The Oldie magazine April issue 424

Features

11 Grumpy Oldie Man

Matthew Norman

12 Olden Life: What was a bottom drawer? Liz Hogkinson

12 Modern Life: What is a beg?

Metcalf

91 Bridge Andrew Robson

91 Competition Tessa Castro

98 Ask Virginia Ironside

Books

50 A Terribly Serious Adventure: Philosophy at Oxford

1900-1960, by Nikhil

Krishnan A N Wilson

53 The Earth Transformed: An Untold History, by Peter Frankopan Roger Lewis

55 Old Babes in the Wood, by Margaret Atwood

Frances Wilson

55 The Man with Miraculous Hands, by Joseph Kessel Dr Theodore Dalrymple

57 Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward, by Oliver Soden Paul Bailey

59 Love, Pamela, by Pamela Anderson Tanya Gold

Travel

82 70 years on the Cresta Run

Rupert Lycett Green

84 Overlooked Britain: Sir John Soane’s doghouse, Cornwall

Lucinda Lambton

Regulars

Editor Harry Mount

Sub-editor Penny Phillips

Art editor Jonathan Anstee

Supplements editor Jane Mays

Editorial assistant Amelia Milne

Publisher James Pembroke

Patron saints Jeremy Lewis, Barry Cryer

At large Richard Beatty

Our Old Master David Kowitz

86 Taking a Walk: Scout Scar, the Lake District Patrick Barkham

87 On the Road: Dickie Bird

Louise Flind

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Arts

66 Film: Nostalgia Harry Mount

67 Theatre: Medea William Cook

67 Radio Valerie Grove

68

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Ian Fleming’s gol ng dream page 16 Tarzan turns 90 page 18

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The Old Un’s Notes

and I can run – and I don’t smoke or drink, though I used to in the early days,’ he says. ‘Mind you, when I perform, I don’t climb on the piano or up the lighting stacks and jump off them no more – that’s all in the past!’

Keep on rockin’, Shaky!

Four hundred years ago, in November 1623, another Shaky made a momentous step.

Happy 75th birthday, Shakin’ Stevens! He was born Michael Barratt in Cardiff on 4th March 1948.

It’s over 40 years since his first number one, This Ole House, in 1981, followed up with Green Door and Merry Christmas Everyone. The Welsh Elvis was born.

Shaky still shows no sign of slowing down. Fresh from guesting on Status Quo’s arena tour last year, he has just released a new single, It All Comes Round, to be followed by a new album, Re-Set, on 28th April.

‘Music’s in my blood and besides, I’m not one to sit around all day – I’m certainly not looking to retire at all,’ Shaky told the Old Un.

He’s planning to go on the road again later in the year. Now living in Marlow, he is still in good shape. ‘I go to the gym every week – I can walk

That was when Mr William Shakespeares [sic] Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies was published – the First Folio, the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays, appearing seven years after

his death in 1616. It had no reviews or literary prizes. But it was a crucial moment, as Emma Smith writes in a new edition of The Making of Shakespeare’s First Folio: ‘Without this

Among this month’s contributors

Anne Robinson (p21) left Countdown ‘to make way for an older woman’. She was on The Weakest Link. She hopes to be a dutiful Cotswolds housewife even though, for obvious reasons, she isn’t married.

Roger Lewis (p34 and p53) is battling with woke publishers over his book about Burton and Taylor, Erotic Vagrancy: ‘the love child of a gang-bang between James Joyce, Alf Garnett and Marilyn Monroe’.

A N Wilson (p50) is one of Britain’s leading writers and journalists. He has written biographies of Tolstoy, Jesus and Hitler. His first memoir, Confessions: A Life of Failed Promises, is out now.

Frances Wilson (p55 and p68) is The Oldie’s TV critic. She is author of Burning Man: the Ascent of DH Lawrence, Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey and The Courtesan’s Revenge

book, 18 of Shakespeare’s plays would have joined the many hundreds of early modern plays (the vast majority of all those performed) that have not survived; without this book, there would be no Macbeth or Julius Caesar or the Tempest.’

Smith’s book is full of all sorts of nuggets – including the detail that, until the 1830s, members of Plymouth Library could borrow a First Folio and take it home for a week. Today, a First Folio is worth £10 million.

The First Folio also contains the best surviving portrait of Shakespeare in different versions by Martin Droeshout (1601-50), an English engraver of Flemish descent.

His first engraving shows a fresh-faced Shakespeare, with a clean collar. The second (both are above) has more shading, producing more stubble, darker cheeks and a grubby collar –Shakespeare after a night out on the tiles.

Shaky No 1 – Shakin’ Stevens

Shaky No 2 – Droeshout’s two Shakespeares in the First Folio

Important

Magpie can’t fly after having one too many fermented apples Metro

The news that convicts recruited by the Wagner Group to fight in Ukraine face firing squads if they refuse to take part in suicidal attacks didn’t surprise the Old Un.

Both sides were equally draconian on the Eastern Front – hence the comment by Marshal Zhukov: ‘It takes a very brave man to be a coward in the Red Army.’

In a new book, Different Speeds, Same Furies: Powell, Proust and Other Literary Forms, writer Perry Anderson compares Anthony Powell with Marcel Proust, and declares Powell the winner.

Anderson, 84, former editor of the New Left Review, defends Powell against the old charges of snobbery.

Bowling green where huge penis was cut into grass is hit again Telegraph & Argus

Banana thrown in chair row

Chester Standard

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An art historian friend of Anderson’s refused to read Powell. Anderson said to him, ‘But you have no difficulty reading and admiring Proust, whose world is much more socially exclusive.’

The art historian replied, ‘Yes, but Proust is over there – his world is not my affair. Powell’s world is here, and I can’t abide it.’

Anderson says this ‘might explain the paradox that critical works about Powell, all admiring, are seven times the number of the single book by an Englishman’.

Anderson had been introduced to the works of Powell at Oxford by playwright Dennis Potter.

He hated the first in the 12-volume sequence and then, halfway through the second, A Buyer’s Market, ‘I was a captive… It was one of those emotional switches as abrupt and violent as falling in love with someone after a tense initial aversion to them, lurking hostility suddenly capsizing into lasting passion.’

Anderson adds that there are 1,240,000 words in Proust’s magnum opus, and 1,130,000 in Powell’s.

But, he says, ‘Bearing in mind that French is syntactically more prolix than English – translations of the latter into the former typically increase in size by some 15 per cent – the longer work, in strictly comparable terms, may actually be the Dance.’ Powell – 1; Proust – 0.

The Wallace Collection, in London’s Manchester Square, has gone barking mad.

In March, they have not one, but two exhibitions about our canine companions. The Queen and her Corgis launches on 8th March, with each decade of our longest-reigning monarch’s life marked with an image that captures her love of dogs. Pictured, above, is a Landseer portrait of them.

Portraits of Dogs: From Gainsborough to Hockney opens on 29th March, with paintings, sculptures, drawings and even taxidermy highlighting the unique bond between we humans and our devoted dogs.

The Wallace says it’s celebrating ‘mankind’s best, faithful and fearless

‘We have to stamp out nepotism in broadcasting. What do you think, Dad?’

stories you may have missed

Royal kennel: Queen Victoria’s dogs and parrot by Landseer

friend’, from Queen Victoria’s spaniels to Hockney’s dachshunds. They had plenty to choose from. The British have commissioned and collected more dog portraits than any other nation.

The museum’s director Dr Xavier Bray, proud owner of two pugs – Bluebell and her son Winston – will give a guided tour at the opening.

Sadly, Bluebell and Winston can’t make it. The Collection doesn’t allow dogs.

And if you hope there will be somewhere to tie up your own four-legged friend in front of the Wallace’s oversize distinguished doors, you’d be wrong. Even Dr Bray will have to get a dog-sitter and leave his pugs at home.

Ninety years ago this year, Franklin D Roosevelt moved into the White House and his wife Eleanor became America’s First Lady. Roosevelt was President from 4th March 1933 until 12th April 1945.

Unusually for a First Lady, Eleanor was part-schooled in Britain. Born into a prominent, high-society American family she was orphaned at ten. She became a ward of her maternal grandmother, who in 1899 sent the 15-year-old girl to Allenswood Boarding Academy in Southfields, south-west London, for

three years to complete her education.

The exclusive private school was set up by the French teacher Marie Souvestre in 1883.

Its pupils wore long, black skirts, white, ruffled blouses and a striped school tie – and boaters when outside. They were also required to walk on nearby Wimbledon Common every morning after breakfast, whatever the weather, before their lessons.

Madame Souvestre encouraged the young Eleanor’s studies, helped bring her out of her shell and inspired her later social activism.

After leaving the academy (which closed in 1950) and returning to America in 1902, Eleanor remained in touch with her former headmistress, who she regarded as a mentor for the rest of her life.

All great writers have to start somewhere – and that somewhere is often accompanied by a rejection slip. That’s what happened to Virginia Woolf with her first review for the Times Literary Supplement in 1904.

So James Campbell reveals in his new book, NB by JC: A Walk through the Times Literary Supplement Campbell – aka JC – was for many years the planet-

brained cousin of the Old Un on the back page of the TLS Woolf was supposed to review Catherine de’ Medici and the French Reformation by Edith Sichel.

But the TLS editor, Sir Bruce Richmond, told Woolf, then 22, that his preferred style for pieces in the Literary Supplement was more ‘academic’ than her effort. He later found another reviewer for the book.

Campbell writes, ‘Given a second try, Virginia Stephen, as she was then, received two guidebooks, to “Thackeray Country” and “Dickens Country.” This time, it was a

success. The piece appeared under the heading “Literary Geography” on 10th March 1905, and the Lit Supp had a new, bright, young writer.’

Woolf then went down the familiar path of enthusiastic cub journalist to grumpy old grandee. Once she had made it, she wrote in her diary, that there would be, ‘no more reviewing for me, now that Richmond re-writes my sentences to suit the mealy mouths of Belgravia’.

In fact, like many a grumpy great, she relented and went on to become one of the paper’s most prodigious reviewers.

‘Is

‘I wonder what he really thought about’

that the in atables helpline? I’m having trouble with Moore’s Reclining Nude’

Jeremy Thorpe’s crush on me

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the Oxford Union, the debating society at Oxford University.

I was successively Secretary, Librarian and President of the Union, when I was a student, back in the late 1960s.

We were called ‘undergraduates’ in those days. And all the colleges were single sex. And the gates to the colleges were closed at 11pm. If you wanted to get into your own or out of somebody else’s, you had to climb over the college walls. It was a long time ago.

I am going back to the Union this month to take part in a commemorative debate – speaking alongside Michael Heseltine (President in 1954), who’s interviewed in this issue as he turns 90, and Michael Gove (President in 1988).

Over the years, I have bonded with some interesting chaps because of the shared experience of being President of the Union: Michael Foot (1933), Ted Heath (1939), Jeremy Thorpe (1951) and Boris Johnson (1986), to name just four.

I met Thorpe first at the Union when he was leader of the Liberal Party and had come back as a guest speaker. He bounded across the debating chamber, literally jumping over the benches in his apparent eagerness to greet me.

Well, I was a boyish 20 and he was a boyish 39. It was a long time ago.

I loved my time at the Union and made some unlikely friendships among my contemporaries.

Christopher Hitchens (socialist cultural commentator whom I always picture cigarette in his hand, in a combat jacket with a hard drinker’s bloodshot eyes) was a good chum. I also had a soft spot for Tariq Ali (President in 1965), who was a bit older than us and regarded as a serious revolutionary.

I remember that Tariq and I had tea together at the Union shortly after he had joined the International Marxist Group in 1968 and I thought, ‘He can’t be that bad – he’s ordered tea and anchovy toast.’

How I loved tea and anchovy toast as they served it in the Oxford Union!

I loved the Union’s High Victorian buildings, the oak panelling, the leather sofas, the high-ceilinged rooms and especially the galleried library, with its murals by Rossetti, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones.

One night when I was Secretary, I was charged with looking after one of the Union’s more challenging guests: Dominic Behan, Irish songwriter and Republican, younger brother of the more-famous Brendan, and son (so he told me) of one of the leading IRA men responsible for killing any number of British soldiers during the Irish ‘war of independence’.

When I met Dominic, he was already wild with drink and impossible to control. He ranted, rambled and lurched around the President’s office, alternately breaking into song and demanding more drink.

He asked me to show him where the lavatories were. I said I’d take him down to them. He stumbled down the stairs and – on the landing – proceeded to undo his flies and produce his member for me to admire.

‘I’m bursting!’ he declared and then, turning sideways, he walked quite sedately down the corridor peeing profusely against the wall as he went.

‘Don’t!’ I bleated. ‘That’s William Morris wallpaper! It’s original!’

‘F*** William Morris!’ he cried, warming to his task and spraying the precious wall with ever greater gusto.

‘He was a Socialist like you!’ I called out desperately.

‘Fuck Socialism!’ he declared, turning

to me triumphantly and shaking the final drips in my direction.

The year 2023 also marks the centenary of Dominic’s older and justifiably more celebrated brother, Brendan Behan. He was born, according to Ulick

O’Connor’s biography of the great man, on 23rd February 1923, though Wikipedia (and most other sources) give his birthday as 9th February.

Either way, everyone agrees he died of drink and diabetes on 20th March 1964, aged only 41.

‘I drink on only two occasions,’ he liked to say, ‘when I’m thirsty and when I’m not.’

I loved Behan’s plays when I first saw them as a boy and bought copies of The Hostage and The Quare Fellow in the early 1960s. I’ve still got them.

On 8th February (the eve of what might have been his birthday – who knows?), I went to London’s Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith to a fittingly uproarious reading of a bewitching new show about Behan’s turbulent life.

He loved his drink to the point of extinction and, curiously, his public displays of inebriation seemed at the time to endear him to the public.

‘There is no such thing as bad publicity,’ he quipped, ‘except your own obituary.’

At his funeral, he was given a full IRA guard of honour and mourned by thousands. It was reckoned the biggest Irish funeral of all time, after those of Michael John Collins and Charles Stewart Parnell.

Behan was mordantly funny: ‘Ah, bless you, Sister; may all your sons be bishops.’ But wise as well as witty: ‘It’s a queer world, God knows, but the best we have to be going on with.’

An exhibition of Gyles’s knitwear is at the Petersfield Museum and Art Gallery until 23rd December

I was 20. He was 39. And he leapt over a bench to greet me

Dreamy: Gyles, 1969

Italians make me an offer I can refuse

My wife was caught speeding in Rapallo. Why should I pay her fine?

matthew norman

With etiquette experts among you in mind, I begin with a delicate question.

When is it acceptable, if ever, deliberately to open someone else’s mail?

Etiquette apart, I suspect this is a criminal offence. Had I as many as seven seconds to lavish on research, a Google enquiry would confirm this.

Sadly, owing to the cocktail of lethargy and arrogance that has for so long propelled this writer’s work towards, if not over, the borderline with unreadability, I do not.

But even if it is a crime knowingly to open another’s post without permission, is there any circumstance in which even the hangiest and floggiest of penal enthusiasts would shrug, and mutter, ‘Mm, well, he probably doesn’t deserve a stretch in Belmarsh for that’?

Ladies, gentlemen and non-binaries of the jury, I submit to you that there is. When the letter is addressed to someone who, while technically still the missus, hasn’t dwelt at the marital home for more than a decade, it can surely offend against neither the law nor decency to open it on her behalf.

In that possibly misguided belief, I opened such a letter a few days ago.

As mentioned here only last month, I love Becca greatly, and hope she at least partially reciprocates. But the Beatles weren’t always right about love, and this relationship has been exponentially improved by the 106-mile buffer zone between my west-London slum and the picturesque Dorset cottage in which she and her four dogs reside.

This letter lacked the warmth that envelopes our long-distance wedlock.

from CLI International Debt Collectors, ‘to act on their behalf in the recovery of the unpaid Italian Motorway tolls detailed above.’

Detailed above were not only the amount outstanding (£61.09: £31.09 in toll fees; £25 collection costs, and the VAT thereon), the location (Rapallo), and the genesis of the problem (‘card payment failed’).

For all the intrigue inherent in that, it was this line that commandeered my attention: ‘Date: 07/07/13 @ 12:17’.

Now, we all adore Italy for so many things. The scenic beauty, the cuisine, Rome’s rich imperial history, the Sicilian culture that brought us the Godfather trilogy and The Sopranos, and the blessed memory of Marco Tardelli’s insanely wild-eyed goal celebration after putting his nation 3-0 up against the Hun in the World Cup final of 1982.

It now appears that we must also worship her debt-related politesse. To anyone miseducated by the abovementioned screen dramas, that comes as a surprise. The soldiers of the Corleone and Soprano families not merely levied extortionate, compounded weekly interest (the ‘vig’). The genteel likes of Luca Brasi and ‘Paulie Walnuts’ Gualtieri broke limbs, at the absolute least, if a debt went unsettled for a matter of months.

Yet the capi di tutti capi of Italian motorway toll booths adhere to the notably unSicilian axiom that minuscule debt is a dish best collected old. God spare their bones, they don’t even ask for their money for almost an entire decade.

Yet why, in the name of all the saints, would they come for it now?

‘We remind you,’ explains the CLI missive, ‘that unpaid tolls are enforceable up to 10 years after the date of the offence…’

Although grateful for the reminder, I was alarmed to need it. You could put it down to the familiar ravages of middle age, but it might be something more sinister.

Perhaps hospitals should bolster their traditional psych assessment questions: ‘Now then, dear, can you tell me who the Prime Minister is? OK, not to worry – they do come and go all the time. But do you remember for how long unpaid Italian toll-road fees are enforceable? No? Nothing? Nurse, call the dementia ward and see if they have a free bed.’

Anyway, this time with Becca’s permission, I rang CLI International Debt Collectors in Faversham to inform them that the debtor had left the address to which they sent the demand even before she accrued the debt.

‘And, before you ask,’ I said, ‘owing to data-protection legislation, I cannot give you any information about her current whereabouts.’

An incongruously charming and good-humoured guy, who bolstered the firm’s international credentials by revealing that he comes from Côte D’Ivoire, said he quite understood.

I asked if he thought Becca should go on the run until 7th July, when the enforceability period elapses.

His chuckle implied that he did not.

DEBT RECOVERY NOTIFICATION,’

‘FORMAL

it began, the capitals in red, in lieu of any such intimacy as ‘Dear Mrs Norman’.

‘We have been appointed by Nivi SpA, Special Attorney of Autostrada Per L’Italia Spa,’ continued the communiqué

Apparently answering the questions about both etiquette and criminal law posed at the start, Becca sounded less delighted than I’d hoped when apprised of this.

‘If they come for me, I’m taking you down with me,’ she said with a hint of that cotton-wool-in-the-cheeks Brando murmur. ‘You didn’t show no respect for the name on the post. You always gotta respect the name on the post.’

Technically still the missus, she hasn’t dwelt at the marital home for a decade

what was a bottom drawer?

A bottom drawer was the term used to denote the gradual accumulation of bedlinen, crockery, cutlery and other household goods that would be useful to a girl when she got married.

It wasn’t always an actual drawer. In America, it was known as a hope chest.

Embroidered tablecloths and the like would be handed down from previous generations and lovingly folded in the bottom drawer as heirlooms.

The phrase arose in the Victorian era, when the bottom drawer of a chest was not only the largest, but also the least used and least accessible. It could be used to store items that weren’t immediately needed.

The concept goes back much further. In 15th-century Florence, marriage chests, known as cassoni, were commissioned to celebrate weddings between two noble families and used to store clothes and textiles. Unlike the modest bottom

what is a beg?

A beg is a people-pleaser. It’s defined in the Urban Dictionary as a ‘suck-up’.

The word ‘beg’ started being used by young people in about 2010. I first became aware of the term two years ago when I was accused of ‘begging it’ by my 16-year-old daughter. I had laughed at a man’s unfunny and oft-repeated joke, and she knew I was doing it because I was about to ask him a favour.

For a young person, a classic example of a ‘beg’ would be someone who ‘doublemessages’. A girl can initiate communication with a boy she likes by sending him a message. But if she sends a second message before the boy responds, that constitutes ‘begging it’ in the extreme.

Were I to use slang around a young person, I’d be perceived as the ultimate ‘beg’. I’d be an oldie committing the crime of being desperate to appear hip, muscle in and be accepted.

Still, there is no reason we oldies can’t

drawer of Victorian days, these pairs of chests were lavishly decorated with precious metals and intricate paintings and intended to be on show.

If I asked my 20-year-old granddaughters what a bottom drawer was, they would have no idea what I was on about. When I was young, it was common for mothers to put together a bottom drawer for their daughters.

My own mother wanted to start one for me and offered to give me a set of silver cutlery for when I was a married woman. I was horrified and asked for books and clothes instead, presents I could actually use. After all, I might never get married, and the idea of collecting posh cutlery was anathema to my bohemian ideas at the time. It was unlikely I would ever have a butler to keep them polished, for one thing.

Some girls, though, were happy to receive such presents as they thought of little else but getting an engagement and a wedding ring on their finger.

The term bottom drawer was still in use in the 1950s and ’60s and went across

all social classes, although it was beginning to sound quaint and oldfashioned. Girls increasingly had other things on their minds besides getting married, such as an education and a career.

These drawers constituted a kind of dowry, as in the past most women had to stop work on getting married and were unlikely to have or earn money of their own. The contents of the drawer would mean they would be able to bring something to the marriage.

Nowadays, we can buy our own bed linen. And today’s young lovers are more likely to move in with each other rather than waiting until marriage to set up a joint home.

The term bottom drawer had nothing to do with the corresponding term top drawer, which denotes an object or person of high status. This expression comes from the top drawer of a chest, used to keep valuables such as jewellery.

There is no corresponding symbolism, though, for poor old middle drawers.

Liz Hodgkinson

use this exquisitely accurate little word amongst ourselves. The other day, a friend in her sixties was describing the lengths her on-off boyfriend had gone to in order to reignite her waning interest. He’d wangled an invitation to an event where she was chairing a panel, and travelled hundreds of miles to it, on the pretext that he was interested in the panel’s subject matter.

‘What a beg,’ I said, and my friend immediately grasped that this was exactly the way to describe the situation.

Another friend received five lengthy texts from a woman, declaring her attraction to him, even though she knew he was married. She justified her forwardness by adding, ‘I just can’t help it!’ Now that’s begging it.

A boy who constantly texts a girl is likely to be considered a persistent romantic or a pest, depending on whether his advances are welcome. But a girl is still expected to play hard to get or be demoted to a ‘beg’. Rules for the young are as rigid as ever.

Strangely, we start ‘begging it’ more as

we age, on the self-deceiving grounds that we’re grown-up enough to stop playing games and start communicating sensibly. In fact, it behoves oldie women to stay very cool indeed, given that older men find ‘begs’ repellently pathetic.

Yet be cool in the wrong way, and you’re also ‘begging it’. The young are far more confrontational than we are, and ready to challenge bad behaviour. One girlfriend was subjected to two years of hurtful negligent arrogance by her boyfriend. Yet she continued to tiptoe around him, keeping her diary empty just in case he deigned to include her in his plans. The less she berated him, the more of a ‘beg’ she was and the more carelessly he treated her.

We should be grateful to the young for pinpointing the error of our peoplepleasing with this precise little word, armoured by its hard consonants.

Though the word ‘sycophant’ has a nice onomatopoeic serpentine slither, nothing packs a punch quite like the brutally economic ‘beg’. I am delighted to have discovered and adopted it.

Charlotte Metcalf

A talent to amuse

Rev Peter Mullen salutes the genius of Noël Coward, 50 years after his death

It’s 50 years since Sir Noël Coward died, aged 73, at his Firefly home in Jamaica, on 26th March 1973. And yet we’re no nearer to doing justice to his personality and talent. T S Eliot called him ‘the real thing’. And Time magazine praised him as ‘full of cheek, chic, pose and poise’ – but he was even more than that.

What can you say of a man who wrote 65 plays – most of which were stonking successes in the UK and in the States –and eight musical comedies, performed hundreds of scintillating revues and cabarets, and was described by Laurence Olivier as ‘the 20th century’s finest actor’?

And then there all those songs from which we can all sing a line or two: Mad Dogs and Englishmen; Some Day I’ll Find You; A Room with a View; and (Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage,) Mrs Worthington

As a child actor, he began at the top with the great Gertrude Lawrence, who mothered him. Coward recalled how she ‘gave me an orange, told me a few mildly dirty stories and I loved her from then onwards’.

Coward was no mere luvvie: as soon as the Second World War broke out, he gave up the theatre and offered himself for war work. George VI wanted to give him a knighthood for his achievements in the secret service but was dissuaded by Churchill, who was repulsed by Coward’s camp demeanour and louche reputation.

But the main reason behind Churchill’s antagonism was that Coward opposed him on the abdication issue. Coward said of Edward VIII’s sweetheart, Mrs Simpson, ‘We don’t want a cutie as Queen of England!’ His knighthood had to wait until 1970.

The war work was serious stuff, for which he earned his place on Hitler’s list of those who would be shot on sight once the Nazis had taken charge of the country. Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell and H G Wells were also on that list,

prompting Coward to say, ‘Just think of the people I shall have to be seen dead with.’

You could think I’m making things up, inventing a fantastical fictional character, when I expand on this catalogue of his talents and triumphs. He was first choice to play James Bond in Dr No (1962) but turned it down, saying, ‘No, no, a thousand times no!’

He also refused the invitation to take the part of Humbert Humbert in the film of Lolita (1962). Coward said, ‘At my time of life, the film story would be logical only if the 12-year-old heroine was a sweet old lady.’

For his memorial service at St Martin-in-the-Fields, the Poet Laureate John Betjeman composed and recited a poem, John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier read verses and Yehudi Menuhin played Bach.

The Queen Mother unveiled the statue of Coward that stands in the foyer of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. After being thanked by his partner, Graham Payn, she replied, ‘I came because Noël was my friend.’

He also enjoyed 19 years’ close friendship with Prince George, Duke of

Kent. He admitted there had been ‘some dalliance’. On the Duke’s death, he said, ‘I suddenly find that I loved him more than I knew.’

Dalliance? He was known for it.

Kenneth Tynan said, ‘As a child actor, he was Slightly in Peter Pan and he’s been wholly in Peter Pan ever since.’

Louche was his style and camp his signature; part of the act – of the Noël Coward phenomenon. But he was insistent that his private life should remain private. About rumours of his homosexuality, he quipped, ‘I think there are a few old ladies in Worthing who don’t know.’

A few years ago, when a poll was taken among actors and critics, Coward came second only to Shakespeare in the list of those who had most influenced the theatre. Kenneth Williams said, ‘None of us would have been anywhere without Noël.’ His friend Lord Mountbatten adored him and described him simply as ‘the Master’.

Why did he never – quite – become a national treasure? Partly because homosexual relationships were illegal during most of his lifetime. Outside the arty, theatrical milieu, most people didn’t much like those they called poofs and queers.

He was a virtuoso satirist; his cynicism was genuine. For me, what makes him so attractive and so lovable is that the chosen victim of his sharpest mockery is himself, as when he said, ‘Ivor Novello’s profile and my mind are the most beautiful things in the world.’

Or when, in 1969, a reporter apologised to him, saying, ‘I hope you haven’t been bored having to go through all these interviews for your 70th birthday and being made to answer the same old questions about yourself.’

The Master replied with a shrug, ‘Not at all – I’m fascinated by the subject.’

Rev Peter Mullen was Rector of St Michael, Cornhill, in the City of London

The Master (1899-1973)

Ian Fleming’s last wish

Seventy years after the first Bond book, Algy Cluff recalls his meeting with the writer – and the dream that never came true

Ian Fleming published his first Bond book, Casino Royale, 70 years ago, on 13th April 1953. To commemorate the anniversary, Ian Fleming Publications is to reissue the entire Fleming backlist in April.

Twice in the past three months I have enjoyed attending 60th-anniversary dinners to mark the launch of the first James Bond film, Dr No (1962). They were held at the Special Forces Club in London and at the Swedish Embassy. The Swedish Ambassador, Mikaela Kumlin Granit, not only is a Bond fan but also would well qualify as a Bond girl!

These occasions were choreographed by a remarkable individual who is writing 007’s biography – Paul Beaver. He uniquely holds the rank of Honorary Group Captain of No 601 (County of London) Squadron RAuxAF and Colonel (Reserves) Army Air Corps (2007-2013), and is a renowned aircraft historian, having written 78 books.

We had a spirited discussion about where Bond had been educated, where he had served in the last war and where the next film was to be located. Sweden was the favoured choice with the denial of Nazi access to its iron ore deposits an obvious subject. We also wondered whether it was any longer necessary for Bond to be heterosexual or even English!

Attendance at these events led me to realise that, apart from a member of the Fleming family (James, his nephew and also a distinguished author), I was the only participant who had actually met Fleming.

This occurred in 1963 at Fleming’s much-loved and much-used club, Boodle’s. It was to Boodle’s that he repaired to avoid the high-octane society which infested (as he saw it) his house in Victoria Square, invited by his wife Ann. Blades – the locale of the Drax-Bond card contest in Moonraker – was obviously based on Boodle’s. I have recently taken Beaver to the club to show him the famous card room, still in active use.

In 1963, the year before Fleming died,

aged only 56, I found myself sitting next to him at a Boodle’s dinner. He was charming and not at all intimidating to a youngster of 23. I was in the Grenadier Guards at the time and about to be deployed to Cyprus.

During our chat, he revealed how tiresome he found the celebrity which claimed him. By now, he had written most of the 007 books. He said that sort of fame was not what he wanted in life.

So, I impudently said, ‘Well, what did you want in life, then?’

He replied, ‘I wanted to be the captain of the Royal St George’s Golf Club.’ The club, in Sandwich, inspired the Royal St Mark’s in Goldfinger

At this time, he was the captain elect. Tragically, the following year, he was in Kent where he was due to be elevated to captain, when he suffered a heart attack after dinner and died the following day, on his son Caspar’s 12th birthday.

Some 20 years later, having become a member of Royal St George’s myself in 1972, a close friend of mine, Sir Patrick Sheehy, was himself appointed the captain. Pat was a larger than life character – the Chairman of British American Tobacco. His intimidating appearance and growling manner terrified everyone. In fact, this was a successful ace he adopted to facilitate his

Under par: Ian Fleming was disappointed in his bid for golfing immortality

quest for the top job at BAT. In reality, he was a clever, kind and good man.

I had accumulated a number of original photographs of renowned golfers who had had an association with Royal St George’s, including Bobby Sweeny (hanging in the club today) and C J Tolley. One was of Ian Fleming wearing his naval commander’s uniform. It was signed by Fleming.

I decided to donate these to the club and sent them to Pat. This I thought was pretty good of me. So imagine my surprise when I received no acknowledgement. Worse, the Fleming photograph was returned to me with a terse note from Pat to the effect that Fleming ‘never quite made it’. In other words, he never actually became captain.

So, in the club, there is an array of photographs – mostly Old Etonian stockbrokers – who did ‘make it’ but no photograph of the club’s most celebrated member by far.

To add further insult, my wife, during one of her periodic clean-outs of my hoard of books and photographs, included Fleming’s signed photograph in a consignment gifted to the Oxfam shop.

Heaven knows where it is now!

Algy Cluff ’s memoir, The Importance of Being Algy, is out in April

Sunak – and his old foe, Margaret Thatcher. By York Membery

Tarzan turns 90

The mane of flowing blond hair might have gone – it’s snowy white these days. In most other respects, the years have been kind to Michael Heseltine.

He turns 90 on 21st March, but he’s in pretty good shape physically and, marbles-wise, is still firing on all cylinders.

His dashing good looks and actionman style led to his being dubbed Tarzan in his political heyday. These days, he is more likely to be found tending to the trees and shrubs in the gardens at his home at Thenford, Northamptonshire, than dashing around Parliament.

But he’s still a deeply political animal. What does he think of the trio of Prime Ministers who’ve occupied 10 Downing Street over the last year?

‘I have a good personal relationship with Boris – who succeeded me as MP at Henley – though I’m deeply critical of his policies, and his political integrity is not one I can admire,’ says Heseltine.

He gives short shrift to Liz Truss, whose premiership he describes as ‘an aberration’. But he appears to admire Rishi Sunak. He says Sunak ‘brought sanity back to British politics’, though he laments the fact that Sunak’s a Brexiteer.

He’s also quick to dismiss Labour leader Keir Starmer’s plans for House of Lords reform. ‘He would be mad to do that – if he were to win the election, the last thing he’d want is a prolonged constitutional row that would actually achieve none of the benefits proposed,’ he says. ‘That said, it’s too big and should have only around 600 members – I’d offer an inducement of some sort, for some peers to go.’

He was born in Swansea in 1933 to parents of mixed English and Welsh heritage – though he points out he’s ‘actually a quarter French because’ his father’s mother ‘was 100-per-cent French’. Heseltine first stood for Parliament in 1959. His political hero, Harold Macmillan, was Prime Minister.

After being elected to the Commons at

Michael Heseltine attacks Liz Truss and Boris Johnson but praises Rishi

Mane man – at the 1985 Conservative Party Conference, Blackpool BRIAN HARRIS / ALAMY

his third attempt – for Tavistock in 1966 (though he was MP for Henley from 1974 to 2001) – he went on to have a 30-plusyear career in front-line politics.

