth century. Yet in furniture and fashion, glimmers of ancient Egypt survive, such as the restored music room in the Armour-Stiner Octagon House (Irvington, New York), the opening of the Suez Canal helping such Egyptian Revival styles bridge the gap between the Napoleonic Era’s fascination with Egypt and the new exuberance that would burst forth in the 1910s and 1920s. As spectacular archaeological discoveries were made in Egypt at the end of the nineteenth century and during the first two decades of the twentieth century, ladies of the Edwardian era might add a sphinx broach here or a scarab ornament there, while gentlemen could sport pharaoh’s head cuff-links (like John’s pair, from the fine Salem, Massachusetts establishment of Diel Marcus & Co.). A sign that ancient Egypt was again on the ascendant was the opening of Grauman’s Egyptian Theater in Los Angeles in the fall of 1922 – just before Howard Carter announced the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb. The treasures of the tomb – “gold, everywhere the glint of gold” – defied description, the headline of a February 18, 1923 article in the New York Times claimed the treasures were “Beyond Reckoning,” while the story reported: “There are no figures that can estimate it. There are few minds that can conceive it.” But that didn’t stop everyone from trying to capitalize on it. By March 1923, the pharaoh had his own song, Old King Tut, with its own delightful chronological syncopation: “Cleopatra sat upon his knee, that’s where she sat!” (actually, an eighteen-year-old Tutankhamun died a thousand years before the queen). Jewellery and dress designers turned the full-page photographs in newspapers into everything from Egyptianizing kitsch to Cartier pieces sparkling with diamonds. From inexpensive cookie tins and ‘Tut Lemons’ to perfume bottles, compact cases, and cigarettes (lots of cigarettes), ancient Egypt was all the rage.

“In furniture and fashion, glimmers of ancient Egypt survive, such as the restored music room in the Armour-Stiner Octagon House. By 1923 the pharaoh had his own song, ‘Old King Tut’, with is own delightful chronological syncopation” The richness of Egyptian Revival art and architecture during the first half of the 19th century gives us remarkable structures, from the American capitol’s Washington Monument to the Egyptian House in Penzance and the Temple Mill in Leeds. The end of the first half of the nineteenth century, in particular, sees the application of rather successful Egyptian architectural styles to new public spaces, such as cemeteries and zoos – in

To some extent, cosmetics were harbingers of the trend. Palmolive company ads touted Egyptian origins for their products, linking new personal care items to ancient Egypt. This tendency to sell concoctions on the basis of an ‘already the ancient Egyptians …’ pitch is well known from the Graeco-Roman world, and even some ancient Egyptian medical recipes claim an even more ancient origin for themselves.

“Flappers were quick to adopt the Nile style, and the bobbed haircuts and dropped waist dresses were at once ancient and modern. Trends in coiffure and clothing design already in process suddenly found Egyptian templates. Wild and ‘boyish’ flappers would not appear so terrifying if they were the aesthetic descendants of the ancient Egyptians” Flappers were quick to adopt the Nile style, and the bobbed haircuts and dropped waist dresses were at once ancient and modern. Trends in coiffure and clothing design already in process suddenly found Egyptian templates. Wild and ‘boyish’ flappers would not appear so terrifying if they were seen as the aesthetic descendants of the ancient Egyptians. Some designs are remarkably successful, while others rely on vague associations of colour – gold and lapis blue, for instance. Most designs that employ hieroglyphs do so with only a vague nod to the actual signs and texts themselves, but some pieces (like the green silk and velvet cape or the orange fringe dress ornament (right) that Colleen wears in the Armour-Stiner House) successfully use images that the ancient Egyptians themselves would recognize. At the same time, more modern Egyptian tulle bi telli – metallic augmented net-like fabric – was adopted into the global fashion repertoire. Flappers and pharaohs certainly made good bedfellows. n

Sartorial

JAKE’S THING Liam Jefferies meets the made-to-order menswear specialist bringing mid-century Ivy stylings into the 21st century www.jakesldn.com

“I’ve used small companies at every stage. I’ve always had that proper ethos in mind, little guys supporting little guys. I think more and more people are making choices about where they’re getting their clothes from and who they’re giving their money to”

ucked away in an East London studio, a menswear revival is taking place. This is the home of Jake’s, a made-to-order company owned and operated by Jake Wigham. After a three-year bout of freelance work for an assortment of Savile Row tailors, Jake set about creating a menswear brand informed by the jazz and Ivy League styles of the 1950s and 60s. Jake’s first shirt model was an Ivy loyalist’s interpretation of the classic button-down collar Oxford shirt, with a traditional six-button front of genuine mother-of-pearl, a five-pleat cuff and a three-finger soft collar roll. His latest is a faithful replica of the iconic Green Chambray shirt worn by Miles Davis on the cover of his seminal album Milestones. Jake sat down for a natter with Liam Jefferies in his Newham workshop.

went on to do a Foundation Art and Design course in Carlisle, so I followed suit, and then applied to the London College of Fashion. My personal statement was like a John Cooper Clarke style poem, laying out my likes and dislikes about fashion and culture in general, while trying to get a bit of my personality across.

Tell us how you started off. I left school at 16 and started working with my dad in a cloth mill in Carlisle, where they mill the red and white cotton for Saudi Arabian headscarves. That was my first introduction to work, but I was literally hoovering dust out of looms and stuff like that; it wasn’t glamorous, believe me. My brother

That’s one way to stand out. I did end up finishing my degree, and I did focus a

lot on Ivy and Suedehead stuff, always making shirts. Part of the course involved setting up a brand, so I started We Sell Soul and got a roll of labels. I sold a few, not loads, because I didn’t have a lot of time. When I graduated, I was looking for an apprenticeship in tailoring, which are scarce at the best of times, and the only work I could find was in my hometown with Steed bespoke tailors, where I started off doing hand finishing. Their trouser maker was getting on quite a bit, so I only did a little under a year of apprenticeship before I started working on real jobs. After two years on an apprentice wage I kind of spat the dummy out. So I set myself up as self-employed for a couple of months up north, and then I made the move down to London to move in with my girlfriend and that’s when I got this workshop in West Silvertown.

I knocked out all of Steed’s trouser jobs and then I made a madras face mask for myself out of some cloth I had, and sent a pic to my mate Nick at John Simons. I ended up cutting and making over 2,000 madras face masks, which kept me going financially through lockdown. I managed to get a little bit of funding through Newham Council and set up my business, bought my first 100 metres of cloth, got my patterns made, got them all graded and then I started sampling. The ball rolled so quickly that within two months I’d launched a brand. I actually contracted coronavirus just before I was planning to launch, so it did push it back about two weeks. How important is a sense of community in the world of slow fashion? It’s massive! The people getting in touch with me are saying, “You’re the type of person I want to be getting my clothes from.” Everything from grading the pattern, getting the buttons, getting the buttonholes done, getting the cloth, getting the labels made – I’ve used small companies at every stage. I’ve always had that proper ethos in mind, little guys supporting little guys. I think more and

How did that go? For about a year I worked freelance as a trouser maker from that workshop, for a few companies on and off the Row, but it was all hand-sewn bespoke trousers. Then Covid hit so I ended up moving back up north into my parents’ house, which was a short walk from the Steed workshop.

more people are making choices about where they’re getting their clothes from and who they’re giving their money to. You could buy a shirt off another company and you don’t know where it’s been made, you don know who’s making it, you don’t know where the money is going. Some people approach a new clothing brand with a bit of trepidation, where they want someone else to have tried it out first, and seeing the people whose opinion you trust, and that’s where Instagram helps a lot.

until I got more into Ivy that I thought, “This is where I want to be, this is what I want to do.” You watch French New Wave films and think ‘Wow, look at these guys in their double-breasted Macs!’ Watching Le Samouraï or Bande à part, the style is there on the screen. Alain Delon has contributed much to men’s style over the years. Have you seen Purple Noon? I watched that for the first time the other day, and the outfit he’s wearing in the first scene! A Brooks Brothers shirt that is absolutely huge, really full, and a pair of white 5-pockets, sockless with loafers and he looks amazing, but also really sinister like his character.

Where does the Ivy influence come in? At the time of my course, I was really into northern soul and reggae, going out most weekends to allnighters, buying records and a lot of late 60s early 70s vintage clothing. Then gradually as I got older I got more into Ivy sort of stuff, which is a much more adult way of dressing; people aren’t going to second glance it unless they know the references you’re making. Mod never really appeared to me; it was always a bit too highbrow for me. The reason skinhead appealed is because it is so neat and clean, but it also wasn’t really aspirational. It wasn’t

Another evident influence is undoubtedly mid-century jazz? Five years ago I bought The Cover Art of Blue Note Records by Graham Marsh and I started going through it looking at all these sleeves, listening to the records and that’s when I found the sound I really like. I love Hank Mobley, Lee Morgan, Donald Byrd, all that hard-bop era jazz totally appeals to me, when I get really busy working, the

sense of urgency in it really gets your heart racing and makes you work faster. I’ve never at any point in my life been into electronic music, it’s never appealed to me. I like the sort of rough element to things in life; I don’t like to be too refined. That’s the timeless appeal of Ivy gear, too. If you wear a battered shirt and loafers and chinos, it never really looks too dressed up, it’s stuff you can just chuck on. You put a button down shirt through the wash and, as long as you hang it up properly, you don’t need to iron it. I want people to come to me in ten years and say they’re still wearing their Oxford shirt, even when the collar is wearing down and the cuffs are fraying.

really durable and they can be washed properly and worn properly. What does the future hold for Jake’s? My end plan is that I want to have people come to me like if you went to Brooks Brothers in the 50s and 60s. “Right, I need two white oxfords, a blue oxford, a yellow, a pink, three repp ties in colours that’ll work with all of the shirts, a navy blue blazer, some khakis and a flannel suit.” I’m only trained to make shirts and trousers. I can make an unstructured blazer, but that’s as far as it goes without me doing another three years of training. I just have to find the right balance, where I’m selling enough shirts to keep my head above water but also expanding my skills and knowledge. I am on the hunt for madras at the minute, but it’d have to be the right one, proper hand loomed and hard wearing. So if it gets to the Summer and you don’t see any madras in my line, it’s because I’ve not found the one I think is good enough quality to have my brand on. n

What do you see as wrong with modern menswear? The quality has totally gone out the window, it’s all about units. I’m totally the antithesis of that; I want people seriously to think, “Do I need this shirt, how often will I wear it and how long will it last?” I have a lot of people asking when the trousers and jackets are going to be available, because they’ve seen pictures of me in them, but I’m not going to release those until I know for a fact that they’re

@sartorialchap

Sewing

CLARE BRADLEY: GREAT BRITISH SEWING BEE CHAMPION 2020 Minerva Miller discusses practical glamour and the lost art of mending with 2020’s Sewing Bee Champion Clare Bradley @clare.bradders

hile watching the first episode of the 2020 series of The Great British Sewing Bee last April, one of the contestants immediately stood out: wearing a vintage inspired dress, she expressed her enjoyment of ‘vintage events’ at which there was ‘lots of gin’. This was Clare Bradley from Winchester, whose accurate sewing skills, consistency and creativity eventually led her to win the competition. Clare’s plucky cheerfulness and steely determination (think a combination of Celia Johnson and Jane Marple wielding a sewing machine) matched her forties-inspired wardrobe.

Her success is even more remarkable when set against the demands of her profession. Clare is a Respiratory Hospital Consultant and spent much of last year at the sharp end of the Covid-19 pandemic. Apart from your sewing skills, the thing that really marked you out on screen was your vintage aesthetic, not only in your appearance but the clothes you obviously enjoy making – what drew you to it? On a very basic level, clothing from the 1940s is just the right shape for my figure. I make them, they fit

me, and I don’t have to ‘footle’ about with them. Secondly, I like the way they combine practicality without looking scruffy. They look smart, but feminine, not shapeless – so today I am wearing my dungarees; I can hike and cycle in them, but they still look, I think, stylish – I don’t look as if I am wearing men’s clothing. Vintage inspired dress can prompt odd reactions. I’ve been on a bus in London with people in fetish wear with brandings and piercings; I’m wearing a tea dress; saddle shoes and red lipstick and I am the one who is stared at! [laughs]: In Hampshire if I get stared at it’s probably because there is no-one else ‘slightly odd looking’ around. I think people also think it takes a vast amount of effort, but most of the time it doesn’t. It does sometimes fascinate people; they say ‘Are you in a film?’ and you reply, ‘Well, no!’ – it’s as if they think you have escaped from a film set and decided to run around town for the afternoon for the sake of it. I think the only problem you do get with people is when they associate your clothes with old-fashioned ideas, that they feel you have this ‘little housewifey’ attitude to the world.

Challenge’ where you limited yourself to the same amount of clothing and garments that you could buy with a year’s worth of ration coupons. Are you still doing that? Yup, I’m in my fourth year actually. I did it initially because it is more like a game and less like an obligation. The longer I continue, the more I realise how important thinking about consumption is. Others had already done a similar thing, though I did feel I had to adapt it slightly; in the original system, a big giant pair of 1940s knickers was two coupons; I decided my more modest modern pair of knickers would use just the one! It does stop me from just shopping and thinking ‘Oooh pretty fabrics’ and ending up with loads of stuff I am not going to wear. But it does also allow for impulse buys; if you see something beautiful you can buy it.

What do you think when you encounter that attitude? I think the first thing I’d say is that they are just clothes. The second thing I’d say is that the 20th century was one of the most visionary times for thinking in human history; while there was racism and sexism, there were also women getting the vote and into the workplace, and it was also at least the beginning of moves towards anti-racism, and it was also a revolutionary period: I think the style of ‘Rosie the Riveter’ symbolises a bid for freedom. I’ve heard you describe your style during our conversation as ‘Vintoid’? Well, I don’t wear genuinely vintage clothing, it’s ‘vintoid’ or ‘vintage-ish’ and although I prefer forties style, I wear all kinds of clothes, including occasionally turning up to work in technical hiking boots!

Is there one item that epitomises vintage glamour for you? Oh, that’s a tough one… I think the headscarf or turban, because they don’t get worn as widely as they once were, and once you put one on, they immediately transport you back to that era. Instant glamour – but they also hide a multitude of hair

One thing that cannot be accused of being anachronistic is a concern about sustainability. You took on a World War II ‘Ration

sins and bad hair days, so they are great on that count too.

after the Covid-19 national lockdown had started, and was just the kind of comforting, cosy, familiar reassuring television that the times required. Yes, it was fortuitous, and completely accidental that it caught the national mood.

One of the trickiest challenges on Sewing Bee is the unseen pattern challenge, in fact the whole experience of sewing on television in front of the viewing millions seems daunting – what made you apply? I thought I might as well try and apply, otherwise I might always wonder if I would have done well; at least I could always say I’d had a go.

In fact, many were inspired by the Sewing Bee to take up sewing during lockdown – what is your advice for someone who has just started? I improved my skills by ignoring instructions that told me a pattern was for a certain kind of sewer: ‘beginner’ or ‘intermediate’, and to try things I had no experience of. I’d make them slowly and look up things I didn’t understand on the Internet. Nine times out of ten it works, maybe not perfectly, but you think ‘Gosh, I’ve managed to make this complicated thing.’ So often you see instructions for beginner sewers that say ‘Make a wrap skirt’ – but I don’t want a wrap skirt, and I wouldn’t wear one if I did make it. Start by making something you want, and if it works it will make you want to make more, whether that is a pair of wide legged trousers or a T-shirt.

Is the application process difficult? There are a few steps; they interview you, look at garments you’ve made, they watch you sewing so they know that what you showed them is not something your granny made. They check that you are fine sewing with a camera right in your face: so the people who are chosen are not necessarily the best technical sewers – but they are people who can sew, talk and perform under pressure. Everyone does seems fairly calm for most of the show. You, for instance, would simply exclaim “Crikey!” or call the sewing machine “You beast!” if things started to go wrong. It’s all good editing! I actually swear like a trooper, and there was a lot of ‘non-swearing swearing’ on screen but I have had to train myself out of doing it at work because of my profession. My patients are often awake or very lightly sedated; you can’t go ‘Oh ****!’ when there is a pool of blood on the floor. You really can’t curse when you are carrying out a procedure, it terrifies the patients – you just have to go, ‘Oh well’. The only problem is that the ‘special calm voice’ I have developed might be a bit too calm; recently, during a minor emergency, I asked a nurse to go and fetch a colleague for me, and they fiddled about until I had to say, “Can you go and fetch them NOW please!”

Sewing is something that we would traditionally learn from our parents; is there a risk of these skills being lost? I don’t think so, people need clothes so the need for professional sewing remains, and there will always be creative people who want to make things. What I think really does risk being lost is the thing that used to be the ‘drudgery’ part of womens’ sewing: mending. It’s not glamorous and you don’t get a fancy garment at the end of it. No-one is going to celebrate you for a beautifully darned sock, and I think that is becoming a lost skill; perhaps one in ten people know how to darn a sock. And that brings us back to the ecological idea, of ‘make do and mend’, that this is what we should be doing… especially with quality materials and heritage clothing. But it should be everyone learning how to do it, rather than having that taint of ‘womens’ drudgery’ about it.

Intriguingly, a great number of the Sewing Bee’s audience wouldn’t dream of grappling with a sewing machine, yet the viewing figures speak for themselves. It’s like The Great British Bake Off: most of its viewers don’t bake, they watch it for the competition, the interaction and the humour.

