Chap Spring 19 by thechap

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DE S IG NE D F OR C OMB AT. DE L AY E D BY V IC TOR Y.

IN 1945, the

British Ministry of Defence commissioned a monopusher ordnance timing watch from Vertex, one of the original â&#x20AC;&#x153;dirty dozenâ&#x20AC;? watchmakers. No one knew it would be the waning days of the War, and although the design was completed, the MP45 Chronograph was never produced. But the MP45 was never forgotten. And now it is available for the first time, based on its original design supplemented with over 70 years of technical advancement. By definition, the MP45 is a classic from day one.

www.vertex-watches.com

Editor: Gustav Temple Art Director: Rachel Barker Designer: Carina Dicks Picture Editor: Theo Salter Sub-Editor: Romilly Clark Circulation Manager: Keiron Jeffries Subscriptions Manager: Natalie Smith Contributing Editors: Chris Sullivan, Liam Jefferies, Alexander Larman

CONTRIBUTORS

OLLY SMITH

LIAM JEFFERIES

CHRIS SULLIVAN

GOSBEE & MINNS

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 is a journalist, author and impresario who 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.

HOLLY ROSE SWINYARD Holly Rose Swinyard is a reporter and fashion experimentalist. In between hosting sci-fi podcasts, Holly writes and speaks about contemporary revolutionary ideas such as gender equality and a post-gender society, along with the equally important topic of clothes and costume.

ALEXANDER LARMAN 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.

DAVID EVANS

SUNDAY SWIFT

DARCY SULLIVAN

FERRIS NEWTON

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

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 freelance paranormal 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.

CONTENTS 8 AM I CHAP?

Submit yourself to the ultimate sartorial assessment

12 C HAPMANSHIP

Queries from Chaps confused about the contemporary world

14 LOS ANGELES TWEED PUB CRAWL

Matt Deckard roams the city in search of a decent pint

18 PEACOCKS & MAGPIES

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

FEATURES 22 ERICH VON STROHEIM

Chris Sullivan on the monocled Austrian who took Hollywood by storm in the early days of cinema

28 D ANDIZETTE

Doctor of Dandyism Sunday Swift on the dandyism of Lucille Ball

34 I NTERVIEW

Gustav Temple meets Billy Zane to discuss tiki bars, Ford Mustangs, high-waisted trousers, Marlon Brando and combovers

•

SPRING 2019

34 SARTORIAL FEATURES 44 FASHION PHOTO SHOOT

We took some nightwear at the louche end of the spectrum and some similar models to an hotel in Brighton

58 THE RHINESTONE REMBRANDT

Darcy Sullivan meets Manuel Cuevas, the rodeo tailor who made suits for Frank Sinatra, Lady Gaga and everyone in between

62 D NA GROOVE

Liam Jefferies meets the Italian menswear designer who has created his own distinct take on the mod look

65 G AMING FOR CHAPS

Holly Rose Swinyard makes a convincing case for the appeal of the sartorial and architectural detail in Bioshock

71 D UEPLE SOCKS

A new brand putting the spring back in the step of gentlemen’s hosiery

72 L ES INCROYABLES

Chris Sullivan on the effete yet violent upper-class roustabouts of post-revolutionary France

82 N ATALINO

Liam Jefferies tries out a few key items from a new collection by a brand that returns to the true origins of ‘smart casual’

86 G REY FOX COLUMN

David Evans of www.greyfoxblog.com reports from a trip to Antarctica, where he tried out some sturdy clothing, an elegant suitcase and photographed a penguin

90 BINOCULARS

Richard Burdett advises on the best bins a man can buy at the most reasonable price

LONGER FEATURES 96 REILLY ACE OF SPIES

Jock Rawlings dismantles the myth of the most notorious spy in history

102 B IRDING

Cover photo: Gareth Gatrell/© Tiger Aspect Productions Limited 2018

ISSUE 99

Nick Ostler explains how Montagu’s Harrier got its name and gives tips for observing spring migrants

107 J OHN BLY

Alex Smythe-Smith meets the antique dealer whose most prized possessions reside in his cocktail cabinet

112 DARREN HAYMAN

Ferris Newton spends a morning in Croydon with the songwriter

116 C ELEBRATORY TIPPLES

Olly Smith advises on suitable libations in preparation for the celebration of The Chap’s 100th edition in May

121 TRAVEL: QUITO

The colourful delights of the home of the Panama hat

REVIEWS 128 A UTHOR INTERVIEW

Alexander Larman meets great British novelist William Boyd

132 BOOK REVIEWS

Books by Philip Larkin, Neil Tennant, Dermot Kavanagh and Lionel Johnson

136 J.P. DONLEAVY

Noel Shine on JP Donleavy’s masterpiece The Ginger Man

142 FILM REVIEWS

Gustav Temple revels in the dark masterpiece that is Paul Schrader’s The Comfort of Strangers

144 PETER O’TOOLE

Alexander Larman assesses the entire career of the actor whom Peter Sellers described as ‘the finest man who ever breathed’

152 THE CHAP DINES

Temple and Larman sample the The Ivy in the Lanes, Brighton

154 OTTO DIX

Chris Sullivan on the harrowing work of the German painter and his place in the art of Weimar Berlin

160 CROSSWORD

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

“I am afraid I am sending you further adventures of myself,” writes the redoubtable Simon Doughty, “at various locations around the British Isles. Hope you enjoy and take heart ripping the piss.” Doughty’s back! Hurrah! This one comes from The Roundel Bar, Morecambe, in front of an Eric Ravilious mural. Simon certainly has the Bohemian air of an early Eric Ravilious, and clearly the ladies seated behind him cannot keep their eyes off his splendid attire.

While Danny Boswell’s hacking jacket is clearly bespoke, he didn’t need to undo his working cuffs to show this off. One would expect a few mud spatters on shooting attire and something bulging from the poacher’s pocket. Whereas Mr. Boswell looks more as though he has stepped straight from a shop window. Nice pipe though.

Charlie Jelonek-Young (7) doesn’t have a tailor yet, but his attire, despite probably being difficult to find in his size, marks him out as a true individual.

“I have been in sporting action again,” writes Martyn Brunt, “this time at the UK Cold Water Swimming Championships at Tooting Bec Lido. The water was a chilly two degrees and headwear other than swim caps was encouraged.” We hope you weren’t disqualified for heating the water with your pipe?

Elliot Breen doesn’t bother wearing waistcoats in which to insert watch chains. He’s too busy channeling the ghosts of Mack the Knife, Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper, and making an excellent job of it too.

Chris Edwards has a few more years on young Charlie (below left), but it is clear he has spent them wisely, mostly reading The Chap Magazine.

The only ghost that Ian Holden is channeling is the ghost of the house whose original features someone decided to obliterate with laminated flooring and gallons of white gloss paint. That said, his overall look is authentic, eccentric and well put-together. He has no choice but to move house.

A man walked into a tailor’s shop and asked, indicating his embonpoint, “Can you do anything about this?” “Nothing whatsoever,” replied the tailor, thinking the man was referring to his appearance.

Overall, David Tibbetts-Chaplin lives up to his magnificent name by dressing rather well. Look more closely, however, and we see that not only is his watch chain worn two buttons too high, but he has also broken another two sartorial rules that we really shouldn’t have to mention again.

David Pittard has made a very good start. All he needs to do now is buy shirts with the correct collar size (one size smaller, in fact) and shirts with separate collars, instead of fake ones. When it comes to his headwear, we have no intention of taking the Pith.

Michael Davidson has removed one glove to have his photograph taken. Nothing more needs to be said, other than that he is a Chap.

Men often drape themselves over impressive vintage aeroplanes at these air shows, usually looking like complete nincompoops, but at least Jonathan Rollinson looks as though he might be qualified actually to fly the thing.

One of these chaps is Lance Pearce and one is not, yet they both look splendid, if not historically in synch. So why is it that the man behind them, wearing shorts, beach shoes, a T-shirt, a ladies’ bracelet and an absurd fauxtrilby, is the one who is sniggering?

Roderick R. Rigden assures us that “I have dedicated the majority of my life to teaching Americans how to dress properly. The other part I am usually a complete cad.” You omitted to mention the part where you put on beige suits in mid-price menswear outlets and pretend to be a shop dummy.

The splendidly named Raoul Duke is fleeing the country on a boat. Not because he’s been blackballed at his club for wearing his watch chain too high on his waistcoat, but to hunt down the man who stole his hat.

CHAPMANSHIP LIFE COACHING FOR THE MODERN GENTLEMAN OR L ADY

Dear Monty, I wish to purchase some racy lingerie for my beloved wife, but I am practically getting a hernia at the thought of the awkward conversation this will require in the lingerie department. Yours truly, Arthur Speckle

Dear Mr. Speckle, This is a common anxiety and we share your concern for the dreaded lingerie visit. The solution is based on the idea that when an awkward situation is made even more awkward, it reaches critical mass and the awkwardness dissolves. So, enter the lingerie department dressed in pin stripe suit, bowler hat and umbrella, march up to the counter and address the first staff member to catch your monocle. Then say, in a clear, loud and unashamed tone, that youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like to purchase some saucy lingerie for your Uncle Roger. Explain that Roger happens to be the same size as your wife, adding that he wears special equipment for this. It will quickly turn the situation around, so that the sales assistant becomes the awkward one. Yours sincerely, Monty

What-ho, Chaps! Ever wondered how to navigate this ever-changing spectacle they call Modern Life? Ever queried the correct response to contemporary situations that are not mentioned in your 1930s edition of DeBretts? Monty Delaunay is here to help. Send him your contemporary social conundra; your perplexing fauxes-pa; your moments of bewilderment at human behaviour, in which it is sometimes hard to distinguish downright rudery from millennial misery. Send your queries to chapmanship@ thechap.co.uk, and we shall publish Montyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s replies here in the next edition.

Monty (if I may?), I recently entered the premis es of Messrs Top Man, in order to purcha se an outfit for a fancy dress party at which the theme was “dress like a nincompoop”. While trying on various com binations of synthetic fabrics in the cha nging rooms, I noticed to my consternation that there was no ashtray provided. In short, where is one to flic k the ash from one’s cigarillo while trying on clothing in high street fashion empor ia? Yours, Gawain Franksome

Dear Monty, I am increasingly finding it difficult to navigate a normal high street pavement, due to the constant flow of people of all ages barreling along while staring at their field telephones. Is there a polite way of countering this, short of snatching their phones away and coming across as an old fuddy-duddy? Cordially yours, Vincent Crave

Gawain (yes, you may), Many of my sartorially resplendent chums have experienced the same difficulty, though not in establishments quite so down-market as Messrs Top Man. The lack of receptacles for one’s cinders extends all the way to Savile Row, I am sorry to say. However, if you do find yourself in an emporium at the lower end of the market, you will note the presence of various fashion accessories that make excellent ashtrays, the most efficacious being the plastic field telephone cases which you will find on various racks all over the store. I do advise you not to stub out your cigarillo, however, as they tend to leave said cases in a condition which then forces you to purchase one of them. Yours sincerely, Monty

Dear Mr. Crave, None of us wishes to come across as an old fuddyduddy, so this problem requires a subtle countermove that makes its point without aggression. Simply take out your copy of a broadsheet newspaper, open it at random and proceed to read with great attention, while continuing to perambulate on the pavement. The telephonefixated pedestrians will be forced to part, for your newspaper is much larger, and probably more informative, than their field telephones. Yours sincerely, Monty

Dear Monty, s abroad, I am alway Whenever I travel ough thr ng ssi pa e for distressed just be ite apart from the passport control. Qu rmitted to take fact that I am not pe Briar on board, ian my beloved Rhodes ving to remove it is the notion of ha carefully applied my many layers of pass through the clothing in order to n’. Is there any tio lia ‘Pillars of Humi s? way of avoiding thi y, rel Yours since Walter Plankett

Dear Mr. Plankett, There is a simple solution to this common problem. Wear a corset. The chaps in white gloves won’t want to go near you, and will usher you through security faster than you can say ‘Bunny Roger’s size 26 waist.’ Yours sincerely, Monty

Events

L.A. CONSTITUTIONAL Matt Deckard organised a Tweed Pub Crawl recently. And what of it, you may ask – we do that practically every Friday. However, Mr. Deckard’s sortie took place in Los Angeles, California, not a city known for its love of tweed nor its profusion of traditional English hostelries. The Chap asked Mr. Deckard how they got on

I decided to organize the event to help remove the shame most citizens feel when they walk out in public, openly showing that they, like me, love tweed and are not ashamed of wearing it, and not only during the not-as-hot months that occur in Los Angeles. It’s all just so much easier when we have a drink in our hands.

.hy did you decide to organise a tweed pub crawl in Los Angeles? There are swarms of chaps thirsty for a chance to put on the regalia which, in this climate, is quite out of the ordinary on the streets of LA. Often confined to those who wish to place their air conditioning on its highest, those who clad themselves in the chunkiest of woven wools often dread the gaze of the neighbor or the passer-by, when they leave their cocoon of frigid air in heavy tailored outfits to retrieve their mail.

Was it the first such occasion in that city? Thursday November 11, 2010 was the first ever Los Angeles Tweed Pub Crawl. Originally attended by

the members of thefedoralounge.com, subsequent years have brought in people from around the world, to wander through the streets of LA as we imbibe pint after pint and cocktail after cocktail. At times the group has gathered steam, occasionally losing stumbling attendees as they succumb to the heat. It depends on the year and how well we do at picking a cool weather date. Tweed, hot weather and alcohol is a mysterious science that has yet to be perfected. Our statement was: “There comes a time in life when friends, a cocktail and tweed are the only things between you and a night of being cold and alone,” and it’s just as relevant now as it was then. The crowd ebbs and flows from 20 to 50 attendees depending on the year.

costumers, actors, sartorial gurus, writers, the hidden intellectual drinking elite that would make for a great Algonquin table discussion.

“There comes a time in life when friends, a cocktail and tweed are the only things between you and a night of being cold and alone” Are there many pubs in LA, in the way the British would understand the word? One of the darndest parts of putting this together each year is the constant change of course the crawl must take, due to many of the pubs coming and going each year. But one standard always on the route is Casey’s Irish Pub. Quite recognizable to a British Expat, but with much more room to roam and breathe than you’d find in a traditional British pub. Outside of that, the myriad of names of places that have come and gone escape me, but Casey’s is the one heritage spot where you will find accents from all across the British Isles.

Who attended? You would think, with the central focus of Los Angeles being a leisurely city and a playground for much of America, that there would be a great absence when it comes to dandy culture. But when the Tweed Pub Crawl comes around, suddenly out of the woodwork people show up adorned in waistcoats with their grandfather’s pocket watch attached. Those that show up are Hollywood

for the LA Linen Liquid Luncheon and the Sartorial Seaside Dinner.

Can one be served a good British pint of ale in such an establishment? There, yes! They know how to pour and often it has been the final destination for a sweaty bunch of tweed-clad, sore-footed swells desiring to fit into a carved wood environment with an air of sophistication mixed with lowbrow acceptance.

How many tweed wearers would you estimate there are living in Los Angeles? I’m under the belief that nearly everyone in Los Angeles has bought some tweed at some point or other in their life, they just don’t know it. This is genuinely a place where you can go into major department stores in the dead of winter and find khakis and shorts at full price, while tweed trousers may have a layer of dust, due to the time spent untouched by customers and retailers. The Tweed Pub Crawl has brought much awareness to the lack of tweed wearing in Los Angeles. Yet overall, it has not made a dent in the general public’s wearing of tweed. In a city of around 4 million, I would guess there are only a few hundred that wear tweed jackets or skirts, at least 9-10 days out of each year. We want to increase those estimated figures. n

Do you plan to organise any further events of a similar nature? The thing is, there aren’t enough events like this going on in Los Angeles. It would be a dream come true to host a Chap Olympiad in Los Angeles. We have the space to train the athletes, and the weather to make it a go without concern of being snowed out or hurricaned on. I do host occasional Knickerbocker Mini Golf tournaments, which provide an outlet for those that have nowhere else to wear their plus fours. I’ve also hosted Vintage Day at the Races events at our Local Santa Anita race Track. Ultimately, I’ve stayed on track for keeping the Tweed Pub Crawl going continuously year after year, but I do believe it’s time to step up the sartorial centered events, seeing as the crowd is growing. Keep your eyes open

To find out more about future Tweed Pub Crawls and other gentlemanly events in Los Angeles, follow @MDApparel on Twitter or @mattdeckard on Instagram.

Minns & Gosbee sally forth into the thrilling and often soul lubricating world of antiques and curiosities, this time discovering the exploits, tribulations and hazards at the local auction house

he first known auction house in Britain was founded by James Christie in 1766. However, auctions were known to have existed in the time of Alexander the Great (256-323 BC) and even further back. Herodotus, the Greek historian, makes reference to an auction in Babylon around 500 BC. We are glad to say auctions still exist today throughout these sceptered isles, although they have been somewhat depleted in variety and size over the last few decades. That said, you can still find a decent auction within a 20-30 mile radius of any mainland location within the UK. If you have never attended an auction and you plan to do so, you are in for a unique experience. For some, this will be akin to walking through an English wheat field on a balmy summer’s day, briar pipe in hand, faithful hound by your side, while you recite one of

Wordsworth’s sonnets. For others, your first auction could be your Passchendaele. There is many a tale to be told within the world of auctions. Some true, some apocryphal and some, as the French say, A prendre avec une pincee de sel, and some complete and utter piffle. All of these are regaled around various catering wagons and food stalls which are often found outside the auction house, to be experienced as you delight in a bacon sandwich and beaker of tea while waiting for your lot number to arrive. Here is one such story, and it is for you, dear reader, to decide which of these aforementioned categories this tale resides in. At a country auction the attendees were told by the auctioneer that some lots advertised had been withdrawn, and that some other lots that were to be in the next week’s auction had been put in their place. A banana box was carried through by a porter and the auctioneer described the contents as a box full of ‘ephemera’ (which usually means

THE FLUMMOXER

AUCTION TIPS

1 Should you find a box at an auction

preview of what initially appears to be a load of old tat but contains a hidden jewel, or indeed a live hand grenade, put on your best poker face, calmly make a note of the box number and move on to the next lot. You don’t want others to notice your find and then compete against you during the auction.

2 The first-time auction fear that by

scratching your head or rubbing your chin, you may end up purchasing an unwanted Victorian elephant foot umbrella stand, is unfounded. The auctioneers are very skillful, and will usually pre-empt any misunderstandings with a “Were you bidding for that, Sir/Madam?” In your reply, always address the auctioneer as Sir or Madam. Civility and respect are paramount in the auction world.

3 If you are going to make regular

forages to a particular auction room, acquaint yourself with the porters. Over time, they may direct you to any items they think may be of interest to you, before the auction starts. Should you eventually purchase said item, a financial gratuity in appreciation of their services is appropriate.

My wise and patient friends, we return once again into our cauldron of curiosity, to venture forth with another puzzling object for your learned minds to unpick. This nickel-plated brass helix with several orifices and fleur-delys garnitures demands your effervescent attentions!

4 Never bid on a whim. It is imperative

that you check every item you may wish to purchase close-up before “sticking your hand up”.

5 Auction house levy fees both to

the seller and the purchaser. These charges vary from house to house, but normally fall within the 15-30% bracket (VAT may be also payable on the percentage).

6 Always inspect prospective purchases

for live munitions!

printed matter items not meant to be retained: old letters, restaurant menus, beer mats etc). Our friend had not bought anything that day, so he bid £5 for the box. There were no other takers so my friend won the lot. At the end of the auction, he loaded his car, told me how he rammed the box into the boot because it was full of other items, finally giving it a hefty kick so he was able to close the boot lid. Arriving home, he removed the box from the car, but while walking up the path to his home he tripped, smashing the box, and himself, into a tree. Fortunately he was not too badly hurt, and after making himself a cup of tea while nursing his wounds, he began to rifle through the banana box. Behind all the letters and old photos, he pushed his hand into the corner of the crammed

Dr Marko Prorocic receives a pair of Fox Cufflinks for being the only reader correctly to identify last issue’s Flummoxer – an early 20th century German pencil sharpener.

Send your answers to chap@thechap.co.uk

box and felt something cold and metallic. The object was entwined with string, and some knitting needles had pierced the box and formed a pincer grip that was holding the mysterious object in place. He tugged hard on the string, pulling the box, the contents and himself onto the floor. The metal object fell onto his lap while simultaneously propelling one of the knitting needles into a very uncomfortable part of his anatomy. Looking down to assess the damage, there, in his lap was a live World War II Mills Bomb grenade. Pin still intact, of course! I asked my friend how he resolved this rather unfortunate, not to say dangerous, situation. “I just looked up online how to defuse a grenade,” he replied, “and then I decommissioned it.”

www.originalmontgomery.com

THE original MONTGOMERY

0116 234 4612

Photograph: Gareth Gatrell/© Tiger Aspect Productions Limited 2018

Features Eric Von Stronheim (p22) •

•

Dandizette: Lucille Ball (p28)

Interview with Billy Zane (p34) 21

Feature

ERICH VON STROHEIM Chris Sullivan on the monocled Austrian actor/director whom Billy Wilder declared to be 10 years ahead of his time, during the early years of the Hollywood movie industry

ew actors have ever commanded the screen with such indefatigable presence as the great Erich von Stroheim. As the World War I German officer and aristocrat Rittmeister von Rauffenstein in Jean Renoir’s immense La Grande Illusion, the monocle-donning actor ‒ dressed in a body and neck brace (his idea) underneath his tight officers’ uniform ‒ drove the bolt well and truly home. And who could forget him in Foolish Wives (which he also wrote and directed) in his precariously tilted white cap, Sam Browne belt, white gloves and cigarette holder? Stroheim’s most significant creation, however, was himself. Long after his death, his claims of having had a career as a cavalry officer, being an Austrian nobleman and his right to prefix his name with the word ‘von’ (illegal in Austria until 1919 unless you were nobility) were proven to be complete and utter falsehoods.

Erich Oswald Stroheim was born in Vienna in 1885 to practising Jews Benno Stroheim, a middle-class hat-maker, and Johanna Bondy. Despite having the fortune to witness the rise of the Secession and the golden age of Viennese art and culture, wanderlust grabbed him and, in 1909, aged twenty-four, he stepped off the SS Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm and on to Ellis Island, New York. There, without a penny to his name, he declared himself Count Erich Oswald Hans Carl Maria von Stroheim und Nordenwall. His timing was perfect. An enterprising young chap, Stroheim, whose work as a traveling salesman took him to San Francisco and on to Hollywood, seized his chance. Hollywood was the centre of the new art form, cinema, which not only combined photography, theatre, literature, fashion and music, but could be seen by the masses worldwide. Nothing like this had ever happened before, and this tiny village in

southern California – which beckoned chancers and adventurers from all over the globe – was the place to be. By 1914 Stroheim was working full time in Hollywood movies as a stuntman, filling bit parts and as a consultant on German culture and fashion, strutting around town in jodhpurs, riding boots, monocle and trademark cane. In 1915 he claimed to have had a small part in Griffith’s entirely racist The Birth of a Nation, but others say otherwise. He did, however, get a small role in the director’s threeand-a-half-hour epic Intolerance, for which he also claimed to be the assistant director but was actually a production assistant. By now World War I was well underway and Stroheim, who had already been married twice, didn’t miss a trick. He rose to the bait and became the film industry’s token Kraut – America’s ‘man you love to hate’ ‒ appearing in such films as The Heart of Humanity. Playing the evil Erich von Eberhard, he tears the buttons from a Red Cross nurse’s uniform with his teeth before having his way, and throws a crying baby out of a window for distracting him. Most Americans saw Germany as a dangerous monarchy dominated by autocratic militarist thinking, including a hidden agenda to undermine democracy and US power. Stroheim was the Hun’s on-screen personification. Undeniably, Stroheim epitomised the opportunist. And so he sailed through World War I unscathed, milking the German stereotype replete with the severest of crew cuts, starched collars,

spats and monocle. After the war he decided to write, and subsequently directed his own script, Blind Husbands – the first of his adultery trilogy – which was well received both critically and at the box office. An example to us all, Stroheim had no formal training. He made it up as he went along. What he had in abundance, though, was self-belief. By 1919 he had also perfected his persona. It has been said he did such a great job that he even convinced himself. Stroheim became the blueprint for the sadistic northern European, and unashamedly made the most of it. Three years later he wrote, directed and starred in Foolish Wives as Count Wladislaw Sergius Karamzin, a captain in the Imperial Russian Army. Costing, according to the studio, a whopping million bucks, it was a film vastly ahead of its time. In the film, Stroheim is a Russian émigré ensconced in Monte Carlo, who leases a villa and (as Stroheim had once done) poses as a count. His two mistresses pose as his cousins while he, using his rather camp militaristic, aristocratic behaviour, seduces gullible rich women, lusts after a retarded teenager and attempts to undo an innocent American. In truth, the plot plays second fiddle to Stroheim’s rather outré appearance. With his make-up, monocle and plucked eyebrows (in 1922!) Stroheim is utterly unforgettable. His profile is one of the great images of silent cinema ‘Since that first showing of Foolish Wives,’ said Stroheim at the time, ‘I have seemed to walk through vast crowds of people, their white

American faces turned towards me in stern reproof.’ Indeed, Stroheim’s look was as uncompromising as his persona. Described by film critic Derek Malcolm as ‘one of the most extraordinary filmmakers of all time,’ when in the driving seat he took no prisoners, winding up his actors, stomping around shouting the odds, both dictatorial and demanding.

“After watching the final cut of Greed, fellow Austrian director Billy Wilder told Eric Von Stroheim he was ten years ahead of his time. ‘No, twenty,’ replied Stroheim”

Unfortunately, Stroheim’s antics and some might say inflated opinion of himself (I disagree) infuriated studio bosses. MGM asked von Stroheim to direct a silent version of the Lehar operetta, The Merry Widow. He totally revised the operetta’s libretto and inserted sexually explicit scenes, and the studio decided that it no longer could work with him. After shooting half of Merry-Go-Round, the first in another trilogy that looked back to the days of the Habsburgs in pre-World War I Austria, he was fired by studio bigwig MGM boss Irving Thalberg, who had no time for Stroheim’s extravagant film making or his posturing.

