The Chap Issue 98 by thechap

ISSUE 98

WINTER 2018

EXPAND YOUR MIND, REFINE YOUR WARDROBE

John Malkovich “Every time Poirot has been done, the moustache has had a lead role and I guess that’s great, but it doesn’t in this interpretation”

THE DUKE OF WINDSOR

A close-hand inspection of the dandy duke’s clothing in Hampton Court Palace

GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER

The man who crossed the Alps on a Space Hopper

TRAVEL

Miami, Florida in a Ford Mustang and racing the Blue Train across France in an MGB GT

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ISSUE 98

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;You are either in your bed or in your shoes, so it pays to invest in both.â&#x20AC;? John Wildsmith

Available from www.wildsmith.com | www.herring.co.uk

Editor: Gustav Temple Art Director: Rachel Barker Picture Editor: Theo Salter Sub-Editor: Romilly Clark Circulation Manager: Keiron Jeffries Subscriptions Manager: Natalie Smith

CONTRIBUTORS

OLLY SMITH

LIAM JEFFERIES

CHRIS SULLIVAN

GOSBEE & MINNS

ALEXANDER LARMAN

Olly Smith is an awardwinning wine writer and broadcaster. He has been International Wine and Spirits Communicator of the Year, and Drinks Writer of the Year at the 2017 & 2016 Great British Food Awards. He is a regular on Saturday Kitchen and BBC Radio 2. Olly hosts his own drinks podcast www.aglasswith.com

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 founded and ran Soho’s Wag Club for two decades and is a former GQ style editor who has written for many others including Italian Vogue, The Times, The Independent and the FT. He is now Associate Lecturer at Central St Martins School of Art, specialising in ‘youth’ style cults and embroidery.

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 Stephens.

When Alexander Larman is neither poncing nor pandering for a living, he amuses himself by writing books, some biographies of great men (Blazing Star) and some examinations of greater women (Byron’s Women). He also writes for The Times, Observer and formerly the Erotic Review, back when it was erotic.

OLIVIA BULLOCK

DAVID EVANS

SUNDAY SWIFT

DARCY SULLIVAN

FERRIS NEWTON

Olivia Bullock is an illustrator with a fascination for obscure youth tribes and musical genres. She is The Chap’s expert on snappily dressed youth movements from around the world. In each issue she turns her expert eye on another group of dandies whose brief existence fully deserves to be celebrated.

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

The Dandy Doctor 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. Sunday is currently working on a book about fictional dandies in film and television. Twitter: @dandy_lio

Darcy Sullivan writes about comic books, aesthetes and algorithms. His articles have appeared in The Comics Journal, The Wildean and Weird Fiction Review. He is a proud member of the Oscar Wilde Society and the curator of the Facebook pages ‘The Pictures of Dorian Gray’ and ‘I am Mortdecai’.

Ferris Newton is a parapsychological investigator, explorer and pigeon fancier. His interest in political systems has led him to the belief that gentlemen with anarcho-dandyist tendencies can learn from fringe political movements such as the Fabian Society, the Monster Raving Loony party and the LibDems.

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

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

135

CONTENTS 8 AM I CHAP?

Those who dare submit themselves to the ultimate sartorial assessment face admiration or opprobrium

12 T HE GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER

Steve Payne, the chap who crossed the Alps on a Space Hopper, reveals his next adventure

18 P EACOCKS AND MAGPIES

The Chap’s antiques experts, Peter Gosbee and John Minns, give insider tips on acquiring objets d’art

FEATURES 22 SARTORIAL DISPOSOPHOBIA

Chris Sullivan on the difficulty of disposing of vintage clothing that was so difficult to acquire in the first place

28 D ANDIZETTE

Doctor of Dandyism Sunday Swift on ‘The Queen of Soul’ Aretha Franklin

34 I NTERVIEW

Gustav Temple meets John Malkovich to discuss his role as Hercule Poirot in The ABC Murders

•

WINTER 2018

34 SARTORIAL FEATURES

LONGER FEATURES

44 PROFILE

96 S TILYAGI

Cordings of Piccadilly, the clothier to the Duke of Windsor revitalised by Eric Clapton

46 FASHION PHOTO SHOOT

We took some of Cordings’ country wear to the streets of St James’s, to the screams of “Brown in Town”

58 T HE KING’S WARDROBE

A remarkable visit to Hampton Court Palace to view some of the Duke of Windsor’s original clothing

62 A MIDE HADELIN

Liam Jefferies meets the Dutch menswear designer who started a business based on his own personal style

65 C OSPLAY

Holly Rose Swinyard explains this phenomenon and how it differs from historical re-enactment

70 L OAKE LEGACY

A pair of half-brogues from Loake’s new commemorative line are put through their paces on Pall Mall

72 H ARRY STURGES CROSBY

Chris Sullivan on the maverick dandy, bon vivant, cocaine user and suicide who blazed out his glory in 1930s Paris

82 M AHONEY WATCHES

Liam Jefferies on a new British watch company setting its sights on creating affordable heirloom timepieces

84 G REY FOX COLUMN

David Evans of www.greyfoxblog.com takes care of headwear, footwear, cufflinks, grooming and motoring, while still finding time to sample a pipe of tobacco

88 T HE BLUE TRAIN

‘Actuarius’ recounts his own attempt to recreate Woolf Barnato’s 1930 wager to beat the Blue Train in a Bentley Speed Six from Cannes to London

Olivia Bullock on the snappily-dressed Soviet youth tribe

102 D ANNY HOUSE

Where Lloyd George drafted an end to the First World War

107 N ICHOLAS PARSONS

Sandra Smith pays a visit to the the nonagenarian entertainer

112 DAVID JONES

Ferris Newton on the First World War Welsh poet

115 B OISDALE OF BELGRAVIA

Chateaubriand, Bordeaux and other traditional victuals

118 W INTER TIPPLES

Olly Smith on what to put into your seasonal drinks cabinet

122 A CHAP HOP DIARY

Mr. B The Gentleman Rhymer on tour with Sparks in Europe

REVIEWS 128 B OOK REVIEWS

Alexander Larman meets satirist Craig Brown and reviews the new Oscar Wilde biography

135 FILM REVIEWS

Rogue Male (1976) with Peter O’Toole

138 OH WHISTLE AND I’LL COME TO YOU, MY LAD Robert Lloyd Parry on M.R. James’s ghost story

144 TRAVEL

Hunter S Thompson/Clark Griswold hybrid in Miami, Florida

152 ART

Darcy Sullivan on James McNeill Whistler

157 RESTAURANT REVIEW The Cinnamon Club

162 CROSSWORD

ISSUE 98

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

“This is myself,” writes Scott J Simpson, “wearing my latest acquisition from Walker Slater tailoring at the recent Sartorial Scots meeting, kindly hosted by Walker Slater in their Glasgow Merchant City Store. I submit this image for your consideration, in the hope that it gives the impression of someone who may reasonably be considered to be worthy of the appellation ‘Chap’.” Clothes – 10/10 (though you don’t need to unfasten the bottom button of a double-breasted waistcoat). Grammar – 9/10 (a photograph of your ‘self’ would reveal a lot more than a nice suit and is technically impossible).

London Boy Lou “Wondered if you’d ‘ave the time to assess the sartorial credentials of this dandy in the underworld. ‘E puts the ‘chap’ in ‘Whitechapel’.” Once we’d had the message translated by an Oxford scholar on underworld argot, it was still difficult to make a sartorial assessment when the chap in question is only partially dressed; though a cravat made from human skin is certainly original.

Professor Smith: “Whilst I was whiling away a pleasant half-hour with ‘Fanny Hill’, a cup of Darjeeling and a Hob-nob in my office/study tent at the bottom of the garden… I almost lost a goodly bowl-full of my Black Beauty Old Shag! Do I qualify for ‘Am I Chap?’ even allowing for my slightly alarmed demeanour?” Lucky we didn’t ask you to translate London Boy Lou’s letter, or we’d have been even more confused.

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“I am becoming rather weary in my quest to fulfill the exacting standards required by your esteemed publication,” writes Frank Annable. “As for the attire – ‘Let’s do Goodwood,’ said my wife, ‘It’ll be fun.’” Sir, we are not here to spoil your fun and thank goodness for some decent standards of English, for once. No complaints on the sartorial front (except for your disobedience of the ‘Always, Sometimes, Never’ rule regarding 3-button jackets).

“Our eldest daughter git herself married up in Cambridgeshire,” writes Alan Clark. “I wore an outfit to the civic ceremony and another tweed affair for the big ceremony a couple of days later. Would you consider either possible contenders for Chap?” Seems to be a poor day for grammar and an even poorer day for formal wear. We are unable to answer your question, sir, since you have sent us a photo of what, presumably, you were wearing to mow the lawn before the ceremony.

There was no letter with Eddie’s photographic submission, so we have no idea whether he is the Chap in the photo or the priest without a comb, nor indeed the standard of his English grammar.

Kevin Regan thought he would distract us from his matching waistcoat and bow tie (dear Lord) by drawing our attention to the portion of shirt visible betwixt trouser and waistcoat. A pity, because the pocket square nearly saves the whole outfit.

“Your recent article on Walker Slater,” writes Leonard Willingsworth, “inspired me to invest in a tweed cashmere three-piece suit from said establishment. The inaugural outing for the purchase was at a friend’s wedding, held at The Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn.” Sir, it’s a good choice of suit and it’s accessorised well – but please pay more attention to the pocket flaps and waistcoat lapels, as they seem to be trying to ascend the no doubt haunted staircase.

“You featured me (above right) in an early issue of your journal a decade ago,” writes Dr Autun Purser, “as well as in your fine book 'Am I A Chap?'. I appeared alongside the German minisub, JAGO. This summer I had the chance to dive several more times in this vessel. Have the years improved my look, do you think?” Diving in a submarine means certain allowances can be made, since Chaps are defined as much by what they do as what they wear. Besides, a decent haircut and some quality workwear and braces show that the last decade has been kind to you, sir.

Eccentrics

ACROSS THE ALPS BY SPACE HOPPER Gustav Temple meets Steve Payne, the self-styled gentleman adventurer whose voyage across the Alps by Space Hopper is one of many eccentric and perilous journeys. Photographs by Olivia Bullock

“Trans-Alpine bouncing has never caught on as a form of gentlemanly or even mass-transportation. It’s just too difficult”

hat made you want to bounce across the Alps on a Space Hopper? I’ve been doing crazy adventures each year for the last few years, each involving a different method of transportation. My first was a walk to Canterbury from Southampton, following the route of the Continental mediaeval pilgrims to the feast of Thomas Beckett in Canterbury Cathedral. I

dressed in authentic 14th century clothing and took original food recipes from the period with me.

When I reached Winchester, a homeless man came up to me saying he’d seen an interview with me in a newspaper, and gave me a pasty that he’d bought me. It turned out he’d only had £3.60 in all the world and he’d spent £2.80 on the pasty for me. When I asked him why, he said, “You’re like us, you’re sleeping rough in the middle of winter, and we look after each other.” During that trip I met a few other homeless people and got some good advice on how to keep warm. It turned from a historical journey into one that was raising awareness for homeless people. I left home with 12 followers on Facebook; by the time I reached Canterbury I had 182,000 followers. A year later I crossed Wales by river in a Coracle, a small round Welsh fishing boat, following the pilgrimage of Saint Brendan the Navigator.

trip, because you can’t cross the Alps anywhere without covering at least 60 or 70 miles, and I needed a route where there was an emergency shelter at least every five miles, because 5.2 miles was the world record for a singe journey on a Space Hopper. I found a place called Bardonecchia in Italy, which advertises itself as the ‘Gateway to the Alps’ on the Italian side, to Grenoble, which advertises itself as the ‘Gateway to the Alps’ on the French side. It was a trip of about 76 miles. I did eight months of practice in Wales to see what kind of terrain the Space Hopper could handle. It copes very well with grass, packed earth, stone, but it doesn’t like small, sharp flints. Fortunately the Alps is mainly limestone, so you don’t get a lot of sharp igneous rock. I did some practice on the snow at Christmas and found that Space Hoppers don’t perform very well on snow, so I knew it would have to be a summer trip. I hadn’t factored on it being the hottest summer for 100 years and I was wearing a tweed suit and a pith helmet and getting through 16 bottles of water a day. You don’t need much more than energy bars when you’re bouncing all day long. I slept in emergency shelters, where for 15 Euros you get a space on the floor to sleep on.

How do you navigate? SatNav or traditional maps? Neither. I just followed the river. I was doing the journey exactly as St Brendan would have done it in the 5th century, in the same clothing. I told the river authorities where I’d be. They said, ‘Not a good idea but ok. We’ll make a note of it.’ I’d love to see that note! ‘Man in fifth-century garb crossing Wales by coracle’. When it capsized and floated off, I had to phone the police and report it, but I was only four miles from the end of the journey so I just walked the rest of the way. So I’d done a journey on foot and one by boat, and I needed a third form of transport for the next journey. I had used the first two journeys as ways of raising awareness for homeless people; while sharing the pasty with the chap in Winchester, he spoke of the difficulties of how he was living. When I asked him what it was like living on the streets, he said, “It’s like trying to cross the Alps on a Space Hopper. It’s a completely ridiculous way of doing things.” And I thought – there’s my next journey. I’m going to cross the Alps on a Space Hopper.

I once had a go on my son’s Space Hopper and it isn’t an easy thing to master. It doesn’t strike me as an efficient mode of transport? That’s why Trans-Alpine bouncing has never caught on as a form of gentlemanly or even mass-transportation. It’s just too difficult. Generally speaking, I was climbing for the first four days, and I was slowly descending for the next fourteen days. I worked out a route in which all the climbing was at the beginning. Some of the inclines were quite steep; there were a few rock faces I had to climb up. I had to deflate the Space Hopper and put it in the backpack. At one stage I took a wrong turning and had to climb a 40-foot cliff face. I used my umbrella to catch hold of ledges and pull myself up.

So once you had the motivation, how did you plan the trip across the Alps? I had to investigate 50 or 60 possible routes across a portion of the Alps. I knew it would be a substantial

Did you have any spare Space Hoppers, in case of accidents? I took four with me. I named them after famous people who had crossed the Alps: Hannibal, Napoleon

– he burst on day five and became Napoleon Blownapart. Nellie, in honour of the elephants, blew away off the top of a mountain on day 14. I was so tired after bouncing up an incline that I literally fell off the Space Hopper and fell asleep. I think I was probably asleep before I hit the ground. When I woke up, Nellie was gone. I couldn’t think of a name for the fourth one, so I put it out on the Internet and they came up with ‘Bouncing McBounceface’.

off. I might try it off the end of Bognor Pier, which is 40 feet up, and then I’d land in the sea. The other opportunity is the wreck of Henry V’s flagship, the Grace Dieu – twice the length of the Mary Rose but a good 300 years earlier. It sank at the bottom of the River Hamble in Hampshire and has never been raised. During the middle ages they did underwater exploration in submarines made out of barrels. So I could build a submarine out of barrels and explore Henry V’s flagship.

How did the locals react to you? I had to learn the phrases for “Because I am an Englishman” and “Why wouldn’t you?” because they’d come up to me and say, “Why are you doing this?”

How does that work? You put a whole barrel over your head, with weights on the bottom of the barrel. Then you stand inside it, as there’s no bottom, and get lowered down on a rope. You take a breath, have a look around, then come back into the barrel for more air. You’ve only got about four minutes before all the oxygen turns into carbon dioxide. I could have an air supply in the barrel, but then I’d have to register it with the British Scuba Diving Association. If you just jump into the water with a barrel, it’s up to you. There are so many rules about what you’re allowed to do these days. If you want to cross the Alps on a Space Hopper or set off across Wales in a Coracle, you’ve got to think, who’s going to prosecute me and what for? n

What will your next voyage be? I’d like to recreate the flight of Eilmer of Malmesbury. In 1018, exactly a thousand years ago, he invented a flying machine. He climbed 80 feet up Malmesbury tower and leapt off, strapped to a pair of leather and wickerwork wings. You’d expect that story to end with crushing death on the stones below, but he became the first person to fly, achieving 220 yards. He crashed into the roof of the bakery, fell to the ground and broke both his legs, but survived. I thought I’d build a pair of leather and wickerwork wings to recreate that flight, but I couldn’t find a building 80 feet tall that they’d allow me to jump

Mr. Bell the Butler is unwell and will return soon

ROAST BEEF

THE DEBUT NOVEL BY MR.B THE GENTLEMAN RHYMER

Pray Father, do tell us more of Mr.B’s exploits.

Oh that Edward, he is such a cad.

‘Acid Edward has the sort of mind that is three parts enquiring to one part dim, to two parts frazzled by years of substance abuse. Usually sherry…’

‘A proper humdinger of a read’ - Charles Dickens Available from www.gentlemanrhymer.com

In this edition, the tables have been turned (quite literally) on Messrs Minns and Gosbee, as they descend on a car boot sale to try and raise some muchneeded cash to spend on other antiquities at the same car boot sale

t some point in one’s life, one may find it necessary to scrape together a few bob in order to beat the wolves from the door. Reluctantly, it is sometimes time to pay one’s creditors those frightful costs and expenses accrued by one’s lavish lifestyle, which leaves one baffled as to how all this could have happened. After all, do you not virtually live the life of a frugal, pious monk? You have squandered your inheritance, sold off the paintings, passed on the Hepplewhite and weighed in the family silver. You have also rifled through late Aunt Agatha’s drawers, revealing only mothballs, a hairnet and half a bottle of Warninks Advocaat, which last saw active service during Christmas, 1958. You can extricate yourself from this misery by selling something, but first you need something to sell. If you are lucky enough to have any friends left, why not ask them if they have some items

they no longer wish to keep? By nature humans are hoarders, but they may let you have some items which you could sell, on a sale-or-return basis, for an agreed percentage of those sales. Once you have gathered your precious finds, this is where the majestic car boot sale shows that, not only is it a sublime method of acquiring trinkets, but it can also be a facilitator for the creation of wealth. Each region of this green and pleasant land has an area dedicated to such events on the weekend. We hope that, with some of our previous articles, your blood has been stirred by the possibility of treasure awaiting you in some nearby pasture, and that you have ventured forth to one of these fairs already. With this under your belt, you know what it is like to buy and the manner of buying in such circumstances. As it was then, now it will be when you sell. Expect bartering, a touch of frenzy, adrenaline and all the fun of a boot fair.

THE TURNING OF THE TABLES

RECENT DISCOVERIES Fantastic finds from the previous month’s rapturous rummagings include:

A selection of 1920s/30s celluloid ‘disposable’ sunglasses, which would have been worn for the season then disposed of/broken through use.

We have compiled below a few select pointers which will hopefully aid your quest to refill those empty coffers. Be bold and enjoy the adrenaline thrill experienced by many millennia of market traders! 1 When loading your vehicle, make sure you pack your table last of all, as it is the first thing you need when you arrive at your pitch. Once erected, it will function as a necessary barrier between you and the general public. 2 Be friendly and cordial to your fellow traders, most specifically those on either side of your pitch. These are your brothers-in-arms and will help you with small change, and also keep their peepers on your table when you are caught short. 3 Be observant; it is unfortunately not uncommon for sticky fingers to steal away your most precious items if left unattended. Place any items of value centrally on the table where you can keep an eye on them.

Plastic supermarket bags are an ideal 4 way to increase your sales. It’s easer for customers to buy more items if they can carry away their purchases with ease. Bring plenty and offer them to customers; they will thank you for your consideration. You are also probably helping the environment. 5 Bring a pal with you if possible, not only for entertainment, but because another set of eyes is most useful when the masses swarm over your stall. Another pair of hands really aids the entire setting up and packing down routine. 6 Warm clothing (shooting tweeds are ⁃ ideal) is essential, for remember you will be spending long periods of time outdoors from the break of day.

1840-60s cast bronze fully functional ‘toy’ cannon. Found attached to a dilapidated, home-made contemporary carriage detracting from its more salubrious origins.

Three ca 1930s-40s brace cufflinks, discovered after over an hour mining a seam of costume jewellery. Fortune favours the brave!

7 A Thermos of tea (with or without ⁃ brandy) will warm what tweed cannot.

THE FLUMMOXER My dear friends! Once again we find ourselves scratching our scalps with frustrated befuddlement. A substantial foot-long Flummoxer at the point of engineering progress. Table mounted, cast and machined to perfection. What on earth is it?

Edwardian serpent cravat pin with exquisite detailing to both eye and scale in solid silver, rescued from a box of scrap.

Only one reader correctly identified last issue’s Flummoxer as a Georgian purse-clasp, and that person was Vans Braddock-Mead and he wins a pair of Fox Cufflinks.

Send your answers to chap@thechap.co.uk

Ca 1920s Balkan tobacco pipe, acquired gratis when dealer accidentally dropped it and snapped the stem, now lovingly restored by the author.

the yorkshire flea

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2019 dates

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24th february 12th may 9am until 4pm

31st march 14th july

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Features Sartorial Disposophobia (p22) â&#x20AC;˘

â&#x20AC;˘

Dandizette: Aretha Franklin (p28)

Interview with John Malkovich (p34) 21

Feature

SARTORIAL DISPOSOPHOBIA Chris Sullivan on the obsession with accumulating vintage clothing, and the lessons to be learned from two American brothers who allowed the hoarding vice to kill them

“

isposophobics can’t, don’t or won’t make fast value judgments about their ‘stuff ’,” says Ron Alford of Disaster Masters, Inc. ‒ a New York-based ‘crisis management’ service specialising in solving anomalous mess. “So their solution for their dilemma is to keep everything. If you put a $5 note, a magazine, a diamond ring and two dozen plastic Chinese food containers on a table and ask a disposophobic to trash two of them, their response would be, ‘I want all of them’. It’s really a disease. It starts in the head of the people and manifests by filling their dwelling units to overflow.” I know many chaps who fall into such a category but most would be described as sartorial disposophobics. One of these obsessives is of course your truly. I collect, I accrue, I amass, I accumulate, therefore I am. The existence of this malady has recently been hammered home after I was almost obliged to move from the home I have occupied

for some 18 years to a smaller property with one, and not three, bedrooms. For six months I tried to dispose of ‘things’, failing miserably, and my flat is still crammed with possessions. My ex suffered apoplectic shock each time she entered my officecum-den. She’d visibly shake among my African

“The journey between hanging onto the classic chassis of a Model T and cherishing a pair of 1952 black and white loafers that have never fitted isn’t really that far, though it is something that, unless you live in a mansion, should be addressed” 23

Chris Sullivan and fellow disposophobic Christos Tolera

carvings, vintage metal wind-up toys, Mad Comics, old phones, vinyl records, stuffed insects, thousands of books and, compelled to retreat faster than the British Army left from Dunkirk, I’d find her hyperventilating outside my door. Job done, says I. But what my ex-wife failed to grasp was that my possessions are me, and in a way explain my tastes and obsessions. However, nothing does this job so admirably as my collection of vintage, or as I prefer to say, ‘second-hand’ clothing. My obsession was perfectly timed as, just as I started cracking the whip aged 15 or 16, the big thing for us (but certainly not many others apart from super groovy Londoners) was that 1950s and 60s kit (as this was the mid-70s), was in abundance,

especially the latter and much of it dead stock. Undeniably it became a sport for us; a deft display of one-upmanship – whoever could source the most authentic mufti in the best condition was King of The Hill. Of course you could easily find items in mint condition in stores such as 20th Century Box or Acme in the King’s Road, but that was cheating. The game was to find such stuff and pay next to nothing for it. “Lovely jacket,” one might say to another collector. “Yes, I picked it up the other week.” “Great find!” “I thought so… it cost all of a pound!” He concludes rather glibly. Gong! He wins. And so it went on – this quest to find original items for a song, paying as little as one could for one-off quality garments; the exact opposite of today’s designer ethos. Of course, as one gets older, one’s shape changes; one puts on weight and much of one’s wardrobe becomes obsolete. But I still can’t throw stuff away. I have 30-inch waist peg trousers from both Acme and Let it Rock, while my current girth runs to 38. I have original 1940s Hawaiian shirts

“Of course, as one gets older, one’s shape changes; one puts on weight and much of one’s wardrobe becomes obsolete. But I still can’t throw stuff away” 24

Chris Sullivan's hoard of shoes, some of which fit him

sized medium, when I am XL. Others who suffer the same malady offer an explanation. “Because most of my clothes are secondhand/newly christened vintage,” chuckles Christos Tolera, who owns perhaps the finest vintage clothes collection in London, “it’s very hard, if not impossible, for me to part with them. I tell myself that I will get them copied one day. I have a suit from 1949 that is totally moth-eaten but has the most amazing cut. I have clothes that I can’t wear but have owned for decades, so I can’t part with them. I have been trying to put a jacket on eBay for three years, to no avail.” I posed the question: “If you saw a mint condition pair of original 1940s brown and cream buckskin laced loafers that didn’t fit at all, would you be tempted to buy them?” “I have a pair that are way too big and I’m still hoping I will eventually grow into them,” replies Tolera. I, on the other hand, have shoes that I bought in the 70s and 80s, such as Denson winklepickers and original cream and beige 1930s correspondents that were tight then when I was a size 9, but now, as my arches have dropped and my feet spread out (it

happens to us all, by the way) and am now a size 10, I still have them. Pshaw pshaw! “But it all makes sense to me... just not to anyone else,” says Tolera. “I have so many pairs of socks I never wear, usually in a brown-based palette, that are just waiting for the opportunity to be worn. They’ve been waiting for years for me to buy the clothes that I would pair with them, which I suppose is a weird way of going about getting an outfit together. They were just too nice not to buy and definitely too nice to get rid of. I just love and admire the craftsmanship and the cut of vintage clothes, which is so hard to replicate. It is a symptom of a vintage clothing obsession, I will admit. But we are dealing in one-offs here.” The actual disposophobic disorder was first identified in 1947 and named The Collyer Brothers Syndrome, after its most paradigmatic example. On 21st March, 1947, the 122nd St. Police, investigating a report of a dead body at 2078 Fifth Avenue, Harlem (a four-storey townhouse inhabited by two elderly, eccentric inhabitants – the reclusive Homer Collyer and his midnight garbage-picker brother, Langley) were forced to batter their way through room after room packed floor to ceiling with junk.