One of the best things about Sewing Bee is the diversity of the contestants, including

Sewing Bee came onto our screens shortly

men, but men are still a minority among home sewers. Yes, I suspect about 95% of home sewers remain women. I think one reason is that in our culture there isn’t the same emphasis on personal style for men, so if you are just going to put on a pair of jeans and a shirt, why would you want to bother to make a fancy pair of jeans yourself ? The male readers of this periodical are very interested in their clothes. But often if you suggest they make their own, the response is that men’s clothing is ‘more difficult’. Is this a good excuse? I think it is some excuse; some men’s tailoring, particularly outerwear, is technically difficult, but you can learn it. I made a pair of shoes last year; you can go on a course – it just takes more commitment. I’ve been told by a tailor that things like shirts, scarves and waistcoats are within the capabilities of an advanced beginner or intermediate home sewer. Is there a lack of vintage inspired sewing patterns for men? There may be. A male 1940s clothing enthusiast asked me about waistcoat patterns for men, I didn’t really know of any, so I suggested he knit one! You once won the ‘Most Dashing Dame’ at the Tweed Run in Edwardian garb and are working on a Victorian outfit at the moment; tell us about that. The day after the Sewing Bee finished, we were all having a deserved lie-in and texting each other. Liz Grylls, Sewing Bee quarter-finalist, found an advert for a ‘Victorian Ball’. She had Punk/Goth leanings and we talked about an outfit I had made for the Chap Olympiad a while back. We just thought, let’s do it, let’s make a full-on complete Victorian outfit and go! I bought three tickets there and then. Unfortunately, due to the Covid-19 pandemic it was cancelled, which is just as well because so far, I have only managed to make my underwear, including a corset, so I would have been very underdressed. What are you sewing at the moment? I just finished a frilly Victorian petticoat this morning; I do need to do some mending, then I thought I’d make some pants out of old t-shirts! n

Style Column

GREY FOX COLUMN David Evans consults two fashion experts to look at how styles of the 1920s were influenced by world events, and what impact our own events could have on the future of fashion

’m of an age where my grandparents were in the prime of their lives during the 1920s. They saw huge changes during their lifetimes; born when very few people had seen a motorcar or aeroplane, they lived to see men walk on the Moon. The 1920s saw a revolution in every aspect of their lives, as the world emerged from the horrors of war (and the Spanish flu pandemic of course) and witnessed changing social attitudes, advances in science and engineering, a flowering of the arts and economic growth followed by collapse. Changes in mens’s and women’s fashions in particular reflected more liberal attitudes and tolerance and, to fit with the Roaring Twenties theme of this issue, I thought I’d explore whether the 2020s will see a similar explosion of transformative energy. I’ve asked two experts to help me with this. Eric Musgrave has written about fashion for over forty years and many of you will have read his book Sharp Suits, a celebration of the history of the men’s

“Of most interest to menswear watchers is, of course, Edward, Prince of Wales, whose innovations are well known – he was seen with turn-ups on his trousers from about 1922. He championed Fair Isle knitwear over waistcoats. He liked plus fours, which dropped to mid-calf rather than the usual just-belowthe-knee length” suit. Caroline Young has written extensively about Coco Chanel (full list below).

purpose, with vital war work carried out in austere, practical clothing. The suffragette movement, leading to women over 30 being given the right to vote in Britain, also made an impact on women’s independence, which was reflected in their clothing. New technology, such as the gramophone, the cinema and the automobile, opened up a new world of dating and leisure time, and so dress codes relaxed for these activities. While the economy boomed, young people still bore the scars from the war, where a generation of young men had been wiped out. As a result, they planned to enjoy every moment, and their glamorous, frivolous fashions reflected their need to let off steam.”

In painting the background to the decade, Eric Musgrave told me that: “The popular impression of The Roaring Twenties being awash with Bright Young Things is a lazy interpretation of a fascinating decade of immense social change in the United Kingdom. The First World War marked a watershed, after which so many things were different. The year 1918 saw almost universal suffrage; social change was reflected in legislation which established the dole system. In 1921 the Education Act raised the school leaving age to 14. State primary education was now free for all children and started at age five. The four years of war had resulted in more than 700,000 dead for the UK alone. Whether because of the disdain at the feelings that the war had seen “lions led by donkeys”, the influence and power of the British aristocracy and landed gentry began steeply to decline from the 1920s. Many large country houses were closed and demolished. Thousands of people left domestic service for betterpaid jobs in the towns and cities. Unemployment was a problem – hence the General Strike of 1926. Many of the accepted roles, hierarchies and social mores of pre-1914 changed during the 1920s.”

These changes had a significant effect on fashions – for women in particular, as Young explains: “The twenties was a decade when women had unprecedented choices in how they chose to live, and fashions reflected these new freedoms. The flapper was the pleasure-seeking modern girl who flattened down their chests, and wore straight, sheer chemise dresses with drop-waists and kneelength hems. It was a complete switch from the fashions before the First World War, when women were cinched into an ‘S’ shape, created through restrictive padding and corsetry. The women of the twenties shocked their elders by smoking, drinking cocktails, and dancing the latest energetic

Caroline Young outlines the changes for women: “A spirit of emancipation was triggered by the First World War, when women were given a new

dances that came out of the clubs of Harlem, and their clothing was designed to suit these activities. When twenty years before, a glimpse of ankle was considered shocking; women were now exposing their arms, their backs and their knees. They also cut their hair short, into a bobbed style, which was considered one of the more provocative style statements a woman could make, and was a declaration of intent. Fashion in this decade also incorporated Art Deco influences, defined by a streamlined silhouette with geometric designs and eastern-inspired motifs, partly as a reflection on the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922. There was also the groundbreaking emergence of trousers, which were still considered quite scandalous for women to wear. But trailblazers like Coco Chanel, who championed white satin pyjamas, and the Bright Young Things, chose them for cutting-edge evening wear, or to wear on the beach.”

Royal Navy man, was a stickler for correctness and convention, unlike his father Edward VII, who had been a fashion innovator. George V championed, for example, a return to wearing frock coats instead of lounge suits. This conservative attitude was not shared by most of his clutch of sons. Of most interest to menswear watchers is, of course, Edward, Prince of Wales, born 1894 and known as David to the royals. His innovations are well known – he was seen with turn-ups on his trousers from about 1922. He championed Fair Isle knitwear rather than waistcoats. He liked plus fours, which dropped to mid-calf rather than the usual just-below-the-knee length. He enraged his father by turning up at Royal Ascot in a grey suit and top hat, rather than the usual black.” In a parallel to today, Musgrave identifies the influence of the celebrity in setting fashion trends: “The Prince [of Wales] noted that the increased use of photography made him more influential than ever. The new rivals to the traditional royals and aristos as style leaders were American movie stars like Lionel Barrymore and Douglas Fairbanks Senior, plus elegant British theatricals such as Jack Buchanan and Noel Coward.

Men’s fashion didn’t see such a revolutionary change, but Musgrave identifies one royal who began to undermine outdated style norms: “In terms of men’s fashions, the 1920s saw a relaxation of the old rules. Yet the king, an ex-

body. Chanel also popularised a trend for costume jewellery, where her strings of pearls worn with her Little Black Dress, introduced in 1926, practically defined the look of the decade. Now we have entered the 2020s, I was intrigued to see if either writer saw any parallels in terms of fashions. For the 2020s, Musgrave predicts: “The continuing relaxation of traditional dress rules, which can only be accelerated by the likelihood of more working from home. Leisurewear, athleisure, casualwear – call it what you will – can only be more prevalent. Fashion trends will continue to be affected by today’s celebrities, but the pace of change will be faster and the length of influence will often be shorter. Socially, I don’t see a lot of parallels between the 1920s and the 2020s, apart from the fact we may be heading for a very bad recession.” Caroline Young, on the other hand, sees some ‘real similarities’: “These two eras are both marked by devastation – the First World War and the Spanish Flu marked the start of the 1920s, and obviously the first years of this new decade have been punctured by the pandemic and huge political changes. Because of this, I think we’ll experience a similar fashion aesthetic. We’re already seeing a surge in leisurewear as people spend more time at home, but I think once we’re allowed out again to socialise and go to parties, I can envision a push for glitz and glamour.” Whatever will happen in this decade, I suspect that classic styles will remain recognisable to the time traveller from the 1920s. I can recall my grandfather, born in 1901, as a very dapper man who smoked cigarettes in a Bakelite holder and wore beautifully tailored suits with suede brogues – a style which I strive to emulate today. In womenswear, Chanel’s ‘little black dress’ has inspired millions of copies. Style is often passed down through the generations and the DNA of classic style changes little, even over the course of a century. n

Interestingly, Fred Astaire made his first professional appearance in London in 1923 and met the Prince of Wales after the show. He was greatly impressed by the young royal’s style and had his white dress waistcoat – backless and not showing below the coat – copied.” The rise of the high street store saw a democratisation of fashion and Musgrave points out that: “The steady spread across the nation’s high street of multiple tailors like Montague Burton and Hepworths meant that the fashions of the Prince of Wales, and stylistic changes like the appearance of wide Oxford bags at Oxford University in 1925, were soon available for the masses.” For women, the champions of style were the designers, although, as with menswear, celebrities influenced tastes: “Coco Chanel was one of the most groundbreaking designers of the decade, as she really captured the flapper aesthetic, which was also known as the garconne look in France. During the First World War, Chanel was creating low-waisted dresses in the chemise style, and by 1918 she was designing jersey shift dresses which moved with the

FURTHER READING Eric Musgrave: Sharp Suits Caroline Young: Living With Coco Chanel; Kitted Out: Style and Youth Culture in the Second World War; Hitchcock’s Heroines; Style Tribes, Tartan and Tweed; and Roman Holiday: The Secret Life of Hollywood in Rome

LONGER FEATURES •

Josephine Baker (p84) • Marx Brothers (p94) • Single Malt Whisky (p102) • Cooking (p106) London Night Clubs (p110) • Eric Ravilious (p120)

Biography

Josephine Baker Chris Sullivan traces the sensational career of the dirt poor girl from St Louis who went on to become the reigning queen of 1920s Paris and an international star

he sun was shining as best it could in Paris on 15th April, 1975. 20,000 people lined the streets to watch Joséphine Baker’s funeral procession. Having already been awarded the Croix de Guerre, the Medal of the Resistance and named a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur for her part in the Resistance, she was honoured with a 21gun salute, making her the first American woman to be buried in France with military honours. Joséphine Baker was a French icon, the poster girl for Les Années Folles or Roaring Twenties, who symbolised everything that was fine and admirable about her adopted country’s greatest decade. She was born Freda Josephine McDonald, in the red-light district of St. Louis on 3rd June 1906.

“Gifts arrived every hour – jewellery, flowers, shoes, hats, dresses, all of which Joséphine left in a big pile on the floor underneath a sleeping pig called Albert. When a friend suggested she hang them up, she said, ‘Oh no, they’re going to take them away and bring new ones tomorrow!’”

Her mother Carrie was a cleaner, while her father was ‘unknown’ but rumoured to have been white. The light-skinned Josephine found herself ostracised within her own family. Beaten by her binge-drinking mother, she did all the housework, looked after her younger siblings, was made to scour the trash for food at daybreak, and worked part time as a maid from the age of eight. In 1916 she witnessed the St Louis race riots, which saw 250 black people killed (many lynched) and 6,000 made homeless after white males burned down every black household they could raise a match to. Baker first had sex aged 12, dropped out of school hardly able to read or write, and the following year married Willie Wells, a 26-year-old steel worker. The marriage broke up after she aborted his child without telling him, and in the ensuing fracas broke a beer bottle over his head. She took a job in a night club and supplemented her meagre earnings by ‘going off ’ with customers and, while busking on street corners, was spotted by a local act, The Jones’s, and joined their troupe as a singer and dancer. Bull dyke corncob pipe-smoking singer Clara Smith gave her singing

“She danced the Charleston in double time, writhed like a cat, walked on all fours and waddled like a goose. The Chicago Herald described her as ‘a comic little chorus girl whose every gaze was syncopation, whose merest movement was a blues’” lessons in exchange for sex and found her a job on stage with her act, The Dixie Steppers. A few weeks in she was elevated to the chorus line and toured the tough Southern circuit, sleeping in train stations. At 15 she married Billy Baker, only to go off again on tour with the Shuffle Along Review. At one point she broke from her prescribed dance routine, crossed her eyes, kicked up her legs and threw caution to the wind. The crowd loved it but the irritable stage manager didn’t – and neither

did her ‘high yeller’ colleagues, who immediately excluded her, while chiding her for being “too goddamned black”. By the next year, 1923, Baker was earning $75 a week (a year’s rent for her mother) in the black review Banville. Dressed in short gingham frock with her lips whitened and her skin darkened, she danced the Charleston in double time, writhed like a cat, walked on all fours and waddled like a goose. The Chicago Herald described her as ‘a comic little chorus girl whose every gaze was syncopation, whose merest movement was a blues’. Her next show, Chocolate Dandies went bust, owing her $1235 and she moved to Harlem, the Mecca of the Afro American diaspora; fuelled by the new Jazz Age and Prohibition, it was jumping more than it ever had. The Volstead Act had served only to make folk drink more and Harlem was where the law was most flouted, with speakeasies and music venues behind every other door. Many of the partygoers who came to Harlem for the erotic cabaret shows comprising ‘hot chocolates’ and ‘tantalising tans’, or to dip their wicks in one of the myriad brothels, were white

members of the adventurous New York social set. They danced in the The Cotton Club or The Plantation Club, which both had black jazz bands (Duke Ellington in the former and Cab Calloway in the latter) but had a whites-only door policy. Baker got a job at The Plantation, where, even though billed as ‘the highest paid chorus girl in vaudeville’ was still obliged to oblige white men and women (sometimes together) who came to Harlem looking for some sexe exotique. Seeing her future as a dancing whore was seriously disillusioning her. Baker was in the right place at the right time when Caroline Dudley, the wife of a diplomat living in Paris, came looking for black entertainers that would, ‘amaze, flabbergast and dumbfound the public’ for the forthcoming production, La Revue Nègre at Theatre Champs Elysees. She saw Baker, ‘who stood out like an exclamation point’ and knew she had found her star. Baker, however, was extremely wary of this little woman coming to her dressing room and speaking of art – a concept that had never entered the performer’s mind – and refused the offer. Dudley upped the offer to $250 a week and returned night after night, but it

wasn’t until the older lady arrived in a magnificent Chinese-style coat embroidered in gold thread that Baker asked for it as a gift, and Dudley went home sans insulation. Joséphine arrived in Paris on 22nd September 1925, her timing perfect. The City of Light, in the shadow of WWI and the Spanish Flu (which together had claimed in excess of 100 million worldwide) upped the ante and bounced back in the Roaring Twenties with Les Annee Folles, with jazz as its anthem. Many black American soldiers simply stayed on after the war. At home, black folk were still being lynched, but here they were not only welcome but also celebrated. Montmartre was nicknamed ‘Harlem on Seine’ and a community of young itinerant male musicians created La Tumulte Noir. “You walk down the hill and hear jazz musicians practising from every window,” said trumpeter Sidney Bechet, who had come to France on the same ship as Baker, “or hanging out shooting the breeze, and I’d be bumping into all these guys I’d played with in the States. It was beautiful.” In 1920 there were

an estimated 8,000 American expats living in Paris, fleeing Prohibition America and, just like Baker, were drunk on the city and its all-night bars, eccentric sex shows, cross dressing, gay bath houses, brothels, all night saturnalias, uninhibited sex in public places and overt cocaine use. Jazz clubs opened like Le Bal Negre, where fashionable young Parisians danced the Black Bottom to Caribbean reedman Ernest Léardée’s house band. Afro Americans then opened nightspots of their own in Paris such as Le Grand Duc. Consequently, in 1925, French white musicians complained bitterly of this ‘black peril’ that had taken their jobs, ballroom managers telling them to come back when they had changed the colour of their skin. Theatrical impresario Rolf De Mare searched Paris for very black cast members for a new production, La Revue Nègre. “We need tits,” said colleague Jacques Charles, “These French people with their fantasies of black girls, we must give them des nichons!” De Mare created La Danse Sauvage, which had Baker

dancing naked apart from a few feathers (and later, hopefully artificial, bananas) radiating raw sexual energy. Joséphine considered it unsophisticated: a show with tits ‘n’ asses for the upper classes. During La Danse Sauvage she would hear the loud drumming and let rip. “Driven by dark forces I didn’t recognise, I improvised, crazed by the music,” she later said. Picasso described her as ‘the Nefertiti of love’, while Hemingway said, ‘she was the most sensational woman anyone ever saw’ – and she had only just turned 19.

that it was called ‘powder city’. Baker loved it and the city loved her. She returned to Paris triumphant and unfortunately agreed to two contracts, one with La Revue Nègre and another with the Folies du Jour at the Folies Bergere, who met her demand for $5,500 a month ($141,335 in today’s money) which would make her the highest-paid performer in France. This ruined La Revue Nègre, bankrupted its promoter Dudley and left an unemployed cast, some of whom had to return to the US. When Dudley chastised Baker, all the dancer could reply was, “Missus I’m feeling fine!” The 20-year-old was still that street urchin who, dragged up in the St Louis ghetto, grabbed what she wanted and screwed everyone else. The Folies du Jour was a complete triumph, however. Baker dolls hit the shops and huge posters of her lined the streets. Fashionable white Parisian women took to suntans and the application of walnut oil to darken their skin. She received 40,000 love letters and 2,000 marriage proposals, and was driven around in a luxurious snakeskin upholstered Voisin (a gift), yet was still insecure. She thought fashionable Parisian society regarded her as a novelty ethnic sex act, so she bathed in goats’ milk and bleach and engaged Belgian born wordsmith Georges Simenon to handle her correspondence. Baker, just turned 20, hooked up with a Sicilian former stonemason who, replete with monocle, Valentino hairstyle and yellow spats, passed himself off as Count Pepito de Albatino. He managed her and she had sex with him. For Joséphine, this was the man who could effect her entrée into chic Parisian society, ditch her bananas and become a formidable chanteuse. He arranged elocution lessons and helped her open her own club, Chez Joséphine on rue Fontaine in Pigalle. Rich patrons flooded in as early as 6 or 7pm to get a table and then waited till 1am until she entered the club with her pet dog, chauffeur, four maids and a gaggle of adoring fans. She’d moved up in the world, so for her next Folies in Spring 1927, Joséphine insisted her bananas be encrusted with diamante. Pepito arranged a world tour. Between 1928 and late 1929, Baker performed in 24 cities, all over Europe and Latin America, travelling with 137 costumes, 64 kilos of face powder, 196 pairs of shoes and 30,000 publicity shots. She performed three times a day in every city, took singing and dancing lessons, employed tutors for French and English and outgrew the flashy Pepito. While on tour she started a relationship with Swiss architect Le Corbusier.

