The Chap Issue 108

ISSUE 108

SUMMER 2021

EXPAND YOUR MIND, REFINE YOUR WARDROBE

Daniel Day-Lewis “I was this wayward guy from South London who didn’t know what to do with his life, then I saw that acting wasn’t only prancing around on stage in tights”

OVERLOOK REVISITED

A trip to St Albans to re-enact scenes from Brideshead Revisited and The Shining

STEVE STRANGE

Chris Sullivan recalls his crazy days with the doomed dandy in the eighties

HELEN MCCRORY

A tribute to the grand career in film and theatre of the late great star of Peaky Blinders 08>

9 771749 966087

ISSUE 108

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Editor: Gustav Temple Picture Editor: Theo Salter Circulation Manager: Andy Perry

Art Director: Rachel Barker Sub-Editor: Romilly Clark Subscriptions Manager: Jen Rainnie

Contributing Editors: Chris Sullivan, Liam Jefferies, Alexander Larman

GUSTAV TEMPLE

LIAM JEFFERIES

CHRIS SULLIVAN

ALEXANDER LARMAN

DAVID EVANS

The editor of The Chap for the last 20 years is also the author of The Chap Manifesto, The Chap Almanac, Around the World in 80 Martinis (Fourth Estate), Cooking For Chaps and Drinking For Chaps (Kyle Books) and How To Be Chap (Gestalten). He is currently working on a book without ‘Chap’ in the title.

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

ALF ALDERSON

DARCY SULLIVAN

PANDORA HARRISON

JOHN MINNS

Alf Alderson is an awardwinning adventure travel writer whose work appears regularly in the world’s leading newspapers, magazines and websites.

He has also written and contributed to a wide variety of guidebooks on adventure travel, skiing, surfing, cycling, hiking, mountain biking and camping.

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’.

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.

Office address The Chap Ltd 69 Winterbourne Close Lewes, East Sussex BN7 1JZ

Advertising Paul Williams paul@thechap.co.uk +353(0)83 1956 999

Subscriptions 01442 820 580 contact@webscribe.co.uk

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

Email chap@thechap.co.uk Website www.thechap.co.uk Twitter @TheChapMag Instagram @TheChapMag Facebook/TheChapMagazine

Printing: Micropress, Fountain Way, Reydon Business Park, Reydon, Suffolk, IP18 6SZ T: 01502 725800 www.micropress.co.uk Distribution: Warners Group Publications, West Street, Bourne, Lincolnshire, PE10 9PH T: 01778 391194

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.

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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.

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CONTENTS 8 WAS I CHAP?

We look back at those who may have submitted their photographs to this publication, had it existed in the 1940s

12 ASK THE CHAP

‘Wisbeach’ ponders queries from readers on matters sartorial

16 SOCIAL DRINKERS

Torquil Arbuthnot provides a handy guide to the sorts of drinkers one may encounter in the post-lockdown world

FEATURES 22 INTERVIEW: DANIEL DAY-LEWIS

Chris Sullivan discusses the legendary actor’s entire career, now that he has retired from the profession

30 H ELEN MCCRORY

Gustav Temple’s tribute to the actress who died earlier this year

36 T HE SHINING PARTY

arcy Sullivan pores over the various theories regarding the July 4th D Ball at the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining

•

SUMMER 2021

22 SARTORIAL FEATURES 44 OVERLOOK REVISITED

The Chap pulled out all the stops in our first photo shoot in over a year, at a former convent near St Albans

60 GRENSON SHOES

Chris Sullivan meets the footwear supremo who turned around the fortunes of the Northampton shoemaker

66 W ORKER’S BLUES

Liam Jefferies meets the French workwear brand Vetra, who have been supplying chore jackets since 1927

70 G ET THE LOOK

Digby Fairfax on how to assemble the correct wardrobe for a saunter along the promenade at the Cote D’Azur or Bognor Regis

74 WISHMOOR WATCHES

This publication rarely reviews watches, unless they are as appealling and affordable as the Pioneer Chronograph

78 GREY FOX COLUMN

David Evans celebrates the true sartorial splendour of the British Isles, despite reputations abroad to the contrary

LONGER FEATURES 84 STEVE STRANGE

Chris Sullivan recalls his friendship with the boy from Rhyl who went on to become one of the world’s most glamorous nightclub impresarios, before drugs took him elsewhere

96 SQUIRE OSBALDESTON

Olivier Woodes-Farquharson explores the non-stop life of the aristocrat, world-class cricketer, horseman extraordinaire, reluctant politician and occasional seducer

102 E NGLISH WINE

Gustav Temple tries to find out whether English still wine will ever be as good as the stuff from Southern Europe

Cover photo: © Matt Baron/BEI/Shutterstock

ISSUE 108

106 COOKING FOR CHAPS

Nicole Drysdale assembles the ingredients for the perfect summer picnic

110 K ENT CALLING

Chris Sullivan explores the seaside towns of Margate, Whitstable and Herne Bay, returning with an armful of vintage chairs

118 S URFING ATTIRE

Alf Alderson dips a toe in the water of surf fashion, with the surprising revelation that the Duke of Windsor himself occasionally ‘hung ten’

REVIEWS 128 I AN KELLY

Alexander Larman meets the author of the definitive biography of Beau Brummell, who is also an actor and playwright

134 BOOK REVIEWS

The Chips Channon Diaries, plus biographies of Robert Maxwell, Monica Jones and Thomas Hennell

138 SALVADOR DALI

Cedric Maldonado on the eccentric surrealist artist who turned dreams into art and back into dreams again

146 PERUVIAN DANDIES

Olivier Woodes-Farquharson uncovers a Peruvian photographer who documented a little-known Andean world of socialites springing into life in a deeply traditional city

152 THE CHAP TAROT

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

157 ANTIQUES

John Minns on the most valuable military medals and how to collect them

160 CROSSWORD

WE LOOK BACK AT PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE PAST, PROBABLY NOT SUBMITTED TO CHAP@THECHAP.CO.UK, FOR CLUES AS TO WHY NEARLY EVERYONE LOOKED SO DAMNED FABULOUS

“It is my duty to inform you that this is a Holland & Holland 12-bore side-by-side, the most powerful shotgun in the world, which would blow to smithereens the portion of your physiognomy situated about your neck.

You, sir, are obliged to pose one pertinent question to yourself: ‘Am I blessed with good fortune?’ Indeed, is this case, rapscallion?”

“Doris, do you think this ladies in trousers thing will ever catch on?”

“I don’t know, Mabel, but it sure as hell beats wearing a petticoat.”

“But where do you find space for your bloomers?”

“I’m not wearing any, Mabel.”

“Can I top you up with more of this small-batch, hand-crafted corianderinfused Brooklyn Pale Ale, Henry?”

“If you insist, Lancaster, though I’d rather have a bottle of normal beer.”

“The bearded chap behind the bar was rather short with me when I asked for normal beer.”

“Hooray, Douglas, we’re all wearing peak lapels, even those of us in single-breasted jackets.”

“Welcome to the demob decade, Scotney. Doesn’t it feel good to be alive?”

“Well it would, Douglas, if the shorthouse at the end had made an effort.”

“Just keep reading your book about British menswear from 1820-1902, Fillibert, and leave the dandyism to us.”

“According to this book, Londsdale, you two will be out of fashion in about three weeks.

My raiment, however, will persist.”

“Harry, are you sure that bow tie is going to fit through the door of the Palais de Dance?”

“It’s like a cat’s whiskers, Sal. If the bow tie fits through the door, then so do I.”

“It says in the airline sartorial guidance, Lawrence, that one may undo the bottom button on a doublebreasted jacket once seated in the aircraft.”

“But surely only in first class, Jeremiah?”

“Don’t look so worried, Huxley.

By the time we reach the end of this concourse, this snazzy outfit will be the height of fashion.”

“I think it will take a little longer than that, Campbell. In fact I sincerely hope it takes an eternity.”

“The principal regulation of Fisticuffs Club, ladies, is that one must refrain from any discourse about Fisticuffs Club. The secondary regulation of Fisticuffs Club is that one should avoid any social intercourse concerning said institution.”

“Hullo girls!”

“So I was downtown with Brooklyn Billy and he says to me, George, I see you soiled your trousers.”

“Hullo, Marmaduke. Would you like a glass of gin and lime? You look as though you could do with a pick-me-up after that swim.”

“Soiled them, Billy?” I says. “But I only just boight them!”

“What are you doing after this, Conrad?”

“Looking for trouble, sir? Trouble is one of our many middle names, along with Ursquine, Hathersedge, Featherstonaugh, Squiffy, Stinky, Biffo and Tufty.”

“I’m getting some snorting powders from Brilliant Chang, then I’m off to cut a rug at the Golden Calf in Soho. Care to join me?”

“Rather!”

the Chap...

By Wisbeach

An advice column in which readers are invited to pose pertinent questions on sartorial and etiquette matters, and even those of a romantic nature.

Send your questions to chap@thechap.co.uk

T. Richardson: My question concerns cravats. I own four or five of these items, but feel I have never successfully worn one.

I feel I am all at sea with the cravat. The issues I have with them include: How best to knot one? Mine seems to come loose at the slightest ruction. One, or two, shirt buttons undone? How tight around the neck? How large the knot? How large the actual cravat? You can get some very large ones.

There seem to be several ways of wearing a cravat; for example, the flamboyant, let-it-all-hang-out style; the cravat almost as a tie, hanging down; the cravat ruffed up around the neck like a muffler or the plumped-up cravat to create the ‘neat neck’ which is part of the purpose of this accoutrement. When and where to deploy such styles? Is it wrong to reach for the cravat when dressing for the evening? Is it possible to wear a cravat without appearing excessively louche?

The Chap: Sir, you have embarked on a splendid neckwear adventure which, if one may say so, you seem to have overcomplicated somewhat. To address each of your concerns in order: The best way to tie a cravat (and this will answer points 2, 3 and 4) is to start tying it with a four-in-

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hand tie knot, but refrain from passing the tip through the knot and simply let the longer portion flop over the top of the knot. This adds extra security to the traditional method of simply looping the longer portion over the shorter. The latter is so unreliable that it even affected the usually sartorially perfect Cary Grant. If you use the below left image of Dirk Bogarde to guide you, you will note that one undone shirt button is sufficient.

Tootal Cravats generally provide the ideal size, and one should avoid anything linking the words ‘Ascot’ and ‘Cravat’, as these are likely to be aimed at soccer players attending weddings.

Cravats are only suitable in the evening if attending an out-of-doors cocktail party, when the dress code has been stipulated as ‘lounge suit’. They are never appropriate for evening wear. As to your final question: No, which is precisely why one should wear a cravat as often as possible.

Jørgen Riber Christensen: Weather permitting, which it never does in Denmark anyway: could a chap venture outside in a Hawaiian shirt, without risking being tossed into the nearest volcano?

The Chap: Sir, your question alludes to a style of shirt that is as risky as standing anywhere near an active volcano. If you were Montgomery Clift starring in From Here to Eternity (which we are assuming you are not), then you could just about get away with wearing an Aloha shirt.

Should you happen to be in a climate that precludes the donning of a long-sleeved shirt, then you would do better to follow the lead of Elvis Presley in Fun in Acapulco, and wear a striped shortsleeved shirt, in his case from Sy Devore of New York.

...

...

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who is never unintentionally rude.’ George Bernard Shaw averred that ‘A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.’ The American writer William Lyon Phelps said, ‘This is the first test of a gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible value to him.’

Personally, I think a gentleman is a fellow who, while taking a piss in the sink, leaves the tap running.

The Chap: Ah, didn’t dear Noel Coward once utter those same immortal lines? It may be useful to combine the quotes to which you refer into one convenient maxim: ‘A gentleman is one who is never unintentionally rude to those of no value to him, while putting more into the sink than he takes out’.

The quote from Robert Smith Surtees ‘The only infallible rule we know is, that the man who is always talking about being a gentleman never is one’ seems to have cancelled out all of the above.

...

William Walker: Is it ever acceptable to tuck one’s napkin into one’s collar whilst relishing a jolly good slap-up lunch, a-la Hercule Poirot? Regardless that the fellow is fully fictitious, he’s still one of our most endearing dandies.

The Chap: Sir, we are back to waistcoats, as is inevitable, and the fact that no amount of slips will protect one’s favourite waistcoat from the feared splash of mulligatawny. The act of inserting a napkin into one’s shirt collar is only as acceptable as the manner in which it is done. If, like Poirot, the napkin is inserted with a great flourish, with a challenging eyebrow raised to any other diner who expresses opprobrium, then it is acceptable. n

Dominic Buckwell: I noticed that Prince Charles often has some kind of trim (or under waistcoat) when wearing a morning coat, and also at his father’s funeral. Can you enlighten me about this? Is it a sartorial tradition or some kind of security device?

The Chap: They are called slips, sir. Traditionally made from Marcella, they are held into place behind the waistcoat by buttons. In bygone eras such as the Regency period it was a sign of opulence to wear several layers of clothing. As fashions developed, the waistcoat slips were used to give the appearance of having a second layer without actually having the bulk. Prince Charles is subtly displaying his Regency dandy credentials by wearing them, without the risk of anyone saying “Who’s your fat friend?” to his companion. Thanks to tailor Haddon Pratt of www.prattandprasad.co.uk for assistance with this detail.

...

Paul Dixon: There are many definitions of gentleman.

Famously, Oscar Wilde claimed ‘A true gentleman is one

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Field Guide

A Field Guide to Social Drinkers Torquil Arbuthnot provides a handy guide to the different types of social drinker one may encounter now the pubs are open again

A

s the tedium of lockdown ends and a Chap is able to saunter forth once more, his thoughts swiftly turn to the delights of social drinking. Whatever the type and location of watering-hole (the Soho drinking den, the park bench, the Lamb & Flag) one will encounter in each establishment a wide selection of social drinkers. The following field guide will help the discerning Chap identify (and in some cases avoid) some of the more common types of toper.

“After lunch a siesta is in order, followed by a further drinking session (industrial-strength cider, a dry sherry) on a park bench, where he will exchange badinage with passers-by and pigeons” 16

The Saloon Bar Bore

The Gentleman of the Road

The Saloon Bar Bore will wear a striped tie from a regiment he didn’t serve in, a signet ring with a crest he’s not entitled to, and a moustache that doesn’t suit him. He dominates the bar with his braying voice and military slang garnered from old copies of Commando comic. He will freely give his loud opinion on everything from how to run the NHS to the best carburettor for a Hillman Minx. Naturally he has his own pewter tankard behind the bar and will almost certainly be a real ale bore. He imagines himself to be a ‘local character’ and is only tolerated by the pub regulars because he buys round after round for everyone in lieu of having any friends. Although he hints desperately that he’s a retired MI6 spy or professional roulette player, it is generally known he married a rich wife who can’t stand the sight of him, so sends him to the pub each day with copious amounts of pocket-money. He is regularly bitten by the pub dog.

The gentleman of the road is fashionably attired in upcycled distressed clothing. The more traditional will carry his belongings on his shoulder in a knotted handkerchief tied to the end of a stick. He prefers his drinking to be al fresco and can often be spotted in the local park, taking the sun with like-minded fellows or carousing along the embankment. His day will start with a light breakfast of chilled continental lager, before a trip to the off-licence to purchase a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 (‘Blue Raspberry’ flavour) or Thunderbird grape wine. The more discerning type will favour a ‘Red Biddy’ cocktail (red wine and meths), sometimes flavoured with Brasso strained through a nylon stocking for that extra zing. After lunch a siesta is in order, followed by a further drinking session (industrial-strength cider, a dry sherry) on a park bench, where he will exchange badinage with passers-by and pigeons.

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The Office Partygoer

The Steadfast Regular

The noted poet Mr. John Cooper Clarke said that his father never bet on the Grand National or got drunk on Christmas Day, as they were the two days a year when he left it to the amateurs.

The Office Partygoer is such an amateur, who turns up in the Lamb & Flag after an afternoon of drinking warm Lambrusco and eating cheese straws to celebrate someone’s retirement or the office Christmas party. They always spend an age cluttering up the bar while they ponder aloud what they want to drink. The female eventually asks for something complicated like a vari-coloured cocktail with a twee name, or an obscure Ruritanian liqueur that she “fell in love with on holibobs”. The male will ask for an avocado-flavoured gin he’s read about in The Guardian. They will ask the barman what tapas the pub does and will wordlessly be shown the jar of pickled eggs.

The backbone of the British pub, he either sits quietly in the corner with the crossword, his Jack Russell and a pint of mild-and-bitter, or communes with like-minded souls over the cribbage board, the shove ha’penny, the darts oche or the dominoes piste. He can discourse learnedly and entertainingly on the burning issues of the day – England’s batting collapse, the barmaid’s alleged love life, who will win the 4.30 at Kempton, or the vagaries of the fruit-machine. He will always wear a jacket and tie (possibly his demob suit) accesorised with a venerable trilby and a dog-chewed walking stick, and will occasionally sport a betting-shop pencil behind his ear. The Steadfast Regular’s wife will join him in the pub of a Saturday night, where she will drink gin-and-It and commiserate with the barmaid about her love life. They will be on nodding acquaintance, but no more, with the Saloon Bar Bore.

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The Rugger Aficionado

The Soho Clubman

Upon entering a pub and complementing the landlord on the traditional sawdust on the floor, one might be told, “Ah, that’s actually last night’s furniture – the rugby club were in here yesterday.”

Although the Rugger Aficionado frequently destroys the furnishings and fittings of pubs, he is popular with publicans because he not only always apologises and pays for the damage inflicted, but also drinks copious amounts of ale and spirits. He can be identified easily, as he travels in a pack of like-minded souls clad in jeans, rugby shirts, bloodstains and traffic cones. Their idea of a cocktail is to top up their pints of beer with their own or others’ urine or, on occasion, with foam from the fire-extinguisher. Much of the alcohol they buy ends up being poured over their own heads. Rather than make use of the jukebox, they will regale the clientele with a rousing rendition of all 94 verses of Four and Twenty Virgins Came Down from Inverness.

Until the 1980s, the harsh licensing laws of England were a leftover from the Defence of the Realm Act of 1914. Draconian laws were such that, between the hours of 3 and 5.30 pip-emma, a pub was not allowed to serve alcohol. This left the thirsty gentleman in need of somewhere in which to slake his thirst of an afternoon, and licensed private clubs proliferated. The Soho Clubman frequents one of these clubs, usually found at the top of dingy stairs in Greek Street and furnished with priceless artwork, left in lieu of bar tabs. The Soho Clubman will be either an artist who has never sold a single daub, a writer who has never scribbled a single line, or an actor who is perennially ‘resting’.

He will belong to several such drinking clubs, forever being temporarily barred from each, for misdemeanours such as kicking the owner’s chihuahua or passing stumers. His alcohol consumption will be akin to that of gentlemen of the road. n

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CLIFTON SUITS TAILORS & OUTFITTERS N 44 TRIANGLE WEST, BRISTOL, BS8 1ES ENQUIRIES@CLIFTONSUITS.CO.UK + 44 (0)117 909 9948 CLIFTONSUITS.CO.UK

Features •

Interview: Daniel Day-Lewis (p22) Tribute: Helen McCrory 21 (p30) • Overlook Hotel

(p36)

Interview

DA NI EL DAY-LEW I S Chris Sullivan meets the triple Oscar-winning actor to look back at his entire cinematic career, and tries to find out why Daniel Day-Lewis works so damn hard at immersing himself in the difficult roles he chooses

O

n meeting actor Daniel Day-Lewis, one gets the distinct impression that, whether successful or not, he has no other option than to do things his way.

A man who subconsciously defies convention at every turn, he is rarely seen at Hollywood shindigs, only acts in films he really believes in and doesn’t give two hoots about money or fame.

Furthermore, since 1997 he has lived as far from the madding crowd as possible, basing himself in Ireland’s wild and wet Wicklow Mountains with his writer-director wife Rebecca Miller ‒ daughter of US playwright Arthur Miller ‒ and his two teenage boys Ronan and Cashel. A several year hiatus between movies is par for the course for the London-born actor, who is known to choose his projects carefully and sparingly.

“And of course I had to prepare, so I just went mad and remembered the halcyon days of fighting on the terraces at the Den, memories that stood me in good stead as Bill the Butcher.

He was a bit of a punk and a marvellous character and a joy to be – although not so good for my physical or mental health” 22

As Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood (2007)

of the production. I did a hell of a lot of running around. If you notice, I get progressively thinner throughout the film because all I did was run.”

Other roles, such as the psychopathic gang leader Bill the Butcher in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York (2002) drove him to distraction.

“At first I was reluctant, because I had been out of the game for five years. I’d got married and had children and wasn’t sure that I was ready to get back into it, because when you go into that tunnel with someone, you have to be sure you’re not looking for the escape hatch half way through.

“I knew what doing the part would entail, as I knew what I am like and Martin didn’t need to convince me. He told me the story on the phone and I thought, here we go, not again! But I had to need to know I was up for it because I don’t want to let anyone down, especially not him, as when you work with him it’s hard work and you have to be an ally, to be someone you can count on and who has the strength of purpose to sustain you through eight months of mayhem.

“And of course I had to prepare, so I just went mad and remembered the halcyon days of fighting on the terraces at the Den, memories that stood me in good stead as Bill the Butcher. He was a bit of a punk and a marvellous character and a joy to be ‒ although not so good for my physical or mental health.”

He grew up in Greenwich, South East London, and despite being the son of the Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis and actress Jill Balcon, he was hardly sheltered. However fine and dandy Greenwich might be, it’s an area surrounded by less salubrious boroughs, which were once home to many of London’s dockworkers. As a young teenager, Day-Lewis soon found himself strolling through sprawling council estates and, being both posh and Jewish, had to defend himself physically.

“I was fascinated by the streets that were close by – Lewisham, New Cross, Deptford – and I roamed the streets of South London and supported Millwall with great gusto, and was on the terraces every Saturday with the rest of the lads. That part of my life means a lot to me – that time before I went to boarding school, when I was roaming the streets of Deptford. It was heaven, just discovering that world.”

As Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York (2002)

“Others might use that frenzy to find out who they are,” says the affable, down-to-earth actor, dressed in black jeans, a T-shirt and scuffed steel toecap work boots, his long curly hair barely concealing two large gold hoop earrings. “But I need tranquility and absolute quiet after a film, and that is that.”

His modus operandi is certainly effective. He is the only man ever to win three Best Actor Academy Awards ‒ an achievement all the more remarkable as he’s made just 17 films in 34 years. He made his last film, Phantom Thread, in 2017, after which he announced his retirement from acting. DayLewis has always picked roles that were not only extremely challenging but completely disparate.

Who could forget his rendering of Hawkeye in Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans?

“It took me about six months to get myself in shape, then it all fell off during the last few weeks

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As Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans (1992)

“It took me about six months to get myself in shape for The Last of The Mohicans, then it all fell off during the last few weeks of the production. I did a hell of a lot of running around for that. If you notice, I get progressively thinner throughout the film because all I did was run”

in awe at Michel Simon in L’Atalante; Jean-Louis Barrault in Les Enfants Du Paradis and Jean Gabin in Le Quai Des Brumes. But there were the British actors who influenced me as well: Richard Harris in This Sporting Life; Albert Finney in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning; Tom Courtenay in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, David Bradley in Kes.” In 1973, at the age of 16, Day-Lewis saw Martin Scorsese’s seminal Mean Streets.

“You could not imagine the effect that had on me. I was this young and slightly wayward guy from South London who just didn’t know what to do with his life. It was like a light going on in my head.

It was so influential for me as a young person, never mind as a young actor. Then I saw that there could be a purpose for this acting, and that it wasn’t all about prancing around on stage in tights.”

Consequently the young man joined the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. He performed with them before going on to cut his teeth in film and TV. It was director Stephen Frears who first saw the young thespian’s true potential and cast him as Johnny, a tough London right-wing extremist street kid who embarks on a romantic relationship with the son of a left-wing Pakistani journalist in Thatcher’s Britain.

“You could see the producer’s bewilderment.

My Beautiful Launderette felt to me as if we were like

Nevertheless, his parents, seeing their wayward son advancing rapidly towards a life less ordinary, and certainly more hazardous, sent him to the Sevenoaks boarding school in Kent, where he lasted just two years. Transferred at 14 to Bedales, a famously liberal private school in Hampshire, he dabbled in drama and soon acquired his first role as a vandal in John Schlesinger’s Sunday Bloody Sunday.

He was overjoyed. “They paid me a couple of quid a day to smash up a few cars. I was 14 and in heaven.

Once I discovered great film I was voracious. I just devoured all I could get my hands on. I looked up

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As Cecil Vyse in A Room With A View (1985)

a continuation of this tradition of looking at this ludicrous divided society we inhabit. I loved the sense of mischief, and it’s a very sustaining feeling to feel you are all partaking of this mischievous enterprise.

