The Chap Issue 114

Proper Chaps Carry Proper Bags.

“One’s personal portmanteau should be selected, both upon purchase and for each day’s tasks, with as much care and attention as one’s suit of clothes.”

Temple, CHAP Spring 22

Gustav

Editor: Gustav Temple Art Director: Rachel Barker

Picture Editor: Theo Salter

Circulation Manager: Andy Perry

Sub-Editor: Romilly Clark Subscriptions Manager: Jen Rainnie

GUSTAV TEMPLE

The editor of The Chap for the last 22 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.

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

Olivier Woodes-Farquharson is an adventurer, diplomat, voice actor and writer, although not always in that order. When not travelling to obscure places that may or may not exist, he is most likely to be found at Cheltenham Races – the best place to blood his latest tweed – or furiously foraging in the English countryside.

NOELLE VAUGHN

A photographer and jazz singer inspired by all things vintage, especially the golden age of Hollywood, Noelle’s photographic work has been featured by the BBC and national press. Her sultry vocals have entertained establishments such as Ronnie Scott’s with swing band The Jive Aces. @noellevaughnphotography

ED NEEDHAM

Ed Needham is the editor and publisher of Strong Words magazine, launched in 2018 to give book enthusiasts a fighting chance of keeping up with the blizzard of new titles, with reviews that don’t feel like homework. He was previously editor of FHM in its million-selling nineties heyday and managing editor of Rolling Stone in New York.

Colleen is an Egyptologist with a Ph.D from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale. She directed the Mo’alla Survey Project, an ongoing archaeological project in Egypt, and has the best vintage wardrobe this side of the Valley of the Kings @vintage_egyptologist

David Evans is a former lawyer and teacher who founded popular sartorial blog Grey Fox Blog ten 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

ACTUARIUS

Actuarius is an artist, essayist, photographer and journalist. A selfconfessed petrolhead, he mainly produces works based around his twin passions of Art Deco and mechanised transport, making the shortlist for the highly prestigious Guild of Motoring Writers Feature Writer of the Year in 2021.

Contributing Editors: Chris Sullivan, Ed Needham Subscriptions 01442 820 580 contact@webscribe.co.uk

TORQUIL ARBUTHNOT

Raised by circus performers in Cairo, Torquil Arbuthnot learned card sharping and knive throwing as a child, skills that got him a place at Balliol College, Oxford, from where he was expelled for reciting Dada poetry through a megaphone in the Bodlean Library.

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.

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

JOHN MINNS

OLIVIER WOODESFARQUHARSON

COLLEEN DARNELL

DAVID EVANS

CHRIS SULLIVAN

THE CHAP MANIFESTO

1 THOU SHALT ALWAYS WEAR TWEED. No other fabric says so defiantly: I am a man of panache, savoir-faire and devil-may-care, and I will not be served Continental lager beer under any circumstances.

2 THOU SHALT NEVER NOT SMOKE. Health and Safety “executives” and jobsworth medical practitioners keep trying to convince us that smoking is bad for the lungs/heart/skin/eyebrows, but we all know that smoking a bent apple billiard full of rich Cavendish tobacco raises one’s general sense of well-being to levels unimaginable by the aforementioned spoilsports.

3 THOU SHALT ALWAYS BE COURTEOUS TO THE LADIES. A gentleman is never truly seated on an omnibus or railway carriage: he is merely keeping the seat warm for when a lady might need it. Those who take offence at being offered a seat are not really Ladies.

4 THOU SHALT NEVER, EVER, WEAR PANTALOONS DE NIMES. When you have progressed beyond fondling girls in the back seats of cinemas, you can stop wearing jeans.

5 THOU SHALT ALWAYS DOFF ONE’S HAT. Alright, so you own a couple of trilbies. Good for you - but it’s hardly going to change the world. Once you start actually lifting them off your head when greeting passers-by, then the revolution will really begin.

6 THOU SHALT NEVER FASTEN THE LOWEST BUTTON ON THY WAISTCOAT. Look, we don’t make the rules, we simply try to keep them going. This one dates back to Edward VII, sufficient reason in itself to observe it.

7 THOU SHALT ALWAYS SPEAK PROPERLY. It’s really quite simple: instead of saying “Yo, wassup?”, say “How do you do?”

8 THOU SHALT NEVER WEAR PLIMSOLLS WHEN NOT DOING SPORT. Nor even when doing sport. Which you shouldn’t be doing anyway. Except cricket.

9 THOU SHALT ALWAYS WORSHIP AT THE TROUSER PRESS. At the end of each day, your trousers should be placed in one of Mr. Corby’s magical contraptions, and by the next morning your creases will be so sharp that they will start a riot on the high street.

10 THOU SHALT CULTIVATE INTERESTING FACIAL HAIR. By interesting we mean moustaches, or beards with a moustache attached.

SARTORIAL FEATURES

SUPERSONIC EDWARDIANS

Seven time travelling Edwardians find out what it would be like to fly on Concorde, by being photographed inside the original aircraft held at Brooklands Museum 59 THE SARTORIAL MONARCH

Gustav Temple on what the nation’s gentlemen can expect from King Charles III in the wardrobe department 62 IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER

Sophie Bainbridge takes a stroll around the border between Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in the footsteps of DH Lawrence 68 LA BOWTIQUE’S

GUIDE TO FORMAL WEAR

Mickael Korausch launches his new guide to dressing properly for black tie occasions 70 GREY

FOX COLUMN

David Evans considers the new premier’s suiting, the new king’s tweeds and long-lasting clothes made of the very best British wool

CHAP LIFE

DEAREST

Professors of Egyptology John and Colleen Darnell on the ancient historical factors that led to the world’s greatest archaeological discovery one hundred years ago: the tomb of Tutankhamun

ECCENTRIC EGYPT

Henry Cockburn on the lesser-known but much more eccentric father of Tutankhamun, the so-called heretic Egyptian King Akhenaten 92 SCENT FROM THE STARS

Noelle Vaughn looks back at the first celebrity perfumes from the silent era, and how they began a trend that continues today

DRINK & TRAVEL

CASTLE TUTANKHAMUN

JOHN

BLASHFORD-SNELL

legendary explorer’s theories about the ghost of the Loch Ness Monster reveal an unexpected fascination with the supernatural

TRAVEL: KENYA Chris Sullivan travels to Kenya to observe big game, sleep under the stars, meet Masai tribesmen and travel by balloon, jeep, camel and horseback

Cover photo: Rex Features/Shutterstock

When a submission to this page comes from someone who went to all the trouble to have themselves photographed right outside the tomb of Tutankhamun, predicting that we would be running various stories about the boy king on the centenary of his tomb being discovered, and when this person is not only a lady but also dressed with exquisite Edwardian perfection for the occasion, we can overlook the lask of fez and declare Pandora Harrison Star Chapette.

For our Egyptian-themed edition, readers were invited to submit photographs of themselves wearing a fez, whether purchased in the Old Bazaar in Cairo or elsewhere.

“A fez image for you,” writes Terence Smith, “sadly not from any salubrious surroundings but from a recent stay in The Christie in Manchester. (One has to keep up appearances regardless of any shit cancer throws at one!)”

Indeed, sir, and all power to your pipesmoking elbow for rising above the onerous circs in such Chappish style!

“Please see attached photos of my partner Catherine and I,” writes Darren Brewer, “on the locomotive heading for Goodwood Revival.”

Catherine came very well prepared for the rail journey, sir, not only with the most splendid fez among these submissions, but also with a cigarette and a fly whisk to bat away any sartorially offensive passengers.

Joseph Tawadros swept away the competition by sending photos of himself in several different coloured fezzes, this one being with the least colourful complementary outfit.

Steven Beutel delved deeper than other fez-wearers, by investigating what lies beneath the red felt headpiece.

“Attached is a photograph of very rare ‘Double Fez’ situation,” writes Russell Nash, “showing myself and my chum Kim Jones, aboard Queen Mary 2 during an Atlantic crossing earlier in the year.”

Sir, one can only assume it took more than two dry martinis for Mr. Jones to explain his shirt to you.

Not sure what Frank Sforza and friend/ initiate/victim are up to here, but it could be something to do with the Freemasons. Surely decorating a fez is almost akin to wearing a tattoo or a logo on a T-shirt? The Fez, like socks, underpants and human skin, should always be unadorned.

“As you will see, I was about to embark on a jaunt astride my Moto Guzzi motorcycle,” writes James Rigby. “Sadly, due to unwarranted nanny-state regulations, I needed to remove the fez and don a ministryapproved helmet for the ride. Perhaps one of your readers could design a protective fez that meets the legal requirements for motorcycle riders?”

Sir, this question is one that we should have considered long ago, and your perspicacity in asking it fully offsets your bizarre apparel.

Paul Lawford was captured by the Egyptian secret service and forced to wear a false moustache to undermine his hirsute credentials, for the crime of insulting the headwear credentials of their nation.

Mick Stevens and colleague took a break from serving and entertaining customers in The Mosaic Grill, Coventry, before being told to get back to work by the management.

“I took to wearing a Fez while having martinis on summer evenings during the pandemic,” writes James Walker. “My wife is, unfortunately, yet to be a convert to the attractions of the Fez.”

Donning mystical headwear can be a lonely business, sir. When you announce to your wife that you are planning to resign from your job and become a professional zither player, she will doubtlessly understand.

“I am honoured to include a photo of myself in off-duty fez,” writes Maj. Meriwether. “Scene: HM 10th Regt. of Foot Mess, Old Sturbridge Village, Sturbridge, Massachusetts, 2022.”

Does the on-duty fez have a more abundant tassel, sir?

Faiysal Alikhan seems to have more credentials than others to wear a fez, namely an entire outfit co-ordinated to match it, including a watchstrap.

Trousers: A Field Guide

Torquil Arbuthnot advises on what leg-encasing horrors one may encounter in this world and what they signify about the wearer

ertie Wooster says, in The Code of the Woosters, “There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, ‘Do trousers matter?’ Jeeves replies, “The mood will pass, sir.” Trousers, of course, do matter, although one would not think so when one sees

the abominations with which certain gentlemen encase their legs. The following field guide will help the discerning Chap identify (and in some cases avoid) some of the more common types of trousering one may encounter upon one’s perambulations.

“Pink trousers should be the colour of a baboon’s bottom and perform a similar function in some courtship rituals. Pink trouser wearers drink nothing but rosé and pink champagne, and eat only strawberries and taramasalata”

Bright red

Much as a red rag is supposed to enrage a bull, so red trousers seem to incense the general populace. Therefore, one has to have a certain bravado to sport trousers the colour of a London bus. If one does not have that chutzpah, then one is in danger of looking like a department store Father Christmas taking his lunch break from Santa’s Grotto. Fire-engine red trousers are traditionally worn by that flamboyant breed, the Hooray Henry, and wearers can be seen en masse getting ‘hogwhimpering drunk’ in the public houses of Chelsea and Fulham of an evening.

Contents of pockets: keys to the oversized 4X4, membership card for Annabel’s, packet of Marlboro Reds, summons to appear before the local magistrate for urinating on a homeless person.

Chinos

Men who wear chinos fondly believe they look like Cary Grant on the Riviera. Rather they resemble

a soon-to-be-disgraced junior minister in David Cameron’s government ‘chillaxing’ at the party conference. Khaki chinos are also worn with a Boden-catalogue fleece on dress-down-Fridays by men who are ‘something in the City’ i.e. glorified second-hand car dealers. If in a tan colour, they are worn with a blue blazer and a minor public school tie, and can be spotted in wine bars and Spearmint Rhino.

Contents of pockets: letter from the Serious Fraud Office, list of people to be fired before the weekend, loyalty card for a lap-dancing establishment, ounce of ‘gak’.

Pink

These should be the colour of a baboon’s bottom, and perform a similar function in some courtship rituals. Pink trousers are required garb for antique dealers

Image: www.lookatmyfuckingredtrousers. blogspot.com

Photo: Soulstealer Photography

(whether televisual or actual) and menopausal businessmen. They are often worn with a jacket of a violently contrasting colour, so that one resembles an Italian ice cream. They are also worn by portly, puce-faced men at the Henley Regatta. Possibly for subconscious reasons, pink trouser wearers drink nothing but rosé and pink champagne and eat only strawberries and taramasalata.

Contents of pockets: contract with the BBC’s Bargain Hunt, jeweller’s loupe, snuff, forged will.

Tweed

If these are held up with a length of rope instead of a belt, then the wearer is a poacher rather than an Earl, although the raggedy state of the trousers will be the same at both ends of the social spectrum. The poacher will add a dash of sprezzatura by tying baling twine below the knee (to keep pheasants in and ferrets out). Colours are muted, often resembling vegetable soup.

The material will be thorn-proof and as thick as a battleship’s hull. (If tweed trousers are worn with sandals, then the wearer is a vegetarian who speaks Esperanto and believes in free love.)

Contents of pockets: rabbit snare, pipe baccy, betting slips, nut or bolt that’s fallen off the Land Rover.

Slacks

Elderly men favour these trousers, which are normally ordered from the back pages of the Daily Telegraph where they are advertised as ‘ex Royal Navy/RAF surplus’. The fly-zipper is twice the length of ordinary pantaloons, as these trousers are worn very high up on the stomach. The material over the thighs will be slightly worn from the habit of plucking at the seams when sitting down. They will have a razor-sharp crease, as the wearer’s enviable ironing skills were learnt when doing National Service.

Contents of pockets: loose Werther’s Originals, lawn bowls measuring tape, phial of poison for use on the neighbour’s cats.

Ethnic

These are worn by assorted ragamuffins who think a gap year spent annoying the inhabitants of Asia or South America gives them a deep spiritual kinship with the natives, and the right to wear stupid-looking trousers. Ethnic trousering relies on a preponderance of beads, fringes, tiny mirrors, tie-dye and batik. The cuffs will usually end some distance above whatever idiotic shoes (espadrilles? gaudy flip-flops?) the beatnik has on his feet. The wearer will probably describe himself as ‘a juggler’ or ‘digital designer’; however, most of his lifestyle is financed by his mummy’s credit card.

Contents of pockets: tube of Superglue for affixing oneself to a motorway, free-trade cannabis,

letter from father asking him when he’s going to get a proper job, sachet of beard oil.

Tartan

As worn by American tourists in Edinburgh, 1970s golfers, the Highland Light Infantry and Rupert Bear. Very few actual Scotsmen will wear tartan trews, as they realise it makes them look like walking tins of Marks & Spencer’s shortbread. However, they will wear them at a gathering of the clans and at the Highland Games, but only if the kilt is at the laundry. Tartans come in many hues according to the clan, from the relatively sober to the eye-wateringly discordant, so if one appears to be wearing the offcuts from a set of curtains, it is best to change one’s name by deed poll to another Mc.

Contents of pockets: hipflask, Tunnock’s teacake, tin of fishing flies, box of matches for burning down Englishmen’s summer cottages. n

Photo: Soulstealer Photography

the Chap...

By Wisbeach

John Randall Lewis: I was disappointed to note a lapse in the usual punctiliousness of your organ in Issue II2 (Spring 2022) with the misclassification of Hergé’s Thompson and Thomson as twins. The pair are kindred spirits in all but kinship, as the variation in spelling of their respective surnames makes clear. My question to you is this: when taking sartorial inspiration from the bumbling detectives, should one wear one’s moustache curved erect, a la Thomson, or rather clean combed, in the manner of Thompson?

Wisbeach: Thank you, kind sir, for the correctum of our erratum. As this original drawing from Cigars

of the Pharaohs below shows, Thomson (left) and Thompson (right) were originally identified only by codenames. Their facial plumage is therefore their only indication of identity, and we would counsel readers growing moustaches to think very carefully about whether they are themselves more of a Thomson or more of a Thompson, before committing to a particular style of lip weasel.

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 wisbeach@thechap.co.uk

Pilates class for seniors at the Cheam Academy of Physical Excellence. I have been asked to wear ‘comfortable clothes’. Do you think corduroy trousers with a reinforced gussett would be appropriate?

Wisbeach: I would counsel you, sir, to be very wary of any such esoteric practices that may lead to your joining sinister cults, in which the strength of a reinforced gusset will be the least of your problems. Joseph Pilates (above), inventor of said exercise method, also invented the following apparati to aid his students: The Universal Reformer, The Wunda Chair, The High ‘Electric’ Chair, The Ladder Barrel

a fencing or wrestling club, as they sound much safer. ...

Tony Petersham: One of my physicians has recommended a daily intake of no more than half a pint of brandy and water to aid digestion, whereas my other physician insists that complete abstention from alcohol is the only way to proceed. I am 17 years old. Which medical practitioner’s advice, in your opinion, should I take?

Wisbeach: Sir, it would be wise, at your tender age, to adopt alcoholic habits that will see you through to old age in the rudest of health. Your

second doctor’s advice could throw you open to all sorts of mental conditions, possibly leading to a weltschmerz it would be difficult to return from, so I would personally counsel you to stick to the brandy and water until you reach the age of 40, and then switch to champagne, but only before breakfast.

...

Derren Cowfold: I write to you with a sartorial conundrum. I have been invited to compete on a television game show called Countdown. I was planning on wearing my ‘lucky’ violet linen suit with polka-dot bow tie, but the programme organisers have advised a dress code of ‘casual, comfortable and natural’. Is there a chance that by displaying dandyism, the judges will hold against me when it comes to the allocation of points?

Wisbeach: Let me hand you over to Albert Camus, sir, whose wise words on the role of the dandy sum up the appropriate response to the dress code suggested by the organisers of ‘Countdown’: “Other people are the dandy’s mirror. A mirror that quickly becomes clouded, it is true, since human capacity for attention is limited. It must be ceaselessly

stimulated, spurred on by provocation. The dandy, therefore, is always compelled to astonish.”

...

Montague ‘Chaps’ Gristle: I travel on the CheamSutton railway line each weekend to shop for comestibles in the souks of Sutton. The journey is short but pleasant. I feel that the driver of the locomotive should be rewarded above his or her standard remuneration, as I am conveyed in comfort and at a speed that does not rattle my equilibrium.

Can you suggest an appropriate tip, and would I be able to enter into the driver’s cabin to personally deliver the largesse?

Wisbeach: I have been told that locomotive drivers are rather partial to sausage and pickle sandwiches, sir. In light of recent strike action, distinctly linked to rail employees’ remuneration, a cash tip might prove too sensitive and may even push said driver to do something foolish, such as allow the train to arrive on time. A sandwich of the above-mentioned variety is more likely to calm him (or her/them) down, and keep their focus on maintaining the sort of punctuality for which this nation’s railway services are world-renowned. n

TWEED ADDICT

FEATURES

JACK CARDIFF

SIR MICHAEL CAINE

Interview

SIR MICHAEL CAINE

As someone who has played such a wide range of roles to great effect, Sir Michael Caine’s voice is unmistakable, never more so than when uttering what have become much-loved and widely-used catchphrases. You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off, anyone…

Now in the twilight of his career – “I have retired to become a writer,” Caine jokes – he remains a hugely distinctive figure, with a signature sense of style that is as effortless as it is authoritative, underscored always by the sort of self deprecation that one would expect of the gentleman we know he undoubtedly is. However dismissive Caine is of some films in which he has featured – “Have I seen Jaws: The Revenge, which came out in 1987? Never.

I hear it’s terrible. However, I have seen the house it built and that’s terrific.” – every moment spent savouring his recollections and experiences is a pleasure. The time he shared with The Chap, during which he was as courteous as Alfred to Christopher Nolan’s Batman, was no exception.