Next up for the monocled one was Greed, an adaptation of the 1899 Frank Norris novel McTeague, starring the amazing ZaSu Pitts and Gibson Gowland. Regarded as one of the great films of all time, it tells the story of a rather dim, poor dentist, McTeague, who opens a shop in San Francisco and falls in love with one of his patients. She wins the lottery, they marry, and then she becomes utterly obsessed with her money. A jealous best friend, Marcus, then informs City Hall that the dentist has no licence. He loses everything and turns to drink, but still his wife will not dip into her winnings. Furious, he beats her to death and escapes to Death Valley, where Marcus finds him. The film ends with McTeague killing Marcus, who has handcuffed himself to his murderer, who is now stranded in one of the world’s hottest places with a corpse to drag around. Dark. Greed is incomparable by virtue of Stroheim’s uncompromising realism, the great performances and the actual locations, like the sewer where the lovers meet, the slums of San Francisco or Death Valley, where Mac meets his nemesis. Stroheim worked unpaid on the edit for a year. Still, the initial cut he submitted to the flabbergasted Goldwyn Company was an outrageous eight hours long. Lest we forget, it was silent and this was 1924. Under pressure, he relented and cut it to four hours, to be shown in two parts. Still unhappy, Goldwyn got his story editor June Mathis (who, Stroheim complained, hadn’t read either the book or the original screenplay) to

chop it, and the eventual released version came in at two-and-a-half hours. Years later, Henri Langlois, the head of the Cinémathèque Française, showed Stroheim the disfigured version. The Austrian sobbed as he watched it. ‘This was like an exhumation for me,’ he explained afterwards. ‘In a tiny coffin I found a lot of dust, a terrible smell, a little backbone and a shoulder bone.’ Langlois assured him that the movie, however mutilated, was still a masterpiece. After watching the film, fellow Austrian director Billy Wilder told him he was ten years ahead of his time. ‘No, twenty,’ replied Stroheim. I couldn’t agree more. Amazingly, the untiring Austrian kept on going and subsequently notched up his biggest box office hit with the black comedy The Merry Widow, starring John Gilbert and Mae Murray, in which both Clark Gable and Joan Crawford had uncredited roles. Strongly Stroheimian, the film was rich in cruelty, perversion and sadism. He followed this up with The Wedding March, in which the entirely egotistical Austrian directed and starred as another monocle-wearing aristo, who this time marries the daughter of an industrialist for convenience. Things take a turn for the worse on their wedding night when he removes her shoes and stockings with fetishistic gallantry, and is visibly repulsed by her deformed foot. (Stroheim’s films are hallmarked by two recurring features – there is always a scene with a janitor, and they always feature the physically malformed. Don’t you just love him?)

Unsurprisingly, Stroheim’s unwillingness or inability to modify his artistic principles for the commercial cinema, his extreme attention to detail, his insistence on near-total artistic freedom and the resulting costs of his films led inevitably to fights with the studios. As time went on he received fewer directing opportunities. His last proper directorial outing was the even more crazy, opulent, and perversely erotic Queen Kelly (1929), which starred Gloria Swanson and tells of a convent girl who ends up running a brothel in Africa. Unfortunately, Stroheim got a little too lewd (in one scene Swanson is whipped by the mad Queen Regina V of Kronberg, while her guards grin with excitement), so the actress sacked him and the film was stalled. By now talkies had stolen the silents’ thunder and Hollywood was turned on its head ‒ Stroheim with it. The film was never released. But Stroheim wasn’t done yet. He went back to acting and moved to Paris, where adoration for

“Stroheim sobbed as he watched the final cut. ‘This was like an exhumation for me. In a tiny coffin I found a lot of dust, a terrible smell, a little backbone and a shoulder bone” 26

him and his films knew no bounds. In 1936 he met Jean Renoir, son of Impressionist painter PierreAuguste Renoir, who cast him in Le Grande Illusion. It has since been cited countless times as one of the greatest films ever made. Le Grande Illusion tells of the futility of war and stars the great Jean Gabin, Pierre Fresnay and Marcel Dalio, as French POWs in a World War I prison camp where Stroheim is the honourable camp commandant. It was released in 1937, and so powerful was its message that, when the Germans annexed France, Goebbels made sure that the original print was the first thing the Germans seized. Stroheim’s affiliation with Renoir led him almost to direct another movie, La Dame Blanche, based on an original story by Stroheim of the same name, which saw Renoir writing the dialogue. Unfortunately the auteur was scuppered by fellow Austrian Adolf Hitler, who had the audacity to invade France and caused Stroheim to head back to the USA, where he acted to type (he played Rommel in Five Graves to Cairo). Even though it might have helped him in an era of staunch antiGermanic feeling, he never dropped his guard and admitted his Jewish heritage. After the war he made a living out of being ‘the Great’ Erich Von Stroheim. ‘If you live in France and you have written one good book, or painted one good picture, or directed one outstanding film, fifty years ago, and nothing ever

since, you are still recognized as an artist and honoured accordingly,’ he stated. He acted in a few films a year, mainly in France, and lived the good life, but it wasn’t until 1950 that he would play a prominent part in another masterpiece ‒ Sunset Boulevard, directed by Billy Wilder. Stroheim is Max von Mayerling, butler and chauffeur to barking mad faded silent movie star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson); the film that Desmond makes Joe Gillis (William Holden) watch in her screening room is none other than the unreleased Queen Kelly, directed by Stroheim. After Sunset Boulevard, Stroheim moved back to France, where he continued to be celebrated, and played out his life as mad German scientists and criminal masterminds. He died in 1957 of cancer in Yvelines, Île-de-France, aged 71, leaving a trail of unrealised projects behind him and many a film fan surmising what greatness he might have achieved, had he been given a fairer crack of the whip. It was Stroheim who introduced sophisticated plot lines and perverted psychological and sexual undercurrents (which essentially harked back to his Viennese contemporary Freud) to cinema. It was he who opened the can of worms that galvanised Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Orson Welles, and John Huston and fuelled the whole film noir movement. In fact, much of the great cinema of the last hundred years might not have happened without Erich Von Stroheim. n

Dandizette

Lucille Ball Sunday Swift on the dandyism that quickly emerged from under the image of the clown portrayed by Lucille Ball

sually when Lucille Ball’s name is mentioned, certain images come to mind: her hair is apricot (not that you can see it in monochrome, but you know it’s there), and she’s usually in gingham fit-and-flare dresses with wide collars. Her large, bright eyes, framed with barely-there eyebrows, are perfect for the shocked expression often on her face. Her overdrawn lips accentuated that ‘ewwww’ gesture she’s so famous for. Her most famous character, I Love Lucy’s Lucy Ricardo, has a penchant for unforgettable costumes, taking on various jobs, like a factory worker stuffing chocolate into her brassiere, or a pizza chef accidentally sticking dough to the ceiling. Whatever image springs to mind, it’s probably not one that immediately says ‘Dandy’. Lucille Ball was a clown, trained by some of the most renowned vaudeville greats – Pepito Pérez, Buster Keaton and Red Skelton. Clowns are unpredictable, haphazard, often blundering. They revel in chaos and are rarely fashionable: for example, Groucho’s mismatched, oversized, out-dated aesthetics always looked like a pile of dirty laundry, visually starting arguments before he even opened his mouth. Buster Keaton’s oversized neckties, fixed strangely on his warped shirt collars, did most of the talking for him. Dandies, on the other hand, are usually precise and deliberate. They work hard to create, cultivate and control a surface identity. It is sartorial rebellion – often politicized,

philosophized and occasionally weaponised. But for clowns like Groucho, Keaton and Ball to play characters so elaborate and over-the-top, every move, every line, every expression had to be carefully planned to appear improvisational and haphazard: only methodical and immaculate selfdisciplined dandies could pull that off. Lucille Desirée Ball was born on 6th August, 1911 In Jamestown, New York. She moved to New York City in 1926 to enrol in drama school. Ball was a tongue-tied teenager, spellbound by the star pupil at the school, Bette Davis. Unfortunately, the school wrote a letter to her mother and said she was wasting her money, and she was sent home. She went back to NYC in 1928, and began working for Hattie Carnegie as an in-house model. “I moved into an atmosphere of gilded elegance,” Ball explained, “Overnight, I found myself in a world of rich

“This girl’s fulla hell,” designer Rosie Roth would complain, sticking Lucille with a pin to make her behave. “You got flair, you got personality, a beautiful body you got. So why so aggravating? You make my ulcer ache” 29

society women, glamorous movie stars and freespending men-about-town.” This transition from to ingénue to glamour girl was not an easy one. “I was soon covered with bruises where Hattie kicked me in the shins to remind me to bend my knees properly, or pinched me in the ribs to make me raise my chest higher,” Ball explains. “Mostly I modelled long, slinky evening gowns and suits, thirty to forty changes a day. With each change I had to slip into matching shoes, whether they were my size or not. By night-time my feet were as swollen and sore as my shins.” For Ball, beauty was literal pain, but it had a few benefits: she was able to analyse and observe the styles and comportment of the high-class clientele of the shop: Joan Crawford, Gloria

Swanson, Ina Claire, the Vanderbilts – all the people to whom, as Ball quips, “a price tag was just something a maid snipped off a dress.” Lucille eventually quit modelling after discovering she had rheumatoid arthritis, but wasn’t sorry to let that life go: “I hated the stagnation that sets in when you are just a clothes horse. At Hattie’s I felt like a well-dressed dummy.” But modelling had been her way into showbusiness. In 1933 Ball did three films with MGM. She signed with RKO in 1935 and remained with this studio for seven years, doing films, plays and radio. She married Desi Arnaz in November 1940. At RKO, designer Irene created a more suitable attire for Ball: “She took me out of frills and gave me tailored, chic things... With my tango red hair and blue eyes, she said I was born for

Technicolor, so she gave me a flamboyant look to match.” Ball was already dying her famous hair red: “It has become a trademark and I’ve got to keep it this way.” Her hair dye was kept under lock and key in a safe in her garage. The henna was very difficult to get, but Ball met a very wealthy sheik who sent it to her regularly.

When it came to keeping company with other dandies, Ball knew some of the best: Cary Grant, Carole Lombard, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Judy Garland and James Stewart, to name but a few. Joan Collins declared that it was just as well that Ball didn’t get the part for which she auditioned of Scarlet O’Hara in Gone With The Wind, because “not even Clark Gable could look into [Ball’s] face and say ‘frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Ball’s public image is one camp frivolity: a playful wink, a silly grin, and the curiously rare talent for being able to take a fall. But, her daughter Lucie Arnaz explains, “She played a very crazy person on television, but at home she was nothing like that at all. She was very responsible and took care of business.” And business certainly set Ball apart from so many of her contemporaries. She was the first woman to own and run her own production company, Desilu. The company began as a joint venture with Ball’s husband, Desi. No one had anticipated I Love Lucy to be the smash hit that it was. It’s difficult to explain just how popular the show was in its day, but at a time when there were only a total of about 15 million television sets in the U.S., ten million of those sets were tuned in every week to see what zany thing Lucy would do next. Behind the scenes, however, Ball and Arnaz fought frequently. It couldn’t have been easy for Ball or Arnaz portraying and competing with the image of the perfect marriage the public had of them. In 1960, Ball filed for divorce, and bought Arnaz’s half of Desilu. She quickly became known for being ‘difficult’: people said she was demanding, cold, and harsh. During production of The Lucy Show’s 1968 episode Lucy and the Lost Star, (left) Ball caught Joan Crawford refusing to show up for rehearsals and sipping vodka from her handbag. Ball threatened to fire her; Crawford declared, “No-one has ever fired me!” But Ball must have scared Crawford into submission, because she showed up to work the next day on time, sober. “My God, they tell me I’m a bitch,” said Crawford. “Lucy can out-bitch me any day of the week!’” Comic actress Carol Burnett argues, however, that Ball “had to get tough... And it was unheard of for the women to do that. Gleeson could say anything. Sid [Caesar] could. But if a woman did, she was a bitch.” Ball quipped that when she took over Desilu, “they added the ‘S’ to my last name.” Ball successfully produced hits like The Untouchables and Mission: Impossible. She also insisted

“Designer Irene created more suitable attire for Ball: “She took me out of frills and gave me tailored, chic things. With my tango red hair and blue eyes, she said I was born for Technicolor, so she gave me a flamboyant look to match” It’s stunning to see what a bombshell Lucille Ball really was. She has an untouchable, icy glamour, rivalling Marlene Dietrich as she towers confidently in long sparking gowns and flowing, closely tailored tulle. One designer who really understood how to maximise Ball’s thin, tall frame was the famous costume designer Edith Head, who designed costumes for an episode of Here’s Lucy, Lucy Meets The Burtons (1970), with guest stars Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

Dandizette

on producing a very expensive little science fiction television show called Star Trek. What may be surprising to many is that, according to daughter Lucie, Ball “hated the business side.” This is probably why, in 1967, Ball sold it for $17 million (almost $128 million today). After the sale of Desilu, Ball could step back from the pressures of producing. She had married comedian Gary Morton in 1961, and by all accounts, this was a happy marriage. She stayed busy, however; she finished her sitcom The Lucy Show, starred in several films for the next ten years, including the 1974 film Mame (which the critics didn’t care for) before starring in her final sitcom, Life With Lucy in 1986, which only lasted one season. By 1988, Ball’s health had started to fail. She suffered a minor stroke, and her final public appearance was at the 1989 Academy Awards,

where she received a standing ovation. Less than a month later, Ball developed a tear in her aorta and went into cardiac arrest. She died on 26 April, 1989. The outpouring of affection for Ball was such that Lucie said the family felt responsible to take care of the nation, despite their own pain, and recalls complete strangers coming up to her in the streets, sobbing. Sammy Davis Jr. said, “The sun never sets on Lucille Ball. All over this worried world, tonight, nations of untold millions are watching reruns.” “Let me tell you, you never fooled me,” Sammy Davis Jr. once told Ball, “putting on the clown’s mask. Clown, you are not. All of the funny hats and the baggy pants and the moustaches and wigs and pratfalls…. They didn’t fool us for one minute. We saw through the disguise, and what we found inside is more than we deserve.” n

Interview

BILLY ZANE Gustav Temple met the actor in London to discuss his new series Curfew, his plans to play Marlon Brando, facial hair, high-waisted trousers and Ford Mustangs

hat’s your character Joker Jones in Curfew all about? An establishment cat who just goes rogue in Dadaist fashion. Asking the question, “If this is sanity?” referring to the near-future dystopian rule of law, “then I choose madness.” So he adapts an alter ego called Joker Jones and enters this illegal race, as a means of pursuing freedom but also as a form of performance art.

Certainly our journey and story in our camper van, complete with Tiki bar, there’s an element that crackles with the John Ford ethos of two Godfathers meets Stagecoach, through the lens of a Hunter Thompson weekend bender. So are there drugs in the camper van? Copious amounts of illicit substances. The van is more Tiki bar than performance vehicle, with an armoire that provides numerous costumes and hat choices. Speed is not what serves this particular crew. It’s slow and steady. And we provide roadside advice. Our day jobs prior to this mad departure was as a team of psychiatrists and psychologists, so we still provide some sound advice, though coupled with a fairly unique drug protocol. There’s certainly an ample amount of wicked gunplay in this show, and high-octane, high-speed racing that is reminiscent of 80s cinema, but a cut above, say grimehouse; more like John Carpenter movies. What I like about it is that the stunts are at speed, kind of like John Landis chase sequences from The Blues Brothers, where you go, that looks dangerous – as opposed to a CGI quick-cut action.

Joker Jones’ look is described as Gonzo Cowboy. Who came up with that, you or the producer? We arrived at it together. Jones is an American, so I embraced the ethos by donning a Tom Mix Ten-gallon split crown Stetson. I wear a rancher in normal life. Do you favour the Stetson brand itself – unfortunately owned by the Germans now? Well, what isn’t? You’ve acted in a couple of westerns before. Is Curfew a kind of Western, even though there aren’t any horses?

Photograph: Gareth Gatrell/Â© Tiger Aspect Productions Limited 2018

Are you into cars in real life? Sure. I drive an Audi A7 but I had a history of Mustangs. Which particular model? I had a ’64.5 convertible, like the one in A Man and A Woman. Then I had a ’71 Mark I. That’s the one that did the two-wheel stunt in Diamonds Are Forever. Great fastback. I put a spoiler on it and a four-barrel carb, extra-wide back tires, but with no disc brakes it didn’t stop as well as it went. As other cars on the road started working in alloy blends, I thought I was going to shred somebody, and I just didn’t want to be responsible for that. You filmed Curfew in Manchester. Was that your first time there? Yeah, and it was great. I’ve always been a fan of what art Manchester produced, music in particular. Big fan of post punk, so it was nice to try to understand the bones of that place. I went to the Factory and all the little clubs that featured that music. And the art scene is really interesting. There are more British actors than American in the series. How does working with them compare with working in Hollywood? I’ve done quite a few films here already, so I always enjoy it. I did Memphis Belle, Cleopatra, Big Fish with Gary Oldman, Orlando, three or four more. I’m a bit of an Anglophile. Before I was a professional actor I came here as a teen, and there was a point where I thought I might want to study acting here. I also considered Chicago, where the theatre scene was booming, with the early days of Steppenwolf, where John Malkovich and Gary Sinesie came up. But in the end I went to Hollywood. You’re going to play Marlon Brando in Waltzing with Brando this year. Many people were saying how much you resembled him as King Balek in Samson (2018). Are you happy with that? I’ve heard that since Dead Calm (1989), from age 21 to my fifties. I’m flattered, I mean it could have been Harpo Marx! I’ve been tempted to play Brando for years, but the period that always

Photograph: Gareth Gatrell/ÂŠ Tiger Aspect Productions Limited 2018

The journey in our camper van, complete with Tiki bar, crackles with the John Ford ethos of two Godfathers meets Stagecoach, through the lens of a Hunter Thompson weekend bender

Photograph: Gareth Gatrell/© Tiger Aspect Productions Limited 2018

I’ve been wearing a rancher hat with a sixtiescut cream khaki suit, skinny tie, with a cowboy boot. It’s a bit like Rock Hudson in Giant meets Elvis in Viva Las Vegas. Kind of an American cowboy rancher from the sixties.

fascinated me most was this particular part of his life between 1969 and 1974 – between The Godfather and Last Tango in Paris. Because it wasn’t just the work he was doing, it was his personal life and what he stood for as an activist, for indigenous rights, tribal rights, civil rights. He walked the walk.

of the first sustainable compounds; closed loop, zero carbon. So the film takes place in Tahiti and LA, and it covers this seemingly impossible task of achieving that in the early 70s. With the budget skyrocketing, much to his accountant’s dismay, and Brando having to go and work on films he didn’t necessarily want to do, in order to pay for the house. One being a pesky gangster movie with a new director, called The Godfather! And then he won an Oscar for it.

He got in trouble for his views, didn’t he? It was very dangerous and highly unpopular to put your ass on the line, which he did, and he always backed the right horse. He always made the historically right and noble decisions. In this case he was ahead of the pack on environmental causes, by engaging one of the more progressive and engaging young architects [Bernard Judge] to create one

Was that the period when he was seen as becoming a bit eccentric? In my experience, Hollywood calls you ‘difficult’ if you simply care. It’s an easy label to attribute

to an artist. I think he ended up becoming the myth of the negative projection of what he was. Like, if you’re gonna call me that, then that’s what I’m gonna be. Almost like Joker Jones – if this is madness I choose insanity. You think I’m difficult; I’ll show you difficult. Brando was not in very good favour after Mutiny on the Bounty. He became the scapegoat for many of the variables of filming at sea. So he fell in love with the location and wanted just to retreat. He was filled with certain contradictions that were quite fascinating. It’s this relationship with his architect that the film’s about. They became fast friends, but there was a job to be done. It’s an opportunity to shine a light on the man during a specific period, without trying to take on his entire life. I’m not a fan of biopics; I don’t think they ever get it right and they usually leave a bad taste in your mouth. You skim over the truth and give just tabloid highlights. I was very thrilled by the script, adapted by Bill Fishman, who I worked with on Posse (1993). We’ve been mates since working in the Actors Gang theatre company in LA. When he revealed that he’d been developing this piece, it was pure coincidence that I had been focusing on wanting to do a Brando piece set in Tahiti. We were put together and it was just Kismet.

why; it felt more nautical. Then I’d take it down to a moustache, which changed from handlebar to a kind of Burt Reynolds length. Recently I grew in the hair, what’s left of it, to balance the moustache. As a similarly follically challenged man, I always found that moustaches and lack of hair never worked. I think if you grow in some hair it actually works. If you’re buzzed down and you do a moustache it looks a little bit off; I think you need to balance it, and own the length. This Christmas I was sporting that look, and it all goes a bit Sean Connery at that point, which people seemed to like. But I thought it was a nice departure from being another slaphead. I remember the day I had my head buzzed down, when I was here in England in the early 90s. Mark Quinn took the clippers to my head one night over at the Groucho Club. No-one in the States, no white man, was doing it, except for skinheads. It just wasn’t fashionable. But now I think we’re going to see a new trend of owning loss of hair instead of hiding it with a shaven head. Do you think the combover will ever come back? I think the return of the combover will be awesome! Especially the ones where the hair is combed all the way over from above the ears. Yeah! No-one’s doing that… I think people will start doing it just for a lark. I have a strange relationship with my facial hair. I love my beard but I hate everyone else’s.

“I like the idea of going against the grain, like Fred Astaire’s tie for a belt. I thought that was a great touch. There’s only so many pairs of skinny jeans a man can wear until he reaches a certain point”

Are there more beards over here in England? No, in America it’s absurd. They’re everywhere. How can you say your beard is a sign of your individuality?

We must of course discuss moustaches. I’ve seen lots of photos of you with various moustaches, which look as though they’re not just for film roles? I often grow a seasonal beard, but it would tend to be inverted. Most people grow a beard in the winter, but I’ll do it in the summer. I don’t know

There was something you said once that an actor should go to an audition dressed like Cary Grant, not James Dean. Does this still hold true? By nature, differentiation works. It’s memorable and shows a certain degree of confidence. If the waiting room is filled with actors aspiring to be seen

Photograph: Gareth Gatrell/© Tiger Aspect Productions Limited 2018

as a tortured youth, right out of the garage, that’s great if the role calls for it. But I always found that dressing for success regardless shows a degree of hireability. If you don’t look like you need the job, you tend to be wanted more. It’s just a weird human trait to deny what is asked of you.

I like the idea of going against the grain, like Fred Astaire’s tie for a belt. I thought that was a great touch. There’s only so many pairs of skinny jeans a man can wear until he reaches a certain point. They work fine on a waif of a boy in a band, but I like a slightly wider leg. Or going completely contrary with a higher waist.

I heard a good tip from a well-dressed man about changing one thing about your outfit just before you walk out of the door. What do you think about my pair of gloves worn as a pocket square?

“There are a lot of western elements in Curfew. If you mashed up the gravitas of a middle-aged John Wayne with Bill Murray in The Life Aquatic, you’d get Joker Jones”

I think it works very well and is certainly better than no pocket square.

I think mashing up those two looks works well in an urban context. There’s a great brand called the Stronghold in Venice, California. But I can only do that look until it becomes too prevalent. I was enjoying vintage motorcycling jackets and that round-collared Caffrey suit, until they were heavily reproduced and now they’re everywhere. I’ve been wearing this rancher hat with a sixtiescut cream khaki suit, skinny tie, with a cowboy boot. It’s a bit like Rock Hudson in Giant meets Elvis in Viva Las Vegas. Kind of an American cowboy rancher from the sixties. That urban cowboy look has been my jam lately; kind of cowboy detective. Do you think that in the 60s you would have seen people in Texas dressed like that? Absolutely, I think you would. I wore a cowboy hat to the Bafta cocktail party. That morning I was actually at a breakfast for Reel Cowboys out in Sun Valley, where I got an award. It was full of great cowboy actors and cowboy stuntmen. They tell you to bring your Colt, but not loaded. So I went straight from that to the Baftas and I didn’t bother changing.

With braces – or ‘suspenders’? I think you can overdo that Newsies [a Broadway musical set in 1899] look, or a little bit barista. If you’re going to go there, you should mix it up. Like the old tucked-in sweater in the trousers, that 30s longshoreman kind of feel. I like schizophrenic style, and I was able to forge that here very well. You have these great speciality shops like Holland & Holland, Beretta, or country shooting gear. I’m not an advocate of blasting wildlife but I like the threads. So upper half of the body English country gent, lower half motorcycle delivery man. I’d mix those two things, with the waistcoat and tweeds; downstairs I’d have leathers, but they’d have to be slightly thrashed.

Which of the great Hollywood westerns do you favour? I like Rio Bravo. Howard Hawks was influenced by western television series. It was unusual for such an established film director to be influenced by the medium of the day, in terms of doing quite a lot of interiors and studio lighting. You also have this incredible duet, My Rifle, My Pony, between Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson. We referenced it in Curfew in one of the team’s viral YouTube clips. They record a lot of their antics and broadcast them from the Camper van. Anyway, back to westerns – I can’t get enough of Shane, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and the punch-up in The Spoilers. Also Hondo, which I saw here for the first time with my dad, in an empty theatre. There are a lot of western elements in Curfew. If you mashed up the gravitas of a middleaged John Wayne with Bill Murray in The Life Aquatic, you’d get Joker Jones. n Curfew is on Sky One.

SARTORIAL •

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Nightwear Fashion Shoot (p44) Manuel Cuevas (p58) • DNA Groove (p62) • Bioshock (p65) • Dueple Socks (p71) • Les Incroyables (p72) • Natalino (p82) Grey Fox Column (p86) • Binoculars (p90) 43

NIGHTWEAR We took three models and some suitcases full of nightwear to Hotel Pelirocco in Brighton, to learn that stylish nightwear is not just for night-time. However, pyjama and dressing gown wearers beware: you may be tempted never to leave your suite

MODELS: DONNA GRIMALDI, PETER GOSBEE, JOHN MINNS PHOTOGRAPHY: XAVIER BUENDIA MISS GRIMALDIâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S HAIR AND MAKE-UP: NATASHA HALL AT PRETTY ME VINTAGE WWW.PRETTYMEVINTAGE.CO.UK CLOTHING SUPPLIED BY PETER CHRISTIAN, GEOFF STOKER, WHAT KATIE DID, BOBBY AND DANDY WWW.PETERCHRISTIAN.CO.UK WWW.GEOFFSTOCKER.COM WWW.WHATKATIEDID.COM WWW.BOBBYANDDANDY.CO.UK WWW.HOTELPELIROCCO.CO.UK

DONNA WEARS: BLACK 1930S LOUNGING ROBE, EMILY SUSPENDER BELT, BLACK SEAMED STOCKINGS – WHAT KATIE DID VINTAGE BANGLES – BOBBY AND DANDY

PETER WEARS: BLUE TRADITIONAL FLANNEL NIGHTSHIRT WITH NIGHT CAP – PETER CHRISTIAN MONOCLE – PETER CHRISTIAN SCARF, POCKET SQUARE AND PIPE – MODEL’S OWN

JOHN WEARS: THE SUNBURST GOWN – GEOFF STOKER CRAVAT AND POCKET SQUARE – MODEL’S OWN

JOHN WEARS: THE SUNBURST GOWN – GEOFF STOKER BURGUNDY VELVET ALBERT SLIPPERS – PETER CHRISTIAN

DONNA WEARS: PEACH 1930S LOUNGING ROBE, 1940S MAP SUSPENDER BELT, LATTE GLAMOUR STOCKINGS – WHAT KATIE DID VINTAGE ACCESSORIES – BOBBY AND DANDY

JOHN WEARS: THE SUNBURST GOWN – GEOFF STOKER CRAVAT AND POCKET SQUARE – MODEL’S OWN

DONNA WEARS: BLACK 1930S LOUNGING ROBE, EMILY SUSPENDER BELT, BLACK SEAMED STOCKINGS – WHAT KATIE DID VINTAGE BANGLES – BOBBY AND DANDY

PETER WEARS: BLUE TRADITIONAL FLANNEL NIGHTSHIRT WITH NIGHT CAP – PETER CHRISTIAN MONOCLE – PETER CHRISTIAN SCARF, POCKET SQUARE AND PIPE – MODEL’S OWN

JOHN WEARS: THE SUNBURST GOWN – GEOFF STOKER BLUE CLUB STRIPED PYJAMAS – PETER CHRISTIAN WHITE SILK SCARF, POCKET SQUARE AND PIPE – MODEL’S OWN

PETER WEARS: BLUE TRADITIONAL FLANNEL NIGHTSHIRT WITH NIGHT CAP – PETER CHRISTIAN ORIENTAL SLIPPER – MODEL’S OWN

COWBOY DANDIES Darcy Sullivan talks to Manuel Cuevas, king of the rodeo tailor style, about a career stretching from Sinatra to Chris Stapleton

hen Country 2 Country rolls through European stadiums next month – bringing top stars in country music to London, Dublin, Glasgow, Amsterdam and Berlin – thousands of people will see dazzling costumes designed or influenced by one man. Just like Versace or Dior, he only needs one name: Manuel. Manuel didn’t create the ‘rodeo tailor’ look, epitomized by colourful suits studded with rhinestones and embroidered with curious designs. But he did become its top artist, and for the past 60 years has dressed an astounding range of high flyers, not all of them country stars. Who else has made clothes for The Beatles and Elvis? Johnny Cash and Prince? Ronald Reagan and Lady Gaga? Amazingly, he’s still at it today. Talking with Manuel is like speeding through the high points of music and film fashion, only to find he was there, shaping looks that defined the era. And it all started with one of the top chap supergroups in showbiz history: the Rat Pack.

