The Chap Issue 106

ISSUE 106

WINTER 2020

EXPAND YOUR MIND, REFINE YOUR WARDROBE

Sir Ranulph Fiennes “I thought I’d have a go at Everest to sort my vertigo out.

But then I got a heart attack at 28,500 feet, which is a bad time to have a heart attack”

ASTON MARTIN

James Bond stunt driver Ben Collins on crashing Astons for a living

DIANA RIGG

A tribute to the late lamented Mrs Emma Peel

CHAMPAGNE CHARLIE The fizz-swilling bon vivant on his career in showbusiness 06>

9 771749 966087

ISSUE 106

£6.99

Editor: Gustav Temple

Art Director: Rachel Barker

Picture Editor: Theo Salter Circulation Manager: Susan Brennon

Sub-Editor: Romilly Clark Subscriptions Manager: Jen Rainnie

Contributing Editors: Chris Sullivan, Liam Jefferies, Alexander Larman

LIAM JEFFERIES

CHRIS SULLIVAN

ALEXANDER LARMAN

DAVID EVANS

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

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

Alexander Larman is The Chap’s Literary Editor.

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

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

DARCY SULLIVAN

SUNDAY SWIFT

PANDORA HARRISON

GOSBEE & MINNS

Darcy Sullivan writes about artists, aesthetes and algorithms. His articles have appeared in The Comics Journal, The Wildean and Weird Fiction Review.

He is press officer of the Oscar Wilde Society and curator of the Facebook pages ‘The Pictures of Dorian Gray’ and ‘The Arkham Hillbilly’.

Sunday Swift is The Chap’s Doctor of Dandyism.

She writes on dandyism, gender, popular culture and the gothic. Her writing has appeared in academic journals such as Gothic Studies and in popular books on cult television.

She is currently working on a book about dandies in television and film.

Pandora’s dark history includes curating gothic fashion for the V&A Street Style exhibition in London, and contributions to the Gothic Dark Glamour exhibition and book curated

by The New York Fashion Institute of Technology. She is a self-styled neophyte occultist, currently studying the tarot and oracle cards as a means of self development.

Peter Gosbee is a jeweller, antiques purveyor and keen disciple of the sartorial arts, often to be found at markets, briar in hand and suitcase brimming with treasures.

John Minns was brought up in what is commonly known as the rag trade. He cut his sartorial teeth working with ‘the King of Carnaby Street’ John Stephen.

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

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

Subscriptions 01442 820 580 contact@webscribe.co.uk

SOPHIA CONINGSBY Sophia is a writer and cigar aficionado from Devon who likes fly fishing, smoking cigars and discovering nature. Sophia spends her autumns and winters hunting with a sparrow hawk and her springs and summers fly fishing on the Devon rivers. @sophiaconingsby

NICOLE DRYSDALE Nicole is a self-taught home cook who has been working as a freelance recipe developer and food stylist for the past 10 years.

She will be sharing recipes culled from her grandmother’s recipe notebooks; she is also a member of a ladies’ cricket team and is learning to play the double bass.

One day she hopes to have a pet ferret which she will call Mrs Washington. @nicolethechap

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

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

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

3 THOU SHALT ALWAYS BE COURTEOUS TO THE LADIES. A gentleman is never truly seated on an omnibus or railway carriage: he is merely keeping the seat warm for when a lady might need it.

Those who take offence at being offered a seat are not really Ladies.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

CONTENTS 8 AM I CHAP?

Readers submit themselves to the ultimate sartorial assessment

10 THE SEMIOTICS OF FACE MASKS

What does your choice of face covering convey to the world?

12 EXTREME BUTLING

Mr. Gimpley-Spankworth on sartorial and etiquette matters

16 THE CHAP TAROT

The third installment of Pandora Harrison’s guide to help readers gain insight, wisdom and enlightenment

FEATURES 22 SIR RANULPH FIENNES INTERVIEW

Gustav Temple meets the world’s greatest explorer, as defined by the Guinness Book of Records

32 D IANA RIGG

Sunday Swift provides a worthy tribute to the late lamented Mrs Peel

38 M OTORING

n interview with James Bond stunt driver and Aston Martin A aficionado Ben Collins

•

WINTER 2020

22 SARTORIAL FEATURES 44 TWA FLIGHT CENTER

Egyptologists John and Colleen Darnell explore Eero Saarinen’s iconic building in JKF International Airport

60 JOHN SIMONS

Liam Jefferies on the man whose eponymous store in Marylebone has become a one-stop shop for the thinking man’s mod

64 T WEED SKI SUIT

A British tailor solves the conundrum of how to look the slightest bit elegant on the slopes

68 B LAKESBY HATS

Australian hat maker Blake ‘Blakesby’ Canham-Bennett has expanded the colour and shape of men’s headwear

76 GREY FOX COLUMN

David Evans advises on what to wear when setting off on great expeditions

LONGER FEATURES 84 CHAMPAGNE CHARLIE

Gustav Temple meets the dapper chanteur, host of the Candlelight Club and fan of vintage fizz

94 SIR RICHARD BURTON

Chris Sullivan on the 19th century roguish explorer who also made the first translation of the Kama Sutra

102 B RITISH RUM

Rums that don’t come from where they used to come from, because they are either made or refined right here on these craggy shores

106 COOKING FOR CHAPS

Nicole Drysdale shares her roasting tips from a sheaf of recipes bequeathed by her grandmother

111 H OTEL REVIEW

Strand Palace Hotel provides a welcome billet from a spookily empty pandemic London

115 T IME TO TANGO

The dance described as ‘a sad thought that is danced’ provides the perfect antidote to being cooped up at home

120 T ON UP BOYS

The 1960s youth cult that congregated on their motorcycles around one café in North London

REVIEWS 128 A UTHOR INTERVIEW

Alexander Larman meets David Nicholls, best-selling author of One Day, screenwriter on the recent television production of his novel Us and author of four further novels

132 BOOK REVIEWS

The Crown in Crisis and Ben Schott’s new PG Wodehouse homage Jeeves and the Leap of Faith

135 NIGHT AND DAY

Torquil Arbuthnot leafs through an anthology of the short-lived magazine published by Graham Greene for six months of 1937

138 JEAN LORRAIN

Darcy Sullivan on the fin-de-siècle decadent who is making an unexpected comeback in the literary world

144 RESTAURANT REVIEW

Alexander Larman and Gustav Temple take a Tier 2 repast at Benares in Mayfair

148 GROOMING

A step-by-step guide to growing a moustache, not necessarily aided by a bout of coronavirus

152 CAPTAIN’S LIP WEASEL

The results of our moustache growing competition, judged

by Captain Fawcett’s right hand man

157 ANTIQUES

The world of rare and antiquarian books

162 CROSSWORD

Cover photo: © Chris Winter/Shutterstock

ISSUE 106

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

“I trust this outfit is suitable?” writes Dominic Carey.

“I had to eschew my monocle for some period shades as the glare of the sun was interfering with my ability to grapple with the ‘fizz’.”

Sir, when you say ‘period’ shades, you are presumably referring to the period of the 1980s? Nevertheless, your raiment, with particular compliments to your trousering and footwear, is perfectly suited to an afternoon in the depths of suburbia.

Whereas Paul Rogers has clearly never even heard of suburbia, for he spends his entire life in a Riviera state of mind. Quite right too.

“A visit to Highclere Castle warranted donning my Mulberry tweed suit,” writes Dave Collier. “Felt the part on the day, but am I good enough for The Chap?”

Sir, a quick glance behind you at the proper chaps would have given you some tips on the use of a pocket square, and may have persuaded you against an ill-advised herringbone waistcoat with a pin striped suit.

These chaps were so excited to meet Bernard Cribbins that they didn’t have time to dress appropriately. Though to be fair to them, neither did he.

Jack Enyart thought that social distancing meant you approach random strangers outside cafés instead of inside them.

Rory Hinnen dressed using as a guide one of those children’s books where you assemble a figure using three mismatching body parts. In his case it was: estate agent (bottom section), Regency buck (middle) and then he put the head on upside down.

Jim Mack’s only words accompanying his photograph were “Feed the tweed!”

For some reason he did the opposite, and threw a ladies’ cashmere coat over a tweed waistcoat. Perhaps he was referring to the vamp on his footwear?

Paul Lawford coordinated his colours so successfully that he turned himself into a painting by David Hockney. When questioned about his wristwatch, he claimed it to be a ‘FitGit’, which sounds an alarm when it’s time to go home. On this occasion the battery had run out.

Semiotics

iotics o m e S e f Th

Gustav Temple on what hidden messages one is conveying to the world via one’s choice of face covering

w

hen a new item of clothing enters the field, chaps are not normally consulted for their views, because for chaps there is no need for any new clothing items; they are too busy rediscovering things like Victorian smoking hats, Edwardian moustache snoods and early 19th century gaiters. However, when the new item is introduced for reasons of public health and becomes mandatory, a chap has no choice but to embrace this new accessory.

The face covering, being obligatory in public places such as tobacconists, opium dens and charabancs, presents the well-dressed gentleman with a whole new set of sartorial concerns: should the mask co-ordinate with tie, cravat or pocket square?

Should it be of plain or patterned fabric? Tweed, silk or chenille? And then there is the question of cut – snug around the chin and nose, or rakishly

flowing? After much heated debate, both at Chap HQ and in the public sphere, it has been more or less agreed that the face mask should, like the pocket square, complement both tie or cravat and pocket square, but must not be of the same pattern as either.

We can’t have chaps strolling about with tripartite sets of matching tie/square/face mask; the existing matching tie/square sets are offensive enough.

A chap must either resort to the face coverings available in high street outlets, or fashion something of his own design; but which style to choose, and what will that style convey to the world, along with the rest of one’s impeccable raiment? Each style of mask is riddled with hidden symbols and meanings attributable to those wearing them. We hereby present a brief analysis of each type of face mask and what precisely one is communicating to society by wearing each one of them. n

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THE MEDICAL “The world has become one vast hospital corridor and I think of myself as a medical practitioner on his rounds.

If anything is actually wrong with you, please don’t expect a more detailed prognosis from me than “It’s probably the Covid, madam.”

THE CONSIDERATE “I don’t mind wearing a face mask, but I need somewhere to exhale my pipe smoke so I may enjoy my briar without offending social mores.”

THE NOSTALGIC “I watched a lot of western movies as a child and I always wanted to be the edgy one with the bandana. And now it’s too late.”

THE ECCENTRIC “I have already experienced the Black Death, the Bubonic Plague and mild halitosis, for I am a mysterious visitor from the past, the future and the second-hand video game store.”

THE ARTISTIC “No matter what the latest government diktat states, one should either be a work or art, or wear a work of art.”

THE DRAMATIC “I’m not taking any chances. This old ‘pig’s snout’ was made to resist mustard gas so I’m sure it can handle this current beastliness.”

THE TERROR “You have so much more to fear from me than coronavirus.”

THE POLITICAL “I ain’t gonna do what The Man tells me to do, unless it means I can’t go shopping.”

THE FUTURISTIC “I’m ahead of the game, guys. This bad boy is also Bluetooth/Netflix/Google/ YouTube enabled, so you won’t catch me crossing any roads safely.”

Extr eme

Butling

Our erstwhile butler Mr. Bell has moved to the outskirts of Amsterdam to become a tulip farmer and goat fancier. He left us in the capable hands of his factotum and personal assistant, Mr. Gimpley-Spankworth, who is here to offer readers advice on social, sartorial and etiquette matters. Send your queries to gimpley@thechap.co.uk

Arthur Peabody: With regards to the wearing of face coverings, should the mask co-ordinate with the tie/cravat or pocket square?

Mr. Gimpley-Spankworth: As you can imagine, Master, I feel slightly usurped by all these people wearing what, to my mind, are merely half-face coverings – the fizzog version of a thong, if you will.

For me, a face mask covers not only the entire face, but also the rest of the head as well. For this reason, if it’s alright with you, I am more comfortable referring to this item as a ‘face covering’ rather than a mask.

However, my job as a butler means I shall apply myself to this question with due diligence, putting all notions of personal discomfort aside.

The face covering, in its current usage during the Unpleasantness, is made of fabric and can be of any colour or design of one’s choosing. It is therefore to be treated just like any other fabric accessory and co-ordinated – and definitely not matched – to one’s other fabric accoutrements. You would not, Master,

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think of wearing a tie or cravat and a pocket square of the same design, would you? Thus the face covering must be of a design that complements the tie/bow tie/cravat/pocket square in its colour palette, but of a different pattern to either of the two other garments.

If still unsure, see photograph (below left) of one Tom Carradine displaying perfect co-ordination.

edges of the face covering enough to indicate his identity. The more trimmed beard wearer, however, is advised to purchase (if available) a face covering in exactly the same shape as his beard. I am informed by my Masters on this publication that they are now making face coverings of their own, bearing various designs that reflect quite distinctly the publication’s aesthetic, so wearing one of these would at least advertise which magazine you read, if not the precise design of your facial hair.

Finally, Master, if you took the measures you suggested that led you ‘no longer to look like your mask’, the question would then arise: who were you in the first place?

Paul Lawford: Dear Mr. G. Spankworth, Due to the current scenario it has become difficult to discern faces, and I resolutely refuse to wear a Name Badge. Thus I am thinking of glueing a fake moustache and beard onto the outside of my mask so that people can recognise me. I have also considered cutting off and using my real facial fur for more realism, but then that would be misleading, as underneath I would no longer look like my mask. Any advice welcome.

Mr. Gimpley-Spankworth: You raise an interesting and pertinent question, Master! How are we supposed to recognise each other, with only the eyes and the clothing to go on? Although we should relish the many opportunities that ubiquitous face coverings provide to avoid the dreadful ‘stop-andchat’ occasions that can wear a chap down.

I am unaware of how luxuriant your plumage is, Master, so I shall answer the query in two parts, one for either style.

The fully bearded gentleman need not concern himself here, for the plumage will seep out of the

Sylvester Horsley: When on a train, where is the best place to keep one’s ticket? I currently hold it cupped in both hands for the entire journey so that I have it ready for the inspector. I couldn’t possibly face the embarrassment of a full body search in front of a full carriage of judgmental passengers. Any thoughts?

PS: The pockets of my weskit are still sewn shut.

Mr. Gimpley-Spankworth: Master, you surprise me! I would have thought that any action that leads to a full body search, such as hurling your ticket out of the window, is to be encouraged. As to the judgmental passengers, I for one would break into applause if a full body search were conducted on a passenger in my carriage.

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Hor nets

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On a personal note, if I am travelling in full fig (which has a single zip all the way from crown to undercarriage) I myself like to hide the ticket somewhere difficult and let the ticket inspectors find it for themselves.

indeed I am) in the ancient martial art of Bartitsu.

The general etiquette on public transport is to express one’s indignation at leg spreaders with a meaningful frown, but since the transport overlords recommend ‘no contact’ between passengers, good luck with that, Master! n

Vincent Barbadillo: I have noticed that certain men on public transport have a tendency to spread their legs to an unnaturally wide aperture, as if to publicise their vestige. It usually results in unsettling fellow travellers either side and those facing the Super Spreader. How should one deal properly with this behaviour?

Mr. Gimpley-Spankworth: Master, I am intrigued, in the first instance, by your use of the word ‘vestige’, which means ‘a trace or remnant of something that is disappearing or no longer exists’ or ‘a part or organ of an organism which has become reduced or functionless in the course of evolution’.

I can only assume that you used this word wisely and intentionally, and its full meaning, I hope, provides the answer to your query.

Due to some of the Master’s home activities, I have developed something of a Pavlovian shudder to the mention of spread legs and have been known to attack same with a furled umbrella. I do not recommend this approach unless fully versed (as

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Arcana

The Chap Tarot Pandora Harrison continues her quest to help readers gain insight and enlightenment, in the third part of her guide to The Chap Tarot

C

patron saint of dandyism, Baudelaire: All which is beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation.

Now shuffle the cards and spread them out before you, while focusing on your concern. Select three random cards. As you draw the cards, place them left to right, face up before you. As you read the cards try to see how they tell a story or portray a journey of progression with a beginning, middle and end.

Study the ‘past’ card on the left. How does the card’s meaning shed light on the history behind your question? How may you or your current situation have been shaped by what has gone before?

Could this card represent a character strength you possess that may help you resolve your query?

Next, try to connect the first card with the middle ‘present’ card. See if you can identify a relationship between the cards. This card is where you are now; it identifies what is challenging you and will guide you towards the action required (or action to avoid), to reach a resolution.

ome, let us lift the veil once more and journey to the borderlands, where a fresh pot of tea and a custard cream await. In this instalment I will reveal the chappish meanings of four more Major Arcana cards and guide you through a simple three-card tarot reading. Please do bear in mind that the descriptions I have given the Major Arcana, or ‘picture’ cards, are reasonably close to the actual meanings, so in practice the Chap Tarot will work sufficiently well.

A simple reading to begin with is the popular three-card spread representing your past, or ‘content’; present or ‘focus’; and possible future or ‘outcome’ but before you embark upon a reading you should cleanse the cards, thus removing any negative energy. To cleanse, pass the deck three times through sacred smoke. This may be your favourite pipe tobacco, a Montecristo panatela or simply a gentle waft of Juniper incense. While doing so, recite a brief incantation to ask for guidance to read the cards. Perhaps something from the

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#10 THE TUBE MAP (THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE) The iconic London Underground Map designed in 1933 by Harry Beck colourfully depicts a modern Wheel of Fortune. Here is where a spin round the Circle Line can emulate the turn of a wheel. Any ride shows us that life is made up of both good and bad times; the commuter who finds a seat versus one who finds himself on the Central Line in someone’s armpit. Chief commuter Reginald Perrin, as portrayed by Leonard Rossiter in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, was known for his repertoire of excuses for being late, from “signal failure at Vauxhall” to “badger ate a junction box at New Malden”. The commuter experiences the mysteries of fate and karma on a daily basis, in the rise and fall of the journey’s expectations. The card signifies a turning point or a change in circumstances to a person’s life. Coping with obstacles and the ability to adapt, finding stability amidst movement and change. Study the Tube map and reroute your journey. No matter what the outcome, it may not last for very long, for the wheel always turns and the train will eventually arrive at the next station.

Reversed – the card signifies a struggle against events and a resistance to change.

Now move to the ‘future’ card on the right. Although this is not really your future, it is a possible outcome.

If the outcome is undesirable, it can be influenced by the action you choose to take in the here and now (see the middle card). The ‘future’ card shows you where your energy is flowing at the moment and it is up to you how you influence that direction. Let’s continue exploring a few more Major Arcana cards

#9 THE SHRINK (THE HERMIT)

This card portrays a teacher who will help us find our way, and Sigmund Freud certainly had to find his way on the path to becoming the father modern Psychoanalysis. The Shrink is an emblem of personal development and the tarot is regarded as a tool to achieve transition through self- analysis and inner awareness. One cannot ignore Freud’s pioneering research into an area previously linked with mysticism and demonic possession. Many of his flawed, controversial and long abandoned theories were the first steps on a journey through the uncharted realm of the mind. He sought to identify the emotional forces of human nature and give man the means to understand and know himself. So the next time you unconsciously suck on your pipe, perhaps consider the pleasure principle and your relationship with your mother. In a reading, the card represents the subject of the reading as a teacher or guide.

Reversed – the card can indicate a fear of other people, when a withdrawal becomes harmful; phobias, paranoia and avoidance of responsibilities.

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#11 COMEUPPANCE (JUSTICE)

#12 THE UPTURNED CHAP (THE HANGED MAN)

Some have paid the highest of prices for their actions and none so much as those of whom are made an example.

Margaretha Zelle, a.k.a.

Mata Hari, was charged with espionage during World War I and was executed in 1917. In truth she was a dancer and courtesan, which was far from illegal in Paris.

Could it be that her real crime was simply being a woman who broke the rules society had set for the fairer sex? The Justice card is a warning that events will happen as they should, based upon past situations, decisions and actions. At the peak of her career, her costumes were scandalous and her dances considered indecent. These actions led to her next career as an infamous courtesan. Courtesans are known to live extravagantly but die badly.

In a reading, the card indicates that events have worked out the way they were meant to and you get what you deserve. Mata’s ending at the age of 41 is well documented but recent findings have suggested that she was a half-hearted spy, more interested in taking payment rather than delivering the goods. No real evidence of her spying activities was ever found, but by officials falsifying records, her execution was used to raise French spirits as the war dragged on.

The scales of justice are an equilibrium between past and future, understanding and action. Your actions in the future can be changed by lessons learned in the present. Reversed – the card indicates dishonesty with yourself and others. You are fooling yourself and cannot see it, or we cannot see when others are unfair to us and treat us badly. Beware; if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.

This card’s image depicts a man suspended in time and viewing the world from a different perspective, a position symbolising personal sacrifice and a spiritual path. This uncomfortable looking fellow points us towards the folklore portrayal of the legendary King Arthur, drawn from the compilation of ancient English and French tales by Sir Thomas Malory in Morte d’Arthur (1485). King Arthur is a quixotic man, caught up in his romantic perception of a quintessential Kingdom with Camelot as its seat of power. Arthur wants to turn the world on its head and reverse its values. He envisions a new world order, in which his Knights of the Round Table are tasked with performing virtuous and noble deeds while in the pursuit of unobtainable ideals.

In a reading, the card foretells independence and being who you are, even if others think you have it all backwards. But the card can also indicate a trapped feeling and a need to let go or walk away from a situation or dilemma. Poor Arthur must confront the possibility of his wife Queen Guenevere’s adultery with Sir Lancelot, and he is torn between doing his duty as the King and his personal feelings.

Ultimately, Arthur sentences Guenevere to burn at the stake, but Lancelot’s rescue party raids the execution, killing several loyal knights, and forces Arthur to war, thus bringing about the fall of Camelot.

Accepting your circumstance can bring you peace but understanding it can bring you enlightenment.

Reversed – the card warns you are doing what others expect from you, or distracting yourself from the real issues. You may be fighting your inner self, are in denial or unable to accept reality. n

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RAFFISH THE NEW EAU DE COLOGNE FROM THE CHAP

AVAILABLE FROM WWW.THECHAP.CO.UK

Features •

Interview: Sir Ranulph Fiennes (p22) Dandizette: Diana Rigg 21 (p32) • Aston Martin (p38)

Interview

S IR RAN UL P H F IE NN ES Gustav Temple meets the man declared by the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s greatest living explorer, to discuss climbing Everest and the Eiger while suffering from vertigo, discovering the Lost City of Ubar, being kicked out of the SAS for blowing up civilian property and using a sextant to navigate at the South Pole

T

I couldn’t go to the Navy, so I went to the Special Air Service headquarters near Sloane Square. So for seven years, the SAS were nominally the bosses of our biggest expedition. We were able to park there and use MoD communication systems, on condition that they appointed a brigadier nominally

he Royal Navy used to have a tradition of handing out a daily tot of rum to every crew member. Do you follow in this tradition on your polar expeditions?

Alcohol in extreme cold conditions is not a good idea and we tried to avoid it, but every now and then we really needed it. Although you don’t really take even a toothbrush sometimes, because of the weight; even all the chocolate wrappers are taken off.

Britain’s polar achievements, despite the Norwegians, have been great, and we were always supported by the Royal Navy. But when we wanted to do the first ever journey around Earth, vertically through both poles, on the Transglobe expedition, we were not supported by the Royal Navy; we had to find some other government body that would support us for the seven-year expedition, and allow us to have a London barracks, otherwise we’d never have got 1,900 sponsors for one expedition.

“20th Century Fox were ruining the village in order to make a film called Doctor Doolittle.

They dammed the lovely trout stream to make a lake. So I agreed, to do my friend a favour, to blow up the dam, on the night that filming was due to start” 22

Photograph: Liz Sca

© Jim Smeal/Shutterstock

Sir Ranulph in his early days in the British Army

in charge of our committee. They chose the officer Wingate-Gray, who had thrown me out of the SAS seven years previously.

everybody was caught, although I wasn’t actually physically caught. I got away from the police dogs by wading along the stream, not leaving a scent like my friends did. But they had my Jaguar, parked four miles away, where we had had supper before moving overland to the target.