“I did the Merchant Ivory adaptation of E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View the same time as Launderette, and I believe they premiered in New York on the same day. I relished the opportunity to do both. In Launderette I was this working-class outcast and in Room I was this upper-class twit. It was great, great fun.”

But there are roles that he doesn’t look back upon with such fondness, such as the adaptation of Milan Kundera’s overrated, confusing novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

“I made it against my better judgement. People ask me about those sex scenes and I say I shouldn’t have done them and I shouldn’t have done the film

– there is a sense of despair in those scenes and it left me feeling a little bit down in the mouth.”

Enjoying himself both creatively and otherwise on set is of paramount importance, and that entails not only empathising with the characters themselves, but suffering the same hardships and enjoying the same pleasures.

“I love the pure pleasure of doing the work, no matter if that work involves some kind of discomfort, even though I don’t see it as discomfort.

And it’s not that one deals with the problems, so much as one deals with the day-to-day challenges of the character. It’s a big game. It’s not life and death. Acting and theatre and film are just one big game and some people forget that. I understand that some might not understand the lengths that I go to, but does it really matter?”

Day-Lewis’s preparation has been the cause of much hyperbole and, occasionally, scorn. He

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As Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York (2002)

crudely tattooed his own hands and trained for three years as a professional pugilist in preparation for The Boxer (1997), built his character’s dwelling out of 17th-century tools for The Crucible (1996) then lived in it for three months without electricity or running water, and remained in a wheelchair for the duration of the shoot as cerebral palsied Irish writer Christy Brown in 1989’s My Left Foot, for which he received his first Oscar.

Unsurprisingly he is sick to death of the likes of me asking about his method.

“Nothing I say in answer to these questions will make the work better or worse, but I understand the impulse that causes people even to consider why I do what I do. But that thirst for information as to what I do and how I do it has been developed and encouraged by I don’t know what. I was on Parkinson and I knew he would ask me about all this, and I thought I was ready for it and I wasn’t at

all, and so I made a right knob of myself.”

But it has to be easier rendering a character if one walks a few miles in their shoes, albeit with pebbles in them?

“I’ve always been intrigued by the life I have never experienced. I go with that feeling, but more than anything else I enjoy it. It is a game. But the way people would have it, it is like a game of selfchastisement, and it has never been that way for me, as it is a pleasurable and intriguing game. What I tended to do in the past was keep my mouth shut, but then people speak on your behalf, which creates a whole absurdity around it. So then you try to talk a bit to address the balance, and then you make an even bigger dick of yourself. So essentially there’s nothing to say.”

In 2007 he received his second Oscar for his rendering of renegade oil man Daniel Plainview in Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. He

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As Reynolds Woodcock in Phantom Thread (2017)

As Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood (2007)

remained in character day and night throughout filming, having worked on becoming the man for three whole years. How long he was in full-blown character?

“I really don’t know – maybe 12-14 weeks.

Luckily I had my family with me and, to be honest, the joy about great work is that you are not looking for the finishing line – quite the opposite – and one of the great things about such work is that you lose yourself, as with all artistic endeavour. My wife and kids went a bit crazy, as I was there all the time. All creative work involves the loss of the self, and it’s like time out of time – a period when I lose myself and the clocks stop and this is the joy.

“You go to these great lengths to imagine another world and another time; and you go to those lengths to imagine a man living in those times and, having spent your imagination on that, it seems more fun to live there than jumping in and out. That is the playground that you’ve created so why not stay there and play?”

Day-Lewis oozed Plainview’s seething

malevolence, so considering the actor is such an affable chap, where did it come from?

“We all have murderous thoughts throughout the day, if not the week, do we not? Any form of coexistence we live under involves some repression.

We have to do that ‒ it’s part of the deal ‒ and we all have some of that in us. And what’s more invigorating than to unleash it? But I cannot account for where any of this comes from me – it comes from the unconscious and I cannot account for what ferments in my unconscious. One just hopes there is a cave somewhere that you can ransack.

“I wasn’t working in isolation as Paul [Thomas Anderson] and I were in very close touch, but still it’s like a little secret that you have to share with yourself and then 200 people. It’s quite an alarming moment and they’re like, ‘Who the fuck is that and what is he doing – well he seems to know what he’s doing, so let him get on with it.’”

Considering that his wife and children accompany him on set wherever he goes, I would have thought that they’d be far more terrified seeing

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With Paul Thomas Anderson on the set of There Will Be Blood (2007)

their beloved husband and father morph into a misanthropic, mercurial monster for months on end.

“They think it’s a right laugh and both boys did a pretty decent impersonation of me. And my wife is amazingly tolerant. I knew that from the word go.

She just believes, like I do, that if you are attempting anything of a creative nature, no rules apply. I don’t ask her how she comes up with her stories. I just read them and love them. And that is all I need to know.

And I really would rather not know.”

He admits, however, that sometimes stepping out of character can be problematic.

“Absurd as it might seem, when you’ve been someone else for that amount of time, conceiving such an enterprise, it’s even more absurd when it’s all over. Then the joke is on all of us because once a curiosity is unleashed you can’t just tie it up again.

There is a period of leakage.

“Plainview probably had a lot of leakage, or rather seepage. And that is why there was no Mrs Plainview in sight. But it does take time to leave your man, as there is no great part of you

that wants to stop doing that work, and no matter how much you’re begging for it to stop, you need someone to put a restraining order on it.”

Since There Will Be Blood, Day-Lewis has taken on just three roles, as Italian film director Guido Contini in Nine (2009), as the title role in Steven Spielberg’s 2012 epic Lincoln, which gave him his third Best Actor Academy Award, and as haughty haute couture tailor Reynolds Woodcock in 2017’s Phantom Thread.

When I first interviewed Daniel Day-Lewis in 2005, he had just delivered a cracking turn as an over-protective father in The Ballad of Jack and Rose. Naturally the conversation swung round to parenthood and my recently born son Finbar.

Interviewing him a few years later for There Will Be Blood, he straight away asked, “How’s Finbar?”

Now how many Oscar-winning actors would remember that? Needless to say, the man is unlike any other actor. He’s not even like any other person. No, siree. Daniel Day-Lewis is a total one-off. n

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Tribute

HELEN McCRORY As a tribute to the late actress, who died aged 52 on 16th April, Gustav Temple recalls an inspiring encounter with Helen McCrory in 2019, on the eve of Series 5 of Peaky Blinders

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“I’m so aware that when you play these parts and play those moments, there is a triangle of ghosts behind you, of people that have never told their stories. Women tell me these extraordinary stories, and what they felt when they saw Polly talk about it”

interviewed Helen McCrory in the summer of 2019, during the build up to the screening on the BBC of the fifth series of Peaky Blinders. The main interview was done over the phone, during the whirlwind press junket she was on with all the cast, which undoubtedly would have involved dozens of similar interviews. When you interview a big star like McCrory, there is a press officer breathing on the line, ready to step in and halt the conversation if something said isn’t to their liking.

You have already been briefed, usually, only to ask questions about the show they are promoting and not to stray from the approved script.

The first thing I expected, from experience with such interviews with actors, was a lot of ‘darlings’, lofty talk about ‘the craft’ and quotes from Shakespeare, added to a refusal to discuss anything that didn’t promote the current project.

So it took me by surprise when Helen immediately showed interest in the interviewer.

“Where are you – you sound like you’re in a bucket!” she laughed.

“It is more or less an enlarged bucket that used to be a garage. Where are you?”

“I’m actually in a cupboard. I had a meeting

with money people this morning, who tried to explain to me what I should be doing, and for some reason I’ve been given a cupboard to think about it.

So cupboard to bucket – we’re well suited.”

We launched into the interview, which was published in the Autumn 19 issue and is now on The Chap web site. There was a lot of talk about the costumes Helen wore as Aunt Polly, and how she constantly gathered accessories and knick-knacks from antiques shops to add to the outfits that had

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“Our conversation was about camper vans and children, and how, if she and her husband Damian Lewis were at a party and couldn’t find each other, one of them would request a certain song to be played, and that would be their cue to find the dancefloor and find each other again”

“I can’t tell you how often I’ve received letters, or people come up to me in the street, and women tell me these extraordinary stories, and what they felt when they saw Polly talk about it. I’ve even had young girls come up to me and talk about terrible rape stories… one girl came up to me and said that when she saw that episode, it was the first time that she then talked to her husband about it.” There is a slight gap on the recording at that point, where Helen tries to stop herself, unsuccessfully, from crying before continuing. That was the only time this has ever happened to me during an interview.

Helen then spoke about the fact that not only is Polly Gray a realistic, accurate character from the 1920s – “Those women like Polly absolutely existed.

So there’s nothing modern about women holding it together, and striding down the street. We know that the police were called to Small Heath more often for fights between women than between men” – but the character also, she felt, chimes with the contemporary world: “As far as being a streetwise alleycat and being tough and facing it, I see those girls all the time. Every time I get on a tube at 2am I think, there’s another little Polly sitting over there.”

She expressed the duty she felt to the audience to portray a realistic person that was more than just a cool character in a TV series: “I’m so aware that

been designed for her by Alison McCosh. I was immediately struck by how much she seemed to care about the character she was playing, despite some observers believing she was only using a tiny amount of her considerable acting skills for Polly Gray, compared to when she played, for example, Medea or Lady Macbeth on the stage.

She also got rather emotional when discussing the sorts of comments she received from members of the public who had watched her in Peaky Blinders.

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when you play these parts and play those moments, there is a triangle of ghosts behind you, of people that have never told their stories. When you speak to them, you have to immerse yourself into it as much as possible, because you’ve got to get it right.”

“Meeting Helen McCrory was nothing like the usual celebrity encounters. She was witty, sharp, cynical and direct, and speaking to her was like meeting one of those rare people you encounter who immediately make you think, ‘I have found a new friend’.”

After the telephone interview, I was lucky enough to have a brief encounter in person with Helen, at the premiere for the new series of Peaky Blinders at the National Film Theatre. After the screening of the first episode, there was a small party in the bar. When Helen walked in with husband Damian Lewis, everyone immediately forgot about the other actors in the room and gathered around her to touch the hem. We had a brief conversation, not about Peaky Blinders but about children and camper vans, and how, if Damian and her were at a party and they couldn’t find each other, one of them would request a certain song to be played, and that would be their cue to find the dancefloor and find each other again. I didn’t note the title of the song down, but it wasn’t that kind of conversation.

Helen was curious about my outfit, a linen ensemble hastily thrown together to get to the screening on time in the middle of summer. She glanced up and down the outfit and simply said, “That’s not really working, is it?” My attempts at journalistic integrity were met with a wave of the hand. Had we got the right brand of cigarette in the interview, which was about to be published? “Oh, who cares?” she said airily, “Let’s not let the facts get in the way of a good story.”

Meeting Helen McCrory was nothing like the usual celebrity encounters. She was witty, sharp, cynical and direct, and speaking to her was like meeting one of those rare people you encounter who immediately make you think, ‘I have found a new friend’. Sadly, this will now not prove to be the case. n RIP Helen Elizabeth McCrory 17th August 1968-16th April 2021

Film

The Overlook Party at 100 Darcy Sullivan revisits the fabled July 4th 1921 Ball at the Overlook Hotel, featured in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, to find out why people are still talking about it

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Shining. The film divided critics and audiences at the time – was it dull or terrifying? Stephen King hated it, and it was based on his bestselling novel.

“Kubrick just couldn’t grasp the sheer inhuman evil of the Overlook Hotel,” King wrote. “So he

uly 4th marks the centennial of one of the world’s wildest parties. This was a grand affair to rival Gatsby’s shindigs or Truman Capote’s 1966 black and white ball. The party took place at the Overlook Hotel in Colorado, and in a famous photo you can see the well-heeled partygoers pausing for just a moment in their revelling. They look as if they don’t know what awful things are about to happen – but perhaps they do. Possibly the chaos had already begun when the photo was taken.

Dead centre in the photo is someone you know. He is smiling, but the smile looks feral. We know him as Jack Torrance. Jack is a murderer who tried to kill his wife and son. That, however, was in the 1970s. So how could he be in a photo from 1921? And why is he smiling?

These are just two of the questions raised by the final scene of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film The

“While there are ghosts and visions in Kubrick’s Overlook Hotel, the focus is on Jack Torrance having the world’s worst midlife crisis. It’s possible he would have had the same meltdown during a longish stay at a Premier Inn” 36

looked, instead, for evil in the characters and made the film into a domestic tragedy with only vaguely supernatural overtones.”

Now hailed as a masterpiece, The Shining took on an even more iconic status last year, due to the pandemic. People posted memes and jokes about how much they related to Jack Torrance, driven insane by being locked up for months with the people he loves. So it seems more than simple coincidence that, as the world stumbles toward recovery, the Fourth of July 1921 party at the Overlook reaches 100. What does that party signify? And can we solve the puzzle of that maddening photo – one of the most talked-about final shots in film history?

and more unhinged. To make matters worse, the hotel amplifies his son Danny’s psychic powers, and the boy sees sinister ghosts and visions. Jack becomes homicidal and sets out to murder his wife Wendy and Danny.

Kubrick’s basic story is the same, but he tones down the idea that the hotel possesses Jack.

Viewers, critics and King himself say that actor Jack Nicholson, who plays Torrance, seems unhinged right from the start. For instance, he takes a perverse delight in telling Danny about how the Donner party resorted to cannibalism. While there are ghosts and visions in Kubrick’s Overlook, the focus is on Jack Torrance having the world’s worst midlife crisis.

It’s possible he would have had the same meltdown during a longish stay at a Premier Inn.

All ghost stories are about the past, and the Overlook has a strange one. In the book, Jack uncovers a history of unsavoury events. In the film, we’re only told of one: a previous caretaker, Grady, went insane and killed his wife and daughters.

But Grady and his daughters aren’t the only ghosts here; Jack stumbles on (or summons forth) a malevolent female spirit, a conspiring bartender and an entire party’s worth of spooks. In book and film, Jack keeps getting drawn into the past, both his own past (he starts drinking again, his anger

THE PAST

The Shining is really two stories — the one told by King and the one told by Kubrick. King’s 1977 novel is about a failed writer who signs on as the winter caretaker at the Overlook Hotel. He and his wife and son anticipate a dull few months of snowbound isolation while Jack writes his novel.

But the Overlook is haunted – more than that, it’s evil. It preys on Jack’s weaknesses, including his alcoholism, and he abandons his writing to obsess over the hotel’s history, gradually becoming more

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“Why is the party set in the 1920s? It may just be a clear visual signpost for ‘a long time ago’. Show people a few flapper dresses and they know it’s the 1920s. The 1920s also represent hedonism in a way the 30s or 40s don’t, and we can imagine hedonism degenerating into murder”

towards his wife and son resurfaces) and the past of the hotel.

THE PARTY

As his madness escalates in the film, Jack finds a full party going in The Gold Room. The costumes tell us this is the 1920s, and we might conclude that this is the 1921 July 4th celebration pictured at the end of the film. There are mixed signals, though.

All three of the songs that play in the party scene were recorded in the 1930s: Midnight, the Stars and You and It’s All Forgotten Now by Ray Noble and His Orchestra, and Home by Henry Hall and the Gleneagles Hotel Band. This anachronism may seem confusing, given that Kubrick was a stickler for details. But then, the waiter who spills a drink over Jack turns out to be Grady, the murderous former caretaker from a different time period. The Overlook is a place where bad pasts merge.

The party looks innocent enough to Jack, but Wendy later sees bizarre images from it.

These range from the humorous – a man in a dog costume fellating a man in formal wear – to the startling sight of a blood-covered man telling Wendy, “Great party, isn’t it?”

This last image suggests that this party may be one of the times chef Halloran is alluding to when

he tells Danny, “I think a lot of things happened in this particular hotel, and not all of ’em was good.”

If, as Halloran says, bad things leave traces behind, the party must have been monstrous to have manifested again in the 1970s, full of guests and decor, and to have swept up both Grady and Jack.

We can only imagine what happened on that night 100 years ago.

What’s clear is that Jack fits right in. “When Jack walks into the crowded ballroom, for example,

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Stanley Kubrick stands in for Lloyd the bartender

literally crossing over into a party atmosphere directly distilled from the Jazz Age, redolent of smoke, free-flowing booze, flapper fashion, and music, he is not only unfazed by the historical

simulacrum that absorbs him, he immediately feels right at home,” notes Tony Magistrale in Sutured Time: History and Kubrick’s The Shining.

Why is the party set in the 1920s? It may just be a clear visual signpost for ‘a long time ago’.

Show people a few flapper dresses and they know it’s the 1920s. The 1920s also represent hedonism in a way the 30s or 40s don’t, and we can imagine hedonism degenerating into murder. But as the documentary film Room 237 illustrates, there are theories that the film is ‘about’ World War II, or the genocide of Native Americans, or how Kubrick faked the Apollo 11 moon landing. In some of these theories, the Overlook and its bad past represent America itself.

“In contrast to the unstable Seventies (exacerbated by the advent of American feminism) of Jack’s own time,” Magistrale writes, “Kubrick depicts the Twenties as an era where blacks, children, and especially wives ‘knew their place’.

It may not be a coincidence that Kubrick configures Torrance’s Overlook photograph during a July Fourth fete, seeking to capitalize on the ironic significance of that date in American history.”

“There is an explanation for the photo, though it’s a bit strange and paradoxical because it’s both real and unreal – the idea that Jack was always at the hotel in some earlier incarnation.

Jack had somehow been the creature of the hotel through reincarnation.

At the same time, we’re meant to experience it ‘in the now’.”

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“It’s good to be back, Lloyd!”

THE PHOTO

Kubrick himself told an interviewer, “The ballroom photograph at the very end suggests the reincarnation of Jack.” Co-screenwriter Diane Johnson backed that up: “There is an explanation for the photo, though it’s a bit strange and paradoxical because it’s both real and unreal – the idea that Jack was always at the hotel in some earlier incarnation.

Jack had somehow been the creature of the hotel through reincarnation. At the same time, we’re meant to experience it ‘in the now.’ There’s no way of resolving that, it’s meant to be magical.”

Fair enough – but what about this? On her website (idyllopuspress.com), Julie Kearns notes that the photo subtly changes as we move towards it.

“In shots 660 and 661, Jack’s shoulder is dropped down to reveal the woman to his left (our right) holding something. This is covered by his raised shoulder in shot 659.” Presumably two versions of the airbrushed photo were used – but why? What is she holding? Does it relate to the small slip of paper in Jack’s waving hand?

100 years on, that photo reminds us that the past is a mystery – and almost certainly darker than we think. n

The final shots of the film, after Jack dies, move slowly in on a wall of photos in the hotel. Our party photo is in the centre, showing Jack Torrance in the middle of the July 4, 1921 celebration.

(The photo was a historical photo that Nicholson was airbrushed into.) The eerie photo works on many levels – Jack has been drawn into the past throughout the film, and is told he has “always been the caretaker here” by the ghostly Grady. He tells Lloyd in the party scene, “I’ve been away, but now I’m back!” With his homicidal rage, he belongs here. And since he died at the hotel, he’s now been absorbed by it into its supernatural force. He was always here and he’ll always be here.

Of course, it also doesn’t work on any literal level. Was the photo always there? Why didn’t Wendy or Danny see it before and say, “Hey, this looks like you.” We know Jack is a real person with a past – how could he have ‘always’ been here? Did he magically appear in the photo when he died?

Kubrick seemed fond of obscure endings, having closed 2001: A Space Odyssey with one of the most baffling WTF sequences in film.

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Luxury capmakers and handweavers

Distinctive tweed and linen caps for discerning Chaps and Chapesses.

Now stocking triple-layer linen face masks.

© Soulstealer Photography

SARTORIAL

Photo Shoot: Overlook Revisited (p44) • Grenson (p60) • Vetra (p66) • Get The Look: Riviera Style (p70) • Wishmoor Watches (p74) • Grey Fox Column (p78)

Photoshoot

OVERLOOK REVISITED Having hung up our cameras, model release forms and boxes of props for a year-and-a-half, it was with great excitement that a mob of popinjays descended on the grounds of Academy Residences, an educational institution housed in All Saints Pastoral Centre, a sprawling manse with a curious history on the outskirts of St Albans, Hertfordshire Photography: Soulstealer Photography Photo editing on facing page: Louise McCormack MODELS: LOUISE MCCORMACK, KAREN BELL, TOM CARRADINE, CHAMPAGNE CHARLIE, MR. B THE GENTLEMAN RHYMER, JOHN HARRISON, BEATA RYDZ, SADIE THE RED SETTER SPECIAL THANKS TO JOHN HARRISON, MANAGER OF WWW.ACADEMYRESIDENCES.CO.UK, FOR GRANTING US ACCESS TO THE SITE

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esigned by Leonard Stokes in the Gothic Revival style in 1899 and built in 1901, All Saints was originally a convent for the Anglican Society of All Saints Sisters of the Poor. The nuns moved into the building in 1901 and made it their mother home, for the care of the aged, the infirm and orphans. By 1908, 40 orphans were accommodated on the site.

Construction on an adjoining chapel in the Gothic style was commenced in 1927, designed by Sir Ninian Comper, with work completed by his son Sebastian between 1960 and 1964. The chapel included a Harrison and Harrison organ below a magnificent stained glass rose window. Also added to the building was an entire new wing in the art deco style in 1929.

The Sisters occupied the entire building until 1973, when increased upkeep costs forced them to sell. All Saints Pastoral Centre was acquired by the Catholic Diocese of Westminster and converted into a conference centre and retreat, but by 2011 it had fallen into disrepair and was sold to property

developers in 2013, when it was turned into a residential language academy for foreign students

by Academy Residences, who still manage it.

A further addition was created in 2019 by rock band Towers of London, who converted one of the many extensions into a louche rock ‘n’ roll pad, from where they are currently plotting their comeback via a soon-to-be-released documentary. The Chap assembled our finest team of chaps and chapettes, armed with vast trunks of clothing, to capture the pastoral magic of All Saints, and also to celebrate the reopening of the country by strutting about the place, frightening the horses and desecrating the chapel.

Inspired by the vast, deserted, probably haunted building, and fortuitously having a pair of identical twins in our number, it would have been a dereliction of duty not to refer to The Shining in at least one photograph. A hush went over the rather noisy troops when we discovered that Stanley Kubrick had conceived his film of Stephen King’s novel but a stone’s throw away in Childwickbury Manor, where the director is also buried. n

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TOM WEARS: ‘Alfie’ Irish Linen Newsboy Cap

by Failsworth Rowing Blazer: Vintage, Hornets of Kensington Shirt/collar: Darcy Clothing Flannels: Simon James Cathcart All other items: vintage CHARLIE WEARS: 1920s or early 30s vintage lightweight wool striped suit Vintage blue waistcoat

by Swan & Edgar Straw boater by Laird of London Vintage Liberty floral tie

TOM WEARS: Vintage plus fours tweed suit from Victory Vintage Shirt/collar: Darcy Clothing Vintage waistcoat

by Dunn and Co Boots by Simon James Cathcart MR. B WEARS: Burgundy Velvet Siren Suit

by Caroline Lindop Burgundy trilby

by Paul Smith LOUISE AND KAREN WEAR: Vintage 1950s pink and blue dresses

LOUISE AND KAREN WEAR: Cream Lace dresses

by Maitresse Clothing www.maitresseclothing.com

MR. B WEARS: Burgundy Velvet Siren Suit by Caroline Lindop Burgundy trilby

by Paul Smith

CHARLIE WEARS: 1920s or early 30s vintage lightweight wool striped suit Vintage blue waistcoat

by Swan & Edgar Straw boater by Laird of London Vintage Liberty floral tie

TOM WEARS: Ex-theatre costume priest’s outfit

LOUISE AND KAREN WEAR: Vintage 1930s gold dresses

KAREN WEARS: Vintage red dress Headdress by Em Brulee Belt and cuff by London Leatherman

MR. B WEARS: Brown Pin Stripe Siren suit by Louise McCormack Costumier louise_mccormack_costumier

CHARLIE WEARS: Fake fur-trimmed robe by Eddie Yates (originally for George Takei – Star Trek’s Mr. Sulu – in Snow White) Skull headdress by Champagne Charlie

LOUISE WEARS: Black and red dress by Louise McCormack Costumier Headdress by Yuan Li London Millinery

Footwear

GRENSON SHOES Chris Sullivan meets Tim Little, creative director and CEO of Northampton Shoemaker Grenson, to discuss the ins and outs of gentlemen’s footwear www.grenson.com www.timlittle.com

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“A customer sent me a pair of shoes a couple of years ago, saying he had been given them as Demob shoes when he left the army in 1945. He was concerned that a bit of stitching was coming loose at the back. We tidied it up and sent them back to him”

man after my own heart, Tim Little is obsessed with the craft of shoemaking.