BORED WITH TUXEDOS Having come to Los Angeles from Coalcomán de Vázquez Pallares, Mexico, Manuel Arturo José Cuevas Martínez was barely in his twenties when he went to work for famed Hollywood tailor Sy Devore. “I was making fittings for Frank Sinatra, and I didn’t know who he was,” says Manuel. “One day he gave me a $1,000 tip. I thought, wow, I’d better find out who he is!” Sinatra and fellow Clan members Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. were the coolest guys on the planet, but their sartorial palette was limited. “I got tired of the Rat Pack,” Manuel says. “Who

“I was making fittings for Frank Sinatra and I didn’t know who he was,” says Manuel. “One day he gave me a $1,000 tip. I thought, wow, I’d better find out who he is!” 59

wants to make tuxedoes every week? Then a girlfriend invited me to see the Rose Parade in Pasadena. My face grew about 10 sizes. I said, I know how I can do this better! I started applying that style to the musicians, and they loved it.” While in Hollywood, Manuel also worked with the queen of film costume design, Edith Head, who won eight Oscars for her work. “When she recommended me for Giant, she said, ‘You dress this kid, make him a pair of jeans.’ I said, ‘Are you kidding?’ This was 1956, no-one wore jeans. The movie comes out, and jeans are no longer for people in the fields, they’re for everyone in every country.” The kid was James Dean. Head also introduced Manuel to Salvador Dalí, who asked him where the flower Manuel used in his designs grew. “It grows right here,” Manuel said, tapping his head. “He said, ‘I’m going to give you something from MY head, and did a little drawing for me.” Manuel made a shirt for the Spanish surrealist. Asked what Dalí was like, Manuel shoots back, “He wasn’t as arrogant as Pablo Picasso!” RODEO TAILOR In 1960, Manuel began working full-time for Nudie Cohn, one of the fathers of the ‘rodeo tailor’ style, along with Nathan Turk and Rodeo Ben. All three men were European Jews creating flashy stage outfits for country and western performers. Cohn is the most famous today, and his ‘Nudie suits’ were in demand. Behind the scenes, much of the work at these Europeans’ shops was done by Hispanics like Manuel, and there are direct influences on the style from Mexican and Native American dress, such as the mariachis.

The rhinestone cowboy style is often derided because of its ‘gaudy’ look and association with middle-of-the-road country performers. The prejudice against it can be explained as a classic country/city schism: sophisticated urban tastemakers have always mocked rural attempts to dress up, whether in Regency England or modern America. Like hip hop or Pearly Kings and Queens, the rodeo tailor look came up from the working class, not down from the elite. “The rodeo-tailor style, so well known and so definably American, is seldom the subject of discussion or study for fashion historians and curators,” noted fashion historian Patricia Mears, in an essay for a 2005 exhibition of Manuel’s work at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. “In recent publications on menswear, it would become apparent that even the most flamboyant studies, such as Colin McDowell’s The Man of Fashion: Peacock Males and Perfect Gentlemen, lack the most cursory mention of country music fashion.” She added, “the Western suit provided white men a kind of personal expression in dress that the infamous zoot suit afforded Blacks and Chicanos in the thirties and forties.” Mainstream country performers such as Grand Ole Opry superstar Porter Wagoner made Nudie suits famous, and the wild style also attracted rockers. Colonel Tom Parker sought out Cohn to make Elvis Presley’s famous gold lamé suit, with the work done by Manuel. Ten years later, country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons (above left with Nudie) of The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers also went to Cohn, where he worked with Manuel to create his iconic ‘Sin City’ suit. “I put marijuana plants on Gram Parsons,” Manuel says.

Manuel left Cohn in 1975 and set up his own business, Manuel Couture, just down the road from Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors in North Hollywood. Many customers followed him, including Porter Wagoner, who said, “I’m gonna go wherever you’re at, buddy.” Naming all Manuel’s A-list clients is impossible, but country fans will recognize his work from albums such as Trio, where he clothed Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris. One of his more famous partnerships is with Dwight Yoakam, who revitalized country music in the mid-1980s with a rockin’ update of Buck Owens’ twangy Bakersfield sound. Yoakam and Manuel collaborated on a signature bolero jacket that visualized the title of his second album: Hillbilly Deluxe. “Dwight was a very talented kid, and witty as heck,” Manuel said. “You don’t meet many people so knowledgeable about history. He said, ‘I need a wardrobe, but I don’t have money.’ I said, ‘Money is not a problem. I can see that you’re gonna hit it hard.’ That style was created by him and me.” Just as country music swings back and forth between back-to-the-farm authenticity and pop commercialism, flashy rhinestone suits and dresses have gone from cool to uncool and back again. But over the years, something fascinating has happened to the rodeo-tailor style: it’s been recognized as a classic, worn not just by crooners and pop princesses, but also by musicians who respect its historical relationship with the genre, which stretches back to Gene Autry and Roy Rogers (and includes Hank Williams). Country music historian and musician Marty Stuart exemplifies this trend, wearing spectacular Manuel suits to reflect his neo-traditionalist approach. New bands like Midland and Joshua Hedley wore cowboy dandy suits on their first albums, released last year. One of country’s biggest hitmakers, Chris Stapleton, wore denim shirts and jeans for his videos but turned up at the 2018 Grammy Awards in a green Manuel suit.

“Style is numero uno to me,” Manuel says. “Some people just look at their budget – that means they’re not my client” Mention Yoakam or Marty Stuart to Manuel and he smiles. “My boys. They’re keeping the music beautiful. A lot of the guys today have no class, they look like mechanics. I don’t want to pay to see that.”

AN AMERICAN STYLIST Drop by Manuel’s shop in Nashville, which opened in 1989, and you’ll likely find him there, working with his small team of around ten to design and create one-of-a-kind looks. While he’s best known for the rodeo tailor look, Manuel has also done classic, Western-influenced clothing for four presidents, and cites George H.W. Bush as a personal favourite, calling him a “champion of kindness”. While it’s often flashy, Manuel’s work is not cheap or mass-produced. Like fine tailors everywhere, he produces each outfit in consultation with the customer. “It’s all by hand, no computerized stuff,” Manuel says. “I learned how to use the fabric, the leather, the metals to make my own boots, buttons and belt buckles. I am totally dedicated to do one-of-a-kind.” What distinguishes his work, besides his unique take on Western cuts, is his embroidery, which draws on a host of American influences. “America has a lot of heritage,” he says. “I understand America as being from Alaska to Patagonia. I still have a lot to learn from the Incas, the Aztecs, the Native Americans. I make Chimayo blanket jackets and I even make clothes for some modern Indian singers – they will talk about what their grandfather wore, and I’ll make it for them.” Given his importance and many awards, including a star on Nashville’s Music City Walk of Fame, why isn’t Manuel as famous as, say, Karl Lagerfeld? For one thing, he has preferred to do custom work rather than ready-to-wear collections. And while not as tight-lipped as the Savile Row tailors, he’s never gone all-out on publicity – unlike Cohn, who not only dressed in his trademark suits but also drove a blinged-up car. “I never learned to brag,” Manuel says. “I knew all the big guys that were making clothing, like Jean-Paul Gaultier, all the Italians, the English, the French. I never got into it. I’d hear them say things and make a big splash, and I would feel kind of weird.” Still handsome at 85, Manuel tends to wear classic black and white, with a bandana or neckerchief reflecting his roots. He has always dressed well, he says, and built his world around that. “Style is numero uno to me,” Manuel says. “Some people just look at their budget – that means they’re not my client. n

Sartorial

DNA GROOVE Liam Jefferies meets Claudio De Rossi, the Italian designer behind unique mod brand DNA Groove

“With age came the necessity to still look good but not like a teenager. People like Fred Astaire, Cary Grant, and even gangsters like Al Capone, were oozing with middleage style and not the teenage look I was used to”

rom its origins among a small group of jazz aficionados in 1950s London, the mod movement spread throughout Great Britain faster than an amphetaminefuelled dancer skidding across a talcum-powdered floor in their finest bowling shoes. However, the romanticised vision of the flamboyant mod-abouttown became diluted to the parka, the polo and, for some reason, sideburns. There is more to mod than this, and a handful of devotees still retain the dandier-than-thou philosophy that first turned heads in the mid-20th century. One of these purists is Claudio De Rossi of DNA Groove. DNA Groove was first established in the 1990s as a vintage clothing store in Vicenza, Italy. After taking over the shop in 1996, Claudio set about paying homage to famous mod tailors Sam Arkus, John Michael Ingram, Sam Arkus, John Stephen and others of their Carnaby Street ilk, and at the

turn of the millennium the very first small batches of genuine hipster-trousers and ivy-league inspired button-down shirts were created in-house. A year later would see DNAGroove.it become the first Italian men’s clothing label to sell online. All in strictly limited quantities, as one would expect from

a store whose clientele would be mortified to cross someone on the street in the same shirt. The three most distinct influences on DNA Groove’s styles are the mods, American Ivy League style and traditional Italian sartorial elegance. Via the lens of retrospective modernism, De Rossi translates these styles with homage to the verisimilitude of the time, while adding new touches in an effort to modernise modernism. The process is more chemistry than haberdashery, though details are certainly not lacking, with considered collar rolls, drape-friendly minimally structured tailoring and hand-folded silk ties. It is not only style that DNA Groove has in spades, but also the substance to boot. One has only to look at Claudio himself to know that he is a fellow who fully embodies his brand’s ethos and style. Clothier to the modern mod elite such as Martin Freeman and Paolo Hewitt, Claudio is head, shoulders and chisel-toe calfskin shoes ahead of his contemporaries. I spoke to Claudio about the founding of his brand.

Where does the brand name come from? DNA was a vintage clothes shop in my hometown in Vicenza, which I took over in 1996. When I started designing my range in 1999 I added the ‘Groove’ to the label, so as to distinguish the vintage clothes from the new clothes I was selling at the time. So the name ‘Dna Groove’ stuck. ‘DE ROSSI’ is a parallel label I am building which is more of a wholesale label that has a more 20s/30s feel. Did you have a background in clothing before DNA? My background was ‘Modernism’ or Mod. As a young Mod I was visiting tailors to get items made, and had been obsessed with mid century clothing and styles as a 12-year-old kid who had been exposed to The Beatles after John Lennon’s assassination in 1980. So I have had a strong and intense background in clothing and style (rather than fashion), but have had no formal education in fashion. How do you go about sourcing your materials and craftsmen? I was lucky enough to have lived for 23 years in the north east of Italy, where most of Italian artisan production is based. I just started approaching small artisan companies, asking them for small productions of trousers, shirts, shoes etc, and they were glad to do these, as long as I didn’t bother them while they were working for the big brands. As for fabrics, I have my suppliers who stock important names in the cloth industry and I am lucky enough usually to purchase end-of-season rolls for a fraction of the price. My customers and I do not care if a specific pattern or colour is ‘this season’s’ or not. We go for style, quality, cut and individuality.

Having worked with the mod elite, is there anyone you would like to work with in future? Yes, they are top blokes indeed. Steve Craddock (Ocean Colour Scene, Paul Weller) is also a very cool geezer and talented musician who is very much into his clothes, and he too is a customer. I gave also worked with John Simons, when they first started their own brand JSA. John and Paul designed their iconic shirts and blazers and I took care of their production through my Italian contacts. I will be doing a small collaboration with a young, stylish and talented designer from London this summer, though I cannot name him for the time being, but watch this space!

How do you source inspiration? Inspiration to me comes from not only my musical and style roots (1950/60s actors, musicians, mods, skinheads, US collegiate look) which was the basis for decades of what I was aspiring to and designing, but later on, with age, I was looking at what the 1960s styles were influenced by. So I went back to the 1920s and 30s. With age came the necessity to still look good but not like a teenager. So people like Fred Astaire, Cary Grant, American 1920s and 30s films and stars, and even gangsters like Al Capone. They were oozing with style, middle-age style, and not the teenage look I was used to. Also, Modernism to me was being different to my peers, going against the stylistic norms, and once I had reached a boundary, I’d always push it further. The Internet makes it so much easier to hook up with people from all over the world and get exposed to videos or photographs of designs one would never see elsewhere, so these too of course are a source of inspiration, but I have always given it my own take of a ‘Look’ rather than replicating it. Faithfully replicating a garment is not satisfying my inner ‘Mod’.

V-NECK PENEDES CARDIGAN A surefire Chap favourite among De Rossi’s wares is the Penedes cardigan. Made from 100% heavyweight smooth Shetland wool, this 3-gauge knit is reminiscent of the midcentury collegiate style found in books such as Take Ivy, Teruyoshi Hayashida’s tome on the Ivy League. The cardigan features all the trademarks of a traditional design: patch pockets, turn back cuffs; yet also boasts such sartorial nods to those in-the-know as genuine Corozo nut buttons and three sport loops on the sleeve, a reference to the American Varsity tradition of earning ‘Letters’ for achievement in study or sport attained within one’s alma mater, hence the term ‘Letterman’.

What is your favourite item from the collection and how would you style it? Hard one this, as I always get excited about everything I do. Currently maybe the collegiate Shetland ‘Penedes’ cardigan, either in the V collar or the shawl collar version. It is my current go-to everyday garment, either with a plain white tee, high waist denims and loafers or boxing-styled boots, or with an Oxford soft-roll collar button-down shirt, baggy flannel trousers and brogues. It’s a trim fit, and the colours I’ve done are both easy to wear and very hard to see in the current market.

As with each item from DNA’s wares, this cardigan is strictly made in limited runs, guaranteeing the sought-after unique nature of the brand’s style. This is not just a stylistic choice, as the garments are made by small, family-run artisan companies, or as Claudio puts it ‘the true Manifattura Italiana’. Refusing to work with sweatshops or any such means of fast fashion, DNA harks back to the days before the high street fashion chains, so it is not just the styles that are nostalgic.

What does the future hold for DNA? This year I plan to do a few collaborations as stated above, and also I plan to develop the knitwear ranges, the summer linen shirts and shoe ranges. Also a made-tomeasure service for suits and trousers. Brand consulting and development is something I am starting to do with small shops that want to start their own brand. After all, I have 20 years’ experience, and to this day I am still virtually the only one-man-brand who offers the total look, from the shoes up. n

www.dnagroove.it

@sartorialchap

Gaming

BIOSHOCK Holly Rose Swinyard on the combination of Art deco beauty, noir sensibilities and nattily dressed characters that makes this particular video game worth delving into. But what exactly is Bioshock?

ioshock is a video game originally released on Xbox 360 in 2007, then PlayStation 3 in 2008 and PC in 2009. It has won much critical acclaim and was voted among the top five games of the year on all platforms when it was released. Impressive stuff if you’re a nerd like me. Bioshock was followed up by Bioshock 2 (2010), a direct sequel tie-in game Bioshock Infinite (2013) and DLC (downloadable content) games Burial At Sea Parts 1 and 2 (2013 and 2014). The original game and its sequel are both set in Rapture, an underwater metropolis created to shun the outside world and its perceived weaknesses. An art deco design masterpiece, Rapture is presented as outside of moral society, built around the philosophy of Objectivism. A paradise of extremist capitalism and ego-driven development, but the moment you enter the lifeline of this “paradise”, everything has gone to hell. I won’t give too much away about the story, as I mostly want to talk about the design and influences

that make the world of Rapture so worryingly incising, but suffice it to say that the crumbling beauty of the city is the perfect metaphor for the philosophy of the selfish. And it’s really bloody scary too. The design of Rapture was very much inspired by the large scale expansion and architectural buildings of 1940s and 50s America. You can see reflections of the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings in New York, as well as the Rockefeller Centre and Fisher Building in the Skyscraper-filled views of Rapture. From a design point of view, if you want to create a place that is truly decadent yet overwhelmingly oppressive in its self-absorption, then the cut and unabashed nature of Art Deco is the obvious choice. It echoes the power of the ancient civilisations of Rome and Greece, while shouting of a future that is yet to come. The fact that it is the choice design of films such as Metropolis and Blade Runner, both of which are clear influences on Bioshock, shows that even

in its beauty, Art Deco has an unavoidable edge of looming menace, full of hard lines and ridged geometry. Add to this the flickering neon signs of glory days passed and you are given a world of hard shadows, unearthly light and tarnished excellence. Flip this on its head and look at Columbia, the city in the sky from Bioshock Infinite, and we see a completely different view of society, though no less sinister. Columbia is the playground of religious extremist Zachary Comstock. Based around the new, wealthy towns of 1850s America with wide, airy boulevards, open park spaces and light, bright houses, Columbia provides exquisite contrast to the capitalist nightmare of Rapture, showcasing the more colourful and quaint design of the Victorian era. Surely this is the paradise Rapture was not? Of course not. The design and colour is cleverly created to be too perfect. It is meant to be enchanting, to trick and deceive, but pull back the veil and see how, just as any Victorian city, the slums and the abused are there, and in Columbia they are simply waiting for their moment to rise up. The design shows the enthralling nature of the cult, the vision of a perfect world that is brought about through the belief in a religious doctrine. But just as with a film or a play, the set alone is not enough; the costume and fashion of the piece must fit into the surroundings in order to make this a truly believable place. And to have something to run away from. These are horror games, chaps; we have to be afraid of something. The fashion houses of both Rapture and Columbia are overflowing with designs to make even the most stylish chap or chapette green with envy. The stylings of Rapture are trapped in the 1940s, when the city was founded and its citizens removed themselves from the outside world, so the fashions of the city are something of a time capsule,

though with their own very specific Bioshock twist. Much as the city they live in, the people are in ruins; their clothes the least of their worries now, but still they reflect the faded grandeur and decadence of days passed. Off-the-shoulder evening dresses gone to rack and ruin, dinner jackets and starched fronts stained with blood; these people, once living the life of luxury, are now doomed to roam the city as splicers – zombie-like monsters addicted to the drugs of Rapture, searching for what made them so that they may be sustained. But it is Columbia were the real beauty of the fashion design can be seen and truly appreciated. The denizens of this city promenade their best selves around to the cheers of their peers. Let us look at the designs of the main characters of Bioshock: Infinite: Elizabeth, The Lutece Twins and Booker Dewitt. The female lead, and arguably the main protagonist of Bioshock: Infinite as well as Burial at Sea, Elizabeth Comstock (right) has a wardrobe that stands as one of my favourite set of character designs in any game. Not only are they beautifully designed, clearly the result of extensive research of the era, but they also present Elizabeth’s changing self throughout the games.

“Art Deco has an edge of looming menace, full of hard lines and ridged geometry. Add to this the flickering neon signs of glory days passed and you are given a world of hard shadows, unearthly light and tarnished excellence” 66

Hor ne t s Not fashion. Style!

Menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Vintage Classic British International Designer and the Unusual

CLOTHING SHOES ACCESSORIES HATS Four shops in the heart of Kensington near the Palace 2/4 Kensington Church Walk, London W8 4NB hornetskensington.co.uk 0207 937 2627 hornetskensington

of dark colour, white on grey – almost a mirror of Elizabeth – gives him the feel of film noir hero, dark, mysterious and nearly broken by the world, while giving off an air of not caring. While both Elizabeth and Booker wear their characters on their sleeves, the Lutece Twins very much do not. Rosaline and Robert Lutece appear as smartly presented, clinical people; cold and calculating in a way that would suggest order. Dressed to match in his and her wardrobes, the Lutece Twins could walk the streets of any Edwardian city and they would fit in. Their jackets almost feel akin to lab-coats to reflect the twins’ scientific background, worn over the more traditional darker fabrics of the era. But this straight-laced and proper appearance disguises their chaotic and trickster-like nature. What is interesting is that Rosalind was designed first, and then Robert to match her. There is something wonderful about the fact that Robert’s design was created to mirror and complement Rosalind, as she is the one who is the more resourceful and determined of the two. He is there to strengthen her and her story, with her narrative investigated in greater depth than his (a rare occurrence in computer games). Every inch of these games is designed with a purpose in mind and reasoning behind it. Not one thing is an accident, happy or otherwise. I encourage anyone who hasn’t played these games to give them a try and to experience all this for yourselves. They are undeniably beautiful, but they are more than that. It is essentially the destruction of that beauty that makes Bioshock, in my opinion, one of the best horror game series around. To walk among the ruins of a great civilisation is to see its ghostly beauty, and to see why it was destroyed is to understand its horrifying reality. n

Elizabeth’s original and ‘younger’ outfit (above) especially stand out to me. Designed around the classic child’s sailor suit of the Victorian era, Elizabeth seems much more naïve in this outfit, but with the style of a person on the cusp of adulthood, just as it is on the cusp of turn of the century styles. On the edge of 1920s ‘freedom’ but still feeling the constraint of Edwardian and Victorian fashions. What is interesting in both narrative and design terms is the way Elizabeth’s look changes later in the game. One would think that she would progress forwards in her quest for self and freedom, but when she changes into her mother’s clothes, later in the game, you see a more old-fashioned style and a step back into her own past. The longer skirts and corset speak of the Edwardian stylings seen in the rest of Columbia, more restrained in some ways, but the lack of a blouse with the outfit, a very unladylike way of dressing, is still showing Elizabeth’s rebellious nature. Booker Hewitt, the player character of Bioshock Infinite, on the other hand, is a mess of man, whose appearance speaks volumes of the cruelties the world has showered upon him. Booker is a Pinkerton by trade and an ex-soldier to boot, which shows in his design, being rougher and readier than many of the other male characters. His design pays homage to his soldiering background, with twisted military braid adorning his double-breasted waistcoat, twinned with leather shoulder holsters that are permanently strapped in place. The choice

www.herring.co.uk

DUEPLE SOCKS Gustav Temple glides about in socks from a new brand that has put a spring into the step of gentlemen’s hosiery

don’t know about you, but I don’t get very excited about socks. The purchase of gentlemen’s hosiery usually involves a cursory inspection of the tiny coat hangers bearing more or less the same item, grouped in quantities whose number indicates their likely quality. The ‘specialist socks’ brands seek to impose increasingly ridiculous designs, with rarely any consideration of the fact that much of the highconcept motif (Picasso, Frida Kahlo, the Simpsons, Christmas) disappears into the shoe, never to be seen again until the footwear is removed. Then along comes Dueple. Their brand seems to have started with the sensible idea of rethinking the whole idea of sock packaging. Their socks come in a cardboard box, not unlike a large matchbox, emblazoned with a retro design that could actually be from the 1940s. They look like the sort of box you might find in some backstreet gentlemen’s clothier in Budapest, Athens or Istanbul, in a dusty pile of dead stock from a much earlier decade. They even have the faint and not

unpleasant whiff of mothballs that such an item would exude. Then to the socks themselves, which are not like any other sock. There are two styles, Dueple and SWIIT (or to put it more simply, thin ones and thick ones). The SWIIT socks have a ribbed texture, making them both extremely comfortable and also gentle on the skin. They are pressure free, allowing for proper blood circulation, making them apparently suitable for diabetics. The Dueples are made from a much finer, unribbed cotton and more suitable for smarter outfits. The range of 31 colours is large but tasteful, covering every hue that a gentleman could desire, and, hurrah, there are no patterns whatsoever. I currently favour the red sock in general (obviously only with black shoes), and the Dueple shade of red is absolutely perfect – not too scarlet and nowhere near the dreaded burgundy. I found that both ribbed and unribbed styles work with any outfit, as they both steer well away from what anyone would refer to as a thick sock. n

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Dandyism

MUSCADINS ET INCROYABLES Chris Sullivan on a foppish mob of cudgel-wielding cads who roamed post-revolution Paris in search of sans culottes to attack

t must have been a right old sight. Gangs of marauding, inebriated fops, known collectively as Les Muscadin, dressed in a manner as outlandish as the most excessive New Romantic, wandering the cramped alleyways and backstreets of Paris, brandishing cudgels they nicknamed ‘constitutionals.’ Said clubs were used upon their sworn enemy, the sans culottes (literally meaning ‘without breeches’), the socialist working class backbone of the French Revolution who supported the abolition of the monarchy, nobility, the curtailing of the power of the Roman Catholic Church, fair wages and price control over essential items such as bread.