Colin Cameron touches the Douglas Hayward-constructed hem of the great British actor, to learn which of his films Michael Caine considers masterpieces and which ones he only made to fund some of his residences, how he got his first big break in acting, and why there were buckets placed in the wings during his early days in repertory theatre

“Have I seen Jaws: The Revenge, which came out in 1987? Never. I hear it’s terrible. However, I have seen the house it built and that’s terrific”

We know you as Sir Michael Caine, Oscar winner, but you began life as Maurice Joseph Micklewhite junior, son of a fishmonger and charwoman-cum-cook, then, before assuming the identity we know and love, morphed into aspiring actor Michael White. You ultimately realised that there was another so-called rival using the same name and so became what you are today (legend has it you were talking to your agent from a public call box at the time, spotted a poster for The Caine Mutiny, released in 1954, and liked the sound of this as an alternative). And so it was as Michael White that you began in repertory theatre, lasting a gruelling decade?

A brutal baptism, sometimes like purgatory. In this type of theatre, for those who did suffer from nerves, we had a bucket in the wings, which you don’t often get on a movie set.

What are the other main differences between theatre and film for you?

In the movies, you just do the take again, and again, and, if needs be, again, and again, and again. On stage, there is one chance and then plenty of time – up to two, three hours, maybe even longer – to ponder if you have fluffed the line.

Before the big time and Oscar wins, you had some challenging years, not least after your first marriage in 1955 to the late actress, Patricia Haines, which left you switching pavements to avoid creditors until the end of the month. When being pursued for child maintenance, you ended up with a court appearance [the judge ruled that Caine pay £3.50 a week, having established that was the only money he had in his pocket after a night in Police cells].

I was in a film called Harry Brown, which came out

in 2009. It is partly a tale of where I grew up, my home patch of East London and the Elephant and Castle. The movie left me shocked at how bleak the part of London where I spent my childhood was.

Get Carter (1971) is based on some of the ‘enforcers’ with whom I spent my later years in the East End.

In all I have been in more than 150 films without all of them being great. People say to me, why did you do those films? And I say, for money. It wasn’t for diamond rings or kidney-shaped swimming pools in Beverly Hills. It was in order to improve the lot of everyone around me.

How was the transition from theatre to movies after your big break came with Zulu, released in 1964?

The bucket in the wings for repertory theatre? I needed one of those for when Cy Endfield, Zulu’s director and an executive producer, told me I had the part because, even though my screen test was dreadful, he thought there was ‘something there’. The rushes after we started filming weren’t great either, which is one of the reasons I never watched them on set. I mean, why worry about yesterday?

“In The Man Who Would Be King, Sean and I improvised a whole scene. John Huston, who always directed with a light touch, agreed on the basis that we had both been in the army for National Service. He reasoned that we knew what sort of exchange two servicemen would really have. And he was right”

Publicity shot for Alfie (1965) With Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King (1975)

What about the craft of film acting compared to theatre?

The hardest thing for anyone making the transition from theatre to film is to avoid overacting on screen. Theatre is performance. Film is essentially, more often than not, just people talking. In the theatre you go to see drama, so there is no surprise that behaviour and speech is exaggerated. In the cinema that isn’t at all what is usually required, as it isn’t the case in real life. For me, the changes from theatre direction was mainly to calm things down. To bring proceedings, filmed relatively close-up, back to reality.

Isn’t there the same level of intensity?

In film you don’t rehearse like you do in the theatre. In film, working together is usually more understated. What is almost always true is that the words are additionally precise. In the theatre, the audience has paid money and wants to be entertained. People who come to the theatre want

to enjoy themselves, so the performance often expected is one that is more extreme. Of course, that brings pressure on the cast. Goodness me, in Glasgow, the balcony is netted off from the stage.

And what about the practicalities?

For films I was in the habit of always learning my lines. Over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. In repertory theatre, you have a new part the next week. There simply isn’t time to absorb a script and become a character completely. In film it is different; you are cast as that person for the duration and you need to be able to speak the scripted words as if they had come from the part which you have been cast to play, rather than from the writer. So for all my films, I learnt my lines by reading them over, and over, and over again, and by saying them out loud over, and over, and over again. I’d do this whenever I could find a quiet space. Or, if around the rest of the cast, I’d still go over – and over, and over – the lines in my head without being at all self-conscious, going through the dialogue, time, after time, after time, wherever I might be and whoever was around.

So you always stuck rigidly to the script?

In California Suite (1978), which was written by Neil Simon and directed by Herbert Ross, my co-star Maggie Smith and I asked about whether we could ad lib. Herbert said: ‘If you are funnier than the script, why not?’ I had the same idea for Hannah & Her Sisters (1987). But in that case, the writer and director was Woody Allen. In truth, it’s hard to be funnier than him.

Any other standout exceptions?

In The Man Who Would Be King (1975), directed by John Huston, Sean (Connery) and I improvised a whole scene; the exchange that takes place in the plot’s court martial moment. With that, we were two stars so we asked John, could we work up something? John, who always directed me with a light touch – ‘from me you won’t get much direction; you get money instead’ – agreed on the basis that we had both been in the army for our National Service. He reasoned that we knew what sort of exchange two servicemen would have. And he was right.

How much advice from fellow actors did you take?

I listened to Jack Nicholson. He was behind me being cast as Victor Spanksy in Blood & Wine, released in 1996. Jack talked me into it, and out of semi-retirement. I’ve got a script, he said. Read it. Then do the film with me. It will be good fun. We’ll get paid, too.

Did any other actors, at the time more established and senior to you, offer counsel or prove to be inspirational?

I forget now from whom I have borrowed some of the tricks I have picked up over the years. They became a part of me. For Alfie [the 1966 adaptation of Bill Naughton’s novel and play of that name], when talking to the camera I was trying to use a method the late Sir Laurence Olivier uses in Hamlet for the soliloquies. And I owe Henry Fonda for a tip about which eye to use in dialogue to camera. We were both in a film called The Swarm in 1974. Henry said: ‘Don’t switch eyes while you speak or listen’.

So how you use your eyes on screen is key? Mascara on my eyelids and pencil on my brows; in film you need your eyes. They have the creative power.

Beyond listening and observing, is it fair to say you’re unlikely to have many books by the likes of Stanislavski, Kazan and Strasberg, proponents of method acting, in your library?

I spend more time watching how people behave in real life. Do you notice that when someone is listening they don’t often blink? That’s a good example of how observation helps. It’s actually even more true when the person is talking loudly, or is genuinely angry.

Have you ever occasionally sought a little outside help?

For the part of Jacobite Alan Breck Stewart in Kidnapped, released in 1971, my voice was at least partly based on listening to presenters on BBC Radio Scotland for a week. In California Suite, to play Sidney Cochran, Maggie Smith’s on-screen husband and a gay art dealer, I had a voice coach. But she was from New England, so some of my dialect had just a little bit of home about it after we had finished. So it was helpful but made a bit more work ahead of filming.

Any more direct assistance?

I was in a film called Youth (2015), and had to conduct an orchestra. Of course I watched some of the best in the business at work, which was useful. But when we came to filming, I also used an earpiece linking me up to an experienced professional, off-stage, who

As Alan Breck Stewart in Kidnapped (1971)

As Victor Spanksy in Blood & Wine (1996)

could relay to me what I should be doing and, most important, what was next up.

Perhaps another career beckoned?

My sense was that the orchestra was following me, even though I was receiving instruction. The first violin – she said I was even better than the real thing!

I know you won’t be held to sharing what is a favourite film from your body of work or any ranking of what you feel are your best films. Nevertheless, The Guardian newspaper did attempt to distill your work down to the ten best films. I wonder whether we could prevail upon your comments on a few of them? The Italian Job (1969), a sugar rush of entertainment, according to the critics? Shot in Italy, co-starring with Noel Coward, so enough said.

The Quiet American (2002): in which your attention to detail was apparently key in securing an Oscar nomination? Perhaps the best of mine. Perhaps…

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), a film that consensus suggests deserves ‘classic’ status? Funny film, happy times.

The Ipcress File (1965), reputedly the film that made you, and which was rich in “deadpan, lizard-like charm”.

I said that Zulu was my big break. The Ipcress File was also important with my name above the title. Harry Saltzman, who produced the movie, said, ‘If you didn’t think you’re a star, who else would?’

Hannah & Her Sisters, simply an “extraordinary, Oscar-winning performance”?

Good enough to win one, to be sure. Likewise The Cider House Rules in 1999. With Educating Rita (1983), The Quiet American, and Sleuth (1972), all good enough, along with Alfie for an Oscar nomination. Remember Alfie was a success in both Britain and the US, which was key for future roles. Plus the first Oscar nomination is very important, career-wise. I still love the movies, the variety and range of roles the business has offered me.

Have you ever been tempted to direct?

I always liked to finish work earlier than they do, generally.

So you have no regrets?

I think of the Rocky Graziano biopic, Somebody Up There Likes Me. I have been equally blessed. n

As Fred Ballinger in Youth (2015)

Jack Cardiff

When I was offered the opportunity to interview the great cinematographer Jack Cardiff, my heart o’er leaped itself and fell on t’other side. This was the man whose name graced the credits on such films as The African Queen, A Matter of Life and Death, The Red Shoes, The Barefoot Contessa, and directed the likes of The Longships, The Girl on a Motorcycle with Marianne Faithful and Alain Delon, and Conan The Destroyer. Cardiff ranks as a giant in 20th century cinema who worked with everyone from Bogart to Gardner, Monroe, Orson Welles, Audrey and Katherine Hepburn, Tyrone Power, Oliver Reed and Raquel Welch.

As I gaze around Cardiff’s study, it is impossible

to be impressed. Apart from the Oscar for Color Cinematography he received for Powell and

not

“My first job was on the last big British silent movie, The Informer, in 1928. It was my job to be on hand with a glass of Vichy water all day, to supply the director Dr. Arthur Robison to help with his flatulence problem”

Chris Sullivan meets the cinematographer who worked with Michael Powell, Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier and John Huston, and that was behind the camera. His work brought him friendships with Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn and countless others

Pressburger’s Black Narcissus and the Best Director Golden Globe for Sons and Lovers starring Trevor Howard, the walls are adorned with photographs and memorabilia that reflect a history in the field that few on this planet can touch: a shot of Bogart jokily rearranging Cardiff’s meagre hair; Marilyn Monroe holding his arm; Dietrich looking through his lens; wacky dancing with Sophia Loren; a Hitchcock drawing. It is just too much for a humble cineaste to contemplate. So, head spinning, pulse racing, I ask him the only question I can muster: “Where do we begin?”

“I think starting with Michael Powell would be a nice idea, wouldn’t you?” says the sprightly and loquacious 91-year-old Cardiff, sitting in the conservatory of his Kent home. “I had a tough time getting started. I was employed by Technicolor and went around the world photographing for them but I had yet to have a big break. One day, as I worked on second unit for the director Michael Powell on The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, I was asked to photograph this large wall full of animal heads, and it was very difficult. As I was doing it I heard

a voice saying, ‘Very interesting.’ It was Michael Powell, who then asked if I’d like to photograph his next film. That was in 1943 and I was 29, but I had to wait another three years to do the job on A Matter of Life and Death, but I suppose I had been waiting all my life.”

Cardiff’s parents were old time music hall ‘pros’ who often appeared on the bill with Charlie Chaplin, Gracie Fields and Sir Harry Lauder, while Cardiff, after a distinguished career on stage, acted in his first silent picture, My Son, at the ripe old age of four, only to retire at age 14 to work behind the camera. “My first job was on the last big British silent movie, The Informer, in 1928. It was my job to be on hand with a glass of Vichy water all day, to supply the director Dr. Arthur Robison to help with his flatulence problem.”

Cardiff moved up through the ranks, working in the tricks department for Korda, as camera operator for Rene Clair and then for Jacques Feyder in 1937 on Knight Without Armour, starring Robert Donat and Marlene Dietrich. “Miss Dietrich seemed to like me. Once when I had a cold she

Black Narcissus (1947)

phoned Germany for a cold remedy for me.

“It was the same year that I worked on the first Technicolor talkie in Europe. And even though it was complex, I loved it. As a child, I had been dragged around from town to town with my parents, going to a different school every week. Then one day I started visiting local art galleries, and that was my big lesson. I loved the way the artists played with light, shade and colour. I looked at each frame as a painting and then the camera became my paintbrush.”

Cardiff’s artistry was never more evident than when he worked with Michael Powell. “Michael was wonderful. He would encourage suggestions and get everyone to put their ideas in. In the beginning of A Matter of Life and Death, we were shooting on

A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

“One day Marilyn told me that she had this disguise that would enable her to walk down the street and blend in. But when she showed it to me I couldn’t believe it – it was the most screaming bright, orange red wig you’ve ever seen. And I said, Marilyn you cannot wear that, it will just attract attention”

Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe

the English coast, and David Niven’s supposed to see this long shot of a beach, thinking he’s in heaven. In the script it said, “Fade in”, and Michael said, “This sounds so corny. I wish I could do something different.” So I said, “Michael, look through the camera.” He did, and I went to the front and breathed on the lens so that it went foggy. After a few seconds it cleared. Michael was absolutely delighted.”

A Matter of Life and Death was a huge success, as was their next collaboration, Black Narcissus. “We shot Narcissus almost entirely in Pinewood,” recalls Cardiff. “I was looking forward to going to the Himalayas, but looking back it was the right decision, because to make a film with such psychological depth in the tropics would have been a disaster. The big problem was how do we create the look of the mountains?

“The obvious choice would have been to use painted backdrops, but we thought they never looked good enough. So I had this idea of using blow ups of black and white photos of the mountains, and coloured them in with chalk in a semi-transparent way – blue on the mountains and ochre in the foreground. And it worked.”

Cardiff went on to work with some of the great

directors of the day, including Alfred Hitchcock.

“I worked with Hitchcock, which was very rewarding. He would spend two years on a script with a writer and then would never deviate from it. It was his bible. He had spent so many hours working on ideas that he would not change a thing. He was a very nice man, a really ordinary cockney type. He loved dirty stories and would chuckle uproariously as he told them.

“I worked on Under Capricorn with Hitch, starring Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotton. After he had done Rope, all shot in one room in about three weeks, he asked me to do the same for Under Capricorn but in a mansion with all these different rooms, and I had to light them all for one continuous shot, which was impossible. Hitch was lovely to work with but this was hard work.”

Cardiff had now made his mark on the international stage and would, in the next few years, shoot, among others: Tyrone Power and Orson Welles in The Black Rose for Henry Hathaway (“pedantic”), Audrey Hepburn in War and Peace for King Vidor (“a plodder”) and Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn for John Huston in the African Queen.

Deborah Kerr in Black Narcissus (1947)

Jack Cardiff at work behind the camera

“John Huston was such a great director,” Cardiff smiles. “He was so easy going that he never shouted or stamped his foot, like a few I might mention. On one occasion Katie was doing this scene and John

just turned his back and put his feet in the water and started fishing. Then Katie noticed. She stopped and said, ‘John Huston what are you doing? I am performing with Mr. Bogart and you are fishing?’ And John said, ‘I’m listening Honey, and you’re doing great. Just keep turning over, no problem.’

“There was a great relationship between Katie and Bogie on and off screen. They were both great actors and even when a few people got drunk, she knew how to handle it. She refused to wear make up for the movie, as she wanted to look authentic. We had this great big boiler that was a part of the ship. It would have taken a crane to lift it and we didn’t fasten it down, as it was being shifted every day according to the shot. One day we were caught in these currents and the boiler was wobbling behind Katie as she was acting, and it was terrifying. At one point we all thought it was going over to crush her, but John dived on to Katie and covered her from the fall. It would have crushed him to death, but that was the man John was.

“We were all really, really ill on the set of African Queen. We were living on a houseboat and drinking contaminated water from the river through a purifier. Eventually we discovered that this filter

Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen (1951)

“Katie Hepburn was doing this scene and John just turned his back and put his feet in the water and started fishing. Then Katie noticed. She stopped and said, ‘John Huston what are you doing? I am performing with Mr. Bogart and you are fishing?’ And John said, ‘I’m listening Honey, and you’re doing great. Just keep turning over, no problem’”

was not working at all, so we had been drinking pure river water contaminated by hippo droppings. The only ones who weren’t ill were Bogie and John, because all they ever drank was pure straight whisky, all day and all night.

“Bogie was a great guy but could be very explosive. When I first met him at a party he came up to me and said, ‘Cardiff, see my face, see all these lines. It has taken years for me to get them and I don’t want you to soft light me so I look like a goddamn fag!’ And I said, ‘Well, Mr. Bogart, I am sorry to inform you that I can’t do anything about your face, there is too much debauchery in it.’ He laughed and said, ‘Put down that sissy drink’ (I had a beer) and he got me a whisky.”

Another legend that Cardiff became very close to was Marilyn Monroe. She’d come to England to shoot The Prince and The Showgirl, directed by Laurence Olivier. “Of course Marilyn was the biggest star in the world, and when she came on set the whole of the world stopped and looked and she was amazing. And I think she hated being looked at. One day she told me that she had this disguise that would enable her to walk down the street and blend in. But when she showed it to me I couldn’t believe

it – it was the most screaming bright, orange red wig you’ve ever seen. And I said, Marilyn you cannot wear that, it will just attract attention and she said, ‘D’you think so? Okay.’ And that was her mentality. On one part she was the great Marilyn Monroe – the sex goddess, the person that everyone in America wanted to go to bed with. That was the Monroe character, and the other one was like a little child of about 14. She was very down to earth and normal but so very vulnerable. You really wanted to protect her. She was hard work and she did exasperate Larry, but her totally extraordinary screen presence made up for everything. She glowed.”

“I became great friends with her but unfortunately not in the marriage sense. She was with Arthur Miller then and she was extremely happy. When we started prepping the film, I asked if I might take pictures of her, as it was my hobby to take photos of all the stars I shot, and she said, why not come down to the house on Sunday around 9.30 am and do it there? I turned up and she was in bed, so Arthur said let’s play some tennis, and after a few games it came to lunch hour and she was still not up, so we had some lunch, went for a walk and came back and it was 3pm, and she was still in bed, so we

Hand painted Himalayan backdrops on the set of Black Narcissus

played more tennis. Eventually she got up at 6.30pm and never apologised! She just said, ‘Hello!’ So I only had an hour with her after being there since 9.30 am.

As either director or cinematographer, Cardiff filmed some of the world’s most beautiful women: Ava Gardner, Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, Leslie Caron, Ingrid Bergman, Audrey Hepburn and Julie Christie. So who was the most beautiful?

“Ingrid Bergman had a face that was indestructible. Most movie stars, unless the lighting is perfect, might look less than 100%, but she looked great from all angles and whatever the lighting. If Ava had been out all night drinking you could see it, but not Ingrid. She could stay up all night and you’d never tell.”

And what of the men, I asked, considering that you shot some of the most legendary hell raisers: Errol Flynn, Lee Marvin, Bogart, Oliver Reed, Ernest Borgnine, to name a few. Who was the most excessive?

“Well, I think Ollie Reed. He had no limits at all, none whatsoever, but he was very, very bright. Lee Marvin was totally excessive but such a lovely man. Errol Flynn was a hell raiser in a different way. He and I were great friends. It was he who gave me my first break as a director, but the production broke

down before it started. I knew him in the fifties when he had quietened down a lot, but he was a pirate who just laughed his way through life and would steal my wife, your wife, anybody’s wife and think nothing of it at all. People thought I was mad agreeing to work with Errol as he would always slip off and drink, but I had an idea. So I gave him a trailer full of alcohol just a few feet away from the cameras that allowed him to drink whenever he wanted. I believe because it was accepted and available, he never really abused it because there was no thrill. If you give someone more than what they want, they will turn their noses up.”

“David Niven was Errol’s great friend and they got up to all kinds of mischief together. But it was so lovely working with David Niven. He had such a wealth of funny stories and was such a great story teller, a true gentleman. Nothing bothered him at all. He was the best company.”

Before I left Cardiff, asked him if there was anything else he’d have liked to have done.

“I wouldn’t change a thing, he said, smiling gently. “I have had the most wonderful life.”