Why had he thrown you out?

For blowing up civilian property with Army explosives.

And why did you do that?

Because of a wine merchant, an ex-school friend of mine, who had been selling his wine in a place called Castle Combe. They were voted the prettiest village in Europe. When my friend was in the pub one evening, he learned that their visage was going to be ruined by a company called 20th Century Fox, who were changing the village in order to make a film called Doctor Doolittle. They dammed the lovely trout stream to make a lake. So I agreed, to do my friend a favour, to blow up the dam, on the night that filming was due to start.

The people who were behind the plan were all in the wine trade. The police were aware that there were villagers against the filming, so they were patrolling the dam. But against SAS training they weren’t doing very well. Things went wrong and

When you planned this whole mission, did you realise you were risking your whole career in the SAS? Well, I didn’t realise that as a result of it, seven years later, someone from the SAS would be put in charge of our main expedition. The SAS approved of this first expedition to go around the earth, it’s their kind of thing, but the person who was in charge was irresponsible, otherwise we wouldn’t have blown up stuff. And so they got the officer who’d thrown me out of the SAS to be the nominal bloke in charge of our expedition. He became a very good friend, I have to say.

After a distinguished career in the Army, what was the turning point that led you to leave it all behind and become an explorer?

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The Lost City of Ubar

“After my wife died and I was trying to get out of the misery, I thought one way of doing it would be to attack the thing I’m most frightened of – because I have vertigo.

So I thought, have a go at Everest, that will sort your vertigo out. I got a heart attack at 28,500 feet, which is a bad time to have a heart attack”

In my regiment, John Blashford-Snell was a Major and I was only a Captain, so I went to John and asked him, if you leave the Army and you’re no longer on Army pay, how do you make a living doing expeditions? And he and Chris Bonnington had shown that it could be possible, they’d worked out a way. So John was very helpful in getting me going and he’s still a very good friend.

So we realised it could be done, though we didn’t start with polar expeditions, we started with Norwegian parachute expeditions. Many of the group of people who came on various expeditions were ex-army, who could parachute and do survey and so on. My wife, who had been helping John Blashford-Snell do publicity for us on our earlier expeditions, came up with the idea of doing the first journey around Earth. I said, that’s been done by Magellan and Christopher Columbus, and thousands of people on holiday. She said, no, don’t be silly – nobody’s done it vertically, ever.

So she became the nerve centre of the entire expedition and was based in different parts of the polar regions; she was the real boss behind the TransGlobe Expedition.

Tell me about your discovery of the Lost City of Ubar.

On that ’92 expedition, which you can read about in Atlantis of the Sands, there was an old mosque called Shis’r, which I’d been using when fighting the Soviet invaders in 1968-70, because I could fill up my six Land Rovers with water and the water

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bowser was as far north as possible. People from the Yemen were coming out of the desert with their new weapons to attack the Sultan of Oman, in whose army I was.

I was using the last sultinate fort – and I’m talking a sort of Beau Geste type little white fort – as a base camp because it had the only available water. The water was there because a meteorite had struck Shis’r, opening up a 40-foot deep hole.

We used to lower ropes and go down, to fill up the water bottles for my platoon. So because I’d used it in the sixties for military purposes, it made sense to use it as a base from which to search for the last water hole in a northerly latitude. So, having made a long search for miles around, we eventually found the lost city in our base camp.

Emmanuel Vilane, the first black man to climb Everest from the other side. I got a heart attack on the last night at 28,500 feet, which is a bad time to have a heart attack.

I was not an OAP until 2009, when I turned 65.

So my first attempt on the Tibetan side of Everest in 2005 with Sibusiso failed because of the heart attack and I nearly never got down.

So next time I thought I’d try the easier side, from Nepal – you’ve probably seen photos of people queuing at the summit. When I say it’s the easy side, it isn’t really because of all those people, but when you’re actually climbing, you don’t do any climbing, you walk the whole way. You have to clip into a rope and that causes problems because not everyone moves at the same pace. People tell you, don’t do it at night, but my Sherpa cleverly said that if you do it at night you’ll be alone and won’t have the danger of being blocked.

So for my second attempt in 2008, I still wasn’t an OAP and we passed a lot of dead bodies, including the body of my sherpa’s father from eleven years earlier, because there hadn’t been much snow that year to cover up the bodies, plus the body of a friend of mine from Scotland. He had died of a heart attack in the same year as my first attempt on the other side – but I had pills and he didn’t.

So on the 2009 attempt, my third, the sponsor Marie Curie reckoned that, even if I failed, I could do it as an OAP, which by then I was, and people would still be supportive and it would still raise money.

So on my third attempt, my sherpa was clever and brilliant and didn’t treat me like any old tourist, but watched closely and saw what I was doing wrong as I got near the top. I managed to get to the top at 65 years old, thanks to his advice.

After the Lost City of Ubar, is there anywhere else in the world yet to be discovered by man?

I’m sure there are many, many places, but I was interested in that particular place because of my experiences in the region and my real respect for the Omani people of the Ibadi religion.

Was Sir Richard Burton an inspiration to you?

Richard Burton was, along with Gertrude Bell and Charles Doughty and St John Philby (father of the English spy). All those people at that time were exploring the desert in the middle of Arabia, and what that consists of in all cases is travelling by camel with local Bedouin nomads. Looking back, I would definitely prefer to do physical records a little bit more than trying to find lost monuments.

One of your most notable world records was being the oldest British person to climb Everest?

I was actually also the first old age pensioner to climb Everest! When I decided to climb Everest the first time, after my late wife had died and I was trying to get out of the misery, I thought one way of doing it would be to attack the thing I’m most frightened of – because I have vertigo. So I thought, have a go at Everest, that will sort your vertigo out. In 2005, just after she died, I tried that with a South African friend of mine – Sibusiso

I read that George Mallory, who went up the Tibetan side in 1924, considered it ‘unsporting’ to use oxygen to reach the summit.

Whether you’re doing that sort of thing or trying to break a Polar record or whatever, most people would try to do it first of all with every modern assistance. Then when that’s been done, the next load of people will try and do it without assistance, when it’s more difficult. Then eventually they will

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try and do without any technical assistance at all or even wind assistance. Scott and Shakleton would use their tent as a sail on their sledge when the wind was behind them. But now people don’t even use modern sails or parachutes to help them.

So the answer to your question is that people will gradually go for more difficult records after the previous one has been achieved.

There is a trend now for recreating difficult journeys from the past in the original vessels, such as those made by Ragnar Thorsketh. Do you have much truck with this sort of expedition?

I would if someone came up with a suitable one.

But Ragnar would be in real proper Viking ships, and everyone would be in the same original clothing, even if it was uncomfortable in wet cold weather, as they had when their forebears had been famous; before the British Empire, the Viking Empire was huge. He would retrace very difficult areas, Greenland Sea and so on, so in many ways it would be more lethal danger than when he was doing the Polar trips.

Can you actually get to the summit of Everest without oxygen?

Yes you can, absolutely. If you’re built with the right sort of lungs and you have the right training and you’ve kept fit, it’s no problem getting to the top.

Do you just wear whatever does the job, or do you have a lucky jacket, such as the one John Blashford-Snell had made at Norton & Sons?

Everything is sponsored; we go for Rolex watches and Land Rover vehicles, which are totally reliable in extreme circumstances compared to anything else. Where we want them tweaked, because our experiences at cold testing has been even greater than Rolex’s, we will advise them. If we are known to be at the forefront of polar innovation, then we have already carefully looked at the enemy – I mean the rivals, the Norwegians. We’ve looked at their reasons for failure on record attempts, and we will very often find it was because they had to take a risk.

So we will identify the risk and avoid taking it.

So as long as there’s danger, it’s valid?

Well, it’s not just the danger, it’s whether the dangers and other risks – like starvation – and every type of obstacle, whether it’s geographic or mentally challenging, they form why that record has not been broken. They don’t have to be based on some lost city or some polar journey; they could be all sorts of records. My polar colleague Dr. Michael Stroud, now professor at Southampton University and Britain’s expert on stress and nutrition, when I asked him in the early 2000s to climb Everest, he was already doing another expedition. So I had to do what he came up with, which was a different type of record: to see if one could run a marathon in seven continents within seven days. And that is a very different type of record to what we’ve been talking about.

Do any of your expeditions ever overlap with one from the Norwegians?

Yes, I can give you a good example. We know who the chief people are in Norway. In the 70s it was Ragnar Thorsketh, then when he took to going in Viking ships around the place, he was replaced

by Erling Kagge, and then he was replaced when he became a publisher by the current one, Børge Ousland.

When Erling Kagge was announcing in all the papers that he was going to do the first solo journey to the South Pole, we had also announced that we were planning a solo expedition, not just to the South Pole but continuing to the other side all the way down to the ocean. We did eventually succeed.

And it can, by the sound of it, because you did it?

We did just complete it successfully and wouldn’t ever do it again. It was highly stressful.

So what would you think about a chap sailing across Wales in a Coraline, where most of the danger comes from the restrictions of the ancient vessel?

What don’t attract us at all are the dangers. The dangers are what can get in the way of success. We find out what risks have stopped our predecessors succeeding, and instead of loving danger and

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taking the risk in a different way, we try to avoid the risks by clever planning. In terms of our polar expeditions in the 70s, we would have to navigate where for 2,000 miles there is no feature. You couldn’t have used GPS or SatNav because there were no polar orbiting satellites. So we were using what Shackleton and Scott and Amundsen were using: one watch on one wrist on local time, the other wrist on Greenwich Mean Time, and then you to look at the sun.

But in the 1990s when there were polar orbiting satellites, we naturally used GPS, SatNav and SatPhone instead of heavy high-frequency radios.

used, a sextant or a theodolite. At the end of the day, when you reach your camp where you’re going to be drilling, you have to get your theodolite, shoot the altitude of the sun, three times sometimes, and then you get very, very cold. In the long run, by the time you’ve finished your 60 nautical-mile day, towing 500 pounds, you’re completely knackered.

Trying to get the altitude of the sun is extremely difficult.

Then you get into the tent where the other guys have got the coffee going and it’s warm, and you have to get your site reduction table and nautical almanac and do the maths of working out your sun shot.

Was there a huge difference, when you compared the two trips?

In the seventies and eighties we used what Scott

Which is exactly what they would have done in Shackleton’s day?

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Exactly the same. And in terms of telling the base camp where you are, you’d need to do that by morse code. Now you just get into the tent, have a cup of coffee and press a button on your SatPhone.

a black drop. So when Kenton Cool, my guide on the climb, asked me, now that you’ve done Everest, have you lost your vertigo? I replied, I hate to say it but no! So he said, I will cure you of your vertigo without the expense of going to the Himalayas. At weekends we can train in the Alps. The north face of the Eiger will cure your vertigo. So after a lot of training we did that. It’s been done in 2½ hours by a Swiss climber; we took three days and nights and it’s a 6,000-foot sheer wall like El Capitan. At the top of it, I began to realise that the reason I had successfully done it with Kenton was because of his clever psychological treatment on the rope. As soon as I was up there without him, the fear came back and I realised I would never lose it. So after the north face of the Eiger I never went back to difficult climbing again. n

What do you make of these American chaps who go around climbing the Dawn Wall of El Capitan?

The European version of El Capitan is the Eiger.

I mentioned earlier my vertigo – even when parachuting in the Army I used to close my eyes when parachuting out, which is forbidden. When cleaning leaves out of the gutter I would send my wife out to hold the bottom of the ladder. But even after my third and only successful summit of Everest, there was never a drop on the whole climb.

You look down and there’s a white shoulder, not

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Dandizette

Diana Rigg Sunday Swift offers a fitting tribute to Dame Diana Rigg, 1938-2020, highlighting some of the lesser-known roles she embraced with as much brio and talent as Mrs Peel and Mrs Bond

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he first time I met Dame Diana Rigg was in 2017 at the 90th anniversary commemorations of Elstree Studios at Sound Stage 9. At 80, she was striking – those eyes, those cheekbones, that mischievous smile, her outfit understated but smart. A glance at the audience confirmed that I was not the only one who was quite in love with her. When discussing her life and career, one word Rigg mentioned repeatedly during this event was “luck.”

Was it really just luck that formed and drove her career and cemented her success? Was it purely through luck that she beat 500 other women for the role of Emma Peel? She seemed to think so.

“All of us had to do a fight with the stunt man. And [he] was clouted over the head with a handbag five

“All of us had to do a fight with the stunt man, and he was clouted over the head with a handbag 500 times.

When it got to my turn he was absolutely punchdrunk and fell to the floor. They obviously thought, ‘Well, she’s the strongest,’ and gave me the part” 33

hundred times. And when it got to my turn, he was absolutely punch-drunk, and fell to the floor. They obviously thought, ‘Well, she’s the strongest,’ and gave me the part.” The script went into little detail regarding the characters of either Steed or Peel, and the producers trusted the two actors to create their characters and much of the dialogue.

that Mrs Peel was simply afforded. Despite being the star of The Avengers with Patrick Macnee, Rigg didn’t even make as much as the cameraman. She recalled, “I don’t frankly know how much I was worth, to be perfectly honest, but I knew I was worth more than the cameraman, for a start. And I made a bit of a fuss, and the reaction to it was what a mercenary person I was, and tut-tut-tut, and all the rest of it.” On this occasion, it wasn’t luck that saved her, but herself. A powerful woman knowing her worth makes for good television, but in the real world, it makes for a pretty hostile set.

Rigg found solace in returning to her real love, the theatre: “After the first season of The Avengers,” she explained, “I went back to Stratford and did Twelfth Night. I was filming Avengers Monday, Tuesday and I’d go to Stratford and do a Wednesday matinee and evening, and Saturday matinee and evening.”

After two seasons, she hung up Emma Peel’s catsuit for good. Her last episode sign-posted not just the end of the Peel era, but the end of much of what made The Avengers unique and groundbreaking. For many, there was no real Avengers without Diana Rigg.

Some fans saw her leaving the show as a betrayal. Rigg, however, needed to move on. In an interview she explained, “I owe The Avengers a very great deal, and I’ve never turned my back on it in that respect. I could have played Shakespeare for twenty-five years and not had the recognition that I got out of one season on The Avengers. But the point was that I, in a way, I had to be disloyal leaving it, I had to turn my back on absolutely anything that approached an approximation of The Avengers in order to prove that I was capable of playing and developing other things … in order to carve another career out for myself, because the pressures to remain within that very small world were huge.”

Her next big role was Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo (Tracy) in the Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), an ironic choice in that The Avengers was really a send-up of Bond in the first place. Patrick Macnee once said “Bond used women like battering rams and seemed intent on drinking and smoking himself to death.” Tracy, however, was an exception: she was an elegant, intelligent and beautiful woman who was integral to the plot and, as Rigg boasted, “not just a piece of fluff.”

Once again, Rigg waved this role off to luck: “I was the gravitas to Lazenby, who was totally inexperienced … I’ve got no illusions as to that’s why they got me.” There was a cost, however. The intrusive fame she’d experienced from The Avengers

“Tracy in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was an elegant, intelligent and beautiful woman who was integral to the plot and, as Rigg boasted “not just a piece of fluff.” She waved this role off to luck: “I was the gravitas to Lazenby, who was totally inexperienced …

I’ve got no illusions as to that’s why they got me”

Emma Peel was an innovation to me when I watched The Avengers as a child – hermaphroditic, sexual, agender, multi-gender, masculine and feminine all at once. She walked right out of an Ouida novel into the Swinging Sixties. Her humour had an ironic detachment, and she threw Wildean quips as easily as she threw men twice her size over her shoulder.

The role offered Rigg the opportunity to play a Femme Fatale, an Heiress, a Fashion Maven, a Sappho, a Lady of Action, and an expert in every field, who somehow also found the time to write articles as an anthropologist. She danced in a mausoleum with a glass of champagne as she awaited her own burial in a coffin. Even when tied up, she exuded a fetishistic and sado-masochistic consent. She brought the Hellfire sex cult to silence as she walked on to their stage wearing a boned corset, spiked collar and a live python. Emma Peel was, in short, the perfect image of the Modern Woman. She never had to ask for equality with John Steed, because she already had it.

Unfortunately, behind the scenes, Diana Rigg wasn’t so lucky: she had to fight for the equality

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this out: Regan with Laurence Olivier in King Lear (1983); Miss Constance Hardbroom in The Worst Witch (1986); the Evil Queen in Snow White (1987); an obsessive and murderous mother, Helena Vesey in Mother Love (1989) and Mrs Danvers in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (1997).

In 1994 Rigg took on the role of Euripides’ Medea. “As luck would have it,” she explained, “my husband had just left me. I’ve shocked you, now, haven’t I? He’d just gone walk-about, and Medea was offered to me, and I thought, ‘right!’” She went on to explain that Medea was a play about “a woman who said ‘no, I’m not accepting predestination and fate, I am forming me, I am making my own life.’

And I think that’s the thread that appealed to a 21st century audience.”

Mark Gatiss recently played tribute to her, remembering her as “flinty, fearless and fabulous.”

He wrote The Crimson Horror especially for Rigg and her daughter Rachael Stirling in a 2013 episode of Doctor Who, where she played a wonderful villain against Matt Smith. “How lucky is that?” Rigg said happily when interviewed about the role. She played Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion and, luckily, lived long enough to play Mrs Higgins in 2018 on Broadway.

was magnified with Bond. Rigg found the fame uncomfortable: “Coming from Yorkshire as I did, to be called a sex symbol was absolutely extraordinary and I simply didn’t know how to handle it, at all.

Because you didn’t talk about sex in Yorkshire – ever! Still less flaunt your sexuality. So, I was not very good at flaunting, and rather walked away from that aspect of my fame.” She recognised, though, that “the [Bond] money was wonderful… Coming from Shakespeare and eight pounds a week, it was terrific.”

This era saw many stage plays adapted to film – and it was her talent for Shakespeare, not luck, that helped her move forward. She played Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1968), Portia in Julius Caesar (1970) and Edwina in the Shakespearethemed Theatre of Blood (1973), a cult favourite about a Shakespearean actor who takes revenge against the critics who gave him bad reviews, a role she loved. “I played with Vincent Price, who was – God, such a delight, he was heavenly. … Here he was, master of the macabre, and he was a very, very good Shakespearean.”

Rigg had a penchant for playing dandies and Difficult Women, once commenting in a BBC interview, “I’m good at evil,” and several roles bore

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And most recently she played Lady Olenna Tyrell – the Queen of sharp wit in Game of Thrones – earning four Emmy nominations for this role alone.

One of the ironies of Rigg’s career is that the three roles she is most famous for are merely a footnote in her sixty-year career. Her heart has always belonged to the theatre – and it was in the theatre that she has been most recognised for awards and commendations. For Medea alone she was nominated for four awards, winning the Evening Standard Theatre for Best Actress and a Tony for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play.

She’s been nominated and won multiple BAFTAs and Emmys. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1988 and a Dame (DBE) in 1994.

Aside from her career as an actor, Rigg authored a book, No Turn Unstoned (1982), which focused on the history of the theatre and bad notices of famous actors like Katherine Hepburn, Roger Moore, David Niven and Laurence Olivier, as well as her own from critic John Simon, who wrote that she was “built like a brick basilica with insufficient flying buttresses”, which she regularly delighted in quoting.

She was also particularly proud of her roles within academia: “I work on the principle that a little gets rubbed off if you move among academics. My joy in life is to keep learning.” She was awarded four honorary doctorates at four different universities.

Despite all this success, Rigg continued to stress that it was luck, not hard work, that had won her career in film, stage and television. “Nothing was planned. My ambitions were simply to work, and I think I worked my way through life.”

Rigg once said, “as long as I’m on stage, I’m alive.” Though her unfilmed theatre works exist only in memory, thanks to film and television, Diana Rigg’s work will always be accessible. She might have had a lot of lucky breaks in her life, but it was her talent, ironic humour and ‘flinty, fearless and fabulous’ personality that made her such an icon. She was a great inspiration to many for the significant dandy roles she played, and the longevity and variety of her career. I count myself to have been among the lucky ones to have seen her at work. Rest in power, Dame Diana Rigg. You will always be needed. n RIP Diana Rigg, 20th July 1938-10th September 2020

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SEAN CONNERY

© Danjaq/Eon/Ua/Kobal/Shutterstock

25th August 1930 - 31st October 2020

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Motoring

ASTON MARTIN Gustav Temple meets Ben Collins, stunt driver in every James Bond film since Quantum of Solace, including the forthcoming No Time to Die, and a ‘Stig’ on Top Gear, to discuss his book on the history of Aston Martin

“A good car chase puts the audience on the edge of the driving seat and the Bond movies are especially immersive because they don’t use CGI. It’s always real stunts and as a viewer you end up believing you could actually just pull the ejector seat if things don’t go your way”

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he book reveals your own fascination with the early days of motoring and coach-building, particularly the eccentric, often moustachioed characters like Selwyn Edge that peopled them. Were they an inspiration for your own choice of career?

Not exactly but then it’s hard to know how much history we absorb subliminally without realising it. The opening scenes of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang show a potted history of early Grand Prix Racing at the turn of the 20th century, with cars sliding around on wobbly wheels and driven by wild men wearing goggles and no seat belts. Researching this book has been a joy, because I’ve learned so much more about those early pioneers and I really felt a connection with previous generations of drivers.

How old were you when you first fired up a motor vehicle and what was it?

My parents made the mistake of placing me on a sit-on lawn mower at the age of five. I found the accelerator much easier to operate than the brake pedal, let alone the clutch, which was as stiff as a board. I navigated an apple orchard pretty well until I reached terminal velocity and smashed into a chicken enclosure. Thankfully no live fowl were injured.

You must have driven every sort of car under the sun. Does Aston Martin still rank the highest? Do you have any of your own?

I treasure my experiences and am grateful to everyone who has helped me to make a career out of thrashing lovely cars. It makes choosing favourites almost impossible because there are different tools for different jobs. Aston Martin have

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Augustus Bertelli and Pat Driscoll during the Biennial Cup at Le Mans, 1932

undoubtedly produced some of the best models in the world and consistently rank highest with their Grand Tourers, because their high performance is matched by their forgiving nature. I have yet to drive the new Valkyrie hypercar but it is on my bucket list. I own several Astons… of the Hot Wheels variety.

Are the stunt driving scenes completely scripted and pre-ordained, or is there any room for improvisation?

There’s always a plan and the moves for the driving scenes are choreographed in order to do them safely.

That said, if there’s a scene with a lot of vehicles working around a big set piece, like a crash, then you might work more independently to get through, and that’s where it pays to have experienced drivers who can read the situation and adjust as things develop.

Was there ever a time in your childhood when you fantasised about being James Bond driving an Aston Martin?

Who doesn’t! A good car chase puts the audience on the edge of the driving seat and the Bond movies are especially immersive because they don’t use CGI. It’s always real stunts and as a viewer I think that you end up believing you could actually dispatch a villain with a flame thrower, or just pull the ejector seat if things don’t go your way. But I never dreamed I would end up behind the wheel in a Bond movie in real life.

Have you ever looked at the script for a driving stunt and said, this will simply kill me, can we change it?

Yes, but that’s quite normal. The beauty of collaboration is looking at the vision in the script and figuring out how to do it safely. ‘Movie magic’ enables us to modify the vehicles, do tricks with the camera or make walls out of polystyrene to create a scene that looks deadly, but isn’t.

When you eventually did drive Aston Martins for James Bond movies, did it feel as if you actually were Bond while shooting those scenes?

There’s only one Bond and Daniel Craig has nailed it. The real buzz that you get from working on these movies is when you do the job that is expected of you because the calibre of the crew around you is so high. I think if the stunt drivers started believing they had special powers or had become their characters it would be a scary place to work.

Do you think that the collection and enjoyment of vintage petrol cars will gradually disappear, due to electric vehicles taking over?