“Muscadins, along with foreigners and deserters, were seen to congregate at the theatre, dressed with ridiculous ostentation, and show themselves with dirty stockings, large moustaches, and long sabres, threatening the good citizens” 72

I’d say these cads were the equivalent of today’s Daily Mail-reading, relatively well-off young popinjays from the lower middle classes, the sons of ‘minor officials and small shopkeepers.’ Muscadin translated means ‘wearing musk perfume’, which these cats certainly did. According to contemporary chroniclers, one might smell a Muscadin well before seeing him but, nevertheless, they were still potent street fighters who, at one point, numbered some 3,000. The strong arm of the Thermidorian Reaction, they existed purely to fight the left-wingers such as the Jacobins, who supported a centralized republican state and a government that could transform society and the aforementioned sans culottes. The fictional Madame Defarge in Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, who knitted the names of the guillotined aristocrats into her needlework, was pure sans culottes and the sworn enemy of these hommes de parfum. Also referred to as the jeunesse dorée (‘gilded youth’) or simply les jeunes gens (‘the young people’) the Muscadin were particularly active after the hard winter of 1794-5 that left the poor not only starving but also cold (if malnutrition didn’t get you, hypothermia would) and as such were increasingly keen on toppling the government. As someone once said, “The peasants are revolting!” So to keep them in check, in stepped these vigilante brutes. And, just like all the subcultures that followed them, the Muscadin, just like skinheads or punks almost 200 years later, took to extreme fashions to identify each other and mark themselves out as part of their gang. They sported tight frock coats with huge 7-inch lapels, often in a different coloured fabric to the body, or striped like a deckchair. Their shirt collars were turned up to the chin, supported by colossal elaborately knotted cravats, tight breeches, huge hats with feathers in them – while the whole shebang incorporated as many bright gauche colours as they could get away with. The Muscadin came to prominence after the coup that took down Maximiliian Robespierre, who had supported the Declaration of the Rights of Man, was president of the Jacobin Club (the most radical of the political groups formed in the wake of the French Revolution) and who coined the phrase Liberté, egalite, fratenite. He considered force a futile and improper way of spreading the ideals of the Revolution; he abolished slavery, opposed the power of Rome, stood up for the rights of the poor, universal suffrage and democracy and lived modestly. Robespierre’s name has become synonymous with tyranny because, during his term in office as one of the most powerful members of

the Committee of Public Safety, there were 16,594 official death sentences in France, of which 2,639 were in Paris during what was named la Terreur or The Terror. As Robespierre said ‘If the basis of popular government in peacetime is virtue, the basis of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror… Terror is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue.” Of course many might disagree, but this was after all a revolution against one of the cruelest tyrants one might ever come across, who not only believed in the Divine Rights of Kings but also believed that the rest of the population were there to serve them and were as disposable as the common or garden rat. Horrific cruelties were commonplace. Injustice was the norm, while to be born poor meant a life of utter misery and an early death. Fuelled by the likes of Tom Payne’s The Rights of Man, Jean Jacques Rousseau’s

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“Les Incroyables affected lisps, limp wrists and assumed an arched, hunchback posture. Some wore maxi monocles, huge elaborate cravats, large earrings, overly wide trousers and garish green jackets, while their hair was combed forward over their lug holes ‘dog ears’ style”

Social Contract and his theory of enlightenment, and Baron de Montesquieu’s, The Spirit of the Laws, the revolution was intended to remedy this and in many ways it did. But to make an omelette one has to break a few eggs, and Robespierre certainly did, by weeding out and crushing all enemies of the revolution, including the right wing Girondists, Danton’s mob in the middle and the Hebertists on the extreme left. But what else was he to do – slap them on the wrist and give them a telling off? What the French had created in 1789 was a relatively new concept ‘a government of the people for the people’ – and the upper crust weren’t going to let go easily. The hated Louis XVI had been left alive as ‘King of the French’ after the Revolution, but still he conspired with his wife Marie Antoinette’s brother Leopold II of Austria and Frederick William II of Prussia, who affirmed that they would restore the French monarchy if other European powers joined them in attacking France. France declared war on 20 April 1792, and Louis was arrested and imprisoned. The monarchy was abolished a month later, the invading Prussian army were compelled to leave France and the former King was found

guilty of colluding with the enemy, high treason and crimes against the state. On 21st January 1793, 38-year-old Louis XVI was beheaded in Place de la Republique, followed by his wife Marie Antoinette (above). To many the pair epitomised all that was wrong with monarchic France, but still Robespierre’s name was tarnished by his overseeing of their execution.

Subsequently, Robespierre was branded a tyrant and arrested and executed, along with 21 of his closest associates. Historically this is known as the Thermidorian Reaction (Thermidor was the 11th month in the calendrier révolutionnaire français, used for some 12 years by the government as a move to remove all religious and royalist influences in the calendar). The Muscadin were the street soldiers of this reaction, who fought against leftwingers and were strongly associated to the First White Terror, when Muscadin, royalists and other right wing elements roamed the country murdering Jacobins.

Accordingly, it was all about decadence, The women teetered about atop high-heeled sandals tied at the ankles with strings of pearls or bejewelled ribbons, dressed in diaphanous gowns that, based on the fashions of ancient Rome, were cut from transparent linen or gauze (nicknamed ‘woven air’), with a cleavage so low and tight that the bosoms of Les Merveilleuses cascaded into the drawing room and on to the street and beyond. Queen of the gang was Thérésa Tallien, the Spanish-born daughter of a wealthy Basque financier who created the Bank of Spain and was consequently made a Count by the King of Spain. She’d been denounced by Robespierre and was one of the main figures behind the Thermidorian Reaction that earned her the nickname Our Lady of The Thermidor. And every rich Parisian snob wanted a piece of her. It was said that she once tuned up at the Tuilleries Palace supported by a negro pageboy, with nine bracelets on each arm, a gold bracelet on each ankle, eight gold and sapphire rings and six toe rings; during a visit to the opera she wore a see-through white silk dress without underwear. Subsequently Tallien became one the country’s most famous ladies, often mobbed by rubberneckers who wanted to see this creature in the flesh, as it were, while tales of her bathing in the juice of imported strawberries were frontpage news. Under her sumptuous wings, Les Merveilleuses also loved a wig, often choosing blonde – purely because the Paris Commune had outlawed them – but were unafraid to chance their arm with perhaps blue, green or pink wigs, often with spit curls plastered on their faces. Another favoured accoutrement was the large expensive hat, replete with enormous bows and exotic feathers. They liberally doused themselves with costly perfume by Pierre Lubin who, the man of the moment, also supplied these young poseurs with masks, scented ribbons, soap and rice powder balls for an uncommonly exorbitant fee. As for the men, they were a rum bunch, not averse to a soupcon of camp, preferring to be called ‘incoyable’ or ‘meveilleuse’ (avoiding the letter ‘R’ as in Revolution) as a stand against the uprising. They affected lisps, limp wrists and assumed an arched, hunchback posture. Some wore maxi monocles, huge elaborate cravats, large earrings, overly wide trousers and garish green jackets, while their hair was often shoulder length, combed forward over their lug holes ‘dog ears’ style, and pulled up in the back with a comb. This was to emulate the hairstyles of those on the way to the Guillotine under bicorne hats (two-cornered,

“The women teetered about atop high-heeled sandals tied at the ankles with strings of pearls or bejewelled ribbons, dressed in diaphanous gowns that, based on the fashions of ancient Rome, were cut from transparent linen or gauze, with a cleavage so low and tight that the bosoms of Les Merveilleuses cascaded into the drawing room and on to the street and beyond” After Jacobin writer Jacques Hebert wrote that “Muscadins, along with foreigners and deserters, were seen to congregate at the theatre, dressed with ridiculous ostentation, and show themselves with dirty stockings, large moustaches, and long sabres, threatening the good citizens, and especially the people’s representatives,” the name Muscadin was adopted in Paris and it stuck. But when the Jacobins were defeated, the powers that be had no time for the breed and they dissipated. Hot on their perfumed heels came an even more ostentatious gang of misfits, who named themselves Les Incroyables or ‘The Incredibles’ while their womenfolk were named Les Merveilleuses or ‘Marvellous Women.’ Described as ‘a rebellious youth movement,’ they were drawn from the Parisian elite and, like their predecessors, flaunted their wealth to differentiate themselves from the starving masses.

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as favoured by Napoleon) with wine-coloured velvet collars, to symbolise the red blood of the beheaded. But as effeminate and effete as they were, mincing through alleyways stinking of musk, they still carried bludgeons, which they fondly referred to as their ‘executive power.’ A suspect crew of foppish coxcombs, they looked up to one Paul Francois Jean Nicolas vicomte de Barras – executive leader of the French Directory, who was no stranger to excess, his humongous feasts attended by ladies, courtesans, royalists, former Jacobites, artists and bankers, while rumours abounded of his post prandial orgies and excesses of drink and debauchery. It was his thirst and reputation for immorality that ushered in his demise and the entrance of Napoleon in the bloodless 18 Brumare Coup of November 1799. The Incroyables and Merveilleuses unquestionably influenced the excesses of the

British Regency era (the Prince Regent being an impressionable age 33 at the height of the Incroyables), while elsewhere they influenced the English fops – descendants of the ludicrously overdressed Macaronis. And then there was John Galliano, whose seminal 1984 Central St Martins graduate collection, named Les Incroyables, earned him a first and a place in fashion history, but was simply a collection that directly copied said movement’s sartorial excesses. So perhaps he should have been given a first in history and not fashion design. Nevertheless his timing was spot on. So were the Muscadin the first ever youth subculture? That award might go to another Gallic tribe, the 13th Century F Goliards – renegade clerics of no fixed abode who loved rioting, gambling and writing the odd ode. But my money is on the jeunesse dorée, who seemed to have ticked every last box. n

Sartorial

NATALINO Liam Jefferies on a brand that has turned ‘smart casual’ on its head and produced a collection to serve any occasion

atalino is a London-based brand with a penchant for classical menswear and leanings towards soft tailoring and smart-casual aesthetics. Do not be fooled by the latter term; this is smart-causal in its most undiluted form – no ‘trainers with a suit’ nonsense here. Instead, clean lines and refined cuts take ready-to-wear to its true origins. Think Cary Grant lounging on set between takes during Notorious, rather than city banker trying to bridge the gap between the office and the sushi bar. The collection boasts a menagerie of materials sourced from their respective Meccas of manufacture; Italian flannel sits among British corduroy and cotton twill, Australian wool and Japanese denim. The latter is not used for a pair of Genoese fustian trousers (or ‘jeans’) but in shirting, to which the high yarn count lends a more befitting softness. That very same care and attention has been paid across the range, where first clip merino wool,

reared in South Australia, is woven on the other side of the world in Scotland, with nary an effect on the price. For this, there is a simple explanation. Becasue Natalino sells directly to the customer, with neither a wholesale channel nor a physical store, the mark-up is considerably lower than their industry counterparts. However, the chaps at Natalino are still on hand to discuss their wares with the same knowledgeable attention to detail as

“Natalino stocks everything one could need to revive one’s wardrobe on the instanter, each piece corresponding with its neighbour to create an efficient and considered wardrobe” 82

one would expect within any such establishment, without the pushy sales tactics. Working as a capsule collection, Natalino stocks everything one could need to revive one’s wardrobe on the instanter, each piece corresponding with its neighbour to create an efficient and considered wardrobe. Liam spoke to Nathan Lee from Natalino.

on top – you can wear pretty much any colour other than cream. Also, because of the heavy 14oz weight of the cotton twill fabric, you don’t have to be precious with them – I like to throw on practical clothes and not worry about creasing or picking up day-to-day scuffs or marks. But because of the details, such as the single pleats, side adjusters and turn-ups, not to mention the high waist, they are more refined than your usual casual trouser or chino. I like to wear mine with a light brown/beige knit over a shirt, dark brown scarf and dark brown loafers, keeping it all fairly tonal.

How did Natalino first come into being? I found myself spending a ton of money on bespoke and other high-end clothing, and thought there must be a more economical way of dressing in a classic way. Made-to-measure is a good alternative but it’s still reasonably expensive, and not everyone can make a trunk show or is willing to wait 1-2 months for the final product. On the other hand, the ready-to-wear market is mainly focused on the luxury end of the spectrum. So I decided to create my own streamlined collection of ready-towear classic items, using quality fabrics and manufacturers while keeping pricing competitive.

Where do you want to take the Natalino brand? We’ll continue to add new pieces to the collection, gradually expanding the offering but keeping it streamlined and limited to classic items. I like the idea of having a relatively permanent collection of classic clothes and adding season-appropriate items, rather than a rotation every season. For example, we will be looking to add linen trousers ahead of summer. This way, we also reduce wastage by not having to shift stock every season. Soft jacketing is an area that we’re currently looking into, and one that we believe would complement the current offering. It would be nice to offer customers a chance to try on our clothes, perhaps through pop-ups, but the online only set-up works best for now, so we can keep our prices low and continue to offer excellent value for money. n

Do you have a background in clothing? I used to work in the City of London, but have had a passion in men’s clothing from an early age; I’d care far too much about the fit of my school blazer or how my trousers sat on the shoe. Later, working in finance meant I was wearing a suit and tie every day, which further honed my obsession with classic men’s clothing. I decided to focus on smart casual for Natalino, as it’s how I prefer to dress these days and I see it as more relevant in the real worl. What are the stylistic influences on the collection? It comes from a lot of places but it’s rooted mainly in the classic era of menswear, whether Ivy League prep, old English aristocracy, classic Hollywood cinema or 1950s Italian Riviera. Classic suiting is a big influence, and I find it interesting to use casual fabrics and applying suiting proportions and details (e.g. high waist, pleated cotton trousers) or in classic menswear pieces (e.g. spread collar shirting in denim). Ultimately, what is most important is that the clothes look nice, are comfortable to wear and can be thrown on without much thought. What is your favourite item from the collection and how would you style it? The cream cotton trouser, for its versatility. These have become my most worn trouser, because the neutral shade works with so many different colours

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NATALINO

Dressing UpLiam Jefferies road tests a pair of favourites from Natalino’s collection

HERRINGBONE RAGLAN OVERCOAT £315 A wardrobe staple if there ever was one, the overcoat from Natalino boasts a relaxed silhouette and raglan sleeves – sleeves cut from a continuous piece of fabric extending from the collar to the underarm, so named for the 1st Baron Raglan, who wore the style after losing his arm at the Battle of Waterloo. Ablated or not, this cut should see you able to wield a sabre with much more ease than its contemporaries, should the need arise. The fully-lined coat is made from a dark grey herringbone weave in a weather-defying 18oz British wool, and features genuine unpolished horn buttons, fly front and a blind placket. Style with positively anything underneath, though it pairs very well with a red tie. The weight of the coat belies its effectiveness in inclement conditions, while not weighing one down. It still serves as a reliable topcoat, with the not-too-structured cut making it an option for both town and country.

ITALIAN WOOL FLANNEL TROUSER £105 Cut with a traditional yet zeitgeist-friendly (not to mention waistline-friendly) high rise, single outwardfacing pleats that compliment the clement taper, allowing ample room around the thigh and a clean line throughout the leg. The trousers are finished with such oft-neglected details as side adjusters in place of belt loops (if trousers fit, belt loops are superfluous) and robust 5cm turn-ups that wouldn’t look out of place at Pitti Uomo. The trousers are comprised of a healthy mid-weight 10.5oz Italian wool flannel, a fabric as versatile as it is resilient. Pair with a navy blazer and long-sleeve polo, or upturned spread-collar beneath a merino polo neck, a look which is turning up on both sides of the pond with equal admiration.

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@sartorialchap

Mature Style

THE GREY FOX COLUMN David Evans of greyfoxblog.com voyages to Antarctica, where he road tests various practical clothing items and reflects on the passing of the years

s I type this I’m wearing a tweed suit. We think of suits as rather stiff, formal clothes, but there’s something relaxed about tweed. Its flexibility and refusal to look untidy, even if a bit crumpled, makes it an ideal alternative to corduroys and an old sweater. I recently tried the The Chap Birdseye tweed suit (available at the Chap Shop), made by Walker Slater, and was impressed by its cut and reasonable price. The Shetland wool tweed provides just that comfortable, well-tailored look and feel that’s needed for sartorial relaxation. The suit can therefore be a casual item of clothing, but sadly many don’t see this, and the rise of sportswear has marked a move away from tailored comfort. Looking around our streets, I feel that not only have many men lost interest in looking stylish, but that this increases with age, exacerbated by fathers who insist on dressing like their sons,

“Ironically it is the younger men who have taken to suits, ties and brogues, as they recognise the elegant attraction of classic styles – just the styles worn by so many Chap readers” wearing shapeless clothes and ugly, chunky trainers. Ironically, and thankfully, this is balanced by the many younger men who have taken to suits, ties and brogues, as they recognise the elegant attraction of classic styles – just the styles worn by so many Chap readers. On the whole, although I grumble, I think that younger people are going in the right direction style-wise, but they must continue to develop

sartorially as they age, rather than hunkering down in a vain attempt to retrieve lost youth. As we age we’re better placed to dress as we want, rather than as slaves to fashion. Talking of age, I recently passed my sixtyfourth birthday and can distinctly remember the days of my youth when, having been given The Beatles latest album, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by my uncle, I listened to When I’m Sixty-Four and tried to imagine, without success, how life would be, so giddyingly far into the future. In those days, 64 was nearly retirement age and a time when many older people settled down with their slippers to await death. Nowadays things are very different. I wouldn’t have imagined I’d be blogging and on social media in my sixties (well, I suppose nobody knew about these things then, but you understand my drift). Better healthcare has increased life expectancy

and, with increasing numbers of older people, their (our) expectations are completely different. Retirement isn’t the beginning of the end; it’s the chance to start new careers, dress better, travel, collect beautiful things, drive well-made cars and bicycles, develop new interests and fall in love again – and people are doing just these things. Some 80% of consumer spending is by those over fifty; a fact that most brands studiously ignore in their marketing. Life gets better as you age (provided you look after yourself) and my feelings about this were strengthened by reading the recently published Bolder: Making the Most of Our Longer Lives, by Carl Honoré. He kindly interviewed me and many other people while writing this exceptional work. He highlights the advantages of age and the book is essential reading for all, as it carefully demolishes illogical and prejudicial attitudes towards age. Please buy it and read it; it will be one of the most

anniversary and my wife’s planned retirement (which has been postponed) Mrs Grey Fox and I recently travelled to Argentina, The Falklands, South Georgia and Antarctica on the holiday of lifetime. Visiting these remote places filled us with a sense of privilege that we were able to go where most will not and to see animals such as penguins, whales, albatrosses and seals, only usually seen on television. More importantly, however, we came away with the sad thought that it’s all very vulnerable. If global warming is not checked now, some 60% of the world’s water, at present locked up on the ice sheet, will melt over the next few centuries, raising ocean levels by amounts that will swamp many of the world’s largest cities and completely change the global map. I tried some interesting pieces of kit while in Antarctica. A lightweight parka from Shackleton (who sponsored Lou Rudd on his recent unsupported solo Antarctic crossing) kept me warm and dry in the coldest conditions. It’s a highly technical coat, made from lightweight water resistant fabric – perfect for cold days, whether at home or nearer the poles. I was able to compare the Shackleton coat with the Antarctic parka made by Nigel Cabourn. Sadly I couldn’t take this with me, as we were limited in the amount of luggage we could take, but I tried it out in the cold of the English Lake District. It’s quite a different animal, as it’s based on the parkas worn by the Hillary/Fuchs Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1955-8 and, while very practical, is vintage in style and construction. Made of Ventile, it has a warm wool lining, wooden toggles and fur hood. As you’d expect from Nigel Cabourn it is solidly made, as a tribute to the originals, and is warm and comfortable but heavy in comparison with the modern Shackleton parka. Neither is cheap, but both are exceptional pieces of clothing that will last and keep you warm in almost any conditions.

significant books you’ve ever read. And this brings me back to the subject of style. Most of us see style as a reflection of how we look – how well we dress. I prefer to extend the meaning of the word, and am widening the scope of my blog to explore style as something that applies to how we live, what we do, our interests, the friends we keep, the music we listen to, the food we eat, the books we read. You read The Chap not only for its excellent coverage of stylish clothing, but for all the fascinating features on film, literature, antiques, personalities and so on. Chap style is about a kaleidoscope of attributes and interests. The truly stylish person exudes a sophisticated depth of personality beyond mere looks. Age is relevant here: the extra years and the experiences you’ve been through give you a richer background to your particular sense of style. I mentioned travel as a favourite pastime of older people. To celebrate our fortieth wedding

Both are made in the UK, incidentally. I also tried knitwear from Shackleton and Cabourn. The former has some pieces based on jumpers worn in the original Shackleton expedition. Also British-made, they smell faintly of lanolin and are a joy to wear. Nigel Cabourn’s roll neck sweater is also a copy of a vintage piece and is one of those rare items that, even when new, feels as thought it’s been your favourite sweater for years. All these jumpers give the wearer a satisfyingly genuine rugged explorer look (which goes particularly well with a beard – see below), essential when navigating the streets of your local city. I love products which have a used/heritage/ vintage feel to them. They mustn’t be artificially aged; there’s nothing worse than fake distressing in fashion and interior design, but an item that adopts older styles and materials because they stand the test of time (like the Cabourn parka) is a different matter. I own several canvas bags from British manufacturers Billingham, the latest of which is a camera rucksack. I used it to carry my photographic equipment in fairly challenging conditions in the South Atlantic and it was comfortable, weather resistant and highly practical. Incidentally, if you’re looking for a small but adaptable camera that takes excellent photos, I can recommend the Lumix DMC LX-100, which I borrowed for our trip. The little camera has a Leica zoom lens and tucks away in larger pockets, while giving the photo enthusiast plenty to play with. It also follows the trend for vintage Leica-inspired styles in modern cameras. My luggage also included a Globetrotter suitcase. Made in North London and used by royalty and commoner alike, this stylish suitcase is admired wherever

I go – and I say that without any exaggeration. The staff in our Buenos Aires hotel insisted that I was a rock star on the evidence of the suitcase alone. It is slightly heavier than a case made from very modern materials (it’s a sort of vulcanised paper construction), but who cares when your luggage exudes such class? Finally, talking of beards, I used the movement of the ship as an excuse not to shave on our Antarctic trip, and now find myself with a beard for the first time for forty years. The novelty is such that I’m keeping it for the time being (despite some domestic opposition). It’s a joy not to have to spend time shaving each morning, but Mrs Grey Fox (unhelpfully, I feel) insists on pointing out that I spend even more time grooming and oiling the new appendage than I ever did on shaving. Some people just don’t even try to understand these things. [Note: my trip to Antarctica was unsponsored. I was given or lent the items that I mention above for the journey]. n Shackleton shackletonlondon.com Nigel Cabourn cabourn.com Billingham billingham.co.uk Lumix panasonic.com Globe-Trotter globe-trotter.com

Barr & Stroud CF41 (7x50), made sometime in 1945

Accessories

BINOCULARS To accompany Nick Ostler’s guide to birding on pages 102-105, Richard Burdett offers some guidance on the best binoculars a chap can use Photographs: Sarah Nicholls

“Binoculars have been miniaturized now, so you can make binoculars that can fold into a top pocket – but that’s only a necessity for spies and perverts”

he pitfalls of collecting any vintage items also apply to picking up antique binoculars (or monoculars), but the optics of the best are as good today as when the lenses were first ground in laboratory factories in the Bavarian Alps or on the outskirts of Glasgow. So don’t cheapen your Bladen hacking-jacket with a pair of plastic twitcher’s bins, but rather put something on your chest that suggests you’re a Rogue Male. Certainly, technology, particularly in material terms, has moved on, so that modern optics are lighter and shock-proofed. They have a rainbow of lens coatings that prevent glare from the ocean or piste. Things have been miniaturized too, so you can make binoculars that can fold into a top pocket, but that’s only a necessity for spies and perverts. Do not be seduced. The joy of looking through the ancient eyepieces of a pair of Ross field glasses

more than compensates for the extra heft. What vistas did these look out upon? Did they see action at Cape Matapan or sail to Murmansk? Did they track big game across the veldt? Of course, you might have to squint on a bright summer’s day, and add a drop of oil to creaking joints occasionally, but that’s not the point.

However, some old binoculars have their problems. Older lenses can become fogged with moisture, dust and mould, or any combination of these; this can be treated, but will not be cheap. Having active lives, binoculars get bumped and dropped, so can end up out of alignment and therefore optically ineffective. Beyond these common problems, mechanisms can seize and old plastics can crack. If you can’t try a pair, which is the norm when purchasing online, get clarification from the vendor, including reassuring words on the image such as ‘crisp’, ‘clean’ and ‘clear.’ Binoculars will appear once you start looking, from flea markets to the white-elephant stall, with thousands of pairs available online. You’ll find a hundred brands, and soon get a feel for the quality, and you’ll start to gauge the size and designs that fit with you, whether it’s a wartime monocular or a pair

of opera glasses. As always, it’s worth pursuing the quality. A second-rate pair will not improve with age, but rather diminish at a faster rate, and there’s no economy in paying less for optics that don’t give you clear field of view and good magnification. The most important description of binoculars is the ‘magnification’ and ‘objective diameter.’ This is usually described, for example, as 7x50, which means seven times magnification and 50mm lenses at the front. The latter figure is important for gathering light, so the larger figures should operate more effectively in the dusk. These numbers might also be enhanced with a description of the ‘field of view’. You’ll find the second-hand market full of larger binoculars that once were the ‘must-haves’ at race meetings, sometimes still festooned with paddock tags. With older binoculars sometimes considered ‘obsolete’, the price shouldn’t be too high, apart from brands such as Zeiss, Pentax/ Asahi and Barr & Stroud, which can still command a collector’s price. Top tip – you’ll find some quality makers produced for other companies, and you can sometimes find the same product, relabelled, at a much cheaper price. Although older binoculars were typically larger, you don’t have to suffer with a hundredweight of black metal hanging around your neck. There were any number of Japanese manufacturers who

“What vistas did these binoculars look out upon? Did they see action at Cape Matapan or sail to Murmansk? Did they track big game across the veldt?” 92

made some powerful micro binoculars that are sharp to look through and fit in the pocket. Typically, with magnification of between 6x and 8x, their size precludes much light gathering, so the second number won’t be much above 21 (pictured on previous page). If in doubt, you can’t go wrong with a famous name, but don’t head straight to Zeiss, rather explore other old brands like Ross. Unequivocally, you can’t go wrong with Barr & Stroud. Not the modern company with that name, but the optical engineers in north Glasgow who supplied the military with binoculars, range-finders and periscopes, but stopped making binoculars in the 1970s. The behemoth is a pair of Barr & Stroud CF41 (7x50), made sometime in 1945. They are the size of binoculars you’d expect to see in The Cruel Sea but manageable. They are easy on the eye, can see a flea at a mile, smell of oil and are emblazoned with the Ordnance broad arrow that marks them out as having been in the Senior Service. They even have filters that can click in place to help vision in lowlight and foggy conditions. With the original leather strap still in place, I might soon replace this for peace of mind, or replenish with neatsfoot oil, as it’s a lot to hang on a half-inch strip of leather. The smaller pair are Barr & Stroud CF24 (8x30) from 1951 (above left). These are compact enough to be easily carried and have superb vision.

