The Chap Issue 118 by thechap

ISSUE 118

WINTER 2023

EXPAND YOUR MIND, REFINE YOUR WARDROBE

CASANOVA

DRUIDRY

JOHN CRAXTON

THE COLONY ROOM

NORMAN WISDOM

GOLDIE

ISSUE 118

9 771749 966094

18>

£7.99

MR B THE GENTLEMAN RHYMER I’M NOT A FAN OF NOSTALGIA. WOULDN'T WE JUST LOVE THINGS TO BE THE WAY WE IMAGINE THEY USED TO BE, BUT ACTUALLY WEREN’T?

YOUR WEDDING

SORTED

CAVANI.CO.UK

King Charles III's Coronation. The new Despatch Boxes of His Majesty’s Government display the new royal cypher of King Charles III

Major contribution to the war effort, notably “L” Detachment, Special Air Service Brigade

1939

2023

Continue to make and supply official governmentDispatch Boxes, notably for Churchill as Secretary of State

1921

HRH Princess Elizabeth proclaimed Queen Elizabeth II and officially photographed with her Dispatch Boxes

Hepburn & Gale merges with Samuel Barrow & Brotherto become Barrow, Hepburn & Gale

1920

1953

Make and supply saddles, belts and cases to officers and soldiers during the Great War

1914

Hepburn & Gale merges with Ross & Co

1901

Samuel Barrow & Brother is formed

1848

John Hepburn commences leather tanning in Bermondsey

1760

Proper Chaps Carry Proper Bags. Proper Bags From Barrow Hepburn & Gale. ‘Barrow, Hepburn & Gale have been making travel goods for generations, and although fashions are constantly on the change, their quality has always been superlative. They are supplied not only to the home market, but the whole world, for the good reason that British craftsmanship in this class of goods has always been admired. At a time when a flourishing export trade is absolutely essential to the country’s survival, no manufacturer can do his country a better service than to produce goods so well made and designed that they may properly be called ambassadors of goodwill.’ Everything In Leather – The Story Of Barrow Hepburn & Gale, published in 1948.

thechap@barrowhepburngale.com | barrowhepburngale.com |

@barrowhepburngale

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

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

Contributing Editors: Chris Sullivan, David Evans

GUSTAV TEMPLE

CHRIS SULLIVAN

DAVID EVANS

The editor of The Chap for the last 24 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

David Evans is a former lawyer and teacher who founded popular sartorial blog Grey Fox Blog twelve 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, whatever the age. @greyfoxstyle

DAVID BRAMWELL

TORQUIL ARBUTHNOT

JOHN MAYHEAD

STEPHEN ARNELL

ANDREW ROBERTS

David Bramwell is a broadcaster, author, musician and creator of The Cult of Water, The Haunted Moustache and No9 Bus to Utopia. His latest documentary podcastseries Adventures in Nutopia, explores radical new ideas, ecology, art, consciousness and new social movements. www.drbramwell.com

Torquil Arbuthnot is a retired high-wire walker and horse whisperer educated at the roulette tables of BadenBaden. He read mediaeval dance at Yeovil Polytechnic, before being rusticated for duelling. He now resides in a tree house in Wigan, where he is composing a 35-hour opera about Ainsley Harriot’s career.

John Mayhead is one of the UK’s foremost classic car writers and commentators, contributing regularly to various national newspapers and magazines, TV, radio and podcasts. Since 2012, he has been the Editor of the UK Hagerty Price Guide and is European Bureau Chief for Hagerty Insider.

Stephen has been a TV channel controller, author (his first novel was published last year), media/culture commentator, occasional lecturer, movie consultant/ sales broker and amateur antiquarian. A habitué of Soho’s Colony Club scene during his younger years, Arnell now resides in bucolic Bedfordshire.

Andrew Roberts read for The Bar in his (comparative) youth, but the lure of British cinema led him to take a PhD in this engrossing subject. The recent purchase of his Wolseley 6/99 is largely due to Carry On Cabby, Quatermass and the Pit, The Fast Lady and many other fine pictures from the golden age of British cinema.

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

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

OLIVIER WOODESFARQUHARSON 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.

Subscriptions 01442 820 580 contact@webscribe.co.uk

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.

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

Printing: CPUK Ltd, Suite 12B Davey House, 31-31a St Neots Road, Eaton Ford, Cambridgeshire PE19 7BA Distribution: Warners Group Publications, West Street, Bourne, Lincolnshire, PE10 9PH T: 01778 391194

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

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

CONTENTS 8 AM I TOPPER?

Readers submit photographs of themselves in their top hats

15 THE COLONY ROOM

Torquil Arbuthnot recalls his first entry into the near-mythical watering hole in Soho which closed in 2008

FEATURES 22 INTERVIEW: MR. B THE GENTLEMAN RHYMER

Gustav Temple meets the Chap Hop superstar and asks whether three-piece suits and plimsolls are acceptable

31 C ASANOVA

livier Woodes-Farquharson on the legendary lover’s other O renowned qualities

36 N ORMAN WISDOM

ndrew Roberts on the comedy actor who was more A Victorian vaudeville than midcentury comic

22 SARTORIAL FEATURES

CHAP LIFE

44 THE DISTINGUISHED GENTLEMAN’S DRIVE

100 S EASONAL SURVIVAL COCKTAILS

The annual motoring event that sees dapper folk firing up their vintage engines in 200 locations around the globe, while raising much-needed cash for men’s health charities

57 THE RESTORATION Gustav Temple takes his motheaten top hat to Lock & Co to meet their master hatter and see whether the cherished topper can be returned to its former glory

64 L EATHER HEAD Alex Simpson on how he returned from the army to revitalise a leather factory in Walsall about to close its doors, and founded a new brand he named Beorma

70 G REY FOX COLUMN David Evans samples bespoke shirting from Frank Foster, Beatles fashion and attends an exhibition about how Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style

75 E DWARD SEXTON Chris Sullivan recalls a meeting with the pioneering tailor who died this summer, when they discussed Sexton’s association with Tommy Nutter and how together they revolutionised the Row.

FOLKLORE 84 KING OF THE DRUIDS Gustav Temple meets Phillip Carr-Gomm, former Chief of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids

92 D AMANHUR

David Bramwell on the self-styled Italian time lord who built one of the wonders of the world under a mountain in the Alps

Some potent brews to get you through the yawning gap between breakfast Buck’s Fizzes and the first glass of wine

106 T RAVEL: ROME Stephen Arnell pays another visit to the Eternal City to see how eternal it really is

116 MOTORING

Actuarius watches the London to Brighton veteran car run and reviews the automotive star of Genevieve

122 GOLDIE

The author of the first biography of Alfred ‘Goldie’ Gardner on the daring racing driver’s thrilling life on the motor circuit

REVIEWS 130 WHAT THE BUTLER SAW

Stephen Arnell assesses some of the many polishers of the silver on the silver screen

138 JOHN CRAXTON

A major retrospective of the artist who worked in Greece alongside Patrick Leigh Fermor

146 THE COLONY ROOM REVISITED

Has the notorious Soho members club actually re-opened as an ‘art installation’ in Mayfair?

153 BOOKS

New tomes on The Prisoner, Bloomsbury Set Style, Pipesmoking racing drivers and vexillology

162 C ROSSWORD

Cover photo: Kenny McKracken

ISSUE 118 • WINTER 2023

Am I Topper READERS WERE ASKED TO SEND US PHOTOS OF THEMSELVES IN THEIR TOP HATS. WE HAVE SEPARATED THEM INTO FOUR CATEGORIES: FORMAL, LADIES, BOHEMIAN AND SILLY

The Star Topper in each category wins a Chap Star Lapel Badge

FORMAL

Star Topper

Paul Farrant is also living the high life, going to the admirable lengths of inserting ‘slips’ inside the lapels of his waistcoat. Unfortunately, however, on this occasion he forgot to put on his trousers.

Robert Stephenson also went to the gee gees and remembered to put his trousers on before leaving the house. Nevertheless, having oneself photographed carefully positioned so that the sign reading ‘Ascot’ is visible over the shoulder has a slight touch of the nouveau riche, does it not, sir?

FORMAL

“Here is a picture of mine,” writes Luigi Sbaffi, “taken last October in the Cremona Theatre, Italy.” We should all live in Italy, signor Sbaffi, and we should go to the opera every night. Sadly we can only dream, but at least we know that, somewhere in the world, somebody is awake while they dream.

“Hello! How are you? I am well,” writes the over-informative Shawn Wade. “Here is a shot of me in my Topper. A French one which, though over 100 years old, looks rather new. I have another one too which is a Christy’s which needs some work.” Thank you for the details, sir. You seem to have sent yourself to sleep along with everybody else.

Robert Chapman went to an afternoon party where the theme was simply ‘nouveau’. Robert, however, looked neither nouveau nor riche, only elegant.

“Please find attached for your consideration myself and my Lincoln Bennett topper,” writes Stuart Turner, “at the inaugural Grand Flaneur Walk in 2019. I thought I appeared remarkably splendid, but was quickly humbled by an acerbic acquaintance, who drew uncharitable comparisons with the ‘Fat Controller’ from Thomas the Tank Engine.”

“I have been wearing Top hat (white tie and tails),” writes Frank Annable, “every Boxing night for several years at a Ball that my good lady wife and I attend.”

So, a young upstart trying to do our job, eh, sir? Besides, we disagree with your acerbic acquaintance, and believe your outfit cuts rather an elegant dash, although the pantaloons could do with a few more inches of cloth below the waistband.

Really, sir? And does Mrs Annable know about the mysterious ladies you pose with on the staircase with a roguish twinkle in your eye?

“John Phipps from Brisbane Australia!” writes, er, him. Sir, the topper looks of good quality and probably vintage, the beard is impressively Victorian and the outer layers of the outfit seem well made and fit well. But why oh why does anyone insist on wearing these ‘scrunchie’ type ties instead of the proper neckwear with Morning Dress – which is a black and white herringbone tie, of normal necktie proportions? Also, please ask your tailor correctly to measure your hands for gloves, sir.

We were unsure whether the husband of Juls Buherer belonged in the ‘Formal’ or ‘Silly’ category, then decided that he needed a category all of his own called ‘Bizarre’. The top hat is of questionable quality but we like the rakish height and concave swoop of the crown. The bow tie is well tied and there is evidence of moustache wax, therefore Mr. Buherer has saved himself from Silly.

FORMAL

Our in-house Victorian detectives have noticed that there are two birthday cards on the mantelpiece and concluded that the occupants of Edward Marlowe’s abode are 30 and 40 years old respectively. Either that or the cards are a reminder of how many times that door needs painting to stop it looking like the entrance to a sauna. Oh, you want to know our opinion of the clothing, sir? The wedding rig looks hired and the topper looks tired.

THE LADIES

STAR Topper “Like all self-respecting French demoiselles,” writes Indiana Loessin, “I do not speak well English. But I am very fond of that gazette of yours (and of top hats of course). Please find attached my portrait à l’ambrotype (a collodion positive) and a more casual picture taken during the Salon du Merveilleux in Paris.” Mademoiselle, with a topper like that, who needs language? Your attempts to grow an enormous white beard and resemble a Victorian gentleman d’un certain age are entirely unnecessary, however.

“I adore top hats and making them,” writes Susie O'Neill, Hatter and Milliner, “My little enterprise is ‘Mad Hat Company’ and top hats are a particular passion of mine. I’m currently thinking about what to design for the flaneur walk next year!” Madam, your attempt to fashion a top hat that blends in with its surroundings for protection is admirable, in fact so much so that we had difficulty spotting it at first. Those colonial-themed restaurants can be dangerous places at times.

“For your consideration, I enclose two photos, writes Susie O'Neill. “My silk topper is by H. J. Whyatt, courtesy of Lincoln Bennett; Cheaney brogues; shirt, trousers, tailcoat - dead men’s vintage, pocket square Etro.” As you pointed out yourself in your missive, madam, the whole outfit has echoes of Mr. Benn; however, we like the elan with which you have thrown the whole thing together – from choice ingredients – and therefore suggest that you dress like this all the time, and to hell with the rules.

Madam, we admire your perspicacity. Having seen your husband’s tache in the ‘Formal’ category, you probably have more time than you think. As to the outfit – there is no room, or need, for modesty here, madam.

Trudy Parrish is staying in an hotel room that features a chandelier in the bedroom, and for this she must be commended. As to the outfit – it is difficult to maintain one’s feminine wiles while in men’s formal wear, but Ms Parrish has carried it off admirably, so let’s hope that the mantelpiece is filled with champagne flutes and billets doux by the beginning of the evening.

“This is a picture of myself and Zack Pinsent,” writes Minerva Minna. “Having jettisoned a dull party on the Strand we persuaded a Soho Members Club, of which we were not members, to let us in. We then persuaded someone else to provide us with some champagne, or possibly just helped ourselves, which may explain the fact we have only one glass between us; memories of the evening are hazy.” Madam, we have heard speak of this Zack Pinsent and the trouble he can get the ladies, and indeed the gentlemen, into. But we must assume it was all worth it for the opportunity, if only for a moment, to don the legendary Pinsent topper.

THE LADIES

“I don’t have long,” writes Pat Annable. “I have gained access to my husband’s email account whilst he is waxing his moustache. I hope that you like my Topper. Modesty would normally forbid me from mentioning that I made the outfit myself. Must dash.”

BOHEMIAN

BOHEMIAN Tsarevich Piotrowicz takes himself much more seriously than Mr. Connolly, unless he is patiently waiting for the photographer to pronounce his name correctly.

Stephen Connolly is either doing origami on Brighton seafront or miming the proletarian pastime of consuming poisson et pommes frites, in some sort of conceptual performance art installation. Either way, he is to be commended for taking such personal risks in the name of style.

Billing oneself ‘Soho Hobo’ sets the bar rather high, but the chap calling himself thus has managed to pull it off without incident. He is probably seated on the steps of the erstwhile Sebastian Horsley residence, although all steps in Soho claim to be those.

Jason Kerridge probably felt he belonged in the ‘Formal’ category, but we of course know better. Not necessarily Bohemian, but certainly several champagne flutes short of a full magnum.

“I apologise for the grumpy lady in the background,” writes Mike Bell, “but she's my sister and often looks like that – I have never understood why. The picture was taken at Bath Christmas Market, where I felt that the frivolity of a green topper was acceptable.” Sir, perhaps your sister is tired of having a photographer follow you around all the time, although we must admit the employment is fully justified.

Safe from what, precisely, sir? Puffa jackets under cheap overcoats and cardboard top hats? Too late, sir.

“Living on my country estate in Devon,” writes Squire James Berkeley-Hunt, “I enjoy all the traditional pursuits: Hunting, shooting (tourists), evicting grey-haired old widows into the snow, and my particular favourite, tying young maidens to railway tracks. Unfortunately, due to budget cutbacks no trains have run on the old branch line for several years, but I persevere in the hope that things will change. Am I topper?”

“Picking my daughter up from an after-school party a couple of weeks ago,” writes Barry Young. ‘Get back in your coffin, daddy, it’s nearly dawn.’

Sir, you omitted to mention your actual job as well as your pastimes, which do sound like they bring you some well-earned hours of relaxation. Being ringmaster for the local circus must be exhausting.

“At last the Caledonian Cracksman has finally been caught on camera. He is believed to be Adam Sellars now residing in Glasgow...” “I asked my chum Duke Elegance if he was a topper,” writes Gary Horsfield. “He replied, ‘Of course I am, my wife Lady Lisa tells me every day. He also told me he was the inspiration for Lord Snooty.’” We always look forward to the regular communiques from Mr. Horsfield, who makes a very strong case against sanity being the preferred mode of living.

The above missive was also received from Gary Horsfield. The wonderful thing about him is that he seems to have chums who are as completely bonkers as him. One suspects that the miniature of whisky in Mr. Sellars handy belt-pouch is a permanent fixture.

“Greetings from the underworld,” writes Darcy Sullivan. “Let my patented Svengali stare compel you to include me in your publication, to which I gladly contributed – when I walked amongst the living.” Sir, we are extremely sorry to hear of the incident at the tanning salon that yielded such a peculiar result. Perhaps if you remain in your coffin during the daytime you will be less prone to uneven patches of deathly pale.

SILLY

“Hello, fellow gentlemen,” inaccurately writes Peter Hermes. “Hope you like my pictures – anyway, stay safe!”

SILLY

Society

The Colony Room – A Tribute to the Fallen Torquil Arbuthnot recalls his first entry into the near-mythical watering hole in Soho, which closed in 2008 but has recently been turned into an ‘art installation’ – see page 146

“I first went to the Colony Room in 2004. I’d been drinking with an acquaintance in Trisha’s, a drinking dive on Greek Street. We got chatting to a nightclub chanteuse dressed as a guardsman. She was having a birthday party in the Colony and invited us along, presumably because we were good little drinkers”

The Colony Room in its heyday, Muriel Belcher second from right

he Colony Room opened in 1948 when Muriel Belcher got permission to open a private club with a drinks licence between 3 and 11 pm. In those dismal days (and indeed up to the late 1980s) pubs shut from 2.30 till 5pm, leaving dehydrated people with nowhere to slake their thirst unless they belonged to a private watering hole. Muriel Belcher came from a well-to-do Jewish family and had run the Music Box, a nightclub in Leicester Square, during the war. The Colony Room was so named after Muriel Belcher’s then girlfriend, a Jamaican called Carmel, and decorated, in a rather desultory fashion, in bamboo and leopardskin. Francis Bacon happened upon the club on its first day of opening, and got on so well with Muriel Belcher that she offered to pay him £10 a week to bring in ‘interesting’ people and wealthy patrons. The club soon became a haunt of louche Soho, with members such as Dylan Thomas, Lucien Freud, John Minton, the two Roberts (Colquhoun and MacBryde), Colin MacInnes,

Nina Hamnett, Jeffrey Bernard, George Melly, Noel Coward, John Deakin, Barry Humphries and many others. For many celebs, such as Dennis Hopper, David Bowie and Tennessee Williams, the Colony Room was the place they wanted to drink in when in London. Even Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon used to pop in. Muriel Belcher was not exactly welcoming and was known for her sharp tongue. All members, whatever their gender, were addressed as ‘Mary’. Those she disliked were ‘cunts’ but those she particularly favoured were addressed as ‘Cunty’. (Indeed, the word ‘CUNTY’ was etched on to the cash register when I used to frequent the club.) Apparently the novelist John Braine lurched in there in the 1960s, and Muriel Belcher took such a dislike to him that she kept calling him ‘Miss Hitler’. He never returned. The MP and possible Communist spy Tom Driberg was a member. A ‘confirmed bachelor’ of the cottaging type, Driberg used to turn up at the club with a different young man in tow every week. Breezily describing the youngster as ‘one of

Peter O’Toole doing his stint behind the bar

my constituents’, he used to dismiss the youth with a handful of coins and an order to go and play on the fruit machine. The membership was always small, never rising above 200 or so, and the annual fees negligible (about £150 in 2008). It has been described as the most exclusive club in London. One couldn’t apply for membership: one had to be asked. The only criterion for membership was that one wasn’t ‘fucking boring’. There was also no attention given to whether one was famous or not. One Evening Standard journalist who used to meet Francis Bacon there said somewhat huffily: ‘It is hard to see now, as the West End hums with salubrious private members’ clubs, restaurants and bars, what attracted aristocrats, artists, actors and anarchists to the Colony. It certainly wasn’t to meet someone famous: on the occasions I drank there with Bacon, no one could have cared less who he was.’ Well, yes, that was precisely the point. Muriel Belcher ran the place until she died in 1979. She bequeathed the place to her barman, Ian Board (known as ‘Ida’), who was if

anything even ruder than her, and who sported a magnificent purple nose courtesy of his fondness for brandy. When Ian Board pegged out in 1994 the club was taken over by his barman, Michael Wojas. Ian Board’s ashes were kept in a bust of the old josser himself, on top of the fridge behind the bar. Wojas was educated at Haberdasher’s Aske’s school and then read chemistry at Nottingham University. In 1981 he came down to London and took a job as barman in the Colony as a stopgap measure. Initially Ian Board was so suspicious of Wojas that he used to hide the day’s takings in the club before he went home. As he was pissed at the end of the night, he could never remember where he’d hidden the cash, so Wojas and he would spend the first hour the next day searching for it, usually finding it stuffed in the piano or behind a mirror. In the 1980s and 1990s the old membership started to die off. Fortunately there was no shortage of ‘interesting’ drinkers in Soho and the club was soon home to the YBAs such as Damian Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Tracey Emin and

the Colony and invited us along, presumably because we were good little drinkers. We rolled up at the club in Dean Street, pressed the doorbell and climbed the grimy stairs to the first floor. The Colony Room was just one smallish room, painted a depressing shade of bottle green, the walls covered in paintings, drawings, photographs and tat. The artwork, I noticed, included originals by Bacon, Freud, Michael Andrews, Hirst, Auerbach, Emin, Sebastian Horsley and various others. There was also a gold-plated Kalashnikov AK47 in a glass case. There was some grubby banquette seating to the side, an upright piano that looked like it had been rescued from a skip and a couple of barstools.