The potential of electric is huge and a lot of collectors are converting their vintage cars into EVs quite easily. I don’t believe that petrol will disappear, because there are certain environments that will never really suit electric and there will always be a strong attachment to the unique way

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Stirling Moss mastering the four-wheel drift at the Esses section of Le Mans in 1958

that a combustion car handles. But I do think EV will dominate and especially when we get a major breakthrough on battery technology.

75 years from now, could a Tesla Model 3 ever be proudly showcased at a classic car festival, in the same way that an Aston Martin DB5 is today?

Tesla fans are hardcore so you’d better believe it.

Tesla have blazed the trail for EV and in 75 years future owners might look at the Model 3 with its quaint steering wheel and wonder what it must have been like to drive one on the open road.

How would you feel about driving an authentic petrol vintage car completely fitted with an electric engine?

I’ve already driven one and was blown away by how well it worked. Aesthetically it looked no different and you can even set up the EV motor to use manual gears. The power delivery was better than the original, while all the old school suspension and hydraulic steering was better than the numb ride of a modern car, so you got the best of both worlds. I think electric conversions will be a huge growth area once we get more charging stations and the electric drive trains become more affordable. n Aston Martin: Made in Britain by Ben Collins is published by Quercus Books

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Photo: Morgan Sette

SARTORIAL

Photo Shoot: TWA Flight Center (p44) • Stanley Biggs (p58) • John Simons (p60) • Tweed Ski Suit (p64) • • Blakesby Hats (p68) • Grey Fox Column (p76)

Sartorial

TWA FLIGHT CENTER, NEW YORK John Darnell and Colleen Darnell take the opportunity offered by the Unpleasantness to cavort around the deserted TWA Flight Center, JFK International Airport, New York, and explain its curious architectural heritage Photographs: Nina Galicheva www.ninagalicheva.com Make-up: Michelle Coursey

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ero Saarinen’s marvellous TWA Flight Center, completed in 1962, was intended to be at once an image of a bird, an architectural image of the concept of flight, and an evocation of the aircraft that travellers would soon board. The result was one of the greatest monuments to Space Age design. Four concrete shells form the roof – one slants to a point in front, like the beak of a great bird, another slopes down to the back as though a tail. One shell rises upwards to each side, the two having the appearance of enormous wings, lifted up to expose the tall windows, through which those within would glimpse the sleek flying machines that would soon whisk them aloft into the great blue.

As Egyptologists, of course, we see Saarinen’s flight center through the lens of ancient zoomorphic architecture, including a temple constructed over five millennia ago that took the form of an enormous bovid. That structure was intended to evoke the celestial cow as sky goddess, becoming a miniaturization of the vast cosmos she formed.

The TWA Flight Center consists essentially of four segmental domes, with Y-shaped supports as buttresses, modern descendants of Justinian’s great dome at Hagia Sofia, and the once shockingly modern architecture of early Gothic cathedrals. The load-bearing elements of Saarinen’s structure indeed recede from view, concealed by their simplicity. The

junctures of the four major roof segments have openings for light, stressing to viewers seeking to understand why the building stands that the answer is not there. Saarinen’s TWA terminal is indeed a direct descendent of Gothic architecture, whose soaring columns and outer supports are decorative scaffolding to support the relatively thin walls, many of which are more window than stone. Unlike the vertical reach of Gothic, however, Saarinens’ structure trades a perpendicular style for ovals, curves, swooping and bending forms that recall the ubiquitous boomerang shapes of the populuxe age.

These curves and the tube-like passageways leading off the main structure foreshadow for the traveller the hulls and curving portholes of the aircraft they will soon board. Tables and seating – like Eero Aarnio’s ball chairs – seem to blossom organically from stalk-like supports that taper in the middle. Others emerge as though part of the architecture. The soaring windows that fill the space between the rising wings to either side of the main construction, and beneath the tail, present a cinematic view of the aircraft that would be landing, taxiing, and taking off from the nearby runways – a simple trip by aircraft becomes a film into which the traveller will soon step.

Visions of the future, like the TWA Flight Center, as they modernize existing activities and look forward beyond the concerns of the present,

often prove more aspirational than fully accurate in their predictions. Saarinen foresaw a future in broad strokes, but without the speed and crowding that the future would require – more people crammed into crowded terminals, before staggering into ever more tightly packed air conveyances. Although a beautiful design, the building was not intended to meet the challenges of the wide-body jet aircraft soon to roll off the assembly lines. The Boeing 747, with its spiral staircase to an upper deck lounge that would truly continue the style and atmosphere of the TWA Flight Center and similarly designed structures, would increase the numbers of people in every terminal at any given time.

One silver lining of the current unpleasantness is the possibility of a visit to the TWA terminal as though it were yet to open, or empty as in a post-apocalyptic film (without the unpleasant concomitant features of shuffling zombie hordes, allergy inducing triffids, etc.). Evoking the trends of archaism and modernism that met in 1960s fashions, and in homage to The Avengers, we blend Victorian, Edwardian, and 1960s in our attire.

John wears early twentieth century morning dress trousers (with an incredible, no-shirt-cancome-untucked height reaching to just below the scapulae) and a 1930s Marengo wool morning dress waistcoat with slip; the shirt and detachable collar are 1920s. His frock coat is late Victorian; not exactly the tailcoat of Marengo wool one would expect for morning dress, but this being the 1960s, we took the liberty of archaizing them by the already slightly archaic. That is also the excuse for wearing a Christie’s derby, rather than a top hat; the derby also lends a certain lack of complete formality. The evening semi-formal wear is original 1930s Palm Beach fabric (both jacket and trousers); the shirt and tie are 1930s vintage as well.

Colleen wears a thin 1960s catsuit with matching ‘loincloth’ skirt by André Courrèges, white over-theknee 1960s boots, and a remarkable cap originally purchased for $50 at Bonwit Teller, Boston, from about 1967, and patterned on the so-called ‘Snoopy cap’ worn by Apollo astronauts. The monokini she wears (indoors here, and in which she swam in the rooftop pool) is a new realization of Rudi Gernreich’s 1964 design; the star-shaped pasties evoke those that Gernreich himself designed for Diana Newman modelling one of his ‘topless’ dresses in 1970. The blue short dress is also 1960s Courrèges. The evening dress is a modern creation by Jason Lyon, using late Victorian remnant fabric. n

Colleen wears: thin 1960s catsuit with matching ‘loincloth’ skirt

by André Courrèges, white over-the-knee 1960s boots, and vintage 1960s cap patterned on the ‘Snoopy cap’ worn

by Apollo astronauts

Colleen wears: monokini inspired by Rudi Gernreich’s 1964 design; the star-shaped pasties evoke those that Gernreich designed for Diana Newman modelling one of his ‘topless’ dresses in 1970

John wears: original 1930s Palm Beach fabric (both jacket and trousers); 1930s vintage shirt and tie.

Colleen wears: modern evening dress by Jason Lyon, using late Victorian remnant fabric

Sartorial

BOLD AND BRITISH WITH STANLEY BIGGS Digby Fairfax on a new collection of practical and stylish knitwear and headwear

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nitwear has always proved a knotty problem for chaps. There are some days, even under the canopy of global warming, when it is simply too chilly to don one’s favourite Fair Isle sleeveless pullover and one seeks a more fulsome covering.

Step in newish menswear brand Stanley Briggs, who embrace the plucky British spirit of adventure, twinned with the more sensible British approach to keeping off the chill. Their new collection of knitwear, caps, shirts and scarves marries adventurous and dashing colours with firm, practical designs.

Every item of Stanley Briggs’ knitwear

collection has full British Wool accreditation, meaning every fibre of wool used to create their jumpers is traceable and does not leave the shores of the British Isles at any stage.

Firstly, the wool is selected from British Wool accredited farms in Wales and Scotland, where only the finest quality wool is accepted. Once treated and cleaned, the wool is sent to Yorkshire, where it is dyed; a natural process ensuring the natural fibres and quality of the wool are not compromised in anyway. Once the iconic Biggs colours are captured, the wool is then sent to a mill in Nottinghamshire where the unique Stanley Biggs jumpers are created.

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THE HENSHAW ROLLNECK £125

THE CHATSWORTH CAP £65

Inspired by ‘The Few’ in The Battle of Britain, The Henshaw Rollneck is an original 1930s design with slight modifications for the 21st Century wardrobe. The cable-knit pattern accentuates the quality of British Wool in its rich navy tone. The Henshaw can be worn on its own for a bracing walk, or under an overcoat if there is any chance of encountering a lady upon one’s ramble.

The hat to doff to said randomly encountered lady is a Chatsworth Cap, an eight-sectioned number in a diamond-pattern tweed, made from 100% British wool woven in Yorkshire mills. With echoes of Richard Hannay, the Chatsworth will cut the mustard in both country inn and grand hotel, and while out-of-doors it will also keep the ears nice and snug against the cold.

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Sartorial

JOHN SIMONS: MARYLEBONE KING OF IVY Liam Jefferies on the man whom many consider Modernism incarnate, and whose eponymous store has become a one-stop shop for the thinking man’s mod

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“For the meticulous modernist, Simons’ store still stands as the nerve centre for discussion, discovery, and damn fine loafers. The ambience is much like that of a record shop where a customer can natter for hours on end about collar rolls”

or a select few, the word ‘Ivy Style’ sparks recollections of a scene encompassing style, art, music, and design. They will soon begin a dressing down on the proper buttonhole placement etiquette on a 3/2 roll blazer, pulling up images of Blue Note Records covers or Jacob Lawrence’s Dynamic Cubist paintings. One name, however, which is always bound to crop up, is that of businessman, curator, designer and overall ‘Face’: John Simons.

With a career spanning over sixty years, John Simons’ benefaction to the British menswear scene remains unmatched. From small beginnings as a window dresser, Simons opened The Squire Shop (one of many stores) in Soho in 1967, and has since gone on to become synonymous with all that is Ivy Style in the British Isles and beyond.

“What is this Ivy Style?” one may ask. Put as succinctly as possible, Ivy is derived from the midcentury collegiate style of North America, which in turn was influenced by the casual sporting attire worn by the British and American upper classes during the 1920s. The predecessor to ‘preppy’, the look became a hit with the rise of the teenage subcultures in post-war Britain, and would see

itself subverted and channeled into what became modernism, and later mod (think Italian coffee and bebop jazz, as opposed to parkas and fighting on pebble beaches).

Born in London four months before the start of World War II, Simons’ father was a tailor; his uncles made suits for C&A and were also acquainted with one Cecil Gee, then-owner of an illustrious menswear emporium on the Charing Cross Road. It was through this relationship that Simons gained an apprenticeship, and perfected an

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eye for window dressing that is still as evident to this day – Paul Smith once described the windows at Simons’ stores as “like theatre”.

After plying his skills for Burberry, among others, John was invited to curate the windows at Austin’s of Shaftesbury Avenue, where his love affair with the Ivy look began in earnest. Natural shoulder jackets, soft tailoring, Oxford shirts, penny loafers; while these would take hold in Simons’ heart, they weren’t the only US imports to have a lasting effect in Britannia.

For many in post-war Britain, America was a source of inspiration for art, music and creativity that wasn’t tied up by the social hierarchy of Blighty. On a trip to New York to meet manufacturers, Simons’ fell further in love with the East Coast scene, and also managed to bag end-ofseason clothing of which the like hadn’t been seen in London yet, and brought them back to the utter delight of his bourgeoning clientele.

Before that fated trip to the Big Apple, however, Simons’ first foray into the world of boutique proprietorship began with the opening

of Clothesville, in the foyer of a clothing factory next to the Hackney Empire in East London. Here were found the tapered peacoats, cigarette-legged trousers and a resplendent corduroy take on a Burberry shooting jacket, complete with buttondown collar. After expanding to Walthamstow market, Clothesville joined Lord John et al in its departure from the high street, and The Ivy Shop, Richmond, was born in 1964, soon becoming the mecca of modernists and such other subcultures appearing on the scene, such as the suedeheads.

Simons was content to cater to the demands from striplings who, while not as sophisticated as Ivy style icons Paul Newman and Chet Baker, would snap up long-wing Florsheim brogues, StaPrest trousers and bright socks, which then filled the rocksteady clubs across town. The appropriation of the New York Madison Avenue look into the working class of London Town and beyond was in no small part due to Simons’ impact, extending even to his coining of the term ‘Harrington’ Jacket.

Formerly known as the Baracuta G9, the moniker was adopted after Simons displayed the golfing

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jacket in his window with the handwritten label ‘The Rodney Harrington jacket’ – a nod to the character from US drama Peyton Place, played by Ryan O’Neal.

The Rodney was dropped, but the name Harrington remains to this day across the world.

1981 saw J Simons opening in Covent Garden, building on the prosperity of Soho’s Squire Shop and Chelsea’s The Village Gate. Since 2011, John Simons has been located in Marylebone, at No. 46 Chiltern Street, among the hustle and bustle of coffee shops and restaurants, away from the noise of Oxford Street. The shop is run by John and his son Paul, who carries the genetic urbanity and perceptive eye for coalescence in the confusingly hybridised world of contemporary fashion.

While the classic curation of Harrington jackets, sack-cut blazers and OCBDs are still in ample supply, one must remember that Simons is a testament to modernism, which must be more meticulous and discriminating than ever, taking from the present only that which inhibits the tenor of the past. Artisanal Japanese denim sits comfortably amid authentic French workwear and hand-knit Canadian

woollens. For the meticulous modernist, Simons’ store still stands as the nerve centre for discussion, discovery, and damn fine loafers. The ambience is much like that of a record shop, where a customer can natter for hours on end about collar rolls, and that same enthusiasm will be returned thricefold.

John Simons: A Modernist by filmmaker Mark Baxter is a fitting ode to the legendary storekeeper, though the job title doesn’t do justice to one who almost single-handedly nurtured an important part of British style history, which has come to prove as influential as those initial inspirations in 1955. Featuring such ‘faces’ as Paul Weller, Kevin Rowland, Suggs, and Paul Smith, it provides a worthy testament to the idiosyncratic innovator, stylist, and educator. Although the global pandemic may have put the kibosh on any thoughts of pilgrimage in carne, Simons’ new website offers yet another window to be dressed in their inimitable style, seersucker face masks and all. n

@sartorialchap

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Sartorial

TWEED SKI SUIT Digby Fairfax on the direct approach taken by a British tailor towards solving the knotty conundrum of how to look the slightest bit elegant on the slopes

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he one huge factor that puts many chaps off taking to the slopes each winter (apart from the fact that we are barely allowed to travel anywhere these days) is the required raiment. How to co-ordinate a black skiing helmet with a bright purple ventile coat, with nowhere to inert one’s pocket square, is beyond the realm of most chaps, and they simply hurl away the brochures for Courchevel and book another weekend in Bognor Regis.

When Tom Wharton of Barrington Ayre Shirtmaker and Tailor was celebrating the completion of a tweed suit with one of his clients, the client declared his passion for skiing, with the assumption that there was no choice but waterproofs

all round with regards to clothing. Tom explained to him that tweed is naturally water and weatherproof and, if they added a natural cotton Ventile lining, the client would be protected against any skiing conditions he might come across.

A tweed ski suit was bespoken on the spot.

Tom then went about designing the ski suit.

The client’s original suit was very much designed with a classic suit in mind, with notch lapels, slanted pockets and three-button fastening. Tom made the rear of the jacket longer than usual, to prevent any powder sneaking in, and added zips to each pocket, so nothing went walkabout while the client was skiing. He also used an old shooting coat trick of adding underarm pleats to allow for a full range of

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movements. The trousers were fashioned on a classic suit trouser but with the addition of a very high fishtail back and storm cuffs to go around the boots.

After the client took his outfit on the slopes, attracting much more attention than the standard ski wear all around him, Barrington Ayre received a number of calls from people who had seen their client flashing around the slopes, and they ended up making most of these customers tweed ski suits as well. They worked with another client to develop a second style of ski suit and now offer two designs: The Classic (above) and the Off Piste (left).

The Off Piste has a high collar and zip front, allowing the collar to be zipped up over the nose. The slant pockets were changed into classic patch pockets with a zip fastening, and a zip pocket was added on the left sleeve, which allows for the wearer’s lift pass to be popped in, allowing them to access the lifts with a simple swipe of the arm.

The ski suits have been made from a range of weights and patterns of tweeds, ranging from a 14oz Easter skiing weight to a proper 24oz battle-proof tweed, and all of the ski suits are made in England.

A gentleman thus attired may now take to the slopes looking as dashing and elegant as he would for a country stroll in dear old Blighty. n www.barringtonayre.co.uk

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Photo: Morgan Sette

Headwear

BLAKESBY HATS Gustav Temple spoke to Australian hat maker Blake ‘Blakesby’ Canham-Bennett, who has expanded the colour and shape of men’s headwear, while maintaining classic styles and manufacturing methods www.blakesbyhats.squarespace.com

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ou seem to have broken the mould when it comes to men’s hat styles, while adhering to traditional blocks and techniques. Was this what you set out to do originally?

Thanks! I don’t know that this was really my initial intent. I just wanted to make very traditional and vintage inspired hats, and I definitely wanted to create styles I couldn’t easily find. I started with a certified millinery course, which at the time I didn’t know was any different to traditional men’s hat making. I soon shifted my focus away from the millinery approach, in favour of more traditional hatter techniques, most of which are methods unchanged for easily a century.

“From the start, a big drive for me was to make hats I wanted but couldn’t seem to find, and that particularly focused on colours. One of my early makes was a velour finish green felt, high-crown Homburg, trimmed with brown petersham ribbon around the crown and brim.

I couldn’t find anything like this, so I made it myself” 68

Photo: Morgan Sette

Blake wears: Blakesby Hats nutria fur felt western hat with vintage pine green moire petersham trim and crown ventilation.

RRL unlined McGraw wool-cotton sportcoat.

The Well-Dressed Head 1910s style bellywarmer tie, ‘The Anderson’, made from 1900s cotton. RJW Shirts ‘Nassau Buttonlink’ 1911 style detachable collar. Vintage cotton uniform pullover shirt.

Vintage morning stripe trousers (1930s-40s).

SJC Balmoral boots.

Disney’s The Rocketeer wristwatch from 1991

Photo: Morgan Sette

interest, and the rest of the world has more of a cultural background to support said niche – for example, more Americans find an interest in hats because those western lids are embedded within their history, or how the traditional English chap would surely be amiss without a bowler atop his monocled noggin. Australia doesn’t really have that history or relationship with hats. But among those of us down here who look abroad for inspiration, or within some counter-cultures, I’d say they’re a bit more common than they may have been decades earlier.

Most hat brands in Britain stick to the tried and trusted trilbies, bowlers and Fedoras in browns, greens and blacks. Did you immediately set out to shake those traditions up?

From the start, a big drive for me was to make hats I wanted but couldn’t seem to find, and that particularly focused on colours. One of my early makes was a velour finish green felt, high-crown Homburg, trimmed with brown petersham ribbon around the crown and brim edge. At the time I couldn’t find anything like this, so I made it myself.

In my early making career, I chose contrasting colours, but I quickly found that not only did such styles lack versatility, but it also felt like this may have been alienating some people. I’ve since learned to be bold in less jarring, more harmonious ways; sometimes bold in design rather than overtly relying on colour to strike interest.

Is there a larger market abroad for your creations?

As I was first getting started, many of my early sales went overseas, but it’s certainly balanced out more recently to 50/50 domestic/international, and I’ve been getting more interest from the UK lately too.

I’m quite fond of the ‘adventure pulp’ aesthetic, so I’m glad to have had the pleasure of making hats for a few modern-day explorers, including Egyptologist John Darnell and documentary filmmaker Trevor Wallace (who took his hat on an expedition to Siberia to dig up frozen mummies). Chap coverman Dandy Wellington is one of my favourite customers, and he’s always down for something more colourful.

In Britain, hat wearing has seen a resurgence, which The Chap is very pleased about. What is the general state of hat wearing among men in Australia?

I’d certainly like to think so, but I don’t think it’s ‘back’ in as big a way as it may be in North America, UK and Europe. I’d imagine it’s much like any niche

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Photo: Morgan Sette

these events off as being more for the milliners, and that broadly men don’t really wear hats to these things down here. Although I did make a teal Fedora with a contrast burgundy ribbon for a customer who debuted it at one of the Melbourne races – he got pretty close to the finals of the ‘best dressed men’ fashions-in-thefield competition, but I feel it’s particularly telling that most of the finalists weren’t even wearing hats!

Are you sticking to felt hats or do you have plans to move into Panama hats?

I have made a few Panamas, but not for quite some time. I find felt a lot easier to work with than straw, which can often seem to have much less ease and give than that of more pliable felts. I’ve more recently made the occasional duplex, which is a hat made with a contrasting crown and brim body, with the crown typically straw and the brim of felt. It’s a design which has actually been around since at least the 1910s, and gives off quite a sporty appearance!

I also have a passion for lightweight or summerweight felts. I absolutely think felt can be practical all year round. I also don’t line my hats (I simply am not a fan of crown liners), and I find this is justified by pushing the option of perforation/ventilation holes punched into the crown to allow the head to ‘breathe’, which I think is a really nice detail lacking from most modern factory-made pieces.

You have thankfully revived the Boss of the Plains hat, a particular favourite of mine.

How much demand is there for these among your customers?

Classic western and heritage Americana designs are always quite favourable, and in many ways timeless pieces which can be worn just as well with more casual or street style, as they can be with more tailored and traditional looks. Often wider seems better, and I often dream of having easier access to felt hat bodies which are large enough that I never have to consider ‘will I have enough for a good width brim here?’

I think the average person might find the larger dimensions a little alienating, or won’t think it suits them, simply because they’re not comfortable with the shape (often because many people have become

In Britain, Henley Regatta and Royal Ascot are two annual events where hat wearing is ubiquitous. Are there any such events in Australia?

We have a few, but our main one is the Melbourne Cup – ‘The race that stops a nation’. I believe we celebrate Royal Ascot here too. I’ve always shrugged

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Penny, one of Blake’s loyal customers in the United States

Photo: Holly-Jo Photography, Los Angeles

Photo: Morgan Sette

too used to cheap mass-produced department store trilbies, with stingy brims and low crowns). However, creatives, and especially musicians, very much gravitate towards these styles.

including many which once belonged to a hatter who made hats for Warner Bros. in the early 20th century.

It’s definitely been a massive yet slow investment.

You have made bowler (or ‘coke’ hats). Any plans to make a top hat?

Indeed, I’ve made a handful in my time. Not many though, as few have requested it. I love a good bowler/derby/coke hat, but I prefer the vintage stiff and structured, yet thin and almost card-like felt of hundred-year-old-plus bowlers. Preferably unlined with a ventilated crown, and a sharp D’Orsay brim curl (that’s the kind of curl where the brim folds inwards at a 40° angle, rather than more contemporary curls, which have more of a curved angle and less of a sharp corner). I can, and have, made bowlers for those not quite as specific and picky as me!

As for toppers, unfortunately they demand very specific crown blocks to make, and it would be an expensive investment for an unclear demand.

I do have a single topper block which is only one size, very much a Lincoln style ‘stovepipe’ topper, and I’ve made one hat with it in a sandy coloured beaver felt with a slightly fuzzy finish, which serves as a bit of a flashy showpiece. I’d love to make more though, one day... n

Are the hats of southern Spain a big inspiration for you?

The sombrero cordobés is one shape I’m quite fond of.

It’s a wide-brimmed hat with a flat-topped crown – picture Zorro. I think of most hats I make as being traditionally men’s styles, but ultimately very unisex, but the sombrero cordobés is one I feel has a much stronger feminine accessibility. They often look nice in black felt with beautiful embroidered or woven trims, particularly with warm tones for contrast.

Where did you source all the necessary equipment to make your hats?

I’m incredibly fortunate to be less than a half-hour drive away from one of the world’s best block makers, Darryll Osborne of Hat Blocks Australia, so much of my standardised range and many of my specialised handtools have come from his workshop, and any repair or maintenance work is trusted to him.