The central focussing wheel turns smoothly, meaning images leap into view with ease. These were one of the best binoculars in that decade, and as good or better than any Zeiss of the age. As opposed to the quirky bulk of the CF41, these have a classic look and are still available at a reasonable price. Apart from the Barr & Stroud pairs, there are a few interesting pieces. A great buy that cost little but has had lots of use is a folding monocular by Wray of London (above) – a ‘Panora’ (8x21). This ‘spy’ lens fits easily into the smallest pocket and needs a twist to bring the prisms into line, but it’s superb for its size. It’s based on the Zeiss ‘Turmon’ 8x21 monocular, and the similarities are so close that it’s possible they are Zeiss, produced for Wray. If you’ve a pair of bins languishing in a drawer, get them out and pour some light through them. Imagine what’s been seen through those lenses. You may have a lifestyle which means binoculars are a must, but it’s doubtful. You therefore have to explore how binoculars can offer a new perspective on your everyday life. If you’re a wage-slave commuting to work in an office block, binoculars might be just what you need, letting you explore the countryside beyond the tracks and allowing you to scan the horizons from your office window. Having them in your pocket or briefcase might even make you feel like a secret agent. n

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LONGER FEATURES Reilly Ace of Spies (p96) • Birding (p102) • John Bly Interview (p107) • Darren Hayman (p112) • Olly Smith (p116) • Travel: Quito (p121) 95

Adventure

Ace of Spies Jock Rawlings on the true story of Sidney Reilly, the ruthless, Machiavellian figure, serial womaniser and con man who became known as Britain’s super-spy

“Reilly was now a wealthy man with the freedom to travel the world without any fear of being collared for his past misdemeanours. He quickly assumed the persona of the fashionable man-about-town – he splashed out on lavish hotel suites, Savile Row tailoring and high stakes gaming tables”

epending on who you choose to believe, Sidney Reilly was either the greatest secret agent Britain ever produced, or a dangerous psychopath and compulsive liar with a taste for bigamy and murder. Either way, Reilly, was one of the most fascinating and elusive figures of the early 20th century. A legendary spy, saboteur and counter revolutionary, he was the man that Sir Mansfield Cumming (the first head of MI6) dubbed the ‘ace of spies’. But he was also a con man. Reilly’s name first came to public attention in 1932, when former spy Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart published an autobiographical account of his adventures in Russia during the 1918 revolution. Memoirs Of A British Agent describes his and fellow agent Sidney Reilly’s failed plot to assassinate

Lenin and bring an end to Bolshevik rule. The book painted Reilly as a mysterious man of action, a maverick operator who seemed indifferent to the dangers of his job. The public loved it and the legend of Britain’s super-spy was born. But it wasn’t until 1967 and the publication of Reilly - Ace Of Spies that Reilly’s reputation was truly cemented. It was written by Sir Robert’s son, Robin and was supposedly based on Reilly’s own reminiscences. The book describes Reilly’s aristocratic beginnings and how, in 1893, he was forced to flee his Russian homeland in the wake of his mother’s sudden death, and the discovery that he was the illegitimate product of her affair with a Jewish doctor. Reilly was crippled with shame – in Russia, on the edge of the 20th century, being a bastard and a Jew was about as bad as it could get. So he

Sidney Reilly

Sir Bruce Lockhart

faked his own death and jumped on the nearest ship headed for South America. According to Bruce Lockhart, Reilly’s introduction into Britain’s secret world of espionage came two years later, while he was living in Brazil. He’d been calling himself Pedro and was working as a cook on an expedition up the Amazon River when the opportunity arose. One night the party was attacked by bandits and Pedro singlehandedly fought them off. In doing so, he saved the life of a British Army Major – a man Bruce Lockhart identifies as Major Fothergill. Reilly’s bravery was rewarded with a hefty cheque for £1500, a British passport and safe passage to England. In London, Pedro became Sidney Reilly and was recruited, by the Major, into the British secret service. Ace Of Spies then goes on to describe Reilly embarking on the sort of fearless escapades that would give 007 a run for his money. At the time of its publishing, the book was considered to be the definitive account of Reilly’s life, providing the background to almost all of the later books or articles written on the subject – it was even adapted for television in the 1980s, with Sam Neill in the lead role. But while the book is never afraid to reflect on some of the more

unsavoury aspects of Reilly’s life, it reads like a boy’s own adventure story and is prone to exaggeration and, in some instances, pure fantasy. So how much of Ace Of Spies is true and who exactly was Sidney Reilly? His origins are hazy, to say the least. Reilly himself proved to be an unreliable source – he spent his whole life providing blind alleys for foreign governments and future researchers to stumble down, and about two photographs of himself. Georgy (or Georgi) Rosenblum, Sigmund Georgievich Rosenblum and Sigmund Markovich Rozenblum are just three of the names he gave as his true identity. He would variously tell people that his father was an Irish merchant seaman, a clergyman or a wealthy landowner with links to Alexander III of Russia. Or perhaps he was a stockbroker or a shipping agent. Was Reilly born in Russia, Poland or Ireland? His provenance defies scrutiny – the harder you look for the truth the more obscure it becomes. Reilly was probably born Salomon Rosenblum in either the Ukrainian port of Odessa, or 90 miles away in the town of Khershon. His exact birth date is unknown – 24th March 1874 has been suggested but is by no means conclusive – however, it is generally agreed that he was

born sometime between 1872 and 1874. He was of Polish Jewish descent and from a comfortable, middle class background. Reilly’s sudden flight out of Imperial Russia has less to do with his mother’s infidelity and more to do with the Okhrana (the Tsarist political police) who wanted to lock him up. He had already spent time in prison – as a student he’d been an activist and courier for a revolutionary group – and he had no intention of going back. As for Pedro and his Brazilian adventures, well, sadly it’s all nonsense – there was no Major Fothergill and Britain didn’t even form a foreign secret service until 1909. Rosenblum actually arrived in England late in the December of 1895. He was on the run from the French authorities after he and an accomplice had robbed and brutally murdered two Italian anarchists in Paris. Reilly escaped into the anonymity of London’s immigrant communities. He was a chameleon with the ability to pass himself off as any number of nationalities. Once established in the capital, Rosenblum (now using the Christian name Sigmund) went into the patent medicine business and it wasn’t long before he came to the attention of William Melville, head of Scotland Yard’s

Special Branch. Melville appreciated Rosenblum’s gift for languages and his easy European charm, and recruited him as a paid informant to spy on London’s Russian émigré community. Meanwhile, one of Rosenblum’s most loyal customers was the aged and sickly Reverend Hugh Thomas, whose inflamed kidneys could only be assuaged by one of Rosenblum’s miracle cures. He swore by them and the two men became friends. But the unfortunate Reverend was unaware that the cunning Sigmund had already seduced his young wife, Margaret, and was formulating a dastardly plot to relieve him of his considerable fortune. In 1898 Rosenblum persuaded the Reverend to alter his will so that Margaret, upon his death, would get the lot. Eight days later the old man was dead. Enter Dr T W Andrew, a man whose physical resemblance to Sigmund Rosenblum was uncanny. Luckily the good doctor was on hand to sign the death certificate. He determined, after a cursory glance, that the Reverend Thomas had been struck down by influenza (he definitely hadn’t been poisoned by arsenic) and there would be no need for an inquest. Needless to say, no evidence can be found to confirm the existence of a Dr T

Fanya Kaplan

W Andrew practicing medicine anywhere in Great Britain at that time. Within hours of his death, the old man was under the sod and Margaret was half a million pounds richer. Four weeks later she married Rosenblum. Rosenblum would escape justice again, this time, it seems, with the aid of his new chums at Special Branch, who provided two gentlemen to witness the nuptials, British citizenship and a new identity for Rosenblum. Sidney George Reilly had officially come into being. Reilly was now a wealthy man with the freedom to travel the world without any fear of being collared for his past misdemeanours. He quickly assumed the persona of the fashionable man-about-town he would later become famous for – he splashed out on lavish hotel suites, Savile Row tailoring and high stakes gaming tables. Margaret, of course, would eventually be abandoned; her use to Reilly had expired the moment the ink had dried on their marriage certificate. Reilly would use women in this way throughout his life. Although he was never considered to be particularly attractive in the physical sense, he did seem to have a magnetic effect on the opposite sex. Seduction came easily to him but he treated it as a means to an end, a tool to gain him money, power or political leverage –

women were simply there to be used and discarded. He would go on to have three wives that we know of and he probably married others using his many aliases, but he was never once divorced. Reilly’s work as a secret agent could now begin in earnest. During the Boer War, Britain sent him to Holland, where he masqueraded as a Russian arms dealer to spy on Dutch weapons shipments to the Boers. But while he maintained strong links to British intelligence throughout his career, Reilly never fully signed up to the national cause. In fact, it’s believed that Reilly spied for at least three other governments. In 1901 Reilly appeared in the Russian controlled Port Arthur in Manchuria, posing as a timber merchant. He spent the next three years familiarising himself with Russia’s defences, probably spying for the Japanese in the run up to the Russo-Japanese War. In 1906 he relocated to St Petersburg and began reporting back to London on the activities of the burgeoning underground revolutionary movement. However, he was also spying for the Tsarist regime and being handsomely paid for his services – he lived in a luxurious apartment, became a member of St Petersburg’s most exclusive gentlemen’s club and spent a small fortune on an extensive art

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collection. In 1909, growing hostilities between Britain and Germany meant conflict was becoming increasingly likely, and the newly formed Secret Service Bureau (forerunner to the Secret Intelligence service) was determined not to be caught with its trousers down. But much of the Kaiser’s preparations for hostilities, including munitions production, was highly classified, so the Ace of Spies was dispatched to Essen in Germany, disguised as a welder. Reilly’s mission was to gain employment in the Krupp munitions factory and to get his hands on a complete set of weapons blueprints. He soon found a job with the factory’s fire brigade and volunteered to produce a set of plans that would show the position of all of the factory’s extinguishers and hydrants. This gave Reilly access to the foreman’s office, where he could discreetly locate the vital blueprints. Early one morning, Reilly was caught by the foreman breaking into the office and was obliged to strangle the unfortunate man to death, before stealing the documents and making his getaway. Apart from that, the mission was a complete success. Reilly made it to a safe house, where the plans were divided into four parts and posted back to England. During the First World War, Reilly relocated to the United States in 1915. He spent most of the war in New York, working as an arms dealer, supplying munitions to both the German and Russian armies. It wasn’t until 1917 that he returned to espionage. He began to spy on domestic anti-capitalist groups for the American Government, while at the same time supplying the British Legation in New York with top secret commercial information gathered from some of America’s largest industries. But it was in Russia that Reilly would attempt his most audacious mission. In 1918 he was sent to Moscow to kill Vladimir Lenin. He arrived in Russia with a small group of agents, under the command of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, and quickly made contact with Russian counter revolutionary groups. Lockhart’s diplomatic status meant that details of the attempted coup were left for Reilly to organise. Reilly got to work infiltrating the Soviet secret police and bribing the Red Army troops guarding the Kremlin. He even posed as a Turkish businessman with socialist leanings to recruit the disillusioned leadership of the Latvian rifle division. The plan was to turn the Riflemen – Lenin’s Moscow bodyguard – into an anti-Bolshevik army that would seize power in the wake of the leadership’s removal. Lockhart, however, was beginning to have

doubts about Reilly’s true intentions, or even whose side he was actually on. He detected in Reilly a thirst for power and suspected that the spy had secret plans of his own to take control of the country for himself. The coup was planned for early September, but on 30th August Russian counter revolutionaries made their own attempt on Lenin’s life. A former anarchist called Fanya Kaplan (left) shot and wounded Lenin as he departed a Moscow arms factory. The reprisals were brutal; thousands of political opponents were arrested and mass executions took place across the city. The British conspirators were quickly identified and forced to flee the country. But Reilly couldn’t leave Russia alone. He’d been tried and sentenced to death in absentia by a revolutionary tribunal, but the following year he was back, reporting on anti-Bolshevik activities in South Russia and encouraging his spymasters to support a new uprising in that region. Later that year he was awarded the Military Cross for his efforts. In 1925 Reilly returned to his homeland for the final time. He travelled to the Soviet-Finnish border to meet with a pro-Monarchist organisation known as The Trust, in an attempt to organise yet another coup in Moscow. However, all was not as it seemed. In reality, The Trust was an elaborate counter intelligence operation created by Soviet agents to capture Reilly. Reilly crossed the border and was never seen again. He is believed to have been executed in a forest near Moscow on 5th November, 1925. Or maybe not. Reilly’s third wife, Pepita Bobadilla (right) claimed that Reilly was still alive as late as 1932, and there were many rumoured sightings of the spy all over Europe in the years following his supposed execution. Stories even began to circulate that Reilly had defected and that he was now working for the Soviets. Perhaps he had been spying for the Russians all along. We’ll never know the full story of Sidney Reilly’s career. The details have long since been lost or destroyed, and his death is similarly perplexing. But it’s clear that in life he was unrivalled in the field of espionage and he will always be remembered as Britain’s Ace of Spies. n

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Birding

Birding Chaps: George Montagu Nick Ostler explains how the Montagu Harrier got its name and gives some birding tips for Britain in the Spring

“It wasn’t until 21 years after his death that the species became known as ‘Montagu’s Harrier’. George would never know that his scientific rigour that day would secure immortality for his family name”

he last time I saw a Montagu’s Harrier I didn’t know what I was looking at. I had tracked the medium-sized, graceful raptor through my telescope as it fled Africa for the summer and crossed the Strait of Gibraltar towards our cliff-top perch. Now here it was, pausing to circle obligingly overhead against a clear blue Spanish sky. Its long, elegant wings looked good for a harrier, but which one? Those curiously black underparts had me stumped. Luckily I had two guides with me to help solve the mystery, Andrés de la Cruz from Cadiz Birding, and my trusty Collins Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe. Between them they confirmed that what we had in our sights was a melanistic Montagu’s Harrier – a rare aberration sporting darkened plumage. George Montagu himself had no such assistance when presented with his first sight of the ‘Ash-coloured falcon’ (the male of the species’ much more pleasing, usual colour scheme) that had been shot one late summer’s day in 1803 near his Devon home. What he did have was an unerringly keen eye, and he knew that with its darker grey upper parts, rusty-

streaked underparts and overall slimmer frame than the more familiar Hen Harrier, this bird was something new. Years later, Charles Darwin himself would praise Montagu’s field craft, saying “Few more careful observers ever lived.” It wasn’t until 1836, however, some 21 years after his death, that the species became known officially as ‘Montagu’s Harrier’. George would never know that his scientific rigour that day would secure immortality for his family name. Given the shame and scandal that had engulfed his life up to this point, that is something his family would have been forgiven for thinking an implausible legacy.

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Alphabetical Synopsis of British Birds – George handling the research and text, Elizabeth the illustrations. It accurately described several newly separated and discovered species and paved the way for the field guides that are now the staple of any modern birder’s bookshelf. Since George Montagu’s time, many species he would have known well, such as the Red Backed Shrike and the Wryneck, have disappeared from our shores. As for the Montagu’s Harrier, it has never been common in the UK and is now our rarest breeding bird of prey. That a handful of pairs still return to secret nest sites in Norfolk and the South-West is thanks to the work of the RSPB and lesser known modern-day Montagus, such as Bob Image and the late Dr. Roger Clarke. Despite their efforts, ‘Sally’, the tagged female Montagu’s Harrier made famous by the BBC’s Autumnwatch, is feared to have been illegally shot in 2017. Today’s field guides may be stuffed with the names of the men and women who identifyied the birds we take for granted – the Bewick’s Swan, Cetti’s Warbler, Lady Amherst’s Pheasant and Montagu’s Harrier. But their hard won immortality will mean little if we allow those species that bear their names to disappear forever from our skies. n

Descended from the first Earl of Manchester, George was a soldier by the age of sixteen, and seemed destined for a solid, if unremarkable, career as an officer in the 15th Regiment of Foot. Aged 20, Lieutenant Montagu showed the first signs of a rebellious spirit when he eloped with Ann Courtenay, niece of the 3rd Earl of Bute. A posting to America during the War of Independence seems to have reignited a childhood interest in wildlife. Upon his return to England he raised six children with Ann and achieving the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. When his older brother James died in 1797, all George had to do to inherit his family estates was agree to one condition – to live there with his wife. But there was a rather large hitch. George had been conducting an affair with Mrs. Elizabeth Dorville, the wife of a London merchant. Abandoning their families, the pair now relocated to Knowle House near Kingsbridge in Devon. The scandal that followed would see George court-marshalled out of the military, and years of costly legal disputes with his eldest son. Despite their self-imposed exile from polite society, the move would see George and Elizabeth raise four children and create one of the seminal works of early natural history – The Ornithological Dictionary or

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ID ESSENTIALS: SPRING Nick Ostler gives a brief list of the more common species one may spot around Britain during the spring

Swallow

House Martin

Swift

Three aerial migrants you are likely to see this spring are the Swallow, House Martin and Swift. Every self-respecting chap ought to be able to tell them apart by asking three basic questions: WHAT’S THE DATE? Anything before late April and chances are it’s NOT a Swift. They return to the U.K. quite late, mainly in May. WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE? All three species are small, fast fliers with pointy wings, but there are some key differences. If it’s all dark and sickle-shaped, it’s a Swift. If it’s white underneath, it’s a Swallow or House Martin.

House Martin

Long tail streamers? It’s a Swallow. White rump and short, forked tail? House Martin. If you get a close enough view to see red on the face, it’s a Swallow. In fact Swifts are dark brown, and Swallows and House Martins have glossy blue backs. In reality, you’ll be looking up at them and they’ll either appear ‘black’ or ‘black and white’.

WHAT’S IT DOING? If it is perching on wires or swooping very low to the ground with strong, elegant wing-beats, chances are it’s a Swallow – so look for tail streamers and red on the face. And if you’re on a farm and it’s flying in and out of a barn, then bet the house on Swallow (its official name is even ‘Barn Swallow’). If it is circling at rooftop height with fluttery wing-beats, perhaps making a rattling raspberry noise and visiting a small mud nest under the eaves, it’s a House Martin. If it is scything through the air much higher up at immense speed and screaming loudly, perhaps over a pub garden on a sunny evening, that’s a Swift. Just to confuse matters, there is one other British hirundine you might come across – the Sand Martin – basically a light brown version of the House Martin. Always seen near water, they nest in large colonies in sand banks. The last time I saw Sand Martins they were streaming past me in their hundreds as I tucked into an insanely tasty Mexican flatbread and catch of the day outside the legendary Dungeness Snack Shack. Sand Martin

SPRING MIGRANTS

Many of our best-known summer birds have suffered drastic declines in recent decades due to habitat loss and the horrendous slaughter by hunters along their migration routes, in places like Malta. It’s now not unusual for me to go a whole year without seeing or hearing a Nightingale, Cuckoo or Turtle Dove. Some migrants are, however, still relatively easy to find in the UK every spring.

Chiffchaff

Willow Warbler

CHIFFCHAFF & WILLOW WARBLER – common olive-green/yellow warblers that can be seen anywhere from March. Very hard to tell apart visually, so best separated by their song - Chiffchaff with its far-carrying chiff-chaffchiff-chaff (hence the funny name), Willow with its descending scale. If, like me, you’ve spotted one in your garden before March, it’s probably a Chiffchaff as an increasing number over-winter in the U.K. thanks to global warming.

WHEATEAR – often the first migrant I see, usually on a coastal walk in mid- March, proudly posing on a rock or running about on a grassy hillside. Black and white at a distance, a riot of subtle oranges and blues up close, the clincher is often the bright white rump seen when flying. Wheatear

Whitethroat

REED WARBLER/SEDGE WARBLER – another pair of summer warblers that are fairly easily found from mid-April, though always in reedbeds rather than woods or gardens. Unlike Chiffchaff/Willow Warbler, it’s much easier to tell these two apart by their looks rather than songs (each a long-winded series of bubbles and squeaks which I still find hard to distinguish). Both are warm brown above and pale below, but what you need to look out for is the Sedge’s bold pale eye stripe.

Common Tern

WHITETHROAT – common olive-green/yellow warblers that can be seen anywhere from March. Very hard to tell apart visually, so best separated by their song - Chiffchaff with its far-carrying chiff-chaff-chiff-chaff (hence the funny name), Willow with its descending scale. If, like me, you’ve spotted one in your garden before March, it’s probably a Chiffchaff as an increasing number over-winter in the U.K. thanks to global warming.

Sedge Warbler

Reed Warbler

COMMON TERN – from April be sure to double-check those seagulls, especially if they seem more slim and elegant than usual and are flying with a buoyant, swallow-like flight (the old name for Tern is even ‘sea swallow’). Several species spend the summer here, but Common, with its white underparts, silvery-grey back, neat black cap and orangey-red bill (with easy to miss black tip) is, well, the commonest.

Interview

John Bly Alex Smythe-Smith meets the Antiques Roadshow presenter in his Tring home to discuss cravats, James Bond’s misnamed cocktails and whether he ever appeared on television sober

he depth of hue radiating from red walls is reminiscent of the finest Reserve Ruby Port. Subdued lighting complements a myriad of bookshelves, crammed with digests about antiques, displays of family photographs and a desk teeming with administrative paraphernalia. The aura of John Bly’s inner sanctum is one of a maverick who is as professionally active now as when he first absorbed the intimacies of the antiques business over seven decades ago. “I was born in a courtyard behind the family shop in May 1939,” John elucidates,

“I was once asked about a 1930s cocktail cabinet and ended up talking more about the man’s dog. On Antiques Roadshow I’d arrive in the evening and have drinks. It was great fun. I didn’t do a sober one for 15 years” 107

John with son James in their antique emporium

Metal alloys, however, were far from the only stimuli rousing the young boy’s interest. Persistent pestering of an employee in the shop to share a roll-up led to said worker assuring John’s mother that the act of smoking would not only make her son sick, but also put him off indulging again. Did the plan work? “I’ve smoked ever since. I was eight years old but didn’t inhale until I was 16.” Leaving school with “The great honour of having only one O Level – Art – and I cheated at that,” John took up employment at Sotheby’s, numbering items to be auctioned, cleaning silver with spirits of salt and learning hallmarks. After four years he joined the family business. “Becoming a partner showed enormous trust from my father. I was unemployable, really. If I hadn’t spent so much time in the Coach and Horses I’d have been really clever.” Such was the reputation of Bly Antiques that film stars such as Rex Harrison, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were regular customers. Terry-Thomas, temporarily living in nearby

“If a martini is shaken, it’s called a Bradford. I wrote to Cubby Broccoli with this information; he wrote back saying ‘mind your own business’!” simultaneously leading me through to the dining room, which features an abundant drinks cabinet and a particularly large black box, containing a particularly large bottle of Jack Daniels. “My father was convinced that Hitler would bomb Tring, where we had a big furniture showroom. After my father was called up, my mother and her mother-in-law ran the business together. Every night the antiques were wrapped and stored in the cellar, then unwrapped and returned to the window each morning. I listened, and learned the difference between bronze and brass, and how pewter is made.”

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Northchurch, also visited the shop, and Dirk Bogarde once parked his yellow and black Rolls Royce on the High Street, in order to pop in for a chat. John recalls attending the matinee idol’s Amersham home where, between starter, primary dish and pudding, guests were tempted with “intercourse cigarettes.”

until he momentarily sidetracks to show me a diamond-peppered wine glass, and then shares details of some 007-related correspondence. “If a martini is shaken, it’s called a Bradford. I wrote to Cubby Broccoli with this information; he wrote back saying ‘mind your own business’!” Venturing on to the topic of motor vehicles, John is reminded of his first car, a Morris 8, which his grandmother had restored for him, and a memorable crash in an MG TD. “I dented all five wheels, including the spare on the back. I got out to see the contents of my glove compartment – half a bottle of scotch, a pack of cards and a garter, my life at the time – spilled over the road.” During this period, John was playing drums for a six-piece Dixieland band; one of whose gigs, at the Derby Arms in Aylesbury, aroused more than satisfaction from percussion. “A blonde walked in and caught my eye. An art student, she had Bridget Bardot hair, white lipstick and fishnet stockings. For two years Virginia thought I was a drummer; I didn’t tell her I was in the antiques business. We married 51 years ago.” Amid the Bohemian air of their 1920s home, a couple of miles from the original Hertfordshire family shop, John fondly recollects wearing cravats at school while playing tennis and cricket, and is agog at anyone who fails to appreciate the opportunity of dressing up. “My first suit was made by a theatrical tailor in Soho. How can you take someone seriously if they are not wearing neck attire? My favourite cravat wearer is, of course, my son, James.” We veer from John’s most cherished personal antique accoutrement – a Wade and Butcher tortoiseshell razor – to the relaxation which cooking kindles, followed by his attentiveness to social niceties. “I always hand write Thank You letters,” he declares, “simply because there is nothing nicer than receiving one.” The climax of this most entertaining morning comes when John’s chivalrous tendencies prompt him to accompany me to my car. During our perambulation, he shares his love of mid-18th century “gentleman furniture – elegant and sophisticated”, before responding to my final question. The cad and the bounder, do they still exist in the antiques world? His response is delivered with a mischievous smile. “Are there are any other people?” n

“A blonde walked in and caught my eye. An art student, she had Bridget Bardot hair, white lipstick and fishnet stockings. For two years Virginia thought I was a drummer; I didn’t tell her I was in the antiques business. We married 51 years ago” Regular luncheons at Aston Clinton’s The Bell later forged a chance encounter which led to a career in television. “Among the frequent diners was the Head of Religious Education Broadcasting at Thames TV. When she moved to Anglia, she asked if I’d like to do a 3-4 minute slot on Anglia News. This led to a half-hour programme, Heirloom. During the second year of Antiques Roadshow, someone dropped out of a shoot in Ely, and they wondered if I’d stop off on my way back from filming in Norwich.” Thus began a lengthy collaboration between one of the country’s most experienced art collectors and a BBC flagship show. Although being in front of the camera is not the lure for John, he continues to appreciate other spin-offs. “I quite enjoy people recognising me in the street. I find it easier to do a piece to camera on a ginger nut biscuit than about a piece of furniture I don’t like. I was once asked about a 1930s cocktail cabinet and ended up talking more about the man’s dog. Antiques Roadshow took up one day per week. I’d arrive in the evening, have drinks. It was great fun. I didn’t do a sober one for 15 years.” The variety of alcoholic beverages John partakes of repeatedly penetrates our discourse,

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Music

DARREN HAYMAN Ferris Newton meets the English singer whose thoughtful, whimsical musings on England have brought about his own adjective, Haymanesque

grey day in Croydon, early autumn, rain in the air. The clock outside the undertakers on George Street had stopped. I made my way to the museum to meet Darren Hayman. For those chaps unfamiliar with Mr. Hayman’s oeuvre, he was the front man of a band called Hefner. Darlings of the late 90s indie scene, Hefner were known for Hayman’s articulate lyrics of love and loss and a stripped down, skittering sound – as if Lonnie Donegan were fronting the Velvet Underground. While most indie rockers are now lecturers in comparative literature or recluses with smallholdings, Mr. Hayman kept going – producing increasingly intriguing work that is hard to describe, but imagine

the spirit of M.R. James, passing through the ghost stories into stripped-down songs sung to piano,