“The first time I met Michael Wojas, the owner, we were both so drunk we shook hands and managed inadvertently to headbutt each other. Wojas, towards the end of his life, was described as ‘looking like a blade of grass growing under a bucket’” The room was crammed with 40 or 50 people, all smoking and drinking and chatting as if all three activities were about to be rationed. I went to the bar and ordered a bottle of champagne, divining correctly that a request for a glass of Diet Coke would be met with an amiable invitation to go fuck myself. I proceeded to do what was expected of someone in the Colony Room, i.e. get very drunk and talk bollocks. I remember (vaguely) chatting to the bloke who played Spider in Coronation Street and having a technical discussion about automatic pistols with someone else. Not long afterwards, two Colony Room stalwarts came up to me and said, ‘You’re the sort of person we want in the Col. D’you want to join?’ Obviously I’d never been so insulted in my life and told them to bugger off. I later found out this was the correct response. Had I shown eager interest the offer would’ve been retracted. For various reasons I never ended up joining the club, and when I finally started reaching for my wallet and the membership fee, the place had folded. The Colony Room closed in 2008 but for three years I used to pop in there regularly as the guests of a couple of members. The company was always

Colony Club Green – probably now a Farrow & Ball colour

others. Wojas also started music nights when the likes of Billy Bragg and Suggs would play, and also ‘celebrity barman’ nights when Kate Moss and Sam Taylor-Wood took a turn behind the stick. Wojas was always to be found sitting on the barstool closest to the door, where he could keep an eye on things in the mirrors behind the chimneypiece. He once said of his role in the club, ‘I am the proprietor, bar manager, lavatory attendant, psychiatric counsellor, odd job man and accountant.’ I first went to the Colony Room in 2004. I’d been drinking with an acquaintance in Trisha’s, a drinking dive on Greek Street. We got chatting to a nightclub chanteuse dressed as a guardsman. She was having a birthday party in

The club phone was a direct line to a bookmaker

entertaining and always eclectic. As Sebastian Horsley said, ‘The Club reminded me of an alcoholic Tardis. It was minute on the outside but huge on the inside and you went there for love, which they served by the glassful.’ At one time or another I chatted to a French mirror designer who had the disconcerting habit of resting his head heavily on one’s shoulder while talking; various brusque ladies who thawed once one was rude back; legendary barman Dick Bradsell (we bonded over a shared interest in the history of the hovercraft); two heavily-bearded gents in three-piece tweed suits and ZZ Top beards called The Rubbishmen of Soho; and numerous amiable and not-so-amiable drunks. The first time I met Michael Wojas, the owner, we were both so drunk we shook hands and managed inadvertently to headbutt each other. Wojas, towards the end of his life, was described as ‘looking like a blade of grass growing under a bucket’. I was in there one evening and got chatting to some dark-haired woman with a Lancashire accent. She commented on my skin problem and

opined it was the result of my eating too much cheese. Ever the gentleman, I told her that she had huge nostrils. We then got on famously and she ended up sitting on my knee for the rest of the evening, to my friends’ obvious amusement. The Lancashire lass went off to powder her nose and my friends asked if I knew who I’d been talking to. ‘Nope,’ I said. I was then told I’d been talking nonsense to Lisa Stansfield. The Colony Room closed in 2008 for mysterious reasons, when the landlord chucked the club out of the premises. Some of the club’s artwork was sold, before some sort of legal suspension was applied when the original artists objected. Westminster Council then slapped a ban on the landlord turning the club into flats. Many of the older club members were, I’m told, secretly glad at the club’s demise, as they believed that the Colony Room had had its day and become full of dreaded ‘bores’ and wannabes. Michael Wojas used to turf people out at 11 pm with the words: ‘Rush-up, dash-up, spend-up and fuck off.’ n

FEATURES

INTERVIEW: MR B THE GENTLEMAN RHYMER

CASANOVA COMPLEX

NORMAN WISDOM

Interview

SLIDE D O W N A SUNB EA M Gustav Temple sits down with Chap Hop superstar Mr. B the Gentleman Rhymer to discuss the whys and wherefores of Chap Hop, growing up in Hancock country and why he was terrified of Michael Gove being his number one fan

“I still love rockabilly, but back then it was part of that whole tribe thing. I remember a friend of mine at school heard me listening to the first Art of Noise album, and he said, what are you listening to? So I tried to justify it by suggesting that the first track started with a twelve-bar blues bass line”

stuff up and imagine how things were. Wouldn’t we just love things to be the way that we imagine they used to be, but actually weren’t? Anyway, someone commented to me that that song from 2020 was a bit of a turning point. Someone else called it my Sergeant Pepper phase, but I always think of it more like Madness, when they used to be a Ska band that did lots of fun tracks but went on to do these very structured melancholy pop songs. The new album is a lot more musical than one I did in the summer called Quid Pro Flow, which was very much the hip hop end of Chap Hop. I just sampled lots of old twenties and thirties jazz tunes and put some beats on top of them and rapped over them. Whereas this one’s definitely considerably

I understand you’ve just finished your never-ending tour – or was it a neverbeginning tour? I’m always effectively on tour, but every now and again you just bracket things – I’ve just finished this album called National Treasure which I’m very pleased with. I think it’s my best. Why do you think it’s your best? There was a track called The House that I wrote during Lockdown, which is based on a Jerome K. Jerome short story called The House about man having a conversation with a house, and how the house is what really understood what had gone on in the past, whereas humans would tend to make

The only uncomfortable part is explaining that Churchill invented the siren suit

more musical, there are more songs, and, perhaps it is, I hate to say it, a little more personal. Previously I was doing Mr. B like it was a sort of a character, and because you have to create the universe, the world in which your character lives; well, okay, I’ve created that now, and I can just deal with other bits and bobs. I don’t have to keep going on about pipe smoking and cricket and things like that.

I understand there’s a song in the album called Take Myself Out to Lunch? I wrote a lot of this album while I was on tour with Sparks last year, and there’s definitely a little bit of Sparks influences in some of the songs; with that one it would be I Married Myself. I must admit I find Sparks a bit confusing. Can you explain Sparks to me? I’m not sure if I can, but what I can say from touring with them is they’re very nice, very gentlemanly, and the thing I love about them is that they’re both, you know, knocking on a little bit now, but they’re just Sparks. So they wake up in the morning and they are Sparks – I don’t know if either of them ever got married or had kids or anything. Ron Mael is one of the most iconic figures in pop music history. Paul McCartney, when he did his video for Coming Up, where he played lots of different musical people, the keyboard player was Ron, as in McCartney playing Ron Mael. When me and Ron were on the tour, whenever we had our little chats, he kept saying. ‘We’re so compatible!’ They’re both lovely but it’s Ron who’s more old fashioned and elegant and, you know, Chap –

“The chap who used to send out my CDs sent me an email saying, We’ve had order right from the House of Commons! The Shadow Education Secretary wants to buy a copy of the first album. So we thought, should we send it or not? I was going to do that Johnny Marr thing, saying, no, no, you’re not allowed to like our music” 24

There are still rules about suits and trainers, which I’ve probably made up

although he does collect Nike Air Jordans. He’ll wear a jacket, trousers, tie, shirt and a pair of Nike Dunks.

Estates with Lois cords that were relatively tight. Run DMC would wear tight black Wranglers and trainers without the laces on. There still are certain rules about trainers, which I’ve probably made up.

What do you think about chaps who wear three-piece suits with plimsolls? I have a song on my 2019 longplayer Dandinista called Three-Piece Suit and Sneakers, and this has always been a thing with me, because there is ‘hop’ in chap-hop. So it’s like everything, there are suits and there are suits, and in the same way there are suit and trainer combos and there are suit and trainer combos.

Are the rules are strict as, say, not wearing brown shoes with a black suit? I’ve got a pair of Nike Dunks at the moment, and they are white with a bit of brown, so they look a little bit like co-respondents, which I quite like. On the way here I saw somebody wearing a Camo pattern Dry Robe in the middle of winter. What are your feelings about that sort of thing, I mean practical sportswear turned into fashion? I live in Brighton, so there are a lot of people wearing them but I assume they’ve just been in the sea.

Why do the shoes have to represent the hop? Why can’t you wear a pair of brogues and a tracksuit? It’s an interesting question, but probably because I would feel like I looked terrible. Some things just work and you can’t explain why. As far as the trousers go, I like a nice Oxford bag and they can work quite nicely with trainers.

Well, I think they’ve just been to TK Maxx. What sort of sartorial no-nos can you absolutely not countenance? Men wearing suits so that are cut so skin-tight that they could be made for children. And also people who have adopted the Peaky Blinders look, making

Is that because the trainers would originally have been worn with quite baggy trousers? Yes, although I guess in the early days of hip hop people were wearing Adidas Superstars and Puma

horrible videos of themselves walking around trying to look hard and basically ruining the baker boy cap – even though I’m wearing one today.

hip hop first arrived in this country. It was the time when things were very tribal, the early eighties. I first heard rockabilly from my friend’s brother and some of his mates, who were about three years older than me. We’d listen to the Stray Cats and the Polecats and King Kurt. In fact I think Shakin’ Stevens was actually my gateway drug into rockabilly.

So your new album is called National Treasure. Why did you choose that title? I thought, if no-one else is going to say it, then I’ll show them the new merchandise we’ve got – these medals on a ribbon. I’ve sort of attempted to preempt my inevitable national treasure status.

What was the first hip hop you heard via your brother? Houdini, the original Electro albums, then Run DMC and the Beastie Boys.

Which album is this in the chronology? National Treasure is probably about album number twelve, as far as Mr. B albums go. The first album was called Flattery Not Included and that was 2008.

So you heard all this through your brother and you were drawn to it? Originally no, because we were less than two years apart, so I had to take the official rockabilly line and say I hated it. I still love rockabilly, but back then it was part of that whole tribe thing. I remember a friend of mine at school heard me listening to the first Art of Noise album, and he said, what are you listening to? So I tried to justify it by suggesting that the first track started with a twelve-bar blues bass line.

Who plays all the instruments? That’s me. Bass, drums, trombone… I even found this piccolo trombone for the last album. Are you one of those people who can just pick of any instrument and work it out fairly quickly? Yes, most of the very early photos of me when I’m just a baby I’ve got an instrument in my hand. Maybe a xylophone or a harmonica. I used to get a guitar or a ukulele every Christmas. They’d usually last a couple of weeks, and then would be destroyed.

It’s like that scene in Quadrophenia when Ray Winstone and Phil Daniels are at the bath house chatting about their schooldays, but when they come out they see from their clothes that one’s a mod and one’s a rocker, so they have to part company. Another of my eureka moments was hearing The Justified Ancients of Mumu, around 1987, What the Fuck is Going On? They had a song called The Queen and I, which pretty much sampled the entirety of Dancing Queen by Abba with a beat box and Bill Drummond shouting over it. I suppose that’s when I got the cultural signpost of sampling; you can just say what you’re about by the samples you choose.

Like The Who in the seventies? Very much like the Who, smashed up on stage. So how do you get from ukuleles for Christmas to recording what turns out to be a hit single, with Collapsed Lung? I was in a band called Skank Thing for a while, back at home in Cheam after university. There was a song called Cheam Beat, which was a sort of glam rock celebration of the banality of suburbia. Cheam is a very typical British home counties suburban town; it’s Hancock country. There is no actual East Cheam, only a North and a South Cheam, but if it did exist, that’s where I was brought up. It’s ‘disgusted of Cheam’ land; very banal and there’s really nothing there.

I watched the video for Eat My Goal and must admit I had trouble spotting which one was you. It was very dark! It was directed by guy called David Slade who went on to direct loads of horror films. But I did have a different look.

Did you get into hip hop quite early on? Oddly enough, my younger brother was actually into hip hop first. I was a rockabilly at the time when

So what happened to Collapsed Lung? Why didn’t you keep going?

Largely because we had a minor hit single called Eat My Goal and it got used in a soft drinks advert. I remember turning up at a university where we were playing and the sign just said ‘Eat My Goal’ in big letters, and ‘Collapsed Lung’ in little letters. We released a single after Eat My Goal, spent a lot of money on the video and it looked really good, it sounded really good – and nobody was remotely interested. It killed the band, although Caroline, my wife, got us back together again as a surprise on my 40th birthday party. Now we’re still here; we just had an album out this year called Collapsed Lung Weekend Television. How do you dress for the gigs, given that Collapsed Lung is a very different look to Mr. B? We’ve got a good workaround to that, which is band uniforms. Our last album was called Zero Hours Band and we had these black polo shirts with ‘zero hours band’ in the Sports Direct logo. You mentioned nostalgia and there’s a song on the new album called Bring Back the British Handswear, as in the two fingers rather than one. I do go on quite a lot about how I hate nostalgia as of itself. Yet you enjoy wearing the clothes that people used to wear 70 or 80 years ago, so why is that not nostalgia too? I do enjoy wearing them, but slightly bastardising them as well. It’s like you can break the rules only if you know the rules first. So what’s to stop you just going full modern? Why are you holding on to the smartness of the traditional British gentleman? Largely because it makes you feel good. If you wear a sweatshirt and tracksuit buttons, that will determine how you feel, whereas if you wear a suit, it makes you feel a certain way; you immediately stand slightly taller and you really notice that people act differently towards you. People who come to my shows dressed up, they’ve put their tweeds on, and they act a certain way because you have to inhabit the clothes you’re in. So you’ve actually influenced the dress code of some of your audience, do you think? Or do you think they’re just dressing up for that gig? You can tell from the facial furniture; someone turns up and they’ve got a proper moustache with the curls on it

Better run when you hear the sirens coming....

Or just sit it out on a comfortable electricity unit

and you think, okay, this is a lifestyle choice; you’re not doing cosplay, which is quite heartening.

He obviously had someone to put it on for him, because I know from wearing a siren suit that there’s a quite a lot of contortion to actually getting it on. It isn’t like putting a jacket and trousers on.

So what do you think about these people who dress up in clothes from March 1943 and won’t wear anything that was made in December 1943, right down to the right vintage shoe laces? I think that there’s absolutely a place for that, and if you want to do that you should do that; it just isn’t for me.

Do you think Churchill would have agreed with you about the British handswear? I think the main difference between the continental or American finger is that it’s just more aggressive. The British handswear is amusing as well. Rick Mayall is the Shakespeare of the British handswear.

And it’s still far better than wearing a pair of jeans and a hoodie, isn’t it? Jeans have become a bit of a misnomer now. They tend to be an old person’s thing. My dad, God rest his soul, didn’t really start wearing jeans until he was in his late sixties or seventies; he always wore casual trousers but he never wore denim until he was retired.

Yes, the sort of hand signal you would see in episodes of Steptoe & Son or Dad’s Army. I get the impression you are equally drawn to that absurd, camp side of British culture as much as things like the KLF or Big Audio Dynamite? I think being from East Cheam, which produced what was I think the first sitcom ever – Hancock’s Half Hour – it’s what I grew up with. That whole area of southwest London was used as the setting for so many 70s sitcoms, like The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, set in Norbiton, and Terry and June and the Good Life, both set in Norbiton, which is next to Surbiton in Surrey and near Cheam.

Today you’re wearing one of your siren suits. Is that a comfortable option? The only uncomfortable part is having explain to people, when they come up to you and say, ‘I like your onesie’ about how Churchill invented the siren suit. They’re called Siren Suits so that when the sirens went off he had something he could leap into – though I don’t think Churchill did much leaping.

There was once a romantic idea of suburbia,

saying he liked the Arctic Monkeys, just making it up. He sounded quite genuine. The chap who used to send out my CDs emailed me saying, We’ve had order right from the House of Commons! The Shadow Education Secretary wants to buy a copy of the first album. So we thought, should we send it or not?

when John Betjeman wrote his poems about metroland, which is the north side of where you were. But then he also wrote about raining bombs on Slough. But Suburbia is still inspiring. Sitcoms are largely about people who can’t escape from the situation they’re in. And that situation is very often suburban.

Really? Why not? Surely that would be censorship? Well, I was almost going to do that Johnny Marr thing, saying, no, no, you’re not allowed to like our music.

I suppose people like David Bowie came out of the suburbs originally. Yes, shame there wasn’t sitcom about David Bowie, perhaps with Nicholas Lyndhurst playing him.

Oh, I don’t agree with that. You can’t cherry pick your audience. Anyway, on the same day, I got an email inviting me to appear on Newsnight. They wanted the whole of my first album boiled down to one minute, so when the car turned up to take me, I was still editing Chap Hop History. When I walked into the BBC studio, they had this huge backdrop of photoshopped pictures of Michael Gove with a gold chain on him and baseball cap, and I was thinking, Oh shit!

Anyway, you do other things as well as music, don’t you, writing books, painting, screenprints – so what’s all that about? [Laughs] That was a real Terry Christian interview moment! “What’s all that about?” I went to a boy’s grammar school and I love music, but doing that seriously wasn’t a remote possibility. It was either football or cricket or you were one of the hard kids. I was very good at art, and so, yes, I’ve done some lino prints and things like that, and written a bit. Making music is my job, but it’s also what I do to relax, so when I finish an album, I’ll relax by doing a different album. So I might finish a Mr. B album and then I immediately go into making an album by the Major, the more sample based thing.

Did you regret agreeing to do it? No, I don’t regret doing it. There’s a bit in Fight for Your Right To Party with the line, ‘Your teacher preaches class like you’re a bally nincompoop’ and I managed to get in a point with the thumb over my shoulder to the picture of Gove. One of the other guests was Michelle Mone, the Tory MP who later ran off with £21 million of government profits from PPE during the pandemic. She was on Newsnight to moan about inheritance tax, and she was in the make-up room, cornering me and Paxman, showing us photos of her in a swimsuit on her phone. When it was all over and I was relaxing in the green room, the editor of the show came over and said, we’ve been trying to get Gove on the show for ages, but he won’t talk to Paxman, he’s afraid. Then this editor said, I’m just texting Gove now, telling him he won’t come on but we’ve got Mr. B here. And Gove texted back immediately, saying, ‘Can I get a signed photo?’ So the editor took a photo to send him, of me holding up a sign saying ‘I was on Newsnight, where were you?’ n

Shall we wind up with the Michael Gove story? What happened there? It all started when I was about to get on a plane at Heathrow and someone sent me a link of something in the paper by Kirsty Allsop, who was moaning about Michael Gove getting up at some Tory do and doing some gentleman rhyming. I thought, thank God I’m getting out of the country. A couple of months later I’d just done a gig in London and I was staying at my mum and dad’s, and suddenly my mum burst into the bedroom, showing me the Daily Mail with a big picture of me, but also pictures of the Correspondents and professor Elemental. The thing that I was most pleased about was that I was singled out because of what the Daily Mail called my ‘Tory baiting lyrics’. Then Michael Gove said in some interview that he liked eccentric weird English music like the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, although it wasn’t like Gordon Brown

Mr B is on tour again from spring 2024. See www.gentlemanrhymer.com

Clapham, Yorkshire Dales

Natural British countrywear, made proper.

www.glencroft.co.uk

Glencroft-ChapAD-120x170mm-FINAL.indd 2

23/10/2023 10:31

Biography

CASANOVA COMPLEX As well as being the benchmark in seduction, Giacomo Casanova was an Alchemist, Spy, Scholar, Cleric, Dandy, Inventor of the National Lottery and Prison Escapee, truly embodying the Enlightenment, as Olivier Woodes-Farquharson reveals

magine being renowned as the World’s Greatest Lover, the final word in seduction … and yet that still not being the most interesting thing about you? It’s a situation that many of us would doubtless still take on the chin, what with the ‘World’s Greatest Lover’ part. Yet the simple and surprising truth is that Giacomo Girolamo Casanova led many fascinating lives, each of which was in its own way enviable: Alchemist, Spy, Scholar, Cleric, Dandy, Inventor of the National Lottery and Prison Escapee, to name but a few; he truly embodied the Enlightenment like few others. He just happened also to have a rattling good record with the ladies, but it is only this latter aspect that we – the louche, lazy and lecherous of the 21st century – have fixated upon. It’s high time we rectified this and revealed a

“Pretty, light-hearted, and a great reader of romances ... The girl pleased me at once, though I had no idea why. It was she who little by little kindled in my heart the first sparks of a feeling which later became my ruling passion.’ Bettina had unwittingly unleashed sexual bedlam” 31

Venice in 1725 as pictured by Pietro Belloti

Renaissance Man quite unlike any other. Born in Venice in 1725 as the first of six children to actor couple Gaetano and Zanetta Casanova, Giacomo was initially raised by his grandmother, as his travelling parents increasingly neglected him. Sent to a horrendous boarding house in Padua and desperate to leave, Casanova begged to live with the family of his favourite tutor, Abbe Gozzi, who then personally tutored him in the arts and music. It was at aged 11 that everything changed when Gozzi’s younger sister Bettina, on a whim, chose to ‘enlighten’ the boy: “Pretty, light-hearted, and a great reader of romances ... The girl pleased me at once, though

I had no idea why. It was she who little by little kindled in my heart the first sparks of a feeling which later became my ruling passion.” Bettina had unwittingly unleashed sexual bedlam. Casanova was already smart, entering Padua University aged 12 to study law, graduating five years later despite hating the subject. What he did love, however, was gambling, and it was while studying that he first hooked himself on to this lifelong addiction; 36 hours straight at the tables was not unheard of. Granny called him back to Venice to straighten him out, little realising that the opposite would happen. By now a late teen, he had developed into a handsome specimen: At 6 foot 2 inches, he stood out from the crowd, abetted by dark features, lusciously curled, scented and powdered locks and sporting three tiny pox marks on his cheeks. That he by now had learned to play the violin well only helped round off the rakish effect. By now every bit the naturally charming dandy, Giacomo was actively climbing the social ladder and getting behavioural tips from 76-yearold senator Alvie Malipero. And, being Casanova, he tried it on first with Malipero’s own squeeze, actress Teresa Imer. Yet it was when he found

“In a wonderful twist of fate, he later discovered that his two nun lovers were themselves engaged in their own affair. One wonders idly if convents were a little different in those days” 32