I’ve also sourced easily two-thirds of my collection through lots imported from the United States,

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Mature Style

AN EXPLORATION OF STYLE David Evans on the enduring style of classic adventure wear, and where to acquire the contemporary gear that leaves plenty of world left to explore

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hy is it that explorers, outdoor types and adventurers always look so stylish? Even when exhausted and suffering, they exude an air of sartorial excellence that puts those of us who’ve had a bath, a good sleep and laundered our clothes completely to shame.

An element of rugged unkemptness looks good, as we see in those carefully styled and curated menswear fashion photoshoots in weekend style magazines. The models have expensively created stubble and/or artfully ruffled hair, as if they are hanging off the Eiger in a blizzard. They will be wearing the best bespoke tailoring rather than technical climbing clothing but, dammit, don’t they make those suits look good?

“This kit mustn’t fall apart on the first river crossing, crack when frozen, tear when abraded by the roughest rock face or rot in the leechinfested heat of the rainforest. Fastenings must be usable with frostbitten fingers and openings easily accessible, yet easily closed against rain and driven snow” 76

So, with that in mind, lets explore the central theme of this issue and see how we mere mortals, whose only adventure is catching the 07:35 train each morning (or setting up another Zoom meeting) can steal a moment of sartorial glory from the greats of exploration, adventure and those who love messing around outdoors in all weathers.

Those venturing out into the great outdoors face extremes of temperature, from subzero arctic to baking desert heat. They face constant damp or skin-cracking dryness. They need clothes that will deal with such extremes, keeping them warm (or cool) and dry. They mustn’t fall apart on the first river crossing, crack when frozen, tear when abraded by the roughest rock face or rot in the leech-infested damp heat of the rainforest. They must be easy to put on and take off and be as lightweight as possible.

Fastenings must be usable with frostbitten fingers and openings easily accessible, yet easily closed against rain and driven snow.

Such clothes must be well-designed and solidly made. In an age when we are (or should be) buying clothing which is sustainably made, the best outdoor wear is ideal as it’s made to last, rather than consigned to landfill after a few wearings or remain unworn, like (according to one survey)

nearly 40% of the clothes bought on our high streets. Buying good adventure wear means buying well: spending more, but buying less. Its reasonably classic, ageless styling means also that it isn’t subject to the transient ravages of fashion; a good climbing jacket will last and look good for many years, particularly when styled with effortless sprezzatura.

Where to find your adventurous look? Start with British brands. We Brits invented most outdoor pastimes, from climbing and skiing to exploring remote areas by land and sea, so needed clothes to enable us to do these things and survive.

The clothes had to keep us warm and dry, yet have ample pockets for flasks of whisky, Kendal Mint Cake and sandwiches. So the ultimate practical clothing came into being – and many British brands still specialise in such products.

Early waterproofs were oilskins; sailcloth daubed with tar, linseed oil and wax. The direct descendants of these are the waxed cottons of Barbour and Belstaff and cloths made by brands such as British Millerain, Halley Stevensons and TempleMoyle Mills, whose products are used by many clothing companies around the world. Early insulation came from furs and wool, and of course we still use wool and cashmere. Photographs of

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Shackleton’s men wearing hand-knitted roll necks and ganseys have inspired a recent boom in chunky knitwear, ideal for those exploring the backstreets of Shoreditch on a chilly day.

If we are to enjoy the world properly clothed and shod, we should respect the environment by wearing ethically produced kit made from recycled materials, or even use ‘pre-loved’ products. Some brands offer refurbished used gear or a free repair service (such as Gallox – see below). Used garments made from Ventile and waxed cottons are easily available from charity shops or online auction sites.

Most purchasers or collectors of outdoor wear will do nothing more adventurous than rush to the shops in the rain for a loaf of bread. The highest quality outdoor kit can be overkill; we don’t need it for 30 degree below conditions, which is where vintage outdoorwear, or modern garments based on older designs, are more suitable.

You don’t have to wear a bright orange arctic parka, more suited to Svalbard than Surbiton, to look cool and have the benefit of a well-designed practical garment. Vintage outdoor clothes, made from waxed cotton, Ventile or other cotton-based cloths like Grenfell cloth do the job perfectly well, while looking even more stylish than modern gear.

They were worn in an era when a man or woman didn’t mind a bit of discomfort. They would use woollen underwear with tweed mid layers and a wind and (reasonably) water resistant outer layer to do everything from deerstalking to climbing Everest.

Some modern brands, like Grenfell, still make clothes identical to those worn by outdoor types early in the last century. The Grenfell Shooter and Walker jackets are examples. I’ve owned both modern and vintage Grenfell Shooter jackets and they are virtually identical, yet both are practical and stylish.

And a well-used vintage piece can look quite superb, as can be seen from the photo (on previous page) of an old and much-loved Barbour Gamefair sent to me by wax hoarder @abritishjacket (on Instagram). This fine spun watertight fabric jacket was introduced in 1960, costing just £7, and first appeared at the Game Fair at Castle Howard in July 1960, where it created much interest. Woven specially for Barbour, it is very light in weight and though, naturally, not as tough and strong as the standard weight, wearers find that it gives good wear. Shooting men in particular liked it and, as you can see, it looks wonderful today: a greatlooking and very practical outdoor jacket. The patina of age looks superb, and although it may

slightly undermine a coat’s weather resistance, who cares when it looks so good?

Finally, the feature on Sir Ranulph Fiennes in this issue is well deserved. I had the pleasure of meeting him at an event organised by Marie Curie a couple of years ago. He has raised over £6m for that charity and is as generous with his time as he is brave and adventurous. His accounts of his adventures are remarkable, amusing and told with a very British self-deprecation.

RECOMMENDED PRODUCTS Here is a far from complete list of outdoor brands that I’ve tried myself or have seen and liked. I’ve included brands recommended to me on Instagram in response to a call for ideas, and others that have a claim to sustainability. There are many I haven’t space for, particularly many excellent US brands, so I hope to continue this discussion in a future column.

If you are a brand specialising in outdoor wear that has a story and is sustainably made, please get in touch with me through www.greyfoxblog.com Knitwear Stanley Biggs www.stanleybriggs.com Beacon & Armour www.beacon-armour.com Outdoor Jackets Barbour www.barbour.com Belstaff www.belstaff.co.uk Frahm www.frahmjacket.com Hilltrek www.hilltrek.co.uk The Workers Club www.theworkersclub.co.uk General Outdoor Wear Shackleton www.shackletonlondon.com Fortis clothing www.fortisclothing.co.uk Grenfell www.grenfell.com Outdoor brands claiming a sustainable approach Gallox www.gallox.co.uk Paramo www.paramo-clothing.com Patagonia www.eu.patagonia.com Finisterre www.finisterre.com Vintage True Grit Vintage www.etsy.com/TruegritvintageStore Rokit www.rokit.co.uk Ben’s Vintage Menswear www.ebay.co.uk/bensvintagemenswear Hornets www.hornetskensington.co.uk n

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Mature Style

LONGER FEATURES •

Champagne Charlie (p84) • Sir Richard Burton (p94) • British Rum (p102) • Cooking (p106) Hotel Review (p111) • Tango (p115) • Ton Up Boys (p120)

Photo: Soulstealer Photography

Interview

CHAMPAGNE CHARLIE Gustav Temple spends an afternoon sipping fizz with dapper chanteur, bon vivant, cabaret performer and host of the Candlelight Club Main portraits by Soulstealer Photography With thanks to Clayton Hartley, www.thecandlelightclub.com

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“When auntie Doris died, I was clearing out the house and I found this bag at the back of the wardrobe.

It contained a full white tie and tails outfit, top hat, scarf, gloves, the works.

And by some miracle it fits me like a glove. The top hat was in a box and the label said, Hope Brothers, Electric Avenue, Brixton”

hen your parents named you Champagne Charlie, was this because they were fans of the music hall performer George Leybourne?

I wouldn’t have thought at that time they had any idea who George Leybourne was! I don’t come from a musical or theatrical family at all. I am what you might call the black sheep of the family. I didn’t really take the name from George Leybourne at all, actually. The character I wanted to create was more along the lines of the Bright Young Things.

I wanted to bring it up to date and have a little more mischief in that era. The name came from a night in Kettners, where I was with a friend and she said, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could be those people who could go into any bar, restaurant or hotel and say, “Champagne!”

So I told this story at my next gig and called myself Champagne Charlie, and the audience shouted back “Champagne!” and it just stuck.

year I realised it wasn’t for me. I wanted a bit more spangles and feathers! So I did the musical theatre course and was in musical theatre for 20-odd years.

I’d always said that I’d love to have a band like the Temperance Seven or the Pasadena Roof Orchestra, and I got a gig at the Burgh Island Hotel, that beautiful shrine to Art deco, and we put the Bubbly Boys together for that. Then all the cabaret and hosting and all that followed on.

Were you already part of the vintage cabaret scene?

I’d always been a fan of the jazz of the twenties and thirties. I trained in musical theatre. In fact I started training as an opera singer, but after the first

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Photo: Soulstealer Photography

she died, he married auntie Doris. When Bob died in the sixties, all of his first wife’s and his stuff was still in the house when Doris died. I was clearing it out and I found this bag hanging at the back of the wardrobe. It contained a full white tie and tails outfit, top hat, scarf, gloves, the works. And by some miracle it fits me like a glove. I didn’t have any of it altered at all. The top hat was in a box and the label said, Hope Brothers, Electric Avenue, Brixton.

Who would have thought?

Have you seen a deal of gaiety throughout your noisy life?

I have, and one of the things that this business allows for is lots of travel, seeing lots of different parts of the country and the world, meeting lots of wonderful people.

What’s the farthest you’ve toured?

What’s furthest, Germany or Norway?

No idea. Is there a cabaret scene in those countries, like there is here?

There are scenes, but not as big as here, even in Germany, where they practically invented it.

I think that in the twenties Brixton was rather a well-to-do area.

Yes, in fact it was the first market street in London to have electric lights, hence the name. It was certainly a destination with lots of illuminations.

You’re wearing a rather splendid iteration of evening dress, Charlie. Is it all vintage?

It is, and there’s a very nice story that goes with this outfit. We had an auntie who died some 25 years ago, and she lived in a huge, detached art deco house in Edgware, which her husband Bob had built for his first wife in the 1930s, and then when

How much do you know about this nonuncle whose clothes you’re now wearing?

He was one of the secretaries for the T-T Motorcycle Races and that’s how he met Doris. Doris and my mother became very close friends, hence calling

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Photo: Soulstealer Photography

Champagne Charlie at The Chap Olympiad 2015. Photo: Xavier Buendia

her auntie Doris, even though she wasn’t actually a blood relative. She and her husband used to ride motorcycles in the 30s 40s and 50s; she was one of those incredibly eccentric characters, riding around on these motorbikes. When they brought in the crash helmet law, she declared that helmets were actually quite dangerous because your ears were covered and you couldn’t hear anything. But they didn’t enforce the law on the Isle of Man, so they shipped all their motorcycles to the Isle of Man and whenever they fancied a ride, they’d go over there and then come back home again, rather than wear a crash helmet in the rest of England. Eventually she bought herself a vintage TR4 sports car and drove that around until she was eighty.

So was there anything about that evening suit that felt special when you first put it on, as if you were infusing the spirit of auntie Doris’s husband. Do you know much else about him?

I do know that he ran one of the first electric radiogramme shops in Edgware. I picked up much more musical influences from Doris. She was a classically trained pianist and she paid for all my piano lessons and my musical theatre course. So she was massively influential on my musical career.

Is your repertoire exclusively composed of songs from the music hall era?

There are two strands to the repertoire. There’s the Bright Young Things, cheeky Charlie side, and we stick to the period between 1919 and 1939. When it comes to doing cabaret hosting and I can dress more flamboyantly and androgynously, then I take a range of songs from the twenties up to today.

Would you go as far as Kylie Minogue?

No! That age-old camp classic, along with Madonna, we don’t go there. It’s more things like David Bowie and Annie Lennox.

Have you ever sung songs by Marlene Dietrich?

Yes, we have, and Friedrich Hollander and the Kurt Weill songs. They’re tricksy pieces of music, mechanically put together like a well-oiled machine and you really have to get inside them.

What’s the current status of the cabaret world due to the Unpleasantness?

I don’t really know what’s going on out there. I know that a few venues are starting to open, but it

Photo: Soulstealer Photography

seems that for every two steps forward, they have to take three steps back. So anywhere where there is live sung performance is under scrutiny and restriction. Things can happen out-of-doors and there’s a move for things to happen indoors from 1st October. The Crazy Coqs at Brasserie Zedel is making a few bookings. But due to local lockdowns, you may get booked into a show out of town and then if that area goes into local lockdown, it gets cancelled. It’s always the same with the arts and the theatre; we’re always at the bottom of the list for any kind of help or support. It’s always sport that gets the first trials with live audiences.

and apparently I signed this 13-year-old boy’s programme. Then some years later, I was looking for a piano player and a friend of mine suggested this chap called Tom Carradine and we started working together. One day he produced this programme that he still had and he admitted to having been a little fan.

You mentioned Veuve Cliquot as your fave fizz. What is so special about ‘The Widow’?

Old Mother Veuve, I call her. It’s got a very particular flavour, what I would describe as a biscuit taste. Other brands of champagne just don’t quite have it, I’m afraid, even though Moet & Chandon was the brand that promoted the original Champagne Charlie.

Do you miss the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowds? How do you fulfil this need without an audience?

I don’t miss the smell of the crowd! But of course there is a slightly narcissistic element to anybody who performs. I spend some of my evenings dancing around the kitchen and singing to my partner, and he always says, ‘You need an audience!’ We’ve done some online performances, but you don’t get that interaction and spontanaiety with the audience. So it is a sad time. I suppose the only consolation is that we’re all in it together.

“In 2019 a lot of people in the vintage scene got very excited about the 2020s being like the Roaring Twenties, but I don’t think any of them expected the Crash of 1929 to happen before we’d even had the Roaring Twenties. We’ve gone straight to the Crash without any of the fun in between”

What have been the highlights of your career so far?

One of my absolute highlights was performing at the Albert Hall a few years ago. I was in a show working with a choreographer, Jenny Arnold, on the anniversary of the Battle of Britain, over three nights. There were eight of us hired to do dance routines to the orchestra. At one point I did a solo routine to Glenn Miller’s Moonlight Serenade to 5000 people over three nights.

The BBC decided to remove the lyrics to Land of Hope and Glory during the televised, audienceless Last Night of the Proms this year. Would you ever change the lyrics to a song from the early 20th century that may be considered offensive these days?

Yes, I would. I’ve made slight lyric tweaks to some of the twenties and thirties songs, to bring them up to date and make them slightly less offensive to today’s ears. I think it’s a considerate thing to do, though there are a lot of purists who might baulk at what I’m saying. I’m very much of the modern world and I love the vintage style, the vintage look and the music, but I think we’ve moved on to different values and different opinions. I think it would be a shame if some of the music got left behind because it might be considered un-PC. So if you can make a slight tweak to keep it alive, I don’t see what’s wrong with that.

So you have skills as a dancer as well as a singer?

Yes, when you go to musical theatre school, at least back then, you learned singing, dancing and acting.

Did you, like your ivory tickler Tom Carradine, have an entire career in musical theatre, before you became a cabaret performer?

Yes, I was on the stage; in fact there’s a funny story about my ‘stage husband’ that he won’t like me telling you. I am some years older than Mr. Carradine, and I was in a pantomime at the Belgrave Theatre in Coventry. There would always be a gaggle of children at the stage door to get your autograph,

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Photo: Clayton Hartley, The Candlelight Club

It’s funny, I remember in 2019 a lot of people in the vintage scene getting very excited about the 2020s being like the Roaring Twenties. But I don’t think any of them expected the Crash of 1929 to happen before we’d even had the Roaring Twenties. We’ve gone straight to the Crash without any of the fun in between. It’s a nice thought, isn’t it, that once we get out of this pandemic, and let’s hope they find a vaccine, there may be a sigh of relief, and people will want to roll back the rug and kick up their heels. Let’s hope so. Something has to die for something to be reborn. n

From what I understand, a lot of those songs were quite fluid anyway, with lyrics changing from region to region.

Exactly. There are two or three different versions of Irving Berlin’s Puttin’ On The Ritz, which is about the black communities in Harlem. Even at the time there were changes to the lyrics to ensure it didn’t offend anyone.

The 1920s was a golden age of creativity, music, literature and fashion, just after the Spanish Flu pandemic. Do you see any possibility of a new golden age springing from the ashes of the current Unpleasantness?

www.champagnecharliemusic.co.uk

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Photo: Clayton Hartley, The Candlelight Club

Biography

SIR RICHARD BURTON Chris Sullivan on the legendary explorer, soldier, translator, cartographer, orientalist, ethnologist, spy, diplomat, poet, geographer, expert fencer and sex obsessive Sir Richard Francis Burton, 1821-1890

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“Burton enlisted in the army of the East India Company because, as he put it, he was ‘fit for nothing but to be shot at for sixpence a day.’ While in the army he kept a gaggle of tame monkeys and hoped to learn their language, but gave up after learning ‘no more that 60 words’”

an you imagine that, in the not too distant past, a thoroughgoing rogue might stand up in his club in the Haymarket and, after far too many whiskeys, pronounce that he was off to discover a new country and, even though I’m sure that those who lived in said country knew of its existence, he would be applauded, funded, sent off amidst fanfare and acclaimed a hero before he even set foot on the boat.

One such voyager was the unreservedly splendid Richard Francis Burton who, notoriously unhinged, incredibly mercurial and enormously controversial, was not usually welcomed in a respectable Victorian household. He drank like a drain, smoked marijuana, imbibed opium and was blamed by associates of Algernon Swinburne for leading the poet amiss, precipitating his alcoholism

and his obsession with the writings of the Marquis de Sade.

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including an unexpurgated version of the Kama Sutra, The Perfumed Garden (the Arab Kama Sutra, basically) and The Arabian Nights. To publish some of his more excessive tomes and avoid prosecution, he formed, with Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot, the members-only Kama Shastra Society. Each of their works was sold subscription-only with a guaranteed 1000 print run.

Certainly considered pornographic, the famed Terminal Essay of the Nights attested to the practice of pederasty, which Burton claimed was widespread in an area of the southern latitudes he named the ‘Sotadic zone’, running eastward embracing Asia Minor, Mesopotania, Chaldaea, Afghanistan, Sind, the Punjab and Kashmir, China, Japan and Turkistan, and the South Sea Islands and The New World.

‘We must not forget,’ he wrote, ‘that the love of boys has its noble sentimental side. The Platonics as well as The Sufis or Moslem Gnostics held such affection, pure as ardent as the beau ideal which united in man’s soul with the creator.’

Add the fact that he measured the penis lengths of male inhabitants of all of the regions he stayed in, allegations of homosexuality (thoroughly illegal in Victorian England) reigned supreme. After

Burton was also uncommonly bright and extremely prolific, publishing 43 volumes on his explorations alone. He spoke 29 European, Asian and African languages and penned books about falconry, travel, fencing, human behaviour, sexual mores and ethnography. He translated and published some 30 works

“In the hour of imminent danger, he has only to become a maniac, and he is safe; a madman in the East, like a notably eccentric character in the West, is allowed to say or do whatever the spirit directs.

Add to this character a little knowledge of medicine, a moderate skill in magic, and you appear in the East to peculiar advantage”

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Sir Richard Burton and Lady Isabel Burton in their garden at Trieste

due investigation, I’d say he was a chap who would have sex with anyone and anything, and would have rogered the crack of dawn if he’d been been up early enough.

Even so, a tall dark, handsome and fearsomelooking man with a full Victorian moustache, Burton, on the surface is like some romantic character from a Boy’s Own annual, or a vintage Hollywood swashbuckling hero. But he was also an out and out oddball, to say the very least. Notoriously and completely obsessed with sex in its every incarnation, his travel writings tell much more about the sexual practices and techniques of the people he saw on his travels than the places he visited. One can only imagine this swarthy Victorian’s reaction on meeting exotic Asian ladies desirous of his attention.

Richard Francis Burton was born on 19th March 1821 in Torquay, to Irish born Lt Colonel Joseph Netterville Burton and Martha Baker, heiress of very wealthy squire Sir Richard Baker. As a child, he and his family lived in England, Italy and France, the boy for the most part tutored privately, where his incredible ability to learn languages quickly became apparent. During his adolescence, he acquired

French, Italian, Neapolitan, Latin and a host of dialects and, after a teenage romance with a Gypsy lassie, even picked up Romani.

He called himself “a waif, a stray… a blaze of light, without a focus,” and proclaimed “England is the only country where I never feel at home.”

Burton entered Trinity College, Oxford in 1840 where, always an outsider, he found himself at odds with other students; after one cad ridiculed his facial hair, Burton challenged him to a duel.

He studied Arabic, falconry and fencing and, after attending a steeplechase banned for all pupils, was expelled from the college. He often quoted from The Kasidah – a traditional Arabic poem that he passed off as a translation, though in fact had written himself: “Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but thy self expect applause.” He riled the Dons by speaking the real Latin, instead of the artificial English version, and, having learnt Greek from an Athenian merchant in Marseilles as a teenager, spoke Greek Romaically, with the accent of Athens – all of which showed his remarkable ear for language and staggering memory.

Burton enlisted in the army of the East India

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Company because, as he put it, he was “fit for nothing but to be shot at for sixpence a day.” So as a subaltern officer in the 18th Regiment of Bombay Native Infantry, he slipped off to what is now Pakistan to fight England’s war with the Sindh. While in the army, he kept a gaggle of tame monkeys and hoped to learn their language but gave up after learning “no more that 60 words”. He became fluent in Arabic, Hindi and Punjabi and more than proficient in Marathi, Sindhi, Telugo and Pashto. He participated in the culture and traditions of India so enthusiastically that his fellow soldiers reproached him for “going native.” His nickname was ‘Ruffian Dick’, for he was a “demonic and ferocious fighter who fought in single combat more enemies than perhaps any other man of his time.”

Such aptitude curried favour with Major General Charles Napier, then commander of the British forces in Sindh, who made him his preferred intelligence officer. Burton, now a Captain, was sent, disguised as a Muslim trader under the adopted alias of Mirza Abdullah, into the bazaars and cafes in search of information. One such mission in 1845

required going under cover and reporting on the goings on of a male brothel in Karachi frequented

by British soldiers. Burton’s overly detailed report of the bordello and its machinations strongly suggested he had taken a sizeable bite out of the forbidden fruit and availed himself thoroughly of the myriad services on offer. The report not only resulted in the demolition of the male knocking shops but also Burton’s army career, as his written testimony was forwarded to Bombay by an ill-disposed officer who’d hoped for the nonconformist’s dismissal and consequent disgrace. The effort to get rid of Burton failed but, now entirely cognisant of his damaged reputation, he returned to England, very ill and even more disconsolate.

For the next three years he lived with his mother and sister in Boulogne but, far from idle, smashed out four books on India. Burton, although quill in hand, was earnestly planning a visit to Mecca, which at the time was prohibited to all non-Muslims. The intrepid explorer, disguised as a Pathan – an Afghani Muslim – darkened his skin and donned Islamic robes and, now circumcised to

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prevent detection, travelled to Cairo and then on to the Suez, Medina. At great personal risk, he then took the famed bandit route to Mecca, where he might have at any time been apprehended by cutlass wielding brigands who’d slit a traveller’s throat just as soon as look at them. Burton fended off such outlaws with pistol and sword.

In the so-called sacred city he further endangered his life by sketching and measuring the mosque and holy Muslim shrine, the Ka’bah.

During his visit it was claimed that, one night, when he lifted his robe to urinate rather than squatting as an Arab does, he was spotted by a local, and in order to avoid capture, killed him. Burton denied the accusation, underlining the fact that had he killed the boy he would almost certainly have come a cropper.

Years later, when a man of the cloth asked about the episode Burton replied, “Sir, I’m proud to say I have committed every sin in the Decalogue.”