He loves the smell of leather, the welt construction, the polish, the craftsmanship and the truism echoed by George Frazier, the esteemed sixties fashion columnist: “If you want to know if a guy is well dressed? Look down. Hopefully, you will see a pair of shoes, an item that tells all about its wearer.”

I bought my first pair of Tim Little shoes from his King’s Road store in 1999. Simple loafers that looked great with chinos or a sixties slack. I wore them into the ground. Subsequently, in 2010, Little became the owner and creative director of one of the great classic British cordwainer companies, Grenson, and has since maintained their position but added quite a twist by taking classics and, as well as recreating them, giving them a somewhat unique edge. His Roseberry (he gives each one of his line a different moniker), for example, is an archetypal,

rather suave plain-toe five eyelet derby based on the classic 207 shape and, constructed from bookbinder leather in rust, brown or black, features a triple welt that gives the item no small degree of heft and lashings of character.

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Other wonderful additions are the Parker: a classic seam apron moccasin topped lace-up derby made from hand painted country grain, atop a svelte commando sole that would go down a storm with either a 1940s style double-breasted with the pleated peg or a nice understated summer linen single-breasted. And then there is the grained Viktor: a formidable Oxford walking shoe with a thick commando sole that, as sturdy as a Hereford Bull, will suffer everything the elements can throw at a chap and last longer than its owner. Via the wonders of modern technology, we bypassed lockdown and managed to speak to each other almost in person to discuss gentlemen’s footwear.

11 years ago you took over the classic Northampton based shoemakers, Grenson.

How did this happen and why was it so important?

It was crucial to me, because I felt the brand needed a massive overhaul and it would only be possible if I could make decisions quickly and take risks. If hadn’t taken Grenson over, it would have been a long slow road to mediocrity. People don’t like change and many people hated what I was doing, especially traditional retailers. I needed to be in control and to say, “This is how it’s going to be.”

How did the Grenson association begin?

William Green started Grenson in 1866. I was born in Nottingham in 1963. Somehow, we came together in 2005 when the previous owner came to my shop and said, “I think this is what Grenson should be.”

I replied, “Imagine this with Grenson’s Heritage”.

How did your love affair/fascination with classic shoemaking begin?

My mum took me to the Co-op in Long Eaton in 1969 to get my school shoes. The women went up a ladder and brought down the shoes and, as she opened the box, I could smell the unmistakable odour of new shoes. I was hooked.

Why is it so imperative to preserve classic manufacturing?

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The Grenson Factory in the past

The Grenson Factory in the present

It’s in our soul (excuse the pun). We make things and sell them. They sell because they are well made. If we can’t do that, then we give up on the idea that we can create things that people want. Imagine if Made in England didn’t mean anything anymore.

to using Christian names. We try to make them relevant or to match the men’s and women’s, like Viktor and Viktoria. Tim Little shoes are all named after my favourite Blues Songs. Names like Stormy Monday, Little Rain, Just a dream, Boom Boom, Little Red Rooster, etc.

How long should a good shoe remain in service?

A customer sent me a pair of shoes a couple of years ago, saying he had been given them as Demob shoes when he left the army in 1945. He was concerned that a bit of stitching was coming loose at the back.

We tidied it up and sent them back to him.

Out of all the shoes you’ve ever seen, what is the one that might be called your desert island shoe? One that ticks the most boxes and that you could not live without?

Assuming you don’t mean literally a desert island, in which case a double-soled, full grain brogue might not work, I’d have two shoes; one my own, and one someone else’s. Mine would be a Triple Welt whole cut that I did as a special earlier this year. It’s got the thing I love most about English shoes; they get better the more you wear them. You can’t destroy these shoes: the more grief you give them, the better they look. The other shoe I love is the Adidas Gazelle. It’s simple, has beautiful proportions, and I love the last

All of your shoes for Grenson have a distinct name – how do you choose them?

I started naming Grenson shoes using surnames from the Rushden War Memorial, names such as Green and Smith. We quickly ran out of them and also one of the names was Stanley, which sounded like a Christian name; people loved it so we moved

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shape. It’s also very comfortable, inexpensive and comes in millions of colourways.

and very hard wearing, they are kind of ‘no nonsense’, and they get better the more you wear them. This is mainly down to the Goodyear Welted technique of making a shoe that we actually use.

What was the first shoe you ever bought with your own money?

My mum bought me some Dunlop Green Flash to play tennis in, just as Nike was breaking. I went out and bought a pair of Nike Wimbledon and threw the Green Flash away. She was livid.

Why are great shoes important?

There’s and old army saying that goes “Always spend good money on your shoes and your bed, because if you aren’t in one you’re in the other”.

Shoes are up there with music and football. They can change your mood. I think men love them because they love things that get better over time.

I loved the Green Flash myself. What’s the shoe you’ve designed that you are most proud of ?

That’s like, which is your favourite child? I’ll go for Spike. I took the LL Bean Duck Shoe and said, “If Grenson made this, what would it look like?” It’s a bit mad but it has its own following and we might reissue it next year.

Who, out of history, had consistently the finest shoes?

If you mean a single person, I honestly don’t know, but I did notice that when Prince Philip died and they showed millions of pictures of him, he always had great shoes including a lovely pair of suede chukkas with crepe soles. Steve McQueen is famous for his Playboys and Paul Newman nearly always wore great loafers.

What about your wonderful Archive range?

Some of the highlights are Dawson, an American workwear inspired boot on a bulbous toe in oiltanned leathers; Sebastian, who is a Longwing Brogue boot in Amber rub-off. There is a group of shoes and boots on a new chestnut pull-up leather that lightens as you bend it; Lloyd, who is my version of a Wall Street penny loafer on an almond toed last, and Brady, who is based on a vintage Swiss Mountain Boot, but I’ve put him on a micro sole to lighten him up.

Who might you have loved to make shoes for?

Cary Grant. He once said, “Everybody wants to be Cary Grant, even I want to be Cary Grant.”

He always looked impeccable and if he had worn my shoes, it would have meant that I was getting it right.

From history is there one shoe style you consider above others?

I know you love a Royal Brogue and I do too, but my all-time favourite is the Plain 5 eyelet Derby (see Grenson Curt, above right). It’s the simplicity I love. I also love a Whole Cut, made from a single piece of leather, because it’s a real shoeman’s shoe, and the Veldschoen because only a few factories can make them.

What exemplifies British shoemaking over the rest of the world?

I always think that you can see a Country’s character through its shoemaking. Italian shoes are very beautiful, light and have perfect detailing but aren’t as hard wearing. British shoes are strong, straightforward

Tell me about a few of your latest range, like the triple welted Roseberry, the Quincy covered toe sandal, the Parkers and Viktors.

As usual they are all our take on classics.

We started the Triple Welts a few years ago and they quickly became our best sellers, as people loved the chunkiness. They were always on the round toe to accentuate the bulkiness, but I suddenly decided to try them on a more

64 Grenson Triple Welts Wing Tip

Grenson Curt

elegant almond toe last, and it worked really well.

Quincy is a Fisherman’s sandal. It’s been around for thousands of years, so this is just our version in our hand painted leathers. Parker is a very simple, almost ordinary American-style apron derby, but Victor is a Veldschoen, first seen by British soldiers in the Boer War and made in a way that makes them waterproof.

How does one look after shoes? Any tips?

No.1 tip: don’t wear them two days running; the moisture from your feet makes the leather wet, and when it’s wet it is vulnerable. Let them dry slowly (not by a radiator). Use shoetrees and lots of leather cream; not just polish, as cream actually keeps the leather supple.

How do you think we’ll all behave and recover from the last year?

I hope that everyone has realised how lucky most of us were before the pandemic, and that we decide to make the most of the future, and also to be nicer to people who are less fortunate. I hope it was all a bit of a wake-up call.

Please explain the triple welt?

It’s a way the factory came up with of almost decorating and accentuating the welt of the shoe, the part that is synonymous with British shoemaking. Instead of trying to make it disappear, we highlighted it by stepping it and wheeling notches on to it, to make it look like there are three welts instead of one.

Is there any advice you can give to a young person who wants to get into designing shoes or clothes?

Be inquisitive, keep your eyes open, look at everything and everyone, watch films, listen to music and get inspired by what’s around you.

It’s all there, you don’t need to be taught if you keep your eyes open. n

Is the art of the great British cordwainer on the way out?

No, not at all; it’s alive and kicking. British shoemaking is a bit fragile compared to 50 years ago, but the companies that are left are good enough to survive.

Mind you, finding new craftsmen for the factory is very tough; kids want a faster route to the top.

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Sartorial

WORKER’S BLUES Liam Jefferies on the iconic French brand Vetra, which has become synonymous with hardy workwear for the last 100 years

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“The postwar years saw Vetra rise to global renown for its savoir-faire workwear. By the 1960s, some workers unions had even insisted upon Vetra workwear in their contract negotiations, so synonymous had the brand become with qualité, durabilité and longévité”

n the modern age, no words evoke a chap or chapette’s sense of dread more than the phrase ‘casual dress code’. However, with this overarching informality seen in recent times, no item has been as adapted more from its humble beginnings than the bleu de travail, the French worker’s jacket.

Often distinguished by colour – notably an eye-catching Hydrone blue (an early form of ‘hi-vis’), the worker’s jacket saw its beginnings as purely utilitarian garb, first adopted by railway workers in 1800s France. Manufactured from robust moleskin or cotton, the jacket was intended to bear the brunt of physical work, and was cut in a loose fitting, functional style reminiscent of the sack coat, that is, without any complicated pleating or accoutrement, save for an array of pockets and, notably, sleeves that could be rolled up.

Much like serge de nîmes across the pond, worker’s blues were quickly adopted into life outside the factory floor, and the workwear jacket would be made famous by public personae such as singer Lou Reed, photographer Bill Cunningham and hedge-trimmer Monty Don.

There is one company which has become a

byword for the bleu de travail, in fact the very name itself, and that is Vetra of France. The Vetra story begins in 1920s Paris. Edouard Beerens married his wife Constance and, as a wedding present, received the keys to an apron and overalls atelier located on Ile Saint-Louis, in the heart of the city. It is from this workshop that Edouard began to create his range of workwear garments and Vetra was born in 1927.

With the growth of the following decade, Monsieur Beerens soon found himself upping sticks and

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moving the company to Lambersart in the North of France, where he would design, grade patterns and manage production, while Constance was in charge of sales and shipping. The factory logo was designed by Beerens himself, the name being an amalgamation of the words VETements de TRAvail (which translates literally to ‘workwear’).

By the end of the 1930s, the pair was manufacturing uniforms for the French army, but fate was to intercede on May 19th 1940. As Winston Churchill made his first broadcast to the British people as Prime Minister, Edouard Beerens fled the city, destroying his machines so they couldn’t fall into Nazi hands. All except one, his most expensive and prized REECE buttonhole machine, which was carried in a trailer behind his car to the small town of Le Lude in Western France.

Despite being tracked by the Gestapo, Edouard didn’t waste any time and established his new workshop to begin production from scratch on the uniforms of La Résistance (one of which is now displayed at the Roger Bellon museum in Sarthe).

Raw material shortage was an issue, as was the difficulty keeping in touch with clients, whose main concern was to survive. Nonetheless, the workshop

continued to produce basic workwear in moleskin and dungaree twill, supplied in half-width folded rolls in cotton and linen.

The postwar years saw Vetra rise to global renown for its savoir-faire workwear. Vetra products would be distributed for decades by specialist stores and marketed to industrial companies, with workers and craftsmen around the country wearing and working in Vetra branded garments. By the 1960s, some workers unions even insisted upon Vetra workwear in their contract negotiations, so synonymous had the brand become with qualité, durabilité and longévité.

In 1964 a new factory was built in the Maineet-Loire department, Western France. It was in these facilities that Claude Beerens, Edouard’s son, implemented the Kanban model of conveyor manufacturing operations, inspired by The Toyota Motor Corporation. This led to the brand’s explosion in production, manufacturing more than 600,000 pieces a year in the 1970s.

For the traditionalist, there is no other option but the genuine five-button cotton twill Hydrone Work Jacket. Still cut and sewn in France using the same methods and materials as their progenitors,

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the jacket features two waist pockets, a left breast pocket and hidden inner pocket, so there is plenty of room for tools, nails, a hip flask or two, pipe tobacco and anything else you may need on the instanter. The regular, unstructured fit not only belies the functionality of the garment, but also makes it ideal for year-round layering.

Vetra workwear will soon celebrate its centenary – and the buttonhole machine that was lugged 150 miles during the Beerens’ flight from Paris? It was retired in 2010 after making 895 million buttonholes – Ça marche!

Liam spoke to Edouard Beerens’ Great Grandsons Edouard and Richard Beerens about the brand: What are the main sources of inspiration or influence for your designs?

We draw inspiration from the large history of Vetra’s manufacturing. Vetra made a lot of specific garments for many professions, in various fabrics. Those styles became iconic and Vetra, as the genuine brand of workwear, has the know-how and the legitimacy to make them again, for today’s wear. Vetra epitomizes French workwear through its authentic history and its

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factory manufacturing 100% in France since 1927.

As workwear had to be a functional garment, any cuts, sewing, buttons, pockets, had a function and a history, depending on the job, that we are almost the last ones to know or remember. It is impossible to steal our soul and our true savoir-faire of French workwear manufacture.

including in famous fashion shows; nowadays you have plenty of brands copying our styles, logotype, and business model. Making French workwear in France is above all a matter of consistency. There are very few brands like Vetra, manufacturing garments with sense, history, and quality matching consumers’ expectations for authentic products.

How do you source your materials?

We have a large ‘library’ of fabrics, the knowledge of what has been done during 90 years, thanks to our countless archives, plus the attendance of fabric fairs provides us with an outlook on modern fabrics. Our fabrics come from Western Europe, from firms like ours, with real know-how.

What does the future hold for Vetra?

That is the question! We cannot know what the future holds in store. The pandemic was a crazy experience, personally and professionally speaking.

Vetra coped with many crises during its long history: the 1930s, WWII and France’s invasion, oil shocks, consumption shift, China’s exports, the 2007 stock market crash, and now COVID-19.

We plan to broaden our range of organic garments, deepen our presence on the web, increase our net of retailers... and keep manufacturing made-in-France genuine French workwear. As long as consumers want bona fide garments, we will respond in kind. n

How important is it that your products are produced in France?

Manufacturing in France pertains to our DNA: in the 1990s many brands/competitors believed they had found the panacea by outsourcing their production, an easier way to make profits. It is always easier to launch a brand without the financial burden of a factory. Ten years ago we were the only ones to offer French workwear,

@sartorialchap

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Sartorial

Get The Look

RIVIERA STYLE Digby Fairfax ambles down to the Cote D’Azur (or Bognor Regis if it’s raining) to show readers how to decant themselves into the Riviera Look

£180.00

SHOES A word of warning to the travelling chap, whether to foreign climes or the English Riviera: you are very likely to encounter the shoeless. By this we mean the flip-flopped, or, even worse, those gentlemen who feel it appropriate to don the ghastly Birkenstock sandal. While exterior temperatures will, it must be admitted, preclude the full brogue boot on the beach, there is no need to allow standards to drop so low. Besides, one would aver that there is no known trouser that looks good with a sandal.

However, Grenson have produced the Quincy Sandal, priced at £180, based on those available in most traditional shoe shops in southern Europe, which at least covers the toes and the heel. Upon your next visit to Spain or Portugal, snap up a pair of these ‘halfsandals’ for the next jaunt. In the meantime, a more economical pair, the Angulus, is available from www.footway.com at £116 (they will cost you around half that ‘in the field’).

Saddle Shoes are another light option, for a shoe that you could actually enter a restaurant in. Rocket Originals and Collectif make them for men, priced at £99 and £95 respectively. Loafers, obviously, also cut the mustard, but not ones with bits of metal sticking out of the saddle: Jones the Bootmaker make an acceptable Penny Loafer for £89, and don’t forget to stick a penny into the upper for that preppy detail.

£116.00

£89.00

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TROUSERS

£86.00

Lightness of cloth is paramount when strolling about during the passagiata hour, but so too is lightness of colour, especially if wearing a dark blazer: although one’s trousers should usually be darker than one’s jacket, the Riviera Look is the exception and obeys the light chino/dark blazer diktat.

For the vintage look, Darcy Clothing offer a Lightweight Cotton Moleskin Cricket Trouser at £86, while those unafraid to clothe their pins in a more contemporary silhouette can head straight over to Spoke London for a pair of their ‘Cotton Lightweights’ at £99. The edge that this brand has on many others is that they put one through a highly accurate size chart, with some rather penetrating questions about body shape, to prevent you from buying the wrong size. Walker Slater’s linen pantaloons are also worth a try, especially their Edward Trousers at £95, for which the matching jacket may also be acquired. Beware when washing the trousers of a pale coloured linen suit, however, as they £99.00 can sometimes end up lighter than the jacket. Linen jackets, contrary to popular opinion, can actually be washed in the machine, but turn it inside out first.

£45.00

SHIRT If (or rather, because you are) wearing a jacket or blazer, this is likely to be removed when the sun is high in the sky, so opt for something that tells its own story, such as a Navy striped linen shirt (£95) from www.sirplus.co.uk. This company also makes short-sleeved shirts, which may be necessary in the tropics, such as a yellow Tencel Cuban Shirt in cotton (£95). If heading for a Latin American flavour, it would be preferable to seek an original Mexican Guayabera from a reputable vintage outfitter such as Bobby & Dandy. Under no circumstances is it acceptable to wear a Hawaiian shirt, unless you have been invited to a fancy dress party while on your hols.

£95.00

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£175.00 £35.00

JACKET This will be your most essential item, as you will need it for the journey abroad, so as many pockets as possible is prerequisite, for all the millions of forms, vaccine certificates etc you will need to present at the airport. For a lightweight cotton twill jacket, Universal Works present the most favourable option, their London Jacket (£175) boasting a total of five pockets, including one for a pocket square. It comes in colours ranging from cream to dark navy.

Walker Slater’s William Jacket, in navy hopsack linen (£265) cuts a sharper line, in case you are in Nice (or Bognor Regis) and fancy your luck at the roulette tables. They also make a fetching cream linen jacket, The Jamie (£245), originally designed by this publication and also available from www.thechap.co.uk.

NECKWEAR It is around the throat that a chap may display his dandy credentials most effectively, and the least sweltering neck adornment is of course the cravat. The new Chap Cravat (£35), based on the Peacock Pocket Square, will liven up any plain shirt with its splashes of purple, aquamarine and burgundy. The more sartorially adventurous may wish to brave the foularde, or neckerchief, for a slightly more playboy look.

Geoff Stocker has turned his pocket square skills to what he has named a bandana, in 30% silk and 70% cotton, measuring 24 inches on each side. It is designed to be thrown around the throat carelessly, so that it flaps in the breeze and pretty ladies can spot one from a distance, and is appropriately called ‘The Waking Dream’ (£85).

£245.00

£85.00

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HEADWEAR

SOCKS

£9.

Last, but certainly not least, are the all-important undergarments for your trotters. You can certainly strut about in a pair of loafers or deck shoes with no socks, but this will not mark you out as a man of style, and certainly not as an Englishman. The lightest socks we could find were from Dueple (dueplesocks.com), who also make rather fetching ribbed socks for the winter. Their Fine Gage 220 Needle Socks (£9.90) come in a huge range of bold colours, as well as plain white or black, and are quite simply like walking on air – although it must be admitted we have not tried them out while stalking across the beach at Cannes in the midday sun.

Panama is clearly the only £60.00 acceptable option for sultry climes, and Pachacuti make the highest grade, peddled from a web site called www.panamas.co.uk.

Prices for their ethically produced Ecuadorean Panamas range from £85-£320, but their prices reflect a product built to survive the fierce summers and tropical downpours of equatorial regions. Olney’s panamas, available from www. hatsandcaps.co.uk, are more affordable, starting at £60 for this white one with a traditional black band – a tradition that began with the death of Queen Victoria and never stopped. Of course, the main purpose of wearing a Panama is to advertise to the other tourists that an Englishman is in town, but if you wish to rule out every last shred of uncertainty, then wear a straw boater (see CHAP Spring 21).

£60.00

SUNGLASSES

Probably the most important accessory to pack is one’s lunettes de soleil, for without these you will be so blinded by the sunlight that admiring glances from the local populace will go unnoticed. Why are decent sunglasses, and spectacles for that matter, so darned expensive? No-one knows, but the answer is not to grab a cheap pair from Boots at the airport. What if I lose them on the beach? We ask ourselves anxiously. The answer is quite simply that you won’t if they are your pride and joy. Go swimming in them if necessary, or avoid the beach altogether. Kirk Originals’ Warwick in Amber Tortoiseshell with dark green lenses will set you back £225 but you will never grow out of them. The more economical option comes from Dead Men’s Spex (www.deadmensspex.com), whose range is so vast – and helpfully categorised by decade – that you are likely to find something similar to those you covet elsewhere, at a much more affordable price. Their Classic American Atomic Age Frames in black acetate frame with metal brow detailing are £60.00, plus £45 for non-prescription polarised lenses.

£225.00

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ERRATUM In the previous edition we published a photograph of a University of Bristol Rowing Club blazer and badge, with a price of £199.00.

This was in fact a bespoke garment made by Clifton Suits (www. cliftonsuits.co.uk) using bespoke woven fabric, exclusively for the University of Bristol Rowing Club, and the price was incorrect. This product is not available to the public.

Sartorial

WISHMOOR WATCHES Gustav Temple’s attention is drawn momentarily from his modest collection of vintage wristwatches, by road testing a brand-new quartz timepiece www.wishmoorwatches.com

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“For this member of the above community, it certainly made a change to wear a watch that simply tells the time accurately, doesn’t need winding up every day, doesn’t require expensive regular cleaning and won’t eventually stop working altogether, just when you’re about to catch a train”

his publication has always been careful not to bang on too much about wristwatches, purely because most other men’s magazines do so, usually to shore up watch advertisements featuring has-been actors flying aeroplanes and so forth.

However, when a missive landed announcing a new wristwatch by fledgling British company Wishmoor, the watch itself immediately took the eye. And since it wasn’t bracketed in the ‘silly’ price category, we decided to investigate further.

Wishmoor Watches was founded in 2018 by Richard Hayes, a chap working in the insurance market with an eye on a higher calling. A long-term admirer of the Tag Heuer Monaco,

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showcased by Steve McQueen in 1971’s Le Mans, Richard’s first automatic watch was a Fossil Mens Grant Sport Watch (ME3138), which he immediately took apart to see how it was constructed. Also keen on the Panerai Luminor (1949), his research into watch manufacture, combined with an admiration of vintage cars, led to the design of his first wristwatch, the Pioneer Chronograph.

Incorporating the Swiss Parts variant of the Ronda 5021, a nickel-plated movement with five jewels, providing accuracy of -/+ 20 seconds a month and battery life of around 4.5 years, this is clearly not a watch for those entirely dedicated to vintage timepieces.

For this member of the above community, it certainly made a change to wear a watch that simply tells the time accurately, doesn’t need winding up every day, doesn’t require expensive regular cleaning and won’t eventually stop working altogether, just when you’re about to catch a train. As to the style, the Wishmoor is more Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File than Robert Donat in The 39 Steps. The chronograph function would certainly come in handy when timing the making of “the best omelette you’ve ever had” and can time up to 30 minutes.

The various colourways include black with black leather strap, russet brown with brown

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leather strap and green with a silver metal strap.

The only novelty, for a fellow who usually wears vintage wristwatches from the early 20th century, is the size. The Pioneer Chronograph is in a hefty 40mm case (although a standard 20mm at the lugs), which means one may only wear it when the wrists are encased in a shirt with French cuffs and cufflinks. Why any reader of this publication would be wearing any other kind of cuff on their shirt is of course purely academic. I personally admire the early 60s flavour of the watch, although I don’t have any other watches from this period to compare it with.

Wishmoor have made no attempt, at least not yet, to produce a fully British watch; the Pioneer Chronograph is currently manufactured by a small company near Venice in Italy, who have the watches assembled in Hong Kong (this is in fact precisely how most Swiss watches are manufactured). It is quite obvious that one would not be paying £210 for a watch of this standard if it were made entirely in Britain, although Mr. Hayes does have plans to manufacture entirely in the UK in the future, and will one day make Wishmoor a truly 100% British brand. n

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Style Column

GREY FOX COLUMN David Evans celebrates the true sartorial splendour of the British, despite reputations abroad to the contrary

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had a crazy Damascene revelation a few months ago, when it occurred to me that, arguably, most of the menswear shapes and styles that we recognise today have their origins in the British Isles.

Imagine, if you will, a group of well-dressed men from every corner of the globe having a good grumble. “What have the British ever done for us stylish men?” Asks one of them. “Quite – what have they ever done for us?” they all cry.