This included: 14 grand pianos; the chassis of a Model-T Ford; an array of human medical specimens preserved in a glass jars; a library of thousands of books; an armoury of weapons; the top of a hansom carriage; a primitive X-Ray machine; thousands of newspapers going back to the 1890s; hundreds of metal tins; and bags and bags of old orange peel. The dwelling itself consisted of an interconnected honeycomb of tunnels, which allowed passage through the junk for those who knew the way, but not for those who did not. Eventually, the police found the body of Homer and it wasn’t until three weeks later, after searching through an estimated 137 tons of tat, that on 8th April they found his brother Langley’s’ corpse, under a huge pile of newspapers and tins. He had, in response to repeated burglary attempts (maybe by fellow hoarders) built a succession of booby traps – one of which he fell victim to – while Homer, both blind and paralyzed and totally dependent on Langley, had died of starvation. Subsequently, the house was condemned and razed to the ground, while its contents were sold for a meagre $1,800. Undoubtedly, in my mind anyway, the journey between hanging onto the classic chassis of a Model T and cherishing a pair of 1952 black and

white loafers that have never fitted isn’t really that far, though it is something that, unless you live in a mansion, should be addressed. Obviously, as I endure said condition myself, I am not the best person to tender advice. However, my long-suffering ex-wife, when my wardrobe colonised hers, suggested the following: “First bring two big rubbish bags to each room, one labelled ‘throw away’ and one ‘give away’. Go through all your shit and ask yourself for each and every item: Do I really, really want this? What does it do for me? Will I wear it again and can I live without it?” I followed her advice and it took me an hour to decide whether I should throw out a brace of

“I still regret that I gave away a perfect petrolblue Charlie Chan-style unlined tropical suit from 1947, because it was a 40 waist and 46 chest and way, way too big. It would have fitted me perfectly now” 26

used detachable collars, a moth-eaten pair of grey spats and a pair of size 30 herringbone bags from the 1930s given to me by the American millionaire Huntington Hertford. I was so exhausted by such contemplation that I gave up, stuck the box back on a shelf and had a lie down. The Collyer brothers would have been proud. As Christos Tolera concludes, “I would guess that I think about these clothes much more than most, and I value them in a way most people couldn’t comprehend. And I still have the odd clothing holy grail that I am obsessed by and still looking for – the perfect pink gabardine, the perfect collar on a shirt, the perfect pleated back suit, the perfect loafer, the perfect jeans, the perfect belt... The list goes on.” As for yours truly, I still regret that I gave away a perfect petrol-blue Charlie Chan-style unlined tropical suit from 1947, which I bought from Flip in 1985, because it was a 40 waist and 46 chest and way, way too big. It would have fitted me perfectly now. To this day I still have nightmares about this. n Chris Sullivan’s book Rebel Rebel – Mavericks who Made the Modern World is published by Unbound in December 2018

Dandizette

Lady of Mysterious Sorrow Sunday Swift on ‘Warrior Dandy’ Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, who died earlier this year

ike our previous dandizette, Princess Julia, Aretha Franklin adopted the title of royalty. Franklin was crowned the Queen of Soul in 1967 at the Regal Theatre in Chicago by dj Purvis Spann, and she held this title as if she had been truly elected as a monarch. Aretha Franklin was never a woman who would divulge anything. To understand her, you must understand her music. Franklin’s long-time album producer Jerry Wexler once said, “I call her the Lady of Mysterious Sorrow, because that sadness seems to be her underlying condition, and I say it’s mysterious, because you can’t identify what may be causing it any given day, and it’s probably the accumulation of a lifetime of bad breaks, disappointments, and just plain unpleasant experiences.” Franklin certainly did have her share of difficult times. Born 25th March 1942, she grew up in Detroit, Michigan, and had two children by the time she was 16, dropping out of school to raise them. She and her sisters spent most of their time with her father, Rev. C.L. Franklin, a nationally prominent preacher who attracted rhythm and blues, gospel and jazz stars like Duke Ellington,

Nat King Cole, Marvin Gaye, Dinah Washington, Mahalia Jackson, Smokey Robinson and Sam Cooke. He was also a friend to Dr Martin Luther King. As a young child, Franklin would often sing to the congregation at her father’s church. After her mother’s death in 1952, she began singing solos, and at just 14 years old, her first single was released. Her adult relationships were turbulent: she married Ted White in 1961 and divorced in 1969, and then married Glynn Turnmann in 1978 and divorced in 1984, and had two more children during this time.

“Aretha was entirely herself. She ignored trends for six decades, didn’t care what the fashion press were touting and wore whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted. If it was covered with crystals, all the better” 29

Despite her mysterious sorrow, Aretha’s career went anywhere but up; she sold over 75 million albums worldwide. She was nominated for 44 Grammys and won 18 (the third most for a woman in history), as well as three other special Grammys. She was the first woman inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, and the second woman inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. In 2014, she was the first female to earn her 100th hit. She’s been awarded honorary degrees and doctorates from some of the most prestigious universities in the US, including Princeton and Yale. But there’s another reason Aretha held onto the title of Queen for so many decades: her impact to society could not be ignored. She was the youngest person at the time to receive the Kennedy Centre Honors in 1994. In 1999, President Clinton awarded the National Arts Medal. Six years later, President G.W. Bush awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The impact Franklin had for women and African-Americans was summed up by President Obama: “Nobody embodies more fully the connection between the African-American spiritual, the blues, R&B, rock and roll – the way that hardship and sorrow were transformed into something full of beauty and vitality and hope.” Franklin made history as the first woman of colour to appear on the cover of Time magazine in 1968. The GMA Gospel Hall of Fame in 2012 described her as “the voice of the civil rights movement, the voice of black America” and a “symbol of black equality.” In her autobiography, Aretha: From These Roots (1999) Franklin wrote that one of her most famous songs, Respect, reflected “the need of a nation, the need of the average man and woman in the street… everyone wanted respect,” and that “it was also one of the battle cries of the civil rights movement. The song took on monumental significance.” She commanded respect and refused take anything less. Respect, a song about a woman demanding respect from her lover, was originally a 1965 song by Otis Redding about a man requesting appreciation from his female lover. Franklin flipped this, and in doing so, she flipped the power dynamic between the genders. Wexler said, “the call for respect went from a request to a demand.” This sense of rebellion permeates everything Franklin did, both in her music career and her life, and particularly in her dandyism. Martin Teo notes, Franklin “embraced her natural locks, despite making famous classic 60s styles like bouffants and beehives. Many are also unaware of her signature turbans and imposing headpieces that inspired the

looks of personalities like Erykah Badu, Alicia Keys and Solange Knowles.” Teo also notes Franklin’s importance in breaking “the stereotypical modelsize exterior by being the curvy woman she was. … [She] pays no need to what fashion critics think of her outfits.” In short, being a “Natural Woman” was, itself, a rebellion for this Fashion Maven Dandy. Her look changed depending on the decade, but she generally favoured glitzy gowns that accentuated her shape. Aretha never declared a favourite designer, but she did say “I have always been fashion-conscious.” Telegraph Fashion editor Caroline Leaper writes, “It’s an important point to make, especially in today’s world of changing beauty ideals, that Aretha was entirely herself. She ignored trends for six decades, didn’t care what the fashion press were touting and wore whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted. If it was covered with crystals, all the better.” While Leaper argues that Aretha “was an authentic one-off, and how could we not give credit to the woman who invented a whole new fashion category, diva dressing?” I would say that she didn’t invent ‘diva dressing’; rather, Aretha drew upon the fine tradition of dandyism through dress. The gowns Franklin wore were, as one might expect, magnificent. But Franklin wasn’t stylish because she wore the gowns: the gowns were powerful because Aretha Franklin wore them. Franklin was a consummate dandy: to dismiss what she did as simply ‘dressing’ is to not recognise the intricate and meticulous work Aretha had done to create, cultivate and curate her image. Like many dandies, Franklin was careful not to allow anyone to see beneath the image she had so carefully constructed. And for someone who led as big a life as Aretha Franklin, people were clamouring for her story. Writer David Fritz describes essentially harassing Aretha in an attempt to be the one who would help her write her memoirs, befriending her family members and sending postcards and letters every six months for 17 years. Finally, Franklin relented in 1999, publishing Aretha: From These Roots, with the help of Fritz. Fritz laments that “Those close to her said she’d never let down her guard. But that didn’t faze me. I’d win over her trust and charm the truth out of her. I didn’t. I found what we wrote [to be] shallow and void of introspection… she clearly rejected my approach and fashioned the book according to her fantasy of an idyllic life. That was her right. We’re all free to mythologize ourselves any way we please.”

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But that’s exactly what dandyism is: a carefully controlled mythologisation of the self. Fritz should have left it there. However, he became obsessed with the “sensitive questions: Aretha’s mother leaving the family, Aretha having two babies while still in her teens, Aretha being beaten by her first husband” that had been off-limits when he and Aretha were writing her autobiography. This resulted in Fritz writing his own version of Franklin’s biography in 2015, insisting he was trying to “honour her story.” For a normal person, having their most intimate fears, pain and experiences excavated and then bled into ink on a page would be daunting and detrimental, at the very least. But for a dandy – someone who worked so hard to create and maintain a surface identity – stolen secrets being divulged by a former trusted source must have been tantamount to a violation of the highest order. “I wanted to be her ghost,” Fritz declared in his book. “Of all the great voices, hers was the one I yearned to channel.” Rich Juzwaik writes, “Franklin’s brand is based on her being superhuman, but humanity has a way of catching up with those who deny it. Franklin is full of contradictions and regularly sabotages herself, but she is fundamentally fascinating.” Franklin was contradictory, certainly: a Lady of Mysterious Sorrow who insisted on rose-tinted glasses. The Queen of Soul reigned as such for over fifty years, but even after her death, this dandizette

will be remembered as not just an artist, but also as a warrior of civil rights and women’s rights. Like many dandizettes, Franklin was often presented as a ‘difficult’ woman because she demanded the respect she gave. But if there can only ever be one Queen of Soul, something tells me Aretha Franklin will manage to keep that crown, even in death. n

Interview

John Malkovich Gustav Temple meets the American actor taking on the monumental role of Hercule Poirot in BBC One’s new adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders

ercule Poirot is an iconic character. What was it that drew you to the role and why did you want to play him? In this case it was the three scripts that Sarah Phelps wrote. I thought that they were very well written, the character was interesting, Hercule Poirot was perhaps not very happy and in a phase of his life that we don’t see very often and isn’t dramatized very often, and that is what interested me. Sarah Phelps always brings something new to Christie’s work. When you were reading the script, what were the things that really popped out and appealed to you? Well, as I said, where Hercule Poirot is in his life; he is nearing the end of his life, he is quite forgotten. As it happens, he has lived in England for almost two decades and the world has passed him by. Apart from the plot, which I think is very well plotted, and a lot of very good characters, that was the part that interested me the most.

That new inspector is Inspector Crome, played by Rupert Grint. Can you tell us a bit about the relationship between Hercule and Crome? Is it a bit of a new broom and the old guard? I don’t think their relationship starts in a very promising way but they eventually gain a measure

Can you tell us a little bit about Hercule Poirot? Where do we meet him in the story

Photograph © BBC One

and how does his story progress? Hercule is receiving letters and he puts together that these letters are being sent to him by a murderer who is called ABC. This murderer is going through the alphabet and murdering people whose names have double initials. That’s where he is at the very beginning. He’s starting to sell some of his possessions to get by (he says he has savings but he doesn’t) and he is, like I think many people do, in the process of fading away. Then he tries to involve the police. His friend inspector Japp is no longer there. Hercule didn’t even know he’d retired, and he finds it very hard to acquaint himself with the new inspector that he has to deal with. That’s where the story starts.

Rupert Grint has a lot of charm. He has a way of being funny and off-centre without trying very hard. He brings an inner turmoil to the funny things he does that I always think is absolutely necessary to be funny

of respect for each other through the course of this story. Poirot is someone who is very experienced and Crome, Rupert’s character, is decidedly less; they have an interesting relationship. You share a lot of scenes with Rupert Grint. How has it been working with him? It’s been very good. He has a lot of charm. He has a way of being sort of funny and off-centre without trying very hard. He brings an inner turmoil to the funny things he does that I always think is absolutely necessary actually to be funny. The rest is maybe witty but not really funny.

“Poirot has established something and been invited everywhere chic and important, and then the invitations stop, as they invariably do in life. I think Sarah Phelps explores this delicately”

Photograph © BBC One

What was it that you felt about Hercule Poirot that you really wanted to bring out in your performance? Was there anything in particular that you wanted to develop in the character we know so well? I am certainly no expert on Agatha Christie and in my experience, a lot of times when you know a piece really well, a piece of literature that it’s based on, it just brings trouble. So, I think that first of all it’s really Sarah Phelps’ choice to decide what to emphasise or not emphasise. One of the things that I thought was important was that Poirot was someone who had lived here in England for nearly 20 years when our story starts. I thought that was important on a number of levels. He says at one point that he’s lived here for 19 years and people still think he’s French. The first thing is that he isn’t French but he has had a long experience in England, in a way about a third of his life, and I think that is an important factor and has to be played and made clear and understood, which I think is a difference from how this story normally is told.

I don’t know if Agatha Christie has the same sort of reputation in America – although she sells all around the world – but is she an author that you were aware of ? Of course, Agatha Christie has a reputation everywhere. I am sure I read two or three Agatha Christie books when I was a kid but it would have been when I was pretty young. Although I don’t know how those shows did in America [And Then There Were None, Witness for the Prosecution] but I thought they were just excellent; they had terrific cast; they looked lovely, very well written and very, very good. But of course Christie is known around the world. In terms of the filming, have there been any particular highlights so far? Have you enjoyed filming on location in the UK; has there been a good atmosphere on set? Newby Hall is a lovely place and it was insane to be on the old trains, boy, they put out a lot of dirt, good Lord! But it’s gone very well, I hope. I think it’s a good cast, some of whose I knew, or at least a tiny bit, and many whose work I didn’t know, but I think Alex has gathered together a very good group and I’ve very much enjoyed it. The 1930s is a very interesting period. Have you done much work set in that period? The 1930s is not a period I have done a lot of work in but I’ve certainly read a lot about it. I’m probably more familiar with the later 30s, the Second World War and after, and the First World War in Europe proper and also in the UK, but not so

much in the early 30s. I would be reticent to speak about it but certainly everybody, myself included, has felt exile; has felt an outsider; has felt unwelcome in various places and situations. I think Sarah draws interesting parallels with today. I don’t think it’s easy to be an immigrant. I don’t think it’s easy to leave what you know and strike out for a new existence. In Poirot’s case, he has established something and been invited everywhere important and chic and to various stately homes to do his murder mystery evenings, and then the invitations stop, as they invariably do in life, and I think Sarah explores this delicately.

“My feeling about Poirot was that a million people play Hamlet and they don’t all look alike; a million people play Richard III and they don’t all look alike. You want to do something that doesn’t disrupt the notion of what period it is”

It’s certainly a painful portrait of a man?

What did you want to achieve with the very famous look? I didn’t really have an opinion about it. I was doing some work in Chicago back in April when I had the first conversation with Alex [Gabassi]. From what I understood from Sarah’s script, I thought that I would need to get a wig and I don’t think that my moustache would necessarily grow that way but anyway, we started to conceptualise and gather the elements to fulfil that vision, which seemed to me to describe someone with very, very dyed hair and a very, very dyed moustache. I thought it was part of the pathos. I could see that it could be one that wasn’t irreplaceable but I understood it as a short hand. Alex said actually ‘No, I want you to look like

Photograph © BBC One

I hope it’s painful. I remember once I was doing a play here [in the UK] in the early 1990s, it was fairly late but my little girl was not sleepy at all and something came on the TV. It was a film about two elderly people who were retiring, I think Stephen Frears directed it, and I thought it was just a wonderful thing. I thought it was terrific. My little girl, who was tiny really, stayed up and watched it. It did a great job of just watching people fade away. But that’s life, we all see it with our grandparents and then our parents, and then it’s our turn and that’s just normal. But, it doesn’t make it any less painful and you don’t see it very much [on screen]. I don’t know… It often seems we produce a million films that are all about teenagers.

Photo © John Darnell

you look now, I saw a picture of you yesterday and I want you to look like that.’ To me that’s a decision for a director. The director is the lead interpreter of something that includes What is the text? What is the story? How do you tell it? What does it look like? And probably principal among those is What are people actually seeing? My feeling was that a million people play Hamlet and they don’t all look alike; a million people play Richard III and they don’t all look alike. Obviously, you want to do something that doesn’t disrupt the notion of what period it is. I think every time Poirot has been done, the moustache has had a lead role and I guess that’s great, but you know it doesn’t in this interpretation really, and I think that’s fine.

You have mentioned conversations with Alex Gabassi a number of times. What is his style? How have you found working with him? I think Alex is very smart and he’s got a very good sense of humour. I love to watch him move things around on the set, because after a day or two I thought, my goodness, you are even crazier than I am! I am only 88% as crazy as him. Everything he’ll organise and reframe, which, by the way, I like; I mean the form is founded upon manipulating images. I think he is very smart, very good with the actors. I feel plenty of freedom, but at the same time I like to hear ‘I want one this way’ or ‘try it like this’ etc. That’s the whole point. I like to have direction from a director. I always welcome that very much

repeatedly felt, or something in the script, that sums up the feeling that’s been going on around this time? Not really, not in a word. I think Alex has a – and I don’t even know what we call it – it’s not really the right word, but I think we say detachment, a kind of recul, sort of… he’s reflective. That’s the time of his life I think, and he’s always reflective about people and what they can get up to. Sarah’s screenplay has interesting notions about Poirot’s past, which I think are very important. But I don’t know, maybe I would say ‘reserve’.

I’d say Poirot is convinced he has to solve the case, with the associates who help him, Crome [Rupert Grint] being one of them. He’s afraid that he won’t have done enough to discover who is committing these heinous acts

What drives Hercule Poirot? When he sees these victims, they’re not just dead bodies to him, it’s almost a very personal thing – beyond the fact that the killer is writing to him. What is driving him through this story? It’s the same thing that drives us all: his past. Scott Spencer had a great line in his novel Endless Love: “the past rests breathing faintly in the darkness, it no longer holds me as it used to, now I must reach back to touch it”. I think in Poirot’s case that is what motivates him. I think Sarah has had the most interesting take on what that past was and why it dictates his present and future.

“As Scott Spencer put it: The past rests breathing faintly in the darkness, it no longer holds me as it used to, now I must reach back to touch it” and I always try to give options that he may like and that maybe wouldn’t have come to mind. So for me it’s a very happy collaboration.

Is this Poirot’s last chance saloon? Well, one never knows that in this life. But it certainly could be. n

Through this process, are there any particular words that resonate or have resonated through this? Is there a word that you have

BBC One’s adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders is coming soon on BBC One

Photograph © BBC One

There are some pretty brutal murders and a race against time. Is Poirot scared or is he convinced that he’s going to solve this case? I think there is being convinced you are going to solve the case and then being convinced that you have to solve the case. I’d maybe say that he is convinced that he has to solve the case, with the associates who help him, Crome [Rupert Grint] being one of them. I think he’s worried. I don’t think he’s personally afraid but he’s afraid that he won’t have done enough, won’t have been on the mark enough or clever enough to discover who is committing these heinous acts. So I think he has fear in that way.

SARTORIAL •

Cordings Profile & Fashion Shoot (p44) Duke of Windsor Clothing (p58) • Amidé Hadelin (p62) • Cosplay (p65) • Loake Shoes (p70) • Harry Crosby (p72) • Mahoney Watches (p82) • Grey Fox Column (p84) • Blue Train (p88) 43

Sartorial

CORDINGS OF PICCADILLY An association between a 1960s blues guitar legend and an English country clothing store seems unlikely, but it is just this odd, eccentric twist on the traditional that makes Cordings of Piccadilly unique among its Jermyn Street neighbours. Eric Clapton became co-owner of Cordings in 2003, but that milestone was only one of many in the company’s illustrious past

ohn Charles Cording opened his first shop as an outfitter and waterproofer in 1839 at 231, Strand, manufacturing and selling mackintoshes developed by Charles Mackintosh. Cordings became so wellknown known for outdoor clothing that when Sir Henry Morton Stanley was preparing for his voyage to find Dr. Livingstone, his first port-of-call was Cordings. In 1877, the business transferred to its current premises at 19 Piccadilly, and in 1902 became J.C. Cording & Co Limited. They secured their first Royal warrant in 1909, when Cordings was granted the Prince of Wales warrant as waterproofers to the future King George V. The young Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, adopted Cordings as one of his many London outfitters, clearly impressed by the

famous Newmarket and Idstone boots on display in the shop window, submerged in a glass tank full of water (where they remained for so many years that they became part of the London taxi drivers’ ‘knowledge’). It was during the difficult years of the late 20s and early 30s that Cordings survived economic gloom by expanding their range from predominately outerwear and boots to a comprehensive range of country wear. Various mergers and acquisitions took place during the 1970s, 80s and 90s, with Cordings emerging victorious and independent, and with larger premises incorporating number 20, Piccadilly next door to the original store. The buyout by Eric Clapton in 2003 kept the company buoyant enough to survive changing fashions, increases in West End rent and the

When The Chap recently paid a visit to Piccadilly with some models and a photographer to photograph some of the Cordings range, there was no need to rearrange the furniture or hide any unattractive fittings: the entire shop provided the perfect Edwardian setting in which to photograph our Chaps and Chapettes. Choosing which clothes to dress our models in would have been a time consuming and endless task (there was nothing on the rails we didn’t want to photograph), but luckily the sharp choices were made by Cordings’ head of marketing Hillary Beque, who also provided crucial attention to sartorial detail, leaving The Chap team exclusively focused on the equally pressing task of selecting the correct pipe and which tobacco for each model to use. n

gradual erosion of Piccadilly from a street for gentlemen to a street for tourists. However, step inside Cordings today and you are immediately transported to the early 20th century. All the original brass and wood fixtures remain; the impressively aged brass plaque on the door has to be polished daily to maintain its lustre. Eric Clapton didn’t change a thing, because the reason he invested was precisely to keep Cordings exactly as he’d remembered it from his teenage visits. The only influence one might assume had come from 1960s psychedelia is the extraordinary range of colours in Cordings’ corduroy trousers, from English mustard to deep purple. Mr. Clapton’s other contributions include deciding to branch out into womenswear and choosing the tweeds for the new seasons.