Yet Burton’s work was unimpeachable. His pilgrimages to El-Medinah and Mecca (1855–56) were hailed as a highly regarded commentary on

Muslim life and manners. “The more haughty and offensive he is to the people, the more they respect him; a decided advantage to the traveller of choleric temperament,” wrote Burton, revealing his modus operandi. “In the hour of imminent danger, he has only to become a maniac, and he is safe; a madman in the East, like a notably eccentric character in the West, is allowed to say or do whatever the spirit directs. Add to this character a little knowledge of medicine, a moderate skill in magic, and you appear in the East to peculiar advantage.”

But for Ruffian Dick this just wasn’t enough, so he prepared a new and equally dangerous solo excursion to the equally forbidden East African city of Harer, Somalia, and became the first European to cross the threshold of this Muslim citadel without being put to death in grizzly fashion. The Somalis believed a prophecy that the city would fall into ruin if a Christian entered.

In Burton’s day, the concept of discovering the source of the White Nile was all the rage. Burton, with three officers from the British East India

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Company, intended to travel through land, but they were attacked by 200 furious locals armed with machetes and spears. Burton was felled by a wellaimed javelin that went through one cheek and out the other, leaving pronounced scars. His comrades either killed or captured, Burton was forced to return to England.

After just a few months in recovery, Burton was off again, having volunteered to fight the Russians in the Crimea. He was part of Beatston’s Horse, a regiment of indigenous fighters in the Dardanelles who, after refusing to obey orders, disbanded while the ever-recalcitrant Burton was named in the consequent enquiry and further prejudiced against.

Even though he still had the source of the Nile firmly in the front of his mind, he proposed to Isabel Arundell and, despite her father solidly refusing the union due to Burton’s irascibility, his lack of funds and his non Catholic status (on the quiet he’d become a Sufi Muslim), she acquiesced.

first Europeans to reach Lake Tanganyika. On their way back, after a rancorous disagreement, Speke, still blind and half deaf, left his companion and travelled north and, on July 30th, reached the great lake that he named Lake Victoria. Although disputed by many as the source of the Nile at the time, it was honoured by the Royal Geographic Society.

The affair sparked a long, heated and very public animosity between Burton and Speke. Speke claimed that Burton had poisoned him on the excursion, while Burton claimed that Speke’s measurements and calculations were inaccurate.

Speke died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds while hunting on Set 15th 1864. The coroner ruled out suicide but most others did not.

In 1863 Burton co-founded the Anthropological Society of London with Dr. James Hunt, “to supply travellers with an organ that would rescue their observations from the outer darkness of manuscript and print their curious information on social and sexual matters” via their journal, Anthropologia.

In August 1869 Burton sailed to the United States, crossed the Missouri River and on to Salt Lake City by mail coach, to satiate his unquenchable thirst for knowledge of sexual practise. On this occasion he’d journeyed to investigate the polygamy of the Mormons. However, having witnessed just drab day-to-day polygamy and not the expected wild orgies, Burton left the area unimpressed.

This was the last of Burton’s big escapades.

He married Isabel and was appointed consul at Fernando Po in the island of Bioko in Equatorial Guinea, Central Africa, from where he explored the West African coast. His next posting was as consul for Damascus, where his efforts to keep the peace between the Muslim, Jewish and Christian populace often incurred enmity. Typically, Burton ruffled more than a few feathers and, in 1871, was transferred to Trieste, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a position that required little diplomacy.

Burton was awarded a knighthood on 5th February 1886 by Queen Victoria herself. Just four years later, he died of a heart attack in Trieste on 20th October 1890, aged 69. Isabel burned many of her husband’s papers and manuscripts after his passing, including extensive journals and a new provocative translation of The Perfumed Garden to be called The Scented Garden. Universally condemned, she later claimed that her husband had spoken to her from the grave and asked her to burn his writings. The couple are buried in a remarkable Bedouin tentshaped tomb in Mortlake Cemetery, Richmond, London. n

“Isabel burned many of her husband’s papers and manuscripts after his passing, including extensive journals and a new provocative translation of The Perfumed Garden to be called ‘The Scented Garden’. Universally condemned, she later claimed that her husband had spoken to her from the grave and asked her to burn his writings”

It took Burton another six months to find a relatively safe route into the interior, which, with Lieutenant John Hanning Speke, he followed on 27th June, 1857, heading west in search of the lake or lakes. The outward journey was plagued with tribulations – valuable supplies were stolen – and both men were beset by a deadly assortment of tropical diseases, snakes, big cats and hostile tribesmen. Speke was rendered blind and deaf in one ear for some of the journey, while Burton was so ill from malaria that he was unable to walk and had to be carried by bearers. Nonetheless, in February 1858, much the worse for wear, they became the

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Drink

BRITISH RUM Gustav Temple nosedives into rums that don’t come from where they used to come from, because they are either made or refined right here on these craggy shores

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“Until 1970, the Royal Navy issued every one of its crew members with a daily tot of rum. Ironically, the very brands that were served on board were never distilled in Britain in the first place and their popularity in the taverns was purely based on their association with Naval swigging”

ver the last decade or so, rum has been slowly shaking off its old reputation as something to swill in discotheques mixed with Coca-Cola.

But only recently has rum begun to be seen as a ‘serious’ drink such as single malt whisky, bearing the unique imprint of the distillery and year of production. Unfortunately, the very brands that first exported rum to Britain from countries like Cuba and Jamaica are proving rather sluggish in catching up with the new vogue for ‘sipping’ rums, to be drunk after swirling the glass, plunging one’s nose into it and declaring how powerful the cinnamon notes are. Brands like Captain Morgan, and more recently

Sailor Jerry, have been shoved along the shelves in most pubs and bars by Kraken, a heavily marketed

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brew that declares its bottling origins as simply ‘The Caribbean’.

But this is no bad thing, for it has paved the way for more adventurous experiments in the distillation of rum, as well as the import of premium brands from further afield than the Caribbean, such as Dom Papa from the Phillippines, a rum so complex in flavour that it leaves most imbibers speechless.

Since rum is not subject to any form of appellation of origin, it can, like gin, be made anywhere in the world. And now it is beginning to be distilled in dear old Blighty, with some surprisingly excellent results. This makes perfect sense, what with the centuries-old association between rum and the Royal Navy, which, until 1970, issued every one of its crew members with a daily tot of rum. Ironically, the very brands that were served on board, such as Pusser’s and Captain Morgan, were never distilled in Britain in the first place and their popularity in the taverns was purely based on their association with Naval swigging.

Now there are several new distilleries on these shores, many of whom carry out the entire distillation and maturing process, and they all seem determined to make British rum into something quite distinct from its imported forebears.

We have conducted copious sampling exercises to determine which of the new British rum brands are worthy of a chap’s tumbler. These rums should all be taken neat, or with a couple of cubes of ice. Should you wish to make rum cocktails, we recommend that you stick to your dusty old bottle of Bacardi for those.

its small 200-litre stills on site, because larger commercially available stills are too big to guarantee a quality product.

The result of the union between the great explorer and the great distiller is Great British Rum. TASTING NOTES: Triple-distilled from 100% pure sugarcane molasses, the powerful flavour begins with aromas of orange, caramel and spiced Christmas cake, leading to flavours of tobacco, vanilla, milk and dark chocolate, with a hint of liquorice on the death.

BRISTOL BLACK SPICED RUM 42% ABV £40 Bristol Spirits is ideally located in the port city long associated with seafaring to the Caribbean. Head honcho John Barrett started out ageing cognac, Armagnac and Calvados in English cellars, and was also one of the first Britons to import barrels of rum and age them in the UK. Ordinary rum can take less than a day to ferment but Barrett gives them six to eight weeks, allowing for complex flavours to develop. Distillation is crucial because each still is different, especially the old pot stills used for his rums. The approach is more methodical than the modern micro-distillery approach, evident from the lack of bearded, tattooed types on the branding and the absence of silly names on the labels. What you see is what you get with Bristol Black Spiced Rum – and what you get is a rather wonderful Christmassy spirit that you absolutely must hide from your auntie Doris after lunch.

GREAT BRITISH RUM 40% ABV £40 During the epic Transglobe Expedition, Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ team became the first to circumnavigate the surface of the globe from pole to pole. On December 30th 1979, their ship, the M.V. Benjamin Bowring, was stationed at 62.17 degrees South, 15.39 degrees East, on a bearing of 220 degrees, when Oliver Shepard came up with a brilliant idea. No matter where they were in the world, they would always find time to toast their accomplishments. Each and every single day, the team raised a toast high into the air. “To the expedition. To friends. To family back home.” The 17:30 Club was born and still exists to this day.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ next expedition was to find a British distiller who could create a rum worthy of the 17:30 Club. That man was Dr John Walters, the first human to distil rum in England.

Dr John’s English Spirit Distillery customises all of

TASTING NOTES: Christmas has come early is the

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first impression, with hints of mince pies and icing sugar. Then the mulled wine notes kick in, laced with cinnamon, cloves and orange zest. The palate offsets the sweetness with lemon zest, aniseed and peppermint, with hints of Latakia pipe tobacco.

be real rum, real flavour, natural ingredients and a quality-tasting liquid.” One of the results in their range is Cut Smoked Rum, which uses 100% threeyear-old Jamaican rum, bottled at 40% ABV. The smokiness comes from American oak chips burnt in a furnace to release the sweet oakwood fumes, before the Jamaican rum is slowly added. Arabian coffee beans and tobacco extract have already been added to the spirit, which is left in oak barrels to mature. The end result is a smoky old rum that you could almost put in your briar and set light to.

MOONCURSER 37.5% ABV £25.00 What place could be more evocative of pirates, smuggling and bottles of rum being whisked from the holds of shipwrecks than Cornwall? The Cornish Distilling Co, based in Bude, produces a modest range of rums including Mooncurser – the nickname given to smugglers who operated out of Cornwall’s hidden coves in the dead of night. Unlike many other brands, the Cornish Distilling Co ferments, distils and bottles all their rum on site. With a background in biochemistry and lifeguarding, head distiller Tom Read started the line in 2017 with Kalkar, an awardwinning Cornish rum and coffee spirit made using only four ingredients. A white rum and a spiced rum followed, before the launch of Mooncurser, notable for being made in an ‘iStill’ (don’t ask).

TASTING NOTES Notes of Swan Vestas spark off an intense flavour, reminiscent of a peaty single malt more than a rum, leading to fiery woodiness balanced out by coffee beans and vanilla.

RUMBULLION! 42.6% ABV £40 From 10-year-old British drinks brand Ableforth’s, best known for their Bathtub Gin, comes this eye-catching rum, in a bottle wrapped in brown paper and dripping with sealing wax. Seeking its inspiration directly from the Royal Navy grog tub tradition, Rumbullion! bears a hand-drawn illustration of same with the motto “The Queen, God Bless Her”. The label also informs us that “A secret recipe was followed, and the Professor finished his hearty tipple with a handful of cinnamon and cloves and just a hint of cardamom.” Naturally, chaps are not taken in by this faux-quaint-oldeworlde branding, so what is the actual drink inside this curious packaging? A base of high-proof young Caribbean rum has been flavoured with Madagascan vanilla and citrus peel, with the further addition of cloves, cassia and a hint of cardamom, making for a deeply spicy, fiery grog, hearty on the nose and steadying on the nerves.

TASTING NOTES: Starting notes of cinnamon, vanilla and caramel, followed by warm nutmeg, orange, cassia and oak. The death delivers hints of black coffee, root ginger and pepper.

CUT SMOKED RUM 40% ABV £25.00 Rum specialist Chris Hare is the chap behind The Cut Rum range, the spirit being produced at the Worthy Park distillery in Jamaica, with everything else conducted in their distillery in Brighton. “We wanted a brand that had no pirates, no sea monsters, no pin-up girls, no ‘spirit-based spiced drink’,” is Hare’s mantra. “It had to

TASTING NOTES: Sweet Madagascan vanilla with clove and cinnamon spices, supported by intense orange peel, leads to rich sugars and spices, orange oil, clove, honey and cola cubes. Creamy vanilla with dark spices on the finishing line. n Olly Smith is setting a new world record for swimming laps around Wine Island and will be back in the Spring

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Let’s talk about the gravy. The best gravy is always made from the meat juices. I’m not saying you can’t add a few gravy granules to supplement it, but the base flavour should start with the meat juices and build up from there

Food

Cooking for Chaps Nicole Drysdale learned to cook from a sheaf of recipes found in the attic bequeathed by her grandmother. She shares her tips for the perfect roast Feel free to share your creations with Nicole on Instagram @nicolethechap

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s a self taught home cook, freelance recipe developer and food stylist for the past 10 years, as well as having four little chaps to look after (in some countries I would be worth many camels), my love of food came to me from a skipped generation.

My mother was and still is a terrible cook, although she does make a proper, and rather salty, Scottish chicken and barley broth. But my father’s mother, Jane Drysdale, worked as a cook at a large country estate just outside Edinburgh for her whole life. Her husband was a gardener on the estate, so they were given a house to live in, where they tended a large vegetable garden.

Sadly I never met Jane, as she passed away a month before I entered the world, but my father used to tell me about her, and bring down from the attic Jane’s big red carpet bag, which was filled with her handwritten recipe notebooks.

Grandma Jane’s notebooks have inspired me to write a recipe book. My first task is to try and decipher the beautiful handwriting, and then to recreate the recipes and update them if necessary.

The recipes I plan to bring you here will be a mixture of Jane’s and mine. I shall start with something every chap should know how to make, at any time of the year:

THE PERFECT SUNDAY ROAST It is all about timings. Rather than one big recipe, it’s more like five or six small recipes all at once. Plan and prepare ahead to make things easy for yourself, and get someone else to wash the dishes, of which there will be many.

The thing I love about doing a roast is the variety of cuts possible. Beef, chicken, turkey, pork, ham or lamb, and a huge range of options for the vegetables.

My roasts always include potatoes, mostly roasted but sometimes dauphinoise. Then a variety of parsnips, carrots, broccoli, red cabbage, sprouts, cauliflower cheese and, if I’m doing a summer roast (yes there is such a thing), then I would do roasted tomatoes on the vine with a baked ham and green beans. A roast is so unbelievably versatile that it can suit the most formal family occasion to a casual Sunday lunch for two. I personally couldn’t have a roast without Yorkshire puddings and horseradish, though some purists only serve horseradish with beef, but for me it can spice up any joint of meat.

Let’s talk about the gravy. The best gravy is always made from the meat juices. I’m not saying you can’t add a few gravy granules to supplement it, but the base flavour should start with the meat juices and build up from there. In the recipes overleaf, I shall go into as much detail as you’ll need to create the perfect roast, with a suitable range of side dishes, for any occasion.

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Roast Topside of Beef

Roast Potatoes

Serves 4 (with leftovers for sandwiches)

Serves 4

Prep Time: 10 Minutes Cooking Time: 1 Hour 25 Minutes Plus 30 Minutes Resting

Prep Time: 10 minutes Cooking Time: 40-50 minutes

Ingredients 1.5kg joint of topside of beef Drizzle of olive oil 2 Sticks of Celery 2 Carrots 1 onion 5 cloves of garlic 2 sprigs of rosemary 2 sprigs of thyme 1 Small glass of red wine 1 Tbsp cranberry sauce or blackcurrant jam 1 Tbsp plain flour 750ml beef stock Salt and pepper Method 1. Remove the beef from the fridge at least 1 hour before cooking. Pre-heat oven to 180.

2. Chop all the vegetables into large chunks and set aside.

3. Take a roasting tray and place it over the stove on a high heat. Season the beef.

4. Drizzle the olive oil into the roasting tray and sear the meat on all sides. Remove to a plate and place all the vegetables in the roasting tray. Turn off the heat and coat the vegetables in the oil.

5. Return the beef to the tray, add a splash of water on the bottom and place in the pre-heated oven (uncovered) for 1 hour 20 minutes for nicely a pink joint. Allow for longer cooking time if desired.

6. Remove the beef from the tray and cover in foil to rest, while making the gravy. Allow to rest for 30 Minutes.

7. Place the tray over a medium heat on the stove and add the flour. Stir for 5 minutes until the flour has been absorbed by the juices. Add the cranberry/jam and combine. Add the red wine and the beef stock, give it a good stir (mush the veg up a bit) and allow to simmer for approx 25 minutes or until thickened.

8. Take a saucepan and pour the gravy through a sieve, squashing all the juices out of the vegetables.

9. Keep the gravy on a low heat until ready to serve.

10. Carve the beef into thin slices. Serve with the gravy, Yorkshire puddings and roast vegetables.

Ingredients 8-10 medium sized Maris Piper or King Edward Potatoes Goose Fat Salt Sea salt (to serve) Dusting of plain flour Couple of sprigs of rosemary Method 1. Pre-heat the oven to 180.

2. Bring a large saucepan of salted water to the boil.

Peel the potatoes and chop in half, or thirds if large.

It’s always good to have a selection of different sizes to suit everyone.

3. Pour the goose fat into a large deep-sided oven tray and place in the pre-heated oven.

4. Place the potatoes into the boiling water and cook for 8-10 minutes. Drain and put back in the saucepan.

5. Rough up the potatoes by shaking them around in the pan until the edges are fluffed up. Sprinkle with the flour and give them another shake. Season.

6. Place the potatoes into the hot fat, turning so they are coated all over. Roast in the oven, turning every 15 minutes, until they are beautifully golden and crispy.

This should take 35-45 minutes. Sprinkle with sea salt and serve immediately.

Brussels Sprouts with Bacon

Roast Honey Carrots

Serves 4

Serves 4

Prep Time: None Cooking Time: 25 Minutes

Prep Time: 5 Minutes Cooking Time: 35 Minutes

Ingredients 10oz/300g brussels Sprouts 4 Rashers of streaky bacon 1 Drizzle of olive oil Small knob of butter Salt and pepper Method 1. Chop the bacon into small pieces and fry in the olive oil until slightly crispy. Remove with a slotted spoon and keep to the side.

2. Fry the brussels sprouts in the bacon fat. If small, keep whole, otherwise cut in half. Once they have started to brown slightly, add a splash of water and fry for 15 minutes, stirring regularly, adding more water if they start to burn.

3. Once cooked return the bacon to the pan, along with a knob of butter. Cook for another couple of minutes.

Season and serve.

Yorkshire Puddings Serves 4 (Makes 8) Prep Time: 5 Minutes Cooking Time: 20 Minutes

Ingredients 7 Oz/200g plain flour 200ml whole milk 4 Eggs Salt Vegetable oil Method 1. Pre-heat oven to 190. Pour 1cm of vegetable oil in each hole of a Yorkshire pudding tin (or deep muffin tin).

2. In a large bowl, sieve in the flour from a height. Add the eggs and beat together to incorporate.

3. Gradually add the milk, getting rid of any lumps. Season.

4. Once the oil is very hot, place the tray over a flame on the hob.

5. Quickly pour the mixture into each hole. The easiest way is to transfer the mixture from the bowl into a pouring jug.

6. Once filled, place the tray back into the oven for approx 15 minutes, or until risen and golden brown.

Ingredients 6 Medium carrots Drizzle of olive oil Drizzle of honey Couple of sprigs of fresh thyme Juice of half a lemon Salt and pepper Method 1. Pre-heat oven to 180. Peel the carrots and cut them in half lengthways.

2. Place the carrots in a roasting tin and drizzle with olive oil. Season and place in the oven to 25 minutes.

3. Remove from the oven, give them a toss and drizzle over the honey, lemon juice and thyme.

4. Place back in the oven for a further 10 minutes or until cooked through and nicely browned.

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Review

STRAND PALACE HOTEL Gustav Temple pays a visit to an eerily deserted London, where the art deco Strand Palace Hotel provides a welcome billet

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“A sign on the grand front doors insists on guests entering via the tradesman’s entrance on a side street and wearing a face mask when approaching the Perspex screens on reception.

Welcome to coronavirus London, sir”

pon our return from a three-day visit to London in late summer, I asked my teenage children what their favourite part of the trip was. “The hotel!” they both said in unison. “What, better than the Science Museum, Tate Modern, that weird pub in Soho and seeing your two uncles?” There was no question about it, the Strand Palace Hotel won hands down, and this was not surprising.

Having lived in London for over 20 years, mostly in the sorts of affordable boroughs of little or no cultural interest, it was quite something to

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be sleeping bang slap in the middle of the capital.

Strand Palace Hotel is situated in the middle of Strand (there is no ‘the’), conveniently opposite two historic landmarks: Simpsons restaurant and Laird Hatters. Or rather, they would have been convenient had they been open. Pandemic London operates on a sort of half life, like a city still under construction, waiting for the lights to be switched on. Oddly, the relentless building works are the only feature not to have ceased, and in some quarters one feels like the visitor to an over-budgeted Olympic park in a country that no-one is allowed to visit.

With not much to do but wander around seeing what is open, one’s billet assumes a greater importance than usual, so we were fortunate to have chosen Strand Palace, built in 1907 and expanded during the 1920s with Art Deco flourishes by Oliver Bernard, still visible today.

Some of the original fixtures captured the period so floridly that they were transferred to the V&A Museum in 1969 for safekeeping, but the current foyer still seeps Art Deco from every corner; but more the Deco of the Starship Enterprise as redesigned by Le Corbusier.

The foyer in the middle of August would normally be bustling with visitors from every corner

of the globe, but today there are only one or two bemasked figures dotted about, making the sleek space look even more cavernous. A sign on the grand front doors insists on guests entering via the tradesman’s entrance on a side street and wearing a face mask when approaching the Perspex screens on reception. Welcome to coronavirus London, sir.

Our two adjoining rooms had one of those doors used to comedy effect in countless Hollywood movies from the fifties; in our case it provided a suitable barrier between teenage impulses to make the room as messy as possible and ensure the television is never switched off. Next door, entertainment was provided by the view through the C of Strand Palace on the huge metal sign, of Lowry-like figures lurking at bus stops in the rain during the daytime, and at night drunken women screaming with laughter on the back of tuk tuks. The former induced reflective recollections of pre-pandemic times spent in Simpsons-in-the-Strand and Laird Hatters; the latter held no meaning whatsoever.

Dining is offered in Haxells Restaurant, where a simple, reduced but still serviceable menu is provided by more people in masks. The waiting staff have cleverly learned to use only their eyes to convey the gamut of emotions required to make

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guests feel as it everything is normal. A quick step outside into Covent Garden, a mere hundred yards from Strand Palace, reveals that everything is far from normal. A zone that would normally be absolutely packed with tourists in the middle of August has the perpetual air of a very sober three o’clock in the morning, with just a handful of people taking lunch and watching the street entertainers struggle to earn a few bob. It should be a luxury, to be able to enjoy this London with all the people removed, but knowing the true cost of this privilege makes it a pyrrhic victory.

During the Second World War, Strand Palace Hotel played a key role, billeting U.S. servicemen, accepting ration vouchers in its restaurants and turning its basement into an air raid shelter. Regular dances, open to the public, continued during the Blitz, offering a welcome respite to war-weary Londoners. The U.S. Army later commissioned the hotel as an official R&R residence for its officers. There is no realisitc comparison to be made between WWII and the current pandemic, but it is refreshing to see Strand Palace Hotel continuing to provide a welcoming haven from a world outside that is not behaving as one would prefer it to. n

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Music

Time to Tango At a time when International travel, like today, was not so easy, the Tango brought erotic Latin-Mexican mores within one’s grasp and was the height of glamorously louche adventure, says Chris Sullivan

“One of the best phrases to describe Tango belongs to one of the greatest poets of tango, Enrique Santos Discépolo, who wrote: ‘El tango es un pensamiento triste que se baila’ (‘Tango is a sad thought that is danced’). The story of Tango is an altogether international one”

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s we are all aware, this new social distancing edict deems discotheques, ballrooms and dancehalls closed for the foreseeable future. This doesn’t mean, however, that one has to consign one’s dancing shoes to the back of the wardrobe, as there are other infinitely more enchanting avenues to explore. The Tango, for

example, is a dance that one might enjoy with one’s significant other in the comfort of one’s living room, and entails dancing and practising in a way that is far more beneficial for your wellbeing than couple’s yoga or meditation. The prefect antidote to these unusual times, Tango is a dance form with a most beguiling past.