He served as Secretary of State for Defence, the Environment, and Trade and Industry before becoming Deputy Prime Minister. According to legend, he plotted his future on the back of an envelope while a student at Oxford – a future that would culminate in his becoming prime minister. But he never did get the keys to Number 10.

His three decades at the top were not without incident. In 1976, he picked up the mace during a stormy political debate in the House of Commons and resigned over the Westland affair in 1986. Famously, he was once described by the Tory MP and diarist Alan Clark as the sort of person who ‘buys his own furniture’.

He also pushed through landmark legislation such as the Right to Buy policy in the early 1980s, enabling more than two million tenants to buy their council homes.

His two proudest political achievements? The ‘urban regeneration’ he inaugurated in Liverpool (after the 1981 Toxteth riots) with projects such as the International Garden Festival in 1984 – which later resulted in his being granted the Freedom of the City of Liverpool.

‘As Minister of Merseyside, I was arguably the most interventionist of any minister in modern British political history,’ he says.

Secondly, he is proud of his pivotal role in setting up the European Space Agency in 1973 during Edward Heath’s premiership, ‘in which Britain achieved a significant leadership in satellite technology’.

Contrary to received wisdom, he

insists he had ‘a good working relationship’ with Margaret Thatcher for much of her premiership.

‘We were never friends, but that’s quite irrelevant – we were colleagues, and she kept promoting and supporting me,’ but they ultimately fell out ‘over the European issue in the mid-eighties’.

In 1990, after Geoffrey Howe resigned as Deputy Prime Minister, he challenged her for the leadership. It’s said that he who wields the sword never wears the crown. And so it proved in Hezza’s case, with the premiership passing to John Major.

Heseltine has no regrets about his leadership challenge. ‘There were clear signs the party wanted change, and the poll tax would have taken the party down and ended Mrs Thatcher’s premiership if she’d still been leader in 1992.’

He regrets never making it to 10 Downing Street. ‘Of course I’d like to have become Prime Minister – and if I had been leader, the party would never have supported Brexit.’

Despite having ‘a minor heart attack’ in 1993, he did get to become Deputy Prime Minister – the second-most powerful position in the land – in 1995.

Then, four years after Labour’s landslide 1997 election victory, he resigned his Henley seat.

Since then, Heseltine has had more time to devote to the magnificent arboretum and gardens he’s created –with the help of a team of gardeners – in the 70 acres of land surrounding his 18th-century mansion.

It boasts ‘a collection of more than 3,000 different types of tree and shrub’, as well as extensive herbaceous borders, a sculpture garden and a rill.

Converting the grounds from ‘an overgrown jungle of weeds’ over the last

40-odd years has been ‘a labour of love’, admits Heseltine, who zips around the gardens every day on a golf buggy.

The ‘therapeutic effects of the greenery’ have brought him and his wife Anne enormous enjoyment – an experience now shared by visitors to the gardens on open days.

There is one last political battle the warrior-like elder statesman is determined to keep waging until his dying breath: reversing Brexit, which he argues has been ‘every bit as bad’ as predicted, inflicting huge damage on the country.

‘Brexiteers claim Brexit hasn’t been done properly, but they’ve had their fingers on the levers of power for six years. So what the heck have they been doing all that time?’

He admits it would be ‘presumptuous’ to think Brexit might be reversed in his lifetime, but he’s convinced that in the longer term Britain will ‘see sense’.

‘The younger generation won’t tolerate the marginalisation of this country,’ he adds.

So will Heseltine be urging people to vote for the Liberal Democrats in the next general election, as he did in the 2019 European elections, an act that led to his having the Tory whip suspended?

‘I’ve never been a Lib Dem – and I can’t remember how I voted in the European elections,’ he says. ‘But the idea that I’m now unaligned [as his Wikipedia entry says] is ridiculous.

‘I’m still a [Tory] party member, and there can’t be a Conservative who’s been at the forefront of more battles than me.’

He admits he’ll have ‘a real dilemma’ when Sunak calls an election.

‘I want the government to pursue a much more British policy of self-interest in Europe, and I’m not getting that from this Conservative government.’

Heseltine attributes his longevity to ‘having a wonderful family’ with his wife and three children. He’s still involved in the Haymarket publishing empire he founded, though son Rupert is now Executive Chairman.

That longevity is helped, he says, by his ‘being a gardener’. And he was much looking forward to his 90th-birthday party when we spoke.

Does he think he’ll still be around in ten years’ time to get a letter from King Charles congratulating him on reaching his century?

‘That’s the plan,’ he chuckles.

For open days at Thenford Arboretum, go to thenfordarboretum.com

Lion in winter: Michael and Ann Heseltine at Thenford House, Northamptonshire

Cars drive me crazy

Anne Robinson excelled on Top Gear but she still needed help from a man – The Oldie’s Matthew Norman – to buy a new motor

Jeremy Clarkson says he never did ‘women can’t park’ gags on Top Gear. Why ever not?

Women are terrible at parking. I once saw four brickies leave a building site in Gray’s Inn Road, each take a corner of a VW Golf and lift it into a space adequate for several coaches and horses, allowing the female owner to give up her struggle.

But I am not one of those women. I passed my driving test days after my 17th birthday. (The registration-plate suffix was B.)

I once chased the fraudster Emil Savundra in my Mini from halfway along the Euston Road and caught up with his Bentley by the traffic lights at Blackfriars Bridge. I wasn’t far behind the rapper Jay Kay in my timing taking a reasonably priced car round the Top Gear track during Jeremy’s time.

But now, entering a car showroom in the hope of buying a new car, I realise I look just the same as the next little old lady who takes a week and a half to do a three-point turn.

My mission is to trade in my threeyear-old Audi A6 estate for a new, smaller, zippier model.

And here’s the problem. The average male customer is specially wired to retain a terrifying amount of unnecessary knowledge on every aspect of the car he is trading in and the car he wants to buy. Whereas I, a woman, have no interest in the minutiae of the dashboard and even less in the inner workings of the engine.

There’s nothing about a flashy Audi dealership that is designed with a woman in mind. Who, wishing to part with many thousands of pounds, would want to be escorted to a desk to be interviewed by a middle-aged man who could just as easily be your accountant or your oncologist?

But there I was with salesman Nick.

Nick knows I want an automatic Audi A3 with some zip. To this I now add electric seats, brown leather upholstery,

dark-grey exterior and, most importantly of all, self-parking.

‘Nick,’ I stress, ‘I have been longing for self-parking almost as long as I’ve been wishing to be as thin as Victoria Beckham.’

But in a trice the joy is sucked from my car-buying experience.

Nick’s computer says no to electric seats, no to brown leather upholstery, no to dark grey and no self-parking.

‘Never mind, Nick,’ I said bravely. ‘Why don’t we do a test drive of the two models you have standing by?’ (One medium fast, one very fast.)

And, as we walk past my A6, I ask Nick to kick the tyres and give me a rough idea of its value.

Nick returns smiling. Perhaps even a bit smug. ‘Miss Robinson,’ he says, ‘you were obviously not aware that the car you have been driving for three years does indeed have self-parking.’

So let’s take a quick look at the scoreboard so far. No electric seats, no dark-grey exterior, no brown leather upholstery, no self-parking and me looking a fool. I make it five points to Nick. Zero to the little old lady.

In a bid to reassert my authority, I explain to Nick (I think politely) that I would prefer a silent test drive. In effect, I say, ‘Nick, you have a non-speaking part.’

Yet the next thing I know, Nick is explaining all manner of car details, carburettor, nought-to-60 acceleration, fuel economy, airbag deployment and so much more.

‘No, no, Nick,’ I plead.

But the noise keeps coming, either about the working of the car or, worse, about which lane I should get into or stay in when we approach a roundabout.

Finally, back at base, I utter a sentence I had planned never in my life to use: ‘Nick,’ I say, ‘I would like to return with a man to help me make a decision.’

As it happens, Matthew Norman of this parish also drives an Audi and I plead with him to join me for the next round with Nick. Matthew says he is baffled that I should need a souped-up Audi, since I have travelled across Italy in his 1.2 litre Audi A3 and appeared completely satisfied.

No matter. With another firm plea to Nick for silence and with Matthew in tow, I set off yet again. And, yes, car details keep coming. But it no longer matters. Suddenly, I know for sure I want the 4-litre boy racer.

So clear am I that Nick becomes redundant. Matthew of this parish becomes redundant.

And, as we park, there’s only need for light banter. ‘Tell me, Nick,’ I say. ‘Do you come from a long line of car salesmen?’

‘No,’ says Nick, ‘my father was lead double-bass player in the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.’

Final score, I think you’ll agree: game, set and match to Nick.

Zippy model: Anne at home with her new car

Andrew Roberts lays out the rules of awful British movies – and there are plenty to choose from

Worst films ever

One of the recent highlights on the Talking Pictures TV channel was Konga (1961), the tale of Dr Charles Decker, a mad scientist played by Michael Gough at his most fiendish.

He employs a growth serum on a chimpanzee, transforming his simian friend into a stunt performer wearing a gorilla costume. Unfortunately, the doctor is also given to shooting his pets, ranting, ‘You fool! Do you think I want the biggest experiment of my life menaced by a cat? Even those few drops might have made Tabby swell up to huge proportions!’

Konga was produced by Herman Cohen, the genius behind I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1975). He claimed the cost of his British masterpiece was $1 million and that it boasted the new SpectaMation trick-photography system.

The result was a picture that posed many questions to its audience. What became of the remaining $999,450 of the budget, to judge by the finished product? Why does central London resemble Merton Park? Finally, how could Scotland Yard protect the capital with only three Wolseley 6/90s?

Above all, Konga fulfilled the principal rules for an awful British picture. First, it must risibly fail to live up to its manifesto. Secondly, the concept should be utterly ill-conceived.

The Cuckoo Patrol (1967) was a vehicle for Freddie and the Dreamers, with the band as short-trousered boy scouts, an idea Werner Herzog might have rejected for being ‘too bizarre’.

In 1966, The Ghost Goes Gear, a B film starring the Spencer Davis Group, Nicholas Parsons, Jack Haig and several mortified-looking musicians, had a plot involving a castle haunted by a folksinging ghost.

Nor should we forget Dracula AD 1972 (1972), Hammer’s doomed attempt to be ‘hip’ in which Johnny Alucard, the

Triumph Stag-driving vampire, urges the 28-year-old ‘teenagers’ to ‘Dig the music, kids’.

With bad films, a low budget is less important than the producers’ failure to use their funds with any degree of wisdom. The Body Stealers (1969) stars Patrick Allen as a cardigan-wearing Lothario saving the world from miniskirted alien invaders. Assisting him in this noble quest is Neil ‘brother of Sean’ Connery. The special effects appear to have cost five shillings and still look worth all of 2/6d on the screen.

By contrast, the 1967 version of

Casino Royale employed five directors and three studios but has all the comedic appeal of a runaway juggernaut.

Three years later, the cinematic non-sensation was Toomorrow, the alien civilisation/flower-power musical starring Olivia Newton-John. Sample dialogue: ‘Yeah, I dig it!’

1963’s The Cool Mikado – a twist version of Gilbert and Sullivan directed by a young Michael Winner and guest starring Mike and Bernie Winters –seems, at first glance, the worst musical in cinema history.

However, Gonks Go Beat escaped into

Nul points: Konga (1961)

the community just two years later. Someone in Wardour Street mistakenly thought the combination of some Decca recording artists – those zany tearaways Kenneth Connor, Frank Thornton and Terry Scott – and various gonk puppets would have audiences queuing at their local Odeon.

Predictable excuses from directors and producers accompany masterpieces like this:

(i) ‘We did not make it for the critics’ actually means ‘My film was solely responsible for turning 200 picture houses into bingo halls. In later years, it will haunt the Betamax section of video libraries and the career of a now-famous minor cast member.’

(ii) ‘This is for the ordinary cinemagoer’ means ‘The peasants are so desperate for entertainment they will actually pay to see this.’

(iii) ‘It is a bawdy romp’ means ‘Two glum-looking bit actresses will remove their clothes in a motel room where the wallpaper takes revenge on society.

Meanwhile, a formerly well-known character actor will make vain attempts to look jovially lascivious while sporting a nylon cravat.’

Some names are often a guarantee of lack of quality. Take Lindsay Shonteff, whose Bond spoof/utter rip-off Licensed to Love and Kill (1979) has all the verve of an advertisement for a discount carpet warehouse. Harry Lee and Edward J Danziger were brothers synonymous with second features that seem to revel in their unremitting cheapness, with

scripts written around props they acquired second-hand.

In 1954, to make use of ten left-over days of studio space, the Danzigers made the world’s finest alien-dominatrix epic – Devil Girl from Mars

The reviewer from the Monthly Film Bulletin was mesmerised: ‘There is really no fault in this film that one would like to see eliminated. Everything, in its way, is quite perfect.’

Devil Girl does immeasurably benefit from the tongue-in-cheek performance of Patricia Laffan as the eponymous villainess, clad in a latex outfit courtesy of the brothers’ deal with a British clothes supplier.

Nicky Henson’s straight-faced aplomb dominates Psychomania (1973), an everyday story of zombie bikers, voodoo, toad-worshipping, hippie funeral songs and supermarket invasions.

Some works at least have the merit of enthusiasm. The DJ Mike Raven stars in two independent horror films. His attempts at acting in the 1972 epic Disciple of Death consist mainly of his pointing his beard of evil at the other cast members and pulling faces.

You can’t fault Mr Raven’s zeal when his Stranger bellows, ‘No doubt we all shall meet again – in Hell!’ with his face apparently daubed in Homepride.

In other pictures, there is a sadness in seeing a former star name in reduced circumstances. Diana Dors was paid £425 in cash to avoid the taxman’s attention for her appearance in Adventures of a Private Eye (1977).

Heading the cast of 1969’s Zeta One, a ‘space-age-strip-girlie-thriller’ made for £60,000, was a visibly dispirited James Robertson Justice, who had recently suffered a stroke.

That same year, wise cinemagoers fled The Haunted House of Horror, with Dennis Price slumping in a mock-up of a police inspector’s office.

Joan Crawford ended her cinematic career as the anthropologist Dr Brockton in the H Cohen production Trog (1970). Pot-holers exploring Ivinghoe Beacon discover a cave-dweller, played by the stuntman Joe Cornelius in an ape mask. The doctor attempts to tame him via the power of light jazz, but he escapes to cause havoc in Cookham by throwing greengrocers with Ray Davies hairstyles through shop windows.

If Trog has a redeeming feature, it is that Mr Gough plays the villainous Sam Murdock, who is utterly opposed to the ‘slimy hell-beast’. Gough regarded ‘Put me down, Konga!’ as ‘one of my great lines’. When he was starring in a play in New York, Tim Burton was in the audience and, according to legend, exclaimed, ‘That’s the guy from all those terrible movies! He is our Alfred [Batman’s butler]!’

It was thanks to such epics as Konga and Trog that Gough (1916-2011) then appeared in four Batman films.

Still, none of them contains lines of such wit as this one in Konga: ‘Fantastic! There’s a huge monster gorilla that’s constantly growing to outlandish proportions loose in the streets!’

Great British turkeys: The Body Stealers (1969); Dracula AD 1972 (1972); and Devil Girl from Mars (1954)

Pin-up that won the war

Eighty years ago, Betty Grable posed for a photo that one in 12 Allied servicemen took to the battlefield. By Christopher Moor

Eighty years ago, a quirk of fate saw a 1943 pin-up photo of film star Betty Grable smiling coyly over her right shoulder become a Second World War icon.

The picture went off to war in the survival kits of around one in 12 Allied servicemen.

Grable (1916-73) was proud to be a pin-up girl. She saw pin-ups as an inspiration for those without a woman in their lives back home.

Her own pin-up accentuated her famous legs, which had been insured for a million dollars as a publicity stunt. The self-effacing girl with the million-dollar legs believed they were the two reasons for her success in movies – not her singing and dancing talents.

She always credited the success of her pin-up to Frank Powolny, head photographer at 20th Century Fox studios. She said, ‘He’ll tell you it was nothing. That I just happened to stand in front of the camera. But it wasn’t easy, even if it was an accident.

‘We were making a picture called Sweet Rosie O’Grady at the time and, in one scene, an artist was to draw me for a cover on Police Gazette. He wanted the measurements and figure just right – so I climbed into the tight white bathing suit for a bunch of pictures.

‘Frank, as usual, wasn’t quite satisfied. Then he got the idea for a pose of me looking back over my shoulder. It was never really intended for publication, but when the publicity department saw it they had a few thousand prints made.

‘Thanks to the servicemen, it turned out be a pin-up sensation and it did a lot for me. But [behind] the picture was Mr Powolny and his camera genius.’

Betty Grable’s movie career peaked in 1943. The annual Quigley poll named her the year’s number-one box-office attraction. Her two Technicolor musicals that year, Coney Island and Sweet Rosie O’Grady, were among the year’s top-grossing pictures.

Her pin-up appeared in the opening

and closing credits of her next movie, Pin-up Girl, released in 1944. The film did not perform as well as Coney Island and Sweet Rosie O’Grady. It seemed to have been rushed to take advantage of the pin-up’s appeal.

Born on 18th December 1916, in St Louis, Missouri, Grable died 50 years ago this year on 2nd July 1973, in Santa Monica. She was 56.

Her marriages to actor Jackie Coogan (1937-39) and trumpeter Harry James (1943-1965) both ended in divorce. She had two daughters by James, Victoria (1944-) and Jessica (1947-2016).

Grable had performed unspectacularly in movies for ten years before her breakthrough came, when she replaced Alice Faye in Down Argentine Way (1940). Audiences quickly took to Betty on seeing her in Technicolor for the first time. She retired from movies in 1955, to concentrate on stage, TV and nightclub work.

What Grable didn’t say about her famous photo was that there were only two exposures left on the film when Powolny said, ‘Look this way, Betty.’ The last shot was the one destined for fame,

with more than three million copies distributed worldwide.

Both back-view poses have been published. The differences are subtle. In the servicemen’s favourite, Grable’s feet are wider apart and her head slightly lowered.

The 1995 television documentary Behind the Pin-Up claimed that the Hays Office – an American organisation of producers and directors formed to enforce the industry’s moral code –required the pin-up be censored.

In that more innocent era, a black garter on Betty’s left thigh had to be removed before the photo could be mailed to servicemen. The garter was seen as a corrupting influence.

Suitably retouched, the pin-up went off to servicemen in sizes convenient for wearing over the heart and dreaming –or as larger prints for pinning up in lockers or on barrack-room walls.

It has been said she turned her back to the camera to hide her advanced pregnancy. Frank Powolny disagreed. Frontal shots he took of her during the session support his opinion, showing the slim star high-kicking and lifting weights. A quip from Grable herself is where the pregnancy story perhaps began. When asked once too often why she’d posed with her back to the camera, she jested, ‘I was a bit flabby around the tummy at the time.’

The pin-up reportedly even went into Vietnam in the 1960s. Nudity was by then banned in American services’ publications. So, while the eligible pin-up girls heeded the message to put their clothes back on for photos for the boys in uniform, the soldiers survived on a diet of early Marilyn Monroe or mid Betty Grable images.

Her Civil War relic, as she affectionately called the pin-up, has survived her in forms she would never have dreamed of.

In 2003, it appeared in a book published by Life magazine, 100 Photographs That Changed the World. Quite right!

Pin-up’s pins: Betty Grable’s 1943 picture

I bought a wood

Joy Lo Dico acquired a smallholding for pleasure – and then the price of firewood started soaring

‘This will be a money pit,’ my friend said.

He’s just been for a walk around the 120 acres of broadleaf woodland I bought in Gloucestershire in 2015.

He was half-right. When I was still pretty green at woodland management, it was; the price of education, I called it.

But events have conspired in the wood’s favour. Seven years on, it produces local jobs, better accommodation for the birds and bees and a supply of fuel for the neighbourhood. It’s also in danger of actually turning a real profit.

Rewind to 2014. I was in full-time work in London and decided I needed a peaceful bolthole in the countryside. I found a cottage surrounded by woods (120 acres is about 80 football pitches – not a small undertaking).

To my eyes, it was perfect and untouchable. Groves of cherry, stands of ash and oak and a helluva lot of hazel – probably why it was called Hazel Woods. My business is called Voltaire’s Wood, after my dog.

But it wasn’t perfect. Its first disease was ash dieback, carried by spores in the wind and now killing off most of the British ash population. The second was neglect: the wood hadn’t been thinned or tended in 50 years.

While there were fine veteran trees, large areas were felled during the Second World War, replanted and forgotten. There are pockets of trees which are clearly reaching pensionable age that have never grown fatter than six inches wide, for lack of light. That’s before the tragedy of the overstood coppice – when coppiced trees are neglected and their rods grow out of control.

From my perch in London, I spent much time thinking about the woods. The experts Oliver Rackham and Richard Mabey were my guides in books. Local foresters came in to teach me what I was meant to be doing.

The price of education was high. In

2018, we cut down two tonnes of wood; the following year, ten tonnes. The costs, in the thousands, never matched the income.

Then came 2020 – and COVID.

I moved my perch to the woods. By now, dieback in the ash was advanced. Whole stands of trees became leafless. What to do? First, make safe the footpaths and bridleways. But how, after this tree pandemic which will see a third of the trees die, would the woods regenerate?

I’d found a few locals who knew the woods well. They come in with chainsaws, diggers and timber trailers to deliver the logs. We brought in heavy horses to haul the logs. We bought a log-splitter, splitting the wood into metre-long billets. We left them to dry over the summer and then cut them to ten inches, ready for delivery, and started selling firewood.

A healthy woodland needs turnover. The theory is that before humans took over, the megafauna – mammoths, bison – would maraud through the woods, knocking down sections of trees and allowing the light onto the forest floor, which, in turn, kicked off the next cycle of growth.

Letting the forests grow high has been the undoing for wildlife, insects and flowers. I had been naive in not wanting to touch the trees. Harvesting them was of long-term benefit to the woods.

It was also, by accident, perfect timing for a healthy rise in firewood sales. The number of wood-burners sold shot up during COVID, and so did firewood sales. The costs of shipping in wood from the Baltics – where much of the kiln-dried wood comes from –rose precipitously.

This year, as the energy crisis loomed, locals wanted to stock up early. Prices went up in our area from £130 a cubic metre to £170 for seasoned logs, or over £200 for kilndried wood.

Our own prices ticked up from £125 to £160, with – unusually – a stacking service included. We remain so low-tech that we carry the logs in heavy-duty sacks to people’s woodsheds – ‘we’ being two strong, capable, charming young men. I sit at home doing the accounts.

Since December last year, firewood has been cheaper to burn, at just 10.37p per kWh, than gas at 12.81p and electricity at 39.21p.

Though there’s a lot of ash, there’s a limited amount we take out every year, and not every ash tree will go to firewood. Some are left in situ –great fodder for the fungi and a good place for wildlife to hang out. Larger logs go through our small sawmill, to be used at home or sold on to local furniture-makers.

The price of education has been paying off. This year, we have put around £10,000 into the woodland coffers, after costs. Next year, we expect that to double.

And the woods are happier, too. Trees are rapidly filling the gaps in the canopy, the understory is buzzing and I’m pretty sure the volume of birdsong has gone up.

Joy Lo Dico, a Financial Times columnist, owns Voltaire’s Wood in Gloucestershire

Party time in Voltaire’s Wood

I’m not the only lonely man

Eight million British men feel isolated. John Matthews is one of them

Ilook around and see a lot of middle-aged and older men wandering around, unhappy and alone.

According to the Jo Cox commission on loneliness, eight million men (of all ages) in Britain feel lonely at least once a week, with nearly three million saying it’s a daily occurrence.

Does society create this loneliness? Or do men create it?

When I was 18, my brother Brent died from cancer. He was ten years older than me. The aftermath was a desert of a social life, with all my friends disappearing like rats off a sinking ship.

Almost 30 years later, I became separated from my partner of 29 years. I ended up living on my own for the first time in 30 years. None of my friends helped. I was shocked how history was repeating itself.

Fast forward a year, and my long-term partner, from whom I’d been separated for over a year by now, had a catastrophic brain haemorrhage. My daughter and I rushed to her bedside as she struggled to survive.

One of my male friends asked, ‘Why are you doing that? Why are you helping her? I thought you were separated?’

I replied, ‘This is the mother of my daughter. We’ve known each other 35 years. There is no question about whether I will help!’

Then what happens? Steve, with whom I was cycling two or three times a week, stops answering my messages, and stops cycling with me.

I bump into him in a pub some time later and he does not even say hello to me. He sits there staring at me, with not a word said – one of the strangest experiences I have ever had.

Matt, who disappeared the year before, appears on email. There’s some slight contact but he does not engage in any meaningful dialogue or call.

My long-term friend Geoff effectively disappears. He stops inviting me on his motorbike rides, replying to messages or

accepting invitations to come round for a chat. From the day my ex was rushed into the neurological ward in Salford on 28th February, it is almost four months before I go out on a normal night out with Geoff. Four months!

I work at it. No criticism. No blaming. Just encouragement – and eventually things with Geoff become more like the old normal.

During the rehabilitation, my ex suggested my daughter and I take a look at Headway, a charity that helps people suffering from brain injuries, and how their families are affected.

One of Headway’s articles on its website said that because people do not know how to deal with a situation, or they feel the person involved needs space, they pull away. The problem is that, when everyone pulls away, their ‘friend’ ends up isolated – which is what I have experienced.

Not everyone abandons you. My friend Jill did the opposite. Last year, when she saw my supposed best friend disappear when I could have used some support, she stepped in and made a point of keeping in contact on a regular basis.

We still meet up every week, go walking, eat pizzas and have a laugh.

People who abandon their friends don’t realise the person going through a difficult time might just want to chat about other things, have some fun and be distracted. They don’t necessarily need or want to talk about the big thing going on in their lives.

When I see lonely old men wandering around – miserable, on their own – I wonder, have they been through a difficult time? Have their friends dropped them as I’ve been dropped?

All the people who dropped me were men. Jill is – obviously – a woman.

Do men have a serious problem? Are they unable to be there for their friends when they need them? Are men brought up to be utterly useless emotionally in difficult situations? My experience suggests they are.

Abandonment by supposed friends means men are creating lonely men as they go into old age. I am determined that this will not happen to me.

John L Matthews is a film-maker and screenwriter

Black mood: Tony Hancock

Finding my feet

I had been working very hard for months. Although the project had been completed, my bodyset (as opposed to mindset) was still in clenched and hypervigilant mode.

I was staying near Tisbury, Wiltshire, with two beady friends, one 75, one 80. They advised me that, if she could fit me in, I should definitely see their marvellous local reflexologist.

‘But I haven’t got anything in particular wrong with me.’

‘Oh yes you have,’ they observed. ‘You haven’t relaxed yet – even though you’ve finished your work.’

Her treatment, they alleged, was keeping the two of them going. One of them is stuffed with drugs for his prostate condition; the other has chesty issues. Yet both have a spring in their step, thanks, they claimed, to their regular sessions.

Many people recoil from the idea of somebody tampering with their feet. Typically, they say, ‘No, I am ticklish and I don’t like my feet being touched!’ Or they believe their feet are too disgusting to be exposed.

However, just like conventional doctors, reflexologists are not lookist.

They see feet not in terms of their visual beauty but as tools to allow them to target their healing. Their therapy differs from foot massage, which focuses on the muscles and tendons. Instead, theirs focuses on the inner organs by using pressure on the feet to assess what is going on internally.

When they are good, they can tell if there may be a problem in there and, although they are professionally not allowed to make a diagnosis, they are allowed to suggest you ask a GP for tests.

You don’t have to get undressed. If you are, frankly, looking for someone to give you their full attention and make a fuss of you, then reflexology is considerably more affordable than other treatments.

So I agreed.

We all know about people being categorised, in a social context, as being either radiators or drains. The radiators cheer you up and the drains are like energy vampires.

Harriet Combes was more than a radiator. I found that, before she had even touched me, just being in the same room as her was enough to make me already feel younger and healthier.

As I lay back in one of those indoor lounger chairs in her quiet, sunny house near Tisbury, she positioned herself on a little stool by my feet and took them into her hands for about 45 minutes.

All I can say is that Harriet has healing hands. Her nimble handling was bliss, and the more lasting effect was that I felt renewed – perhaps five or six years younger. Spookily, just by touching my feet, she identified a weakness in one hip, the upshot of my falling into a pot-hole a year ago. An X-ray confirmed this.

A couple of weeks later, I was in a spa in Spain and booked a reflexology

session. It was enjoyable and relaxing, but there was no therapeutic comparison.

So my advice to readers is: ask around and get personal recommendations. The word gets out when someone has the magic touch. Some oldies will remember the cult figure of the late ‘Joe the Toe’ or Joseph Corvo, who practised in Chelsea and had a waiting list around the block. His clients swore by him. In those days, it was known as ‘zone therapy’.

Harriet Combes has two interests. One is maintaining the health of oldies. Reflexology helps with balance and, as the Duke of Edinburgh believed, avoiding falls is key to life extension. It also improves blood flow and circulation and is good for arthritic pain.

Some 75 per cent of disease is estimated to be stress-related, and relaxation is necessary to promote the body’s self-healing abilities. If you can’t discipline yourself to relax, it would certainly not be self-indulgent to visit a reflexologist.

Harriet’s other interest is in reproductive reflexology. She has been trained by Barbara Scott in a school called Seren Natural Fertility. Seren therapists employ integrated medicine and work alongside consultants, urologists and andrologists. Specialist reproductive reflexology can make the relaxed female body a more receptive host.

Reproduction is not of much interest to oldies. But it is to our daughters and granddaughters, who can get very stressed when they fail to conceive.

And now for something completely healing: reflexology

I was clenched and exhausted – until I had a foot inspection

Elaine May, 90, has been a legend for 70 years. She starred with Mike Nichols in the 50s and won an Oscar last year. By Hugo Vickers

Funny girl

At The Oldie’s 75th-birthday party for the Queen Consort last year, Craig Brown asked me if there was still a star I craved to meet.

Without hesitation, I replied, ‘Elaine May.’ She turned 90 on 21st April and she lives in New York. It might be possible.

In 1983, I watched her film The Heartbreak Kid (the 1972 version). I watched it in bed, more or less chewing the sheets, as a newly-wed falls in love with a girl other than his wife on his honeymoon. It occurred to me that, with such an enormous commitment made, this must sometimes happen.

Elaine May is enormously famous, but we should all know her much better. She was born in Philadelphia in 1932, the daughter of a Jewish director and actor and his actress wife, and first went on stage aged three. She married at 16, divorcing ten years later. Two further marriages and a long-term relationship with Stanley Donen followed.

In 1955, at the age of 23, with but seven dollars to her name, she joined the Compass Players in Chicago where, fortuitously, she teamed up with the late Mike Nichols (1931-2014).

They went on to form their own stage act as Nichols and May in 1957, creating a new brand of ironic comedy which filled theatres across America, ran for nine months on Broadway and then extended into television. They described the technique as like jazz but improvising with words rather than music.

‘We base our comedy on the recognisable things that happen to people,’ declared Nichols.

In 1958, they shot from earning $50 a week to $5,000 for a single TV slot. They were taken up by the agent Jack Rollins (who lived to be 100), asking him for an opening and a closing line and then improvising.

Rollins recalled, ‘Suddenly comedy was being formed right in front of my eyes, and I mean comedy that was side-splitting and irresistible. I was howling.’

They were hired for two weeks in a club called the Blue Angel, soon extended to ten weeks.

A press report in 1959 pointed out, ‘I have never met two people whose minds were so perfectly attuned. If one went off on a dizzy tangent while answering a question, the other would immediately continue riding the rocket until they were off to another planet.’

Among their sketches, there is the grief lady at Long Dust selling a bereaved man a cheap funeral, then adding extras – a casket: ‘It looks better.’

Then there’s the first tense teenage date in a car, or the obtuse telephone operator failing to help the caller find George Kaplan – ‘K as in knife, A as in

aardvark, P as pneumonia…’ There’s a series of doctor, patient and nurse sketches, a man seducing a girl from the office while his wife is in the mountains, and a mother calling her son when he has been sending up a rocket.

Particularly entertaining is a vapid film star giggling her way through the promotion of her latest musical movie, Two Gals in Paris, revealed to be the life story of Gertrude Stein. They are all as much a joy to listen to today as they were 60 years ago. Noël Coward judged them ‘outstanding’, and Neil Simon wrote of ‘their high-style wit and their sophisticated but hilarious routines. They were in a class by themselves.’ Simon added, ‘Unlike most comedians, however, they were brilliant actors.’

In May 1962, they performed at the Madison Square Garden birthday celebration for President Kennedy (at which Marilyn Monroe sang ‘Happy Birthday, Mr President’).

And then they went their separate ways, fearful of becoming typecast and anxious to move forward.

She became a director, screenwriter, playwright and actor, appearing in her own comedy, A New Leaf (1971), opposite Walter Matthau, and directed The Heartbreak Kid. She can be spotted, unscripted, giving Benjamin a letter from Elaine Robinson in The Graduate (1967), directed by Nichols, and the core story is perhaps similar.

In The Graduate, the ‘hero’ starts off with one woman and swaps her for another one.

In The Heartbreak Kid, Charles Grodin marries, is horrified by his bride (Jeannie Berlin, Elaine’s daughter) eating Milky Ways in bed, and with egg down her face at breakfast, on the way to their ill-fated honeymoon in Miami Beach, and is then diverted by a gorgeous blonde, Cybill Shepherd.