A handsome specimen by his late teens

Casanova’s charms worked even behind a mask

later Pope would appoint him to the Order of the Golden Spur for ‘services to The Church’ made it all the more delicious. His seduction usually started literally seconds after a meeting. This often involved deliberately starting an argument and then apologising by caressing the emotional beauty, often with the offer thereafter of some rich food: usually crab soup, followed by oysters eaten from the breasts. Neither did he let certain ladies’ way of life act as a hindrance. Even after he seduced another teenager, Caterina Capretta in 1753 in Venice, and saw her irate father parcel her off to a convent, he was hardly put off. Instead, he charmed the other nuns into passing messages to her, along the way catching the eye of another nun, the beautiful Marina Morosini, who couldn’t contain herself and the two started their own affair. In a wonderful twist of fate, he later discovered that his two nun lovers were themselves engaged in their own affair. One wonders idly if convents were a little different in those days. Indeed, Casanova occasionally considered life in a monastery himself, before some temptress appeared to persuade him that praying was likely less fun than conquering the pink fortress.

himself in bed with two teenage sisters, Nanetta and Marton Savorgnan, that the true addiction to seduction began. Thereafter he seldom cared if they were nuns, whores, duchesses or lusty peasants. Ironically, after a brief, unhappy stint in the military in Corfu, he started working as a church cleric – by day, at least. Come nightfall, the opportunity to plant the parsnip became a ritual, and he increasingly convinced himself that celibacy would make you ill. He then had his first homosexual encounter, when a man seduced him while the pair were eyeing up the naked women of an Ottoman harem. “It would have been impolite to refuse”, Casanova later noted. But he was no impressionable fool. Aged 20, when at a dinner where well-known castrato singer Bellini was performing, Casanova’s instinctive understanding of women persuaded him, against insistence from others, that Bellini was no man. Turning on the charm, he lured Bellini into a game of Reveal the Sausage… and he was proved right. She was in fact a lady named Teresa Landi. Soon enough they had an affair, producing Casanova with an illegitimate son, Cesarino, whom he resolutely ignored thereafter. And all this as a junior priest. That a

Never was this more evident than when visiting the Countess Mont-Real, where he was attracted to a newly-married young lady also visiting. Casanova kept trying it on whenever her husband’s back was turned. Having eventually persuaded the unnamed beauty to take a ride on a two-wheel chaise, a huge thunderstorm suddenly appeared, terrifying the poor lady. He recounted later: “Using a ‘method of distraction’ which provided excitement closer to hand, I succeeded in curing her of her dread of thunder, although I doubt she would reveal the secret of my remedy!” Yet Casanova’s reputation soon caught up with him, and he had to flee Venice to avoid angry fathers. The Grand Tour beckoned, and Giacomo spent most of 1750-53 in France, learning the language, becoming a Freemason on a whim, and finding plenty of time to seek out horizontal refreshment with Paris’ countless beauties, as well as casually impregnating his landlady’s daughter Mimi. Brilliantly, he turned his gambling vice into an opportunity and used contacts to introduce the concept of a state lottery to France. It proved hugely successful, made him a sack of cash and gave him access to high society, including Madame de Pompadour and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, yet somehow he found time to satisfy his intellectual desires – his translation of The Iliad was considered a masterpiece. But as he was also relentlessly performing ‘Night Physic’ with countless ladies, rich and poor, even Louis XV cried ‘Enough!’ and had him chased out of town. By now, however, he was also hated by the Venetian Establishment, who were either jealous of his luck with the ladies or his success in life, so looked for excuses to pounce. In 1755 they found a spurious pretext – a supposedly anti-religious satire he’d written as a teenager. Soon enough, with no trial, they had him locked up in ‘I Piombi’ (the Leads) – Italy’s most notorious prison, from which no-one had ever escaped. He languished there for 15 months in dark, hot, flea-infested rooms that he couldn’t stand up straight in. But Casanova wasn’t your usual prisoner, and ultimately fashioned one of the greatest prison escapes in history. His first attempt was thwarted when, having found a piece of iron on his daily exercise and fashioned it slowly into a spike to burrow into the floor below, he was suddenly forced to move rooms, just as he was about to escape. Undeterred, he befriended another inmate, a dodgy priest named Balbi – now in the room above Casanova’s – to whom he sent a bible with the iron bar smuggled inside the parchment

cover, bribing the jailor doing the delivering with a bowl of macaroni. Balbi now did the digging down, pulled Casanova up and from there, on Halloween 1756, the two men together bored up into the great attic immediately above. Peeling away the lead tiles, and using pillow covers and sheets as rope, they endured a perilous night-time journey across the roof, before being able to amble out of the palace corridors at dawn. Thereafter hailing a gondola to make good their escape, word soon got out that they had fled, so Casanova – displaying nerves of steel that we all wished we had – broke into and spent the day at the house of the very Chief of Gendarmes who was out looking for him. In an extra flourish, he also left in his cell a note for his guards: ‘Since you all did not ask my permission to throw me in prison, I am not asking for yours to get out.’

“Casanova broke into and spent the day at the house of the very Chief of Gendarmes who was out looking for him. In an extra flourish, he also left in his cell a note for his guards: ‘Since you all did not ask my permission to throw me in prison, I am not asking for yours to get out’” Now a minor celebrity, he spent most of the next 14 years on the road, travelling nearly 40,000 miles, often under the assumed name the ‘Chevalier de Seingalt’. These were busy times. When he wasn’t seducing and squiring in bed, he penned many books, an opera libretto, poetry and philosophical treatises. He mingled with the likes of Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin. He pretended to be an alchemist in Paris. In Amsterdam he was asked to be a spy. In Warsaw, he fought a duel – over a woman of course – with an army officer. He badly wounded his hand, but refused for doctors to amputate it, as he suggestively said that it would ‘unduly affect my performance’. Yet he was ultimately rootless, and left England underwhelmed in 1763, where he had tried to sell his national lottery idea. Most appallingly, though, he was

problems with slavery, and often courted girls who were alarmingly young. Worst of all, when visiting an old flame called Lucrezia, she confessed that her daughter (another of Casanova’s stream of bastard offspring) still wasn’t getting pregnant with her husband and, incredibly, asked Casanova himself to sort this out. Even more incredibly, he obliged, and his son – and grandson – arrived nine months later. (And remember kids: Don’t try this at home). As he approached 60, becoming penniless but still finding it impossible to keep his breeches on in the presence of married women, he left Venice for the last time. After a chance encounter with Count Joseph Charles von Waldstein, whose Castle Dux in Bohemia had 40,000 books, Casanova became the Count’s librarian for his last 14 years. It was a monstrous comedown for such a bon vivant; unable to converse in German or Czech, he remained desperately lonely and harboured suicidal thoughts. But doctors suggested the cleverest of cures: that he should write his memoirs. He threw himself for years into the task, writing a letter in 1791 exclaiming, “What pleasure in remembering one’s pleasures! It amuses me because I am inventing nothing.” These 12 volumes, written in French rather than Italian, are now universally regarded as a masterpiece and the most authentic source of social customs of 18th-century Europe. n

slowly losing his looks, and it was a 17-year-old London courtesan named Marie-Anne Augspurgher who led on and then scorned the now middle-aged Casanova (“It was on that fatal day...that I began to die.”) The romantic humiliations continued across Europe. “The power to please at first sight, which I had so long possessed in such measure, was beginning to fail me.” Racking up huge debts with his incurable gambling, he was finally allowed back to Venice, where his inquisitors from 17 years before invited him to dinner, as they were desperate to know how he had escaped prison. Soon after, he had an unforgettable experience. Meeting the Duke de Matalone’s 17-yearold mistress Leonilda in Naples, he fell madly in love and asked for her hand in marriage. The Duke somehow concurred and asked for her mother to come and give permission. The mother – Anna Maria Vallati – duly arrived, saw her would-be sonin-law and promptly screamed and fainted. She and Casanova had had an affair 18 years earlier, and there was no hiding it: Casanova was about to marry his own illegitimate daughter. For this was the dark truth that the modern reader has to accept about the great but often seedy 18th-Century lover: he lacked any sort of values that we would latterly call ‘morals’. He weaponised the venereal diseases he was now riddled with, had no

Biography

BRING OUT THE GUMP Andrew Roberts on the fifties comedy actor who was more Victorian vaudeville than midcentury comic turn

“While Wisdom found fame in the British cinema of the Fifties and Sixties, he was already an anachronism. He could have belonged to the gas lit Victorian music hall, as depicted by Sickert or Toulouse-Lautrec”

A 30-shiling undersized check suit unleashed the Gump

o a certain generation of Britons, screening the latest Norman Wisdom film at your local Odeon was as much a part of the Christmas festivities as Meltis Newberry Fruits. Beyond the UK, his pictures were also enormous successes at the box offices in the Commonwealth, the Middle East, South America, the USSR and most famously Albania. Norman Joseph Wisdom was born in London on 4th of February 1915. In 1930 he joined the army as a band boy and embarked on a show business career at the end of the Second World War. In 1949, when he was acting as the stooge for

the magician David Nixon, he devised his ‘Gump’ costume: a thirty-shilling undersized check suit. In 1952, Wisdom signed a contract with the Rank Organisation. His first significant film, Trouble in Store – directed by John Paddy Carstairs and released in 1953 – resulted in thirteen years of star vehicles. While Rank appreciated the box office receipts, many critics were not in favour of Wisdom’s films, as The Tribune fulminated: Don’t try and tell me that the Wisdom series are harmless little comedies. They show a set of attitudes and a contempt for the audience rare even in the Rank set-up. How can we accept as sympathetic a clown who is presented as

Trouble in Store (1953)

“In Press for Time the narrative exiles Wisdom from a London of brick-shaped Ford Zephyr Mk. IVs straight from a J.G. Ballard novel to the Devonshire coast”

not merely awkward but an ignorant and offensive nuisance? How can we side with a comic who is shown to be a semiliterate moron? Such a rant now reads almost irresistibly like one of Edward ‘Mr. Grimsdale’ Chapman’s diatribes. In 1973, Penelope Gilliatt opined, ‘Norman Wisdom specialises in bashfulness that verges on mental deficiency’. But this was a mild critique compared with Bosley Crowther’s review in The New York Times of Trouble in Store: Wisdom would be honoured for holding the third Ritz Brother’s coat. To put him in a class with Lou Costello would be to flatter him recklessly. To mention his name with Red Skelton’s would be to libel the latter. Wisdom’s Rank comedies never succeeded in the USA – but he till outsold From Russia with Love in world cinematic markets. Rank initially had no idea how to use Wisdom; an early screen test obliged him to inform Petula Clark that she had ‘eyes like gossamer’. It is only just about possible to imagine Dirk Bogarde uttering such a line with conviction, and Wisdom was ill suited for overcoming such typically banal early 1950s juvenile lead material. Eventually, Jill Craigie devised Trouble in Store as a vehicle for

Wisdom, who plays a stockroom boy who aims to become a window dresser. In doing so, he defeats a gang of crooks led by a velvet-voiced cad and (of course) wins the heart of Sally, who works in the record department. The studio wisely further cast Jerry Desmonde, one of Britain’s finest comedy straight men, as the store owner August Freeman. The screenplay included a subplot of Margaret Rutherford’s aristocratic shoplifter as further insurance for a comic who had never sustained an acting role in a feature film. Trouble in Store resulted in Wisdom receiving the 1954 BAFTA award for the ‘Most Promising Newcomer To Film in 1954’. A profile in Films and Filming noted, ‘He has reached the degree

The Bulldog Breed (1960)

belonged to the gaslit Victorian music hall, as depicted by Sickert or Toulouse-Lautrec – a place of acrobats in leotards, of tear-jerking ballads and crude, broad emotions. Wisdom’s childhood certainly fitted this melodramatic bill.” The sentimentality could be unalloyed, but John Fisher observed Wisdom’s stage appearances: “After his signature closing with Don’t Laugh at Me cos I’m a fool he would walk to the wings with his head down, then shoot a glance straight at the audience, break into hysterics and say ‘You ought to see your faces!’” Such a device was rare in Wisdom’s films, to their detriment. One exception is the witty self-parodic court-martial scene in 1960’s The Bulldog Breed, with the assembled officers and

of eminence where satisfying theories are being composed about his own particular brand of clowning’. Unlike George Formby’s or Will Hay’s films, pathos was vital to Wisdom’s screen and stage persona. The Gump was his creation, honed throughout many years with Army concert parties, variety theatres and television, as the historian Roger Lewis argues. “More embarrassing today are the sequences where he is raising money to liberate orphans, or when he starts singing to entertain the handicapped. The point is that while Wisdom found fame in the British cinema of the Fifties and Sixties, he was already an anachronism. He could have

With John Le Mesurier in The Early Bird (1965)

NCOs bursting into tears at Norman’s defence of relentless woe. This markedly contrasted with 1955’s One Good Turn, where Wisdom plays an orphanage handyman. The Monthly Film Bulletin moaned: “He attempts to exploit the pathetic quality which once arose easily and naturally from his comedy here results in a mawkish, tasteless pathos”. Yet One Good Turn features a standout sequence of Wisdom battling with a recalcitrant telephone box and an irate queue jumper. Eight years on, A Stitch in Time has the Gump bringing comfort to another orphan – and slapstick that Jacques Tati might have applauded. Wisdom frequently excels

when his characters display a sense of self-belief, however misguided. With Trouble in Store, Norman is utterly convinced of his window dressing skills, just as an attempt to perform a citizen’s arrest on a ‘thief ’ in 1962’s On the Beat results in Norman becoming trapped outside a moving Tube train. In addition, the Gump is ever eager to impress authority. Desmonde is at his considerable best in Trouble in Store and A Stitch in Time, where his pompous, self-regarding figures also have a genuine sense of ambition. The department store owner is hard working and possesses a sense of vision, while Sir Hector wishes to raise money for a children’s home. Both these endeavours are in severe danger from the efforts of a short, aggressively helpful outsider. The comic was aware of the dangers of being trapped in a formulaic straitjacket – he expressed a wish to “develop his film character through a more mature role” as early as 1954. By 1965, the magnificently executed opening of The Early Bird, Wisdom’s first major colour film, can be seen as a virtual riposte to Pinewood’s management – if stairs they want, stairs they shall have. The following year, he was still the country’s fifth most popular box office attraction, but Wisdom’s last film released by the Rank Organisation, Press for Time, conveys a sense of retreat. With Trouble in Store, the Gump

Liz Fraser in The Bulldog Breed

What’s Good for the Goose (1969) was not good for audiences

was at the heart of nascent consumerism in a West End department store. One of the best sequences in any Rank comedy film of this period is of the grand department store besieged by hundreds of wild-eyed female bargain hunters, all seemingly clad in equally deranged-looking headgear, as they frantically search for now de-rationed luxuries. In Press for Time the narrative exiles Wisdom from a London of brick-shaped Ford Zephyr Mk. IVs straight from a J.G. Ballard novel to the Devonshire coast. Press for Time has one sublime moment when we see Wisdom’s profile as he walks alone but still resolutely along the coast at sunset, a further demonstration of the sheer eloquence of his body language. Mike Vickers’s beautifully plangent score tantalisingly hints at the film that might have been – a vision of comic melancholy on par with Hancock or Sellers. But this is an isolated vignette in a flatly directed picture that was Wisdom’s last mainstream film comedy. Of 1969’s ‘romp’ What’s Good for the Goose, the less said the better. It was that British cinematic oxymoron, a ‘Sex Comedy’; Wisdom cavorting with ‘far-out’ mini-skirted extras to the sounds of The Pretty Things had the allure of a Public Information Film about warehouse safety. Of course, there seldom appeared to be any natural chemistry between Wisdom and the various Rank

ingenues who played the heroine who comes to admire Norman. But Goose represented a new, albeit exceedingly unwelcome development in Wisdom’s career – nude scenes resulting in patrons fleeing their local Odeons in terror. Conventional belief is that Hollywood’s The Night They Raided Minsky’s and, on television, Going Gently represented the only occasions Wisdom received strong direction from William Freidkin and Stephen Frears, respectively. But 1960’s There Was a Crooked Man is worth viewing for an older, warier Gump, and each of Wisdom’s Rank pictures has at least one moment of felicitous slapstick. In 1954, he told the press, “I want to be the first Norman Wisdom, not the second Chaplin” and Trouble in Store depicted a unique figure. He may be in his late thirties, but he is still the ambitious errand boy, dodging among Commer delivery vans as he dreams of being promoted to shop assistant. Alternatively, he is the private soldier, appealing to a paternal CO over the heads of recalcitrant Corporals and Sergeants who do not appreciate his talents. The Gump has escaped from the twilight of the music hall into post-war Britain; the Victorian clown now confronting menacing Teddy Boys in coffee bars. And never laugh at him because he was a fool. n

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THE DISTINGUISHED GENTLEMAN'S DRIVE

GREY FOX COLUMN

SARTORIAL

LOCK & CO

BEORMA LEATHER

EDWARD SEXTON

Sartorial

THE DISTINGUISHED GENTLEMAN’S DRIVE An annual global celebration of fast cars, dapper clothes and charitable causes WWW.GENTLEMANSDRIVE.COM

“Participants are encouraged to dress in their finest retro-inspired ensembles, “paying homage to a bygone era of elegance and style”. Yes, reader, this does sometimes mean clip-on braces and ill-fitting suits of inappropriate fabrics, but at least they are not wearing fleeces and pantaloons de nimes (actually, some of them are)”

aving run The Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride for 12 years, the team behind the international celebration of motorcycles and dapper chaps has also launched a four-wheeled version. The Distinguished Gentleman’s Drive (DGD) celebrated its third year in 2023. Sunday, 24th September this year saw over 6,000 distinguished gentlefolk taking part in 200 locations around the world. This year’s drive raised an astounding US$400k, which will go directly towards prostate cancer research and men’s mental health programmes around the world. The DGD 2023 featured a picturesque ride through some of the most iconic cities and roads across the globe, including the United Kingdom,

DGD Caracas, Venezuela, Photograph: Elias Lilue

DGD Sydney, Photograph: CTRL Media

DGD Tokyo, Photo Junichi Okumura

Portugal, Venezuela, Chile, the United States, Pakistan, Japan and Australia, among many others, allowing participants to showcase their classic and vintage vehicles polished to glowing perfection. The route took them through city and country roads, providing picturesque backdrops for each event. Participants are encouraged to dress in their finest retro-inspired ensembles, “paying homage to a bygone era of elegance and style”. Yes, reader, this does sometimes mean clip-on braces and ill-fitting suits of inappropriate fabrics, but at least they are not wearing fleeces and pantaloons de nimes (actually, some of them are). Nevertheless, the generosity of the participants and sponsors reaffirmed the commitment of The Distinguished Gentleman’s Drive community to making a positive difference in the world. “We are thrilled with the success of the Distinguished Gentleman’s Drive 2023,” said founder Mark Hawwa. “It’s always a joy to see our community come together in support of such a

deserving cause. We are deeply grateful to all the participants, sponsors, and volunteers who made this event possible. Next year, our goals are to reach even more drivers, and connect with clubs around the world to host their own drives and bring local classic automotive enthusiasts together for a day of driving dapper for men’s health.”

The Distinguished Gentleman’s Drive encourages everyone who wishes to host their own drive in 2024 to visit www.gentlemansdrive.com/hosting and join them in planning for an even more remarkable event next year.

There follows our own selection of some of the finest vehicles and outfits from across the globe, from Caracas to Coventry, from the 2021 and 2023 Distinguished Gentleman’s Drives. n

DGD Caracas, Venezuela, Photograph: Elias Lilue

RAFFISH EAU DE COLOGNE FROM THE CHAP

AVAILABLE FROM WWW.THECHAP.CO.UK

DGD London, Photo: MJ Studio

DGD Lisbon, Portugal, Photo Filipe La Salette

DGD London, Photo: MJ Studio

Headwear

THE RESTORATION Gustav Temple visits Lock & Co to see what can be done to restore his original Edwardian Lock & Co top hat

“When Queen Victoria was mourning Prince Albert, they changed it to a plain black mourning band, made of wool. From then on, every hat was fitted with a mourning band. But when we renovate, we go back to the original tradition of the grosgrain band with a bow, with the back end of the bow tucked in”

’ve had my Lock & Co topper for over 20 years, purchased for my wedding in 2001 from David Saxby, formerly of Fulham. As well as being the ‘top’ part of top and tailing my fully Edwardian wedding attire for said wedding ceremony, the hat has served me well, coming out of its original leather box for things like Grand Anarcho-Dandyist Balls, infrequent trips to the Opera and white tie dos (and occasionally white tie don’ts). However, the lustre was beginning to pall on my trusty topper, and the underside of the brim was showing patches where the dreaded clothes moth had somehow got into the hat box (sealed with a lockable clasp, no less). So I called the good folk at Lock & Co, the oldest hat shop Britain, and probably the world, to see whether they could do anything to spruce up the faithful old friend. I was assigned the attention of Jayesh Vaghela, Lock &

The first thing I’ll do is give it a good clean

The plush immediately returns to its former shine

Co’s only Master Hatter, who restores all their top hats himself and who moonlights as the hat expert on a BBC television programme called The Repair Shop. Was there anything Vaghela could do with a 100-year-old top hat that had seen better days?

France, in the 19th century. The story goes that one of two brothers inherited the factory, and out of spite, the other brother burnt down the entire factory in the late 1950s. And that’s what destroyed the production of any more of this special plush used for top hats.

When restoring an original Edwardian top hat such as mine, what is the first thing you would do? The first thing I do is give it a good clean, using plain old tap water. One of the main reasons for the initial clean, as well as removing dust, dirt, cobwebs etc, is to ensure the plush is fully healthy with no bald patches, and also to see whether there is any damage to the shell underneath the silk plush.

Why can’t somebody else create a new loom to produce more of this silk plush? That was the only place in the world that made silk plush and nobody else knew how to do put it together. The whole knowledge, the whole record, the idea behind this plush, got destroyed. Ordinary velvet, for example, has the pile in a straight line, but with plush it’s different. The top of the crown, as you can see, starts in the centre and spirals out to the edges anticlockwise. There would have been two looms at this factory, one for the crown of the hat and one for the sides. So the plush was milled in three sections, sides, crown and the top of the brim.