After a moment’s silence, one of them tentatively raises a hand. “Well, they brought us bespoke tailoring – and the three-piece suit.”

There’s a general muttering. “And tweed,” calls out another. “And Yorkshire cloth.” More reluctant agreement. “And Prince of Wales check, Glen check and tartan.” They’re all contributing now: “And waxed cotton jackets.” “And wellington boots.” “And cardigans.” “And Fair Isle, Shetland knitwear and ganseys.” “And Aran jumpers.” “And

“The British detectives, Thomson and Thompson in the Tintin books, wear dark suits, toothbrush moustaches and bowler hats. Pierre Daninos’ series about Major Thompson, an Englishman living in France, has his character in tweeds, carrying a tightly furled umbrella and, yes, wearing a bowler hat” mass-production off-the-peg clothing.” “And the British Warm, covert coat, trench coat and Ulster.”

“And brogues, Chelsea boots and desert boots.”

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“And Goodyear-welted shoes.” “And khaki.” “And mackintoshes.” “And polo necks, polo shirts and button-down collars…”

And so it goes on until they adjourn, still grumbling about the inadequacies of British style, to the pub for a warm beer (both British inventions of course). At first I wondered if I was getting carried away by unsavoury nationalism – a touch of Flanders and Swann’s The English, The English, The English are best, I wouldn’t give tuppence for all of the rest!

But look at the facts. Western tailoring has its roots in London’s tailoring skills, still found on Savile Row. Our cloths are products of an industrial revolution that enabled them to be manufactured in Britain in amounts large enough to be exported around the world. The patterns on those cloths: tweed, tartan, herringbones and checks, have their origins in traditional British weaving. Aran, Fair Isle, Shetland, ganseys are the products of knitters from all over the British Isles. Footwear, hats, leather goods and jewellery were produced in large amounts as the British Isles developed efficient and cheaper ways of making. All these products found their way around the world, where they were eventually copied, manufactured and worn by men of style.

The main factors in the scattering of British products, design and styles around the globe were the complex trading links that originated from the process of colonisation. Britain’s colonies became a vast marketplace into which manufacturers could

pour their products. In many cases, British styles became objects of desire; local clothing would, sadly, be rejected in favour of a three-piece suit – and of course that suit would follow the pattern developed in England.

How can we define and recognise British men’s style? For a clue, let’s look at how other countries see the British man – or perhaps more realistically the ‘English man’, because he’s the icon whose clothing styles have been adopted and adapted around the world. Closest to home are the French. Like any neighbours, Britain and France have developed unsophisticated assumptions about each other’s characters, and clichés abound.

The French, of course, all wear berets and blue workwear jackets, drive corrugated metal vans, drink Pernod, smoke too much, lounge around in Parisian cafés and conduct extra-marital affairs.

The English eat appalling food, have bad teeth, hate sex, can’t hold their drink, imbibe too much horrid English beer when on holiday abroad and all wear bowler hats.

The French have three fictional characters that reinforce their views of British men’s style.

The British detectives, Thomson and Thompson in the Tintin books, wear dark suits, toothbrush moustaches and bowler hats. Pierre Daninos’ series about Major Thompson, an Englishman living in France, has his character in tweeds, carrying a tightly furled umbrella and, yes, wearing a bowler hat.

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This French view of British menswear style has been repeated around the world; from the USA to Asia, the Englishman wears dapper suits, tweed or pinstripe, good shoes, a bowler hat and, usually an umbrella (after all, it does rain continuously in the UK). Such clichés naturally have their origins in reality and we do sometimes play up to these preconceptions. The English cyclist, Tommy Simpson, who tragically died on the Col du Tourmalet stage of the Tour de France in 1967 (see CHAP Autumn 20), wore sharp suits and wasn’t averse to donning a bowler hat to help seal his hosts’

prejudices about what Englishmen should wear.

Men are very conservative in their styling; it’s only in the last couple of decades that most of us have dared to start wearing brightly coloured shirts.

Until the late 18th century, men wore colourful and highly decorated clothing (or at least the rich did). Towards the end of that century, these styles reached an extreme with the ‘macaroni’ – an effete man who, adopting continental menswear styles, wore tall, curled and powdered wigs, dressed in the extremes of fashion and behaved somewhat effeminately. This all changed with the Regency

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dandy Beau Brummell, who emphasised beautifully tailored but sober clothing in monochrome colours.

Brummell’s use of high quality, perfectly fitting and understated shapes influenced menswear to this day. Throughout Victorian times, and into the last century, men’s clothes remained largely monochromatic, reinforced by sober religious thinking and a view that business-like attire should be essentially dark and conservative. Individualism could be expressed through sharp cuts, showy accessories like walking canes, silk cravats and ties, colourful waistcoats and patent leather shoes, but business clothing remained unshowy. Only now are things changing, as dress-down Fridays and the rigours of a year’s lockdown have contributed to a move away from the suit and formal clothing for work, bringing with it colour and more relaxed shapes.

While the British gentleman prefers to dress soberly for work and for town (remember ‘no brown in town’) he tends to shed this monochrome image when it comes to weekends and country wear. His natural reticence, and years of postBrummell, Wesleyan and Victorian sobriety are thrown to the winds with a whiff of country air. He still shuns bright colours, on the whole, but striking checks become part of his wardrobe.

The British man’s style owes a large element to camouflage. When in town, his reticence encourages him to fit in with his surroundings – and what better enables him to fade into brickwork, concrete and urban angularity than grey flannel, dark pinstripes and black leather shoes? It’s a different story in the country, where the variety of colour, form and texture encourage more adventurous hues and patterns, which offer the otherwise conservative dresser the chance to brighten up without feeling too dandy. Country sports clothes: breeches, stockings, big leather boots and fancy bags enable the grey city gent to transform into a rural peacock.

So within the restrained structure of British menswear a man (or woman) can become a bit of a swell. Daninos’ Major Thompson may have been soberly dressed in a dark suit, but look at its slim, sharp cut – Edwardian revival style – and his tightly rolled umbrella and highly polished oxfords. No doubt a striped regimental tie, shiny cufflinks and a tiepin would be added to brighten up this otherwise restrained image. But, when in the country, he’d dress in a brightly checked tweed suit, mirror-like chestnut brogues, a Tattersall shirt and colourful silk tie or

cravat – adding an extra almost foppish dimension.

To summarise, while at first sight the British gentleman is a quiet soul, on closer inspection it’s the details that make him a dandy and a celebratory figure – and isn’t now the time to have some sartorial fun, after a year of lockdown?

Wearing very traditional clothes doesn’t necessarily label you as a boring and conservative dresser.

Select bright colours, checks and colourful but refined accessories, wear them with confidence and panache and you move into the territory of the rake, the dandy, the swell or the fop.

Finally, here are my suggestions for a few brands to enable you to acquire that stealthy dandy look of the gentleman who, under his calm Savile Row exterior, is actually a Latin extrovert bursting out of his restraints.

Cordings of Piccadilly: the first place to go for the authentic brightly coloured check tweed country look. Try their orange needlecord trousers or a Skipton tweed suit for that cheery country look.

New & Lingwood: the school clothing store for the grown-up schoolboy. Slightly less heritage than Cordings, but try their magenta linen shirt or multi-check deconstructed linen suit, to counter the grey of the city or to cheer up your next visit to the beach.

Harvie & Hudson: their blue and white striped linen jacket will brighten your post-lockdown holiday.

Budd Shirtmakers: off the peg and bespoke shirts to brighten your day.

Geoff Stocker: his silk dressing gowns, squares and scarves are the perfect cheery accessories that will dandify any outfit.

Dashing Tweeds: their reconstructed traditional tweeds will make you a gentleman or woman of the town or country sans pareil.

Cravat Club: British-made silk cravats and scarves.

Vintage, to add that dash of elegance: Hornets of Kensington, Victory Vintage or Savvy Row. n

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Nightlife

Strange Days Indeed Chris Sullivan recalls his friendship with the boy from Rhyl who went on to become one of the world’s most glamorous nightclub impresarios, before drugs took him elsewhere

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“He used to follow us everywhere,” grins original Pistols bass player Glen Matlock. “We’d be at the furthest ends of the country and we’d turn round and he’d be there, having taken buses or hitchhiked, whatever was needed to be in that front row. You had to admire him for that”

orty years ago Visage released Fade To Grey.

Undeniably it was the soundtrack of a youth movement that both enthused and annoyed the world and comprised dressing up to the ninety nines, dancing to electronic dance music and believing that David Bowie was God. Most called its adherents New Romantic and others Blitz Kids, but, whatever the moniker, such excessive mufti had not been seen on the streets of the UK since the Regency Period, and all agree that the leader of the pack was one Steve Strange.

“I just loved clothes since I was kid,” said Strange in an interview with me a few months before his death six years ago, “And used to watch

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as old boots. According to Strange, “Even though we lived in the lap of luxury, my mum left my dad and we moved to Newbridge.”

Steve, his mum and his sister lived on the top of a formidable hill on the same tough council estate where the boxer Joe Calzaghe grew up. Here he took to dressing as a skinhead in Crombie and Ben Sherman. “From the age of 12 I had to be the trendiest kiddy on the estate,” he chuckled. In 1973 he became infatuated with David Bowie, dyed his hair orange and was kicked out of Greenfield Comprehensive. A year later he was bowling up to The Wigan Casino for the all nighters, funded by his after school job as an apprentice butcher at Tesco.

I first met Steve in 1975 in the Miners Institute in Blackwood, where on a Friday they had Northern Soul events. He might have been described as a Bowie-loving northern soul boy.

I bumped into him six months later in a pub in Newport, where he sported 32-inch-wide baggy trousers, Fred Perry and an MA-1 jacket covered in northern soul badges. After the pub we went to the club Scamps, just up the hill. Finding a club full of Bowie and Roxy lookalikes for whom extravagant dressing up was de rigueur, Harrington, as he was then known, was in his oils. The following week he was wearing a see-through Fiorucci mac, bright pink peg trousers and winklepickers. By now he was part of our gang of soul boys and we travelled to Bristol and London, where we attended such landmark funk clubs as Crackers, The Global Village and The Lacy Lady in Ilford.

This was early 1976 and the whiff of punk was in the air, so travelling to London to catch concerts by The Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Stranglers et al was a must. Of course, Steve was as keen as mustard. “I started putting my own outfits together, wearing bin bags and slashing my T-shirts.

I wore heavy eye make-up and pierced my nose and had three chains running from my nose to my ear,” he recalled. “The Western Mail photographed us and ran it under the headline ‘Hey Punks, meet the chain gang’. The Pistols were like a drug for me and I was thoroughly addicted.”

“He used to follow us everywhere,” grins original Pistols bass player Glen Matlock. “We’d be at the furthest ends of the country and we’d turn round and Steve would be there, having taken buses or hitchhiked, whatever was needed to be in that front row. You had to admire him for that.”

A move to London followed in November 1976, and your man found himself kipping on Matlock’s sofa. “Even though I often didn’t eat for

“All I did was find a place for them to go and be fabulous and have fun. We were all kids – I was only 20 – and we’d all been Bowie fans and lovers of Westwood but no Club would ever let us in, and when they did it would always end up in a punch-up, as you couldn’t wear a hat back then without being attacked” the TV with my mum and think ‘Ooh, I’d like to dress like that when I’m grown up!’ And then we started the Blitz and everything fell into place and I could dress as anything I wanted to at any time.”

Steve Strange was born Steven John Harrington in Newbridge, Wales in 1959. The family had a 30-room guest house and a few working men’s cafes in the rather dodgy seaside town of Rhyl – once described as Beirut-on-sea and rough

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days and lived on sofas, London was everything I’d ever dreamed of,” Steve said while swigging his pint of Stella. He then got a gopher job with Malcolm McLaren at Glitterbest, followed by a job in McLaren’s shop Seditionaries. Wearing the latest Viv Westwood kit, he was the envy of us all but, like me, was seeing the writing on the wall for punk.

In 1978 Strange joined new wavers The Photons, befriended drummer Rusty Egan and started working in groovy clothes store PX in Covent Garden. I didn’t see him for a while, then bumped into him on Oxford Circus one rainy night in September 1978, and he invited me to his new Bowie Night at Billy’s, a rather seedy gay club run by a 6-fooot-6 Jamaican pimp called Vince. At the time no one was banging down the club’s door asking to do a night there.

“We printed up flyers that said Fame, Fame, Fame, Jump aboard the Night Train, Fame, Fame, Fame, What’s your Name?,” explained Steve. “Soon we had queues around the block, so I stood on the door in my long leather German overcoat and jodhpurs, deciding who could come in, as it was for our crowd, all of whom were trying to be more outrageous than the rest.” A tiny club accessed via a staircase, Billy’s was full of mismatched tables and chairs, a tiny broken toilet with a door that didn’t shut, no toilet paper, no soap and the carpets did such a good job of sticking to your shoes that loafers were a no-no. But Billy’s was about the people and the music. And there was nowhere else like it on earth.

As for the prevailing style of dress, it was all rather random. Some went toy soldier, while many of the girls certainly wouldn’t have looked out of place as backing singers with Roxy Music circa ’76, in pillbox hats, veils, gloves and pencil skirts. Some, such as Andy Polaris, went for a double-breasted Demob suit, while others, such as yours truly, gave their old Let It Rock pink peg trousers an airing, teamed with a Breton fisherman’s T-shirt.

“At Billy’s in 1978, there were only 150 people from the whole of London who had the sense to find the club and get what we were doing,” says Rusty Egan.“And I bet you could almost name them all.”

Billy’s lasted just a few months, after which the club became invaded by pimps and hookers who came to gawp at the weirdos. Rusty’s mob decided to leave, the owner Vince threatening to break Egan’s legs, so he scarpered to Germany in search of electro. Strange, being Welsh, paid no heed, continuing to work in PX. One afternoon Steve

went for a drink in the Blitz on Great Queen Street, a wine bar decorated with Wartime Ovaltine signs holding about 250 people. Steve secured a regular Tuesday, beginning on a freezing cold February 13th. Rusty played Roxy Music and Kraftwerk with a smattering of glam and Steve’s door policy was tough. If you weren’t in the know, you were not in the club. Steve famously turned away Mick Jagger.

“The Blitz wouldn’t have been anything without the kids who attended,” a typically modest Steve said. “All I did was find a place for them to go and be fabulous and have fun. We were all kids – I was only 20 – and we’d all been Bowie fans and lovers of Westwood, but no Club would ever let us in, and when they did it would always end up in a punch-up, as you couldn’t wear a hat back then with out being attacked.” Strange was earning, and now wearing the top gear that no-one else could afford. He went from future space warrior – all padded shoulders and Lurex zigzags – to Robin Hood with a feather in his cap, and on to his camp made-up Monk look in a matter of weeks. In those days he set the bar by which all others were measured.

And then one night David Bowie turned up. People went bananas. I was so disappointed.

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All these hep cats rubbernecking like 13-year-old teenyboppers. Bowie asked Steve to be in the video for his new single Ashes to Ashes. “I thought we were going to go somewhere exotic,” said Steve, “but we met at The Dorchester at 5am and ended up on a freezing windy beach in Kent.”

Consequently, the press went crazy for the whole shebang. The Evening Standard led with an editorial entitled ‘Dandies in Hand Me Downs’ describing us as a gang of ‘new romantics’, and the name unfortunately stuck. None of us were particularly romantic but the frilly shirt was about and the press like nothing better that a fancy chemise, so the name stuck. “I hated the name New Romantic,” asserted Strange. “That was just one look that lasted a few weeks. Unfortunately, a lot of people took it seriously all over the country and, before you knew it, men in berets, frilly shirts, pantaloons and ballet shoes were everywhere. I didn’t mind that much as it became a worldwide youth cult.

We changed people’s lives and, as you once said, ‘opened a million closets’, so I’m proud of that.”

To add to the unreality, the likes of Kim Bowen and Michelle Clapton (Game of Thrones’ costume designer) had adopted a seriously ecclesiastical style of dress; a cross between the Ayatollah, Mother Theresa and Marc Bolan. Elsewhere, patrons were dressed as Teds, Westwood punks, cowboys and, well... you name it. Punters were having sex in the back alley, losing themselves in the toilets and George O’ Dowd – the cloakroom boy – was dressed as a nun with too much make-up.

The whole shooting match came to a crescendo after we were awarded a Saturday night, which became the biggest night in the UK. Due to the club’s 200 people capacity, an angry mob of 1000 people waited outside one Saturday trying to get in, one of whom stuck a large tree branch through the front window, while everyone inside was off their boxes, some letting fireworks off in the club.

The police closed us down.

Later that year Strange and Egan, as Visage, released Fade To Grey, a top-ten hit in nine countries.

He was now an international pop star whose best friend was the magnificent Grace Jones. His first royalty cheque was for £250,000, he was modelling in ads for Yves St Laurent and doing personal appearances, but he was spending it as fast it came in.

“I wish my accountant had told me that this wouldn’t last forever, “ groaned Steve. “I was buying £10,000 fur coats, footing the bill for £1000 dinners for me and my friends and doing loads of coke. I was only 21 and was basically a kid from the Valleys who’d been given this money and had no training in what to do with it, so I just went bloody mad!”

Strange and Egan moved their club to The Camden Palace on the site of a former music hall.

Regulars included Jack Nicholson and Angelica Huston, Arnie, Sly Stallone, Christophe Reeve, Freddie Mercury, Phil Lynott and about every happening young band, actor and model in Europe. He then moved into the Seymour Walk home of the utterly glorious Francesca Von Thyssen, daughter of model Fiona Campbell and the world fifth richest man, Heini Von Thyssen.

“Me and Chessie (Francesca) were like the Posh and Becks of that time and we partied as if there was no tomorrow,” smiles Strange. “I never carried money and behaved like royalty in my chauffer-driven car and bodyguard. Parties at Seymour Place were like going back to the greatest Hollywood parties you could ever envisage.

After two years, Steve was the subject of a citizen’s arrest in The Camden Palace by a moronic

“Strange and Egan moved their club to The Camden Palace on the site of a former music hall.

Regulars included Jack Nicholson and Angelica Huston, Arnie, Sly Stallone, Christophe Reeve, Freddie Mercury, Phil Lynott and about every happening young band, actor and model in Europe”

Steve claimed to be bisexual, which was utter nonsense. He was a predatory male who unashamedly chased handsome boys, whether they were straight or not, and usually had his way with men you’d have never have imagined would jump into bed with another man.

In 1980 Strange, Egan and I teamed up and opened Hell in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden.

Half way through our tenure, some wag started selling LSD for 50p a pop. Suddenly the dynamic changed. “I went downstairs once and had to come back up,” sighs punter Mark McCarthy, “I thought everyone was melting.”

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squaddie who thought he’d clean up London’s crazy drug fiends on his own. Steve went to court; it was all over the papers and gave the company who owned the venue the opportunity to ditch Steve and Rusty.

Strange, like many of his contemporaries, savaged the marching powder and, to come down, started chasing the dragon. “I thought it was like every other drug,” groaned Strange, “but it’s not.

It grabbed me and I became an addict. All I thought about was heroin and I let everything else go to shit. All my friends tried to get me off it but I couldn’t stop. I went to Ibiza to live but as soon as I came back I was back in it. I was even convicted of stealing a chequebook to get money to support my habit. I was and still am so ashamed of what I did, and what this did to my family, but I just couldn’t stop.”

“I still miss his 3 am calls that went on for hours, his requests to borrow a few quid, and still miss his very presence. For me he was the symbol of a mad barking decade when everything was possible and nothing was off limits” Strange was fined £500 for theft and deception, after forging a signature on a stolen cheque in a bank to get cash to buy heroin. Unfortunately the monkey was on his back and heroin would dog him for the rest of his life.

In 2000 Strange hit an all time low when he was given a suspended jail sentence after being caught stealing a £10.99 Teletubbies doll in Bridgend, South Wales. Police then discovered that Strange, then 40, had been stealing all afternoon, his booty consisting of cosmetics and clothes from High Street stores. His solicitor Mel Butler said: “He has found it difficult to cope with falling from grace after being a man of considerable wealth in the Eighties.”

In 2013 Steve announced another new version of his band Visage and released an album, but the comeback hardly made any waves. He was

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now living with his mother in Wales. In 2015, prior to his band’s tour, he went to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to get himself together. While there his grandmother passed away. Strange lost the plot, freaked out at the airport and had to be restrained by police and sedated. Later that day he died in the local hospital of a heart attack. A heart-shaped gravestone, which the Steve Strange Collective paid for, was unveiled in December 2015.

I still miss his 3 am calls that went on for hours, his requests to borrow a few quid and still miss his very presence. For me he was the symbol of a mad barking decade when everything was possible and nothing was off limits.

“For me there was no one moment that summed up the eighties,” recalled Strange. “The whole decade was extraordinary. We felt we could try anything and often we’d succeed, and if not you’d have fun trying. Everyone was putting on club nights, making music, designing clothes and painting. And don’t forget Thatcher was in power, there was mass unemployment and not many opportunities, so the country was totally in the doldrums and we had nothing to lose.” n RIP Steve Harrington 1959-2015

George Osbaldeston as a Young Man

Biography

George Osbaldeston: The Tireless Squire Looking for a role model for how to live life with relentless exuberance, Olivier Woodes-Farquharson explores the non-stop life of George ‘Squire’ Osbaldeston: squeaky-voiced aristocrat, world-class cricketer, horseman extraordinaire, reluctant politician, perennial knave and occasional womaniser

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“Osbaldeston did what every self-centred, easily distracted, patronising and privileged trouble-maker still does to this day: he became an MP. A nod and a wink enabled him to be elected as Whig MP for East Retford, Lincolnshire, from 1812 to 1818, although he rarely attended the House and would likely have been hard pressed to distinguish a Whig from a Tory”

s we emerge bleary-eyed from The Unpleasantness and seek opportunities to hedonistically make up for the year that never was, we look for inspiration from those who have come before us who would have known how to trip the light fantastic.

Known throughout Victorian Britain as ‘Squire’ Osbaldeston, George Osbaldeston packed an astonishing amount into his 80 years. He only grew to 5 feet 6 inches, but was 11 stone of packed, lean muscle with, it was said, ‘legs appearing somewhat disproportioned to his body’. Although not overtly foul looking, one unflattering portrait of the time reveals a face not unlike a well-slapped haddock, and his voice was described as incongruously high-pitched to the point of falsetto. But he never stopped moving.

The Squire boasted an eclectic skillset that included playing world-class cricket, being an

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Squire George Osbaldeston on Ashton with Sir Francis Holyoake Goodricke on Crossbow, by John Ferneley Snr (1830)

unparalleled shot with a rifle, beating horse racing records, being the finest foxhunter in the land and generally risk-taking like a frenzied honey badger.

That he was an outrageous cur and irascible bounder to see him through all this is a given. That he made it to old age at all remains a mystery.

Born on Boxing Day 1786 as the only son of five children, Osbaldeston’s parents inherited a great uncle’s estate at Hutton Buscel, near Scarborough.

His father had the cheek to die when George was only six, and although the estate was left in trust to him, his mother thought nothing of dipping deeply and frequently into the well and squandering it, because those political society parties were not going to host themselves. The usual path of Eton was tried, but he brilliantly got himself expelled within a year, most likely for being himself. Still, he once recalled, ‘“I could beat any boy single-handed at cricket, and any boy my age in fisticuffs.”

Despite his behaviours, dependable contacts got him a place at Brasenose College, Oxford, but he continued to display a complete allergy to studying, as well as pouring hot gravy over the heads of students or masters he took a dislike to. Obtaining an actual degree never appeared to feature anywhere in his plans, but he was known to play billiards for 50 hours straight.

He had also bought his first foxhounds, and this was to be the true love of his life. For nearly 30 years he spent a fortune moving from one famous hunt to another as its Master: 1810, the Burton, Lincolnshire; 1813, the Muster’s pack; 1815, the Meynall and Atherstone, Derbyshire; 1817-1827, the Quorn, Leicestershire; 1827-34, the Pytchley, Northants. Each move involved the enormous expense of purchasing the Mastership, which included the running costs of stables, kennels and men and renting a gentleman’s residence for the season.

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George Osbaldeston, esq., M.P.

“Noticing that the posy contained a rare orchid, he hopped onto his mount and galloped into the night, riding non-stop for 25 miles to a large manor house, in the conservatory of which the special flower had been grown. He helped himself to a superior specimen, galloped the 25 miles back and, caked in mud, handed it gallantly to the overwhelmed Miss Burton, thus claiming the next waltz”

This necessarily itinerant approach was for a very straightforward reason. Despite subsidising everything, and one loyal friend remarking that ‘no one who ever knew the Squire would imagine for a moment that he was capable of doing anything approaching an ungentlemanly action,’ Squire Osbaldeston could be an absolute rotter. He antagonised and exhausted all ranks of society in every hunt by his limitless boasts, incessant arrogance and his paranoia that everyone was out to cheat him. He was also hunt-obsessed, often going six times a week, and more than once riding a poor horse to death.