Simon wrote the screenplay. So there

Elaine May in 1967

is plenty of slick Jewish humour, and there are memorable phrases, such as ‘There’s no deceit in the cauliflower.’

May knew how to develop the characters but had no idea how to dress them. Costume designer Anthea Sylbert told her Cybill Shepherd had to have white cotton underwear. ‘That’s what those blondes wear,’ she said.

Vincent Canby reviewed the film for the New York Times: ‘It’s a movie that manages the marvellous and very peculiar trick of blending the mechanisms and the cruelties of Simon’s comedy with the sense and sensibility of F Scott Fitzgerald.’

It would take pages to analyse all May’s achievements, not least her teaming up with Mike Nichols for The Birdcage (1996) and Primary Colors (1998).

At an AFI Life Achievement Award in 2010, she gave a hilarious speech in Nichols’s honour.

Of The Graduate, she said, ‘And then when they’re on the bus and he’s won, he has nothing to say to her and you think, “Oh well, yeah, of course.”

‘And if you kept the camera on the prince after he put the glass slipper on Cinderella’s foot, what would he say to her? He would say, “Nice shoes.”

‘If you’re a writer, you really want Mike to direct your screenplay because you know that every shot and every costume and every piece of furniture and every shoe and everything you see is going to tell your story and never give it away.’

On 25th March last year, she won an honorary Oscar.

She proved she had lost none of her verve: ‘They told me Zelensky would introduce me tonight!’

Hugo Vickers is author of Malice in Wonderland: My Adventures in the World of Cecil Beaton

Clockwise from above: Directing A New Leaf (1971); with Walter Matthau in A New Leaf; with her Honorary Oscar, 2022; with Mike Nichols, 1959

Kidnapped!

Argentina was never a placid sort of place.

But my father, Ronald Grove, was well used to its turbulent ways. At 64, he had lived in Buenos Aires for over a quarter of a century, as head of the Vestey family’s huge meat-packing business.

So he was not unduly concerned when a visit by ex-President Perón early in 1972, after a 17-year exile in Madrid, stirred up a surge of activity by left-wing urban guerrilla groups.

He did know he might be on their hit list, especially as he’d recently had to lay off hundreds of workers. Even so, back in London, where I was a leader-writer on the Evening Standard, I was startled when my father offhandedly mentioned that he was now varying his route to work and had a weekday bodyguard with a .22 pistol.

I wrote back sounding like a worried parent: ‘Things are getting dangerous. A .22 pistol is only one up from a peashooter. Shouldn’t you and Mum be thinking of getting out?’

It was the middle of the night when the phone woke me. I can’t remember who was calling because at the word ‘kidnap’ I went into shock.

It was probably Lord Vestey himself, my father’s boss, the young but thankfully level-headed Sam (then 31), allegedly known at Eton as ‘Spam’ thanks to the family’s meat fortune.

‘Your father … on his way to golf … alive and well, but…’ I scarcely needed to listen. This was just as I’d feared. The call ended on a reassuring note: the company would do whatever was necessary to get Ronnie released. But there was also a chilling instruction: I must not talk to the press. It was vital to keep the matter from the Argentine authorities.

This was a bit of a tall order for an ambitious young hack. On the Tube on my way into work, I could see that nearly all the papers led with the story.

‘British business chief kidnapped by guerrillas in Buenos Aires’ was the

headline in the Times that morning, 11th December 1972.

My own paper, the Evening Standard, would surely splash on it later in the day. And here was I, with a unique inside track on the story, forbidden from talking to Fleet Street colleagues. Of course, I knew this was right.

The guerrillas were emphatic that if the police got involved, Señor Grove would be killed. This was no idle threat. Only months earlier, a kidnapped Fiat executive, Oberdan Sallustro, had been murdered by his captors when the police came too close. They shot four bullets into him.

But, still, it was hard giving no-

comment answers to the reporters, who were phoning me at all hours. My editor at the Standard, Charles Wintour, was understanding. There was no pressure on me to contribute to the paper’s coverage. Anyway, without much help from me, the news desk produced a decent feature. Underneath the photograph of my parents, my mother was described (she would have been thrilled) as ‘ex-actress Lesley Burton’. The last time she’d appeared on a West End stage was 35 years before (in Housemaster by Ian Hay, which ran for 662 performances –Mum’s glory days).

Meantime, somewhere in a Buenos Aires suburb, in a stifling, strip-lit cellar,

Fifty years ago, Trevor Grove’s father, head of the Vestey family’s meatpacking business in Argentina, went to play golf – and didn’t come home

Ronald Grove (top right) worked for Sam Vestey (left), who paid his ransom

Ronald and Lesley Grove in the Evening Standard, where Trevor Grove worked at the time of the 1972 kidnap

eight feet square, the ceiling just three inches above his head, my father had been coming to terms with his predicament. His first note to my mother was dated the evening of his capture. I have it in front of me now, written in a firm hand on rough paper, though I don’t know how or when it reached her.

He describes his ‘people’s prison’. There was a bed at one end in a wire cage, which they promised not to close if he behaved himself. ‘I quickly promised.’

That first night, and every night, one of the guards slept on the floor beside him. In the morning, he did exercises and cleaned his cell. ‘Washed at the basin and had to pot myself in front of the girl guard – not so pleasant but she took no notice,’ he wrote, with admirable sangfroid. ‘Afterwards we played canasta on my bed.’

With his captors’ permission, he began keeping a diary. ‘These young people are all masked in capuchas, hoods with eyeholes; so I can’t tell their ages, but I put them around 18–30. They are very polite – completely dedicated to their socialist views. I spent most of yesterday listening to their arguments, one at a time. Very intense…’

Back in London, I carried on working, a distraction from the leaden fear inside me. This was more than a decade before such truly awful kidnappings as those of Terry Waite, Brian Keenan and John McCarthy in Lebanon: they spent years in captivity, while fellow hostages were killed. Even so, I thought grimly of the ordeal of Geoffrey Jackson, the British ambassador to Uruguay, who’d spent eight months in the hands of Tupamaro guerrillas the previous year.

The particular horror for relatives of a kidnap victim is that they are helpless onlookers, and they want only one outcome, at any cost. It was said the kidnappers were demanding a ransom of a million dollars – six million in today’s money.

During the days and nights that followed, my father was kept abreast of negotiations. He had to nominate colleagues who would be instructed how and where to deliver the ransom – two to make decoy runs, the third to hand over the actual cash. My father was deeply unhappy about putting them in such danger. But that is what these brave men did.

The guerrillas were triumphant. Their

hostage was blindfolded and manhandled up the ladder, and then carried to a small truck. After an hour’s drive, they stopped. The senior guard, the man whom the others called El Flaco (the thin one) – and whom my father had come to like during their long conversations in the cell – led him from the vehicle.

‘He told me it was 9.30pm,’ my father later recalled, ‘that I was in the district of Matanza and that within two blocks I would come to a paved road where I could catch a taxi. I asked for some money. He gave me 20 pesos.

‘He told me to take off my blindfold and walk forward 30 paces without looking back. Before leaving me, El Flaco clapped me on the back and said, ‘Adiós Go with God. Be proud of the way you have comported yourself. We have nothing against you personally.’

It was 1am on Wednesday 20th December when he reached the embassy in Buenos Aires. In the afternoon, there was a press conference, though by that time in London, which was four hours ahead, the Evening Standard had already scooped the world: ‘Kidnapped Briton is released for Christmas!’

How much his employers had paid to bring about that happy outcome was never disclosed. But the success of the hostage-takers was not lost on ordinary criminals: over the next few years, dozens of businessmen were kidnapped in Argentina, for ever larger ransoms.

Years later, I asked my friend Andrew Graham-Yooll, the courageous news editor of the Buenos Aires Herald during the Dirty War, 1976–83, when the generals were in charge, what might have become of my father’s kidnappers. Dad was especially anxious to know whether El Flaco could have survived the junta’s purges.

Andrew made enquiries. A senior guerrillero, he was told, who could well have been involved in the Grove kidnap, had been captured and become one of the disappeared. He had almost certainly been executed in the military’s favourite fashion – flown out across the River Plate, drugged, stripped and dropped into the sea.

Trevor Grove’s No One Taught Me to Tango: Memories of Anglo-Argentina is published by Black Spring (£20)

When Scotland struck oil

There’s much about it I don’t like.

We take too long getting to Scotland. The Houston scenes are a shambles – Burt Lancaster’s tycoon snoring in a board meeting; the unfunny appearances of the angermanagement psychotherapist; the business executives gesticulating in glass offices.

I don’t much warm to Peter Riegert’s MacIntyre, whose lines are delivered with a hint of sarcasm – though he’s surely preferable to the other original casting choices: Henry Winkler, Robin Williams and Michael Douglas, who’d have overpowered – obliterated – the film’s charm.

Nor am I enamoured of Denis Lawson’s Gordon Urquhart. He is suave – almost smug and smarmy – giving his frame an odd, vain little twist each time he moves through doors and hatches, swishing into rooms as the community’s hotelier, barman, accountant and fixer. The character has a ferrety, stoaty, slinky, duplicitous manner – Sid James without the cackles.

If it comes to that, the entire conception, or plot, is actually monstrous – the destruction of a pristine coastal environment to make way for a petrochemical refinery, complete with helipads and storage tanks.

‘I don’t want to be coy with you, Gordon. We want to buy the whole place,’ says Mac, arriving in the Highland village from Texas with his clean cuffs and his briefcase.

The joke is that, instead of being appalled by the vandalism and pollution and worried about being displaced, the residents are more than happy to grab the cash.

‘You need to accept the fact you’re stinking rich,’ one old boy says to another. ‘Nobody said it was going to be easy to be a millionaire, Edward.’

All that said, Local Hero, released 40 years ago, despite demurrals, is my favourite film. For something magical occurs, and it becomes more than simply a work in the Ealing Comedy tradition.

One is sucked into the strange atmosphere, as Mac is, as he gradually abandons suit and tie and adapts to the pace of the place, collecting shells and examining the sky. In a lovely scene, he forgets his digital watch, which is washed into a rockpool and beeps and tweets, talking to the crabs and fish.

There is a sort of poetic lustre – the golden constellations; the showers and

Local heroes: Burt Lancaster and Fulton Mackay (back row) with other cast members, 1983

falls of purple and scarlet; green fire in the evening light: a protracted glow created or captured by cinematographer Chris Menges, who used a smoke gun to take away any sharpness.

Burt Lancaster’s Felix Happer, it turns out, is more interested in astronomy than in oil production – ‘Comets are important. They could be the key to the universe, maybe’ – and something about a Hollywood legend’s own majesty is metaphorically invoked.

Local Hero, ostensibly a small-scale British picture, seems to have brought back Don Fabrizio, the prince from Visconti’s The Leopard, which Lancaster made in Sicily for Visconti in 1963 – though it was of Glaswegian Bill Forsyth that the star, by now aged 68, said, ‘I’ve never worked with a director who speaks no known language.’

Nor does Local Hero unfold in any known place. The curtains of tinted blue mist; the mighty waves and walls of glistening rocks; the sea lions, lichens and surfy sand (home to Jenny Seagrove – an oceanographer with webbed toes; a vision of eroticism).

Part of the unreality is that the real-life locations were widely scattered, actual landscapes manipulated and made artificial.

Local Hero, the tale of a Scottish village that’s about to become filthy rich, came out 40 years ago. Roger Lewis still cries every time he watches it

It’s for you: Mac and Victor

‘Here’s the beach. Here’s the village,’ Forsyth was told by his production designer, pointing to a map. ‘Trouble is, they’re on opposite sides of Scotland.’

The village of Ferness was the Aberdeenshire settlement of Pennan, a conglomeration of small white houses and telegraph wires – with the allimportant red phone box on the jetty, placed there by the art department.

The interior of the Macaskill Arms was the Lochailort Inn, near Mallaig, 168 miles away.

The pub was the Ship Inn, in Banff. The ceilidh was filmed over three days in Ellon, on the way to Peterhead, and the music re-recorded by Mark Knopfler in the Women’s Institute Hall, Banff.

Felix Happer’s office suite was constructed in the warehouse of the Ben Nevis Distillery – his library, kitchen and observation dome. The church exterior was constructed of cardboard at the far end of Camusdarach Beach, Arisaig, on the west coast, and the interior, where the villagers hold secret meetings, was Our Lady of the Braes, Polnish. After hitting Trudy the rabbit, Peter Capaldi’s car is marooned overnight at Loch Tarff, near Fort Augustus.

The unit stayed at the Alexandra Hotel, Fort William, most of the actors at the Glenfinnan Hotel, and Lancaster had Inverlochy Castle to himself.

Once we arrive at Ferness, which could be Brigadoon or Barrie’s Neverland, conflicts fizzle out – though notice how Cold War jets stream across the firmament; the distant explosions and booms. There are no fistfights in the saloon.

Nothing dramatic occurs – only weird, shifting moods. Bill Forsyth’s hankerings were for ‘small-scale stuff ’: gentle eccentricity; blokes painting boats, pottering about; the likes of Jimmy Yuill, Sandra Voe, Alex Norton and Rikki Fulton smiling into the middle distance.

‘Whose baby?’ asks Mac, when he sees yet another chap pushing the pram. Everyone shifts about awkwardly.

John Gordon Sinclair, star of Gregory’s Girl, whizzes about on a

motorbike, a danger to pedestrians: ‘You’ve got to look both ways.’

And who ever thought Capaldi, the bashful, gangling Danny from Knox Oil and Gas, Aberdeen, would later become the maniacal Tucker in The Thick of It Everyone’s favourite line is the fisherman’s, when he is painting a nameplate for his boat: ‘Are there two gs in bugger off?’

Knopfler’s electronic, twangling (very eighties) score – his beautiful tunes and arrangements – consolidates the wistfulness; the air of enchantment.

The captain of a Russian trawler appears, and is given a warm welcome. Fulton Mackay, no longer the martinet of Porridge, is Ben, a lonely beachcomber.

‘What’s the most amazing thing you ever found?’ asks Mac.

‘Impossible to say,’ replies Ben. ‘Something amazing washes up every two or three days.’

If the crowd looks as if it may be about to surround Ben and coerce him into relinquishing rights to the cliffs and foreshore, jeopardy is immediately averted by the arrival of Happer in his helicopter, arriving out of the clouds like a deity from the heavens: ‘Good sky you’ve got here, MacIntyre … I like this place.’

He decides it can be a site for a research institute, rather than an oil refinery. ‘Sea and sky. I like that. We can do good things here.’ Everything drops into place; is resolved. The villagers receive their money, and the village won’t be destroyed.

Whereupon Peter Riegert is dispatched back to Texas.

The first cut of the film ended somewhat flatly. The final shot was added later, to ensure an ending of genius, perhaps the greatest in cinema history. Mac is in his Houston apartment, examining his souvenirs. We cut to a long shot, salvaged from unused footage, of Pennan/Ferness, in the dawn silence.

The phone in the phone box starts ringing, and gets louder and louder, as we switch to Knopfler’s triumphant title music. Mac, missing the place terribly, has phoned it up.

Depending on my mood, I am weeping at this point; tears sometimes of joy, more usually of piercing nostalgia.

Local Hero ends with an attempt at connection – with the past, with lost happiness.

Further reading: Local Hero: Making a Scottish Classic by Jonathan Melville, Polaris Publishing, Edinburgh, £16.99

Tenants from Hell

Don’t rent your flat to lawyers or pop stars, Bruce Beresford was told by a friend. If only he’d listened

As I’ve split my time between London and Sydney for many years, I thought – naïvely –that renting out the residence in the city from which I was absent would be a good idea.

Disillusion with estate agents and occupiers descended rapidly.

Initially, before leaving London, I met an agent who seemed both experienced and practical. He would, he said, have no problem renting out my West End flat.

Back in Sydney, I often called for rental news and was invariably told the flat had been shown to a number of people – with no result. ‘The market is slow,’ was the standard explanation.

My son was at Oxford at the time. He phoned me in Sydney and said he’d been in London, was cycling past the flat and noticed the lights were on. So the flat had been rented? About time – around four months had passed.

I asked my son to call in to the flat the next day for information. His phone call and description of the occupant revealed it was the estate agent himself who was the occupier.

Evidently my son’s visit promoted panic. The agent left the flat quickly with his possessions – as well as some of

mine. I phoned his office a few times but the number had been disconnected.

Another agent was contacted. This one quickly found a lady from the USA who wanted the flat for a year. She was a lawyer working for some corporation.

I could see no problems. I ignored the advice of a friend – ‘Don’t rent to rock/ pop groups because they’ll wreck the place and don’t rent to lawyers because they come up with reasons why they don’t have to pay any rent at all.’

After a couple of months with no payments, I called the flat and the lady lawyer said she’d deposited no rent as there was no microwave.

I had a microwave delivered.

A month or so later, there were still no payments ‘because the fridge is leaking’. I managed to find a Polish handyman who reported back that he’d fixed a minute leak.

Halfway through the year, I made another desperate call. This time, I was told there were still no payments as the flat had been burgled, ‘probably by the porters’ – as they had keys. Jewellery was missing, but the matter had mysteriously not been reported to the police.

Having known the porters – who had attended to the entire block for some years – it seemed highly unlikely to me that any of them were part-time thieves.

In the final month of the alleged ‘rental’, I told the lady lawyer I was not returning her deposit as not one penny/ cent of the agreed monthly sum had ever been placed in my account.

She then calmly informed me that my modest, but treasured, collection of paintings (which had remained in the flat) would be slashed/destroyed.

The agent, who had been no help in extracting rent, assured me that the lady lawyer was bluffing. In view of her past behaviour, I doubted this, especially as I’d found out from the porters that she had sub-let the flat for some months while she was back in the USA.

I returned the deposit.

Back in Sydney, during the era of the

above events, my wife and I bought a charming terrace house in Paddington, close to the city.

It seemed perfect, having been ‘restored by the previous owners’. It turned out to be our own Potemkin village. On our first night, I was reading in the living room, while my wife was having a bath in the upstairs bathroom. Suddenly I was drenched by a downpour from the ceiling – once the bath plug was pulled, the water simply emptied into the room below.

The following morning, a plumber informed me there were no water pipes from the bath. No plumbing at all.

Noticing an unpleasant smell in the kitchen, I looked underneath the sink to check the food-disposal device. This had always made a reassuring grinding noise when it was turned on – but all I found was a tiny toy motor. There was no waste machine. Food scraps, emptied down the chute, simply piled up in the cupboard underneath.

A visually appealing part of the house were the beautiful Victorian stained-glass panels in the front door – a delightful feature of many Australian houses of the era. We returned from a film screening one night to discover two large gaps in the door. The panels had been removed by the vendor.

I realised, of course, that they were a key part of the vendor’s overall sales plan. I had never met this person but dealt only with his estate agent.

The agent was non-committal – not to say evasive – about the problems with the house and unperturbed when he heard my furious complaints about the devious sale agreement. He smoothly assured me he didn’t have – and had never had – contact numbers or a postal address for the vendors.

Oh, and by the way, I have also had disastrous experiences with my forays into Airbnb rentals…

Bruce Beresford directed Driving Miss Daisy (1989) Model landlord: Rupert Rigsby

Buy British – in Canada

When Reverend Michael Coren moved from Britain to Toronto, he wasn’t short of Marmite, Dolly Mixture or Glacier Mints

There are no specific numbers of how many shops selling British chocolates, sweets, food, and memorabilia exist in Canada, but estimates are in the hundreds.

They began in the 1970s, catering to a small niche market. Back then, before the internet, British Sunday papers would arrive by Monday lunchtime and these shops were the best places to buy them.

As online news developed and hardcopy papers were less in demand, these relatively few shops branched out into selling food. By the early 1990s, the number of shops selling British chocolate and biscuits had multiplied. In Toronto there are at least a dozen. In towns around the metropolis, that number quadruples.

With names such as British Pride, Across the Pond, the Scottish Loft, the products on offer vary with the seasons but the constants are familiar: Mars, Double Decker, Twirl, Galaxy, Minstrels, Yorkie and Fry’s Chocolate Cream.

And the menu goes well beyond that. Every type of British biscuit, often from Marks and Spencer, sweets, bottles of Fairy Liquid, Imperial Leather soap, Coronation Street and EastEnders mugs, football scarves and hats, tea towels picturing various royals, books about the Lake District, and a plethora of Downton Abbey, Doc Martin and Carry On DVDs.

Fox’s Glacier Mints, actually much less common in Britain, and Dolly Mixture, also much harder to find in the UK, are never out of stock.

Why the success? Canada is far from as British as it once was, two generations of immigration have changed the country’s tastes, and while we’re still a monarchy – and have the Union Jack on several provincial flags – the pull of US culture and commercialism is difficult to resist.

It’s partly Brits and the children of Brits still longing for things they’d likely never buy if they were in London or Manchester. But most of those queuing

up for their Branston pickle have little if any connection to a country they’ve often never even visited. In other words, there’s profit in imagination as well as nostalgia.

It’s comfort-shopping for some, and Anglophilia for others, especially Americans who flood the branches just over the border in Niagara and see Canada as the closest thing to Dibley they’re likely to find.

For someone like me – I’ve now lived away from Britain, my childhood home, for most of my life – it’s almost a form of regression. I’d never have visited these places 20 years ago but, as I age, I grab lifelines from a happy past.

While contemporary Brits frequently look to the foreign for glamour or thrill, those living 3,000 miles away, British or otherwise and young or old, see the UK as offering something special and unique. And, yes, they even buy Marmite and claim to enjoy it. Rule Britannia’s exports. Sponsored

Literary Lunch

Town Mouse

My dream retirement home? Soho

tom hodgkinson

served behind the counter. But Michael was not a healthy man and died quite young. The Colony Room closed.

I will stroll past the Groucho Club and wander down Meard Street for an appointment with my tailor, John Pearse.

I might have a sandwich at Bar Italia in Frith Street, which still stays open all night and was memorialised by the great Jarvis Cocker. There I will sense the ghost of the lovely William Hazlitt, who gave his name to a hotel in this street, and who died here in 1830 at the age of 52. I might go and see his grave in the churchyard at St Anne’s.

He said of his own life, ‘I loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best.’ He died heartbroken, spurned by the woman he really loved.

Mr Squirrel or Mr Vole will take me to Ronnie Scott’s to hear some experimental sounds on the saxophone. I may stray to the Jermyn Street Theatre, a gem which seats only around 80 people.

Let’s not get too nostalgic. Each generation has loved Soho for its freedom and its wildness for centuries and so it goes on. Today, it’s still Mecca for liberty-seekers.

Ah, Soho! Scene of my youthful late nights and soon, I hope, the scene of my old-age daytime rambles as well.

On retirement – not that old hacks ever retire; we think we retired many years ago – I will live in a tiny flat in Soho. The cottage in the country with roses round the door holds no appeal for me.

I would like to be old and living in the heart of things, with a fedora, silvertopped cane, shiny brogues, no car and a long coat of wool and cashmere with a velvet collar.

Any money I have left will be sitting in a bank account for easy retrieval by my children when I die. The flat will be simple, sparse and in a Georgian house with wooden panelling. There will be a bedroom and a sitting room/study.

It will look like Dr Johnson’s house when he was visited by Oliver Goldsmith to help the melancholic Irish dramatist escape his creditors. There will be a small kitchen but most of my meals will be taken in the street, pubs, clubs, cafés and theatre bars.

I will read and write in the morning. After lunch, I’ll take a nap. Then I will

wander the streets, a modern-day flâneur, observing life.

I will sit outside the French House on Dean Street. At 6pm, I will repair to the Coach & Horses, once the haunt of Jeffrey Bernard, and still a convivial pub.

I once interviewed the great man. I was in my twenties, fairly nervous. He was living in a council high-rise on Berwick Street in a small flat (of the sort I wouldn’t mind inhabiting when old, though it was built in the 1960s rather than my preferred 1760s), and that’s where we met.

He was exceedingly grumpy, which made for an awkward encounter but a good read. ‘I met a girl the other day who said she was going to Oxford to read English. I said, why can’t you read Pride and Prejudice in the f***ing kitchen?’

I’ll walk down Dean Street, past the old Colony Room, and remember the ghosts of that little outpost of freedom where Francis Bacon drank. I became a member in its dying days. The proprietor Michael Wojas had successfully reinvented it for the nineties. I drank absinthe there with Damien Hirst while artist Sarah Lucas

My hedonistic young friend Mr Fox, my companion on revels, believes Soho is reinventing itself: ‘We have Trisha’s, Gerry’s Club, the Phoenix, Le Beaujolais, an efflorescence of gay pubs and bars. Soho’s traditions of licence, permissiveness and exotic indulgence which have hung in the air since the mass influx of French émigrés from the 1680s, and the thrill of the chase, ever since huntsmen used to cry “So-ho!” across its fields, can still be felt.’

Then there’s Gerrard Street, home to a dozen excellent Chinese restaurants. Some nights, I will dine here, and on other nights in Lexington Street at the Hogarthian Andrew Edmunds, whose eponymous proprietor died last year. He was a Soho legend, keeping the vibe of the 18th century alive, in his old town house, with the Academy Club (founded by Andrew and the late great Auberon Waugh) and the Literary Review upstairs, and his gallery selling Hogarth prints next door.

If I’m feeling groovy, there’s always Gaz’s Rockin’ Blues at the St Moritz in Wardour Street. Serving up good old basic rock ’n’ roll and reggae, Gaz Mayall, son of John Mayall, has been running his club for 40 years now.

If you’re tired of Soho, you’re tired of life. It’s an endlessly stimulating stomping ground for oldies.

Country Mouse

Marmalade addicts – the Queen, Paddington and me giles wood

‘If, at some future period of the world’s history, men should acquire the art of flying, there can be no doubt that migration would become the custom, and whole nations would change their localities,’ wrote Richard Jefferies in 1883.

Seville is in my DNA through the marmalade connection and its orange season. Famous for being over almost before it has begun, the season runs from the end of December through to mid-February.

This year, the season coincided with our hot-water boiler failing at precisely the same time as our daughters’ planned return for a family-bonding week. Conditions in the cottage would be more intolerable than usual.

As if reading my mind, my technically literate elder daughter booked a six-day break at Las Casas de la Juderia in the historic centre of that well-dressed city of flamenco dancers, mysterious gentlemen in capes, black cloaks and scarlet scarves of the finest vicuna. She presented it as a fait accompli and we compliantly gathered at Gatwick.

Seville marmalade, and the snobbery associated with it, was emblematic of my parents’ incompatibility.

My father’s preference for Robertson’s Shredless was, by his own admission, plebeian. If ever compelled to eat one of my mother’s home-made Constance Spry recipes, namely Mr Ringrose’s or even Colonel Gore’s, he would ostentatiously spit out the shreds with a vehemence, as if she had been trying to poison him with baby scorpions.

What a waste of her training at Winkfield – her parents had groomed her to marry a company director. My father was a company director – of a Potteries fireplace-manufacturing firm – but he lacked that final dab of polish which would have accrued from his attending a

public school, even a minor one. He never acquired the taste for bitter marmalade. He devoured Glacier Mints.

Nothing can prepare an Englishman for the sad day when his mother’s preserving pans, quaint sieves and muslin bags go to house clearance because her housing-association bungalow simply hasn’t the space for all that paraphernalia.

Now I can no longer get my hands on a home-made version, I find Oxford Cooper’s Vintage Marmalade quite acceptable. But the late Lady Rupert Nevill would not approve.

As the model for the haughty Lady Trentham in Gosford Park, played by Maggie Smith, she famously denounced those households shabby enough not to have made their own – ‘Oh! Shopbought marmalade!’

It was Alfonso XVIII and his wife, Queen Eugenia de Battenberg, granddaughter of Queen Victoria, who started the tradition of sending the British Royal Family bitter oranges from the Royal Alcázar of Seville for the purpose of marmalade-making.

Fans of marmalade cannot separate a visit to Seville from a visit to this royal palace – or can they? It was no Freudian slip when my wife tried to book ‘skip-theline tickets to Alcatraz’.

Our pre-booked tickets were in reality only permission to join a snaking queue of other pre-booked ticket-holders. The prison analogy stuck.

In each crowded state room, apart from the less-visited tapestry room, my instinct was to break out. This was peak tourism and the zombies around us seemed curiously uninterested in the aesthetics. I wasn’t the first to parrot the phrase, ‘If it’s like this in February, imagine it during high season.’

No wonder Mary eventually found me staring at the contents of a skip full of windfall oranges at the darkest corner of the rather gloomy ‘English garden’.

The family was quick to diagnose the problem – low blood sugar. It was at least four hours since I had stuffed my face with breakfast and they swiftly bagged a sunny table at a café within the grounds. A very unroyal self-service affair – but one daughter obligingly queued at a counter and returned with a tray bearing a sugary cortado and an excellent craft beer from Granada, which went by the name of Alhambra, plus Ibérico ham and cheese bocadillos. My shoulders dropped a full six inches as I decompressed.

As the strong foreign ale worked its magic, I was able to claim what every visitor to Seville should feel … a slightly euphoric state brought about by exposure to sun and architectural excellence –some of a Moorish character, all of it utterly transporting, especially the patterned glazed roof tiles.

What could spoil it, now we had moved away from the crowds?

The answer came with a stabbing sensation in the crotch area of my tweed trousers. A peacock was attempting to probe for dropped breadcrumbs.

Only on returning to the cottage did I learn the terrible truth of the Alcázar and that my instinct that something was very wrong had been spot-on – as, too late, I read an online description:

‘In the last few years, the Alcázar has received an unprecedented number of visitors. This is thanks in part to one of HBO’s biggest hits. The site appeared in a recent season of Game of Thrones and has attracted more visitors than ever as a result. For that reason, entry lines can involve standing out in the hot sun for an hour or more.’

On a brighter note, marmalade was an endangered product, almost worthy of inclusion in the Olden Life column.

But sales have gone up by 18 per cent since the death of Queen Elizabeth II, a fan, obviously, of the Seville version.

All thanks, apparently, to the Paddington Bear video – and nothing to do with Game of Thrones.

‘We’re trying to limit our kids’ screen time to 23 hours a day

Sixty years on the Street of Shame

I am now marking 60 years as a working scribe.

I favour the word ‘scribe’ rather than ‘hack’. The latter implies, surely implausibly, that a journalist will do anyone’s bidding for money.

There have been vast changes in the media since my debut in journalism in 1963. With the march of technology, this is only natural – things have changed everywhere else, too.

But what’s striking is the revolution in values. Almost everything once considered acceptable is now the opposite. Being reprimanded by your boss is now called ‘bullying’. If we complained, we were told, ‘If you can’t stand the heat, don’t come into the kitchen.’

There wasn’t such a sense of horror around paedophilia in the old days, deplorable as it is. I was informed, on first coming to Fleet Street, that the proof-readers at the Times were exceptionally meticulous because they were unfrocked clergymen, and much respected for their erudition.

‘Why unfrocked?’ I asked, innocently. ‘Oh, usually for interfering with choirboys,’ came the insouciant reply. Was it a more forgiving age, or a more brutal one?

Things look different when they affect you personally.

Just take the difference between a theoretical idea and the impact of that idea when it impinges on one’s own life.

I followed the Brexit debate attentively. I didn’t vote for Brexit, or against it; but I’m interested in the idea of ‘sovereignty’. I like Charles de Gaulle’s concept of a ‘Europe of nations’.

That means the nation state should affirm its own sovereignty while nonetheless forming friendly cultural and trading associations with neighbours.

I enjoyed the highfalutin discourses of Claire Fox, an energetic Brexiteer in the Lords; and Brexity Kate Hoey, also in the Lords, is surely a spirited Ulster lass. Meanwhile Ruth Deech, an admirable supporter of matrimony in the Lords, had to bear the slings and arrows of her smart Oxford friends when coming out for Brexit. All these strong women of a certain age!

But now we are getting down to brass tacks. And I’m dealing with an issue that involves my own personal life: from theory to practice.

In the first months of this year, I have had the task of transporting the contents of a small flat in Dublin – obviously, within the EU – to Deal in Kent – now, obviously, not.

From November last year, negotiations were under way with an established haulier and removals firm based in Whitstable. Mr Dempsey, an Irishman whose trucks have been wending ’twixt Ireland and England since 1968, agreed to haul my books, clothes, small items of furniture, pictures, bric-à-brac and the rest of the personal clutter I have accumulated.

But then Mr Dempsey began to lose heart, and seemed more reluctant to continue with negotiations. ‘Brexit has made moving the contents of a residence into a nightmare,’ he told me wearily. Everything has to be itemised in documentary septuplets, he sighed: seven copies of each document spelling out just what is being moved.

If any item contains components made outside the EU, that has to be listed in detail. Information about what was bought

when and where must be provided. Does that include my Uncle Jim’s sitting-room chair, acquired around 1948, acquired by me around 1998? Yes, said Mr Dempsey. HMRC requires authentication that this personal ‘change of residence’ is not a commercial tax dodge.

Then the veteran haulier threw in the towel. His son lamented, ‘We’ve trucked stuff between Ireland and England all our lives, but Brexit has ruined us. It’s broken the business.’ They cancelled the removals job – more trouble than it’s worth.

And so, as spring beckoned, I opened negotiations with another removals company. They started off by warning me that Brexit had turned a previously simple task of loading a van with household stuff into a bureaucratic ordeal, and to be prepared for the vast amount of paperwork that awaits.

Funny how, when something affects your own life, grandiose theories can be replaced by exasperated experience.