“Rich patrons flooded in as early as 6 or 7pm to get a table and then waited till 1am until she entered the club with her pet dog, chauffeur, four maids and a gaggle of adoring fans. She’d moved up in the world, so for her next Folies in Spring 1927, Joséphine insisted her bananas be encrusted with diamante” The show was a sell-out and its run extended, so Baker installed herself in a suite in a 5-star hotel and bought all the things she’d ever wanted, such as a brace of china baby dolls and a menagerie of pets including a parrot, a snake, a couple of rabbits and a pig named Albert. But she needn’t have spent a penny. Gifts arrived every hour – jewellery, flowers, shoes, hats, dresses, all of which she left in a big pile on the floor underneath a sleeping Albert. When a friend suggested she hang them up, she said, “Oh no, they’re going to take them away and bring new ones tomorrow!” The finest couturier in France, Paul Poiret, made her gowns for free, Helen Rubinstein did her make-up and she was asked for her autograph so often that she had to get a stamp made to acquiesce. But in 1926 La Revue Nègre was on the move, seeking further audiences in Berlin. On the opening night, gangs of Hitler’s brownshirts stood outside and aggressively demanded the show’s closure. But Joséphine was undaunted. Weimar Republic Berlin was the hottest city on the planet, where everything and everyone was on sale – one might buy a crossdressing homosexual, a feminine or collar-and-tie lesbian or a dominatrix on the street. Berlin was also so full of cocaine from leftover military stockpiles

On her return to Paris, Joséphine recorded the romantic ballad, J’ai Deux Amours, Mon Pays et Paris. ‘She left us a negresse, droll and primitive, and came back a great artist!’ said one review. The platter sold 300,000 copies while the show where she debuted the song, Paris qui renue, ran for 13 months. In celebration she acquired a pet cheetah, which she led about the streets on a lead and a gem-encrusted collar. Huge crowds followed, “Belle Joséphine, brave Joséphine!” they yelled. The following year she toured again. She almost caused a riot in Vienna, as both the church and Hitler supporters paraded the streets, handing out leaflets condemning her show. In Zagreb, Budapest and Prague, Catholic students threw ammonia bobs at the theatres, Munich banned her altogether and, in Berlin, Nazis attended every night and heckled her till she quit. Joséphine’s reaction was to write a book, My Blood In Your Veins about racial inequality and discrimination. In 1936 she returned to the US so star in Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway. Time magazine described her as a “Negro wench whose dancing and singing might be topped anywhere outside of Paris” while most other reviews were worse. To add to the insult, New York’s St Moritz Hotel insisted that she enter via the service entrance so as not to anger other guests. Baker returned to Paris in 1937, married the French industrialist Jean Lion and, appalled by the US and its racism, became a French citizen. During the Second World War Joséphine entertained Allied troops, and was recruited by the military to garner intelligence from Axis sources. When the Hun entered Paris, she fled south, accompanied by a French intelligence officer pretending to be her assistant, and travelled through Spain and Portugal, passing on valuable Free French messages written in invisible ink on her sheet music. If caught, she would have been tortured and shot. Upon her return to liberated Paris, she was greeted by crowds of adoring fans, received the Medaille de Résistance and a handwritten letter of gratitude from De Gaulle. In 1948 Baker was paid by the newspaper France- Soir to travel in disguise around the American Deep South and try to use the facilities denied to black folk. The resulting death threats and her arrest made for lively series of articles that uncovered racism in the US, but it didn’t bode well for her forthcoming US tour. But there was no holding her back. Baker refused to play venues that weren’t mixed, insisted on all-black stage crews, lobbied the senate for equal rights and received death threats from the Klan, leading to her adventures being

discussed in Congress. On May 20th, 1951 – officially Joséphine Baker Day – she was driven through Harlem in a motorcade and, in 1963, joined Martin Luther King in Washington DC for a Civil Rights rally. On her travels around the world Baker had adopted 12 impoverished children, but with little thought as to how they would readjust from their homes in Asia, Africa and South America. Her only experience of a mother had been her own and she thus turned from a loving mother to a vengeful harridan overnight, while tutors, nannies and domestics were fired on a whim, leaving the children confused and unsettled. Nevertheless, unlike many rags-toriches celebrities, she made up for her failings and left behind the reality that an uneducated black ghetto girl could conquer the grooviest most sophisticated city in the world and become a household name, as well as making indelible mark on global culture. Paris named the Place Joséphine Baker after her, and Channing Avenue in her birth town of St. Louis was renamed Josephine Baker Boulevard. Joséphine Baker died aged 68 on 12th April, 1975. After her funeral in Paris she was buried in Monaco Cemetery. n

Harpo

Cinema

The Marx Brothers Over 90 years ago, four New York brothers changed the parameters of comedy forever. Olivier Woodes-Farquharson explores their unique impact on the early world of talkie cinema and their continuing legacy

hen moving my family to Manhattan on a diplomatic posting a few years ago, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office allocated for us a spacious threebedroom apartment on the 28th floor of a typically vast block on the Upper East Side. More specifically, it was at the corner of East 93rd Street and 2nd Avenue, and despite having never actually visited New York until then, East 93rd Street rang the vaguest of bells in my usually dependable memory. A quick stroll through the mind palace and I stumbled across it. I was giddy in realising that I was to live on the very street where my lifelong heroes the Marx Brothers had been brought up.

“Despite Harpo’s silence, he is the beating heart of the movies, even when he is chasing whichever pretty blonde girl is nearest, honking his horn in blissful innocence, because he clearly would have no idea what to do next if ever he caught her”

Zeppo

Chico

The Marx Brothers were initially four and latterly three, youngest brother Zeppo leaving after 1933’s Duck Soup. Each of the four took an utterly different angle when bringing their unique hi-jinks to the screen. And this was reflected in the clothes they wore – clothes which were effectively a uniform, as they each donned essentially the same outfit in every movie, from 1929’s The Cocoanuts to 1946’s A Night in Casablanca. Their father Samuel was a moderately successful tailor. But the driving force behind their initial stage success was their mother Minnie, like her husband a German Jewish arrival to the US in her youth, who cajoled, inspired and ultimately acted as manager to her sons – originally including fifth brother Gummo, who soon left to join the army during World War I. The hard-worked personas that the brothers presented on screen were first honed on the exhausting vaudeville circuit spread-eagled across the US, eventually breaking into Broadway in the 1920s, meaning that the brothers segued into the era of talkie movies with one of the slickest acts anyone had ever seen. So what did each brother bring to the revelry?

by the name Ravelli, Chicolini, Fiorello, Tony or Panello, the template never changed: a pork pie hat, a scruffy jacket and shapeless checked trousers, colours now unknown through the black and white lens. Chico always played a slightly unsavoury and untrustworthy charmer, with a subtle Italian accent, ready to scam at a moment’s notice, and always armed with a barrage of puns: some very clever, others knowingly lame. We’d call them ‘Dad Jokes’ now, but dads don’t have the awareness that Chico does when delivering them. Often, he actively wants you to groan. Off screen, he would live up to his nickname because, despite being married to the long-suffering Betty, he had the most immense difficulty keeping his trousers on around the ladies. An angry Betty once caught him kissing a chorus girl. ‘I wasn’t kissing her,’ came the effortless reply, ‘I was whispering in her mouth’. This risk-hungry approach to life didn’t end there. Chico relentlessly gambled all his money away, again and again. In fact, the last two Marx Brothers films were made specifically because he was massively in debt and persuaded his kindly brothers to help rescue him from his predicament. As his brother Groucho once remarked, ‘There are three things that Chico is always on: a phone, a horse or a broad’. Yet, for all his shortcomings, the brothers still clearly adored him and forgave him everything.

CHICO The eldest, nicknamed Chico, was born in 1887 as Leonard. His movie character, as with each brother, was essentially identical in every film: whether going

Groucho

“After dinner, news arrived of the heavy raid on London. There was nothing that I could do about it, so I watched the Marx Brothers in a comic film which my hosts arranged. I went out twice to inquire about the air raid and heard that it was bad. The merry film clacked on, and I was glad of the diversion – Winston Churchill”

clown. His get-up has become iconic: trousers that would look rough even on a homeless man; an off-centre tie and checked shirt, not even trying to match, and largely covered by an ill-fitting and incongruous raincoat, the cavernous pockets of which contain, among other things, a fish, a flute, a sword, a cup of steaming hot coffee, and a candle burning at both ends. The look is finished with either a blonde or red curly wig and a top hat that appears to have spent a week in a skip. Harpo carries a cane that is topped off with an old-school car horn which, along with whistling, is Harpo’s main form of communication. For throughout their 13 movies, he doesn’t utter a word. In fact, go onto YouTube and you’ll find only one known recording of his voice – 30 seconds of a deep, rich and slow drawl, with the most delicious New York vowels, discussing – of all things – being thrown out of a brothel in his younger days. His character – variously called Stuffy, Pinky, Punchy, Wacky or Rusty – always displays immense empathy. Despite his silence, he is the beating heart of the movies, even when he is chasing whichever pretty blonde girl is nearest, honking his horn in blissful innocence, because he clearly would have no idea what to do next if ever he caught her. To my mind, none of the Chaplins, Keatons or Lloyds of the silent world ever matched Harpo’s sublime antics. His signature move of the leg grab

HARPO Born in 1888 as Adolph, which he changed presciently to Arthur in 1911, Harpo was by all accounts an angel of a man. No digging by any unscrupulous journalist could ever find the merest hint of dissent against him. He was devoted to his wife Susan, he adored his four adopted children, and made lifelong friends everywhere he went. This innocence is echoed in every Marx movie, with Harpo essentially playing a mute, pantomime

Horse Feathers, 1932

Duck Soup, 1933

– where he looks his interlocutor closely in the eyes whilst surreptitiously taking their hand to hold his thigh up for absolutely no reason until they eventually notice – shouldn’t be funny the 87th time you see it, yet it is. His famous ‘Gookie’ – involving a deft mix of blowing out the cheeks, sticking the tongue out through the teeth and crossing the eyes – never fails to have anyone who watches it in stitches.

And then there’s his face. Without make-up, the brothers were eerily similar looking in real life. Yet the often shy and misanthropic Groucho, perhaps keen to hide behind a façade, would only go before the camera wearing small round spectacles and three great smears of black greasepaint to represent his moustache and eyebrows. Every novelty dressing-up shop is guaranteed still to have it. And it goes hand-in-hand with his bizarre walk; an athletic, stalking lope, with one hand behind his back as he leans forward almost 90 degrees. It was apparently a hugely exaggerated pastiche of a late 19th century dandy style of walking. The characters he plays in each film range from hustler, naïve businessman to obscure politician, who almost always get conned out of something, usually by Chico. They often take him far more seriously than they should – a problem that the viewer never has, bearing in mind his characters go by such names as J. Cheever Loophole, Rufus T. Firefly, Otis B. Driftwood and Hugo Z. Hackenbush.

GROUCHO Brother number three was born Julius in 1890, and with two big brothers who were borderline illiterate, Groucho was the true bookworm intellectual of the family. Although a roll call of outstanding screenwriters helped add so much shape and genius to these movies, the scripts were peppered throughout with Groucho’s self-scripted conveyor belt of oneliners which, despite the passage of time and the evolving of culture, still dazzle like no other from that era. As one wag put it, Groucho’s sentences often lose their way, fail to accomplish what they set out to accomplish, and are proud of it. Groucho invariably wears tails, regardless of the circumstance. They are deliberately a size-anda-half too big, as though to tell us that he takes any given situation frivolously. A cigar, which doesn’t usually appear to be lit, transitions frequently from his hand to his mouth as he unleashes his next unprovoked put-down.

ZEPPO The baby brother, born in 1901 as Herbert, got something of a raw deal. It was imperative in the comedies of those days to have the straight man. Even after Zeppo left the troupe to become an agent, his character persisted in all the subsequent films, played by different actors who were not called Marx.

A Night at the Opera, 1935

His outfit is the most conventional: a dapper, light, double-breasted suit and polished brogues. But his more pushy older brothers always managed to claim the best lines, and develop their on-screen personas further, leaving Zeppo in a vicious circle that increasingly frustrated him. When their second movie Animal Crackers (1930) was rehearsing, one of the producers challenged him to put more variety into his performance. One can only imagine the level of Zeppo’s annoyance as he quipped, ‘How many different ways are there to say “Yes”?’ When they were touring in the 1920s with their stage show of Animal Crackers, Groucho fell ill with appendicitis, and with virtually no notice, Zeppo took Groucho’s place, with the latter – recuperating in the audience – astounded that his kid brother could give a pitch perfect rendition of such a unique character.

musical origins and the preferences of the time. But don’t be distracted by this – or fast-forward through it if you must – because the rest is still gold. The Brothers’ first movie written explicitly for the camera was Monkey Business (1931) and, for the first two thirds at least, it is as close to happy lunacy as you could ever hope for. Essentially, they are four stowaways on a transoceanic liner on its way to New York from who-knows-where. Neither at the beginning or end do we know who they are, what they’ve done to need to hide in four barrels marked ‘Kippered Herring’, why they want to go to New York – nothing. It emphatically doesn’t matter. But they get discovered and have to run and hide to avoid getting caught. And while avoiding the crew, they insult passengers, have love affairs, get caught up with gangsters, take over a Punch and Judy show, become barbers, impersonate Maurice Chevalier, the usual things you do on a cruise. On Wikipedia, the ‘plot’ section to describe this movie is the shortest of any such entry I’ve ever seen. And this viewer isn’t the only person to see this 75 minutes of farce as pure balm. Here is an extract from the memoirs of Winston Churchill during

WHY SHOULD WE STILL CARE? Certain aspects have understandably dated from these movies. Watching a nicely choreographed song-and-dance number or a straight harp solo in the middle of firecracker comedy seems simply odd or sluggish now, and betrays both the Brothers’

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some of the darkest days of last century: After dinner, news arrived of the heavy raid on London. There was nothing that I could do about it, so I watched the Marx Brothers in a comic film which my hosts arranged. I went out twice to inquire about the air raid and heard that it was bad. The merry film clacked on, and I was glad of the diversion. Monkey Business was that film. Movies 90 years ago were not constrained by the agonising over structure that weighs down the development of so many projects today. In the 1930s, there was much less expectation of what shape, if any, the story should take. To that end, you can look for a linear tale everywhere in Horse Feathers (1932) but you aren’t going to find it. Although the musical numbers are the part of Marx movies which have dated the most, Horse Feathers suffers less than the others. Groucho’s early number during his investiture as Dean, Whatever it is, I’m Against it, should surely be the anthem for non-conformists everywhere. Horse Feathers saw the Brothers’ star shine even brighter. They made the cover of Time magazine and the movie caught the attention of legendary Spanish painter Salvador Dalí. He had struck up a friendship with Harpo and wrote a movie script for them called, naturally, Giraffes on Horseback Salad. It was never made but, having been lost for decades, turned up in Dali’s private papers in 1996, and was turned into a graphic novel in 2019.

all dressed as the latter in full nightgown and greasepaint, Harpo attempts to mimic a suspicious Groucho’s every move. The increasingly implausible but near-perfect mimicry is astounding, at one stage involving eyeing each other up and each walking through the ‘mirror’ and back again; it’s made all the more powerful by the brothers’ incredibly similar resemblance in the Groucho make up. The Brothers’ contract with Paramount Studios thereafter expired and they were courted by MGM, tempted both by the dollar signs and the presence of boy wonder producer Irving Thalberg. He suggested bigger budgets, more story and a tiny toning down of the lunacy in order to reach an even wider audience. Initially sceptical, they found a compromise: test the new material on the stage for a few months around the country to see what did and didn’t work, and keep the bits that did in the movie.

