Dispatch Boxes King Charles III's Coronation. The new Despatch Boxes of His Majesty’s Government display the new royal cypher of King Charles III
with h
Proper Chaps Carry Proper Bags. Proper Bags From Barrow Hepbur n & Gale.
‘Barrow, Hepburn & Gale have been making travel goods for generations, and although fashions are constantly on the change, their qualit y has always been superlative. They are supplied not only to the home market, but the whole world, for the good reason that British craf tsmanship in this class of goods has always been admired. At a time when a flourishing expor t trade is absolutely essential to the countr y ’ s sur vival, no manufacturer can do his countr y a bet ter ser vice than to produce goods so well made and designed that they may properly be called ambassadors of goodwill.’
Ever ything In Leather – The Stor y Of Barrow Hepburn & Gale, published in 1948.
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, Torquil Arbuthnot
GUSTAV TEMPLE
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.
SAM KNOWLES
By day Sam Knowles is a data storyteller; on summer Sundays he combines his passion for narrative and numbers on the cricket pitch. He is the co-refounder, scorer and match reporter for the Gentlemen of Lewes Cricket Club, whose exploits can be followed on Twitter @GoLCC_Lewes
Office address
DAVID EVANS
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
TORQUIL ARBUTHNOT
Torquil Arbuthnot is a social affairs journalist whose career started with The Chap in its early days. Torquil was ‘on the barricades’ at the very first Chap protest, Civilise the City, and continues the Great Work today by bringing traffic to a standstill on the Aldwych through the display of astounding pocket squares.
The Chap Ltd 69 Winterbourne Close Lewes, East Sussex BN7 1JZ
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
RUBY DEMURE
Ruby Demure is an international starlet with a background in cabaret, clowing and singing, who burst on to the Brighton burlesque scene in 2007. Ruby also produces, programmes and stage manages shows for other artists, and she is currently writing her own cabaret show. @ruby_demure
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.
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.
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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.
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.
Email chap@thechap.co.uk
www.thechap.co.uk Instagram @TheChapMag
@TheChapMag
STEPHEN ARNELL
CHRIS SULLIVAN
ANDREW ROBERTS
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.
8 AM I CHAP?
Gustav Temple meets the eighties crooner now touring the songs of a music hall legend 44 66
The old favourite is back – insightful and occasionally helpful comments about readers’ sartorial arrangements
12 INTERNATIONAL ETIQUETTE
Chris Sullivan highlights the social gaffes to which one is easily prone when travelling abroad
FEATURES
22 INTERVIEW: JOE JACKSON
31 THE ART OF THE SCREEN CAD
From George Sanders to Peter Wyngarde, Andrew Roberts rounds up the naughtiest cinematic bounders
38 R.S. SURTEES
Torquil Arbuthnot on the neglected Victorian chronicler of huntin’ shootin’ and fishin’ exploits
SARTORIAL FEATURES
44 THE GRAND FLANEUR WALK
This year’s saunter sans purpose saw the biggest-ever attendance of flaneurs and flaneuses
60 DESERT BOOTS
The long journey of this suede classic from the Indian polo fields to the beaches of Brighton
66 MALTESE DANDY
Francisco Giordanella encounters Valetta’s answer to Zack Pinsent CHAP LIFE
72 THE MOON IN THE ROOM
A visit to an hotel in Chipping Norton formerly managed by The Who drummer Keith Moon
78 GREEK BRANDY
Greece’s second national drink in all its multi-starred manifestations
84 LONDON FIELDS
Lunch with Matthew De Abaitua turns into a reflection on London in the 1990s
88 MOTORING
A peek behind the scenes of the hallowed Grand Prix racetrack at Monaco
92 TOWERS OF THE MANI
Gustav Temple visits the Southern Peloponnese in the footsteps of Patrick Leigh Fermor
REVIEWS
106 FANTASY ISLAND
Stephen Arnell watches the Greek island of Spetses shifting through the lens of all the films made there, from The Magus to Glass Onion
116 BOOKS
A round-up of tomes old and new, on subjects ranging from rowing blazers to one-upmanship to Ian Fleming’s Goldeneye manse on Jamaica
124 WILDE WIT
Another opportunity to display one’s razor sharp aperçus in the style of the master
126 CHAP REQUISITES
Celebrate our Silver Jubilee with everything from a lapel badge to a splendid tie
READERS SUBMIT THEMSELVES TO THE ULTIMATE SARTORIAL ASSESSMENT. SEND YOUR PHOTO FOR CONSIDERATION TO CHAP@THECHAP.CO.UK
Christopher Sleap found a magical shop where the floor divides the room into two portions. The left side imbues the customer with a dapper sense of style, while the right side is labelled simply ‘Toad of Toad Hall’.
Never brown in town, they said to Darcy Sullivan. He simply stared them down and told them never to speak to him again.
When Chris Tinkler came down for breakfast in a country hotel dressed like this, he was offered a pair of slippers and the vegetarian option.
Travelling on trains made Dean Temple feel sad, so he cheered himself up by buying a tweed suit with two buttonholes. But he was too melancholy to go and buy two flowers to put into them.
John Delikanakis is more of a cheery sort, brightening the world around him by always carrying a set of bells. He is barred from most of the pubs in his village except the ones that permit Morris Dancing.
Frank Annable has never made a sartorial mistake in his life. He instinctively knows what colour his surroundings will be, and dresses accordingly.
Greg from Michigan’s first mistake was accidentally to send us a photo destined for some imitator of The Chap. His second mistake was his entire outfit.
Frank Sforza lives in a special care home where he is looked after by young carers, who sometimes end up fighting over whose turn it is to remove Frank’s ridiculous hat.
“Lady Mollie H,” writes Gary Horsfield, “waited patiently for her maidservant to come and remove her glasses and rub her tired eyes.” Quite so, Mr. Horsfield. And we at The Chap are still waiting for a missive from you that makes any sense whatsoever.
Graham Crockatt is obsessed with flat surfaces. He regularly irons the tassels on his fez and carries himself in such a manner that the shawl lapels of his dinner jacket always face forward. It would be nigh impossible to make the tips of a self-tied bow tie remain so flat, so we can only conclude that Graham has been ejected from whichever gentlemen’s club he attempted to enter.
Catherine is still waiting (since last summer) for someone to bring her a proper glass from which to sip her Pimm’s No.1 Cup.
Nick Thomas has cleverly adopted the pose of someone pretending they don’t wish to be photographed, when in fact it’s the only thing they want. And rightly so. Apart from the absence of a dimple in the tie below the knot, and the lack of break at the bottom of the trousers, Nick’s outfit has a certain Ivy League brio that he inhabits with pleasure and confidence.
Mark Wolff, every time he writes to us, never lets us forget that we once noted a passing resemblance to Oddjob from Goldfinger. Yet this photograph clearly shows that, when it comes to dastardly villains, Mr. Wolff is closer to George Sanders’ character Addison de Witt from All About Eve.
Steve Jenkins vowed to ‘fight them on the beaches’ when he donned his Churchillian black Homburg. Instead, he rounded up a couple of litterbugs who had surreptitiously emptied the Werthers Original wrappers from their pockets into the sand.
Mark Beechcroft-Stretton has invented a new Bond villain all of his own. This one – let us call him ‘Truffles’ – wears a bulletproof dressing gown, carries an exploding pipe which he offers to his victims, and dispenses anyone trying to get in his way with a cricket bat signed by the entire England cricket team.
Not content with continually sending us photos of himself wearing pantaloons de Nimes, Simon Doughty seeks further to offend us by sporting plimsolls. Disguising them among a Basque beret, Universal Works ikat shirt, vintage chore jacket, Simpson summer weight tweed trousers and canvas postal bag gave the redoubtable Doughty a Monsieur Hulot-meets-PeweeHerman aura.
International Etiquette
Chris Sullivan learns the hard way what should and should not be done in certain countries to avoid social suicide
“A
foreigner is always expected to be on time, while his Russian counterpart might turn up an hour late and not apologise. I asked my translator what was going on and she told me that this is a test
of one’s
patience, which is considered a great virtue in Russia”
The first time I encountered the discrepancies of international etiquette was when I had a band whose drummer and percussionist was a Brazilian gent named Geraldo D’arbilly. One evening we were playing at a club in Germany and, after he did the most amazing conga solo I’d ever heard, I turned and gave him the okay sign, finger and thumb creating a circle, you know: ‘Well done, spot on!’ After the show, he gave me the filthiest look and stormed off in a huff. I later discovered that this sign, the international hand signal for scuba divers that says ‘I’m okay’, in Brazil means ‘you arsehole!’
while in Turkey it means that someone is gay and in France it just means zero.
Subsequently, I have paid great attention to the why and wherefores of such customs and am constantly taken aback by the global anomalies. In the UK you are expected to bring a bottle of quality wine per person to a dinner party, but in Italy such behaviour is considered disrespectful as, in their mind, you are suggesting that their vino isn’t good enough for your consumption. Giving someone carnations is a complete no-no, as they are used at funerals and thus associated with death. As an Italian friend of mine explained:
“It is like saying here… you will die soon!” Also never give an Italian anything in the quantity of seven, whether it be 7 or 17 or 27, and always try not to have seven guests at a party, as it is considered doomed. And if you meet an Italian at a social event you should never ask what they do for a living, as that is considered extremely bad form and, if you toast or shake hands with someone, you must look them straight in the eye. To be sure, Italy is a minefield of imminent disaster unless one is informed.
And the home of pasta and pizza is not alone. In Hong Kong, the colour white is associated with death, so wearing your crisp white linen suit is off limits. Red, on the other hand, is considered extremely lucky, so wearing a red tie is a winning move. I went to Hong Kong once and the team I was to work with met me at the airport and started clapping. I thought word about my famed unpunctuality
had reached them and they were sarcastically applauding the fact that I had actually arrived. But no, such behaviour is most common in those parts. Even more baffling, though, is that you are supposed to clap back. But in Hong Kong it is easy to fall foul. I once blew my nose at a restaurant and, judging by the dirty looks I received, thought I’d end up on the menu –especially as I had used a cloth handkerchief and put it back in my pocket. This they consider barbaric. I then made matters worse by refusing a drink, as I had a bad cold, and got deeper into my host’s bad books. You never refuse a drink in Hong Kong. Of course I could have made matters worse by yawning, stretching and putting my feet on a chair – all of which are considered extremely uncouth all over Asia.
One might also easily and unknowingly cruise for a bruise in Korea. Touching someone is considered such an extreme personal
The English word ‘kowtow’ comes from the Chinese word meaning a deep bow
violation that I wondered just how the women ever get pregnant, while looking someone in the eyes can be seen as a physical challenge. Another important detail is the bow. A long bow at the end of a meeting means everything went well, and a short one quite the opposite. While tipping in the US is expected, in Korea it is considered an insult. You must not pour your own drink but you must for others; women pour the men’s beverage but never another woman’s, and are expected to pour their own. In the UK, if someone buys you a drink at a bar you must offer one in return, even if you are about to leave.
Maybe the most puzzling place for etiquette is Russia. A foreigner is always expected to be on time, while his Russian counterpart might turn up an hour late and not apologise. I asked my translator what was going on and she told me that this is a test of one’s patience, which is considered a great
virtue in Russia. She also told me that smiling unnecessarily is seen as a sign of weakness. In some countries, even being polite can drop you in it. In India I thanked my host for the meal his wife had cooked us and was scolded. ‘Thank you’ is considered a form of payment in India and therefore insulting. In Japan, unless you want to get paralytic drunk, always leave a little drink in your glass, as finishing your drink means you want more and your host will go to great lengths to accommodate. Otherwise he is losing face. Also avoid using the number four, as it denotes death to the Japanese and, if they say ‘maybe’, they actually mean no, as they consider it rude to say no. Rather perplexingly the Japanese, even though their protocol is very strict, will ask rather personal questions on a first meeting. This is seen as purely showing interest and not at all intrusive. Another winning move in the Land of The Rising Sun is continually to nod when someone talks to you. It means you
In Korea, women pour the men’s drinks but not another woman’s
FLÂNEUR
ELEGANT SCENT FOR FLANEURS AND FLANEUSES
are paying rapt attention and enjoying every minute of their spiel, even though you cannot speak their language.
In France using a comb, toothpick or nail clippers in public is viewed as most vulgar, but my favourite bit of reverse etiquette is in Colombia. While there a few years ago, I met a few new people and did my best to complete telling them an anecdote, only to be met with the very promising: ‘I’ll call you in an hour’, which never materialized. I was informed by a British expat a few days later that this extreme
euphemism might mean anything from tomorrow till a week’s time, while tomorrow might well mean next month or more. Once I knew the score, it wasn’t difficult to adapt to these strange codes.