It’s often assumed that England’s hereditary European opponent is France, and the French are frequently blamed for sticky problems with EU relations, or troubled issues such as the illegal Channel crossings.

But, as my late husband would point out, the English language reveals that the Dutch were the true ‘hereditary enemy’ (being sharp competitors in trade).

Slang involving the Dutch often implies deceit. A Dutch treat isn’t actually a treat. A Dutch uncle isn’t really an uncle. In a Dutch auction, the prices go downwards. Lighting one cigarette from the tip of another was called a Dutch f*** – hardly flattering.

Now we are enjoined to open our car doors with the Dutch manoeuvre. Instead of using the hand nearer the car door, you reach over to the door with the other hand. This means the driver will naturally turn his or her head backwards to spot oncoming traffic. A Dutch contortion, maybe?

As Mary Kenny enters her seventh decade as a journalist, she looks back on the highs and lows of old Fleet Street

Who will end my lady drought?

Jem Clarke is in his very, very early fifties, is five foot zero inches tall and has never left the family home in Cleethorpes, which he shares with his parents…

Living in the same small town all my life has given me the reasonably acceptable gift of genuinely lifelong friends.

None is longer-serving than Mikey Wadburn. We met in first-year infants and still live within streets of each other: I still with my parents, while he has ventured out into a room below a flat above a tanning shop.

To be honest, he was always the one with the adventurous, wandering soul, and now lives on the nearest edge of the very centre of town, accordingly. Nothing says wanderlust like the top end of the high street.

The only thing we have in common other than our lifelong bachelor status is that Mikey is also a very short man. When we sit in the local coffee shop, I often muse that if we had been born 30 years later, we would probably have made a very good incel cell.

Still, to be honest, the amount of time online would probably put him off. He’s still on the most basic internet coverage. And, for me, the level of continuous anger the professionally celibate seem to need would prove too exhausting for my central nervous system. It is sometimes too overloaded even after a mediumpaced episode of Question Time

It was definitely in tones more of accepting sorrow than of revolutionary roar that Mikey disclosed to me, entirely out of nowhere, ‘Do you know I’m on the wrong end of an 18-year-long lady drought?’

Uncomfortable to share my own number – and slightly peeved that his was only 18, the dark horse – I nodded with big, accepting eyes. I was desperate to appear sorry for him, and not envious.

I just let the statement flop into silence, eager to let the subject disappear like the foam on my frappé.

He reflected, ‘It’s not even the sex I miss; it’s the company. My mates say it’s

all right, and that marriage is a rotten game anyway, but…’ – he sighed – ‘you know what gets you most about living alone? Ghosts.’

Really? I’ve never considered ghosts as preying on the pathetically single. In literature and American supermarket newspapers, they suggest ghosts go for families, mainly on account of the vibrational energy of the newly pubescent, which attracts them.

Maybe there is a subset of ghosts who like the more off-flavour of the 50-something singleton. There are a couple of tourists from South Yorkshire who constantly frustrate my local fish-and-chip shop owners by demanding pollock each summer. When my parents take that final stroll onto God’s Avenue, the only thing I can now look forward to is some ghost with an overly fussy palate moving in.

Or should I maybe move in with Mikey? Save him from the spooks and give myself some great source material for some mega-populist piece of nonfiction – Trinity Mirror books would bash my door down for exclusive rights to our ghost stories.

I excitedly probed Mikey: ‘What’s your ghost like?’

‘A twat,’ he explained unhelpfully but utterly sincerely.

‘No, I mean physically.’ I tried to help by suggesting timidly, ‘Does it have any distinguishing features … a hat?’

‘A hat!?’ Mikey was miffed. ‘It’s a

bloody haunting, not a fashion show.

‘Look, I’ve never dared look, but he makes a sinister, hissing noise like an echoey kettle, and bangs about like he’s wearing clogs and that.’

‘So it’s a male ghost? You said “he”.’

‘All ghosts are male, you idiot!’ he scoffed. ‘When did you last see a white sheet with boobs?’

I suddenly remembered that Mikey and I had been separated at junior school, as he was put in the slow class. I diplomatically nodded: ‘Oh, it’s that sort of ghost, you think?’

‘Yeah, indoors, innit. So, obviously, it will go for a sort of house-ghost look, I think…’

Suddenly uncertain in his ghostology, he got out his mobile phone and distracted me with a photo of a lady from Asia he had met online playing a word game. She now wanted to start a new life with him if he could scramble together the airfare.

Alas, I was never to meet the ghost. Weeks later, Mikey pulled his squeaky bike to a dead stop next to me, and whispered in my ear, ‘Turned out the ghost was the midnight cleaner turning on the tanning machines to have a sneaky freebie, and now I’m boffing her!’

As he cycled away again, he pulled an extravagant wheelie while whooping, ‘Eighteen years. Bonkometer now back to zero!’

I thought to myself as I turned for home, ‘Yeah, when I die, I’ll bloody haunt you, pal.’

After 18 years, my old friend has finally found a lover. If only I could be so lucky jem clarke

I’m on strike – for my pupils’ sake

During the pandemic, two MPs, from the two main parties, said to me they believed that teachers were the unsung heroes of the lockdown.

I’m not comparing what we did to what the nurses did, but our job did go some way towards holding together the fabric of society in those weird times.

The teaching was substandard in the first lockdown, and miserable and depressing in the second. But the pastoral side of our work became front and centre of what we were doing.

Both parents and pupils often felt we were a lifeline of normality that kept them sane. And, for those who did not manage to stay sane (some horrible family stories came out of that time), we were at least part of a reliable world they felt they could trust.

No one, least of all the MPs, is saying that now – after we joined nurses, rail workers, the Post Office, border control, ambulance drivers, barristers, and driving testers on strike.

Society is broken, and we are part of society. But no – now we are ‘betraying’ the children who have already missed so much school.

They are missing the point. What is happening in schools is just not good enough. When austerity began, it seemed fair enough. We were ‘all in it together’, after all. Or were we? Of course not.

Within a minute and a half, the MPs were voting themselves pay rises, while keeping the public sector frozen for two years and then capped at one per cent for another eight years.

Is it any wonder that so many people are leaving teaching, while so few are joining? It is not a profession, in this country, with much kudos and that is mostly because it is so underpaid.

No one suggests to graduates leaving the finest universities that they should become teachers. My ex-husband was very unwilling for me to train for this job. My friends say things like it is ‘brave’ or ‘good’ to be a teacher. They ‘admire’ it but would not want it for their children.

And how does this play out in the classroom? Classes are growing larger again. Fewer languages are being taught because we can’t get the teachers. No one is applying for the head-of-department jobs (especially in a core subject such as

English) because it is just not paid well enough for the amount of work and pressure involved.

So many young teachers come into the job as an afterthought – because other careers didn’t quite work out, or because they have a young family, and it fits with their lives. Many don’t even train to teach the subject in which they have a degree – they look for a shortage subject and apply to teach that. If they didn’t like the subject enough to study it at university, how can they hope to inspire the young?

Meanwhile, the MPs’ pay rises have gone up – right from the beginning of austerity: 28 per cent to them; three per cent to us. We are not colder or hungrier than anyone else, but we have worked as hard or harder than others.

Yes, I struck in February, and I will strike again in March. Of course, I hope to increase my own pay. But I also hope to improve the quality and quantity of teachers. I am an oldie, after all, and on my way out. But I want to see an improvement, or the hope of an improvement, for younger teachers and younger children. It has to happen.

Quite Interesting Things about … authors

Only 11 per cent of professional authors make a living from their writing.

One in ve Britons cannot name a single author of literature.

Aristotle had a lisp.

Jonathan Swift invented the name Vanessa.

James Joyce took 17 years to write

Finnegans Wake.

Rudyard Kipling painted his golf balls red so he could play in the snow.

Flaubert lived with his mother until he was 51.

Daniel Defoe began his rst

novel, The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, aged 60.

Brendan Behan became an alcoholic at the age of eight.

J M Barrie, author of Peter Pan, was under ve feet tall and didn’t shave till he was 24. When Roald Dahl was six, his mother took him to meet Beatrix Potter. She didn’t like children and told them both to ‘buzz o ’.

George Orwell had his knuckles tattooed as a policeman in Burma, and

later ran the village shop in Wallington, Hertfordshire. Nostradamus published a book of love potions and jam recipes.

Alexandre Dumas fought his rst duel at 23. In the course of it, his trousers fell down.

Jorge Luis Borges never produced a work of ction longer than 19 pages. He called writing long books ‘a laborious madness’.

Miguel de Cervantes was captured by pirates and held as a slave in Algiers for ve years.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, lived next door to Mark Twain.

Mark Twain de ned an ideal library as one with no Jane Austen books in it.

Arnold Bennett died of typhoid contracted from water he drank in Paris to prove it was perfectly safe. When staying in hotels, Hans Christian Andersen always carried a coil of rope in case he needed to escape from a re.

JOHN LLOYD

222 QI Answers to Your Quite Ingenious Questions is out now

For more on QI, visit qi.com and, on Twitter, @qikipedia

Little J M Barrie

sister teresa

Sister Helen, the Angel of Death Row

As soon as I was old enough to hold the cards, my mother taught me to play poker. At the same time, she taught me to be a good loser: more useful than the cultivation of a deadpan expression.

At 16, in 1963, I took part in my boarding school’s debating society. I was selected to defend the abolition of the death penalty. Up till then, I had never given the subject much thought but, while preparing my speech with as much help as was available in the school library, I became convinced this punishment was totally wrong, and I have thought so ever since.

I lost that debate by a high number of votes; I was furious and I let it show.

It still strikes me as shocking that so many well-brought-up teenagers, educated in a Roman Catholic school with allegedly Christian values, could have reached the conclusion they did.

The same fury was brought back to me

recently when I read Sister Helen Prejean’s Dead Man Walking, an account of her fierce and persistent protests against the death penalty in the USA.

My admiration for Sister Helen knows no bounds. As the result of corresponding with an inmate on Louisiana’s death row some 30 years ago, she not only got involved with him, helping him right up to the moment of his death, but also became an outspoken critic of state executions.

She brought to public attention the inefficiency of the electric chair, and the appalling death for which it was responsible: a shorter death than when someone was burnt at the stake, but involving the same sort of agony.

She also raised the question of the morality of any state’s killing its citizens, and pointed out that while the Old Testament condones the death penalty, the New Testament says nothing at all about its justification.

Memorial Service

This woman has had the courage to admit the mistakes she made at the beginning of her campaigning – the main one perhaps being her failure to deal with the relatives of the victims, a mistake long since put right.

Her eloquence and her unreserved conviction as to the immorality of state executions has led, over the last 30 years, to changes of mind and heart throughout the world.

In due course, she was in contact with two Popes, and in 2018 there was, thanks to her, a revision made in the catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, expressing complete rejection of the use of the death penalty and a call to all Catholics to work towards its global abolition.

She thus put right a wrong decision made 1,600 years ago. For the first 400 years of its existence, the Church was staunchly anti-death penalty.

Dame Frances Campbell-Preston (1918-2022)

Dame Frances Campbell-Preston, who died last year at 104, was the Queen Mother’s oldest surviving lady-inwaiting. She served her from 1965 until the Queen Mother’s death in 2002.

She is pictured, right, on her 100th birthday. Her thanksgiving service was held at the Wren Chapel, Royal Hospital Chelsea, where she worshipped until she was 13.

Her grandfather Sir Neville Lyttelton was Governor of the Hospital, 1912-31. Dame Frances remembered meeting, as a little girl, four veterans of the Crimean War at the hospital, including one who’d met Florence Nightingale.

In the service sheet, Dame Frances wrote, ‘I trust my funeral will be cheerful

and that the coffin will be carried out to the tune of the Regimental March of the Black Watch, to alert my husband that I am on my way. That is my “plan for the future” and it makes me smile.’ A piper did indeed play Hielan’ Laddie, the Regimental March of the Black Watch, in memory of her husband, Patrick CampbellPreston. He was imprisoned at Colditz after being captured at St Valery in Normandy in 1940. He died in 1960, aged 49.

In the early months of Dame Frances’s widowhood, her sister-in-law Joyce Grenfell visited her. She was inspired to write the poem Life Goes On, read at the service by Dame Frances’s son Robert Campbell-Preston.

It includes these lines:

Dame Frances’s other son, Colin Campbell-Preston, read a family prayer. Viscount Bridgeman read from Journal of a Soul by Pope John XXIII.

Lord Chartres, former Bishop of London, paid tribute: ‘She loved this place, the scene of her 100th-birthday celebration in 2018. She was so down to earth and such fun. She was not intimidating but she had immense presence.’

The hymns were Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord!, Immortal, Invisible, God only wise and Guide me, O thou great Redeemer Earl Rosslyn represented the King and Queen Consort. Lady Susan Hussey, Dame Frances’s niece, represented the Princess Royal. The Hon Mary Morrison represented Princess Alexandra.

JAMES HUGHES-ONSLOW

‘Parting is hell, But life goes on, So sing as well.’

Listen more – and don’t lose your marbles

Deafness is related to dementia but does one cause the other?

dr theodore dalrymple

As Dr Johnson was terrified of madness, so most of us are terrified of dementia, both for our own sake and for that of our loved ones. If anything can stave it off, it is much to be welcomed.

It has long been known that there is an association between deafness and dementia. If there is a causative relationship, in which direction does it flow, or could it flow in both directions?

If deafness causes dementia, how does it do so and could the wearing of hearing aids reduce the risk of developing it?

It is possible that the two conditions, deafness and dementia, develop pari passu, by a similar mechanism, for example by vascular damage. Loss of mental stimulus because of deafness could also foster dementia – as could the necessity for the hard of hearing to devote too much attention to trying to catch sound to the exclusion of other, more varied, mental activity.

And if the wearing of hearing aids could prevent dementia, it is also possible that dementia could prevent the wearing of hearing aids?

A study among ageing American veterans tried to answer some of these questions. Of course, a population of American veterans is not representative of populations as a whole (for one thing, it is overwhelmingly male – 98.9 per cent in this case), but there is no real reason the results should have been any different for any other ageing population.

A large sample – 72,180 – of ageing veterans (over 60) who showed no signs of dementia were provided with free hearing aids after audiological testing, and were followed up for 3½ to 5 years. It was found that those who used their hearing aids persistently had a 27-per-cent reduction in their chances of developing dementia, compared with those who failed to do so; the effect was

much less in those aged only between 60 and 70. Persistent use was estimated by the number of hearing-aid batteries reordered by the veterans.

The results were certainly consistent with the idea that use of hearing aids prevents or delays the onset of dementia.

The reverse was also found to be true. People with reduced cognitive capacity are less likely to use their hearing aids regularly: they forget, they have more difficulty with fitting them and so forth.

A vicious circle would thus be set up: reduced auditory stimulus promotes or accelerates dementia; further dementia reduces access to auditory stimulus.

Audiologists say persistent use of hearing aids, rather than intermittent use, itself prevents further hearing loss. This might help explain the effect of reducing the development of dementia. Of course, as some people – including those in married couples – have discovered, not being able to hear is sometimes an advantage. Some of my elderly male patients used to call uxorial complaint earache.

The story is told of an eminent physician of the old school, Frederick Parkes Weber, whose father, Sir Hermann Weber, physician to Queen Victoria, wrote a book about how to live a long time. He himself lived to be 100 and attended medical meetings well into his nineties. He was so learned that cheering once broke out when he admitted in public to never having heard of something.

Once he had delivered himself of his opinion on any subject, he would turn off his very large hearing aid with a tauromachian flourish, as if there could be nothing further of any value to be said on the matter.

These days, hearing aids are much more discreet, allowing for no such thespian gestures. They also carry no burden of humiliation, as they once did.

The Oldie, 23–31 Great Titchfield Street, London, W1W 7PA letters@theoldie.co.uk

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Cheer up, Paxo

SIR: Having just read Jeremy Paxman’s reasons to be gloomy (March issue), regarding the issue of his new driving licence, I would like to ask you please to let him know that my new licence, applied for online on the 7th, arrived by post this morning, the 10th.

Nil desperandum, Jeremy. Regards, Rod Atkinson-Hill, Edith Weston, Rutland

Get your kit on, Babs...

SIR: I am deeply offended by the cover of the March issue, which features a seminude Barbara Windsor. Could you not have used instead the charming picture of the clothed Miss Windsor laughing delightedly with Jim Dale on page 14?

I am not prudish (although was wrongfully accused of such by readers of my second-favourite organ, Private Eye, when I complained about the smutty nature of cryptic crossword clues that likewise reduce women to sex objects).

You probably won’t publish this letter, as you seem interested only in flattering comments from readers.

Yours disappointedly, Jackie Lloyd, Lyme Regis

...or Carry On Stripping

SIR: I have just received the March issue of ‘perhaps the best magazine in the world’.

Can I be the first of many elderly persons with rectal wind to say how appalled, outraged and disgusted at this outdated display of near nudity and denigration of the female sex?

Perhaps next month you could publish a still from one of the Benny Hill films in order that I may continue to be affronted.

Damn … can’t cancel the sub. Paid up for next 12 months. Just have to grin and BARE it.

Yours, C Stephen Winterbottom, Kendal, Cumbria

Scots Wha Hae

SIR: In the Old Un’s note about The Bridges of Robert Adam (March issue), I was interested to read Simon Heffer’s assertion that British – by which, I presume he unfortunately means English – attitudes in the 18th century to Scottish cultural capabilities were prejudiced. It was ever thus.

Dr Johnson was, however, something of an outlier in his hostility to Scotland, but was eagerly roared on by the lingering fear in London that it had only just escaped a Catholic restoration.

The intellectual powerhouse that was the Scottish enlightenment became the framework for our modern society and its significance has been unfortunately downplayed ever since.

Yours sincerely, Gordon Wemyss, Leswalt, Stranraer

Glenconner’s angry hubby

SIR: Anne Glenconner was a great supporter of my work with victims of domestic violence. She offered her house for a fundraising event and I was grateful.

Mid-event, showing my film about domestic violence, I heard a thunderous banging on the front door – and on opening it I discovered her husband, Colin, in a furious mood, because he mislaid his keys. ‘What is that noise?’

Cary Grant’s tailor

SIR: Cary Grant’s tailor was Quintino’s in Beverly Hills (March issue). No one knows who made his sunglasses in North by Northwest but his estate recently endorsed something similar marketed by a company called Oliver Peoples.

Prof Dominic Regan, Bath

Geordie Valerie Grove

SIR: Valerie Grove campaigns admirably against verbal atrocities on the radio, but is she right (March issue) to rail against different pronunciations of ‘book’? The word is derived from the Old English ‘bok’ and has surely developed various regional inflections. As a Geordie, albeit long exiled, Valerie will recall that, for more than a few here in the North East, a book is a byeuk.

Geoffrey Phillips, Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear

Robert Conquest’s third law

SIR: Theodore Dalrymple’s jaundiced comments about the NHS and the police having been reduced to nothing more than bureaucracies (March issue) were spot-on.

The word ‘bureaucracy’ used to apply only to public-sector organisations, where process and procedure took precedence over product/output/result. Banks, mobile phone companies, airlines and any organisation reliant on a merry-goround phone system that plays electronic ‘music’, of the sort used to torture political prisoners, should be added to the list.

Robert Conquest’s third law of politics states: ‘The best way to understand any bureaucracy is to assume it has been taken over by a cabal of its enemies.’

Colin Green, Chester

Why oldies indicate

SIR: I whooped with joy on seeing Matthew Norman’s ‘give me a sign!’ (Grumpy Oldie Man, March issue).

‘I’ve never been any good at small talk. So do you mind if I just stand here and gawk?’

‘It’s a film about domestic violence,’ I said.

Erin Pizzey, Twickenham, Middlesex

This may explain some of the problem. While driving through Wolverhampton recently, I came to a large roundabout

with traffic lights on red, while I was behind a learner driver under professional instruction. Attached to the rear-view mirror was a dangly thing.

Lights turned green and off he went, with this dangly thing now swinging around, and he did not indicate.

It was off-putting for me, following it, let alone for the young male driver learning to drive and trying to negotiate a busy three-lane roundabout. So it was not surprising that he failed to indicate.

A few days later, when I was following a young learner driver under professional tutelage, we came to a large roundabout. I wanted to go right. So I indicated – unlike the car in front.

I gave him space as there was still no indication, so … which way? He slowed and then I saw the instructor pointing straight ahead, which meant he should have been indicating left.

In both cases, it was not the pupil’s fault that he didn’t indicate or was distracted, but the instructor’s.

So, when those learners go for their tests, that tester should pick up on the fact they don’t signal and will fail them, which means another set of sessions with the same or another instructor!

Second thought: wasn’t there a change some years ago, saying that if there was no other car around, you didn’t have to signal?

So you have to look all around to see if there’s anyone near enough to make indicating necessary! That therefore may be why oldies indicate and others don’t.

Bring back the always-indicate rule. Yours faithfully, Victoria Jenvey, Bridgnorth, Shropshire

Crocodile in Birkenhead

SIR: Eleanor Allen (Olden Life, March issue) may presume that a crocodile of schoolchildren was called that because of the way it moved. But when I was growing up in Birkenhead in the 1960s, we called a line of girls from the local school a crocodile for a very good reason. It was vicious and it bit people.

James Bibby, Prenton,

Merseyside

Online landline

SIR: I usually enjoy Digital Life by Matthew Webster as, despite nearly 20 years’ working in technology businesses, I now find as an oldie that technology is leaving me behind.

However, in his otherwise excellent article ‘What won’t happen in 2023…’ (February issue), he states that ‘BT is shutting down all landlines by 2025.’

That is not correct. What BT is doing is replacing the current analogue system with an internet-based version, called an IP network. You can keep your landline, but you will have to plug it into the internet. And if you have a power cut, it won’t work. So you’ll still need your mobile in the event of an emergency.

Dr David Pearson, Harpenden, Herts

Seeking travel experts

SIR: I’d be grateful if you could include the following research enquiry on your letters page:

I am writing a biography of the Irish writer Robin Bryans/Robert Harbinson, whose travel books and autobiographies were published by Faber in the 1960s, and would like to hear from any reader of The Oldie who may have corresponded with him, or who is willing to share documents, photographs or memories.

I can be reached at 30 Antrim Road, Lisburn, Co Antrim, Northern Ireland, BT28 3DH; p.d.wilson@qub.ac.uk; 07980 983913. Many thanks, Paul

Wilson, Queen’s University Belfast

Picking on foreigners

SIR: I am surprised that Sophia Waugh is surprised by the culture of bullying Ukrainian children at her local school (March issue). Children are often cruel – especially to “the other” – and frequently ape what they see and hear at home from their elders. No surprises they pick on the foreigners at school –they mirror our wider society.

Rodney Pinder, London SE24

Devon language lessons

SIR: Your article (School Days, March issue) about Ukrainian children and their settling-in problems at school rang a bell with me. As evacuees in the Second World War, my brother and I found a similar response from classmates in

Devonshire. But, within months, our accents were as solidly Devonian as those who had been born there.

This meant that there was no further problem – that is until we returned to London six years later, when we had to endure the reverse procedure. If the Ukrainians pick up the language rapidly, I think all may yet be well.

Peter J Holloway, Brighton, East Sussex

Sybil Thorndike’s Hoover

SIR: Gyles Brandreth’s story (March issue) about Dame Sybil Thorndike hoovering when she should have been hovering is very funny … except, only a few days before I read it, I saw the same tale regarding a bit-part player in the TV soap Crossroads. I hope one of the accounts is true! Or – who knows? – both of them.

Simon Broad, Sawston, Cambridgeshire

First dame of theatre

SIR: Gyles Brandreth’s entertaining article in the March issue contains a glaring error. Ellen Terry was not the first theatrical dame, although many people thought she should have been. It was understood that the fact that she had lived, unwed, with her lover, Edward Godwin, and had two children by him made her an unsuitable recipient for such an honour at the time.

The first theatrical dame was Genevieve Ward in 1921. She was an American actress whose work brought her to Britain at which time she became a British citizen. Dame May Whitty also received a damehood in 1918, but it was for her charitable work during the First World War, not for her considerable theatrical career. The Lyceum Company felt strongly that Ellen should have been honoured with Henry Irving and gave her the title Lady Darling. ‘With which title, I am well content’ was Ellen’s response.

From 1984 to 2002, I was custodian of the Ellen Terry Museum, Smallhythe Place, which now belongs to the National Trust and I fell completely under her spell.

Margaret Weare, Stone-in-Oxney, Kent

Venice, Italy’s Birmingham

SIR: In Harry Mount’s article on Wren (March issue), he quotes Betjeman: ‘Be careful before you call Weymouth the Naples of Dorset.’ I recall the story of a group of British canal enthusiasts exploring inland waterways on the continent and their leader proclaiming, ‘Welcome to Venice, the Birmingham of Italy.’

Jon Sims, Rownhams, Hampshire

I Twice Met George H W Bush

In 1986, my company transferred me from London to Sydney and put me up in a small flat at the end of Darling Point, a quiet, smart part of town.

Directly across the road was the United States Consulate. Apart from a flag and a discreet plaque, it looked much like all the other waterfront mansions in the area.

Driving home from my new office one evening, I was surprised to see a couple of police cars outside my apartment block, with all their lights flashing. I was directed to pull over and then ordered out of my car. A beefy Sydney cop pinned me against my vehicle – but wasn’t keen to explain why.

I worked it out when several large black limos came round the corner. They were too big to get through the gates of the Consulate. So the passengers, including the then Vice-President George H W Bush, had to get out in the quiet street.

Bush looked around, spotted me being

President George H W Bush, 1989

detained against my will and worked out what was going on. He walked towards me and said something along the lines of ‘I’m terribly sorry. This sort of thing seems to happen wherever I go.’ Once he was safely inside, I was released.

Around ten years later, I found myself in Houston, Texas. My colleague Bill and I were waiting for a taxi outside a big, modern hotel. Suddenly the double doors behind us were flung open and a group of big men in dark suits pinned us both against the wall.

Then out came the then ex-President George H W Bush, with his wife Barbara in tow. He paused briefly, looked directly at me and said something along the lines of ‘I’m terribly sorry, this sort of thing seems to happen wherever I go.’ Once the Bushes had sped off, we were released.

I very much doubt he recognised me and he certainly didn’t hear me shouting at his departing motorcade, ‘Just make sure it doesn’t happen again, George!’

Tom Moult

Egon Ronay’s exceedingly good taste

honour my side of a £50 bet I’d desperately needed to win to see me through the last of my African days.

It seemed worth a try.

Sipping my White Cap beer in Nairobi’s celebrated Thorn Tree Café, I noticed the small ad in a well-thumbed English newspaper: ‘Egon Ronay seeks hotel and restaurant inspectors.’

Well, I’d made it through catering college and cooked professionally before setting off to busk and bum. With my cash reserves down to zilch, I scribbled off a few lines to Britain’s ‘Mr Gastronomy’, extolling admittedly limited virtues and not expecting any sort of reply.

To my great surprise, an envelope was waiting when I arrived home in early December, wearing nothing but a kikoi and a pair of flip-flops to

I managed to somehow bluff my way through the interviews and arrived on Day One of the job from heaven. Presented with a list of smart London hostelries, I duly booked accommodation for the forthcoming week and reserved tables at a selection of restaurants, including

Claridge’s, the Dorchester and the Connaught, dining twice daily in the company of the organisation’s chief inspector, Géza Luby.

fellow diner I’ve known who sent back his soup because it was too hot.

We once travelled together overnight as part of a cross-Channel ferry survey, and after dining separately – he in the restaurant, I in the cafeteria – we set off to our respective cabins, arranging to meet and exchange notes over breakfast.

Usually the epitome of calm politeness, he appeared ruffled by his night afloat when I breezed in with a ‘Morning, Egon. Did you sleep well?’

‘No, I did not,’ he grumbled, his Hungarian accent more noticeable than usual. ‘It voss like trying to sleep all night long on a … a … a vibrator!’

By Tim Broadbent, PontSaint-Esprit, France, who receives £50

Readers are invited to send in their own 400-word submissions about the past Ronay with Wedgwood teapot, 1984

My training period over, I’d leave the office every fortnight with a huge wad of cash (no credit cards in them thar days) to see me through another gruelling round of browsing and sluicing the length and breadth of Britain and Ireland. And Egon? Struggling occasionally with the vagaries of the English language, the Budapest-born Ronay was unerringly charming and affable, passionate about his food, of course, and generous to a fault. He paid me handsomely (and unexpectedly) for a silly poem I’d scribbled and included it in his swansong 2006 Guide (he died in 2010, aged 94). He is also the only

Guame,

Oxford eggheads and numskulls

At university, A N Wilson met brilliant dons – and professors who struggled to define a tomato

Iam a middlebrow who at the age of 20 did not even know what philosophy, as understood by modern philosophers, actually is.

Nevertheless, finding myself at Oxford, I happened to know some of the giants in Nikhil Krishnan’s fascinating A Terribly Serious Adventure.

The philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe (1919-2001) resembled a large, handsome, unwashed gypsy. Neighbours were frequently ringing up the NSPCC to complain that her ever-expanding brood of kids were being neglected while Mother translated Wittgenstein.

‘More’s playing with razor blades!’ one of them overheard. More was a wittily named son who came to add to the huge tribe.

An observant Catholic, Elizabeth Anscombe was married to philosopher Peter Geach (1916-2013), who bore an uncanny resemblance to Pope John II.

‘I think it’s quite an achievement to have BAGGED your supervisor!’ Anscombe said to me when introduced by my then fiancée, a fellow of Anscombe’s Oxford college.

I remember her telling us one day that, when driving back from Cambridge, where she had become a professor, she’d run over a badger. ‘What did you do with it, Miss Anscombe?’

‘Put it in the boot, of course.’

‘And then what?’

‘What do you think we did? We ATE it.’

Later, when I was masquerading as a junior don, I had dinner most evenings for a couple of years with A J Ayer (1910-89), known for his famous book Language, Truth and Logic. But to me he was just a genial old man who entertained me with talk of our shared passion, detective stories and memories of a stormy friendship with the great Raymond Chandler.

What these giants of the philosophical scene were doing for their day jobs was a closed book to me – quite literally. I came to know about the philosophical scene only through my friendship with Iris Murdoch, who told me about Simone Weil (1909-43). Weil instantly became my heroine – and still is.

For reasons unknown, Weil is described in this book as a nun. This unbaptised, vodka-drinking, Christenraptured, chain-smoking Jewish genius – she refused baptism because it would alienate her from the unchristened Homer – would have been surprised by this. She was a greater figure than anyone mentioned in this book – but that is another story.

Last year, there were two fascinating books about groups of Oxford academics – Daisy Dunn’s Not Far from Brideshead, about Maurice Bowra, Eric Dodds and Gilbert Murray. A book that appeared to be about who became the next Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford turned out to be a story with much wider ramifications.

Then there was Metaphysical Animals, by Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman – a really gripping account of four philosophers, all women, all educated at Somerville –and the stand they took against the blokes who were peddling ‘analytical’ philosophy – Ryle, Ayer, Austin and co.

You’d think this was parish-pump stuff, of interest only to nerds like me who happen to have been at Oxford and even known some of these legends personally, but in fact both books turned out to be about big and exciting things. Like how to be good. What would constitute a good society or a good person?

This rather similar round-up of academics from yesteryear tells the same story. Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot and Mary Midgley were all able to show that the account given of our inner life, and of our capacity to make ethical choices, by so many of their fellow Oxford philosophers – pipe-smoking Oxford chaps – was woefully limited and, in many cases, downright wrong.

But, as the present book shows, there was something noble about the blokes’ attempt to purify the language and make sure that philosophers meant what they said and knew what they meant when they said it – as should the rest of us.

Undoubtedly, much of what the ‘Oxford philosophers’ were saying and writing seems, to the lay person, so esoteric as to belong in the pages of Gulliver’s Travels

‘When I see a tomato, there is much that I can doubt.’

So wrote Henry Price (1899-1984), Wykeham Professor of Logic, pictured. He spent several paragraphs wondering whether what he was seeing was a hallucination, or a plastic tomato. Of one thing one could be certain: ‘There

exists a red patch of a round and somewhat bulgy shape, standing out from a background of other colour patches, and having a certain visual depth, and that this whole field of colour is directly present to my consciousness.’

A J Ayer was among those who believed the only thing we could be sure of was that our sense data informed us that we were seeing a tomato.

He was not reviving the absolute scepticism of Bishop Berkeley, who believed that we could not be sure of the existence of ANYTHING. There are moments in this book when one remembers dear old Dr Johnson, upon mention of Berkeley, stating, ‘I refute him thus!’ and kicking a stone.

Toweringly the oddest pair in the book – and surely the most impressive – are Cambridge-based Ludwig Wittgenstein and his representative on earth, Elizabeth Anscombe. She it was who patiently translated Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations

Whereas Wittgenstein thought philosophy leaves everything as it is, Anscombe backed the philosophical justification of the moral life.

It was she who (unsuccessfully) opposed Harry S Truman’s being given an honorary degree at Oxford, because he was a mass murderer (Nagasaki and Hiroshima). The philosophers argued that Truman, by merely signing an order to murder hundreds of thousands of civilians, had not actually done the deed himself.

Like Anscombe, her friend Iris Murdoch, who worked for refugees after the war and saw at first hand of the devastating effects of Hitler’s campaign, saw that it was not good enough to say, with Freddie Ayer, that ethical statements had no meaning.