“Mick Jagger is still singing about meeting girls on street corners! No-one likes a fat mod. Bowie grew into his age – with the unfortunate exception of the drum ‘n’ bass experiments with facial hair” 112

ukulele or vintage electronica; the wheezing of old pump organs trapped in the brickwork of Methodist chapels; the villages, silent churches and lonely fields of England; suburbs, edgelands, new towns. The Haymanesque. When I arrived, Mr. Hayman was talking to his friend, a Labour councillor, about London’s underground rivers, forgotten tube stations and the ghost of Croydon’s Addiscombe line. From abandoned Victorian engineering, we move logically to music. Mr. Hayman has mastered a problem that bedevils those who have grown up in the music industry: how to remain authentic. “I mean,” he says, “Mick Jagger is still singing about meeting girls on street corners!” It is important to age gracefully; as

Hayman wryly points out, “No one likes a fat mod. Bowie grew into his age – with the unfortunate exception of the drum ‘n’ bass experiments with facial hair.” Hayman insists on “appropriateness.” Whether laying down the fat riffing Old Man, Don’t Waste Your Time at Sidcup Working Men’s Club or striding the muddy fields, he remains a man whose music is appropriate: true to real life, in all its loneliness and glory. Mr. Hayman certainly dresses like a chap – a bohemian who divides his time between walking his parson’s terrier, the graft of music making and Edward Thomas-like wanderings. He is proud of possessing a “wardrobe of tweed” and knows the joy that only a good hat can bring. Most notable,

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ing boots well suited to “walking Mini the dog” and covering the miles. Know an artist by his muse – and his shoes. As any chap knows, though, it’s not just about the clothes. It’s what you do while wearing them that counts. Our august journal has frequently celebrated the noble arts of the chap as one who sets his face against a tawdry world. Mr. Hayman’s musical art celebrates this spirit. Throughout his career, he has kept creative control over what he does and how he does it. With Mr. Hayman’s music, the listener gets something well-made, not what some kidult music executive thinks fit to be a commodity. To get the range and scale of the work, it is best to move backwards from his latest project: the inspired epic of popular memorialisation that is Thankful Villages (2016-8). A thankful village was one to which all the men who went off to the Great War returned alive. Mr. Hyman has visited them all, tracking ghosts and historical echoes along field lines, to village greens and lonely churches. “You cannot just write love songs,” as he points out. The recordings that make up the three-volume project are compiled from interviews with villagers, as well as psycho-geographical experiments in place and memory. The bracelet of an American bomber pilot discovered in a ploughed field can inspire a song as much as the gurgling of drains and gutters. “After one show,” Hayman recalls, “we ended up drinking with the village cricket team, who had not been to see us play, late into the night.” This odyssey of England puts Hayman in the company of artists like Maxim Griffin, chroniclers of connections, wanderings and strange epiphanies. Prior to Thankful Villages there was a series of albums exploring the frustrations and triumphs of small-town Essex lives; a pastoral of A-roads,

however, is a very fine knitted tank top, sported in the video for Old Man, Don’t Waste Your Time: “Oh, that – it came from a gent’s outfitters on Islington High Road. I think it shut down a long time ago. Probably a restaurant now.” Alongside Paul McCartney, Mr. Hayman is the only rocker known to have sported such a garment. Critical of Macca’s forever-young hair policy (denounced as ‘the male blue rinse’), Hayman does, though, confess to wearing brown in town: if only a pair of stout walk-

“The Haymanesque is Penge Common, municipal lidos, caravan holidays, the refuge of the favourite café, rutted lanes leading to dark woods, station waiting rooms with old fireplaces, fields and rivers glimpsed from a train on a branch line” 114

Piano or I Know I Fucked Up. Therefore the adjective ‘Haymanesque’ is justified. It has been pointed out that Mr. Hayman is the spiritual successor of Ray Davies, but the Haymanesque is not a wistful evocation of Carnaby Street or the North London demi-monde of the Muswell hillbillies, bowties and light ale. Nor is the Haymanesque the village green preservation society. It is Penge Common, municipal lidos, caravan holidays, the refuge of the favourite café, long walks and brief escapes, rutted lanes leading to dark woods, station waiting rooms with old fireplaces, fields and rivers glimpsed from a train on a branch line, the blurred boundary between the past and the present, history and a lover’s kiss. The lunchtime crowd was turning up in the café at Croydon Museum. We had been talking all morning and it was time to go. As I walked back through the drizzle to East Croydon, the undertaker’s clock showed the same time. The train took me away, into London, grey on grey. n

laybys and estates over old farm land; music that leads back to a different time. Indeed, if you listen to records like The Green and the Grey (2011) or Essex Arms (2010), you feel a shift from personal memory to something else: the trauma of the Civil War and the witch trials of the 1600s – the inspiration for The Violence (2012). “You can visit the Essex witch country,” he says, “You can stand where Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General, stood.” But there is nothing there. However, if you listen carefully, you might just catch “the creaking of the scaffold” on which they hanged Elizabeth Clarke. Perhaps the most haunting of all Mr. Hayman’s projects, however, is a record called Lido (2012). Dedicated to lost swimming pools, Mr. Hayman describes Lido as composed “of field recordings of places that are no longer there” but somehow present – and set to tunes both jaunty and melancholic – evoking Jubilee Pool, Saltdean and Black Rock Baths, echoes of the laughter of forgotten summers. Chaps who read too much poetry tend to carry with them the ‘curse of the literary’– the desire to over-interpret. While it would not be unreasonable to find in Mr. Hayman’s lyrics something of Phillip Larkin’s sensibility, he is himself somewhat dismissive: “A lyric writer is not a poet.” Words and music come together, “Chords are a kind of punctuation,” he insists. Mr. Hayman sees his music as rooted in his response to people and situations: hence the importance of “Getting out and visiting places to pick up a word, a tune, a line. Field recordings are useful, the creak of a chair can be part of the atmosphere of a song or a recording, as is so beautifully realised in Nuns Run the Apothecary on Florence (2015). However, Mr Hayman chuckles, there is still something delightful about a “properly miked up drum kit.” So this is not a cult of the whimsical or the happy accident. Mr. Hayman’s aesthetic is “Finish it! You get the idea in an instant.” In the end the test is physical: the tingle down the spine; the emotional precision of ‘Josephine’, the regret of Boy, Look At What You Cannot Have Now, the melancholic history of The Ship’s

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Drink

The Chap Loves A Drink Olly Smith prepares for the monumental celebrations of The Chap’s 100th edition this May by suggesting suitable libations

“Glengoyne seems to me the best whisky to mark the passing hundred of The Chap because, as the Lowlands lead to the Highlands, the first hundred Chaps will surely lead to the second hundred”

n the perfect dose, cascading into the correct vessel and served in the brightest company, few pleasures rival the capacity of a decent drink to exaggerate the sheer splendour of breathing. In my experience, alcohol in its panoply of flavours leads to soaring thoughts and sometimes

song via detonations of deliciousness. As I scribble these reflections on the brilliance of booze, I am recovering, glass in hand, between extreme episodes of hurling myself down frozen pinnacles on modern planks. The Alps are gleaming at me, the sky is pillowing with frozen fluff and it occurs to me that

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skiing is very much like a damn good drink – everything is at once compressed and elongated. While skiing – or enthralled by the world’s best drink – the senses are compelled to react under the exquisite pressure of sheer enjoyment. As we approach the monumental occasion of The Chap achieving 100 editions this coming May, this calls for a couple of deep dives into liquid lunacy – I’ll come to the second after the first. Primarily this forthcoming 100th edition should serve as a testament to the ineffable grit of the soul incarcerated in Gustav’s hot frame. One of the great joys of writing for this particular bible of galoshes is that, thanks to Gustav’s lead in curating words underscored by passion, one can wade deeply through sentences that are sometimes deep, but which always run fast. Without Gustav and his merry band, the roof would have fallen in and the rats would have had free rein in the cellar – nibbling at the corks and hoping for more. They shan’t get at the liquid, for it is ours and ours alone. But what are the ultimate boozes to raise to 100 iterations of a rat-free cellar? A pint of beer, of course. Ideally in a dimpled jug. Harvey’s Best is indeed the best but frankly whatever is local, in good condition and plentiful

supply I will gladly encourage. As for wine? All of it. But in particular, take great heart in the quality of our local British bubbly. It’s an altogether correct way to commence celebrations of this magazine’s maiden century, as we gently clap it back to the pavilion and wonder, given our current state of gentle inebriation, how the hell we are all going to get home. In the meantime, here are three effervescent English ambassadors to commit to memory: 1. Breaky Bottom (no giggling, it’s excellent, full stop) 2. C amel Valley (their rosé is so good it makes your ears pop before the cork) 3. H ambledon (their Premiere Cuvée is the absolute balls) But perhaps the best drink to raise to The Chap is whisky. Whisky is the fire that ignites the silliness of dreamy ambition – and then delivers it with the next sip. Many space shuttles and symphonies owe their very inception to a dram of fierce Scottish power and, as I type this, I am drinking the work of the only distillery in Britain that is both in the Highlands as well as The Lowlands. I know this, for I have visited Glengoyne, founded in 1833, and with the Alps filling my eyes I am swigging their 18-year-old (43%) from my hip flask and it is making me smile for all of its outrageously mellow beauty. Aside from

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being the pinnacle of silent pep talks, it seems to me the best whisky to mark the The Chap’s century because, as the Lowlands lead to the Highlands, the first hundred Chaps will surely lead to the second hundred. And the whisky itself tastes like a payload of marzipan delivered on a missile of malt. The only other drink that is permissible to celebrate this gregarious centenary is The Bloody Mary. Yes, I know that good, even great vodka can be enjoyed neat, but for £34.95 you can find Beluga Noble Russian (40%) from the Whisky Exchange, which can do both. Your Bloody Mary will require you to buy the finest spice mix in Britain, which is

HAMBLEDON £45 hambledonvineyard.co.uk

CAMEL VALLEY £29.95 camelvalley.com

BREAKY BOTTOM £26.99 breakybottom.co.uk

BLOODY BEN’S £7.50 bloodybens.com

Bloody Ben’s Bloody Mary Mix. I’ve no idea how much it costs because it is so delicious it really doesn’t matter – I buy the large bottles in doses of six, because the flavour of this outrageous elixir, merged with plush tomato juice over ice with a slice, makes the world seem better in every single way. And there you have it. Beer, fizz, whisky and a cocktail as red and fiery as this day is large and luminous. “Don’t worry, be happy,” sang Bobby McFerrin. He’s bang on. Here’s to a hundred more Chaps, in the meantime, thank you Gustav and Bobby for the truth, splendour and wild beauty of it all. But most of all, here’s to you – just keep breathing. n

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GLENGOYNE £75.40 masterofmalt.com

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Travel

Quito, Ecuador Neil Hennessy-Vass heads to the Equator to purchase a Panama Hat and a suit, and to see the sights of old Quito while he’s there

“Carludovica Palmata, or the Torquilla Palm, is the scientific name for the plant used to weave the world famous Panama hats. Why are they called Panama hats yet are made in Ecuador, I hear you ask?”

ne of the fourteen countries that straddle the Equator, Ecuador took its name from that imaginary line and offers an engaging place for the traveller to explore with much historical interest, museums and art galleries but, more significantly, it’s the best place in the world to buy a Panama hat. I took a trip out to the far-flung continent of South America to find out what a chap really needs to know about the intoxicating capital of Quito.

This is a country where avocados grow all year round and there are only two seasons: wet and dry, although it might well rain in the afternoon in the dry season. November to April is usually the wettest; it can be chilly at night and hot in the day so pack layers – think flannel rather than tweed. You’ll need stout walking shoes and a good waterproof jacket, and you can get a new Panama hat while you’re there (see below). Although taxis are cheap and plentiful (the minimum fare is only $1.50

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and you can get practically anywhere in the city for less than $10), I would urge you to walk, especially in the historic colonial centre, where youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll see so many more interesting places that are not accessible by car. Quito is long and thin and runs roughly northeast to southwest in the northern highlands of Ecuador and the eastern flanks of Pichincha Volcano. With a population of 2.6 million and predominantly low-rise buildings, the city is spread out. Traces of pre-Columbian life go back 8000 years BCE, but Quito is best known for the colonial period, from 1535 to 1822, after the 12-year struggle for independence was finally successful. It was during this time that the historic centre was developed, and in 1978 it became the first UNESCO World Heritage site in the world. You will find a multitude of architectural disciplines including Gothic, Moorish and Rococo. A perfect example of Rococo is Santo Domingo Church, owned by the Dominican order and designed by Francisco Beccera in 1581. It has an intricate wooden Moorish ceiling constructed with no nails or screws, and frescoes that were added in the 1800s. Its piece de resistance is The Chapel of

Our Lady of the Rosary (right), an overwhelming golf-leaf covered Rococo masterpiece. You can even ascend to the roof with a guide, though this is not for the squeamish or portly â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the route up is through dark narrow passages and steep spiral staircases. The reward is a splendid view of the old city and the knowledge that you managed to get up there, so you should be able to get down again.

PANAMA HATS Carludovica Palmata, or the Torquilla Palm, is the scientific name for the plant used to weave the world famous Panama hats. Why are they called Panama hats yet are made in Ecuador, I hear you ask? The Panama Canal was built between 1881 and 1914, mainly using Ecuadorian labour, and to stave off the heat they wore what the hats they had been wearing for hundreds of years. The Panama Hat dates back to pre-Inca days and a tribe called the Xipixapas, who are said to have first developed the intricate weaving required to make a proper hat. So secret were the skills needed to create these beautiful hats that the indigenous tribes never revealed to the Spanish conquistadors how it was

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done, much to their consternation. The process is quite elaborate and can take weeks or months if the weave count is high. Some hats can sell for $1000s. You could go to one of the swanky shops in the centre of Quito to buy a hat, but I chose to visit a lady who had been making them since she was a little girl. Her shop is on Junín E1-44 and Juan Pío Montufar in the San Marcos district. The hat I bought had taken her two days to weave and cost the princely sum of $50.

Man, a building designed by Oswaldo and his two architect sons to house a national collection of his works. Completed after his death, it has his largest painting, ‘Condor’, depicting a fight between a condor (representing the Andean people) and a bull (colonialism).

BUYING A SUIT Now what would any self-respecting chap need to pair with his newly purchased authentic Panama hat? Why, a bespoke suit of course. There are several good tailors in Quito and, again, you could go to the centre and find a perfectly respectable tailor, but at a price. The canny chap will seek out somebody like Gonzalo Vargas, at Cuenca N8.30 Y Manabi, who’s been making men’s clothes for 37 years. His shop is tiny and in disarray and his workbench is a bit messy, but he creates award-winning attire for the discerning gent on the move. Gonzalo will make you a three-piece from $110 for the manufacturing, plus the fabric. He stocks a multitude of fine yarns so you should find something you like, and he

ART GALLERIES

The national hero and godfather of Ecuadorean art is Oswaldo Guayasamín. After graduating from the Quito School of Fine Arts he travelled extensively around South America in the 1940s, constantly struck by the indigenous inequality around him, and this became the main thrust of all his work. Guayasamín’s house is now an open museum and a fascinating visit, as he was also an avid art collector and the walls are dotted with insightful pieces. Next door to his house is the Chapel of

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also makes bespoke shirts. So why should you use Gonzalo? For many years he made suits for Peter Romero, the American ambassador in Ecuador – a fine endorsement if ever there was one.

ceviche with onion, crab with coconut, lamb with flava beans and nougat with apple were just some of the delectable dishes. The ‘experience’ part of the hotel is a rather unique opportunity to try various new skills. I had a go at gold-leafing a statue destined for a church. Tasting chocolate and coffee can be attempted, as well as watercolour painting with a local artist. This was a very enjoyable couple of hours in the most sublime of settings with the most charming of men. Quito is a quixotic blend of history, the bestpreserved buildings in Latin America’s Spanish history, charming people and superb food. At nearly 3000 metres, the altitude takes it toll on the system initially, but plenty of water and the odd aspirin takes care of it. The symptoms are headaches and shortness of breath – so perhaps leave that ascent up to the roof of The Chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary until later in your stay. n

ACCOMMODATION Casa Aliso Boutique Hotel in the La Floresta district, known for its restaurants and nightlife, was once a Doctor’s surgery, and it has the feeling of a home from home, with a small library, garden and excellent multilingual staff. My second hotel was a grander affair. Hotel Castillo Vista Del Angel claims to have the finest view in Quito, perched on one of the many hills on the edge of the old town. The food is superb (three-course breakfast anyone?) and views as commanding as promised. Finally I stayed at Illa Experience Hotel, listed in Time Magazine’s ‘Best places in the world’. The Illa Experience is something rather special; with only 10 rooms, it has a cutting-edge restaurant run by Alejandro Chamorro from Noma in Copenhagen. The food is quite simply stunning food: shrimp

For further information on travel to Quito, visit www.quitotravel.ec

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CLOTHING FROM THE

nly a few examples remain of our three-piece suit, made especially for The Chap by Edinburgh tweed merchants Walker Slater. The suit is made in a medium-weight Shetland wool with a distinctive â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;birdseyeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; weave, in brown or blue, and each of the three elements is also available as an individual garment. Once they are all sold, the suit will be discontinued and replaced with a new collection.

www.thechap.co.uk/shop

REVIEWS •

Author interview: William Boyd (p128) Book Reviews (p132) • JP Donleavy: The Ginger Man Letters (p136) • Film: The Comfort of Strangers (p142) • Peter O'Toole (p144) • Restaurant: The Ivy in The Lanes (p152) • Art: Otto Dix (p154)

Author Interview

WILLIAM BOYD Alexander Larman meets the great British novelist at his London home, to discuss a career that began in 1981 with the novel A Good Man In Africa

f one had to name the greatest novelist of his or her generation, then William Boyd is surely one of the main contenders. Beginning his career in 1981 with the hilarious, scabrous A Good Man In Africa, Boyd has since written another fourteen novels, along with many volumes of non fiction and short stories, which cumulatively have led to a level of critical and commercial success that have left most of his contemporaries grinding their teeth in envy. Prolific and seemingly committed to his craft in a way that writers half his age could only marvel at, Boyd’s knack for writing gripping and hugely readable books with serious intellectual clout is a very rare art indeed. I met him to talk about fame’s upsides and downsides, his friendship with David Bowie and what it’s like to follow in Ian Fleming’s footsteps and write a James Bond novel, Solo.

“I’m constantly being judged by people, and I accept that there might be a certain amount of malice involved. But it’s ephemeral; it may ruin your lunch, but it shouldn’t ruin your dinner” thought, ‘What? What’s your definition of porn?’ I get reviewed for other work too – films, television, plays – so I’m constantly being judged by people, and I accept that there might be a certain amount of malice involved. But it’s ephemeral; it may ruin your lunch, but it shouldn’t ruin your dinner.

CHAP: You’ve usually had terrific reviews for your books. Was it ever thus? WB: My first book was accused of being pornography – in the Evening Standard, no less – and I

CHAP: Your books run the gauntlet between comedy, often quite dark comedy, and

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the Cold War, or WWII. I loved the idea of not having a swastika in sight. It was a complicated spy novel, and the title reflected the idea of its characters being unsettled. I didn’t change publishers for ideological reasons, but for corporate ones; we had a rueful divorce of sorts. It was decided that literary fiction was worth ‘X’, and everybody who presented a literary novel would be capped at a certain level, and certain authors – including me – thought, ‘There are six other publishers who will pay what I’m asking’. So I think that Penguin, my initial publisher, regretted their decision, and now I’m back with them again. I’ve had a few forking paths – a few rollercoasters – but I am instinctively loyal and like to stick with the people who like my books.

seriousness. How does this exhibit itself ? WB: My earlier novels were more overtly comic novels, though I think Ordinary Thunderstorms is quite funny as well. There’s always some humour lurking below the surface. Incidentally, that was a book that was reviewed terribly, until a couple of late notices, one in the Guardian and one in the FT; I felt that some of the critics had dashed off their copy without bothering to read or engage with it properly. Over the course of what has now been quite a long career, one does feel that some people have their own agenda, and your perceived reputation becomes apparent in the way that you’re written about. ‘Time he was taken down a peg or three.’ Often, I know who the reviewer is, too. But it comes with the territory, and it doesn’t keep me awake at night.

CHAP: What was your experience of writing a James Bond novel? Can we expect to see it filmed post-Daniel Craig? WB: I took enormous pains over my James Bond novel, and am proud to put it on the shelf next to my others. I don’t think, unfortunately, that it will ever be filmed; the rights to the films are owned by the Broccoli family, and the Flemings own the literary character, and never the twain shall meet. Solo is set in 1969, and all the canonical Bond films

CHAP: You changed publisher about a decade ago, and there was a perception that your work became more commercial as a result. Is that fair? WB: I don’t think it is, actually. When I changed publisher to release Restless, I had wanted to write a spy novel about what you surrender as a human being – namely, ‘trust’ – and one that wasn’t set in

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are set in the years that they’re made. Personally, I’d rather see a retro Bond than the 2019 version we’ll see next, but they’ll never do that. None of the continuation novels have ever been picked up for cinema. But then if you look at the early Bond films, and novels – such as the one I think is the best of both, From Russia With Love – they’d never make it like that now. There would be car chases and glamorous locations; the needs of the franchise, and a long way from the novels.

production, and I get a trickle of royalties. It was a surreal experience, watching the play, as I know no Russian but understand all of what was going on. I even had to make a speech, via my translator. I thought I could get away with a few token thanks, but she made it clear that it had to be very long, so I rambled on. It’s a funny world, the theatre, and I’m a new boy in it, and learning a lot about it, but I love it. It’s a fantastic medium for a writer, and better than film and television, in that the collaboration between writers, actors – who always have something to say – and directors is really stimulating. I’m not precious about my text – it’s infinitely malleable and continually changing. Once a film is made, or a novel’s published, it’s set in cement, but live theatre… I saw Longing about 25 times when it was on, just to see how it constantly changed night after night, with the audience’s response stimulating the actors, and trying new things.

CHAP: You’ve also worked in film and theatre. What have been the highlights, and challenges, that you had there? WB: I’ve written a lot of films – and, by the standards of the industry – had a lot made. But I’ve always loved the theatre and am a great theatregoer; have been ever since university, when I was the theatre critic of the student newspaper. It’s a mystery to me as to why I didn’t do plays earlier, but I think for a long time I thought that they were interchangeable with film scripts, which of course they’re not. My first play, Longing, came about from an abortive BBC commission, in which I stitched three Chekhov short stories together. (It was cancelled because ‘they’d done the Russians’.) So I thought ‘maybe there’s a play there’, and thought it would be easy. Five years later… everyone seemed to like it, and it was eventually staged at the Hampstead Theatre by Nina Raine in 2013, and was a great success for a first play. It’s actually still on in St Petersburg – it’s in repertory in a beautiful theatre in a very lavish

CHAP: Do you ever re-read your novels, and if so what is that like? WB: The time that I re-read my novels is when I adapt them, and I’ve adapted almost all of them for television or film, apart from Solo and The New Confessions. So I go back to them with a forensic approach – ‘what can we carve out of this?’ And you look at your younger sensibilities in a different way; you also realise that film has its own utterly distinctive potential and effects. The novel has utter freedom and flexibility; film, by way of contrast, brings mind-boggling frustration. Not aesthetic ones – it’s the nature of the medium.

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Author Interview

Film is photography, and can offer one point of view, via the camera lens, so if you want to do something subtle or (dread word) suggestive, it’s almost impossible.

for a film, and it might end up being a better medium for it. I find that, initially, one engages with the writer’s work, and then you engage with the writer as a person afterwards. Poetry-wise, Larkin’s a great favourite of mine, along with Auden, Heaney, Hughes and Elizabeth Bishop. Larkin has this reputation as a misanthrope and a grump, but in fact he’s almost a 19th century Romantic, something that becomes clear when one reads the whole body of work. There’s a lot of quiveringly intense poetry, which one might imagine that he would mock. In fact, the most expensive book that I own is an edition of his ‘XX poems’, which was privately printed very early in his career. And the life – the hidden life – is fascinating. I also like Jamie McKendrick and Craig Raine, in terms of contemporary writers.

CHAP: How did your friendship with David Bowie come about? WB: I worked with David Bowie on my Nat Tate ‘hoax’. Bowie was a great reader, who had read a lot of my books, and so we had a bit of a mutual admiration society when we first met in the mid nineties. Oddly, I was quite underwhelmed when I first met him, which was when we were both on the editorial board of Modern Painters – a very sophisticated and serious art magazine – because we were both out of our depth. So we, the new boys, banded together. I’m convinced that some of the elderly professors had no idea who this blonde bloke was. So our friendship had nothing to do with music. It began with literature and art, and it morphed into the Nat Tate story, which has continued to linger in popular culture. Bowie’s death revived interest in it; I round off my book tour, a 90-minute monologue, with that story, and it always goes down a storm. It was Bowie’s lustre and fame that elevated that hoax into something special – so even though it was my book, he deserves the credit, too, as it wouldn’t have spiralled the way it did. And it’s become part of the Bowie myth.

CHAP: You’re well known as a great admirer of Evelyn Waugh. What do you think is his best book? WB: I have some controversial opinions; I think that Scoop is his masterpiece and don’t especially rate A Handful Of Dust, which many others do. I’m also interested in the way in which Vile Bodies was influenced by the work of William Gerhardie, who wrote a novel called Jazz and Jasper; Waugh simply lifted stuff from this book, and the whole comedy is hugely influenced by it. So, not to put too fine a point on it, he ripped off the book. I keep meaning to write a scholarly article about the similarities between the two, when I have the time. As Waugh said of Gerhardie, ‘I have talent… you have genius.’ It was probably quite telling that, when Gerhardie was hard up, Waugh gave him £100; perhaps he felt guilty.