And that is just what one has to do when travelling; adjust, adapt and assimilate. There is nothing worse than an expat who hangs on to his former country’s manners and refuses to kowtow to the modus operandi of his adopted country. Getting with the local programme is all part of the fun. n
Sometimes the strange social rituals of foreigners can seem perplexing
RAKER MAKE CLOTHES FOR THE FORWARD-THINKING CHAP FROM FABRICS PRODUCED IN THE BRITISH ISLES
INTERVIEW:
JOE JACKSON
JOE JACKSON
Gustav Temple meets the eighties pop star now showcasing on a UK and European tour an album of songs by music-hall maestro Max Champion
“I think our stage outfits reflect the music, i.e. Edwardian with a sort of modern festive Technicolour twist. An actual Edwardian band would have been all men, in respectable dark suits, but we are an eccentric bunch of six men and four women and we’re here to party!”
During the eighties, lots of people were wearing suits and there was even a brief flirtation with the 1940s. But your 80s look always seemed to come from the heart. How important are clothes to you today? Onstage, very. Offstage, I’m always trying to figure out how to dress well without being a dandy or attracting too much attention. But I do hate what I call the Slobbification of modern life. Things like, people showing up at the theatre in shorts and flip-flops. That, and the atrocious state of gents’ trousering. All those low-waisted, too-short ‘skinny pants’
– anyone would think we had trouser fabric rationing!
In 2017 you penned a heartfelt paean to the dry martini. Where have you had the best dry martinis served to you? Paris, by an old geezer in a white jacket, and Madrid, by an old geezer in a red jacket.
Which other cocktails do you consider essential elements of a sophisticated life (if indeed you crave such a thing)?
A well-made Old Fashioned – not too sweet, not too bitter, with a good strong Bourbon or
Rye and a single large ice cube. I’m also a fan of the Sazerac – the official cocktail of my favourite US city, New Orleans.
Is it possible to maintain standards while on tour, or do you ever have to sink as low as drinking lager from a can?
A cocktail kit accompanies me on the road. Anyone who works with me can tell you about Case Forty-Nine.
Going back to the beginning of your career, it didn’t seem long before you released an album of jump jive covers. Had you always admired that style of music and do you still?
Firstly, I’m in this music thing for life, so sometimes I’m going to do something different,
to keep it interesting. In that case, I’d been very ill and listening to that music helped me get better and cheered me up, so I thought, why not share that? The Max Champion project is in very much the same spirit: going back in time to find the inspiration to go forward. In this case, even further back, to about 1910, but with a more modern twist. It’s a way of getting back to making music just for the sheer fun of it –something we tend to lose sight of sometimes.
Your latest album pays homage to music hall singer Max Champion. Do you see any connection between old-time music hall and your own earlier musical output?
I did my first gigs as a teenager, playing the piano in pubs, and I played a lot of music
Jackson has very strict rules on the making of a Dry Martini
hall songs before I knew anything about the history of it. I was also getting the influence second-hand, so to speak, from Ray Davies, Paul McCartney, Ian Dury or Madness. I’m not sure how much of an influence it is on my songwriting, but I do admire the clever wordplay and the humour, and my hat’s off
to anyone who can write a tune that everyone wants to sing along with. Anyway, the music hall element is a strain in British pop that goes way back to before our culture became Americanised, and I think it’s in our DNA.
Where do you think the music of Max
Champion sits in the modern era? Would it be the equivalent of Chas & Dave, or is it more like, say, Oasis?
Well, these songs are very ahead of their time. For instance in the Thespian’s Lament you have a self-indulgent actor who wants to tell the world his political opinions; in Monty Mundy, an Englishman who ‘identifies’ as Maltese; and in Health and Safety, a send-up of the kind of ‘zero risk’ thinking that makes things so miserable these days. So Max might fit in pretty well.
Are there any other vintage periods or styles of music history you favour and may one day tackle yourself?
Some people seem to think I have a list of musical genres and I go down it ticking them off! It’s actually the complete opposite, I have no agenda or ‘plan’, I’m guided purely by intuition. Mostly what I do is an eclectic mishmash of styles, because I have such a varied background in music and that’s just who I am. I think my ‘style’ is, whatever I do that other people don’t.
Are you still a smoker? Did you really move from New York to Berlin purely because of Germany’s more relaxed attitude towards Lady Nicotine? New York was changing dramatically, becoming ‘sanitised’. The smoking ban was a symptom of the reasons I moved, rather than the reason. I don’t actually smoke very much, but I opposed the ban on principle because (a) it doesn’t take much research to figure out that ‘secondhand smoke’ is nonsense, and (b) it crossed a line and brought Nanny into nightlife, which is the last place she belongs. Nightlife has definitely got worse, though smoking bans aren’t the only reason. But Berlin still has a thriving nightlife, and it’s not a coincidence that there’s very little oppressive bureaucracy, taxation, or rules and regulations. So you can have smoking places, nonsmoking places, and places with separate rooms, and bars
and clubs that open and close whenever they want. And why not? We’re adults, aren’t we?
There are some who opine that the 20th century version of pop music ended some time in the early 2000s, and that the ‘rock star’ is no longer a relevant icon for our times. Do you agree? That may well be true. At any rate, in the 20th century popular music became hugely important to young people, in a way it never was before and may never be again. I could feel sad about that, but no one’s stopping me from making, or listening to, music I like, so I concentrate on that. And I have no interest in being trendy – let alone a rock star.
Should people still celebrate the hellraisers of the past such as Keith Moon, or should we shake our heads and wonder sadly what afflicted people like him mentally? Why not both?
Do you make your own nine-piece band wear shirts and bow ties, or are they expected to dress more formally?
I think our stage outfits reflect the music, i.e. Edwardian with a sort of modern festive Technicolour twist. An actual Edwardian band would have been all men, in respectable dark suits, but we are an eccentric bunch of six men
and four women and we’re here to party!
We’ve seen you in plenty of trilbies and pork-pie hats, but have you ever been drawn to the wide-brimmed fedora or top hat?
I have a sort of ‘signature hat’ that a lot of people call a pork-pie, but a pork-pie would have a narrower brim. I’ve been reliably informed that mine is actually a Flat-Top Homburg. n
Mr Joe Jackson Presents: Max Champion What a Racket is out now
Visit www.joejackson.com for European and UK tour dates
Joe Jackson’s Two Rounds of Racket Tour comes to the UK in October
THE ART OF THE SCREEN CAD
Andrew Roberts on the actors who have darkened the screen with their characters on the wrong side of right but with a
Alfred Hitchcock’s first Hollywood film, Rebecca, was notable for a severe case of grand larceny in the villainous form of one Jack Favell. Even Laurence Oliver was powerless to prevent wholesale scene-stealing from George Sanders’s charming interloper who blackmails, cheats, fibs and delights in utterances such as ‘I’d like to have your advice on how to live comfortably without hard work’. In his limited screen time, Sanders had forever established the template for screen caddishness – a tall,
“The apotheosis of Patrick’s cinematic cads was Major Race of The League of Gentlemen –debonair, resourceful and with all the best lines‘Remember rule two, old darling. Never get ahead of the mob. They’re liable to shoot you in the arse’”
raffish twinkle
elegant chap with a serenely sardonic manner, an interesting approach to moral responsibility and a clipped English diction. This screen persona won him an Oscar for All About Eve as the columnist Addison DeWitt.
The cad was typically a younger son remitted by his long-suffering family to remote parts of the Empire on the condition that he never returned to Blighty. They were also invariably awarded all the best lines in the screenplay. The finest portrayers of the breed hailed from diverse backgrounds; some, as with Sanders, Vincent Price or Laurence Harvey, were not UK-born, while Dennis Price – née Dennistoun Franklyn John Rose Price – was an Old Radleian. Others were of suburban backgrounds, acquiring social polish through years in repertory theatre. Aside from the suavity of appearance and sense of savoir-faire in their wardrobe, their common
denominator was a clipped accent combined with a seemingly affectless style of acting and immaculate timing.
After the Second World War, the surviving members of Hollywood’s ‘British Colony’ were often showcased as Romans of a distinctly caddish hue, dining on fresh larks as they ordered their square-jawed All-American slaves to be flogged. Meanwhile, Pinewood, Shepperton and Elstree produced an array of cads to equal any from MGM or Warner Brothers. We have previously discussed Laurence Harvey, ‘The Lithuanian Lothario’, who optimised the Mayfair Dandy. Before Terry-Thomas, British cinema’s comic bounder du jour was Guy Middleton: tall, broad of frame and glinting of an eye. Donald Sinden borrowed elements of this persona for the 1950s Doctor films, but it was a pale imitation of Middleton’s jovial brashness.
George Sanders as Addison de Witt in All About Eve (1950)
“The cad was also quite at home in The Avengers, exchanging barbs with Mrs. Peel as they attempted to rule the world or at least a five-mile radius of Elstree Studios. Peter Wyngarde would have made a splendidly full-blooded bounder in 1930s Hollywood”
Ill health blighted Middleton’s later years, but even when appearing in a B-film from The Danziger Brothers (possibly the UK’s cheapest filmmakers), he never failed to entertain the
audience. The decline of Dennis Price’s career is better known and seeing him as a police inspector in the Z-feature The Haunted House of Horror is a truly sad experience. In fact, British cinema rarely knew how to employ Price’s delicate, nuanced talents, aside from The Boulting Brothers, Basil Dearden, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The angry, vulnerable Sergeant Peter Gibbs of A Canterbury Tale is a crucial figure of 1940s British cinema, and to quote Terence Davies on Kind Hearts and Coronets, without Price, there would not be a film. ‘He holds it all together with the most elegant diction. It’s quite wonderful, even just to listen to’.
Then there was Nigel Patrick, elegant, languid, with a voice like a sweet but deadly liqueur. Simon Rawley in Silent Dust established
Nigel Patrick (left) with Ronald Culver in Trio (1950)
his screen persona as one at home in niteries and never to be trusted. He was the perfect Tom Ramsay, the amiable parasite of W. Somerset Maugham’s Encore. British cinema also used Patrick as an authority figure, and his senior officers had an agreeable louche quality. The apotheosis of Patrick’s cinematic cads was Major Race of The League of Gentlemen –debonair, resourceful and with all the best lines - ‘Remember rule two, old darling. Never get ahead of the mob. They’re liable to shoot you in the arse’.
By the time of The League of Gentlemen’s release in 1960, the British cinematic cad was undergoing a transformation. Leslie Philips was the Lupin Pooter of the silver screen, even if James Robertson Justice tended to regard him as a ‘nicompoop!’ With Connery’s Bond, the
elements of the cad are all present and correct – the dress sense, the one-liners, the womanising – but these are now in the service of Queen and Commonwealth.
And as the decade progressed, cad of cads Terry-Thomas began to parody himself in flatulent ‘International Comedies’. The cad’s image was comprehensively de-constructed in Nothing but the Best, where Denholm Elliott’s remittance man instructs Alan Bates’s counter-jumper in the codes and mores of the upper-classes. By the end of the 1960s, Roger Moore’s double role in The Man Who Haunted Himself hinted at real caddish possibilities, with the rougish smiles of Harold Pelham’s doppelganger. In 1973, Vincent Price’s demented Shakespearean in Theatre of Blood was the rotter in complete Grand Guignol form.
Dennis Price in Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
Meanwhile, television proved a fertile ground for a new generation of cads. ITC employed Peter Bowles as Egyptian police chiefs and KGB agents with a sinister yet debonair quality, while John Carson’s rotters always sounded as though they had been recently cashiered. The cad was also quite at home in The Avengers, exchanging barbs with Mrs. Peel as they attempted to rule the world or at least a five-mile radius of Elstree Studios. Peter Wyngarde would have made a splendidly full-blooded bounder in the Hollywood of the 1930s. In A Touch of Brimstone, his Honourable John Cleverly Cartney is the equal of any cinematic bounder.