Thus he got kicked out of each hunt and moved on.

In parallel, and pushed by his status-obsessed mother, he also did what every self-centred, easily distracted, patronising and privileged trouble-maker still does to this day: he became an MP. A nod and a wink enabled him to be elected as Whig MP for East Retford, Lincolnshire, from 1812 to 1818, although

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A Young Gentleman on a Bay Hunter by Frederick Herring The Elder (1830)

he rarely attended the House and would likely have been hard pressed to distinguish a Whig from a Tory.

He had zero interest in politics, and although usually eye-rollingly prolix, he was never once known to give a speech in the House.

At the next election he resigned, because there was frankly far too much riding and gambling to be done. The Squire’s greatest riding feat came in 1831, when he bet one of his drinking buddies, Colonel Charrite, 1000 guineas that he could ride 200 miles in 10 hours. It became the viral news sensation of Autumn 1831, with Osbaldeston training, laying bets on himself and drinking in equal measure during the run-up. But soon before the big day, racehorse owner John Gully approached him, casually mentioning that he knew ‘damn well’ that Osbaldeston could ride that distance in ten hours.

But the odds would be far more interesting if he could do it in nine…

Like a bear to honey, The Squire took him on, and opted to cover the distance by repeatedly circling the world’s largest racecourse, the roughly four miles at Newmarket in Suffolk. He picked 28 of his best horses, using one per circuit. Despite torrential rain on the morning of the November day itself, Osbaldeston didn’t delay. In a black velvet cap and rich purple silks – similar to the present Queen’s colours, in fact – he hopped on soon after 7am, and proceeded to ride like a possessed banshee.

Despite numerous stops to tussle with an unruly thoroughbred called Ikey Solomon, neck brandy, eat a selection of pies and liberally urinate, he completed the 200 miles, and descended from his final mount to await the official result. 8hrs and 42 mins. He had done it. Without hesitation, he leapt back on, galloped at full pelt to the Rutland Arms, skulled a few tankards, took a hot bath and aggressively claimed that he ‘could eat an old woman’.

To understand the scale of this feat, it is worth noting that 162 years later, on the same course, the champion steeplechase jockey Peter Scudamore barely beat the Squire’s record, despite taking shorter breaks, spending more time in the saddle and not riding while cabbaged on cognac. On completion, and in contrast to the Squire, witnesses recalled that Scudamore ‘declared himself exhausted and laid himself carefully on the ground for a massage’.

Even by his standards, 1831 was a busy year for Osbaldeston, as it marked an infamous duel with his bitter rival Lord George Bentinck. Some believed that the Squire had held back his horse Rush at Doncaster, in order to carry a lower handicap weight in his following race at Heaton, where – would you believe it – he won easily. Bentinck had bet £200 that he wouldn’t, and seethed when he saw that Osbaldeston had apparently progressed from blackguard to all-round scoundrel. When Osbaldeston demanded his winnings, Lord George declared,

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George Osbaldeston by Sir Francis Grant

“I’m surprised you ask for the money, for the affair was robbery”. “The matter will not end here, my Lord!” squeaked Osbaldeston, and so the Squire and the Lord met with pistols at dawn on Wormwood Scrubs.

Bentinck had reason to be the more apprehensive. Osbaldeston was an outstanding shot, noted on more than one occasion to bring down 98 pheasant from 100 shots. Bentinck’s friends therefore worked

overtime in the run-up to negotiate some semblance of honour, resulting in both men shooting into the air. The coda came a few years later, when, at the races, Bentinck fired his pistol in the air to celebrate a victory. Osbaldeston, who was riding in the race with a gun, responded by shooting Bentinck cleanly through his hat, missing his head by two inches.

There was, however, no happy ending with his other nemesis, Lord Frederick Beauclerk. Since his

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Oxford days, Osbaldeston had shown himself to be a fine right-handed all-round cricketer. His bowling style was described as ‘fearsome fast underarm’, putting not just batsmen but wicketkeepers at peril, with several stuffing their garments with straw when the Squire was unleashing another scorcher.

But being Squire Osbaldeston invariably meant combining skill with gambling and controversy. In 1810, in a two-a-side game of ‘Double wicket’, he and his friend William Lambert (right) challenged Beauclerk and Thomas Howard. The day arrived, but Osbaldeston had been dancing on the ceiling most of the night and woke up with wine flu. “Pay or play,” was the humourless Beauclerk’s riposte.

Osbaldeston wobbled to the wicket, took a single and promptly retired to do some toilet hugging. Fortunately Lambert saved the day: he made 56 and 24 in his two innings, and then bowled out both Beauclerk and Howard twice each to win it by 15 runs.

The Squire then boasted that he could beat anyone in a single wicket game. George Brown of Sussex took the bet and defeated him. As everyone in those days appears to have been an appallingly sore loser, the Squire promptly scratched his name off the list of MCC Members. When the red mist had once again ascended, he repented and asked to be reinstated. A crowing Beauclerk, who essentially ran the MCC, point blank refused. However, Osbaldeston remained one of the leading cricketers of his day, representing Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex.

Glory in the saddle or on the pitch was not matched by success in relationships, though not for want of trying. While at one county ball he was said to have seduced both the daughters of the house in one evening; this appears to have been the exception rather than the rule.

Yet despite his gruff and suspicious exterior, he occasionally deigned to display a rare chivalry. At a ball in Lincoln, he was introduced to the beautiful Miss Burton, who entranced him. Later in the evening, as she went to complement another beauty on her posy of flowers and was rudely snubbed, the Squire knew what he had to do. Noticing that the posy in question contained a rare orchid, he did some digging, finished his supper, hopped onto his mount and galloped into the night, riding non-stop for 25 miles to a large manor house, in the conservatory of which the special flower had been grown.

Breaking in, he helped himself to a superior specimen, galloped the 25 miles back and, caked in mud, handed it gallantly to the overwhelmed Miss Burton, thus claiming the next waltz.

The only proper relationship he seems to have had was early on, with a Miss Ann Green, also of Lincoln. In his memoirs Osbaldeston carefully described her as ‘a member of the frail sisterhood’, by which he meant ‘whore’. When she bore him a son in 1812, mother and son quietly moved to Tasmania, the latter siring 16 children, maintaining his family line and name to this day in the Antipodes.

The money Squire Osbaldeston made from racing wins was overshadowed by huge gambling debts of around £200,000 (equivalent to over £2 million today), which eventually forced him to sell his lands in 1848. Hawking around for some form of stability, he finally married his widowed housekeeper Elizabeth Williams in 1851 at the age of 65, most likely as he was then able to squat in her north London house. He admitted in his memoirs that he had wasted his riches and had lived ‘a life of plunder’, but had clearly regretted absolutely none of it.

Williams, in turn, doubtlessly infuriated him by permitting him only a frugal allowance, quashing any hopes he had of unleashing his now meagre assets in a gambling house. Quiet his latter days may have been but, having passed away at home just shy of his 80th birthday on 1st August 1866, one nevertheless suspects that his phantom still rides exquisitely at the front of a hunt in the Midlands, pausing only either to insult the nearest rider or possibly buy him a drink. n

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Drink

ENGLISH WINE Gustav Temple meets a David and a Goliath of wine production in East Sussex, to find out all the whys and wherefores of this burgeoning industry

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s with most matters concerning these fair isles, as soon as one sets foot in any particular department, the whole English v British question comes up, and this is particularly true of the wine produced on these shores. And with another negative consequence of Brexit being the threat of prices for our beloved European wine slowly increasing, we should take note that, simultaneously, our climactic temperatures are also increasing. Is there a future for English wine as a full replacement for the wines of Tuscany, Bordeaux and Rioja? I set forth into the valleys of East Sussex to meet two gentlemen who were qualified to inform me, and whether we should be calling it English or British wine.

“It’s more complicated here than in southern Europe, where the wine regions like Lombardy or Tuscany are within both geological and political boundaries. Sussex is only a political boundary, so it becomes difficult to distinguish it geologically from Kent or Hampshire, but the Sussex Sparkling PDO is a good start” 102

MEETING DAVID

“We were over the moon when we got our first harvest. We’ve got a great piece of ground – 90 acres in total, of which only 2.4 acres will be vineyards. A small vineyard is better for us, creating more diversity in the key zone and using the rest for cropping hay. We face directly south but Wolstonbury Hill gives good sun protection and the ground drops away to the east and west, giving frost drainage. We’re part of the Danny Estate, where Churchill attended the drawing up of the armistice for the First World War with Lloyd George on 13th October, 1918. There are accounts of Churchill walking through our farm, though he never made it up the hill. I like the idea of producing a pint-sized bottle of sparkling wine, like the one that Winston had every day for lunch.”

My first port of call was the ‘David’ of Sussex wine, one Ivan Weightman, doyen of Wolstonbury Wines near Hassocks, West Sussex, in the shadow of Wolstonbury Hill – which Churchill nearly climbed once but drank a pint of champagne instead (see below).

Wolstonbury Wines make sparkling and still wine, their first harvest only in 2018. With nothing more than a background in farming (his father grows more traditional crops in County Durham), Ivan planted his first vines in 2015, choosing the Bacchus and Reichensteiner grapes for their adaptability to the local terroir. Sussex lies in the same chalk basin that extends to the Champagne region of France, but our weather has yet to catch up with their longer, hotter summers. The threat of frost is always lurking around the corner in England and this limits which grapes can be successfully harvested.

Why, I asked, are so many Sussex vineyards focusing on sparkling wine and not still wine?

“To make still Chardonnay in the UK you’d have to have an exceptional summer,” says Ivan, “like the long summers of the Champagne region. You crop the grapes for sparkling wine a few weeks earlier, and that makes all the difference in our shorter summers.”

However, Wolstonbury have taken the plunge and produced both still and sparkling wines. Their first crop yielded 6.2 tons of grapes, easily enough for a decent first run of the two white wines they have called simply Bacchus and Bacchus Reichensteiner (see tasting notes below). This successful yield involved some processes that sounded positively mediaeval: “Some vineyards burn candles to raise the temperature around the vines. But paraffin based candles are not good for the environment and 450 candles just for our one hectare would cost us £4,000 in one night! So we burn hay bales or timber instead. We planted the whole vineyard over two days, out there by tractor light at night. It took two days to recover, but it was worth it.”

Currently Wolstonbury have their grapes turned into wine at a local winery, but this year they will be building their own winery and scaling up production. At the moment they sell mainly to local walkers and online. The farm happens to be in a very attractive walking area and even while I was there, visitors dropped in to sample the wines in an attractive outdoor Cellar Door. When the winery is built and the vineyards expanded to two or three hectares, Wolstonbury hopes to be producing 20,000 bottles of still and sparkling wine.

MEETING GOLIATH Next stop was the Rathfinny Wine Estate in East Sussex, an enormous 600-acre estate with 227 acres of vineyards. When expanded over the next six years to its full capacity of 350 acres, Rathfinny will be producing nearly 80,000 cases of sparkling wine per annum.

I met Rathfinny’s Brand Ambassador Richard James to find out what Goliath has to say about English wine production. After digressing into whether the three-button collar on a bespoke shirt by tailor Gresham Blake was acceptable, we got down to the nitty-gritty of Protected Domains of Origin (PDOs). Barely had the words “British wine” left my lips when Richard’s hand was raised to stop me.

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expensive winery equipment and get something on the market while the sparkling wine did its time in the cellar.

We headed over to the winery to take a look, by car, as it would have been a good seven-minute walk. As well as the floor-to-ceiling wine stills, there is a piece of equipment normally associated with kidney failure in humans – a dialysis machine.

“Most other wineries cool the grape juice down to zero degrees in vast stills, which takes up a lot of time and energy – even though everything at Rathfinny is solar powered. This electro-dialysis machine filters all impurities out of the wine, is far gentler on the product and uses far less energy.”

Rathfinny’s environmental credentials extend everywhere and make the whole enterprise entirely sustainable. Richard pointed out the strips of land between every ten vines in the vast valley before us, where, instead of using any insecticide, species of wildflower are planted that attract larger insects that feed off the smaller unwanted insects. Pheromone attractors are also used, to allow the estate to monitor numbers of specific moth species.

If it all sounds rather technical and industrial, harvest season in mid-October at Rathfinny is quite the opposite. Only local people are employed, most of them walking up to the estate from the surrounding villages and towns like Seaford and Newhaven. Richard compared it to the 1950s tradition of Londoners going down to Kent for hop picking. It’s a bit of a family day out; the work isn’t backbreaking, as they are not on a steep slope and there are no heavy baskets to carry, plus there is a selection of wine at the end of it.

The Rathfinny vision, assisted by huge amounts of investment from owners Mark and Sarah Driver, is to combine high-tech equipment with family values and create award-winning sparkling wines that rank alongside the best champagne in years to come. “It would be ideal,” says Richard, “if in about ten years’ time, a restaurant in New York or Beijing has an English wine section on their wine list, divided into counties, and that Rathfinny Sussex Sparkling is treated with equal reverence as Champagne.”

“The term ‘British wine’ dates back to the early 80s, when grapes were brought into Britain from elsewhere to make wine here. The important PDOs these days are ‘English Wine’, ‘English Sparkling’ and ‘Sussex Sparkling’, all of which are produced by Rathfinny. Sussex Sparkling was only set in law three years ago, approved by the EU for export.

“It’s more complicated here than in southern Europe, where the famous wine regions like Lombardy or Tuscany are within both geological and political boundaries. Sussex is only a political boundary, so it becomes difficult to distinguish it geologically from Kent or Hampshire, but the Sussex Sparkling PDO is a good start, and will develop as time goes on.”

While Brexit pushes up prices of imported European wine, has it had any effect on the production of English wine? “Only when it comes to all the extra paperwork when importing stock such as bottles and corks. A British manufacturer has yet to produce sparkling wine bottles in sufficient volume.”

So why do we need European wine at all?

“Weather. It will be at least 50 years until England is able to produce a Shiraz or a Cabernet Sauvignon, because we simply don’t have long enough summers. The grapes we grow at Rathfinny are the classic three for sparkling wine: Pinot Noir, Pinot Meurnier and Chardonnay.”

Rathfinny’s Sussex Sparklings are legion, accounting for 98% of their production, from a Classic Cuvée 2016, to Blanc de Noirs 2016, Blanc de Blancs 2016 and Rosé Brut 2017. They also produce small batches of still wine under the label Cradle Valley, purely because the first pressing of a new harvest can be turned into still wine the following year, and they wanted to start using their vastly

TASTING NOTES: Armed with the certainty that we wouldn’t be tasting any Malbecs or Merlots, we tried a selection of still English white and rosé wines to see how they compared to classic southern European wines.

A good selection, available in mixed cases, is available from www.theenglishvine.co.uk

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WOLSTONBURY BACCHUS REICHENSTEINER 2018 £16.99 ABV 12.5% WEST SUSSEX winecellardoor.co.uk

FOLC 2020 VINTAGE ROSÉ £14.99 ABV 11% KENT drinkfolc.com A pale salmon pink colour is produced by a blend of Pinot Noir, Pinot Meurnier, Chardonnay, Bacchus, Reichensteiner, Schönburger and Dornfelder grapes. The vineyard, based in Kent, is a family-run affair launched during lockdown in 2020.

The palate is clean and crisp with a mineral backbone, with notes of wild strawberries kicking in, balanced by floral notes leaving a long and textured finish. This was the finest of the rosés we sampled, easily sitting comfortably alongside any rosé from southern Europe. The elegantly dimpled bottle is rather sexy too.

Most of the English whites we sampled veered towards the drier end of the spectrum, for the sweetness of some southern European wines comes from the fruitier grapes produced by their balmier climates. This wine has a very strong Englishness about it, with apricots and elderflower on the nose, and crisp, light, floral notes on the way down. Pale in colour, sleek in bottling and smooth on the palate: the perfect picnic wine.

CRADLE VALLEY ROSÉ 2019 £18.00 ABV 12% EAST SUSSEX rathfinnyestate.com

NUMBER 1 £12.99 ABV 11% ESSEX theenglishvine.co.uk

The rosé made by the Rathfinny Estate from predominantly Pinot Gris grapes is described as ‘ballet slipper pink’ and we would concur. There is a lot of surprising flavour in this discreet offering: notes of wet grass and summer wildflowers on the nose, followed by deeper cuts of cucumber and strawberries on the palate. An aftertaste of gazpacho makes this one to sip while watching a cricket match in white flannels on the village green.

The house wine from theenglishvine.co.uk is a pleasant, no-nonsense easy drinker made from Bacchus grapes, created by viticulturalist Peter Morio in 1933. The name, of course, comes from the Roman name for the Greek god of wine Dionysus.

Bacchus grapes ripen early, making them ideal for cultivation in England. Our colder climate causes the grapes to retain a higher acidity, producing lower yields. The nearest European equivalent in flavour would be a Sauvignon Blanc.

STILL BY HATTINGLEY CHARDONNAY £19.50 ABV 12.6% HAMPSHIRE hattingleyvalley.com

CHAPEL DOWN ENGLISH ROSÉ £13.99 ABV 12% KENT chapeldown.com

Family-owned winery Hattingley Valley has added its first-ever white wine, made from 100% Chardonnay grapes, to its collection of awardwinning English sparkling wines.

The first impression is super dry for a Chardonnay. Hattingley is almost sooty on the nose, with a vibrantly bright acidity and a very pale colour.

Green apple flavours kick in on the palate, with a hint of honey and pear. An ideal wine to wash down richly flavoured cheeses.

A delicate rosé which epitomises English summer, with aromas of strawberry and cream, made in Tenterden, Kent from grapes sourced from Kent, Sussex and Essex. Chapel Down is a 20-year-old vineyard that recently replaced Bollinger as official partner of the Oxford & Cambridge Boat Race. They are also an official supplier to No.10 Downing Street, but don’t let that put you off. Another easy drinker, with redcurrants and floral notes on the palate leading to a crisp, refreshing finish. n

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Cooking

A PICNIC TO IMPRESS Nicole Drysdale prepares the perfect ingredients for a picnic that is easy to transport and impressive to serve Feel free to share your creations with Nicole on Instagram @nicolethechap

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ant to know how to butter up your picnic guests? It starts with the butter. These days everyone has a sourdough starter on the go; making your own bread has become the thing to do but I have to admit I have resisted. Mainly due to the fact that I live round the corner from an amazing bakery, but also because I never seem to get past the starter stage without killing my starter by forgetting to feed it (a bit like my houseplants).

Homemade butter, however, with homemade or fresh bakery-bought bread, is simply divine and cuts an impressive dash at any table or picnic blanket. And there is no need to tell your guests how easy it is to make; just take the compliments on your originality.

For this picnic butter I have simply added sea salt, but if you wanted a sweet butter for breakfast crumpets I would suggest a pinch of soft brown sugar and perhaps even a pinch of cinnamon.

Other flavours to play around with could include chilli flakes, ground coriander or crushed cardamom pods, or, to toast on bread, garlic or fresh herbs. This can be delicious served with fish.

No-one enjoys a soggy sandwich. I like serving open sandwiches, which can be made up once you have reached your picnic destination.

That’s why the baked ham works well, for you can

cut fresh slices as and when your guests get peckish.

The English mustard gives the ham a sharp bite to it, while the honey gives a sweetness. Cut slices as thick or thin to suit individual tastes, and a topping of the piccalilli makes the perfect open sandwich.

I really must insist you try making haggis sausage rolls. Whatever your thoughts are of haggis, I can guarantee that once you have tried it in sausage rolls, you will never go back to plain sausage meat.

I mix roughly half and half of sausage meat and haggis. Like any sausage roll, these are best enjoyed fresh, so I would suggest making these on the morning of the picnic. Everything else can be made the day before, except the piccalilli, which takes around a month to make.

For a sweet treat I’ve gone for fudge, with the delicate flavour of rose. Be careful not to add too much rose, as the flavour could become overpowering. Fudge is a little easier to transport than tartlets or a cake, and so is perfect to take on a picnic. As it’s very sweet, the addition of fresh ripe strawberries on a sunny day would help to cut through the sweetness.

These picnic ideas sit perfectly on their own, but if you wanted to add to them you could include salads, cheeses or good quality tinned sardines. Let’s hope the sun is shining all summer and we can enjoy many day trip picnics. Probably best to pack the umbrella just in case…

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Haggis Sausage Rolls Makes 35-40 (small) Prep Time: 10 minutes Cooking Time: 35 minutes

Ingredients 2 Packs ready rolled Puff Pastry 1 Egg 500g Haggis (MacSweens preferably) 450g Sausage Meat Method 1. Remove the puff pastry from the fridge at least half an hour before required. Pre-heat oven to 190.

2. In a large mixing bowl, mix together the haggis and sausage meat until fully combined.

3. Unroll the pastry and place on a large chopping board. Keep the parchment paper underneath so it doesn’t stick to the board.

4. Cut the pastry in half lengthways.

5. Take a handful of the haggis mixture, roll it out in a sausage shape and place along the middle of the pastry.

6. Fold the pastry over on itself, making sure the haggis mixture is tightly inside the pastry. Use a fork to press both sides together.

7. Take a sharp knife and cut into individual sausage rolls about 3cm each. Gently stab each one with the knife on the top.

8. Whisk the egg and brush over the top of the sausage rolls to get a nice golden colour.

Place on a large baking tray lined with baking paper and pop in the pre-heated oven for around 35 minutes, or until golden.

Sea Salted Butter Makes 2 ramekins Prep Time: 10-15 minutes

Ingredients 600ml pot of Double Cream Sea salt to taste

Method 1. Place the double cream into the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix at the highest setting. After about 7-10 minutes, the cream will separate into butter and buttermilk. You might need to scrape the cream from the edges every so often.

2. Remove the butter and squeeze out any remaining buttermilk through a muslin cloth or clean tea towel.

3. Place the butter into a bowl and season with sea salt to taste.

Baked Gammon Prep Time: 5 minutes Cooking Time: 2 hours

Ingredients Small Smoked Gammon Joint 1x heaped tablespoon of English Mustard 100g Runny Honey Method 1. Place the gammon joint in a large pan of boiling water and simmer for 1 hour.

2. Pre-heat the oven to 180.

3. Mix the English mustard with the honey.

4. Place the gammon in a baking dish and coat with the honey/mustard mixture.

Cover with foil and cook for 1/2 hours, then remove the foil for the remaining 1/2 hour. If using a larger joint, cook as per pack instructions.

Piccalilli Makes 6 Jars Prep Time: 20 minutes Cooking Time: 20 minutes Pickling Time: 1 month

Ingredients 225g Sea Salt 1 x Cauliflower 2 x Courgettes 150g Fine Green Beans 3 x Carrots 3 x Shallots 1 x Red Pepper (Optional) 1/2 Jar small pickled onions

1 x Clove Garlic 25g Fresh Ginger 1 x Chilli (Optional) 750ml White Wine Vinegar 200g Caster Sugar 2 tbsp English Mustard Powder 2 tbsp Ground Turmeric 2 tbsp Cornflour

Method 1. Stir the salt into 500ml water. Once dissolved, make up to 2.5 litres. Pour this into a large mixing bowl or jar (or two).

2. Prep the vegetables: cut the cauliflower into small florets; slice the carrots then cut in half; do the same with the courgettes. Cut the green beans into 1.5cm lengths and the shallots into fine slices.

3. Put the vegetables into the salted water and leave to brine overnight (or at least 12 hours) 4. The following day, rinse the vegetables under cold water and place on kitchen towel for 20 minutes or so to dry.

Discard the brine.

5. Sterilise the jars by placing them, lids removed, into the oven at 120 for 15 minutes.

6. In a large saucepan mix the cornflour, sugar, mustard and turmeric powders together, with a splash of the vinegar, and mix to form a paste.

7. Once combined, add the rest of the vinegar and bring to the boil.

8. Once boiling, add the vegetables and the pickled onions (and red chilli if using) and turn down the heat. Cook for 5 minutes then turn off the heat and allow to cool slightly, before spooning the mixture into the sterilised jars.

9. Loosely place the lids on the jars until completely cooled, then tighten them up and place in a cool dark cupboard for a month.

Fudge with a hint of Rose Makes approx 30 small squares Prep Time: 30-40 minutes Cooling Time: 2-3 hours

Ingredients 1 x Tin Condensed Milk 125g Unsalted Butter (115g for the fudge, 10g to line the tin) 450g Light Soft Brown Sugar 150ml Full Fat Milk 1-2 tbsp Rosewater, or a couple of drops of Rose Essence Method 1. Put all the ingredients, except the rosewater, into a large saucepan and place on a low heat until melted.