Reading this fair-minded survey of a whole miscellany of modern philosophers, we discover the power of the Anscombe argument: that the reductionism and materialism of the chaps – most of whom, surely, were half barmy, or at least on ‘the spectrum’ –were ultimately ‘corrupt’.

By refusing to recognise ‘metaphysics as a guide to morals’, they appeared to justify much of the moral chaos that engulfed society in their day.

Nikhil Krishnan’s A Terribly Serious Adventure: Philosophy at Oxford 1900-1960 is published by Profile Books (£20)

A N Wilson is author of Confessions: A Life of Failed Promises

‘When I see a tomato, there is much that I can doubt,’ wrote Professor Price

The Earth didn’t move

ROGER LEWIS

The Earth Transformed: An Untold History

By Peter Frankopan Bloomsbury £30

The birth of my first grandchild is imminent but, frankly, who’d want to be born into the world as it is today?

The planet is, as Peter Frankopan says with some relish, a vale of ‘sorrow and sadness’, brought on by acid rain, the threat of nuclear apocalypse, climate change (which on its own ‘threatens the very future of the human family’) and a general belief that ‘Entire ecosystems are collapsing.’

To which the only possible reaction is: so what? Beginning his story several billion years BC, Frankopan chronicles nothing other than what might be called Biblical catastrophe.

What mortal could have done anything about changes in the earth’s orbit around the sun; the impact of giant meteorites; tectonic shifts, which create mountain ranges and new continents, ‘pushing land that had been at sea level upwards, with the result that marine fossils can be found at or near the summit of some of the highest peaks’? And cause the horrific earthquakes that struck poor Turkey and Syria in February.

Disaster is what has made us, as animals and men, adapt to ‘a series of flukes, coincidences, long shots and serendipities’. Moths and butterflies in the Himalayas, for example, have moved up a thousand metres to find more amenable conditions.

Fish and crustaceans have dived deeper in the Mediterranean, searching for cooler currents. As deserts spread, humans migrate to the more equable, greener north, where crops can be grown.

Frankopan likes to dwell on the effects of the moon on tides, weather and reproductive cycles: ‘Albatrosses are more active on moonlit nights’ – as are werewolves, come to that.

Volcanoes fascinate our author. ‘Volcanic eruptions bring wide-ranging consequences for the natural world,’ apparently. Clouds of ash fill the sky, temperature plummets and nothing grows, leading to ‘large-scale deforestation and the transformation of woodlands into grasslands’. Herbivores vanish, as there’s a paucity of leaves to munch on.

‘I guess when we spoke on the phone, I thought “Renaissance man” was a figure of speech...’

The lesson of The Earth Transformed is that life exists under continuous sentences of death and destruction: storms, floods, droughts and severe winters, which ensure harvest failures and malnutrition, if not outright starvation.

The periods of ‘favourable climate conditions’, when people can build towns and cities, ‘develop writing systems, religions and complex economies’, are incredibly brief and few.

Even if civilisation does come about, it will collapse. Prosperity alternates with recession and poverty. Conflicts and wars abound, provoked by territorial aggression, and arguments over rights and private property.

Indeed, when people band together, there is immediate trouble. Higher population densities create bacterial disease and sanitation issues.

Agriculture was perhaps a bad idea, as illnesses jumped from cattle, goats and sheep to their handlers – chickenpox, smallpox and monkey pox. Maybe we should have done without meat, milk, clothes and textiles.

Frankopan generally doesn’t think much of mankind’s contribution at any stage. It is our fault insects and birds have gone, as this stems from ‘deforestation, heavy use of pesticides and urbanisation’.

For reasons undivulged, he travels regularly to New Delhi, Bishkek and Lahore, where pollution is rife, the air quality ‘acrid, damaging and dangerous’.

In Afghanistan, in 2017, the death toll from pollution and asphyxia was eight times higher than the number of casualties in battles with the Taliban. It makes you think, though I’m not sure about quite what.

Fossil fuels, open fires, motor

traffic and the rest are sending ‘polycyclic hydrocarbons into the atmosphere’, which contribute, says our alarmist author, to mental illness and dementia, ‘as well as an elevated risk of self-harm’.

But then Frankopan is frightened of washing machines. He wants us to lose sleep over ‘microplastic fibres, shed from synthetic clothing, discharged’ by a fast spin.

I don’t have to believe any of this if I don’t want to. Though Frankopan, a Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford, says he has analysed the chemical constituents of shells and made evidential inferences from midges trapped in Danish sediment, it’s not particularly original to point out how everything is interconnected and in permanent flux.

I think I knew cycles of aridity and glaciation are a planetary norm, but then I did O-Level geography.

Global warming, furthermore, is nothing new – so why blame governments and the Industrial Revolution? Three million years ago, sea levels were 25 metres higher than today, and temperatures three degrees Celsius higher. That wasn’t the fault of factories.

In 6,150 BC, a chunk fell off Norway, causing a massive tsunami, which submerged the areas connecting Britain and the Continent, turning us into an island. In Frankopan’s reasoning, this geomorphological event ‘consequently’ caused everything from our need for a navy, and hence our imperial ambitions, the Second World War and ‘the exceptionalism that helped drive the Brexit vote’.

As when Frankopan mentions the ‘linguistic similarities between Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iran subfamilies’, are we meant to be incredibly impressed by his cleverness, wit and erudition? It seems simply selfregarding, something to impress undergraduates with.

This big, flabby bore of a book fails to reach the obvious conclusion – that another way of interpreting the evidence is to say how resilient and persistent people are, as they adapt to circumstances outside their control.

This is a cause for celebration, not modish complaint and phoney hand-wringing.

Roger Lewis’s Erotic Vagrancy: Everything about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor is out later this year

Curate’s egg by Atwood

FRANCES WILSON

Old Babes in the Wood

20th-century suburban mother is, she suspects, a witch, is similarly composed of flat sentences and tired jokes, as if the idea itself were enough.

they’re only a touch away. Is that better, or worse?’

When Tig is dying, Nell holds onto him while he sleeps.

By Margaret Atwood Chatto

& Windus £22

These 15 stories by Margaret Atwood are a mixed bag.

The first three and the last four feature an elderly couple called Tig and Nell. They are based, I imagine, on Atwood herself (now aged 83) and her husband, Graham Gibson, who died in 2019. The eight stories that form the book’s core explore a variety of themes, some fantastical and futuristic.

There is an interview between the author and George Orwell, who speaks through a medium in a séance. There’s a version of Patient Griselda, as told by an alien. In one tale, the soul of a snail translates into the body of a bank clerk, and in another, two best friends squabble over their memories of the past.

The degeneration of language is a recurring subject, with Atwood’s observations being much the same as those of the rest of us.

‘Did she just use totally as a modifier?’ asks a retired university lecturer in Airborne: A Symposium

In each case, an amusing idea has been only half-executed, leaving us with something undernourished and slight.

The Orwell interview, in particular, is a missed opportunity. ‘You’re a female colonial, I understand from the voice?’ Orwell says to Atwood.

His own voice, together with the consumptive cough, comes in and out of tune, Atwood says, like a radio finding its wavelength.

Orwell tells her about the world as it was before his death in 1950 –‘revolutions, dictatorships, wars’ – and Atwood fills him in on what’s happened since.

‘The internet?’ he asks. ‘Is that some kind of political secret society?’

After mocking his limitations (‘I guess you didn’t read women much’) and admitting that she had initially missed the allegory in Animal Farm, Atwood says, ‘There’s one more thing I’d like to tell you about. It’s a book called Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit.’

It is unlikely that Orwell, campaigner for the kind of plain English that the working man might enjoy, would much care for the self-indulgence of Orwell’s Roses, a pretentious meditation on what Orwell means to Solnit and what roses mean to Orwell. But hey ho.

My Evil Mother, about a girl whose

The Tig and Nell stories, on the other hand, are subtle and poignant, written in grief and from the heart. Nothing untoward happens in them; almost nothing happens in them at all, in fact, and this is their beauty.

Atwood’s subject here is memory, loss and the slowing down of the clock. Tig has died and Nell, heartbroken, remembers the daily pleasure of his companionship.

In First Aid, she remembers coming home to find the front door open and blood on the steps of the house:

‘That was some time ago. Early autumn, as she recalls, a year in the later 1980s. There were personal computers then, of a lumbering kind. And printers: the paper for them came with the pages joined together at the top and bottom, and had holes along the sides, in perforated strips, that you could tear off.’

Tig, having cut himself while chopping a carrot, is at the hospital having his wound stitched up. Nell then recalls a first-aid class they attended, and a variety of life-threatening experiences.

The drama of First Aid is contained in the movement between the solid, recognisable past – ‘How much waiting we used to do, she thinks. Waiting without knowing’ – and the present, where ‘space-time is denser; it’s crowded; you can barely move because the air is so packed with this and that’.

Switching between the 20th century and the 21st, Atwood catches the cataclysmic differences between the eras: ‘You can’t get away from people: they’re in touch; they’re touching;

‘Don’t go, don’t go,’ she whispers.

When he is dead she reflects that ‘It’s an optical illusion, the retreating figure dwindling, growing smaller and smaller and then disappearing in the distance. Those retreating stay the same size. They aren’t really diminished. They aren’t really gone.’

If the entire book were composed of Tig and Nell stories, Old Babes in the Wood would stay in the mind as something whole, lovely and fully achieved rather than like, well, a radio programme coming into and out of focus.

Himmler’s hero doctor

DR THEODORE DALRYMPLE The Man with Miraculous Hands

By Joseph Kessel Elliott & Thompson £20

When I told people that one of my first patients in prison was a man who had killed and dismembered three children and who now complained of a slight cough, they would ask how I could treat such a man.

It was the same question, in essence, as lawyers are asked about their defence of those whom they suspect to be guilty of the awful crime of which they have been accused.

But what of treating a man such as Heinrich Himmler, guilty not of individual crimes but of unprecedented mass murder as national policy? To treat him medically was the fate of Felix Kersten (1898-1960), an alternative practitioner and masseur trained in Eastern methods who was the only person who could relieve the Reichsführer’s intermittent bouts of excruciating abdominal pain.

Opposed to Nazism, Kersten used Himmler’s dependence on him to help reprieve the lives of many prisoners of the Gestapo, and eventually saved thousands from extermination.

‘We must not tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories about my new clothes’

Joseph Kessel – the French journalist, novelist, travel writer, aviator and adventurer who, like Kersten, was born in 1898 and lived some of his early life in the Russian Empire – published this account of Kersten’s life after he had become Himmler’s medical adviser and confidant. He based it entirely on

Frances Wilson is author of Burning Man: The Ascent of D H Lawrence

Kersten’s own account, and the result is as racy as any spy novel.

First published in French in 1960 with a preface by Hugh Trevor-Roper, it conveys very graphically the jockeying for power among the Nazi elite while they were complicit in some of the worst crimes in the far-from-spotless history of humanity.

Kersten had a very large and fashionable practice both in the Netherlands, where he treated Prince Hendrik, and in Germany, before he became entangled with Himmler. He was so successful that he accumulated a collection of Dutch and Flemish masters.

According to his own account, he was utterly apolitical before then, concentrating entirely on his lucrative medical activities, scarcely even noticing the advent of the Nazis. Whether this is plausible – whether any intelligent person could not notice the radical change that came over Germany in 1933 – is a question that Kessel did not ask, let alone answer. It would have rather spoiled the straightforwardness of his narrative.

Kersten was introduced to Himmler in 1939, before the outbreak of war, by a German industrialist whom he had successfully treated and who feared the nationalisation of his company. In a sense, Kersten never looked back: Himmler confided in him as in no one else.

The portrait of Himmler that emerges is that of a type with whom we have become, alas, all too familiar. Himmler was a touchy and self-doubting but arrogant and ambitious mediocrity. His drive to power was all-consuming in the attempt to overcome his own obvious defects and inferiority. At the same time as seeking power, he was to be the abject slave of someone or something more powerful than himself – in this case, of course, Hitler.

It is striking how so many of the top Nazis – Himmler, Goebbels, Hitler himself – promoted the ideal of Apollonian brutishness when they themselves were such physical weeds.

Kessel, who was himself treated by Kersten after the war, accepts Kersten’s account of his achievements and activities rather uncritically.

Kersten (who published his own memoirs in 1947) claimed he had averted the deportation by Himmler of the entire Dutch population to Poland. He did this by telling Himmler this additional burden to his already crushing duties rendered his abdominal crises impossible to treat, even by himself. The only solution was to abandon the plans for

deportation until victory was achieved.

According to later research, no such plan actually existed. And Kersten, brave and admirable as he undoubtedly was, did not resist the temptation to magnify his own achievements.

The book is dated in another way. Surely, no one would now write about Himmler’s treatment without wondering what his actual diagnosis was. Irritable bowel? Peptic ulceration? On this matter, Kessel is silent. The details of the illness are frustratingly skimpy.

There seems little doubt, however, that whatever it was, there was a strong psychological component to it. Were the miraculous hands that soothed away Himmler’s pain the hands of the placebo effect wielded by a man with a most reassuring manner?

There are revelations in the book that, if true, are important. Kersten claimed to have seen a report proving that Hitler suffered from tertiary syphilis. This is possible but not probable.

And Kersten reports that Himmler told him the Final Solution was ordered by Hitler himself and that he had a written document signed by Hitler to prove it. This, if it existed, has never been found.

Whatever the historical exactitude of the book, it is a wonderful read, and the portrait of Himmler has the ring of ghastly truth.

Dr Theodore Dalrymple is The Oldie’s doctor

Courageous Coward

PAUL BAILEY

Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward

By Oliver Soden Weidenfeld & Nicolson £30

The public persona Noël Coward first displayed to the world in the 1920s – the clipped way of speaking; the cigarette in its long holder; the tailor-made suit; the martini at hand – belied the fact that he was more often in the lonely company of his typewriter, tapping out a comic masterpiece such as Hay Fever.

Then there were innumerable revue sketches and song lyrics, the controversial play The Vortex, described by Bernard Shaw as ‘damnable and wonderful’, along with forgotten works.

As the Rev Peter Mullen writes on page 15, Coward died 50 years ago, aged 73, on 26th March 1973.

His reputation as a gadfly and man-about-town was sustained by well-timed appearances at posh cocktail parties and his natural gift for the spontaneous witticism that soon became the property of thousands of anecdotalists. It was all part of the show of being famous, as he well knew.

Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward isn’t in the cradle-to-grave tradition adhered to by more conventional biographers.

It’s composed of nine parts, beginning with an Edwardian comedy in six scenes called ‘The Rainbow’, featuring Master Noël embarking on a stage career.

That’s followed by an act concerned with the First World War and Coward’s unusual training for the military, which has the title ‘Services Rendered’.

‘Les Années Folles!’, the revue that comes next, is set in the ’20s. And ‘The Mask of Flippancy’, a play in three acts, has Coward writing Private Lives, the sparkling conversation piece that will ensure his lasting place alongside William Congreve and Oscar Wilde as a master dramatist.

‘The Tipsy Crow’, a play with music, which is fifth on the bill, accounts for the hectic years when the ever-industrious playwright, actor and songsmith was revelling in his hard-earned fame.

‘Tinsel and Sawdust’, the war film, shows Coward entertaining the Allied troops in often sweltering temperatures in Africa and the Middle East. He tries his hand at spying, too, besides scripting and starring in the movie In Which We Serve. The morale-boosting This Happy Breed is staged and then filmed.

‘We’ve been waiting ages for this treatment’

Before Germany is defeated, when he is becoming a little bored with wartime restrictions, he produces the wonderfully funny Blithe Spirit, taking the rise out of spiritualism and even of death itself. Then comes Present Laughter, providing him with yet another whopping great leading role.

The remaining sections consist of eight short stories, collected under the title ‘The Desert’. They chart his increasing disenchantment with the modern world.

‘The Living Mask’ depicts the chronically ill Coward returning to his beloved West End in style, acting his heart out in three brand-new plays and getting ecstatic reviews, at long last, from the very critics he had come to despise.

Finally – the curtain comes down, as it were, with ‘An Awfully Big Adventure’. Coward’s four previous biographers (Sheridan Morley, Clive Fisher, Cole Lesley, Philip Hoare) met Oliver Soden (and numerous friends of Coward, all dead) to talk about their multi-talented subject.

Soden’s achievement in this bold and ambitious book is to have captured Coward’s personality in all its curious aspects, especially his need for disguise.

The theatre was a hiding place for homosexuals, and it helped that he was stage-struck at an age when most boys are interested in sport.

His mother, Violet, who had lost her first-born to meningitis when he was only six, showered her darling child with affection. With her support, he became a jobbing actor at 11, wearing a bowler hat in The Goldfish, a play for children written and directed by Miss Lila Field. His first words as a professional were ‘Any luck, Dolly?’

Almost a decade later, he was being recognised as a playwright. In I’ll Leave It to You, which was staged in 1919, there’s an indication of the verbal brilliance to come with this exchange:

‘You’ve wounded me to the quick.’

‘I don’t believe you’ve got a quick.’

When Soden praises Coward’s ear for music, it’s not just the songs he has in mind. The staccato dialogue in his comedies is jazz-like in its edginess and inspired repetitions.

He notices, too, how often Coward employs the word ‘gay’, long before it took on its current meaning.

The well-known names are all here. His family of close friends, resembling disciples, with their babyish nicknames, are present and occasionally incorrect in their behaviour. The stage is set from the opening pages. And the show goes on until the end with its star in the spotlight, where he always reckoned – despite doomed

Blonde on blonde TANYA GOLD Love, Pamela

By Pamela Anderson

Headline £20

Pamela Anderson is the Sleeping Beauty of Baywatch, exuding sex and death. Now she has written a memoir whose title amounts to a rebuke: Love, Pamela It means: I can still love.

Baywatch, the TV show about lifeguards at a Los Angeles beach, was the most popular television show in the world, with over a billion viewers in the 1990s. I didn’t watch it but still I knew her: an innocent with a peculiar sweetness of face and charming gaucherie – and the sort of body you see in pornographic films.

She says it herself: she was a child when all this began. She is one of the late-20th century’s noble sequence of tortured pop-art blondes. Because the world has changed, she is writing her own story.

Not many women have been bestselling Mattel dolls – and her memoir reads as though written by a doll that speaks. There is narrative, selfjustification (unnecessary to me, but not to her) and, at the very edges, truth.

She was born on Vancouver Island to characters from Grease: if Rizzo and Kenickie had a baby, it would be Pamela. Her parents were teenage tearaways with style, and almost penniless.

These passages about her youth have an air of menace. I wait for the founding tragedy, and it comes: she was sexually abused by a female babysitter. Her father drowned the family’s puppies in front of her and tried to push her mother’s face onto the stove element. She was raped by a boyfriend, and gangraped by his friends.

She would have had her mother’s life,

but she was plucked from the crowd by a camera as if by the finger of God. She was at a football match in Vancouver and the roving camera rested on her.

She started doing advertisements. Playboy telephoned, asking if she would pose for the October 1989 cover. When her boyfriend heard to whom she was talking, he threw a tray of silverware at her head. He was one of the better ones. Men didn’t trust her. They wanted her too much. Was it perhaps safer to be made of paper? Playboy, with its Mansion (she capitalises it) and its ratio of two or three women to one man at parties – she saw Jack Nicholson ejaculating in a mirror –became her ‘family’.

Hugh Hefner, Playboy’s publisher, put her on the cover more times than any other woman and called her ‘the DNA of Playboy’. She called him a gentleman though he was really a pimp. But any man who didn’t beat her was a gentleman.

Then came Tommy Lee, the drummer in Mötley Crüe, whom she married after four days’ acquaintance. His courting sounds like stalking, but the 1990s were a different time. Together, they became a tabloid circus. He pointed a gun at a camera crew; as a wedding present, the crew didn’t press charges. He beat photographers. He beat her TV-show producer. He beat her.

She left him, writing of their two sons, ‘We let them down’ – and I want to shake her. I think this is the essential Pamela: the one who blames herself. Tommy and her father bonded over hatred of the paparazzi. They are the same man.

She left the marriage with two boys and the sex tape of an encounter with Tommy Lee. It was stolen and sold, which was criminal, but it was Tommy and Pamela – so who cares?

‘No matter how I tried,’ she writes, ‘the image was bigger than me and always won. My life took off without me.’

She survived, and went to live in France like a woman in a novel, dabbling in left-wing politics and green causes, loving the animals who are obviously an avatar for the child that she was.

Love, Pamela competes with a recent television series about the sex-tape saga, made without her permission: greed again, masquerading as a tribute again.

I would call her book justice – at least women like Pamela write their stories now – but I would not call it writing.

Rather, this book has the flavour of medicine. We might not like it – and I didn’t – but it must be taken.

Tanya Gold is the Spectator’s restaurant critic

love affairs, income-tax arrears, any number of bad reviews – he belonged.

Paul Bailey was The Oldie’s theatre critic

Right royal Nazi wedding

How bizarre the wedding of the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson on 3rd June 1937 was.

There were almost no guests. A renegade priest hosted the ceremony. The Royal Family boycotted it.

And the man who hosted the lavish affair was a Nazi collaborator. He later asked for a Faustian deal with the Duke which would damn him for ever.

One of the few guests who attended, the Duke’s fixer Walter Monckton, later said, ‘It was a strange wedding for one who had been six months before King of England and Emperor of India and dominions beyond the seas.’

After the abdication on 11th December 1936, the Duke and Wallis were unable to see each other for six months –otherwise her decree nisi would have been invalidated.

When they were finally reunited in early May, Wallis supposedly said, ‘Darling, it’s been so long, I can hardly believe that it’s you, and I’m here.’

They may have wished to live happily ever after, but there were numerous difficulties. Letters patent issued by George VI on 28th May 1937 allowed Edward to retain his title HRH the Duke of Windsor.

They also stated, ‘however, that his wife and descendants, if any, shall not hold the said title of attribute.’ She would for ever be a second-class citizen.

When the Duke discovered the snub, courtesy of Monckton, he shouted, ‘This is a nice wedding present!’ He blamed his mother, Queen Mary, who observed protocol rigidly. He sneered that her letters to him read as if they were to ‘a young man who is stopping for a while

in a foreign country to learn the language’.

George VI, egged on by his wife, Queen Elizabeth, was equally resolute.

He forbade any of the members of the Royal Household from attending the wedding, on the grounds that it would be wrong to sanctify an event that wasn’t held under the auspices of the Church of England.

The man who would marry them was a real curiosity.

Robert Jardine, a vicar in Darlington, was a publicityseeker and self-described ‘fighting parson’. He contacted the Duke’s solicitor, A G Allen, to offer his services. Jardine said that, ‘with God’s help, I am fighting for the happiness of my one-time earthly King’.

He made his way to the Château de Candé in France, where the wedding was to be held. It was the home of the Franco-American industrialist Charles Bedaux, who had generously offered to host the ceremony. Jardine officiated, saying that ‘quietness and an atmosphere of spiritual power marked the entire service’.

Jardine was waved off by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor with gifts of a slice of wedding cake and a pair of cufflinks. When he returned to Darlington, he found himself notorious, and his ecclesiastical career never recovered.

The ceremony was sparsely attended: the guests were vastly outnumbered by journalists.

Randolph Churchill, one of the few present, found himself operating in both camps, nipping from the press enclosure to the château and back again.

Bedaux and his wife, Fern, ensured that the hospitality Edward and Wallis

enjoyed was, quite literally, fit for a king. There was no immediate charge for the wedding – but Bedaux’s intentions soon became clear.

He was a millionaire businessman who had made his fortune with a worldwide system of workers’ efficiency – the Bedaux system – but was concerned that his interests in Nazi Germany were being stymied. Not only did he have to pay regular bribes to the German state, but his business now fell under their control.

Bedaux, who later obtained both German citizenship and the honorary rank of Sonderführer on the outbreak of war – protecting his interests –organised a visit for Edward and Wallis to Germany in October 1937.

During that visit, the Duke had a private audience with Hitler. They were ostensibly in the country to see the economic improvements wrought by the Nazi regime.

But it was designed by Bedaux to show the regime with which he wished to ingratiate himself that he was a man of substance and power. As a younger man, he had been a big-game hunter. Now the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were the most impressive trophies he had acquired.

It all went awry. Bedaux killed himself in 1944 when he was arrested by the Americans for treason. And the German tour meant Edward and Wallis were finished.

Had the strangest of royal weddings never taken place, their decline in reputation may never have taken place, and they might now be regarded with affection. Instead, the events of 3rd June 1937 damned them – and Bedaux – for ever.

Alexander Larman’s The Windsors at War: The Nazi Threat to the Crown is published on 9th March (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

The Windsors were married by a dodgy priest, hardly anyone came and a Nazi collaborator picked up the bill

alexander larman

Merry Wife of Windsor: the 1937 wedding, Loire Valley

History

The going is good for racing historians

The Cheltenham Festival has 100 years of winners – and losers

david horspool

The Cheltenham Festival is back again this March.

Cheltenham has a lot of festivals, including jazz, music, science and literature.

But the only one that doesn’t need a qualifier is for horse-racing. COVID couldn’t stop it (and it far from stopped COVID – the 2020 Festival was a virus super-spreader) and it has been cancelled or interrupted only by war, frost, and foot and mouth. This year, its main event, the Gold Cup, will be 99 years old.

But should any of that interest a historian? Don’t we get enough sport in the sports pages (and in Jim White’s excellent Oldie column)?

Well, not many of us like war, famine, or, for that matter, the minutiae of parliamentary debate. But they are all legitimate subjects of historical enquiry.

So is sport. About 50 years ago that might have been a contentious point, but not now. History has got bigger. Increasingly historians have focused on the history of what we might call ‘ordinary life’. And in Britain sport is embedded in everyday life, and has been for several centuries.

Sport has always had its historians of sorts. There have been careful archivists of every bareknuckle contest of the prize-fight era (documented in Vincent George Dowling’s Fistiana [1841], a champion among titles). There have been enthusiastic sporting narrators and memoirists, too, from Izaak Walton (The Compleat Angler) to Daniel Mendoza (the boxer who wrote a self-aggrandising memoir in 1816).

But only in the later-20th century have they been joined by teams of academic sports historians, variously enthusiastic or sniffy about what a football historian described as ‘scarf and rattle history’.

National Hunt racing, in history as in life, is something of a poor relation.

Racing has had some fine historians,

but they have tended to focus on the flat. It’s understandable. Flat racing has a longer pedigree, going back at least to Charles II’s involvement on Newmarket Heath. It was the sporting focus of the most influential class in society for centuries, if not always of their most upstanding members.

The stories of lost aristocratic fortunes are legion. They range from the tragic –Henry Berkeley Craven shooting himself in 1836 after losing an astonishing £8,000 on the Derby – to the glorious.

The ‘Yellow Earl’, the fifth Lord Lonsdale, steadily blew through a seemingly inexhaustible fortune in extravagant forays into racing and other, equally expensive pursuits (including equipping private battalions for the Boer War and First World War).

National Hunt racing, by contrast, didn’t really get going in Britain until the St Albans steeplechase in 1830. It started to imprint itself on British life with the beginning of the Grand National, first run in 1839.

Most of the horses involved in steeplechasing before this were ‘hunters’, which their owners raced themselves. Jump racing has a long history of the ‘gentleman amateur’ rider, who, not needing to be as light as the flat jockey, was able to compete more comfortably.

Cheltenham was just one of many places where racing was tried in the 19th century without much lasting success. At a flat meeting there in 1830, the grandstand was even burnt down after a riot.

It was only in the 20th century that the course became the home of the National Hunt festival and the most prestigious races over jumps, such as the Gold Cup and the Champion Hurdle.

Over the past 100 years or so, jump racing and Cheltenham have produced lots of stories to interest historians.

The most obvious involve the Irish connection. Cheltenham becomes a little Dublin every March, with thousands of spectators making the journey to cheer on Irish horses and jockeys.

Steeplechasing has Irish roots, with some of the first recorded races taking place in Ireland. The Irish love affair with jump racing has survived some of the bitterest periods of Anglo-Irish relations.

Irish racegoers began to come in ever larger numbers after the Second World War, when Cottage Rake won three Gold Cups in successive years (1948-50). The horse was trained by Vincent O’Brien, the Irish nonpareil who, uniquely, was a champion over jumps and on the flat.

A decade after ‘the Rake’ came Ireland’s most famous equine export, Arkle, who managed his own treble, beginning in 1964. He is memorialised in bronze at the course (though his skeleton, rather oddly, is on show at the Irish National Stud in County Kildare).

Sports commentators are fond of referring to ‘the history books’ and ‘making history’.

Usually, they just mean breaking records, which isn’t the sort of historymaking most historians have much time for. But the hundreds of thousands who flock to Cheltenham, the Grand National and other race meetings every year are making history too.

The Cheltenham Festival is from 14th to 17th March 2023

David Horspool is writing State of Play: Sport in British History

Cottage Rake, triple Gold Cup champ

The powder monkey at the Battle of Trafalgar writes, ‘We had to leave our Quarters 2 get breath.’

So boys of 17 were using text messaging in 1805. Plus ça change Dr Pam Macdonald, University of Wales academic

Paolo Coelho writes because he wants to be loved. I read because I want to be interested. At this point, it’s hard to say which of us is the more disappointed.

Adam Mars-Jones, review of The Zahir by Coelho

No sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy, no army, no diplomatic service, no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, no manors, nor old country houses, nor parsonages, nor thatched cottages, nor abbeys, nor little Norman churches, no great universities, nor public schools – no Oxford, nor Eton, nor Harrow; no literature, no novels, no museums, no pictures, no political society, no sporting class.

Henry James on what is absent in American life, 1879

An Englishman’s mind works best when it is almost too late.

Viscount D’Abernon

A reporter beckoned me aside and asked, ‘Would you call this a reunion of the neo-conservative clan?’

Commonplace Corner

So I said, ‘How are you spelling clan?’ Tom Wolfe at the 25th-anniversary party for the American magazine National Review

To the best and greatest of men, I dedicate these volumes. He for whom it is intended will accept and appreciate the compliment. Those for whom it is not intended will do the same. Disraeli’s dedication in Vivian Grey (1826)

This book is affectionately inscribed to my young friend Harry Rogers, with recognition of what he is, and apprehension of what he may become unless he form himself a little more closely

upon the model of The Author. Mark Twain’s inscription in his book Following the Equator (1897)

Beauty and grace are performed, whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

Annie Dillard

You’re the only person I know who ever went to Europe for a reason.

Cleo to Tom Ripley in Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley (1955)

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

G K Chesterton

Arbitrary redistribution of wealth is called ‘taxation’, a calculated debauch of the currency is called ‘inflation’, the exercise of ‘lordship’ by rulers is called ‘socialisation’, servility packaged with benefits announces itself as ‘the New Freedom’…

Michael Oakeshott

Oxford skylines offered spurious serenity in the form of gold stone against sharp blue, which of course I refused. I wondered what made this town think it was so different. Keep your eyes level and your feet on the ground and I don’t see how you can miss the ugly, normal, tooling, random street-life of record shops, dry cleaners, banks.

Martin Amis, The Rachel Papers (1973)

effort, debt and doubts about the whole thing’s benefits.

Serious students

My eldest child went off to university in 2020 and was immediately locked down in his campus flat. That year, he caught COVID twice and never met a single tutor. Now, as he writes his last essays, his tutors are abandoning him to strike. His university experience has been overshadowed by worry, weakly supervised

How far from the golden postwar period, which ended in the mid-1990s. Then, university was the one carefree period of your life. You left home, free of parental supervision and, thanks to government support, free of serious money worries.

That golden period ran in parallel with increasing social liberalisation. Universities were the Petri dish of the permissive society: three glorious years given up to intellectual, social and sexual experimentation.

A perfect time, between childhood and the demands

of adulthood, to study, yes, but also to be irresponsible and to make mistakes.

Now we just feel sorry for students. With a £50,000 bill on graduation and a tight job market, not to mention all-pervasive social-media surveillance, being carefree doesn’t come naturally.

But, with their soaring

SMALL DELIGHTS

Uncovering clothes not worn for 20 years, and finding they’re still useful and still fit.

Email life’s small delights to editorial@theoldie.co.uk

mental-health problems, students owe it to themselves and their future to get out of their libraries and spend some quality time behaving, unashamedly, like complete prats: enjoying drinking games, snogging the wrong people, dancing all night, sleeping all day and discussing Teletubbies while high on pot.

Of course, terrible embarrassment will ensue, but the great thing about mistakes is that we learn from them. The broader their learning, the better equipped they will be to face the world and understand how and where they can make their unique contribution.

BENEDICT KING

Matt Damon, The Talented Mr Ripley (1999)

PETER HOLLINDALE, YORK

FILM HARRY MOUNT NOSTALGIA (12)

When did it become so bloody grim being in the Mafia?

In the Godfather series, life looks impossibly glamorous for the Corleones. Of course there were all the gruesome murders to take care of, but what about the sharp suits, the sprawling Long Island family compound (actually filmed on Staten Island) and the sun-kissed weddings in America and Sicily?

Then came Gomorrah (2014-21), the terrific TV series about the Camorra in Naples – and now Nostalgia, about Felice Lasco, an old crook (a marvellous, melancholy, resigned Pierfrancesco Favino), who returns to Naples after 40 years on the run as a murder accomplice.