CHAP: Which contemporary – or noncontemporary – writers do you enjoy? WB: I read all my contemporaries – ‘the class of 83’ – and I know them all well, but I’m not influenced by them. I try to keep up with ‘the youngsters coming up’, and even if I don’t read them, I’m aware of them. There are some younger writers who I really like, and buy all their books, but my favourites in the 20th century are people like Nabokov and Joyce. As a former literature lecturer, I’ve read a vast amount, and the Russians are especial favourites of mine, whether their novels or biographies of them. And then there are other perennial greats too: Updike, Waugh, Muriel Spark – who I met when she was a little old lady, not the woman of whom it was said ‘she used up friends like Kleenex’ – which is quite an epitaph. Going back, there’s Dickens of course, and Stendhal – both his novels and his extraordinary life – and Graham Greene; I’ve adapted his last novel, The Captain and the Enemy,

CHAP: What’s next? WB: I’m publishing a second volume of non-fiction at some stage – More Bamboo – but I’m trying to decide when it’s going to be released. It’ll be a long book, as I’m written a lot of introductions at three or four thousand words. And then I have another novel that I’m keen to write, although I don’t know what this year is going to offer in terms of plays and TV adaptations. I’ve written a TV series called Spy City, set in Berlin in 1961 before the Wall goes up, and that seems finally to have achieved momentum. So hopefully that’ll be out in 2020, but the best laid plans, etc… n

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Book Reviews

is no sense of the libido that led Martin Amis, son of Larkin’s greatest friend Kingsley, to label the late poet ‘Don Juan In Hull’. Instead, there is a great deal of domestic humour, some of which is more endearing than others. Larkin refers to himself as ‘your creature’, calls Eva ‘my old creature’ or ‘Mop’, and frequently includes (rather good) little caricatures of Mop as a walrus-like creature, decked out in Victorian-style garb. He worries about her health, delights in minor domestic triumphs (‘how exciting about the lavatory!’) and generally offers the sense of a dutiful, if often distracted, son. How far from the despairing image that he presented in letters to other friends, but we remember that, after Eva died in 1977, so did Larkin’s poetic muse; what few poems were written after that point, with the exceptions of the terrifying ‘Aubade’ and the revelatory ‘Love Again’, are little more than squibs and jeux d’esprit.

LETTERS HOME

By Philip Larkin (Faber £40) Reviewed by Alexander Larman hey fuck you up, your mum and dad. In one of the most famous opening lines in twentieth-century poetry, the great Philip Larkin thus offered his own, trenchant take on the nature of familial relations. Obviously, as with all of Larkin’s poetry, searching for straightforwardly biographical readings between the lines can be a frustrating and reductive experience, but the sentiments so curtly expressed in This Be The Verse seem, from what we know of Larkin’s biography, to be pretty much on the money. He never married nor had any progeny himself (thus practising what he preached, if the poem’s final lines ‘Get out as early as you can/And don’t have any kids yourself ’ are to be believed), and had a difficult relationship with his own parents, Nazisympathising Coventry city treasurer Sydney and the increasingly neurotic and querulous Eva. Even if ‘they were fucked up in their turn/by fools in old-style hats and coats’, one imagines that a collection of letters to his family will be either grim or somewhat pointless to read. The Larkin industry has thrown up seemingly endless collections of unpublished material since his death in 1985 – including his epistles to his longest-standing paramour, Monica Jones – and there seems little danger that popular and critical biographies are going to cease to be published. So, is this new collection, edited by his most recent biographer James Booth, worth reading, or is it simply a wallow in mid-twentieth century sepia misery? First things first. If one reads this expecting that one is about to alight on an entirely new Larkin, then one will be disappointed. Given that the vast majority of letters herein are to his mother after Sydney died in 1948, there is an understandable reticence about matters literary and sexual. Women flit through the pages, of course, but there

“With all of Larkin’s poetry, searching for biographical readings between the lines can be a frustrating and reductive experience, but the sentiments expressed in ‘This Be The Verse’ seem, from what we know of Larkin’s biography, to be pretty much on the money” What we have here, then, works best as a portrait of the artist as a young (and then middleaged) man. There are lines throughout that few other writers would have dreamt up; EM Forster is dismissed as ‘a toothy little aged Billy Bunter’, and his mother is warned off expectations of having a good time en vacance with the injunction ‘you can’t expect things to be on holiday as they are at home’. We see cameos of Larkin’s hard-living, heavydrinking youth – ‘I went to a friend’s 21st last night, with predictably disastrous results’ – and equally valuable insights into his first steps into librarianship, before he became, in Alan Bennett’s immortal description, ‘the Himmler of the accessions desk.’

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This is a far cry from his wry account of fighting a losing battle in the library over a penny fine, or his vainglorious assertion that ‘I shall win next time.’ There are a lot of letters in this book, perhaps too many for all but the most committed aficionado of Larkin. Yet there are a very great number of those who can be placed in that category, despite (because?) of the posthumous revelations of racism and xenophobia. (Larkin, who hated the concept of ‘abroad’, would undoubtedly have not only voted for Leave, but would have happily been the poster boy for the campaign.) It is for these milling multitudes that this book will be a hugely welcome addition to the millions of words that already exist about their hero, but perhaps the last word should be left to the great man himself, as he writes, with a typical shrug, ‘the sense of happiness is easily overthrown’. A good wallow in this will produce, in our opinion, all the symptoms of such happiness.

He is one half of the Pet Shop Boys, an act who seem to be slightly adrift in 2018. Despite still selling out arenas and festivals worldwide, there is an inevitable tension between their status as highenergy pop performers who, despite both being fast approaching pension age, can still shake an elegantly tailored leg with acts half, or even a third, of their years, and what the songs are about.

“Despite both approaching pension age, The Pet Shop Boys can still shake an elegantly tailored leg with acts half their age” Moving from ironic commentary on Thatcherism and greed, through witty analyses of Catholic guilt, the relationship between love and money and even meta-commentary on their own fame as pop stars, Tennant’s lyrics have always been a suitably wry brother to Lowe’s grandiose musical flourishes. This was probably never seen better than on Left To Their Own Devices, which Tennant reveals in this book was exaggerated autobiography; there will always be a thrill in a well-spoken man singing ‘Turn on the news and drink some tea/Maybe if you’re with me, we’ll do some shopping’ over the most bombastic of (Trevor Hornproduced) orchestral accompaniments. Yet the point of a collection of lyrics, rather than songs, is to assess the words on their own merits, and this is where One Hundred Lyrics comes into its own. Obviously many people will find their favourites unrepresented (I was disappointed that Jealousy, the first song Tennant and Lowe ever wrote together, only appears in the erudite and thorough introduction), and there are a few eccentricities of selection which seem to indicate personal preference rather than an objective assessment of what is any good. I remain unconvinced, for instance, that The Truck-Driver And His Mate, featuring such deathless lines as ‘Parked inside the lay-by/Their destination can wait/Dancing in the moonlight/The truck-driver and his mate’, really deserved its place here, any more than the obnoxious I’m With Stupid, a rather tired and obvious commentary on the Blair-Bush regime, does; these days, it has dated very badly. However, this has to be set against lyrical brilliance that would not disgrace any of the twentieth century’s greatest poets, most of them,

ONE HUNDRED LYRICS AND A POEM

By Neil Tennant (Faber, £14.99) Reviewed by Alexander Larman t’s one of the greatest accolades – or ego trips – that a musician can imagine. One’s lyrics published, by a major literary house, placing you in the pantheon not just of the great pop or rock stars but the great poets. Of course, this can lead to accusations that this takes place too readily; I have no problem with the likes of Nick Cave, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen being so lauded, but there comes a point when one has to ask whether Bonnie Prince Billy, Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks or Billy Bragg really deserves such an accolade. As Paul Draper from semi-forgotten Nineties band Mansun sang on An Open Letter To The Lyrical Trainspotter, ‘The lyrics aren’t supposed to mean that much/they’re just a vehicle for a lovely voice.’ Yet the collections keep coming. Last year saw the publication of Kate Bush’s collected offerings, with an introduction by the writer (as opposed to the comic actor) David Mitchell, and now Faber has published Neil Tennant’s, introduced and with a commentary by Tennant himself.

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of course, published by Faber themselves. I never realised that Tennant wrote three songs all inspired by a friend’s illness and death from AIDS, It Couldn’t Happen Here, the great Being Boring and Your Funny Uncle. Reading, rather than listening, to them, one realises with a poignant chill how powerful cheap music can really be; beginning with the careless evocation of ‘How clear it seemed/in six-inch heels, quoting magazines’, and ending with ‘No more pain, no more fear/No sorrow or dying/No waiting or crying/These former things have passed away’ can leave one breathless. There are funny lyrics (Yesterday, When I Was Mad, Shameless), sad lyrics (Love Is A Catastrophe, Invisible) and witty-yet-angry ones, of which the legendary It’s A Sin is perhaps the pick of the bunch. Yet the cumulative effect of reading this book, with Tennant’s commentary offering a sort of meta-autobiography, is of a sense of resigned sadness, and a sighing acceptance of mortality; this is made explicit by the poem, a short, fourline affair, which nods to Thomas Hardy (or his successor-cum-imitator David Nicholls). The book ends ‘It keeps its secret patiently’. A fitting summation, then, for these lyrics, which ably manage the difficult and satisfying task of appearing to be explicit about their author, while nonetheless allowing him to remain elusive, enigmatic and aloof. Which is, let’s face it, more than you can say about Bananarama.

So when a football book comes along with a dust jacket bearing the image of a stylish black man in a Soul Boy version of a pinstriped demob suit, co-respondent shoes and a rakishly-angled Fedora, well, that’s worth a look. Different Class is a different kind of football book, about a different kind of footballer. One who was also a dandy. And, as was said of one of the subject’s heroes Fred Astaire at the actor’s first audition – also dances. Laurie Cunningham was the first black footballer to play for England. Before that he worked his way up the league from Leyton Orient to West Bromwich Albion, before being signed by Real Madrid in 1977.

“Laurie fletched and arched like a limbo dancer. It was a dance of sorts. You could sense music – Soul music – throbbing to a rhythm in his mind, sense the brief touch of ball against chest, knee, foot. Laurie was lost in his art, man, lost”

Dermot Kavanagh frequently returns to the idea that Laurie Cunningham’s playing style was hugely influenced by his being a very good dancer. Many commentators of the time also picked up on this. Noted sportswriter Rob Hughes described watching Cunningham play at Brisbane Road: “Laurie flexed and arched like a limbo dancer. It was a dance of sorts. You could sense music – Soul music – throbbing to a rhythm in his mind… Laurie was lost in his art, man, lost.” Cunningham spent as much time practising his dance moves with his girlfriend Nikki in their London flat as he did at training sessions (or more, for he was often late to early-morning kickabouts). He and Nikki would spend hours perfecting Donald O’Connor’s famous backflip from Singin’ in the Rain. Kavanagh tracks down Nikki to talk to her about Laurie’s dancing. He shows her a photograph of the player in action during a match, flying through the air between two opponents. “That’s a dance move,” she says. “We practised that for hours. Everything was art to him, creative art, you could see it when he played.” The clubs where Laurie and Nikki danced were part of the Soul Boy scene that happened outside of mainstream culture in cramped, sweaty

DIFFERENT CLASS: THE STORY OF LAURIE CUNNINGHAM By Dermot Kavanagh, (Unbound, £20) Reviewed by Gustav Temple Books about football are plentiful. You can read ghost-written autobiographies by 23-year-old strikers promoting their new fragrance for men; then there are the ‘How football changed my life’-type tomes, in which men wistfully recall passing the thermos of hot chocolate to their dads on the terraces (“sometimes with a cheeky nip of whisky in it, on cold days!”). No other sport brings so many tears to so many men’s eyes, and so many books to the bookshelves with unshaven men in shorts on the covers.

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rooms in North London. The fashions were extreme: sharp double-breasted suits, Oxford bags, co-respondent shoes, a Soul Boy variation of the Gatsby Look. They were devoted to vintage long before it became fashionable in the 1980s. Kavanagh recounts how much trouble Laurie and his chums would go to for the right threads, discovering dusty boxes of dead-stock Demob suits in menswear emporia in Leyton (probably while his team-mates were training). He took his finds to a Jewish tailor in Stratford to have them copied and stamped with his own style. The clothes had to serve the dual purpose of making a dandiacal splash yet being flexible enough to dance in, because Soul Boys did not just dance from the hip. One of Laurie’s dandy cohorts was so concerned about creasing the back of his trousers that he carried a folded piece of brown paper in his pocket to sit on during journeys on the Tube. When Cunningham was transferred to Real Madrid in 1977, he soon gained a reputation as a nifty player and a bit of a playboy. The conservatism, not to mention the racism, of 1970s Spain somewhat cramped his style. He was once fined one million pesetas for being seen at a nightclub while recovering from an injury. Rob Hughes was so worried about his future at the club that he penned an open letter, in his column in the International Herald Tribune, to Real Madrid’s manager, advising him never to “impose discipline that cuts out the dance”. No-one could cut out the dance. Cunningham went on to play for Real Madrid for five years, becoming one of their star players. Such was the legend that, when he turned out for a match against bitter rivals Barcelona, the Catalan fans cheered Cunningham every time he got the ball. Football fans will understand, much more than me, how rare that is. Unfortunately, the aggressive style of Spanish play led to frequent injuries for Laurie, and he ended up spending more time off the pitch than on. He moved to Rayo Vallcano, another Madrid team, for a spell but the magic had faded, blighted by constant injuries and botched property deals in Spain. As Cunningham approached retirement age, he did the only thing a living legend can do – he died in a car crash. Different Class is unavoidably a book about football, but it is as much about fashion, style, music, dancing and race. To neglect it because of the soccer would be to miss out on a gripping, poignant tale, extremely well told.

INCURABLE: THE HAUNTED WRITINGS OF LIONEL JOHNSON, THE DECADENT ERA’S DARK ANGEL

Edited by Nina Antonia (Strange Attractor Press, £14.99) Reviewed by Darcy Sullivan very well-rounded chap has a soft spot for the decadents and aesthetes of the late 19th century, those pale-blooded young dreamers who could spend all day gazing at a lily and drinking absinthe. Floppy of hair and wrist, their devotion to beauty and rejection of work sets a stellar example for us all. This is why, in our horrid era of Brexit and Trump, you need Lionel Johnson. The fact that you’ve probably never heard of him is part of his charm. He attained an ephemeral fame bordering on complete anonymity, despite being chums with W.B. Yeats and – his biggest claim to fame – introducing Oscar Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas. Johnson is overshadowed by his friend and fellow aesthetic poet Ernest Dowson – who, dead at 32, barely casts a shadow at all. In Incurable, Nina Antonia collects Johnson’s poems, essays and some ephemera, fronted by her excellent introduction to the poet. Johnson flourished briefly in the 1890s, aestheticism’s magic hour, before drinking his way to an early death in 1902. Towards the end he was drinking two pints of whiskey a day. Antonia is an expert in damned pretty boys: Johnny Thunders, the heroin-cursed guitar hero from The New York Dolls, was her first biography. Haunted by a fervid anticipation of his death, Johnson writes movingly of nature but more profoundly about his own emancipation from this world. Mystic and Cavalier starts with what seems an ending: ‘Go from me: I am one of those, who fall.’ Really, it’s hard to see where a poet can go from an opening line like this. But Johnson does, and his closing is equally dramatic: ‘O rich and sound voices of the air!/Interpreters and prophets of despair:/Priests of a fearful sacrament! I come,/To make with you mine home.’ Dark and delicate, Lionel Johnson reminds us of life’s fragile grace. Incurable he may have been, but his poems are a tonic for a toxic today. n

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THE GINGER MAN LETTERS Noel Shine on a new book that chronicles the true rakish tales behind JP Donleavy’s Chappish materpiece The Ginger Man

“Sebastian Dangerfield is the product of a class for whom a skewed sense of entitlement is but the inevitable consequence of privilege. By anyone’s standards he would be considered a misogynistic buffoon, a pub boor and a wastrel” 136

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ll I want… is one break… which is not my neck,” concludes a clearly exasperated Sebastian Dangerfield, towards the end of JP Donleavy’s seminal work of fiction, The Ginger Man. Who among us has not had cause to utter these words or something similar at some sad juncture? The Ginger Man revolves around the changing fortunes of Dangerfield, an American student taking law at Trinity College in post war Dublin. He is cast ostensibly, as the perennial outsider – his distinct WASP credentials placing him at odds with a society, beyond the college gates, which is intrinsically Catholic in everything but taste. There is much to recommend in The Ginger Man, without delving too much into its so-so plot. It is as much an exploration of the depths to which an otherwise decent chap can plummet when put to the pin of his collar, as it is a story of inverted snobbery. A part of us wants to see Dangerfield get his comeuppance. He is the product of a class for whom a skewed sense of entitlement is but the inevitable consequence of privilege. A breed apart, for whom the narrow constraints of the moral compass simply do not apply. By anyone’s standards he would be considered a misogynistic buffoon, a pub boor and a wastrel. Yet he elicits our sympathy. By dint of a clever literary device deployed by its author, the narrative slips assuredly from the external action to the inner workings of Dangerfield’s whiskeyaddled mind, leaving the reader privy to his every thought and reminiscence, as he struggles gamely to assert his pukka credentials in ever more fraught circumstances. Throughout, his crown of ginger stands in sharp relief to the utterly dismal world he is compelled to inhabit, rendering him as the very embodiment of the Wildean adage, which asserts that while “we are all in the gutter, some of us are looking at the stars”. James Patrick Donleavy knew only too well the plight of desperate men and their pukka credentials. He made no secret of the fact that The Ginger Man was as much an homage to the bohemian Dublin he knew, as it was his meal-ticket out of there. Donleavy, a native New Yorker of Irish descent, served in the US Navy towards the latter end of WWII. He availed of the GI Bill of Rights to come to Dublin and study Sciences at Trinity College. Alas, young Donleavy distinguished himself on campus only in the manner of his sartorial elegance and grooming. He favoured Donegal tweed suits while sporting a neatly trimmed beard. While commendable actions in themselves, they

were not likely to pass muster in an exam hall setting. It was no surprise when he left without sitting exams to become an artist. He married an English speech therapist, Valerie Heron, with whom he had two children. When his artistic endeavours came to naught, he quit the art world and, in a fit of pique, sat down to type the novel which became The Ginger Man. The book is a fictional representation of life around Trinity College and its environs, creating the character of Sebastian Dangerfield from elements of fellow Trinity student, Gainor Crist, and Donleavy himself. Dangerfield’s sidekick – O’Keefe – bears more than a passing resemblance to another Irish-American student at Trinity, Arthur Kenneth Donoghue. All three men and their subsequent exploits beyond the realm of fiction are the subjects of a new book by Bill Dunn, The Ginger Man Letters (Lilliput Press). The bulk of The Ginger Man Letters concentrates on the exchange of correspondence between Donleavy and Donoghue, with Gainor Crist having expired by 1964, a victim of his own excesses. Many of these letters give credence to the conjecture that, far from being derivative of James Joyce, Henry Miller or even Kafka, Donleavy’s writing style is entirely original in itself. It is also abundantly evident that many of Donoghue’s real-life travails were harvested for use in Donleavy’s subsequent books, most notably The Saddest Summer of Samuel S, published in 1966. While Donoghue undoubtedly enjoyed being immortalised in fiction, it is impossible to escape the irony which saw Donleavy’s star on the ascent, while his own fortunes continued on a corresponding downward spiral. Throughout, there is no doubt that Donleavy valued his old pal, affording him every material comfort and advice during his sporadic sojourns at his homes in London or the Isle of Man. In 1969, Donleavy learned from his wine stockist at Fortnum and Mason of a tax-scheme in Ireland favouring writers. Ever the pragmatist, he quickly decamped to Ireland with his second wife, Mary Wilson Price, in tow. He came for the tax breaks and stayed to roam the seldom trodden landscape of the mind. Eschewing the bright lights of Broadway and the West End, he cultivated a life for himself as an erstwhile country squire, on a sprawling estate overlooking Lough Owel in the midlands. In so doing, he garnered a reputation for himself as being somewhat of a recluse. There were more novels, including, A Fairy Tale of New York – a title Shane McGowan famously

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appropriated for the Christmas classic by The Pogues and Kirsty McColl. By the mid-1980s, Donoghue was of retirement age. With little coaxing from Donleavy, he left the States and settled in at a gate house on Donleavy’s estate at Levington Park, Mullingar. In no time, the two men were at loggerheads, with Donoghue blissfully unaware of the simmering tensions about to come to the boil in the Donleavys’ failing marriage. In 1989, Donoghue became an unwitting victim of the fall-out from their eventual divorce, when he appeared to take Mary’s side. Donleavy, who once claimed that “writing was turning one’s worst moments into money,” could find little in this final debacle to celebrate in fiction.

“Donleavy learned from his wine stockist at Fortnum and Mason of a tax-scheme in Ireland favouring writers. He came for the tax breaks and stayed to roam the seldom trodden landscape of the mind” While on a publicity tour in North America, in the early 1990s, Donleavy struck up a rapport with journalist Bill Dunn and his wife Chris. Dunn, an avowed fan of Donleavy’s work, first mooted the idea of compiling the best of Donleavy’s archive into a book, and proceeded to bring it to fruition with Donleavy’s imprimatur. In The Ginger Man Letters, Bill Dunn has seamlessly interwoven his own painstaking research into a narrative worthy of the odyssey begun seventy years ago in a Dublin that was then little more than a town shrouded deep in literary myths. Despite this, aficionados of Donleavy’s work will be delighted to note that he remains an enigma still, that most elusive of elements – a thing on high, with gossamer wings. I met JP Donleavy while he was still very much on terra firma, in 2015 at a book launch, and again, later that same year at Levington Park for the purposes of doing an interview. The last time I saw him was as one of his guests at Trinity College Dublin, on the day that the former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, presented him with a scroll, confirming his status as a Doctor of Letters. The Yank who had cut such a dash across Trinity’s

try insiders, journos and bloggers. There too, was a loosely affiliated group of what one could politely call curious onlookers with an eye to whatever free wine was going a-begging. After a few glasses of said vino it was obvious to all but the wilfully blind that there were ghosts in the room. I don’t know if CCTV captured them, but I could just about discern their presence. They appeared to be mocking the rest of us mere mortals, as we rubbed our chins with practiced ease and frowned at one another approvingly. I was just about to deliver a devasting put-down to the young madam who had the impertinence to inform me that there was no more wine to be had – of any vintage – when I caught a glimpse of a slightly dishevelled-looking rake, sporting a Trinity scarf about his neck. He looked vaguely familiar to me, in a way that strangers sometimes do. He had a distinctive mop of ginger hair, which was appropriate for the night that was in it. What he did next left me slightly aghast. Dammit if he wasn’t helping himself to a book in the ‘Self-help’ section – in the most clandestine fashion possible. Naturally, I moved to apprehend the bounder, but as I did so, he vanished before my very bleary eyes. Right there and then, I made a mental note to forego the hors d’oeuvres and leave before I was thrown out. I sought refuge in one of Donleavy’s old haunts – McDaid’s – just around the corner. It has a very convivial atmosphere after dark. No ghosts, but plenty of spirits. Mine’s a Gold Label, no ice, thanks for asking. God have mercy on the wild ginger man! n

cobblestones all those years ago had come back to take care of some unfinished business. The perennial outsider no more, he now had the respect that was his due. A photo I took of JP that same day is included among the many fine photos of him in The Ginger Man Letters. I hightailed it up to the first-floor department at Hodges and Figgis’ book shop in Dublin to attend the book launch, which was scheduled to coincide with the first anniversary of JP’s death. When I arrived, it was like a scene from the proverbial Irish wake, but without the snuff. The room was filled to capacity with friends and family of the late Doctor Donleavy. There were publishing indus-

Noel Shine’s interview with J.P. Donleavy will be published in The Chap’s 100th edition

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THE COMFORT OF STRANGERS Gustav Temple reviews the new dual-format edition from the BFI

here is something of Patricia Highsmith in The Comfort of Strangers (1990), adapted for the screen from Ian McEwan’s book by no less than Harold Pinter, and directed by Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader. However, in a Highsmith novel, the murder would come somewhere near the middle of the story, and by then the reader have such a clear idea of why the murderer is committing their crime that he’d practically be egging them on to get on with it. In The Comfort of Strangers, the murder occurs right at the end, and by then the audience is sill in the dark about its motive. Nasty denouement aside, a stellar cast keeps the viewer hooked from the opening scene in Venice, where the ancient architecture and loose summer clothing prevents the film from having the dated look of many films from the late 80s/early 90s. Colin (Rupert Everett) and Mary (Natasha Richardson) are drifting around Venice in an attempt to revitalize a stagnant marriage. This is vintage Rupert, with his oddly sloping shoulders,

toned body and Byronic profile. It is he, rather than his wife, who attracts the attention of suave-butslimy Robert, played by Christopher Walken. Walken provides his usual peculiar, flat-faced, sinister delivery, with a long opening monologue that the actor probably insists on having in every movie he appears in. Nobody else in the world speaks like Christopher Walken, with his odd emphasis on random words, his pregnant pauses, his permanently pursed lips. He is like an alien from another planet who has learned our language but falls slightly short of mimicking us. According to the director’s commentary on this re-release, Walken’s opening monologue clocked in at over 12 minutes – too long for a single reel of film – so he devoted hours of rehearsal to delivering it in 10 minutes and 45 seconds, without altering a single word. Walken had nearly fired himself from the shoot early on, citing difficulty in inhabiting his character: a wealthy, sexually ambiguous old-school Italian with a penchant for photographing handsome tourists. He’d worked on his Italian accent in New York and

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Schrader had a grander vision for the film: he wanted to make Venice come alive as a location by exploring its Moorish roots. He describes on the commentary how he ‘played Venice as Istanbul.’ Every piece of architecture featured has a Moorish feel, and the score by Angelo Badalamenti enhances it. Schrader insisted, with great difficulty and plenty of baksheesh, on clearing the streets for most of the outdoor scenes. He didn’t want ‘badlydressed’ locals ruining his sleek, elegant portrayal of the city. ‘Venice,’ he says, ‘regards filmmakers the same way they regard a busload of Japanese tourists – they are there to be plucked.’ The wardrobe was all by Giorgio Armani, who had worked with Schrader on American Gigolo, although Schrader noted how disinterested Armani was in The Comfort of Strangers. 10 years on from Gigolo, he was much keener to exploit the profits from catwalk fashion than by styling movies. However, Armani was the right choice for Rupert’s loping frame. This was the first big film Everett had made since coming out in the late 1980s (for which he blamed a distinct lack of Hollywood roles being offered afterwards) and he was very conscious of playing the role as heterosexually as possible. He and Schrader devised a code during filming, where after a scene Schrader might say, ‘I caught a glimpse of the pink petticoat there.’ Since the film is based on a book by Iain McEwan, there cannot be a happy ending. As soon as the couple set foot out of their hotel after their sex binge, Robert appears, like some well-dressed gremlin, and lures them back to his palazzo. Unlike a Highsmith story, none of the characters’ motivations are very clear; questions from characters receive only oblique non-sequiturs. Finally and suddenly, without warning, the nastiness that Robert has leaked out during the whole film brings The Comfort of Strangers to its rather nasty denouement. n

when he arrived for filming, it was completely the wrong kind of accent. He offered to resign but Paul Schrader said, ‘Give me two days.’ The director was friends with Luchino Visconti’s daughter and he went to her to ask for help: ‘I need to find a certain kind of Italian to be a guide for Chris. Homosexual, British-educated, very stylish.’ ‘I know just the man,’ Visconti said, ‘Adone Colonna.’ So Walken spent a few days hanging around with Adone, soaking up his world of glamorous cocktail parties and clubs for queer gentlemen, and found his character of Robert. The married couple keep bumping into Robert as they wander about Venice, until he entices them back to his grand palazzo, where his wife, played by Helen Mirren, wafts about tragically in an Arabian dressing gown. The cocktail hour is slightly marred when Robert suddenly punches Colin in the stomach during a conversation about Robert’s father. But the couple are too polite to storm out, and get through an awkward dinner, listening to Robert’s Walkenised speeches about sexual politics and the legacy of his father. A feeble attempt by Mary to stand up for feminism is abandoned, but the evening is not without its benefits. Mary and Colin return to their hotel, pull down the blinds and have vigorous sex for three days. These were the only scenes not penned by Pinter, who was squeamish about sex scenes. He wanted Schrader to portray the whole three-day sex binge off camera, but Schrader didn’t agree, so he wrote the scenes himself, faxing the typescript to Pinter, who begrudgingly acceded. Harold Pinter ran a tight ship as screenplay writer, insisting on no cuts or edits during filming. A request from Natasha Richardson about the back story of her character was greeted with the Pinteresque reply: ‘You don’t need to know.’ He was only on set for two weeks and it didn’t sound like much fun when he was around.