2. Bring to the boil and boil for 10-15 minutes, stirring continuously.

3. Remove from the heat and allow to cool for 5 minutes before adding the rosewater.

4. Now beat the mixture for 5-10 minutes until thick and smooth.

5. Line a 20x20cm tin with parchment and grease with the remaining butter.

6. Pour the mixture into the tin and allow to cool at room temperature. Once cooled and set, remove from the tin and place on a chopping board. Cut the fudge into small squares. To store, line a tin with parchment and use a sheet of parchment between each layer.

Travel

KENT CALLING Chris Sullivan explores three towns on the Kent coast for signs of a decent holiday in the sun

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’ve always had a soft spot for the British seaside but it took Covid restrictions for me, and many other Britons, to once again become tourists in our own land. Previously, I considered it a duty to visit as many foreign countries as possible and, consequently, surfed the wave of cheap flights, grazing the budget airlines each week looking for an economical conduit into pastures extraneous. That’s all changed of course but, entirely undaunted, I plumped for a series of adventures in the resorts on the North Kent coast, and was rewarded beyond my every expectation.

My first port of call was Margate. I’d visited the vicinity a few times way back, decked out in my peg trousers, plastic sandals and Hawaiian shirt to attend the Bank Holiday soul sessions at the Ballyhai but, after a fearsome battle with big angry

“The Bay itself, with its pier and adjacent amusement arcades, is classic Kiss Me Quick territory but, if that’s not your cup of Rosie Lee, one can sit outside The Hampton Inn and rejoice in its ample seating, look out to sea, imbibe copious amounts of liquor and acquire a spiffing sunburn, which, in my book, no holiday is complete without” 110

Teddy Boys on the beach, didn’t return until 2010.

My mission then was to DJ at a friend’s 40th in the wonderful ‘disco’ basement of the utterly wonderful Walpole Hotel. A magnificent establishment that has remained architecturally intact since the fifties, its corridors are positively festooned with what might be described as a Chap Museum, including cabinets full of wartime memorabilia, antique billycocks, historic dining sets, wind up gramophones, 1930s Colman’s Mustard and Bovril posters, while mannequins in 1920s mufti stalk the corridors. I played a few records after the campest pianist since Liberace, Bobby Crush, tickled the ivories and, as we all stayed on the premises, nearly had a coronary when turning corner to see a 1930s flapper looking at me with those dead glass eyes.

On that occasion, I didn’t have much time to

see the town proper, as the hotel is in Walpole Bay, a mile or so from the town, but I still got a whiff of its charms. Included was a peruse of its many secondhand furniture emporia, such as the magnificent Ford Road Yard (where I wanted to buy everything) and Junk Deluxe where, for a pittance I bought four 1960s dining room chairs exactly like the ones I had as a child. Whisked away by nostalgia, I’d not considered how to get them home to London on the train and, after a tremendously difficult mile walk with chairs hanging off my arms and on my head, arrived at the rail station sweating like a Mongolian wrestler and looking far angrier.

The journey from King’s Cross to Margate is only 90 minutes, so the beach is easily accessible for city dwellers. Thus, my next visit was during that tiny gap in Covid restrictions last year but, as every hotel

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was booked, for a day trip with the lovely lady, Dolly.

We started with a look in Wayne Hemingway’s Dreamland, where classic Dodgems, a Big Wheel etc makes it great for kids. But for us, the scorching heat caused us to install ourselves in Barnacles, a classic low-priced British pub with old men boozing at noon, a pool table, darts board, a fruit machine and a substantial outside seating area looking over the bay. Unfortunately, the view is marred by the brutalist eyesore of Turner Contemporary Art Gallery, a heinous blot on what was once a lovely landscape, and which could easily have been built somewhere else, like Poland.

“One of Herne Bay’s greatest assets is its celebrated vintage stores. The Emporium is a large shop front that comprises a brace of different stalls selling everything from deco soap holders to thirties toys, Victorian wild boar horn pepper pots, indispensable Victorian Guzunders to 1960s Whitefriars ruby glass jugs”

After a good few pints of Shepherd Neame (Kent’s local beer) we merged into the long queue for Peter’s Fish Factory and sampled as good a Haddock and chips as I have ever tasted, setting us back a mere £5 for a huge portion. Next we visited The Sun Deck, where they played soul music, proffered an array of international food stalls and served rather marvellous cocktails that we considered it our duty to investigate fully. Then it was sunset at the Buoy and Oyster Bar on the seafront, replete with a lovely sun terrace, extravagant cocktails, cracking seafood and the most magnificent sea view. They also offer apartments for rent, which I would have taken advantage of, had they not all been booked.

So enamoured was I of Kent that, after due examination of the forecast, I made my way down just a few days later to spend a weekend in Herne Bay and Whitstable that, on the face of it, are very different but both still worth a visit. We took the train to Herne Bay and plotted up in a classic British Bed

and Breakfast The Evening Tide: bijou, charming and inexpensive and with a formidable breakfast entirely unlike the classic meagre scram of old lodging-house days. The Bay itself, with its pier and adjacent amusement arcades, is classic Kiss Me Quick territory but, if that’s not your cup of Rosie Lee, just a lovely walk down the sea front will take one to The Hamptons, an unobtrusive and rather empty impeccable beach. One can sit outside The Hampton Inn and rejoice in its ample seating, look out to sea, imbibe copious amounts of liquor and acquire a spiffing sunburn, which, in my book, no holiday is complete without.

One of Herne Bay’s greatest assets is its celebrated vintage stores. The Emporium is a large shop front that comprises a brace of different stalls selling everything from deco soap holders to thirties toys, Victorian wild boar horn pepper pots, indispensable Victorian Guzunders to 1960s Whitefriars ruby glass jugs. Opposite the Emporium is Briggsy’s, which, appropriately sitting on the site of an Art Deco cinema, is full of so much totally wonderful

items you will come out in a cold sweat and even wee yourself in excitement on entry: fifties bar stools, oak shop fittings, Gray’s original art deco dining sets and on and on. Of course, we did not come away from Herne Bay away empty handed, but the bulk of our booty came from Pretty Green Vintage, from where Dolly bought a fetching hand-embroidered thirties silk kimono and a deco shot glass set with matching tray for £50 (the perfect purchase for the entertaining Lady), while I spent £30 on an authentic twofoot high free-standing African sculpture. By the time we got to the utterly exceptional Alamode Vintage clothing store we couldn’t carry anymore, but we are planning a visit this summer and bringing two larger suitcases. For those who care about antique clothing, accessories and objets d’art, Herne Bay is nothing less than copiously essential and, as the items are at least half the price of anything in London, is worth a trip just for this aspect alone.

Bags bursting, our next port of call was Whitstable. Here, due to a cancellation, we just managed to snag a night at the original Art deco

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Hotel Continental; overlooking the sea, it might be the setting of a Hercule Poirot mystery and whose view is not spoilt by the obscene Brett Aggregate Works, which, almost as much of an eyesore as the aforementioned Turner Contemporary would be better in Bulgaria. Luckily though, it’s easily avoidable and once one gets about 100 metres past it, the pebble beach separated by wooden groynes is really rather charming and quaint and, as such, does not feel like the UK at all. Having been to Whitstable many times, my modus operandi is luncheon a la plage comprising take away fish and chips from Ossie’s on the High Street or W.C.Jones on Harbour St. with a stack of beers or a bottle or two of Rosé from the off licence a few doors down. Subsequently, after a post prandial swim in the unusually warm waters, it’s a stroll down the beach, perhaps picking up a few dazzlingly fresh oysters (a legacy of the Romans who partook of Whitstable oysters as far back as 80 AD) from the Whitstable Oyster Company on the coastline, and then onto the marvellous hostelry, The Old Neptune (an infamous smugglers’ haunt in the

19th Century) to sit on the beach with a jar or five of their brown frothy stuff and experience what J.M.W. Turner described as the world’s greatest sunset. And to be fair to old Joe Turner, he was right, as twilights here really are most exceptional; add a few pints and a jar of cockles and one’s world is flawless.

If I’m staying the night in Whitstable I usually take supper in Wheelers, opened in 1856 by Dredger Man Richard ‘Leggy’ Wheeler. A quite incomparable establishment, it also proffers quite awe-inspiring beach picnic boxes, and for dinner the likes of Lobster linguine, monkfish marinated in buttermilk, honey and saffron and steak and oyster pudding made with Guinness suet pastry. Otherwise it’s the Harbour Street Tapas restaurant, which takes advantage of the wonderful freshly caught local seafood.

I would attest that Whitstable (once home to Peter Cushing) is somewhat special, as it carefully avoids what some might describe as naff, and is sophisticated without being either overly stuck-up or peevishly posh. It’s just nice, bucolic, rather

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welcoming and, dare I say, encouragingly European.

Herne Bay (once the residence of Bob Holness) is a rather more typical British seaside resort but not overwhelmingly so, and certainly appropriate for families or rabid vintage hoarders such as I.

The chosen home of the late great Hattie Jacques and John Le Mesurier, Margate ticks every one of Herne’s boxes twice but is still not the least offensive and, being perfect for the younger folk or groovy soul fan, is unquestionably worth exploring.

Indubitably, the main advantage of taking a break in the UK is that it can be last minute. Thus you don’t waste money and time sitting in the rain in a costly hotel in Europe or beyond. I just check out the weather on the Met Office site and, if we’re looking tip top, book accordingly and, if all the accommodation is taken, instead do a day trip. This year, I’ll be doing both and will plot up in Whitstable for a good few days and, when not on its beaches or pubs, will either cycle or walk to Herne or take the train from Margate (30 minutes by car and 25 by train, so if the kids get bored you can take them for a day out

in Dreamland) to sample their slightly diverse offerings. So, if you heed my advice, maybe you will see me there, resplendent in my knotted hankie headwear, string vest and trousers rolled up to the knee, waving a European flag. n

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Surfing

EVERYBODY’S GONE SURFIN’ Alf Alderson dips a toe in the water of surf fashion, with the surprising revelation that the Duke of Windsor himself occasionally ‘hung ten’

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“There are pictures in the British Surfing Museum of The Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII, surfing off Waikiki Beach in 1920, clad in an unflattering one-piece bathing suit, while literary royalty in the form of Agatha Christie took surfing lessons in South Africa and Hawaii in 1922 (also sporting a one-piece bathing suit, and unlike the Prince, a bathing ‘bonnet’)”

rom its earliest days, surfing has always been about style, whether on the beach or while riding the waves. But not everyone who surfs has style, particularly today when, it seems, everyone is a surfer once the sun comes out.

However, it was not always thus. In the fifties and early sixties, surfing was a niche and rebellious activity when the pioneers of the sport – men who were not afraid to paddle out into waves that had never before been surfed and were the size of a house – developed a laid back, casual and practical style of dress that also had a strong identity and even exclusivity about it. Indeed, in one of its earliest incarnations on the Hawaiian Islands, surfing was as exclusive as it gets – it was, quite literally, the ‘sport of kings’.

When Captain Cook dropped anchor in Hawaii in 1778 and became the first European to

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(previously boards weighed 40 lbs or more and were made from wood) came a ‘surf style’, which developed more for practical reasons than in response to any whims of fashion.

Surfers of this period dressed very similarly to followers of the Beat movement, and there were crossovers between the two, in their rejection of popular culture and search for freedom and selfexpression; beatniks achieved this through music, literature and philosophy, surfers did it through searching for and riding ‘the perfect wave’.

“Boardshorts, the ‘tools of the trade’, were made of heavy cotton or even canvas in order to withstand the rigours of wave riding, and were often fastened with a drawstring to obtain a more secure fit, which was vital to ensure the owner did not suffer the humiliation of a ‘debagging’ following a heavy wipeout” see and comment on surfing, only royalty was allowed to surf, using only the best boards and riding only the best waves, although the hoi polloi was permitted to indulge in the activity with poorer quality equipment and on inferior waves. Of surf fashions there were none, since the sport was practiced au naturel.

Mealy mouthed missionaries put a stop to this aquatic fun for many years, but surfing re-emerged as a sport in the early 20th century, when, once again, royalty was involved, in this case British – there are pictures in the British Surfing Museum of The Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII, surfing off Waikiki Beach in 1920, clad in an unflattering one-piece bathing suit, whilst literary royalty in the form of Agatha Christie (above) took surfing lessons in South Africa and Hawaii in 1922 (sporting, like King Edward, a one-piece bathing suit, and unlike King Edward, a bathing ‘bonnet’).

However, it wasn’t until the 1950s and 60s that the sport really began to develop, when along with improved, lightweight fibreglass surfboards

By the 1950s Southern California vied with Hawaii as the hub of surfing, and while styles appropriate to a tropical climate (aloha shirts and shorts) featured heavily in the niche world of surfing, California’s climate is not as ambrosial as that of Hawaii, and this was reflected in what surfers chose to wear – plaid shirts and plain white t-shirts were common, casual Harrington-style jackets, unbranded sweatshirts, crew neck and roll neck jumpers (or sweaters, to use the American parlance), loose fitting chinos, often rolled up above the ankle for more practical use on a sandy beach, and canvas deck shoes, loafers and sandals – these were all standard issue. Think James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, Steve McQueen in The Great Escape or Jack Kerouac in his Beat Generation pomp.

The style, attitude and atmosphere of that golden era of the Southern California surf scene was captured in the iconic surf movie Big Wednesday, produced by John Milius, himself a surfer (he

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Jack O'Neil

declared in 1976 “My religion is surfing”, an admirable sentiment with which it is difficult to find fault).

Boardshorts, the ‘tools of the trade’, were made of heavy cotton or even canvas in order to withstand the rigours of wave riding, and were often fastened with a drawstring to obtain a more secure fit, which was vital to ensure the owner did not suffer the humiliation of a ‘debagging’ following a heavy wipeout.

Also popular was ex-military clothing such as combat jackets, greatcoats and boots for inclement weather, which, following WWII, and later the Vietnam War, were cheap and readily accessible.

“O’Neill developed his own signature look, sporting a black eyepatch over his left eye, which along with a luxuriant beard, made him look as much a pirate as a surfer. The eye patch was not an affectation, however – it was worn as the result of an injury to the eye caused as a result of being hit by a surfboard”

Of course, the dreaded pantaloons de Nimes were an inevitable item of surf clothing, but one has to bear in mind that hard wearing and relatively cheap garb was deemed essential among a tribe of individuals who eschewed work in favour of chasing waves, and for whom gainful employment was anathema; the likes of Miki Dora, a surf legend of sixties Malibu, literally lived in rough shacks on the beach in the summer months, and were as likely to barter for essentials such as food and surfboards as to work for them.

Brands such as Carharrt, Woolrich, Dickies and Wolverine were popular, because they offered good value, rugged clothing that would withstand the rigours of beach life, and today the more discerning surfer will still opt for the same and similar brands, although they now invariably command a premium price, since the hipsters of Hoxton and environs decided they wished to look like pale, weedy and bewhiskered versions of a surfer.

Another renowned ‘waterman’ from the early days of surfing who had a style very much his own was Jack O’Neill (left) from Santa Cruz in northern California, who invented the modern surf wetsuit to cope with the frigid waters of his home town.

O’Neill developed his own signature look, sporting a black eyepatch over his left eye, which, along with a luxuriant beard, made him look as much a pirate as a surfer. The eye patch was not an affectation, however – it was worn as the result of an injury to the eye caused as a result of being hit by a surfboard.

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HAWAIIAN SHIRTS

More correctly known as ‘aloha’ shirts, the classic Hawaiian shirt dates back to the late 1920s, when the company Musa-Shiya the Shirtmaker in Honolulu began making shirts out of colourful Japanese prints. Later styles went on to incorporate traditional Hawaiian quilt designs, tapa (a type of Polynesian cloth) designs and floral patterns, followed by classic Hawaiian motifs such as palm trees and surfboards, varying in colour from muted to positively eye-watering. The latter tend to be worn by tourists rather than locals.

Aloha shirts are generally short sleeved with a sewn in left chest pocket, which should be continuous with the print pattern of the rest of the shirt, a modestly sized collar and buttons either to the chest or down the entire length of the shirt. They are generally worn with the tail out, and were naturally adopted by Hawaiian surfers for their vivacious looks and loose, comfortable feel. Aloha shirts gained universal acceptance after Elvis Presley wore them in a variety of movies set in Hawaii in the early 1960s.

In 1966 the Hawaii Fashion Guild campaigned successfully for ‘Aloha Friday’, a day when employers would allow men to wear aloha shirts on the last business day of the week; for better or worse, this went on to spread globally and become what is referred to in the UK as ‘Dress Down Friday’.

Pioneers of modern surfing like the abovementioned individuals, along with the likes of Californians Phil Edwards and Pat Curren, Hawaiian Fred Hemmings and Australians Nat Young and Michael Peterson, lived life by their own rules. Forsaking regular paid employment to hunt for waves and leading an itinerant existence on the coast, the way they dressed was an outward expression of this rejection of contemporary society, and predates by more than half a century the predictable and selfregarding ‘surfer/campervan lifestyle’ that is done to death on social media these days, by individuals who rarely seem to have heard of the old but true cliché ‘imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’ (often they haven’t even heard of the people they unknowingly imitate).

Many of these surf pioneers were also prone to the occasional display of flamboyance – surfing hedonist Miki Dora in particular was renowned for his braggadocio and self-aggrandisement, managing to squeeze his sponsors for enough money to, at various times, arrive at parties driving a 1948 Jaguar XK120, a 1953 Mercedes Benz 300 Mille Miglia Sport Leicht (today worth well in excess of £1 million) and a 1958 Porsche 350A Spyder.

I met Dora in South West France two years before his death in 2002, while I was working as the editor of a surfing magazine, and despite accusations of surliness, stand-offishness, he came across as friendly and approachable. I had surfed

alongside ‘Da Cat’ (a nickname gained due to his feline grace upon a surfboard), as he caught the biggest and best waves of the day, despite being the oldest surfer in the water (he was 65 at the time; we coincidentally shared the same birthday).

Later that same day, Dora turned up at a party to which we had both been invited in a black suit, bolero tie and Cuban heels, the suit loosely based on the Mexican charro style – not exactly ‘surfwear’, but a loud echo of the individuality and style he and his peers brought to surfing in its early days.

Of course, this free and easy vagabond lifestyle couldn’t last, and the understated surf fashions of the fifties and sixties eventually gave way to the hippie and drug influenced fripperies of the seventies, followed by the fluorescent excrescences of the 90s and, later, the over-commercialised tat that is still part and parcel of the surfing world.

But there is some hope – a few surfwear brands such as Finisterre and Patagonia produce quality threads that would not have looked out of place at Malibu Point or Sunset Beach in 1963, so all is not lost for the discerning waverider looking to cut a dash on both boardwalk and surfboard. n Alf Alderson is the author of various surfing tomes including Surf UK and Ultimate Surfing Adventures, both published by www.fernhurstbooks.com

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Author Interview

IAN KELLY Alexander Larman meets the author of the definitive biography of Beau Brummell, to find out about his many other activities as an actor/writer/playwright

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’ve always been of the opinion that the two most interesting things in the world are sex and the 18th century.’ So says the writer, actor and playwright Ian Kelly, one of the true Renaissance men working today. Over the course of an eclectic career, he’s done everything from play Hermione Granger’s father in one of the Harry Potter films to writing the definitive modern biography of Chap hero Beau Brummell, and has managed to retain his sangfroid in all situations.

We talked to the great Mr. Kelly about many things, including, but not limited to, the two most interesting things in the world.

“Lockdown sartorial splendours include thermal long johns and even fingerless gloves when the heating isn’t working.

It would be La Boheme in a Parisian garret, except it turns out January ain’t that romantic if the boiler’s buggered”

CHAP: Your website calls you a ‘writer, actor, historical biographer, screenwriter and playwright’, which reminded me of the joke in Stoppard’s Invention of Love about Charon’s confusion when it came to AE Housman being both a classicist and a poet.

Do you ever find similar confusion when it comes to any of your own artistic identities?

KELLY: Yes, that does sound a bit confused doesn’t it? But it is just how things have panned out. I always loved writing and acting, telling stories, especially from history, and have been fortunate to be able so to do. My life, for good or ill, remains rather as it always was, even as a student, jumping between dressing rooms and libraries, with now the

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Photo: Sasha Damianovsky

occasional archive or location thrown in as well.

Though these days, if I am lucky, I get paid.

and ‘imagining’ history as very closely related exercises in three-dimensional empathy. You can see this in action at events like the Festival of History, an English Heritage festival of ‘re-enactors’ with invited historians speaking and selling books, and wearing appropriate attire. I need hardly tell the readers of The Chap that clothes can richly inform one’s feeling for the past. My line always was that I believed passionately in physical research. Until, that is, I wrote a biography of Casanova, when the idea could be misunderstood.

CHAP: Your erstwhile co-star Simon Russell Beale once called acting ‘three dimensional literary criticism’. Having played real-life characters such as Prince George (in your own play), Robert Lyon and Woodrow Wilson, what have been the challenges of interpreting such historical figures, whether in the theatre or in film?

KELLY: In terms most obviously of empathy, there is a great deal in common between being an actor and a biographer. Trying to inhabit and understand another life, hoping to communicate some of this to new audiences, via some prism of one’s own experiences, senses and ‘voice.’ Biography is an empathetic conversation between writer and subject, just as acting is to some extent a mediation between character, actor, playwright and audience.

Echoes of the past can help you as a writer, but I suppose I do think of the process of acting

CHAP: Would you describe yourself as ‘an actor who writes’, ‘a writer who acts’ or something else entirely?

KELLY: I’d be loath to describe myself at all. I am a man who tries to be a loving dad, a mate to his friends, make the world a slightly more fun place if I can (though that amounts some weeks to nothing more than making a really cracking Sunday roast) and who is lucky enough to be paid – erratically – for things he is curious about.

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of ways. Latterly, this may be the Bridgerton effect.

He became a drawing-together of the differing things I do: biography, theatre, film – but all of them actually representing very different ‘Beaux’ and none of them completely ‘him’.

He is an enigma as a personality; it was rather the ideas around him that drew me to him: the clothes, tailoring, sex, British ‘masculinity’, ideas of fashionability and the Neo-Classical and so on. I was lucky, as with an earlier book about the birth of gastronomy, to hit a moment when people were keen to allow those discussions – and more to the point men were willing – to read about matters sartorial, sensual, and to buy those sorts of books. No-one had written much about Brummell in a generation, and I stumbled on some new material, but it was also partly about an actor’s love of dressing up and the stories clothes tell. So I owe Brummell a lot... including some marvellous Anderson & Sheppard and Meyer & Mortimer suits…

Photo: Sam Chick Styling: Olivia Pomp

CHAP: And the follow-up to that was the similarly lauded Casanova. Did you think that you would become the chronicler of well-dressed libertines at this stage in your career, or was it mere coincidence?

KELLY: ‘Well-dressed-libertines’; sounds like a band. One thing leads to another. I hadn’t intended to write so much about sex in Brummel. He had been thought a sort of asexual martyr-saint of fashion, which turned out to be very much not the case. So Casanova, as one central figure in what is sometimes described as ‘the First Sexual Revolution’ (the 18th century) and certainly one of its most intriguing writers, seemed a natural sequel.

And to be frank, I also knew it would be a joy to research. Essentially, Giacomo Casanova writes in his memoirs about travel, sex, love, food and people, and has scattered his archive around Europe’s most beautiful cities: Paris, Prague, Venice, St Petersburg. On the whole, I’ve always been of the opinion first voiced by the wonderful Irish feminist Brigid Brophy, that the two most interesting things in the world are sex and the 18th century. So what’s not to like?

CHAP: Your first biography, of Chap icon Beau Brummell, attracted the kind of acclaim that Brummell himself would have sold his grandmother for. What drew you to the Beau as a subject?

KELLY: Is that an allusion to Grandma Brummell’s early life as a West End brothel madam? The critical response was as happy as it was unexpected, in that at the time I had wanted, (pomposity alert) to try to ‘prove’ Brummell was worthy of serious and lengthy consideration: the clothes, the cultural moment, the myth and also his post-mortem denigration. Brummell lives on for me in a number

CHAP: Did you have any especially exciting or amusing moments of discovery in your research for both books?

KELLY: The exciting find with Brummell, unexpectedly, were his medical records (the book is still available, so I’ll leave that for readers to discover). The thrilling aspect of the Casanova

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journey was its recent adaptation into a full-length ballet. This is not the sort of thing as happens to historical-non-fiction works at all often, and that ballet remains one of my happiest experiences of collaboration and adaptation. Writing without words turned out to suit me… not sure what to make of that.

that his story spoke to you more than the other two?

KELLY: Yes and no. What Foote afforded me, as both biographical subject and protagonist of my first full length play, was a chance to explore the metaphor of theatre in looking at the age of revolutions – and at the focus upon fallible celebrities as a way of understanding and embodying those revolutionary concepts. So it’s a very modern tale, and also full of my experiences of a life in the theatre, its joys and heartbreak. But Foote as a character is very far from myself. Simon Russell Beale’s recreation of someone teetering on the edge of sanity as a result partly of circumstance and his sexuality, but also as a result of a wild, dangerous and brave political-satirical talent – I admire and am fascinated by it, but very much from the wings.