What’s that shell made of ? It’s made of fine cheesecloth and layers of shellac called gossamer. In this case, there is no damage to it whatsoever, otherwise we would have had to take the hat through a reblocking process. However, had there been any damage to the plush itself, the hat wouldn’t have been suitable for restoration anyway.

Have Lock & Co ever tried to find someone to reproduce this peculiar process? About ten years ago, we came across ten metres of what appeared to be the right kind of hatter’s plush. In terms of appearance, the sheen was immaculate, but when we took a closer look, we

Why is the original silk plush so difficult to replace? All the silk plush currently in circulation was produced on a single loom in a factory in Lyon,

Jayesh Vaghela, Master Hatter at Lock & Co

Jayesh in Gustav’s fully restored topper, which happens to be exactly his hat size

Photo: Patrick O’Connor

I can immediately see that there have been plenty of moth visitors

saw that the filaments were not long enough. They were closer to a velvet and too short for one of our top hats.

it that beautiful shine. What about the story that Guinness can be used? We’ve had a few customers come to us with top hats that have been cleaned with Guinness. Initially it may bring out an extra shine, but then there is the aftermath. When I put them on my workbench for a clean, the first thing I notice is the smell. No matter how much you wash it, the Guinness is embedded. Unfortunately, part of it remains within the plush and cannot be removed.

Can’t you just take apart an old top hat beyond repair and have the silk plush copied? We have tried that, by lifting a piece of plush and taking it to a fabric expert at a university. They scanned it and they could see how the plush was put together, but they could not work out how to reproduce the process. They can zoom in very close and see that the filaments of the fibre interweave in a loop, but the way it’s laid in cannot be done by hand.

So how did you come to be Master Hatter at Lock & Co? My degree was in visual arts. The original plan was to become a secondary school teacher, but instead I worked in a bank for a number of years. After working for the likes of Fenwicks in retail, I entered Lock as a retail manager fifteen years ago. Just to find myself working for Lock & Co was an honour. I love meeting new people and Lock’s clientele comes from all over the world.

So even the makers of the finest silk for a couture dress cannot come close to reproducing this silk plush? Nowhere near. Before I polished this particular silk plush on your top hat, in appearance it was all ruffled up and very dull, almost like a fur felt would look. Over time the plush loses moisture and raises to the surface, and that’s what makes it resemble fur felt. But as soon as I brushed it, the filaments began to untangle and the water begins to condition the plush, pushing all the filaments into a straight line, which is what gives

What’s your favourite hat, of all the ones you own? My favourite hat is a top hat, but unfortunately one cannot wear one every day. There is Royal Ascot,

Let’s unpick the underside of the brim right now

of course, but we are so busy during those periods that we cannot leave the shop to attend the event.

leather. When we do a full renovation, we want the life of the hat to continue for at least another hundred years. This leather has reached the end of its life and there are markings on it, so it has to go. We’ll replace it with a new leather band, which we source from our neighbours, bootmaker John Lobb. They supply us with the fine leather used in the lining of their shoes. We have to use the finest leather because it has to last a long time and is also prone to damage from sweat. In all our renovations we use Lock’s signature green leather sweatband, although the leather used in our new hats comes from elsewhere than Lobb. Then to the white lining, which formerly was made of silk, but we use acetate because it’s much more durable. Then we apply the Lock & Co logo into the crown, which hasn’t changed since Lock was established in 1676.

You could always get married again, for a chance to wear it? [Laughs] I think I would prefer to retake my marriage vows, though I’d have to ask my wife first. Back to this top hat. So far you’ve only given it a good clean, but I imagine there are many more steps to bring it back to its full glory. What’s the next thing you have to do? Having cleaned it, I now know that the plush is immaculate. Next I have to address the mourning band, which is now more visible. I can immediately see that there have been plenty of moth visitors. When these hats were made – this one in the early 20th century – they always had a grosgrain ribbon with a bow on the left hand side. When Queen Victoria was mourning Prince Albert, they changed it to a plain black mourning band, made of wool. From then on, every hat was fitted with a mourning band. But when we renovate, we go back to the original tradition of the grosgrain band with a bow, with the back end of the bow tucked in. And so the lining. We will lift out the white leather inside band first. You can see that moths have got in here as well and there is fading on the

So let’s have a look at a fully restored top hat. Do you remember how damaged this one was when it was brought to you? We have approximately one top hat brought to us every day, but I remember this particular one. It was in a similar condition to yours, with extensive moth damage. The cloth under the brim – the underlining – had gone completely green and started to go very thin.

A fully restored top hat with grosgrain band instead of mourning band

How long does the whole process take, to get a hat like mine to the finished condition of this one? It’s done in stages. The first stage, where I strip the entire hat, takes about half a day. Behind the silk lining there is a layer of paper, separating the silk from the shellac of the hat’s shell. Let’s unpick it now so I can show you.

Here you can see the handwritten numbers saying what kind of hat it was, the hat’s size, the batch number and the initials of who worked on it. Now you can see how the lining was stuck on the shellac itself. I’m looking to cut the stitching to release it properly. I have to be extremely careful in pulling this out, as it could easily get damaged permanently.

[At this stage, Gustav is wincing with agony while watching the lining of his top hat being cut out with an ordinary pair of scissors]

When it’s all put back together again, who has to do all the restitching? Me. I’ll do every process in the whole restoration. The band is stitched to the hat itself, as well as the bow, which is held in place with just a couple of stitches.

Before you did this job, who was doing it before you? I am actually the first Master Hatter at Lock & Co. Before that, one of the hatters at the shop would have done this kind of restoration. They taught me how to do it, so the skills get passed on. Unfortunately, unlike tailoring, there isn’t an apprenticeship you can do in restoring hats. You can only study millinery. As far as I know, we are the only hatters who offer a full restoration service. So that’s the leather coming away. You can see the paper behind the silk, not glued on but just placed there. There’s the gossamer backing, with a kind of coating. They all vary on the inside, according to who did the work in the first place.

So what will happen if someone brings it in to have it rennovated again? Hopefully I’ll still be here, so I’ll know how it was done and can reproduce it. What if it’s in a hundred years? Well, let’s hope these skills are passed on to future generations of hatters. n Lock & Co, 6 St James’s St, St. James’s, London SW1A 1EF www.lockhatters.com

Sartorial

LEATHER HEAD Alex Simpson, founder of Beorma Leather, recounts how he returned from the army to revitalise a leather factory in Walsall about to close its doors

here did your interest in leather goods come from? I was given a piece of leather in art class when I was 13 and really enjoyed working with it. My dad bought me a hole punch and some sewing thread and needles, and I made my brother a bag for his 16th birthday (I was still 13). He still has it to this day; it’s pretty crude and a long way from what we do now, but I love that it still gets use 26 years later. That’s the real beauty of leather; it’s timeless and, if looked after properly, will last a lifetime.

How did you come to reopen a leather factory in Walsall? Last year I returned home from Iraq, where I had been working as a security contractor conducting Improvised Explosive Device Disposal (IEDD). I had spent 12 years in the army doing this (leaving as a Warrant Officer Class 2) and a further three as a civilian in both Africa (Mali) and Iraq. But I decided to come home for a year off, due to the upcoming birth of our first child, Jake. My plan was to support my family and attempt to make my hobby/passion a small sole

27 of the original 65 leather workers were kept on at Beorma

trader business. I got to work building a workshop in our garden and making some small leather goods. This went really well for four months, but one night while feeding Jake I read of the closure of Whitehouse Cox. I was really saddened to hear of this 125-year-old company closing its doors and the 65-odd staff becoming unemployed. I reached out to the owner about potentially taking on some of their equipment and maybe one or two of their staff, to help me grow what I was doing, but after seeing what they did and how many wonderfully talented people were about to be made redundant, I decided to throw everything we had at keeping this trade going in the Walsall area. We found a building that needed a lot of work and, along with all our savings, sourced some investment and began the hard work of transforming a dilapidated shell into a leather factory.

factory was Whitehouse Cox, but other than some machines and our lovely staff we have no affiliate with them, although it’s fair to say that we still carry a lot of the DNA of Whitehouse Cox, as so many of my team worked there for most of their lives. What was your ambition when you took over the factory? A lot of factories in the Walsall area have closed their doors recently, due to Covid and the cost of living crisis. I wanted to keep some of this wonderful talent alive in the community and stop it from potentially being lost forever. Walsall has such a rich history of leatherwork, and my drive is to keep that alive while making the most beautiful products from the best materials and championing Handmade In England. How many of the factory’s core products did you keep, and how many new ones did you devise? We have kept some of the old factory’s products but have changed them to give them a fresh and

Why the name ‘Beorma’? The name Beorma comes from the Anglo Saxon Chief who founded Birmingham, where I was born and live now. The original name of the previous

Each belt is plaited by hand using traditional methods and ensuring a tight and beautiful weave

modern edge, so technically all of our products are new, although there is certainly an element of those old designs still running through some of Beorma’s pieces.

Who designs your new products? All of us on the team, discussed at weekly design and production meetings. I will tend to draw something new or take inspiration from an old style and reinvent the design, but my amazing team have over 700 years of experience between them, so when they tell me we should do something a certain way or bring an idea to the table, we all sit together and collaborate. Jackie my Factory Supervisor has been doing this for over 45 years, and we work very closely when designing something new. I am immensely lucky in that I can give her a relatively basic drawing and she and the team can turn it into a masterpiece.

“We only use full grain vegetable tanned leather that is responsibly and ethically sourced. This means the leather is of the highest grade and tanned slowly, resulting in a stronger, tighter grain. The tanning process uses natural materials such as oak bark and other renewable natural tannins that don’t pollute the planet or damage the leather”

How many of the original staff members at the factory were you able to keep? 27 of them. I wish we could have kept everyone but as a new start-up it wouldn’t have worked. Where will you find new leather workers when the current crop retires?

Every piece, while made to the same standard, is unique

I have already brought in two new team members, both straight from a leatherworking college based in Walsall. They are really keen and both approached me for a job and training. As we continue to grow, I will continue this approach, as I couldn’t be happier with how quickly they have picked up the skills and how much effort they have put in to learning the trade. This is an area we want to grow the business and get the next generation of artisans coming through in the UK.

Why do customers still need hand-made leather goods? To put it simply, quality. Our products are guaranteed to last a lifetime because I know they will. We believe it’s important to move as far from fast, disposable fashion as possible. When you buy a statement piece, it should not only last a lifetime, it should also be passed down and should tell a story of the life it has lived. We only use full grain vegetable tanned leather that is responsibly and ethically sourced. This means the leather is of the highest grade and tanned slowly, resulting in a stronger, tighter grain. The tanning process uses natural materials such as oak bark and other renewable natural tannins that don’t pollute the planet or damage the leather. Because of this, the leather will grow more beautiful with age as a patina develops, giving the leather a natural and stunning glow. Our tagline – every stitch a story – comes from the fact that every piece, while made to the same standard, is ever so slightly unique because it is made by hand from beautiful vegetable tanned leather.

Are apprenticeships possible in leather working? There are schemes for this and it is something I would be very keen to develop as we grow. Walsall has one of the highest rates of NEET (not in education, employment or training) in the West Midlands, and I am really keen to make a positive impact on this as the company goes forward. The community in Walsall has a long-standing reputation of leatherworking craft and skill, and we want to see this continue with Beorma.

What are your core products? Our hand plaited/woven belts are our biggest seller. Each belt is cut and plaited by hand using traditional methods and ensuring a tight and beautiful weave. Aside from these we have a number of wallets and purses, but the Regent wallet and the Ascot purse are my favorite pieces. They combine elegance, sophistication and functionality perfectly. We are currently working on our bag collection, which I think is where my heart truly lies when it comes to designing leather products. A weekend bag and a tote bag are going to be two of our core styles, which we expect will sell out fast once they hit our site early next year. Will there always be a market for leather goods? Leather, being so tactile and sensory as a material, has the unique ability to elevate your mood and give you confidence to take on the day. Whether it’s having a classic wallet in your pocket or a belt completing your look, leather goods are still a signal of appreciation of fine artisan craft. When this specialist craft is coupled with UK handmade, we feel this is what makes Beorma stand out from the crowd. Do you think younger people appreciate the value of the longevity of a product, such as a wallet or belt? I think any person, young or old, with an eye for style appreciates how classic and well-made pieces can be a part of their signature look that will span across years. With Beorma pieces we know that they only become more beautiful over time and can start to tell their own unique story. n

beormaleathercompany.com

Style Column

GREY FOX COLUMN David Evans’s regular round up of all things sartorial, including three tomes on dress and fashion worth delving into www.greyfoxblog.com

“The Beatles used tailors like Dougie Millings, Tommy Nutter and Edward Sexton. They also wore the standard sixties fare of Afghan coats with flared Levi’s and mixed casual with tailoring in a way that was very authentic and personal and anticipated how such styles are worn today”

Frank Foster Shirts

ith yet more news in recent months about the unethical practices of a certain fast fashion retailer, it’s always refreshing to find manufacturers who make high quality products on a small scale and where employees are paid fairly and have good working conditions. The first two businesses I mention here are both small, make individual garments to measure or bespoke, are run by the founders’ daughters and manufacture here in the UK. Mountain Method makes outdoor clothing on the fringes of The Lake District. I’d heard rumours that such a company existed, and this was confirmed by a contact who pointed me towards the small town of Millom on the coast of Cumbria. Millom is a fascinating place which, until 1968, was centred round a thriving ironworks, the closure of which hit the town hard. Today this friendly town of terraced housing surrounded by more recent developments is home to newer enterprises, though the history of the loss of the ironworks, which employed most of the population, is still felt in the area. Mountain Method was founded in 1981 from a previous business based in Scotland called Tulloch Mountain Craft. In those days, waterproof clothing for mountaineering and camping was far from breathable, water resistance was suspect and seams were sealed by tape stuck with EvoStick, which eventually failed. Walkers of my generation will recall how sweaty and hot climbing

anoraks and cagoules were, but today breathable waterproof membranes and machines to heat seal taped seams have transformed outdoor wear. Mountain Method is now run by the founder’s daughter Fiona Butcher, who is proud that she makes in Britain. The business specialises in one-off made-to-measure garments and I had the pleasure of having a jacket made from three-layer eVent, a modern all-weather performance fabric that proved ideal for soaking conditions on The Lake District. When so many suppliers of outdoor wear make their products outside the UK, it’s a privilege to watch experts patterning, cutting and machining top quality walking and climbing kit here in the UK, on the edge of some of England’s most beautiful mountaineering and walking country.

FRANK FOSTER SHIRTS Frank Foster shirts is tucked away in a basement on London’s Pall Mall, where bespoke shirts have been made for the discerning since 1956. Frank Foster made shirts for several of the James Bond actors and for many others in the film and entertainment worlds, in business and elsewhere. Follow them on Instagram and you will see pictured some of the prestigious roll call of their past clients, including Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Orson Welles, Tony Curtis (who wasn’t liked by Frank), Norman Wisdom, Frank Sinatra, Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum. Sadly Frank died in 2016 and the business is run by his wife Mary (who makes the shirts) and daughter Sam. Visiting their workshop

One of the Beatles’ looks that shook the world, along with the roof

is a real treat. The walls are lined with signed film posters, examples of their work are on display and everywhere are rolls of mainly deadstock shirting going back decades. I had some shirts made, cotton and silk, all from gorgeous cloths, the origins of which are lost in the mists of time. Frank Foster’s signature cocktail and tabbed ‘Lapidus’ cuffs adorn some of them. All fit beautifully and the welcoming atmosphere is down to Mary and Sam’s friendly approach to their clients. I strongly recommend you to visit now to order some of their superb shirts (note that, in common with all bespoke shirtmakers, there is a minimum order if you haven’t had shirts made there before). A small business at the start of what will hopefully be a long and successful innings is Moghrabi, founded by Mousbah Moghrabi, whose ambition is to design high quality tailoring and shirting. I tried one of his brightly coloured silk shirts, the designs of which are based on artwork by friends and acquaintances. Beautifully made, here’s an ideal shirt for that special occasion. His silk shirts, ties and pocket squares complement the immaculately tailored jackets, trousers and overcoats he also produces.

FASHIONING THE BEATLES Three books that I’d recommend for wiling away the long winter evenings begin with Fashioning the Beatles: The Looks that Shook the World. Longtime Beatles fan Deirdre Kelly looks at a surprisingly little examined topic, the role of the Fab Four as trendsetters throughout the sixties and beyond. Kelly describes how, while not exactly following fashion, the Beatles took it in new directions. They often did this under the guidance of others; we hear, for example, how Brian Epstein steered them in the direction of wearing suits after being unimpressed by their scruffy appearance when he first saw them at the Cavern in Liverpool. They used tailors such as Dougie Millings and Tommy Nutter and Edward Sexton. They also wore the standard sixties fare of Afghan coats, flared Levi’s, and mixed casual with tailoring in a way that was very authentic and personal and anticipated how such styles are worn today. Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style by Bethan Bide and Lucie Whitmore marks an exhibition at The Museum of London in Docklands, running until 14th April 2024. This fascinating book looks at a topic covered before but

Happy dresser Rebecca Smith

brings new material to describe the vast contribution made by Jewish tailors, designers, retailers, manufacturers and couturiers to London’s foremost position in the fashion world in the twentieth century (a position now arguably being watered down by world events and global brands). Names like Marks & Spencer, Cecil Gee, Wallis & Co, Lord John and Mr Fish, supported by armies of makers in London’s East End, supplied fashions during the fifties and sixties not only to the likes of The Beatles but also to the ordinary man and woman. I’d have liked to see Frank Foster mentioned but sadly he is one of many not included. Both book and exhibition are essentials for anyone interested in London, its history and the story of Britain’s leading place in the fashion world. Books examining the effect that clothes have on our psyche are rare. Rebecca Smith’s The Happy Dresser is a very personal look at her lifelong relationship with clothes. Coming from a background in which clothes and fashion were allimportant, she researched the links between what we wear and our wellbeing while doing a Masters in Applied Positive Psychology. She shows how our clothes can affect mood and relationships with

others. Her style is highly readable and she recounts how clothes have affected her life. In one chapter, a pair of gold boots tells the story of how they came to be owned by the author. This is a book to be read by all, male or female. I found it engaging, uplifting, sad in parts but overall a fascinating examination of the vital role of clothes in our lives. The book (fortunately) isn’t available on Amazon, so I have put a link to where you can buy it below. Happy dressing, everyone! n

Links: Mountain Method mountain-method.co.uk Frank Foster Shirts on Instagram @frank_foster_shirts The Happy Dresser rebecca-weef-smith.sumupstore.com Moghrabi moghrabi.co.uk Museum of London museumoflondon.org.uk

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Sartorial

EDWARD SEXTON Chris Sullivan recalls a meeting with Edward Sexton, the legendary Savile Row tailor who died earlier this year and left a legacy in broad lapels

“While there are people with money who can pay for the best, they will always buy the best there is. But I’m a great believer in creating an illusion and, as a sartorial sculptor, I fit the clothes but also supply something else. We offer something that is so unique and so bloody special that it is the ultimate luxury”

Tommy Nutter, the flamboyant front man

“

y old boss, Fred Stanbury, used to say that we make suits for the three C’s” says Edward Sexton, “the crooks, the cranks and the cripples – the crooks have got the money, the cranks will never be happy and the cripples can’t go anywhere else. Being a run of the mill tailor producing bog standard single and double-breasted suits was never good enough for me. I’m a great believer in creating an illusion and, as a sartorial sculptor, I fit the clothes but also supply something else.” Sexton, business partner of Tommy Nutter, the legendary tailor who dressed three of the Beatles for the cover of Abbey Road, revolutionised and reinvigorated Savile Row at Nutters of Savile Row. Opening in 1969, Nutter kitted out Bianca Jagger in a style that influenced women around the world. And while Tommy was the flamboyant front man who made the connections, Sexton was the expert cutter in the back room who turned his partner’s inspired notions into reality. “I started in 1955 with Kilgour French and Stanbury on Savile Row,” Sexton told me over lunch one rainy afternoon a few years ago. “We dressed everybody and I still do. The essence of great tailoring is fit and style, but also it must be made in the true tradition of Savile Row with a Bianca Jagger in Edward Sexton

“Edward had the ability to create an unimpeachable silhouette that made every single one of his customers look far better than their actuality. It was if he weaved a golden web of masculine elegance around his clientele that spoke for them in a language only the most refined might comprehend; but for the man himself it was almost simple – but not quite”

can pay for the best, they will always buy the best there is. We offer something that is so unique and so bloody special that it is the ultimate luxury.” For the well dressed chap-about-town there can be no greater luxury than a Sexton suit. One might throw names such as Kilgour, Huntsman or Anderson and Sheppard about but, in my humble opinion, having been trained in the genteel art of Savile Row tailoring, no-one could better our man Edward. He had the ability to create an unimpeachable silhouette that made every single one of his customers look far better than they did in actuality. It was as if he weaved a golden web of masculine elegance around his clientele, which spoke for them in a language only the most refined would comprehend; but for the man himself it was almost simple – but not quite. “Once a man buys a Savile Row suit there is no going back. It is the finest suit in the world.” In the 1970s, when Andy Warhol and his business manager Fred Hughes wanted the best tuxedos money could buy, they called on Sexton. “I can do drama all day long,” chuckles Sexton. “Andy and Fred definitely wanted it in spades, so I accentuated the silhouette and gave it to them.” Bobby Gillespie, Jarvis Cocker and Harry Styles have all been loyal and dedicated customers, while Elton John employed Sexton to create his most flamboyant suits for years.

true hand foundation, because unless it is made correctly, the suit won’t fit – it has to be moulded and sit on the handmade canvasses, on the hand padded lapel and the hand padded collar, not like all of these machine produced foundations that people use – you just end up with a flat jacket.” For Sexton, the man who trained Stella McCartney, the handmade suit will never die out because, “While there are people with money who

“I’ve never been in it for the money,” says Sexton, who was born Born in 1942 in Dagenham, then a municipal borough of Essex. Sexton’s working-class Catholic family, some of whom worked as tailors and seamstresses, formed an indelible impression on his future vocation. “I just had to be the best and I worked really hard. When I started at Lew Rose, which was a big name in the fifties, and then moved to Kilgour, French and Stanbury ten years later, the competition was intense, so by the time I joined with Tommy Nutter at the end of the 1960s, I was ready.” I met Tommy Nutter in the early 1980s at The Embassy Club in Old Bond Street. I was introduced to him by Steve Strange, who was a gay as a daffodil, but nothing compared to Tommy, who was camper than a row of tents. He was also an extravagant drinker of champagne and imbiber of all powders from South America, whereas Sexton was the polar opposite – a straight talking family man who rarely took a drop. Sexton and Nutter met while working at tailors Donaldson, Williams & Ward and, on Valentine’s Day, 1969, with the help of funding

from Cilla Black, they opened Nutters together on Savile Row, immediately causing a tsunami throughout the Row with the radical cut of their suits. “Tommy came up with the extra wide lapel idea,” recalls Sexton, “But I came up with the long, lean, slim body. The combination was a unique one and was everything modern in 69. It certainly caused a stir, as nothing like that had ever come from the Row. I’m quite proud of that.” The Nutter-Sexton silhouette was modish, fabulous, seditious, unexpected and coalesced with a keen devotion to old-school Savile Row craftsmanship, thus revolutionising classic British bespoke. Sexton, until 1976, continued as managing director of Nutters. He then relaunched under his own name and became the icon that he was until he died. Few people have made such an impact on tailoring as we now know it, but Edward Sexton was more akin to an architect than a man who merely created men’s clothing, and as such he will forever be remembered. n Edward Sexton, 9th November 1942 – 23rd July 2023

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FOLKLORE

PHILIP CARR-GOMM

DAMANHUR

Folklore

PHILIP CARR-GOMM Gustav Temple meets the former Chief Druid to discuss witchcraft, Druidry, paganism, ornamental hermits and why druidry is like vodka

“The Wicker Man idea seems so improbable, if you look at the old illustrations of Wicker Men. Imagine putting very angry, aggressive blokes in a huge wicker man, which would be hard to do anyway, and then as soon as you light a fire underneath, the wick is going to snap and they’re all going to come pouring out before they burn”

ou were Chief Druid in the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD) for 30 years, from 1988-2008. I think I know what a bard and a druid is, but what is an ovate? Druid teachings are expressed in three particular streams or ways. One, there’s the Bardic stream, which appeals to the part of us that wants to express our creativity, encouraging the use of the spoken word, poetry and music and expression and so on. And then you’ve got the ovates, which are the part of us that’s curious about life and that wants to explore different levels of consciousness and the natural world. The part that wants to be of use in the world, rather than the mystical impulse which wants to attain union with the divine. There are these two fundamental sorts of spiritual drives in us, I think.