CORDINGS PHOTO SHOOT PHOTOGRAPHY: PETER CLARK @PETERCLARKIMAGESUK MODELS: DAVID EVANS @GREYFOXBLOG, RACHEL HANDLER @MISS_ROSY_RIVOTS, CHRISTOPHER STYLES @APICCADILLYCHAP STYLIST: HILLARY BECQUE ALL CLOTHING FROM CORDINGS OF PICCADILLY UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED

Cordings of Piccadilly 19 Piccadilly, London W1J 0LA www.cordings.co.uk

CHRIS WEARS: NAVY RED PETER CHECK TATTERSALL SHIRT £69.00 RED WOVEN WOOL AND SILK ENGLISH DUCK TIE £65.00 CHARCOAL GREY TWEED REDFORD CURVED CAP £59.00 THORNER TWEED WAISTCOAT £150.00 THORNER TWEED JACKET £445.00 THORNER TWEED PLUS TWO SHOOTING BREEKS £175.00 DECO FLORAL POCKET SQUARE BY THE CHAP £25.00

DAVID WEARS: OLIVE CRUSHABLE TRILBY £59.00 GREY DERRY IRISH DONEGAL TWEED JACKET £435.00 GREY DERRY IRISH DONEGAL TROUSERS £195.00 GREY DERRY IRISH DONEGAL WAISTCOAT £150.00 FAWN ORIGINAL COVERT COAT £475.00 UMBRELLA FROM A SELECTION AT CORDINGS PIPE: STRAIGHT BRIAR BY COOL & SWEET TOBACCO: ASHTON RAINY DAY

RACHEL WEARS: RUST BRUSHED WOOL AND FEATHER TRIM HAT £65.00 | BARLEYCORN DOUBLE VENT JACKET £415.00 | WINE FITTED VELVET WAISTCOAT £129.00 | MARGARET ANNIE TANA LAWN LIBERTY SHIRT £65.00 | ORANGE SOFT STRETCH NEEDLECORD JEANS £99.00 | BROWN CHESTNUT LEATHER BROGUE £129.00

CHRISTOPHER WEARS: CINNAMON CORDUROY GARFORTH CAP £49.00 GRENFELL WALKER JACKET £600.00 BRIGHT ORANGE CORDUROY TROUSERS £110.00 LOAKE CHESTER BROWN BROGUE WITH DAINITE RUBBER SOLE £240.00 WALKING STICK WITH ANTLER HANDLE FROM A SELECTION AT CORDINGS

Sartorial

THE KING’S WARDROBE Gustav Temple pays a visit to Hampton Court Palace to view some clothes owned by the Duke of Windsor in the Royal Dress Collection

“He wanted to wear the high-cut American trousers with a belt. Scholte wouldn’t make American trousers. So he had Scholte make the coat and he sent the fabric to made into trousers in New York. Wallis Simpson called them his ‘pants across the Ocean’”

awrence, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, “Can you see anything?” It was all I could do to get out the words, “Yes, wonderful things.” The Lawrence in question was my journalist chum Sandra Lawrence, who had used her contacts at Hampton Court Palace to secure a private visit to their Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection, to view a small but perfectly formed collection of clothes once owned by the Duke of Windsor, formerly the Prince of Wales and King Edward VIII. Sandra had missed her train and I was already deep in the bowels of the Palace, in the company of Eleri Lynn, Collections Curator at Historic Royal Palaces. As I was putting on a pair of blue medical gloves in order to touch the first garment, Sandra

walked into a scene from CSI, except that the dead body was thankfully not inside its covering. The dress tunic for the Welsh Guards bore the

signs of age; the once-golden details on the braiding and buttons had tarnished with age, but the cloth (almost certainly by Gieves & Hawkes, though it bore no label) was in perfect condition, showing little signs of wear. Which is not surprising, for the Duke of Windsor was noted for not wearing it at occasions when he really should have. At one military parade, the then Prince of Wales turned out in Morning Dress to inspect the troops, when he should have been wearing the very tunic on the rail in front of us. He was not a fan of rules, Eleri informed me, and broke them as often as he could. The next item hauled out of its tissue paper was a brown houndstooth double-breasted suit. None of these bespoke items were sized but it looked like a size 36 chest to me. The coat was made at the Duke’s favoured Savile Row tailor Frederick Scholte and the trousers were made by New York tailor Harris. He preferred the American trouser cut and always had the trousers made across the Atlantic, mainly because he didn’t like wearing braces and British trousers were always cut for braces. “This,” announced Eleri, “is another suit he wore as the Prince of Wales, from the thirties, and it’s another brilliant example of him breaking the rules, because he once wore this in the City.” A stunned silence. “Brown in Town?” I ventured, hardly daring to believe my ears.

“Deliberately. He was not uneducated in sartorial rules by any means, so he knew what he was doing, and it caused headlines.” “He didn’t want to wear braces,” Eleri continued, “He wanted to wear the high-cut American trousers with a belt. Scholte, who was one of the best tailors in the country, wouldn’t make American trousers. So he had Scholte make the coat and he sent the fabric to made into trousers in New York. Wallis Simpson called them his ‘pants across the Ocean’.” At this point I brandished my Duke of Windsor credentials by mentioning the sardine tin that he always carried around when shopping for clothes, full of fabric swatches from his latest outfits, to find accessories that co-ordinated with them. It was my only victory, for we were clearly in the hands of a true expert. Eleri manages the entire collection in the Hampton Court archive, so no doubt would have as much insight into sartorial details of every royal since Henry VIII, who built the Palace. “Can we have a look inside the trousers?” I asked, without a trace of irony. Not only was the Duke very particular about the cut of his trousers, but there were also some strange little D-shaped metal clips on the waistband near the buttons. This one sartorial detail left even Eleri perplexed. “He did have buttons in the waistband to fasten the bottom of his shirt to – you can see them here – but these are something else.”

The next item hauled carefully from the tissue paper was a black tail coat. Again, the Duke went his own way, for the coat was not made of the usual light wool with silk lapel facings of most tailcoats. His was made from a very tightly woven black herringbone wool, almost resembling barathea. The auction label said Prince of Wales, Knight of the Garter, 14-11-34. I confirmed that the coat possessed the standard two pockets concealed in the tails, reputedly for the stowing of a pair of ladies’ stilettoes when stealing across the lawn from a ball, though Eleri was not convinced by this explanation (though she did say that barristers’ robes have a concealed pocket, for clients to slip payments into in order to keep this vulgar transaction private). The Duke’s tails did not have any pockets, so he must have stored his stilettoes elsewhere. The inevitable next question was whether the archive had any of the Duke’s accessories, and Eleri quickly produced, with a certain flourish, a pair of his shoes. A pair of two-tone loafers made by Peal & Co Ltd, Bootmakers, Oxford Street, by appointment to the late George V. Peal & Co closed for business in 1965 and is now owned by Brooks Brothers, who still produce some of their original designs. British company Forster & Son inherited some of the Peal lasts and continues to use them in the construction

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York offered the following explanation in their catalogue entry for one of the Duke of Windsor’s morning suits (the jacket made by Scholte, the trousers by Forster & Son) in their collection: “To avoid the necessity of wearing either a belt or braces to support his morning trousers, Forster [another of the Duke’s British tailors] devised an internal elasticized girdle, which fastened at the center front with a series of adjustable hooks and bars. To prevent gaping, two vertically positioned trouser hooks were set on either side and hooked over the tight fitting girdle.”

of some of their boots and slippers. The Duke’s shoes had a rubber sole, which looked original, but with the later addition of a rubber heel, possibly under the Duke’s orders. Most of the items in the archive had been acquired via auction, and it seems unlikely that a collector who had originally bought the shoes at a previous auction would have had them touched by a cobbler. The final item viewed was the piece de resistance. A Lord of the Isles tartan three-piece suit, once again by Scholte, trousers by Harris of New York. By 1951 the tailor had clearly overcome his earlier resistance to turn-back cuffs and other flourishes, for this piece could have been made by Tommy Nutter. There were two waistcoats, one by Scholte and one by Hawes & Curtis, as well as a matching cummerbund (hopefully never worn). The label states that this suit was often worn at the Windsor’s weekend residence The Mill in France. Tartans the Duke was allowed to wear were Royal Stuart, Hunting Stuart, Rothesay, Lord of the Isles and Balmoral. It’s an odd item, in that tartan is usually used

for formal wear, but this was worn at informal house parties. “Once again,” said Eleri, “his tendencies to rule-breaking mean he was wearing the tartan he was entitled to wear at an informal gathering long after he had ceased to be king. It was the assertion of his former hereditary rights in front of non-royal, probably bohemian guests.” Inside one of the outside pockets was an auction tag from 1997, when a major auction was held at Sotheby’s on 10th-11th September of clothes and jewellery from the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. We had spent over an hour poring over four clothing items owned by the Duke of Windsor, yet this formed only a minute portion of the entire collection in the care of Historic Royal Palaces, which dates back to the time of Henry VIII. Another visit, merely to look at Princess Margaret’s handbags, for example, would have taken just as long. For now, Sandra and I emerged from the vaults of Hampton Court with images of Scholte’s creations burning in our minds and the memory of, indeed, wonderful things. n

Sartorial

AMIDÉ HADELIN Liam Jefferies meets Amidé Stevens, the Dutch fashion designer who kick started his new accessories brand on Instagram

“Apart from the investment side of things, I use accessories to liven up my outfit and really express my own style. Using different accessories gives you much more options than the basic items you wear”

ow did Amidé Hadelin first come about? It began as a social experiment on Instagram on January 31st, 2017. Triggered by stories from a then co-worker, I was intrigued by the whole notion of people following the photographic stories of others. I’d been working in a part time job selling high end men’s shoes for a few years, after resigning from my job as a research consultant at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. Since I had been long interested in men’s shoes and style – not so much fashion – I thought it a nice pastime to see if there could be an audience interested in my personal style, and the styles I found inspiring at local stores. Before long, this led to multiple inquiries from Instagram members into possibilities for them to

buy the accessories I was showing. This triggered my then dormant business sense. It had been quite a number of years since I’d had my own business, during my time at university studying business administration. These questions through Instagram

made me think of starting anew, aiming at building a brand in the best possible accessories for modern gentlemen; classic with a twist, if you will. First stop: Pitti Uomo in June 2017, the rest is history…

we were lucky to be allowed to order some ties from their collection of vintage fabrics. Have you considered making other items of menswear beyond accessories? Well I have, and I’m sure we will expand to shoes and shirts and maybe even suits in a few years’ time. But a lot of those items require an even greater investment than the already significant investment that was necessary to offer a substantial range of high-end accessories. Apart from the investment side of things, I use accessories to liven up my outfit and really express my own style. Using different accessories gives you much more options than the basic items you wear. That doesn’t mean you can’t achieve lots of different outfits mixing up suits, separates, and shirts, but just think what you can do when you add ties, pocket squares, braces and socks in the mix, or even umbrellas, gloves and sunglasses. Your options to express yourself become almost limitless.

With pieces made in Italy and England, how do you source your products? Pitti Uomo was and is an important source of contacts. Many people know Pitti as a peacocks showoff event, and although this might be true (yes you can also find me on that wall), it is first and foremost a trade show, bringing together lots of interesting producers of menswear and accessories. It’s also a great place to talk to people and get tipped on other high-end producers that are not present at the show. Travelling to Milano Unica later brought me directly into contact with producers of fabrics, and although our first collection was sourced from fabrics that were in stock with our various accessory producers, we will be gradually shifting towards buying fabrics directly from the source and having them made into finished products by the artisans we work with, who are true and proven specialists in their various fields. A nice example of this are the latest braces we added to our collection. We sourced the wool/ cashmere tweeds directly from Standeven and had them hand made into unique braces – in fact they are first braces ever to be made from Standeven cloth.

What is your favourite item in the current collection? That’s a difficult question, because I’m drawn to each of these items for different reasons. The traditional regimental tie, made from one of the finest Italian jacquard fabrics around, makes me feel a bit nostalgic. The vintage paisley tie just makes me feel honoured that we can offer a selection of ties in these vintage fabrics from the personal collection of our Italian artisan tie maker. The gloves I especially love for their heritage. These gloves in the finest North American deerskin, hand-made by another third generation family-run business – in this case British – and based on a model that has been around since the 1800s, for me represents the best in glove making worldwide. Especially in the Peruvian peccary version we also offer; you can’t get any better than that, really. Last but not least, the hand-printed silk pocket square (and maybe my preferred item of these four because of the frequency I could use it). This is a unique piece in its own right. You can’t find hand-printed silk for ties or pocket squares outside the UK. All silk printing in Italy is digital nowadays, and although those techniques have improved greatly over the years, there is still nothing like a piece of fabric that has been printed by hand by a highly select group of craftsmen, finished by hand into such a delicate and staggeringly beautiful accessory. n

How did you come to work with Bigi Milano? For me they were the first tie producer to catch my eye at Pitti last year. Being third generation tie makers, Stefano Bigi and his sister Paola are very passionate about keeping family traditions alive, and they produce magnificent ties from the best of fabrics in their Milan workshop. They are constantly seeking new lovely and cool fabrics to offer to their clients. This, in combination with their long tradition, made them an interesting producer for us to work with. Tell us how you found the 1970s Vintage Silk. Well, that was easier than you might think. The artisan workshop that produces the Amidé Hadelin ties are second generation tie makers with a strong passion for and pride in their work. Their passion is so strong that they keep – and actively source – vintage fabrics for their private collection, simply because they love their heritage so much. Usually the amount left of these fabrics is very limited, and

SOME ACCESSORIES FROM AMIDÉ HADELIN Dressing Up

PAISLEY HAND PRINTED SILK POCKET SQUARE Hand-printing silk is an art form on the verge of extinction, only performed now in England (Macclesfield to be exact, an area as inextricably linked to silk printing and weaving as Northamptonshire is to shoe making). The technique, formulated and used to this day by Robert Keyte Silks, ensures an enhanced depth of colour, as well as connoting a sense of individuality, for no two are exactly the same. The variety of colour and complexity of pattern allows the wearer to compliment their outfit with the required level of precision. €69

JACQUARD REGIMENTAL TIE A tie of classical jacquard-weave in pure silk from one of the best mills in Como, Italy, the untipped three-fold construction belies a lightweight lining. It’s fully hand made in Italy, from fabric cutting to the last slip-stitch, with hand-rolled edges ensuring an elegant drape and a perfect knot dimple. At 8cm in width and with a length of 150cm, the tie is of perfect proportion to complement most suiting, modern or classical. €105

UNLINED DEERSKIN GLOVES Exquisitely hand-stitched in England from deerskin sourced from North America, home of some of the finest in the field, these gloves take the humble leather glove to its zenith. The deerskin is soft and supple, suggesting a delicacy, yet the distinctive grain alludes to the hardwearing nature of this natural material. As with most products for which a long-life is evident, a repair and re-lining service is offered for enhanced longevity. €105

1970S VINTAGE SILK PAISLEY TIE Constructed in the same fashion as the regimental tie but also self-tipped, so the back features the same fabric as the rest of the tie. The blade is slightly larger, at 9cm, a nod to the vintage nature of the piece, without going overboard into kipper-tie territory. €125

www.amidehadelin.com

@amidehadelin

@sartorialchap

Sartorial

COSPLAY Holly Rose Swinyard on the differences between Cosplay, historical re-enactment and Live Action Roleplay (LARP)

s some of you fine people may know, I am a cosplayer. Shocking, I know, that such a well-dressed person as myself spends their time making and wearing the most outlandish outfits imaginable, based on popular culture, of all things. How can this possibly be true? Well as it turns out, the path that has led me to this sartorially excellent way of being was started by cosplay. It’s a very important part of my life; I learnt to sew because of it; I learnt to design; I learnt to understand what colours, fabrics, and design styles looks good on put together and what doesn’t. In short I learnt about fashion, because that’s where all costume-based hobbies have their roots. Cosplay, LARP, and more obviously, historical re-enactment,

“Cosplay is more like being able to find something of yourself in the character and inhabiting them for a bit, rather than being “this person is exactly like me!” After all, I’d be pretty worried if I was actually like General Hux from Star Wars” 65

was actually like General Hux from Star Wars). There is a ‘traditional’ demographic of teens and twenty-somethings in Cosplay, and they are predominantly girls (yes, shocking: girls are just as nerdy as boys, if not more so) but it’s a hugely diverse group of people. My personal favourite cosplayers are a retired Japanese-American couple, known as Cosplay Parents, who spend most of their time making costumes and going to Disneyland together. If that isn’t ‘hashtag couple goals’, I don’t know what is.

all have a basis in the fashion past, present and in some cases future. I’ve argued before that Star Wars costumes come from the fashion of the 1940s/50s, so of course the cosplayers wearing them are doing that too, and it’s the same for any piece of pop culture – yes, even the terrible designs from the 90s. We should start with the most obvious thing: what is cosplay? First things first, cosplay does not come from Japan; the word may have been invented there, but the hobby itself finds its roots in the science fiction literary conventions and events of 1920s/30s America. The earliest record of someone in the West dressing up as a character from a piece of media for an event that was not theatrical is in 1908. A Mr. and Mrs. William Fell attended a masquerade at a skating rink in Cincinnati, Ohio, wearing costumes from the sci-fi comic Mr Skygack from Mars. Later, in 1939, Myrtle R. Douglas attended the first World Sci-Fi Convention in costume, being the first to do so in the environment of popular culture, and continued to promote what we now call cosplay in the many sci-fi zines that she wrote for and edited over the next 20 years. It caught on quickly and by the second World Con many more people had started “fan costuming”.

COSPLAY AND HISTORICAL RE-ENACTMENT

Cosplay differs from historical re-enactment; it is much more about bringing some form of fiction to life rather than recreating any sort of reality. You’re not throwing yourself into reliving the past, and seeing how things were – in an albeit much safer and more sanitised environment than it would have really been – but cosplay is more about reaching for something you wish was real. There is a level of childlike wonder to it all; when you look in the mirror and see yourself as that character you loved as a kid or one who reminded you what it was like to be a child, you can’t stop yourself from grinning. The other big difference is that cosplayers don’t stay in character. There are some who do; the 501st Garrison and other charity groups are notable for that, and many will try and stay in character when interacting with children – after all for the kids, they are actually meeting Spider-Man – but for the most part performance is on stage during competitions and masquerades. It’s not like with LARP or re-enactment where you are living the part all day; cosplay is more like borrowing a role that belongs to the character. You are inhabiting them for a day, maybe taking on some of their traits other than appearance. It’s not surprising that you will behave slightly differently, but it’s not really the same as the re-enactment. When the convention doors close you cry “FREEDOM” and throw your costume off and head to the pub (or bed if you don’t want a hangover for another long day in costume), whereas in LARP and re-enactment there is much more involved, staying in character right up to going to bed, possibly in a period-accurate tent. Cosplay, historical re-enactment and LARP (Live Action Role Play) all have slightly different ways of doing things, but at the end of the day it’s indulging fully in a passion to the point of immersion. We live in a world where we are constantly bombarded with images of a perfect life, of a

“My personal favourite cosplayers are a retired Japanese-American couple, known as Cosplay Parents, who spend most of their time making costumes and going to Disneyland together. If that isn’t hashtag couple goals I don’t know what is” Now that we’ve got a bit of the history lesson out of the way, what does this rather peculiar word mean? Cosplay is an amalgam of costume and play. That’s it. And there is no more succinct way of explaining it: cosplay is wearing a costume and playing the part in some way. So it’s a bit like acting but not. With cosplay it’s more like being able to find something of yourself in the character and inhabiting them for a bit. If you’re like me, then this often means being able to play up a certain aspect of your personality, rather than being “this person is exactly like me!” (after all, I’d be pretty worried if I

ÂŠ Laura King

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Millie and Steven Tani AKA Cosplay Parents

perfect body, a perfect world, while simultaneously seeing modern life crumble around us. We interact on screens, projecting the best of ourselves for everyone to see and seeing the best version of everyone else in return. Is it any wonder that many of us choose to escape that for a weekend? Maybe that’s camping in a muddy field shooting muskets at each other, or maybe it’s in a convention hall having kids losing their mind because for them you are Captain America come to life. Either way, it’s allowing you time away from everything; brain space, possibly even some clarity on problems you may be facing; if nothing else you can at least have some fun. And there will be those of us who take these things and make them our jobs, becoming tailors, set designers, props builders, writers, photographers, but we will always have a version of cosplay purely for our own enjoyment.

Cosplay is just another strange, not-so-little subculture that makes people happy. And what’s wrong with that? I love making costumes and getting to be my favourite characters, but I also love making vintage inspired clothing and wearing that, and if anyone saw me at this year’s Chap Olympiad you’ll have seen that there are plenty of ways for those things cross over – kudos to those who got the Bioshock references; you will not be thrown to the splicers. So if you fancy getting involved in cosplay, or just going and seeing what it’s all about, there are comic, anime and sci-fi conventions all over the country where you can go and see this madness for yourselves. Most of them will even have small cosplay competitions, so you can really get an eyeful of the huge amount of love and effort that goes into all of it. I hope you do. n

Footwear

LOAKE LEGACY Gustav Temple road tests a pair of half brogues from the new Legacy 1880 Collection by Loake on the hard streets of London

“The ‘breaking in’ of shoes is for schoolchildren and ladies who force their feet into toe-curling stilettoes. Northampton-made shoes should feel comfortable the very first day you wear them and should not yield a single blister”

t is fitting that a shoemaker founded in 1880 brings out a new range, 138 years later, named after that founding year. Loake was set up by three brothers, Thomas, John and William Loake in Kettering, Northamptonshire at the house of Thomas Loake. In 1894 the company moved to much larger premises in Kettering, where Loake still operates today from the Unique Boot Factory. Busy making military footwear during two world wars, the company did not officially register the Loake brand until 1945, earning themselves a Royal Warrant by 2007. Those 138 years have seen many styles emerge from the Unique Boot factory, from Despatch Rider Boots for the British Army to Cossack Books for the Russian Army, and a multitude of civilian styles of footwear from chunky brogues to elegant loafers and everything in between. Now comes the Loake 1880 Legacy range, on sale since September this year. The last 138 years have seen hundreds of different lasts pass through the Unique Boot Factory, and Loake has created two new ones specially for this range, the ‘River’ and the

‘Bullet’. Both incorporate elements of lasts from the past but add a contemporary finish in the toecap, creating a pleasing silhouette that also gives space for the feet to breathe. The model featured here is the Derwent in Black Calf, a half brogue (or semi-brogue) made on the ‘River’ last. The construction is top-grade Northampton-made Goodyear-welted calf leather. A vegetable-tanned leather lining assures a greater level

of moisture absorption, while the engineering of the last provides increased arch support for enhanced comfort. So much for the technical details, but how does the Derwent actually feel? As a man whose winklepicker days are long behind him, yet who steadfastedly refuses ever to contemplate what some manufacturers describe as ‘comfortable shoes’ (i.e. not remotely stylish or, even worse, designed primarily for sport), the River last seems to fit the bill. The standard F-fitting width, often pretty snug on many Northampton-made shoes, gives plenty of room for manoevre, but the toecap angles to a chisel shape normally associated with a tighter fit. The most important road test for any pair of shoes, as anyone who only wears footwear from Northampton factories knows, is that they shouldn’t need breaking in. The ‘breaking in’ of shoes is for schoolchildren and ladies who force their feet into toe-curling stilettoes. Northampton-made shoes should feel comfortable the very first day you wear them, and a full day of walking about, doing whatever you need to do, should not yield a single blister. I put my Derwent half brogues to the test by wearing them on an all-day assignment in central London, where the unforgiving pavements, underground escalators, cobblestones, discarded Coke cans, not to mention the Portland Stone steps up to Pall Mall gentlemen’s clubs (just to peek in the doors and dream of membership) made my shoes do their work. I can reliably report that there were no blisters and no discomfort. While inserting a pair of shoetrees at the end of a new pair of shoes’ first working day, one always inspects the creases that have

formed, which are there to stay and, if they’re not in the right places, there is nothing you can do about it. The shoe trees will absorb the day’s moisture and maintain the condition of the leather lining, but the exterior leather will have moulded itself around your feet and worked out where it has to give. The solid construction of the Derwents had ensured they maintained their shape on the toecap and gently bent around the arch in a way that added to the elegance of their shape. Another pair of black brogues that had been my stalwarts for five years suddenly looked completely worn-out and ready to be consigned to the ‘putting out the bins’ selection (if in town, of course; I also have a ‘putting out the bins in the country’ selection). I have a feeling that these new half brogues from the Loake 1880 Legacy range are going to see many good years of action before I have to put out the bins in them. I chose a half brogue because they are multi-purpose and can just as easily be worn for lunch at Boisdale’s, dinner at the Cinnamon Club and even for a black-tie event. Loake 1880 Legacy shoes are available from www.loake. co.uk and in Loake shops and accredited stockists. Prices range from £240 to £275. n

Dandyism

HARRY CROSBY Chris Sullivan on the extraordinary life of dandy, gadabout, poet and suicide Harry Crosby, who defined the excesses of postwar Paris and always wore black

n December 10th 1929, 21 days before the end of the Roaring Twenties, five weeks after the Wall Street Crash and four years before the repeal of Prohibition Harry Crosby, aged 31, was found dead with a .25 caliber bullet in his right temple. Next to him lay his mistress, 20-year-old, Josephine Noyes Rotch, equally deceased, with a hole in her left temple that deftly matched her paramour’s. In one fist Harry held the pistol and in the other her hand.