Naples has some of the loveliest spots on earth – the baroque churches, the Bay

Arts

of Naples, Vesuvius framing the view. But, apart from a brief glimpse of Vesuvius and the catacombs, there’s none of that here or in Gomorrah

Instead, it’s all dark, rubbish-strewn back alleys in La Sanità, in the gloomy shadow of Capodimonte hill.

The streets are plagued by thugs on motorbikes, randomly spraying bullets at terrified families. Even the big don Oreste Spasiano (heroically grumpy Tommaso Ragno) takes limited pleasure in his kingdom, mutely sleeping with his prostitutes, moving from grotty safe house to grotty safe house.

The one thing that can get inside Spasiano’s granite heart is his childhood friendship with Felice Lasco – doomed by their joint murder of an old man when they were teenagers, and destroyed by Lasco’s four-decade exile in Egypt.

Their reunion in Naples after so long is touching – but will Spasiano spare the only other witness to their crime, who is

also his only friend?

That is the simple plot of this film, based on the novel of the same name by Ermanno Rea (1927-2016). Directed by Mario Martone, who also wrote the screenplay, it holds the attention at not-quite-rattling pace – at one hour 57 minutes, the film is relatively short by today’s standards.

Martin Scorsese’s next film, Killers of the Flower Moon, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, is a terrifying three hours and 20 minutes long. Some wise officials at the Cannes Film Festival are trying to trim the film before they let it be screened in May.

It’s funny how a film like Nostalgia is longer than, say, a single episode of a TV series such as Gomorrah, which varied in length from 44 to 55 minutes. And yet a single episode of a good TV series packs in more than this slightly flabby, minorly self-indulgent film.

Surely expensive, long films should feel more pressure to be gripping than cheaper, shorter TV episodes? These days, it’s the other way round.

Where Gomorrah was tightly plotted, with overlapping plots, and carefully punctuated with, I’m afraid, very pleasing bursts of megalomaniac violence, this film – like so many – is arrogant in the way it avoids techniques that might make it more interesting.

There are overlong, lingering shots of Lasco walking the streets of Naples, Lasco smoking and Lasco bathing his elderly mother.

A great TV episode – or a great film –wouldn’t allow these meandering diversions without the insertion of a plot point or a terrific bit of dialogue.

Supposedly ‘artistic’ films shouldn’t dispense with those interest-producing techniques. Not surprisingly, they then become just a little bit boring, even when they’re about wonderfully juicy subjects, such as murderous Mafia hoods.

See Naples and die: old crook Felice Lasco (Pierfrancesco Favino, right) in Nostalgia

THEATRE WILLIAM COOK MEDEA

Soho Place Theatre, until 22nd April

‘Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,’ said that splendid playwright William Congreve, ‘nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.’

Was he thinking of Medea when he coined this immortal couplet? Those two lines sum up the essence of Euripides’s timeless play.

Medea was already a familiar figure in Greek mythology when Euripides made her the heroine of this tragedy, first performed in 431 BC. That first-night audience would have known how she helped Jason win the Golden Fleece and bring it back across the Black Sea; how she married him and bore his children; how he forsook her for the King of Corinth’s daughter, and how their children were subsequently killed.

What made Euripides’s play so controversial – even at the time, apparently – was that he made his Medea a scheming murderess with malice aforethought, a calculating killer of her own offspring (in previous versions, what she did was depicted as an accident, or vengeance by the Corinthians).

Even the ancient Greeks, well accustomed to blood and gore, seem to have found this plot twist hard to stomach. Medea premièred in a dramatic contest between three rival playwrights. Euripides came third. I’m sure he’d be tickled pink to see his first-night flop being performed 2,454 years later – in barbarian Britain, of all places (a bloke called Sophocles came second – I wonder what became of him?).

It’s always fascinating to watch such an ancient play – it’s like stepping into a theatrical time machine – but that initial fascination soon wears off. To be engaged for an evening, we need to be persuaded to find this grim story enthralling rather than repelling, and the only way the drama can do this is to make us sympathise with Medea, in spite of her dreadful deed.

For actors, directors and dramaturges, it’s the ultimate challenge – somehow convincing us of mitigating circumstances for the ultimate taboo.

What prompts a woman to do such a thing? God only knows, but it seems to crop up in the news with awful regularity. Our world is very different from Euripides’s, but our demons remain the same. This is the first production I’ve seen that achieves this moral sleight of hand, turning baddies into goodies and leaving you wondering how they did it.

As a powerful woman from a foreign land who’s stripped of her power when she becomes a wife, Medea is fertile ground for discussions about feminism and immigration. I was rather afraid a new version would make a meal of these issues, rather than letting them remain implicit. Thankfully, this production sticks to Robinson Jeffers’s lyrical, lucid adaptation, written in 1946. His script still feels topical, while never seeming trite.

Director Dominic Cooke helps a lot by keeping it to a tight 90 minutes – he’s wise to realise there’s a limit to how much filicide an audience can take. It’s staged in the round, which really draws you into the action, and the chorus are scattered among the audience, in modern dress. It’s only when they stand up and start speaking that you realise they’re part of the show.

The cast are all good, but any rendition of Medea rests on the title role, and Sophie Okonedo holds your gaze throughout. Like a soloist in a great concerto, she rises to every emotional test.

Ben Daniels juggles several hats, playing Jason, Creon, Aegeus and the tutor. He’s pretty faultless in all four parts, but it’s a shame these characters couldn’t be divvied up between four different actors. I found it rather confusing, and even after I’d worked out who was who, it was hard to suspend my disbelief.

I would have found it far more interesting and entertaining to see four separate performers playing these diverse roles. There are loads of super actors out there who’d surely be grateful for the work.

That’s pretty much my only gripe about an otherwise engrossing evening, greatly enhanced by the convenience and elegance of this smart new theatre – the first brand-new theatre in London’s West End for half a century.

From the outside, it looks like a glitzy office block – an enormous slab of glass and metal – but once you’re inside, it’s surprisingly intimate and cosy. The seats are supremely comfy, and the sightlines are superb.

RADIO VALERIE GROVE

Radio is our university of the Third Age.

I treat some programmes like undergraduate essay crises. It’s Donne next week , but first I must read Stevie Smith’s Novel on Yellow Paper, before Melvyn’s In Our Time, whose subject is Stevie on Thursday at nine.

So I seize my Virago edition of Stevie Smith, guiltily unopened since 1980. I discover its introduction is by my old friend Janet Watts (we met on the Londoner’s Diary in 1968) to guide me through the idiosyncratic quirks of Smith’s prose: ‘the talking voice whose humour and warmth do not veil its merciless clarity’.

As brilliant Janet notes, ‘Smith defied suburbia and its tennis clubs; braved spinsterhood and old maidhood; foreswore marriage.’ Her novel reflects the Not Waving but Drowning poet’s voice.

On reading minor Victorian novels, Smith wrote, ‘How richly compostly

A woman scorned: Medea (Sophie Okonedo)

loamishly sad were those Victorian days, with a sadness not nerve-irritating like we have today. How I love those damp Victorian troubles… Yes, always someone dies, someone weeps, in tune with the laurels dripping, and the tap dripping, and the spout dripping in the water-butt, and the dim gas flickeringly greenly in the damp conservatory.’

Wonderful fodder for your commonplace book.

And Melvyn’s trio of academics per episode – how does he find them? All articulate, audible, fluent and willing to respond to his request: ‘Can you just fill us in on a bit of context here?’ Everyone I met that week had heard this programme – and all sang Melvyn’s praises (except a Mumsnet blog, which accused Bragg of sounding underwhelmed).

In the same week came the 60th anniversary of Sylvia Plath’s suicide, on 11th February 1963. Archive on 4 was presented by a poet new to me, Emily Berry. Plath is a lady so honoured she defies oblivion. But Berry had a sound basis for bonding with Sylvia. Berry’s mother killed herself when Emily was seven. She fell in love with Sylvia’s The Bell Jar at about 14. She feels Sylvia’s influence on her own poetry.

She presented living testimonies from friends of Plath: Ruth Fainlight, Gillian Becker and Heather Clark, Plath’s latest biographer. Up in Heptonstall, where she is buried in Hughes country, a broadYorkshire man spoke at the graveside: ‘It’s not my thing, isn’t literature. Archaeology is.’

He said visitors divide into Plathites and House of Hughes. Whenever Hughes’s name was removed by illwishers, it was replaced – but the man who replaced it took his own life last year.

I wondered what the lovely Frieda Hughes, artist/poet daughter of Ted and Sylvia, felt about such programmes. When I rang, she was out in her Welsh garden, wearing a headlamp as darkness had fallen, and she was digging the earth for the builders who are creating the studio and gallery of her dreams. She knew nothing of the Archive on 4

But she’d admired Clark’s biography. ‘People think the children of the famous are absorbed by them,’ she said. ‘But I can’t think of my parents in that way. My mother may be what they study, but I can’t study her like that.’

The best thing was hearing Sylvia’s rich, warm, often laughing voice –especially when asking a guest at her chilly Devon house, like the hostess in the popular cartoon, ‘Would you like an extra hot-water bottle, or another cat?’

My Oldie neighbour Mr Town Mouse confides to subscribers of his magazine the Idler that his wife has switched off the Today programme (because it incited such feelings of anger and helplessness) in favour of Radio 3. Mrs Mouse’s mood has ‘soared ever since’. Their kitchen resounds to Bach and Vivaldi and they are lifted into ‘sublime worlds’.

So the Hodgkinsons, like McDonald’s outlets, sundry shopping malls and various prisons, confirm that classical music does indeed have charms to soothe the savage breast. Or beast.

TELEVISION FRANCES WILSON

‘Why do we still idolise this mixed-up mess of contradictions?’ the poor viewers are asked at the start of Becoming Frida Kahlo (BBC2). ‘And why can’t we take our eyes off her?’

What follows are three hour-long episodes composed of footage of the famous face: the monobrow, the faint moustache, the unsmiling mouth, the black eyes boring straight through you and the hair wound round the Medusa head like a cobra.

Unoriginal to the last, Becoming Frida Kahlo borrows its title from the films Becoming Jane (about Jane Austen) and Becoming Elizabeth (about Elizabeth I) – and the biographies Becoming Liz Taylor, Becoming Muhammad Ali, Becoming C S Lewis, Becoming Mrs C S Lewis, Becoming Queen Victoria, Becoming Johnny Vegas and Becoming by Michelle Obama.

The implication is that we will watch Kahlo evolve from chrysalis to butterfly, but no such transformation takes place. She was born fierce and she remained

fierce. Photographs of her as a child, when she contracted polio, are just as terrifying as those taken in adulthood.

The narrative is told in bite-sized ‘chapters’ with titles such as ‘There’s no place like home’, ‘I get myself noticed’, and ‘There’s nothing without him, Diego Diego Diego’. It’s unclear what purpose these headings serve, unless the audience is assumed to be aged ten or under.

Born in Mexico in 1907, at the age of 18 Kahlo lost her virginity and, temporarily, her mobility when the bus home from college collided with an electric trolley car. A metal rod tore through her middle section and she spent the next few months mummified in a full-body plaster cast.

Horizontal, a mirror mounted to the canopy, she began to paint her face on an easel which her mother, using an ingenious contraption, suspended above her.

Diego Rivera, whom Kahlo married aged 22, adopted the same posture when he painted his murals on ceilings.

‘This is my first work of art,’ Kahlo wrote on one of her hospital canvases, but we are told nothing by any of the talking heads about whether these paintings were ‘art’ or not. Nor are we told about Kahlo’s folk influences, early style or evolution as an artist. Instead we learn that while she was recovering, she was abandoned by her boyfriend.

Rivera was 20 years older than Kahlo and around 20 stone heavier. He was a man-mountain and she was pint-sized; he could have carried her around in his trouser pocket. Their dimensions are so different that Kahlo’s image looks, in the photographs, as though she must be standing far away while Rivera is nose to nose with the aperture.

During the Great Depression, the

Left: Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in 1933. Above: Kahlo’s Self-Portrait with Braid (1941)

Bob Wilson

‘Fee exorbitant, forbid you to record,’ was the cable the Gramophone Company sent producer Fred Gaisberg, another gramophone pioneer born in 1873. Guessing that the project would break even, he paid the hefty £100 fee out of his own pocket.

It was money well spent. Over the next 20 years, the Gramophone Company and its American associate Victor would earn over £2 million from Caruso recordings. The repertory that afternoon was mainly contemporary. Caruso’s craft was rooted in Italian bel canto, but it was he who gave the tenor voice the resources demanded by the new musical realists from Verdi to his great admirer Puccini.

Opera is a form of heightened experience or it’s nothing. Caruso’s genius lay in the fact that the power, which held audiences in thrall and took colleagues to new expressive heights, was underwritten by a sovereign technique married to a certain natural discretion. No tearing of a passion to tatters for him.

couple, both Communists, went to Detroit, where Rivera was commissioned by Henry Ford to paint 27 frescoes celebrating the success of his motor industry. Thousands of workers had just been laid off and some of them had been shot dead, on Ford’s orders, during a peaceful protest.

So why did Rivera accept the job? The question is beyond the remit of the documentary. He was then commissioned by Rockefeller, who was, as Rivera’s charming grandson tells us, ‘the reechest man eever existed on earth. Nobody else eever has put so many money in one hand eever. How was possible that he was doing murals to Rockefeller? Being a Communist and work for Rockefeller, if you can think of the worst thing in life eever was Rockefaller.’

Meanwhile, Frida was bored, depressed and tearful.

‘Winter here is the saddest thing,’ she wrote. ‘The sky is the colour of a fly’s wing and the streets are full of melting snow. I’m completely disillusioned with the famous United States. Everything is just for appearances, and underneath it all is nothing but crap.’

When he wasn’t painting, Rivera was shagging other women. Kahlo had a revenge flirtation with Georgia O’Keeffe but her love for her husband, she said, was more important than life itself.

A miscarriage resulted in the painting Henry Ford Hospital, 1932, where she lies naked on a bed with a foetus floating above her like a balloon. ‘It’s as though

pain drove her to paint,’ we are told by an expert.

Rivera’s affair with her sister resulted in Kahlo’s painting of herself lying ‘murdered by life’, multiple stab wounds on her naked body. How, when and where were these canvases painted? Who knows.

She died, relatively unknown, aged 47. Will we now be told about the birth of the Kahlo myth; how this spitting wildcat became as tame as a household tabby? No, we won’t.

The searing questions posed at the start of this low-wattage Frida-fest remain overlooked and unanswered. As if her life wasn’t sad enough.

MUSIC

RICHARD OSBORNE CARUSO MASTERCLASS

It’s 150 years since the birth in a Naples slum on 25th February 1873 of the great Italian tenor Enrico Caruso.

His mother’s 18th child, and the first to survive infancy, he would become one of the most famous men of his age.

2023 is a vintage year for remembering singers whose art transcends the familiar ravages of time. Caruso’s friend the mighty bass Chaliapin was born into a Russian peasant family just 12 days before him. And December will bring the centenary of the birth of Maria Callas.

The gramophone helps preserve their work. And it was Caruso who effectively ‘made’ the medium one afternoon in Milan in April 1902.

And the legacy still matters. His recordings were a vade-mecum throughout the careers of his two great latter-day successors, Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti. As Austrian tenor Richard Tauber remarked, ‘Caruso’s recordings are the finest lessons any young singer could have.’

And not just tenors. I’m still reeling from Elisabeth Schwarzkopf’s fury, expressed over afternoon tea in her home near Zurich in the early 1990s. She was recalling her meeting with a prize-winning young soprano who’d never heard of Caruso, let alone studied the fabled mastery of phrasing, tone colour and the long legato line from which Schwarzkopf herself had learned so much.

True, the legacy was badly compromised in the 1970s by RCA Victor’s artificially ‘improved’ LP transfers. Happily, we now have Naxos’s Complete Caruso Edition, a 12-CD set, painstakingly assembled from original sources by the incomparable Ward Marston, still available for a little over £50 from Naxos Direct.

There are those who think that 1906 to 1910 (volumes 3 to 5 in the Naxos edition) were Caruso’s vintage years. Yet as the voice darkened and life experiences took their toll, so the art deepened. Listen to the oath-swearing duet from Act 2 of Verdi’s Otello recorded with Tita Ruffo in 1914, or Caruso’s matchless account of Macduff’s lament for his slaughtered children in Verdi’s Macbeth recorded in 1916.

And what of those extracts from the last – some say greatest – of his

‘They should’ve gone to Specsavers’

stage recreations: Saint-Saëns’s Samson and Eléazar the tormented goldsmith in Halévy’s La Juive?

Caruso was a gifted actor. Witness Edward José’s 1918 silent film My Cousin – long neglected but now on YouTube. The director’s technical legerdemain allows Caruso to play both the impoverished Neapolitan-born sculptor Tommasso and his cousin, Caroli the celebrity tenor, whose unexpected arrival in New York causes private mayhem.

Until Caruso’s mismanaged final illness, this affable, life-affirming, famously generous man appeared to be a born survivor. He survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which destroyed the Opera House but not the Palace Hotel where Caruso was sleeping. He’d later survive the attentions of a notorious gang of Sicilian extortionists – as well as the allegations of a woman (in cahoots with the arresting officer) who’d triggered a tabloid storm by falsely accusing Caruso of molesting her in the Monkey House in New York Zoo.

What he never got over was the desertion in 1908 of his common-law wife and mother of his two sons, the singer Ada Giachetti. The break-up (in which he was by no means blameless) inspired his deeply affecting song Tiempo antico (Olden Times), which he recorded in 1916.

Popular Italian song was another Caruso speciality, bringing him riches comparable to those of Scotland’s Harry Lauder, a singer he much admired.

Nearly 100 songs were specially

written for Caruso, alongside the handful he himself helped create. A selection of these has been made for the two-CD Enrico Caruso: His Songs (Urania LDV14096). It’s an ambitious 150th anniversary compilation, edited, annotated and realised by Italophone English tenor Mark Milhofer with pianist Marco Scolastra – persuasive advocates both, even of those songs Caruso himself recorded.

GOLDEN OLDIES RACHEL JOHNSON ROCKERS’ REQUIEM

So far, this year has been a boulevard of broken dreams.

There are, as Eric Clapton would wail, all too many tears in heaven.

Jeff Beck and David Crosby gone within a fortnight of each other, followed by Barrett Strong, probably the best songwriter you’d never heard of. I hadn’t either, till it was announced on the midnight news that the Motown hitmaker who wrote Money, I Heard It Through the Grapevine and Papa Was a Rolling

Stone was now jamming with Beck, Crosby, David Bowie and John Lennon etc etc at the ‘late great’ gig in the sky.

I hope when he knocked on heaven’s door, Barrett got extra St Peter brownie points for writing his biggest hits for others, as Prince did for Sinéad O’Connor (Nothing Compares 2 U). Greater love hath no musician than to lay down his tracks for others to slalom into the rock-and-roll hall of fame. That seems to be the definition of creative generosity.

Anyway, another troubadour has laid down his lute – or, in the case of Jeff Beck, one of the best guitarists of all time, one of his six-string Fender Stratocasters.

‘Twenty twenty-three,’ sighed David Gilmour of Pink Floyd to me. ‘What a brutal year.’

It is. Several greats have already been ‘gathered’.

When those who have given us the soundtrack of our lives die, a little bit of us dies with them, and so far it does look blacker just when – no, thanks very much, Mr Cohen – we don’t want it darker. I feel protective about who is left – Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Rod Stewart, Paul McCartney, Elton – and anxious about who is next.

Last year, we bade farewell to Ronnie Spector, Meat Loaf, Taylor Hawkins, Coolio, Loretta Lynn, Jerry Lee Lewis, Irene Cara and Christine McVie.

Much as I love Fleetwood Mac, arguably the most consequential figure on the Valete list for 2022 was Michael Lang, impresario of the Woodstock festival, which brings us full circle back to David Crosby, and of course Stills and Nash (and Young).

David Crosby expected to be dead when he was ‘about 30’, but instead of joining the famous 27 Club along with Jimi, Janis, Kurt and other doomed youth he made old bones and died aged 81.

Crosby called his debut solo album If Only I Could Remember My Name, in 1971. That’s inclusive both of the fried old hippies who couldn’t remember the ’60s and those who can’t remember anything anyway, which is most of us here.

RIP Jeff Beck, David Crosby, Barrett Strong – we don’t make ’em like that any more.

Enrico Caruso with one of his records, 1918

Joining the celestial choir: Jeff Beck, David Crosby, Barrett Strong

EXHIBITIONS HUON MALLALIEU

JULIAN STAIR: ART, DEATH AND THE AFTERLIFE

Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, 18th February to 17th September

Once we had read Proust and Anthony Powell and reordered our gardens during lockdowns and inter-lockdowns, some of us at least made starts on writing the books we had been pondering for ages. Mine, Listening to Dry Paint, on the ways artists have deliberately put sounds into our minds, is due later in the year.

I haven’t yet heard of any painters inspired by the plague but Julian Stair, one of our leading potters, has had a very apposite reaction. He had already been making cinerary pots (the archaeological term; otherwise known as funerary urns) since 2012. But he concluded that more

Clockwise from left: African memorial figure; Cycladic winged ‘bud’ form; male memorial figure from Abeokuta; Stair’s Figural jars; Japanese pot with face on rim

was needed in response to the pandemic: ‘I don’t think the victims of the pandemic, let alone the survivors, have received appropriate recognition.’

As part of his preliminary research, he went to a Death Café. Death Cafés aren’t covens or conventions of horror film fans. According to Su Hines, the Norwich organiser, they are ‘informal spaces where people come together and talk about death over tea and cake with a view to helping us all make the most of our finite lives. The conversations are always very stimulating and also life affirming.’

The exhibition of about 30 urns ranges down from life-size, some of which contain human ashes, to ‘embodied’ pots which have ash mixed into the clay. It’s more than a response to the pandemic since not all the participants, so to speak, died of COVID.

Where he has an image of the deceased, Stair has tried to infuse

their pot with something of their character, and the images and biographical details will be included in the display. The four largest urns are reminiscent of wrapped mummies, or perhaps large chess kings and queens. Studio pots are among the most tactile of all works of art, and these should have a quite extraordinary charge.

Sir Robert and Lady Sainsbury were among Stair’s early collectors, and the centre holds 18 of his pots. As well as the urns, there are ancient, Cycladic, marble figures, and anthropomorphic vessels from Ecuador, Nigeria and Japan. Drawings by Alberto Giacometti have been chosen from the centre’s collection by the artist to ‘create a poetic and moving meditation on the human condition’.

After the exhibition, the urns will either be returned to their families or friends or become part of the Sainsbury Centre collection.

MATTHEW WARNER

Pursuits

GARDENING DAVID WHEELER GO DOWN TO THE WOODS TODAY

I am overly, though justly, fond of the little woodlanders.

April is their month, and no garden is too small for a sampling – indeed, a window box or single flowerpot is all a few of the smallest ones require.

‘Woodlander’ is my shorthand for those mostly diminutive, early-flowering, shade-loving (or shade-tolerant) plants, whose moments in the footlights are brief. They behave like well-mannered dinner guests or sickbed visitors who know exactly when it’s time to leave.

Some – notably snowdrops and winter aconites – will have strolled onto the stage as early as January and linger on, lapping up what diminishing applause they can still muster. But, in the way of all invitees, they too will fade away, vacating ground for the emergence of their later-flowering cohorts, whose cue is the months’ warmer and longer days.

It’s Nature’s answer to the gardener’s skill of achieving ‘successive planting’ – a worthy practice whereby one plant or group of plants makes way for its natural replacement, like the string of arias that propel a Verdi opera.

The smallest of these mostly early woodlanders are classified as alpines and have their dedicated horde of admirers.

Many belong to the Alpine Garden Society, an international body founded in 1929 to promote the cultivation, conservation and exploration of alpine and rock-garden plants, small hardy herbaceous plants, hardy and half-hardy bulbs, hardy ferns and small shrubs.

Be sure to take a hand lens when you attend one of their shows. Detail is all.

To British gardeners, the most familiar of herbaceous woodlanders are pulmonarias (lungworts), pulsatillas

(pasque flowers) and brunneras (beefedup forget-me-nots in welcome shades of blue, emerging in some varieties from silvery variegated foliage). All are indispensable.

Supreme among the blues is matforming Corydalis flexuosa. Look out for the varieties ‘Blue Dragon’, ‘China Blue’ and ‘Porcelain Blue’. In variance to the predominantly mid-green fernlike leaves, there is the cultivar named ‘Purple Leaf’, which shows intriguing dark red foliar markings in winter’s depths.

Euphorbia robbiae (Mrs Robb’s bonnet), a relatively low-growing spurge, gives generously of lime-green flowerheads at this time of the year –doling out textbook contrast alongside any blue-flowering neighbours. The eponymous Mary Anne Robb (18291912), a somewhat uncelebrated botanist and botanical artist whose drawings are held at Kew, introduced this form of E amygdaloides from her travels in north-western Turkey in the early 1890s. I’m not sure I can live without it.

Tiarellas (meaning ‘little turbans’, which their seed capsules resemble) and tellimas, along with vincas (major and minor), provide attractive, evergreen, weed-supressing ground cover. They’re best used under and around shrubs, where they can be left undisturbed to display plumes of fringed bells (tellimas) and nine-inch-tall spikes of creamy-pink ‘foamy’ flowers (tiarellas) through to mid-summer.

Trilliums, challengingly tricky in cultivation in this country but a glorious ‘weed’ in the eastern United States, are the woodland aristocrats. I buy fresh bulbs (rhizomes) most years but have failed spectacularly to build up any notable drifts.

A closing word to those bereft of a garden. Auriculas. These primulas, bred and cross-bred for yonks, have legions of aficionados. They travel miles at this time

of the year to specialist shows where, in their infinity, wondrous flower shapes, colours and textures are judged for fame and fortune.

Traditional terracotta Long Tom pots are still made by ceramicists. But many growers now prefer plastic containers (easily concealed in more aesthetically pleasing crocks) to lessen some of the potentially taxing bits of cultivation. Auricula-growing and -collecting become compulsive, bringing friendships and conviviality – aspects of gardening as vital as the plants themselves.

David’s Instagram account is @hortusjournal

KITCHEN GARDEN SIMON COURTAULD SWEDES

Unsurprisingly, the swede came from Sweden, where it was developed in the 17th century and known as Swedish turnip. Making its way south, the root vegetable found favour with the Scots, who dropped the link with Scandinavia and referred to turnips or neeps, which became an important accompaniment to haggis.

Elsewhere in Britain, and particularly in Cornwall, swedes are called turnips and are an essential ingredient of a pasty.

Since swedes take up to six months to mature, it is best to sow the seed in April, initially in trays or pots, or if outside

Early owering – Auriculas

no later than May. When thinned or planted out, the infant swedes should be about nine inches apart.

Keep the plants well watered and free of weeds during summer, and lift them from October when they’re the size of a cricket ball. Swedes can probably be left in the ground through the winter, though in hard weather the plants should be covered with straw.

Like other brassicas, swedes are prone to clubroot, which can be avoided if you add lime to the soil to make it more alkaline. Varieties such as Marian, Invitation and Gowrie claim to be resistant to both clubroot and powdery mildew.

I have read that in the Second World War German troops forced French farmers to grow swedes during the occupation. But I wonder if that vegetable was kohlrabi – like the swede, of the same family as turnip and cabbage.

In Ben Macintyre’s excellent recent book Colditz, he relates how that German vegetable did not go down well with the British prisoners. Would boiled swedes have been more palatable?

There are those who say that the orange flesh of swedes is an acquired taste; my wife unfortunately has yet to acquire it. But it is worth persevering.

Both the Swedish and the German turnip can be similarly treated – thinly sliced and fried, or mashed with cream and grated nutmeg. I have also enjoyed swedes with potatoes as a topping for shepherd’s pie, and a spiced swede soup is recommended for a cold day.

COOKERY ELISABETH LUARD MICHELIN STARS AT HOME

The disappearance of destination restaurants such as Noma in Copenhagen (three Michelin stars, five times best-onplanet) seems likely to continue.

This means that none of us will, for the sake of gastronomic credibility, have to scrape up the cash and book a year ahead for a mouthful of reindeer heart smoked over spruce needles.

Perhaps the era of superstar chef presiding over 20-course tasting menus is over. The legacy of the best of them, however, is a treasure trove of romantically illustrated cookbooks, some of which contain surprisingly down-to-earth advice. Celebrate April Fool’s Day – in France, poisson d’avril – with a nostalgic plateful, as served in El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, Catalonia, still thriving.

El Celler is still going strong because

chef-proprietor Joan Roca has a more realistic view of fine dining than Noma’s René Redzepi. Roca is listed third in the current list of the world’s best chefs, after Redzepi and David Muñoz of DiverXO in Madrid – basically, no slouch.

The restaurant business is not for wimps. Things can go belly-up at any time. Best stay at home with a copy of Cook with Joan Roca.

Billed as a culinary manual for trainee chefs but entirely suitable for the domestic cook, it’s magnificently illustrated with step-by-step instructions for roasting, grilling and boiling, with information on things chefs notice but the rest of us might not. I had no idea chickpeas should be started in boiling water and all other pulses in cold, or that parsley in the soaking water stops artichoke hearts from browning.

Here’s the great man on three basic sauces. It’s easy when you know how.

Hollandaise sauce

Ingredients: 250g butter, 2-3 egg yolks, lemon juice, salt and pepper.

1. Clarify the butter – that is, heat it gently to separate the water. Remove the scum that forms on the surface and decant the butter from the base. Keep it close to 65°C.

2. Whisk the egg yolks with the lemon juice, salt and pepper.

3. Emulsify the egg yolks in a bain-marie (bowl set over simmering water), with the clarified butter, stirring it in slowly.

4. Keep it warm enough to stop the butter hardening but not curdle the egg.

Mayonnaise

Ingredients: 200ml sunflower or refined olive oil, 1 egg yolk, lemon juice, salt.

1. Emulsify the egg yolk with a few drops of lemon juice and salt.

2. Whisk the egg yolk and slowly add the oil, continuing to whisk with an electric whisk on moderate speed.

Béchamel (white) sauce

Ingredients: 1 litre full-cream milk, 70g butter, 70g flour, white pepper, nutmeg, salt.

1. Boil the milk with salt, white pepper and a scraping of nutmeg.

2. Prepare a roux by mixing the butter and flour in a saucepan with a whisk. Mix over a gentle heat until completely homogenised and without lumps. It does not need to take colour.

3. Add the hot milk to the roux, little by little, and cook until the desired texture is reached. The flour will not react till it reaches a temperature of about 80°C, so you need to apply enough heat.

4. If you’re not going use it straight away, cool it quickly. To stop a skin forming, cover with clingfilm or a light layer of single cream or milk.

RESTAURANTS

JAMES PEMBROKE

VERY FAST FOOD

‘That dinner cost £4 a minute,’ said Bill Knott, The Oldie’s drinks correspondent.

Forty minutes after arriving at RedFarm, the Covent Garden offspring of the famous New York dim-sum restaurant, we had finished.

Bill was right. The waitress brought all our dishes so quickly that we had no choice but to leave and find comfort at the Lady of the Grapes wine bar, in Maiden Lane.

Confirming his epitaph (‘Never one to mince his words’), Bill expanded on his theme. ‘That’s about the same rate per minute as Marcus Wareing charges at the Berkeley.’

All I could think about was the meal deal I had bought at Sainsbury’s the day before: £3.50 for a sandwich, a packet of crisps and a San Pellegrino. I calculated that Bill and I could have 22 lunches together for the price of the RedFarm dinner, even if they lasted only eight minutes each. We could eliminate the time spent on travel by lunching on Zoom, and we could then go out for a proper lunch with other people.

Knott meal-timing is particularly applicable to Chinese restaurants. In spite of the massive culinary improvements made since the postwar era of ‘chop sewage’, there is still a deck-clearing urgency about the service in Chinese restaurants. I occasionally go to the excellent Lanzhou Lamian Noodle Bar in Cranbourn Street; dinner, from ordering to paying the bill, never lasts more than 15 minutes.

So, to stay put for two hours, just order one course at a time. Our dinner at RedFarm would have been sumptuous. We started with delicious multicoloured Pac Man dumplings. We followed these

with a piquant pork-and-crab dumpling soup. We could then have had a breather before devouring their pork belly and Barbary duck ho fun.

I have to be honest: I always find the restaurants in Chinatown disappointingly slimy and earnestly proletarian. When Mao Tse Tung came to power in 1949, he dubbed chefs the ‘running dogs of capitalism’ and he’d have felt quite at home there.

I’d been recommended the Food House, but the carpet was so sticky we barely made it to the upstairs dining room – quite a journey for chicken dumplings with cabbage.

Wander into Romilly Street and things lighten and brighten. Baozilnn is all about Northern Chinese street food. The walls are bedecked with pictures of Mao and happy peasants sharing dumplings, as will you be. They are incredibly filling. So do leave room for their burgers.

If you want to find where the running dogs are cooking now, cross the road to Barshu, where Szechuan cooking is at its best: spicy and delicate. Take a group of four or six and order all the following, two dishes at a time: number 13 –smacked cucumbers; 41B – boiled sea bass with sizzling chilli oil; 58 – dry-wok twice-cooked pork; and don’t miss 95 –the Mapo tofu aka ‘pockmarked old woman’s bean curd with minced pork’; and 111, the legendary dan dan noodles.