“Biography is sometimes giving people a good hearing, and I am drawn to the neglected, or derided, to see what we might have missed.

We are all flawed, we all deserve an empathetic ‘reading’, and there is compassion and even self-compassion in recognising this in others, and in oneself” CHAP: Preceding them both was Cooking for Kings, which you also performed as a one-man show. What were the challenges that you faced of turning a book into drama?

KELLY: The book and play are being adapted as a tv drama series with Banijay in Paris (Versailles, Peaky Blinders) but it’s becoming a piece about Talleyrand and espionage as well as about food and sex (you’ll note a theme here). As a solo show, it made the front cover of the NYTimes Food Section, and was somewhat fêted (possibly because we fed the audience French patisserie after each show) but I’ve blanked a lot of the memory out of sheer terror.

It was good preparation for what has followed in some regards, as there really was nowhere to hide.

If the choux didn’t rise to the occasion, as it were, everyone knew.

CHAP: The play was liberally stuffed with really excellent jokes. Do you have the feeling of ‘Nailed it!’ when you come up with a good one-liner, or were a lot of them refined and perfected through the rehearsal and editing process?

KELLY: There’s a lot of Foote himself in there, as well as me, and it was a cast of world-class comedians. Life can be pretty shit, especially of late, and there’s a lot to be said for laughter. The play was in part about theatre ghosts, but also the way jokes get recycled or are left uncredited. I chose in the end to accept Richard Eyre’s invitation to be in it, which had not been the original idea, and play Prince (later King) George. It was really an excuse to enjoy the ride and listen to the sound of laughter from the wings every night. The theatre is a living beast, changing nightly with the audience and it fascinates me to see how meaning is constructed in a discussion between actors and audience. In comedy, this is very apparent, when something is, or is not, working. It’s why comedians are the braver performers, while never having the kudos of ‘straight’ actors. I find comedy very moving as an art form because of that – the laughter fades, the art is lost, but the live ‘nailed it!’ moment is the essence of a truth revealed.

CHAP: This, of course, stood you in good stead for Mr Foote’s Other Leg, which was both an award-winning book and a West End show. Foote was considerably less well known than either Beau Brummell or Casanova, but did you feel, as an actor,

CHAP: Foote, the Beau and Casanova are deeply flawed but somehow very sympathetic figures in your telling. Was this something that you look for in people whose lives you explore – whether the flaws or the sympathy?

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Photo courtesy of Mr. Porter

KELLY: I learn for good or ill that I am attracted to damaged people, in life and as subjects, in a sense out of empathy but also in wanting to understand, and even bring healing, both in life and in my subjects. I don’t mean to be an apologist, and I try to present biographical subjects warts-and-all, but I cannot help but empathize – exactly as you would as an actor. Biography is sometimes giving people a good hearing, and I am drawn to the neglected, or derided, to see what we might have missed. We are all flawed, we all deserve an empathetic ‘reading’, and there is compassion and even self-compassion in recognising this in others, and in oneself.

And so it came to pass. Highlights included some insights into the graft and glamour of the fashion world, and into Dame Vivienne’s singular mind and world view. But on the whole, I find I am happier in the archive. A living subject rightly gets to say, and Vivienne often did, ‘Oh I see it looked that way, but that wasn’t how it felt to me’ which turned it into a unique and valuable collaboration – the inner and outer view.

CHAP: Is there anyone else who you would like to write about?

KELLY: I’ve been working on another theatrical subject, a piece with the working title Principall Player: A Life of William Shakespeare, the Actor, but I have been busy with adaptive work and dramas for stage and screen. I am constantly fascinated by lives and think ‘Ah yes, there’s another book’ so we shall see. I’ve just started on a play about Shostakovich and Stalin, and have various real-lives I am dealing with dramatically for television: Talleyrand, Dr Johnson, Alexandre Dumas, and now all the Rothschilds for the series I am co-writing with Julian Fellowes. My dreams are quite confused and

CHAP: You collaborated with Vivienne Westwood on her autobiography. What were the highlights of that experience, and how did it feel to write about a living, rather than long-dead, subject?

KELLY: It came my way unexpectedly as a commission and invitation. Vivienne and I used to joke that we met in the 18th century, in that she has a long fascination with the era and its art and philosophies, and had read my Brummell book.

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over-peopled, but that makes for a swellegant party.

CHAP: Which other biographers and (living) playwrights do you admire?

KELLY: The list is so long. Antonia Fraser first really inspired me about biography. Now, there would be Claire Tomalin, Jenny Uglow, Philip Hoare, Simon Winchester, Alistair Horne, Jeremy Black, Richard Holmes, Jonathan Bate and Paula Byrne, some young Turk called Alex Larman (shurely some mistake – Ed). Mark Kurlansky was a major influence, and so on. As living playwrights go, I am a fully signed up Stoppard fan, also contemporaries and pals like Lee Hall and Jez Butterworth. Nina Raine’s work I adore, along with Lucy Prebble, Joe Penhall, James Graham and Laura Wade. Some of the most interesting work of course is on the fringe and from the next generation, and I love physical theatre too, which sometimes originates with more of a collective than a playwright, so I’ll namecheck Frantic Assembly and Scott Graham and the work of Henry Naylor.

Photo: Jolly Thompson

CHAP: Like many screenwriters, you have been attached to many projects that have been optioned, developed and even written, but are yet to be filmed. Which ones would you most like to see filmed?

KELLY: I long for the simplicity of books sometimes, where they definitively end up on a shelf, but two or three of the screen projects really are quite close now. I’d adore to see filmed a commission that came my way after Mr Foote, about Handel and the chaotic premier of Messiah in Dublin in 1741… but that’s gone a Hollywood route that is unfathomable to me.

CHAP: What item of clothing are you most proud of or besotted with?

KELLY: No single item. Any old actor will tell you ‘You shouldn’t hold on to costumes’. I’m fairly happy naked.

CHAP: You currently live in Paris, how do you find that?

KELLY: Paris was forced upon me by circumstance, come the pandemic and other dramas, but even in lockdown, it is my favourite city in the world.

CHAP: And have you ever committed any fashion faux pas that you would like to share with our readers?

KELLY: I was a teenager in the 80s, so; obviously… plus, I was a ginger kid whose mother dressed him in purple. I’ve think over-shared already…

CHAP: As this is a Chap interview, we must touch on matters sartorial. Is there an ‘Ian Kelly writing ensemble’ that should be in the boutiques and gentlemen’s outfitters, and if so what does it comprise?

KELLY: Lockdown sartorial splendours include thermal long-johns and even fingerless gloves when the heating isn’t working. It would be La Boheme in a Parisian garret, except it turns out January ain’t that romantic if the boiler’s buggered.

CHAP: What would be your epitaph?

KELLY: There’s something in Foote about leaving behind the sound of laughter, but actually I’d as happily be remembered for being kind – and meaning it. n

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HENRY ‘CHIPS’ CHANNON, THE DIARIES: VOLUME 1, 1918-38

Channon’s reputation does not lie in his political achievements; he never rose any higher than MP for Southend and failed to obtain the peerage that he assiduously schemed towards.

His open support for Neville Chamberlain and appeasement may well have stymied any further advancement, but there is also the suspicion that his baroque private life may not have helped, either.

Nor did he achieve any distinction during his life as a writer. He published three books, two novels and a work of non-fiction, which were received coolly and have not lasted beyond his death in 1958. Instead, he is lauded and feted for what are believed to be the most indiscreet diaries ever kept by a British public figure.

Knowing the dynamite that he was leaving behind him, Channon asked that they be kept under lock and key in the British Museum until 2018. Times change, and an expurgated selection was published in 1967, edited by Robert Rhodes James. Until this year, anyone who wanted to take stock of Channon’s life and work had to rely on this engaging but somewhat inconsequential selection, which offered some tittle-tattle but only tantalised readers as to why the well-connected would go white with fear when they learnt that Channon had kept a diary. But now, Simon Heffer has edited Channon’s diaries into three volumes, which will be released between now and next year. The first has been released to a blitzkrieg of hype, with serialisations and news stories, to say nothing of copious sales. Do they justify the build-up?

The answer is ‘sort of ’. For historians of events such as the abdication (ahem), Channon offers an intimate and first-hand account of the goings-on behind closed doors that may not materially affect any of the information that we currently have, but adds interesting and relevant detail to the well-worn stories that many readers may feel that they know inside-out. He is fascinating on the events leading up to Chamberlain’s return from Munich with his worthless piece of paper in his hand; we are so used to viewing 1938 as a failure that it is salutary to be reminded that there were many who believed Chamberlain to be little less than a conquering hero. And there are countless telling portraits of the great and good (or not-sogreat and not-so-good) of the time. I especially enjoyed his description of Lady Beauchamp as ‘a sugary, well-bred demon encased in fat and privilege’, and HG Wells as ‘difficult and petulant… he betrays his servant origins’.

Edited by Simon Heffer (Hutchinson, £35)

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n the annals of the twentieth century’s greatest diarists, the same names usually appear. Harold Nicolson, naturally.

James Lees-Milne, if you must. And if you’re of a military disposition, Viscount Alanbrooke’s war diaries are fairly extraordinary. But the man who has been perennially cited as the best of all of them, an Anthony Powell character made scandalous, gossipy flesh, was the Conservative MP Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon. American by birth, he later repudiated his home country, calling it ‘a menace to the peace and future of the world’ and saying, ‘If it triumphs, the old civilisations, which love beauty and peace and the arts and rank and privilege, will pass from the picture’.

“Until this year, anyone who wanted to take stock of Channon’s life had to rely on an engaging but somewhat inconsequential selection, which offered some tittle-tattle but only tantalised readers as to why the well-connected would go white with fear when they learnt that Channon had kept a diary.

But now, Simon Heffer has edited Channon’s diaries, released to a blitzkrieg of hype” 134

Whether this was seen as a statement of intent for his future reign, or simply a desire to defecate, it is a shockingly coarse moment. And, unfortunately, it arises from an editorial misunderstanding.

To ‘pump ship’ was a relatively common expression in the 1930s, meaning to urinate, and so Channon was recording a piece of hearty toilet humour from the new King. Yet the less becoming expletive was decidedly unregal, and so its inclusion here is a mistake that will undoubtedly be addressed in future printings. It makes one hope that the other volumes – fascinating though they will undoubtedly be – contain no such howlers. Chips’ reputation – to say nothing of Dr Heffer’s – depends upon it.

“Spanking and vampirology aside, the diaries are a strange mixture of the fascinating and the dull. Perhaps three volumes remains an over-indulgence, and the salient material could have been compressed into two, or even one lengthy book. And Dr Heffer’s editing is dutiful, at times extremely helpful and sometimes bewilderingly literal”

REVIEW ROUND-UP

By Alexander Larman and Gustav Temple

FALL: THE MYSTERY OF ROBERT MAXWELL

As for Channon himself, a bisexual roué who was the terror of both the ladies and gentlemen, he comes across as profoundly dislikeable and snobbish but endlessly entertaining. There is a wonderful moment when he comes across the Catholic priest, scholar and vampire aficionado Montague Summers, who pantingly begs to be allowed to spank Channon on his naked buttocks; Channon accepts, on the libertarian grounds that ‘one should really always do anything once’. Although Channon notes, ‘I began to wish I had not come, and quivered with nervousness’, ‘my sense of humour wedded to a love of adventure triumphed.’

Spanking and vampirology aside, the diaries are a strange mixture of the fascinating and the dull.

Perhaps three volumes remains an over-indulgence, and the salient material could have been compressed into two, or even one lengthy book. And Dr Heffer’s editing is dutiful, at times extremely helpful and sometimes bewilderingly literal. Most people reading this book would probably be aware that Henri Matisse was an artist, or that ‘toujours’ means ‘always’, but we are informed of these salient facts in footnotes, alongside considerably more interesting titbits and details.

Yet there is one egregious error that a scholar and historian as exacting as Dr Heffer should surely have been aware of. When the book was published, there was some attention paid to the detail of the newly crowned Edward VIII springing to his feet at a dinner somewhere in Belgrave Square and announcing, ‘I want to pump shit’.

By John Preston (Viking £18.99)

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’d had very high hopes for John Preston’s Fall, no pun intended.

Preston is a fine novelist whose first foray into non-fiction, A Very English Scandal, about the Jeremy Thorpe affair, was an excellent, pageturning read that also led to one of the best TV dramas of the past few years.

It is therefore somewhat disappointing to report that Fall is a superficial and lightweight account of Robert Maxwell’s life and death that doesn’t manage to say very much about its gargantuan protagonist, other than that he was a horrible, corrupt man with occasional forays into either extremely courageous and brave acts or, more normally, some wild piece of misanthropy that would usually lead those around him to have nervous breakdowns. Some of the more bizarre details entertain and enthral, and Preston writes in a lively and readable style, but this is a real let-down from a hugely talented author.

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MONICA JONES, PHILIP LARKIN AND ME: HER LIFE AND LONG LOVES

THOMAS HENNELL: THE LAND AND THE MIND

By Jessica Kilburn (Pimpernel Press, £60)

By John Sutherland (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20)

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n another case of an increasingly familiar literary serendipity, this book came to our attention following the story of Eric Ravilious in the previous edition. Thomas Hennell’s name pops up in all studies of Ravilious and his circle, but this is the first full biography of the artist in over 30 years. It is a heavyweight, richly illustrated tome that would sit comfortably on the coffee table, although a pot of darjeeling might be a more appropriate brew.

For Thomas Hennell, raised in rural Kent, was for his whole life in love with the English countryside, which he explored continuously on a rusty old bicycle.

he introduction and acknowledgements to the literary critic John Sutherland’s latest book hint at a tormented genesis, something expressed by the title.

Apparently, Monica Jones began as a memoir of Sutherland’s friendship with the woman best known for being Philip Larkin’s most significant love interest; she taught Sutherland at Leicester University and went out drinking with him and other favoured students. Yet somewhere along the line, the book’s emphasis shifted into being a biography of Jones, using thousands of previously unpublished letters that she sent Larkin over the course of their long, tempestuous relationship.

And then it shifted once again to encompass Sutherland’s thoughts about Larkin, whose presence in the title is far from accidental.

The resulting book is, of course, revelatory and hugely interesting, but it also has a strangely apologetic quality. Sutherland clearly wants to take Jones out of her history-honoured place as merely ‘Larkin’s paramour’, but unfortunately her undistinguished academic career, frequently virulent anti-semitism and racism and dedicated alcoholism all combine to leave one wondering whether her guying as Margaret Peel in Larkin’s friend Kingsley Amis’s novel Lucky Jim was really all that unfair.

At a time when issues of biography are rushing headlong into questions of both authority and taste, and where subjects are being cancelled, either by their authors or by their reception, one finishes Sutherland’s obviously heartfelt book and wonders whether it was really the book that he intended to write, or if another, more provocative, one might yet emerge from another source.

“When we see the copious reproductions of his work in the book, there is a heavy touch of the Van Gogh about them, the lush rural idylls seeming to writhe with some unnamable and sinister force”

His first encounter with Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden, in 1931, came in a lodging house in Essex, where Hennell was washing at the old water pump. The two artists, themselves obsessed with rural England, were immediately drawn to this eccentric vagabond, especially when they saw his tweed jacket, made for Hennell by his friend Margery Kendon, dyed ‘as near as possible to the greyness of the bark of an oak tree’.

The tale of Hennell’s life takes a tragic turn when we learn that he suffered some form of

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Book Reviews

The Guest House, Cerne Abbas, ca.1940

“Hennell survived his brushes with madness, thanks to the support of his artistic community, and went on to become an official war artist in 1943”

become an official war artist in 1943. He survived postings in war-ravaged northern Europe, but it was a posting to the Far East that did for him, when in 1945 he was caught up in the struggle for independence in Java and completely disappeared.

Author Jessica Kilburn offers the first full account in this book of what may have happened to Hennell, as well as a full account of his fascinating life and work. n

mental collapse in 1932, spending the next three years in and out of mental institutions. When we see the copious reproductions of his work in the book, there is a heavy touch of the Van Gogh about them, the lush rural idylls seeming to writhe with some unnamable and sinister force. Hennell survived his brushes with madness, thanks to the support of his artistic community, and went on to

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Art

SALVADOR DALI Cedric Maldonado on the eccentric surrealist artist who turned dreams into art and back into dreams again

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“Dandyismo was en vogue, and Dalí’s eccentricities brought him into the closed dandy set at the apex of student life.

English customs and manners were all the rage: an illustration declared the watchword of the dandies: ‘Desperation for tea!

Tea! Tea! Tea!’”

don’t do drugs, I am drugs.” – Salvador Dalí

Looking aslant, the bright, causticallyshadowed Catalan sunshine casting deep shadows among phallic, cervic and fantastical rock shapes, a painter stands at his easel, wearing an unconvincing dark wig, the red breeches of a Zouave and the pointed slippers of an Ottoman bey, as the country flies that live on Catalan olive trees gather hungrily at his moustaches and lips, which he has helpfully covered in date palm sugar and honey to lead one into his mouth: a human Venus Fly Trap. This can be none other than the self-styled ‘concentric-eccentric’ artist, Surrealist and proto-Pop-Art showman, Salvador Dalí.

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Modern Rhapsody, 1957

Born in Figueras, Spain on 11th May, 1904 to Salvador Dalí Cusí, a ‘notary public’ and Felipa Domènech Ferrés, Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech was an intended replacement for an older sibling who had died young of meningitis nine months before, also called Salvador (‘Saviour’ in Spanish). Later he said that all his art emerged from the twin traumas of leaving the Paradise Lost of the intra-uterine stage to enter our world of apparent reality at birth, and the second trauma of having to face Death, this trauma reinforced by having to replace this ‘other’ Salvador, who had been an infant prodigy on whom his parents had doted.

Salvador Dalí claimed, using the image of a pair of fried eggs alive with phosphorescence, seen across several of his paintings, that he could remember this Paradise before birth with astounding clarity. Indeed, Sigmund Freud confirmed this, after a visit Dalí paid to him in London, when he brought his masterpiece The Metamorphosis of Narcissus for the inventor of psychoanalysis to analyse. Dr. Freud remarked that the painting itself showed that he had also done the job of analysis himself, and that Freud’s role beside the couch was therefore superfluous. Dalí, for his part, was delighted that Freud had called him a fanatic.

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At 16 Dalí remarked, “I’ll be a genius, and the world will admire me. Perhaps I’ll be despised and misunderstood, but I’ll be a genius, a great genius, I’m certain of it.” As a teenage painter, he experimented in every ‘ism’ from pointillism to futurism and cubism, and his father helped organise his first exhibition of charcoal drawings in Figueras, Catalonia, at the local theatre, which the artist would, years later, buy and turn into his famous Theatre-Museum (right). The artist would also end up being interred in its basement.

In 2018 Dalí’s body was disinterred to extract his DNA, because a tarot-card reader called Pilar Abel had claimed to be his illegitimate love-child (which later proved to be false). His embalmer Narcís Bardalet was thrilled to discover that the preparation he had used to set the artist’s moustaches for all eternity at his favoured ‘10 past 10’ angle had survived three decades perfectly intact. Dalí had favoured a Hungarian Moustache Wax sold in the Place Vendôme, Paris. He confirmed that at night it drooped like Fu Manchu’s, but by day (and we now know even in the longest sleep, of death) remained perfectly erect.

From 1922 to 1926 Dalí studied at the Academy of San Fernando, Madrid, Spain’s top art school, but rapidly brushed up against the teaching staff, being removed three times for various misdemeanours, the final expulsion when he had his oral exam in front of three lecturers whom he accused of knowing less about Raphael than he did.

At the same time he was staying at an institution known as the Residencia, a progressive university residence started by Professor Alberto Jimenez, where students could lodge and hear lectures from the world’s great minds on a variety of subjects. Dandyismo was en vogue, and Dalí’s eccentricities brought him into the closed dandy set at the apex of student life, along with poet and playwright Federico García Lorca and future surrealist filmmaker Luís Buñuel. English customs and manners (and to a certain extent modes of dress, in imitation, like the Residencia itself, of Oxford University) were all the rage, and an illustration of the time declared the watchword of the dandies: ‘Desperation for tea! Tea! Tea! Tea!’

This was the heyday of the three artistic geniuses of Spain’s 20th century. At Dalí’s new home in the fishing hamlet of Cadaques, he is believed to have had an affair with Lorca. The break-up came soon, when Lorca shot to fame with his Gypsy Ballads, a collection of brilliant poems that summed up his Andalusian culture and sense

of rebellion. Dalí and he were never to meet again, and cruelly Buñuel seemed to be calling him a dog with the title of their surrealist collaboration, Un Chien Andalou (The Andalusian Dog) produced in Paris not long after, a short film that imprinted them both as two of the leading surrealists of the day in Paris. In 1936 Lorca was shot by fascists in the Spanish Civil War.

As a result of the eye-catching and scandalous frisson the Surrealists created, an enterprising maker of some of the first cinematic commercials made an ad involving several Surrealists, including Dalí, to advertise a furniture company that wanted to stress the solidity and stability of their product.

The Surrealists appeared to be involved in some sort of séance, becoming wobblier and shakier in contrast to the sturdy, sane table. Eventually the whole room, apart from the table, rocks and wobbles from side to side. This ad, shown in small cinemas in the 1930s, perhaps set the store for the future more than any Dalí painting.

Dalí’s sojourn in Paris was to last until the War, but it encompassed the height of the Surrealist avant-garde movement and in the eyes at least of Dalí himself, he was its leader (it has been remarked that each surrealist would say the same thing of himself). By the time of the War, Dalí had to appeal to Picasso for the money to get to America, which

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Gala helping Salvador develop the Dalí brand

“Instead of a hat, he wore a bread roll on his head.

He created his famous ‘Aphrodisiac Jacket’ with four buttons on each sleeve, four on the front, and forty-one shot glasses, each containing a straw, crême de menthe and a fly. Perhaps the first Mohican on a white man sprouted shockingly from his head”

the fellow Spaniard duly lent him. Appealed to in his turn by Buñuel, Dalí not only didn’t help, but also told the authorities he was a communist.

It was in this period that Dalí’s clothing started to metamorphose into the fully surrealistic.

Instead of a hat, he wore a bread roll on his head.

He created his famous ‘Aphrodisiac Jacket’ with four buttons on each sleeve, four on the front, and forty-one shot glasses, each containing a straw, crême de menthe and a fly. Perhaps the first Mohican on a white man sprouted shockingly from his head.

Dalí also worked with designer Elsa Schiaparelli on a dress which was bought by Mrs. Wallis Simpson, perhaps in error, trying to make an impression on the Prince of Wales. Unfortunately the hyperreal lobster motif appeared to be emerging from between her legs in the Cecil Beaton photograph, but most surreally of all, the image had the desired effect of creating erotic delirium in the blood-royal. Dalí was not just under a roll, but also on one.

Helped at all times in his business affairs by Gala (neé Elena Ivanovna Diakonova), a Russian emigré he had fallen in love with when she was still married to the surrealist Paul Elouard, and whom he was later to marry, Dalí was able to develop a

veritable publicity machine that meant his name was mentioned in the media every single day he was in America from 1940 to 1970. He rightly claimed to have invented Pop Art in the sense Warhol later intended, ensuring the continual media presence of the artist whatever the content of the creation, and perhaps in spite of it. Gala remained a distant and muse-like creature of enigma

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Wallis Simpson in the dress designed for her by Dalí and Elsa Schiaparelli

Photo Credit: The Museum of the City of New York/Art Resource, NY.

and mystery, and her presence loomed ever larger in the subject matter of his paintings as they gave way from the initial ‘paranoid-critical’ stage of Surrealism to his ‘Nuclear Mysticism’, which brought in ideas of science and metaphysics, Catholicism and optics into the purview of the artist.

Installed in 1501 Fifth Avenue, at the Hotel St. Regis, Dalí was a famous sight there, holding court with Gala with a small bear or an ocelot on a lead, with a bath filled with easels, pill-filled bikinis and Aphrodisiac Jackets. In a luxury department store nearby, Dalí had accepted a commission to use these elements in a window display (above). Unfortunately the owners saw fit to adjust and edit certain elements so as not to offend certain upmarket sensibilities, and when Dalí saw this he was as enraged, got into the window and re-arranged the display, before breaking the plate glass window by mistake. Police were called and he was advised by his lawyer to hand himself in, as a friendly judge was on the circuit that afternoon.

After being committed to jail and threatened with violence by inmates, a Puerto Rican gangster protected him when he discovered to his delight that Dalí had committed his act on Fifth Avenue.