Above all, the greatest exponents of screen caddishness could hint at the feelings
beneath their self-consciously witty aphorisms. One could cite Denholm Elliott’s venomous back-street abortionist in Alfie – “Don’t ask questions” – or Dinsdale Landen, whose insouciant detective Matthew Earp so enlivened ITV’s Thriller, as an alcoholic writer in Play for Today: C2H50H, corroding with self-loathing. In All About Eve, DeWitt both celebrates genuine talent and lives in fear of the mockery of others – ‘Remember as long as you live, never to laugh at me’. With Sapphire, Patrick’s Detective-Superintendent knows that he can solve the case but never the racism that leads to the eponymous character’s murder. In Theatre of Blood, Edward Lionheart delivers Hamlet’s soliloquy before a mocking audience
Peter Wyngarde as John Cleverly Cartney with Carol Cleveland in The Avengers
of his critics. The moment his beloved daughter witnesses his humiliation is as much a highlight of Vincent Price’s career as his Matthew Hopkins in Witchfinder General. Dennis Price’s coolly passionate sense of revenge for his mother drives Kind Hearts and Coronets: “Because she married for love instead of for rank or money or land.” In 1961’s Victim, Vincent Price’s blackmailed West End star explains, with understatement that conveys more pain than a self-indulgent bid for an Oscar, how the law prevented him from finding love “in the only way I can”. It is a performance of a gay actor trapped in a grey, hypocritical London. And perhaps the most excoriating deconstruction of the cad persona
was seen in George Sanders’ lead performance in Roberto Rossellini’s Viaggio in Italia. Just as the narrative slowly strips the cynical Alex Joyce of his verbal defences, Sanders himself is gradually divested of his carefully constructed caddish persona to reveal a sense of depressive loneliness. On location Sanders burst into tears: “There is no dialogue, I don’t know what’s going on or what will happen tomorrow. I cannot take it.” The conclusion resonates because Sanders’s character has found the courage to discard his verbal tricks and studied air of boredom. When a cad shares his real emotions with the audience, the result is often more powerful than any number of histrionic ‘dramatic’ performances. n
Roger Moore in The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)
SURTEES’ SPORTING JOLLITIES
Torquil Arbuthnot on the writings of Robert Smith Surtees, parodist of the hunting crowd who only ever wrote his most famous tales under a pseudonym
Reticent and proud, he was quick to resent slights and was, according to a biographer, “persistent in his animosities.” “I never push myself an inch forward,” Surtees once remarked, “but I damned well see that I’m never pushed an inch back”
Women never look so well as when one comes in wet and dirty from hunting.
Robert Smith Surtees was born in 1805 in Northumberland and grew up at Hamsterley Hall in county Durham. He was educated locally before being articled to solicitors in Newcastle upon Tyne and then in London. Although he was admitted to ‘Chancery’ in 1828, it is doubtful whether he
(Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour, 1853)
ever practised, and in 1835 he removed his name from the law list. Surtees’ social status was materially altered by the death in 1831 of his unmarried elder brother. In 1836 he was invited to stand as Conservative candidate for Gateshead but, anticipating defeat in the general election, he withdrew before the poll. He inherited the Hamsterley estate on the death of his father two years later. In 1842 Surtees was appointed a JP and deputy lieutenant for the county, and for two years he held a commission in the Durham militia.
By all accounts he was an active landowner, farming 250 acres and managing 700 acres of woodland; an agricultural reformer; and a conscientious magistrate and poor-law guardian. He served as high sheriff for County Durham in 1856 and as deputy
sheriff in 1859 and 1863. He is best known for his novels and stories, many revolving around exploits on and off the hunting field.
Although he hunted all his life, Surtees was not a good horseman. His interest was in the scientific skills of hunting, not in the then fashionable hell-for-leather galloping across country, which he despised. Reticent and proud, he was quick to resent slights and was, according to a biographer, “persistent in his animosities.” “I never push myself an inch forward,” Surtees once remarked, “but I damned well see that I’m never pushed an inch back ”
Surtees’ career as author, which he never publicly acknowledged (though he took little trouble to conceal it), began in his early days in London. His first completed work was a
Mr Jorrocks Has a Bye Day, by John Leech, from ‘Handley Cross’
Surtees did not see any real public recognition in his lifetime as a serious or even respectable author. This is possibly because his books ran counter to the fashions of the Victorian age in their absence of treacly sentimentality and moralism, and their almost wilful flouting of conventional mores.
largely legal treatise, The Horseman’s Manual in 1831, the only title which ever came out under his name. He was already contributing to the Sporting Magazine by this time and in 1830,
when CJ Apperley (writing under the nom de plume “Nimrod”) withdrew from his position as hunting correspondent, Surtees took over as his successor, writing under the pseudonyms of “Nim South” and “a Durham Sportsman”. In 1831, after he had been refused a share in the management of the magazine, he started his own, the New Sporting Magazine in association with his friend the art publisher Rudolph Ackermann, and appointed himself editor and hunting correspondent.
In 1838 Surtees published in book form a collection of his magazine articles featuring the cockney Mr. Jorrocks, the “jolly, free-andeasy, fox-hunting grocer” (to use Surtees’ own description), under the title Jorrocks’s Jaunts and Jollities. A longer, more rounded Jorrocks novel, Handley Cross, appeared in 1843 and another, Hillingdon Hall, in 1845. Most of Surtees’ novels were serialized in the New Sporting Magazine, Bell’s Life in London, or the New Monthly
Mrs Barrington Very Complacently Leads Off with Stephen Dumpling, illustration by Cecil Charles Windsor Aldin
Magazine, and were sometimes substantially revised and enlarged before appearing in book form, sometimes in monthly instalments. The illustrations to Surtees’ stories were as important as Cruickshank and Phiz were to Dickens. Phiz also illustrated Surtees, but it was more often John Leech (an equally melancholic fox-hunter, and the first to illustrate Dickens’ A Christmas Carol) or Cecil Charles Windsor Aldin.
His first moderate success came with Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour (1853). This was followed by two novels of a different type, Ask Mamma (1858) and Plain or Ringlets? (1860), in which the huntin’ and shootin’ interest is only part of a broader picture of provincial society and manners. His last book, published posthumously in 1865, was Mr Facey Romford’s Hounds, which Surtees himself regarded as a good sequel to Mr Sponge and which some critics consider his best novel. Surtees also produced a pamphlet Hints to Railway Travellers and Country Visitors to London: By an Old Stager in 1852.
Surtees did not see any real public recognition in his lifetime as a serious or even respectable author. This is possibly because his books ran counter to the fashions of the Victorian age in their absence of treacly sentimentality and moralism, and their almost wilful flouting of conventional mores. His leading male characters, such as Jorrocks and Soapy Sponge, are vulgar and shady; his leading ladies dashing, coarse and far from virtuous; and his outlook on society satiric to the point of cynicism. Yet, paradoxically, the qualities that led in his own time to an under-appreciation of his talents as a writer meant that his books in a later age lived on, whereas those of many of his more famous contemporaries are now forgotten. As a biographer writing in the late 1890s, thirty years after Surtees’ death, said:
“Among a wider public his mordant observations on men, women, and manners; his entertaining array of eccentrics, rakes, and rogues; his skill in the construction of lively
dialogue (a matter over which he took great pains); his happy genius for unforgettable and quotable phrases; and above all, his supreme comic masterpiece, Jorrocks, have won him successive generations of devoted followers.
Surtees’ reputation among other writers of his day was high; he was admired by Dickens and Thackeray and was also praised by writers in the 1920s and 30s such as Siegfried Sassoon, George Orwell, Anthony Powell, and Evelyn Waugh. Perhaps Lawrence Durrell best summed up Surtees’ allure in an interview in 1959: “One of the writers I reread every two or three years is Surtees, and I very much hoped that England was going to be Surtees’ England – a vulgar, jolly, roistering England, not especially aesthetic or cultivated or delicate in any sense, but something with its vulgar roots in food, sex, and good living.” n
Portait of John Jorrocks by Henry Alken
presents
The grand silver jubilee ball
7pm-2am Saturday 12th October 2024
THE FOURTH GRAND FLANEUR WALK
THE DESERT BOOT
THE FOURTH GRAND FLANEUR WALK
Gustav Temple reflects on this year’s saunter sans purpose, with only the words of Virginia Woolf to guide 100 flaneurs through the streets of Mayfair
PHOTOGRAPHY: SOULSTEALER PHOTOGRAPHY @SSTEALER
On Sunday 5th May 2024, a crowd assembled at the junction of Piccadilly and Jermyn Street, London W1. Usually the only notable aspect of this corner is the life-size statue of the great dandy Beau Brummell, but on this day even the Beau himself would have shielded his eyes. For this group of flaneurs, dandies, quaintrelles and boulevardiers held no truck with Brummell’s dictum that a welldressed man should never stand out from the crowd.
For this merry band of 21st century flaneurs, standing out from the crowd is precisely what they want to do. Today’s lamentable clothing styles, for all ages, seem determined to ensure that each individual blends into a seamless entity, entirely dressed in shades of blue, grey and black (ironically the very colours Beau Brummell wore). On
this day in May, the key words were instead elegance, flair, eccentricity and élan. Any ancient sartorial rules concerning appropriate Town wear were entirely abandoned, but with the joyous spirit of those who know damn well they are breaking the rules, yet whose clothing style somehow seeks a kind of artistic harmony within itself, as a group.
Every style of clothing from as far back as the Regency period was represented, from Napoleonic-era military uniform, through Victorian formal wear, Edwardian Town clothing, 1920s flapper style, 1930s boating ensembles, forties demob chic and Neo-Edwardian teddy boy style. Those who were not observing a specific period of history merely threw something together that ultimately made sartorial sense and blended successfully into the eclectic mix on display that day. There were more hats on display than
Flowing locks and scarlet dress - and that’s just the gentlemen
The spirit of Tommy Nutter dwelt among us for a day
have likely been seen on the streets of London since about 1952, and more walking canes, umbrellas and parasols than you could shake a swagger stick at.
Once the general preening and peacockery had been completed, a reading from Virginia Woolf’s 1930 Street Haunting essay took place.
“What greater delight and wonder can there be than to leave the straight lines of personality and deviate into those footpaths that lead beneath brambles and thick tree trunks into the heart of the forest where live those wild beasts, our fellow men?
The main stream of walkers at this hour sweeps too fast to let us ask such questions. They are wrapt, in this short passage from work to home, in some narcotic dream, now that they are free from the desk, and have the fresh air on their cheeks. They put on those bright clothes which they must hang up and lock the key upon all the rest of the day, and are great cricketers, famous actresses, soldiers who have saved their country at the hour of need. Dreaming, gesticulating, often muttering a few words aloud, they sweep over the Strand and across
Waterloo Bridge whence they will be slung in long rattling trains, to some prim little villa in Barnes or Surbiton where the sight of the clock in the hall and the smell of the supper in the basement puncture the dream.”
The flaneurs were finally ready to proceed with the business of the day, which was to saunter sans purpose in whichever direction whimsy dictated. It was spontaneously decided that they would head in a southeasterly direction, taking them under the glittering signage of The Ritz towards Green Park. It was too early to pause for refreshments and besides, even the Ritz would be unable to provide a table for one hundred at such short notice.
After crossing the bucolic greenery of the park, the flaneurs strolled along Constitution Hill, past Buckingham Palace and into the motor-car maelstrom of Wellington Arch. At this point a few flaneurs fell back from the pack, having been distracted by the legions of
Never before have so many berets been deployed in the line of duty
photographers trying to get the shot that would make their fortune. Those that survived made it to the first hostelry they encountered, the Grenadier on Wilton Row. This being a quaint
Belgravia pub, there was no room at the inn for 100 thirsty flaneurs, and thus the group was forced to split, the second contingent ending up at the Star Tavern, Belgrave Mews. n
“The good citizen when he opens his door must be banker, golfer, husband, father; not a nomad wandering the desert, a mystic staring at the sky, a debauchee in the slums of San Francisco, a soldier heading a revolution, a pariah howling with scepticism and solitude. We see the whole breadth of the river Thames through the eyes of somebody who is leaning over the Embankment on a summer evening, without a care in the world. Let us go in search of this person – and soon it becomes apparent that this person is ourselves.”
Virginia
Woolf, Street Haunting
Tom Carradine and his cockney chums
Jonny Haart, haunting the streets since the 1920s
Lyndsey @fabginge Walker shielding herself elegantly from purple rain
LEFT: Francisco Giordanella @dandyfrancis
Photo: Rob Case
THE DESERT BOOT
Chris Sullivan on the long voyage of the chukka boot from the polo fields of India to the film set of Quadrophenia, via The Great Escape
Even though many ascribe the invention of this British classic to Nathan Clark, who in 1949 designed a boot that was based on an item which officers of the British Eighth Army had made for them by local Egyptian tradesmen during the Second World War, its roots actually lie in India, along with the jodhpur and the khaki trouser.
Initially, this traditionally two-eyelet suede boot was named the ‘chukka boot’ after the playing period in polo and, often unlined and fitted with a rubber or leather sole, had been
“Curiously, the most prominent items of the Mod portmanteau – the button-down shirt and the desert boot – were both seen as American but were both in fact taken directly from the polo field and were quintessentially British”
brought back to the UK by the British Raj from the thirties onwards, and was worn by rather louche Bohemians clad in corduroy. When such men were stationed in climates far too severe for the British army boot, they had their faithful chukkas copied in Cairo’s Old Bazaar. The result was the roughly fashioned crepe-soled suede boots that they wore off duty. And, as with the history of any garment that is copied, what gets lost or added in translation becomes the norm and forms the blueprint for another slightly different, and at times equally iconic, style.