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“One of the best phrases to describe Tango comes from one of the greatest poets of Tango, called Enrique Santos Discépolo, who wrote: ‘El tango es un pensamiento triste que se baila’ (‘Tango is a sad thought that is danced’). The story of Tango is an altogether international one.

In 1890 Argentina was a sparse under-populated country some 40 times the size of the UK. So at the turn of the century the country opened its doors to immigrants from Spain, Poland, Russia, Britain and particularly Italy. With them they brought their dances – waltzes and mazurkas – and mixed them up with the Cuban Habanera to create a new dance style, the milonga – known as poor man’s habanera.

According to sources legion, the dance was honed by the Gauchos – tough cow herders who’d been involuntarily pushed to the city after Generación del ochenta (the period in Argentine history from 1880 to 1916), which split Las Pampas, the countryside, into private property. This legislation was intended to connect Argentina with what they regarded as, ‘civilization’. Thus, the gaucho lost his habitat and his job, so off he went to cause a bit of mischief in the big city. No different from the cowboys of the Wild West, gauchos were the top dogs on the mayhem block, as tough as old boots, and their game was visteo (knife fighting training), cockfighting and pimping and, last but not least, Tango.

Soon these men spawned imitators – poor young kids from the slums who carried a short throwing knife under the lapel of their jacket – who’d seen the Europeans waltzing around the dance floors with ladies, so they absorbed the conceit with no amount of glee and gave it a rather erotic spin. They would take their woman to dance and wrap themselves around her like a boa constrictor, completely united in an intimate embrace.

In Lunfardo, the dialect of Buenos Aires, the word for Italian is tano, shortened from neapolitano (Neapolitan), who brought with them a melodic and lyrical style of violin that is a key component in the utterly unique Tango. A thorough marriage of outside influence, the emblematic instrument of the Tango, the bandoneón (accordion) was brought to Buenos Aires by German sailors, the rhythm a bequest of black slaves while the lyrics echo the heart-rending lifeblood of flamenco.

By 1900 the aforementioned émigrés, mostly single men from Spain and Italy, numbered over two million. Most suffered extreme penury and, in their desperation, formed gangs, who lived nefariously in the brothels where Tango was king. Esteemed Argentine writer Jose Luis Borges claimed that Tango was ‘born in the brothel’.

As always, whether it be jazz, rap, blues or Tango, such shenanigans and their venues, no

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Š Rko/Kobal/Shutterstock

Juan Carlos Copes and MarĂ­a Nieves dancing the 'Copes' style of Tango

Apaches on the Rue de Lappe in Paris

Maria Nieves &Juan Carlos Copes

matter how dangerous, will always attract the curious men of letters such as Sr. Borges, as well as the well-heeled who went in search of a quick thrill. And it was these rich young men and women who further pollinated Tango. Many studied in Europe or went on the Grand Tour and some, not surprisingly, had learned to dance the Tango in the dens of iniquity in Buenos Aires. These elegant young chaps strutted their stuff, and the Parisians, especially, lapped it up.

Dancer Maurice Mouvet claimed he was the first Frenchman to dance the Tango in Paris at the Café des Ambassadeurs in 1908 with his partner Leona. He claims that a gang of South American lads showed him the moves at Club Maxim.

Paris went Tango crazy. It was especially loved by ladies who couldn’t wait to get on the dancefloor and get close into the man of their choosing. Tango dance schools flourished. Every neighbourhood had a club that turned into a Tango venue, such as Le Balajo, on the notorious gang enclave Rue de Lappe in the Bastille. The famous Apache dance – named after the Parisian semi-gangs who spoke ‘la langue verte’, a mystifying argot, dressed in cloth caps, neckerchiefs and cummerbunds that contained their lock knives – was the ‘Tango’ of Parisian street culture, essentially made to look like a physical attack.

Soon the Tango craze spread to the rest of Europe. It came to Britain in 1910, where it became

the mainstay of afternoon tea dances (The Café de Paris in Leicester Square had an afternoon Tango session until the 1990s) while clubs such as Ciro’s behind the National Gallery led with it. The craze was the favoured dance of the liberated groovy fashionista, especially the queer artistic element. It was camp, dramatic, indelicate and might have been created for attention seekers. It was big in London’s first nightclub, The Cave Of The Golden Calf, awash with another South American import – the then entirely legal cocaine.

In other words, Tango was the entire rage everywhere, darling.

Hotels such as The Savoy soon offered Tango dances in the afternoons from 3 until 6pm, while Street urchins danced the Tango on London street corners for coins; married couples gave it a go in pubs until the mania for Tango was blamed for low enlistment into The Territorial Army.

The trend lulled during WW1 but as soon as Rudolf Valentino, dressed as a Gaucho, delivered a sultry tango in The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse (1921) it was off again and attracted millions more adherents. Juan Carlos Copes, born in 1931, and María Nieves, hatched three years later, hit the zeitgeist head on, having lived with Tango from birth. They met at a milonga, danced all night and found they had something very special indeed.

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Tango at an afternoon tea dance in London, 1920s

Maria Nieves

“We worked beautifully together,” says Juan Copes. “We created a new style that came from both of us. I was slow and she was quick, so we merged elements and it became a popular Tango technique known as The Copes Style.”

All was going well for the pair and Tango itself. But when the President was deposed in a coup d’état in 1955, the new military junta discouraged anything-nationalist – including Tango – and encouraged the importation of music from abroad, such as rock ‘n’ roll, cumbia, country and pop.

Gatherings of more than three people, including dances of any kind, were banned, in an attempt to apprehend political agitation.

“We were thrown out of the Atlanta club, where we’d danced for years,” sighs María in the film Our Last Tango. “But Juan was obsessed with Tango. He knew it could be big in places other than Argentina. He wanted it to be accepted like jazz and that was his dream.’

In 1955 Juan and María teamed up with Astor Piazzolla, who fused elements of jazz and classical in his compositions, and they toured Central America, Venezuela, Brazil, Mexico and Cuba. Often performing breakneck Tango, replete with spins and dips on a metre-square high table, they went on to massive success in Puerto Rico, followed by shows in New York, Chicago and Washington.

During the 1980s, the pair created and starred in the Tony Award-winning Argentina, which ran for years on Broadway, but the couple now only speak to each other when absolutely necessary. “We danced together for 50 years and never imagined it would end,” laments Nieves. “I would like him to be my friend but that cannot be.”

Tango is all about such emotional drama, tears and remorse.

Today Tango soirees and classes are in abundance all over the world, from Dubrovnik to Devon.

UK aficionados include Siouxsie Sioux, Robert Elms and Clive Anderson, while London’s Porchester Hall hosts a huge Tango festival and competition each year in June; now postponed to the winter, it is a real demonstration of Tango excellence.

Thus the time might well be nigh to roll back the carpet and learn to Tango with one’s significant other. I can think of worse things to do at home during such times as these. n Six of the best Tango recordings: 1. The Last Tango in Paris – Gato Barberi 2. Escualo – Astor Piazzolla 3. Milonga del Angel – Astor Piazzolla 4. La Yumba – Osvaldo Pugliese 5. Tango Santa Maria – Gotan Project 6. Tres Amigos – Anibal Troilo y Alberto Marino

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Motoring

The Ton Up Boys Sophia Coningsby on the 1960s youth cult that congregated on their motorcycles around one café in North London

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“The Ace Cafe on the North Circular Road in London was the perfect hangout for the Ton Ups. It was well positioned for racing, with nice straights and tight ‘S’ bends.

It didn’t sell alcohol, but the Ton Ups didn’t need that”

’ve always been very seriously interested in music, and in style too, so it’s not surprising that I’ve often found myself digging deeper into youth cultures where music and clothing were often of equal importance. The mods from the 1960s interested me in particular. I was fascinated by their peacock behaviour, their great showiness and religious attention to detail with clothing. I used to think that if I had been around then I would most definitely have been a mod. But recently, while talking to Mark Wilsmore (of Ace Cafe fame; see below) I suddenly realised that I was far more

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young people of Great Britain, and like lots of other musical and fashion influences, they started in London. Irrepressible youths often get caught up in crazes, especially if frowned on by an older generation. The London youths of the 1950s lived in areas still bombed out by the War, while their parents and grandparents had lived through two world wars.

Money was tight and the country was struggling.

The youths wanted to differentiate themselves from their parents; one way of getting out of the financial and social depression was on motorbikes.

There were some pretty fast bikes out there; 600 and 650ccs. Popular with the youths were BSAs (“They were the working class lad’s bike,” says Mark), Triumphs (“more aspirational”) and Nortons (“a bit more snotty”). Then in 1958, Royal Enfield launched the Constellation 700cc – the first ‘superbike’. The Constellation had huge performance (it was capable of 115mph) and looks to match, and basically anyone could ride one as you only needed a provisional licence and an L-plate.

The rebellious youth of the 1950s wanted faster and faster bikes (which they could now, for the first time, get on hire purchase). They wanted the clothing to match: helmets that made you look like a jet fighter pilot and leather protective jackets. You could only get black leathers but they looked cool as hell.

With these faster bikes it was possible to achieve 100mph for a short time and that’s just what happened, on the streets and arterial roads of London, and it wasn’t illegal because there was no speed limit on bigger roads until 1965. The youths that reached 100mph became ‘The Ton Up Boys’, and so a youth culture was born. Adrenalin is a drug (in this case speed-induced) and it was the only drug these Ton Ups needed, because you can’t ride a bike properly if fuelled by alcohol or street drugs.

The Ace Cafe on the North Circular Road in London was the perfect hangout for the Ton Ups. It was well positioned for racing, with nice straights and tight ‘S’ bends. It didn’t sell alcohol, but the Ton Ups didn’t need that. And what was especially good about the Ace, because it was built like an amphitheatre, was that everyone could see who was there, so it became a place to be seen, competing for who had the fastest or the coolest bike.

Customising bikes became common; they began to emulate the professional racers they saw at Brands Hatch, and so these motorcycles looked very different to the vehicles their fathers were riding.

There weren’t many young people who had record players at home, but at the Ace there was a juke box that played all the latest hits from America and

“Trouble came properly with intensive media scrutiny. On January 14th 1961, the front cover of Today Magazine had three youngsters on it, all in leathers. The photograph was taken inside the Ace Cafe and the headline was The Ton-kid’s creed: LIVE FAST. LOVE HARD. DIE YOUNG” interested in the rockers, because the rockers were originally the ‘Ton Up Boys’ (and girls). It’s my love of motorcycling (and my motorcycle) that subtly changed my leaning. Something Mark said absolutely resonated with me: “I really liked the look and sound of the mods, but I loved the speed and thrill of the bigger bikes.” And of course the bikes win.

Mark was nine in 1966, the heyday of the mods and rockers. “In the school playground you were either a mod or a rocker,” he says. Both subcultures had a pervasive influence on the

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that, of course, was Rock ‘n’ Roll. Once the Ton Ups started congregating at the Ace and riding their motorcycles from there, they started attracting a lot of disapproving notice from the neighbourhood and then the media. Their elders saw them as antisocial, noisy, dangerous on the roads and tough looking, all dressed in black leathers. They were easy to spot, identify and avoid.

Trouble came properly with intensive media scrutiny. On January 14th 1961, the front cover of Today Magazine had three youngsters on it, two boys and a girl, all in leathers. The photograph was taken inside the Ace Cafe and the headline was ‘The Ton-kid’s creed: LIVE FAST. LOVE HARD. DIE YOUNG’. The message behind the headline was ‘enjoy it while you can’; there was bomb damage everywhere, the threat of nuclear war was ever present and you could all be dead in three minutes, so life was lived to the full. But what was excitement and adventure to the youths was seen with horror by their elders. Today magazine was a mass-market magazine and reached a lot of disapproving people (including more press and then Parliament). The same evening that the issue of Today came out, an episode of Dixon of Dock Green was aired with the title ‘The Burn Up’.

The story was of a young man on his motorcycle (a Ton Up) with his girlfriend riding pillion. The guy (played by heartthrob singer turned actor Jess Conrad) crashed and his girlfriend died.

“They termed the Ton Ups

‘rockers’ as they listened to rock ‘n’ roll and it was a catchy name to pit against the mods. When the mods came about in the early 60s the Ton Ups had been around for a few years”

Two weeks after this, Mark tells me, the Daily Mirror published an article over several pages, featuring a photograph of a young chap cornering on a Royal Enfield Constellation. The article was formed around interviews with youngsters at the Ace, flagging up the danger to the nation, informing them that there were 13,000 fatalities on the road every year, mainly youngsters on motorcycles. They called the article ‘The Suicide Club’. And so the Ton-Ups became the ‘baddies’. An upshot of all this bad press was that Parliament began to legislate speed limits and enforce L-plates.

I’ve chosen three cigars for our modern ‘ton ups’, all New World cigars. For a morning smoke before your race, why not have a ‘Joya de Nicaragua Red Petit Corona’. For a nerve-calming cigar, ‘My Father Le Bijou 1922 Grand Robusto’ and for the winner of the race, ‘La Flor Dominicana The Oro Chisel’ in a highly appropriate gold tube.

It was the press who gave the Ton Ups the name ‘Cafe Racers’ (as they all seemed to hail from the Ace), which today has come to mean a definitive style of motorcycle. It was also the press who termed the Ton Ups ‘rockers’ as they listened to rock ‘n’ roll and it was a catchy name to pit against the mods.

The mods came about in the early 60s when the Ton Ups had been around for a few years. Forever seeking the newest thing, the mods tuned into a newer music from America, 125 and 250cc scooters (which you could legally ride on a provisional licence) and Italian style suits. They were the new kids on the block and the press delighted in the real or assumed rivalry between the two groups. But the idea of the mods outriding the Ton Ups (on their bigger, faster bikes, with more experience) is quite nonsensical.

“Who goes to the Ace nowadays?” I asked Mark. “It’s the boys in their fast cars,” he tells me.

Surprisingly, that appeals to Mark because, although a motorcycle man himself, he likes the Ace to lead the way and he doesn’t hang on to the past. n

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REVIEWS •

Author interview: David Nicholls (p128) • Book Reviews (p132) • Night and Day Magazine (p135) Jean Lorrain (p138) • Restaurant Review (p144)

Author Interview

DAVID NICHOLLS Alexander Larman meets David Nicholls, best-selling author of One Day, screenwriter on the recent television production of his novel Us and author of four further novels

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“Full lockdown happened just as we were finishing post-production. All of a sudden we were watching sound mixes on tinny laptops and trying to grade the image on twelve different computers.

Actors were recording additional dialogue in airing cupboards and the deadline sailed by”

avid Nicholls and I have history together, but in the most benign way possible.

During lockdown, the bestselling author and BAFTA-winning screenwriter offered to help host a virtual ‘book launch’ for anyone whose latest titles were published during the pandemic, happily tweeting about them on their publication date, and I was one of the dozens, possibly even hundreds, of writers whom Nicholls helped in this fashion. Because of instances of kindness like this, he’s commonly, and rightly, regarded as one of the nicest men in the industry, but has also established himself as a serious literary figure.

He is best known, of course, for his phenomenally successful, decades-spanning One Day, but he has also written four other wry, thoughtful and moving novels, including his most recent Sweet Sorrow, and Us, which was recently triumphantly adapted for television with Tom Hollander in the lead. And as a screenwriter, he’s adapted other writers including Hardy, Dickens,

Edward St Aubyn and Blake Morrison with skill, compassion and sympathy. But, because this is a Chap interview, what we really wanted to know about were whose shirts he wears. Which we now know, after a fashion.

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CHAP: I once described your writing in a review as representing ‘the mid-point between Graham Greene and Richard Curtis’. Was that remotely fair?

NICHOLLS: Well it’s very flattering. The Catholicism’s absent but regret, guilt, how to be decent – they’re all there. And I certainly draw on some of the same romantic comedy elements as Richard, even if I’ve never managed the same kind of commercial success or a plausible happy ending.

I try not to think too much about how the work’s perceived, but American literature has always been more of a touchstone – those great coming-of-age novels, the social comedies, the family dramas. If I’ve tried to emulate anyone, they’re probably on the other side of the Atlantic.

Photo: Sophia Spring

CHAP: Your adaptation of your book Us is currently showing on the BBC. I was struck by your credit appearing first, suggesting that you are the true auteur of the show?

NICHOLLS: I must admit that took me by surprise too. It’s a bit un film de isn’t it? I’m not sure it will ring any bells for viewers. I’m not that prolific on TV compared to, say, Russell T Davies or Jimmy McGovern or Sally Wainwright, the writers who rule that medium. I can’t write returning series – a very particular skill – and this is the first BBC drama for six years. Perhaps there’s a hope that the novel will pull in viewers, but it’s humbling for novelists to remember the extraordinary reach of TV. More people watched last night's Corrie than will ever read One Day.

it to be a love letter, for the cities to look enticing even when the situations are hellish. Hopefully it’s tantalising now, rather than just plain mean.

CHAP: Douglas is a difficult protagonist; in the book, his inner voice makes him likeable and sympathetic even while he’s doing awful things. Were you ever tempted to use voiceover. ?

NICHOLLS: This is the hardest part of adapting any first-person novel – the inner-monologue provides the alibi. ‘I did this terrible thing, I made this stupid remark but here, reader, is my real intention.’ That all goes, along with all those observations and jokes that can never be said out loud. But voice-over is a tricky technique because it privileges one character over the others and dramatisations are inevitably more democratic.

It’s a third-person medium, so you have to jettison precious humour, similes, metaphors, description etc. But you gain design, location, score, the control that editing gives you and, of course, performance.

Here and in Patrick Melrose it was a real privilege to have great acting to provide the thoughts and

CHAP: Watching it in our strange semilockdown era, its themes of travel and escape are almost painfully poignant. Was this something that became clear during the editing process?

NICHOLLS: We were meant to broadcast the show in May as a kind of tantalising foretaste of the summer holidays. Obviously that plan didn’t quite work out, and full lockdown happened just as we were finishing post-production. All of a sudden we were watching sound mixes on tinny laptops and trying to grade the image on twelve different computers. Actors were recording additional dialogue in airing cupboards and of course it was impossible and the deadline sailed by. Perhaps that’s just as well, because it would have been too much, rubbing people’s nose in all that freedom of movement during full lockdown. We didn’t change anything in the cut – that aspect was fixed – but we’d always intended

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Now here I am, living it and I must admit it doesn’t feel so different. Similarly with youth, you have to remind yourself that there’ll be some changes in language, etiquette, technology, politics, slang, and of course you have to get that right. But the fundamental emotions – the doubts, the insecurities, preoccupations – will stay broadly the same.

Photo: Sophia Spring

CHAP: Your most recent novel, Sweet Sorrow, struck me as a deliberate revisiting of past themes and ideas, including your own career on the stage; father-son relationships, and sudden time jumps. Is it simply coincidence?

NICHOLLS: Writers are always picking at the same sores, aren’t they? The last three have all had this 20 year-leap and I’m sure this preoccupation comes from entering middle-age – if I’d been writing at 26, these subjects would never have crossed my mind. My father became ill during the writing of One Day and died while I was working on Us, so that relationship has somewhat preoccupied me, even though I’ve never written anything about it directly. And class, education; these things have always been on my mind. So yes, as the work has piled up, I can see that there are themes, even though if they’re unconscious at the time of writing. I wonder if it’s a weakness, something to push against or embrace? I’m not sure, but I do know I’ll have to do something different next time round. Or perhaps I won’t be able to.

“I love the story of John Cheever putting on a suit to travel to his basement office, then changing into sweat shirt and chinos to write. I do something similar but without the suit. I have some really nice clothes– I like Margaret Howell and Comme de Garcons, but given that no-one ever really sees them, they tend to stay in the wardrobe”

CHAP: The book is inspired in part

by Pulp’s song David’s Last Summer.

What other songs have been especially inspirational for your work?

NICHOLLS: I certainly have to know what the characters are listening to. Music’s less prominent in the text of Us because, Mozart aside, Douglas is largely indifferent to it. But for the writing process, every book has come with a private playlist, not just the songs mentioned but the mood, the response I want from the reader. One Day was meant to be a great pop song, something caught between major and minor keys – I Say A Little Prayer or God Only Knows were in my head, along with Massive Attack’s Protection. And St Swithin’s Day by Billy Bragg was always there too – that theme of nostalgia, lost love, old photographs, regret.

feelings. And the good news is the book still exists, so nothing is really lost.

CHAP: It’s the first of your books so far to feature middle-aged protagonists. What are the greatest challenges in writing characters who are now roughly your contemporaries?

NICHOLLS: I started writing the book ten years ago almost as a challenge – can I put myself in the strange, alien mindset of a 54 year-old man!

CHAP: Did you ever have an inkling while writing One Day that it would be ‘The One’?

NICHOLLS: I knew it was a good idea and I knew that I was enjoying the process, which isn’t always the

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case. I took my time too, and the reaction of early readers was something I’d not had before. But no, not a clue. The Understudy was something of a flop, and I presumed that would be One Day’s fate too – a good idea that got a little lost, and no book number four.

That novel’s success has been my great good luck and it would be churlish to be anything but grateful for it.

intention was to reinvent what we think of as ‘Dickensian’ and come up with something darker, harsher, more grounded – The Godfather of Dickens movies. But I think that would have required a more ruthless approach to the text, and I just loved every page too much to hack it up, which is why it feels like a précis rather than a bold vision.

CHAP: For some reason, The Understudy feels like the novel of yours that receives the least attention these days, although I was delighted that it was adapted online during lockdown. Why do you think this is, and do you think that it’ll be filmed one day, too?

NICHOLLS: There is a script, though it feels a little dusty. Perhaps it will come back to life, though attitudes to fame, the mechanics of it, are so different now. I’m fond of the book, but it’s the one I’d most like to rewrite. The premise is good but the execution is patchy and I think I was struggling to write in a third-person voice, feeling my way. I’m not embarrassed by it, but Starter is more fun, more consistent. The Understudy is the difficult second album, recorded too quickly, so it’s relative neglect is not a source of heartache for me.

CHAP: It was tremendously kind of you to help promote other authors’ work over Twitter during lockdown. What were your greatest discoveries about the world of contemporary publishing?

NICHOLLS: There’s so much of it! I didn’t editorialise the lists at all; anyone who contacted me was mentioned, and there were just these wonderful books coming out, week after week. I’m an embarrassingly slow reader but there was so much I wanted to eat up. I hope we don’t lose any great books because of it, that they have a long life and that the writers dust themselves off and try again.

CHAP: I read that you’ve been unable to write anything since lockdown began; do you feel that the fog may be about to lift, or are you happy having a respite from what has been a fairly demanding schedule?

NICHOLLS: I always wanted a break but I had visions of great expeditions – I’d walk the Pennine Way! Read Lawrence and Keats! Instead I seemed to just go out looking for toilet roll. Also I realised how my writing schedule is tied to the term calendar, and the distractions at home were so continuous that I just gave up. So no writing, but no respite either and I have some regrets about not finding something else to fill the time with.

CHAP: I also loved your version of Far From The Madding Crowd. You had big shoes to fill in competing with the John Schlesinger film, but did you just ignore it and return to the Hardy novel?

NICHOLLS: I grew up on the Schlesinger film and admire it hugely. It’s very, very close to the novel, very long, with a style and pacing that’s very much of its time. So a new take felt justified and, once I’d taken it on, I tried to put it out of my mind.

Our director, Thomas Vinterberg, was entirely unaware of both book and film and immune to that whole Brit period drama tradition, and this was a great plus too. So I’m very proud of that film. It’s a classic case of both versions being very faithful to the text while also being entirely different to each other.

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

NICHOLLS: I love the story of John Cheever putting on a suit to travel to his basement office, then changing into sweat shirt and chinos to write.

I do something similar but without the suit. I have some really nice clothes– I like Margaret Howell and Comme des Garcons, but given that no-one ever really sees them, they tend to stay in the wardrobe.