The Victorian idea of Druidry was more like the Wicker Man than anything approaching reality

So not so unlike a Benedictine monk, the Druid just wants to achieve union and harmony and I think this is why Druidry is a helpful teaching, because it says you can strive for union with the divine – and that’s a major goal of spirituality – but without it being called an ‘up and out spirituality’ – basically just how can I get out of here? Instead, the druid says, ‘It’s meaningful that I’m here; I’d like to really engage with the world, and that’s the ovate side.

for the amusement of the owner? The best analogy I can think of is with cocktails. You know you have certain kinds of drink that are very missable, like vodka for instance, which you can use in lots of different cocktails. Well Druidry is like that; it combines very well with other religions. There are plenty of Christian Druids, Wiccan Druids and there are atheist Druids. How do we know what Druids believed, if there’s no written record of them? The ancient truths were an oral culture and so we know very little. There’s the material from Julius Caesar and the classical writers, which gives us a little insight, and then you’ve got this thousand-year gap where Christianity came, but Christianity had this sort of love affair with paganism, a sort of tempestuous love affair. This is what Bristol History Professor Ronald Hutton talks about, how the Christian clerics and scholars were fascinated by pagan religions, so they wrote down the old stories. Especially during early Christianity, from the sixth century onwards, but

You chose to follow the Druidic path, due to meeting Ross Nichols when you were 11, but could you just as easily have drifted into Christianity or Hinduism or Buddhism, or some other belief system? For many years I used to think that I really wanted to be a sort of hermit character, and then I realised I’m actually I’m a very social being and enjoy being with people. You mean like an ornamental hermit, installed in the garden of a grand mansion

“Use their sacred sites, destroy their idols but do not destroy the sites themselves”

particularly around the eleventh century, so as the door was closing, the old stories got recorded.

break from tradition, it just sort of seeped through. So what was Julius Caesar’s view of the Druids? People think that the Romans had a very clever philosophy, which was to accept all the local religions, because as they spread the empire there were lots of different religious cults and practices, so they had this habit of tolerating them and absorbing them. It was only when Boadicea rebelled that they hit back and they went for the money. That’s what we always do when there’s terrorism, we go for the money. So the Romans marched on Iona, which was the isle of the Druids, because the gold was coming from Wexford across the mountains and then into Britain, and the Druids controlled that. So it’s not fear, it’s just greed. According to Caesar, the Druids sacrificed humans and animals inside wicker men, but that is now written off as nonsense. For a start, Church of England priests were present at executions; that’s not unusual in itself. But the Wicker Man idea seems such an improbable idea, if you look at the

Why was that, do you think, because surely the Christians would have wanted their religion to take centre stage? It wasn’t a complete cut or separation between Christian culture. If you look at the early writings of the Christians, I think it was Gregory who said, “Use their sacred sites, destroy their idols but do not destroy the sites themselves.” Basically, build on them while respecting their sacred location. Like putting green men in Christian churches? Yes exactly, so that’s a good example. In mediaeval Ireland, you had the Brehon laws, which were produced by the Druids. St Patrick was so impressed by them that he got a group of scholars to record them. You know the way when the colonies were relinquished, you’d raise a different flag but all the people were still in place, those who became the priests and the judges and so on; there wasn’t this

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Princess Elizabeth is invested as Honorary Ovate of the Gorsedd of the Bards of Wales at the National Eisteddfod of Wales, 6th August 1946

old illustrations of Wicker Men. Imagine putting a bunch of very angry, aggressive blokes in a huge wicker man, which would be hard to do anyway, and then as soon as you light a fire underneath, the wick is going to snap and they’re all going to come pouring out before they burn. It just doesn’t make sense in any way.

“If you ask ten Druids what they believe, you’ll get twelve answers. So when someone says they are a Druid, do they mean as you might say you’re Buddhist because you’ve read a few books on it and you’ve got Buddha statue in the garden? They’ve read about the values of Buddhism and thought, if I had to be anything I’d be a Buddhist. You know, like Tina Turner was a Buddhist”

You co-wrote The Book of English Magic, so as well as Druidry are you also interested in the whole idea of the occult and magic and witchcraft? Wicca and Druidry do dovetail, I suppose because Wicca is definitely white magic. There are other distinctions too, like High Magic and Folk or Low Magic. Low magic is where you use magic to affect the physical world, so you use it for healing, for getting money or getting a lover. The high magicians look down on that because they’re interested in using magic for transformation for spiritual purposes. The difference between high

magic and low magic would be, say, the difference between doing a Golden Dawn ritual magic ceremony in order to access your divine nature, and doing a bit of magic to help Granny who’s going through some illness, to make her better.

Then there’s what you might call the ‘Cultural Druids’, which include the Archbishop of Canterbury and included the Queen, although I don’t know if Prince Charles was initiated. There are plenty of photos of Princess Elizabeth being initiated into the Goresedd of Bards in Wales, and that cultural phenomenon of druidry still exists in Wales. They have the Eisteddfod every year, this massive thing televised on the Welsh language channel of the BBC, which is almost like an agricultural fair, with huge Druid ceremonies in it. So once you’ve determined that your dinner party guest is neither of those, then they must be interested in Druidry as a sort of spiritual path, but then you have to remember that if you ask ten Druids what they believe, you’ll get twelve answers. So when they say they are a Druid, do they mean as you might say you’re Buddhist, because you’ve read a few books on it and you’ve got Buddha statue in the garden? They’ve read about the values of Buddhism and thought, if I had to be anything I’d be a Buddhist. You know, like Tina Turner was a Buddhist. So are you a Druid in that sense, or have you trained as a bard and then an ovate and then a Druid? We have 30,000 members and we publish this training in six languages.

Which brings us to witches, which you also cover in your book. How do you think the idea of witches first came about? There were these women who were probably a bit like today’s new age practitioners and healers, yet ended up misinterpreted by the Church. There might have been this wise woman who claims she can heal your sick horse, but then the horse dies and the whole village turns against her. Before the National Health Service was introduced, you either went to the doctor, who would probably bleed you, or you went to that local person. When I used to take my kids to school, you’d hear other parents talking in the playground about their children’s illnesses and saying thing like, have you tried peppermint? Swapping home remedies and healing ideas. Then at the other extreme you get the sort of things you see in the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, like red stilettoes filled with wax and a dead sparrow. Sometimes the legacy of some alternative cultures can be quite unattractive. I’m not a fan of most New Age or pagan art. It often reminds me of those Athena posters from the seventies.

How does a Druid actually train? The training involves learning a story and then living through it and sort of entering into it. A story that’s come down to us originally from the oral tradition from Wales, and you also find it in Ireland. It’s the story of Taliesin, who became the finest poet in the land.

There’s obviously a strong link between Paganism and Druidry. Can you follow Druidry and not be a Druid? The actual druids are more like priests. So if you met somebody at a dinner party and they said they were a Druid, you’d have to determine whether they were what’s called a fraternal Druid. These are people who belong to Druid societies which are a bit like Rotarians; they mainly do fundraising activities and they were very big in the in the inter-war years. They had lodges, very much like the Freemasons; there were about a million of them. They borrowed from Druidic iconography but that was as far as it went. About ten years ago we’d often get emails from people saying, “My dad was a Druid, and we’ve got a teapot that says, ‘Ancient Daughter of Druids Lodge Number One’.” You just have to tell them it was kind of like the Rotarians or the Masons and that members included Winston Churchill.

But it’s not a story that goes as far back as Neolithic times? No, they think they can probably trace the historical origins of the manuscript versions to the ninth century. So that’s the Bardic stage, and then you go into the Ovate stage. You can do the Bardic training in a year, but most people take about four to seven years, because they pace themselves and they have a mentor they can communicate with. Does Druidry, like Wicca and the occult, attract a few very unstable people? Less so in Druidry, because the first level of training is about creativity and so people tend to self-select out, whereas with Wicca, because the attraction is the magic and the spells, then if you’re unstable and you’re attracted to that, there’s more risk to your mental state. n

Folklore

THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD David Bramwell on the self-styled Italian time lord who built one of the unsung wonders of the world under a mountain in the Alps

“Observing this all from a corner of the galaxy is a group of interplanetary delegates who meet every Friday as part of some current affairs panel. One of them has a fondness for the people of Earth and decides to save us. He travels back in time to 1950 and has himself ‘pre-incarnated’ into the body of a human baby in Turin, named Oberto Airaudi”

The world’s largest underground temple

One of the eight separate temples at Damanhur

eep in the foothills of the Alps, an hour’s drive north of Turin, lies the eighth wonder of the world: the Temples of Humankind. A vast underground network, equivalent in size to St Paul’s Cathedral, it boasts nine chambers, secret stairways, a labyrinth and a pyramidal glass music hall. These colourful, cavernous buildings, decorated in parts with Egyptian symbology, were constructed over two decades by Damanhur, a spiritual community led by a man called Falco Tarassaco (which translates as Hawk Dandelion). The Temples of Humankind are a genuinely astonishing architectural wonder. While all of the world’s great ancient monuments are past their best, weathered by nature and history, here the paint is still drying. And yet, despite being the world’s most ambitious work of outsider art, chances are you’ve never heard of the Temples of Humankind which, quite

frankly, are as bizarre as the story of their creator. Damanhur was founded in the summer of 1978, when 30 likeminded people were brought to an Alpine mountainside by their spiritual leader, Falco Tarassaco. He instructed them to build a temple, ‘the like of which has not been seen for thousands of years’. They begin to dig in secret, at night. For the next 13 years, in an operation that would have made the building of the Tom, Dick and Harry tunnels in The Great Escape seem like child’s play, two million buckets of rock, earth and clay were removed from the mountain. By 1991, they had completed eight separate temples, which boasted marble floors, stained-glass ceilings, mosaics, carved columns and statues. The Damanhurians (a community that by then numbered 134) were careful to cover their tracks, knowing that they didn’t have planning permission. But after a former member tried to

‘A laboratory for the future of humankind’

blackmail them, they came clean to the Italian authorities in 1992. In 1995, after press campaigns, Internet appeals and a petition, the buildings were declared to be a unique work of art. With a few health and safety tweaks, the installation of a lift and the obligatory gift shop, the Temples of Humankind were allowed to remain in the hands of their citizens, earning a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the World’s Largest Underground Temple (although, to be honest, there’s little competition in this category). Along with the temples, the community went on to build a village with an open temple (Damjl) and schools, and even to convert an Olivetti factory into workshops, a supermarket and conference hall. Nowadays, Damanhur has a population of nearly 1,000, who live in communal houses called nucleos. The community makes money through its GM-free organic produce and by constructing ecohouses. Although Tarassaco passed away in 2013, his extraordinary time on Earth lives on through a community that describes itself as ‘a laboratory for the future of humankind’. But who was Falco Tarassaco and why did he urge his followers to spend decades creating a vast underground temple? Hold on to your hat, we’re

taking a journey far into the future! It’s AD 2600 (or thereabouts) and the Earth has been destroyed by alien terrorists who, in an act of malicious nihilism, have removed humankind’s free will and sent the planet on a path of destruction. Observing this all from a corner of the galaxy is a group of interplanetary delegates who meet every Friday as part of some current affairs panel. One of them has a fondness for the people of Earth and decides to save us. He travels back in time to 1950 and has himself ‘pre-incarnated’ into the body of a human baby in Turin, named Oberto Airaudi. At a young age, Airaudi realizes that his mission in life is to save humanity from destruction. After spending his early twenties as an insurance salesman, he gets down to the job in hand – ammassing a small group of followers and encouraging them to help him build a giant battery to jolt the Earth on to a new timeline. However, in order to do this, the team first need to locate the Earth’s ‘synchronic knot’ (a meeting point of the planet’s four ‘rivers of energy’). Had it been in Central Park or under the Kremlin, Airaudi would have been scuppered but, as luck would have it (and after travelling the world), he discovers that it’s actually less than an hour’s drive from Turin. Better

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Damanhur – twinned with Atlantis

still, the land is for sale. The group establishes a small community, Damanhur (Egyptian for ‘City of Light’), and members begin to adopt animal and plant names. Oberto Airaudi becomes Falco Tarassaco. The giant battery they are building, dug into a rare but highly conductive rock strata known as mylonite, will eventually become known as the Temples of Humankind. After completing the temples and conducting a number of complex rituals, the team manages to create a new timeline and the planet is saved. And while Tarassaco and the odd companion have to travel back to Atlantis occasionally to buy essential nuts and bolts from a specialist timeline hardware store, humanity’s free will is restored and once again we have the power to decide the planet’s fate.

true sense of the word – awesome, anyone travelling to Damanhur seeking evidence of aliens and time travel might be disappointed. Visitors might also have been surprised by Tarassaco. He could often be spotted around the community and was no slouch when it came to sharing communal duties. But where other spiritual gurus have classically favoured ponytails, white robes and tie-dye trousers, Tarassaco seemed to be permanently attired in jeans and a zip-up cardigan – more part-time lecturer in computer studies than alien superhero. On a Friday evening, he conducted interviews and visitors could ask him anything they liked. However, anyone asking such direct questions as: ‘Are you an alien?’ would be met with a grin and a vague answer such as: ‘I’m merely someone trying to do their best.’ To dismiss Tarassaco as a charlatan who convinced his followers to build

THE ‘MYTH’ OF DAMANHUR While the Temples of Humankind are – in the

Falco Tarassaco lives on in mosaic form

a spiritual theme park is, however, to miss the point of Damanhur entirely. In his TV series The Power of Myth, writer Joseph Campbell discusses how our old religions and myths ‘no longer serve us’ – which is why, in the West at least, they are being abandoned. But, as Campbell argues, while science is the best language we have for explaining the universe, what the world needs right now are ‘modern myths’ to teach us how to live. In recent decades, Hollywood has articulated new modern myths, such as Star Wars, but what Tarassaco created with Damanhur appears to be utterly unique in the modern world – a living myth. His is a modern-day parable that weaves time travel, terrorism and Egyptian symbology with environmental concerns and the destruction of the Earth. With Airaudi as auteur, Damanhur’s residents built a glorious film set on an epic scale, chose their roles and – year by year – continue to

develop the script. Tarassaco, understandably, kept the best role for himself: a spiritual Doctor Who. We’ll never really know how much Tarassaco believed his own myth, but does it really matter? Thanks to his singular vision, the world’s largest underground temple is now lodged inside an Alpine mountain – open to visitors for a modest entrance fee. The gift shop needs a bit of attention, but you can’t have everything. Plus, this is no dusty pile of stone but a living temple, regularly used for Damanhurian rituals and ceremonies. In contemplating Falco Tarassaco’s life and his impact on our world, perhaps a more important question we need to ask ourselves is this: when news of the Earth’s eighth wonder of the world broke in 1992, why were we all so wrapped up in the misery and paranoia of daily events that one of the most incredible global stories of the last 50 years went unnoticed? n

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CHAP LIFE

SEASONAL SURVIVAL COCKTAILS

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Drink

SEASONAL SURVIVAL COCKTAILS Gustav Temple puts some pep and ginger into the yawning lacuna that stretches between breakfast buck’s fizzes and the first glass of wine with lunch

“Those who are not accustomed to quaffing cocktails regularly can often think of them as gateway drugs to an entirely decadent and irresponsible life, and assume that special clothing is required such as white dinner jackets, black bow ties and red carnations. Which of course they are”

eople often refer to Christmas as a ‘boozy’ or ‘over-indulgent’ period, purely because it involves drinking alcohol before 5pm. Come the first of January, those same people can be seen self-righteously placing a palm over their wine glass when offered a top up at any time of the evening. What they seem to forget is that Christmas is actually rather a risky time for the serious drinker. Once the obligatory brace of buck’s fizzes has been quaffed at nine ack emma on 25th December, there then opens up an enormous, aching, dried-up lacuna until the ‘special’ bottle of red wine is uncorked when luncheon is served, usually around three pm. The off-licences are closed and the only place one

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JAISALMER GOLD GIN MULE 60ml Jaisalmer Gold Indian Craft Gin 2 Slices Root Ginger 15ml Lime Juice 7.5ml Sugar Syrup 12 Mint Leaves Ginger Beer Muddle the ginger in the base of a cocktail shaker. Add the gin, lime juice, sugar syrup and mint leaves. Shake over ice and fine strain into a highball glass, and top up with ice and ginger beer.

have never heard of, and which has the festive aura of a Warninks Advocaat or eggnog, but without the ghastly colour and flavour of a melted set of fairy lights. The cocktail recipes that follow are designed with Christmas in mind, but I can guarantee that most of them will retain their rightful place on your list of favourite cocktails for the rest of the year. Then you can meet up with Uncle Ron and Auntie Sheila in the Spring, all dressed in cocktail outfits, and wink at each other over glasses of delicious concoctions, in the sure knowledge that next Christmas they will come prepared.

may purchase anything to drink is the petrol station, and we all know that they put the same stuff in their bottles of wine as they do into their petrol pumps. Reader, here is my suggestion. If you can find the various uncles, aunts and stray relatives of unknown origin lost under the piles of wrapping paper, simply wave a bottle of one of the ingredients on these pages towards them and whisper, meaningfully, “Christmas cocktail, anyone?” I guarantee that most of them will bite your hand off, and then it will be time truly to display your powers of mixology, which you are about to master by reading this article. What is the secret of a good Christmas cocktail? It’s all in the name and the ingredients. You could offer your guests a classic negroni or a dry martini, but if they are not regular cocktail drinkers, they will shake their heads in confusion and fear of the sophisticated life. Those who are not accustomed to quaffing cocktails regularly can often think of them as gateway drugs to an entirely decadent and irresponsible life, and assume that special clothing is required such as white dinner jackets, black bow ties and red carnations. Which of course they are. So your approach must be subtle and cunning. Offer your bewildered bloodline a cocktail that they

Jaisalmer Gold Indian Craft Gin ABV 43% £40 for 70cl. Jaisalmer Gold Indian Craft Gin is produced by Radico Khaitan, the largest Indian beverage alcohol company. It is infused with 18 handpicked botanicals, of which 14 have been sourced from India, including Coriander from Jaisalmer, Saffron from Kashmir, Nagpur Orange Peel, Darjeeling Green Tea, Gandharaj Lemon Peel from Eastern India, Nutmeg from Karnataka, Cinnamon from Kerala, Locally Sourced Rose Petals from around the distillery, Lemongrass, Bay Leaf, Liquorice Root, Vetiver, Black Pepper and

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MULLED DUPPY TODDY 50ml Duppy Share Aged Rum 25ml Any Spiced Rum 50ml Pineapple Juice 50ml Orange Juice 25ml Honey 25ml Lemon Juice 20ml Crème de Cassis or Ribena 50ml Water Pinch of Cinnamon Add all the ingredients to a pan and heat until hot, but do not boil. Pour into a mug and garnish with grated nutmeg.