Shortly after this interview, on 22nd April 2009, Jack Cardiff passed away aged 94. n

Jack Cardiff, 18th September 1914–22nd April 2009

Time travel films usually portray either Victorians finding themselves baffled by present-day technology, or contemporary travellers pinging back to a time of horse-drawn carriages and street urchins. What if the timespan was smaller, and you transported some Edwardian ladies and gentlemen into the cabin of a passenger aircraft from the 1970s? Reader, we did just that, by taking seven immaculately clad folk who favour the Edwardian period to Brooklands Museum, proud owners of one of the 18 original Concordes now on display in various museums in France, the US and the UK.

The first Concorde, prototype 001, flew from Toulouse on 2nd March 1969. The world’s first supersonic passenger aircraft was capable of flying from London to New York in three hours and twenty minutes, travelling at Mach 2, more than twice the speed of sound, at 1350 mph.

France and Britain had signed an accord in 1962 to develop a supersonic aircraft together, giving it a name meaning ‘harmony’, ‘agreement’ or ‘union’ – Concorde, with the first UK meeting taking place at Brooklands. Using four Rolls Royce/SNECMA Olympus 593 engines, the latter developed by Bristol Aero Engines, a Frenchdesigned afterburner was also mounted on the wings alongside the British-made engines. The wings were produced in an ogival delta design, reaching a span of 25 metres. By the time of Concorde’s first commercial flights in 1976, total costs had reached £1.3 billion (nearly £8 billion today), funded by British and French taxpayers.

Pilot training for Concorde was far more rigorous than ordinary passenger aircraft. Instead of the usual eight weeks’ training, Concorde pilots required six months. Take-off produced no more noise than a typical passenger aircraft, but once Concorde breached the sound barrier it produced a loud sonic boom like a thunderclap in the sky. Civil Aviation noise limits meant it could only be taken on flight paths predominantly over water, such as London Heathrow or Paris Charles de Gaulle to New York, Washington or Miami. Concorde used 80 tonnes of fuel on a typical Atlantic crossing – half of it during take-off and ascent to Mach 2. At a cruise speed of 22.5 miles per minute at a top limit of 60,000 feet, kinetic heating would expand the aluminium fuselage by a full ten inches.

Passengers were treated in style, offered complimentary champagne and cigars during the short transatlantic flight, though they paid for the privilege. An average fare for the London to New York journey was £4,500. Cabin space, holding just 100 passengers, was reduced to a minimum in the interest of speed, the narrower space fitting only two instead of the usual three seats on each side of the aisle.

On 25th July, 2000, Concorde ran into problems. Flight 4590 from Paris punctured a tyre on a metal strip left on the runway by another aircraft. The fuel tank exploded from a spark and all 113 people on board were killed. She continued flying for another three years while a Civil Aviation review into the crash took place. But it was fuel costs, exacerbated by the Iraq war, which did for Concorde, pushing running costs up to £60m per year before she even got off the ground. British Airways’ last passenger Concorde flight was on 24th October, 2003, piloted by Chief Concorde Pilot Mike Bannister, who had been in the cockpit since 1977.

There are plans for supersonic air travel to make a comeback. NASA and Lockheed are currently developing the supersonic X-59, with the focus on the reduction of noise during the sonic boom, as supersonic flights over land have been banned since 1973. Meanwhile, Boom Overture is another supersonic aircraft in development by the US, with a similar delta wing configuration to Concorde.

For the moment, the supersonic experience can only be imagined aboard the stationary Concorde held at Brooklands Museum in Weybridge, Surrey. The 25-minute Concorde Experience runs every day the museum is open and requires both a museum admission ticket and an additional Concorde Experience ticket. Book your visit via www.brooklandsmuseum.com/concorde n

“Passengers were treated in style, offered complimentary champagne and cigars during the short transatlantic flight”

L-R: Marcus Anthoney Walters, Pandora Harrison, Ruby Demure, Jonny Haart, James Blah, Viktor H, Isabella Ferretti

This photo was taken aboard another aircraft at Brooklands, the Vickers VC10, also known as ‘Victor Mike’

THE SARTORIAL MONARCH

Now that Prince Charles has acceded to the throne as King Charles III, there is no doubt that he has been preparing for this role for decades. Sartorially, too, Charles is ready to become one of our bestdressed kings, with the possible exception of Edward VIII, whose fancy wardrobe was slightly corrupted by his slovenly monarchical duties.

What does the more robust and hands-to-thepump King Charles bring to the nation, if he is to

be a sartorial guiding light for the gentlemen of England?

With the broadest range of gentlemen’s outfitters and tailors to choose from, if not the broadest sartorial palette, Charles has narrowed his sights to a select few suppliers. His association with Turnbull & Asser is well known, although his choice to have the Jermyn Street shirtmaker fashion him actual suits was often seen as eccentric. He favours Anderson & Sheppard,

Gustav Temple on what the nation’s gentlemen can expect from their new monarch in the wardrobe department

“When, as Prince Charles, he went for a tour of St James’s bootmaker John Lobb only a decade ago, head of the firm John Hunter Lobb believed that the Prince was still wearing the first pair of black Oxfords they had made for him in 1971”

rumoured to have been on the late Diana’s prompting, though he also has accounts at Gieves & Hawkes, Ede & Ravenscroft and Benson & Clegg. Charles is shod by John Lobb, naturally, though also wears brogues from Tricker’s and Crockett & Jones. Lock & Co make all his hats, but the King is not always under the famous ‘conformateur’ for toppers and bowlers, as Sue Simpson, retail director of James Lock & Co, mentions: “He wears a lot of regimental and top hats, but the thing we supply most often would be tweed caps, which he likes to have made in his own tweed. Not in great numbers, but he likes quality, he wants something that will last.”

Charles follows the great aristocratic tradition of wearing clothes until they fall apart. He may not often be seen walking about in a tweed jacket with holes in the sleeves, but he does prefer a wardrobe that is built to last. When, as Prince Charles, he went for a tour of St James’s bootmaker John Lobb only a decade ago, head of the firm John Hunter Lobb believed that the Prince was still wearing the first pair of black Oxfords they had made for him in 1971.

Charles’s staples, as Patrick Grant of Norton & Sons once explained in The Chap,

are “double-breasted two-piece suits in classic English patterns in grey or navy solids, narrow pinstripes for the winter, and lighter grey and beige solids and variations on the Glenurquhart or Prince of Wales check (created for Edward VII, not VIII as is often believed) for summer; pale blue solid or striped spread collared shirt; tie knotted four-in-hand with a very small knot, typically in regimental stripe or club pattern, silk for town, woollen wovens for the country (including the rather handsome Highgrove Tweed tie); and a pocket handkerchief.”

When it comes to tweeds, this is where Charles really expects longevity, linking in with his concerns for both the environment and traditional British industries. “He’s just very interested in keeping up the traditions,” says James Sugden, director of Johnstons of Elgin, makers of estate tweeds. “He likes proper tweed from Scottish wool that will last 30 or 40 years and he is really involved in recreating them. Manufacturing in Scotland is an endangered species and I think his interest has created a huge amount of business.”

When Charles launched the Campaign For Wool in 2008, wool prices were very low and “his personal interest in his own tweeds helped

Impeccable co-ordination of accessorised stripes and spots

American orientation of the stripes on Charles’s regimental tie

save the industry and create jobs,” says Sugden. One of Charles’s tailors agrees. John Hitchcock, head cutter and managing director at Anderson & Sheppard, says, “He likes his clothes to be cut in a classic style, to be made to last and to be comfortable. The way that we hand-tailor our clothes, sewing the sleeves and shoulders in by hand, makes the jacket comfortable and easy to wear all day. The fullness in the chest and the sleeves also allows for easy movement. We help to look after the clothes and to extend their wear with steam pressing, general repairs and any necessary alterations.”

And when it comes to formal wear, Charles extends his love of the double-breasted, according to Patrick Grant: “He sports a double-breasted dinner jacket with appropriate peaked lapel, simple white dress shirt (he seems to reserve white shirts for formal occasions and funerals) and the finishing flourish of a coloured pocket square.”

The King’s unique style is his own version of royal tradition, always giving fashion a wide berth. “I don’t think he ever responded to the beat of the street,” says style guru Peter York. “It just never happened, did it? I think he was quite a formal young man. Whereas that other Prince of Wales,

Edward VIII, became set in a rather dandified way early on, Charles has been rather different from his contemporaries. There is a royal way of dressing that arouses all sorts of responses, but I can’t think of anybody anywhere who does that particular look.”

As Charles moves from his title of Prince of Wales to King, his royal duties may have changed somewhat, but it looks as though his wardrobe will continue to lead in the same quiet manner as previously. n

The Prince even once went full Yankee doodle dandy Charles has been wearing the same tweed overcoat since the 1980s

Dominic West in The Crown – way off the mark

IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER

Sophie Bainbridge takes a stroll around the border between Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in the footsteps of David Herbert Lawrence, trying to imagine how the author would view the area today

PHOTOGRAPHY: HARRY

With Stanley Biggs Clothiers opening a new physical store on the border of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, we thought we’d take a closer look around at the locality and its unique history. DH Lawrence has been closely linked to the brand since its early days, with one of our early jumper designs taking his name; our little way of championing his legacy.

It has been around one hundred years since Lawrence was actively writing, living and working in the area surrounding our new location, but would the landscape today be recognisable to him? An avid walker and explorer of the area, Lawrence would often walk the four miles between

RENTON

PHOTOGRAPHY www.stanleybiggs.co.uk @stanleybiggsclothiers

“An avid walker and explorer of the area, Lawrence would often walk the four miles between here and his Eastwood home, exploring the hilly country and remaining fragments of the Sherwood Forest, picking up inspiration for his writing along the way”

The Biggs Scarf (left), The Navigator Scarf

The Wingfield Trousers/The Hillary Rollneck

here and his Eastwood home, exploring the hilly country and remaining fragments of the Sherwood Forest, picking up inspiration for his writing along the way.

During Lawrence’s time, the area would have been at the height of the Industrial Era. The landscape would have been a great patchwork blanket of railways and canals, collieries and towns, woodlands and farms; all inharmoniously interwoven together. And beneath all of this, the labyrinth of mines that fuelled the great industrial machine of early 20th century Britain.

A great lover of the local landscape, Lawrence feared its loss to industrial expansion, as well as the effect modern living had on society as a whole. This passionate concern often threaded its way through his novels, with many of his most well known works being set around the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire area, notably his home town of Eastwood, and the village of Jacksdale, where our store is located.

In recent decades, the area has seen a regeneration, with the old railway lines and canals reformed into country paths, and the old pits and works dedicated as nature reserves; something Lawrence would be thankful to see, we think. With the power to regenerate from the ashes of its predecessor, Lawrence’s personal emblem was a phoenix; an apt emblem for the area’s recent transformation.

Despite his extensive travels, it is interesting to see that his most recognised writing took him back to his East Midland roots. He travelled and lived all over the world, yet it was the people and this area that inspired his most well known writings, namely his last novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. When it was first published (in Italy) in 1928, it was considered so sordid in its nature that its UK publishers Penguin were brought to trial under the Obscene Publications Act. They eventually won the right to publish, in full, in 1960. The fictional Wragby Hall and the surrounding woodlands and

The Melbourne Trousers

The Arthur Rollneck

grounds were all inspired by a local hall and woodlands close by to our shop. But Lady Chatterley’s Lover was not the only novel of Lawrence’s to be banned. One of his first novels, The Rainbow (1915) was also banned for ‘obscenity’.

Once again, the changing landscape of the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire countryside provides a catalyst for the plot. The novel provides a fascinating insight into how a family in Britain changes socially, against the backdrop of the increasing industrialisation of Britain. Spanning roughly 65 years from the 1840s to 1905, the central ‘character’ is an entire family, and how it develops over three generations.

Even to this day, Lawrence’s writing is labelled as ‘saucy’, when actually he was just as expressive about all aspects of relationships, whether they be platonic or romantic between individuals, or between an individual and society. The physical intimacy of his writing has its roots in his belief that the body and the sense of touch had been lost, especially in the Western world, to an overemphasis on the mind. Lawrence sought to restore the emphasis on the body, to highlight the sense of touch and to bring back physicality.

DH Lawrence challenged conventional thought on politics, the arts, religion, gender, sexual experience, friendship and marriage. Lawrence’s views as expressed in the novels are now thought to be far ahead of his time. So when you come and visit our store, be sure to explore the local area, and think about how a local lad who started out as a coal miner broke away from convention and became one of the greatest imaginative novelists of the 20th century. n

Stanley Biggs Clothiers, The Old Library, 15 Selston Road, Jacksdale, Notts, NG16 5LF

MODERN BLACK TIE BY MICKAEL KORAUSCH

Modern Black Tie

At over 400 pages, Modern Black Tie covers everything from the classics to the future of the formal dress code, and gives readers dozens of examples of black tie outfits and accessories, to provide them with the confidence and inspiration they need to tackle all their black tie occasions, across various levels of formality.

Modern Black Tie is written in a clear, accessible, and often humorous style, which is not surprising from the thoroughly charming and affable, not to mention exceedingly well-dressed, author. In our interview with Mr. Korausch (who is of exotic French and Russian stock) he reminded us that, “Black tie events are usually a celebration of something, so why have everyone dressed exactly the same? You wouldn’t wear the same outfit to a restaurant in Dubai as you would to a party in northern Sweden. Creativity and fun have their

readers are concerned

place with black tie, as long as you’re having a nice time and you’re not wearing anything silly.”

If

that Mr. K will be advocating the sorts of sartorial flourishes that

Founder of La Bowtique Mickael Korausch, maker of the finest bespoke bow ties and featured within these very pages in CHAP Spring 22, is publishing Modern Black Tie, a comprehensive guide to contemporary evening wear

“Tying a bow tie is a skill every man should know, like changing a tyre on a car. Once you’ve learned how to do it, you never forget. Learning to make them takes a little bit longer! Ideally you should match the bow tie to the facing on the lapels of the dinner jacket”

modern celebrities think are acceptable with black tie, they need not worry. “I don’t approve of things like black shirts or messing about too much with the classic monochrome palette. Dark red socks, even white socks can work with black tie, for a subtle splash of colour in a discreet part of the outfit, though I sometimes wear grey socks with black tie, to retain the monochrome tone throughout. The black tie pocket square should ideally be white, but we have been experimenting with a few departures, such as a touch of grey or black on a white pocket square.”

In every respect, Modern Black Tie is a contemporary title for the 21st century man.

The fundamental philosophy of the book is to show that black tie is an ever-evolving phenomenon, and while not eschewing the traditional tenets of the dress code, its argues that what really counts is the effort you make to dress the way you do for special formal events.

With ten comprehensive chapters, a directory of the world’s leading black tie brands and a foreword by Stephen Fry, this is the perfect reference book for anyone who is interested in black tie or classic menswear, anxious about the right thing to wear for a wedding or formal event, or simply looking for a finely illustrated sartorial reference book to add to their collection. n To order the book: www.labowtique.com/product/modern-black-tie

MODERN BLACK TIE WILL BE RELEASED WORLDWIDE IN DECEMBER 2022 AND WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE BOTH ONLINE AND AT PHYSICAL LOCATIONS ACROSS THE MENSWEAR WORLD. LAUNCH EVENTS WILL BE HELD IN LONDON, STOCKHOLM, FLORENCE AND NEW YORK OVER THE 2022–23 BLACK TIE SEASON. FOLLOW @LABOWTIQUEBOWTIES ON INSTAGRAM FOR PRECISE DATES AND DETAILS

Photo: Ross Robertson @roo_withaview

GREY FOX COLUMN

The discussions around the new king’s wardrobe elsewhere in this issue remind us that he is one of those admirable souls who puts his beliefs into practice. His views on the environment are well known, so too is the shameful contribution made by global clothes manufacture to climate change. The new king has long practised the now common style mantra, ‘Buy less, buy better quality’. Not for him the wasteful practice of wearing a few times and then throwing away; Charles III is often seen

wearing old and much patched shoes and suits. Although his Savile Row suits cost many times the price of ready-to-wear high street suits, I’d be willing to bet that he gets his money’s worth from them. A well-made bespoke suit will last from one generation to the next and, if looked after well, can prove a shrewd investment.

Which brings me on to Rishi Sunak, who at the time of writing had just been appointed Britain’s latest Prime Minister. Sunak’s style in contrast with the new king was highlighted in the image of the two

David Evans assesses the new prime minister’s sartorial style, with a sharp glance at his trouser hems, and advocates long-lasting clothes made of the very best wool www.greyfoxblog.com

men meeting when Sunak took up his appointment. The king wears a Savile Row suit and the PM a very slim suit, possibly tailored (he is known to favour off-Savile Row tailor Henry Herbert). The king’s is rather full in cut, with the trousers ending in a single break and 1.5" turn-ups – possibly a little too traditional for contemporary tastes. Sunak’s verges on the now rather outdated skinny look, with the trouser hems well above the shoes.

I had a lively debate with friends on Instagram when I posted this photograph, with views on each style roughly split equally. Many thought Sunak’s style sharp and modern; others found it a bit ‘overgrown schoolboy’. The king’s suit also divided opinion, some feeling it was ‘flappy’ and ‘puffy’. Essentially this was about the very personal question of style and how, thankfully, we all have different tastes. The king is expected to be traditional in everything he does, including his suit style, and while he can look very stylish he can also look a bit dated. My personal preference would be for something between the two – a beautifully cut and somewhat slimmer Savile Row suit would be perfection.

Traditionally men bought trousers to fit with a slight fold, or break, at the bottom hem when standing straight. Over the last few years, trousers have grown shorter; some, like the Prime Minister, even having the hem flapping around the ankle while they walk. I refuse to be judgmental about trouser lengths, for style is personal, but doing away with the trouser break makes sense for a few

reasons. Firstly, having the hem stopping at the shoe without the trousers pooling around the ankle does lengthen the appearance of the leg; it is also a more contemporary look, is more elegant and saves wear on the trouser hem. Returning to Sunak, at 5,7' in height, it makes sense to wear his trousers slightly short to give the illusion of height.

On the subject of trousers, I want to again sing the praises of Spencers Trousers. This remarkable family business in Sowerby Bridge in Yorkshire makes trousers to order to your own specifications. I wanted a slim-ish fit with pleats, tapering to two-inch turn-ups, and that is exactly what I got. Beautifully made and all for some £145 upwards, depending on cloth and style. Highly recommended and proof that the best British-made products are excellent value for money.

Both of the above remind us not only that British style leads the world, but also that the British still make good clothing. Many factories were closed in the last half of the 20th century, as makers went overseas or folded in the face of cheap competition. What is left, and what is being built new from scratch, is helping to maintain and revive skills built up over centuries.

I was reminded of these skills recently when I visited the Yorkshire mill of Joshua Ellis, who manufacture quality cloths and knitted products from cashmere and lambswool. I’ve talked before in this column about the feeling of pride that pervades all the factories, mills and workshops that I’ve visited, and this manifests itself in the quality of the products; quality recognised the world over (and, hopefully, increasingly so here in the country where they are made). I was delighted to be invited by Joshua Ellis to collaborate on a collection of cashmere scarves, and it was a privilege to work with a mill where things are made with such pride.

Joshua Ellis is a sizeable and long-established business. What’s exciting is seeing new and much smaller businesses using both traditional and newer high-tech skills to manufacture here in the UK. One example is Maria Benjamin, who, from her farm in the South Lakes, has organised local sheep farmers to produce fleeces from which she has made various products, including yarns from traceable sources and a series of blankets named after the areas from where the wool originated. She also sells a rather nice tweed, woven by Sam Goates of Woven in the Bone, from fleeces from James Rebanks’ farm, author of The Shepherd’s Life

A few other brands making in the UK that you

may like to explore: Colhays make high quality knitwear in Scotland. I tried a few of their pieces recently and was impressed how they were just slightly different, the product of excellent design. Genevieve Sweeney makes some gorgeous knitwear in beautiful colours. Glencroft have a rather nice jumper made from British wool, which has that faint lanolin sheep scent that reminds us of the true origins of knitwear.