It was this boot that Nathan Clark (of the famed British shoemakers Clarks) brought back from Burma, where he’d been stationed with the West African Brigade in the late Forties. Consequently, he set about perfecting the Clarks Desert Boot. In 1950 Clark unveiled it at the Chicago shoe fair and sales rocketed. Of course the boot ticked all the relevant boxes for early fifties hipsters. Their soft no-nonsense structure was perfectly aligned with the free-thinking jazz ideology of the day, and, paired with jeans and sweatshirts became, along with open-toed sandals and loafers, the chosen footwear for
Nathan Clark: preferred making perfect boots to wearing fitted jackets
jazzers, beat poets and writers such as Jack Kerouac and his hero Neal Cassady.
Over in the UK, middle-class traditional jazzers and later beatniks – who added the obligatory Arran jumper, beard and duffle coat – initially championed the desert boot. They met in the 2i’s Coffee Bar in London’s Soho and went on peace marches holding their Ban The Bomb banners high. As a result, the boot became associated with a certain breed of existentialists and it was this, coupled with the opening of the first Clarks store on Regent Street in 1957, which ensured their place
in the annals of great British youth culture. The Beatles in their early days sported desert boots, as did Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, The Small Faces and Patrick McGoohan, star of the massively popular Danger Man series, while in Paris the Left Bank was chock-a-block with chukka-wearing non-conformists who frequented the famed Beat Hotel.
In 1963 the shoe took an almighty leap in popularity when the Godfather of Mod Steve McQueen decided, apparently of his own volition, to wear desert boots (along with a sweatshirt, chinos and an A1 bomber
Ronnie Lane (second from right) of the Small Faces puts his best desert-booted foot forward
“By the mid-Sixties the desert boot had lost any connections with polo and had conquered the high street. The chosen footwear of
The Who, The Small Faces and The Animals, it was ubiquitous on UK streets”
jacket – all curiously military gear) in the film The Great Escape. Previously the item had been aligned with beats and dropouts – the ancestors of hippies – but now it would jump ship and grace the feet of their diametrical opposite, the Mods. Curiously, the most prominent items of the Mod portmanteau – the buttondown shirt and the desert boot – were both
seen as American but were both in fact taken directly from the polo field and were therefore quintessentially British.
By the mid-Sixties, the desert boot had lost any connections with polo and had conquered the high street. The chosen footwear of The Who, The Small Faces and The Animals, it was ubiquitous on UK streets. The item came full circle in 1967 when the Deputy Leader of the House of Lords, Lord Shackleton, came back from Aden wearing a pair of locally made desert boots. He returned to Aden with orders from several government ministers for pairs of desert boots. Such governmental approval dented the boots’ credibility among the youth, but what really sounded its death knell was its appropriation by Marks and Spencer, who in 1970 copied Clark’s Desert Boot as part of a revamp of their men’s fashion department, teaming the once proud boot with a rather sombre navy blazer, tweed trousers, a buttondown shirt and a silk paisley scarf.
O what a lovely war, said Clarks
Steve McQueen: so cool he could wear stained chinos
No longer a hepcat item, it was now the chosen shoe of geography teachers, hippy soundmen and middle-class dads who wanted to get down with the younger generation. And so the shoe became a laughing stock. No one wanted them. That is, until the film Quadrophenia came along in 1979. Riding on the wave of the new mod revival gave the shoe yet another lease of life. Subsequently championed by the likes of Paul Weller, they once again attained the level of unimpeachable classic UK street wear – an accolade previously awarded to the likes of the Fred Perry, Levis 501s and the Doc Marten.
Consequently, when any band or youth movement gleans any influence from Mod culture, out comes the desert boot. Oasis, again drawing on the sixties, influenced yet another generation of popsters who were mad for the desert boot. Damon Albarn is a fan, while the
Arctic Monkeys are often seen padding around London in said footwear.
Today desert boots are well and truly back in vogue and are made by many manufacturers, but for my money the best versions are made by Clarks (particularly the version in Tobacco Suede), while those by well-known London shoemakers Church’s, the Ryder III Brown Suede (as worn by James Bond in Quantum of Solace) are for those who want something a little more sturdy. A question that often provokes heated debate is, what do you wear the desert boot with? A triedand-tested combination is pairing them with khaki chinos. But, according the website Mod Culture, “Only wear desert boots with jeans or cords (the latter rarely). You could probably wear them with khakis. But a suit and desert boots is a big no-no!”
You have been warned. n
Daniel Craig flexes his muscles while pretending to drink whichever brand sponsored the scene
Kacie Belle wears Gladys Dress in Remus Racetrack Print and Contrast Seamed Stockings
MALTESE DANDY
An encounter with Malta’s answer to Zack Pinsent leads to a splendid conversation about dandyism
“Costume is something of a sacrilegious word to me. I interpret costume as something one buys off-the-shelf for a carnival or Halloween party. Because they are tailored and well-kept, they are clothes, not costume”
Francisco Giordanella was in Malta visiting family, when he came across a mysterious local legend who goes by the name of ‘Citoyenport’. This outstandingly dandiacal gentleman dresses, every single day, in full Regency costume, despite several drawbacks such as the 40-degree heat in summer, the mockery of locals and the distinct shortage of suitable haberdashers and milliners.
Francis, no stranger to the art of dressing impeccably himself, sought an audience with the Maltese dandy, and below one may read the Mediterranean maverick’s replies to his questions.
When did you begin dressing in Regency costume?
I first started off as a Napoleonic wars reenactor. One of my roles was that of a local militiaman, which meant wearing civilian clothes. It is there that I started to take my first interest in the basic garments of the time (shirts, waistcoats, breeches etc.), and then moved on to get my first frock coat made. I used this particular ensemble for Regency events and so on. As was the case with many other people, the COVID pandemic was an eye-opener that life was too short to miss out on doing things which make you happy, so I started to include historical fashion into my daily wardrobe in 2020.
Do you think of it as ‘costume’ or simply nice clothes?
Definitely clothes. Costume is something of a sacrilegious word to me. I interpret costume as something one buys off-the-shelf for a carnival or Halloween party. As they are tailored and well-kept, they [my wardrobe] are clothes, not costume.
Where do you acquire your period clothing from?
All my clothes are tailor made by a handful of tailors. I do the designing, sourcing of fabrics and all the preliminary work, while tailors then piece it all together. I wish I could find time to do it myself, but I sadly cannot.
How do local townsfolk react to you?
I’m afraid that Malta is still pretty much gripped by a general culture of ignorance which is typical of insular and small countries. Laughter, and sometimes even heckling, are not uncommon by locals. Homogeneity and conformity are a staple of Maltese social culture (which has roots in its colonial past); subcultures are pretty much non-existent and people going against the grain tend to be regarded with suspicion.
That is not to say that I do not receive positive reactions, though most of the positive comments tend to come from foreign nationals (residents and tourists alike). Commentators aside, the positive comments tend to be very
‘Laughter is not uncommon by locals’
‘I am often mistaken for a street performer’
encouraging and ecstatic, which of course helps me to keep going. Many others are also curious; again, not being exposed to the idea of subcultures, they would often mistake me as being some sort of street performer or such.
Do you think of yourself as a dandy, a fop – or something else?
Well, I tend to wear breeches over trousers, and have long, as opposed to cropped hair, which are not so dandy-friendly, and my apartment is decoratively sober. Though I most certainly dress in the spirit of the Regency era, I tend to use peculiar vocabulary, and most certainly have an interest in more niche and cultural pursuits. I do have some earlier 18th century ensembles which I use specifically for themed events, but I am most certainly not a fop on a day-to-day basis. I’d say 75% dandy!
Who are your sartorial heroes?
Historically, and as clichéd as it may sound, I’d obviously have to say Beau Brummell. He himself being in a situation where he was challenging the sartorial status quo, he stood his ground and carried on with his personal choice of wardrobe before becoming the rage among all the bon ton.
My contemporary hero and major influence is of course Zack Pinsent, for opening my eyes to the possibility that, yes, it is permissible and perfectly fine to dress as you please, no matter what those around you have to say about it.
Are there any other dandy types or welldressed men or women in Malta?
Other than you (Francesco Giordanella) I am not aware of anyone else who would encompass the complete definition of a ‘dandy’. As far as well-dressed men or women go, it depends on what would qualify as well-dressed. If it refers to the usual range of designer brand clothes, then yes, there are many to be found. Though if you’re referring to dress reminiscent of Grace Kelly, Diane Furstenberg, Noel Coward and Robert de
Montesquiou, then I’d say no. At least not that I know of, but then again Malta is very small so such persons would be highly conspicuous. I only know of one very specific person who I know quite well, and she experiments a lot with Edwardian concepts in her modern wardrobe.
Do you enjoy being the only person in the area dressed in Regency style?
It’s always nice to have an identity which you can claim for your own which makes you different, though sometimes it warrants some unnecessary attention, as mentioned in my answer to the first question. But overall I’d say yes, I do enjoy it.
Beau Brummell asserted that a welldressed man should not stand out from the crowd. Do you think this still applies today?
I feel that clothes have become so simplified and monotonous that even trying to spice things up just a little bit, whilst maintaining a sense of propriety, would inadvertently make one stand out. It’s difficult to implement Brummell’s philosophy in the 21st century, where a hypercapitalist model does not promote creativity and self-expression. Contemporary clothing (brand designer clothes included) look more like uniforms, as people are considered more as cogs in the economic machine rather than individuals. Clothes are a factor of attraction and esteem, and those gifted with more physically attractive features will suffer no inconvenience even when not putting their best sartorial foot forward. For more average persons, however, a sartorially exquisite range of clothes can serve as both an empowering tool and a way to turn heads. Taking architect Louis Sullivan’s maxim that ‘form follows function’, that the shape of an object or building should relate to its intended function and purpose, I’d say that Regency fashion is a perfect example of that: aesthetically pleasing with the intention of giving its wearer a distinguished and refined look. n
RAFFISH
EAU DE COLOGNE FROM THE CHAP
GREEK BRANDY
CHAP LIFE
The Moon in the ROOM
Gustav Temple spends the night in the corridors once trashed by rock legend
Chipping Norton, known locally as ‘Chippy’, is not a place one would associate with rock ‘n’ roll hellraising. It is a sleepy little market town in Oxfordshire, with a few nice bookshops and a café serving a variety of cakes and pastries (closed on Mondays).
However, once you step through the equally unprepossessing frontage of the Crown and Cushion Hotel on the High Street, you are entering the halls of rock history. The first thing you see from the car park is a temporarily
closed swimming pool, which looks as though the petrol could have leaked into it from the tank of a drowned Rolls Royce. Once you have checked in with a charming lady behind the reception desk, she points to a convex mirror behind you with the word ‘BAR’ and a huge arrow, and by following it, you feel as though you are nearing your destination: Moon Land.
For the owner of the Crown and Cushion, from 1969, was The Who drummer Keith Moon. The irony of a rock star who was known for trashing hotel rooms all over the
Keith Moon in his own hotel in the Cotswolds
Photo: Barrie Wentzell
world, coupled with the likely outcome of an extremely heavy drinker owning his own pub, was not lost on his chums. None of them, however, turned down the frequent invitations to enjoy free drinks at the bar, served by Keith himself, and today you can see photographs of Ronnie Lane, Vivian Stanshall, Elton
John and Ringo Starr all enjoying Moon’s generous hospitality. On one occasion he paid for a coach to transport revellers at a London nightclub all the way to Chippy to enjoy a free night at the Crown and Cushion.
Keith’s room at the hotel was always Number 3. At one point, when in the midst of
Keith Moon acknowledging the ‘crown’ part, while the cushions are probably also in there somewhere
“When the lady at reception received my request for Room 3, she dismissively said, Oh it’s only a tichy room. There are much bigger ones on that floor. Then she saw the copy of Dear Boy in my hand and silently handed me the key”
a divorce from his wife Kim, he moved all his possessions into the hotel, lying to the locals who spotted him unloading a washing machine from his Rolls Royce that he’d been burgled
and was taking no further chances.
Which room would you choose, dear reader? When the lady at reception received my request for Room 3, she dismissively said, ‘Oh, it’s only a tichy room. There are much larger ones on the same floor.’ Then she saw the copy in my hand of Dear Boy, Moon’s biography by Tony Fletcher, and silently handed me the key.
Immediately making a shrine in Moon’s room, it was difficult to imagine a rock legend throwing televisions out of the window and such. The flatscreen set was bolted to the wall, but on the plus side there were two complimentary pink G&Ts, which I thought was a nice touch.
That evening there was no sign of any
The complimentary pink G&Ts felt like a suitable tribute
“Barrie’s photograph of us all clustered around bar, casually smoking our Benson & Hedges and delighting in Keith’s company, perfectly captures the spirit of a more carefree era”
long-haired rock legends at the bar; only a few grizzled bikers in tatty leathers. But once installed at the bar with a quadruple Remy Martin (no ice) in hand, it only took a squinting of the eyes (aided by the cognac) to flesh out of the scenes pictured in frames alongside the bar.