CHAP: Without wishing to denigrate anyone else’s work, is there any project that you’ve been involved in that didn’t live up to expectations, and why?

NICHOLLS: I think it was a mistake to take on Great Expectations. Everyone involved did great work and I loved the actors in particular, but I was probably too close to the novel, which was and remains my favourite book of all time. The

CHAP: What would be your epitaph, if you could have one?

NICHOLLS: He did his best. n

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THE CROWN IN CRISIS

The book is not without humorous asides and contemporary references, which makes a refreshing change from many historical biographies. “The world will never be wholly ready,” writes Larman on W.E., Madonna’s appalling 2001 film about the couple, “for the film’s depiction of Wallis dancing to the Sex Pistols’ Pretty Vacant while gyrating libidinously with a young man dressed as an African tribesman, as a Benzedrine-popping Edward looks on delightedly.”

There are also flashes of Jilly Cooper, certainly intentional, in passages such as the one describing Edward’s isolation at his country estate: “It seemed to be a retreat that would not have disgraced a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, and the prince who strode its corridors in plus fours, whistling and followed by his Cairn terriers Cora and Jaggs, struck her as an isolated and rather sad figure in need of rescuing.”

When the final curtain falls and Edward has to leave his beloved Fort Belvedere, the staff all lined up on the steps to bid him farewell for the last time, the reader is transported to the profound awfulness of the moment with: “Fred Smith, who had looked after him since 1908, lost his temper and shouted, ‘Your name’s mud! M! U! D!’ Edward remonstrated mildly, ‘Oh, Frederick, please don’t say that. We’ve known each other for so long’.”

As one might expect from a writer whose previous work has largely been literary biographies, Larman finds Shakespearean richness in the account of the reluctant king, crown thrust upon him, but much of the interest comes in his meticulously presented account of the behindthe-scenes machinations, in which politicians, newspaper editors, courtiers and clergymen all vied with one another to obtain supremacy for their particular objective. Some of this material is familiar but presented in a fresh and engaging fashion, such as the notorious rivalry between the newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook and Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin.

We learn that the forces opposed to abdication and supportive of it marshalled themselves into ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ camps, that Edward and Wallis became both ‘citizens of the world, and citizens of nowhere’, and that Beaverbrook managed to manipulate events through a pliant media and a susceptible public. Plus ca change. The book concludes with the image of Edward, showing no remorse whatsoever, launching himself on a forty-year career in idleness and shopping, roaming

By Alexander Larman (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20) Reviewed by Gustav Temple

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must confess that my own interest in Edward VIII has had more to do with his legendary wardrobe than the abdication saga. And there seem to have been acres of book pages devoted to Edward and Mrs Simpson, of varying degrees of quality. However, author Alexander Larman, biographer of Lords Rochester and Byron, has had a go and produced what his publisher’s blurb breathlessly calls ‘the definitive book about the events of 1936’.

The tale of a foolish, weak Prince of Wales having his head turned by the American Wallis Simpson and abdicating his throne in order to marry her has been told many times, but it soon becomes clear that Larman has a different intention in mind: writing a suspense thriller about the abdication, complete with end-of-chapter cliff-hangers that leave you on the edge of your chaise longue.

Like all thrillers, there is plenty of political and social intrigue behind the main story. A Nazi conspiracy to form a grand alliance with England; prurient suggestions of Wallis’s shady past in China and her dominatrix-like hold over Edward; backstairs gossip about Edward’s courtiers’ loathing for their master; and a richly detailed and revelatory account of an assassination attempt on the King, conducted by a ne’er-do-well drunk and occasional MI5 informant called George McMahon.

The author pulls no punches in his assessment of the reluctant monarch, never losing an opportunity to condemn him for his vanity, vacuousness and selfishness. Wallis comes across slightly better, though Larman’s presentation of her occasionally has parallels with the current Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their own mini-abdication.

Yet while the departure of Harry and Meghan to Los Angeles is a distraction rather than a serious threat to the institution of the monarchy, as this book observes, Wallis nearly managed to destroy the throne.

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Book Reviews

around the world in search of a home. “Instead, he became both citizen of the world and a citizen of nowhere, rootless, stateless and drifting, doomed to scrape by on a mixture of reluctantly offered hand-outs and his former reputation: the Ancient Mariner in Club Class.”

Larman quotes a letter written to the Liberal politician Lady Hilda Currie after the abdication reached its conclusion: ‘What a fearful ten days we have been through; it would need an Aeschylus to write the tragedy of what I called in the House of Commons yesterday these inscrutable promptings of a human heart.’ While not quite an Aeschylus, Alexander Larman has certainly turned an incredibly complicated saga into a thrilling, eloquent and witty tale, which owes more to Frederick Forsyth and Evelyn Waugh than the ancient Greek tragedian.

fellow to keep the Wodehouse torch alight. After Sebastian Faulks had a go with Jeeves and the Wedding Bells in 2013, which remained a highly entertaining pastiche rather than a novel in its own right, Schott has taken the series in a different direction to one Plum would ever have countenanced. The stakes have become far higher, as Bertie and Jeeves have found themselves caught up in a shadowy world of international espionage, with the black-shorted Roderick Spode, aka Lord Sidcup, planning all kinds of fascist shenaniganery, and the plucky secret agent Iona McAuslan acting both as Bertie’s handler and potential love interest. Yet there is also a ‘traditional’ Jeeves and Wooster plot coexisting alongside; the Drones club is threatened with bankruptcy after some ill-advised financial dealings, and the only way to save it is through a series of accumulator bets that will bring in a fortune.

Can it be done?

One of the evergreen pleasures of the original Jeeves and Wooster novels is that they conjure up a pre-lapsarian world in which nothing ever goes badly awry, and even nights in the cells and hideous hangovers are seen as part of life’s rich pageant.

Schott, hitherto best known for his much-loved ‘miscellanies’, has something slightly more complex in mind. His books are crammed with in-jokes and allusions (helpfully explained in a useful and witty appendix at the back), and it’s doubtful that Wodehouse would have included a cameo appearance by Ludwig Wittgenstein, nor that he would have portrayed Spode and his ilk as the genuinely menacing, if ridiculous, forces of a new world order, which must be stopped at all costs.

If this makes Jeeves and the Leap of Faith sound at all heavy, it should also be noted that virtually every page contains a treasurable line, or simile, or joke. Most writers who would attempt to pastiche Wodehouse’s style could come across as clunky or repetitive, but Schott’s lively and intellectually rigorous authorial voice keeps the story moving determinedly through some surprisingly twisty plot points, meaning that it is possible that we may now have a worthy successor to The Master at work.

The book ends on a jaw-dropping cliffhanger that turns over a century’s canonical presentation of its characters on its head: I, for one, cannot wait to see how it is resolved in a further story. n

JEEVES AND THE LEAP OF FAITH

By Ben Schott (Hutchinson, £18.99) Reviewed by Alexander Larman

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ast year, the editor of The Chap and I spent a fascinating hour with ‘the new PG Wodehouse’ Ben Schott, as he would no doubt hate to be called. At one point during the interview, one of us asked Schott whether another Jeeves and Wooster book seemed possible, which would have made him the only writer apart from Wodehouse to have written more than one book in the series. He equivocated, but there was a gleam in his eye, akin to Gussie Fink-Nottle confronted with a fresh newt, that suggested that such a thing was on the cards.

And so, just over a year later, here is the sequel to King of Clubs, cleverly timed once again for the everrapacious Christmas market.

In some regards, Schott is the perfect

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Exclusively available from www.thechap.co.uk

Literature

NIGHT AND DAY Torquil Arbuthnot leafs through an anthology of the short-lived magazine published by Graham Greene for six months of 1937

“Contributions from HE Bates, Henry Miller, Jocelyn Brooke and Nancy Mitford were turned down. “My God, no,” scribbled Greene on Mitford’s covering letter”

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Night and Day launched at a cocktail party for 800 guests at the Dorchester on 30th June 1937.

Each guest was given a numbered copy of the magazine, the first prize being a copy signed by the contributors. The second and third prizes were a year’s and six months’ subscriptions respectively, although ironically these prizes proved identical, since the last issue was on 23rd December of the same year.

Greene and his co-editors assembled what Powell called “a strange mélange” of contributors which “synthesised pretty well.” Peter Fleming

n an essay in 1934, Graham Greene wrote, “The world may be divided into those who enjoy Punch and those who enjoy The New Yorker.” Night and Day, the short-lived magazine Greene was to co-edit in 1937, was flagrantly modelled on the latter.

In his autobiography, Anthony Powell writes that Night and Day “was designed to dislodge Punch, long regarded as the quintessence of tameness, tapering off into insipid philistinism.” The new magazine was to combine excellent prose with witty cartoons, and to strive to be entertaining, worldly and selfconsciously sophisticated.

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(brother of Ian) compiled the gossipy weekly pages of “Minutes” at the front of the magazine under the name ‘Slingsby’. Many of the other contributors were not as well-known as Fleming but were to become more so in the post-war years.

The team of regular critics included Evelyn Waugh on books, Elizabeth Bowen and Antonia White on theatre, Osbert Lancaster on art, AJA Symons on restaurants, Hugh Casson on architecture, Constant Lambert on music and Greene himself on the cinema.

John Betjeman’s ‘Percy’s Progress’ described the life of a man-about-town and was a mixture of The Diary of a Nobody and PG Wodehouse; Hugh Kingsmill and Malcolm Muggeridge went on literary pilgrimages; Cyril Connolly’s ‘The House of Arquebus’ was a fictional diary written by the daughter of a middlebrow family; Alistair Cooke provided a ‘New York Letter’ and William Plomer reviewed all-in wrestling. Contributions from HE Bates, Henry Miller, Jocelyn Brooke and Nancy Mitford were turned down. “My God, no,” scribbled Greene on Mitford’s covering letter. Night and Day also carried the work of some of the best illustrators and cartoonists of the era, including H Botterill, Feliks Topolski, Nicolas Bentley, Paul

Crum, Edward Ardizzone and Brian Robb.

A tongue-in-cheek piece appeared in the 21st October edition entitled ‘The Snob’s Guide to Good Form’ by PY Betts, which strives a bit too hard for its air of sophistication. Certain foods are, apparently, “good form or bad form, according to the time of day at which they are eaten.” So kippers and bacon-and-eggs are poor form at breakfast but “completely sophisticated” between midnight and 6 a.m. When it comes to the arts, it is acceptable to attend the Royal Academy but “emancipated… to sneer at all the pictures.” Among modern painters “the names to toy with” are Picasso, Braque, Dali, Balthus and Joan Miró. If it is impossible to “divine the subject” of a work of art, or if it is made of some unfamiliar material (for instance, “hairclippings from a saluki belonging to a Sitwell”) then it is safe to assume the art is “significant.”

On literature, it advises mugging up on the reviews in the Sunday papers and “if you must read, read American writers.” As to the cinema, “All Russian films are marvellous, even magnificent”; Cecil B DeMille films should “never be enjoyed”; Astaire-Rogers collaborations should be “treated tolerantly”; Disney cartoons “must be loudly adored”; and one should “mention the

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APERÇUS FROM THE SNOB’S GUIDE TO GOOD FORM: Cider is a sweet, sissy and shameful drink, little better than cocoa in the estimation of people who really know what’s what.

• Lemons are socially acceptable at any meal.

• Snobs who wish to be on the safe side are advised to laugh at nothing whatever except Anglo-Indians or Selfridge’s decorations, both of which are definitely foolproof fun.

• The Snob must sneer at public schools; but he should also have been to one of them.

• Communism and Fascism are both à la mode.

• Cycling is unspeakable.

• Having money tied up in foreign stocks that have slumped is very good form indeed.

•

review of Wee Willie Winkie appeared in the 28th October issue, including the lines:

“Already two years ago she was a fancy little piece… Now in Wee Willie Winkie, wearing short kilts, she is a complete totsy… Her admirers – middle-aged men and clergymen – respond to her dubious coquetry, to the sight of her well-shaped and desirable little body, packed with enormous vitality, only because the safety curtain of story and dialogue drops between their intelligence and their desire.”

Greene’s review caused a predictable uproar.

WH Smith refused to stock the issue, but when the magazine took legal advice their counsel stated that in his opinion the article contained no defamatory statement and could be published without risk.

Indeed, extra copies of the magazine were printed to meet the expected demand. Twentieth Century Fox brought a libel action and the case came up before Lord Chief Justice in March 1938, three months after Night and Day had ceased publication.

The case was resolved at a cost to the magazine of £3,500 (approximately £175,000 in today’s money), with Twentieth Century Fox insisting Greene contribute £500 himself. “I kept on my bathroom wall the statement of claim – that I had accused Twentieth Century Fox of ‘procuring’ Miss Temple ‘for immoral purposes’,” Greene recalled in 1972.

Anthony Powell finishes his memories of Night and Day with, “Nothing became [its] brief existence as a comic paper better than the exquisitely comic climax which terminated its publication.” n

montage of the Grierson documentaries from time to time.”

The article ends with the exhortation to “break as many rules as you like, but to be sure to find out first which rules it is good form to break.”

An anthology of Night and Day was published in 1985. In the preface, Greene writes that when the magazine appeared for the first time, “the shadow was very dark and perhaps that accounts for the rather strenuous determination of the editors to make the weekly light and amusing at all costs.” Reading the anthology, one is certainly left with the impression that the magazine was trying a bit too hard to be ‘sophisticated’ and ‘amusing’.

The editorial tone of the magazine comes across as arch and winsome, striving too eagerly for an appearance of jaded and cynical wit.

It is generally assumed that the magazine folded after Twentieth Century Fox sued Graham Greene for libel after his review of a Shirley Temple film. In fact, the magazine was in financial difficulties already. Despite a generous publicity budget, Night and Day never achieved its target sales of 30,000 copies per week, which was a quarter of the sales of its rival weekly Punch. In November the shareholders sought to raise further capital for the magazine, and even considered a merger with Lilliput. Neither the capital nor the increase in subscriptions materialised, and the shareholders decided to discontinue the magazine, with the final issue published on 23rd December 1937.

Having already taken a swipe at Shirley Temple in The Spectator in May 1936, Greene’s film

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Decadence

JEAN LORRAIN One of the most outrageous decadents of fin de siècle France is making a comeback, writes Darcy Sullivan

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“Lorrain outs Marcel Proust and then fights a duel with him. He savages his enemies in the press and mocks them in his fiction, until lawsuits bankrupt him. An explorer of occultism, he decorates his apartments in a style so macabre it freaks him out and he has to move”

e is someone you half want to keep out of your book, for fear he might take over too much of it.”

With this flourish of rhetorical trumpets, Julian Barnes warns you in his 2019 book The Man in the Red Coat: here comes Jean Lorrain. For most readers, this will be their first meeting with the French author (1855-1906), but it’s safe to say they won’t forget him.

Barnes’ book is full of fascinating people who made fin de siècle Paris sparkle, but Lorrain keeps stealing the spotlight like a gay best friend in a romcom. He outs Marcel Proust and then fights a duel with him. He savages his enemies

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Recent illustration of Jean Lorrain by Nicolas Rosenfeld, illustrating his dandyism and fondness for ether

Illustration by Drian from Monsieur de Bougrelon

in the press and mocks them in his fiction, until lawsuits bankrupt him. An explorer of occultism, he decorates his apartments in a style so macabre it freaks him out and he has to move. He takes ether to keep him wired for long hours of writing, leading to one of the most disgusting deaths in all of literature.

Dubbed ‘Sodom’s ambassador to Paris’, Lorrain was rediscovered in the mid-1970s in France, but ignored in the English-speaking world. Philippe Jullian’s 1974 biography was never translated to English, unlike his books on contemporaries J.K. Huysmans and Robert de Montesquiou.

But Barnes’ inclusion of him in The Man in the Red Coat was just one sign of Lorrain’s resurgence today. Snuggly Books has recently published several of Lorrain’s books in English. He’s also a key figure in the emerging field of Decadent studies, celebrated in events like the 2018 Decadence, Magic(k) and the Occult symposium in London, organized by the British Association of Decadence Studies (BADS). And this summer brought two English-language editions of Lorrain’s hilarious Monsieur de Bougrelon.

Why now? “Lorrain, like many other Decadent authors,” says Matthew Rickard, an academic who spoke on Lorrain at the BADS event, “fell to the wayside for both the everyday reader and scholars for many years, written off as a second-rate writer obsessed with sexual perversions.

However, with the rise of feminist and queer theory in the 1980s, many overlooked and forgotten texts began to be reclaimed and recognised once again for their particular insights into human sexuality, gender, and perversions.”

Mes chers, get ready. It’s time to meet Jean Lorrain.

movement in French literature and art that rebelled against the warts-and-all realism of authors like Balzac. Decadents revelled in dreams and death, in the madness of geniuses and aristocrats. Like their English and Irish contemporaries in the Aesthetic Movement, they championed art for art’s sake, but their tastes ran to the morbid.

“Monsieur de Bougrelon hustles the Frenchmen into a wild tour of Amsterdam that lasts several days, transforming the city into a panorama of bizarre scandals, “hypothetical lusts” and a fetishized pineapple. Most of the book is a Bougrelon monologue, a bebop braggadocio solo”

However, once his father died and his allowance stopped, Lorrain had to split his time between writing literature and the journalism that paid the bills. “Lorrain’s career developed as a member of the stable of writers assembled

by Catulle Mendès, initially for the Écho de Paris in 1889, which transferred to Le Journal in the mid-1890s,” says Brian Stableford, a noted science fiction author who has become a leading expert in Decadent fiction, and Lorrain’s chief English translator. “For some fifteen years he was committed to delivering two items a week, using the secondary pseudonym Raitif de la Bretonne for one of the series. The manoeuvres he employed in trying to maintain the fluency, variety and originality of his work – in parallel with experiments and developments employed by the most inventive fellow members of the stable (including Octave Mirbeau and Marcel Schwob as well as Mendès) – shaped the concerns and narrative techniques of the entire Decadent Movement.”

Writing on deadline was no way for a dandy to live, so Lorrain overcompensated, wearing multiple rings and makeup and dyeing his moustache. If Montesquiou personified male elegance, Lorrain was camp. But despite his

SODOM’S AMBASSADOR TO PARIS “Jean Lorrain is perhaps one of the most important figures in the French Decadent canon,” says Rickard. “In many ways, both his writing and his flamboyant lifestyle encapsulate the literal decadence of fin-de-siècle Paris.”

Lorrain was artificial, like all the best decadent things, down to his name. Born PaulAlexandre-Martin Duval, he changed his name at his father’s request when he became a writer. His father must have seen what was coming.

Lorrain was drawn to the late 19th-century vogues for dandyism and decadence, the latter a

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into the construction of masculinity at the time.

Although Lorrain was a notoriously flamboyant homosexual whose novels and poems often dealt with ‘perverse’ themes and expressions of homosexuality, the author was very careful to maintain the illusion of respectability. For example, there are anecdotes of confrontations where Lorrain would effectively duel any man who would insult his virility, despite being renowned in Parisian circles for his love of make-up, jewellery, and wrestling tights.”

Lorrain’s fiction, like his reportage, was laced with nastiness. Tartarus Press helped kick off Lorrain’s revival with a collection called Nightmares of an Ether Drinker, which demonstrates Lorrain’s penchant for contes cruels (tales of cruelty). Unable to join the aristocracy, he painted them as a grotesque race.

“Lorrain’s ‘style’ is largely a product of the market forces that enabled him to make a living and the quest for uniqueness,” says Stableford, “a quest that he exported from his literary fantasies into his lifestyle fantasies. In his prose as well as his dress code he was a flamboyant dandy (‘the last disciple of Barbey d’Aurevilly,’ as Remy de Gourmont described him, meaning ‘last’ in the sense of ultimacy rather than chronology). The pressure of his mass-production led to a marked inconsistency in his routine output, but he was brilliant at his best and never dull, even when treading water.”

We can’t really talk about Jean Lorrain without talking about his death, which was as horrific as anything in his stories. The ether he took had lacerated his colon, and even the best surgeon – Lorrain’s friend Samuel Pozzi, Barnes’ titular man in the red coat – could only do so much. While giving himself a medicinal enema, Lorrain blew out his colon, right there in the lavatory.

“In his prose as well as his dress code he was a flamboyant dandy (‘the last disciple of Barbey d’Aurevilly,’ as Remy de Gourmont described him, meaning ‘last’ in the sense of ultimacy rather than chronology)”

MONSIEUR DE BOUGRELON

adventures with Paris’s ‘rough trade’, he seemed to delight in attacking other gay men. He made up and reported a story that Montesquiou had pushed women and children out of the way with his cane to escape a fire, and the story is still repeated as truth today. In a review of Proust’s Les Plaisirs et les Jours, he accused Proust of sleeping with the illustrator’s son, which led to a duel. (They fired in the air and shook hands, though it is tempting to imagine Lorrain as The Man Who Killed Proust.)

“For me, as someone who works on the representation of masculinity, and above all queer masculinity,” says Rickard, “Lorrain’s writing provides a fascinating, yet also frustrating insight

While Lorrain wrote poetry, stories and even plays, he is perhaps best known for his novels. Monsieur de Phocas is Lorrain’s Decadent masterpiece, full of familiar poisons – illness, nobility, obsession, murder. But his most striking creation is the eponymous hero of Monsieur de Bougrelon. Have you ever felt that grim ennui at the end of a holiday, when you have seen all the highlights of your destination? That is the malady affecting two Frenchmen in Amsterdam, lingering at the Café Manchester, when in strides a bumptious gallant:

“The frock-coat was green, and what a threadbare green! The gaiter-strapped trousers

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Monsieur de Bougrelon, here illustrated by Drian, was based in part on Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly

oversized volume from Side Real Press. The Side Real Press edition, limited to 300 numbered copies, contains the stunning art by Drian from a 1927 French edition that would set you back several hundred pounds.

“Looking at the various illustrated editions, the Drian artwork stood head and shoulders above the rest, as it seemed to capture the spirit of the book really well,” says John Hirschhorn-Smith, publisher of Side Real Press. “Drian illustrated fashion magazines of the ’20s, such as Harper’s Bazaar, moved in the circles of the super-rich, designing interiors for Maharajas and the like, and was (like Lorrain) something of a dandy himself.”

If you’re intrigued by Jean Lorrain, there’s no better place to get started than Monsieur de Bougrelon.

“It is probably his best book: extravagant tales of the rich and snobbish, with sumptuous descriptions of interiors, clothes and jewellery, plus sexual perversity thrown in,” says Hirschhorn-Smith. “It has the feeling of Huysmans’ novel Against Nature – the ‘breviary of the decadence’ – minus the dull bits. What’s not to like?” n The Snuggly edition of Monsieur de Bougrelon is available on their website and on Amazon.

The Side Real Press edition is only available on the publisher’s website

143

Photograph: Rose Callahan

were twisted like a corkscrew over fine cambered and polished boots, but gaping at the heel. His red woollen muffler, very long around the neck, was a much-darned rag, ragged and holed; but as such, with his old captain’s face painted and plastered, his bloodshot and charcoal-blacked eyes, with his toothless mouth beneath a waxed moustache, that ragamuffin was a great lord, that marionette personified a race, that clown was a soul.”

Monsieur de Bougrelon hustles the Frenchmen into a wild tour of Amsterdam that lasts several days, transforming the city into a panorama of bizarre scandals, “hypothetical lusts” and a fetishized pineapple. Most of the book is a Bougrelon monologue, a bebop braggadocio solo. With his outrageous mythmaking, Monsieur de Bougrelon joins Baron Munchausen and Don Quixote among literature’s great fabulists. But is he a disgraced nobleman? A phantom? The devil himself ? (The character’s outré look was based on the aforementioned Jules-Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly, a fancifully costumed author who wrote the philosophy of dandyism and turned Beau Brummell into an icon.)