At this point, I have to raise the flag for Wagamama which has been knocking out fresh Asian food for over 30 years. Take some young and ask for a table away from the music. Again, more numbers: this time, in the shape of calories. For £60, Adam and I had a feast of chicken ramen (698 calories), the freshest yaki soba with chicken and prawns (819 calories) and, of course, bang bang cauliflower (471 calories). All washed down with a lychee tonic water and a large power juice. Virtue-signalling worthy of Mao.

DRINK BILL KNOTT MY SHERRY AMOUR

As I sipped a glass of Valdespino’s aptly named Deliciosa manzanilla, I gazed out at the fishing-boat-bobbing Atlantic ocean from a little beach bar in Sanlúcar de Barrameda.

Reluctantly opening my eyes, I was in wintry Soho, but happily ensconced in the Academy Club on Lexington Street, whose owner, my old friend Andrew Edmunds, died last September, as Tom Hodgkinson writes on page 38.

Andrew’s wine lists, both in the club

and at his eponymous restaurant downstairs, were the most benignly priced in London, and they still are: my half-bottle of Deliciosa was a mere £15. It retails for around £9 – sherry is the best-value great wine in the world, as Andrew knew very well.

I wished only that he had still been around to chew the fat with me for a few minutes and help himself to a glass, as used to be his wont. I think my subconscious ordered a half-bottle, not a glass, in the expectation that he might.

Still in search of Spanish warmth, I scurried off for lunch at Maresco on Berwick Street, a quirkily brilliant seafood joint whose aim, as stated by its Scottish owner, is to ‘hijack the best Scottish seafood on its way to Spain’ and serve it with great Spanish wines.

In charge of the latter part of the offering is the estimable Naroa Ortega, who once worked front of house at the much-celebrated Basque grill restaurant Asador Etxebarri. I perched at Maresco’s handsome bar, hypnotised by Hebridean langoustines twitching on crushed ice.

She poured me a glass of something chilly and showed me the label. It was Valdespino’s Inocente fino. ‘When was the last time you tried one of their sherries?’ she asked.

Fairly recently, I replied, wanting neither to point out that an antediluvian club around the corner had been pouring it for years nor to sound like a complete lush.

To me, dry sherry is the apotheosis of Atlantic whites. Starting from Brittany, skirting the Bay of Biscay and heading south towards Gibraltar, these include Muscadet, Txacoli, Albariño and vinho verde, and they all have a profound affinity with the local seafood.

To accompany anything from a plateau de fruits de mer in Quimper to a plate of carabineros (red prawns) in Jerez, via the kokotxas (hake cheeks) and spider crabs of the Basque country, and the highly prized percebes (goose-necked barnacles) of Galicia, nothing cuts the mustard better than a lip-smackingly crisp white wine in a neighbouring ice bucket, the salty tang of sea spray never far from the nostrils.

I shuffled back to the Academy to drain the remains of my Deliciosa, and raised a glass to Andrew. As a wine-lover and a gourmet, a vintner and a restaurateur, he had the gastronomic equivalent of perfect pitch. Happily, at least some of his tastes, whether Soho’s new generation of restaurant folk know it or not, survive him.

Join Bill in Piedmont: see page 79

This month’s Oldie wine offer, in conjunction with DBM Wines, is a 12-bottle case comprising four bottles each of three wines: a cricket-themed Chardonnay from Down Under to quaff in anticipation of this summer’s Ashes, a focused, vibrant Riesling from a top winemaker, and a fruity Chilean number versatile enough to drink on its own or with a roast. Or you can buy cases of each individual wine.

Chardonnay ‘The Googly’, One Chain Vineyards, South Australia 2021, offer price £8.99, case price £107.88 Montrachet it’s not, but this Aussie Chardonnay from cool-climate vineyards is appealingly fresh and zesty.

Funkstille Riesling, Ferdinand Mayr, Niederösterreich, Austria 2021, offer price £11.75, case price £141.00

From the same winemaker as last month’s Grüner, a classy dry Riesling with hints of pear and grapefruit.

Merlot Reserva ‘Los Espinos’, Espinos y Cardos, Valle Central, Chile 2021, offer price £9.50, case price £114.00

Soft, juicy, ripe, plummy fruit with a long finish: very easy to drink, and great value.

Mixed case price £120.96 – a saving of £31.95 (including free delivery)

For details visit www.dbmwines. co.uk/promo_OLD

NB Offer closes 25th April 2023.

SPORT STENHOUSEMUIR NIL

A friend of mine’s mother had a childhood obsession with Stenhousemuir Football Club. As she grew up, listening to Sports Report on BBC Radio, it became a family preoccupation that the Scottish lower-league club always seemed to be announced by James Alexander Gordon in the day’s classified football results as not having scored a goal.

She even believed this was the operation’s full name: Stenhousemuir Nil. Some years ago, she mentioned her youthful fascination to her son and asked him the question that had been on her mind for so long. What on earth was it that lay behind the decision to name the club not United or City, Rovers, County or Town but Nil?

Having put her right, my friend decided the best gift for her imminent significant birthday would be to take her to a Stenhousemuir home game.

On arrival at Ochilview Park, the club’s modest ground near Falkirk, they discovered they were not alone in being drawn to central lowlands by Stenny’s reputation for parsimony.

Among the 300-odd crowd that day were 30 Norwegians who had flown over from Oslo. They shared a fascination with a Scottish Second Division club seemingly incapable of achieving the single most important purpose of the game: scoring a goal. Neither she nor the Norwegians were to be disappointed by the result that day: Stenhousemuir 0, Arbroath 0.

You wonder if whoever it was who decided that BBC Radio 5 Live’s Sports Report should no longer contain a reading of the classified football results is aware of stories like this. At the start of the season, it was announced that the comprehensive round-up – for generations a feature of the corporation’s output – would no longer be read out by Charlotte Green, Alexander Gordon’s mellifluous successor, or by anyone else.

They insisted that, in these days of instant access on the mobile phone, the listeners no longer needed anyone to read out the results. With the BBC pressed for time, because it had won the rights to broadcast commentary from the Premier League match that kicked off at 5.30pm every Saturday, the results were reckoned to be an unnecessary intrusion.

The outcry was significant and immediate. The BBC responded by suggesting no one complaining about the decision listened to the results any more.

Gary Lineker mocked the moaners on Match of the Day. Why worry? After all, everyone already knew the score.

But, as my friend’s mum knew full well, the glory of the classified reading lay not in the simple communication of fact.

As soon as the last note faded of Out of the Blue – Hubert Bath’s magnificent march of a theme tune – you could prepare yourself for three minutes of aural delight. This was less a summary of the day’s results, and more a piece of performance poetry – a confluence of odd names and unlikely numbers. Just as you can relish the Shipping Forecast without actually being on a boat, so the classified results created a moment of reflection.

And where else could you ever be confronted with the immortal line: Forfar 4, East Fife 5?

No more. Sadly, there will be no children growing up convinced there is a football club in Scotland called Stenhousemuir Nil.

But then Stenny themselves are doing their best to subvert that reputation. When my friend took his mum to a game there recently, they were taken aback by the score: Stenhousemuir 1, Dumbarton 1.

The club hasn’t been involved in a goalless draw since they played Cove Rangers in the Scottish Cup back in September 2021. As an indication of how everything changes, Stenny, it seems, are Nil no more.

MOTORING ALAN JUDD

JAMES MAY’S ELECTRIC DREAMS

James May, one of the brightest stars in the Top Gear firmament, has had an EV (electric vehicle) since 2014. His current stable includes a Tesla Model S, a hydrogen Toyota and a Porsche 911. Writing in the Telegraph recently, he described himself not as an EV evangelist but as ‘an intrigued participant in the experiment’.

He enjoys his Tesla but for longer journeys uses his Porsche 911. The reason? Not range anxiety – he reckons the range of the Tesla and many other EVs is not a serious problem – but the ‘ball-aching inconvenience of public charging’.

Not only because there are too few public charging points but because it takes too long to charge. A lot of research goes into extending battery range, yet range is not really the problem. EVs won’t be fully deployable until they can recharge as rapidly as Mr May can refill his Porsche.

It took May three minutes to fill his Porsche at a 20-pump filling station, which could handle, he calculated, 200 cars an hour. There are about 33 million cars on our roads and, given that they’re replaced at an average of about two million a year,

by 2040 more than half should be EVs. Some estimates put the current number of public charging points at 60,000 (though the government confesses to only about 37,000). They are said to increase by about 1,500 per month which, taking the more optimistic estimate, means about 366,000 by 2040, catering for 17 million-plus EVs, which is nothing like enough.

That doesn’t include home charging, of course, but it’s estimated that about 40 per cent of the UK’s 28.3 million homes have no off-street parking. So we’ll need millions of public chargers. Separately, McKinsey estimates three million chargers will be needed across Europe by 2030, up from about 378,000 in 2021 when they were installed at 1,600 per week. That will mean installing up to 10,000 per week. The fastest-weekly installers in Europe are France at 400 and Germany at 200.

It gets worse. The government’s insistence on banning sales of new petrol and diesel cars after 2030 not only discourages research on alternative and synthetic fuels which could potentially use the existing supply network, but may also lead to the demise of car-making in Britain.

From next year, manufacturers have to sell a set portion of zero-emission vehicles, increasing yearly up to 2030, rather than the current system of averaging CO₂ emissions. Lead times in the motor industry are often more than a year, especially during the continuing chip shortage, which has already reduced UK car production to a 66-year low.

Yet major car-makers here, such as Toyota, still don’t know what their portion of zero-emission vehicles will be, nor, in the case of hybrids, what the prescribed ‘meaningful zero-emission range’ means.

Then there’s the fact that manufacturers want to save costs by making expensive EVs close to battery-production plants. Such plants are popping across Europe, but here we don’t have enough to sustain the industry even in planning, especially since the liquidation of Britishvolt.

Governmental actions and inactions often run counter to governmental aspirations. The demonisation of diesel, for example (despite modern diesels’ emitting no more particulates than petrols), will lead to higher CO₂ emissions because petrols emit more than diesels. London mayor Sadiq Khan’s beloved ULEZ, which favours post-2005 petrols over pre-2016 diesels, may therefore be increasing London’s contribution to global warming.

As for 2050 and net zero, the clue is in ‘net’ – it’s achievable only with trade-offs, exporting your emissions or pretending they don’t count because of savings elsewhere. Sounds like a con.

Fight for the right to broadband

Our dependence on the internet grows and grows, sometimes faster than we notice.

I was idly looking at the possibility of buying a new television. I was startled to see how easy it is to buy sets that have no capacity whatever to be attached to an aerial on the roof. The manufacturers assume that we’ll find all our viewing online; it’s becoming normal.

That’s why I believe that broadband should probably be treated as a utility, and its supply and establishment properly regulated, just as with water and electricity.

The government has – credit where it’s due – made some useful steps in this direction, especially in terms of allowing internet suppliers access to Openreach’s

Webwatch

For my latest tips and free newsletter, go to www.askwebster.co.uk

Olive and Mabel youtube.com/@mrandrewcotter

The collected films of the two best-known Labradors on the internet.

Easter worldhistory.org/Easter

Easter – historical context, date, liturgy, customs, from World History Encyclopedia.

I will happily try to solve your basic computer and internet problems. Go to www.askwebster.co.uk or email me at webster@theoldie.co.uk

network at a fair price. It has accelerated competition and reduced prices.

Another tiny advance was made in December 2022. The Building Regulations Act has been amended so that all new homes built in England must now be fitted with the fastest internet connection on the market in that area. If that is not yet the very fastest (known as gigabit broadband – a dream where I live), the house must be built to accommodate gigabit broadband when it does arrive. That means junction boxes, cable ducts and the like.

This is, as far as I can see, the first time there has been a legally enforceable acceptance that access to the internet is a necessary part of life.

Of course, you might argue that it’s preaching to the choir. I suspect that every house/builder in the country already knows that they can’t sell a new house without an internet connection, any more than they could sell one without running water. But better late than never.

The devil is in the detail, and there’s plenty of that – too much to go into here. However, the usual trouble with developer-installed broadband, especially in more remote areas or in blocks of flats, is that it tends to be yoked to a single supplier that’s done a deal with the developer and hence has the monopoly of supply to those homes. This leaves users at the mercy of that company’s pricing with no option to change supplier. The new rules don’t address that.

They also miss another trick. There should be an obligation that every newly-

built home has a central cupboard for the router, and built-in cabled connections from it to sockets (known as ethernet sockets) in all the main rooms (including the shed). A wired link to a router offers the fastest-possible connection. Wi-Fi, convenient as it is, is a heavy drag on transmission speeds.

You really would notice the difference, especially if there were several people using the same internet simultaneously. There is no excuse for new houses’ being built without this sort of network in every room.

Another well-intentioned change in these new regulations relates to flats. Hitherto, tenants have been entirely reliant on the goodwill of the landlord for permission to install decent internet, and apparently about 40 per cent of such requests are simply ignored.

The new rule states that if a request is ignored for 35 days, a court can order access to hallways and lofts to install the wires. However, this new legislation can’t force landlords to agree, and if they do respond to the request in good time but say no, I’m not sure how far this gets us.

When I am in charge of the country (it can be only a matter of time, surely), and after I’ve dealt with misplaced apostrophes, I’ll introduce a national grid of gigabit-broadband wiring to all buildings, just as for electricity. The broadband-suppliers will then pay to use that network and fight for our custom, just as electricity companies do already.

Well, I can dream.

Margaret Dibben: Money Matters

How to ensure your insurance pay-out

People are rarely satisfied with the insurance company’s pay-out when their car has been stolen or written off.

The regulations say you should get a ‘fair market value’, which should be enough to buy a comparable replacement. The figure should equate to the price you would have to pay in a reputable dealership for a car like yours before it was damaged.

But forecourt prices can be higher than ‘fair’ and the offer from the insurer

can be lower. The price of second-hand cars soared during the pandemic, leaving policyholders even more short-changed by undervaluations.

With this in mind, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has sent a warning to insurers not to undervalue cars – or any other insured items – when they are settling claims because it is unfair on consumers, especially during the cost-of-living crisis.

The FCA’s chiding is fuelled by its new strategy of being proactive in improving customers’ experiences when dealing with financial firms.

It is reminding insurers that they must clearly explain to policyholders the implications of the different settlement options available when making accident claims, such as taking cash instead of repairs, and that they must not incentivise staff to undervalue.

There is no question that some insurers are breaking the rules and giving claimants less than their vehicle’s market value. Insurers base their offers on the prices published in trade magazines such as Glass’s Guide, which is for trade only, or Parkers, which gives the public a free online quote. HPI Check also gives online quotes but charges for them.

Write-off valuations are not fixed amounts and anyone who believes an offer is unreasonable can negotiate with the insurer. Companies will sometimes increase the figure if you complain it is too low – but the FCA says people shouldn’t need to do that. It expects firms to calculate a fair price immediately, including taking into account the impact of inflation, and whether customers have to buy a replacement car or are getting the damage repaired.

To challenge an offer, look for similar models online and in local salesrooms and compare the condition of your car with the average. Perhaps you have low mileage, have recently bought new tyres or have had an expensive sound system fitted.

As a last resort, if the insurer refuses to pay what you believe is the right amount, you can take a complaint to the

Financial Ombudsman Service. If they agree with you, they will instruct the insurer to increase the offer and add eight per cent interest to either the extra amount due or sometimes to the whole amount they are paying you.

The FCA’s intervention is an indication of how the regulator is changing its procedures to set higher standards, becoming more innovative, more assertive and tougher on firms seeking authorisation. It promises to take

quick action against any financial institution that it finds treating customers unfairly. Its new groundbreaking requirement –Consumer Duty – comes into force at the end of July, to improve the way financial companies treat their customers.

You can expect better treatment and you should complain if you don’t get it. If customers continue to keep quiet when they are dissatisfied, service will be even slower to improve.

A Taste of Piedmont and Turin

One of Italy’s quieter yet most bountiful pockets, Piedmont is a gem well worth discovering.

Bill Knott, our highly knowledgeable wine writer (aka Knottipedia), says, ‘There cannot be anywhere on Earth where the twin joys of sublime food and great wine collide more spectacularly than in Piemonte, particularly in the stunning hills of the Langhe, home to the noble wines of Barolo and Barbaresco. And November sees the region at its most bountiful and beautiful: the leaves in the vineyards are autumnal shades of crimson and gold, and the hearty local cuisine is elevated by blizzards of white truffle.’

We will be staying for one night in the old town of Turin at the Hotel Victoria (www.hotelvictoria-Torino.com), which has a spa and pool to which we have free access. Then we head to the heart of the countryside for four nights at the delightful Hotel Il Campanile (www.hotelilcampanile.com), which has an excellent restaurant.

Thursday 9th November – arrival

Depart EasyJet from Gatwick at 1410; arrive Turin at 1700. Check in to the Hotel Victoria. Dinner at Al Garamond.

Friday 10th November – tour of Turin

Tour of the city including the cathedral and its famous shroud, the church of San Lorenzo and the Porta Palazzo food market. Lunch, followed by free time before departing for Hotel Il Campanile at 4.30pm.

HOW TO BOOK: Call 01225 427311 or please email Katherine at reservations@theoldie.co.uk

Price per person: £1,950 which includes all meals, wine with meals, transport and entrances. You need to book and pay for your own flights. Single supplement: £300. A non-refundable deposit of £750 will be required, with the full balance due on 1st August 2023.

Saturday 11th November

– truffle hunt, Barbaresco and Alba

Up early for a truffle hunt with a local trifolau and his dog. Then to Barbaresco, for a tasting at Bruno Rocca, followed by lunch at L’Antica Torre. And on to Alba, including a visit to the White Truffle Fair. Return to the hotel for dinner.

Sunday 12th November – Asti

A guided tour of the city's centro storico and its spectacular medieval towers and churches. Then to lunch at the family-run Michelinstarred Il Centro in Priocca.

Monday 13th November – Barolo

A tour and tasting at Banca del Vino. Then we will visit G D Vajra, one of Barolo’s foremost producers. Lunch at Trattoria della Posta.

Tuesday 14th November – departure

Depart for Turin airport where we catch the 1140 BA flight, which lands at Gatwick at 1235.

‘You know, at any given moment you're less than six feet away from one of them’ with Bill Knott 9th to 14th November 2023

The Redstart

by john mcewen illustrated by carry akroyd

Among the brightest of the spring migrants is the redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus). The male is more glorious, with a vivid head and orange breast in addition to the orange (red) tail and rump – also the startling feature of the paler female, which gives the bird its name. ‘Start’ is from Anglo-Saxon ‘steort’ (tail). Phoenicurus is from the Greek phonikouros (firetail) bestowed by Aristotle, father of natural science, from phoenix, firebird of Egyptian mythology.

Among the bird’s English folk names are firetail and brantail. It belongs to the thrush (Turdidae) family, which includes the robin, whose ‘red’ breast and sky-blue eggs are a match, and the chats (stonechat etc). They all delight in fanning, quivering – and, in the redstart’s case, thereby setting alight with colour –their tails.

John Buxton’s (1912-89) book The Redstart (1950) is a bird classic. In 1943, Buxton was a prisoner of war at Eichstätt in Bavaria. He was an ornithologist, inspired by his brother-in-law Ronald Lockley, who on Skokholm Island created Britain’s first bird observatory. When Buxton was imprisoned, Lockley advised him to bird-watch, concentrating on one species.

He duly found pleasure in watching a breeding pair of redstarts ‘unconcerned by our fatuous politics’. Bird-watching enthused the camp – even some surreptitious guards. Thanks to a 16-strong team of inmates, from April to June no bird pair has ever been watched so continuously – 850 hours non-stop.

Buxton acknowledged that birds do not have ‘man’s massive individuality’ but they nonetheless differ in character. Redstarts are not outstanding songsters, but the Eichstätt male was brilliant, even at mimicry. Singing had three successive functions: claiming territory, attracting a mate and, with added tail displays, guiding her to his chosen nest site.

Redstarts nest in holes and so this pair

happily occupied a makeshift nestbox. He sang while she built – working incessantly (8.47am to 7.38pm) – and also during the laying and incubation of the eggs. He then fell silent till the chicks were fledged.

‘Men have all the fun, while women do all the work,’ said the late Fay Weldon. This applies to most birds.

Buxton’s book gleaned redstart facts from other sources: their pulse rate is 980 a minute. Thus the oldest thenknown redstart, which died at six, clocked as many heartbeats as a human octogenarian. Life expectancy is among the shortest – 9.3 months.

Redstarts migrate from the subSaharan trans-African Sahel zone. In September 1965, freak weather drove a

massive ‘fall’ of migrants onto Britain’s eastern coastline. Between Lowestoft and Minsmere alone, half a million birds, including 250,000 redstarts, found refuge.

Seventy years ago, redstarts bred throughout mainland Britain. Today, an amber-rated decline to 135,000 pairs finds most in the west, especially Wales. As a beneficiary of a redstart-filled Berwickshire childhood, I am pleased to learn from the distinguished botanist and borderer David Low that they hold on in the Borders ‘quite well’.

The black redstart (Phoenicurus ochruros) is very rare in Britain, with a winter population double its 100-odd breeding pairs. They like rubble, hence city wastelands, first colonising here in blitzed London.

The Iceman cometh again – after 71 years

Rupert Lycett Green first did the Cresta Run in 1951, aged 13. He did

it

again

this

winter, aged 84 – a record gap between runs

Aged 13, I came second in the Baron Oertzen Handicap on the Cresta Run in 1951.

I was taken to St Moritz, Switzerland, by my stepfather, Ralph, Lord Grimthorpe, a famous Cresta rider himself. I had hurt my ankle in a skiing fall but could still run and jump onto a toboggan.

Riding the Cresta is sliding down an iced toboggan run at more than 70mph, lying on your tummy with your face a couple of inches from the ice, on what looks like a large tea tray on runners.

In fact, the toboggan – or ‘skeleton’ –under you is a steel structure on which much thought, money and effort have been expended over the years to get its rider to the Run’s finish in the fastestpossible time.

The skeleton’s rounded runners are slightly bowed for speed on the straights, and sharpened into knives towards the back to help you track round banked corners in the smoothest possible parabola without slipping sideways.

Whatever skill I had was honed on the snowy slopes of the Howardian Hills in Yorkshire. Bumping and bouncing down

over a rabbit-warrened hill, I always preferred to lie head first, as elbows and feet could be stuck out to avoid my tipping over.

In 1888, on the Cresta Run, Captain Bertie Dwyer, a Cresta rider since childhood, crossed the finishing line at about 75mph, making him the fastest self-propelled man on the planet. He subsequently won the blue ribbon of the Cresta, the Grand National, three times.

Soon the success of the Run, handbuilt in its own narrow valley, with water from the valley’s stream sprayed onto the snow turning the surface into ice overnight, increasingly drew intrepid visitors from England. Rich Americans followed, with the occasional Italian aristocrat and Swiss hotelier making up the numbers.

Then, as Englishmen do, they formed a club with all the accoutrements that can

The Cresta Run, St Moritz, in 1912. It was founded in 1884

baffle other nations. The St Moritz Tobogganing Club is still thriving, having undergone a rocky period after the Second World War, when English travellers were allowed to take only £50 with them – later reduced to £25.

The Services Championship then came to the rescue, providing enough riders with their expenses paid for by the Army, Navy and Air Force. They all regarded the Cresta as a form of adventure training, turning a blind eye towards St Moritz downtime adventures.

The Club became an all-male show for 90 years until 2020, having banned lady riders on ‘health’ grounds, not unconnected with a certain Mrs Bott beating Mr Bott in a championship race, the Curzon Cup.

However, Cresta racing is now truly open again, with one-third of the services riders being female. A Ladies Championship race commemorates a brilliant rider of yore, Lorna Robertson, who in her day equalled the best and beat the rest.

The language of the St Moritz Tobogganing Club is, of course, English. The club has the enormous benefit of truly existing only from late December to early March, which means that the fun mixed with a touch of danger is concentrated into ten weeks.

Away from the Run, the Sunny Bar in the magnificent Kulm Hotel is the Cresta’s home from home, galvanised by super-Secretary Gary Lowe. Cups are presented, winners are kissed and toasted with English champagne, friendships renewed for another season.

Festivities end in the early hours in the nearby Dracula nightclub, founded

by the inimitable Gunter Sachs (19322011), photographer and former husband of Brigitte Bardot.

A strange rule for an ice run with corners is that the toboggans must have no steering mechanism. This lack is usually discovered by innocent novices who think that they will get round Shuttlecock Corner by thought process alone.

I went out of the run there into the straw four times in a row. Then I worked out that shifting my weight back over the knives and gently pushing the front of the toboggan downwards meant that I could avoid the Shuttlecock straw and reach the finishing line.

A Cresta victory is celebrated by all the riders who took part in the race pretending to be a firework, jumping up and down crying out ‘Boom!’ and ‘Ssh!’

For years, the firework theme was transferred on to the actual Run by a splendid eccentric, Adolf Haeberli. He attached rockets all over his body and lit them before setting off on his toboggan on the last run of the season in a cloud of orange smoke, punctuated by explosions as one rocket after another sped him on his way.

When the great Adolf retired, a distinguished air vice-marshal took on the fiery mantle. Unfortunately, unbalanced by fireworks, he crashed out of the Run and lay comatose for a while in what looked like a pool of blood. Although he was quite badly hurt, at least the blood turned out to be the contents of an unexploded smoke bomb.

Cresta riders divide into the modernists and the traditionalists. The former, dressed in skin-tight – usually

black – latex, wander around looking like pensive aliens and win all the championship races.

The traditionalists dress like King George V deerstalking in Scotland, mutter about toboggans that steer and seem mostly unaware that time has passed since Bertie Dwyer reigned supreme.

When the money is down in one of the Auction Handicaps, yesterday’s Old Fogey can emerge, looking slightly embarrassed, in shiny latex, make a surprisingly athletic start before flinging himself on his toboggan and sliding down the Run a second and a half faster, to triumph in the race and carry off the money on behalf of himself and his backers – often the aforementioned latexeteers.

Mastery of the Cresta Run is very rare. When achieved by the best riders, it may last only a year or two. The Run is built by hand, and though the corners and straights all have the same names each year, every corner is subtly different every season.

The greatest riders include Italian Nino Bibbia, a brilliant all-round sportsman who represented his country in three winter sports. Then there was Billy Fiske, the first American to die in the Second World War, flying in the Battle of Britain, who held all the records and never went out at Shuttlecock Corner.

Franco Gansser, the most stylish champion, looked as if he could drink a cup of tea while winning Grand Nationals. Clifton Wrottesley, an Irish peer, was peerless in the best races for a decade or more. And champion James Sunley rides with the steeliest determination when the chips are down.

They have all mastered the Icy Lady of St Moritz for a time.

For the rest of us, if you haven’t ridden before, 200 Swiss francs will get you six rides. After a little instruction, off you go, trying to stick your toe rakes into the ice to slow your rate of acceleration.

On the first run down, you are a tourist. On the second run, you are a piece of baggage. On the third, steering with your feet becomes an option. By the sixth, either you retire gracefully or you’re hooked.

Cresta riding needn’t become an obsession. Yet still I ponder, as I write of my ‘last’ ride (a world record 71 years after my first), in December 2022’s Lowe Portago race, ‘Dash it! If I had taken two more steps in my start, I could have beaten my previous best.’

I’m still hooked.

Rupert, 13, and his stepfather, Lord Grimthorpe, St Moritz, 1951. Right: his comeback

Sir John Soane in the doghouse

lucinda lambton

In 1806, Sir John Soane completed his grand sweep of alterations and additions to Port Eliot – originally the 13th-century Priory of St Germans.

He had been commissioned by the second Lord Eliot, a man of action and taste who had already done much of Port Eliot’s landscaping himself.

Soane’s work was to embrace the whole estate, making considerable alterations and additions to the house, as well as designing heavily machicolated Gothic stables, along with a dairy and an ingenious, tricking-the-eye house for the cattle.

Beneath the eaves, what appears to be a fluted frieze is in fact a ventilating system of considerable length, operated by a knob which, when pulled, slides panels aside to open or close the flutes.

What a delicate doubling-up of taste and technology, to be sure!

The greatest elegance was applied with considerable charm on buildings for animals throughout the country. Elihu Burritt, the American consul in Birmingham, described the practice charmingly in 1863, in A Walk from London to John O’Groats

Burritt was the self-educated son of a Connecticut cobbler, philanthropist, emancipationist and writer. Previously a blacksmith’s apprentice, he was known as ‘the learned blacksmith’.

In his book, he described his first taste of clotted cream from the cows of Port Eliot as ‘that most delectable of luxuries. I remember meeting with an old musty volume many years ago containing a learned disquisition in Latin on the question of whether the butter of Abraham placed before the angels was really butter or this very cream.’

Cows were one of Soane’s favourites. The ‘Elevation of a Dairy House in the Moresque Stile’ appeared in his Designs in Architecture of 1778.

It was produced when he was only 25 (he had yet to add the ‘e’ of supposed distinction to his name).

This book was his first publication, allowing him to commit fantastical and high-flying ideas. Hurrah for such gall. Only two years earlier, when he was a student at the Royal Academy, his quite stupendous design for a Triumphal Bridge won the Royal Academy’s Gold Medal.

It so impressed George III that the young student was sent on a three-yearlong Grand Tour, paid for by the Royal Academy’s travelling scholarship. In Rome, he met Piranesi and the mould was cast for Soane to become the greatest Romantic classicist of all time.

He was a colossus in all matters architectural, not least for our purposes with his designs for animal buildings. At Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire, he drew up plans for the estate managed by the Earl of Hardwick to have an 11-bay façade for chickens’ nesting boxes.

In 1794, a thatched farm was blessed with ‘capital piggeries’ and deer pens, all designed by the great man himself – and a very great man he was too.

The great neoclassical architect designed a dairy, stables and a sublime kennel

Where the cows came home: Port Eliot, seat of the Earl of St Germans, 1831

At Wimpole Hall, he designed an 11-bay façade for chickens’ nesting boxes

Many more such delights were created for creatures. The ‘residence for a canine family of ancient times’ is worth a serious mention: it was designed in 1798 for the disreputable Lord Bishop of Derry, Frederick Augustus Hervey, soon to be elevated to become the 4th Earl of Bristol.

They met in Italy, where the Lord Bishop bewitched the young architect with grand proposals for his Irish estate.

First came the classical dog kennel for the hounds of his eldest son, inspired by a visit Hervey and Soane made to Lucullus’s villa near Terracina on Christmas Day in 1778.

Without unsightly concessions to the kennel’s working role, a circular exercise yard embraces three wings which splay forth from the central rotunda. One is a residence for the kennel man, another for the veterinary sick bay and the third for the bitches – while dogs are kept beneath the dome.

With the Doric order – so simple, clean and clear – the Bishop and Soane made a handsome case for the general use of the neoclassical style. As a proud cheer – or bark – four dogs sit tall on the

parapet, while another leaps high in the sky on the weathervane.

Although the original architectural drawings were lost – no doubt purloined by the Lord Bishop – Soane made a copy of them from memory in 1781, to be exhibited in the Royal Academy. This is what hangs in Soane’s house in Lincoln’s Inn today.

Below: Soane’s doghouse, an 1835 copy of his original 1779 design

Nothing was to come of any of it: cock-a-hoop with such important commissions, Soane cut short his precious studies in Italy and sped to work on the Bishop’s estates at Ickworh, Suffolk, and Downhill, Ireland.

It was to be in vain. His proposals were rejected and he returned to England without payment – not even for every penny spent on travel!

He never got over it. In his memoirs, 50 years laterk he wrote, ‘Experience … taught me how much I had overrated the magnificent promises and splendid delusions of the Lord Bishop of Derry.’

Despite rejecting the great Soane, the Bishop was a builder on the grand scale – creating not only palaces and houses, but also an abundance of roads, bridges and monuments. His roadworks alone were likened to those of a Roman emperor rather than an Irish bishop.

Hervey enjoyed himself, too. William Childe Pemberton’s biography says that, when Hervey was in Italy, it wasn’t only his building style that likened him to a Roman emperor.

Soane by Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1829

Taking a Walk

Grandpa’s spirit haunts the Lake District

When I last walked on Scout Scar, some 20 years ago, I helped my mum scatter Grandpa’s ashes.

I should remember the day clearly, but I don’t. There was wind, straggly hawthorn and a sense of completing a task, I think, but this vertiginous ridge of limestone with preposterously fine views everywhere is lodged in my memory from other walks with Grandpa.

In his latter days, slowing up, he eschewed the high fells of his home county and stumped along its lovely limestone edges, from Gatebarrow to Whitbarrow, with his Border Collie, Tess.

I returned to Scout Scar recently while visiting Kendal for its Mountain Festival. The town hummed with impressive outdoorsy folk. Even in the bleak winter, head torches bounced down footpaths after dark. The breath of Lycra-clad joggers hung in the air.

I felt a wuss taking a taxi a couple of miles out of town to Scout Scar, even though this move sensibly turned a four-hour up-and-down circuit into a two-hour, mostly downhill stroll.

The taxi driver knew Scout Scar from lockdown. He took loads of people up then. It’s the perfect nearby wild. There’s the instant gratification of a low hill with spectacular views in all directions: the high fells of the Lakes, the sweep of Morecambe Bay and the sensuous curves of the Howgills.

The ascent from the car park to the ‘summit’ was a five-minute amble beside pale-trunked ash trees. There were a few walkers enjoying the view: a man with a baby in his rucksack and a laughing young couple, who held their toy dog over the precipice for an interesting Insta shot. Better than dangling babies, I guess.