The biography described some of them: the one of Keith with Viv Stanshall and Ronnie Laine, Keith in a gigantic bow tie and matching waistcoat, was taken the night one of the local regulars at the pub, in hacking jacket and tweed cap, complained to Moon’s group about the noise. Melody Maker journalist Chris Welch (who later went on to pen the biography of Vivian Stanshall Ginger Geezer) recalled the evening: “Arriving with photographer Barrie Wentzell, the lounge was almost deserted. But there was Keith behind the bar, beaming and resplendent in a huge bow tie. ‘What will you have, dear boy? By the way, have you seen this? It’s the latest gadget, a microwave oven’. I was fascinated by this technological marvel but distracted by the unexpected arrival of old friends, Ronnie Lane of Small Faces and Faces fame and Vivian Stanshall formerly of the Bonzo Dog Band.
“Barrie’s photograph of us all clustered around the bar, casually smoking our Benson & Hedges and delighting in Keith’s company, perfectly captures the spirit of a more carefree era. When I saw this picture for the first time in over 40 years it was rendered all the more poignant by the realisation that I was the only surviving member of this happy scene. It also reminded me of the prank that Moon had
played, as the bar filled up with customers. A white haired man with a military moustache and clipped accent to match barked loudly at Keith, ‘The service here is outrageous. I demand to speak to the landlord.’ Keith popped his Marty Feldman eyes and replied haughtily, ‘I AM the landlord.’ Exit dissatisfied customer grumbling loudly.”
I don’t know whether I expected paradiddles to be drummed on the mirror while I slept in Room 3, but keen readers of this publication will know that I always enjoy soaking up the atmosphere of places of renown. There was definitely something about the Crown and Cushion that invited debauchery, or was this impulse purely based on the knowledge of what had passed there previously? Reader, I drank more than usual and indulged in a cheeky Benson & Hedges or twain (possibly influenced equally by the funeral of my paramour’s mother I had just attended), and was even tempted to try out Moon’s favourite drinking challenge. He once complained to a barman at the Five Bridges Hotel in Newcastle that he’d been served the wrong brandy in his usual brandy and ginger ale. The barman responded good-naturedly that it would be impossible to identify the brand of cognac, once drowned in ginger ale and ice. Keith offered to name all four brandies in return for drinks on the house for the rest of the night. The barman lined up four bottles of brandy on the bar and Keith sampled them all: Remy, Martell, Courvoisier, Hennessy… he got them spot on every time.
The barman of the Crown and Cushion, an amiable fellow in his early twenties, was familiar with this tale, but when questioned as to whether he would accept a similar challenge, pointed to the two different types of brandy behind the bar. “It would be too easy,” he said drily. We had a round of whiskies instead and went to bed.
As I slipped into a deep slumber in Room 3, I recalled Keith’s words and agreed that the Crown and Cushion was very restful. n
Sadly Keith Moon was only able to join me in spirit
WARRIOR SPIRIT
Gustav Temple assesses the second Greek national drink, Metaxa, in all its star-studded manifestations
“Greek tastes tended towards the rougher distillates, powerful on the palate yet lacking in aroma and character. Spyros, with his sophisticated tastes and silk cravats, was determined to make something much smoother and closer to the fine cognac wines produced in France”
Ouzo might be the first drink that springs to mind when we think of Greece, but that aniseed-infused beverage is not to everyone’s taste. The country’s other national drink has been sliding down a much wider range of throats for 136 years. Metaxa is similar to
brandy or cognac and is consumed in the same way, although does not qualify for those denominations of origin, and has its own distinct flavour.
The story begins in 1888 on the Greek island of Kefalonia, where Spyros Metaxa was born into a long line of silk merchants.
Being in the family silk business saw the young Spyros travel widely, introducing him to many of the varied spirits and fine wines that were being produced across Europe. He was, quite simply, a man of refined taste with the spirit of adventure, with his sights set on higher things than remaining in the family silk trade.
Spyros built his first distillery in Piraeus, the port that serves Athens. During its construction, he found an ancient medallion depicting the Salamina Warrior. The Battle of Salamina took place in 480 BC in the waters near Piraeus, between an alliance of Greek city states led by the Athenian general Themistocles and the invading Persian army led by King Xerxes. Outnumbered by the invading Persian forces, the Greek navy fought them off heroically, turning the Salamina Warrior into a symbol of vim and courage. So Spyros immediately slapped it on to the first bottle of
Metaxa he produced, and it has gone on every single bottle since.
Greek spirits in Spyros’ day were unlike those consumed in other European countries. Greek tastes tended towards the rougher distillates, powerful on the palate yet lacking in aroma and character. Spyros, with his sophisticated tastes and silk cravats, was determined to make something much smoother and closer to the fine wines produced in France.
Surrounded by luminous turquoise sea, the island of Samos sits in the warmth of the Eastern Mediterranean. Since the times of the earliest Greek traders, grapes – and particularly Muscat grapes – have been cultivated here, on vineyards on the slopes leading up to Mount Ambelos, the island’s highest mountain. The terroir, a tough mineral soil with rainfall at the right times of year, yields Muscat grapes with
intense aromas and flavour, the finest of them selected by Spyros and still selected today by Metaxa’s current master blender. The Muscat wines are aged separately until they are ready to be blended together in Limousin oak casks. The majority of Metaxa’s base brandies come from Spain and Italy, and the rest from Greece, where they are distilled from sun-dried grapes.
When launched in 1888, Metaxa was an instant success, the Greeks thirsty for a spirit that didn’t taste like car exhaust fumes mixed with raisins. Initially enjoyed in Athens, word quickly spread across the whole of Greece about this sensational new drink that wasn’t quite a brandy or a cognac, but something born of the nation and reflecting its rich history and sun-drenched land. The position of the Metaxa distillery in Greece’s busiest port guaranteed immediate access to Mediterranean transport routes, and soon Metaxa found its
way to the zinc bartops of Spain, Italy, Britain and France. The first bottle of Metaxa landed in the United States in 1900, only 12 years after Spyros’ distillery had opened. Bottles of the quintessential Greek spirit have continued flowing internationally ever since.
By the late 1960s, Metaxa had outgrown its modest Piraeus distillery, and a much larger one was established in Kifissia, a suburb in the northeast of Athens, where it continues to be manufactured today. For the last 136 years only five individuals, including Spyros himself, have been given the role of master blender, with the grand title of ‘Metaxa Master’, a chap with a fine nose entrusted with the role of ensuring the quality and consistency of the drink. Today this role belongs to Constantinos Raptis, a position he has occupied since 1992. The Metaxa brand was sold to Grand Metropolitan in 1989, and then to Remy-Cointreau in 2000.
Spyros Metaxa
Early 20th century Metaxa poster
METAXA 5 STARS BITTER LIME SODA
1.7 oz Metaxa Five Stars 1 dash Angostura Bitters Juice of one lime wedge
Mix all ingredients in a mixing glass over ice and top up with soda water. Garnish with a sprig of thyme.
Ironically, the drink that was refused the title of ‘cognac’ and ‘brandy’ is now owned by one of the world’s biggest exporters of those very French beverages.
The five types of Metaxa are Three Stars, Five Stars, Seven Stars and Twelve Stars, as well as a Grand Reserve. The Twelve Stars spirit is internationally distributed, while the Grand Reserve and limited edition products are more difficult to find and sometimes limited to certain regions.
Metaxa can be sipped straight like cognac or brandy, with a flavour profile that is rich, sweet, and complex, with notes of rose, bay leaf, cinnamon, dried fruits, lavender, nutmeg and pepper, and it also goes well in certain cocktails. There are Greek versions of the Sidecar, Caipirinha, and Mojito, among many others. The Greek version of a Brazilian Caipirinha blends Metaxa with cane sugar and lime, along with a mix of fresh fruit and a black olive. n
ALEXANDRION
Similar in flavour to Metaxa but at the lower end of the budget, Alexandrion was originally founded by Nawaf Salameh at a small distillery in Crete.
Alexandrion 5 Stars is made from a blend of grape distillates and aged in oak barrels for at least five years. Its smooth, rich flavour and amber colour makes it a suitable substitute for the more costly Metaxa, often enjoyed as an after-dinner drink or as a base for cocktails. Production was entirely moved to Mr Salameh’s home country of Romania, where it uses grapes grown in the vineyards in the Delu Mare wine region. Alexandrion is aged in oak barrels with a secret bouquet of extracts reminiscent of delicate Mediterranean aromas. The Alexandrion Group is now one of Romania’s largest producers of spirits and liqueurs and Alexandrion Brandy is the flagship product of the Group.
Alexandrion 5 Stars ABV: 37.5% £18.99 for 50 cl.
Clear, mid-deep golden amber in colour, notes of Crème Anglais/toasted pecans on the nose, with flavour notes of pecan pie, vanilla and light cinnamon spice, and a round and fruity palate.
Alexandrion 7 Stars ABV 40 % £21.85 for 50cl.
A premium blend of the Romanian brandy that is made from a blend of grape distillates and aged in oak barrels for at least seven years. Clear, mid-deep golden amber with notes of golden Muscat and hints of aged wood. The flavour hints at lightly spiced oak and rose water.
LONDON FIELDS: THE NEW MOON
Gustav Temple takes a saunter along Memory Lane to the nineties in the company of Matthew De Abaitua
One can imagine Leadenall Market during the time of Charles Dickens, bustling with butchers, costermongers, blacksmiths and the odd lonely lawyer’s scrivener looking for love among the packing crates. Leadenhall’s Victorian cobbles stood in for Diagon Alley in the first Harry Potter Film, in which Hagrid and Harry enter the Leaky Cauldron Pub through a blue door. Oddly, we couldn’t find a pub with that name anywhere in the market.
Today Leadenall market has been turned into a sort of covered village, with branches of upmarket clothing outlets rubbing shoulders with sushi bars and trendy pubs.
The customers look more like characters from a Martin Amis novel than one of Dickens’, the sharp-jawed men marching about purposeful and jacketless in the midsummer heatwave, the women trying carefully not to spill their takeaway miso soup down their expensive blouses. There is the buzz of the
City of London but not the dress code. Unlike a Martin Amis novel, no-one is taking a dangerously long lunch. The many tables on the cobbled areas outside the pubs are virtually empty.
My dining companion and I are here to try and fix that, at least partially. Matthew De Abaitua, former deputy editor of the Idler Magazine, author of several science fiction novels and a memoir of working as Will Self’s factotum in his youth, has agreed to take time out of his busy schedule as head of department at Essex University to sample the delights of Leadenall Market on a Tuesday afternoon.
Our hosts are the revamped premises of The New Moon, a large building with a traditional pub downstairs and a restaurant upstairs. As soon as we ascend the stairs to the dining quarters, we are stepping back into the nineties. The décor is unassuming yet studied; dado rails splice walls in a sludgy shade of pink, hatstands stand to attention, their services unrequired. They are purely decorative
objects hinting at a not-so-distant past that is still within our grasp. De Abaitua (the name is Basque though its bearer Liverpudlian) observes that the décor is “like the nineties as recreated by somebody who has only seen a Polaroid of it”. He also comments on the menu boasting self-conscious 90s-style revivals of oldschool classics such as Croque Monsieur, Baked Camembert and Chicken Club Sandwich. Only the ‘Plant-powered cheeseburger’ reminds us that we are in the third decade of the 21st century. Even the beer is oddly out of kilter with the times – instead of a thousand citrussy pale ales from micro breweries, there is only lager and one cask ale. Perhaps we are closer to the nineties than we thought. Perhaps we should have taken Keith Talent’s advice and plumped for the lager – ‘more reliable cos it’s kegged, innit?’
We opted for a glass of Gavi instead, to wash down our respective starters of cured salmon and mango tartare, and toasted crumpet with oyster mushrooms and Ssamjang
The hat stand is not so redundant as it thought Welcome to the nineties, declares the menu
sauce. Talk inevitably turned to lapsed City dress codes: Matthew had counted just three men wearing ties during his journey from Hackney to the City on the Underground. He waved a hand around the off-pink room and pointed out that there were as many City chaps in here wearing ties. The heatwave provided a partial excuse, but standards were clearly dropping and those hatstands were unlikely to see much use, before the next restaurant interior trend wiped them out entirely.
Our main courses came, de Abaitua having chosen pie of the day (smoked haddock and salmon pie served with Burford brown egg, toasted lemon & chive crumb and seasonal greens) and I, acknowledging the double helix of the eighties revived in the nineties, plumped for the Chicken Kyiv, with only the spelling of the Ukrainian capital decrying its place in the 2020s.
The food, while nothing outstanding, was wholesome and generously portioned. The New Moon has positioned itself as a stop-off for the weary upper-tier office worker. The days of absurdly generous expense accounts being splashed out on four-hour lunches at fine-dining establishments are long gone, even at senior management, as are, thankfully, the days of City boys chopping up cocaine in the lavatories and staggering back to the office to alienate the entire female workforce.