A NIGHT AT THE OPERA (1935) In this humble viewer’s opinion the most perfect movie the brothers made. Opening in Milan, Otis B. Driftwood (Groucho, of course) informs the wealthy Mrs Claypool (Margaret Dumont) that if she invests in his opera company he will make her the toast of New York society. For once, there is actually far more story than the summary suggests, more of a structured film than a selection of loosely conjoined sketches. And ‘the Zeppo role’ of Baroni is, ironically, both bigger and better than any part Zeppo himself was ever given, played charmingly here by singer/actor Allan Jones. Too many laughout-loud moments occur to mention them all in depth, but describing this film and not mentioning the ‘Stateroom scene’ would be like recounting one’s recent holiday to the Giza plateau and neglecting to mention the pyramids. I could go on. And indeed so did the Marx Brothers, making just one more top-notch film (A Day At The Races, 1937), before the gentle rot set in and the law of diminishing returns was applied. None of the subsequent films is bad; far from it. Memorable scenes abound throughout. They just don’t hit that invisible, transcendent bullseye of immortality that previous ones had. Yet you only have to look at The Goon Show of the 1950s, the Woody Allen and Monty Python movies of the 1970s, Airplane and Naked Gun in the 1980s, or Anchorman more recently, to realise that the Marx Brothers are still indirectly shaping brilliant movies, albeit from their film set in the sky. And you don’t have to live in an apartment on East 93rd Street to appreciate that. n

DUCK SOUP (1933) The jury will always be out about which is the best anti-war satire ever committed to celluloid, but Duck Soup is definitely up there. When the film came out, Mussolini was well established as Il Duce in Italy (and it was his banning of the movie that confirmed to the delighted brothers they were on to a winner). It was also the year that saw the advent of national socialism in Germany, which makes the film that much more prescient. As one historian put it, ever since 1933, it seems that politicians have selflessly dedicated themselves to upholding Duck Soup’s truth. We begin this time to have some semblance of a story being told. It takes place in the imaginary country of Freedonia, where dictator Rufus T Firefly (Groucho) decides to invade his neighbour Sylvania just for the hell of it. With Zeppo as his secretary, Chico as his Minster of War and Harpo as his chauffeur, there are attempts to diffuse conflicts by both sides, with Groucho always managing to grab defeat from the jaws of victory. The film features one of the most sublime silent comic routines ever conceived, the fabled ‘mirror scene’. With Chico, Harpo and Groucho

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Drink

RISKY WHISKY Gustav Temple takes a voyage around the world via five single malt whiskies that do not come from Scotland

“A doctor’s note for Winston Churchill, while he was living in New York in the 1930s: “This is to certify that the postaccident convalescence of The Hon Winston Churchill necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits, especially at meal times. The quantity is naturally indefinite but the minimum requirements would be 250 cubic centimeters”

et other poets raise a fracas ’Bout vines, an’ wines, an’ drucken Bacchus, An’ crabbit names an’ stories wrack us, An’ grate our lug: I sing the juice Scotch bear can mak us, In glass or jug.” Robert Burns, Scotch Drink To some readers (and they may be right) it is already blasphemous even to suggest that whisky can come from anywhere except Scotland. But when one discovers that whisky is also made in Germany, Japan, India, Taiwan, Finland, Australia, Canada and Ireland, one feels duty bound to inspect the goods. Of course whisky is also made in the United States but theirs is called bourbon and is an entirely different, usually blended, kettle of fish – admittedly not without its charms. For the purposes of this investigation of global whisky, however, we are going to give blended

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concoctions a wide berth, even though, again, there are many supremely quaffable iterations. We shall stick solely to single malts, for it is only within this esoteric and specialised liquid that any true comparison can be made with the towering achievements of Scotland. An entry in the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland of 1494 lists “Eight bolls of malt to Friar John Cor wherewith to make aqua vitae.” Roughly translated into the modern idiom, this means that Friar John had enough malted barley to produce around 1,500 bottles of whisky, known colloquially as uisge beatha or ‘water of life’. Friar John was ahead of his time, for it was not until 1654 that the Scottish Parliament introduced laws to prohibit the illicit distillation of whisky. During the 18th century, one of the most feared excisemen, whose job was to shut down illicit stills, was Robert Burns. By the time he wrote his famous ode to whisky, Scotch Drink, in 1785, he had already confiscated hundreds of barrels of the stuff. Perhaps it was drinking it all that led him to change his tune and begin a new career as the poet who would forever be associated with whisky. The Excise Act of 1823 made it legal to distil whisky for a licence fee of £10, bringing an end to smuggling within ten years. Some of Scotland’s finest distilleries continue to operate on sites used by smugglers 200 years ago. The men who had created the most successful single malts in those distilleries, such as Johnnie Walker, James Buchanan, Tommy Dewar and James Chivas, then began exporting whisky around the world in the 19th century, cornering lucrative markets in countries as far flung as Hong Kong, Australia, the United States and South Africa. Scotch even survived during Prohibition in America, being exempt for those who required it for medicinal purposes. A famous doctor’s note exists for Winston Churchill, while he was living in New York in the 1930s: “This is to certify that the post-accident convalescence of The Hon Winston Churchill necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits, especially at meal times. The quantity is naturally indefinite but the minimum requirements would be 250 cubic centimeters.” Given the global export of Scottish whisky, it was no surprise that some countries began making their own. It would soon have dawned on them that the reason (apart from mysterious philosophical ones) the Scots make the best whisky is due to their climate and their terrain. The combination of harsh winters and rich, peaty bogs leads to the distinctive flavour of single malt, while some con-

noisseurs even believe they can taste the sea spray in certain Islay whiskies. The very different climate in nearly all other countries, not to mention their lack of peat in the ground, produces flavours that veer wildly, in some cases, from traditional Scottish single malt. Those from Japan are the closest to the Scots, partly due to the fact that most Japanese distilleries import their barley from Scotland. Japan has been producing whisky since the 1920s, with Yamazaki, near Kyoto, being the first established still, now called Suntory Yamazaki. Japanese single malt has since grown into a huge international industry, winning countless awards even when pitted against the might of Scotland’s single malts. In 2014, Yamazaki Single Malt Sherry Cask 2013 was named ‘the best whisky in the world’ by Jim Murray in his annual Whisky Bible. Japan’s mountainous terrain and its plentiful supply of cold spring water makes it an ideal location for the production of whisky. Many world whiskies try and mimic the peaty smokiness of Scottish single malts, while others appeal to more international taste buds by using sherry and red wine barrels to produce a more rounded flavour. To some whisky drinkers outside of Scotland, the essence of Robert Burns’ liquid muse is as impenetrable as his dialect: Leeze me on thee, John Barleycorn, Thou king o’ grain!

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NORTHERN IRELAND

We present tasting notes for five world single malts, a tiny sampling of what is available. Other recommendations are: DYC 15-Year-Old (Spain); Suntory Yamazaki Distiller’s Reserve (Japan); Zuidam Millstone 5-Year-Old Lightly Peated (Holland); Three Ships 12-Year-Old (South Africa).

THE SEXTON, SINGLE MALT IRISH WHISKEY, 40% ABV £29.00 Ghoulishly named after the keepers of graves in cemeteries and in a suitably gothic, hexagonal bottle with a skull in a top hat logo, The Sexton was created by one of the few female master blenders in the industry, Alex Thomas. Produced from triple distilled 100% malted barley, the spirit is aged in casks imported from Jerez in Spain and formerly used for Oloroso, at the darker end of the sherry spectrum. The label informs us that it was distilled in County Antrim, where the only distillery is Bushmills, so make of that what you will.

INDIA RAMPUR ASAVA INDIAN SINGLE MALT WHISKY 45% ABV £68.95 The world’s first Indian single malt whisky, matured in American bourbon barrels and finished in Indian Cabernet Sauvignon casks. Produced at a distillery in Uttar Pradesh, in the foothills of the Himalayas, the location exposes the whiskies to polar opposite climate conditions throughout the year, causing Rampur Single Malts to mature more quickly than their Scottish counterparts. Master Blender Anup Barik was born into a family of blenders and has been creating the spirits for gin, vodka, whisky and rum for 26 years. Rampur is distilled in traditional copper pot stills, matured in India’s largest and oldest distillery, dating back to 1943, and then non chill-filtered and bottled at 45%.

TASTING NOTES: On the nose, there are boggy, turfy, outdoorsy notes that immediately whisk one to the Emerald Isle, but with a handful of Spanish almonds and sultanas. The first sip indeed makes one think of someone taking care of graveyards on a misty night, but the spirit is within, not without. Accents of peppered pears kick in, swiftly followed by raisins, cloves and other woody elements. The death leads quickly to a resurrection of rich flavours under a full moon.

TAIWAN KAVALAN SINGLE MALT WHISKY 40% ABV £45.00 Taiwanese private companies were not allowed to make spirits until Taiwan joined the World Trade Organization in 2002. Kavalan was the first-ever whisky distillery on the land that the locals call their country but the Chinese call one of their islands. Taiwan’s subtropical climate would not seem ideal for the production of whisky, but high summer temperatures accelerate the ageing process, while the Siberian winter winds assist with oxidation. Local chap Ian

TASTING NOTES: Exotic notes of honey and sweet caramel burst from the richly dark colour in the glass. On the palette, the undertone of toasted muscovado sugar confirms that this brew is definitely not from Celtic lands but from somewhere far more tropical. It tastes something like a sugarcube diluted through the tears of the Maharajah, while he watches the sun set over his new palace. On the finish: mince pies and crème Anglaise. Delicious.

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Drink

Chang was spotted as having an exceptional nose for whisky, and a mentor in London was sought. Ten consultants turned him down before Scotch whisky expert Dr. Jim Swan replied, “I don’t know where Taiwan is, but I would like to give it a try.” The result, logged proudly in the distillery’s annals, was the first drop of ‘new label spirit’ at precisely 3:30 pm on March 11, 2006. Since that fateful moment, Kavalan has won more than 220 awards, including ‘World’s Best Single Malt Whisky’ for Kavalan Solist Vinho Barrique at the World Whiskies Awards in 2015.

the added peatiness comes simply from ageing it in a cask that previously held peated whisky. TASTING NOTES Surprise surprise – vanilla peatiness on the nose, laced with hints of peach and apricot. The first sip conjures up lace doilies and polite company, but the brown sugar and spices herald the promise that one will soon be proceeding to the boudoir. The death brings more peat and a pleasantly sooty sharpness to the tongue.

NORTHERN IRELAND

TASTING NOTES: The nose is greeted by sea salt and coffee beans, with a hint of Himalayan glacier. The volatility of the first sip, redolent of forest fires, quickly evaporates into dusky floral notes of rose and hibiscus. After the fire: liquorice jostles with granite, suggesting milk of magnesia.

BUSHMILLS 10-YEAR-OLD SINGLE MALT 40% ABV £35.00 A fine example of an Irish single malt, from the distillery founded in Country Antrim in 1608, taken over by Bushmills in 1784 and still recognised as the world’s oldest licensed whiskey (spelled with am ‘e’ in Ireland) distillery. Bushmills is now owned by Jose Cuervo, in itself testament to the popularity of Irish whiskey throughout the world. James Joyce refers to Bushmills in Ulysses, while fans of gravelly voiced bluesman Tom Waits might care to know that he also namechecks Bushmills in the song Tom Traubert’s Blues. Its popularity in the US is not surprising, given their large Irish community, plus the fact that Irish whiskies are rarely distilled with peat, making them more palatable to those who are more familiar with bourbon.

ENGLAND COTSWOLDS SINGLE MALT WHISKY 46% ABV £39.00 A whisky made in England! Whatever next, champagne made in Sussex? Of all five samples, this is the closest to a peaty Scottish single malt, and this is no surprise, given that the climate of northwestern England is not a million miles away to that of Scotland. Every step of the distillation process, from harvesting the local barley, to steeping it at Warminster maltings (Britain’s oldest working maltings), grinding and mashing the barley in the mill, then double distilling it in traditional copper pot stills, is carried out in the Cotswolds. The spirit then rests in oak casks for a minimum of three years. Because peat bogs are not a common feature of the Cotswolds landscape,

TASTING NOTES: Lighter and smoother on the nose than the Sexton, but notes of apples, cloves and cinnamon hint at the body lurking beneath. A rich, golden hue, it slides down the throat with a fruity glimpse of melted chocolate and a touch of salted butter. On the death: Tom Traubert’s Blues. n

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I think many people are too scared to cook a soufflé. It’s either the fear of the sudden drop or the lack of rise, but as long as you keep the air in when adding the egg whites, you will get the prefect rise every time.

Food

Cooking for Chaps Don’t be scared of making a soufflé, says Nicole Drysdale, also providing further recipes for the perfect social occasion Feel free to share your creations with Nicole on Instagram @nicolethechap

hen thinking about a dinner party, I always think about the guests attending and plan the menu around them. Obviously dinner parties seem so very much in our past at the moment but they are still very much in our future and I’m looking forward to having a table full of people soon. Sometimes I do a couple of different curries/ rice/onion bhajis or a stand-up style starter and something simple like homemade pizza and delicious salads. Sometimes dessert can even be the most divine chocolates or homemade biscotti served with Vin Santo (one of my favourites). For this particular dinner party, however, I am delving into my grandmother’s recipe books and doing it very properly. Small servings, so no-one overeats and becomes too tired for the baccarat table. Despite using my Scottish grandmother’s recipes, this menu plan has a very French feel to it, which heavily influenced fine dining in country houses in the 1930s. I personally also have a huge love of French cuisine, as I was a chalet girl in the Alps (Chamonix) for two years in my early twenties. My love of French cuisine continues to this day and I still have a tendency to use too much butter. I pulled the soufflé recipe out of my grandmother’s recipe book because I think many

people are too scared to cook one. It’s either the fear of the sudden drop or the lack of rise, but as long as you keep the air in when adding the egg whites, you will get the prefect rise. And resist all desire to open the oven door, ie treat soufflés the same as you would Yorkshire puddings or meringues. And, most importantly, have your guests already seated before you remove them from the oven, as they will drop very quickly. I’ve played with the recipe slightly and used different cheeses, to reflect my time in the Alps and give the soufflés a stronger flavour. The dusting of breadcrumbs inside the ramekins is also very important, as you will get a better rise if the soufflés have something to stick to as they climb their way up. Follow the recipe step by step and I can assure you that your guests will be impressed. Once you’re confident with the cheese soufflé, why not try different flavours? Blue cheese and thyme, goat’s cheese, butternut squash or spinach, or for a sweet treat, chocolate or pear and salted caramel. The rest of the menu is straightforward. Just be careful not to burn the Beurre Noisette. Plan ahead and make the hollandaise and Cranachan earlier in the day. If any of your guests don’t eat fish, it could be replaced with a breaded chicken fillet. Flatten the chicken fillet with a rolling pin, then dust in flour, egg wash and coat in breadcrumbs. Add some grated parmesan and fresh thyme while making the breadcrumbs for extra flavour. This is a firm favourite in my house.

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Cheese Soufflé Makes 6-8, depending on ramekin size Prep Time: 15-20 Minutes Cooking Time: 15 Minutes

Ingredients 40g Plain flour 40g Butter, plus extra for greasing 25g White breadcrumbs 300ml Full fat milk 4 Large eggs 100g Gruyere cheese, finely grated 50g Comte cheese, finely grated Salt and pepper Method 1. Boil the kettle and pre-heat the oven to 200c. 2. Melt 10g of butter and brush the ramekins, then coat with the breadcrumbs. Place these in the fridge. 3. Melt the 40g of butter in a pan and stir in the flour. Once combined, gradually whisk in the milk until lump free. Bring to the boil then simmer for 5 minutes, stirring regularly until you have a smooth pourable mixture. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl and allow to cool slightly. Season. 4. Fill a large roasting tray half way to the top with the boiling water and place in the pre-heated oven. 5. Separate the eggs and put the whites in a large bowl. Whisk the egg whites until stiff. Add a pinch of salt. 6. Stir the comte and most of the gruyere into the white sauce mixture until smooth and, one by one, add the egg yolks. 7. Stir a couple of spoons of the egg whites into the mixture until combined, then carefully fold in the rest of the egg whites. Be careful not to blow out the air. You want the mixture to be light and fluffy. 8. Remove the ramekins from the fridge and spoon in the mixture, filling them up to the top. Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the top and place in the roasting tray. Bake for about 12-15 minutes until a lovely golden colour and well risen. Try and resist opening the oven door. Serve immediately with some fresh bread and a green salad (optional).

Hollandaise Sauce Cooking Time: 20 Minutes, plus cooling time.

Ingredients 2 Large egg yolks 150g butter 1 tbsp white wine vinegar 1/2 lemon Pinch salt Method 1. Set up a Bain Marie by half filling a large saucepan with water and bring to the boil. Place a heatproof mixing bowl on top, making sure the bottom of the bowl doesn’t touch the water. 2. Melt the butter in a small saucepan, then remove from the heat. 3. Reduce the heat of the Bain Marie to minimal and place the egg yolks in the bowl and whisk. Add the vinegar and continue whisking. Gradually whisk in the melted butter and you should very quickly end up with a lovely smooth sauce. 4. Remove from the heat, season and add a squeeze of lemon juice to loosen. Place in a small serving bowl and allow to cool.

White Fish with Beurre Noisette Served with boiled baby potatoes, rocket and sliced tomatoes Serves 4 Prep Time: 10 Minutes Cooking Time: 30 Minutes

Ingredients 4 White fish fillets (lemon sole works well) 500g Baby potatoes Couple of handfuls of rocket 3 Large tomatoes Dusting of plain flour 125g Butter Drizzle of olive oil Salt and pepper 1 Lemon Method 1. Slice the tomatoes and place on a plate. Drizzle with olive oil and a sprinkling of salt. Set to the side. 2. Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil. Add the potatoes, cutting the larger ones in half. Reduce the heat and cook until tender. 3. Meanwhile, prepare the fish by lightly dusting each fillet in the flour, shaking off any excess. Heat a tbsp of butter in a large frying pan and add the fish fillets. Turn after a couple of minutes, keeping a close eye on them, as they will only take 5-7 minutes until cooked. Once cooked, place the fish fillets on a plate and cover with foil. 4. Place the empty frying pan back on the heat and add the butter. You want to cook the butter until golden brown (being careful not to let it burn). This will only take a couple of minutes. Remove from the heat, season and add a squeeze of lemon juice. 5. Drain the potatoes. Dish up each plate with a fish fillet, some potatoes, a handful of rocket and some sliced tomatoes. Drizzle over the Beurre Noisette (it’s very rich, so use sparingly). Serve the hollandaise sauce on the side.

Cranachan Serves 4 Prep Time: 10 Minutes Cooking Time: 5 Minutes

Ingredients 1 pint double cream 100g Porridge oats Dash of whisky (or whiskey) Drizzle of honey 1lb raspberries Method 1. Heat a large frying pan and toast the porridge oats until lightly browned. 2. Whisk the double cream until thick. 3. Slightly crush most of the raspberries, keeping a couple back for decoration. 4. Stir the crushed raspberries, whiskey and most of the oats through the cream. Divide the mixture into your serving bowls. Top with the remaining raspberries and oats and add a drizzle of honey to each.