There’s just space to tell you about Bremont’s new range of watches. What’s interesting about them is that they are the first watches made in any great number that are powered by a British-made movement. The last manufacturer to produce watches and movements in volume here was Smiths until about 1970. Bremont’s H1 range comprises three very handsome watches in various guises, and is an important milestone in the long history of British matchmaking.

Finally, to while away the long winter nights, I recommend reading The Rebel’s Wardrobe: The Untold Story of Menswear’s Renegade Past (Gestalten). The book explores many items of menswear, their origins and some of the style icons that made them famous.

From the white T-shirt and workwear through flying jackets to the aran sweater, safari jackets and trench coats, hats and footwear, it takes a fascinating look at items of clothing that started out as radical signs of rebellion only to become mainstream. And don’t mention it to the editor of this illustrious publication, but serge de nîmes is mentioned too.

Links: Joshua Ellis Cashmere joshuaellis.com Maria Benjamin dodgsonwood.co.uk Woven in The Bone woveninthebone.com Spencers Trousers spencers-trousers.com Colhays colhays.com Genevieve Sweeney genevievesweeney.com Glencroft glencroftcountrywear.co.uk

Glencroft Jumper made from British Wool

MUMMY DEAREST

“Tutankhamun’s dried corpse was wrapped in hundreds of metres of fabric, with the priests carefully delineating each finger and toe (and the penis as an important organ in the afterlife) and placing funerary amulets within each layer of cloth. Then it was time to place the funerary mask – 22 pounds of solid gold adorned with lapis lazuli – over the mummy’s head”

On November 26, 1922, while his patron the Fifth Earl of Carnarvon, the earl’s daughter Lady Evelyn and engineer and archaeologist Arthur ‘Pecky’ Callender looked on with mounting anticipation, the archaeologist Howard Carter made a small hole in a doorway that had been sealed thirty-four centuries earlier. Moments later, by the light of a single candle, Carter gazed upon the golden treasures of Tutankhamun. Their work, made possible by the toil of many Egyptian excavators, quickly became the world’s most famous archaeological discovery. A century later, the impact of ‘King Tut’s tomb’ in the popular imagination

– and as one of the greatest concentrations of ancient riches to survive to modern times –remains undiminished.

As all good archaeologists do, we must sift backwards through the sands of time to understand how it was even possible for Tutankhamun’s tomb to remain virtually intact until 1922. Beginning around 1460 BCE, the rulers of New Kingdom Egypt chose a desert canyon on the west bank of Waset (modern Luxor), now known as the Valley of the Kings, as the location for their rock-cut tombs. Often excavated a hundred metres into the cliffs, these tombs came to be decorated with an increasing number of solar treatises, the earliest

Professors of Egyptology John and Colleen Darnell outline the ancient historical factors that led to the world’s greatest archaeological discovery one hundred years ago: the tomb of Tutankhamun

The Valley of the Kings in Howard Carter’s day

comprising images and texts describing the sun god’s journey through the twelve hours of the night. The rising and setting of the sun was the

never-ending process that was the template for resurrection for the Egyptian king and all his (or rarely, her) subjects.

Around 1140 BCE, a king named Ramesses, the sixth pharaoh of that name to come to the throne (the name was popularized by Ramesses II, ‘the Great’, whose descendants aspired to his achievements), ordered construction to begin on his tomb. Workers who specialized in royal tomb construction – handsomely, if sometimes tardily, paid – began their new project. Just to the north and east of the entrance to their workplace, some of Ramesses VI’s workmen built small, dry stone shelters, places to sit out the midday heat, unaware they were snoozing a mere three feet above the uppermost stair leading down to the entrance of the tomb of an earlier ruler named Tutankhamun.

As the dynasty of the Ramesses waned and Egypt lost control of the gold mines and distant trade networks that supplied so much of its wealth, an economic crisis hit the Nile Valley. Inflation, hoarding of supplies and even civil war threatened the kingdom. The eleventh Ramesses and his

“The second group of robbers appears to have been taken by surprise, a linen scarf with gold rings – robbers’ swag abandoned on the floor of the main room – bearing testimony to the panic of the New Kingdom kleptomaniacs. The thefts likely occurred within a couple of decades of the burial, after which the tomb remained sealed until that exciting November day in 1922”

The entrance to Tutankhamun’s tomb today

immediate successors made an astonishingly desperate decision: they ordered the removal of the gold and jewels from the royal tombs in the Valley

of the Kings. Protected by policemen through all the strife and tomb robbery of the late Ramesside Period, the treasures of the New Kingdom rulers fell prey to the very officials sworn to protect them. Dead kings were stripped of their treasure to shore up the economy of the living. The state-sanctioned grave robbers worked in semi-secrecy to avoid offending the public, but the results of their efforts were thorough. Nearly every tomb in the valley was opened, all of the metal and precious objects removed, and the royal bodies respectfully, albeit bereft of most worldly possessions, reburied in two caches.

But thanks at least in part to those working on the tomb of Ramesses VI, even the harried officials in the melancholy days of the last Ramesses could not find the tomb of Tutankhamun. Alone among the royal tombs of New Kingdom Egypt, his remained undisturbed, sleeping away the antiquity and the Middle Ages, as unknown to the Coptic monks who visited its grander yet gapingly empty

“Carter spent nearly a decade methodically clearing the tomb and overseeing the conservation of the fragile artifacts to prepare them for transport to Cairo. Carter completed a threevolume preliminary report of the tomb’s contents, but died in 1939, the final publication of the tomb unfinished”

Howard Carter’s first inspection of the mummy

FLÂNEUR

GENTLEMANLY SCENT FROM THE CHAP

fellow tombs as it was to the invading armies and hordes of artists and scholars who accompanied Napoleon’s Egyptian misadventure.

In 1323 BCE, Tutankhamun died at the age of 18 (give or take a year) of unknown causes after a brief, nine-year rule. After his death, a seventy-day mummification process began, with the goal of transforming the corpse into a stable physical form. Natron salts desiccated the body and the major organs were removed. Separately wrapped, sealed in miniature gold coffins that resembled the king’s own, these preserved viscera were placed in stone canopic jars, housed within a gilded shrine and protected by statues of four goddesses. Tutankhamun’s dried corpse was wrapped in hundreds of metres of fabric, with the priests carefully delineating each finger and toe (and the penis as an important organ in the afterlife) and placing funerary amulets within each layer of cloth.

Then it was time to place the gold funerary mask – 22 pounds of solid gold adorned with lapis lazuli – over the mummy’s head. The purpose of the mummification process was to create a personalized container where the soul could rest at night; a mummy was essentially a person’s body turned into a statue. The Egyptians believed that their souls

followed the sun god, Re, as he traveled through the heavens and Underworld, and, just as Re visited his corpse, the god Osiris, king of the dead, during the night, so too did a person’s soul visit his or her mummy.

Tutankhamun’s mummy was deposited within a set of three nested coffins, the innermost of solid gold (weighing over 200lb). The coffins were lowered into a stone sarcophagus, surrounded by four gilded wooden shrines, a funerary ensemble that essentially filled the burial chamber of the tomb. As the king had died at such a young age, Tutankhamun’s tomb was not the long series of corridors and rooms that other longer-lived pharaohs had in the Valley of the Kings. The royal workmen only had time to excavate four small rooms to hold the thousands of objects that would be buried with the king, and rapidly completed paintings on two walls of the burial chamber were the tomb’s only parietal decoration.

Once all the funereal panoply, from Tutankhamun’s underwear to his chariots, had been placed in the tomb, the entrance was sealed. The doorways of most of the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings were not hidden from view. Instead, protection was provided by special police

The outer and first inner coffin of Tutankhamun’s three nested coffins

patrols, which mostly succeeded in guarding the tombs until the official plundering around 1050 BCE. The gold in Tutankhamun’s tomb is eloquent testimony to the effectiveness of the desert patrols, at least until the workmen of Ramesses VI built their huts. But even the most vigilant patrols could not prevent all break-ins: the outermost chamber in Tutankhamun’s tomb was robbed twice in antiquity. The first ancient thieves made off with some gold statues and jewellery, but the broken seals at the tomb’s entrance were noticed and disturbed objects put back in place. The second group of robbers appears to have been taken by surprise, a linen scarf with gold rings – robbers’ swag abandoned on the floor of the main room – bearing testimony to the panic of the New Kingdom kleptomaniacs. The thefts likely occurred within a couple of decades of the burial, after which the tomb remained sealed until that exciting November day in 1922.

Howard Carter, originally trained as an artist, made thousands of careful notes and drawings, while English photographer Harry Burton, granted leave from his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, created an exemplary photographic record of each object before and after its removal. In spite of a self-induced scandal resulting from an ill-advised attempt to sell to The Times of London the exclusive rights to press coverage of the tomb, and antagonizing the growing nationalist sentiments of the Egyptian government, Carter continued his work, carrying on after the tragic

death of his patron, Lord Carnarvon, on 5th April 1923. Carter spent nearly a decade methodically clearing the tomb and overseeing the conservation of the fragile artifacts to prepare them for transport to Cairo. Carter completed a three-volume preliminary report of the tomb’s contents but died in 1939, the final publication of the tomb unfinished. That monumental task continues to this day, including exciting new scientific studies and conservation work at the new and permanent home of Tutankhamun’s treasures: the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Discoveries elsewhere in Egypt, including some made by expeditions in which we are engaged (with John as director), reveal that the reign of Tutankhamun was not merely one of lavish treasure and tragic death. Inscriptions in the Eastern Desert reveal the far-ranging activities of one of his Nubian officials, Heqanefer, and inscribed blocks in the Wadi Abbad are testimony to a chapel of Tutankhamun, probably constructed as an aspect of work on a well, to quench the thirst of workmen on a dreaded dry route to the wealth of the gold mines. A stela of Tutankhamun in the Western Desert hints at the functioning of a complex border patrol system. Tragically short though his reign was, and fabulously wealthy his burial, we now have some reason to believe that Tutankhamun’s rule may also have witnessed a robust new approach to control of the southern deserts. n

The unbroken seal on Tut’s tomb as Carter would have found it

THE DADDY OF THE VALLEY

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair Prime Minister, Pharaoh, Daddy – whatever a ruler calls himself, he ends up in one of two categories. The first is the staid monarch, a steady hand and the embodiment of everything his country holds dear. This ruler will listen to his advisors, will never drunkenly tussle with a dissenting voter, nor will he attempt a bacon sandwich in public. In all things, this ruler will act as rashly as a bank manager who has won the pools.

The second is the good time Charlie, the pleasure seeker Rodney, the gay dog Graham. This bloke will as soon stick his folly in a grotto as sit through a cabinet meeting. He’ll gamble and cheat, lie and collect all the fashionable diseases of his day. In short, bury your gold; the revolution will be violent. What unites the two is a drear predictability. Taxes, tariffs, tarts and tailoring; in the great cosmic judgement all will be weighed. Good or bad, rich or poor, all will be found mediocre. In decades and millennia to come, schoolchildren will doodle moustaches and pimples on queen, shah, or tsar alike in the universal verdict: oily tick.

However, once or twice in the lifetime of a civilisation comes a ruler so bonkers as to make the whole damn system worth it. These mavericks shine not through something so vulgar as great deeds or as crass as catastrophic failures – anyone can achieve those. It is a leader’s incomprehensible zeal for niche pastime that marks them out as worthy of study. One such chap lived over 3000 years ago, in the land of Egypt.

Among the hoohah surrounding King Tutankhamun, Henry Cockburn turns his attention to the boy king’s lesser-known but much more eccentric father, the so-called heretic Egyptian King Akhenaten

“To compare Akhenaten to other pharaohs is to compare Ziggy Stardust to a sea of Captain Mainwearings. The apple didn’t so much fall far from the tree as it fell into the bubbling cauldron of Edvard Munch’s ayahuasca”

“We've been making the finest clothing accessories since the 1960s. All items are made by hand here in our workshops. Send us your fabric, we’ll make you something amazing!”

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–

ten sixty sphinx and aLL that The year is 1332 BC, Egypt’s New Kingdom period. Egypt is filthy rich. In a few decades, Ramesses the Great will become the most powerful pharaoh of all time. We are about halfway between the building of the great pyramids of Giza (2600 BC) and Cleopatra’s aspy antics (30 BC). Here comes Tutankhamun. His reign is a nonentity. Through a mixture of luck and happy accident, his tomb will lie undiscovered and unrobbed until 1922, and you know the rest. Howard Carter broke the seal and the whiff of gold would ensure the mediocre Tut would always get top score on Pointless Have a look at his name. That ‘Amun’ refers to Amun-Ra, head of the pantheon. Nothing unusual so far, though do pause to admire those cultures with the chutzpah to name people after gods. Before becoming king, Tutankhamun had a different name: Tutankhaten.

‘Aten?’ I hear you ask, ‘I’ve watched the 1999 masterpiece The Mummy starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz over 75 times, and I’ve never heard of an Aten.’ Dig a little deeper with me, push past old Tut, and prepare to discover one of the ancient world’s true eccentrics. No doubt in recent times he’d have adorned the crowns of Egypt with ear trumpets, promenaded his anteater through Thebes, or slathered his figs with marmite. The man in question is Tutankhamun’s father, Akhenaten.

debrett’s guide to modern mummification Throughout Egyptian history, pharaohs behaved themselves. Not in some boorish, moralistic way –I mean they represented themselves like pharaohs, did what pharaohs do, embodied pharaohhood in all outward appearance. As predictable as a plaque unveiling at the latest carbuncular council building,

A family portrait of Akhenaten and Nefertiti with three of their children

a pharaoh would restore temples, have a few samey statues whipped up and then, that’s a wrap, shuffle off to make way for the next chap. Fancy becoming a female pharaoh like Hatshepsut? You’d better enjoy the wearing of false beards, because false beards are what pharaohs bally well wear. Pharaohs behave.

reexamun your prejudices

See then how Akhenaten represents himself. Take one face that can only be described as ‘horsey’; a belly and buttocks swollen beyond a few nights on the ale; then combine them with narrow shoulders and waist, and little stick limbs. Voila! Not exactly the manly ideal – but then, neither is the effect particularly feminine. To compare him to other pharaohs is to compare Ziggy Stardust to a sea of Captain Mainwearings. The apple didn’t so much fall far from the tree as it fell into the bubbling

cauldron of Edvard Munch’s ayahuasca.

From what affliction did this guy suffer, some ask, to manifest like Richard O’Brien as part-digested by a python? That rather misses the point. Akhenaten’s subjects, too, start to appear in similar bloated and warped magnificence – his wife Nefertiti, for example, otherwise renowned as a classical beauty. It’s a style, a movement, but it feels so out of place, it’s the equivalent of Picasso popping up in the Renaissance. At the same time, scenes of Akhenaten and his family become decidedly lovey-dovey compared to normal pharaonic pursuits. Affection? Hand holding? Kissing? One thing is certain: Akhenaten isn’t behaving.

The answer to all this is that word again, ‘Aten’. When certain chaps need a little meaning in their lives, they join a harmless all-consuming cult. When the god-king of Egypt needs a little meaning in his

Read the whole story of Akhenaten and Nefertiti in the new book by John and Colleen Darnell

life, he creates a harmless all-consuming cult, shuts down everyone else’s harmless all-consuming cults, and forces his yes men to tell him what a good idea it is, at spearpoint.

This god Aten who suddenly comes to prominence, unlike the animal headed gents to whom we are accustomed, is a charming sun disk with many hands that gracefully caress all and sundry in a manner that no right-thinking person could find in the least disturbing. In terms of religious schism, this is no ‘is it blood or is it wine?’ nonsense. This is shut up the temples and start scratching Amun’s name off the walls stuff. The idea that Akhenaten might have been the world’s first monotheist tends to get people all hot and bothered. Suffice it to say it was a pretty radical shift.

our once and future king Here lies the solution to the wonderfully vibrant

and peculiar art style. In condensing religion into the Aten, it became both mother and father to Egypt. Akhenaten’s androgynous, alien look was part of the deal – his due as ‘son’ of the Aten.

Then, like that, it was over. Tutankhamun took control, changed his name, and gradually all that beautiful wackiness of his father was undone. The name of the Aten was replaced with Amun’s, and eventually Akhenaten’s name was expunged from Egyptian records too, an enemy of Egypt and a heretic. Normality, that slave-tyrant beloved of the bourgeoisie, took hold once more. Pharaohs got conventional again.

In a world coated in the residue of such dishwater cretins, let the unique, let the weird, let the peculiar manifest. May our leaders elevate the surreal, the spectacular and the fantastical, may they bare their flabby bodies to the sun. When next you head to the polls, may the Aten’s many-groping hands guide you. n

Akhenaten Museum, Minya, Egypt

Scent from the Stars

Noelle Vaughn looks back at the celebrity scents that preceded today’s merchandise cash-ins by offering perfumes genuinely worn by the stars of the day

Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, Kylie, Beyonce and Britney– it is perhaps easier to list which celebrities haven’t launched their own fragrance. Designed to reflect the personality and style that made them famous, it’s virtually impossible to walk into any store without being bombarded by glossy adverts and bold designs all vying for your attention. You’d be forgiven for thinking that celebrity fragrances are a product of the celebrity obsessed, merchandise-mad modern world. But the great celebrity fragrance battle taking place on every perfume counter in every city in the world is nothing new. In fact, it’s so last century. Literally.

“It was silent star Colleen Moore who was the first celebrity to launch a perfume under her own name. Her huge eyes and mischievous Betty Boop expression catapulted her to international stardom. In 1923 she cut her hair into a boyish bob to win a starring role in the racy film Flaming Youth”

Before the explosion of Hollywood in the 1920s, the perfume houses of the Victorians and Edwardians were operating within the puritanical constraints of the era. Complying with Queen Victoria’s own moral views, floral scents such as lavender, rose or lily of the valley were all that were available to the female market. If you didn’t want to smell like a bouquet of flowers or a walled garden, the options were few. Anything exotic or sensual, or that could in any way be considered ‘sexy’, was considered just as outrageous as wearing make-up; it was immoral, only fit for stage actresses and prostitutes. Accusations of ill repute by daring to wear anything that deviated from the pure scent of a flower meant that perfume houses quite understandably did not venture far from safe virtuous fragrances. They wanted sales, not scandals.

However, after the death of Queen Victoria, the horrors of WWI and the relentless self-sacrifices of the Suffragette movement, the sun rose on an entirely new era. The birth of cinema produced a new heir to an empty throne; goddesses smouldered on the silver screen evoking sensuality, glamour and, most importantly, freedom; capturing the imaginations of young women eagerly seeking exciting and daring role models, worlds apart from their mothers and aunts. Driven by this desire, by the 1920s they would have cut their hair, discarded traditional corsetry and smashed the taboos of smoking and wearing make-up in public.

As early as 1918, Helen Chadwick, an early silent star with the Pathé film company, endorsed Jonteel beauty products and perfumes. But it was silent star Colleen Moore who was the first celebrity to launch a perfume under her own name. Her huge eyes and mischievous Betty Boop expression epitomised the perfect flapper and catapulted her to international stardom. In 1923 she caused a sensation after cutting her long hair into what would become her trademark dark, boyish bob to win a starring role in the racy film Flaming Youth. One of the most coveted and stylish film stars of the silent era, she became a role model to millions; suddenly, barbers were inundated with requests from women wanting to have their hair bobbed. Colleen Moore was the girl everyone wanted to be. Seeing the effect of star influence, the studios caught on to the publicity potential of celebrity endorsements. Colleen collaborated with perfumier Darnee and launched a successful line of fragrances, which the press documented, publishing photos of her in the process of testing perfumes on her wrist. Like the promotional packaging of current celebrity fragrances, such as Nicki Minaj’s Pink Friday, Colleen used strong branding and quirky designs that reflected her image and personality. Her theme was always the shamrock, inspired by her Irish heritage (which some sources suggest was purely fictional for publicity reasons). Fictional or not, it featured on everything in her range. A notable design was a green Bakelite

Shamrock that contained a ‘hard’ perfume, designed to be small enough to slip into a handbag. Other lines included powder compacts, all featuring the trademark shamrock and her signature in green. As the rise of celebrity continued with the growth of Hollywood, perfume houses were quick to realise the marketing potential and engaged celebrities to endorse their fragrances.