“Crosby painted his fingernails black, exclusively wore black double-breasted suits, a black cloth carnation in his buttonhole and drank to distraction” 72

Harry and Caresse Crosby

Polly Rogers Peabody changed her name to Caresse when she married Crosby

The day before, Harry Crosby had penned his concluding entry in his journal: ‘One is not in love unless one desires to die with one’s beloved. There is only one happiness: it is to love and to be loved.’ It was a suicide pact. The coroner reported that Crosby had a Christian cross tattooed on the sole of one foot and a pagan icon representing the sun on the other, while his toenails were painted red. Harry Sturgis Crosby was one of a number of young men whom Gertrude Stein christened ‘the Lost Generation’. A disaffected group who had fought, lived through and often witnessed first hand the atrocities on the front line of WWI, they’d found themselves adrift, writing and creating in Paris amongst the architects of modern culture, as we now perceive it. It’s almost impossible to conceive what the French capital must have been like back then. I often imagine a scene outside the likes of the La Coupole in Montparnasse circa 1923. James Joyce might be sharing a bottle of wine with Archibald MacLeish, while over his shoulder sits Samuel

Beckett talking to Hemingway, who is then joined by Ezra Pound who waves to Matisse as he cycles past Coco Chanel, who is sitting next to Buñuel and Le Corbusier. Meanwhile, Aleister Crowley is nursing a hangover at the bar, aimlessly gazing over at Tristan Tzara, Man Ray and Duchamp, who sit behind Diaghilev, who has just arrived to meet Picasso to talk about the sets for the Ballet Russes. In 1920 there were an estimated 8,000 Americans living in Paris, but by 1925 they numbered some 40,000. Undeniably, the Americans set a torch under Paris but none created as big a blaze as Harry Crosby who, the product of generations of blue-blood Americans, was born June 4th 1898 in Back Bay, Boston. Among his ancestors he could count Revolutionary War General Philip Schuyler and William Floyd – a signatory on the Declaration of Independence – while Uncle Jack was none other than banking magnate J.P Morgan. He studied at the finest schools, including St Marks prep among the Whitney’s, Huntington’s and Dewey’s. The only sign he showed of being in any way unusual was that, even though he’d studied, among

many others, Byron, Tennyson, Chaucer, Dryden, Milton, Wordsworth and the most personally influential, De Quincey – apart from the bible, his only literary infatuation was the entirely prescient Omar Khayyam, and especially his stanza – ‘Ah, we make the most of what we yet may spend, Before we too into the dust descend.’ And maybe it was this that inspired Crosby to follow in the New England tradition – whereby sons of the elite entered conflicts they could have easily avoided – and volunteer in 1917, aged 19, for the US Ambulance Corps in France. He thus drove ambulances throughout the conflict. He carried buckets of amputated human limbs and penned hundreds of letters describing the horrors he saw at first hand. ‘He had no jaws, teeth or lips left,’ he scribbled. ‘Under his eyes the skin was dead blue… Of course he couldn’t yell as his mouth or what was left of it was a mere mass of pulp.’ Sure signs of mental instability followed. He took to reading the bible every day, sung hymns to himself and attended church as often as possible, but it was until an artillery shell ripped through his vehicle, leaving, as biographer Geoffrey Wolff explains, ‘but a few spare parts and a young man’s untouched body and gravely injured imagination’ that, as Crosby admitted, he ‘became a man.’ Harry believed God himself had saved him that day. ‘Faith in God is the most powerful factor in the entire world,’ he inscribed soon afterwards. During the The Battle of the Orme, Crosby’s company rescued some 2000 men. As a result, on March 1st 1919, Crosby became the youngest American to be awarded the Croix de Guerre. He was 21. He returned to Boston a changed man. Gone was the steady manager of the school Glee Club. He painted his fingernails black, exclusively wore black double-breasted suits, a black cloth carnation in his buttonhole and drank to distraction. Some thought him shell shocked, while family friend Gardner Monks opined that, ‘He [Harry] was an entirely different boy after the war and a much more confused and impulsive one… He was as wild as blazes.’ Here he met his future wife, the then-married and rather well endowed, Polly Rogers Peabody (pictured above; she invented a bra to contain her ample bosoms) some eight years his senior. An English admirer declared that ‘she was vain but her silk stockings were forever twisted’ which certainly sums her up. “Harry seemed to be more expression and mood than man. Yet he was the most vivid personality I’ve ever known, electric with rebellion. My love

“Harry seemed to be more expression and mood than man. Yet he was the most vivid personality I’ve ever known, electric with rebellion” for Harry blinded me like a sunrise,” she said, even though from the beginning of their relationship he talked almost constantly of love and death and of his obsession with mutual suicide. ‘I promise whenever you want we shall die together,’ he wrote to her. Of course Boston Society, and especially the couple’s families, were scandalised. Harry was sent off to work in his uncle’s Bank in Paris. Polly went to England. He then flew on a private plane to get her, brought her back to the French capital and threatened suicide unless she stayed with him but, after hearing of one of his affairs, she left back for Boston. Typically Crosby chased her across the Atlantic on a cargo ship and pursued her relentlessly. Thus he persuaded her to leave her alcoholic husband and marry him. On September 11th 1922 they, along with her two children, boarded the RMA Aquitania and moved to Paris. Here they quickly embraced every smidgeon of excess that the city could offer. They enjoyed an open marriage, spectacular bacchanals, seven-

in-a-bed orgies, ominous tattoos and airplane joy rides, while gambling as if tomorrow never existed, forever flying high on a mountain of cocaine, opium and hashish and carrying a mutual suicide pact with cremation instructions therein. At the beginning of 1923 Harry resigned from the bank and, much to the vexation of his investment banker dad, became a full time writer of both prose and poetry and a dyed-in-the-wool dandy. He dressed always in black, was shaved twice every morning, hated being touched by strangers, avoided the poor, considered himself an aristocrat and a snob yet dressed his servants in the most expensive garments, often lavished gifts on flower sellers and tradesmen and would often pay more for goods than their listed price if he thought them undervalued. Crosby’s extravagance knew no bounds. He gambled as if there was no tomorrow. He always travelled first class and ate and drank the finest of everything, hated ‘ filthy germ ridden paper bills’ and preferred to use gold coins. Luckily for him the dollar had jumped in the exchange rate and so did his allowance, though $12,000 a year (now $200,000) was still not enough for the young

reprobate. His average daily spend in purely bars restaurants and taxis amounted to £500 in today’s money. On one occasion he paid a thousand francs to see a girl whipped in a brothel, and wrote to his mother that he ‘should like to have a harem with no girl older than 15 other than Caresse.’ ‘He looked like a God,’ wrote his stepdaughter Poleen Peabody. ‘He didn’t look like anybody on the streets or in restaurants or anywhere. He was just different.’ Undeniably, by now Crosby was in full flow. He smoked intimidating amounts of opium in his Chinese long stemmed pipe every day (‘almost a religious act, almost a prayer!’) ate hashish, snorted cocaine as if it was going out of fashion and was rarely without a drink. But it wasn’t all about hedonism. Not quite. In 1925 Crosby arranged a dual publication of books of poetry by him and his wife. ‘It is a glimpse of chaos not reduced to order. A glimpse of the living untamed chaos.’ wrote D.H. Lawrence of Crosby’s poetry. In 1927, the Crosbys founded an English language publishing house in Paris called Editions

Caresse Crosby with Salvador DalĂ

Narcisse after their black whippet. Initially vanity projects for their own work, their books, executed on the most beautiful paper, exquisitely produced and deluxe, were immediately collectable. Thus when they produced 300 copies of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, with illustrations by Alistair (AKA Hans Hemmings Von Voight), they hit the zeitgeist and so the next year they expanded and changed the name to The Black Sun Press. The new press also published Crosby’s second collection, Red Skeletons, a collection of poems hugely influenced by Baudelaire and the British decadent tradition. Photoheliograph below, is a poem by Harry Crosby, first published in 1928 in a poetry collection titled Chariot of the Sun black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black black They subsequently published, among others James Joyce (then unknown) D.H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound and Ernest Hemingway, and soon their publishing house was considered one of the most important independent presses in France. And while Caresse embarked on a relationship with the young Henri Cartier Bresson, Crosby was notching his bedpost. In July 1928 Crosby met 20-year old Josephine Noyes Rotch (pictured right, another thoroughgoing American blueblood who was as crazy as he was and shared his death wish) in Venice. They stayed in bed for eight days and he described her as the ‘Fire Princess’. Their affair lasted until she married on June 21st 1929 and rekindled soon after. She then bombarded Crosby with letters and telegrams demanding further involvement. They met in Detroit in December 1929 at an expensive hotel and for four days smoked opium, enjoyed sex and never left their room. On December 9th Josephine sent Harry a poem, the last line of which said ‘Death is Our marriage.’ The next day Harry had arranged to meet Caresse and his mother for dinner. He didn’t turn up. He and Josephine were subsequently found in his hotel as described earlier. There was no suicide note, while his wedding ring that he had vowed never to remove was crushed on the floor. The press had a field day musing for weeks on whether this was suicide or murder. But all they had to do was read the man’s poetry. ‘My dying words shall be a lover’s sighs,

Beyond the last rhythm of her thighs.” ‘Death,’ he wrote, was ‘the hand that opens the door to our cage.’ A man of his word, he had always maintained that he would die young by suicide after living life to the full. His poem Sun – Death begins with a roster of famous suicides – Diogenes; Socrates, Cleopatra, Modigliani, Van Gogh, etc. I will leave the last words to Harry Crosby’s biographer Malcolm Cowley: ‘He had gifts that would have made him an explorer, a soldier of fortune, a revolutionist: they were qualities fatal to a poet.’ n Black Sun – The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby by Geoffrey Wolff, is available in New York Review Book classics A collection of Harry Crosby’s poetry, Ladders to the Sun: Poems by Harry Crosby was published by Soul Bay Press in 2010

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Horology

MAHONEY WATCHES Liam Jefferies makes the case for purchasing a decently priced watch rather than wait forever to acquire a vintage Omega or Rolex

stablished in 2018, Mahoney was brought about to pay tribute to the owner’s Celtic Grandfather and, more particularly, his love of a quality timepiece. As their motto reads: “A quality timepiece has long been the symbol of an individual with style and class. What you choose to wear on your wrist tells the world a lot about who you are.” Rather than offering an imitation of the grand houses of horology, Mahoney set about crafting a model which stands on its own merit. What the Mahoney range is not is an attempt to emulate or duplicate a premium-range timepiece. It is instead its own incarnation, utilising the same methodology as the classics. The watches are made in Switzerland. Swiss movements are hand-assembled and ensure, combined with the use of metal gears, very high quality internal mechanisms. The same high quality

greater degree of individuality, with natural variations in colour and texture (and whether one decides to test the water resistance of 50 metres). For the Edge model, the strap is an adjustable 316L stainless steel mesh, at a width of 22mm to compensate the Edge’s 42mm diameter – perhaps one for the larger waisted reader. The case is made of premium grade stainless steel, as is appropriate for a non-dress watch. This is preferable for several reasons, the first being that it affects the price substantially, with gold-cased watches often selling for 430% more than their steel counterparts. Given the intention behind a nondress watch, any form of precise metal is simply for prestige. Steel gives the reliable ‘heavy’ feel on the wrist, is highly resistant to rust and can be re-polished when blemished or scratched. So next time you are considering a replacement for your factory-made inferior model, or pondering over your pipe-dream scrapbook full of photos of James Bond and his expensive timepieces, take heed that your ideal watch may just be the one you can buy right now, and cherish for a lifetime. n

materials enable watchmakers to perform repairs easily to scratched or broken parts, which is why vintage Swiss watches are still seen in abundance, fully working. The Mahoney Artisan (above) is a versatile and tastefully robust model, living up to the name. If there were such a thing as a workwear watch, this is it. Every detail is designed for maximum functionality with minimum fuss. The ‘Edge’ model (previous page), by contrast, exudes an air of elegance, with a silver dial and minimalist index in place of numbers. On the Artisan the dial is blue but, contrary to popular opinion, this is not as limiting as, say, a black dial. Black dial on brown straps, or against brown clothing, is a faux pas any true chap can spot, while blue opens up the styling options, allowing greater colour-play within one’s wardrobe. It will also not clash with brown shoes in the way that a black watch face would. The crystal of the watch is comprised of mineral glass, an ordinary glass crystal that has been treated chemically to withstand scratches. While not as scratch-resistant as sapphire, mineral glass is far superior to plastic crystals. The Edge model has K1 mineral glass with a sapphire coating, adding another element of protection and lifespan. The movement is a Ronda 517, featuring three hands and a day-and-date indicator. This form of movement is superlative, due to its reparability and powerful stepping motor, not to mention its long life. The strap on the Artisan model is a modest 20mm in Italian calf leather, and this yields a

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Mature Style

THE GREY FOX COLUMN David Evans of www.greyfoxblog.com takes care of headwear, footwear, cufflinks, grooming and motoring, while still finding time (not) to enjoy a pipe of tobacco

“Great fun and supremely British, the Land Rover Series 2a certainly has character – perfect to drive wearing a tweed suit and chunky brogues and with my smelly Labrador Harry festering quietly in the passenger seat”

ooking back over my first few columns for this illustrious organ, I see that I’ve tried to introduce readers to little-known brands, so that the big boys don’t receive all the attention. To continue this trend I’ll mention a few here. Let’s start at the top with hats. I tend to think of millinery as making hats for women, but many milliners make for the male of the species too. It can be fun, as a chap, to have a hat made to your specific requirements. Shape, style, colour, materials and size are all within your control. With some spare Harris Tweed to hand, I asked Lisa Taylor at Taylor Red Millinery to see what she could come up with. She made a fedora-style hat and a traditional tweed cap. Tweed is perhaps an unusual material for a fedora, but it’s worked and, lined with some fox head silk, has made a very special and individual headpiece. Naturally, Taylor Red also make hats for women,

throwing open the charming possibility of his and hers headgear. Talking of tweed caps somehow takes me on to motoring. I found myself wondering what sort of car the average Chap reader would own and drive. British-made, possibly, or a fifties US car, or

even perhaps an environmentally friendly hybrid or electric car? However, I’m going to talk petroleum spirit here because, in the 70th anniversary year of the marque, I became the proud owner of a Land Rover Series 2a. Built in 1967, she’s a station wagon, a rarity from that time – as a private passengercarrying car, a station wagon attracted purchase tax, making her more costly than her commercial vehicle stable mates (most were then used by farmers, foresters and contractors – this was long before luxury Land Rovers arrived in Chelsea and Morningside). She’d belonged to a good friend of mine for many years. After he sadly died last year, I decided to find someone to restore it in his honour. The restoration took over a year but the wait was worthwhile, as the car is now better than when she rolled off the assembly line in Solihull all those years ago. Robust but basic, she has no synchromesh on second or third gears, the steering is heavy and the brakes indecisive, but clunk her into low ratio four-wheel drive and find a rocky, muddy field and she’s unbeatable. Great fun and supremely British, she certainly has character – perfect to drive wearing a tweed suit and chunky brogues and with my smelly labrador Harry festering quietly in the passenger seat, his big tongue trailing in the breeze out of the sliding side windows.

And talking of British-made and of labradors, Harry is very keen on the bridle leather collars and leads from Tim Hardy at Worcestershire Leather Company. British made and robust, they’ll last as long as most classic Land Rovers – and Hardy will make you a superb belt to match. Which leads me to more British-made leather goods. I recently visited the Crockett & Jones shoe factory in Northampton, the home of English shoes. The visit reminded my why I love factory visits so much. The smells (in this case of quality leather and boot polish), the astonishing skills of the workers, the mix of old and new technologies (why throw away old machines when they still work well and reliably?) and the pride that permeates the whole enterprise reminded me why I like to buy a few items of quality rather than have piles of cheap clothes. Well-made English shoes are carefully designed for comfort from good quality leather. Being Goodyear-welted, they can be re-heeled and resoled many times without the uppers wearing out. A good pair will last you for years in comfort: a cheap pair from a lesser manufacturer will be landfill within a year or two. I used to be wary of suede shoes, thinking that they would quickly become shabby with wear. I’ve since worn a couple of pairs of English-made suede derbies. I’ve found my Crockett & Jones Newquays

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only require a going over with a suede brush to restore them to as-new condition, proving my theory that quality materials pay for themselves with use. Continuing the theme of quality and Britishmade but returning to a smaller brand you may not have heard of, I would like to mention Lamler. Founder Helen Plummer is one of those admirable young designer/entrepreneurs that are emerging at the moment in the UK. Based in the West Country, she has a seaside studio in which she designs raincoats made from British-made waxed cotton. Not only are her designs contemporary and different, but also the coats are made extremely well, with much attention to detail (as in the gorgeous horn buttons) and construction. So good are they that I feel these are future classics. They may be pricier than some high street macs, but they will last for many years, making them good investments. Another small brand you may like to look at, particularly with the gift-giving season upon us, is Abi Insol. A London-based jeweller, she’s introduced a range of cufflinks made from vintage buttons. Each design is unique or limited. Naturally I had a pair made from fox head buttons that probably initially graced a huntsman’s waistcoat. Modestly priced, they’d make the ideal present for the cufflink wearer in your life. On the grooming front, a new brand you may like to try is Urban Jack. I particularly like their shave serum. It comes in a small bottle, ideal for travel, and gives an excellent smooth shave without the froth and bother of shaving soap. They have found the right balance of fragrances for their shaving products – nothing too floral but pleasantly masculine and soapy. Another small grooming business, Wilde & Harte, make a nice range of traditional single-blade razors and shaving brushes for you to achieve that baby’s bottom finish on your jawline. I tried the el-

egantly designed Eltham safety razor, which, because it doesn’t give too aggressive a shave, would be ideal for the beginner or the man who (unaccountably) likes to rush his shaving. When it comes to the sense of smell, two scents I love are those of freshly roasting coffee and good pipe tobacco. Recently I (a non-smoker) had the dubious privilege of borrowing one of our editor’s pipes, so that I could make smoke for the Cordings of Piccadilly photoshoot appearing elsewhere in this issue. I find that the very best coffee tastes as good as it smells when it’s being ground. Sadly this didn’t seem to be the case with pipe baccy. While it smelt gloriously in the tin like baking toffee, it tasted like bonfire smoke. I wonder if there is a tobacco that tastes as good as it smells. n Tim Hardy Worcestershire Leather Co www.timhardy.com Taylor Red London www.taylorred.co.uk Crockett & Jones www.crockettandjones.com Lamler www.lamler.com Abi Insol www.abi.london Urban Jack www.urbanjack.com Wilde & Harte www.wildeandharte.co.uk

Motoring

PROJECT BLUE TRAIN In 1930, racing driver Woolf Barnato bet that he could reach his club in London in his Bentley Speed Six from Cannes before the Blue Train. ‘Actuarius’ recounts his own attempt to recreate the wager

I could drive I harboured a desire to emulate him. 2018 saw my 50th birthday and what better way to celebrate than by realising my dream? There were two minor problems – firstly, racing on public roads is frowned upon by unimaginative officialdom

he bonds and interests formed in youth may come to influence the whole of our lives, but some need a spark before taking hold. I was generally aware of vintage Bentleys and the Bentley Boys as a child, but it was visiting a local meeting of the Bentley Drivers Club as an adolescent that truly lit the fire. The precise moment was cycling along the A52 as three ‘Le Mans’ tourers thundered past, all with gloss black bonnets and matt black Rexine bodies; my heart was instantly lost to them. I avidly read everything I could find on the cars, characters and associated exploits, and one story in particular lodged itself in my consciousness: Woolf Barnato racing the Blue Train from Cannes to London in 1930. Barnato’s race wasn’t even close, he arrived in London before the train reached Calais, but it immediately passed into legend. Before

“We soon realised that Fury’s secret weapon, a 3.5 litre V8 engine, coupled with a lack of air-conditioning, soon made driving conditions intolerable enough for Bell to ask if he could remove his tie” 89

brief discussion, it was decided that the best way of dealing with this was to sneer at everyone else for being so soft; however the heat was intolerable enough for Bell to ask if he could remove his tie. As we were in France and the natives therefore unlikely to be scandalised, I permitted him to do so. The journey started to feel like a taste of the endurance runs of old, with the only punctuation to our progress being fuel stops, the occasional tollbooth and at one point my having to instruct Bell to remonstrate with an impudent local. Our growing confidence was cruelly shattered just shy of lunch at the Bentley dealership to the North of Lyon, where the road and rail groups were scheduled to meet, when Fury decided to drop her coolant and stop in a tunnel. It was here that travelling with a butler proved to be a godsend, for Bell immediately sprang into action, organising our recovery “avec l’AA” while I put the hazard triangle out and lit a conciliatory cigar. I fear the relief we felt at being stranded in a location shielded from the burning sun would have been scant consolation to those stuck in the traffic jam we caused. When he arrived, our jovial knight in shining flatbed truck promised to find us an old car specialist, and the subsequent tour of Lyon’s backstreets led us to an unassuming garage, where the presence of numerous classic cars gave some reassurance. Nidal, the proprietor of Djef Auto, examined Fury, and a phone call to expat expert-cum-trans-

and, secondly, the Blue Train, officially named Calais-Méditerranée Express but colloquially referred to as ‘Le train bleu’ or ‘The Blue Train’ because of its dark blue wagons, no longer exists. In spite of these obstacles, a small group of us created a co-ordinated schedule that saw my wife, my niece and her boyfriend leaving Cannes by train to finish under the clock at Waterloo station the following day. Mr. Bell, who had kindly agreed to be my butler for the run, would accompany me in my MG BGT ‘Fury’, starting from the Carlton Hotel in Cannes as the train left the station. With luck we’d arrive at the old Conservative Club on St James’s Street in London to coincide with the train group finishing. By doing this we could match the start and finish locations of the 1930 race, while fulfilling other activities. Thursday 2nd August 2018 dawned over Le Cannet, with a warmth that promised a continuation of the blistering temperatures we’d experienced up to that point. Bell was despatched to forage for breakfast before we headed to the Carlton, outside which, at exactly 07:53, we raised a glass to the memory of Barnato. This duty observed, we fired up Fury and cruised through Cannes to the A8, snaking along just shy of the coastline past the playgrounds of the pre-war elite. Meanwhile, our companions were following the ghost of Le Train Bleu in air-conditioned luxury along the same stretch of coast to Marseilles before heading north. Kilometres of trouble-free dual carriageway rolled away under Fury’s tyres, open windows giving the merest respite to the conspicuous heat. Unfortunately, we soon realised that her secret weapon, a 3.5 litre V8 engine, coupled with a lack of air-conditioning, may also prove to be our downfall. After a

A pit stop at Le P’tit Train de la Haute Somme

lator Richard of Phoenix International resulted in the diagnosis of a stuck coolant valve, a frustratingly simple problem that had self-rectified. At least we could now proceed, although the time lost meant we had to rush straight for the evening stop at Auxerre, which had been chosen because Barnato illicitly refuelled from a tanker on its outskirts. Coincidentally, Team Train had also been stymied in their attempt to reach the dealership through, bizarrely, the taxi rank at the local Metro station turning out to be completely sans taxis. Opening the curtains on day two revealed a bruised sky behind the cathedral across the river from our hotel, but no sign of relief from the heat. Once on the road again, the routine of dispatching the kilometres became a state

of mind rapidly settled into, the temperature merely a constant to be ignored. The only problem experienced on the way to our next stop, a photo shoot at Le P’tit Train de la Haute Somme, was negotiating Le Peripherique around Paris. France’s capital may have been a shining beacon of sophistication in the 1930s but, when driving through the city at lunchtime in the 21st Century, it is merely to be endured. However, once released into the countryside, the final stretch to the beautifully preserved line finally allowed for swift B- road motoring. The idyllic setting that greeted us, of engine sheds next to a peaceful river, belied the railway’s grim origins as a WW I supply line, and we spent a very pleasant hour larking about. I even had time to give Bell a few pointers about driving steam locomotives before we started the final run for the ferry. Our drama-free leg to Calais contrasted with the train group, who were now suffering multiple problems. After visiting the Blue Train Restaurant in Paris, Travis had to be temporarily abandoned at the Eurostar immigration desk, and then parts of Kent catching fire threatened their ability to join us for afternoon tea at The Grand in Folkestone. This was both irksome, as The Grand was once owned by

Motoring

‘Bentley Boy’ Dr Benjafield’s in-laws, and worrying, as the rendezvous set up the final run into London. We arrived at the hotel within a minute of schedule to meet up with friends who would join us for the last leg, and an example of the brand-new Bentley Continental GT was sent down by Jack Barclay to escort us home. A close look at this revealed an immensely capable machine that exuded high-end class rather than brash opulence; a modern sophistication rather than the stuffily old-fashioned. The Continental was a clear echo of the pre-war presence that had inspired myself and others over the years. I suspect we could have travelled completely across Europe in this and still arrived fresh for cocktails and dancing. The train group did eventually manage to join us half an hour late, turning the leisurely tea into a grab for whatever food we could carry before our dash into Town. Spearing straight for London along the M20 and then through the suburbs, things were going well as the sun dropped until, within a few minutes of our destination, we hit stationary traffic. There had been an accident and we had to divert. The minute hand crept round as heat build-up under the bonnet began to cause fuel vaporization, and I began to suspect

that we might not make it at all. But miraculously the traffic cleared as we entered Pall Mall, and with one last effort we roared past the RAC and came to a halt outside the Conservative Club. We had arrived at our destination at 20:40. We were to all meet again for one last time, at the conclusion to our adventure in Jack Barclay’s Bentley showroom in Berkeley Square, where we learned that the train group had reached their destination at 20:17. Despite this, it still felt like an achievement as we raised a final glass of Champagne to our inspirations, Bentley and Barnato. It was a fitting culmination to a journey that had started two days before in Cannes, 35 years ago in a teenager’s eager imagination, or back in 1930 depending on your point of view. I now think of Fury as ‘The Blue Train MG’; not a title blithely appropriated as a nod to past glories, but rather one earned by attempting something difficult. I hope that Woolf and W.O. would have agreed. Special thanks to those who joined me, especially my wife Fiona for living with this ambition for over two years, and my niece Emma who planned the rail journey. Particular thanks also to Meibel, and everyone at Jack Barclay who grasped what it was all about. n

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Style Tribes

Stilyagi Olivia Bullock on a counter-cultural movement in Stalinist Russia that kicked against the regime in green jackets, pink trousers and stars-and-stripes socks

“He looked incredibly absurd, the back of his jacket was bright orange, while the sleeves and lapels were green. I hadn’t seen such broad canary-green trousers since the days of bellbottoms. His boots were a clever combination of black varnish and red suede”

he Stilyagi emerged anonymously in Russia in 1946 in an expanding post war communist regime. Stalin’s design for a socialist utopia was increasingly enforced on a society expected to uphold a dedicated and zealous patriotism. Cultural endorsement was maligned in favour of conformity and dutiful loyalty to Soviet ambitions, implementing a code of conduct that enforced a nationalistic identity. Those who deviated from societal conformi-

ties attracted attention from the authorities and were promptly penalised. This incensed a few youthful citizens, whose rebellion became exclusively stylistic, to avoid the severe penalties issued for overt political dissent. The Stilyaga (plural Stilyagi – the word means ‘style hunters’) was a derogatory label placed on this burgeoning counterculture by those who disapproved. Their apathetic attitude towards a unified work ethic was considered a rebuke to the Stalinist

administration. Theirs was not a subjective exercise, but an audacious revolt against the suppression of creative expression and cultural appreciation. Western culture was considered the antithesis of Soviet ideology. The Stilyagi embraced US culture, appropriating an idealised facsimile of an imagined American youth. Their clothes, music and attitude, copied from film stars, musicians and images from magazines â&#x20AC;&#x201C; if they could be obtained â&#x20AC;&#x201C; was a revolt against the Soviet system. They developed their own Americanised lingo. Zhlob was a corruption of Slob, Shuzy of shoes; they also referred to themselves as Chuvka (boys) and Chuvikha (girls).