Nightlife

Bright Young City Chris Sullivan on how the end of WWI and the Spanish Flu pandemic brought about the birth of nightclub culture in 1920s London

“Nicknamed ‘flappers’ (derived from the way dancers of the Charleston flapped their arms), they were far more controversial than the later rockers, hippies or punk rockers, and caused an even greater hullabaloo”

he nightclub ethos as we now perceive it, with bars and dance floors on which men and women actually dance together, began in the 1920s. Before the era, aptly named the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties, so-called ‘respectable’ women did not frequent late night venues, were not allowed into pubs and were not expected to trip the light fantastic. Their position in life was to make babies and clean the house. For the most part, the nearest thing to a nightclub prior to WWI was a barn dance or a pub with a pianist. The roar of the twenties was not just heard in the UK but all over the world, as folk rose up from the intolerable misery of the First World War, which had left 20 million dead and some 21 million wounded. Hostilities had ended on 11th November 1918, only to be replaced by another equally insidious confrontation: Spanish Flu originated in Kansas City in March 1918 and was exported to Europe by US soldiers. First reported in a Spanish press unhindered by the US propaganda machine, the US brazenly attempted to shift the blame by sneakily naming it the ‘Spanish’ Flu.

For most of us, the realities of a global pandemic were unknown in the 21st century, but now we can easily empathize with those in the 1920s who had suffered the greatest pandemic in history and how eager they were to dress up, fly out and finally get back on the lash. The result was the greatest global explosion of hedonism, art, music, style and libertarianism that had ever been witnessed. Major cities across the world went doolally: Berlin, New York, Chicago, Paris, Vienna and, last but not least, London, took the bulls by their wilting horns and gave them a damn good thrashing. And for once it was young women who led the way. In 1918 the Representation of the People Act was passed in the UK, which allowed women over the age of 30 to vote. This was only 2/3 of the female population. Meanwhile, on 18th August, 1920, the 19th Amendment was passed in the US that allowed all white female US citizens over the age of 21 to vote. Understandably, young women in the UK were furious. Thus, as an act of defiance, many aped their American counterparts by bobbing their hair, wearing shorter skirts, smoking,

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“By night, flappers frequented jazz clubs and relished casual sex. These reckless, style-obsessed girls were perceived as a huge threat to a society in which women were expected to be seen and not heard. These new flappers needed a stage where they could define themselves”

listening to jazz, and flaunting their disdain for contemporary mores by dancing and drinking and misbehaving in the many night clubs that sprang up around them. Nicknamed ‘flappers’ (derived from the way dancers of the Charleston flapped their arms) they were far more controversial than the later rockers, hippies or punk rockers, and caused even greater hullabaloo. Hairdressers flourished, as millions of young ladies cut their hair. The cosmetic industry boomed, as did the tobacco business. The flapper look, also called garcon (little boy) was seized on by Coco Chanel and involved binding the chest to flatten the breasts, while waists dropped to the

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hipline over Rayon (artificial silk) stockings, worn rolled over a garter belt. By night, flappers frequented jazz clubs and relished casual sex. These reckless, style-obsessed flapper girls were perceived as a huge threat to a society in which women were expected to be seen and not heard. ‘The social butterfly type,” wrote Dr. R. Murray-Leslie in a 1920 article Too many Women. Is it the cause of Social Unrest? “the frivolous, scantily-clad, jazzing flapper, irresponsible and undisciplined, to whom a dance, a new hat, or a man with a car, were of more importance than the fate of nations.” These young flappers needed a stage where they could define themselves. This showground

podium became the nightclub. Here they could dance, drink and dally without men. In nightclubs, for the first time in history, they could be themselves, and this was most certainly true in London. In 1912, Frida Uhl Strindberg (she’d been married to Swedish playwright August Strindberg) opened the Cave of The Golden Calf in London, in a former cloth warehouse at 9 Heddon Street, just off Regent Street. Its purpose was “For the promotion of the arts and for the association together of artists and other persons who are interested in literature and the arts”. Jacob Epstein, Wyndham Lewis and Eric Gill created the club’s murals, while drinking and dancing until dawn was

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1940s/50s REPRODUCTION CLOTHING

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Standing, L-R: Richard Wyndham, Brian Howard, Elizabeth Ponsonby, Cecil Beaton. Seated, L-R: Stephen Tennant, Georgia Sitwell, Inez Holden, Harold Acton. Front, L-R Tallulah Bankhead as tennis star Jean Borotra, in 1927

de rigueur for both aristos and bohemians, against a soundtrack of ragtime and a famously overexcited gypsy fiddler of dubious extraction. The spot went bankrupt in 1914 but had set the scene for the dance-crazy, frenzied 1920s, when folk threw every caution to the wind. In 1921, the draconian wartime licensing laws that restricted opening hours to lunchtime (12:0014:40) and supper (18:30-22:30) were reformed by

Lloyd George. One could now drink until 1am, as long as the booze was served with a meal. As one might expect, that ‘meal’ was generally sandwiches, and few of the drinkers observed last orders. The Dangerous Drugs Act of 1920 criminalised the selling and possession of morphine and cocaine unless on prescription. Previously both were sold over the pharmacy counter – heroin (diamorphine) as a painkiller and cough medicine,

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“And so the scene was set. We have former officers addicted to cocaine that is available on every street corner in Soho, extended licensing laws, rebellious young ladies intent on causing havoc and a population who’d survived both the Spanish Flu and the Great War. The result was the greatest explosion of hedonism, music, art and libertarianism that the world had ever seen” while cocaine was freely available as a pick-me-up and cure-all. “Can I have a comb, some shampoo and a tube of toothpaste? Oh, and seven grammes of cocaine and a large bottle of heroin, please?” A popular medicine was Ryno’s Hay Fever Relief, which contained 99.9 per cent pure pharmaceutical grade cocaine. Thus, unaware of the harm it might cause, cocaine was given to British troops as ‘Forced March Tablets’. A Useful Present for Friends at the Front announced Harrods (above left), advertising a kit that included packages of morphine and cocaine, complete with syringe and spare needles. Such was the problem among officers that, on May 11, 1916, the Army Council issued an order banning the sale of cocaine to any member of the armed forces unless prescribed. But once back on Civvy Street, their attachment to the drug knew no bounds. And so the scene was set: former officers addicted to cocaine that is available on every corner in Soho, extended licensing laws, rebellious young ladies intent on causing havoc and a population who’d survived both the Spanish Flu and the Great War. One might say that an explosion of nightlife would have been conspicuous by its absence. One of the most contentious nightspots to capitalise was Club 43, a totally lawless all-night cocaine parlour, opened in in 1921 on Gerard Street (now Chinatown) in Soho. Owned by the great Kate ‘Mama’ Meyrick, the club catered to the nobility, politicians, the rich, artists, actors (such as the famously Sapphic Tallulah Bankhead, who

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Bright Young Things were not always young, and displayed a more relaxed approach to earlier dress codes

described the club as “useful for early breakfasts” – breakfast time for her being about 10pm), writers, gangsters and even members of the IRA. Part of the club’s charm was its secret escape tunnel leading to Newport Place next to Leicester Square. For selling alcohol after-hours, Meyrick suffered numerous fines and five prison sentences, including 15 months in Holloway in 1929 for bribing the constabulary. In particular, Meyrick entertained a motley crew of terribly posh, sexually ambivalent young Old Etonians and Harrovians and debutantes dubbed The Bright Young People. Included in this gayest of gaggles were Edith and Oswald Sacheverell, Elizabeth Ponsonby, a few Guinness heirs, Babe Plunkett Greene, ‘It’ girl Brenda Dean Paul and bull dyke Ruth Baldwin. Also among the Bright Young Things were camp stately homos such as Cecil Beaton, the Hon Stephen Tennant, bisexual composer John Betjeman, US railroad heir and surrealist patron Edward James and Evelyn Waugh, who immortalised Meyrick as Ma Mayfield in Brideshead Revisited. The Bright Young People took to racing through the streets of London in their Bugatti and Rolls Royce sportscars at 80mph. They held

all-night parties in swimming baths, costume balls in stately homes and staggered from club to club in London’s West End. The quintessential BYP venue was the Gargoyle Club on 69 Meard Street, which claimed to transform ordinary people into Bohemians. “They even began to dress differently,” wrote Daphne Fielding. Also in Soho was the Blue Lantern in Ham Yard, catering to the fringes of pseudo-smart Bohemia. Another Ham Yard club was The Hambone, run by Soho burglar Mark Benney, who said in his autobiography Low Company that the club “was patronised by everyone from Augustus John to Darby Sabini [Italian gangster immortalised in both Brighton Rock and Peaky Blinders]. It was arty, respectable and risqué.” Twenties London also produced more upmarket venues such as the painstakingly decadent Kit-Kat club. Europe’s most luxurious and expensive night spot, it opened in the Haymarket in 1925 and, with a seating capacity of 1700 and a membership of 6000, became the hub of the capital’s night life, attracting princes, ministers and aristocracy with entertainment including singers, dancers and acrobats (like Archibald Leach who later became Cary Grant). It was all very Great Gatsby.

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“Only a genius could write a masterpiece out of such glum material.” Louise Brooks on Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies

The city’s most expensive and exclusive nightspot, however, was the Embassy Club on Old Bond Street, which attracted The Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII. The Café de Paris, opening in 1924, was so popular with the Prince and the Bright Young People that, when its popularity started to wane, the owner begged the Prince to grace its dancefloor to help resuscitate the club, which he did and the club once again boomed. In 1924, New York’s Ace Face Louise Brooks visited London and demonstrated new dance craze The Charleston on stage at the Café de Paris, starting a nationwide craze that was embraced by the Bright Young Things. Brooks found them rather dull and, after reading Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies, remarked, “Only a genius could write a masterpiece out of such glum material”. After the clubs, the Bright Young Things would pile into the Cavendish Hotel on Jermyn Street, whose chatelaine Rosa Lewis was more than accommodating with drinks and all-night refreshments, courtesy of celebrity drug dealers Brilliant Chang and Eddie Manning, to keep the party alive and kicking, only to wake up the next evening and find their antics in the newspapers. In 1924, Daily Mail owner Lord Sutcliffe instructed his editors to “Get more names in the paper. The more aristocratic the better… everyone likes

reading about people in better circumstances than their own.” The Mail was then a step up from The Mirror and several rungs down from The Times. And thus the concept of paparazzi and journalists snooping around parties looking for the dirt was born. By the end of the twenties, the flappers had successfully flouted their emancipation in nightclubs all over the world and there was no going back. In 1928 all women over 21 were given the vote in the UK and the world became a different place. In 1929 the Wall Street Crash brought a close to many rich people’s decadence and many clubs, such as London’s Astoria, lowered their sights to appeal to a more middle-class audience less affected by the Crash. Clubs like the Hammersmith Palais became ice skating rinks or closed for good, to be replaced later by car parks and shopping precincts. Today, history is repeating itself as many landmark clubs, such as the Café de Paris, have shut down, but this might be premature. The smell of approaching hedonism is in the air; undoubtedly an army of revellers is already considering what to wear when Covid retreats and venues once again open, and much high jinks and the copious consumption of liquor seem on the cards. Will we see a return of the enthusiasm that fuelled the decadent 1920s nightclub scene? I think we’d be foolish not to think so. n

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Art

ERIC RAVILIOUS'S HELICOPTER Gustav Temple heads for the Sussex hills in search of the landscape of Eric Ravilious

h, Ravilious! He really did make rather lovely tea towels, didn’t he? If you happen to live in Eric’s stamping ground of East Sussex, you cannot escape from his imagery. Every gift shop in Lewes is bursting with Ravilious prints, postcards, tote bags, fridge magnets and tea towels. The latter is particularly ironic as, by all accounts, he didn’t keep his kitchen very tidy. And he only popped into Lewes once, in the 1930s, to grab some antique chairs from a junk shop and haul them back on the train to Furlongs, a house near Glynde occupied by fellow artist Peggy Angus. Angus lived in rustic splendour in this tumbledown cottage in the middle of nowhere, with no electricity, gas or running water. It became the artistic hub of a group of painters, printmakers and ceramicists, some of whom would go on to be seen as the key players in the emergence of British modernism. Charleston House, a furlong or two away across the Downs, was home to another

artistic circle centred around Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. Peggy Angus once spotted Woolf wafting past Furlongs, but contact between the two groups was never established, the Charleston set, apparently, being more likely to discuss problems with the servants than what shade of green best captured Mount Caburn. It was essentially a class division, the Ravilious set being more ruggedly bohemian and given to midnight nude dancing than the Bells and Grants. While Virginia Woolf complained to the district council about the new cement works that spoiled her view, Ravilious and Angus were delighted by them and made frequent visits to paint them. Eric’s idea of a nice day out was to stand for hours in the rain on a bleak spot on the Sussex Downs, capturing the essence of the landscape in an original way that would end up on thousands of tea towels. If a tea towel were ever used at Furlongs, it would have been to wipe the paint of a brush.

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Because I live in the shadow of the Sussex Downs, and because lockdown gives one many extra hours to fill, I felt it my duty to go forth and discover how much the subjects of some of Ravilious’s paintings had changed since the 1930s. Others had had the same idea, and I was even given a convenient map drawn by eccentric neopagan vicar Peter Owen-Jones, showing the way to Furlongs from the railway station at Glynde, a prosperous hamlet near the famous opera house. The 30-minute-walk to Furlongs takes one deep into Ravilious country, as a book of his paintings clutched along the way confirmed. In order to reach his view of Mount Caburn, much mud was to be negotiated, plus the crossing of a dual carriageway that wasn’t there in Eric’s day. Furlongs is immediately recognisable for its distinctive single and double chimneys and a neat little walled garden at the back. However, my attemps to capture by camera the actual view Ravilious painted proved impossible, and it became

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clear that he had taken a spot of artistic licence, by painting a view of the garden that would only be visible by helicopter. This turned out to be the case with several other views that should have matched his paintings. The blighter had only gone and cheated by going several steps further than mere representation. Bloody modernists!

there are several secondary schools in England that still bear entire walls of her beautiful tiles, and a single Angus tile occasionally surfaces on eBay, priced roughly the same as she would have been paid for the entire commission in the 1940s. Peggy Angus was the fulcrum for the entire movement, providing not only accommodation and inspiration, but also a haven for Eric’s naughty shenanigans with Helen Binyon, with whom he conducted a five-year secret affair. The other person that linked them all was Paul Nash, whom the group had been lucky enough to have as a tutor for three months at the Royal College of Art in the 1920s. This would be like having Tracy Emin as one’s tutor today, but less annoying. Nash is seen as one of the most important landscape painters of the first half of the 20th century, and his official war paintings from the First World War are some of the most famous depictions of the conflict. Nash was also big on applied art, something viewed with disdain by the European surrealist and cubist painters of the period. Picasso might have enjoyed painting set decoration for Diaghilev’s ballets, but he would have baulked at making wallpaper. Paul Nash encouraged all his students to learn skills other than painting, not simply for their equally laudable aesthetic value, but also so that they could earn a decent living as artists. The fact that Peggy Angus and co all scraped a living from public commissions for murals, tiles, book jackets and home decor contributed to their lack of recognition on the international sphere, at least until more recently. At the end of the lane from Furlongs, we encountered an old boy taking a stroll, who

“Eric’s idea of a nice day out was to stand for hours in the rain on the Sussex Downs, capturing the landscape in an original way that would end up on thousands of tea towels. If a tea towel were ever used at Furlongs, it would have been to wipe the paint off a brush” The current occupier of Furlongs cast suspicious glances through her window as I snapped away on the road outside. I waved the large book of Ravilious reproductions at her by way of explanation. Upon departing the house down the lane, I suddenly saw another view that looked familiar: Furlongs as painted by Peggy Angus herself (above). Angus is sadly overlooked, in the shadow of her more famous houseguests, who also included Edward Bawden and John Nash. She produced an enormous body of work herself, including paintings, prints, wallpaper and tiles;

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stopped for a chat when we revealed our grand artistic mission. “I once did some work at Furlongs in the eighties,” quoth he, “for an old lady who lived there. When I was digging in the garden I kept finding bits of old tiles.” I didn’t want to ruin this priceless memory by mentioning how much he would have got for them on eBay, so we bid him farewell and continued our exploration of Ravilious country, enjoying the possibility that there was now just one degree of separation between us and Peggy Angus. Next stop, this time by motor car, was Cuckmere Haven, a dramatic network of flooded rivers and oxbow lakes leading down to the sea near Beachy Head. After several attempts at different points along the highest point of the cliffs, it proved impossible to capture in a photograph the same view as Ravilious’s painting. Once again, he seemed to have used a helicopter. He had also omitted a pair of coastguard cottages on the horizon, which I later discovered were built in 1820 (film fans might care to know that they feature in the 2007 film Atonement). Maybe Eric had a vision

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of the future, for unless enough money can be raised to build a proper sea defence, the cottages will slide off the cliffs within a few years. The final leg of the journey was to the Long Man of Wilmington, which Ravilious painted in 1939. The Long Man was originally thought to have dated from the Neolithic period, but subsequent scholars have dated it more closely to the early 18th century. Making these little journeys by car made me realise what effort Ravilious had gone to. On the first trip to Wilmington a heavy fog descended, covering the Long Man in a blanket of white. Again, the precise view painted by Eric was not possible to capture, and this had nothing to do with urban development as the area is protected from that sort of thing. The barbed wire fence (a favourite motif of his) that aesthetically frames the chalk carving is no longer there (or was it ever?) and Eric seems to have been painting it while leaning uncomfortably to the right. Exploring the living subject matter of artists is certainly an immersive way to appreciate their work. Capturing the mimicked photograph is more difficult that imagined, and each one leads to further exploration in books and the internet to find out more about each composition. I wouldn’t recommend it with the works of Tracy Emin, though. n

REVIEWS •

Author interview: Lisa Hilton (p128) • Book Reviews (p132) • Bertram Fiddle (p136) • Hotels - A User’s Guide (p142) • Chap Tarot (p148) Talking Pictures TV (p152) • Antiques & Collectables (p157)

Author Interview

LISA HILTON Alexander Larman meets the author of several books about femmes fatales, to find out how she deals with reviewers identifying her with her subjects

he historian and novelist Lisa Hilton should be best known for writing a variety of excellent, beautifully written and often very funny books, which have ranged from a definitive biography of Elizabeth I to her recent, highly subversive trilogy of Maestra novels, dealing with the Ripley-esque exploits of their protagonist Judith Rashleigh. Yet, unfortunately, British critics and interviewers have repeatedly attempted to link Hilton herself with many of the femmes fatales that she writes about so elegantly and wittily. Perhaps as a riposte to their narrow-mindedness, her latest book, a short, elegant monograph called Sex and the City of Ladies, deals with the way in which history has largely been told from a male perspective, and attempts to redress the balance by bringing to life three notorious women from history: Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine the Great. Hilton has often bemoaned the way in which interviewers have attempted to discuss her private life rather than her work, but here at The Chap we have no such prurient impulses.