Pink Pepper. Other botanicals include Juniper Berries, Angelica Root, Caraway and Cubeb Pepper. It is, in other words, a superbly exotic gin that tastes of the Himalayas. It takes between 150,000–250,000 saffron crocus flowers just to get 1kg of saffron threads, and many hours to hand pick the flowers and pick the threads. The liquid is then enhanced by Gold filtration. This unique production process passes the Gin slowly through a filter made of intertwined golden silk filament, enriching the Gin with gold ions and providing a clean and smooth tasting experience and balanced flavour. When you sip Jaisalmer Gold Indian Craft Gin, you will view the world as if looking through a golden silk tapestry strung across a balcony overlooking the Ganges. And when you add it to the cocktail on the previous page, you will feel as though you are actually there, rather than staring at the pages of the Radio Times in horror at the television schedules.

they have a similar folk tale: the mischievous Duppy spirits travel from island to island, taking their share of rum from the barrels in which it is being distilled. Duppy Share Aged Rum is sourced from two of the most prestigious rum distilleries in the world, being a blend of a three-year old 100% Pot Still rum from the Worthy Park Distillery on Jamaica, and a five-year old 100% Column Still rum from the Foursquare Distillery on Barbados. The result is a bright, bold and versatile rum with notes of green banana, sultanas and vanilla, with a hint of brown sugar, ginger and lime on the finish. Are we going to say that drinking this will make you feel as though you are sitting under a palm tree in Barbados, while a giant turtle nibbles at your toes and a boat pulls in bearing twenty seductive dancing maidens? Not quite, but a few Mulled Duppy Toddies and that seasonal drizzle outside the window might look slightly less grey.

Duppy Share Aged Rum ABV 40% £20 for 70cl.

Adriatico Roasted Amaretto ABV 46% £37 for 70 cl

In the world of single malt whisky, the angels are said to take their share of each whisky from the casks where it is being matured. In the Caribbean

Featured in a previous edition, Adriatico is a new version of the almond-based liqueur usually known as Amaretto. Inspired by an old Italian

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ROASTED AMARETTO SOUR 50ml Adriatico Roasted Amaretto 50ml Fresh Lemon Juice 50ml Fresh Orange Juice 1 Egg White Dry shake all the ingredients. Add ice to the shaker and shake again. Strain into a chilled coupe glass and garnish with lemon zest.

tiramisu recipe, Adriatico is made from a unique Apulian variety of almond called Filippo Cea from Puglia in southeastern Italy. The almonds are roasted before being macerated and distilled, then blended with cinnamon, cocoa, cane sugar and coffee. A pinch of sea salt is added, taken from the salt flats next to the Adriatic Sea from which Adriatico takes its name. Adriatico would make an ideal substitute for the grandmother who normally favours a small post-prandial Baileys, as it has the sweetness she likes but none of the alcohol content that makes her go a bit weird and start talking about the war again. Anyway, sorry, grandma, but we need all the Adriatico for our Roasted Amaretto Sours. Warning – this cocktail does contain egg whites so is not suitable for those of us who cannot be bothered to go around separating the egg yolks from the whites over a bowl and making a mess everywhere. Oh and probably vegans. However, a simple solution has been presented to the world in the form of pre-separated egg whites in a bottle, the most popular brand being Giffards. Keep a bottle of this in your cocktail cabinet, but don’t try making a Californian omelette with it.

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MR BLACK ESPRESSO MARTINI 60ml Mr Black 30ml Espresso Combine ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake hard and strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with a single coffee bean.

Mr Black Coffee Liqueur ABV: 23%. £24 for 50cl

The launch was such a success that it quickly became the fastest-growing coffee liqueur in the United States, prompting global drinks giant Diageo to snap it up and add it to their portfolio. Unlike other coffee liqueurs, Mr Black contains vodka as well as top-grade Arabica coffee and sugar, so when it comes to making an espresso martini, there is not much work to do. The only drawback is that once the other assembled guests see you making these, they’ll all want one (especially the children). A failsafe way of reducing the quantity you have to make is to refuse to serve it to anyone who calls it an ‘expresso martini’.

Australia may have once been a country whose wine we enjoyed back when Chardonnay was still fashionable, but it is not a country one associates with cocktail ingredients. Designer Tom Baker and leading Australian distiller Philip Moore put paid to all that in 2013, by creating a new roasted and distilled coffee liqueur especially targeted at Espresso Martinis called Mr Black.

Luxardo Aperitivo ABV 11% £12 for 70cl. Famed for its original Maraschino Cherry Liqueur, featured in CHAP Spring 23, ancient Italian brand Luxardo has added a few more delicious cherry-infused beverages to its roster, including Luxardo Aperitivo. Based on Negroni staples Campari and Aperol, Luxardo Aperitivo is orangey-red in colour and infused with herbs,

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LUXARDO WINTER SPICED SPRITZ 25ml Luxardo Aperitivo 75ml Champagne Put a barspoon of festive spice (Cinnamon, Ginger, Orange Peel, Cardamom, Cloves, All Spice, Star Anise, Nutmeg) into a jug and fill it with a bottle of Luxardo Aperitivo. Leave for one day, stirring a few times. Pour 25ml of this infused concoction into a flute glass or tall wine glass. Top up with chilled Champagne and stir.

roots and citrus, as well as the famous Luxardo maraschino cherries. The result is far more flavoursome than either Aperol or Campari and good enough to drink as a straight spritzer. Another new brew from Luxardo is Sangue Cherry Liqueur, delightful as a shot on its own (hands off, grandma), or in a Luxardo Mulled Cherry cocktail. n

LUXARDO MULLED CHERRY Pour 50ml Luxardo Sangue Morlacco Cherry liqueur into a heatproof glass. Make a hot water infusion with a festive blend teabag (eg cinnamon and nutmeg). Pour this into the glass and stir. Garnish with fresh orange slices, dropped into the glass.

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Travel

FOUNTAIN OF ETERNAL YOUTH Stephen Arnell returns for another of many visits to Rome, tossing a coin into the Trevi Fountain to ensure he comes back again and again

“Retiring at the atypically early hour of 10pm, I found myself rudely awakened at midnight by a cacophony of sounds and blinding light streaming through chinks in the heavy window drapes and under the door, resembling a scene from Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind”

hey don’t call Rome the Eternal City per niente. No matter how things change, the character of the city remains the same, sometimes even experiencing cyclical returns to past times. Hence the Rome depicted in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960) was revived in an even more decadent (and vulgar) form during the Berlusconi years, shown so vividly in Paolo Sorrentino’s superb The Great Beauty (2013). You’ll see gents of a certain age sporting camel coats and expensive shades, smoking expensive

cigars as they either accompany or eyeball much younger women on the Via Veneto, although there is something self-parodying about them nowadays, even if these teak-hued boulevardiers have yet to cotton on to the fact themselves. After Stanley Tucci’s recent verbal emasculation at the hands of national treasure Jilly Cooper, I thought he had fled to the Old Country in high dudgeon. “There’s nothing you really want to sleep with,” she complained in an interview with The Sunday Times. “They’re not really as attractive as

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Tucci lookalike on the Via del Corso

Terence Stamp in Toby Dammit (1968)

“Why do I find myself drawn back to Rome? As a Roman history buff since I was in short trousers, to be in the city where so many pivotal events of the distant past happened is still a big kick for me. And there’s always something new to see”

Station, thence to rooms at local pensiones nearby and, as my finances gradually improved, to hotels in more upscale Riones, then most recently outside the city itself in Castel Gandolfo, location of the Pope’s summer palace in the scenic Alban Hills. But this year I decided to return to Rome’s centre, specifically the streets near the Trevi Fountain, opting this time for an apartment rather than a hotel. The last time I stayed here I was amazed to secure a bargain rate suite at the prestigious Grand Hotel Plaza (formerly the Alberto Roma), an historic five-star establishment built in 1860, located on the Via del Corso near the Spanish Steps. Cineastes will be familiar with the Grand Hotel Plaza from films such as John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017), The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015), Gangs of New York (2002), Ocean’s 12 (2004), and Visconti’s final film, the melancholy classic L’innocente (1976). Fellini adored the ambiance of the hotel, using the lobby and bars for meetings and people watching. I soon discovered why I had managed to get such a great deal for my stay there. Exhausted after a long day doing the sights, I donned my usual nightcap and nightshirt and retired at the atypically early hour of 10pm, only to find myself rudely awakened at midnight by a cacophony of sounds and blinding light streaming through chinks

they used to be. I like strong, powerful men.” The problem with modern men, Cooper claimed, is “they’re always washing up”. Although it turned out that the man I spotted in the Via del Corso was nothing more than a Tucci lookalike. Brown is a colour esteemed by both sexes in Rome, in this case to inadvertent comic effect, almost approaching Basil Fawlty’s ‘weekend’ look (“You wouldn’t understand, dear, it’s called style”). I’ve been coming to Rome since the late 1980s, when my then frugal means first meant staying in dingy dormitories close to the seedy Termini

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Largo di Torre Argentina

in the heavy window drapes and under the door, resembling a scene from Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The hotel (presumably for a hefty fee) had permitted the filming of a booze commercial directly outside the window and in the hallway by my suite, hence the blinding arc lights, bellowing grips and excited crowds gathered to see whatever star di giorno was hawking the brand (I never found out). They did move me to another room when I called the front desk, but it rather soured me on the place – I imagine they thought I’d be thrilled to be part of the experience, which, in a better mood, I might have been. For a more sinister Roman filmic encounter, I urge readers to check out Fellini’s Poe adaptation Toby Dammit (1968), where Terence Stamp’s titular alcoholic actor comes a cropper when offered the bonus of a new Ferrari to star in a movie there. An excellent print of the picture is available free to watch on YouTube.

there’s always something new to see. The newly renovated Largo Argentina (where Julius Caesar was assassinated), Mausoleum of Augustus, Temple of Venus and Rome, the notorious Tarpeian Rock (where traitors were hurled from), and Domitian’s Ramp on the Palatine were all on my itinerary. And, as one of the style capitals of the world, it’s somehow fitting that luxury brands including Fendi, Gucci, and Bulgari have been backing these restorations over the last decade. The common assumption that Rome is a noisy, chaotic city, log-jammed with traffic is only partially true. Off the main streets and on parts of the Aventine, Palatine and Janiculum hills there is a surprisingly rustic, villagey atmosphere where silence, church bells and the distant Apennines on the horizon transport you to the age after the Fall of Rome, when huge swathes of the city reverted to farmland. The back streets of the central Subura area retain the cobbled streets and some of the disreputable air they once possessed during the Republic and Empire. And, to the more modern-minded visitor, there are many other places to see than the piles of ancient masonry I usually gravitate to. These include the kitsch Quartiere Coppedè, a 1900s district boasting a collection of buildings that

THE LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME Why do I find myself drawn back to Rome? As a Roman history buff since I was in short trousers, to be in the city where so many pivotal events of the distant past happened is still a big kick for me. And

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Esposizione Universale Roma

appear to draw inspiration from Grimm’s fairy tales and the imagination of Mad King Ludwig. Around 15 minutes from the city centre in the southwestern suburbs is Mussolini’s EUR (Esposizione Universale Roma), another junked attempt to build a ‘modern’ Rome, architect Marcello Piacentini’s gargantuan travertine structures showing a vision of a brutalist future. Despite the Fascist associations, it is admittedly an impressive area; you get the feel for the place if you watch Julie Taymor’s Titus (1999), her visually stunning adaptation of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, which uses EUR extensively as a backdrop to the bloodthirsty events of the play. And, if you are a Londoner missing the capital, there’s even a ‘Little London’, on the Via Celentano, or Piccola Londra as the locals call it, built in 1909 as part of another, earlier abandoned plan to make Rome a truly modern European capital. ROME AFTER DARK If you’re interested in Rome after dark, I’m not your best guide, as I prefer the old-world ambience of

watering holes such as the aforementioned Grand Hotel Plaza, Harry’s Bar (built above a swanky Roman domus and a water cistern) and Antico Caffè Greco during the day. These are all preferable to the ubiquitous Irish pubs that infested the city when I first visited and the more rambunctious clubs in Trastevere, where Roman youngsters and those who yearn after lost youth tend to party. For those still labouring under the ‘Hipster’ appellation there are drinking dens (termed ‘Speakeasies’ by the locals) such as Bukowski’s Bar, Jerry Thomas and Argot. ‘Peaky Blinders Roma’ has now shut up shop for good. The spontaneous gatherings of locals depicted in movies such as Roman Holiday (1953) and Fellini’s Roma (1972), may well occur, but in over thirty years of visiting the city I have yet to witness one. FINE DINING A LA ROMANA Local cuisine is not one of the reasons I come to Rome. Although perfectly edible, I find most of the Roman cuisine rather samey – surprisingly underseasoned and far too offal-centric. And whatever you

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do, steer clear of the dreaded Menu turistico you’ll find in many eateries; often consisting of congealed pasta and antipasti that has seen better days, if not weeks. However, I find Rome’s airy Rosetta rolls addictive, likewise the porchetta di Ariccia from the picturesque town of Ariccia in the nearby Alban Hills. Both ideal for a picnic on the Palatine. The pizzas are also terrific, but avoid street vendors and the obvious tourist traps. Coffee is, as you would expect, generally superb, especially when accompanied by a grappa (Caffè corretto) when setting off for a morning peregrination. I would also recommend trying the traditional fried artichoke of the restaurants of Rome's Jewish Quarter by the ancient Portico of Octavia. Delicious and far too tricky to try at home, so indulge yourself when you’re in the city. One ancient Roman delicacy I’m happy no longer to see on the menu is Licker Fish, a form of carp that existed purely on human excrement flushed from the Cloaca Maxima sewer into Tiber. They were oddly a big hit with the rich in the days of the emperors, due to their rarity and the difficulty in catching them. ‘Hollywood on Tiber’ has been revisited

recently, in Saverio Costanzo’s Finally Dawn (2023), where Lily James plays the Liz Taylor-esque star of an ancient Egyptian epic filming in the city. During the 1950s and 1960s, a host of star-laden motion pictures – including Cleopatra, Three Coins in the Fountain, and of course Roman Holiday – were shot in Rome’s Cinecittà. LA GENTE Romans are famously not especially fluent in English, but if you’re prepared with a few appropriate Italian phrases and courtesies, you’ll find them perfectly welcoming and more than willing to try to meet you half way. Unlike, say, the impatient Parisians, but less effusive than the genuinely affable Athenians. Rome itself is essentially a Southern Italian city (Naples is just 140 miles away) and can get exceedingly hot. This November the weather was unseasonably warm, so layers are advised, although some well-heeled Roman ladies still insisted on wearing their furs. I favoured my trusty black needle-cord blazer, combined with matching trews and silk scarves, coupled with comfortable elasticated Chelsea boots for the pounding they will take on all those cobbles. n

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www.bellandcolvill.com

MOTORING

LONDON TO BRIGHTON VETERAN RUN

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GOLDIE GARDNER

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Motoring

VETERANS ON THE RUN Actuarius watches the London to Brighton Run, admiring the cosy old-world pleasure tinged with deep nostalgia, as the electric vehicle waits in the wings

hould you venture down to Hyde Park in London before daybreak on the first Sunday in November, you will find a group of people gathered there with a bizarre collection of colourful machinery. Odd, unfamiliar bulky shapes move through the gloom like primeval creatures, wheezing and coughing in the early morning air, occasionally emitting creaks and groans. The cars, on the other hand, sit silently at the edge of the road awaiting their crews. This disparate and unfailingly cheerful crowd have gathered for one of those peculiarly British events born of adventurous rebellion and evolved through

the years into a much loved institution – the annual London to Brighton Run. Its origins are to be found with the start of motoring in the UK, which was far from seamless. The very first cars were constrained by a universal speed limit of 4mph, while a man carrying a red flag proceeded in front of them. In 1878 the need for the red flag was removed, followed by significant further changes in 1896 with the introduction of the Locomotive Highways Act. Although the replacement national speed limit of 14mph may seem a tad underwhelming to us now, it should be remembered that this was still very

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Getting up a head of steam in London for the start of the run

“The oldest vehicle present was an 1892 Peugeot Vis-aVis, believed to be the first powered vehicle to run in Italy. These eccentric contraptions sit driver and one passenger over the rear wheels, with two other passengers facing them at the front, obstructing the view but at least providing a useful windbreak”

the London to Brighton, was a celebration of this new-found freedom and started with breakfast at the Charing Cross Hotel on November 14th of that year, along with the symbolic tearing up of a red flag. The run itself was from the Metropole Hotel in London to its namesake in Brighton, and although 33 vehicles took part, only 17 made the finish. Given that the electric entries had to be carried by train to Brighton, and that there are scurrilous rumours regarding some of the other cars also being transported by rail (then smeared in mud before driving to the finish), it was even less impressive than the numbers suggest. Despite this undistinguished start, the car became ever more popular, while the first London to Brighton run as we know it arrived in 1927. In that year, the Daily Sketch sponsored a re-enactment for cars built before 1905, and this proved so popular that, excepting a couple of pauses due to World War II

much the era of the ‘horseless carriage’, with many cars running on solid tyres. The Emancipation Run, the progenitor of

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2008 Rolls Royce Phantom 7 £79,500

1953 Jaguar Xk120 Ots With Race History £125,000

1951 Bentley H.j.mullinerSold “Lightweight” Saloon £42,000 Bugatti Type 54Mkvi €4,800,000 From Clientʼs Belgian Garage

1950 Vincent Rapide Series C £60,000

1951 Bentley Mark 6 H.j.mulliner 'Lightweight' Saloon £48,000

1989 Aston Martin Lagonda Series 4 £118,000

1957 Austin Healey 100/6 £82,000

1958 Bentley S1 £35,000

Even the drivers’ cameras are from another era, the pre-smartphone days

and Covid, it has been run annually ever since. 2023 saw the red flag ceremonially rent asunder by F1 supremo Ross Brawn at 7am (sunrise), signifying the start in the now traditional manner. As this year is the 70th anniversary of the release of the film Genevieve, it was only fitting that the titular Darracq and her Spyker adversary were the first away, with the rest of the entrants following in order of age. These were the usual cosmopolitan mix; some entrants had been shipped in from as far away as Hong Kong and no less than 25 came from the USA. The oldest vehicle present was an 1892 Peugeot Vis-a-Vis entered by the Turin Motoring Museum, believed to be the first powered vehicle to run in Italy. These eccentric contraptions sit driver and one passenger over the rear wheels, with two other passengers facing them at the front, obstructing the view but at least providing a useful windbreak. As this arrangement provides the opportunity to play Bridge or take afternoon tea while bowling down the highway, it has something to commend it but, unsurprisingly, soon fell out of favour. The London to Brighton has never been a race, but for the record Henry Lawson was the first to arrive on the South coast at the wheel of a 1903

MMC, taking just under three hours to complete the 60 miles. Neither has it ever been simply an event for hardened enthusiasts. Instead, there is undeniably something of the travelling carnival that accompanies the cars as they pass along the route every year. Tom Wood, on his first event with Piers Trevelyn in his 1904 De Dion Bouton, was impressed how “going past Buckingham Palace and down the Mall to Trafalgar Square, in the half light of the early morning people were lining the route cheering us on.” A clear indication of the general desire to see these relics of a bygone age chuff by, many loaded with crews in period garb and providing a uniquely attractive experience.

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It was somewhere around Cuckfield that the drugs began to take hold

The glossy paintwork, flashing cartwheel spokes and polished brass accompanied by honking horns or tinny whistles, deployed more to please enraptured children than warn of oncoming traffic, bring an offbeat charm that cannot fail to delight. Despite modern roads along with improved tyres and lubricants, this does still remain as something of an adventure for those taking part. Jon Horsley, another event debutant in the National Motor Museum’s 1903 Daimler, noted how, “Through all the trials and tribulations that many cars and crew had, all kept smiling, just happy to be part of this huge event. Our own car suffered a few issues but they were sorted by the great team from Beaulieu. If you like cars, you must do this, if only once.” Tom echoes this with a similar sentiment, “As we inched closer to Brighton the anticipation grew, and as we rounded the last bend into the finishing straight, the crowds cheered and the enormity of what we had achieved hit home – it was one hell of an achievement and very emotional. Probably a once in a lifetime experience for us but one that will live with us for ever.”

Despite having been fortunate enough to see the run a number of times, the first as a small child on a memorable trip down to London with my grandparents, I have yet to take part. Perhaps one day, but for now it is enough to simply be a spectator. After all, when the sun is shining on a clear Autumn day, what could possibly be nicer than standing at the side of the road waving and cheering as a procession of brightly coloured old cars rattle past? n

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Genevieve (1953)

The film that put old bangers on the map The London to Brighton Run has always existed in the general consciousness as a curiosity involving eccentric cars crewed by equally eccentric people. However, 70 years ago, Genevieve was released, bringing with it a little more colour to the public perception formed up to that point via chirpy black and white newsreels. Released by the Rank Organisation, right from the start this richly Technicoloured whimsical adventure, accompanied by Larry Adler’s jaunty harmonica, has the air of an Ealing production. The characters hold a mirror to familiar British tropes, slyly wrapping subversive satire within a warm genuine affection. The film centres on professional, loving but bickering couple Alan and Wendy McKim taking the titular Genevieve (a 1904 Darracq) on the annual London to Brighton run, along with old friend Ambrose Claverhouse. He is joined in his 1905 Spyker by the glamorous Rosalind Peters – with the fact that his car is not strictly eligible indicating his roguish leanings. There are mishaps, arguments, laughter and suspected infidelity, which all leads to an illegal race back to London. As with any grand adventure though, it is not the destination that matters in this film, but the journey. The principal charm comes from the main characters, who have depth and are therefore flawed. John Gregson’s Alan is priggish and childlike, while Dinah Sheridan plays Wendy as a capricious tease. Kenneth More as Ambrose verges on the conceited boor and Kay Kendall’s Rosalind possesses the air of the dipsomaniac neurotic. Crucially though, such marked characteristics do not wholly define them and despite such drawbacks all are immensely likeable. Quick to quarrel and equally quick to forgive, you could easily imagine spending a very happy evening in their company. The final denouement where, after angers have flared

throughout the race, all four hug joyfully in the distance as the end credits roll is entirely believable. By contrast, the production was apparently a fraught affair, not helped by director Henry Cornelius’ lascivious ways. Given the age of the film, and the well-known fact that sex was invented in the 1960s, I’ve always found the open references to pre-marital shenanigans rather surprising. This seems a little at odds with its natural family viewing niche, and indeed provoked censure by the prudish American certification board on release. It does however sit well with the modern sophisticated sheen of the central couples as they dance, drink Champagne and generally live it up in London and Brighton. So it’s become a commentary on Britain at that time, but neither as coherent nor as barbed as the best of Ealing comedies. A film that addresses some adult themes yet has the air of the easygoing family comedy. Perhaps most importantly, like the London to Brighton Run itself, it is something that both the motoring enthusiast and non-enthusiast can enjoy equally.