What we observed at the other tables was the gentle conversation among colleagues who have risen slightly above the miso soup on the go level, and who probably appreciate the more relaxed dress codes that allow them to dine in shirtsleeves. When we popped across the cobbles to another pub for a few postprandials, we perched around a barrel on metal stools and observed the ebb and flow of City life while discussing the future of print publishing. If you are reading this at all, it means that our optimistic conclusions proved accurate. n
Monaco Historique
Actuarius sees a motoring writer’s dream come true when he is invited for a glimpse behind the scenes at the historic Monaco Grand Prix racetrack
With its mix of the glittering Mediterranean Sea, attractively well-heeled patrons and a conspicuous adoption of the sparkling Champagne lifestyle, Monaco successfully uses its glamour to entice and entrance so many. This small principality huddled around a natural harbour has been ruled by the Grimaldi family for over 700 years, and it was Princess Caroline who came up with the money spinning idea of the casino to raise funds in the mid 19th century.
“Every part of the track recalls powerful images. The cars themselves, ranging from the 1920s to the late 80s, provide equally vivid bridges between the realms of the remotely studied and the newly encountered”
The dawning of the 20th century brought greater problems than relieving the peripatetic upper classes of their inheritance. The Jazz age had brought new joys and excitement with it, including motor sport, and the zenith of this was the Grand Prix race. Monaco found it could offer a new thrill to these bright young things, and so Anthony Noghes organised the first Monaco Grand Prix in 1929, won by French born British driver William GroverWilliams in his Bugatti Type 35B.
Monaco has been a fixture of the Grand Prix season ever since. Such is its place in European culture, that by the 1960s the race had become a shorthand reference for the lifestyle of the international playboy, followed in the 70s by an association with the uber-cool members of a highly sophisticated emergent jet set. The circuit that snakes its way through the streets today is still recognisable from that
first event, although the Principality continually rebuilds and redefines itself along with its target clientele. One notable difference is that the F1 race of the 21st Century is big, brash and financially rapacious, and therefore a far cry from the ethos of the first 60 years or so of its existence. However, for those who know, every two years the Monaco Historique gives a lucky few the chance to revisit less gauche times, when the event was more a chance to see the racing, rather than to be seen at the race.
I was fortunate enough to be invited by the Aintree Circuit Club to attend this year’s Historique. Rising before daybreak allowed for a quiet exploration of the track and back streets, coolly shaded by the hemmed in buildings, where there is a strange familiarity for the motoring enthusiast visiting for the first time, born of years watching the Formula 1 TV coverage and looking at old photographs.
F1 design supremo Adrian Newey takes his Lotus 49 out for a spin
Every part of the track recalls powerful images. The cars themselves, ranging from the 1920s to the late 80s, provide equally vivid bridges between the realms of the remotely studied and the newly encountered.
The bumpy run to Mirabeau from Casino Square remains the most evocative, bordered by overhanging trees on one side and precious remnants of the Belle Epoque era on the other. Dropping down to the hairpin at Grand Hotel, delicate 60s cars and upright pre-war machines look especially at home here. For the ultimate rush, photographers can crouch alongside the Armco half a circuit away at the exit from Piscine, as be-winged screaming projectiles from the 70s to the late 80s brush it, their drivers chasing crucial split second advantages.
I came away from the weekend buzzing with the overwhelming visceral impact of it all. I now have a set of iconic Monaco photos: Type 35 Bugattis heading down to the hairpin,
Lotus 25 with scarlet Ferrari on its tail bursting into the sunlight at St Devote, Ferrari 312 flashing past a backdrop of spectating superyachts. These photographs are a reminder of the difference between knowing about something and being fortunate enough to experience it for yourself. n
A Bugatti Type 35 rounds the Hairpin
The Bugatti Type 35
Bugatti was founded by Italian-born Ettore Bugatti in the German, but later French, city of Molsheim and thus can be considered a truly European brand. Although the company quickly built a good reputation, the arrival of the Type 35 along with its various derivatives was a real game changer.
Manufactured between 1924 and 1931, the Type 35 was a sophisticated and tightly packaged machine that could be raced across various formulae. Although denied a win first time out, it soon became an almost irresistible force and is today recognised as the car to take the most victories ever, with over 1000 wins and 2000 podiums. All this achieved with a car that remained useable on the road once requisite lights and wings had been fitted.
Initially having a capacity of just under 2 litres with unforced induction, the ultimate incarnation was the 35B, which introduced a supercharger and 2.3 litre engine. Other variants gave plenty of choice between the two extremes, dependent on ambition and disposable income. All had 8 cylinders and, although wire wheels were available, it will forever be associated with the distinctive cast
alloy 8 spoke versions.
The 35 was followed by the improved twin-cam Type 51. A few years back I was kindly taken for a run around the villages near Castle Combe in a Type 51. The cockpit is best described as cosy and spartan. Bare metal is everywhere, with the gearbox joining the occupants and thin sheets of aluminium separating feet from power plant. Starting up produces a typical pre-war rattling hum, with supercharger and gears providing suitable themes under the engine’s melody. In my case, the lack or rear wings prompted an unplanned, momentary wear test of tweedclad elbow against tyre. Luckily my jacket had elbow patches.
Out on the open road the ride was firm but not uncomfortable, while the performance is best described as smoothly urgent. Despite its small size, I could comfortably have covered many miles with no real discomfort. The exhilaration was undoubtedly accentuated by being seated so high and without a windscreen, but the view down the beautifully formed wasp waisted bonnet was sublime. A real jewel of a car.
TOWERS OF THE MANI
Gustav Temple goes on a Greek Odyssey in search of the impenetrable eyrie where once dwelled Patrick Leigh Fermor
As soon as one sets foot in the Southern Peloponnese of Greece, and specifically the area called the Mani, it is difficult to escape the influence of Patrick Leigh Fermor. There are traces everywhere of the decorated WWII hero who led the liberation of Crete from the Nazis and later settled on the coast of the Mani, in a beautiful house he built from local stone in 1965. Leigh Fermor’s books are in every bookshop and tourist office; you can even buy a copy of his most famous tome Mani in the local grocery store.
Leigh Fermor only died as recently as 2011, and many of the locals still remember him walking about the village of Kardamyli in his dapper suit, one eye covered by an eye patch. He took part in the annual celebration of Greece’s independence from Turkey in 1821, maintaining a status as important as the mayor to the people of Kardamyli. His house, nestled among the cypresses along the coast towards Kalamiti, is now an artist and writer’s retreat, run by the Benaki Foundation to whom Patrick bequeathed it. We’ll go and have a look at that, I said casually to my travelling
“Mani is a very scholarly work, with Leigh Fermor’s travel notes interspersed with deep reflections on the Byzantine Empire and comments on Greek poetry. I found myself agreeing with the comments of Paddy’s Greek housekeeper of 15 years, who tried reading Mani herself but cast it aside saying, ‘It never really gets going’”
companion, once we’ve explored the area –not realising what a Greek Odyssey that would turn out to be.
There was much else to explore before that, aided by the reference book of Leigh Fermor’s Mani. Published in 1958, Mani is still seen my many as the definitive history of the area, which begins on the southern side of the Taygetus Mountains and extends all the way to the bottom of the peninsula, reaching the southernmost tip of Greece on the ‘middle finger’ of the three points of land that jut out from the mainland.
I had tried reading Mani before the journey, imagining it would whet the appetite for the voyage into this remote region, but it was difficult to get into. Mani is a very scholarly work, with Leigh Fermor’s travel notes interspersed with deep reflections on the Byzantine Empire and comments on Greek poetry, with lines like “improvised rhyming couplets in the ordinary fifteensyllable metre of which each must be complete
In Kardamyli, some of the doors keep the sunlight out And some of them let it flood in
and epigrammatical, as they are sung antiphonally”. I found myself agreeing with the comments of his Greek housekeeper of 15 years, who tried reading Mani herself but cast it aside saying, “It never really gets going”.
However, once installed in a small taverna overlooking the turquoise waters of the Ionian
Sea, Greek coffee in hand under the vine leaves, Mani begins to make a lot more sense. It was written not long after the Second World War, in the aftermath of Leigh Fermor’s major part in the extraordinary campaign to liberate Crete. The operation involved months of preparation, during which time
The 18th century church of Agios Spiridon in Kardamyli Old Town
he studied the coastal terrain, learnt the local dialect and befriended all the brigands and smugglers who knew which caves to hide in. By the time his battalion arrived from England, Paddy had gone entirely native and was barely recognisable to his fellow officers, emerging from a bush to greet the landing craft dressed as a local peasant, sunburned the colour of mahogany. The campaign can be read about in detail in Wes Davis’ excellent The Ariadne Objective: Patrick Leigh Fermor and the Underground War to Rescue Crete from the Nazis. When Leigh Fermor returned a decade later to travel around mainland Greece, his objective was purely social and historical. He travelled incognito, using his fluent Greek to smooth the path over the harsh terrain of the Mani. The book is full of strange tales of meeting old men in dusty village squares, who insist on sharing their bottle of Ouzo with the English stranger and discussing Greek politics and Greek mythology. The Maniots have a
reputation, frequently confirmed in the book, of being the most hospitable people in Greece (though the entire nation is known for this too). On many occasions Paddy and his wife Joan are saved from dire conditions and extreme thirst on the side of a mountain by the arrival of a peasant on a mule, who immediately offers to share their humble sack of olives and cheese with the lost strangers. A whole chapter is devoted to the Leigh Fermors’ time with the family of Vasilio, a peasant girl with a lamb strung around her shoulders who finds them parched on a rocky outcrop. She invites them to stay with her family in their tower on the edge of a village.
Towers feature heavily in Mani, gracing John Craxton’s front cover as a powerful symbol of the area. Leigh Fermor devotes much space to this curious tradition, dating back to the Nyklian era, of each tribe building taller and taller towers to withstand the opposing tribes in their towers. Some of
Patrick Leigh Fermor’s drinks cabinet
The entrance to Kardamyli Old Town
The surrounding cypresses have completely obscured Leigh Fermor’s house from public view
the villages he visits are entirely composed of towers, a few of them still occupied. We saw the ruins of many towers perched on hilltops, simple structures rising from a square base with few windows, which were only used to blast away at the invaders from other towers. There are even tales of one tower being built while another is under siege by gunfire, somehow being constructed high enough to repel the attack before the other one is destroyed. The ancient tradition, and its association with status, has not disappeared: the lady who ran our small hotel proudly announced that she was going to stay in a friend’s tower nearby for the summer.
Patrick Leigh Fermor’s house on the clifftop above Kalamiti Beach seemed the most obvious tourist attraction, once we had seen Old Kardamyli, a magnificently restored fortification from the 18th century, with an immaculate basilica full of gold ornaments, olive presses and, of course, an enormous tower. The Fermor eyrie, a few miles outside Kardamyli, is now
rented out to wealthy writers and artists, and is only open one day a week for visitors during the summer. A quick flick through their web site informed us that this Monday’s tour was entirely booked up, as they only admit around ten visitors per hour-long tour.
Paddy’s house, it seemed, had become an unassailable tower itself, guarded by the gatekeepers of his estate. But the guards had not reckoned with this cunning tourist, who flipped them an email containing the word ‘journalist’ – that shibboleth that can still occasionally open doors locked to the general public. Thus, while sipping Greek coffee in the town square, we were offered ingress that very day, in fact within less than two hours. The only trouble was that the house is a 45-minute uphill walk away, along a main road whizzing with reckless Greek drivers, seared by midday 33-degree heat with no shade whatsoever. This was only weeks after the death in Greece of BBC presenter Michael Moseley, who had
The view from a taverna in Kardamyli
gone for a walk in similar heat without his ‘just one thing’, a bottle of water.
It would also somewhat have undermined my journalist credentials to arrive for the tour dripping with sweat. In desperation, we asked in a travel agent for the number of a taxi. The extremely helpful Dionysia (goddess of wine, of course) rang a few numbers but said there was nothing until much later, after which the tour would have finished and the house locked up for another week. Beaming with national pride at our crestfallen faces, Dionysia reminded us of the hospitable nature of all Greeks, and particularly the Maniots. “I shall drive you there myself. Come on, let’s go.”
Ten minutes later, stunned with gratitude, we were standing outside the former Fermor manse, watching the locked gate with all the other visitors. A man emerged and surveyed us all with distaste, immediately disappearing inside and locking the gate again. We inspected each other, wondering what the right criteria
were. What does a journalist look like? I wasn’t wearing a baggy white linen suit and a panama hat and I was not carrying a notebook and fountain pen. But my email had been acknowledged, hadn’t it? We had entered a mysterious world of unassailable Mani towers again. What would Paddy think of this? More waiting under the partial shade of craggy olive trees in the hot brown rock, the shrill buzzing of cicadas the only sound. Nobody dared to speak, in case they said the wrong thing and were overheard by the gatekeepers.