“I was mystified by the raised eyebrows. Maestra was described as a ‘shocking’ book, but compared with some of the historical goings-on I had already written about, it felt positively tame. Maestra was realistic, as far as I was concerned; I wondered whether the pearl-clutchers actually know what’s going on online” We instead sat down with The Talented Ms Hilton to discuss questions of identity, being misunderstood and objectified and the sartorial faux pas that still keeps her awake at night.

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CHAP: As a leading historian yourself, do you believe that the institution is a fundamentally misogynistic one? HILTON: While it’s undoubtedly the case that much history has been, and is still, written from a male perspective, the book makes a slightly different argument: that dissolving the categories of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ might be a more useful way of considering the past. I don’t think that most contemporary historians are misogynistic, rather that an emphasis on gender (even with the best of intentions), doesn’t necessarily serve particular historical figures effectively. CHAP: You focus on three disparate women, Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine the Great, all of whom have historical reputations of being ‘bad’. What gave you the initial idea of challenging that lazy shorthand? HILTON: The book was a commission from the TLS, with the brief ‘wicked women’. I was interested in the dynamics which produced their reputations, and in replacing the ‘bad’ label with a more measured consideration of what made them exceptional. CHAP: At less than 100 pages, the book is short and very concise. What were the challenges that you faced of writing at that kind of length? HILTON: The book is on no way meant to be a comprehensive history, more an essay on the way we write history itself. I would have loved to have had more space to really go into the different women’s stories but that would take years!

your Maestra trilogy, Elizabeth I, Nancy Mitford or Lavinia Fenton. What have been the consistent elements that you’ve found within them? HILTON: Power, jokes, frocks.

CHAP: It’s your first non-fiction title since 2014’s Elizabeth: Renaissance Prince. In the interim, you’ve written four novels. Do you find moving between fiction and nonfiction straightforward or challenging, and what are the separate (and complementary) skills that both require? HILTON: I love doing both fiction and non-fiction, but I can never decide which I prefer. Essentially, the two genres have more in common than one might think – it’s all about taking the reader with you, whether your characters are real or invented.

CHAP: Eyebrows were raised when you published your book Maestra, which seemed a dramatic change of approach from your previous work. Did you expect such a reaction? HILTON: I was mystified by the raised eyebrows. Maestra was described as a ‘shocking’ book, but compared with some of the historical goings-on I had already written about, it felt positively tame. Maestra was realistic, as far as I was concerned; I wondered whether the pearl-clutchers actually know what’s going on online.

CHAP: You’ve explored the lives of real and fictitious women throughout your writing, whether it’s Judith Rashleigh in

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CHAP: You chose to use the pseudonym LS Hilton for the trilogy. Was there a particular reason why? HILTON: I wanted Maestra to feel more neutral and also to separate the history from the novels.

librettist, and is it something that you wish to explore again? HILTON: The brevity of a libretto is fascinatingly different from longer forms, and, obviously, the demands of a score. It was a fantastic experience and I’d love to try it again.

CHAP: You have previously complained that British journalists and critics have been less interested in talking about your books than in exploring any perceived autobiographical elements to be found in them. Given that EL James, for instance, has not faced such scrutiny, where do you think that this prurience stems from? HILTON: I think EL James was a lot smarter than me. Unfortunately, women are still expected to write about their personal lives (the more salacious or traumatic the better), when publicising their books. No-one asks Ian Rankin to talk about his relationships or mental health. But when you have the pressure of a huge publishing machine behind you, it can be difficult to say no to the prurience, because if you do, you won’t get the cover or the interview your publicist is pushing for.

CHAP: You live in Venice, and studied history of art in Europe. Do you think of yourself as British, European, neither or both? HILTON: I was born a European, and I am proud of that identity. Brexit appals me. My daughter is Italian, her father lives in France – the idea that national boundaries are as constrictingly narrow as they may have been in the past is absurd as well as destructive. That said, I do miss HP sauce… CHAP: What are your favourite things about your Venetian life? HILTON: The sense of joy and privilege I feel every single time I step out of my front door into this magically beautiful city. The extraordinarily rich and cosmopolitan cultural life, and the fact that it’s on the beach.

CHAP: You wrote the libretto of the opera Love Hurts in 2016. What were the challenges that you faced with being a

CHAP: Throughout your career, you’ve combined writing books with journalism.

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Do you think that this is a requirement for any contemporary writer, both on a purely financial level and to raise one’s profile? HILTON: I find imminent bankruptcy a great motivator. Books and TV pay slowly and badly, journalism keeps things ticking over. CHAP: Who are your greatest influences? HILTON: My favourite writer is Evelyn Waugh, though I would never presume to describe him as an influence. CHAP: Which contemporary writers do you most admire? HILTON: Susanna Clarke, Michel Houellebecq for fiction. I was hugely impressed with Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five – it did something so original and necessary with history. And I die for Marina Hyde. CHAP: What are your plans for future books? HILTON: I’m working on a new novel and have plans for a history, back in the eighteenth century, which is maybe the period I like best. CHAP: What, to date, are you proudest of in your career? HILTON: This book. Maybe not for the work itself but for the fact that the TLS commissioned it. CHAP: As this is a Chap interview, it would be remiss not to touch on matters sartorial. What is your preferred ensemble and who are your favourite designers? HILTON: At the moment I lust after a bespoke Huntsman suit and a Cartier panther bracelet. My all-time favourite outfit is ancient dungarees, a bikini and a Panama hat. I went through a bit of a designer phase, but I’m more interested in quality than labels now. CHAP: And have you made any fashion faux pas in the past that you are especially ashamed of ? HILTON: Oh God. A lilac silk Joseph Conran swing coat that I wore to a Vogue lunch. Why? I looked like the Queen Mother. It still keeps me awake at night. CHAP: How would you like to be remembered? HILTON: As someone who was kind. n

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TO THE END OF THE WORLD

To The End of the World, his third volume of memoir, is nominally about the struggles and tribulations that he underwent while attempting to fund and then produce his passion project, The Happy Prince, a film about the final days of Oscar Wilde. Yet from the uproarious prologue, in which Everett describes a martini-soaked dinner at J Sheekey with two producers attempting to convince him to play the role of a giant’s personal hairdresser in a special-effects film (‘a little set all made of leaves — leaf sink, leaf hairdryer, leaves through the windows with leaf curtains — and me in the middle, hipsters and a green quiff, backcombing an ogre’) before he realises that he has stood up Joan Collins and Christopher Biggins at The Ivy, this is as much rambling meditation on the perks and indignities of being a B-list celebrity as it is any kind of exploration of Wilde or filmmaking.

By Rupert Everett (Little, Brown, £20) Reviewed by Alexander Larman

upert Everett has always, to his credit, been the most unconventional of stars. He first emerged in the Eighties as a heartthrob in Another Country, and then, after a quiet few years, returned triumphantly in the late nineties with his acclaimed appearance in My Best Friend’s Wedding, which led to more work as a leading man. Yet his blithe lack of concern for the niceties of the film industry have led to his career being stymied or, at times, derailed altogether. The unremitting candour with which he has chronicled his misadventures, in interviews and autobiographies, has not helped.

“Everett remains an entertaining guide to the vagaries and pitfalls of the entertainment business, although there is a surprising amount of un-ironic luvviedom present here, particularly when it comes to Colin ‘Frothy’ Firth”

“Reading this memoir, it often seems as if Everett’s labour of love nearly sent him to an early grave, like his idol. Although he only gets into the nitty-gritty of the production process surprisingly late into the book, after offering brief insights into his other roles, Everett is both hilarious and revealing on the challenges of trying to mount a reasonably lavish period piece on a low budget, with him as untested director”

Everett admits early on that his vanity led him to turn down the opportunity to have the film made by the legendary American producer Scott Rudin, who wanted Notting Hill director Roger Michell and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Wilde. After he played Oscar on stage, in David Hare’s The Judas Kiss, Everett became obsessed with taking the role himself, as well as writing and directing the film. After many years fruitlessly searching for funding from both British and European sources, interspersed with extra-curricular visits to countless subterranean ‘gentlemen’s clubs’, Everett eventually managed to cobble together the (mainly German) money and the film was made, with a starry supporting cast including his old friend Colin Firth as Wilde’s friend Reggie Turner, Emily Watson as his estranged wife Constance and Colin Morgan as Bosie. It was critically acclaimed, but a commercial disappointment, failing to make back even its

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modest budget. Reading this memoir, it often seems as if Everett’s labour of love nearly sent him to an early grave, like his idol. Although he only gets into the nitty-gritty of the production process surprisingly late into the book, after offering brief insights into his other roles, Everett is both hilarious and revealing on the challenges of trying to mount a reasonably lavish period piece on a low budget, with him as untested director. He calls in favours, begs, borrows and tantrums, and eventually his Wilde is immortalised in celluloid, albeit at a time when audiences seem far more interested in less loquacious caped crusaders. Everett remains an entertaining guide to the vagaries and pitfalls of the entertainment business, although there is a surprising amount of un-ironic luvviedom present here, particularly when it comes to Colin ‘Frothy’ Firth. It was Firth’s participation in The Happy Prince that secured much of the funding, and Everett writes about his long-standing co-star (who first acted alongside him in Another Country) with a starry-eyed, apparently straight-faced adulation not present elsewhere in the book. Firth, who took an honorific title as coproducer, ended up participating for free: a display of generosity that would have been approved of by Turner, who remained by Wilde’s side right until the bitter end in Paris, as the playwright miserably quipped that his wallpaper would get the better of him yet. A sharper editor might have suggested a tighter focus on Wilde and The Happy Prince, but the rambling and discursive nature of the writing lends it an enjoyable appeal. And some of the vignettes are priceless. Referring to the discontented director of photography, Everett writes ‘now his forehead throbs and his eyes have shrunk, glittering with madness. I haven’t seen this look since working with that orangutan in Dunston Checks In.’ One doesn’t finish reading To The End of the World wanting to go out for dinner with Everett, but it is hard not to admire his chutzpah, wit and determination. At a time when many of his peers have either ascended to superstardom or long since given up acting, he has a unique place in his industry. Undeniably, these revealing memoirs bite the hand that feeds, but also he makes the process of acting seem tangible. Not for him the Daniel Day-Lewis-esque ‘full immersion’ into a role; he is more likely to be stopped at the airport and searched, due to the unusual prominence of the

crotch on the fat suit that he has to wear to become Wilde. It is to Everett’s credit that he meets with triumph and disaster and treats both imposters the same. If he’s more entertaining about the latter, then that’s because there’s so much more of it to go around.

REVIEW ROUND-UP

By Alexander Larman and Gustav Temple

CLUBLAND’S HIDDEN TREASURES By Sam Aldred (Amazon, £11.99)

here have been many books written about members’ clubs, with varying degrees of veneration and snobbishness, but very few of them tend to be read by anyone other than an elite few, anxiously scouring the index for mention of their particular gentlemen’s establishment. Therefore young clergyman Sam Aldred’s new book is a particularly welcome addition to this sub-sub genre of literature, being a witty and beguiling examination of the major London clubs and their histories. Every institution that appears is represented by a particularly iconic or strange item amongst their collections – the betting book at White’s, a snuff mill in a ram’s head at the Caledonian and Gladstone’s axe at the National Liberal Club, to name but three. Aldred, who has clearly dined and wined long and successfully at these establishments, is a charmingly enthusiastic aficionado of the world of clubland, and comes up with numerous entertaining tales about both the foundation of the clubs and some of the more bizarre and eccentric characters who have graced, or darkened, their doors. Like his fellow literary clergyman Fergus Butler-Gaillie, Aldred has a knack for the telling detail that illuminates a larger story, and this is a

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THE TALL OWL AND OTHER STORIES

captivating, page turning read that is probably best enjoyed in a leather armchair in front of a roaring fire, large glass of brandy to hand. And a plea to any enterprising publishers reading this: surely Aldred’s book deserves a wider, and more lucrative, audience than its current existence as a self-published volume on Amazon?

By Colum Sanson-Regan (Wordcatcher Publishing, £8.99)

ollections of short stories seem like a relic of a bygone age, when it was less difficult to get anything published at all in fiction. The recent vogue has been for new writers to publish, as their first published work, a collection of linked short stories with a common thread, making it as novellike as possible. Irish writer Colum Sanson-Regan bucks this trend by returning to the short story in its purest form, with no particular links between each of the 12 tales. The range of settings is extraordinary: a roadside tacos joint in Latin America suddenly ripped apart by a truck accident and the consequences to the wounded owner and her daughter; frisky shenanigans behind the scenes during the filming of an interview with a highmaintenance female pop singer in China; the return of a recently released mental patient to her family home, a caravan park in Wales, where she witnesses the eponymous (and mythical) tall owl; and my personal favourite, the way a fetishised walking stick covered in feathers becomes a symbolic talisman for the breakdown of a fatherson relationship, in some undisclosed Eastern European country. This young Celtic buck Sanson-Regan has a natural talent for telling yarns in measured, crisp prose with a touch of magical realism about it; the stories are so dense in imagery, setting and detail that each one could easily have been a novel in itself and they are best read only one at a time, with a pause for breath before the next one. Sanson-Regan clearly has a great literary future ahead of him, if this 175-page collection is only a glimpse into his febrile imagination.

LONDON, BURNING By Anthony Quinn (Little Brown, £14.99)

nthony Quinn, former Chap interview subject, is undoubtedly one of the most purely entertaining novelists writing today. His books tend to be gripping historical yarns, with real-life characters appearing in thinly disguised form, and peppered with surprising, even startling twists. (A useful rule of thumb is not to become too attached to any of the major characters.) His latest novel, London, Burning, is very much Quinn at his best. Although it’s not a continuation to his recent trilogy of books Curtain Call, Freya and Eureka, it shares many of their characteristics: a beautifully evoked setting in late 70s London, thinly fictionalised figures of the era and a fascinating, twisty narrative. Quinn follows the fortunes of four characters, including the aforementioned Selves, an undercover policewoman, a Northern Irish academic and a cynical broadsheet journalist. All of their stories coalesce and inform each other, as London wilts under both the stench of uncollected rubbish and the ever-present threat of the IRA’s bombing campaign, while Thatcherism offers the only hope that any of the characters have of escape. The only criticism I would have is that, coming out as it does at a time of national misery and ceaseless terror and panic, it cannot be said to offer the escapist thrills that perhaps we all long for. Yet, when life returns to normality this will deservedly take its place amongst 2021’s most enjoyable reads.

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Book Reviews

DEVILS, LUSTS AND STRANGE DESIRES

him the ‘Professor of cut-and-paste’. It would generally be a better business for the world of literary biography if this Uriah Heep of letters were never published again.

By Richard Bradford (Bloomsbury, £20)

I SAW HIM DIE

here is no obligation for a biographer actually to like their subject, but there is a duty for them to do their research properly. Mr. Bradford achieves neither, producing a virulently nasty hatchet job on a subject who has been written about twice previously, by Andrew Wilson and Joan Schenkar. Bradford’s tome, published to mark Highsmith’s centenary, is less than half the length of either previous biography, and he shamelessly plunders them both for details that Wilson and Schenkar painstakingly extracted from the huge volumes of Highsmith’s journals and diaries. The book was written in 2020, when international travel was practically impossible, so it is doubtful that Bradford was able to get to Switzerland at all, where the Highsmith archive is held in its entirety. Bradford’s introduction savages the personality of Highsmith, giving the reader scant reason to read on, but then he goes one further by declaring that most of her books are pretty awful as well. He shows little evidence of having read any of them, by copying his notes from the previous biographies – his scathing dismissal of This Sweet Sickness, one of Highsmith’s most accomplished novels, even mis-spells ‘Annabella’ as the name of the female protagonist. How this slipped by a sloppy editor at Bloomsbury can only be explained by the biography being rushed out in time for the centenary of its subject’s birth, which is the flavour of the entire, mercifully brief book. But the time has come for a reckoning, and we are not alone in dismissing Bradford as a talentless hack – Craig Brown calls

By Andrew Wilson (Washington Square Press, £16.99)

he author of this Agatha Christie homage is the subject of our main interview, in which he discusses his biography of Patricia Highsmith. Since that book’s publication in 2003, Mr. Wilson has not been idle, producing further biographies of Alexander McQueen, Sylvia Plath, Harold Robbins and the survivors of the Titanic. He also, among other fictional exploits, pens mystery novels in the style of Agatha Christie and this is the third one in the series. The heroine and reluctant detective is Christie herself and the setting is a remote country house on the Isle of Skye, replete with suspicious butlers, glamorous sirens and sinister members of the secret service. I have not personally read an Agatha Christie novel since childhood so cannot comment on how accurate the pastiche is, but reading it purely as a historical thriller is certainly convincing. Unlike many such works, the social and sartorial references to 1930s aristocratic society are spot on, and the complex web of characters – naturally stranded in the house while the police investigate a murder or twain – is handled deftly. The use of Agatha Christie as the protagonist is a clever twist on the homages we have seen elsewhere by other writers, to PG Wodehouse and Ian Fleming, among others, which simply attempt to prolong the existing canon. I Saw Him Die adds a biographical element that breathes new life into the original author, as well as prolonging the life of her literary works. n

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Games

BERTRAM FIDDLE, GENTLEMAN EXPLORATOR Darcy Sullivan discovers the weird world of Seb Burnett and his most chappish video game character www.bertramfiddle.com

“I’m from a town in Lincolnshire called Spalding, so I made a short film about a great Victorian explorer who ends up in this soggy little backwater called Slapding, where everything smells of fish and cabbages and people are descended from frogs and things like that”

long to be an adventurer, but I don’t like doing anything adventurous.”