Motoring

Goldie Standard John Mayhead, author of the first biography of Alfred ‘Goldie’ Gardner, provides a boiled-down version of the racing driver’s thrilling life on the motor circuit

“Goldie was hooked. The only problems were that he didn’t have the huge personal wealth that Campbell had invested in his record-breaking attempts, or the physical strength to drive a massive car like the 27-foot-long Bluebird”

he biographer of a long-dead subject, especially one who isn’t well known, takes a risk. There must be a spark to set the fire burning, a suggestion that the person in question had enough of a story to fill 80,000 words, but after that it’s a lottery. You could be a couple of years into your research and find out that your life’s work has been to uncover someone who you don’t actually like or, worse still, is just plain dull.

I’m glad to report that Alfred Goldie Gardner did not let me down. I knew a little of his story – invalided out of the Royal Field Artillery when his aircraft crashed in 1917, becoming a racing driver at Brooklands, then breaking various ‘light car’ speed records – but really didn’t know the half of it. Nobody did. At first glance, Goldie was the epitome of an early twentieth century chap: tall, moustachioed, and with a pipe almost permanently

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Goldie at Le Touquet in September 1928

gripped between his teeth, but I quickly realised that he was so much more. As I turned over the stones of his past, a gloriously complex, brave and quite extraordinary man emerged. I found a story of love, camaraderie and betrayal, of singleminded determination, courage and dedication, with a supporting cast of brilliant engineers, movie stars and millionaire playboys. But I also found a man struggling to come to terms with his past and desperate to prove to himself that he had made a difference in life, an obsession that almost destroyed his family. I unearthed a story that had mostly been forgotten of a person Stirling Moss called the bravest man he’d ever met, who set records that Richard Noble described as being ‘Extraordinary, even by today’s standards.’ The man known as Goldie by his friends (his mother’s family name in the Scots tradition rather than a nickname) was born in 1890 to an uppermiddle class family. His father, a commodities trader, was comfortably off rather than rich, but wealthy enough to have Goldie privately educated. Tall, even as a youth, Goldie excelled at sports, especially running and rugby, but from a young age was obsessed with speed, especially the two-wheeled

variety. After a brief stint working in the city, he took a posting to Ceylon as a tea trader, where he met a group of like-minded young men. They spent their spare time playing rugby, polo or tearing around the jungle roads outside Colombo on their motorcycles, the pith-helmeted group quickly gaining a very poor reputation from the ex-pat wives who preferred a more genteel existence. By 1914, Goldie was back in Britain, and immediately answered the call when war was declared. Joining the Royal Field Artillery as a Second Lieutenant, he was quickly promoted and placed in charge of a battery of guns, gained a personal mention in dispatches by Field Marshal sir John French after his first battle, and in early 1971, then a Major, was awarded the Military Cross, the country’s third-highest award for gallantry. Then, in August 1917, the aircraft in which he was a passenger crashed, leaving him with the awful wounds that were to define the rest of his life, and ending his service. As a younger man, I also served in the British Army, deploying on operations in Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan, so what happened next to Goldie I found fascinating. Unexpectedly civilian

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At the RAC TT in 1932

“By the time war once again broke out in September 1939, Goldie had secured 31 national and international speed titles, including a fastest run of 207.4mph on 2nd June 1939. This wasn’t just an extraordinary achievement for him, but also his MG mechanics, Reg ‘Jacko’ Jackson and Syd Enever”

and unable to take part in any of his pre-war passions of sport or motorcycling, he desperately sought for a meaning to his life. Like many other veteran officers, he found it on four wheels, lapping the banked concrete tracks of Brooklands motor circuit near Weybridge, a place that provided a sense of community with its distinct ‘rank’ structure of drivers, mechanics and adoring public. Having survived the trenches of the Somme, he found that he was able to deal with the visceral danger of motor racing and keep pushing when others lifted off. Quickly, he became known as a competent racing driver and branched out into other races at home and abroad. It was at one of these, the Royal Automobile Club Tourist Trophy, held around the twisting, blackthorn-lined roads near Newtownards in Ulster in 1932, where he almost lost his life for a second time. Turning a blind corner, he came across the result of an earlier collision, swerved, and his car flipped, once again crushing his right leg, the one already almost immobile from his 1917 injury. Although he took part in a few races after this, his results show his heart was no longer in

it. Then, in 1935, he accompanied his friend Sir Malcolm Campbell to Daytona Beach in Florida, where Campbell was aiming to set a new landspeed record, and Goldie’s life changed again. He watched as Campbell’s attempt attracted not just crowds of onlookers but also worldwide newspaper headlines. He was hooked. The only problems

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Goldie looking glum as he recovers from a second set of injuries to the same leg in 1932

were that he didn’t have the huge personal wealth that Campbell had invested in his record-breaking attempts, or the physical strength to drive a massive car like the 27-foot-long Bluebird. Fortunately there were other speed records to aim for, various titles covering more limited engine sizes. He decided that this was his calling and promptly bought a single-seat racing MG K3 which he had prepared for record breaking, quickly enlisting the support of the MG factory and its boss, Cecil Kimber. In 1936, he broke a couple of records at Brooklands but the track, by then pitted and bumpy, limited his speed. Then, in June 1937, he managed to secure an invitation to an event on the Frankfürt–Darmstadt Reichsautobahn designed by the Nazi machine to prove the dominance of their state-sponsored Silver Arrows racing team. As I wrote in my book, “The inclusion in this of a disabled, six foot-three, 47-year-old British war veteran in a repurposed racing car delivered in a borrowed truck was extraordinary, but possibly seen as a chance to humiliate the old British foe.” To their utter astonishment, Goldie rolled up his sleeves, tucked in his tie and promptly set two Class

G international speed records, touching nearly 150mph. Over the next two years, he returned, first with the same MG then another, this one streamlined in the style of the German machines by master designer Reid Railton and fettled by the MG works engineers to extract as much power as possible from the tiny 1.1-Litre engine. By the time war once again broke out in September 1939, Goldie had secured 31 national and international speed titles, including a fastest run of 207.4mph on 2nd June 1939. This wasn’t just an extraordinary achievement for him, but also his MG mechanics, Reg ‘Jacko’ Jackson and Syd Enever. The fact that they managed to generate this speed from an 1105.5cc car just 12 years after Sir Henry Segrave set the land speed record at 203.79mph using a 44.8-litre twin-aero-engined Sunbeam was as much a feat of engineering as it was down to driver courage. Goldie being Goldie, World War II was seen as another opportunity to prove himself. Signed up by Sir Malcolm Campbell to support the Coats Mission, the secret mission to extract the Royal Family should the Germans invade, once

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Sir Malcolm Campbell’s attempt to set a new land speed record at Daytona Beach, March 1935.

the immediate threat receded, he then rejoined the Royal Artillery. Bored of running their driving training, he volunteered again, and found himself an officer in General Montgomery’s staff headquarters, crossing the D-Day beaches and organising French resupply convoys until the end of the war. Then it was straight back to record breaking, setting the first times on the roads of Italy and Belgium with his old MG, before persuading his sponsors to pay for long-distance attempts on the salt flats of Bonneville in Utah. I won’t spoil it for those who wish to read the full account in my book, but it was here, in 1952, that the 62-year-old veteran finally pushed his luck one time too many, receiving an injury that led to his death in 1958. By then, he had become the first non-American to race in the first Daytona Stock Car race, the precursor to NASCAR, had been married twice and divorced once, could name Clark Gable as a close friend and had been awarded the MC, the OBE, three BRDC Gold stars and the Royal Automobile Club’s Segrave Trophy. He had also achieved nearly 150 speed records, including holding six of the ten record titles and, according to the FIA, three of his

records still stand. As I said, Goldie really didn’t let me down. n Goldie, the amazing story of Alfred Goldie Gardner, the world’s most successful speedrecord driver, is published by National Motor Museum Publishing and available in all good bookshops and online for £20

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THE COLONY ROOM REVISITED

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BOOK REVIEWS & CHAP BOOKS

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REVIEWS

FILM: WHAT THE BUTLER SAW

V T & FILM

WHAT THE BUTLER SAW Stephen Arnell assesses the sublime, the perfect and the sometimes downright sinister polishers of the silver on the silver screen

“From his first appearance in My Man Jeeves (1919) to his final 15th hurrah in Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen (1974), Jeeves was a dependable figure in a chaotic world. Reliable, super-intelligent, witty (occasionally too much for his station) and supplier of steadfast support to his amiable but dim master Bertram Wilberforce Wooster”

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Dirk Bogarde and Wendy Craig in The Servant (1963)

YOU RANG, M’LORD?

he butler (valet, batman, gentleman’s gentleman or major-domo, if you will) has become a staple in cinema, books and television, despite their rather antiquated air and snobbish appeal – in the real world chiefly confined to the nouveau riche and foreign potentates, usually those educated at the more exclusive English public schools. Despite the societal changes of recent decades, the role of a butler is traditionally a male one, owing to the confidential relationship with his similarly gendered employer. Although saying that, Lady Penelope (Thunderbirds) got on perfectly well with Parker, despite the hint that she was keeping him in line by referring to her knowledge of his criminal past.

The movie/TV butler performs many duties, some above and beyond those usually associated with the profession. When you need tea, you ring for him. When you hear the doorbell, the butler will be striding effortlessly to answer it. If you need life advice delivered in the form of sassy one-liners, the butler is there to provide it (asked for or not) alongside your perfectly prepared breakfast/luncheon/supper, together with an ironed newspaper and a single carnation in a cut glass vase. In the late afternoons and evenings, he will be there with a well-timed whisky, brandy, or sherry – as older readers may remember from the Croft Original TV advertisements from the 1980s.

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Stephen Mangan and Matthew Macfadyen in the stage play Perfect Nonsense

“Sheer nectar, Jeeves.” (more of whom later). He’ll draw you a bath, and if you’re entertaining at home or ‘in Town’, organise the perfect sartorial combination for you. And, in the case of Batman, when you’re a filthy rich playboy moonlighting as a caped vigilante superhero, he’ll even help knock you up a nifty Kevlar costume – and make sure to order spares, in case young Mr Wayne needs them – under his cover of belonging to the “billionaire, spelunking, BASEjumping crowd.” For the purpose of this exploration, we’ll divide onscreen butlers into five categories: the good, the heroic, the evil, the tragic and the comic.

call of enjoyably wry performances from the likes of Dennis Price, Stephen Fry, Michael Aldridge, Roger Livesey, Martin Jarvis, Matthew Macfadyen and David Suchet. Other top-drawer manservants include Gordon Jackson as the stuffy, deferential, but essentially kind-hearted Angus Hudson in ITV drama Upstairs, Downstairs (1971-5), and of course firm but fair Mr Carson (Jim Carter) in toffee-nosed love-in Downton Abbey (2010-15). And from approximately same era as Upstairs, Downstairs, BBC1’s The Duchess of Duke Street (1976-77), where John Welsh played the decrepit Merriman, officially a head waiter, but more of a wrinkled retainer figure to owner Louisa Leyton (Gemma Jones) and the staff of her Bentinck Hotel. Speaking of wrinkled retainers, mention must be made of Old Scrotum (J. G. Devlin), ubiquitous servant to Sir Henry (Trevor Howard) at Rawlinson’s End in Vivian Stanshall’s 1980 film of the same name. “Have you washed your hands, Scrotum?” “Yes Ma’am, I did that just now behind a tree in the garden.”

VERY GOOD, JEEVES PG Wodehouse’s literary creation Reginald ‘Reggie’ Jeeves is in many ways the paragon of the profession. From his first appearance in My Man Jeeves (1919) to his final 15th hurrah in Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen (1974), Jeeves was a dependable figure in a chaotic world. Reliable, super-intelligent, witty (occasionally too much for his station) and supplier of steadfast support to his amiable but dim master Bertram Wilberforce Wooster. The role of Jeeves is a gift to actors with what is termed ‘Presence’, as is demonstrated by the roll

ALFRED THE GREAT Aside from the many incarnations of Batman’s

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Dan Akroyd and Denholm Elliott in Trading Places (1983)

over 12 years ago (The Dark Knight Rises in 2012), the recent news that he has quit acting at the ripe old age of 90 means there no longer exists the possibility of him borrowing the keys to the Batmobile for a jaunt, now that he’s in possession of a Platinum Level bus pass.

Alfred Pennyworth, the Hollywood movie has thrown up plenty of other menservants. There’s The Admirable Crichton (Kenny More), who ends up ruling the roost when his aristocratic employers are shipwrecked on a remote South Seas Island, the resourceful Jarvis (James D’Arcy) in Marvel’s Agent Carter, and comic relief Hillary (Chris ‘Mr Brittas’ Barrie) from the first two Lara Croft pictures. My personal favourite is the great Denholm Elliott’s Coleman in Trading Places (1983) whose pithy turn of phrase (“what a scumbag”), homespun wisdom, Crêpes Suzette preparation, innate empathy and ability to impersonate an alcoholic Irish priest give him the edge over many other movie butlers. When it comes to Batman’s Alfred, I confess (and many will disagree with me) that my favourite recent incarnation was Jeremy Irons in the last few DC movies. Why? Less emotionally needy than Michael Caine or doddery than Michael Gough. Gough seemed to do everything in Stately Wayne Manor without any other staff to help him. Cleaning copious amounts of fetid bat excrement from the Cave, preparing delicious meals for Bruce and photojournalist squeeze Vicky Vale, providing sage relationship advice, and waxing the Batmobile every Sunday afternoon. Even though Michael Caine’s last performance as Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred Pennyworth was

I HATE YOU, BUTLER Who can forget those nasty manservants who have betrayed the trust of their masters – or joined them in criminal enterprises. The slimy manipulator Barrett (Dirk Bogarde) in Joseph Losey’s The Servant (1963), Terence Stamp’s spectral Ramsley in The Haunted Mansion and our naughty little friend Nick Nack (Hervé Villechaize) from The Man with The Golden Gun (1974), a manservant who appeared to take great pleasure in carrying out the various homicidal tasks assigned to him by three-nippled contract killer Francisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee). Oliver Reed essayed a satanic twist on Bogarde’s Barrett in 1973’s Blue Blood, in the shape of his menacing gentleman's gentleman Tom, exerting an unhealthy influence over his debauched Byron-esque employer Gregory, Lord of Swanbrook (Derek Jacobi). The butler’s life can be a deeply sad one,

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Nick Nack (Hervé Villechaize) in The Man With the Golden Gun (1974)

Erich Von Stroheim and William Holden in Sunset Boulevard (1950)

unsurprising given the long hours and inbred toffs often employing them. Notable is Tony Hopkins’ emotionally constipated Stevens in Remains of the Day, who appears to have a stick surgically inserted in his backside from birth, and Sunset Boulevard’s masochistic Max von Mayerling (Erich von Stroheim) faded Hollywood icon Norma Desmond’s (Gloria Swanson) star-making director and first husband, now her servant/enabler. In Robert Altman’s Gosford Park (writer Julian Fellowes’ vastly superior warm-up to his own Downton Abbey) we get two tragic manservants for the price of one, in Alan Bates’ boozy Mr. Jennings and vengeful Robert Parks (Clive Owen).

“Good God. Doesn’t speak English? And yet, on the other hand, if one will go around marrying persons who pop out of cakes, it’s bound to be, well, rather catch as catch can, isn’t it, sir?” – Charles Firbank (Terry-Thomas). But the king of comedy butlers surely must

HOW TO FIRE YOUR BUTLER In How to Murder Your Wife (1965), Chap favourite Terry-Thomas’ valet Charles Firbank experiences a professional dilemma when his confirmed bachelor employer Stanley Ford (Jack Lemmon) impulsively gets hitched to sexy Italian model Virna Lisi at a drunken stag do. How long can he last in the newly feminised Ford household? Jack Lemmon and Terry-Thomas

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Dudley Moore and John Gielgud in Arthur (1981)

be John Gielgud’s waspish secret softie Hobson in Arthur (1981), master of the barbed repartee and the stinging insult. Witness his classic upbraiding of spoilt rich drunkard Arthur (Dudley Moore): Arthur: I’m going to take a bath. Hobson: I’ll alert the media. Arthur: Do you want to run my bath for me? Hobson: That’s what I live for. Perhaps you would like me to come in there and wash your dick for you, you little shit. Incidentally, Moore’s comedy partner Peter Cook played butler Robert Brentwood in culture clash comedy The Two of Us (1981-82) the unsuccessful US remake of ITV’s Two’s Company (1975-79) where Donald Sinden played Elaine Stritch’s snobby manservant. The fact that he played the servant rather than the master probably irked Cook, who was already jealous of Moore’s brief period of movie stardom. In BBC1’s To the Manor Born, Brabinger the butler (John Rudling) filmed an advert for

Cavendish Food’s ‘Fauntleroy’s Old English Tonic’. As we’ve seen with Croft’s Sherry, the tradition of using British servants to shill for products is a long one, and continues to this day, most recently ‘Henry the butler’ from William Devane’s Rosland Capital adverts. And, as we enter the festive period, a couple of seasonal treats. Savour the classic Two Ronnies sketch (‘your nuts, m’lord’) from 1976 and the comedy sketch Germans inexplicably love to watch every New Year’s Eve, Lauri Wylie's Dinner for One (1963). It’s probably not too surprising to discover that humans are not alone in enjoying the luxury of butler service. Recently a leaflet was put through my door advertising ‘The Cat Butler’, promising to provide, “feeding, grooming, cleaning as well as playtime and cuddles!” More than your average homo sapiens employer receives, it appears, unless such personages as the Duke of Westminster ask you for a chuck under the chin and some tinned salmon. Something no truly professional butler could reasonably refuse. n

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Art

THE MAN WHO STARED AT GOATS Gustav Temple pays a visit to the living set of Antiques Roadshow – otherwise known as Chichester – to view the paintings of John Craxton

“Gradually leaning towards the cubism he picked up from the painters like Picasso he’d seen in Paris, and local Greek artist Nico Ghika, who taught him the link between Byzantine mosaics and cubism, Craxton discovered it the ideal style with which to capture the jagged, rugged character of rural Greece”

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Landscape with Derelict Windmill, 1958

ne may think of the West Sussex cathedral city of Chichester as more Antiques Roadshow than the home of fine art, but tucked away behind the main shopping thoroughfare (with the usual prosperous small town suspects: JoJo Maman Bebe, Clinton Cards and upmarket charity shops) is the Prado of the Sussex coast. Pallant House was built in 1712 for wine merchant Henry Peckham and his wife Elizabeth in the Queen Anne Style. Used by the council until 1919, it was turned into an art gallery in 1982 to house a large collection of British art bequeathed to Chichester by Walter Hussey. He stipulated that the works, which included names such as Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland and John Piper, should only be shown in Pallant House. More valuable British art was donated in 1989 and 2006, and now the gallery houses one of the finest collections of modern British art in the country, making it the ideal location for a

major retrospective of paintings by John Craxton. This exhibition has been on tour in Athens, Crete and Istanbul, reflecting the artist’s own European wanderlust. Readers of The Chap may recall the name John Craxton from a feature in CHAP Summer 18 about Patrick Leigh Fermor, the decorated WWII officer who played a large part in liberating Crete from the Nazis then later set up home in Mani, a remote corner of the Peloponnese. The two became firm friends and Craxton went on to design the front covers of all of Leigh Fermor’s subsequent travel books. Craxton himself felt the call of southern Europe aged 14, as soon as he saw Picasso’s Guernica at the Paris World’s Exhibitionin 1937. Born into a London Bohemian family of musicians, Craxton was the only painter among them, returning to Paris aged 16 to study life drawing. Back in London, Soho sucked Craxton into its artistic orbit and he became friends with Lucian

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NEW ANTIQUARIAN BOOK DEPT The Chap webular emporium now boasts a new category of desirable product: books either directly or indirectly related to The Chap oeuvre. From signed first editions of The Chap Manifesto to hardback copies of Stephen Potter’s One-upmanship series, including the odd extremely rare sartorial tome such as Today There are No Gentlemen by Nik Cohn.