In 1932, Greta Garbo inspired Crown Perfumery Co to create the scent Tanglewood Bouquet, and her rival Marlene Dietrich is said to have been the inspiration for Creed’s Angelique Encens, which she herself wore. Long before Jean Paul Gaulthier’s famous perfume bottle based on Madonna’s corseted figure, designer Elsa Schiaparelli launched her perfume Shocking (left). For 1937 it was revolutionary; the bottle was a curvy, female torso based entirely on the physique of the scandalous movie star Mae West. West’s influence did not stop there; in 1943, Rochas launched their deep, sensual fragrance Femme which was also based on her famous curves.

Chanel No 5 was born in the1920s like its most famous blonde advocate, and exploded along with the icon at the height of her fame in the 1950s. Of course, it is remembered most for being the only

thing Marilyn Monroe admitted to wearing in bed. Marilyn also favoured Rose Geranium by Floris; a receipt dated 14th December 1959 shows an order for half a dozen bottles of it to be shipped from the London perfumier and delivered to The Beverly Hills Hotel during the filming of Some Like it Hot.

The inimitable Audrey Hepburn was fond of delicate floral scents and was enamoured with the light, pretty aroma of Creed’s Spring Flower. However, she was rumoured to have wanted her own exclusive perfume, one that no other woman could wear. Conveniently for Audrey, one of her closest friends happened to be the designer Givenchy, who granted her this wish. Apparently, as soon as she smelt the creation, Audrey instantly adopted it as her own, telling Givenchy, “I forbid you to commercialise and sell this fragrance.” Her reaction inspired Givenchy to name it L’Interdit. Designed for her and her alone, its name translates as ‘forbidden’, a nod to the fact that it was

Audrey Hepburn’s favourite scent was Creed’s Spring Flower

deliberately and wholly unavailable to anyone other than Audrey. When it was eventually released in 1957, Audrey was its poster girl.

The 1950s saw the emergence of a new wave of celebrity and with it, a new generation. Scenes of thousands of screaming girls prompted the perfume companies to sign contracts with the latest hottest celebrities, capitalising on an impressionable younger audience now known as ‘teenagers.’ If you thought Justin Bieber and One Direction’s own fragrances were a modern marketing tactic, think again. Elvis Presley’s Teddy Bear perfume was introduced in 1957 by the aptly named Teen-Age Perfumes Inc. Following this, in the 1960s, The Beatles launched their fragrance With The Beatles. Named after their

1963 album, the bottle featured a sticker of each Beatle’s face on the front. What either scent smelt like is not widely documented, but with these once cheap little bottles now selling in auctions for more than some of the top end perfume house fragrances, perhaps it’s worth

checking to see if you still have that bottle of Take That’s 1995 Pray in the attic.

Far from the turn of the century, when racy scents would render you a social outcast, exotic perfumes had gained popularity since the 1920s, championed by the vamps of silent films who had made a career out of being sensual and alluring. From Guerlain’s 1925 fragrance Shalimar to Dana’s Tabu in the 1940s (nicknamed the ‘prostitute’s perfume’ and famously worn by Ava Gardner), the femme fatale was en vogue

None of these, however raunchy, had openly used scandal and controversy for advertising and promotional purposes. The rise of the raunchy scent hit an all time high with the launch of Sophia, inspired by Sophia Loren and launched by Coty in 1980. The advertisement featured three old women peering over disapprovingly. “They say you’re not as innocent as you seem. They say you have a past. They’re right, you do. So do I. Now wear my perfume and let them talk.” Where scandal once discouraged the use of racy perfumes, it was now the sales pitch.

It was during the heady and decadent 1980s that the celebrity fragrance really began gaining ground. After Sophia, several other celebrities launched and endorsed perfumes. But the biggest celebrity perfume was yet to come. In 1991, the iconic movie star Elizabeth Taylor launched White Diamonds. To this day it retains the record for being the biggest selling celebrity fragrance of all time.

From Colleen Moore in the restricted 1920s to Elizabeth Taylor in the more permissive1990s, one thing is for sure: today’s celebrity perfumes are by no means the first, and for as long as celebrity culture is alive and well, they certainly won’t be the last. n

“Far from the turn of the century, when racy scents would render you a social outcast, exotic perfumes had gained popularity since the 1920s, championed by the vamps of silent films who had made a career out of being sensual and alluring. The femme fatale was en vogue”

OF ENGLISH CASTLES AND EGYPTIAN KINGS

On the centenary of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, we visit a castle in Hampshire to meet the great-grandson of the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, who found the tomb with Howard Carter in 1922. We also meet Adam Von Gootkin, who created a special edition of Highclere Castle Gin to mark the centenary

This November, the Tutakhamun Edition of Highclere Castle Gin was released, a collaboration between the 8th Earl of Carnarvon and American distiller Adam von Gootkin. We were invited to Highclere Castle to meet the Earl and find out how this fusion of English gin and ancient Egyptology came about.

Visitors to Highclere Castle’s events and tours may be familiar with the grand entrance, instantly recognisable as the neo-gothic portal where guests are welcomed in Downton Abbey. But this was not an episode of a television series, and I was welcomed at the tradesmen’s entrance. Lord Carnarvon emerged from behind a computer screen, clad in a workaday

outfit in shades of burgundy, complaining about an injury to his back. We adjourned to a small meeting room to discuss gin, cigars, Egyptology and the curse of Tutankhamun.

“I always found most gins either too sharp at the back, or with too many herbs at the front. I wanted ours to be purer and for the alcohol level to give sufficient vapour before you’ve even tasted it, so we pushed the alcohol volume up to 43.5%. For the centenary of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb we produced a new caskflavoured version, to go with our Senetjer Cigars, both packaged in ways reminiscent of what my great-grandfather found in the tomb.”

The first samples of the barrel-aged gin had yet to arrive from the US, where it is bottled, so we zoomed over to New England to ask co-founder Adam Von Gootkin what it tastes like.

“The Tutankhamun edition is Highclere Castle gin aged for two years in 50-year-old Armagnac barrels, Scotch whisky barrels and New American Oak, one after the other. Then we blend them together, so that there’s a bit of France, a bit of Scotland a bit of America in there. The result is

a beautiful, champagne-gold coloured spirit. There are layers of leather, elements of white pepper, the smokiness of the whisky barrels, a touch of vanilla coming from the New American Oak. If you imagine a citrus tart with crème brulee on top, that’s a pretty close description.”

I asked Lord Carnarvon to tell me more about his ancestor, the 5th Earl whose legacy had now resulted in two types of gin and several types of cigar. The Senetjer Cigar comes packaged in a tomb-like box with Egyptian hieroglyps, reflecting both the Castle’s vast collection of Egyptian artefacts and the close association it has with cigars.

During regular weekends in the 5th Earl’s day, visitors to the castle, including Edward VII, would have got through some 200 cigars. The first cigar produced by the estate was suitably named the Edwardian, the result of visits to the tobacco plantations of Nicaragua. The Earl dispelled two common myths: “The best cigars do not come from Cuba, where the manufacturing process is inconsistent. Cigar supplier Davidoff in the US, where they sell the estate’s cigars, has nothing to do with the one on Jermyn Street, where they mostly sell their own brands of cigar, although they do now stock the Edwardian.”

According to the current Earl, much less is known about the character of his great-grandfather

“The idea of a curse on the tomb would have suited the culture of the ancient pharaohs, to prevent looting in the future. The Tutankhamun tomb had been broken into many years before Howard Carter found it, but on that first occasion they were after the oils more than anything else, which the robbers took and then resealed the tomb”

Adam Von Gootkin with a Senetjer Cigar at Highclere Castle

than about his archaeological discoveries with Howard Carter.

“He was basically an Edwardian gentleman adventurer. He was one these chaps who could have had an education from the best schools, but found life much more interesting and educated himself by reading. Naturally trained as one of the most outstanding photographers of his day, he was also fascinated by early motor cars, which were complicated and dangerous at the time. By the time he had pushed both speed and distance in these vehicles, he was ideally suited for the Egyptian adventure.”

As is well known, the 5th Earl made the major archaeological discovery on 4th November 1922 with Howard Carter, then died shortly afterwards on 19th March 1923. He was never to learn what a profound influence his discovery would have on the world, leading 100 years later to the vast construction of a special museum in Cairo to house the collection he unearthed. Although, as his great-grandson pointed out, the building itself may be ready but the collection is yet to be open to the public. “Is this the continuing curse of Tutankhamun, perhaps?”

“No, it’s just problems with construction.”

The current Earl is not a great believer in the legendary curse, citing the fact that Howard

Carter lived a long life for many years after entering Tutankhamun’s tomb, as did nearly all of the workers who helped excavate it.

“My grandfather, the 6th Earl, became very superstitious about the early death of his father in the cause of Egyptology. He himself was a soldier in WWI, stationed in the killing grounds of the Middle East, at one point his horse machine gunned from underneath him.

“The idea of a curse on the tomb would have suited the culture of the ancient pharaohs, to prevent looting in the future. In the case of Tutankhamun, the tomb had been broken into many years before Howard Carter found it, which was why the antechamber had been ransacked. Strangely, on that first occasion they were after the oils more than anything else, which the robbers took and then resealed the tomb. Luck turned out to be on everyone’s side for its future discovery. Rockfall in the area got muddled in with workmen’s huts for Rameses VI’s tomb.”

Is the current Earl ever troubled by superstitious thoughts concerning the tomb and its contents?

“I’m not worried about being around the Valley of the Kings or in Tutankhamun’s tomb –I’ve been inside it many times. Many years ago I was doing a documentary for the British Museum on one of the very deep tombs of the nobles. When it

A butler sparks up Lord Carnarvon’s cigar in the Smoking Room at Highclere Castle

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had been built they were concerned about robbery and had dug very deep shafts. I was lowered on a ropeladder down a very narrow shaft, and bits of it broke when I had nearly reached the bottom. My safety rope was attached to a 20-stone Arab gentleman – if he’d fallen on top of me I’d have been dead anyway! When I came back up, every bit of me was covered in red dust. I’ve also taken balloon rides in Egypt, the first time landing bang in the middle of a farmer’s field with Egyptian power lines everywhere. So if there’s a curse, it’s had plenty of opportunities to get me.”

So how did a collaboration on an English gin, between the custodian of an English castle and an American distiller, come about? Adam von Gootkin, as we discovered on a call to his New England office, is not as American as he sounds.

“My family goes back to the 1800s from the UK. We had a very large distillery here in New England, and during Prohibition my grandfather and great-grandfather were very active in Connecticut. We had two steamship ferry boats and a rather infamous Victorian hotel on the banks of the Connecticut River that served as a famous speakeasy during the Prohibition era. In my twenties I built the first distillery for many decades here in Connecticut. The brand we made was very successful locally but I wanted to do a brand that was steeped in history and authenticity, but with global appeal. I wanted to connect with my family history in England and spend as much time there as I could.

“The British country house is a very unique dynamic that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the

world. The nearest thing you might find to it here in the US is in the estates of the deep south. The men who ran those estates had a more refined lifestyle than others, although not the level of education of their British counterparts. Some of my friends are still influenced by that slightly louche southern gentleman aesthetic. We meet at my friend’s New England country house, smoking cigars in New & Lingwood dressing gowns.

“What I definitely didn’t want to do was to stick a Downton Abbey label on any old gin and sell as much as we could. I wanted the gin to reflect the way the residents of Highclere Castle genuinely live, putting on black tie for dinner and so forth. In fact Julian Fellowes, when he wrote Downton Abbey, based it partly on the stories of how the folk who live at the castle still live today.

“We’re going to make a Highclere English whisky at some point, as I’m a big fan of brown spirits, since the castle already produces tons and tons of barley. As to how to consume our gin, I’m always trying to recommend people drinking Highclere Castle Gin on the rocks with an orange wedge, and the new edition will work just as well, or even as a neat sipper, with a nice cigar on a chilly winter’s day by the fireplace.”

“As to the cigar, I wanted it to have a sense of ancient holiness to it, so we named it the Senetjer, the ancient Egyptian word for incense. The Egyptians didn’t smoke tobacco, but they would have placed incense on a tray and inhaled it.” n www.highclerecastlegin.com

“What I didn’t want to do was to stick a Downton Abbey label on any old gin and sell as much as we could. I wanted the gin to reflect the way the residents of Highclere Castle genuinely live, putting on black tie for dinner and so forth. In fact when Julian Fellowes wrote Downton Abbey, he based it partly on how the folk at the castle still live today ”

The tomb-like box of Senetjer Cigars

FROM THE ARCTIC TO THE AMAZON

Gustav Temple meets John Blashford-Snell, whose adventures have taken him across all seven continents, as well as into the heartlands of Britain to help the nation’s underprivileged. John recounted some of the tales from his new book, From Utmost East to Utmost West: My Life of Exploration and Adventure

You had a special travel suit adapted by Norton & Sons. Could you explain the details?

It was to suit all seasons, for use in the tropics, the cold and the wet. I’ve still got it and it’s still going strong. It has zips so you can take off the sleeves and turn the trousers into shorts, and lots of

secret pockets to hide your money. I wore it in the Arctic and the hot clammy tropics of the Amazon.

Tell me about your unusual encounter with Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia in 1964. Well, my godfather had looked after Haile Selassie during the war, when the Italians invaded Ethiopia

and he was exiled to Britain. When I was posted to Sandhurst as an instructor and put in charge of adventure training, I thought a wonderful place to visit would be Ethiopia. My godfather wrote to Haile Selassie to see whether we’d be received. The Emperor replied and said, ‘Certainly. He must come out here and we will look after him.’

Ethiopia had just become the centre for African unity and we had a superb expedition, largely on behalf of the Natural History Museum. Haile Selassie did look after us and we had some wonderful meetings with him. We were told that imperial protocol demanded we had to bow to him three times on the red carpet; at the door, on the carpet and finally at the throne, and that

“We were told that we had to bow to Haile Selassie three times on the red carpet; at the door, on the carpet and finally at the throne, and that the only way to do it was to bow low and press your forehead on the carpet, then you can see between your legs and spot the lions lurking about behind you”

Presenting Lulette to Emperor Haile Selassie in Addis Ababa, 1968

the only way to do it was to bow low and press your forehead on the carpet. I said, that’s a bit obsequious, isn’t it?

They said, no, no, no. If you bow like that you can see between your legs and spot the lions lurking about behind you. He had these pet lions roaming around the throne room. Afterwards he took us out into his garden to show us a beautiful pair of cheetahs. There’s a photograph by Chris Bonnington of one of the cheetahs looking straight at one of our lady members, who’s wearing a dress with a cheetah pattern on it!

Sounds as terrifying as meeting Haile Selassie. There was something you said at the time about meeting him, “The eyes of the nearest being to a living god I had ever met seemed to bore into mine. He said nothing more but simply nodded, put out his thin hand and shook mine with a noticeably

firm grip.” Did you actually believe you had met someone beyond the human realm, or were you just speaking figuratively?

He had a godlike appearance. He definitely filled you with awe when you were talking to him, and I think a lot of great men have this. He spoke in a very quiet voice; he wasn’t bombastic or pompous. It was almost like a hearing a voice coming down from heaven.

How did you first meet that other great explorer, Sir Ranulph Fiennes?

He came into my office in the Ministry of Defence when I was extremely busy and said, ‘Excuse me sir, I want to go on an expedition.’ So I said, you’ve got five minutes to tell me about it. Well, I was still listening to him an hour later. His plan was to go up the Nile in a hovercraft and he’d found a company that made small hovercrafts that would lend him two of them. I ended up helping him raise the

Cheetah meets cheetah, photo by Chris Bonnington

funds, because he had such a rare zest about him that I thought he was worth backing.

Although you both left the army to become explorers, Fiennes seems much keener than you to be the first in each of his endeavours, whereas you’re quoted as saying “I have no particular desire to conquer a peak or to be the first man to complete some particular feat.”

I’m not really into being the first and second of anything. If you asked me to climb Everest, as an engineer I’d probably say I’d build a scaffold up the side. I’m really more interested in the conservation side; what we can do to help the people, the flora

“Genghis Khan is supposed to be buried with several tons of silver, very tempting to treasure hunters and so on. There have been a number of expeditions to find it, primarily Japanese, but no-one has managed to locate the site”

Opening a new well near Tenta, Ethiopian Highlands in 2005

and fauna and so on. On our expeditions we always try and help the local people, usually with medical or dental aid; they in turn help us and the results help everybody.

It sounds as though you have an equal interest in concrete jungles as well as tropical jungles, as in helping the people, particularly the youth, of this country.

My father was an army chaplain who ran various youth clubs and boxing clubs. When I retired from the army I was asked if I’d help in Liverpool, where they were trying to build a centre for underprivileged youngsters. They managed to get hold of a large building belonging to the council

and they called it The Door. We managed to raise two-and-a-half million quid, which went on the property itself and refurbishing it. It became a huge success; around 50,000 young men and women have been through it, where they get help with homelessness, work training, their rights and so on.

So these days are you still planning the next expedition abroad?

Well I was, but of course the pandemic put a stop to it. In two weeks’ time I’m leaving for the first time in two years, though I would have been on expeditions non-stop. We were due to go to Mongolia this year but Mr. Putin stopped that. He didn’t want us going anywhere near the Russian border. We’re

With ‘lucky’ Jersey flag among the Wiwa in Northern Colombia

now planning to go next year and hoping that Mr. Putin won’t interfere this time. When I first went to Mongolia the Russians were occupying it. Then they withdrew under Gorbachev, and Mongolia became an independent republic.

Would it please you to be the first man to discover the tomb of Genghis Khan?

I think it’s best left alone. The Mongolians don’t want it interfered with; they regard it as a sacred place, and of course no-one’s ever found where the tomb is. Genghis Khan is supposed to be buried with several tons of silver, very tempting to treasure hunters. There have been a number of expeditions to find it, primarily Japanese, but no-one’s managed to locate the site.

“I have another theory that we were seeing something that could have happened many years ago, rather like a ghost. I’m very interested in the supernatural, so I’ve often wondered whether the Loch Ness Monster could be an image of something that once did exist but is no longer there”

Lessons on the grand piano brought from England to Masakenari

I wondered about your belief in the supernatural. Your studies of the Loch Ness Monster, while being largely scientific, also seemed to indulge in the myth of the monster. Where do you draw the line between genuine scientific exploration and myth-seeking?

We did head up quite a lot of scientific work on the Loch Ness Monster. It was inconclusive, because we did find evidence that there were objects moving around the depths of the Loch, and you can go down to nearly 1,000 feet of water. One of the things that we discovered was that there was a large number of Arctic charr (a coldwater fish) living at great depths, so there was the possibility of a food chain that some large creature could have lived on. In the end, I tended to believe that what the so-called monster could have been was a sturgeon. It could have got into the Loch through the various canals that join it from the sea. We saw objects on sonar coming up from great depths that were definitely animate, but we never saw any living thing actually appear on the surface. Loch Ness is rather like dark coffee and visibility is appalling.

But surely a sturgeon wouldn’t have the scale of the creatures people claim to have seen on the Loch, would it?

I think possibly there’s a lot of exaggeration when people see movement in lochs. You’ve only got to see half a dozen otters swimming one behind the other, to get the impression of something with bumps sticking out of the water. Seals also sometimes get in, and flying salmon.

I have another theory that we were seeing something that could have happened many years ago, rather like a ghost. I’m very interested in the supernatural, and I’ve had one or two experiences of meeting unexplained things in strange places. So I’ve often wondered whether the Loch Ness Monster could be an image of something that once did exist but is no longer there.