Suddenly, a hive of activity. The guard emerged again and asked for everyone’s name. Some were whisked in, others were summarily dismissed. Our two names, it seemed, had made it on to the list and we were given the nod.
The house is an aristocratic version of a typical Peloponnese residence, with sprawling stone terraces peering over the clifftop towards
The view from Patrick Leigh Fermor’s living room
the sea and steps down to what would have been Paddy’s private beach. The focal point inside is the library, where Paddy’s famous drinks cabinet has been restocked with his favourite drinks: Gordon’s Gin, vodka, Johnnie Walker Black Label, Metaxa Greek brandy. The hundreds of books are behind chicken wire; perhaps a necessary prevention of pilfering but nonetheless prison-like. You can still picture the long conversations that took place in this room, launched by Paddy’s catchphrase “Drink time!”
You can imagine the Duchess of Devonshire reclining on an armchair while Paddy waxes lyrical on Byzantine poetry, waving his hands in the air with the deep blue Ionian Sea framing him in the huge windows.
Then the guards come and inform us that the tour is over. We must leave immediately, thank you. We drift back out to the now deathly one o’clock heat, wondering how we’ll get back. Will one of the other visitors to the house see us walking on the main road and take pity on us, offering us a lift?
Or would we have to walk through that madness-inducing heat, cars zipping by us on both sides for forty-five minutes, thinking of Michael Moseley rather than Paddy Leigh Fermor?
As the welcoming sign for Kardamyli hove into view and we mopped the sweat from our necks, I recalled the many tales in Mani of Paddy and his wife Joan sweltering among the rocks of the Taygetus, inching towards their destination without even factor 50 sun cream to protect them. We made it back to the village, assisted by whichever Greek gods guard the foolish wanderer through their lands – perhaps the very same gods who had protected Paddy and Joan – and went straight back to the office of Dioynisia to thank her again, only now realising what she had saved us from. n
The Greek goddess: Dionysia Trigilida www.mycarrentals.gr
The Leigh Fermor house: www.benaki.org
FANTASY ISLAND
BOOK REVIEWS
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Fantasy Island
From John Fowles’ The Magus to The Lost Daughter (Leda & The Swan) and latterly the Neo-Olympian Pantheon of disruptors in Glass Onion, the Greek island of Spetses combines Hellenic legend with luxury living, says Stephen Arnell
Rian Johnson’s sequel to Knives Out is partially set on the pocket-sized island of Spetses, a resort long favoured by well-heeled Athenians in search of a reachable break from the city. Glass Onion makes the most of the location and has led to a resurgence of interest in the island and in Greece itself. The movie harks back to both Greek myth in the figure of the Zeus-like Bron and his subordinate group of disruptors, who each (akin to the Hellenic Pantheon) have their own individual spheres of influence, including politics, science, social media and fashion. Filmed the year before Glass Onion’s similarly Covid-affected shoot, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s acclaimed adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s 2006 novel The Lost Daughter, (very) loosely based on the Greek myth of Leda &
“Guy Green’s muchderided 1968 movie adaptation of Fowles’ novel prompted Woody Allen to remark that, if given the chance to live his life again, he’d do everything exactly the same, with the exception of watching The Magus”
The Swan, was also Spetses-set. Holidaying on the island, Olivia Coleman’s self-described ‘unnatural mother’ Leda sees parallels with the younger Nina (Dakota Johnson) whose three-year-old daughter briefly goes missing.
The picture also stars Paul Mescal (Normal People) as Nina’s lover Will. Mescal returned to the Aegean for Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun (2022), another critical success to add to his résumé.
“I recall visiting the excellent Karagiánn’s Bakery every morning for delicious freshly baked sesame bread, Greek doughnuts, Spanakopita, and spending the evenings at the old harbour’s friendly Apanemo bar/restaurant, where my ubiquity was often rewarded with a free Metaxa or two”
My own association with Spetses goes back to the late 1980s, when the island enjoyed (if that’s the right word) a mercifully brief spell as a package holiday destination. Although a few boozy Brits frequented the island, it was far too sedate and cultured for many; nightlife was confined to portside bars, beach hostelries and a few late-night spots in the Old Port such as Bikini. Even then, the locals outnumbered tourists and rarely allowed holidaymakers to get overly lairy.
Although not far from Piraeus (around 47 nautical miles), the cheaper ferry journey took around 4 1/2 hours, enough to discourage many UK vacationers. I later travelled by Flying Dolphin hydrofoil, still a trip of over two hours, again a deterrent to Brits who had already spent three hours on a flight from the UK. Both journeys were still considerably shorter than that taken in 1984 by the Spetsesbuilt replica of Jason’s Argo, the galley ship
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)
sailed by the mythical Jason and the Argonauts in quest of the Golden Fleece in 1300 B.C.
Tim Severin and his 20-man crew rowed the galley along the same 1,500-mile route taken by the ancient craft from the Greek port of Volos, 200 miles northeast of Athens, to Colchis in Soviet Georgia. According to legend, Jason assembled the bravest heroes in Greece to find the Golden Fleece and win back his father’s kingdom. Along the way, the voyagers were seduced by sirens, attacked by warriors, buffeted by storms and challenged by monsters, but Jason succeeded in seizing the fleece with the help of the sorceress Medea, who later became his wife.
My journey included stops at some of the other Argolic islands, such as Hydra, Leonard Cohen’s stunning Prospero-like hideaway, where various artistic types would decamp. Once while there I spotted Paul Smith, essaying his linen ‘Englishman Abroad’ look.
I stayed on Spetses every summer for over 18 years; at first in basic un-airconditioned apartments and then at more chichi places, until the prices suddenly became eyewateringly expensive, when the island became popular again with the Athenian upper classes and endured an influx of Russian oligarchs and other nouveau riche travellers.
I recall visiting the excellent Karagiánn’s Bakery every morning for delicious freshly baked sesame bread, Greek doughnuts and Spanakopita, and spending the evenings at the old harbour’s friendly Apanemo bar/ restaurant, where my ubiquity was often rewarded with a free Metaxa or two. By the bustling portside bars and cafes, a roast corn vendor could be observed every evening, an amiable old cove kitted out in a crisp white uniform and jaunty white side cap.
Island events included the annual Armata Festival, celebrating the defeat of an Ottoman
The welcoming cannon on Spetses harbour
“As can be seen in the opening scenes of Glass Onion, Spetses Town’s Dapia waterfront is dominated by the Poseidonion Grand Hotel, modelled on the Carlton Cannes Hotel in Cannes and the Negresco in Nice, which gives the island a Riviera-like aspect”
fleet by a combined navy of vessels from Spetses, Hydra and Psara during the Greek War of Independence. I was there when Greece won the Euros in 2004, when what seemed like the island’s entire 4,000-odd population took part in an impromptu moped-
led fun run round the town to celebrate the team’s unexpected victory; much as the ancient Greeks celebrated their victories over Persia at Marathon and Salamis, minus the mopeds. As can be seen in the opening scenes of Glass Onion, Spetses Town’s Dapia waterfront is dominated by the Poseidonion Grand Hotel, modelled on the Carlton Cannes Hotel in Cannes and the Negresco in Nice, which gives the island a Riviera-like aspect. When I first holidayed in Spetses, the hotel was seriously neglected and had the air of Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel – the later, dilapidated iteration, that is. Nowadays the Poseidonion thrives as a luxury establishment for those lucky enough to afford it. Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc and Helen Brand (Janelle Monáe) enjoy drinks in the hotel’s veranda bar in a Glass Onion flashback sequence. But there are enough rustic tavernas outside the Spetses main drag
Daniel Craig arrives on Spetses in Glass Onion
to satisfy anyone in search of the ‘authentic’ Hellas.
Spetses has welcomed other movie stars before the above films. In the mid-late 1990s, during the making of The Island of Doctor Moreau (1996), I saw a rather portly Marlon Brando being helicoptered into the port, something you don’t witness every day. Much earlier, Melina Mercouri met Greta Garbo on Spetses, while the island was the inspiration for the island of Phraxos in John Fowles’ 1965 novel The Magus. John Fowles taught at the British-style Anargyrios and Korgialeneios School outside the town, something always mentioned with pride in any local discussion of the author and the island.
Guy Green’s much-derided 1968 movie adaptation of Fowles’ novel prompted Woody Allen to remark that, if given the chance to live his life again, he’d do “everything exactly the same, with the exception of watching The Magus”.
Most of the filming was meant to take place on location in Greece, the book’s principal setting, but political unrest forced production to relocate to Mallorca, where the house where most of the story takes place was built on a remote part of the south coast. With cast members Anthony Quinn, Michael Caine and Candice Bergen, the film should have been a huge hit, especially on the back of the multi-Oscar-nominated 1965 film version of
Michael Caine and Anthony Quinn in The Magus (1968)
“With cast members Anthony Quinn, Michael Caine and Anna Karina, the film should have been a huge hit, especially on the back of the multiOscar-nominated 1965 film version of Fowles’ debut novel The Collector”
Fowles’ debut novel The Collector. Caine was so impressed by The Collector that he signed up for The Magus without knowing anything about
it. “I knew I wanted to do John Fowles’ next novel… before he had even written it,” said Caine at the time.
But The Magus bombed on its initial release, losing money and alienating the critics. It has since become a cult classic, viewers enjoying its psychedelic mood, Technicolor cinematography and three of the era’s finest actors. (Editor’s note: when we lived on Mallorca as children, my brother and I used to go and play on the dilapidated set of The Magus, a short swim away from our favourite beach of Portals Veis). Caine declared The Magus one of the worst films he’d ever made – but more because of audiences being utterly baffled by the plot than due to its cinematic quality. n
Anthony Quinn and Candice Bergen in The Magus
BOOK REVIEWS
A mixture of new publications and vintage classics that every Chap should own. All the books reviewed are available from Chap Books on www.thechap.co.uk
ROWING BLAZERS: REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION
Author: Jack Carlson
Publisher: Vendome, £50
Ten years ago, we interviewed designer and U.S. rowing team member Jack Carlson about the first edition of this book and his general interest in the history and tradition of the rowing blazer at colleges, schools, national teams and amateur clubs around the world. A decade later, Mr. Carlson saw fit to revise and expand his original book, having launched a successful brand of rowing blazers on the back of it in 2017, called, appropriately enough, Rowing Blazers.
“Some of the photographs in this book show young American rowers with aristocratic faces, their rowing blazers held together with precarious stitching and sometimes streaked with river mud and other effluvia”
Carlson is three-time member of the United States national rowing team, he is a World Championships bronze medalist, Henley Royal Regatta winner, and Head of the Charles champion. He has a PhD in archaeology from Brasenose College, Oxford, and an undergraduate degree in Classics and Chinese from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. He is a Fellow of the Explorers Club and a member of the IBF (the International Bar Flies) at Harry’s Bar in Paris – probably the highest ranking of his academic achievements.
The book itself was originally intended purely for the rowing community, who simply adore, when they are not pulling oars on rivers and lakes around the world, poring over the colourful myths, rituals, stripes, badges and legendary races associated with their blazers. But once Ralph Lauren got behind the book, it instantly reached a wider
audience of preppy types obsessed with three-roll-two cut jackets, sportswear worn as fashion items and wearing favoured items until they are practically falling apart. Some of the photographs in this book show young American rowers with aristocratic faces, their rowing blazers held together with precarious stitching and sometimes streaked with river mud and other effluvia.
Like the preppy boys of the fifties, who proudly wore Duck tape holding their penny loafers together and let their lobster-coloured shorts fade in the sun to a tatty shade of salmon, there is a nobility among some rowing clubs to show their rowing battle scars. Not unlike the self-inflicted scars borne by the Mensur German duellists of the 1930s, these rowing chaps want us to know that their blazers are not pristine fashion items, but genuine sportswear that is often put through its paces. Not all the blazers in this book are
falling apart though; many others are sharp, neat and pristine, as elegant and tailored as any bespoke dinner jacket.
The revised edition of the book features many new clubs and teams that were not in the original edition, from the historic Shanghai Rowing Club in China to Tigre Boat Club in Argentina; Nassau Rowing Club in the Bahamas to Partez Rowing Club in Japan. The book also features Row New York and London’s Fulham Reach Boat Club, along with Olympic champions from Great Britain, New Zealand, Germany, the United States and South Africa.
Book Reviews
GOLDENEYE
Author: Matthew Parker
Publisher: Windmill Books, £20
Ian Fleming’s life has been well documented, proving that one of the many candidates rumoured to have inspired the character of James Bond was himself. He worked behind the scenes at what became MI6 during the Second World War, travelled to some of the scariest parts of the world as a journalist and non-fiction author, and established a community of expats on Jamaica, transforming the island from a remote tropical paradise into a fashionable resort for the super wealthy after he had died.