A lot of us can relate to that. But cartoonist and accidental game designer Seb Burnett has turned his thwarted fantasies into comedy gold. Well, not actual gold. But it is very funny. That something is Bertram Fiddle, Victorian explorator, who has starred in the two most Chap-friendly video games you’ll ever point and click your way through. Bertram wears a massive moustache beneath his equally massive schnozzola, which resembles a jumbo shrimp. He inhabits a cartoon London rife with tea and skullduggery, where he and his Cyclopean sidekick Gavin slowly and ineptly track down nogoodniks like Geoff the Murderer. And there are puns. So many puns. Bertram Fiddle combines Sherlock Holmes with the nudge-nudge-wink-wink humour of the Carry On films and the kind of quirky folk you’d

encounter in an Edward Gorey book, all filtered through Burnett’s delightfully goofy art. It could not be more British, with bad guys like Lord

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Bertram Fiddle couldn’t be more British, with villains like Lord Arthwipe and Lord Wretchedly

I shan't rest until I solve this mystery and uncover the secret identity of Geoff the Murderer, whomever he is!

“Playing one of the Bertram Fiddle games is like finding yourself inside a children’s cartoon, albeit one that’s peppered with enough rude double entendres to satisfy Viz’s Finbarr Saunders.”

Slapding, where everything smells of fish and cabbages, and people are descended from frogs and things like that. It wasn’t very nice to the people who live in Lincolnshire.” Part of the inspiration came from 1970s films based on novels by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs. In At the Earth’s Core, Peter Cushing plays a pernickety inventor with beefy American Doug McClure as his tag-along muscle (McClure, incidentally, was also part of the inspiration for hasbeen actor Troy McClure in The Simpsons). “I liked the idea of a Victorian who finds himself in these strange situations and tries to deal with them in a gentlemanly manner,” says Burnett. So in his two video games, what way-out locations does Bertram Fiddle find himself in? A tropical island that time forgot, perhaps? A mirror version of Earth on the opposite side of the moon? How about an undersea realm ruled by the survivors of Atlantis? “He’s basically stuck in London,” Burnett concedes. “He could be going to more and more exotic and ridiculous locations, but for the sake of simplicity we kept him in Victorian England.”

Arthwipe and Lord Wretchedly cackling in glee (the best way to cackle), and cameos by Oscar Wilde, Mr. Hyde and Professor Elemental. Bertram himself represents the gentleman-amateur spirit of explorers such as Robert Scott, taken to the ultimate degree of folly. Burnett created Bertram in the mid-2000s, while working on his animation degree at Bristol’s University of the West of England. “I’m from a town in Lincolnshire called Spalding, so I made a short film about a great Victorian explorer who ends up in this soggy little backwater called

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Peter Cushing and Doug McClure in At The Earth’s Core

Playing one of the Bertram Fiddle games is like finding yourself inside a children’s cartoon, albeit one that’s peppered with enough rude double entendres to satisfy Viz’s Finbarr Saunders. “My daughter Hana was about six or seven when we developed the first game, and she was play-testing it every night,” Burnett recalls. “One day we were walking down the street and she said at the top of her voice, ‘My grandfather has a massive clock!’”

THE GAME’S A FOOT Originally pitched for a BBC comedy animated series, Bertram Fiddle was rejected as being too old for kids but too gentle for teens. Burnett and the Rumpus animation studio he co-founded then secured funds to turn it into an interactive puzzle game. Just not sufficient funds. Still, they persevered, and within a year completed The Adventures of Bertram Fiddle, Episode 1: A Dreadly Business. “I remember when we got featured on the Apple App Store,” says Burnett. “I thought, I can retire now.” It turns out he couldn’t. “Monument Valley had come out a few months before, and had 145,000 downloads in the first week. We had less than 5,000. But there are reasons why. The people who had made Monument Valley were attuned to what the people who play games on Apple devices wanted, rather than some sort of weird-nosed Victorian cartoon.” Still, The Adventures of Bertram Fiddle gained a cult following, particularly in Japan, where it won the “Best Narrative” award at the Tokyo Indie

“The Adventures of Bertram Fiddle gained a cult following, particularly in Japan, where it won the “Best Narrative” award at the Tokyo Indie Fest 2015. That set the stage for A Bleacker Predicklement, the second Bertram Fiddle extravaganza” 139

Fest 2015. That achievement set the stage for A Bleacker Predicklement, the second Bertram Fiddle extravaganza.“Some people said the first game was a bit simple, so I thought, alright, I’ll show

them – I’ll make the next one twice as big and twice as complicated,” Burnett explains. “Sure, we could have been more business-savvy, but where’s the fun unless you’re crying in the middle of the night because you don’t know what you’re doing?” Of course, it wasn’t just Burnett creating the games. The entire staff of Bristol-based Rumpus Animation was involved, as were programmers, a musician and voice artists like Louis Jones, who plays several characters including Bertram himself. (Jones is also the voice of Timmy the Sheep from Aardman Animations, co-located in Bristol.) “I gave him references like Peter Cushing in At The Earth’s Core, and an inactive Victorian explorer with a fussy streak,” says Burnett. “The voice has changed over the years, since the first video was made in 2006/2007 and the last game was made in 2015/2016. When we’re recording the dialogue, Louis will record a line and I might say something like, ‘You’ve got to sound more worried here.’ He’ll reply, ‘You know I’ve got no idea what’s going on?’”

“Until our heroes reappear, you can join Bertram Fiddle’s quests on your iPhone, Nintendo Switch and Steam. And you can find Seb Burnett where you can find all great cartoonists: hunched over a drawing table in the smallest room in the house, door closed, scribbling a whole world to life with a pencil and paper” 140

over a drawing table in the smallest room in the house, door closed, scribbling a whole world to life with a pencil and paper. “I’m quite misanthropic,” he says. “I’m enjoying lockdown; I can play in my little room being miserable and grumpy about everything.” n

BERTRAM ON ICE? If you’re not a gamer, there are other ways to explore Seb Burnett’s bizarre Britannica. He has drawn and written two Kickstarter-funded books, 100 Days of Mystery and 100 Days of the Macabre, which teem with malevolent characters and dark humour. You can feel the spirit of The Addams Family in these “tales of befuddlement and dread”, mixed with the grubby England of Charles Dickens. You’ll meet the Little Toad Girl, the Professor of Mothery, Jam Zombies, the Magpie Man, the Black Rose Killer and The Flaming Monocle. Imagine if Edgar Allan Poe wrote for kids. As for Bertram Fiddle and Gavin, where they will turn up next is, appropriately, a mystery. “I’d love to make a live-action Bertram on Ice with Benedict Cumberbatch,” Burnett says. “Maybe we’ll get Jason Statham to play Gavin.” Until our heroes reappear, you can join Bertram Fiddle’s quests on your iPhone, Nintendo Switch and Steam. And you can find Seb Burnett where you can find all great cartoonists: hunched

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Tr ave l

HOTELS – A USER'S GUIDE Torquil Arbuthnot recalls the days when one could billet at establishments that ranged from the highly suitable to the socially dangerous, and he presents a handy guide to each type of hotel accommodation

adly 2020 was a year mainly of Colditz-style internment, with very little opportunity to leave one’s abode for a well-earned holiday or even to flee one’s creditors. One can only fondly remember evenings spent in the Hotel Splendiferoso on the Cap d’Antibes or wet weekends in a B&B in Rhyl. But once the quarantine is lifted and the bucket-andspade retrieved from the pawnshop, the Chap will want to saunter forth on his summer hols. As there are many types of hotel and accommodation available, this is a short guide to hostelries for the discerning traveller.

THE SEASIDE B&B The British seaside B&B is not known for its comfort but, like a Land Rover or a pork pie, does the job in an admirably no-nonsense fashion. True, the hot water will only be available for several minutes a day, there are a list of rules that would not be out of place in a German prison, and the management will steal the guests’ towels. But the bed will be comfortable and the breakfast magnificent. Since any holiday to the British seaside is bound to be ‘rained off’, a Chap will find himself spending time in the Residents’ Lounge. This

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The Seaside B&B

room will be dominated by a vast colour television perpetually tuned in to a documentary about meerkats. The bookshelves will contain sets of Mr. Alistair MacLean’s penny-shockers and Miss Georgette Heyer’s bodice-rippers. Although there are some board games in a cupboard, one will find oneself almost reaching the end of the game before realising that some vital piece is missing. The other guests will include a company director and his ‘secretary’, a party of spelunkers from Burton-on-Trent, and a family which considers itself too posh for Butlins. The Country Inn

THE COUNTRY INN Sadly the country inn is nowadays peopled by quacking lawyers, BBC producers and other riff-raff from London, all clothed via the Boden catalogue. The colourful locals in the public bar will play up to these interlopers, speaking rural dialects garnered from the popular televisual entertainment Poldark, and overcharging for botched work on their holiday cottages. But on the plus side there will be industrial-strength local cider on tap, and a shove ha’penny board in the corner. The inn will either be decorated with agricultural implements that look like instruments of medieval torture, or seafarers’ flotsam and jetsam. The food will be impressively solid, as will the gravy.

The bedroom will be up in the eaves and, instead of a welcome chocolate on the pillow, there will be a packet of pork scratchings. During the night one’s sleep will be disturbed by mysterious bumps and noises, possibly from smugglers evading the Revenue men.

THE BOUTIQUE HOTEL Everything in this establishment will be wincingly ironical or post-modernist, and the wallpaper will induce a headache. There will be ‘curated’ art on the walls, ie daubs by local art students. It will

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The Boutique Hotel

be run by a self-styled ‘character’ who is about as colourful as Mr. Tim Henman. The hotel will proudly display photographs of talentless celebrities who have stayed, such as the gurning Dame Emma Thompson or some dementedly cheerful food-taster from a televisual cookery programme. If one makes the mistake of dining in the hotel’s ‘bistro’ or ‘trattoria’, every under-cooked item on the menu will be described as ‘our famous...’ or ‘our signature...’ The waiters will be overly familiar and will try to tell you about their screenplay. Some analogous item will be plonked in the middle of each bedroom (a blacksmith’s anvil, say, or a petrol pump) on which one can bark one’s ankles. The controls for the shower will look like something from Concorde’s dashboard, and will not work. Most of the clientele will be made up of wedding parties and hen parties, clogging the hotel bar with demands for sickly technicolour cocktails.

Many of the hotel guests will actually be long-term residents, mainly elderly ladies who will pounce on new guests and insist on setting out the Tarot cards. Another resident will be ‘The Colonel’, whose regular table in the dining room is covered with an array of chutneys. Commercial travellers will make up the bulk of the transient guests, although there will be the occasional tattered barrister appearing at the local Assizes. Both will sport loud check suits and have an enviable repertoire of off-colour stories. Should one peruse the guest book, one will notice a preponderance of Smiths, as the hotel is popular for those couples requiring a dirty weekend.

THE SEEDY HOTEL The seedy hotel is usually located in a stagnant London suburb such as Bayswater or a somnolent resort town such as Budleigh Salterton. The hotel will smell faintly of damp and despair. The plumbing, like the wine at dinner, will be of uncertain vintage. The staff will appear to have been recruited from the local lunatic asylum.

The Seedy Hotel

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FLÂNEUR T HE ME N’ S F R AGR ANCE FRO M T H E CH A P

Ava i l abl e excl u si vel y fro m www.thechap .co.uk

The Swanky Foreign

Occasionally the hotel will appear in the Sunday newspapers, as one of the guests will turn out to be a naughty vicar, or a steamer-trunk in the left-luggage room will be found to contain the body parts of a showgirl.

THE FADED RELIC OF EMPIRE These hotels may be found in the far-flung former colonies such as Kenya, Singapore and St. Lucia and are usually named after an unhinged Victorian general who once stayed there. The décor will be Home Counties Tropical circa 1950, with an excess of dusty chintz, bamboo and stuffed animal heads. Although air-conditioning has been installed, it is likely to be temperamental, and all bedrooms still contain vast mosquito nets. The staff will wear uniforms that make them look like extras from the 1935 film The Lives of a Bengal Lancer and have deportment that would impress Jeeves. Tiffin is served daily at 3 pip-emma, though the marmalade does not invite close inspection. The bar is the haunt of drink-sodden colonial types, mainly rubber-planters and big-game hunters. They will befriend hotel guests, mainly so they can cadge drinks and bore them with tales of the days when the natives knew their place. The house cocktail is nine parts Gordons Gin to one-part local aperitif made from the bark of the yim-yam tree. The baize is threadbare on the table in the billiards room; however, on the plus side, an obscure variant of snooker (e.g. ‘Cumberland’s Light Horse Beezer-Slosh’) will have been invented at this table. n

THE SWANKY FOREIGN The swanky foreign hotel is to be found in European capital cities, German spa towns and French casino resorts. The overheated rooms will be crammed with vast items of Louis XIV furniture but will lack a Corby trouser press. Apart from the senile wealthy and the boorish Eurotrash, the guests will be an agreeable mixture of gentlemen cat burglars, Ruritanian femmes fatales, elegant card-sharps, sleek Argentine gigolos and mountebanks masquerading as Russian nobility. The waiters are by turn supercilious and obsequious, depending on one’s bank balance, and the concierge is on a retainer from MI6. The bar will be called something like ‘The American’ and will claim that Hemingway and Marlene Dietrich regularly drank there. For a price, the head barman will provide anything from seats at the opera to Charlotte Rampling’s telephone number. Since the restaurant has not the faintest clue how to make a decent pot of oolong, a Chap will fuse the hotel’s lights by plugging in his 1970s teasmade.

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Arcana

THE CHAP TAROT Pandora Harrison presents the fourth instalment of her series of Chap Tarot cards and how they can illuminate the curious

alutations, good patrons of this divine tome, and blessed be. In this instalment I’d like to introduce you to the infamous Marie Lenormand, cartomancer to 19th century France bon ton, and outline four additional Major Arcana cards from a chap-tastic angle. Now, are you sitting comfortably with a suitable libation in hand? Good. Then I shall begin. Marie Anne Adelaide Lenormand (1772– 1843), known as the sybil of the Rue de Tournon, was a prophetess, palm reader and seeress. But most of all, she was a fortune-teller whose palm was often crossed with silver during the Napoleonic era, and the greatest cartomancer of all time. A bright, confident Marie Anne arrived in Paris in 1786 at the age of 14. She claimed to have obtained her first deck of cards from gypsies who taught her how to read them. By 17 she had made her first impactful prediction, the fall of King Louis XVI. A star was born. A flare for self-promotion quickly set Marie Anne up as a ‘bookseller’, in

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fact a front for her fortune-telling enterprise. But Mademoiselle Lenormand did indeed collect books, and as an eager reader she diligently studied mathematics and astronomy as part of her practices. She dedicated herself to the hermetic arts and divination by studying a variety of folklore techniques, such as reading tea leaves and coffee grounds, palmistry and scrying with mirrors. She was intuitive by instinct and would combine these with astrology and numerology and, of course the main tool of her trade, playing cards. Her Rue de Tournon ‘shop’ was adorned with phantasmic decoration, including dried bats, nailed by their wings to the ceiling, stuffed owls, cabalistic signs and skeletons; pretty much anything likely to impress a weak or superstitious mind in possession of a full purse. Her reputation grew and she soon attracted both royal and revolutionary clientele, from the Princess de Lamballe to Robespierre. But the dark arts were illegal during this time and she occasionally found herself in the Bastille, but never for long and never without a deck of cards. During an early incarceration she encountered a fellow inmate, Madam Josephine Beauharnais, whom she predicted would one day be raised higher than a queen. Madam Beauharnais became a widow during The Terror, was released from the Bastille and married a soldier whose star was on the rise...

The soon-to-be Empress Josephine was fascinated by the superstitious beliefs of her homeland of Martinique, and is said to have believed in tarot as a form of divination. She developed a close bond with Lenormand and sought her unique services on several occasions, much to Napoleon’s disgust. His intense dislike for Lenormand was a result of a palm reading she did for him in 1807, in which she predicted his exile and death. His wife’s persistent interest in Lenormand proved a source of conflict in the marriage and thus Josephine’s visits to the Rue de Tournon bookseller resumed in secret. Lenormand apparently prophecised Josephine’s divorce and, with other such dire predictions, including the fall of Napoleon’s Empire, Lenormand fled Paris and retired to the countryside with a tidy fortune. Her career lasted 40 years, but outside the bon ton of Paris she began a second career as an authoress. She wrote at least 15 bestselling books, including Memoirs of Empress Joséphine, a three-volume tome filled with anecdotes from Lenormand’s relationship with the Empress. Lenormand died in 1843 and was buried in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. Upon her death, Marie Anne’s nephew, a devout Catholic, was appointed as her heir and burned all of her occult library and paraphernalia, taking only the monetary fortune that she had left behind. To this day you can still purchase a deck of Mademoiselle Lenormand fortune telling cards based upon the 1799 German Spiel der Hoffnung (The Game of Hope). Unlike tarot cards, which rely more on personal interpretation of images, the Lenormand decks have everyday symbols like ‘key’, ‘dog’, or ‘house.’ Many decks also include traditional playing card suits: hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs. Each card has a straightforward meaning that doesn’t change, whereas in tarot a card can be read differently depending on the question asked.