So have these supernatural experiences generally been on your travels to exotic lands?

Actually, most of them have been in Britain. Once I stayed the night at a farm in Wiltshire we were using as a base for the Scientific Exploration Society. When I arrived, late at night, the owners were out for the night and had left the key in the letterbox for me, and I let myself in. There was

a bottle of whisky on the table and a note saying ‘Welcome, use the bedroom at the end of the corridor, see you in the morning.’

So I had a sip of whisky and read the paper for a bit. I’d just flown back from America and my time zone was completely out. Then I heard this coughing in the room above the kitchen, and I thought, blimey, I’ve disturbed the son of the house. Anyway, I went to bed and in the morning ran myself a hot bath. There was a glass door to the bathroom. I heard the boy getting up and saw him walk past the glass door. I said ‘Good morning, Michael’ and got no reply, although he was a quiet sort of chap. Then I heard him clump up and down the stairs a few times.

When I came downstairs in the morning, my hosts had arrived back. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, ‘I disturbed Michael last night.’

They gave me a funny look and said, ‘Michael hasn’t been here for six weeks.’

The other occasion was in my homeplace of Jersey, where I was clearing out some tunnels made by the Germans during the War. We used two of the quarry workers who’d been made to dig the tunnels under the Gestapo. There was a place deep in one of the tunnels, where there seemed to be a false wall. I used a dousing technique to test it, and I reckoned that there was a hidden tunnel behind it. I found an air shaft and another tunnel that seemed to lead in this direction. So with these two chaps we crawled through the air shaft and into what turned out to be another tunnel.

We crawled back out to the fresh air, and then I realised I’d left something inside the tunnel, so I told the two quarry workers to meet me at the pub. There was a soldier positioned at the door, to make sure everyone who went in came out again. When I’d got my stuff I said to the soldier on the door, alright, you can lock up now. Where are the two quarry workers?

He said, “There’s only one, sir.” When I got to the pub there was indeed only one quarry worker there, and I asked him where his colleague was.

“Oh, he couldn’t make it today,” he said, “He couldn’t get away from work.”

Yet I knew I’d been in those tunnels with two men, talking to them all day. n

From Utmost East to Utmost West: My Life of Exploration and Adventure by John BlashfordSnell is Published by Bradt Guides

AN AFRICAN ADVENTURE

Chris Sullivan travels to Kenya to observe big game, sleep under the stars, meet Masai tribesmen and travel by balloon, jeep, camel and horseback

Imust have been just six years old when I first saw Stewart Grainger on the BBC Saturday afternoon film matinee, as big game hunter/ adventurer Allan Quatermain chasing around Africa in King Solomon’s Mines (1950). Since then, for decade after decade, I’ve positively yearned to follow in his footsteps to suck in the equatorial air, see the Big Five and just smell the great Dark Continent.

After leaving Heathrow on the Air Kenya Airways flight to Nairobi, we transferred from Wilson airport in an 8-seater private plane, arriving after a mere 90 minutes at Rusinga Lodge on Rusinga Island, slap bang in the middle of Lake Victoria. I had brought an ensemble of khaki shorts with matching multi-pocketed waistcoat, floppy Boonie hat, 1950s Aertex top, rugged work boots, knee high

“Lying there looking at the Milky Way, which felt so close you felt you could grab a star and use it as a lamp, against the serenade of the bass roar of hippo, the cackle of hyena and the incessant chatter of monkeys, I’ve since realised that this was one of the most unforgettable moments of my life”

khaki socks, Rayban Aviators and the obligatory binoculars casually hanging from the neck. This was my notion of ‘fitting in’.

By 9am we were hurtling in a speedboat across the tepid waters of Lake Victoria; at 250 miles long it is the world’s second biggest lake, while fishermen in their dhows, carved from a single tree with sails made from sack cloth, waved and laughed at yet another bunch of crazy westerners in such a mad mad, mad rush. Our destination was the Ruma National Park, just thirty minutes on the other side of the Lake. Transferring to a grungy old Land Rover, we glimpsed our first large mammal of the trip: a magnificent Jackson’s Hartebeest, followed by a family of Rothschild’s giraffe, only lifting their heads when a herd of impala went bounding past them, followed by another gang of gazelle. Needless to say, I was in heaven.

On the way back to the lodge, we stopped to enjoy a vodka and tonic anchored off Bird Island, a twitcher’s paradise full of cormorants, pelicans, egrets, herons, storks, spoonbills, while, on the rocks

below, voracious four-foot monitor lizards sloped around waiting to nick an egg. Suitably refreshed, it was time to get on the plane to our next lodge.

Passing through the Aberdare mountains, past the imposing snow-capped Mount Kenya and the endless Rift Valley, the low flying plane followed vast herds of zebra while families of giraffes and elephants looked on, until we landed at Sosian, an old style colonial building straight out of an H. Rider Haggard novel, with an expansive dining room, billiard room, spacious lounge, huge verandah and a swimming pool.

First on the day’s itinerary was the camel safari. Not my favourite animals in the world, I bagged the youngest of the herd, who seemed to believe he was destined for better things than carrying the likes of me around. After the fifth occasion of the blighter sitting down and refusing to get back up, we both decided to part company and walk. In the Euaso Narok River I saw a pair of hippos, a European white stork, cormorants, herons, curlews, crazy looking crowned hornbills and a pair of African fish

The Mukotini bed at Loisaba, set on Land Rover wheels

eagles. Breakfast again was in the bush, cooked on the side of the river and served with of a brace of the finest Blood Marys I have ever tasted.

On our next journey, on horseback, we passed zebras, reticulated giraffe, mongoose and even a striped hyena, and coming a little too close to a herd of elephants, one of whom made a mock charge at our group, causing the horses to bolt and two novice riders to be thrown to the ground. My steed bolted and, after clearing a few hedges I managed to pull the beast back to order. The incident was a potent reminder that the African bush is not a theme park.

Next stop on the busy itinerary was a safari by jeep to a large watering hole on a plateau 6,000 feet above sea level, where we were assured we would see the mighty elephant. On the way we saw impala, waterbuck, Thomson’s Gazelle, zebra and giraffe, until we reached the top at dusk, to find Sosian manager Steve Carey and wife Annabelle waiting for us behind a miniature bar stocked with all manner of drinks next to a roaring log fire. Sipping a Bombay Sapphire and tonic was a moment straight

out of King Solomon’s Mines, especially when a large family of elephants walked up to the watering hole for their drink.

The next morning, a thrilling 45 minutes’ drive took us to Loisaba, situated on 61,000 acres of private game ranch on a plateau perched perilously on the mighty escarpment overlooking Lakipia, an empty plain that reaches all the way to Mount Kenya some 100 miles away. My ‘room’ was one of Loisaba’s renowned Masai-managed Koija Star beds, 45 minutes away from the lodge, among a kopje of rocks in one of the Eastern Valleys, overlooking the Kiboko Dam and deep in the bush. Slap bang on the Equator, and some 6,000 feet above sea level, the star beds sit on 15-foot acacia stilts, without gas, electricity or hot water. The bed, or ‘Mukoteni’, is covered in netting and built on Land Rover wheels, so it can be wheeled out from under the thatched roof to sleep under the stars while listening to the cacophony of noises supplied by hippos, hyena, wild dogs, elephants and even the odd leopard. After dinner I chatted to the Masai while two of the tribe

Young Masai perform vertical jumps to try and attract a young lady

played wooden flute-like instruments and sang music that I could only describe as jazz – akin to Miles Davis’ A Kind of Blue or John Coltrane, full of minor fifths and sevenths and gentle harmonies. And then I went to bed.

Lying there looking at the Milky Way, which felt so close you felt you could grab a star and use it as a lamp, against the serenade of the bass roar of hippo, the cackle of hyena and the incessant chatter of monkeys, I’ve since realised that this was one of the most unforgettable moments of my life.

After dropping off my kit at Loisaba, it was time for another game drive. Our guide and driver were Soloman, another Samburu Masai who, decked out in the full regalia, was not only a total gent but, as I soon realized, what he didn’t know about the local game and the surrounding area was not worth knowing. Driving through the flat orange soiled savannah, passing football sized lumps of poo and bare, sculptural trees, it isn’t hard to follow the path of an 11-foot, 13,000-pound Loxodonta africana or African elephant but, try as we might, we couldn’t

find any of the blighters. Yet we did see almost everything else: herds of zebra, ibis, eagles and a wart hog, while a pair of giraffes allowed us to get so close we could fully realise just how tall they are, which is about 18 feet, while their tongues are petrol blue and the size of a rabbit. We finally saw a lioness lazing under a tree with her two cubs, exactly the same color as the bush. If she hadn’t waved her tail I would have been none the wiser. But what you see here is how nature so miraculously works.

That afternoon we were offered a trip in a hot air balloon. Loisaba’s resident red balloonist Michael McGrath will thrill you with the experience of a lifetime, as the wind gently blows you over the 61,000-acre Laikipia plateau. As the balloon descended some 900 feet per minute to what seems like striking distance of extended families of terracotta-red elephants, the feisty males shook their heads in angry disbelief, while unsettled mothers grabbed their offspring to rush them away from this massive belching scarlet beast.

A few hours before sunset I visited Koija to

What do these Masai children know that we don’t, to make them look so happy?

watch their eligible young men dance and sing in their finery, in an effort to attract a young lady. They then threw down the gauntlet to see who could perform the highest vertical jump, while teenage girls giggled in anticipation. It reminded me of my gang and I strutting our soul moves in front of the local chicks back in the day, the big difference being that the Masai are infinitely better attired. I visited the little huts they lived in, hearing how difficult it is for them to survive in the 21st Century, and bought some of the amazing handcrafted jewellery and artefacts that keep them going.

I then traveled to the Liwa National Park, home of Will Craig, whose mother Delia bequeathed the land as a breeding ground for rhino to stock other sanctuaries around the world, and whose dogged wildlife conservation is responsible for restocking the area with a bewildering cornucopia of species. “We also put as much money as we can from tourism back into the community,” said Craig. “We have set up three schools, nine nurseries and a clinic that helped 7,000 victims of Aids.” A massive

We certainly will come again, thank you

achievement, such activity is only possible because of the tourist buck. Our safari there, again led by Samburu Masai, fulfilled my every dream and ticked every last box on an African adventure.

For tailor-made packages to Kenya: www.rainbowtours.co.uk

Lodges and Accommodation: www.rusinga.com www.sosian.com www.loisaba.com www.lewawilderness.com www.tamarind.co.ke www.wasini.com

Getting There

Kenya Airlines and Virgin Atlantic fly direct to Jomo Kenyatta Airport, Nairobi. Or visit www.trailfinders.com who will plan your whole trip for you. n

MOTORING

GOODWOOD REVIVAL

Goodwood Revival 2022

Actuarius finds his senses heightened and his ears ringing at this year’s unmissable festival of vintage motor racing

“Immense Ford Galaxies, a symphony of V8 grunt and chrome, bludgeon their way to the front along the straights, while Minis trail in their wake, relying on front wheel drive tenacity to keep in touch around the corners. Ford Cortinas, BMWs and Alfa Romeos dance their way around the circuit as best they can. Everyone respects the history of the cars they are racing, but everyone wants to win”

The roots of Goodwood Motor Circuit, nestling between the South Downs and quaintly charming Chichester, can be traced back to RAF Westhampnett, a satellite airfield for nearby Tangmere, built on the Duke of Richmond’s land near Goodwood House. Its potential for becoming a racing circuit was recognised by 610 Squadron pilot Tony Gaze while stationed there, when he suggested adopting the perimeter track as a replacement for the irretrievably damaged Brooklands, whose banking had been sacrificed for the sake of wartime safety.

Opened in 1948, Goodwood became hugely popular but, in 1966, racing ceased due to safety concerns regarding ever rising speeds. Gentle decay took hold and the circuit became a ramshackle and neglected artefact by the 1990s. However, after the success of the Goodwood Festival of Speed in 1998, the track was restored and the annual Revival meeting launched by Lord March. Spared the safety requirements that necessarily blight modern circuits, there was an opportunity to replicate the experience of racing in the past.

The vintage fairground in the shopping village outside the circuit entrance perhaps best encapsulates the surreal uber-fancy dress party

atmosphere that is unique to Goodwood Revival. A little too knowing, a tad too ‘am dram’ truly to transport you back to the 1940s-1960s, instead you feel like you are a part of a very special celebration of those times. They were marked in 2022 with a parade for Ferrari’s 75th birthday, and a demonstration of the cars Graham Hill raced, marking the 60th anniversary of his first F1 title, led by Damon Hill, former F1 champion and Chap cover star.

Those arriving early at the circuit gates were welcomed by the dawn patrol of Spitfires flying overhead while the low sun dried the dew off the grass. The bustling, well-dressed crowd quickly built, moving among millions of pounds worth of cars in the paddock and aircraft parked on the infield, coffee and bacon sandwiches eagerly consumed as the distant roar of a warming engine occasionally intruded, building an anticipation for the thrills to come. The classes that contest the different trophies and cups throughout the meeting provide a balanced and entertaining selection of cars from the circuit’s heyday. Pre-war voiturettes race for the Goodwood Trophy, their presence at the Revival recognising the role they played in club racing during the late 40s and early 50s, being

A Ferrari 63 bodied 250 GTO heads out to the circuit for the Graham Hill Celebration; Lord March is on the right

the only cars generally available at the cease of hostilities. This year they were joined on track by the first new-build ‘continuation’ BRM. Designed in 1954 to take on the Italians, it was difficult to drive and unreliable in period, but the 1.5 litre supercharged V16 remains a jewel among engines. Typically this one retired early, but the sound from the open exhausts, an all pervading urgent and rasping howl, was uniquely intoxicating; a highlight of the meeting despite its failure to finish the race.

Sports racers from the 1950s form the Revival’s core. Jaguar C Types and D types, Ferraris and Maseratis are brought to life here in vivid colour and sound. The drivers, sawing away at the steering wheels as the cars dynamically transition through corners, constantly balance on a knifeedge between adhesion and disaster, providing a dramatic counterpoint to the anodyne restrained composure of 21st century racers. The 1960s saloons competing in the St Marys Trophy arguably provide the most fun. Immense Ford Galaxies, a symphony of V8 grunt and chrome, invariably bludgeon their way to the front along the straights,

while Minis trail in their wake, relying on front wheel drive tenacity to keep in touch around the corners. Somewhere between them, Ford Cortinas, BMWs and Alfa Romeos dance their way around the circuit as best they can. Everyone respects the history of the cars they are racing, but everyone wants to win.

Delicate F1 single-seaters of the 1.5 litre era and Formula Juniors appeal to the purist’s sensibilities, extracting speed from subtlety and precision. Andy Middlehurst once more lifted the Glover Trophy in the former category, driving the sublime minimalist Lotus 25, iconic as Chapman’s monocoque pioneer. At the opposite end of the scale, the Whitsun Trophy sees thunderous Can Am cars lock horns, while monstrous fat-tyred V8s, the noise being felt in the chest as much as in the ears, provide a heavy metal contrast to the F1 string quartet.

The Revival’s headline act is the RAC TT for 1960s GT and prototype cars, newly bolstered by the Stirling Moss Memorial Trophy, created to lure more esoteric examples out on to the tarmac. These represent an apogee of car design and

Damon Hill at the wheel of a BRM driven by his dad at Goodwood in 1962

Around 150 Austin 7s on track to celebrate the centenary of the car

include the brutish short-coupled Cobra, the toned and elegant E-Type and the diminutive Porsche 904. Charismatic, beautiful and fast: it’s no wonder this is a favourite among spectators. Jenson Button and Harrison Newey were set to take a dominant victory in Adrian Newey’s Lightweight E-Type, but mechanical failure sidelined them after the driver change. Only at Goodwood will you see an F1 world champion driving a car owned by motor sport’s pre-eminent designer. After the E-Type’s exit, the Cobras of Bill Shepherd and Brendon O’Brien took up the battle for the lead, with Gordon Sheddon and Andrew Smith eventually taking the win for O’Brien.

If you have an interest in motor racing, social history or the vintage scene, a visit to the Revival is a must. At some point during the weekend, if you’re lucky, you will be stood in bright sunshine next to a couple in tweeds and twinset as a Maserati 250F flashes past in a drift, or possibly watching a C-Type heading towards you at dusk with headlights glowing, and for that moment you will truly be transported back in time. n

A fleet of Maseratis and Ferraris

Ferrari 250 SWB and GTO

Enzo Ferrari, in typically idiosyncratic style, identified his cars through a number signifying the capacity of a single cylinder in the engine followed by a model name (although being Ferrari, inevitably there are exceptions). Due to this, there have been quite a few Ferrari 250s without much in common between them, from straight 4 racers to V12 road cars. However, two examples of the breed are not only closely related but stand out even among their remarkable siblings –the SWB and GTO.

The start of this particular line was the 250GT of 1956, a V12 two-seat Berlinetta which combined elegant styling with the kind of performance that allowed you to breakfast in Paris and lunch in Cannes. Of course it took to the racetracks that led to the competition focussed 250 Tour de France (TdeF). After some success this was superseded by the more nimble and powerful 250 Short Wheel Base (SWB). Introduced in 1959, the 250 SWB is quite possibly the most beautiful car ever built. Exquisitely tailored by car styling doyen ‘Pinin’ Farina, even he was having a particularly good day when he penned this masterpiece. Perfectly balanced with lithe purposeful haunches and a subtle tension to the top lines of the wings, the windscreen and side windows sit in perfect proportion on top, the roof sweeping down to the tail with a rare grace. The subtly angled ‘shark mouth’ nose menaces while avoiding overt aggression. As if this wasn’t enough, the SWB raised its stock still further by winning numerous races, including the TT at Goodwood in 1960 and 61, driven by Stirling Moss, as well as in its class at Le Mans.

An improving opposition drove the need for an even more extreme variant. This would emerge in 1962 as the near mythical 250 Gran Tourismo Omologato (GTO). Being lower than the SWB, with bodywork wrapped more tightly about the underpinnings, the aesthetics of the GTO are perhaps a little bit more awkward, but along with even more power this ensured a continuation of Ferrari’s run of high profile wins. Class wins at Le Mans again were joined by victory in the TT at Goodwood three years running, with Innes Ireland and Graham Hill at the wheel. Three examples were built with the notchback ’63 bodywork but all were fast, well balanced and exist as the ultimate expression of the front engined GT that could be driven to and from a race. They are recognised as the most desirable Ferraris ever built, which goes some way to explaining the price tag of circa £40 million.

I was fortunate enough to ride in the passenger seat of Sir Paul Vestey’s GTO around Goodwood many years ago. The seating was low but comfortable, the roomy cabin sparsely trimmed in black quilted leather, delicate chassis tubes left naked within the footwell and under the dash. Corners were taken in effortless drifts as the melodious V12 song filled the cabin, and surprisingly effective brakes tested the 4-point harness. We were passed by Lord March himself in a mid-engined Lola, but I wouldn’t have swapped to the faster car for anything. Ferraris speak to the heart and, at that particular point in my life, charging through St Marys, I was deep in the middle of a profoundly personal conversation.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: DAVID CLAYTON

DAVID CLAYTON

During Steptoe and Son’s eight seasons, which ran between 1962 and 1974, Wilfrid Brambell was one of the most famous faces in Britain. At its peak, audiences approaching 30 million watched his performance as the disgusting rag-and-bone man Albert who lived to

ruin the dreams of sophistication of his son Harold (played by Harry H. Corbett.) After playing Paul McCartney’s grandfather in A Hard Day’s Night (1964), he was also quite something in America too. David Clayton has written a new biography of Brambell, You Dirty Old Man! (The History Press, £20).