This book is about Goldeneye, the house Fleming built in Oracabessa Bay on what was then a rarely visited island by Europeans. But this is not a book about architecture or town planning. The story of the house becomes the story of Fleming’s life and the story of the changes that took place on Jamaica during the time he lived there.
Fleming spent two months of every year at Goldeneye, his faithful housekeeper Violet maintaining the property in his absence. Luxury colonial villa it was not; guests from
England were shocked to find that there were no windows, a typical Jamaican feature that Fleming enjoyed, as it let in cool breezes while he was writing. The guests, and Fleming’s various paramours, complained that they also let in mosquitos, bats and other unwelcome creatures. Fleming’s answer to them was that there was a magnificent private beach a short staircase away. He loved snorkelling and scuba diving and would spend hours in his private cove with harpoon in hand. Guests from England who didn’t wish to spend the entire morning snorkelling and swimming with their host were not invited again. Even Anthony Eden came to stay, although he was exempt from the snorkelling rule.
Every one of the fourteen Bond novels was penned at Goldeneye, the second, Live and Let Die, set almost entirely on Jamaica. Many of the other Bond novels feature a Jamaican setting, or Fleming used his imagination to turn the sights and sounds of Jamaica into some other exotic location.
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.
The literary chap will find much to mull over in the ‘Chap Books’ section of WWW.THECHAP.CO.UK
Goldeneye was also the setting of Fleming’s long-term, on-off relationship with Ann Charteris, wife of the 2nd Viscount Rothermere. Their clandestine affair began on Jamaica and eventually, after many ups and downs and tantrums, led to a slightly more settled marriage. Although Fleming’s Bond-like roving eye soon put paid to that, when he embarked on a new affair with Blanche Blackwell – mother of Chris Blackwell, who went on to found Island Records and promote the reggae music of Jamaica to a worldwide audience.
Also featured in Goldeneye is Noel Coward, who moved to Jamaica not long after Fleming. Initially hostile to the camp playwright, the two soon became firm friends and the epicentre of the burgeoning expat social scene. The book also charts the independence of Jamaica from Britain in 1962, bringing about huge changes to the country and the status of its British colonial population. While the country moved into a new era of freedom and celebration of its own culture, Fleming kept the flame alive of empirical values in the form of James Bond, who was, even by the mid-sixties, already becoming something of an anachronism. The films based on the Bond novels breathed new life into the character, the first, Dr No, being filmed partly on Fleming’s private beach. He entertained the cast and crew at Goldeneye, gradually warming to the casting of Sean Connery, about whom he had initially had reservations to take on the mantle of his suave action hero.
Goldeneye is a fabulous way to learn about the life of Ian Fleming and the creation of the Bond franchise, as well as the history of the dismantling of the British Empire and even the birth of reggae music. Bob Marley paid
the house a visit in 1976, long after Fleming’s death, in the company of his label’s owner Chris Blackwell, who tried to persuade him to buy it. But Marley thought it was “too posh” and so Blackwell bought it himself and turned it into a luxury resort, which it still is today. The windows, presumably, have now been installed.
GENTLEMAN, A TIMELESS FASHION
Author: Bernhard Roetzel
Publisher: Könemann
For many, along with Paul Kerr’s A Gentleman’s Wardrobe, this was the first book on gentlemanly style one ever bought, and some would argue that it’s the only one a man will ever need, despite it being published in 1999 and by a German (although the foreword is by British journalist and author Nick Yapp). Gentleman breaks
down every aspect of classic and traditional dress, offering tips on co-ordination and assemblage as well as useful guides on essentials such as the different types of tweed. As well as clothes, gentlemanly accessories such as fountain pens and eaux de cologne are explained, giving the aspiring gentleman a fully comprehensive guide. However, as the author points out in his introduction, “Clothes do not make a gentleman; and, by the same token, a real gentleman is always a gentleman, even without his clothes.”
He book came about after Roetzel wrote a letter to Cologne-based publisher Ludwig Könemann. Invited to an interview, Roetzel chose his outfit very carefully: a fine Englishmade suit and a pair of suede Oxfords from Crockett & Jones. Roetzel is convinced he got the commission purely based on his clothes, having no previous credits as a menswear writer.
Gentleman was first published in German in February 1999, the English version coming out a few months later. “In London people didn’t know my face,” said Roetzel, “but the following years after the launch of Gentleman, sales staff would recognised the name on my credit card when buying shirts, ties and shoes on the world-famous Jermyn Street. What really puzzled most readers that I met in the first years after the release of my book was my age. I was 32 when it came out. I proudly remember Michael Drake telling me, when I was introduced to him at Pitti Uomo, that he thought that Gentleman had been written by a man with considerable experience, possibly in his fifties.”
Since traditional gentlemen’s clothing, by its very nature, is timeless, the book still reads relevantly today, although some Chaps may find the focus entirely on the top end
of the clothes market somewhat alienating. Gentleman still makes an excellent guidebook to have on hand (in a particularly huge valise – it’s a coffee-table sized hardback) while browsing vintage raiment, as an accurate reference book, as long as one can overlook the slightly cheesy photo shoots, which are the only thing that date it.
ONEUPMANSHIP
Author: Stephen Potter
Publisher: Rupert Hart Davis
Stephen Potter’s One-upmanship series was a huge influence in the early years of The Chap OneUpmanship was the third in the series, preceded by Gamesmanship and Lifemanship, and this is the one that will be most familiar to readers of The Chap, and indeed viewers of School For Scoundrels, the Boulting Brothers’ 1960 film starring Terry-Thomas and Ian Carmichael. As Potter explains himself in the introduction, “How to make the other man feel that something has gone wrong, however slightly. The Lifeman is never caddish himself, but how simply and certainly, often, he
can make the other man feel a cad, and over prolonged periods.” There then follows a series of techniques, amusingly explained and illustrated, to show how precisely always to be ‘one-up’ on one’s fellow man, some of which appeared verbatim in School for Scoundrels.
Consider ‘Winemanship’, for example: “After saying (not of course really having a cellar) ‘I’ll get it from the cellar,’ enter any cupboard (preferably beneath stairs), close door, and make sound with feet as if descending to and (after pause) mounting from a wine cellar.”
MANI
Author: Patrick Leigh Fermor
Publisher: John Murray
As mentioned in Towers of the Mani (page 92), much of the area of the Southern Peloponnese covered in this book is unchanged since it was published in 1958. Patrick Leigh Fermor and his wife Joan set out to discover the land of Greek myths and Mycenian wars isolated on the peninsula below the Taygetus Mountains, and the book records their journey across mountains on foot, by caique along the coast and on the backs of whatever beasts of burden offered to them by local goatherds. Along the way they stop in remote villages, some of them composed entirely of towers, and are offered the generous hospitality for which the Greeks, and particularly the Maniots, are renowned. The travelling couple’s fluency in Greek makes them welcome guests, the locals eager to share their food and lodging with them, in exchange for news about life beyond the Taygetus.
Leigh Fermor intersperses his travel notes with reflections on Greek history, ancient mythology, the Greek language and the peculiar customs of the Maniots. There is plenty of drinking and occasionally singing, all captured in the author’s rich, poetic prose, which brings to life the dry, dusty terrain of the region, surrounded by turquoise seas and dotted with thousands of olive trees.
“A black and white cat slept on a sack of groceries. Joan wrote letters and I worked at my notes by the uncertain lamplight. The windows opened onto a moonlit waste of rock and stone, and a little distance off a tall thin tower, silvered by the moon along one of its rectangular flanks, rose into the boiling night. Our pens scratched industriously. Suddenly the innkeeper’s wife broke silence.
‘What are you writing?’ She asked Joan.
‘A letter to England.’
‘Well, tell them in London that you’re in the Mani, a very hot place where there’s nothing but stones.’
‘That’s just what I’m saying.’” n
SAYING IT WITH STYLE
The Secrets of Oscar Wilde’s Wit, according to thrice-victor of the Wilde Wit competition Darcy Alexander Costorphine
“I put down my pen, picked up my gavel, and exchanged writing sentences for passing sentences upon them. This year, I am taking time out of my otherwise preciously protected empty schedule to take on a new role: that of mentor –a sort of guru to the gagsmiths, if you will”
In the ranks of the notable quotable, no figure personifies the art of verbal wit as much as Oscar Wilde. He is the quintessential quipster of the English language, its epitomic epigrammatist – the man who, according to W. B. Yeats, was ‘the greatest talker of his time’.
Almost 125 years have passed since the fulfilment of his famous interior design-based ultimatum (‘My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go.’). Still, Oscar Wilde remains the wit in relation to whom every other wit is judged, from Tom Stoppard to Stephen Fry to Edward St. Aubyn.
But how do you fare against the ‘Lord of Language’ himself? Is your wit as fine as your wardrobe? Are you as satirical as you are sartorial? If so, then here’s your chance to prove it. The Oscar Wilde Society is currently accepting submissions for its annual Wilde Wit Competition. The competition was established five years ago by Chap writer Darcy Sullivan. As it transpired, the first three editions of the competition were all won by the same person: an individual whose egotism forbids me from passing him over without sufficient praise. For he was me.
Last year, rather than enter the competition for a fourth time, I put down my pen, picked up my gavel, and became one of its judges. I exchanged, as it were, writing sentences for passing sentences upon them.
This year, I am taking time out of my otherwise preciously protected empty schedule to take on a new role: that of mentor – a sort of guru to the gagsmiths, if you will (or if you won’t; please yourself). To that end, I was asked if I could devise an efficient method for imparting the wisdom of the wisecrack to prospective entrants. It turns out that I could –an achievement I can only attribute to the fact that ‘nothing worth knowing can be taught’.
W·I·L·D·E·W·I·T is the easy-to-remember acronym that will serve as the whetstone to your witticisms. Master it, and you’ll become a modern master of the maxim, for it provides all the elements necessary for saying it with style.
Here, then, are the secrets of Oscar Wilde’s wit: Wordplay: This one should go without saying. But, in the world of Wilde, everything is worth saying if it is said well enough. So focus on the following and leave no phrase unturned: antithesis – to Oscar, opposites are always attractive (in a lexical sense, anyway); transformation, i.e., altering a familiar expression, as in ‘Nothing succeeds like excess’; transposition, i.e., word swapping, such as ‘Work is the curse of the drinking classes’; and, finally, puns – much maligned but the means by which your meanings are multiplied. Note that The Importance of Being Earnest is an entire
play built around a single pun — so don’t be a homophonophobe.
Irony: Oscar employs irony as both substance and style. In the former, he explores the ironies of life: ‘There are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.’ In the latter, he exemplifies them: ‘Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest importance.’ So, make your reflections ironic and your irony reflective.
Logic: Or, rather, illogicality. Life, for Wilde’s characters, is divided into the absurd and the perfectly absurd (Mabel Chiltern: ‘What an absurd reason!’ Lord Goring: ‘All reasons are absurd’). Experiment with paradox, informal fallacies, and nonsense. Embrace your inner Lord Goring: ‘I love talking about nothing, father. It is the only thing I know anything about.’
Declaration: ‘I have nothing to declare except my genius,’ said Wilde reportedly upon arriving in America, and part of that genius lay precisely in his gift for declarations. Even the Land of the Free couldn’t outdo him: to Oscar, every declaration was a declaration of independence.
So, use declarative sentences. Then, add in absolute-sounding adverbs – Oscar invariably does so. To sound absolutely perfect one must be perfectly absolute.
Inversion: Wilde wasn’t subversive; he was inversive – rhetorically, morally, and (in terms of Victorian sexology) sexually. He turned things outside in and downside up. At first glance, his works appear full of reversals; of course, ‘It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.’
Truth: ‘Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.’ So, put on your Oscar-esque mask, tell the truth, and send it into the Wilde Wit Competition.
CHAP SILVER JUBILEE HEIRLOOMS
This year marks 25 years of anarcho-dandyism, and to celebrate this, along with our splendiforous party on 12th October (see page 42), we have created the priceless heirlooms you see pictured here.
From a metal lapel badge with the discreet markings of the quartercentury, through a necktie and pocket square designed by Caroline Lindop, another pocket square – in two colourways –designed by Geoff Stocker, and finally a Silver Jubilee tankard tea mug made from bone china, we think you’ll agree that these items are heirlooms truly worthy of the momentous occasion they celebrate.
They will also be available at the above-mentioned Grand Silver Jubilee Ball on 12th October 2024
Instead of the usual price of £32.00 for four issues per year, the recipient will become an annual Chap subscriber for just £16.00, precisely half the usual cost, which still includes free postage. The offer is available in the EU and elsewhere in the world with extra shipping costs. The subscription can be cancelled after one year if no longer required.