Th e l itera ry chap will find mu c h to mu ll over in t h e ‘ Ch ap Books ’ section of WW W.T HECHA P.CO.UK

Hotel by the Sea, 1946

“The influence on Craxton of Greek landscape, people and culture seeps from the walls of Pallant House. He was most comfortable painting the local people going about their daily work, turning their goat herding, fishing and farming into epic Homeric studies”

the place up a bit, so they hid a putrefying monkey corpse in the oven while taking tea with the great art critic and his wife. But, as the exhibition at Pallant House reveals, it was the Aegean that was always calling Craxton. He first visited Poros with Freud, then travelled across Greece to Crete, gathering inspiration along the way. The influence on Craxton of Greek landscape, people and culture seeps from the walls of Pallant House. He was most comfortable painting the local people going about their daily work, turning their goat herding, fishing and farming into epic Homeric studies. Gradually leaning towards the cubism he picked up both from the painters like Picasso he’d seen in Paris, and local Greek artist Nico Ghika, who taught him the link between Byzantine mosaics and cubism, Craxton discovered it the ideal style with which to capture the jagged, rugged character of rural

Freud, both taking a studio together and honing their craft. Not known for maintaining domestic bliss, a visit by Sir Kenneth Clark meant tidying

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Pastoral for P.W., 1948

“The use of colours is sparse, graphic and almost like a screenprint. In Landscape, Hydra (1963-67), the pattern of lines and flecks becomes more akin to weaving and stitching in a rug or tapestry”

The exhibition reflects the different stages of Craxton’s painting style. The earlier pieces, such as Pastoral for P.W (1948), a very large painting hung in the entrance to the gallery, shows a fractured picture space of a shepherd/musician among some mountain goats. There are obvious influences from Picasso’s Guernica here, in the triangular shapes defined by contrasting lights and darks. The goats themselves are also quite cubist, with their angular, twisted bodies. There is a self-portrait from this period which uses similar angled planes of light and dark to describe a seated figure. The space is much more sculptural and illusionistic, more like Picasso’s neo-classical period. From the 1960s, Craxton’s work became more graphic, flatter and line based. For example The Butcher (1964-66), one of the paintings in this exhibition that has never been hung in public

Greece. Craxton’s social life in Greece centred around Patrick Leigh Fermor, whose house in Kardamyli became a magnet for writers and artists, including Lawrence Durrell, Nancy Mitford and Cyril Connolly.

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The Butcher, 1964-66

before. The coloured outlines here create strong negative shapes, whereby the whole image is compressed and stylised. The picture space is much shallower in these works, with pattern being used as a way of filling certain areas. The use of colours is sparse, graphic and almost like a screenprint. In Landscape, Hydra (1963-67), the pattern of lines and flecks becomes more akin to weaving and stitching in a rug or tapestry. Works like these feel airy and light, with the dark blue/mauve areas acting like a cloud passing in front of the sun. The space is still divided into sections, yet it all operates on the frontal picture surface. When one has finished viewing the huge quantity of work in the John Craxton exhibition, including all the book covers he designed for Paddy Leigh Fermor, there is still much to see at Pallant House. The permanent exhibition contains works by many of the greats of 20th century British art, including Graham Sutherland, David Bomberg,

Barbara Hepworth, Paul Nash, Peter Blake and even the painting by Michael Andrews of The Colony Room, as featured on page 149 of this edition. All in all, it makes a trip down to Chichester well worth the effort. n John Craxton: A Modern Odyssey runs until 21st April 2024

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Art

THE COLONY ROOM REVISITED After an interregnum of 15 years, the notorious Soho members club re-opened as an 'installation' in Mayfair's Heddon St for a limited (or maybe not) season. Stephen Arnell meets the man behind the unlikely resurrection, artist Darren Coffield

“The club’s last proprietor, Michael Wojas, wanted to enter the Colony for the Turner Prize back in 2001. In the light of that, I constructed an art installation that recreates the atmosphere and interior without any hint of sentimentality or pastiche, as you so kindly put it”

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Darren Coffield, the man behind the ersatz bar

arren and I have known each other for many years, as fellow Colony members and friends. The Colony Room has remained a passion for him throughout his career, a kind of boozy, Bohemian Shangri-La, so if anyone could revive the stricken Golem, it was Coffield. Home-from-home to an assortment of artists, actors, musicians, royalty, Soho characters and

assorted ne’er-do-wells, the ‘Col’ was a unique establishment. Although only yards from the likes of Soho House, Century and Union, the club was an altogether unique (sometimes unhinged) experience, although it must be said The Groucho and Gerry’s occasionally came close. I spoke to him after the first week of previews, when Coffield shared his thoughts on The Colony Room #2.

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The Colony Room 1 by Michael Andrews

club’s 75th anniversary. If anything it’s more like a love letter to London’s lost bohemia. There is a long tradition in the history of art of artists making copies of another’s work. For me, the club was a forever changing artwork in itself. A performance space where the most unlikely things could and often did happen. The club’s last proprietor, Michael Wojas, wanted to enter the Colony for the Turner Prize back in 2001. In the light of that, I constructed an art installation that recreates the atmosphere and interior, without any hint of sentimentality or pastiche, as you so kindly put it.

How difficult was reviving The Colony Room? It wasn’t difficult for me, because I have somehow become the biographer and custodian of the Colony Room and know it inside out. Besides which, I know where all the metaphorical bodies are buried, and which skeletons reside in which closet. It would probably have been near impossible for anyone else. For a start they could never have brought together the two warring factions which the club split into during its final months in 2008. A bitter feud developed over those who supported the Colony’s last proprietor, Michael Wojas, in trying to close the club on its 60th anniversary, and members who thought it was bigger than any one person and that it should remain open.

And who executed the replica artwork? Most of the work is from my own personal archive. Some artists, such as Sarah Lucas, gave permission for a copy of their artwork to be placed in the club. Others, like Maggi Hambling and Michael Heath, supplied me with the originals.

Is it ‘art’ to pastiche the past so, dare I say, slavishly? No, it’s not a pastiche. It’s really here to mark the

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But shouldn’t the past be consigned to the past, so we can get on with shaping a better future? Forget the future; by bringing back the space I am trying to help the people in the present. It will once again become a thriving space, with its own community of creatives putting on shows, performances, poetry readings, book launches etc. All those small little interesting spaces once occupied by the creative crowd in central London were either shut down by Covid or have been killed off by the dystopian vision of London’s current Mayor. Can The Colony Room #2 it be a true reproduction, if the people who originally made it won’t be there? The opening party was packed with old members still with us. Those who are new to it will pick up the bohemian vibe by osmosis. The Colony is a legend, and like Pazazu its fans are legion. People have written to me from all over the UK saying they are coming to London to visit the space. On the opening night we had people who’d flown in from USA, just to be part of it. As The Colony was often consumed by a fug of cigarette fumes, can you smoke in the new reconstructed version? Smoke? Well, several people were left fuming that they missed the opening party (ha ha!), and it is true to say we have standards to maintain. We don’t sell non-alcoholic beer and we certainly wouldn’t sell anything as unhygienic as water. “Fish fuck in it,” as WC Fields once said. But in answer to your question, there are indeed seating and tables outside where people can smoke.

Every detail from the original club has been lovingly recreated

The prices are kept deliberately low so that art students and those retired, living on a meagre state pension, can come and afford to while away their time drinking there. The Colony is like a family and is unique in that respect. The real Wetherspoons of Soho is Soho House, a bland corporate enterprise with branches dotted all around the place.

What do you think Muriel Belcher (the original owner) would make of your take on the club? The woman who started it all by opening the Colony in 1948, Muriel Belcher, would have loved it. Especially her former barman (and the Colony’s second proprietor) Ian Board, and Francis Bacon, who wanted to keep Muriel’s memory alive.

Have any of the original Colony Club Celeb Set visited? We’ve had singer Lisa Stansfield, artist Maggi Hambling, cartoonist Michael Heath and journalist Cosmo Landesman turn up. We even had two of the Colony’s original barmen, Simon Crabb and Michael Law, working behind the bar and the old club pianist, Clifford Slapper, tinkling the ivories.

You’ve kept 2008 drinks prices, so could it end up as the Heddon St Wetherspoons?

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Initially for six months, but it has been such a success so far it seems like it is going to be a going concern.

Is there anyone on the door to keep out the riffraff? That all depends. Let me know when you’re planning to visit, and we’ll get some heavies on the door to greet you.

Are you doing any merchandising? Has the Colony Room become (gulp) a brand? The Boho Hard Rock Café? No, there’s no merchandising in the bar as such, except signed copies of my book Tales from the Colony Room – but no T-shirts, mugs, novelty willy-warmers or bum bags. Not yet, anyway, you’ll undoubtedly be sad to learn. n

What’s the atmosphere like so far at Heddon St? Any memorable incidents yet? The vibe is exactly how it was. Quite a few people got rather tearful when they first came in and couldn’t believe how much it not only looked but felt like the club. The atmosphere is amazing. People just love soaking it up and basking in the golden glow of bohemia.

The Colony Room Club is open on a walk-in basis from 3-11pm, seven days a week at 4, Heddon St, Mayfair, London W1B 4BS

How long will the club be open for?

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FLÂNEUR G E NT LE MANLY SC E N T FRO M T H E CH A P

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BOOK REVIEWS Edited by Gustav Temple

FREE FOR ALL: REDISCOVERING THE PRISONER

and technology. In a reference to a scene showing a nightclub with piped music, they say, “It’s predicting the automation of live music. Why pay musicians when you can just plug in this contraption and Bob’s your uncle? This removes the pesky and costly human element. It’s the kind of ‘progress’ McGoohan warned us against.” You are also unlikely to find references in any of the previous Prisoner books to Liz Truss’s short tenure as prime minister, or to hotels where you can check in without speaking to a human being. The only thing you won’t find in this highly engaging book is accurate sartorial comments. “This doesn’t quite explain why he’s wearing a morning jacket; hardly standard civil service garb. Morning suits were traditionally worn by country gentlemen in the morning before a day’s horse riding. Tally ho?” Actually, morning dress was standard uniform for civil servants, right up until around WWII, as well as for bank managers, radio broadcasters – and podcast hosts, had they existed back then. That one inaccuracy aside, this book is a must-read for any Prisoner fans who wish to be fully informed of the facts behind every episode, and also to learn the best order to watch them in, for, as Free For All points out, they were not made in the sequence they were broadcast. “This led to some notable discrepancies,” Bainbridge and Ross tell us, “largely regarding how long Number 6 has been kept in the Village. ‘I’m new here!’ he bellows... in episode 8!”

By Chris Bainbridge and Cai Ross (Quoit Media, £11.99)

hris Bainbridge and Cai Ross have been hosting a podcast about The Prisoner for the last two years. What is a podcast? you may well ask. A cross between a television programme and a non-fiction book, it is a new way of consuming facts that leaves you free to walk about the room, do some dusting or sink into a bath while doing so. What Bainbridge and Ross have done is turn their hugely popular podcast into a book, quite literally, so that each section is credited to either Chris or Cai, making you feel as if you are listening to a podcast while reading it. Free For All takes each and every episode of The Prisoner and discusses it in great detail, with plenty of asides on the production, some of the supporting cast and things like the soundtrack and comments about how difficult or easy Patrick MacGoohan was to work with. The first thing you notice is that it is very well informed, clearly the product of not just huge fans of The Prisoner, but also chaps who are knowledgeable about that period of British television in general. This makes for a very engaging read, as you feel as if you are in a safe pair (or two pairs) of hands, gaining not only a thorough understanding of The Prisoner but also of the time when it was made, as well as fun facts about Portmerion and Patrick MacGoohan’s ultra-fussy prudishness. Why read this tome and not one of the earlier ones about The Prisoner? Because you will benefit from recently unearthed facts and figures that won’t have appeared in earlier works, and also from the occasional insight into the relevance of the themes explored in the programme to today’s mores, politics

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BRING NO CLOTHES

By Charlie Porter (Particular Books, £15)

new book about the fashion and style purveyed by the Bloomsbury Set? Hurrah – lots of facts about three-piece tweed suits, cloche hats and trilbies daubed with paint, then? Er, no actually. The title of the book could almost serve as a warning against approaching this book with too much enthusiasm about period clothing. The book was tied in with an exhibition at Charleston House’s new museum in Lewes, which this reviewer had the benefit (if you can call it that) of attending while reading Bring No Clothes. The first thing to note is that author Charlie Porter is a perfectly decent fellow. He was once menswear editor for the Financial Times and clearly has strong feelings about fashion and its relationship with power, art and self-expression. All fine and dandy, but Charlie can’t help himself from tearing into the Bloomsbury Set as if practically everything they wore had been forced upon them by a sinister, authoritarian force that was determined to squash every aspect of their personal freedom and self expression. Whereas we all know that the Bloomsbury Set, along with members of many other 1930s artistic circles (usually moneyed, often aristocratic) were determined to shuck off anything to do with tradition or stuffy bourgeois convention. They would hold nude outdoor parties under a full moon and would drift into each other’s boudoirs, almost with no regard for whether the occupant was male or female. Charlie is fully aware of this: “Their rejection of society’s fashion was interwoven with their radical

conversations about ideas and philosophy. We can imagine other young humans around the world at the time taking similar action, ones out of the spotlight so their story is not told. Virginia and Vanessa’s adoption of loose and dishevelled clothing was not fashion. The fashion of the time wanted them to stay corseted and silent. This was anti-fashion.” By focusing on the ‘queerness’ (Charlie’s favourite word) of Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell and Vita Sackville-West, Porter then goes on to complicate all their radical fashion stances, diminishing the outright bohemianism of their rejection of conventional sartorial rules by trying to turn them all into people struggling with expressing their sexuality. That indeed must have been a part of what they were doing with their clothing, but the bigger picture is one of rejection of the norm. When it comes to the gentlemen of Bloomsbury, Porter is even wider off the mark. A portrait of E.M. Forster (right) by Roger Fry at the Charleston exhibition bears the caption: “The writer E.M. Forster lived his life trapped in tailoring. He was a gay man only able to publish heteronormative novels – Howard’s End, A Room With a View – in his lifetime…. His situation asks us to see the suit as a garment that can inhibit experience. 21st century designers, such as S.S. Daley, have used Forster’s words to break this patriarchal hold.”

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“Two years after A Room with a View was published,” Porter tells us, “Roger Fry painted Forster’s portrait. A suit, shirt and tie cover Forster entirely, except for his face, a stark, long hand and wrist.” Well yes, Charlie, otherwise he would be unable to breathe, if the suit covered him entirely like some sort of tweed gimp outfit.

“I’m wearing a sheer black caftan and a tiny pair of shorts. It’s easy to consider this progress, and liberation.” It is also easy to consider that, had E.M. Forster swanned about in sheer black caftans and tiny pairs of shorts, we may not have A Passage to India or Howard’s End. Charlie Porter is slightly more interested in sexual politics than clothes, and treats all of the members of the Bloomsbury Set (at least those who questioned their sexuality) as victims of a sadistic patriarchal plot to make their lives miserable. It is certainly true that it must have been incredibly difficult for anyone, from any level of society, to be homosexual in the 1930s, but surely it would have been slightly easier for those with a private income and chums with huge houses in the country? The title of the book refers to a line from an invitation Virginia Woolf sent from her Sussex eyrie to London friends, emphasising that they would not be expected to dress for dinner while weekending with her. Porter has tried to unpick every single garment worn by each member of the Bloomsbury Group, as if it will reveal the plot against them. But by doing so, the writer rejects all the clothing of the era and suggests that it was the three-piece suits and the corsets whodunnit. This seems a pity for the clothes that remain, lovingly reappropriated by Chaps and Chapettes and worn with joy, freedom and self-expression, and not a hint of oppression.

“That queer body crying out, hidden in plain sight by clothing he longed to shed, so he could reveal the body he yearned to share. So much of his life was lived not able to share it. Forster is that rare entity: a Bloomsbury figure who did not have sex with anyone else in the group.” Perhaps he was too busy writing three of the greatest novels in the English language, Charlie? You can’t have everything. Apparently it worked out alright for Forster in the end anyway; he lost his virginity at 38, found a succession of tram conductors, bus drivers and policemen to consort with, and even wrote an unpublished memoir, later in life, entitled Sex. “I’m writing this in the British Library,” concludes Charlie Porter’s chapter on E.M. Forster,

HOW THE TRICOLOR GOT ITS STRIPES By Dmytro Dubilet (Profile Editions, £19)

book about flags? Surely that’s been done before and, besides, what’s so damned interesting about vexillology? Actually it hasn’t, not in the way this book goes through all the major flags of the world and looks at how they came about and what evolutions they went through that reflected the ups and downs of the nations they represented. The only previous books about flags have been reference books and things like the Ladybird Book of Flags. Dmytro Dubilet is a former Ukrainian cabinet minister and his book was first published in his

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own country, six months before its invasion by Russia. Given all this, he is surprisingly sanguine about the facts behind the various flags that have fluttered on Russian tanks during their frequent incursions into other people’s lands, treating that particular chapter with the same humorous and informed approach as all the other chapters. Dubilet groups the flags of each chapter not around nationalistic lines, but around colours and patterns. So flags featuring eagles include Albania, Montenegro, Serbia, Spain and Andorra, while the chapter titled ‘American Dream’ groups together all the countries in the world that have used stars and stripes in their flags. Vexillology proves to be a fascinating science and the book reveals that not all flags are rectangular – both Switzerland and Vatican City have square flags – while the Belgian flag, with a ration of 13:15, is almost square. The changing fortunes and political allegiances have altered many flags over the ages; China’s flag had a rather attractive dragon on it until 1912, then after the first revolution they switched to five horizontal stripes, representing the five major nationalities of China. Today they have a red flag with one large yellow star – the Communist party – and four smaller stars, each representing the working class, the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. The only drawback to this book is that, while watching sport with chums on the television, you will constantly annoy them with informed comments about the tiny flags depicted next to the team of each nation playing.

GOLDIE

By John Mayhead (National Motor Museum Publishing, £20)

ecently we reviewed a book about cricket that was its author’s 50th book, suggesting a one-man book factory whose output is destined directly for the shelf of books next to the lavatory, or even the lavatory itself. What is the precise opposite of that 50th tome? Perhaps the first-ever book lovingly written by a motoring journalist about a subject close to his heart, which has never been covered in biography form before, and also the first publication by the National Motor Museum. Reader, it shows. The author, like his subject, is a war veteran, having served in Afghanistan and Iraq, who has devoted the rest of his career to writing about motor racing and classic cars. Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred Thomas Goldie Gardner was the holder of more than 100 international speed records and is generally credited as the world’s most prolific speed-record driver (see page 122). Goldie was a First World War veteran who came away from the Great War with a severely damaged right leg and a Military Cross. Despite his disability, he made his racing debut in an MG Midget at Brooklands in 1924, soon becoming the first driver to reach 100mph. Mayhead fleshes out the subsequent story of Goldie’s determination with joy and passion. Petrolheads will marvel at the descriptions of finely tuned engines, while those who prefer men in blue overalls tinkering with their motor vehicles will enjoy the tale of one man’s steelyeyed vision to become, against all the odds, the fastest man on tarmac. n

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CHAP BOOKS

A new department of our online emporium flings open its doors to welcome bookish chaps www.thechap.co.uk/chap-books

ur webular emporium has benefitted from a new category of product, namely Chap Books. The shelves of this category are already filled with books we consider suitable reading material for Chaps and Chapettes, and more tomes are being added weekly. The range is broad – but not too broad, mercifully. Naturally the starting point is the books that have issued from this very stable: The Chap Manifesto, The Chap Almanac etc, plus the occasional rare out-of-print edition of less populist works. Then we have the kind of books that, while not directly produced by this organisation, have nevertheless some form of connection, for example We Are Dandy by Chap contributors Rose Callahan and Nathaniel Adams. The final, and broadest category, includes those books that have either influenced The Chap – step forward Stephen Potter,

P.G. Wodehouse et al – or have provided invaluable resource material for the magazine. These would include tomes on vintage menswear, tailoring and the art of dressing. Furthermore, each Chap Book purchased comes with a free Chap Bookmark, and these, should one wish, may also be purchased on their own in packs of five. So from a modestly-priced Penguin paperback of What Ho, Jeeves to the coffee-table splendour of Made in Britain, you are certain to find something to stimulate the eyes and the brain cells in Chap Books.

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A TIME TO KEEP SILENCE Patrick Leigh Fermor

One of the books currently on the shelves in Chap Books is by former biography subject Patrick (Paddy) Leigh Fermor. This decorated WWII hero’s earlier works such as A Time of Gifts, published before the War, chronicled his long journeys across Europe and into the Middle East. After that he served in Crete, using his local knowledge and fluent Greek to gather together a team of local desperadoes to kidnap a German general and liberate the island from the Nazis. Leigh Fermor returned to Greece after the War and settled in the Peloponnese, hosting the literati of London in his remote eyrie with tales of his travels and gallons of Ouzo. One of his visitors was artist John Craxton (see page 138), who illustrated this and many other of Paddy’s books. There he continued writing, and one of the results was this slim volume on his brief tour of the ancient monasteries of Europe. Paddy turned up unannounced at each one, and was given a cell, a habit and a candle, and expected to muck in with the other novitiates for prayer, fasting and sometimes complete silence. Cistercian, Benedictine, Trappist – he sampled them all, often finding the conditions physically challenging and craving conversation, wine and sex in equal measure.

But the writer finds his way to the centre of monastic life and reflects articulately on the chosen life of a monk. “By fierce asceticism, cloistered incarceration, sleeping on straw and rising in the darkness after a few hours’ sleep, by abstinence, fasting, humiliation, the hair shirt, the scourge, the extremes of heat and cold, and the unbroken cycle of contemplation, prayer and back-breaking toil, they seek, by taking the sins of others on to their own shoulders, to lighten the burden of mankind.” After spending a few weeks in each of the most remote monasteries in France, Leigh Fermor, by way of conclusion, pays a visit to the rock monasteries of Carpadoccio in Turkey. These extraordinary places, carved directly into the rocks in the desert and long empty of monks, are now simply architectural relics like those of ancient Rome. Paddy wanders about them, reflecting on what it must have been like to pray from dawn in a dark mountain chamber never touched by sunlight, and concludes with a shiver that it made the Cistercians of southern France seem like lightweights, with their cosy stone cells and straw mattresses.

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