Author Interview

“I don’t think anyone believed that he had a valet living with him in this small flat – although when they went back to the flat after the funeral, there was a big cardboard cut-out of Wilfrid there, which they thought was a bit unusual. We don’t know what happened to Yussof”

Ed Needham meets David Clayton, author of the first biography of Steptoe pere Wilfrid Brambell www.strong-words.co.uk

CHAP: Wilfrid Brambell is a rather forgotten figure these days – what led you to write about him?

CLAYTON: I used to watch Steptoe and Son at my granddad’s in the early seventies and remember howling with laughter at it. I loved both characters, but there was just something about Wilfrid Brambell. I was amazed as I was going through his career just how much he had done. His nickname was ‘Old Neverstop’ and it is true, he took anything and everything. There were no airs or graces, and it wasn’t just for money, because he had a decent amount stashed away. I think he just always enjoyed doing something.

CHAP: Why was Steptoe and Son the biggest thing on television in its day?

CLAYTON: Lots of people have theories, but the one that everyone should remember was that the writing was fantastic, the actors were amazing, the sets were brilliant and it came along at a time when it spoke to people in the street. It was two rag-andbone men trying to survive, and that instantly hit with the British public because it was something

everyone could relate to. The early sixties through to the early seventies wasn’t a particularly buoyant time for the country.

CHAP: You are quite adamant that this myth that Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H. Corbett couldn’t stand each other is entirely false. Where did that story come from and how has it endured?

CLAYTON: I think it was a good narrative for a number of documentaries and articles, because it would be quite fascinating if two actors who portrayed father and son really did detest each other. It gives an interesting backstory to how they made the show so successful, if in real life they couldn’t stand the sight of each other. I couldn’t believe it was true because of the warmth between them in a lot of episodes, whether it is Harry giving up and realising he is never going to get away or

his dad’s manipulative behaviour. There are some really genuine little moments. Getting writers Ray (Galton) and Alan (Simpson) on board was important, because who is going to know better than those two? Like anybody else, they had little disagreements or frustrations, but they respected each other completely and it was a load of rubbish that they didn’t like each other.

CHAP: You say that autograph hunters would fail to spot Wilfrid when he came out of the BBC studios after filming Steptoe and Son because he dressed so impeccably – where did this exquisite dress sense come from?

CLAYTON: I think he was quite a dandy. He always enjoyed dressing well and speaking posh. That might have partly been because he came from Ireland, and for whatever reason thought he’d get more work if he was English. As he was able to afford it, his clothes got better and better, and I think he enjoyed that contrast of putting a lot of distance between the ‘dirty old man’ and who he really was. He probably even enjoyed not being noticed or shocking people just by being totally

“He was quite fashionable – whatever was going and of the day. There’s a picture of him outside, perhaps in Carnaby Street, and he has a mustard jumper on with shorts, high socks and brogues –he had a flamboyant side to him, for sure”

the opposite, whereas Harry H Corbett was quite scruffy and generally looked the same off set.

CHAP: What sort of things would one have found in his wardrobe?

CLAYTON: Savile Row suits, for sure. He was quite fashionable – whatever was going and of the day. There’s a picture of him outside, perhaps in Carnaby Street, and he has a mustard jumper on with shorts, high socks and brogues – he had a flamboyant side to him, for sure. As a kid they used to think he was a little girl, and he was very close to his mother because she used to put him on stage and play the piano back in Ireland, so maybe he just got used to wearing smart clothes that caught people’s attention from an early age.

CHAP: At one point he went off to America, believing he was going to be a big star on Broadway, but his show Kelly closed after just one night. How did that affect him?

CLAYTON: Not at all, really. He was over there for six months while they were doing try-outs in different cities as a build-up to Broadway, and he experienced mild hysteria from Beatles fans

and had become a celebrity in America because the Beatles were huge everywhere. But his first love was the stage, and a major part in a show on Broadway was too good to turn down, so it was maybe scratching an itch and seeing what the life was like. Off he went, gave it a try, and by the end he was exhausted, so I think he wasn’t that bothered when it closed. It wasn’t his fault. It was very poorly written and badly produced, and he was one of the few that came out with any credit. The actress Anita Gillette said it was “a bad idea gone wrong.”

CHAP: Wilfrid was also rather partial to neat gin – a rather Victorian taste. How would you characterise his relationship with alcohol?

CLAYTON: He was what we’d probably call a high-functioning alcoholic. He was a heavy drinker, probably all through the Steptoe series and certainly later in life. I don’t want to say it got to unmanageable levels; there were times when it drifted over into his professional life and affected his performances, but I don’t think he did too badly overall.

CHAP: He was the BBC’s highest paid star for many years, but it’s unusual to find such a huge celebrity with so little interest in the sort of showbizzy places that throw open their doors to such people. Why did that side of success appeal so little?

CLAYTON: He was a very private person and, given that what had happened to him when he was arrested – or entrapped – by the police in a Shepherd’s Bush toilet (in 1962, Brambell received a conditional discharge for ‘persistent importuning’) had almost ended his career, he thought he’d live his life out of the public eye as much as he could. That is one for people to make their own minds up on, whether he was soliciting or was just a happy drunk who smiled and said hello to people, but it gave him such a shock to think it was all going to be taken away from him, just when he’d finally made it. It was a stigma to be a gay actor, and ambiguity was better than being open.

CHAP: He also had this Malaysian ‘valet’ called Yussof – who was he?

CLAYTON: I’ve no doubt he was his partner and he obviously met him when he was overseas, but it

was very difficult to find out very much about Yussof at all. I don’t think anyone believed that he had a valet living with him in this small flat – although when they went back to the flat after the funeral, there was a big cardboard cut-out of Wilfrid there, which they thought was a bit unusual. We don’t know what happened to Yussof.

CHAP: What would you have liked to talk to Brambell about, given the chance?

CLAYTON: Wilfrid spent two years thinking he had a son, which turned out to be the lodger’s. His wife had been seeing a New Zealand student while he was out working and had a baby which Wilfrid thought was his, and I think that destroyed him. And then you have Harry H. Corbett, who didn’t really have a father figure. He was born in India and raised in Manchester by his grandparents, and – OK they were just playing a part, but to me it was so good – so did he see Harry as a sort of surrogate son, and did Harry see Wilfrid as a father figure? Is that why they created this amazing television series? Is that the ingredient people miss? Knowing Wilfrid, he might have said it was a load of B, but that’s what I would have asked him. n

BOOK REVIEWS

By Ed Needham www.strong-words.co.uk

NON-FICTION

A PRIVATE SPY: THE LETTERS OF JOHN LE CARRÉ

Edited by Tim Cornwell. (Viking, £30)

Fear not if you fancy a snoop through the great espionagiste’s mail but aren’t too sure of the background: this formidable volume (700+ pages) also functions as a letter-studded biography. Abandoned by his mother at five, le Carré was forever trapped in the force field of his “conman extraordinaire” father Ronnie (a schoolmaster forecast that le Carré might become “either Archbishop of Canterbury or a first rate criminal.”) For years he lived in dread of learning which target was the latest to have been swindled penniless and was one bounced cheque from having to leave Oxford, until a classmate (Reginald Bosanquet) helped out, freeing up le Carré to inform on the university’s communist sympathisers. “I was a nasty, vengeful little orphan with a psychopathic liar for a father and a boy-scout self-image as an antidote,” was his own thumbnail portrait. After teaching German at Eton and a stint as a “diplomat” (= spy) in Germany, the cash rolled in like the storm clouds off his

Cornwall clifftop home when The Spy Who Came in from the Cold hit unexpectedly in 1963, and with fame came more distinguished names on the envelopes – Alec Guinness, Graham Greene, Philip Roth. Observe the details of a complicated life intimately and at your leisure, but don’t forget the “most important thing”: the small ‘l’ in le Carré. “For Freudian reasons, an obsession for me in age.”

HUNTING GHISLAINE

by John Sweeney (Hodder & Stoughton, £22)

Of all the challenges facing issuers of birth certificates, no longer will they have to worry how to spell “Ghislaine”. Not only is the name likely to be out of circulation for the next few decades, but also on the improbable chance some newcomer likes the sound of it, the infamy it carries has stamped the correct spelling into most people’s vocabularies permanently. Given the world’s familiarity with this ghastliest of enablers then, what has journalist John Sweeney attempted to hunt? Everyone knows where Ghislaine Noelle Marion Maxwell is – in jail, serving twenty years for being a procuress of prey for Jeffrey Epstein. Case closed: but what sort of person would both opt for and excel at such a career opportunity? Growing up as the beloved youngest of the unstable tyrant Robert Maxwell, she was spoilt and indulged, but also constantly exposed to his violence, sadistic control and grotesquery, leading to elaborate coping mechanisms. Clever and charming enough to thrive in society, she then lost her bank and cachet overnight when the pensionplunderer drowned and, having never worked, faced a humiliatingly un-luxurious future.

Yet, just as her share price seemed to have collapsed, the shadowy Epstein came along to meet her financial needs, as well as whatever emotional void only a weird older man could begin to fill. She loved him, but as he was in no position to ask young girls to get into a car with

him, he needed her. Already a skilled veteran at being around appalling powerful men, “all she had to do was feed the second monster with fresh children” and she was back on the private plane circuit.

In case you were in any danger of becoming nostalgic about anti-establishment war hero Robert Maxwell, there is chapter and verse on what a shocker he was too. Such as his wife Betty’s description of a snacking session: “He ate a pound of cheese, a jar of peanut butter, two jars of caviar, a loaf of bread and a chicken in one go.” When not cramming a fridge into his face, Betty “accused him of taking a sadistic pleasure in crushing and humiliating everyone who loved him the most.” Towards the head of that tiny pack was Ghislaine, and it’s not hard to see how such pressures might warp a person’s character. Sweeney argues that she developed twin personality strains: the life and soul of the party among her muckety-muck acquaintances, but a cold and unforgiving exerciser of power too, having been on the wrong end of so much of it herself. By switching on the former in the presence of vulnerable young girls of all social strata, she became a very effective supplier of victims. This strategy has led to the 60-year-old currently residing at FCI Tallahassee in Florida, where, according to the US Bureau of Prisons, she will thankfully remain until July 2037.

DICKENS AND PRINCE

By Nick Hornby (Viking, £9.99)

This comparison of the “hyperenergetic” work habits of Charles Dickens and Prince serves up the most delicious analysis of the only two candidates for the all-time “hardest working man in showbusiness” sash. And besides entertainingly profiling their spectacular output – workloads so colossal that the temptation to take a lie down on their behalf is strong – novelist/screenwriter Nick Hornby explains why these two share a stage in his head: “Prince and Dickens tell me, every day… Think quicker, be more ambitious, be more imaginative.” While novelising ferociously, Dickens also received between sixty and eighty letters daily, and responded to most of them himself. (The Oxford edition of his letters runs to 12 volumes. Volume 12: 842 pages.) And that’s before the performances, speeches, tours, charity work, ten children and a love life requiring extensive travel. A vault of un-catalogued Prince material is estimated to contain 5-8,000 unreleased songs, “or a ten-song album every six months for the next three or four hundred years.” Being in Prince’s band and playing regular aftershow shows meant often not coming off stage until six in the morning. Neither could turn it off, which may have contributed to neither seeing sixty. And both were still on the go until the very end.

THE ROMANTIC

By William Boyd (Viking, £20)

If you’re looking for life-in-a-day literary pyrotechnics from William Boyd, you’ve come to the wrong window. Boyd is your go-to guy for life-in-a-life, a believer that only the perspective of a person’s entire natural span can provide any reliable sense of what it was all about. He did it with novels such as The New Confessions and his masterpiece Any Human Heart, fictional biographies of men who appeared at the dawn of a century and, always guided by heart rather than head, follow paths that bounce off great events and large personalities over decades. This time it’s the nineteenth century and a wandering seeker of experience called Cashel Greville Ross (17991882), a most Boydian name. There’s even an author’s note suggesting that this account is pieced together from a trove of scribbles and souvenirs the subject left behind, just to place him more convincingly as real flesh and blood making his zig-zag way through history.

Raised in Ireland and then Oxford, Ross’ first major impulsive decision is to leave home for London on learning some unexpected details of his parentage, only to have his head turned by a military recruiter letting him have a go on a drum and ending up

at Waterloo. That in turn leads to a spell in the Indian army and a campaign in Ceylon. In both theatres his fate rests on his less than blind obedience to orders. On returning to Europe he decides to write a sort of journal of the grand tour, and finding that his having been at Waterloo is something of a social passport, makes the acquaintance of Shelley and Byron in Italy. Familiarity with these two helps him get a literary career underway, helped in turn by an anonymous novel describing his passionate affair with an Italian countess, again guided by some powerful emotions taking precedence over levelheaded decision-making, to Ross’ eternal regret. He becomes richer than he could have imagined (and also poorer and more imprisoned), he has a life in America, beats Speke and Burton to a great secret of the African interior, experiences opium addiction and becomes enmeshed in an international criminal enterprise in an unexpected role as a Central American diplomat. Phew! Fortunately for his long-term well-being, he acquires some ballast in the form of a central European aide-de-camp called Itzhak, a sort of multi-purpose assistant and reservoir of common sense, and Boyd keeps all these peaks and troughs from triggering travel sickness in the reader with his signature leisurely pace and command of detail. (This is a writer who could name a dozen varieties of horse-drawn vehicle off the top of his head, and tell you the best one to take from the station in Trieste.) The Romantic will delight Boyd’s disciples, cause more than a few eyes to stray longingly toward a suitcase and timetables, and remind readers once again of his unwavering message: to access the full drama of life, always heart, never head.

THE LINDBERGH NANNY

By Mariah Fredericks (Headline Review, £14.99)

In 1927 at age 25, Charles Lindbergh cornered the market in fame by flying solo and nonstop across the Atlantic. In 1932, when Lindbergh and his wife Ann were still

“the most celebrated couple in America”, their son of 20 months, Charlie, was kidnapped while he slept. A substantial ransom was handed over, but two months later the boy’s body was found in nearby woods. A man was convicted and put to death, but as a note ominously warns before any action gets underway here: “many believe there were others involved who were never identified or held accountable.” One to have felt the wrath of the “many” was “the Lindbergh nanny”, a Glaswegian childminder called Betty Gow. This is her excellent perspective on the crime of the century. Quiet, observant and resilient, she picked up clues that made her best placed to re-construct the kidnap scenario. The spittle-flecked mob may have seen her as a foreigner to pin their hatred on, but her subtle appreciation of the disappointments of working people set her apart from the detectives, the amateur sleuths and the great Charles Lindbergh. The real Betty Gow died in 1996, at the age of 92, but lives on here as true student of the human mind and the lot of the servant.

JACKDAW

By Tade Thompson (Cheerio, £15)

Narrator Thompson is a psychiatric doctor. He also writes, and one day receives a call from a friend barely able to contain herself. The

New York Times has read his book (he lives in London), and its reviewer compares “the feelings induced to those of Francis Bacon’s Screaming Popes.” This leads to “the Francis Bacon people” commissioning him to write a novella based on the artist’s works. “A simple writing assignment” thinks Thompson breezily. And mistakenly. Entering the Baconian nightmare, where the subjects’ agonies are painted as twisted, tormented flesh, is no afternoon at the bandstand. There’s the legendary Bacon schedule to consider: “My reading told me Francis would wake up and paint each morning, then, early evening, he’d go gamble. Then he’d get himself good and beaten, buggered before or after. We’re talking real lashings and punches here.” A permanent erection, rotten meat sculpture and visions of Bacon’s enabler nanny who organised his rent boys and narcotics complicate the writing process, and Thompson turns to a dominatrix called the Destroyer and memories of his own dark and violent childhood, in an attempt to recreate Bacon’s relationship with psycho-sexual pain. He even starts eating photographs of Bacon’s legendarily filthy studio. “I would absorb Francis Bacon one way or the other”, he declares. Too much Bacon, it appears, is not just a menace to the waistline. n

FILM REVIEW

A JUMPED UP PANTRY BOY

“I am in the peak of condition. I could copulate for England at any distance.”

Andrew Wyke (Laurence Olivier)

Stephen Arnell reviews Sleuth, one of Michael Caine’s finest outings, when he was pitted against the formidable talents of Laurence Olivier

This December will see the 50th anniversary of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s (All About Eve) final movie, the classic whodunnit Sleuth (1972).

Adapted by Anthony Shaffer (Frenzy, The Wicker Man, twin brother of Amadeus writer Peter) from his stage play, Sleuth pitted two of Britain’s acting legends against each other – Laurence Olivier (then aged 65) and youngish tyro Michael Caine (39).

In fact, Sleuth wasn’t the first movie the pair appeared in together; both had also featured in 1969’s The Battle of Britain, and went on to join forces in A Bridge Too Far (1977) and The Jigsaw Man (1983).

But Sleuth was the only picture that Olivier and Caine went ‘mano a mano’ – in acting terms that is. Apparently shooting the movie was a pleasant experience for both actors – each upped their game for the piece, but there were none of the Method histrionics that Dustin Hoffman inflicted on the poorly Olivier during the shooting of Marathon Man (1976).

Reminiscing in 2014 to Esquire magazine, Caine said: “The greatest compliment I ever received came while I was working with Sir Laurence Olivier, Lord Olivier. We were making a film called Sleuth, and I did a scene with him. When it finished, he looked at me and said, “I thought I had an assistant. I see I have a partner.”

In a contemporary interview with Dick Cavett, Olivier praised Caine as an “underrated actor”, although (in a way reminiscent of his character in Sleuth), he drew attention to his colleague’s humble “Bermondsey and proud of it” origins. Caine of course is no Actors Studio aficionado, but he would only be human in wanting to give the practised scene-stealer Olivier a run for his money.

Both are excellent in Sleuth, both enjoyably overripe and stagey. For me, Olivier takes the honours, although it’s a damned close-run thing. Caine only lets himself down once, when he indulges in a very unconvincing crying jag, but, in the context of the picture, he may just be putting it on to save himself.

Michael Caine as Milo Tindle, née Tindolini, in Sleuth

For a movie like Sleuth, I’m loath to pick apart the plot for readers, as it will ruin the experience of watching it. Briefly, Caine’s hairdressing salon owner (Casa Tindolini, where it “Pays to provide the Latin lover atmosphere.”) Milo Tindle (née Tindolini) is summoned to fogey-ish mystery writer/game-player par excellence Andrew Wyke’s (Olivier) gewgaw-stuffed manor house.

Tindle has been cuckolding Wyke’s expensiveto-maintain spouse Marguerite (“Converses like a child of six and makes love like an extinct shellfish,” according to her husband), but rather than confront him, the tricksy author has an intriguing offer for the understandably confused crimper.

An offer that will take Marguerite (only ever shown in painted portrait form of actress Joanne Woodward) off Wyke’s hands and give the cashstrapped Tindle the means to keep her in the style to which she has become accustomed, heading off the possibility of a weepy forgiveness-asking return, “mewing for support”.

No angel himself, Wyke has a mistress of his own, Téa. Wyke waxes lyrical about his paramour: “Her golden hair smells of pine and her cobalt

eyes are the secret forest pools of Finlandia.” Tindle, however, is more prosaic: “I hear she’s a well-scrubbed blonde with all the sex appeal of a secondhand jeep,” and “a Finnish bird who runs the sauna in Salisbury.”

The sardonic verbal sparring is the chief pleasure of the film; it begins at the off with Wyke eyeing up Milo’s blazer, crisp white shirt, blue

“The greatest compliment I ever received came while I was working with Sir Laurence Olivier,” said Caine. “We were making a film called Sleuth, and I did a scene with him. When it finished, he looked at me and said, ‘I thought I had an assistant. I see I have a partner’”

“Why

it?”

“The shortest way to a man’s heart is through humiliation”

kipper tie and slacks outfit as “Neatly dressed in brand new country-gentleman’s clothing.”