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THE FINEST MAN WHO EVER BREATHED Alexander Larman’s projected biography of Peter O’Toole, Who Are You? may or may not be published one day. In the meantime, here is his view of the actor of whom John Sessions told Alex ‘Peter had feet of clay, perhaps, but a heart of purest gold.’

At the time of his casting, O’Toole had had a successful first season with the RSC at Stratford, appeared in small parts in a few undistinguished films and was generally following the tough and financially unrewarding path upon which most actors set out after their graduation from drama school. Yet Lean had seen him play the charming and debonair Captain Monty Fitch in the 1960 caper film The Day they Robbed the Bank of England, and had

here is a famous scene towards the end of the first half of Lawrence of Arabia, in which a dusty and dejected TE Lawrence, fresh from battling his way across the Sinai desert, is confronted by a motorcyclist across the Suez Canal. The rider (reputedly voiced by the film’s director, David Lean) calls out, repeatedly ‘Who are you?’ As Lawrence looks at him with a mixture of confusion and what might be fear, it is clear that TE Lawrence, archaeologist, scholar and warrior, no longer has any idea who he is. There are some roles that are so perfect for an actor that a unique synthesis of performer and part takes place, and the one inhabits the other completely. Thus it proved with Peter O’Toole and Lawrence; something of an irony, given that O’Toole was the third choice for the role, after Marlon Brando and Albert Finney. Finney turned down the part, much to Lean’s relief, as he had no doubt that O’Toole was the actor he wanted to play ‘his’ Lawrence.

“When he was a boy, he wrote in a journal that ‘I will not be a common man. I will stir the smooth sands of monotony. I do not crave security. I wish to hazard my soul to opportunity’.” 145

Lawrence, too, was someone who would reinvent himself time and again, literally and figuratively, something to which Lean’s film nods early when a character describes Lawrence as ‘a poet, a scholar, and a mighty warrior…[and] also the most shameless exhibitionist since Barnum & Bailey.’ Later in life, Lawrence attempted to reclaim his anonymity by rejoining the armed forces under various pseudonyms, including TE Shaw and John Hume Ross. For O’Toole, there was no need to adopt any pseudonyms, as his characters loomed up in all their idiosyncrasies and colourful excesses on screen and stage alike. Yet, especially as his career wore on and he specialised in increasingly eccentric and ostentatious performances (which may or may not have been appropriate to the material), he justified his actions by placing himself in the Edmund Kean-Donald Wolfit tradition of knowingly ‘theatrical’ acting. The suspicion remained that he was playing two different characters at the same time. The first was Macbeth, Alan Swann, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe or whoever else who he was being paid to imitate. The second, and altogether greater, role was that of Peter O’Toole. Peter Sellers, O’Toole’s co-star in 1965’s sex comedy What’s New, Pussycat?, once quipped (on the Muppet Show, no less) that ‘there is no me, I do not exist… there used to be a me, but I had it surgically removed.’ Although O’Toole and surgery were indeed not unknown to one another in the

“As his friend and co-star Brian Blessed described O’Toole, ‘He wasn’t just a man of extremes, he was THE man of extremes: Lord Byron with a knuckle-duster’.” declared afterwards ‘This is Lawrence!’ The differences between the two initially seemed to contradict him. O’Toole, at 6’2”, was nearly a foot taller than Lawrence, and bore little facial resemblance to him. TE Lawrence had studied at Oxford and wore the calm serenity of one born into the English privileged classes; O’Toole, meanwhile, had left school as early as he could for a chequered career that included journalism and national service in the Navy, before he decided that his future lay in acting. Yet Lean saw something in the young actor playing Monty Fitch that he could work with and mould; a good-natured and pleasant exterior masking something quite different inside. And then there was the curious background, one that O’Toole himself deliberately mythologised from an early age. He claimed a romantic attachment to Connemara in Ireland, stemming from his origins there, glossing over his more prosaic birthplace in Leeds. T.E.

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Seventies, he did not have so drastic an attitude towards the effacement of his own personality. When he was a boy, he wrote in a journal that ‘I will not be a common man. I will stir the smooth sands of monotony. I do not crave security. I wish to hazard my soul to opportunity.’ As a prediction of his life and career, the boy O’Toole’s forecast proved uncannily apt. He was anything but a common man, causing disruption and chaos in his search for whatever came close to Walter Pater’s ‘hard, gem-like flame’. This encompassed alcoholic and narcotic abandon, a cavalier attitude towards personal relations that saw two torrid relationship breakdowns and countless feuds with co-stars, directors and producers. One did not expect consistency or constancy from Peter O’Toole. As his friend and co-star Brian Blessed described him, ‘[he] wasn’t just a man of extremes, he was the man of extremes: Lord Byron with a knuckle-duster.’ With O’Toole, boredom was a mortal enemy to be kept at bay, and this began from an early age. He started out as a journalist at the Yorkshire Evening Post. Although he would later shrug off this period as being little more than a distraction, writing in his autobiography that ‘[I had an] unspoken wish not to be a chronicler and photographer of persons and events’, it also prepared the way for him to act as the teller of his own tale, with all the attendant embroidering and exaggerations. He boldly stated his wish ‘to become the person at the heart of the events

which were being chronicled and photographed.’ He was not to be disappointed. Throughout his life and career, O’Toole evaded predictable category. This was accomplished by the conscious adoption of a larger-than-life character that he played for more than half a century, the hard-drinking Irishman who could alternately be a refined fop, a Byronic lover and a hard man, in life and performance alike. Even as he gracefully winced while the Maurice Jarre theme music from Lawrence accompanied his entry onto countless awards stages and chat show sofas, he knew what was expected from him. Some witty one-liners, a couple of louche references to an existence heavy on wine, women and song and, ideally, a memorable glimpse into his past life. If the acquaintance with verifiable fact was glancing, it did not matter. To quote the words that O’Toole’s friend Tom Stoppard placed in the mouth of another Anglo-Irishman, Oscar Wilde, in his play The Invention Of Love, ‘to do it was nothing, to be said to have done it was everything.’ The public O’Toole, then, was and remains a well-known phenomenon, one who can be resurrected at the touch of a button and whose greatest work will be enjoyed until such time as film no longer exists as a medium. Attempting to find the private man beneath the façade is a harder task. The most valuable source is his ex-wife Siân Phillips’ memoir Public Places, which simultaneously lionised and damned O’Toole as someone prone to childish fits

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PETER O’TOOLE AND OTHER ROGUE MALES

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of giddy exuberance, often while taken in drink, and equally childish episodes of discontent, both private and public. O’Toole retained a childlike view of the world, in which his lover became a protector from the more unpleasant aspects of life. A more cynical view might be that he was an actor at his most attentionseeking and determinedly quixotic, incapable of doing anything in a straightforward fashion without making an exhibition of himself, and damning the affections and efforts of others into the bargain. Both views might be correct, or neither might. Such was the way in which he created a series of Russian doll personae for himself, in which the grandiloquent film star could be reduced to a more thoughtful stage actor, and then to the man who gave interviews and could be seen at first nights and premieres. The real O’Toole – the final and smallest doll of them all – remained elusive. This elusiveness was something that he zealously guarded, and explains O’Toole’s well-known horror of a biography being written in his lifetime. Phillips noted that, when he was heading off for his nights of drink and debauch, he took care to leave all signs of identification at home. This meant that, in the early days before fame, he was able to leave the theatre, or the television studio, and essentially disappear into whatever milieu he fancied being part of, in

whatever persona. Doubtless there are still men and women alive who caroused with O’Toole in those years with no idea who he was. There is a dark humour to Phillips’ weary account of being telephoned by yet another policeman to inform her that her husband had been arrested for drunken behaviour; despite one of the most famous men in the world refusing to tell the constabulary who he was, it did not take a Sherlock Holmes to ascertain his identity. It is something of an exaggeration to describe O’Toole’s relationship with Peter Sellers as a close friendship, as they only appeared in two films together: Pussycat, and a cameo from O’Toole in the bizarre psychedelic James Bond disaster Casino Royale. In his fleeting appearance, dressed as a piper, O’Toole asks Sellers whether he is Richard Burton, and, when informed ‘I’m Peter O’Toole’, responds ‘then you’re the finest man who ever breathed. God bless you, sir.’ Yet what both actors shared was a desire to remove themselves completely. While Sellers took refuge behind props, costumes and funny voices, O’Toole simply vanished in plain sight. In this, he resembled his Hamlet director Laurence Olivier, whose boldness as an actor was matched by his ability to disappear when off duty and be ‘himself.’ O’Toole took enormous pleasure in describing his study in his Hampstead house as ‘the Marcus Luccicos Room’. The allusion was to a character in

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Othello who never appears on stage although is urgently requested at one point. As with another of his great literary heroes, Godot, O’Toole seemed most comfortable in communion with those who never appeared in their own guise. It is in keeping with O’Toole’s real, as opposed to imagined, autobiography that the figure of his father becomes intriguing. ‘Captain’ Patrick O’Toole was a fantasist, a drunk and a petty conman whose casual abuse of his family led his son to recall that his childhood had either been ‘wake or wedding’. O’Toole senior liked to construct a fiction that he was a prosperous bookmaker, but his financial incompetence and exaggerated belief in his own abilities at the turf ensured that the atmosphere at home was normally closer to mourning than celebration. Perhaps because of this, O’Toole developed a strange relationship with money that simultaneously encompassed public profligacy with great private meanness. Yet it was not only the lack of money that affected O’Toole growing up, but the ever-present threat of family violence. One of his oft-cited stories was how his father would sit the boy on a mantelpiece, telling him to jump and promising to catch him. When the young O’Toole leaped, he landed on the floor, hard, as his father coldly informed his son ‘Never trust any bastard.’ O’Toole repeated the story throughout his life as a humorous, even admirable one, gaily laughing that ‘I’m not from the working class… I’m from the criminal class.’ When the Captain first saw his son’s success on stage, he would wonderingly and proudly point at his family’s name up in lights, saying ‘Look at that... an ‘O’ as big as a cartwheel.’ From his rather less intimidating mother Constance, O’Toole found a love of literature and poetry that lasted throughout his life; one of his unfulfilled late projects was to record each of Shakespeare’s sonnets, which found its closest expression in a moving recitation of sonnet 18 in Venus. Throughout his career, he chose projects based on the scripts or source material rather than the directors or other filmmakers involved; the likes of the Rattigan-scripted Goodbye Mr Chips, literary and theatrical adaptations like Becket, The Ruling Class, The Lion In Winter and Under Milk Wood, or original scripts like Hanif Kureishi’s for Venus, were all notable triumphs for him. Perhaps as a deliberate policy, he largely ignored the great auteurs of the twentieth and twenty-first century, working only once with Lean and on substandard films by his friend John Huston and, much later, a young Neil Jordan. Only

in his collaboration with Bernardo Bertolucci on The Last Emperor – a supporting role that bears all the hallmarks of him on his best behaviour, professionally and personally – did he work with a major film director to any degree of success. O’Toole’s respect and appreciation for the written word was one of his more personally commendable features – although it did not stop him appearing in some diabolically written films – but, like many actors, he was himself something of a frustrated writer. Although he wrote two volumes of memoir, and an unfinished third, few of his greater ambitions were ever fulfilled, most notably a unproduced screenplay adaptation of Uncle Vanya: a play close to his heart. He had made his debut at the Bristol Old Vic in a minor role in Vanya, making his appearance as costumed and made up as a young Stalin. In the seventies, he would return to the Bristol Old Vic to play Vanya himself, and any comparison between the disaffected man whom life has passed by, and the actor enduring what would be a largely hideous decade both professionally and personally, seems an irresistible one. As a man, O’Toole was an odd mixture of great kindness and generosity, but also boorishness and an almost comic lack of consideration for others. He might, as he did at Wimbledon in the late eighties, turn up at a public event and enliven it with a tirade of deeply offensive abuse, aimed at virtually every race, sex or nation under the sun: behaviour that would have seen many others shunned by both friends and producers alike. Yet friends of his such as Blessed and John Sessions also remember a man of compassion and decency, whose witty and always empathetic letters, voicemails and emails, invariably beginning ‘Hello love’, showed little interest in boastfulness, but instead displayed a heartfelt interest in his friends’ wellbeing. Like his forbear Byron, he was especially well-disposed towards the innumerable waiters, porters and general staff who crossed his path, who found themselves generously rewarded for the most commonplace of courtesies. He was a loving father, especially to his son, Lorcan; yet he was also capable of pettiness, which manifested itself in an estrangement between him and his daughter Patricia that lasted until his death. Nonetheless, she and her sister Kate still commemorated the memory of their beloved, bewildering father by waltzing down the aisle together, a conscious recreation of their father’s actions at the funeral of their grandmother. Even beyond the grave, artifice and memory had their place. n

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The Chap Dines

THE IVY IN THE LANES 51A Ship St, Brighton BN1 1AF www.theivybrighton.com

eith Waterhouse once described Brighton as ‘a town that looks as if it’s helping the police with its enquiries.’ This barbed, if undeniably once accurate, comment seems somewhat outdated in 2019. Yes, there are still parts of Sodom-by-the-Sea, as it was once dubbed, that have the authentic seediness of the dive about them. However, there are now many more that do credit to any bustling metropolis, thanks to a combination of a lively and well-heeled populace with good taste and the far greater range of places for them to spend their money. Chief among these is one of the most welcome arrivals in the city, namely The Ivy In The Lanes, which offers splendid food in the most delightful of settings, at a price that all can afford. Unlike the Ivy’s flagship eaterie on the edge of Covent Garden, whose imposing doormen

practically shoo away any curious onlookers who are not in possession of either an agent or a reservation, the Brighton wing is open to anyone who knows it’s there. Discreetly located on a street that has a variety of other, less salubrious places to dine, the leaded windows of the restaurant, in a stylishly converted bank, beckon the curious like a tantalising looking glass. Eat me, it seems to breathe. Inside, it is appropriate that we encounter a wonderland of Art Deco, busy with the hubbub of those who have eschewed the delights, or otherwise, of the nearby shops and have their sights, and their stomachs, set on higher things. There are several tables evidently hosting grown-up children entertaining their visiting parents – perhaps to inform them that, by moving to Brighton from their childhood homes in the sticks, they have not, in fact, gone down in the world.

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On this freezing, definitely not ‘dry’, January day, we peruse the menu, armed with two glasses of the Ivy’s excellent own-brand champagne. Seafood is chosen to start; finely smoked salmon with crab for Gustav, and a delightful combination of scallops, chorizo and butternut squash for Alex. All of this appears on our table with dexterous celerity. We are having a long lunch, but we don’t wish to engage in any unnecessary fripperies. For mains, we agree that beef, adorned with various rich sauces, is called for. Alex orders the rib eye steak on the bone, while Gustav plumps for the day’s special, a hunk of beef accompanied by a liver paté-moistened brioche. Both are excellent, not least because of the well-chosen side orders; tomatoes with a tangy Pedro Ximenez sauce, finely cut chips and the kind of béarnaise that makes one check that one has not, in fact, wandered into a Provencal backstreet bistro.

We were fortunate enough to be attended to by the charming Carmen, who informed us, when pressed, that she hailed from Sicily. Once we had established a rapport with Carmen and explained that we were definitely not tourists, it became less awkward to ask that she photograph us for editorial purposes. ‘More wine, gentlemen?’ It would have been a dereliction of duty not to have ventured into the excellent Chateau d’Arche Rouge from Bordeaux. And then something sweet was called for, and the chilly weather put us both in the mood for chocolate; Gustav enjoyed the theatricality of the chocolate bombe, detonated personally by Carmen and washed down with a glass of port, whereas Alex found that the cappuccino cake and espresso martini made the happiest of bedfellows. We wandered out into the milky afternoon winter sun, fulfilled and replete. The Ivy in the Lanes makes its guests feel welcome, whether they are coming in for a full three-course blow-out or popping by for a cocktail and a sandwich. And that, frankly, is what any restaurant of this calibre should do. If this is what comes of helping the police with their enquiries, then we would be happy to place ourselves under this particular arrest any day of the week. n

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Art

OTTO DIX Chris Sullivan looks at the harrowing work of German painter Otto Dix and his place in the art of Weimar Republic Berlin in the 1920s

“Their aim was to eschew old Expressionist habits and look outside their windows at the factory floors, hospitals, shipyards, brothels, and capture the excess, prodigality, despair, revolt and trivial amusements of their brave new world”

tto Dix comfortably sits among the pantheon of artists who used their craft to criticise and discredit the society in which they lived. His artworks, despised by Hitler and the Third Reich, depicted the chronic aftermath of WW1 and the excesses an of twenties Berlin – the beggars, the prostitutes, the physically maimed veterans, the sado-masochists and the hedonists. “All art is exorcism,” he explained. “I paint dreams and visions too; the dreams and visions of my time. Painting is the effort to produce order; order in yourself. There is much chaos in me, much chaos in our time.” Indeed, Dix was born at a pivotal time in European History. It was 1891 and Kaiser Wilhelm II – the last German Emperor and King of Prussia – had, only three years before, acceded to the throne.

Dix was born in Gera in Eastern Germany, the eldest son of a foundry worker and a seamstress. Encouraged by his painter cousin, Fritz Amman,

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Metropolis, 1928

between 1906 and 1910 he served a painting apprenticeship, after which he entered the Dresden Academy of Applied Arts to learn decorative wall painting and studied the methods of the Old Masters. All was going swimmingly until 1914 when the Kaiser turned the whole world on its head. The atrocity that was World War One had begun. Young Otto volunteered, somewhat eagerly, for service and was drafted into a field artillery regiment. “I have to experience all the ghastly, bottomless depths for life for myself; it’s for that reason that I went to war, and for that reason I volunteered,” he later said. And he certainly got his wish. By 1915 he was a machine gunner at the frontlines in France, his task to mow down oncoming soldiers as they charged to their death over no man’s land. In 1917 his unit was transferred to the Eastern

Front, where he remained until the Russian October Revolution deposed the Czar and hostilities with Russia ended. Dix then returned to the Western Front, took part in the German Spring offensive, earned the Iron Cross (second class) for valour and reached the rank of vice-sergeant-major. Remarkably, even though he’d been wounded five times, he’d served the whole of the Great War on both fronts, and was thus honourably discharged one month after the debacle ended. More than 70 million combatants were put into the field, 20 million were wounded and an estimated 17 million killed, including 2.5 million Germans. In 1919, Dix formed the Dresden Secession with Oskar Kokoschka and Conrad Felixmüller, creating woodcuts such as Apotheosis (Apotheose) that exhibit the better aspects of both Futurism and

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Crippled War Veterans Playing Cards, 1920

Cubism; at its centre are the grossly over sized genitalia of a prostitute dressed in a corset that exposes her sagging breasts. Dix had found his artistic direction. Meanwhile, the Kaiser had been forced to abdicate. What followed was the German Revolution and the founding of the Weimar Republic (the first democratic government in the country’s history, whose parliament was based in the city of Weimar) which, however optimistic, was doomed to failure. Germany was thrown into one of the worst economic depressions in history. In the early postwar years, inflation was growing at an alarming rate but the government simply printed more and more banknotes to pay the bills. Then the monthly rate of inflation rose to a staggering 3.25 billion per cent, equivalent to prices doubling every two hours, bringing the US dollar to Deutschmark exchange rate to 80 billion. Famously, by 1923 it took a wheelbarrow full of notes (200 billion marks) to buy a loaf of bread. The maxim that ‘many a masterpiece was written on an empty stomach’ had never rung so true. Berlin in the 1920s was one of the most creative cities in the history of the world. Rather like the financially strapped New York of the 1960s and 70s, poverty and need fuelled artistic endeavour and while, even though the likes of Dix, George Grosz and John Heartfield’s work was a condemnation of Weimar society, said culture still produced remarkable results. Many of the creatives were joined by one common aim: to eschew old Expressionist habits and to look outside their windows at the factory floors, the hospitals, the shipyards, the brothels, the dens of iniquity and capture the excess, prodigality, despair, revolt and trivial amusements of their brave new world. Both Dix and Grosz had followed such a path since 1919. Dix had set the tone with the likes of Crippled War Veterans Playing Cards (1920) Butcher’s Shop (1920) and War Wounded (1922) but it wasn’t until 1923 that this movement found a name: Neue Sachlichkeit, or New Objectivity. Naturally, Dix led the movement by example. In 1924, he’d joined the Berlin Secession and exhibited his series of 51 etchings Der Krieg (War) cycle of 1924, which were consciously modeled on Goya’s Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War). Art historian George Heard Hamilton describes Dix’s cycle as ‘perhaps the most powerful as well as the most unpleasant anti-war statements in modern art.” Equally unsettling are Dix’s paintings of prostitutes, such as his unnerving Street Walker (1920)

– his subject a skeletal deathly pale prostitute, bug eyed with bad teeth – and Three Women of 1926, which portrays three prostitutes in a brothel – one hideously fat, another painfully thin and the third on her hands on knees like a dog, her pendulous breasts touching the floor. Erotic they are certainly not. During this time, countless war orphans and widows turned to crime and prostitution just to put food on the table. The terms ‘prostitute’ and ‘war widow’ became interchangeable, and Berlin became one of the world’s leading sin cities, where any type of sexual distraction could be bought. Berlin became the cocaine of capital of the world, the whole city burning the candle at both ends. Also popular was diacetylmorphine, which, from 1898 to 1910, was marketed under the trademark name Heroin as a non-addictive morphine substitute and cough suppressant. It was banned elsewhere but was freely available in Weimar Berlin. One of the city’s most legendary imbibers was one of Otto Dix’s models, the scandalously androgynous nude dancer Anita Berber, who wore her hair in a bob dyed blood-red, sported a monocle and roamed Berlin with a pet monkey on her shoulder.

“In some circles, especially in the Berlin art world, cocaine was considered and interesting and fashionable vice. I never got involved myself, even though buckets and sacks of the stuff was snorted in my company. I was disgusted by their inflamed nostrils” Carl Zuckmayer Dix captured her in 1925 wearing the tomato-red ‘Morphine’ costume. Not one to hide her drug use, her preferred substances were cocaine, opium and morphine, aided and abetted by chloroform and ether, mixed in a bowl which she then stirred with a rose and ate its petals. Her style inspired Marlene Dietrich, who launched her acting career as Berber’s understudy and copied her every move. Berber personified Berlin’s roaring twenties, dancing to words by her first husband, the expressionist poet and notorious international con artist, Sebastian Droste. The pair were banned from most European venues and

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was dismissed from his teaching post at the Dresden Academy and was allowed only to paint landscapes. In 1937 the Nazis put on their infamous Exhibition of Degenerate Art, which featured any remaining art deemed modern, degenerate, or subversive. Intended to incite further revulsion against the ‘perverse Jewish spirit’ penetrating German culture, it featured over 650 artworks gathered from 32 German museums (including works by Dix, Grosz, Beckman and Kandinsky) only six of whom (out of 112) were actually Jewish. It opened in Munich on 19th July and remained on view until 30th November, before touring 11 other cities in Germany and Austria. The artworks were hung in a cramped basement of the Institute of Archaeology. Above the works were scrawled slogans such as ‘The Jewish longing for the wilderness reveals itself – in Germany the Negro becomes the racial ideal of degenerate art.’ Some 2,009,899 visitors attended the exhibition – an average of 20,000 people per day – while the Nazisanctioned Great German Art Exhibition attracted a fraction of that. Subsequently, Goebbels destroyed some 4000 sized works of art. Today they’d be worth a King’s ransom. Meanwhile Otto Dix said, “People were already beginning to forget what horrible suffering the war had brought them. I did not want to cause fear and panic, but to let people know how dreadful war is and so to stimulate people’s powers of resistance.” Not only was his message completely ignored but, after he was he was arrested in 1939 and charged with involvement in a plot on Hitler’s life, he was conscripted into the army for World War II and in 1945 was captured and put into a prisoner of war camp. After the war he returned to his beloved Dresden, which had been thoroughly razed to the ground by Allied Bombers in 1945. Some of his new paintings followed a more religious path, while others, such as Ecce Homo II (1948) looked at the misery caused by WWII. Otto Dix died in Singen, Germany in 1969, leaving three children: a daughter Nelly (1923–1955) and two sons, Ursus (1927–2002) and Jan (born 1928), all of whom have enjoyed the fruits of his magnificent labour. n

Portrait of the Dancer Anita Berber, 1925

expelled from Vienna, and in their book The Dances of Depravity, Horror, and Ecstasy, envisioned a dance with Berber catching Droste’s sperm in her mouth as he hangs from a rope above her. She died of TB aged 29 and was buried in a pauper’s grave. Berber’s death metaphorically signalled the forthcoming end of the Weimar Republic and the decadence, liberalism and open-mindedness of Berlin’s Golden Twenties. All through the decade, discontent had come from both the far right and left. Adolf Hitler attempted a coup in his Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923 that failed, but membership to his Nazi Party still went from 27,000 in 1925 to 108,000 in 1928, even though his prediction of further economic disaster was considered unwise. The Nazis condemned much of the work of the Neue Sachlichkeit as degenerate art, or entartete Kunst (a term that they applied to all modern art), and they destroyed much of the movement’s work and prohibited many of its artist from painting. In 1933, Dix

Julien Bryan’s short film of the Exhibition of Degenerate Art can be seen at www.ushmm.org Dix by Eva Karcher and Ingo F .Walther is published by Taschen Magic Realism: Art in Weimar Germany 1919-33 is at Tate Modern, London until 19th July

159

CROSSWORD 1

By Xeno

Solutions to crossword Issue 98 Chap Winter 18 19

R E M C O T F I C H O N

P L A R L O D L I E L D

P J E C A R N M P S P A L

D T E A C J D R A D O V P B U S T E S O N E M R E S E N D N A L T E E O R S E R S

S C O T F R E E T W E L V E

A R U E D T O I E P I N U N E R M C H O E S I N T E N S E R W N A G E R R A I C A R S H

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