CHAP TAROT CARDS #13 LAZARUS (DEATH)

The Death card is the single most misunderstood card in the deck. It is not, as is usually believed, about someone’s demise, but rather a release of energy from the acceptance of death that allows new energy to flow in. Like spring following winter, without death clearing away the old, nothing new

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can find a place in the world. David Bowie continuously released energy throughout his career by reinventing himself when the time was right. Since the orchestrated demise of Ziggy Stardust/Aladdin Sane, we witnessed a continuous death and rebirth cycle of The Thin White Duke. Death brings new life in the form of creatures that feed on the corpse. Since Bowie’s death in 2016 much has been created musically honouring his memory, but it was his final album, Blackstar, which essentially designed his death and swansong in much the same way he designed his life, as art. The card advises that if we can accept death (as Bowie did) and the resulting transformation, we can live life more fully, and this knowledge can bring calm and the desire to change. In a reading, the card represents a time of change or fear of change, or even fear of death, depending on the surrounding cards. Reversed, the card indicates being stuck in old habits, inert and lethargic in life, avoiding change; boredom and depression.

taining a balance of power between the races of the universe. Taking action on their part is rare, bound by the moral complexity of interfering in the natural flow of history. The Doctor, however, did occasionally dabble in the timelines of a wide range of events and individuals, as was his wont as a renegade Time Lord. Tom Baker as the fourth Doctor is a capricious if somewhat despondent creature, whose capacity for righteous anger is frequently tempered by his personal warmth, fuelled by jelly babies. In the 1975 six-part serial Genesis of the Daleks, the Doctor faces the dilemma of changing history to avert the creation of the Daleks. The Doctor hesitates, ethically questioning whether he has the right to make such a decision. In a reading, the card represents moderation and balance in all things. Sometimes this can mean doing nothing, like the Time Lords’ policy of non-intervention. The intemperate person always needs to be doing something, but often a situation requires you simply to wait; sometimes the battles we choose not to take are just as important as those we do. Reversed, the card warns of wildness and going to extremes, not understanding or knowing what action is appropriate to a situation. It cautions against allowing your life to fragment and not let old fears and habits die into the past; a need to calm down and allow the process of death and rebirth to happen and flow.

#14 TIME LORD (TEMPERANCE) This card serves as an intermediary card. A temperate card that can influence the cards surrounding it, especially ones that are in a state of flux or considered chaotic, but mainly this card is representative of someone who is able to approach all of life’s problems with joy (almost as if by magic) and possessing the ability to deal with life as it comes, and not according to routines or habits. The Time Lords are purported to be a wise and technologically advanced race from the planet Gallifrey. They are the selfappointed guardians of time and of main-

#15 DORIAN GRAY (THE DEVIL) Oscar Wilde once said that “We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.” It is somewhat fitting that Wilde’s only published novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), is a direct reaction to his experience of being a poster child for the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, an intellectual and artistic movement emphasising pleasure and beauty rather than social-political themes. Undiluted aestheticism, warns Wilde warns, will erode one’s moral code. Wilde himself admitted in a letter to the St. James’s Gazette that Dorian Gray “is a story with a moral. And the moral is this: All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment.” And so it is Dorian who is the devil in this card. The hedonist or materialist’s fixation on the pursuit of desire (monetary, sexual and political) can only lead to misery. Desires and emotions are seen as an energy in tarot, rewiring focus and direction. Energies focused in the wrong direction can lead to dangerous obsessions, sexual crimes and violence.

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The blackness of the card’s illustration is depression and an inability to see the truth. It could be a relationship gone bad where emotions run high. Dorian ultimately abandons the concept of morality and sells his soul to the devil, so that his portrait becomes more disfigured with each one of his selfish acts, while he himself remains young. This is an illustration of the incompatibility of morality and unconditional aestheticism. Reversed, the card symbolises an attempt to break free of misery or bondage; a bad situation that is no longer to be accepted or tolerated. You may want to liberate yourself, but you must be conscious of the misery before you can break free of it. If the card is in a past position, the change has already taken place but scars and feelings of anger remain.

One night, while Byron was reciting Coleridge’s Christabel, Shelley suffered a severe panic attack with hallucinations. The previous night Mary had had a nightmare that would inspire her most famous novel, and poor Claire's emotions were so stirred by what she was reading that she apparently had a hysterical fit. The moment was right, the stage was set. The party decided to have a ghost-story competition. Their combined creativity, the storm being unleashed outside the villa and various stimulants encouraged prodigious levels of cerebral activity. The result was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and Polidori's short story The Vampyre (1819). These stories became the cornerstones of Gothic horror. Gothic fiction places emphasis on both emotion and a pleasurable kind of terror, both of which are known to stimulate areas of the brain that can lead to nightmares and hallucinations. In a reading, the card indicates that your dreams are disturbed, arguments occur frequently and depression is evident. The card is illustrated by an exploding tower, representing the release of pent-up energy determined to get beyond the barrier of repression. If this card is present in a reading, look for the clearing away of a situation that has been building up and is stressful or intolerable, and which can thus lead to new beginnings or liberation. Reversed, the card indicates an on-going stressful situation, confinement or detention.

#16 THE HAPPENING (THE TOWER) The Happening in this case is the lost week at the Villa Diodati, Lake Geneva Switzerland, in the summer of 1816 where Lord Byron, Dr John William Polidori (Byron’s friend), Percy Bysshe Shelly, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Percy’s future wife) and Claire Claremont (Mary’s stepsister and paramour of Byron) indulged in a spot of wine, laudanum and storytelling. The Villa Diodati represents the tower in the card and, in the worst of situations, can be known as ‘The House of the Devil’ for it serves as a prison for those who live to satisfy their ego through materialistic desires (wealth, fame and physical pleasure). It is a tower of illusion and repression.

In the final Chap Tarot instalment, I shall discuss the Lunar Tarot Ritual and the last five Major Arcana cards. n

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Te l e v i s i o n

TALKING PICTURES TV Gustav Temple spoke to Sarah Cronin-Stanley about the television channel she launched six years ago with her father Noel Cronin, which now reaches 3.5 million viewers a week

hat you’re doing is wonderful! I find it almost impossible to find classic black and white movies on any of the popular platforms, which don’t seem to value the origins of modern cinema. Was this why you founded Talking Pictures TV? Our target audience doesn’t have access to Netflix, Amazon or BritBox. I know this because I think we’re one of the only channels in the world that has a direct relationship with its viewers. A lot of them don’t even have Internet access, so we’re taking them back to a time when they just wanted to watch the telly, and they can watch Talking Pictures TV on Freeview, Sky, Virgin or FreeSat. The schedules are devised by Noel every day, to ensure that there is a variety of drama, horror, pathos, comedy etc. We wanted to reintroduce the idea of the family sitting down and watching a film together, like the Saturday Morning Picture show.

Who founded the channel? It’s me, my father Noel, my husband Neil and Archie, my son. We founded the channel six years ago. And do you really run it from a shed in your garden? Well, it isn’t quite a shed, more of an extension, but it certainly isn’t a great big glass building in Soho. What sort of equipment do you have to use to produce the channel? There’s a screening machine, so Noel can watch the old 16-mil and 35-mil film, a live broadcast of the channel on a monitor, three desks and three phones, and that’s it! Are you continually adding titles to your list and how do you acquire said titles? The whole reason why we were able to launch is because we own a library of film rights, under Renowned Pictures, our 20-year-old sister company.

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Noel and I were both film distributors, so we used to sell film rights to all the terrestrial channels. That side of the business, of being the provider for the black and white Saturday afternoon matinee kind of died. So we thought, this is crazy, there’s a massive audience that wants to watch those films, and that’s why we launched Talking Pictures TV. We felt that both young and older film lovers were being neglected, as well as the films themselves. A lot of the film rights that we want to buy from the major studios would take some big digging and lots of paperwork for them. We don’t want their big blockbusters; we want the stuff in their archives they’d forgotten they owned. The other problem is that a lot of the big films that we’d like to air are owned by American majors, and you cannot go to them and say, ‘I’d like this film for next Saturday’. Instead, you have to negotiate huge packages of films, in the hope that the one you want is in it.

about the changes to the TV licence [no longer free for over 75s]. I think it’s outrageous that people are now paying for a TV licence and not watching the BBC, they’re watching our channel. Do you believe in offering viewer warnings that alert the viewer to scenes in a film they may find offensive? Yes, we’ve always done that. There are different laws for home video, where you’ve made a personal choice to buy that film, knowing there may be something offensive in it. But when you broadcast something, you have to follow the OfCom rules.

Do you write each week’s schedule yourselves, with each description of each title? They are wonderfully summed up! Some of them are provided by the content providers; some of them come from published reviews and some just from Noel’s memory. Also, everything we screen has to be watched six weeks before it’s aired.

Where do you stand on the prevailing view that some audiences may find the language and attitudes in films and TV programmes from days gone by offensive or inappropriate, by today’s standards? I think that history should teach us about the values of certain times in the past, and without the cultural material for viewers to experience it, they’ll never know what actually happened.

Is the channel funded by advertising? Yes, that’s the only source of revenue, like any other commercial channel. Some of them don’t spend any of their budget on subtitles, which we do, not because we’re legally obliged to but because we know our audience need it. Why don’t you charge a subscription like Netflix, who give us mostly utter drivel for £9.99 a month? Because we’re not on a streaming platform, we can’t at the moment, but we might have to do so in the future, just because of the natural progression of TV, but one of the huge reasons that Noel and I launched Talking Pictures was to provide something that was free and accessible to the people that really need it. Especially during these covid times; you should see our postbag – it would make you cry! We get so many letters from people isolated at home, of all age groups but particularly the over-75s, telling us that we really have kept them sane. It would be very hard to say to those viewers, one, you’ve got to get a computer, and two, you’ve got to pay us. That isn’t quite what we’re all about. And that’s another reason why we’re so cross

Would you ever show something like Mind Your Language? I would love to show Mind Your Language but we haven’t secured the rights yet. We’ve shown programmes like It Ain’t Half Hot Mum where characters are blacked up, but that was purely because there weren’t many ethnic actors around when it was made. Do you ever receive any complaints about such screenings? We once had a complaint about a programme – one complaint, with 120,000 viewers – so you can’t please everybody. In fact, more viewers complain when we’ve silenced an offensive word than when we haven’t. n

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A SAMPLE FROM THE TALKING PICTURES TV SCHEDULES

08:10 BFI: POST HASTE 1934. Factual. Humphrey Jennings’ first film as a director, a brief overview of the British postal service.

05:00 THE ROGUES 1965. Gig Young, David Niven and Charles Boyer are The Rogues, members of two related families of international forgers and conmen. 06:00 PHANTOM FROM SPACE 1953. Sci-Fi. Directed by W Lee Wilder. Stars Ted Cooper, Noreen Nash, Dick Sands & Burt Wenland. A radioactive alien crash-lands on Earth near a LA laboratory. His arrival attracts much attention. (SUBTITLES AVAILABLE)

10:30 I KNOW WHAT I LIKE 1973. A ‘lost’ short, directed by James Allen, featuring Bernard Cribbins OBE. With the help of some ‘family’ members, Bernard explains the process of brewing beer, from the pasture to the pint.

07:30 HAMMER THE TOFF 1952. Crime Drama by Maclean Rogers. The Toff (John Bentley) tries to help Susan (Patricia Dainton) reunite with her missing uncle who's been targeted by criminals after his steel formula. (SUBTITLES AVAILABLE)

12.30 MAKE ME AN OFFER 1954. Comedy. Directed by Cyril Frankel. Starring Peter Finch. The story of Charlie, who as a boy fell in love with a Portland Vase on a trip to a museum, pursues his dream as an antiques dealer.

18:35 CHAIN OF EVENTS 1958. Drama. Director: Gerald Thomas. Stars Dermot Walsh, Susan Shaw & Lisa Gastoni. A clerk tries to dodge paying a bus fare, and it sparks all sorts of complications.

02:10 THE SKULL 1965. Horror. Directed by Freddie Francis. Stars: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Patrick Wymark, Jill Bennett. Madness fills the mind of a professor who buys the stolen skull of the Marquis de Sade. (SUBTITLES AVAILABLE)

03:20 BFI: TERMINUS 1961. Drama. Directed by John Schlesinger. Iconic short of a day in the life of a London Railway Station.

20:00 COPACABANA 1947. Musical Comedy. Director: Alfred E. Green. Stars Carmen Miranda and Groucho Marx. An agent has his only client pose as both a French chanteuse and Brazilian bombshell to fool a nightclub owner. (SUBTITLES AVAILABLE)

23:50 THE COTTON CLUB 1984. Drama. Director: Francis Ford Coppola. Stars Richard Gere, Gregory Hines, Diane Lane & Nicholas Cage. The Cotton Club was a nightclub in Harlem, famous for its visitors and Jazz music.

04:00 THE MIND OF MR JG REEDER: THE FATAL ENGAGEMENT 1971. Stars: Windsor Davies, Willoughby Goddard and Mona Bruce. A stream of gentlemen callers arrive at the flat of Hetty Malone, a musical star, only to learn that she is dead.

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John Minns on how Bakelite first came into production in the 1920s and its pervasive influence on fashion and homeware for several succeeding decades

n 1901 Dr. Leo Hendrik Baekeland (18631944), a brilliant and erudite Belgian-born chemist and successful businessman moved into Snug Rock, a substantial property close to the Hudson River in Yonkers, New York. A year earlier, he had sold the rights for a new type of photographic paper he had invented called ‘Vellox’ to George Eastman (of the Eastman Kodak company) for $1,000,000, with the proviso from Eastman that “Baekeland would not produce any other product for the photographic industry for the next 20 years.” Pondering what to do next, Baekeland could see there was a potential market for plastic, a new and perhaps more robust type, which would have a wider use and with more extensive application than the current existing plastics, which had a number of drawbacks. Baekeland set up a laboratory in the basement of his home in Yonkers in order to find the solution.

The main problem was that the plastic items available at the time were made of celluloid, a derivative of organic compounds from natural plant and vegetable fibres, which had a tendency to warp and lose their shape; if placed close to a heat source they were also unstable and combustible. There had been many reported cases of celluloid billiard balls exploding on impact after colliding with each other on the baize. By 1907, Baekeland had overcome all of the previous negative issues associated with the earlier plastics, by creating the world’s first synthesised plastic from a resin made from a combination of phenol and formaldehyde. In 1909 the new plastic was patented, its chemical name Polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride, which didn’t exactly trip off the tongue. It was commercially re-named BAKELITE. Initially used in electrical insulators, it proved suitable for mass-produced items due to its strength, heat resistance and ability to retain its shape.

Many diverse objects were made from Bakelite, from doorknobs to electrical fittings, ashtrays, telephones and many other household items, but it was only later, when a larger variant of colour pigmentation was introduced, that Bakelite took a quantum leap forward. The ‘New Bakelite’ section of the Paris exhibition of 1925 caught the eye of the public and the imagination of the fashion designers of the day, who started to incorporate more Bakelite into their clothing and accessories. Jeanne Lanvin, Elsa Schiaparelli, and Gabriell ‘Coco’ Chanel would all eventually use Bakelite within their design ranges, incorporating buttons, buckles, handbags and costume jewellery.

The world was entering a new and vibrant epoch, the complete antithesis of the previous decade, blighted by the First World War and the Spanish Flu pandemic. A great sense of relief pervaded all aspects of life; a new sense of joy and optimism was reflected in fashion, for which Bakelite items, in their bright, whimisical colours, provided the perfect adornment, as well as entering the home in the form of the sorts of gadgets that had previously been made of wood or metal. Leo Baekeland would eventually retire from the Bakelite business, devoting his time to the growing and cultivation of tropical plants. During the latter part of his life he would become increasingly obsessive and eccentric, eating all of his meals from tin cans. This condition may have been brought on by having spent so many years working in the company of noxious and toxic chemicals and fumes. By the time Leo Baekeland died in 1944, at the age of eighty, Bakelite had been used in 15,000 different products. Leo Baekeland can unquestionably hold the title as the ‘master and creator of modern plastics’. n

THE BAKELITE MUSEUM

HOW TO IDENTIFY A PIECE OF BAKELITE Bakelite is largely made from a mixture of formaldehyde and phenol.

The Bakelite Museum was opened in Greenwich in 1983 by Patrick Cook, later moving to an 18th century water mill in Williton, Somerset. The collection contains every conceivable item made from Bakelite, from radios to a Bakelite coffin, as well as the presses, moulding machines and original steel moulds from Britain’s first Bakelite factory. After 25 years, the Bakelite museum is in the process of moving to a new permanent home, and Mr. Cook is publishing a book about the collection.

If you rub a piece rigorously with your thumb, it will emit a smell you are very unlikely to forget, something akin to the odour of the old school lab. Another way of identifying a genuine piece of Bakelite is to carry an authenticated piece around with you in your pocket. If you are at a market or auction, for example, and you find a piece of Bakelite that appears to look like the real McCoy, tap it against your genuine piece. If it is genuine, it will have a distinctive sound, similar to that of hands cupping together.

THE FLUMMOXER This issue’s antiquity conundrum is some sort of gentlemen’s gadget or gewgaw, but what is it and what the blue blazes is it for? The winner receives a pair of Fox Cufflinks.

Send your answer to chap@thechap.co.uk

Brandon Harris correctly identifed the last issue’s flummoxer as a a universal watch key, for the winding up of pocket watches.

CROSSWORD 1

By Xeno

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Solutions to crossword Issue 106 Chap Winter 20

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DOWN

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The Chap Issue 107

Articles inside

TALKING PICTURES TV

THE CHAP TAROT

HOTELS: A USER’S GUIDE

BERTRAM FIDDLE

BOOK REVIEWS

LISA HILTON

ERIC RAVILIOUS’S HELICOPTER

BRIGHT YOUNG CITY

COOKING FOR CHAPS

THE MARX BROTHERS

WORLD WHISKY

GREY FOX COLUMN

CLARE BRADLEY

JOSEPHINE BAKER

JAKE’S THING

PHARAOHS AND FLAPPERS

GET THE LOOK

ADJUSTABLE COSTUME

BOHÈME SAUVAGE

INTERVIEW: ANDREW WILSON

ASK THE CHAP

ANNA MAY WONG

SARTORIAL LOCKDOWN

1920S V 2020S