Because of their ambivalent and neutral political views and relatively small number, the Stilyagi were initially tolerated, though disapproved of. However, their expanding numbers and rebellious conduct was met with increasingly tighter controls, as part of the wider attempt to maintain a socialist utopia. Feelings of disenfranchisement among young Soviets, including access to youth centres and dance halls, many of which had been destroyed or repurposed as military bases, resulted in numbers dwindling in the Komsomol â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the youth division of the Communist Party. In 1947 party leader and cultural ideologist Andrei Zhdanov imposed further restrictions on anything considered Western, including a ban on Jazz music. This all led to discord and the formation of a counterculture that was defiantly pro-west and the antithesis of Soviet ideology. For the Stilyagi, a fanatical idolisation of all things western became integral to their reality. The term Zagranitsa (across the border) referred to both a real and imagined perception of the West, seen as unattainable and exotic. This was a concept the Stilyagi took to extremes by coveting anything imported from America. Small groups would gather around the Brodvay (a corruption of Broadway) or the main streets of Moscow and Leningrad, in the hope of catching sight of an international visitor.

narrow trousers ending at the ankles to show off brightly coloured socks, or even ones with the US flag, were worn with the thick-soled shoes originally worn by factory workers. Despite the amalgamation of US styles and a nod to the British Teddy Boy, the Stilyagi created a look entirely their own. Dark sunglasses emphasised their coolheaded composure, and they always chewed gum – or paraffin wax if it wasn’t available. Satirical paper Krokodil described one individual’s attire in 1949: “He looked incredibly absurd, the back of his jacket was bright orange, while the sleeves and lapels were green. I hadn’t seen such broad canary-green trousers since the days of the renowned bell-bottoms. His boots were a clever combination of black varnish and red suede.” For the chuvikha, sartorial restraint was equally disregarded. They embraced the American ‘sock hop’ style, with full-skirted, brightly patterned dresses, colourful Capri pants or short provocative skirts with slits up the side. Accessories were brightly coloured necklaces and earrings, ideally ones that sparkled on the dance floor. High heels were the footwear of choice, but not so high that they would make dancing difficult. Jackets with raglan shoulders were preferred over more formal tailoring and shoulder pads. Skirts would be ornamented and fixed with large safety pins to accentuate their

“The X-Ray press produced recordings printed on flimsy disks adapted from the plastic sheets used to make X-Rays; they were nicknamed ‘Bones’ due to the various osseous matter imprinted on them” CLOTHING STYLE Their clothes developed into a style uniquely Stilyagi. A version of the controversial Zoot suit was a favoured choice, its extravagant use of fabric and typically bright colours a snub to the utilitarian convention. Bold colours became an emblem of Stilyagi allegiance. For the chuvka, bright green suits were worn with contrasting shirts in pink or yellow – never white – accessorised with brightly patterned ties or bow ties. Hair was worn long and greased back into a pompadour and sideburns were long, to resemble a caricature of Elvis Presley or Johnny Weismuller in Tarzan. This initial parody evolved into a more sophisticated look. Long jackets that hung to the knees,

Scenes from Valerie Jodorowsky’s 2008 film Stilyagi

curves. Hairstyles, often worn short with curls or backcombed into a large pompadour, were paired with bright red lipstick. Their main objective was to stand out from the Serge Massey (grey masses).

BLACK MARKET MUSIC

The Stilyagi’s desire for prohibited foreign goods created a robust black market. The Fartsovshchik (illegal businesses) became resourceful and lucrative operations. Acquiring such goods increased the Stilyagi’s prestige and clothing was of particular interest. For those who couldn’t afford the black market, existing clothing was adapted or hand made to imitate Western fashions. Another equally covetable commodity was records. The Roentgenizdat, or X-Ray press – so called due to the process of transferring musical recordings onto plastic sheets used to make X-Rays – was an enterprising scheme, given the little resources available. These records, not unlike the flexidiscs of the 1980s in Europe, were nicknamed ‘Bones’, due to the various osseous matter imprinted on them. However, the flimsy disks could only be pressed on one side, and sometimes only had a few seconds of music, despite the unfortunate customer having paid a decent price of 4-6 Rubles. They were bought and sold on street corners or dark alleyways, under the threat of severe penalties. The state-controlled record company Melodiya had complete control over all LP production. The public was expected to destroy any American records and shops were forced to remove them from their shelves. If the Roentgenizdat were caught

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producing ‘music on the bone’ they could be sent to the Gulag for five years. There were even fines for playing a single record. Forbidden from gathering in public places, the Stilyagi would meet in homes, factory clubrooms or any other covert locale they could access, to listen to jazz and dance with wild abandon to Swing or Boogie-woogie. These secret congregations would revel in the upbeat energetic rhythms of Glen Miller and Benny Goodman. Glenn Miller’s Chattanooga Choo-Choo was their unofficial anthem.

Stilyagi were not illegal, yet the police and the Komsomol were authorised to publicly ridicule them, by forcibly cutting their hair and clothes on the streets. The novelist and satirist Vasily Aksyonov named the Stilyagi ‘The first dissidents’. Such endorsement became ammunition for what was ultimately a futile battle the authorities couldn’t win. After Stalin’s death in 1953, both the media and politicians were left with little more reprisals than mockery and petty slander. By 1957 the Stilyagi had outgrown their countercultural calibre. As international trade regulations loosened, along with Russia’s gradual admission of the West, there resulted an influx of foreign media, goods and general acceptance. Cultural production boomed, and by the 1960s the country’s leniency towards outside cultures enveloped the Stilyagi, by now acknowledged as an important social phenomenon. As western influence permeated mainstream culture, so too had its mythical status. No longer an unattainable commodity, the notion of Zagranitsa had become inconsequential. Without the impetus for rebellion, the Stilyagi dissipated. Their depiction in Valerie Jodorowsky’s 2008 film Stilyagi shows a charming portrayal of what is now regarded as one of Russia’s most important historical trends. But it is the original Stilyagi’s charismatic cynicism and youthful dogma that endures as one of the most endearing and optimistic movements in social history. n

TODAY HE DANCES, TOMORROW HE SELLS HIS HOMELAND The authorities attempted to disband the Stilyagi, with a media-endorsed campaign to humiliate and shame them. Classifying them as ‘enemies of the state’, they launched frequent attacks on their style, associating their moral disregard for civilian society with the stupidity and arrogance of the West. The headline ‘Today he dances Jazz, tomorrow he will sell his homeland’ was adopted by anti-Stilyagi propagandists. It was duly re-appropriated by the Stilyagi as a statement of their contempt for the Soviet regime.

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History

100 YEARS AT DANNY HOUSE The story of a house that, exactly 100 years ago, played host to a crucial War Cabinet meeting, held by David Lloyd George, which brought about the end of the First World War By Dennis Merry and John Minns

ucked away at the end of a narrow country lane, in the heart of the Sussex Downs, is a little-known gem of Elizabethan Englishness, which was recently the setting for a grand garden party commemorating 100 years since the end of the Great War. With a thousand people in attendance, many dressed in period costume, a host of First World War re-enactors, local supporters of the Liberal Party, high-ranking officials and members of the government, ‘The 1918 Lloyd George Garden Party’ was an homage to a similar event hosted

by David Lloyd George in 1918 at the very same stately home, Danny House. Apart from a hundred years of change and a very different world, the principal difference between the two parties was the unveiling of a life-size bronze statue of the man himself, specially commissioned by the current owner of Danny House, Richard Burrows, and created by sculptor Phillip Jackson. The statue depicts ‘jigging George’ dancing the Hornpipe in celebration of hearing of the end of hostilities, and was unveiled by Colin Pricket who, at almost 99 years old, is Danny’s oldest and

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Richard Burrows, current owner of Danny House

longest-standing resident. He is also, quite possibly, the only man still alive to have had afternoon tea, on different occasions, with the two men largely responsible for both world wars.

On the first occasion, in 1937, Colin was staying with a family in Germany where Tom Mitford was also staying. Tom was visited by his sister Unity, the infamous devotee of Adolf Hitler and part of Hitler’s inner circle. She invited Colin to meet Hitler for coffee and cakes in Munich, and Colin’s recollection of Hitler was that he was full of ‘Austrian charm’. The following year, while visiting the battlefields of the Duke of Marlborough, Colin’s history teacher, a friend of the Kaiser’s grandson, was invited to meet the Kaiser, along with Colin and his fellow alumni. This took place at his large country house outside Utrecht in Holland. The Kaiser received them in his study, sitting on a large gymnasium horse, speaking to them about Queen Victoria and of how she had died in his arms at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. The Kaiser spoke to them in fluent English and later invited them for a traditional English tea with sandwiches and Dundee cake. The First World War was never mentioned.

“Colin Prickett, at 90 years old, is Danny House’s oldest resident. He is also, quite possibly, the only man still alive to have had afternoon tea, on different occasions, with the two men largely responsible for both world wars, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Adolf Hitler” 103

Statue of David Lloyd George at Danny House

David Lloyd George

It is an interesting quirk of fate that the man who had spent such a pleasant and informative afternoon with one of the major architects of the First World War should end up living in Danny House, where the British War Cabinet met to agree the terms of the Armistice that would bring about the final end to hostilities. Danny House is a Grade 1 listed red brick Elizabethan mansion near Hurstpierpoint, built in the shape of a capital ‘E’ in honour of Queen Elizabeth I. It has 141 rooms and is set in eight acres of gardens, amid 400 acres of parkland, and granted a

Royal Charter in 1333. It currently functions as a ‘prestigious rental retirement property’ consisting of 20 well-appointed retirement apartments, as well as a family home. The name Danny is understood to be a corruption of the Saxon ‘Danehithe’, meaning ‘Valley and Haven’ and the site has its origins in the early Iron Age. In fact, the Domesday Book of 1086 records that the land was held by Robert de Pierpoint from William de Warenne, son-in-law of William the Conqueror. The House was built on the site of a previous building, the origins of which were little more than a hunting lodge, and it has been owned by a number of families, until it was taken over by The Country Houses Association in 1956. Current owner Richard Burrows bought the house as a going concern in 2004, to maintain it as both an existing residential facility for the retired, as well as a family home, when The Country Houses Association went into receivership. As soon as he read about Danny and its location, and the dilemma of the residents needing to find alternative accommodation at short notice, the choice became obvious. He decided to buy it, without even having seen a single photograph. Danny House also plays host to a number of charitable events, with ap-

“The statue, commissioned by the current owner of Danny House, depicts ‘jigging George’ dancing the Hornpipe in celebration of hearing of the end of hostilities, and was unveiled by Colin Pricket” 104

proximately 3,000 people attending each year, and to date has raised some £300,000 for charity. And so back to ‘the man who won the war.’ David Lloyd George was the British Prime Minister from 1916 to 1922. He is generally credited with having laid the foundations of the Welfare State, and one of his many other achievements was to persuade the Royal Navy to introduce a convoy system during the last two years of the war. There is a singular connection between Lloyd George and Danny House, in that it played host to the British Prime Minister on a number of occasions over a four-month period between July and October 1918. The house was rented from the owner, Colonel Campion, by a friend of Lloyd George, newspaper magnate Lord Riddell, for his use as a country retreat. The British Prime Minister found Danny House to be an excellent place in which to unwind from the rigours of government and the strains of responsibility at such a crucial time in world history. He developed the habit of a pre-breakfast walk up Wolstonbury Hill with his dog Cyruzo, and would often take war cabinet documents with him to read. On a number of occasions his long-suffering secretary, Frances Stephenson, (who also happened to be his mistress), was despatched to retrieve documents which he had inadvertently left at the top of Wolstonbury Hill. While he was an exceptional leader and significant Prime Minister, Lloyd George was also a very human and down-to-earth man, as shown in one of his letters to Frances Stephenson, when she was ill during 1918: “Well how is the dear little girl with cold in her “dose?”... I have been envying that cold & wishing I were it. In the dead of night I should have crept down to the lips & had a great time – pressing their softness and then scampering along those pearly teeth – then touching the top of the tongue – then back to the lips. Oh that I were a cold.” The culmination of Lloyd George’s connection to Danny House was the meeting of the War Cabinet in the Great Hall on 13th October 1918, to agree the terms of the Armistice. These were based on President Woodrow Wilson’s statement of principles for peace given to the American Congress on 8th January. Among others present at the Cabinet meeting was the Minister of Munitions, the Right Hon. Winston Churchill, M.P., the man who went on to play the leading role in the next ‘Great War’. A wooden plaque listing those present at the meeting hangs on the wall of the Great Hall, adjacent to the impressive stone fireplace. n

SOME CURIOUS FACTS ABOUT DANNY HOUSE • D anny

Park hosts the oldest identifiable cricket ground in the world, at Sand Field. A cricket match was played there in 1717, as recorded in Thomas Marchant’s diaries.

• W inston

Churchill’s name was cut out from the wooden plaque listing the war cabinet members attending the 13th October meeting, by a young schoolboy when the house was being used as a school. It was later restored.

• T he

owner of Danny House, Colonel Campion, was saved from an almost certain death by the 13th October meeting in his own Great Hall. His orders were for a suicide mission to Belgium, to take place on 12th of November, one day after the signing of the Armistice.

• L loyd

George’s time at Danny House is the only known period when he and both his wife and mistress all slept under the same roof.

Huw Prall charts the magical career and story of Diana Dors in this comprehensive study!

w w w. b o o k g u i l d . c o . u k

Interview

Nicholas Parsons Alex Smythe-Smith meets the nonagenarian performer in his home, to discuss cravats, Terry-Thomas and growing old

erpetuity of sartorial standards is to Chaps the equivalent of gratuitous public exchanges via wireless telephony to the masses. Indeed, accruing decades need neither dilute nor adulterate those canons, without which society would undoubtedly plunge into dishonourable decline. As a nonagenarian, Nicholas Parsons radiates polite yet firm resolve on such matters. “I think the cravat is a very elegant form of dress, a colourful and sophisticated accessory. I own at least 30. What I don’t understand is, people wear an open neck shirt with a beautifully tailored jacket.

“I think the cravat is a very elegant, colourful and sophisticated accessory. I own at least 30. What I don’t understand is people who wear an open-neck shirt with a beautifully tailored jacket” 107

Nicholas Parsons with Richard Attenborough in 1957's Brothers in Law

This goes against the grain with me. A tie, or better still, a cravat, complements a jacket. I always wear cravats for my one-man show.” Our conversation takes place in the secluded Buckinghamshire barn conversion where Nicholas resides with his adoring wife Annie. Exposed beams, brick open fireplace and plethora of family photographs reflect the stylishness of their generously

proportioned drawing room, where fragrance from fresh flowers permeates the air. Nicholas, seated on a large sofa where his red jersey blends with adjacent velvet cushions, announces he is “weak in the legs but strong in the head.” Truly, despite occasional forgetfulness, his mental alertness is impressive. “I keep working. Using mental and nervous energy helps to keep me going, though I have to pace myself more sensibly these days.” This summer the silver-haired gent, who remains as slim and erect as he was in his prime, completed yet another successful Edinburgh Fringe, entertaining with his one man show, Nicholas Parsons’ Happy Hour. “I love the exhilarating atmosphere up there,” he smiles. “I’ve done the same show for 16 years, stand-up comedy in which I engage with the audience in the intimate Cabaret Bar.” That the nation has, for decades, been regaled by this stalwart of the entertainment industry is in no small measure due to a willingness to buck familial pressure. “I was born at a time when you did as you were told. My father said a few rather eccentric people go into showbusiness, but I would have to

“I came from a middle class family and had a public school accent. I could have been crucified but I survived that environment, making them laugh with my Scottish accent. It was the instinctive performer in me; you have to get your audience on your side” 108

Terry-Thomas in 1957's Brothers in Law

get a proper job.” A stint north of the border followed, when Nicholas embarked, aged 16, upon an engineering apprenticeship in Clydebank. Was this social transition straightforward? “I didn’t know what they were saying and I seemed a complete oddball to them. I came from a middle class family and had a public school accent. I could have been crucified but I survived that environment, making them laugh with my Scottish accent. It was the instinctive performer in me; you have to get your audience on your side. I was there for five years and became one of their mates.” The manual labour experience did not, however, curtail his acting ambition and Parsons returned home still gushing with fortitude. “I wrote to theatre managers and agents. On one occasion I sat in a theatrical manager’s office for two days pleading for an audition. In the end they were so fed up with me, I got a part. That was down to sheer, utter determination.” From this modest beginning, Nicholas’s blossoming repertory and film career led him to cross paths with The Chap’s spiritual godhead,

Terry-Thomas. Both men were cast in the Ealing Comedy Brothers in Law. “Terry was a great character, a brilliant impersonator with great comedy timing. His talent and larger than life character meant you could sense his presence in a room. Not in himself a funny man, he was an outstanding comedy performer.” Our banter is momentarily interrupted by what is commonly referred to as a ringing tone. Nicholas picks up his contemporary handset, heretofore positioned on a rectangular coffee table next to a volume of The Kenneth Williams Companion, but is unable to access the call. I offer my modicum of knowledge and he hands me the slim electronic device whence, having activated the answering response, I return it to him. After briefly conversing with the caller he takes the phone to his wife in the nearby dining room. “I love a challenge.” His announcement, upon returning, is not connected to electrical gadgetry but the weekly television programme he hosted for 12 years, Sale of the Century. “When I was asked to do a quiz show, my immediate reaction was: I’ve

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never done that, it would be interesting. Like taking on an acting role, it’s an aspect of yourself and you want a sense of drama. At the time, the press thought quizzes were downmarket entertainment; nowadays they treat them correctly.”

“For the finale of The Rocky Horror Show, everyone wore fishnets and high heels, so I told the producer I’d dress the same. I kept on my crushed velvet jacket. People said I had very good legs” Even longer in duration, over 50 years, Nicholas has presented BBC Radio 4’s Just a Minute, which showcases his listening skills and syllabic curiosity. “It’s my favourite job. I have developed my own style. Every time we do a show the adrenalin starts to pump. Psychologically I say to myself, it’s worked before, it will work again. One thing I’m proud of, our show is hardly edited. We treat it like a live show and I wear a collar and tie to complement the audience. The essence of success is having fun.” A somewhat disparate, yet equally notable professional highlight is his memorable role in The Rocky Horror Show. “The Narrator had always been treated as an object of ridicule but I wasn’t going to stand there and be insulted, so I started lobbing comments back to the audience, who laughed. For the finale everyone wore fishnets and high heels, so I told the producer I’d dress the same. I kept on my crushed velvet jacket but wore a suspender belt, fishnet stockings and heels. People said I had very good legs.” Hospitable and gallant, we’re discussing his fondness for waistcoats and favourite alcoholic beverage (“Red wine, obviously; Claret, not the heavy stuff, and an occasional Campari as an aperitif ”) when he gently reveals another appointment is imminent. Perhaps one final question, I venture – your ongoing ambitions? Having recently celebrated his 95th birthday, Nicholas Parsons’ response reveals a charisma which is, thank heavens, as alluring as ever. “To be interviewed by charming journalists.” n

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Poetry

IN THE TRENCHES WITH DAVID JONES Ferris Newton on the Welsh poet who learned to write poetry while serving with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in the First World War

“He managed to get the tin of sardines into his tunic’s left bottom pocket, along with two grenades”

ou cannot wear good clothes if you don’t read good poetry. What, then Sir, is good poetry? An easy question to answer: the work of David Jones. A soldier, poet, painter and mythographer; with his mop of hair and straight fringe, Jones looked a little like Mo out of the Three Stooges, but a Mo who could read Welsh, had a profound interest in myth and classical civilisation and could strip a Lee Enfield rifle. Jones is the poet as man of action. Jones shares a name with the Monkee, Davy Jones and the Bowie, David Jones. Brought up in

London of Welsh parentage, Jones’ father hailed from a Flintshire village close to an ancient battlefield. David Jones had a strong sense of history, writing evocatively of his fascination for pictures of medieval Welsh infantrymen; another formative memory was of the City Imperial Volunteers marching past his bedroom window, off to the Boer War. His mother was a Londoner of Italian descent and it was perhaps from her that he inherited his gift for drawing and painting. Shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, he joined the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. Jones’ biographer speculates that he saw more front line action than any other

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English writer of that period. His experiences of the Somme informed his long poem, In Parenthesis. Pick up a copy. It isn’t difficult to get hold of. First of all, the text looks different from conventional poetry. In Parenthesis is a mix of prose passages and long and short lines of verse. It is an admittedly difficult poem – but its difficulty is central to the problem with which Jones was wrestling: how to find meaning in the mechanised carnage of the war. Jones tells how, during an extended period on the front, he looked into a dugout and was surprised to see a Catholic mass being celebrated. He was struck with the profound sense that some kind of redemption might come out of torment. This mysticism sits alongside his observation of the brutality of combat and the boredom of trench life. The endless rounds of sentry duty and fatigues punctuated by the arrival of rations (loose tea bound up with sugar in a hessian sand bag; two packets of Trumpeter Cigarettes for each man; tobacco for pipe smokers; letters from home; uneatable cheese; apple and plumb pudding). After the war, Jones’ mental and physical health were fragile. In Parenthesis came to him slowly as he painted by the sea in a cottage near Port Slade. Jones converted to Catholicism and worked for a while with Eric Gill, inspired by the latter’s commitment to faith and craft. He lived with Gill’s creative guild in Ditching, and later Capel-y-ffin, a remote hamlet in Powys. Jones also spent time in London. His masterpiece, the difficult, allusive The Anathemata pushed the techniques he had developed in his earlier work. The Anathemata is, if you like, the literary equivalent of a Picasso – the kind of art that wants to abandon limited perspectives and see something (as it were) from all sides. So, instead of the old verses (or stanzas) that were neatly arranged like fields bordered by lanes, poetry becomes fragmentary. Order might be there, but it is hardwon. Jones experimented with lines that followed something like speech rhythms or which evoked a mystery that might articulate itself as a rhythmic intimation. The Anathemata, like In Parenthesis, searches for something that holds history together, a kind of mythic or deep time. A chap waiting on Tottenham Court Rd for an omnibus might curse every 73 that passes on its way where no-one wants to go (Stoke Newington). Time seems to stretch to infinity. But Jones makes us think about time in a different way. In The Anathemata (which is, in fact, also a poem of London) the present and the past connect together in ‘ripples and spirals’– myth and

reality rubbing shoulders. So Jones’ poetry is a long way from the kind of verse that a chap might have suffered at school. This was most probably Georgian poetry, a late and decadent flowering of the romantic tradition. In a strange kind of way, the war saved poets like Jones and Wilfred Owen from churning out this form of polite, vaguely melancholic verse. There were, of course, more interesting figures around this time. A.E. Housman, for example. His outpourings of immaculate lovelorn sadness were addressed to a Venetian Gondolier who was more interested in flat bottomed boats than fat bottomed blokes. Despite Housman, and other more adventurous figures like Gerard ‘Mary’ Hopkins, something had happened which made it hard to write a certain kind of poem. Modernism. Instead of mooning about lamenting the loss of the countryside and the farm girls/boys who would not look at them, poets started writings about locomotives, pylons and the end of Western civilisation. If Georgian poets cycled down quiet lanes and stopped at village pubs, the modernists roared through on motorbikes, sending ducks wildly quacking on village greens and causing elderly parsons to shake their heads sadly and take another pinch of snuff. If the world had become a waste land, Jones knew it was necessary to learn from the past to make the future possible. Jones, then, invented a myth of the world. He compels the reader to

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Human Being, self-portrait of David Jones from 1931

engage in similar meditations. Most contemporary chaps have probably not experienced combat at first hand, and may have little knowledge of the Mabinogion or Ecclesiastes. Jones’s advice would be: go into yourself. Start with what you’ve got. Reading the The Anathemata the other evening, I took Jones seriously and retreated into memory. Just like Proust’s narrator, dunkin’ a custard cream into a tepid cup of coffee and suddenly inspired by memory, I was back at school. I remembered a time when I went into the English Department’s staff room to locate a copy of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads. I came upon a booklined place of peace which (as I can now identify) was filled with the evocative aroma of Sobranie Black Russian tobacco. This soon mingled with another memory. Once, the games teacher Mr. Cleat had to supervise an English class. He arrived in his green tracksuit and bellowed his way through a reading of Edward Thomas like he was lambasting the rugger team.