This year the definitive English translation of Monsieur de Bougrelon appeared from Stableford, published in two editions: a collection from Snuggly Books, with additional tales, and a luxurious

The Chap Dines

BENARES RESTAURANT & BAR 12A Berkeley Square, Mayfair, London W1J 6BS www.benaresrestaurant.com Reviewed by Gustav Temple and Alexander Larman

M

’colleague is nothing if not optimistic.

When Larman suggested dining in the heart of Mayfair just as London limbers up for Tier 2 of pandemic measures, I thought he had lost his Elgin marbles.

Infected by his gung-ho enthusiasm for the delights of the pristine white linen tablecloth, I was instructed simply to choose a suitable pre-prandial libation location near Berkeley Square. “But what about social bubbles and all that? ”

This was brushed aside with Larman’s usual devil-may-care sweep of the hand, probably containing a gin and tonic. “Groups of up to six can meet for work purposes. This is most certainly for work purposes.”

“I shall see you in Mr. Foggs Residence, then.”

Over cocktails served in the faux-Victorian, colonial splendour of that establishment on Bruton Street, we discussed the recent withdrawal of the shrunken heads from the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, wondering whether, by being in a bar

surrounded by the ersatz ephemera from Britain’s colonial past, we were already breaking some soonto-be-disclosed new law. “So tell me about where we are to sup shortly, m’colleague.”

“They describe it as ‘modern Indian cuisine with a contemporary British twist’.”

“I don’t like some of those words.”

“Don’t worry; they’ve enhanced, rather than spoiled, the Indian dining experience. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

Benares didn’t disappoint on any level. The rather grand entrance sweeps one up to a split-level bar and restaurant with the air of a smart hotel in New Delhi. Larman of course insisted, a-laKingsley Amis, that we take another cocktail before dining. I think he is actually turning into the great literary roué (he had, naturally, been at the Garrick for lunch that day with his literary agent), whose insistence on at least two pre-prandial drinks meant no-one ever dared utter the phrase ‘Shall we go straight into lunch?’ in his presence.

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If this was to be our final meal before an imminent circuit breaker, it would be a feast fit for a maharajah, let alone a mere king. Larman had visited the restaurant in a previous incarnation, when Atul Kochhar was head chef, and was able to spot the culinary differences. “It’s a lot less reliant on heavy sauces and spicing, and much more interested in showing off the ingredients to their best ability.” This is a different kettle of fish, and Sameer Taneja’s exciting new menu will demonstrate its evolution.

We braved the tasting menu. In some restaurants, this can often condemn two trenchermen to a miserably prolonged evening sampling things that they don’t particularly want to eat. But at Benares it is a perfectly judged and exquisitely timed odyssey into all things subcontinental. It is surprisingly heavy on seafood; oysters, turbot and scallop all feature in the first few courses, alongside a rather cheeky little course of chicken momo with beetroot raita, and a truly delicious amuse bouche of a kind of exquisite soup of chicken sorba with summer truffle.

As we talk of Patricia Highsmith and PG Wodehouse, we drink the perfectly judged matching wines. The highlights include a Greek Viognier, sparking a lively debate as to whether we had ever encountered such a type pof Greek wine before, and a 2015 Alsatian Gewurtztraminer, which cuts through the spice of the tawa masala turbot course with authority and brio.

There is more to come in the delectable shape of the tandoori lamb chop and saag aloo with crispy anchovy. The accompaniments of a truly sensational black daal and excellent, appropriately fluffy naan bread meant that we were soon able to return a verdict of ‘superb’ on this course, as with everything else that we ate. Looking around at our fellow diners, all remaining in their bubbles of either long standing or hastily constructed for the evening, there could be no doubt that a meal at Benares remains one of the most purely, guiltlessly enjoyable treats to be had in Mayfair, or anywhere else in London, for that matter.

By the time we departed it was 9.30pm, usually time for a brace of post-prandials at some nearby hostelry. But Tier 2 now means an early bedtime for the libertines. We loitered in Berkeley Square in a state of shock and disbelief that the evening was already over, wondering if there was a speakeasy that might admit us. Lollygagging in Mayfair, it seems, attracts the attention of another tier of its night denizens. A pair of young Russian ladies approached us, asking if we wanted to ‘have some fun’. “Fun is not allowed any more,” we declared informedly, before shuffling off in different directions to brave the wave of pickpockets, beggars and footpads who seemed to have seeped out of the shadows, which made it feel a bit like the 1920s but without the Bright Young Things. Still, the BYTs didn’t have the pleasure of an evening at Benares, which remains their loss. n

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GROOMING How To Train Your Moustache (p148) • The Captain’s Lip Weasel (p152)

G r oom in g

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR MOUSTACHE Gustav Temple recounts how a dose of the Unpleasantness resulted in the cultivation of a new moustache

B

ack in March this year, I came down with a dose of the Covid and was confined to quarters for two weeks, with a further week in recovery. I was lucky enough to experience only the chaise longue version; I didn’t require hospitalisation, only a fortnight of listlessness, fever and feeling ruddy awful. In fact, I felt so ruddy awful that my shaving equipment, my clothing and even my precious drinks cabinet were sorely neglected for three weeks.

A cursory glance into the looking glass each day gradually revealed the emergence of a beard (no surprise there; Covid-19 isn’t that virulent), and when the three weeks had passed and I began to feel normal again, I contemplated the bearded image of myself and considered my hirsute options.

1. Shave, or rather cut, the whole thing off.

2. Remain bearded.

3. Shave off most of the beard but leave a moustache behind.

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Option two was informed by the glimpses on social media of various colleagues and chums who had, for some reason, seen lockdown as a reason to stop shaving altogether. One could only assume that their daily shave had formerly been taken at a nowclosed barbershop, or that their supply of Trumpers shaving equipment had run out.

I had plenty of razors, shaving soap and brushes, and as I contemplated this mess of hair on my lower face, I could clearly see various moustaches hidden within it, like one of those inkblots in which the shapes you see are supposed to reveal psychological truths. My psychological truth was that to neglect this opportunity to leave a moustache behind would be a dereliction of duty.

But which moustache? They were all in there: Fu Manchu, Salvador Dali, Mexican bandit, full handlebar, pencil, mutton-chop extension. I could even have turned myself into a particularly eccentric member of the Amish brethren.

“But which moustache?

They were all in there: Fu Manchu, Salvador Dali, Mexican bandit, full handlebar, pencil, mutton-chop extension.

I could even have turned myself into a particularly eccentric member of the Amish brethren”

The tools at my disposal were a packet of modern double-bladed disposable razors, a pair of scissors and a Gillette Safety Razor. The company that had invented the safety razor, after 100 years of allowing it to morph into various plastic iterations, had finally decided to relaunch their traditional safety razor. They went one further, by launching a new sub-brand that they named ‘King C Gillette’ after their founder, the splendidly named King Camp Gillette.

Why they turned his middle name into just an initial is anyone’s guess; surely not to avoid being confused with chicory-based java substitute Camp Coffee?

I set to work with my tools, quickly finding that a plastic razor is completely useless with more than three days’ growth, and that extensive scissor work was required before any other form of blade could be deployed.

149

Moustache inspiration from three Doc Hollidays: Dennis Quaid in Wyatt Earp, the real Doc and Val Kilmer in Tombstone

Rather than aiming for a particular moustache, I took the quote attributed to Michaelangelo that to sculpt the statue of David he just chipped away all the stone that didn’t look like David. In my case, my David was the right moustache for me.

What emerged, after a very long shave, was a sketchy version of the moustache I bear today.

Disappointingly flat against the cheeks, it contained no springiness, no tips that could be waxed and no clear identity. There was clearly more to this moustache cultivation lark than simply getting ill during a global pandemic.

As to the razor, there is no question that shaving around a moustache requires a far more detailed, precise technique than merely removing all the stubble from one’s chin and cheeks. A plastic razor is simply not up to the job, not least because all the removed hairs get clogged up between the two or three blades (we shall not speak of the quintuplebladed abominations available). My Gillette Safety Razor does the job far more efficiently, and a quick dip into a basin of water quickly removes all the iron filings. The sharp angle of the head allows one to sculpt with great care into all the non-Davidian nooks and crannies of an emerging moustache.

150

Another Gillette product I sampled was their Clear Shaving Gel, also under the King C ensign. This may sound like a departure from the holy font of hard shaving soap made by countless traditional companies, all of which are more than ideal for a fully cleanshaven chap. But when it comes to the work required around an existing moustache, you really need to see what you’re doing, and the clear shaving gel, rubbed into wet cheeks in seconds, allows one to maintain a clear vision of the emerging sculpture.

After a few more weeks, the moustache began to grow properly and rise from the slopes of the fizzog. Tips had to be tamed, for which I of course deployed our very own Debonair moustache wax.

Before long, more decisions had to be made: which direction should the tips go; curly or straight? Should any hair be allowed to grow behind the moustache, boosting its volume from behind the scenes?

I have discovered that there is never a point reached where one can say that the moustache is finished. Each day it changes, sprouts, veers in new directions. Once the desired shape has been reached, simply maintaining it becomes the daily chore. I opted for the addition of what is politely known as a ‘soul blade’ and less politely as a ‘jazz

BALMY ARMY Paul Lawford tries out some of King C Gillette’s new Beard Balm

Being locked indoors and behind masks has seen an explosive growth in experimental facial hair. Gillette has been quick to respond with a Grooming Balm. Gillette Beard Embalmer?

Witnessing King Camp Gillette shuffling about in the world of the bearded might be viewed with as

spot’, in the face of much traditional moustache-world opprobrium, purely because, as the tache itself flourished, it began to sit too heavily on the upper lip and required some balance. During my extensive moustache research – something of a lifelong pursuit – I came across a photograph of the original Doc Holliday, who bore the soul blade. If it was good enough for the 19th century dentist-turned-gunslinger, then the jazz spot had authentic enough credentials for me.

My advice to any chaps planning to grow a moustache is not to go around licking door handles to try and catch the Covid, but simply to stop shaving for 2-3 weeks, then look into the mirror with a Michaelangelo state of mind. n

much suspicion as hearing that Sweeney Todd has just moved into the shaving business.

The Unboxing: Unscrew the lid and there it is. A white balm. What is balm, you ask? Is it just cream masquerading as a goop of greater gravitas?

It looks very much like a Mr. Whippy, minus the flake, in a tin. No, the answer is cream has water in it, while balm apparently not. The myriad of voodoo ingredients includes the tremendous Argania Spinosa Kernel Oil and the indispensable Theobroma Spinosa Cocoa Seed Butter. The long list does however start off with Aqua, but I am no Louis Pasteur.

I rubbed it on to my bearded parts and can report that it works. Not much is needed, depending of course on sq ft of plumage.

The scent is much like their deodorant, which might come in handy if you have a penchant, as I do, for Gentlemen’s Relish and Cuban Cigars.

This product should please any pognophile in need of a bit of shrubbery softening.

P I L S ' N I A T P A THE C sel

Wea

In association with Captain Fawcett, we present the winners and runners-up of our Captain’s Lip Weasel Competition. Captain Fawcett’s Right Hand Man has combed through the multitude of entries with his fine-toothed beard comb, and found, as well as a few ancient relics of breakfast, lunch and high tea, an astounding series of collective efforts among the hirsute gentlemen of the world

WINNER The winner receives a handsome Captain Fawcett Wild Boar Bristle Moustache Brush, a tin of Captain Fawcett Menthol Moustache Wax and a Stove Enamel Badge, while second and third prizes are a copy of Best of The Chap and a tin of Debonair Moustache Wax. All Hail the Hirsute!

Dan Brown One has to admit to being simply bowled over

by Dan’s rather superb face furniture. Glossy beard in top health, precisely waxed ’tache. Spiffing sartorial instincts too. I confess to be not a little envious of this fine fellow! Huzzah!!

2ND PLACE

3RD PLACE

Matt Nicholson Simply stupendous! A veritable cascade of autumnal splendour. A tonsorial torrent of glistening bronze! What magnificence! And that fine moustache... All hail those perky tips! Do be careful sir, you’ll have someone’s eye out!

Xausa Jean-Pierre This Gentleman has nearly knocked his pipe out with his tip-top curling tips! Remarkable facial topiary all round in fact! I shall meet you under the clock. You will know me only by the gold pin in my left lapel...

RUNNERS-UP

Paul Bunce Rumours pertaining to Magnum PI’s retirement have been grossly exaggerated, for here he is in his ‘Technicolor’ resplendent glory.

Only the most confident kind of gentlemen are able to sport bold florals with such distinctive elán.

Andy Hayes A marvellous manifestation of ‘Pomp & Circumstance’. Taut tips, tidy chin. Keenly combed crown.

Here’s a fellow who could teach us a thing or two about sprucing up.

Well done that man!

Mark Porter Mr. Porter, what shall we do?

A simply splendid display of well tamed Lip Weasel and wondrous winter chin warmer, underlined by a most dapper beau tie. You shall go to the ball!

FLÂNEUR UNIQUELY U NI SE X F R AGR A N CE FRO M T H E CH A P

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RUNNERS-UP

Tsarevich Piotrowicz Brideshead Revisited with a twist of tweed. What luscious locks tumble from the noble scalp of this most compelling gentleman. That’s what I call getting a head start. All hail the hirsute!

Ben Wilkes Inspector Wilkes of the Staffordshire County Police with a fine display of hirsute law & order!

As a boy, I was once collared by a remarkably similar looking fellow while departing the tuck shop with a packet of Parma Violets and a sausage roll. Let’s be having you.

Graham C T Seen here as Joe Hawkins, a most excellent contender for the category ‘Mutton Chops’ at the upcoming British Beard & Moustache Championships, I’d wager. And simply superb eyebrow action to boot! I wonder if he can make them dance the flying fandango?

Steve Jenkins This is going to hurt you more than it’s going to hurt me, however, you will tell me what I need to know. Mr. Jenkins and his lip weasel loom large from beneath the peak of his cap.

Spookily Splendid!

David Harmony I’d wager this fresh-faced whippersnapper is somewhat new to the Lip Weasel game but,

by Jingo, the fine young chap is off to a simply cracking start!

Carry on Sir! It’ll be all over you by Christmas.

Matt Schommer Matt Schommer managed to find an undershirt with a logo that rhymes with ‘Whisker’, though his exemplary lip weasel was already far ahead of the game. Mr. Schommer is clearly a man who simply will not tolerate a single hair out of place on any part of his bonce. Quite right too, sir!

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John Minns and Peter Gosbee turn their quizzing glasses on to the acquisition of antiquarian books

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Antiquarian Books

he Gutenberg Bible, produced by Johannes Gutenberg and Johan Fust, is probably one of the most famous books ever compiled, and it was the first book to be printed on a printing press. Previously Wang Zhen (1290-1333), from China, invented a movable type. Simply speaking, this is an individual font type where a letter is chosen singly then added to another to create a word, and then printed; rather than all of the font hand-carved into a wooden block or clay tablet, which was the method used for centuries previously, now generally known as block printing.

In 1444, over 100 years after Wang Zhen’s movable type, Gutenberg invented the mechanical printing press. This would go on to revolutionise and facilitate the mass-production of books. There is another thing that makes the Gutenberg Bible so rare and valuable from the point of view of the dealer-collector and investor. It was made in folio form, meaning that the original purchaser could

buy one single page at a time and, if they wished, could have it bound into book form later. There are a number of incomplete books and, indeed, single pages that are still out there. Some of these individual pages still turn up, the most recent one

The Gutenberg Bible

making £75,000. So, in theory, over time it would be possible to make a complete version of the Gutenberg Bible. I have heard of collectors buying or swapping individual pages and others involved in consortiums to do just that.

This bible in its complete form, depending on condition, could have a value of between £35£100 million, so they are literally worth more than their weight in gold. Investors will scramble to buy whenever this holy grail of books comes on to the market, being an investment producing 20% or more per annum. And who could blame them!

Now for a more contemporary author.

For a mere snip at £72,000, a complete set of first edition James Bond books by Ian Fleming is currently for sale on eBay: ‘A very good to fine set with original dust wrappers’.

Fleming probably had no idea of the subsequent value of the 14 Bond books he wrote from 1953 to 1966. Even though 100 million of his books have since been sold, individual early first editions in mint condition are much prized and very much worth looking out for. A first edition, first impression Casino Royale, published in 1953, in near fine condition with original dust jacket, could set you back £50,000.

And yet it is just the sort of book you could find on the shelf in the living room of Mrs Bibbs’

Digs for Theatricals and Entertainers in Bexhillon-Sea.

Even more recent books, such as a first edition hardback copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling, signed by the author, can set you back £6,000, and a signed copy of Stephen King’s The Shining for £5,000. The condition of a book will have a big impact on its collectability and value. If the aforementioned copy of Order of the Phoenix had an ever so slight dent in one of its corners, or small tear in the spine, you would see its value drop exponentially, as there are millions of scuffed and dented copies out there.

If you are considering collecting or dealing in books, or you already have some copies and want help to assess their value, it might be worth looking at a guide to book conditions.

There are over 30 descriptive phrases pertaining to books – a common language or lexicon used by professional bibliophiles.

Antiquarian booksellers such as www.abebooks. com provide the full list of terms.

A TALE OF TWO BOOT SALES Last summer I was at a Sussex antiques fair, one of many open-air events held throughout the country during the season. Needing a break from looking at antiques and vintage paraphernalia, I made my way over to the more sedate area dedicated to books, manuscripts and literary ephemera. Piles of books of every size and condition awaited, including complete sets of old Encyclopaedias Brittanica, weighing a ton.

Flicking through them, I suddenly remembered Old Tom. Tom was a book dealer who had been on the circuit for years, regularly seen carrying books under his arm, often tied together with his old Radley school

tie. I realised I hadn’t seen Tom for a good while, and Old Tom was rather old. Then, in a very serendipitous moment I turned, and standing next to me was Frank, a mutual friend of Old Tom’s. Telling him I had just been thinking about Tom, he said, “Oh, you haven’t heard then?”

“Is he…?”

“No,” said Frank, “He is alive and well… but this is what happened.” And Frank told me the story:

It was the previous winter and Tom was considering whether he should go to a local boot sale. It was the week before Christmas and people who would not ordinarily do a boot sale would do so to earn a few extra bob. When Tom arrived at the market he was quite late and a number of stallholders were already packing their stalls away.

An old lady was standing at a rickety stall, looking most forlorn, her frozen fingers protruding through fingerless gloves. Leaning against the stall was a dirty old painting. Tom glanced at it briefly.

“I’m only asking a fiver for it. I don’t want to have to put it back in the attic, it took me ages to get it out,” she moaned. Tom took a closer look; it was a painting of military men on horses. There was a hole in it the size of a golf ball, unfortunately decapitating one of the soldiers.

Tom was just about to move on when the lady said, “I’ll take four quid for it.” Tom felt sorry for her and bought the painting. He lugged it home and left it leaning against the wall in his cluttered hallway.

Some months later he read in the local paper that a well-known auction house was offering free valuations that day. He gathered a few things together in a

rucksack. He glanced at the painting and thought he might as well take that as well. He thought the frame might be worth something.

Old Tom joined a queue to have the contents of his rucksack assessed, but none of the items was deemed to be of value, aesthetically or otherwise.

Crestfallen, Tom placed the painting on the table.

“I’ve also got this”. The valuer gave the painting a quick once over. “You’re in luck, we have one of our colleagues over here from our New York branch.”

He beckoned the American expert over, who picked up the painting and looked at it intently for a moment. Nervously he fumbled in his pockets for his eyeglass. Then, calmly, he looked up at Tom. “Sir, this painting is by one of America’s greatest Civil War artists, Winslow Homer. I would suggest that at auction in America this painting should realise around $750 thousand dollars”. The painting actually went on to make $1,500,000 at auction.

“The last time I spoke to Tom,” said Frank, “he was about to open the antiquarian book shop he’d always dreamed of, in the heart of New York City.”

THE FLUMMOXER This issue’s antiquity conundrum is posed by the item in this photograph. What is this device and what was it used for?

One lucky provider of the correct answer receives a pair of fox cufflinks.

Send your answers to chap@thechap.co.uk

Dominic Carey correctly identified last issue’s Flummoxer as a wooden tie press from the 1940s

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SPRING 2020

ISSUE 103

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SPRING 2020

EXPAND YOUR MIND, REFINE YOUR WARDROBE

Alec Baldwin

THE HOLLYWOOD EDITION

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I don’t own any jeans. Act your age is a good personal style”

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MAUREEN O’HARA

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THE SUMMER OF LOCKDOWN EDITION

THE WOMEN OF PEAKY BLINDERS

“In season 5 of Peaky Blinders, we wanted that feeling of Polly still smelling of Gitanes, but now it’s Gitanes with a splash of eau de cologne”

SUMMER 2020

AUTUMN 2019

Helen McCrory

SUMMER 2020

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Honor Blackman “I’ve only seen Goldfinger twice.

I’ve turned down parts in the past because they required a sexy woman and I always wanted to play the secretary”

FELLINI’S ROME A tour of the city via Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita

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Spanish dandyism, from eccentric counts to modern-day tailors

EURO DANDY

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CROSSWORD 1

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By Xeno

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W H I S K E R S

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Solutions to crossword Issue 105 Chap Autumn 20

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A L O N V E I S I E C K

A H A F T O R R I N A I S E L

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ACROSS Across

R U S O N J A D E O O S C A S L I P R O C R C L I C K E M S E R S H A O A G S I D E E O F S O W N

U N A T T R A C T I V E

T S E U N S T E L T E S Y S E F D I V B E

T R A D I S R I N D C P L E M A N M S E A R

I P L C E D N G E S I T R N E A U M E E R

DOWN Down

1. Mercy, captain, for Long John Silver? (13) 1. When one’s up cycling calamari home (5,2) 1 When 1Object upforcycling home Mercy, forground LongsoJohn Silver?

(13) 2. Recorded 8. that’scaptain, dug from the to speak (4) sound one's disc used short timecalamari in examination (5) (5,2) 9. Nice sir, SOS mix-up caused cancellation 3. Rushes mum and dad to the bottom of hill (8) 2 Recorded 8of Object sound dischigh used for short that's arrangements (10)dug from the ground so to 4. Southern US literature on violent stakes game (7,8)time in speak 10. Rune leads(4) to gold-bearing rock, perhaps on the beach (6) 5. Basis of examination arrestee’s line in (5) being innocent (5) 11. Parrot, maybe, or a tit, I’m unclear (8) Those that will try roast pie (9) 3 Rushes mum and dad to the bottom of hill 9 Nice sir, SOS mix-up caused cancellation of6.

12. Skips starter, eating sandwich still and filling up (9) 7. Find and hand ticket seller round spectacles (4,3) arrangements (10) 14. Billy Bones cast Galileo adrift (4) 13. Pirate’s (8) underwear (4,5) 16.

Quality penalty (4) island bachelor party held in saloons (8) 4 Southern 10 Rune leads to gold-bearing rock, perhaps on15. Tropical US literature on violent high 17. Get this Special K with bananas (9) 16. Shoots dealer with rifle, shot goes off, he’s gone (7) stakes game (7,8) the beach (6) 19. Translate Cajun log relating to Union (8) 18. Where patients look to a higher place (7) 21. authority rules boy’s (2-4) 20. Slowest way to get the end (5) line in being innocent (5) 5 Basis 11 Local of toarrestee's Parrot, maybe, or aloan tit,was I'modd unclear (8) 23. Kind of important to listen to Heath (3-7) 22. Cabin could be built, for example, with money raised (5) 6 Those that will try roast pie (9) 12 Fish Skips starter, eating sandwich stillover and 24. smuggled in when Jolly Rodger seen flying (4) 25. Tacky quality ten assets, renovated houses, filling upof(9) 7 Find and hand ticket seller round spectacles not so great (13)

14 Billy Bones cast Galileo adrift (4)

(4,3)

13 Pirate's underwear (4,5)

16 Quality penalty (4) 17 Get this Special K with bananas (9)

162

19 Translate Cajun log relating to Union (8) 21 Local authority rules boy's loan was odd (2-

15 Tropical island bachelor party held in saloons (8) 16 Shoots dealer with rifle, shot goes off, he's