Wyke favours a vaguely rural rigout of checked tweed jacket, white shirt, cravat and pressed trousers. The costume designer for Sleuth was John Furniss (1935-) whose range also extended to the likes of Wombling Free (1978) and The Blue Max (1966). Battle commences with Wyke’s mockery of Tindle’s half-Italian heritage, doubting that he can “become English”, sarcastically noting the Tindolini family journey “From Genoa to Georgian in a single generation”. Wyke even goes as far to refer to Italian wine as “Dago Red”.

Quite a contrast with Caine’s role as Charlie Croker in The Italian Job (1969) where he threatens the Mafia with violent retaliation on the “quarter of a million Italians in Britain. They’ll be made to suffer. Every restaurant, cafe, ice-cream parlour, gambling den and nightclub in London, Liverpool

“James Bond’s Ken Adam was production designer for Sleuth; Shaffer was inspired by Stephen Sondheim’s gimcrack-laden Manhattan apartment, which included rare antique games such as ‘The New and Fashionable Game of the Jew’. The film was even briefly given the working title of Who’s Afraid of Stephen Sondheim?”

and Glasgow will be smashed. Mr Bridger will drive them into the sea”.

Tindle isn’t quite the “Bloody wop”, “Snivelling dago clown” and “Jumped up pantry boy who doesn’t know his place” (a line later purloined by Morrissey for The Smiths’ This Charming Man) that Wyke takes him for, proving more than able to match him, barb for barb. The self-proclaimed “Shifty old Sly Boots,” mocks Wyke’s boasted sexual prowess (“I suppose these days you are concentrating more on the sprints than on the long-distance stuff”, and “It’s not the winning, it’s the taking part that counts”) and derides the writer’s hokey detective creation as “Your man Merridick,” rather than the correct ‘St. John Lord Merridew.’

Although billed as essentially a two-hander, Sleuth’s other character (aside from Wyke’s manor house itself) is that of the plodding policeman Inspector Doppler, played by Alec Cawthorne,

a middle-aged rep actor of some note who sadly drifted into obscurity in his later years. Doppler’s entrance in the last act of Sleuth takes the picture into an altogether darker direction, one which will prove a treat to those who have yet to see the movie.

James Bond’s Ken Adam was production designer for Sleuth; for the set, Shaffer was inspired by Stephen Sondheim’s gimcrack-laden Manhattan apartment, which included rare antique games such as ‘The New and Fashionable Game of the Jew’. The film was even briefly given the working title of Who’s Afraid of Stephen Sondheim? Sondheim co-wrote The Last of Sheila with Anthony Perkins the following year, a movie that shares some of the dark humour and clockwork intricacy of Sleuth. Composer John Addison, best known for his stirring theme to A Bridge Too Far (1977), provided a suitably baroque score to Sleuth, complimenting the onscreen action perfectly.

“Why don’t I just keep tapping you lightly on the head with the poker until a lump comes up?”

Caine attempted to repeat the Sleuth formula ten years later in 1982 with Deathtrap, Sidney Lumet’s adaptation of Ira Levin’s smash hit 1978 stage play. While the picture has its moments, and boasts a then-noteworthy gay kiss between Caine and co-star Christopher Reeve, it’s too selfconscious in endeavouring to replicate the appeal of Mankiewicz’s film.

It is, however, still vastly superior to Kenneth Branagh’s misguided remake of Sleuth itself in 2007, which cast Caine in the Olivier role of the original, pitting him against a young Jude Law in Caine’s 1972 role. Branagh enlisted Harold Pinter to rewrite Shaffer’s sublime script, stripping it entirely of the original’s playful wit and malice, while upping the supposed homosexual subtext.

Reviews were unkind, with The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw stating, “Dead Film Walking, a zombie of a film, a shuffling Frankenstein’s monster of a film, leaking electricity from its badly fitting neck bolts, tragically whimpering at the pointless agony of its own brief existence. A perfect storm of rubbishness.”

Writing for The Seattle Times, Moira McDonald wielded the critical knife in surgical fashion: “Those

who say they wouldn’t mind watching Michael Caine and Jude Law recite the phone book may well have their patience tested by Sleuth.” Prior to Sleuth, Law had played Caine’s role in the flop Alfie (2004), while Caine cameoed in Sylvester Stallone’s hopeless Get Carter re-do in 2000. With a filmography as extensive as Caine’s (111 and counting) there are always going to be more than a few stinkers, as well as (relatively) hidden gems such as The Last Valley (1970), The Black Windmill (1974) and Silver Bears (1978) from the 1970s. “Be sure and tell them... it was just... a bloody game.” Milo Tindle, Sleuth. n

“Doppler’s entrance in the last act of Sleuth takes the picture into an altogether darker direction, one which will prove a treat to those who have yet to see the movie”

“You

are a young man dressed as a clown about to be murdered”

THE FLATULENT FRENCHMAN

The very role of the entertainer has shifted with the times, even in such renowned venues as Le Moulin Rouge. As Olivier Woodes-Farquharson discovers, in the 1890s the most popular act of all had nothing to do with talking or singing. Not from one’s mouth, anyway

ILLUSTRATION: MARK ELLENDER

The jury is currently out as to who is the current highest paid entertainer in Europe. Such are the complexities of modern day contracts that you could make a case for any of half a dozen. Go back 130 years, however, and the answer was much more clear cut: it was a man by the name of

Joseph Pujol, who plied his trade on the hallowed boards of the Moulin Rouge in the giddy Parisian district of Montmartre. So far, so predictable. Except that Pujol’s form of entertainment was not as an actor, or singer. He certainly was, however, an entertainer, but not of the ilk that you or I would immediately recognise.

“A natural entertainer, Pujol overcame his initial shyness to become something of a hit with his school peers, one of whom claimed ‘he could wash your walls with just a bucket and a squat.’ He also soon realised that with air rather than water he could add a whole new dimension to his act: that of sound”

“Le Petomane enriched the experience thereafter by attaching a lit cigarette to the rectal tube, and becoming the first person – surely –to enjoy the art of anal smoking. The show would often end with his blowing out

1857, Pujol’s upbringing was seemingly loving and straightforward. His mother was Rose, his father was Francois, a stonemason, and the family also ran a bakery which they hoped Joseph would take over one day. Yet it was a fabled schoolboy trip to the seaside that changed the course of his life. Planning to dive beneath the waves, Joseph took a deep breath, only to realise that his abdominal muscles, as an instinctive reaction, contracted in tandem with his breathing. It was only as a strange cold sensation rumbled its way up his innards that he realised that things were not normal. He rushed back to shore, only to spot vast quantities of seawater casually seeping out of his bottom. He was both horrified and intrigued.

He went home and immediately practiced his newly discovered skill, and was somewhat taken aback at the sheer force and distance he could reach by expelling jets from his backside – later measured by proctologists at a mightily impressive five metres. A natural entertainer, he overcame his initial shyness to become something of a hit with his school peers, one of whom claimed “he could wash your walls with just a bucket and a squat.” He also soon realised that with air rather than water he could add a whole new dimension to his act: that of sound.

Joining the army, he once again became hugely popular in entertaining his fellow bored soldiers with his ability to suck up air – fully two litres at a time – and would let off a sphincter song while imitating a variety of sounds. His comrades adored it, and soon nicknamed him Le Pétomane, a portmanteau of the two French words péter (to fart) and maniaque, which is self-explanatory. The French original is far neater, but the approximate translation would ‘The Mad Farter’.

For Pujol’s great skill was to break wind with immense precision and control, thanks to his sensational sphincter. And the public absolutely loved him for it.

Hailing from the great port city of Marseille, where he first saw the light of day on 1st June

They convinced Pujol that he was wasted in the army and that he should hire a local theatre in Marseille and ply his trade – assuming you could call firing your retro-rocket a trade. It was an inspired call, and word of mouth quickly spread around the region that there was something truly original being performed. One of the things that was rapidly noticed was the total lack of smell whenever he emitted a check flapper. Importantly, this was gas that had only just been sucked up, so had not yet had the time to bake within. Just to be absolutely sure, Pujol would also give himself an enema before each show, ensuring that no accidental turds would be whistling for right of way. Indeed, he may have received more enemas that anyone else in history, and we are enormously grateful for it.

a candle on stage from well over a foot away”

Other provincial towns rapidly asked to host Pujol, and he obliged. He was a roaring success, and enjoyed taking requests from the audience to replicate certain sounds. Dressed in tails, occasionally with white gloves, with plenty of looseness around the waist and a small rubber tube dangling behind his posterior, he would invert a burp with minimal fuss and profuse laughter. By now the big time beckoned. He left the army and

made his way to Paris, becoming possibly the first and last person to make it in the City of Light based on no other reason than his ability to unleash fog slicers on command. He aspired to nothing but the best, and so made his way confidently in 1892 to the Moulin Rouge, specifically to see Director Charles Zidler. Upon arriving at the famed entertainment hall with its huge, iconic red windmill, Pujol said to himself, “The sails of the

Moulin Rouge; what a marvellous fan for my act!”

Used to cabaret, vaudeville plays and can-can girls, Zidler was initially baffled as the self-assured Pétomane asserted that he would be the next phenomenon. Zidler allowed him a couple of minutes to explain why and, within a few minutes and several windowpane shattering bottom burps, Pujol had been hired. The canny Zidler knew that, beneath the surface of an acceptable, polite society was a saucy, repressed one aching to come out. Even so, not even he realised that within a couple of shows, Le Pétomane would be bringing in 20,000 francs per performance – more than double that being brought in by the darling actress of the day, Sarah Bernhardt, at the rival Theatre de la Renaissance.

Pujol didn’t sit back, but honed both his craft and his performances. The refined version – if refined is truly the right word – went as follows.

First, he would float a few rather small air biscuits to test the room. Then, he would begin to go through his repertoire of impressions. These could be noises that replicated the sound of a bride on her wedding night or – at the other extreme – he would unleash the gluteal tuba with ten solid seconds representing the sound of a haberdasher tearing two yards of calico. More straightforwardly, he would drop a barking spider whose echoey sound was indistinguishable from the sound of a firing cannon.

Then, as surely now, the audience couldn’t get enough, with the aisles overflowing with audiences writhing around in hilarity-induced agony. On more than one occasion, women had to be removed by strategically-hired nurses, as they had passed out from laughing too hard in their tight corsets. One poor fellow even had a heart attack from

his uncontrollable laughter. A keen musician and trombone player, Pujol experimented on stage too with a flute, which he attached to the rubber tube flapping around his bottom, allowing his copious gas to play out La Marseillaise or O Sole Mio. He enriched the experienced thereafter by attaching a lit cigarette to the rectal tube, and becoming the first person –surely – to enjoy the art of anal smoking. The show would often end with his blowing out a candle on stage from well over a foot away.

It was not just the ordinary folk who wanted to enjoy the simple but effective pleasure of watching a man repeatedly airbrush his boxers. Royalty – as is so often the way – was just as debauched. Pujol was asked to perform for highly exclusive audiences that included King Leopold II of Belgium and the future King Edward VII.

This may have been La Belle Epoque, with science and technology making rapid breakthroughs in wider society, but sometimes all royalty needs to see is a man turning his sphincter into a one-man jazz band.

“This may have been La Belle Epoque, with science and technology making rapid breakthroughs in wider society, but sometimes all royalty needs to see is a man turning his sphincter into a one-man jazz band”

Pujol didn’t think any of his act was vulgar – indeed, he bracketed himself more with Vaudevillian impressionists, and counted such revered artists and Renoir and Matisse as personal friends. He was also kind-hearted, and it was this that first got him into legal trouble with his employer. Keen to help out a friend who had stumbled upon hard times, he stood beside his pal’s gingerbread stand in a local market and did his thing to attract business. Le Moulin Rouge’s owner, Monsieur Oller, was not impressed, believing that their contract stipulated he was only allowed to ‘let the toothless one speak’ within the confines of their club. The French press had an absolute open goal with the ensuing court case (“Money Doesn’t Smell”, “One Fart Chasing Another”), with existential questions being asked about what purposes the very air could be used for and where.

Le Pétomane’s defence understandably took the line of ‘You can’t own the wind’, yet the judge was unmoved. A disappointed Pujol lost the case, was compelled to pay damages and immediately left Le Moulin Rouge in disgust. The petulant night club may have won in court but they had lost their main attraction. They rapidly magicked up a female replacement – La Femme Pétomane – but this fartiste was soon exposed for being a fraud, surreptitiously smuggling a bellows under her petticoat. This time, the case fell in Pujol’s favour, and his popularity was evident by the thunderous applause that awaited him outside the court.

Le Pétomane, meanwhile, had opened his own club, Le Theatre Pompadour, where he pressed reset on his repertoire, this time accompanying a set of mimes, clowns and magicians as they recounted well-known folk tales, all accompanied by Le Pétomane’s special take on music. It was also around this time that Pujol was contacted by a highly intrigued Thomas Edision, who was so inspired by Le Petomane’s abilities that he tried to invent a Kinetephonolfactograph film – i.e. a film accompanied by smell rather than sound. It came to nothing, although it did allow for Pujol to be filmed for around 30 seconds – grainy footage which survives to this day but which is tragically lacking in both smell and sound.

Utterly deranged his latter shows may have been, but they kept audience enthralled for fully 20 years and Pujol himself in good money, until the advent of the First World War, which marked a watershed for so many. As one Pétomane biographer

remarked, “No one had time for such frivolity anymore, not even within Le Pétomane’s family: Two of his sons were maimed on the front lines. After the notorious chemical warfare attacks of World War I, gas-based comedy seemed in rather poor taste anyway.”

With his only other skill being that of a baker, Pujol moved to the south coast in Toulon and opened a successful biscuit factory. He lived a long and happy 30 years thereafter with a wife and ten children. He was retired from his unique profession, but far from forgotten. When he passed away as a breezy 88-year-old, just a month after VE day in 1945, more than one doctor begged the family to be given permission to examine his rectal plumbing and understand how he had been able to do what he could do – one even offered 25,000 Francs for the privilege. But the family was having none of it, with his son Louis explaining, ‘“There are some things in this life which simply must be treated with reverence.” n

RAFFISH

EAU DE COLOGNE FROM THE CHAP

Thomas Cook was born in 1808 into an impoverished working-class family from the small market town of Melbourn in South Derbyshire. At the age of ten he was forced to find work to support his mother, after she had become widowed for the second time. Thomas undertook various jobs, including garden labourer (for just a penny a day) woodworker and printer.

Despite his humble beginnings, he would go on to create one of the world’s largest travel agencies (later to be known as Thomas Cook & Son).

Thomas was the epitome of the self-made man, and is considered the pioneer and father of modern tourism and the creator of the package holiday.

At the age of 20, Thomas became a Baptist minister and an ardent teetotaler. On July 5th 1841 he initiated his first organised trip, taking a party of almost 500 people by train from Leicester to Loughborough – a distance of just 12 miles – to attend a temperance meeting where he was charging one shilling per person for the round trip, which included a printed itinerary, lunch and afternoon tea; a brass band was also hired to entertain his brethren.

The journey that day would be a pivotal moment that would inspire and motivate Thomas to expand

John Minns packs his portmanteau for a voyage to the origins of the package holiday by one Thomas Cook, esq

his excursions and to arrange for more extended trips throughout the rest of the British Isles and beyond. At this time, a large proportion of the populace had not ventured far from the boundaries of their own homes, especially in rural areas, some rarely straying more than 20 miles from their domain. Travelling, especially abroad, would be largely the luxury of the wealthy. The common man and woman would be excluded from it. Thomas believed that travel should be accessible to all, and a seismic change was about to happen to facilitate his wish.

It was the beginning of the industrial revolution in Britain, and transport facilities, including trains, sailboats and steamships, would expand exponentially over the coming decades, making travel more accessible and less expensive. It was perfect timing too for Thomas, as just a decade earlier it would have been almost impossible to have achieved. By organising and securing large group bookings from companies offering transport, accommodation and dining facilities, Thomas was then able to pass on some of that discount to his clients, marking the introduction of the first package holiday, brass band included.

Cook was fascinated by Egypt, the Nile and surrounding areas because of its biblical connections with his fervent religious beliefs. In 1869 (one year after the opening of the Suez canal) he would lead his first grand tour there. It became an incredibly popular destination for ardent travelers. Its popularity increased even more after the tomb of King Tutankhamun was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922.

Thomas Cook & Son purchased the steamship SS Sudan, previously owned by HM King Fuad (King of all Egypt and Sudan) and would offer luxury cruises along the Nile. One notable traveller who embarked on the steamship in 1933 was Agatha Christie, who would be inspired by her time on board to write Death on the Nile, published in 1937. 75 years later, the same ship would be used in the filming of the television series of Death on the Nile starring David Suchet as Inspector Poirot.

TRAVEL LUGGAGE

For the long voyages offered by Thomas Cook, the traditional bow-topped Captain’s trunk was not fit for purpose and needed to be turned in to a much more practical piece of luggage. The Portmanteau, otherwise known as the steamer or wardrobe trunk, was soon to be invented; it was easily stored and more stackable than conventional luggage, as it was largely flat. Once the traveller had arrived, the portmanteau could stand vertically and would open in two halves to reveal various drawers, fitted coathangers and compartments to hold jewellery, stiff collars and other requisites.

Three notable names that produced luggage at the time that still exist today were Hermes, Louis Vuitton and Maison Goyard. Exquisitely built to the finest quality and made to last, the portmanteau became a robust and practical form of luggage to assist the pragmatic traveller on what could be an arduous journey by rail road, sea and foot. Their portmanteaux would gradually be covered with dozens of luggage labels, to advertise to the world how many grand voyages they had made.

Early examples of luggage from these companies are highly prized by today’s collectors, especially sets in mint condition. One of the oldest sets of trunks – and in mint condition – was found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun; it contained a number of everyday items like cosmetics, clothes and jewellery. Things that the boy king would need, presumably, to accompany him on his longer and slightly more arduous journey to the afterlife.

THE FLUMMOXER

Readers are invited to ponder the purpose of this issue’s antiquity conundrum, and one provider of the correct answer wins a superb pair of Fox Cufflinks.

Send your answer to chap@thechap.co.uk

Robert V Stephenson correctly identified last issue’s Flummoxer as a silver napkin holder, made in Birmingham in 1911-12.

A TIME FOR GIFTS

Our ever expanding range of gentlemen’s requisites and elegant sartorial adornments now includes a hip flask, a cocktail shaker set, a cravat, several gentlemen’s fragrances, lapel badges and a selection of silk pocket squares. The Chap Watch, available in black or cream, is also now back in stock

Instead of the usual price of £28.00 for four issues per year, by taking up this

will become an annual Chap subscriber for just £14.00, precisely half the usual cost, which still includes free postage. The offer is available in the EU for £19 and elsewhere in the world for £24. The

can be cancelled after one year if no longer required.

DOWN

King on charm offensive (7)

Break lock; go into container; gets what's overdue (7)

It's a sign of Blair scandal (5)

Little time during hunt for flattery (5 4)

Vernacular of laid back hepcat, not at all odd (7)

Club chap at the wheel (6)

Avoid London, it's dead! (5,4)

M1 Hit up for a bit of butter (4)

Decorated old sailors on a cover of TIME (6)

What Sturgeon's referendum might make the UK she can get away with it? (4,4)

Avoid London, it’s dead! (5,4)

What Sturgeon’s referendum might make the UK if she can get away with it? (4,4)

Misguided lad is devil in disguise (3 7)

Get a tune out of Gibson with headless body (6

Pint babe? E Roberts has it (4)

Small vehichle took Wan and painting (2 4)

New wave vegan art ad! Ridiculous (5 5)

I'd case meadows out for what farmers dread (3,3,7)

Show that's when evening news is on, to debut on Dave (6)

Real wild party at the end of term on peer's estate (7)

Court order outside parking to increase 300% (9)

Snake shuffled to move quietly (5)

Old shrub with leafy edges (7)

High-vis wearer needs casserole to take on tough

This clue's stupid and I'm clever... Or the other around? (4,5)

Opposite Ford in Carry On Doctor (8)

Scottish Heritage Design and Tailoring Excellence Est 1989