On his desk he had placed a neat attaché case, the badge of his office. As I later found out, the attaché case contained the crisps that Mr. Cleat ate for his lunch and a pack of Lambert and Butler King Size. What, then, do we make of David Jones? Jones’ poetic art should appeal to a chap. He was committed to well-made things. His poetic lines share something of the grace, complexity and form of his work in wood cutting, stone carving and painting. Jones’ work is concerned with evocative symbols that, as it were, exist both in and outside of time. Symbols that keep ‘broadcasting’ their meanings to those still able to pick the signals. In this way, one might be able to find something of Jones in the memory work of the musician/artist Darren Hayman. Jones’ legacy remains. While his poetry might not be the first choice for Mr. Cleat, it is certainly worth pondering Jones’ texts while filling the room with the evocative aroma of Sobranie tobacco. One needs to take the myth of the self as seriously as one’s tailoring. n

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Dining

BOISDALE 15 Eccleston Street, Belgravia, London SW1W 9LX Reviewed by Alexander Larman and Gustav Temple

ou cannot miss Boisdale of Belgravia. The strawberry-red frontage stands out like a Highland hunting lodge amid the upmarket estate agents (a set at Albany for £4.3 million, anyone?) and the fly-by-night delicatessens that look like reckless gifts from hedgefund managers to their trophy wives. En route to our lunch appointment, we paused to pay homage to the good old days of Belgravia by admiring the plaque outside Lord Boothby’s house of ill repute on Eaton Square. Ingress into Boisdale is as smooth as can be expected when front-of-house is staffed by Eastern

European teenagers, though to be fair we arrived for lunch at what is probably just after their breakfast hour. Once installed at the Macdonald bar under the friendly auspices of a jovial Scottish barman, we were introduced to the modest selection of gins. He couldn’t find the printed list but announced, “I can tell you everything you need to know.” What we needed to know was two large G&Ts made with a London Dry No3 gin and unpretentious miniatures of Schweppes. How quaintly 1970s! Once installed at table, we were back at the mercy of our tartan-skirted Natashas, whose

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defining quality was not sloppiness or incompetence but inconsistency. The red wine for the main course was presented – undecanted – at the same time as the white wine and starters. Yet the day’s specials were recited by the waitress as if she had tasted each dish personally rather than simply memorised a list. Lists are clearly not objects of veneration at Boisdale, and a glimpse of the owner slapping the backs of favoured customers (not including these humble reviewers) showed why. Ranald Macdonald, the younger of Clanranald and eldest son of the 24th chief and captain of Clanranald, has a louche air about him. With flowing grey hair, a tweed jacket, white chinos and – we were not mistaken – black shoes, he clearly holds no truck with convention. Which is precisely what gives Boisdale its charm. The stag’s heads on the walls jostle for space with mounted trombones and framed photographs of cool jazzmen. It has more of the air of a bohemian drinking den than a stuffy old-boys supper club, like some of its Belgravia counterparts.

Lord Boothby would have been quite at home here. We are seated handily close to the musical area (although, sadly, no minstrel comes to serenade us during our lunch), and commence our inspection of the menu, which The Scottish Restaurant boasts a particularly fine example of. We know that we want to share the chateaubriand for a main course, because the gently mooing Highland cattle that Boisdale serves must be made an example of, especially when served with black truffle mayonnaise and smoked béarnaise, and truffle chips. (We must advise, incidentally, that the latter are taken unadorned; the cheese and truffle add surprisingly little to the excellence of those cuts of potato.) But this is a restaurant review, so we must start with something other than steak. Alexander takes the chilli squid, which is battered to a ‘T’ and slips down just as well as that slithery octopod; Gustav ventures into the mackerel paté, which is slightly overdrowned in its bathing of melted butter. Just as well that we have taken two glasses of the white Bordeaux, which is a crisp, dry delight, and far too drinkable.

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And then, onto Boisdale’s raison d’être. We have eaten a great deal of cow in our time, ranging from the impeccable to the unspeakable, and the chateaubriand here is firmly in the former category. It is presented simply – a 20oz behemoth between two – but has the perfect balance between marbled fat and succulent meat and, coupled with the sauces, is quite the treat. We attempt to order a Bordeaux as an accompaniment, but upon being denied it, we plump – and ‘plump’ is certainly the operative term here – for a bottle of Portuguese red, the dou Rosa. Once decanted, it is the perfect accompaniment to a decidedly masculine – or Chappish – lunch. We chink glasses and engage in cultural chitchat about Flaubert’s salaciousness and plot lines in Line of Duty, concluding that both were absolutely on the money. ‘Pudding? Pudding!’ So many decisions, so little time. We decide that the Knickerbocker Glory must live up to its name, and it does, in glorious fashion, and a Rum Baba is most enjoyable as well, its less flashy origins belying a one-two punch of the hit of the rum and the soft crumble of the sponge.

Gustav takes a Pedro Ximenez (‘God’s own drink’), and Alexander peps himself up with an espresso martini. Then a regretful leave must at last be taken into the now darkening streets of Belgravia. n

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Drink

Winter Tipples Olly Smith invites you to spend very little on a cabinet full of alcoholic curiosities to keep you warm and enlightened during the winter months

“What does it taste like? A cross between a mince pie and ‘The Scream’ by Edvard Munch. Oloroso is shocking in its intensity and beguiling in the impression it gives of dried fruit whose very sweetness has been shocked into a landslide of weird absence”

inter drinks are rather like smoking while skiing – strange moments whose very antipathy fuses the moment into a singularly mystic thrill. Usually the drinks of winter are drizzled between festive proceedings for which no-one ever plans, and the resulting carnage is a wasteland of smouldering dreams and regrettable sandwiches. Vivid, potent and extreme, these winter drinks are the sorts of things you’d probably find in Michael Caine’s hip flask while filming of The Man Who Would Be King, making his whiskers stand to attention with every sip. But what exactly do we mean by a

‘winter drink’, and why should any self-respecting Chap bellow at his butler to make sure the drinks cabinet is fully stocked with their entire lexicon? First of all, these drinks are ruddy cheap. Why? Simple. They remain totally and inexplicably underrated. Take sherry – possibly the greatest value beverage of any description currently on the planet, rivalled only in impact by Ming The Merciless’s secret recipe for his lusty Power Potion. For years, this liquid jewellery has graced southern Spain’s treasury of tipples. On warmer days, a cool glass of light bright Fino or Manzanilla is turbo-charged refreshment that will make your very mind feel as pristine

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as your palate. Always carry a notebook while sipping these drinks; your waking dreams are not to be mistaken for idle drifting – you are in fact being blessed with poetry and it is your sacred duty to write it down and ideally declaim it to the nearest waiter, who will, for sure, offer you a drink on the house. But when the thermometer plunges deeper than Pluto’s socks and the icicles hang from your snuffbox like tiny inverted organ pipes, my friend, this is the time for you to murmur the word ‘Oloroso’, as if in prayer to the ancient gods of Olympus who – and this is a fact – get royally wasted on sherry whenever they have one of their legendary ‘Monday night parties’ up the mountain. What does it taste like? A cross between a mince pie and The Scream by Edvard Munch. Oloroso is shocking in its intensity and beguiling in the impression it invariably gives of dried fruit whose very sweetness has been shocked into a landslide of weird absence. The fires of inspiration will burn from your belly to your brain and, if you need to take it one step further, arm yourself with a sweet glass of vortex-black Pedro

Xímenez, the triumvirate of slick black treacle, satanic figs and dates draped in sequins of sugar. Sherry, though, is the tip of the iceberg. Tawny Port served chilled is a supreme all-rounder to deploy with a slice of fruit cake during the months of dreich, but I want to open this cabinet over here and shove your head right into it. See it? Next to the voodoo doll. Yes, exactly. MADEIRA. I’m going to cut to the chase here and get specific. Madeira comes in various degrees of sweetness from Sercial (zesty) to Malmsey (marmalade). Pick yourself a Bual (which has the medium sweetness of a jester weeping in Sugarland) and pair it with a slice of creamy blue Dolcelatte. This makes every winter’s day transform into Honolulu, with you at its centre as a grinning human volcano. But if you’re considering even darker options, the devil beckons you into his lair by holding two distinct items in his horned claws: lightly chilled Sercial in the left and Comté cheese in the right. Smash those two into your face and the cosmos is yours. There is one final winter tipple that’s guaran-

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Silver Bells, Cobalt Gold.

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teed to get you travelling thirst class aboard the slow plane to Spring in the company of Burt Reynold’s ghost. Banyuls. No-one drinks it, it’s stupidly good and it’s a ticket to shouting BRAVO at every passing second because it just makes you feel like it. Some say Banyuls is a southern French fortified wine that tastes a bit like Port. I say it’s almost certainly the drink that inspired the lusty Power Potion sloshing in Ming’s goblet. And that, my friends, is all you’ll ever need to soar over winter and never come down. n

“If you need to take it one step further, arm yourself with a sweet glass of vortexblack Pedro Xímenez, which is the triumvirate of slick black treacle, satanic figs and dates draped in sequins of sugar”

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TOURING EUROPE WITH SPARKS Excerpts from Mr. B The Gentleman Rhymerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Chap-Hop Diary continue, with a tour around Europe with electro-pop legends Sparks

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Music

5th June 2018

best Sparks support act since Queen’ or the chap who sent me a message, 15 minutes into my halfhour slot which just read ‘Get off now’, I thought it went rather well. The following night we played at the Forum in Kentish Town to a most rapturous and unexpected reception (it’s London. London doesn’t tend to do a lot of the old rapture). It almost felt like a headline show. All especially nice, as members of the B clan had come along. I could tell that pater had enjoyed the evening as he said ‘my word’ quite a lot. As I came off stage I bumped into the band’s manager. She told me that she’d enjoyed the gig and that they had been struggling to find Sparksappropriate support acts for the European tour. We checked dates and before one could say ‘ein, zwei, drei, vier’ I was booked, and here I am, sat in the sun watching the Munich traffic go by and wonder-

verything went disconcertingly smoothly this morning. I actually got a spot of kip before the call from Abdul my cabbie chum, who was waiting for me at a quarter to four in the morning. The roads were clear, the weather was fine, the flight to Munich uneventful, and I managed to find the right train and alight at the correct station before finding the venue without any trouble. The venue was of course closed. I suppose it was 10 a.m. and no-one would be about for a few hours yet, so I plonked myself down with a coffee (proper tea is not easy to locate in Munich) at The Magic Café, overlooking three lanes of traffic in this summer’s current heatwave. So, here I am; it’s all happening. A month or so ago I received a tweet from a lady saying ‘you should support Sparks’, to which I replied ‘of course I should’, or something along those lines, and thought nothing more of it. A couple of weeks later said lady came along to my recital in Hitchin, and informed me that she had connections in that area and that Sparks were on the look-out for support acts on their UK tour. She furnished me with some relevant contact details and a couple of weeks later I found myself on stage at the Leeds O2 Academy, playing to a couple of thousand eccentric music fans, and I must say that, depending upon whether one believes the person on the Sparks fan forum who called me ‘The

“Whether one believes the person on the Sparks fan forum who called me ‘The best Sparks support act since Queen’ or the chap who sent me a message, 15 minutes into my set, which just read ‘Get off now’ – I thought it went rather well” 123

ing whether it’s entirely appropriate to play Hail The Chap in Deutschland.

I eventually awoke in my windowless sarcophagus to discover that I had slept until three o’clock in the afternoon, so rather than enjoy a leisurely day taking in the sights of the city, I had to swiftly don my attire and get myself sound checked and ready to roll, as it were. Once that was done I bumped into the brothers Mael in the dressing rooms, where I took the opportunity to present Ron with a Mr. B Club Tie (available from – ahem – my website) as a token of my general appreciation. He popped it straight on and told me that he was honoured and would wear it on the next tour, which I chose to believe. In person, the man whose on stage countenance would be described as unnerving, or perhaps in the modern parlance as ‘resting bitch

6th June 2018 I have taken a breather and am making the most of the air conditioning on the sleeper coach to escape the oppressive heat of this continental midsummer. I’m also here to try and establish exactly what I did with my touring ablutions bag, which may be either in the shower room of the venue, in my bunk or in the luggage hold. I’m sure I’ll get used to the disconnected nature of it all by the end of tomorrow, when it will all be over and then I shall try and regain my land legs. Last night’s recital was splendid fun, even though my rather speedy, clipped-English rapping style may have either gone over their heads or beneath the audience, and I should probably have sung my version of Kraftwerk’s The Model in its traditional German, but hey-ho and what have you. Gladly, middle-aged German chaps appear to have plenty of disposable income and they snapped up their Chap-Hop merchandise with as much glee as our Teutonic cousins tend to muster. The tour bus was a delightfully friendly place, the band (sans the brothers Mael, who prefer to travel at their own pace by train or car) and crew bantering away, as I was plied with gin and wine and whatever else was in the fridge. I finally retired to my coffin-like bunk at around 2am and slept fitfully as the bus bounced its merry way to Cologne.

“I took to the stage to a half empty room and polite applause, but left to a full room and a satisfying cacophony of cheers. And it seems the Belgians liked my Kraftwerk cover more than the Germans. Perhaps because their English is better” 124

face’ is the most chirpy and pleasant cove a chap could hope to meet, as is his younger brother. I changed the set slightly for the show, having realised that a lot of what I was doing was making little sense to people for whom English was, at best, a second language, so I slapped a few old faves back in there and kept it free from too much Anglononsense, and it seemed to do the trick. As we set off on the bus last night we cracked open the two bottles of Champagne which had been a gift for the teetotal brothers from their hotel, and which they had kindly donated to us lot. We drank and larked about (their guitarist was particularly jocular company) and I eventually tumbled into my little coffin in the early hours.

to move as one single mass of pink and black. Russell was incredible, especially for a man just short of his 70th birthday, leaping about and singing falsetto for over an hour as if age was no object to anything whatsoever. And Ron, dearest Ron. Watching him from the back of the stage as he sat there, perfectly still at the keyboard upon which he’d written 50 years’ worth of eccentric pop classics, was a quite religious experience. Just a nice, shy man whose whole life revolved around making music, who handed his younger sibling the limelight only to become one of rock’s most iconic figures himself. A real hero. With a moustache and Oxford bags to boot. As the tour bus was loaded up, I bade farewell to the chaps and we vaguely arranged to do it all again one day. Then I set off to my hotel for a few hours’ sleep, a train to Brussels, the Eurostar to King’s Cross, a train to Watford to pick up the motorcar, then a drive to Peterborough and a little Chap-Hop recital in a little theatre to my own little army of weirdos. n

7th June 2018 Awoke in Antwerp at 9 o’clock and attempted a snooze, but the hangover wouldn’t allow me, so I hauled my sorry ass (apologies, been spending too much time with Americans) out of bed and dragged myself to our complimentary breakfast at the hotel next to the venue, before being shown to the fifth floor and my enormous, empty dressing room. Only so much a chap can do alone in an unventilated room in the midst of a heatwave, so I had a rather cold, soapless shower and wandered off in search of Antwerp’s much lauded vintage shops, which, as it turned out, catered largely for ladies intent on reliving the glories of 1987. Thus forth I found myself sat on a bench enjoying one of those Gothic town squares that Belgium seems to do so beautifully. A chap on the next bench to mine played a violin with a gramophone horn attached to it for the entertainment and general bemusement of passers-by, while a tall redheaded woman wearing golden antlers posed for photos in the fountain beneath a bronze statue of a couple of naked types larking about with water. I sat there and soaked up the atmosphere long enough to establish that the bloke with the gramophone-horn violin only knew one tune, so I ambled back for my soundcheck. After a couple of hours of R&R (rest & relaxation, not Ron & Russell) I took to the stage to a half empty room and polite applause, but left to a full room and a satisfying cacophony of cheers. And it seems the Belgians liked my Kraftwerk cover more than the Germans. Perhaps because their English is better. As it was my last night on the tour I treated myself to watching Sparks from the wings. The band were cool, tight and businesslike and seemed

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I DL E R

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“The thing I like about your idling philosophy is the cultivation of interest, the grappling with what life is for,” Jeremy Paxman

REVIEWS Author interview: Craig Brown (p128) • Book Reviews (p132) • Film: Rogue Male (p135) • M R James (p138) • Travel: Miami (p144) • Art: Whistler’s Fireworks (p152) • Restaurant: The Cinammon Club (p157)

Author Interview

CRAIG BROWN Alexander Larman meets the Private Eye regular who is keeping British satire alive and kicking against the pricks

“

here’s only one Craig Brown” echoed the chants of the fans, from Aberdeen to Preston. Granted, the Brown that they were singing about was the football manager, rather than the satirist and biographer, but they might as well have been – probably should have been, on balance – eulogising his namesake. Over the course of an illustrious career, Brown has skewered the great and good (or, to be more exact, the pompous and puffed-up) in Private Eye, shown himself to be an erudite and informed critic and, now, has become an award-winning biographer, with his much-acclaimed recent book about Princess Margaret, Ma’am Darling. In our glowing review, we said of it that ‘[the] witty, elegant demolition of her is both formally adventurous and extremely funny… this is the antidote to tiresomely prolix biographies of ‘our betters’, full of energy and wit.’ We sidled over to the ever-so talented Brown to talk royalty, writing and which public figures he doesn’t feel have been given a hard enough time.

“Are there any celebrities who you don’t feel have been castigated enough? “Pinter, obviously. Bono. James Corden is beginning to get on my nerves. I’m amazed that Tracey Emin has been allowed to get away with it for so long. I could go on…” CHAP: Your book Ma’am Darling recently won the James Tait prize. Did that make you feel that you’ve joined the elite of literary prizewinners, and was it a surprise? CB: When people asked me what I was writing, and I replied, “A book about Princess Margaret” they would either look embarrassed, or give me a pitying

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look, as if I had finally hit rock bottom. Also, my agent hadn’t been able to see the point of it, so I had gone solo. And throughout the year that I spent writing it, I used to scream, “Why did I ever suggest this?” at my computer on a daily basis. So its very good critical reception, followed by the South Bank Show Sky Arts Award for Literature, then the James Tait Black Prize, came as a very welcome and complete surprise, particularly the James Tait Black, which has such an interesting list of past winners, including Lytton Strachey’s Queen Victoria, which, by chance, a little part of Ma’am Darling pastiches. And, yes, I did feel that I’d gone up a rung or two on the literary ladder.

limited, as so many of her meetings took exactly the same form: she would arrive late, make everyone wait, drink too much, get more and more hoitytoity, and so forth. So I had to broaden it out. It ended up a sort of exploded biography, full of fragments: fragments of biography and autobiography, parodies, speculations, other people’s thoughts, parallel lives, etc, etc. CHAP: What have you thought of other accounts of her, such as Edward St Aubyn’s dissection of her in Some Hope and Vanessa Kirby’s portrayal of her in The Crown? CB: The St Aubyn vignette was brilliantly sharp, as you would expect. Vanessa Kirby’s acting was tremendous, though the script made far too much of Margaret being jealous of the Queen. In fact, she was always doggedly loyal. In Ma’am Darling, I include an interview with A.N Wilson, who once asked Margaret if she ever dreamt about the Queen. She replied that she had a recurrent nightmare in which she had done something unspeakably damaging to the Queen, she never knew what. When she woke up, she would have to phone the Queen, so that she could be reassured by the sound of her voice. So this sibling rivalry element of the

CHAP: What made you decide upon Princess Margaret as a subject? CB: Over the years, I’d noticed that she put her head around the door of virtually ever post-war memoir or diary. Everyone seemed to have met her. My last book, One on One, had been a daisy chain of 101 people, each of whom had met the next. I thought it would be interesting to write an inverted form of it, with 101 people all meeting the same person, i.e. Princess Margaret. But when I embarked on it, I realised that it would be far too

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Margaret portrayal in The Crown was inaccurate.

CB: I think writing more than one Royal book is a sure route to madness, so I won’t be doing one. On the other hand, I can’t get enough of Fergie. She’s one of the great comical creations of our age.

CHAP: The book contains numerous fabricated and imagined scenes. Was it always your intention to mix fact and fiction in the way that you did? CB: I never wanted to write a straight biography of her, but I was always keen to make it clear what was fact and what was fiction. Too many biographies run them together without letting the reader know. My fictitious bits – for instance, her marriage to Picasso, or her Christmas Broadcast as the Queen – are, I hope, obviously fictitious.

CHAP: You’re well known – revered, even – as one of Britain’s most brilliant satirists. Does that place a constant responsibility on you to be witty and cutting the entire time, even when ‘off duty’? CB: Most funny writers aren’t very funny to meet. Keith Waterhouse once said that cracking jokes in company was a waste, like throwing gold coins down the drain. And there’s a big difference between writing jokes and saying them – you have minutes, perhaps even hours to form a funny sentence in print, whereas in person you have to do it instantly. So I’m not particularly funny in person, and, after 60-odd years, people don’t expect me to be. If they do, they’ll be disappointed.

CHAP: Ma’am Darling could hardly be called a glowing portrait of Margaret. Did you find that you had more or less sympathy for her when you finished writing the book? CB: Most people tell me that they end up more sympathetic to her as the book ends. I suppose I felt pity for her, which is the one emotion in others that she spent most of her life battling against. I suspect a large part of her rudeness was to do with trying to prevent pity. But it is hard not to feel pity for someone who began life with so much potential, and lived to see it drain away.

CHAP: A Hunter Davies profile of you from 1994 described you as ‘the most fashionable, most successful young journalist of his generation’. Do you look back on that and think ‘Well, I lived up to my promise’, or ‘Gosh, things went awry…’? CB: To be honest, I never think of it. I have a vague memory of reading it at the time, and thinking that he’d got the wrong end of the stick. I suppose in the business of freelance journalism

CHAP: As you say, most royal biographies tend to be dull as ditchwater. Is there anyone else in the current Royal Family who you think might make an entertaining subject for a similarly irreverent book?

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Author Interview

CHAP: And are there any who you don’t feel have been castigated enough? CB: Pinter, obviously. Bono. James Corden is beginning to get on my nerves. I’m amazed that Tracey Emin has been allowed to get away with it for so long. I could go on…

I’ve been successful in as far as I’ve always managed to have a Sunday career alongside a Daily career, whereas most journalists have to pick one or the other. Without being too vulgar about it, this has doubled my income. Heaven knows whether I’ve lived up to my promise. On the one hand, I haven’t developed into Shakespeare, but on the other hand at least I’m not Tim Rice.

CHAP: Your Private Eye demolitions of the not-sogreat and not-very-good are a thing of wonder and joy. How would you feel if someone tried to do a satirical take-off of you? CB: Cheesed off, I suppose – at least if it was any good.