Post-war, Dalí became the toast of a prosperous America that worshipped ‘enigma’

as a foil to the nuclear age, replete with product, advertising hoardings and TV evangelism. Its millionaires flocked to be painted in society portraits that were anything but conventional, and a large Dalí foundation was filled with his works in St. Petersburg, Florida.

In 1948 Dalí returned to Spain and claimed he admired General Franco, a statement that made him deeply unpopular with everyone from George Orwell to Buñuel and the other Surrealists. Of Picasso, he remarked:

“Picasso is a painter, so am I; Picasso is Spanish, so am I; Picasso is a communist, neither am I.”

He claimed to be both metaphysically a monarchist and an anarchist, and a member of no political party; the King of Spain, an admirer, eventually made him Marquis de Dalí de Púbol.

He bought the bombed-out shell of the theatre at Figueras to turn it into the theatre-museum, and installed Gala in her own castle, to which he had to obtain written permission to visit. Accused by many of merely monetising his past glories, the famous moustaches seen in Alka-Seltzer and Chocolat Lanvin TV ads across the world, people forget that he was not only a pioneer in art but also in advertising, and even of the self and its deepest motivations. n

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Photography

THE MAGICIAN OF LIGHT Olivier Woodes-Farquharson uncovers a treasured Peruvian photographer who documented a little-known Andean world of socialites springing into life in a hitherto deeply traditional city

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“Many keen amateurs will swear that the crispness of the light in South America is somehow on another, indefinable plane when compared to other continents, yet none have been able to ensnare it and let it weave its alchemy the way that Chambi did, whether capturing people or places on his camera”

ou think you’ve seen so many like it: A sharp, black and white photo of a popinjay, likely from the 1920s. He sits relaxed, confident, alert and dashing.

You automatically assume it was taken in Europe – Paris, Rome or somewhere on the eastern seaboard of the US. But look behind him. There is no wall in the northern hemisphere that looks anything like that. It is monumental, it is ancient, it is stunning. It is Inca. And the fop in question is high in the Andes – a very, very long way from anywhere.

It is largely thanks to the skill and passion of Peruvian photographer Martin Chambi that we are able to gain any insight into this little known world. Unknown outside South America until after his death in 1973, he is now regarded as the great photographic chronicler of pre-war Andean life.

Others would come to the mountains and exoticise their subjects, tellingly not getting to know them.

But as Argentine photographer Sara Facio points out, ‘Chambi was the first great photographer

not to regard us through the eyes of the colonist’.

A social chameleon but a scrupulously honest and truthful one, Chambi’s photographs didn’t

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Self-portrait of Martín Chambi looking at himself, Cusco, Peru (1923) image courtesy of Martin Chambi Archivo Fotografico www.martinchambi.org

just pioneer a new art form within his homeland, but also kick-started an entire social movement, in reclaiming Peru’s stunningly rich indigenous heritage.

looked down upon. He sought out locally renowned photographer Max T Vargas, who immediately took a shine to the passionate teenager, quietly ‘forgetting’ to charge the boy rent and taking him on as an apprentice.

Chambi was born on 5th November 1891 in the humble adobe hut where his parents lived. His immediate world was the southern Peruvian village of Coaza, high in the Altiplano – the desolate moonscape that squats between the desert of the coast and the mighty mountain range inland.

What Vargas was first to notice – and which enthusiasts of Chambi’s work have remarked upon ever since – was his extraordinary skill with light.

He was enchanted by it, but he also had a natural talent that seemed to manipulate it in a way that others couldn’t. Many keen amateurs will swear that the crispness of the light in South America is somehow on another, indefinable plane when compared to other continents, yet none have been able to ensnare it and let it weave its alchemy the way that Chambi did, whether capturing people or places on his camera.

British industry was very present there at the time, keen to exploit the region’s vast tin mines.

With so many mining companies present in the region, engineers were doubling up as photographic chroniclers, and the equipment at the time was notably hefty. Thus the 12-year-old Chambi, keen for tips as a porter, stumbled across his first camera and was instantly entranced. He took a self-portrait and told his parents that his future path was clear.

Chambi decamped to Cuzco in 1920.

Translated from the local Quechua as ‘navel of the world’, this unique Andean city was the capital of the astonishing Inca Empire that thrived in the century prior to the arrival of the conquistadors in 1532. It continues to lure travellers to this day

Chambi made his way to the city of Arequipa, colonial both in its architecture and its outlook. A pure blooded indigenous Andean, no matter how handsome, was sadly but predictably

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Self Portrait with Inca Ruins (1943) image courtesy of Martin Chambi Archivo Fotografico

and possesses some of the most jaw-dropping stonemasonry in the world. It also had a higher fullblooded indigenous population than Arequipa.

a fee-paying socialite in one minute, and a street beggar the next.

His landscapes are equally powerful. It is no surprise that Chambi took over 1000 photos of Machu Picchu. Still the most photographed site in the whole continent, we now know it to be a country residence of the great Inca emperor Pachacuti. Machu Picchu became a favourite site for the picnicking set and they usually wanted Chambi with them to document their frolics. One particular trip in the late 1920s was organised by a wealthy young Cuzquena, Señorita Ricarda Luna, accompanied by 30 of her upper-crust friends, a troupe of musicians, amateur botanists, doctors, café intellectuals, and sufficient chickens and pigs to slaughter and cook on the way.

The timing of his arrival could not have been more fortuitous, for this was when, finally, ‘Cuzco woke up’. The university was exploring more openminded studies, and a café culture burst into life, a glittering party set rising out of it. For the first time since the Conquistadors, there was an awareness of the richness of indigenous Andean culture that had been submerged for so long beneath colonial Spain. This cultural and spiritual growth went hand-in-hand with a greater self-regard for the clothing that this burgeoning set chose to wear.

Dowdy, functional attire made way for style – or, more accurately, two very opposing styles: one a bleeding-edge, European dandy chic; the other a wholesale hijacking of the more traditional garb of the indigenous Andeans, unchanged for countless mountain-dwelling generations. Chambi photographed both. No other studios would have

By now, Chambi’s work was nationally known, exhibited in all Peru’s major cities at least once by 1934. He consolidated his reputation over the 30s and 40s, even as Cuzco’s spark of enlightenment went back into hibernation during World War II,

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Juan de la Cruz Sihuana con Víctor Mendívil (1925) courtesy of Instituto Moreira Salles

English Wedding Couple, Cuzco (1927) courtesy of www.moma.org

as trade dried up. And then came the day when everything changed.

efforts of US anthropologist Edward Renney, who stumbled across Chambi’s work during a 1970s trip to Peru. With the help of Chambi’s son Victor, he managed to organise an exhibition of some of Chambi Snr.’s photographs at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1979. Further exhibitions were mounted in France, Spain and beyond. In Madrid he was trumpeted as ‘The Magician of Light’.

At 1.45 pm on May 21st 1950, Cuzco was shattered by a huge earthquake, killing 1,625. The earthquake shifted the land, but there was a shift within the man too. Chambi spent less and less time in his studio and more on the streets to witness and document first-hand his adopted city being rebuilt.

Although over 35,000 houses were destroyed, he still documented a new wonder: the crumbled modern rendering revealed underneath the splendour of the incredible, centuries-old and earthquake-proof Inca stonework, so much of which had been plastered over during colonial times.

Chambi’s legacy had been secured. By harnessing his natural wisdom and warmth with such skill into his timeless photos, he was able to transcend the complex network of relationships that Cuzco’s heritage engenders, and preserve an extraordinary time in a seemingly alien place.

Peruvian belle lettriste Mario Vargas Llosa continues to laud him as ‘a pioneer, a master, a genius’, but on those bizarre, foppish picnicking trips to Machu Picchu in the 1920s and 1930s, he was also, incongruously, that rare thing: a completely trusted friend. n

Martin Chambi breathed his last on 13th September 1973. Fittingly, he passed away in the wonderful, idiosyncratic studio that had captured so many extraordinary moments of 20th century Andean life. With none of his interviews or notebooks surviving, his memory may have been quietly erased forever, except for the serendipitous

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Arcana

THE CHAP TAROT Pandora Harrison reveals the fifth and final Instalment of the Chap Tarot, as a means of gaining mystical insight into one’s life

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elcome, dear reader to the fifth and final instalment of the Chap Tarot. Our journey is nearly at an end and I thank you for coming along for the ride and hope you have enjoyed the adventure. In this instalment we shall look at the remaining five Major Arcana cards.

CHAP TAROT CARDS #17 MY SWEET GEORGE (THE STAR) This is the gentlest and most sensitive card in the Major Arcana. It is representative of healing, hope and peace after emotional storms and intense bouts

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in 2001 and his final words were “Everything else can wait, but the search for God cannot wait, and love one another.” When reversed, the card signifies drawing back from the calm and hope the card truly represents; to experience weakness, deep insecurity and arrogance.

#18 LA MARCHESA (THE MOON) In contrast to the gentle artistry of the previous card, this card encourages visions, myths and vivid imagery. Luisa, La Marchesa Casati, was a young heiress who burned bright during the belle époque in Venice, Italy. She became the muse of writer and poet Gabriele D’Annunzio and as her ‘svengali’ he encouraged her to develop a signature ‘look’ with flaming-red hair, pale makeup, red lips and heavily kohled eyes. She gave lavish choreographed parties and wore outlandish themed costumes as a form of performance art. She indulged herself with the popular craze for séances, fortune telling and the occult. Luisa loved to astonish and shock her audience with theatrical effect – at the dinner table she would present a wax male mannequin, said to represent a former lover, within which was of creativity and inspiration. Towards the end of the 1960s, the Beatles were experiencing great changes in their individual musical tastes, personalities and lifestyles. After their breakup in 1970, one Beatle would seek solace in the Hare Krishna movement and become a lifelong devotee of its spiritual teachings in mercy, truthfulness, austerity and cleanliness. Inner calm and wholeness are key features for the card and during his time in the Beatles, George Harrison introduced fellow members of the band to Transcendental Meditation and incorporated Indian instrumentation and Hindu spirituality in the Beatles’ recordings. Subtly displayed within the card’s illustration is the ibis bird, the emblem of the Egyptian god Toth, the god of poetry and the arts. As a respected patron of the arts in the form of music, poetry and film George, the ‘quiet Beatle’, is our Star. Not just a rock star, George was a true guiding light who expressed his passion for humanity by raising awareness and much needed funds for charities in India and South East Asia.

In a reading, the card reveals emotions expressed through nature, lovers and children, and an inner sensitivity expressed with passion; darkness transformed into light. George died of lung cancer

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an urn containing the ashes of said lover for its ‘heart’. This card is a gateway into the unknown, the strangeness of the mind, strange emotions and dreams or hallucinations. These are things that must be welcomed, for they enrich our lives.

When this card appears in a spread we are advised to embrace it and be more intuitive and psychic. When reversed, the card warns of an inner struggle, not welcoming the moon’s influence, causing fear and disturbed emotions. The more we fight against the moon’s influence, the more fearful we become. You need to experience this fear to experience life’s wonders and all the adventure it has to offer.

true social status. For The Tramp, as long as he acts like a gentleman, believes that he is one and is able to hope that someday he will actually be one.

The Tramp is ideally suited to this card, which represents enduring optimism, physical energy and wonder. Chaplin’s slapstick comic timing is an essential aspect of the card too, leading to a joyful release and an active energised state. While the Little Tramp may not get the girl or the rich lifestyle he was striving for at the end of the film, he remains upright, shrugs off the disappointment, kicks his heels and strolls off into the distance with a “just wait ’til next time!” attitude inherent in every step. The eternal optimist, The Tramp is, after all, human and an everyman. His dreams are our dreams; he is one of us; a symbol of downtrodden yet resilient humanity.

In a reading, the card denotes your opportunity to see the world and your life filled with beauty and light and a chance to be liberated and joyously free. The card represents knowledge, wisdom and a sense of clarity or lucidity. Reversed, the card is good things that cannot be, as if the sun has become clouded over. Happiness is still there but it’s less obvious and the querent needs to work to see the gift of joy from the sun.

#19 THE TRAMP (THE SUN) The creation of the iconic character known as The Tramp by Charlie Chaplin in 1914 happened as a happy accident while Chaplin was working with comedy film producer Mack Sennett of Keystone Cops fame. The Tramp is a gentleman of the road; he is a childlike, bumbling, good-hearted character. He endeavours to behave with the manners and dignity of a gentleman, despite his

#20 CLARENCE (JUDGEMENT) “Clarence who?” I hear you ask. Clarence Odbody (born May 1653) is the guardian angel (played by Henry Travers) to James Stewart’s lead character George Bailey in Frank Capra’s 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life. This card is a resurrection, a coming to terms with past experiences as a way to move forward and beyond. Who better than Clarence, AS2 (Angel Second Class), who successfully earns his wings on Christmas Eve when he helps the disillusioned George Bailey to realise the positive effects he’s had on others’ lives, thus changing his mind about killing himself.

In a reading, the card’s meaning is somewhat obvious from its illustration: it’s all about a great force leading you or calling you. You must recognise and hear the call, symbolised by the trumpetblowing angel; heed it and then act upon it. For the reality of life has changed and the only choice is to follow it. It’s an awakening of the true mind and the discovery of your true identity or purpose.

George’s awakening is a result of his wish never to have been born. Clarence grants him this wish and shows him what the world would be like had he never existed. Without the numerous years of

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In a reading, the card means success, realisation, satisfaction or a goal reached through the dance of life. Participants of the Chap Olympiad exhibit originality with a flourish of flamboyancy, as they take part in the carefully crafted ‘non-sporting sports events,’ in which they demonstrate a minimal amount of physical exertion with maximum panache. It is the dandy and dandizette who politely decline to dance to the faded tune of modern-day society. Here there is joy to be had dancing to one’s own beat.

The colours in the card represent energy, nature, love and healing, which are all very much aspects of a day out at the Chap Olympiad; the energy of the spectacle, the natural park setting and the love and healing endowed by a decent G&T. For the winners there is the presentation of the gold, silver and bronze cravats, awarded for the most decorous chap and chapette of the games. In short, the message of this card is “Huzzah, you’ve made it!” Reversed, the card signifies stagnation, in movement and growth slowed or stopped, but the potential is there to kickstart it and dance to your own beat once again. n selfless acts George bestowed upon his community, he is now presented with a vision of a town filled with unhappy people with meaningless. As George comes to realise the positive effects he has had on others, he hears the call and regrets his wish.

Clarence then restores George to his previous life; a life which he now greatly appreciates. Clarence has called George to his true identity and earns his wings as a reward. The call can come from within, guiding you to make some important change, be it mundane and immediate or an entire shift in life.

Reversed, the card warns of a call that has been heard but unheeded, or the recipient tries to deny the call, usually from a fear of the unknown.

#21 THE CHAP OLYMPIAD (THE WORLD)

The first Chap Olympiad took place in Regents Park, London in 2004. It was an ad hoc gathering of like-minded friends brought together by the satirical anarcho-dandyist magazine you now hold in your hands. In the following years it has developed into a glorious sartorial summer garden party, welcoming guests from all four corners of the globe.

Visually the card depicts the self, or in this case the Olympian, as being everywhere in all things and open to the universe.

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John Minns on the four most prestigious medals in the world, who won them and how to set about collecting antique medals

Medals For Gallantry In valour, there is hope Publius Cornelius Tacitus (56-117) The Victoria Cross (VC) If it were not for the involvement of one notable Irish journalist covering the Crimean war (1853-56) it is very unlikely that the VC would ever have existed. William Howard Russell (right) (1820-1907), later Sir William Howard Russell, was a field correspondent for The Times. It was he, while living cheek by jowl with the ordinary soldiers and NCOs, who had observed first hand and on numerous occasions the bravery and heroism of “these fine men” whose exploits in the field of combat had gone relatively unnoticed and therefore unrewarded.

Russell’s missives to The Times highlighted the fact that, while senior officers were eligible to receive medals and other awards (brevets promotion) during conflict, battle or other engagement with the enemy, ordinary soldiers were largely not. He continued tirelessly and regularly

to make this point in his dispatches to The Times, suggesting that recognition for acts of heroism and gallantry be allocated to the common soldier. Over time, he managed to garner much support from members of parliament and the populace, via his articles and more notably from Prince Albert, who suggested a medal for gallantry should be awarded to all those deemed worthy, regardless of status or rank.

It was mooted that a medal of simple construction and design be produced, instead of the gallantry medals that were lavish, loud and bright. The directive and concept by Prince Albert suggested the medal should be made of non-ferrous metal and of simple design in the form of a cross, but the media were unhappy with the concept, The Times calling it ‘poor looking and mean’. It was only when Queen Victoria herself let it be known of her wish to strike a medal that would not recognise birth or class that all remaining dissent and objection disappeared.

1,355 VCs have been awarded since 1856 and some 295 awarded posthumously. It is a protocol for the holder of a VC to receive a salute first from a fellow combatant, regardless of rank.

Until 1925, the VC could be forfeited for various misdemeanours, eg theft, serious crime or murder, but this was rescinded when King George V announced: “Even if the VC holder be sentenced to be hanged for murder, he should be allowed to wear his VC on the scaffold.”

The Croix de Guerre The Croix de Guerre was a gallantry medal whose inception was in 1915, covering WW1 and WW2, available to all ranks. The medal was simple in appearance: a Maltese cross with crossed swords made of Bronze, with the addition of a ribbon attached to it, allowing other awards to be ‘added on’ in the form of Clasps, palms and stars.

The award was not just for the individual.

It could be given to military personnel or civilians who were part of a group, for example, The Marquis, the Free French or other resistance groups.

It could even also be awarded to non-human comrades-in-arms.

In WWI, a carrier pigeon named Cher Ami was awarded the Croix de Guerre for her actions that saved the lives of countless men.

An American soldier, Major

Charles White Whittlesey, and a battalion of men from the 77th division, were trapped in an enclave behind enemy lines, surrounded by German soldiers. After receiving friendly fire from allied troops, they were being decimated. They released Cher Ami, armed with a vital note informing the allies of their predicament. However, within just a few seconds she was spotted and shot by the Germans. She was sent crashing to the ground, but within minutes she managed to take flight again. She eventually made it to headquarters after flying 40 km badly wounded, shot through the chest, blinded in one eye and lame in one leg, but she survived.

Cher Ami’s actions that day saved the lives of 194 men. For her heroism, she was awarded The Croix de Guerre with palm. In 1919 she starred in a silent film The Lost Battalion, naturally playing herself. Other recipients of the Croix de Guerre include: Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, James Stewart and Josephine Baker.

The Pour Le Mérite The Blue Max originated in 1740 from the court of King Frederick of Prussia. The language of the court was French, hence the use of the French term of Pour le Mérite (‘for excellence’). The medal was awarded to civilians and for military officers of a certain rank and class who had distinguished themselves in the field, or who had facilitated or organised a successful battle campaign.

This award was also bestowed to members of the Luftstreikrafte (later to be known as the Luftwaffe). It was during the First World War that the Pour le Mérite became popularised by the daring exploits of ‘darlings of the airways’ such as Oswald Boelcke and ‘Max’ Immelmann, whose first name later conjoined to the blue coloured enamel on the medal to coin the colloquial term ‘Blue Max’. But the real superstar at that time was Manfred Von Richtofen (1892-1918) ‘The Red Baron’. He became the greatest German Ace of WW1, with 80 victories, and died at the age of just 25, having been shot through the chest. Despite his injuries, he managed to land his plane in a field. It was reported by an Australian stretcherbearer who arrived first on the scene that Von Richtofen’s final word was “Kaput”.

Medal of Honor (MOH) (AKA the Congressional Medal of Honor) The Medal of Honor is the highest award for valour in the USA. The medal was a five-sided star with slight variants in design, depending on whether issued to Army, Navy or Air forces.

Between 1914 and 1942, the design was changed to a cross and issued to navy and marine corps personnel, but was not received well as it appeared too Germanic and not that dissimilar to the British VC. The cruciform version was designed and made

by New York jewellers Tiffany and Co., who only made 22 in total, making it a very rare medal.

All medals are attached to a blue moire silk ribbon to be worn around the neck, and presented by the president. A total of 3,512 Medals of Honor have been awarded since the first was awarded in 1863. Only one woman has been awarded the MOH: Mary Edwards Walker M.D (1832-1919), a surgeon captured by Confederate forces during the civil war, and imprisoned as a spy on her release as a prisoner exchange.

She later received her Medal of Honor for her work as a medic during the Civil War.

ACQUISITION & COLLECTION If you are considering acquiring medals for hobby or investment, it may be worth connecting with others with similar interests via a collectors club or collectors’ magazines. Medal News magazine is one such informative periodical. In addition, The Medal Yearbook gives current values and various price guides based on condition and rarity.

FAKES

Medal value and popularity has increased enormously over recent years, and consequently there are a few miscreants out there who will try to pass off a ringer or fake as a genuine piece. Copies and reproduction and wrongly attributed medals abound; while the majority of collectors/dealers are honourable, it may pay you to apply due diligence when parting with your cash.

PURCHASE AT AUCTION

SPINK auctions have existed since 1666 and have a dedicated team of experts who diligently research and verify provenance before putting any items in one of its sales. Most of the main London auctions have fairly regular medal auctions, usually incorporating coins and stamps, with a number also in the provinces. Wallis and Wallis is another established and highly revered auction of note outside London.

THE FLUMMOXER Readers are invited to ponder the purpose of this issue’s antiquity conundrum, and one provider of the correct answer wins a sterling pair of Fox Cufflinks.

Send your answer to chap@thechap.co.uk

James Matthews correctly identified last issue’s flummoxer as a portable folding gentlemen’s coat hanger.

Stewart Atkins photograpahy www.maitresseclothing.com @maitresseclothing

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CHAMPAGNE CHARLIE The fizz-swilling bon vivant on his career in showbusiness

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

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Solutions to crossword Issue 107 Chap Spring 21 W I N G S C E R A E E D O W S E S D S G E X P E C T A A O R D S P E A K E E T A F A N A W R Y R C C M U N C H O A U Y A N T I P A S E E H R D I S P L A Y

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DOWN 27 First ones in line outside pub every night it's

1. Watching celebrities, it’s looking up (10) 2. Batter: thicker wings need unlocked (4) twenty-eight grams (7) 1 Watching celebrities, it's looking up (10) 7. Romantic lead pulls out of comedy to produce Visage (4) 3. Rush indoors for fight (3-2) 28 Hole inatone old Ethiopian 9. 7 See 19 Down lead pulls out of comedy to produce 4/13. Harmonies that, sea,by givean a boost (1,4,2,3,3) (10) Romantic 10. Hard border 5. Out of control celebration (12,3) Visage (4)or a soft one? (5) 11. Have enough smarties? Not even (4) 6. Kitchen utensil reportedly superior (7) Down 9 See 19 Down 12. 24/7 Post Office on roundabout around North Street (7) 7. Get fans in after a tweak to closure (9) 2 Batter: thicker wings need twenty-eight grams 13.

4 Down 8. Jazz fan goes to express hesitations to food supplier (7) 10 See Hard border or a soft one? (5) 14. Socialist office colour (6) 15. Haul on and co for for one RuPaul 3 Brian RushMay indoors fight (3-2)(4,5) 11 Have enough smarties? Not even (4) 16. Less calm when banks of Nile river erode (7) 17. Frankie Dettori puts his foot in it (7) 4/13 Harmonies that, at sea, give a boost (1,4,2,3,3) 17. half-concealed perspective and bitaround of glitter (7) Street 18. Right after mid-night, a resident of Denmark turns 12 Spot 24/7 Post Officebyon roundabout North 19. It(7) holds up trunks (6) up to supply Carribean island (7) 5 Out of control celebration (12,3) 21. Daring Squire set off (6) 19/26/9. “Make merry like Rapunzel...” (3,3’1,4,4) 6 Kitchen utensil reportedly superior (7) 13 See 4 Down 22. Bars open out to over the top country residence (7) 20. ...States Mr Idle in the morning on first of August (7) 7 Geton fans in after a menu tweak(5)to closure (9) 24. off whenoffice sides exchange on the house (4) 23. Pasty remains stripped-down 14 Run Socialist colour (6) 25. Contents: bread, doner and something extra (3-2) 8 Jazz fan goes to express hesitations to food sup 16 Less calm when banks of Nile river erode (7) 26. See 19 Down (7) 27. ones in line outside pub night it’s unlocked 17 First Spot half-concealed byevery perspective and bit (4) of glitter 15 Haul on Brian May and co for one RuPaul (4,5 28. Hole (7) in one by an old Ethiopian (10)

19 It holds up trunks (6) 21 Daring Squire set off (6)

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22 Bars open out to over the top country residence (7)

17 Frankie Dettori puts his foot in it (7)

18 Right after mid-night, a resident of Denmark tu up to supply Carribean island (7) 19/26/9 "Make merry like Rapunzel..." (3,3'1,4,4)

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