CHAP: You completed a book by a Chap favourite, Kyril Bonfiglioli, in an act of literary ventriloquism, if you will. How did you find that? CB: I didn’t particularly enjoy that experience. He had died leaving the penultimate chapter of a novel unfinished. After I’d agreed to finish it, I came to realise that the reason he hadn’t finished it was because he had found it impossible to tie up all the loose ends of the plot – so he had written the main plot, and then the conclusion, but had been unable to supply the missing link. So mine was a sort of French-polishing job, and it didn’t play to my strengths. I was very glad when it was over. Also, I got such a tiny percentage that, even when it was filmed with Johnny Depp, I don’t think I got more than ten pence, possibly less.

CHAP: Do you have any significant professional regrets? CB: I avoid looking backwards, partly out of cowardice. The benefit of this is that I don’t have many regrets. If I could live my life again, I would delete about six or seven occasions when I have hurt someone unintentionally. Perhaps a few more than that, but not a crippling number. CHAP: What would you most like to have inscribed on your tombstone? CB: Beyond Parody. n

CHAP: Both Ma’am Darling and your previous book, One on One, showed an interest in pushing biographical forms. Would you ever write a ‘straight’ biographical or non-fiction book? CB: It’s unlikely, particularly in the realm of biography. I find the chronological trawl too tedious, and most straight biographies seem bogus, too, as no-one looks at their own lives in that way. CHAP: Are there any figures in the public eye at the moment – or in the past – who you think have had an unfairly raw deal? CB: I’m sure there are lots. Among the Royal Family, Prince Philip – particularly in The Crown, in which they even made him responsible – completely falsely – for the death of his sister. A number of funny writers continue to be undervalued – Elmore Leonard, for instance, and Simon Gray and Alan Ayckbourn. Solemnity and obscurity are too highly prized, which is why Harold Pinter is so revered. There are many journalists who write much more interestingly than many lauded novelists – I’d much rather read Ian Jack or Julie Burchill or Auberon Waugh than most Booker Prize winners.

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Book Reviews

shining star cruelly laid low by imbeciles and fools was undercut by numerous scholarly investigations which exposed the book’s factual errors; particularly regrettable was a wrongly captioned picture of a forgotten actress as ‘Oscar in drag’. Sturgis makes no such errors, and Oscar is a fine testament to years of research and careful thought. At first, his rigour and scholarship are both bracing and illuminating. Unlike Ellmann, he offers a full account of Wilde’s schooldays at Portora in Ireland, and of his unhappy time as a student at Trinity College, Dublin, where his wit and brilliance found themselves adrift amongst Philistines. It is, at least, heartening to know that the famous story of Wilde single-handedly beating four men in a fistfight is true. The greatest strength of this book is its authority. Sturgis deftly combines well-known and new material to paint a picture of a man who, while often silly and vain, had an integrity and brilliance that few, if any, of his contemporaries could match. We do not have the secular saint of Ellmann’s book; instead, we have a far more recognisable, accessible figure. Yet, as the life wears on, and familiarity creeps in, one starts to feel slightly weary. Sturgis is, by his own admission, a historical biographer rather than a literary critic, and there is a lack of engagement with the work that becomes cumulatively disappointing. Whether one believes that Wilde’s plays are flawless masterpieces or fascinating insights into a flawed psyche – or something else altogether – one could read this book and never have any sense that its subject made people laugh. (Which is not to say that it is devoid of humour; more than one would, to misquote its subject, have a heart of stone not to laugh at the witticisms and inversions that he was synonymous with.) Bosie, as ever, seems like a shallow and spoilt prig, but the downfall here has never seemed so pathetic, the act of a short-sighted man distracted by a pretty boy’s backside rather than the tragic downfall of one of English (or Irish) literature’s greatest lights. At least the perpetual side man of Wilde’s story, Robbie Ross, emerges as a figure in his own right, boldly introducing his hero into the joys of Uranian pleasures before, later in life, acting nobly and selflessly as his executor and tireless defender of an often chequered reputation. It is always difficult to set oneself up as the definitive arbiter of a life. Sometimes, as with

OSCAR: A LIFE

By Matthew Sturgis (Head of Zeus, £25) Reviewed by Alexander Larman

“Oscar Wilde was a lonely child He fought and won acceptance from the world They smiled, they laughed, they praised They drove poor Oscar to his grave.” The Divine Comedy, ‘Absent Friends’

s Neil Hannon’s typically witty and apposite lyrics indicate, the obsession of the literary establishment with Oscar Wilde shows little sign of abating. Since his death 118 years ago, quipping ‘either that wallpaper goes or I do’, there have been countless biographies, films, productions and hagiographies of ‘the wittiest man who ever drew breath’. Yet what the Wildean industry has always lacked is any kind of consensus. Was he a gay martyr who happened to write a few amusing plays, stories and essays? Or was he a brilliant and revolutionary writer who was undone by his sexual orientation, at a time when nobody understood what it was to, as it were, ‘bear a poppy or a lily in your medieval hand’? Matthew Sturgis’ new biography, a behemoth at over 800 pages, including (lengthy) appendices and notes, sets out to be little less than the definitive modern biography of Wilde. From the introduction, its explicit comparison is clear; Richard Ellmann’s hitherto magisterial life of Wilde, published in 1987 when the great biographer was dying. Regarded, rightly, as Ellmann’s magnum opus, its unashamedly partisan view of Wilde as a

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Claire Tomalin’s Dickens or Jenny Uglow’s Hogarth, the combination of well-researched scholarship and brilliantly fresh writing mean that every other jobbing hack might as well down pens and not bother any more. Yet Sturgis’ Oscar is, perhaps, not quite the last word on this endlessly quixotic figure, even as it offers future scholars and readers countless tantalising and fascinating insights. The ‘lonely child’ may, yet, have a biographer who gives him the rich and sympathetic treatment that he merits, for all of his faults and often self-imposed complexities.

This atypical modesty perhaps becomes clearer if one examines Hardman’s life and career, which she has written about elsewhere. Groomed for success at The Spectator for years, where she has been the assistant editor, she underwent something of an annus horribilis in 2016; her marriage collapsed, she suffered from exceptionally bleak depression that resulted in her having to take extended leave from her job and, in the most awful of ironies, she found herself caught up in the Nice terror attacks when on holiday with her new partner, the former Labour MP John Woodcock. With this in mind, one might expect Hardman’s book to be a very personal look at her relationship with politics. Instead, she approaches it from a more detached perspective, only bringing in her own experiences when directly relevant – such as the time that she was referred to as ‘totty’ by a senior Conservative MP (later revealed to be Colonel Bob Stewart) and had to complain to the Whips about his behaviour. This later led to an outcry directed more at her than him, as she was accused of overreaction, not being able to take a joke, etc etc. She writes about it briskly and without self-pity; her wider point is a greater, if not necessarily more important, one. Hardman’s thesis is, essentially, that most politicians are decent men and women motivated by the right ideology, whatever side of the party spectrum they come down on, but their ability to do their best is limited by the archaic and demanding system that they find themselves entrapped in. In her criticisms of the bizarre, deeply old-fashioned Parliamentary system that our politicians are marooned in, she often echoes a bestselling examination of our flawed legal system, The Secret Barrister; there is even a section, when she discusses cuts to legal aid and how that has affected, on occasion, the politicians who voted for it, that could have come out of the other book. She’s a literate, engaging guide to the vagaries of Westminster life – and if you’ve ever wondered why there are so many affairs involving ‘ordinary looking middle-aged men’ and their young and lissom assistants, you may well find your answer here. It also helps that she writes with unusual compassion and insight into an institution that often seems part public school, part prison; I cannot imagine many people would finish reading this book and deciding that a career in politics is one that they want to embrace. Yet there is a circumspection and restraint to this book that will probably disappoint anyone

WHY WE GET THE WRONG POLITICIANS

By Isabel Hardman (Atlantic, £18.99) Reviewed by Alexander Larman sabel Hardman is a political journalist who, unusually in the bitchy halls of Westminster, has a reputation for being well liked on all sides. One can therefore expect that Why We Get The Wrong Politicians will generally be reviewed by her peers, and generously. However, we at The Chap can cover books without fear of influence or favour, and so it is interesting to report that Hardman’s book – her first – comes close to being excellent, but is let down by a surprising timidity of approach and an unwillingness to place herself, a leading political journalist, more squarely in the limelight.

“Hardman’s thesis is, essentially, that most politicians are decent men and women motivated by the right ideology, whatever side of the party spectrum they come down on, but their ability to do their best is limited by the archaic and demanding system they find themselves entrapped in”

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who is hoping for, say, a rip-roaring look at political human nature along the lines of Tim Shipman’s excellent Fall Out and All Out War. There is little gossip here, nor any real solutions to the problems that Hardman so crisply and intelligently discusses. She was clearly writing the book before the Brexit referendum – which may yet prove to be the gamechanger that politics needs, albeit not in the way that its architects could ever have predicted – hence a disproportionate reliance on interviews with David Cameron when he was still Prime Minister, and one cannot help but feel that it will become dated very quickly. Yet, if this sounds damning, it is not meant to be. Hardman, like the politicians she admires, comes across as a thoughtful and profoundly decent person – a quality rare in public life – and the problems that she has faced and dealt with in her private life make her substantial achievements all the more impressive. Thus, if this isn’t quite excellent, it’s still very good, and that means that it’s definitely worth reading.

alike, and as the sadder, wiser (but considerably richer) best-selling writer who longs for his vanished love, Katerina, with whom he had a visceral and erotic connection two and a half decades before. Yet Frey, whose fictionalised memoir A Million Little Pieces brought him both infamy and fortune, has created a loathsome protagonist whose antediluvian attitudes towards anyone who isn’t male, American and ‘a writer’ make this a uniquely unappealing and old-fashioned wallow in glorifying empty masculine privilege. Were Harvey Weinstein not awaiting trial on charges of sexual assault, he would undoubtedly be first in line to buy the film rights.

“This book probably contains the worst-written sex scenes since Morrissey’s Land of the Lost, and it lacks that book’s demented creativity. One longs for a ‘bulbous salutation’ to raise the tone”

KATERINA

By James Frey (John Murray, £18.99) Reviewed by Alexander Larman hose who have had the misfortune to come across a stranger masturbating in public usually feel a mixture of shock, revulsion and embarrassment. Much the same emotions are engendered when one turns to page three of James Frey’s muchanticipated and largely autobiographical new novel, Katerina, to find the protagonist Jay announcing ‘follow your heart and follow your cock’. Over the course of the book’s unedifying length, there is a very great deal about Jay’s cock, and its machinations, which is described in entirely tedious detail. What is never supplied is a reason why the reader should care about his spoilt, pretentious and vacuous alter ego. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the idea at the heart of the narrative, which follows Jay both as an eager 21-year old in Paris in 1992, consorting with the beau monde and demi-monde

The tone is set early on in the narrative, with a lengthy guide to the carnal and cultural highlights of Paris that would have Baedeker turning in his grave. It is all too fitting that Jay begins his odyssey after a reading of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer inspires him to lead a life of erotic excess, but we learn that he is also a thinker because, as Frey writes, ‘when I sit down to read, I take it seriously… it’s sex and love and the smell of cum.’ There is a lot of intercourse and semen here, described with repetitive banality; this book probably contains the worst-written sex scenes since Morrissey’s Land of the Lost, and it lacks that book’s demented creativity. One longs for a ‘bulbous salutation’ to raise the tone. The relationship between ‘Writer Boy’ and ‘Model Girl’, as Jay and Katerina style themselves, should be affecting, a celebration of two young people emerging into adulthood. Yet such is the almighty narcissism of the author’s worldview that he, and we, cannot care about any of his spoilt, selfish characters. The controversy behind A Million Little Pieces once threatened to derail Frey’s career. Fifteen years and many million sales later, the inexplicably dreadful Katerina represents a new and, in its own way, impressive kind of career suicide. n

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W E I V E R M L I F

ROGUE MALE Gustav Temple on the BBC TV adaptation of the novel by Geoffrey Husband. The BFI releases Rogue Male on DVD/Blu-ray in December

ogue Male opens during a pheasant shoot in Germany in 1939, with tweedy Teutons blasting various birds out of the sky and turning a shotgun on a wild boar that storms their patch. Enter elegance: Sir Roger Hunter (Peter O’Toole) strolls into a different patch of undergrowth in brown tweed hacking jacket, mustard yellow waistcoat and tweed flat cap, looking as if bagging pigeons is all rather beneath him. And it is. For when he’s taken cover and set up his rifle to take aim, we see that his target is none other than the Führer himself, entertaining his Nazi chums with Eva Braun in his country estate after their pheasant shoot. After the assassination attempt fails and Sir Roger is captured, he resists torture with aristocratic scorn and wit, describing his attempt to shoot Hitler as “a sporting stalk”. “You understand English,” he says to his torturer, “But you don’t understand Englishmen.” The SS officer ignores him. “How did you get here?”

“I walked from Poland.” “That is over 200 miles.” “I go to a good bootmaker. Schenider in Clifford Street.” Throughout the subsequent torture, escape and evasion of his pursuers, Sir Roger continually refers to his sartorial credentials and they form an integral part of his character. He also treats the whole escapade as a sporting adventure, showing the sort of sangfroid and gung-ho that also defines a gentleman. The first German he encounters after fleeing his captors is a fisherman. They may not be from the same nation, but they are both sportsmen and that unites them. Realising that, by helping Sir Roger, the German is aiding the demise of the Nazism he loathes, he provides him with food, clothing and a boat. “I salute you; you’re a sportsman,” are Sir Roger’s parting words. The fisherman salutes back. Sir Roger makes it back to London, where his first port-of-call is the Turkish baths, where he meets his cabinet-member uncle, played by Alistair Sim, Images courtesy of BFI

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who calls him ‘Bobbity’. He expresses his disapproval of his nephew’s rash actions in Germany in the language of the sporting gentleman: “Shooting heads of state is never in season, even if they are jumpedup corporals. They are protected like ospreys.” Having established himself as an honourable sporting gentleman who likes good tailoring, Peter O’Toole’s character then spends much of the film in the clothes of the ordinary man. He makes it back to London and, with the Nazis still on his tail, dons a disguise to visit his friend Saul Abrahams (Harold Pinter, below) in the City, who declares that Sir Roger looks like an advertisement. “I thought I looked rather democratic,” Sir Roger replies. “I bought the rig in what they call a department store.”

He actually looks incredibly dapper, in black pin stripe suit, black Fedora and pink and blue silk tie. It is a sure sign of the two chums’ class that, along with consuming gull’s eggs and champagne for lunch, their idea of a disguise is wearing clothes from the high street. Sir Roger’s next visit is to his tailor in London – but not for a bespoke suit. We now understand that, for all his snobbery, Sir Roger is dedicated to a higher cause and everything must now serve that purpose. His tailor provides him with more clothing he wouldn’t normally wear – rollneck sweaters, a mackintosh, a beret. But Peter O’Toole cannot help but look stylish, even while burrowing his way into a foxhole in Dorset in the clothes of a labourer. The actor was always a bit of a dandy, though country tweeds were not his thing. In real life he wore crushed velvet jackets, flowing scarves and wide-brimmed hats; more louche bohemian than country squire. Most actors, however stylish when in character, usually disappoint when off-camera. One rarely saw a well-dressed Sean Connery when he wasn’t playing Bond. Peter O’Toole, along with a small handful including Steve McQueen and Roger Moore, was one of the exceptions. When someone’s personal style is so distinct, elegant and authentic, they cannot help but look stylish, whatever they’re wearing.

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Film

Images courtesy of BFI

This of course is the essence of dandyism. Which is precisely why Peter O’Toole as Sir Roger Hunter cuts such a dash throughout the film, even when wearing other people’s clothes or disguises. When the Nazi-sympathising British agent Major Quive-Smith (John Standing, above left) finally picks up Sir Roger’s tail in rural Dorset, we see him swilling beer in a country pub and wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his slightly too ostentatious checked tweed suit. Major Quive Smith is from the same class as Sir Roger, but is clearly not a true gentleman – this much is obvious long before he announces his unsavoury politics. He needs the help of a manual on hunting, Rough Shooting, to help him track down his prey. Sir Roger’s instincts, even as the hunted, are more finely honed than that. The final scenes, conducted with Sir Roger, without any fingernails, buried in his dark, airless foxhole for a few days, while Quive-Smith pays him daily visits in freshly pressed tweeds and a covert coat, show that ultimately clothes have no bearing on the actions of a true gentleman. “Don’t assume that because we both go to a good tailor that we’re on the same side,” declares Sir Roger when Quive-Smith tries to persuade him they share a similar ideology. It is the suggestion that Sir Roger signs a confession to his murder attempt on the Führer, in order to escalate hostilities

with Germany, that fires him up with enough rage to find a way of defeating his captor. Even when he’s dispatched Quive-Smith, Sir Roger continues to show gentlemanly decorum by resisting the urge to kill his accomplice. He realises that the only way to escape the village without arousing suspicion is to don the tweeds of the dead man. Sir Roger Hunter is a well-dressed aristocrat who has spent most of the film wearing other people’s clothes, proving that a gentleman is much more than a mere clothes-horse. He is willing to sacrifice bodily comfort – and tolerate poor tailoring – in service to the higher cause of saving his country from Nazism. Sir Roger’s secondary (or perhaps primary) motive for assassinating Hitler is revenge for a lover, seen in flashbacks, being shot by a Nazi firing squad. This slightly heavy-handed plot device, though true to the original novel by Geoffrey Household, helps to broaden the appeal of Sir Roger to a wider audience. Though set in 1939, the TV film was made in 1976, by which time the upper-class toff, whose love of the fine things in life is as strong as his patriotism, would have been less familiar and resonant to a television audience. Revenge on the suffering of a lover is something we can all identify with, whether we have our boots made by Smyth of Clifford Street or not. n

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OH WHISTLE AND I’LL COME TO YOU, MY LAD Robert Lloyd Parry, a keen disciple of M.R. James, explains how the author’s best-known spooky tale came into being, by visiting some of its key locations

“The discovery of an ancient whistle, a baffling recurring nightmare and the accidental summoning of something horrifying. By the end, Parkins has been pushed to the boundaries of his sanity and returns to Cambridge a changed and harrowed man”

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ecember 1902: Henry Luxmoore, an Eton schoolmaster, pays a visit to his old pupil, Montague Rhodes James, then a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. Luxmoore was one of several bachelors to congregate around James that Christmas, and he gave a vivid account of the festivities in a letter to a friend. King’s, he wrote, “is like a most splendidly appointed club. Last night Monty James read us a new Christmas ghost story of the most bloodcurdling character, after which those played animal grab who did not mind having their clothes torn to pieces and their hands nail scored.”

At the beginning of the story we meet the protagonist, Professor Parkins, enjoying an endof-term College feast. We eavesdrop on some typical high-table chit-chat, small talk about ruined churches, vacation plans, golf courses – and ghosts. The guests at James’s Christmas soirees would have immediately recognised the milieu. They might even have half-glimpsed themselves in the characters that are sketched: there’s Disney, the professional archaeologist who just can’t help talking shop. Parkins himself, ‘young, neat and precise in speech…’ And Rogers, the bluff joker sitting opposite. It’s a reassuring, realistic opening, and while it subtly prepares us for the philosophical tumble that Professor Parkins is fated to take, it does little to suggest the strangeness of the events that will lead up to it: the discovery of an ancient whistle, a baffling recurring nightmare and the accidental summoning of… something that is all the more horrifying for its being intangible and inexplicable. By the end, Parkins has been pushed to the boundaries of his sanity and returns to Cambridge a changed and harrowed man. The morning after the feast, Parkins sets off for The Globe Inn at Burnstow, where he plans to spend a few weeks playing golf and writing. Burnstow, James admitted, is closely based on the Suffolk resort of Felixstowe, and the journey made by Parkins from Cambridge to the east coast mirrors one made by James’s friend Felix Cobbold each December.

“Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to you, My Lad is an unforgettable tale, and a curious one to have emerged from such convivial circumstances” By the time that Luxmoore made these observations, M R James’s Christmas get-togethers had become a fixed tradition: carols and prayers in the great Chapel at King’s were followed by dinner in Hall, washed down by spiced beer. Senior members of College and their guests then took snuff and a snifter in the Combination Room, before some retired to James’s rooms, to sit, smoke and sometimes snooze, while their host read a freshly composed ghost story by the light of a single candle. The stories James performed on those occasions are among the best supernatural tales ever written and are still being read – and listened to – today. Luxmoore was back at Kings in 1903 to hear his friend read two new stories. One, Number 13, was inspired by a recent trip James had made to Denmark. The other was the tale for which he’s probably best known today. Luxmoore gave it the Latin name Fur Flebis (‘Thief, you will weep’), but it was published the following year under a different title – one which is still capable of sending a shiver down the spines of those who recognise it. Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to you, My Lad is an unforgettable tale, and a curious one to have emerged from such convivial circumstances. It’s an authentic spine chiller and there are flashes of real horror and despair, but it manages at the same time to be, on occasion, laugh-out-loud funny. And it’s a work of the imagination that has its basis in James’s own experience as a Cambridge don.

“One of James’s great strengths as an imaginative storyteller is that he wrote so well about what he knew. He situates his supernatural horrors in plausible and recognisable surroundings – country houses, libraries, churches, colleges” Cobbold, a philanthropist and millionaire from a well-known family of Ipswich brewers, was the sometime bursar of King’s College, a popular senior fellow who, unlike some of his colleagues, led an active life outside Cambridge. He served as a

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The Dining Room at Felixstowe Lodge

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Liberal MP for various Suffolk constituencies, and his philanthropy is still felt today in Ipswich today: Christchurch Mansion, now the city’s main art gallery, was saved from demolition and donated to the public by Cobbold in 1894. But he spent freely on his friends too, and every December, after celebrating Christmas in King’s, he’d retire with a select group to his splendidly appointed seaside villa, The Lodge in Felixstowe. This palatial residence still stands today, overlooking the sea at Cobbold’s point, where the low cliff bends north towards the mouth of the River Deben. The building served as a girls’ school for much of the 20th century, and today has been divided into several different houses. But it was originally one vast bachelor pad, constructed by Felix Cobbold as a playground for himself and a select group of bookish chums. James was invited several times in the 1890s, and in his memoirs he recorded his pride at being on the guest list, describing Cobbold as “the soul

of liberality”. All this good fellowship seems a long way from the ‘old-womanish’ Professor Parkins, holed up alone in a small inn, nervously playing rounds of golf with strangers. But it’s clear when you visit Felixstowe today that the view from Parkins’ room in Oh, Whistle… is the precise view you get from a guest bedroom at Felix Cobbold’s Lodge. One of James’s great strengths as an imaginative storyteller is that he wrote so well about what he knew. He situates his supernatural horrors in plausible and recognisable surroundings – country houses, libraries, churches, colleges. And the closely described topography of Felixstowe/Burnstow adds enormously to the impact of his story. The blustery golf course; the shingle and sand; the old Martello tower; the ‘bleak and solemn’ sky: this realistic local colour makes James’s imaginative horrors, when they intrude, all the more creepy. Felix Cobbold’s hospitality provided James with a physical setting for his great tale. And I wonder whether an unhappy event that occurred during one of his house parties might also have gained a presence. James Kenneth Stephen – Jem to his friends – was one of the brightest and most promising figures to have trod the well worn path from Eton to King’s College in 1870s. The son of a celebrated high court judge and nephew of the eminent man of letters Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf ’s father, he became well known for his colourful speeches at the Cambridge Union. It’s no surprise that this charismatic, quick-witted poet was invited to join the New Year’s house parties at Felixstowe Lodge. We

“The oddly unpleasant tone of some of the poems has sometimes been brought in evidence by those who accuse James Stephen of being Jack the Ripper” 141

don’t know how often he went, but he was definitely there as Felix Cobbold’s guest in late December 1886, when an accident occurred that changed – and almost certainly cut short – his life. Accounts differ about exactly what happened. His friend Arthur Benson had it that Stephen injured his head while examining a pumping-mill. Within the Stephen family it was always said that he was struck by a projection from a passing train. There’s even a suggestion that a horse he was riding was frightened by a whistle, or a gust of wind blowing a leaf, and bucked its rider to the ground. But whatever the details, it’s certain that on 29th December 1886 Jem Stephen suffered a blow to the head and was never the same again. “He soon got over the accident”, wrote Benson, “but no doubt some subtle inflammation of brain-tissue resulted. He began to form sanguine and unbalanced plans, to be extravagant in money matters, and to display emotional tendencies of a rather vehement type…” In 1888 Stephen set up a literary magazine, The Reflector, of which he was editor, chief contributor and distributor and into which he ploughed a reckless amount of money. After 17 issues the money ran out and The Reflector folded. The following year he was expelled from the Savile Club in London for violent behaviour towards the staff. And a few months later he narrowly escaped being jailed in Paris for fraud. He returned to Cambridge in 1890 and for a while his friends and family sensed an improvement in his behaviour. He took on pupils in law and history. He began to speak at the Union again. And he published two volumes of poetry: Lapsus Calami and Musa, quo tendis. The oddly unpleasant tone of some of the poems has sometimes been brought in evidence by those who accuse Stephen of being Jack the Ripper. I’m not convinced that there’s much substance to the accusation, but it is thanks to the researches of ripperologists that we know a lot about the last few weeks of Stephen’s life. On November 24th 1891, his landlady found him standing naked at his bedroom window in central Cambridge, throwing his belongings out onto the pavement below, screaming. He was, it seems, convinced that a warrant was out for his arrest. He was becalmed by friends, and his brothers were summoned from London, who accompanied him to a hospital in Northampton where he was admitted suffering from “extreme depression.” St Andrew’s, where Stephen was admitted, had been founded as the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum in 1838. It was the same

institution in which the poet John Clare spent the last 25 years of his life. And, like John Clare, Stephen never left St Andrews, though his residence was much shorter. A few weeks after his admission, despite interludes of improvement in his mood, his condition deteriorated abruptly. He began to refuse food. And on 3rd February 1892 he died: the cause of death was recorded as “mania, refusal of food, and exhaustion”. A close friend of M R James once offered the observation that his ghost stories ‘lacked depth.’ And I think I know what he means. They are spinechilling certainly, and often show a strong steak of melancholy. But they don’t provoke or demand deep thought. They don’t encourage the reader to dwell upon the problems of existence, or the challenges of religious faith. They are entertainments to be accompanied by madeira and followed by a late-night round of animal grab. But that’s not to deny an underlying seriousness. And aside from the supernatural horrors that James so brilliantly describes, there’s another latent fear: the fear of madness. It’s a fear that crops up again and again in James’s stories and, as Jem Stephen’s experience shows, it was a very real threat within James’s own circle. By December 1903, when James seems to have read Oh Whistle… aloud for the first time, Stephen was nearly 12 years dead. And although James never forgot his friend, and recalled him warmly in his memoirs in 1926, it would probably be going too far to assert that his story had a direct influence on Oh, Whistle… However… I don’t think that M R James believed that if you blew a whistle by the seaside you could unleash terrifying elemental forces. I don’t think he necessarily believed that there were unseen agents of evil wreaking havoc upon human lives – although he might have done. But I think he did believe – in fact he knew – because he’d seen it close up, that terrifying, relentless, seemingly inexplicable forces could lay hold of a perfectly intelligent man, take away his wits and, in extreme cases, could bring about his utter destruction. And that such forces could be set in motion by chance events when on holiday in Felixstowe. n

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FEAR & LOATHING IN WALLY’S WORLD

Gustav Temple crosses the Atlantic to Miami, Florida, in a reckless bid to try a new kind of family holiday that stimulates both the little people and the bigger ones

t was somewhere around Golden Glades when the Toblerones began to kick in. ‘No point in mentioning the lizards,’ I thought, ‘They’ll see them soon enough.’ I kept my thoughts to myself as I gently pressed the accelerator on the hired Ford Mustang nosing its way out of the underground car park at Fort Lauderdale airport. My two passengers Theo (12) and Romilly (10) were high on jetlag, airport confectionery and the buzz of seeing America for the first time. I was buzzing on the terror on getting the three of us in one piece to Miami, while simultaneously learning how to drive on American freeways. Six lanes, cars constantly veering across them without signalling, and the fierce Miami sun bearing down on our heads, exposed by the unwise opening of the sun roof. I thought I’d feel like Hunter S Thompson on

this journey, but was beginning to feel more like Clark Griswold in National Lampoon’s Vacation. Could this harebrained scheme really work? Instead of the usual journey to boring old Europe and doing what

“I was tempted to take a Live and Let Die walk over the alligators’ backs before realising I wasn’t wearing my safari jacket. Sartorially, Florida presents only one problem: temperatures of 32 C degrees and humidity off the scale” 145

And now we were doing it and there was no turning back. We missed a few turnpikes, looped around junctions a few times, but this baptism by fire gave me no option but to keep my foot down, and by the time the glittering skyline of Downtown Miami hove into view, I knew how to drive in America. You just do what the hell you like and ignore everyone else; honk your horn if someone’s in your way and keep the top down on a convertible on freeways. It was a blessed relief to pull into the driveway of the Mandarin Oriental, a swish establishment on Brickell Key, over a narrow bridge from the southernmost tip of Miami. It was 7pm according to the clock in the lobby, but it felt like three in the morning, and was actually midnight according to our messed-up body clocks. My son fell asleep over dinner and an early night prepared us for the seven solid days of activities I’d planned. Our first excursion was with Thriller Miami, a speedboat ride around the harbour and islands of a city that is surrounded by water. As fresh arrivals, still jetlagged, confused and very hot, this was the perfect way to get a handle on this new world we had discovered. The boat zips around the various islands at breakneck speed, with a running commentary from an enthusiastic pilot that hypes up the city and the passengers of his vessel. Star Island is one highlight, though the only celebrity name I recognised was Don Johnson, whose house looked unlike all the others – tasteful and rustic (and once owned by Elizabeth Taylor) rather than showy and vulgar (Madonna left Star Island in a huff when the neighbours complained about her noisy parties; I hope Don Johnson was one of them). A ‘fun fact’ imparted to us seemed to sum up the spirit of Miami: when Hurricane Wilma was coming in 2005, a wealthy yacht-owner positioned his prize vessel near the harbour to avoid damage at sea. He placed it right beside the Hard Rock Café, whose gigantic metal guitar crashed from the roof and split the multi-million-dollar yacht in two. A middle-aged father travelling alone with two children brings many moments of shared wonder, but also many moments of disconnection: I was trying to see Miami through cool Hunter S Thompson sunglasses, but they wanted me to see it through Chevy Chase prescription spectacles. Sometimes the two collided in a happy accident.

everyone else does during school summer holidays, I devised the wheeze of flying an extra 2000 miles to Florida. The notion of visiting any of the theme parks in Orlando was not even discussed with my children. They understood that there was a higher purpose to this trip. This was to be our voyage to the American Dream. My son would turn 13 during the holiday and I wanted this life-changing event to take place somewhere significant that he’d remember forever. The country that invented the teenager seemed perfect. The preparations had been extensive, from hours of paperwork for the post-Trump Tourist Visa, to getting a notary to permit me to travel alone with my children (in line with US anti-child trafficking prevention). When I was ready to commit the funds in a high street Flight Centre, there was a noticeable double take when I didn’t say we were going to Greece, Spain or France. However, the price of the three airline tickets, with Air Norwegian, came to roughly the same amount as they had when we flew to Menorca the previous year. The car was hired at the same time. Another double take when I insisted on paying the extra for a Ford Mustang. The flight from Gatwick to Fort Lauderdale, sold to the children as “part of the fun” was tailormade for two kids who love nothing more than eating snacks and watching TV for nine hours straight. I spent most of the flight chewing nicotine gum and worrying about that hour-long drive to Miami.

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On the day of my son’s birthday, he found a place online called Fun Dimension, some sort of concrete bunker full of noisy machines and other children. It sounded more like Hell Dimension to me, but it was his 13th birthday. Then I looked it up and Fun Dimension happened to be right in the heart of Wynwood, the artistic district I’d had in my sights when planning this trip. So the kids got to spend two hours chasing Hispanic kids around dark rooms with lasers, and I got to wander around this area which, like every hipster neighbourhood, is surrounded by abject poverty and deprivation. We had to dodge past sleeping homeless men on the rough streets around Fun Dimension, and everywhere was graffiti, not all of it the carefully curated kind that the developers of Wynwood have turned into a tourist attraction. While the kids did what they needed to do, I did the same and wandered around the neighbourhood. The beard quotient was very high and Wynwood was the only area in Miami I was offered weed on the street. I didn’t consider it an appropriate birthday present for my son so declined. We were all very interested in diners and Miami has plenty of them. This was one of our shared visions of America: sitting in a vinyl booth being served breakfast with grits on the side and endless cups of coffee by a woman in a 1950s uniform. Wynwood Diner had the desired exterior, but inside it was all bare brick and exposed plumbing, with hip Latina waitresses saving up for their next tattoo. Close, but no grits. This diner only served pancakes the size of placentas and craft beer. Our next excursion was to the Everglades Safari Park, where alligators and crocodiles lurk. It’s a surprisingly short drive from Uptown Miami to the lush green swampland of the Everglades, toured by a noisy airboat. The alligators emerge from their leafy lairs as soon as the boat comes to a halt and eye the passengers tentatively, before disappearing under the murky water when the engine cranks up again. I was tempted to take a Live and Let Die walk over their backs before realizing I wasn’t wearing my safari jacket. Sartorially, Florida presents only one problem: temperatures of 32 C degrees and humidity off the scale. You never stop sweating and here in the swampland it was even worse than the city. Mexican Guayaberas proved the only solution to

maintaining a modicum of elegance, paired with off-white chinos and a straw trilby. On day three we transferred to our second hotel, the Element Miami Doral in Midtown, a discreet, modern hotel whose star attraction was a robot called Eco to provide room service. We summoned Eco with a few provisions, but he got lost on the 7th floor and had to be recalled to reception. A human being called José delivered our goods instead. We rarely heard any language other than Spanish among service staff; the population of Miami turns out to be 70 per cent Hispanic; mostly Cuban, Venezuelan and Colombian. The Cuban population, resident in Miami since the great Mariel exodus of 1980, has established itself in Little Havana. While a long way from the real poverty and ruined beauty of the real Havana, the low-rise buildings and 1950s Chevvies set it apart from its neighbour West Brickell, a flashy upmarket area with a shopping mall we entered to breathe in its highly expensive air-conditioning. Our second diner was closer to the mark. S&S Diner on Biscayne Boulevard moved to its current site from its original location on second Avenue, due to redevelopment of the area, where it had been since 1938, and is now housed in a precariously isolated little corner surrounded by more building sites for skyscrapers. However, S&S Diner still qualifies as Miami’s second-oldest restaurant and offers a warm, welcoming atmosphere

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and exactly the kind of hearty, wholesome and huge-portioned fare one would expect. Normally, like most modern parents, I try to ensure that my children eat the occasional vaguely healthy meal, but in Miami I abandoned this and let them eat what they wanted. Which was usually junk food, though S&S Diner’s burgers are a long way from McDonalds. It was time to see more wildlife, and our third day featured a visit to Monkey Jungle, situated to the southwest of Miami outside the city borders. In 1933 Joseph DuMond built a 30-acre replica Amazon rainforest here and released six Java Monkeys into it, establishing a wildlife centre that would remain for over 80 years. There are now 300 primates living in the trees, and before our meeting with them visitors are primed with instructions on what to expect. As we entered the double gate into the jungle behind our guide, it felt like a “what could possibly go wrong?” Jurassic Park moment. I glanced at the others in our group and wondered who’d be the first monkey-kidnap victim. The size and character of the dozens of squirrel and capuchin monkeys that suddenly materialised from the trees made it more of a Doctor

Doolittle moment. The children were entranced as the furry little creatures, some with babies clutching to their backs, leaped from the trees and on to our hands and heads. With multiple cameras and videos flashing, it became a fashion photo shoot for tiny fur coats and cute monkey faces. The final leg of our journey was to Miami Beach, an island joined to the mainland by a series of two-lane bridges. There are no skyscrapers, but all the low-rise art deco buildings have been requisitioned by big hotel chains, giving this relatively small island the feel of a large city. The deco architecture is everywhere, its crisp, smooth white lines interrupted by the logos of Starbucks, H&M and Superdry. The oldest building we saw was an early 20th century church under renovation, the billboards outside it declaring the good news – it will be turned into another shopping mall! Despite the chainstore ubiquity, a few vestiges of vintage Miami survive, and for our third diner we hit the motherlode. 11th Street Diner is a proper airstream building with all the original fittings. With an authentically vintage menu to match the building, we finally found out what grits are: mashed corn, luckily served in a separate dish.

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But we weren’t here for the grits; we were here for the vibe and there was plenty of that. We headed over to Ocean Drive for another immersive experience, and it didn’t disappoint. From the terrace of the News Café, where Gianni Versace used to take his morning victuals, the stream of fashion conscious, fashion victim and virtually fashionless individuals never ceases. While we took our last breakfast in America, two black women in rainbowcoloured skimpy outfits with hair to match sashayed past the entrance. A red Ford Mustang screeched to a halt and the driver, causing a traffic jam, leaped out and secured one of the ladies’ phone numbers, before jumping back into his car to the whoops and backslaps of his passengers and screeching off. The traffic resumed its flow and we headed to the beach to cool off. One would imagine that the fashion conscious would head for the portion of this enormous (and artificially constructed) beach that represents their particular tribe. Our tribe was the one that’s too hot and needs a swim, so we randomly entered the arena, taking advantage of the free suntan cream dispensers provided by the Miami Medical Centre. The beauty of beaches, especially with children, is

that they are all the same and everyone knows what to do. Yet there is still something magical about floating in the incredibly warm water that is only a dolphin-ride away from the Bahamas. In the other direction is the comfortable, solid wall of art deco and neon which looks iconic even in daylight. Some elements of our journey had replicated similar holidays in southern Europe, but going that extra few thousand miles had given our week an extra ingredient that only America can provide. While strolling about Miami Beach, we met lizards the size of dachshunds wandering about, and the children didn’t complain once about being bored, hot or tired, like they usually do on European jaunts. The constant stimulation of the senses and the immersion in a world seen so many times in Hollywood films had made our holiday into more of a quest. It strengthened us a family unit because we all got something out of it; while the kids marvelled at the lizards, I recalled scenes from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and we all came away from our trip with a Miami suntan that would not fade for a long time. n Thanks to www.miamiandbeaches.com

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Art

WHISTLER’S FIREWORKS

As a new Whistler exhibition opens in England, Darcy Sullivan spotlights a turning point in the feisty artist’s life

ou probably know at least two things about the American artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler. First, he painted his mother – though the 1871 painting we know as Whistler’s Mother is actually titled Arrangement in Grey and Black. This is an important point, so hold on to it. Second, Whistler outwitted Oscar Wilde. As immortalized by Monty Python, Wilde once responded to a bon mot from Whistler by sighing, “I wish I had said that.” Whistler replied, “You will, Oscar. You will.” But there’s much more to Whistler. He was one

“I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face” John Ruskin

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Nocturne in Black and Gold, The Falling Rocket by James McNeill Whistler, 1875

Portrait of James Abbott McNeil Whistler in Front of the Thames by Walter Greaves, 1874

of the 19th century’s great artists, whose ideas about art cut through the sermonizing claptrap of his age. A Kubrick-level perfectionist, he subjected even famous subjects to dozens of sittings until he was satisfied with the painting. Whistler was also a firebrand who fought with his fists and wit, punching friends, relatives and strangers and dashing out world-class zingers. When riled by criticism, Whistler would fire off snide comebacks to the newspapers, and even collected them into a book, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies. Whistler may not have invented flame mail, but he was the first to publish it in hardback. These two sides of Whistler – the thoughtful artist and the snarky battler – didn’t usually gel. Some of his friends complained that he weakened his status as an artist by waging his bitter feuds in public. There was one occasion, however, when Whistler’s championing of art for art’s sake and his quick-fire wit fused perfectly. It involved the premier art critic of the Victorian age, John Ruskin, and one of Whistler’s most revolutionary paintings. It was a turning point for both men, and for how we look at art. It was also funny as hell.

wallet. “Whistler’s real difficulty at the moment was lack of money,” Hesketh Pearson explained in The Man Whistler. “He was heavily in debt and his pictures were not selling. After Ruskin’s criticism his Nocturnes were regarded as jokes, and no-one was brave enough to be painted by him.” Because the review insulted the man as much as his work, Ruskin’s review could be taken as libellous. Seeking a very public smackdown, Whistler sued. In November 1878, 140 years ago this month, Whistler v Ruskin came to trial at the Court of Exchequer.

ART ON TRIAL Ruskin was too ill to attend, and his absence “deprived the trial of its main interest,” according to James Laver in 1930’s Whistler. “What might have been a magnificent duel, a combat of elephant and tiger, dwindled into a display of shadow-boxing.” But Ruskin’s defence strategy was simple: Put Whistler’s art on trial. Team Ruskin reasoned that no jury of regular folks would look at Whistler’s nutty picture and approve. Whistler had to defend not just his character and his painting but his ideas about art. Unlike Ruskin, he didn’t think art needed to tell a story, have a moral or be an exacting representation of its subject. It should be beautiful, a harmonic composition of shapes and colours. This is why Whistler named his paintings nocturnes, or arrangements: they were pure art, like music. It’s why Whistler’s Mother is really Arrangement in Grey and Black. Sure, it’s his mom, but what counts is the gestalt visual effect, not the old gal in the chair. These were radical ideas at the time, and Ruskin’s barrister, Sir John Holker, went straight at them when cross-examining Whistler. (The quotations here, as well as the indications of courtroom responses, come from Linda Merrill’s A Pot of Paint: Aesthetics on Trial in Whistler v Ruskin.) HOLKER: What is the subject of the Nocturne in Black and Gold? WHISTLER: It is a night piece and represents the fireworks at Cremorne Gardens. HOLKER: Not a view of Cremorne? WHISTLER: If it were called ‘A View of Cremorne’ it would certainly bring about nothing but disappointment on the part of the beholders. [Laughter] It is an artistic arrangement. That is why I call it a nocturne. Holker went after a second critical point: HOLKER: Did it take you much time to paint the Nocturne in Black and Gold? How soon did you knock it off? [Laughter]

COCKNEYS AND COXCOMBS By his own account, John Ruskin could not believe his eyes when he saw Nocturne in Black and Gold. And not in a good way The Victorians liked their art to be beautiful, representational and moral. Ruskin insisted the purpose of art was to “express the highest moral standards and values of a society,” as Daniel Sutherland wrote in his definitive Whistler: A Life for Art’s Sake. In stark contrast, Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, which depicted nighttime fireworks, was shockingly abstract. In reviewing an exhibition at the Grosvenor in 1877, Ruskin attacked the decline in modern art, and singled out Whistler’s Nocturne: “For Mr. Whistler’s own sake, no less than for the protection of the purchaser, Sir Coutts Lindsay ought not to have admitted works into the gallery in which the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approached the aspect of wilful imposture. I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.” This is Victorian for, “My two-year-old could have painted that.” Coming from Ruskin, the comments hurt Whistler’s reputation and his

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A STINGING VICTORY There are striking parallels between Whistler v Ruskin and Oscar Wilde’s 1895 lawsuit for libel against the Marquess of Queensberry. When Queensberry’s lawyer Edward Carson asked if a homoerotic phrase in one of Wilde’s letters was beautiful, Wilde responded: “Not as you read it, Mr. Carson. You read it very badly.” When Holker asked Whistler to explain why the Nocturne was beautiful, he replied, “I daresay I could make it clear to any sympathetic painter, but I do not think I could to you, any more than a musician could explain the beauty of a harmony to a person who has no ear.” Quips like these amused the courtroom, but both men paid dearly for their trials. Wilde’s resulted in follow-up prosecutions that put him in jail for ‘gross indecency,’ ending his career and bankrupting him. Whistler won his case – but the jury awarded him only a farthing, and no costs. (This is Victorian for, ‘Stop wasting our time.’) Already in severe debt and counting on the trial to dig him out, Whistler went bankrupt. But if the critics thought they’d shut him up, they didn’t know Jimmy Whistler. “His ‘victory’ marked the beginning of his war against the critics, that is, the self-appointed arbiters of the Victorian art world,” says Sutherland. “He had, of course, indulged in brief and minor skirmishes with critics in the past, but nothing like the manifesto he threw at them with Art and Art Critics, a direct result of the Ruskin trial. The Ten o’Clock [Whistler’s lecture on art] was but a more eloquent echo of this initial but sustained attack.” More importantly, Whistler rebounded as an artist, entering a whole new phase of success. “Whistler became an even greater artist as a result of the trial and subsequent bankruptcy,” says Sutherland. “Forced to go to Venice, he produced some of his most delicate and beautiful art, different from anything he had done in the past, and based on a more sophisticated philosophy of art, or at least of technique. The Venice etchings and pastels were every bit as revolutionary as the nocturnes, which he abandoned entirely (at least in painting) after the Ruskin trial.” So that’s a result of: Coxcombs 1, Critics 0. n

John Ruskin

WHISTLER: I beg your pardon? HOLKER: I was using an expression which is rather more applicable to my own profession. [Laughter] WHISTLER: Thank you for the compliment. [Laughter] HOLKER: How long do you take to knock off one of your pictures? WHISTLER: Oh, I “knock one off” possibly in a couple of days; [Laughter] one day to do the work and another to finish it. Holker had landed two huge blows: the painting didn’t look like anything, and it only took two days to paint. The third punch would lay Whistler out. Instead, Whistler parried with the trial’s standout line. HOLKER: The labour of two days is that for which you ask two hundred guineas? WHISTLER: No. I ask it for the knowledge I have gained in the work of a lifetime. (Applause) POW! Whistler argued forcefully that art is based on the artist, not the subject, not the effort. This philosophy would soon sweep through the art world and find its heroes in people like Duchamp and Warhol. “Whistler was saying,” author Daniel Sutherland told the Chap, “in his own inimitable way, what every artist, even the ones who took Ruskin’s side, believed – and I suspect still believe – How do you quantify talent, experience, or, not to put too fine a point on it, genius?”

‘Whistler and Nature’ runs at the Compton Verney Art Gallery in Warwickshire until December 16. Daniel Sutherland’s Whistler: A Life for Art’s Sake (now in paperback) and Whistler’s Mother (2018, co-written by Georgia Toutziari) are both available from Yale University Press. The Whistler Society is at www.whistlersociety.org

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Dining

THE CINNAMON CLUB

30-32 Great Smith Street, London SW1P 3BU Reviewed by Alexander Larman

he epistle that I received from this magazine’s editor was a tragic one. “I regret to inform you that I have been taken unwell, following an unfortunate trip to Cornwall. You shall have to do the next review as a solo endeavour.” This was enough to bring a tear to my eye, although my sorrow was swiftly dampened by the knowledge that I would be lunching, albeit

with less elegant company, at the Cinnamon Club, the doyen of London’s sub-continental restaurants, situated in the shadows of Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. If Gymkhana is a dashing son and Indian Accent an impeccably presented mother, then Vivek Singh’s Cinnamon Club – still, after all these years, a place packed to the rafters with politicians, journalists and those-in-the-know – is surely the patriarch. Those who dine here tend to come away rhapsodising at the whole experience; the sublime food, the wonderful wine, the books… “What have books got to do with fine dining?” The Cinnamon Club is set within what used to be Westminster Library, and has retained a quietly civilised air. One imagines the gossip circulating between tables being kept at a low thrum; we were visiting during the party conference season, so the atmosphere was sedate. Not that the restaurant wasn’t

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busy; it’s a big room, but it was comfortably two thirds full, even on a Thursday lunchtime. As I made myself comfortable in a book-lined corner, I contemplated my fellow diners. Well-dressed men of a certain age who seemed to know all that there was to be known; savvy visitors who were tucking into the excellent value set lunch; even a few ladies who lunch, who seemed to be lapping up the most outrageous gossip. We were furnished with a fine bottle of white to whet the whistle, a Riesling Kabinett from the house specials list. Well might it do. We peruse the menu, which offers a cornucopia of delights. I’m especially tickled by the fact that, almost apologetically, there are a couple of dishes, devised by the great Eric Chavot, ‘for those challenged on the spice front.’ We do not indulge. My fellow trencherman has some mild confusion over the pronunciation of the fish he orders, but we get there in the end; I, always conscious of the social niceties, plump for the tandoori octopus. It is a thick, rich and generous portion of that wriggling amphibian; I like to think that it put up a good fight before it disappeared into the pan, and thence my belly. And then, the main courses. There is a certain theatricality in the Singh method, because one does not visit the Cinnamon Club to sup on chicken tikka masala or lamb rogan josh. There is chicken, but it is

old Delhi style butter chicken, served on the bone and carved at table. The sauce is a thing of beauty; in days of yore, one can imagine the locals flocking to one’s dining room and begging for a taste. It is sufficiently good to imagine selling a soul for it, albeit preferably not one’s own. A glass of the Riesling is taken; some black lentils added to the dish to add an (unnecessary) additional layer of complexity. Of course, nothing can really compete with this, but we’re prepared to give it a go. There is a smorgasbord of desserts, presented with the confidence of a restaurant that wants to defy the cliché that Indian establishments can’t do pudding. For £30 for two a combination can be presented and, after some careful plucking and nibbling, we decide that the outstanding offering is a very fine pistachio ice cream, although the sticky toffee pudding runs it close. A coffee and some excellent petits fours later and we’re ready to waltz out into the Westminster afternoon, replete and ready to conduct ourselves with the aplomb of any of our elected representatives. The Cinnamon Club has been in business for the best part of two decades. All we can urge you, with the greatest of sincerity, is to be careful with your napkin as you slurp the most delicious of sauces; be warned, food this good will stain. And on your very fine lapels be it. n

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