I imbibed the wind from the west. The big fells to the north were sheathed in clouds of midnight blue which threatened rain.

To the west rolled the gentle South Lakes. Patches of ‘improved’ pasture

patrick barkham

were illuminated brilliant green when the sun struck. Underbarrow Pool was flooded; waterlogged fields shone silver.

The top of Scout Scar was a land of limestone rubble, almost as uncompromising as an alien planet.

Yews clung to the western edge and stunted hawthorns my height grew from cracks in the natural limestone pavement. Juniper trees reached the size of clumps of heather.

A raven gurgled as I reached the appropriately otherwordly hut of stone known as ‘the mushroom’, built in 1912 as a memorial to George V.

In its shadow, people had constructed mini towers from the stone. Some see this kind of mass participation in Andy Goldsworthy-style landscape art as vandalism, but it looked fairly benign to me.

After illuminating the pasture, God’s rays moved on to Morecambe Bay. I turned east, crossing the limestone clitter, a jumble of stones resembling a newly-dug quarry, as if geology had just happened. Sheltered from the westerlies grew ginger bracken and grey-green juniper, attractive in winter against the grey stones, and stunning with the addition of flowers in summer.

Then, suddenly, I saw Grandpa. He

was silhouetted in the distance, one of two walkers, an old man with flowing white hair, a stoop and a collie.

It was uncanny, except that this lookalike must be my mum’s age – and now my mum was reaching the end, too. Generations move on as briskly as a footstep. Or perhaps it only seems quick once we are old, and time speeds up.

The afternoon appeared to accelerate as I moved off the scar and into a lush green field of fat sheep. Then onto the road that met the upward march of Kendal’s suburbs, Brigsteer Rise taking shape beneath the clank clank of a yellow digger.

I will draw a veil over the rest of the walk, into Kendal, dusk coming in, rush-hour traffic coming out, and back to Oxenholme Station.

Not because it was terrible, just because it happened so fast. And my head and heart were still on Scout Scar long after my body and feet had left it.

Follow the path south through the kissing gate from the car park on Underbarrow Road, LA8 8HB, to enjoy the views from Scout Scar. After a mile, there is a footpath east back to Kendal – or you can loop round and back to the car park

On the Road

Dickie Bird – 90 not out

You’re 90 on 19th April. What was the most memorable game you umpired? My last Test match at Lords against India in 1996. England and India lined up in front of the pavilion to give me a fanfare of trumpets as I walked out.

Is there anything you can’t leave home without?

My medication. When I was umpiring, I’d need my wristwatch.

Do you travel light?

I used to have all my cricket gear – my whites, my white shoes, my spikes I wore in my shoes.

What’s your favourite destination? New Zealand. But I enjoyed India, Pakistan, Australia, Sri Lanka and the West Indies.

What are your earliest childhood holiday memories?

Going to Scarborough and playing on the beach with my father at cricket.

Did you prefer football or cricket at school?

I preferred football, but I thought cricket would give me a longer life and I was right.

Why did you give up playing cricket professionally?

A knee was bothering me terribly.

How did you get into umpiring?

I was having a quiet drink with John Waugh who played for Middlesex, and he said, ‘Have you ever thought of becoming an umpire?’ and I just laughed, and then I thought there might be something in that. I wrote to Lord’s in August and they said, ‘We’ll put your name forward,’ and in November I got a letter saying I’d been accepted for the 1970 first-class cricket season. Aye. And I really took to umpiring.

Did you enjoy it more than playing?

In 1958, Ronnie Burnett was captain of Yorkshire and he sacked four of the greatest players and brought in young lads. We finished fourth-bottom in the

Championship and the members went mad. In 1959, we won the Championship – and from then on, Yorkshire was amazing. They were the best years of my life.

What’s your favourite cricket ground in England and abroad?

Lord’s and Calcutta.

Do you think your job would have been much easier with modern technology and the review system?

It’s easier now to umpire than ever and everything’s right with the review system – the umpire has nothing to do.

What’s the best decision you ever gave? I gave Robin Smith run out in a test match at Headingley, and everybody thought he’d got in. When they played it back, television slowed it down – he was out by an inch and a half.

What are the most difficult decisions? LBW, run-outs or disputed catches? Run-outs.

How good is the England cricket team now? It’s only a matter of time before they’re the most powerful cricket nation in the world.

What’s the best team you ever umpired? The West Indies in the late ’70s and early ’80s had a great bowling attack – Andy Roberts, Malcolm Marshall, Michael Holding and Joel Garner – and a great batting line-up with Gordon Greenidge, Desmond Haynes, Vivian Richards. Australia in the early ’70s were so powerful with the great captain Ian Chappell, his brother Greg, Dennis Lillee, Dougie Walters, Geoff Thompson, Ashley Mallett – can’t pick one from the other.

And the worst?

Never saw one.

Who was your favourite player of all time?

Garfield Sobers of the West Indies.

Ever witness any cheating? No. I never saw anything or heard of anything.

Is Yorkshire the greatest county? Yes. Well, I’m a Yorkshireman –I’m bound to say that.

As an ex-President of Yorkshire CC, how did you feel about the racism there? I never saw any racism, but I wasn’t in the dressing room.

Are you a traveller?

I didn’t need to worry about leaving a wife and kids behind. I loved going abroad. Every country made me so welcome. And they still think the world of me, though I say it myself.

Do you go on holiday?

I always go to Scarborough. That east coast – I don’t think there’s anything nicer in the world on a fine day.

Did you have a daily routine when you were an umpire?

I was always at the ground before anyone else. My first test match at Headingley, I arrived at six in the morning – and we didn’t start till half-11 in those days.

What have been your career highlights ? Umpiring the first three World Cup Finals and having lunch with the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

What’s your biggest headache? The long flights to Australia and New Zealand.

What was the best hotel you stayed in? The Taj Mahal and the Oberoi in Bombay. I didn’t stay in the Sandy Lane Hotel in Barbados, but I swam in the sea outside it, and one day I bumped into something and I thought it was a rock and it was Pavarotti.

The umpire recalls his favourite match, his best decision – and colliding with Pavarotti in the Caribbean.

By Louise Flind

Across

1 Hurtful remark from X hit sprog badly (7,4)

9 Vague, becoming passionate outside the pub (9)

10 The Yorkshire determination is material (5)

11 X, infected by farm disease, is not here (6)

12 Poison that could be power to American state? (8)

13 Feature of group given task (6)

15 Imagine poor vegetarians with no pitch (8)

18 Feeling better, and showing it (8)

19 Endless avarice seen with church state (6)

21 Face European court’s different variations of language (8)

23 Shocked husband in story turned back time (6)

26 A bit of weather must heat unit (5)

27 Glower, then log in for resolution (4,5)

28 Books found in most of the plots by Jacob’s brother (11)

Genius crossword 424 el sereno

Down

1 Notice youth protecting vehicle after parking (7)

2 Origin of automatons (not British) (5)

3 Threatening one politician with closure (9)

4 Blush, seeing student wearing short dress (4)

5 Is the poor X in two minds? (8)

6 Symbol of bear market’s origin (5)

7 Engineers must have experience to cover one and take over responsibility (7)

8 Sue set fire to barrier under investigation initially (8)

14 With no show of uncertainty

finds where supporters stand (8)

16 Fighter out of order? (9)

17 Posture adopted if batting, for example (8)

18 One might check return of decay under car from Germany (7)

20 Lands in eastern America (7)

22 X (5)

24 Protection, say, is subject to law essentially (5)

25 Trace of patois discovered on the rise (4)

How to enter Please scan or otherwise copy this page and email it to comps@theoldie.co.uk. With regret, we are temporarily unable to accept postal entries. Normal procedure will be restored as soon as possible. Deadline: 5th April 2023. We do not sell or share your data with third parties.

First prize is The Chambers Dictionary and £25. Two runners-up will receive £15.

NB: Hodder & Stoughton and Bookpoint Ltd will be sent the addresses of the winners because they process the prizes.

Moron crossword 424

Across

1 Smudged, labelled (6)

4 ___ Rooney, footballer (5)

8 Dance venue (5)

9 Unlawful (7)

10 Stomach (7)

11 Shock, daze (4)

12 Greyish-brown (3)

14 Bill of fare (4)

15 Supplies weapons to (4)

18 Take a pew (3)

21 Skin disorder (4)

23 Make lively (7)

25 Yield, buckle under pressure (7)

26 Sky blue (5)

27 Throw out forcibly (5)

28 Shooting star (6)

Down

1 Foolishly impulsive (6)

2 The remains (of an estate, e.g) (7)

3 Gigantic (8)

4 Metal joint (4)

5 Sailing boat (5)

6 Stretch (6)

7 Demon (5)

13 Pilot (8)

16 Step, yardstick (7)

17 Harass, bother (6)

19 Mottled (cat) (5)

20 Thin facade (6)

22 Mother-of-pearl (5)

24 Resign, stop (4)

Winner: Miriam Cheeseman, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire Runners-up: John Elkington, Wells, Somerset; P D Wakely, Redland, Bristol

Moron 422 answers: Across: 1 Skint, 4 Height (Skin tight), 9 Freak, 10 Unhappy, 11 Extends, 12 Licit, 14 Tie, 15 Icy, 16 Kid, 18 Own, 21 Molar, 22 Declare, 23 Seminar, 25 Elect, 26 Dodged, 27 Mayor. Down: 1 Suffer, 2 Identical, 3 Taking, 5 Exhale, 6 Gap, 7 Trysts, 8 Substandard, 13 Chicanery, 17 Amused, 18 Orange, 19 Scream, 20 Nectar, 24 Mud.

Genius 422 solution

X stands for the same word wherever it appears

Spring is upon us, an appropriate moment to reminisce on last year’s Spring Foursomes, in which my team lost in the Final to Hinden.

I would never say I’m happy to lose. However, one member of the Hinden team was ill and we were all aware it might be his final chance to win. We were happy to shake their hands at the end – then jump into our cars, as we were all longing to leave the underwhelming motorway-junction hotel venue in Warwickshire.

One member of my team was the legendary Zia Mahmood - always an exciting teammate both at and away from the table. Here is some pure Zia class from early in the event. Z (as I call him) was sitting East.

Dealer South North-South Vulnerable

Competition

TESSA CASTRO

IN COMPETITION No 290 you were invited to write a poem, Spring Cleaning, as an acrostic with the first letter of each line spelling out the title. I don’t know if the extra requirement made the poems better, but rhyme and metre usually do.

Tony Bartlett pretended to quibble about the meaning of ‘spring’: ‘Pram spring? Mattress? Trampoline?/Rusty after years of use.’

Con Connell had Mrs Shakespeare giving her husband sound advice: ‘Not that you would ever lose Love’s Labour/ If you tried to keep your desk a bit more tidy…’

Andrew Bamji introduced a note of class war: ‘Now I know you rich bastards are having a laugh/ Gaily boasting, “No problem – for we have got staff!” ’

G M Southgate looked forward to ‘Noting the worktops/ Need scrubbing, and when this is done,/ Going to sleep on the sofa, in blessed spring sun.’

More grubbily, Peter Hayes’s narrator had his bank account cleaned out by his Thai bride; that’ll learn him!

Nowhere left to put belongings, Giant heaps are everywhere. Can I find the strength to clear things? Let the place taste some fresh air? Every time I swear I’ll do it Apathy destroys my will. Now at last I settle to it, I am set to climb the hill. Not quite yet. I think a beer may Give me strength to clear away.

Max Ross

Spring cleaning’s list of things to do Perhaps applies to poets too: Remove and dust all triolets, Install New Roman alphabets. Neat bleach shifts rogue apostrophe’s (Get Brasso to hyperboles.) Chop out unbridled US words Lest nouns take root and grow to verbs. Eradicate portmanteau grime And give your words more space to rhyme.

Next – toss used stanzas with a grin In Reverend Spooner’s Busty Din. Now make up for the time you’ve lost –Go out of doors with Robert Frost.

The bidding

Commiserations to them and to John Wilsher, D A Prince, Ann Drysdale and Basil Ransome-Davies, and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom win £25 with the bonus prize of Chambers Dictionary going to Jane Bower.

David Dixon

Sunbeams pierce the speckled windowpanes, Prompting me to start the grisly work Removing winter’s filth, the lingering stains

(1) Weak with seven decent hearts.

(2) For take-out.

(3) Able to hold up his ace of hearts the appropriate number of times to exhaust East then hope to avoid losing a subsequent trick to West. A clear choice.

West led the ten of Hearts, East playing the knave and declarer ducking. Z can count to five (as he put it). One heart trick and two club tricks: if he can make two diamond tricks, the game is down. Needing West to have a diamond picture, at trick two he switched to the seven of diamonds.

Declarer played low from hand, beating West’s knave with the ace. He crossed to the ace of spades and led the nine of clubs. Winning the queen, East now led the ten of diamonds, happy to lose it to declarer’s queen and set up two diamond winners for his king-nine. Oddly, declarer ducked the ten and now Z masterfully switched to an entry-cutting second spade.

Declarer could win dummy’s king-queenten of spades, but when he led a second club, East could win the ace and exit with his queen of hearts, soon scoring the king-nine of diamonds. Two down – Z magic.

ANDREW ROBSON

Squeaky-clean, pristine-green shoots spear skyward

Pledged to a polish, Ciffing with sap, Rinsoed with rain, rooting through loam, Inching and piercing. Astonishing rotten Nuggets of leaf matter, iced, winterweary Gobbets of mud, defrosted humus. Conditioned in Comfort the tumble-dried clouds,

Lathered in Lux the sky’s net curtains; Elating the sullen, sleep-sodden garden A bigness of light sweeps its Cillited sponge, Newly and now, annual, awaited, Immaculate freshening, Flashing, Febrezed, Newly and now, breath-catching, eye-bright, Gasp at the Vim of the Spring, cleaning. Jane Bower

Surrounded by my student clutter, Piles of plates and dirty cups, Room that’s modelled on a gutter; It is time to clean, perhaps.

Ice and snow have left. I cannot shirk

Necessary tasks. I fetch my broom, Gather up the other tools I need. Congealing dust resides in every room

Lurking under cupboards to impede Easy progress; muscles of an ox Are now required, and would it be a crime

Not to move them all? Relentless clocks

Inform me I am running out of time. No one could enjoy this annual chore. God knows at best it is a dreadful bore.

Katie Mallett

COMPETITION No 292 I’ve had trouble with creaky knees, but now I’m glad to walk at all. A poem, please, called The Walk, in any connection. Maximum 16 lines. We cannot accept any entries by post, I’m afraid, but do send them by e-mail (comps@theoldie.co.uk – don’t forget to include your own postal address), marked ‘Competition No 292’, by Thursday 6th April.

To advertise, contact Jasper Gibbons on 0203 859 7096 or via email JasperGibbons@theoldie.co.uk scc rate £45+vat. The copy deadline for our next issue is 20th March 2023

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Son-in-law a bad cop?

QI am a 70-year-old man with a daughter who’s been married to a police officer.

I have never liked him, but have been civil for my daughter’s sake. Now, with the recent revelations about the Met, I feel I don’t want his company.

I shall shortly be faced with the choice between visiting them or not. What do you suggest?

I can see that my feeling is irrational in that he himself is blameless for –though perhaps aware of – the toxic culture, but feelings are not always rational, are they? I’m sure I cannot be the only one in this position.

M F, Leicester

AYou have behaved impeccably so far. And visiting your daughter despite your dislike of her husband has been a kindly and civilised move. It would be a great mistake to stop visiting them, and would cause misery and fury within your family – and rightly.

This man has, as far as you know, done nothing wrong. It’s unfair to blame one innocent man for the sins of his (comparatively few) colleagues. That way, wars start.

I do hope you will continue to behave politely, rather than let your unfounded emotions get the better of you and cause irreparable damage.

No, feelings are not always rational, but it is a sign of a civilised person not to let them dominate his or her actions if they can cause harm.

I know quite a few people I have loathed irrationally for years. But, by keeping my feelings in check, I have finally become quite fond of them!

As Alcoholics Anonymous so wisely advises, ‘Fake it to make it.’

virginia ironside

My secret lover

QFor the last 25 years, I was having an affair with a married man.

His wife and children didn’t know that he was gay and it all worked perfectly and no one, as far as I know, was hurt.

But now he’s died and I so long to go to his funeral, but of course I can’t just turn up without an excuse. What do you think that I should do?

Gerald (not my real name), address supplied

AIf you’re sure you’re not going to be racked by sobs and drawing attention to yourself, I can’t see why you shouldn’t slip in last and just stand at the back in the shadows – and then make your escape.

Alternatively, ask the vicar or celebrant of the service if he or she has any advice.

If they’re compassionate and trust you not to make a scene, they might point out a very discreet place you might secrete yourself into – or perhaps provide a personal blessing at a later date.

This sad situation arises, by the way, much more often than you might think.

Vicars taking funerals can be quite familiar with the shadowy figure at the back of the church or cremation service who comes and goes without being noticed.

If questioned, you can always mumble about being a work colleague from way back or something.

Do try to be there. It can be a big part of what’s known, rather pompously, as the ‘grieving process’.

My racist wife

QMy wife has always been very outspoken and the older she gets – she’s now 80 – the more strident are her views.

She often talks disparagingly about black people or immigrants and obviously it’s starting to embarrass our social circle. She rang the gas board and asked for someone white to read our meters. Understandably, it resulted in an awful fuss. She absolutely refuses to listen to my begging her to stop and says I’m a slave to political correctness.

A J, Ashford, Kent

AThis kind of intransigent bigotry is often a sign of early Alzheimer’s.

There is very little you can do about it except try to take over the booking of service appointments yourself and get her out of the way when the engineers arrive.

Apologise in advance to your friends and explain your predicament to distance yourself from her views. Don’t argue with her, and refuse to engage if she persists.

Most people of her age will realise what’s going on and either pay no attention or change the subject as soon as possible. And even people of different ethnicities from your own will, if they’re at all understanding, probably have equivalent-aged relatives in their families and won’t take her remarks personally.

However, if things continue to get worse and she starts to insult strangers, it might be worth consulting your doctor to find out whether it might be a sign of anything worse.

Please email me your problems at problempage@theoldie.co.uk; I will answer every email – and let me know if you’d like your dilemma to be confidential.

GRACEFULLY GUIDE TO GROWING OLD

Sponsored by

The joy of staying in... Ivo Dawnay

... and the bliss of going out Rachel Johnson

Grand designs in Morocco Glenys Roberts

Running for my life Richard Askwith

Guide to Growing Old Disgracefully

April 2023

Sponsored by

Cover: Beryl Cook

Published by The Oldie magazine, Moray House, 23/31 Great Titchfield Street, London W1W 7PA

Editor: Jane Mays

Design: Lawrence Bogle

Publisher: James Pembroke

Advertising: Paul Pryde, Rafe Thornhill, Jasper Gibbons

For advertising enquiries, call Paul Pryde on 020 3859 7095

For editorial enquiries, email: editorial@theoldie.co.uk

Among the contributors

‘Bursting with empathy, common sense and humour’, geriatric doctor David Jarrett’s book 33 Meditations on Death: Notes From The Wrong End of Medicine has been widely praised for its unflinching reflections on the fate that we all share. Brain surgeon Henry Marsh called it a ‘grimly humorous yet humane account of the realities of growing old in the modern age’.

Acclaimed, author, biographer and social historian Anne de Courcy has written lives of Diana Mosley, the Earl of Snowdon and Margot Asquith. a A former chair of the Biographers’ Club, she opened up her own glorious corner of Gloucestershire to fellow writers for the first Bibury literary festival - a runaway success complete with cupcakes.

Richard Askwith is the prizewinning author of Feet In The Clouds

– now a cult book on Fell Running – and a passionate advocate for the English countryside and its traditions. His latest book, The Race Against Time, described by the Observer as inspirational, is a clarion call to older runners everywhere, amongst whom he now counts himself. He lives with a number of quadrupeds including his much-loved cat.

18 Literary life

Starting a festival

Anne de Courcy

20 Eye Care

What to look out for Nick Evans

23 Genealogy

Family history unearthed

Jane Ridley

24

Running Oldies on the move

Richard Askwith

27 Investment Risk

Beware of Gurus

Garry White

27 Last Word

Writing a eulogy

Gillean Craig

FOGO versus FOMO

Ivo Dawnay... happy in his armchair

It would be clever but trite to say there are parties and then there are parties: the warm white wine book launch in Daunts, Marylebone is not, after all, quite the same as a kneesup in a Hampton Court palace with Evgeny Lebedev and Elton John.

But, in fact, all parties, modest or extravagant are ultimately the same thing: a festival of show-offery. All of them, after all, are merely marketing vehicles whether it be for a book, restaurant, museum or hotel, or simply for the hosts themselvesgilding his or her ‘brand’ with the quality of the canapés and the celebrity-wattage of the other guests.

I suppose when I was much, much younger and a professional party-goer for the Evening Standard’s Londoner’s Diary column they were occasionally fun, spiced by the challenge of having to find out something that would make a paragraph or two the next day. For a bachelor-about-town, they also held the vague promise of an encounter with the woman of one’s dreams or at least one for dinner.

Well I now recall my first fumblings as a diarist being forced by my editor to ask Tim Rice a cheeky question at the launch of one of his West End hits. As my boss looked on, I sidled up to him and coyly whispered: ‘Please talk to me briefly as I am being monitored for chutzpah by my employer and I badly need to keep this job.’

Rice, ever the gentleman, complied, and a few days later I was invited out of the blue to be an ‘angel’ for his new project, something provisionally entitled Evita. I politely declined on the grounds that it was improbable he would have three smash hits on the trot – a poor decision as, had I had a punt, I would not now be reduced to writing about my social phobias.

Since I married a socialite, parties have become an even greater trial. My friend, Giles Wood (of Gogglebox

and this parish) once invited me to be a founder member of the Threapleton Society – a club for men married to more important women.

(Threapleton was the husband of Kate Winslet, sadly no longer needed on the voyage of life after the commercial success of Titanic. We planned to ask Denis Thatcher to be chairman and Prince Philip our patron.)

Plus One, then, is now my fulltime role and possibly the title for my autobiography. Like Rosencrantz and Gildenstern, I have long been one to swell a progress, though seldom start a scene or two.

Moreover, I am now familiar with the time-honoured rituals of arrival where a mob of ‘snappers’ catch Her at the door of the V&A or the Corinthian Hotel.

Usually they reluctantly if politely take a quick pic of the two of us together, then gesture impatiently for me to step aside as they get the money shot of Herself, posing, chest

minutes with ironic observations about this and that.

But then, this is the fundamental problem of parties: the 60 second conversation. Now replete with canapés, one must eventually lumber off like some lonely Mastodon in the savannah in search of someone you might vaguely know to ask them questions the answers to which interest neither of you.

‘Oh, hello Charlie’, you say to someone you think you might have been at prep school with, ‘Been on holiday yet?’

Or at dinner, seated with the rest of the duds next to a woman who was pining to be close to the fashionable poet, she turns and asks: ‘Do you have children?’ As a cricket-loving friend has it, such well-meaning ladies are ‘unplayable’, like an Australian fast bowler.

And hence, FOGO – or, if not actual Fear of Going Out, then BOGO – or deep, profound boredom with it. For let’s face it, parties are almost always devised and convened by women, for women to display clothes, flaunt status and gossip. They are not for men.

out, knee cocked, like a Hollywood babe in front of the branding.

Once inside it is sauve qui peut as she disappears into a sea of air kisses and deeply insincere whoops of greetings (and, no doubt, caustic whispered asides) and I slip away to the bar, or, better still, spy out the kitchen exit where the canapés emerge, hot and piping, into the melée like TS Eliot’s coffee spoons.

There are usually a group of us men, quite often including David Cameron, biding our time while our better and brighter halves exchange their ‘Oh My Gods’ and ‘awesome’ insights into Harry & Meghan or goings-on at 5 Hertford Street.

Occasionally this salon des refusés masculins can actually be tolerable and we can idle away the

For us, nothing - not even the Vanity Fair Oscars - can really compete with an open fire, a large whisky and Match of the Day.

Rachel Johnson... out on the town

My name is Rachel Johnson and I am a party addict! Which means of course that I also have a chronic FOMO. Indeed, until the other day (ie a few years ago) if I was invited to several parties on the same night (these were my glory days as one of London’s Most Invited) I would micro-manage the logistics, as to miss even one party would give me an almost physical pain.

Most evenings when there was ‘only’ one party and I had RSVP’d yes but had decided not to go (always because my husband was being an Uncle Matthew) this would happen.

I am town mouse, he is country

Fear of going out and fear of missing out divide many a married couple, not least Ivo Dawnay and Rachel Johnson, who make the case for cosy nights in and wild nights out

‘Since I married a socialite, parties have become an even greater trial’

mouse and if he had his druthers he would never go to town, let alone ‘out out’. As the witching hour of 6.30pm approached I would end up pelting upstairs, throwing on a dress and fleeing solo into the night, unable to resist the lure.

I would progress to the party as if yanked on a rope. I couldn’t bear the idea of not going because then, Rumsfeld-like, I wouldn’t know what I had missed. Only if I went would I know.

All my jobs, contacts, stories, friends, or most of them, came from parties. I would go because of purest FOMO. I would therefore plan the evening with the care and efficiency once dedicated by Alastair Campbell to a Blair re-election campaign tour of the North-East.

I would plot which constituency (ie party) to hit up first; who to knock up and canvass (ie who to talk to); how to leave without offending hosts (ie plot an exit strategy); work out which party to drink, eat and end up at, set myself a final departure deadline and have in mind a return ride before I stepped out, heels on, blow-dry swinging, into my first Uber (Mohamed in a Prius is here for you) of the evening.

I swapped notes and tips on strategy with Sir Nick Coleridge, also

a serial party-goer, as to how to work several parties in one night. We agreed that this can only be achieved if they were all ‘in town’ or within a mile or so radius. It was a breeze to swing past a book launch in Hatchards or Sotheran’s, a cocktail party at Sotheby’s or Christie’s and a private view in the Royal Academy before, say, ending up in the Wolseley or 5, Hertford St or at a wooden table drinking plonk out of a tumbler in the Academy Club.

It was harder, we agreed, to do multiple drive-bys if Winfield House (the residence of the US Ambassador to the Court of St James), Lord Lebedev’s rus-in-urbe pile (called, agreeably, “Stud” but it’s in the KT8 postcode), the River Cafe in W6, or anywhere indeed south of the river.

‘The way I do it is I never take a coat,’ Nick told me, ‘So I never look as if I’m arriving or leaving, I always make sure I have face time with the hostess, I buy the book, and keep my driver waiting just outside’.

It took the pandemic and parties to dry up for me to think I hadn’t really missed them as much as I thought I would. The warm white wine. The speeches. I could live without a book launch ever again, I told myself. I hated evenings racing, late, between events and not even

having time for pointless small talk, let alone pleasurable gossip and flirtation!

And then, of course, the social whirl started spinning and in 2022 I was back to my bad old ways. If invited, and if I’d accepted, I felt it was bad form not to show (this is something that never occurs to my husband - he rarely responds to emails, opens Paperless Post, or even replies to WhatsApps). I would feel - narcissistically, no doubt - that my presence would be noted, even missed (I know - laughable).

But, in order not to burn out, I am on a party diet. Like Martinis, and unlike breasts, I have decided that one is perfect, two is too many.

Sometimes this protocol presents temptations. At a fun bash for Sebastian Payne’s new book at the Reform Club, over Christmas, Emily Maitlis came up glittering. ‘Do you want to come to Hugh Grant’s party with us? We’re leaving!’

Reader, I have my pride.

Now I am merely the sister of the former PM, I hope it will be easy to stick to my new regime.

But of course if two tempting stiffies on one night need to be attended to - no pun intended! - I am still just the girl for the job.

Ready to rock and roll? Rachel and Ivo

Tubby like Pooh? Not me

Liz Hodgkinson on the benefits of a

Next year I shall be 80. But am I a sad old biddy, taking buckets of pills every day, grappling with a dodgy hip, high blood pressure, osteoporosis and rheumy eyes?

I am not. Apart from a certain amount of annoying hearing loss, I would say that I am as fit and healthy as I was 30 or 40 years ago. Every day I am climbing up and down 50 steps to my fourth-floor flat and I walk with a spring in my step. Most years, I go on a walking holiday, often over tough terrain.

But that is not all.

The secret to my continuing good health into what many people might consider extreme old age is, I believe, mainly down to my rigid daily exercise routine. I started doing exercise in earnest about 40 years ago to help me give up smoking and have continued ever since. When people ask whether I enjoy it I have to answer no, not really. I am by no means a natural athlete and hated gym at school, added to which I am basically lazy. So it is not easy but it has become such an unbreakable discipline that I feel I shall instantly turn into a wobbly old slob if I miss even a day.

My regime includes about 40 minutes on my home exercise bike, high impact interval training (HIIT) and weightlifting at my local gym, plus the gentler routines of Pilates, yoga and tai chi. Apart from the Pilates, all these sessions are intense enough to work up a sweat and I am usually dripping by the time I get off the bike or finish the aerobics class. And even at my age, I continue to improve.

My HIIT instructor, all of 24 and therefore 55 years younger than me, has seen my fitness levels increase as he takes me through high knees, jumping jacks, burpees – horrible but satisfying (when over) - squats and mountain climbers. I can say that if you have never done an HIIT class, you have no idea how long 30 seconds lasts. But in a masochistic kind of way, I look forward to these

workouts. Or, at least, I look forward to the feeling of wellbeing when they’re over.

The benefits of regular, intense exercise have been well documented and include a certain level of protection against many chronic and age-related diseases. Around two-thirds of people in the UK are considered to be overweight and exercise can certainly help here. A woman friend lost three stone in a year by exercising with a personal trainer. I enjoy my food and would far rather exercise off excess eating than go on a nasty restrictive diet.

It may sound obvious but if you are overweight, huge extra strain is put on joints, muscles, the heart and

daily work-out

and it definitely improves mood. If I feel anxious or under stress, I can guarantee that a vigorous workout will lift my mood. It is impossible to think about anything else when performing a strenuous exercise routine and I often find that by the time the class or session is over, I have forgotten what I was worried about. At the very least, I know that 30 minutes on the treadmill at the gym, for instance, will put my problems into perspective.

the digestive system. Frequent rigorous exercise also ensures a quick throughput, meaning you get rid of waste matter fast, not allowing it to clog up and remain in the body. Wrinkles cannot be avoided whatever you do, although exercising enough to work up a sweat keeps skin supple and soft.

So how much exercise should you do to make a difference? The latest advice from the American Physical Activity Guidelines is that adults should aim for 150 minutes or 2.5 hours of moderate to intense exercise a week, which is more than it sounds. I also find that it helps to exercise with a friend. My next door neighbour is a gym bunny and we go to many classes together. Often when I meet her outside, especially in cold, snowy or rainy weather, we say to each other: ‘I really don’t want to do this; we must be mad.’ But we make the effort and come back agreeing what a good workout we have just enjoyed – or endured.

There are no guarantees of course but I am convinced that my exercise regime over the years and decades has ensured that I am not on any prescription medication whatever – I just don’t need it – and far from overburdening the health service, I have not been to see a doctor for many years. It is also more than 50 years since I was last a patient in an NHS hospital and that was to have a baby, not because I was ill.

It is also never too late to take up at least some exercise. Pilates is ideal for older, less fit people and swimming is also excellent. You may not be able to manage a highintensity workout but even the most unfit can cope with a tai chi class. And if you do sign up for a suitable class this year and keep at it, you will be very glad you did.

New to exercise? Consult a personal trainer near you at www.ukfitness.pro

I can guarantee a vigorous work-out will lift my mood

Truffling for black gold

Sasha Dorey and her Italian water hounds are hot on the trail of our very own home-grown truffles

The night before he arrived at our house, I dreamt of Tom, the truffle hunter. I had read about him a year before and plucked up the courage to ring his number.

Together we went to various little woods I thought might contain truffles. It was in the very last hazel copse, not far from the sea, that his white woolly dog dug found a truffle the size of a pea.

I was instantly hooked and in celebration we feasted on lobster soup and fresh local prawns. 15 years later, with three woolly dogs of my own, I am proud to call myself a truffle hunter.

Astonishingly, I discovered that there were truffles growing in my garden before I made my call to Tom. At that time, I had two dogsGeorge and Eric. To help train them, Tom sent me some of the dried truffles he kept in his coat pocket –something I found quite bizarre. Now I am seldom without one.

Alas, the training wasn’t successful. George, my biddable labrador, was too old and there was nothing for Eric the terrier to kill. Could I get a woolly dog for myself? I wanted a Lagotto Romagnolo Water Hound – the breed of retriever from the Romagno region of Italy, renowned for their hunting abilities.

These were extremely rare at the time but I was lucky enough to get a puppy from an unplanned litter.

Tom provided more samples. And so I could identify the most enthusiastic truffle lover, which turned out to be Flukey Sukie. I named her Dulcie after the seaweed of which I am so fond.

For Dulcie’s training, I bought fresh truffles. Finding instructions to train a dog to sniff out truffles wasn’t easy, but eventually I stumbled across a useful Italian article on the subject, thank God.

Little pieces of truffle should be wrapped in clean rags and then trussed up with string to create a

Strufion. These are distributed around the house under cushions and behind curtains while the dog is contained in another room.

Once released, the dog uses her amazing snout to sniff them out. The game then moves outdoors.

Dulcie loved it and learnt quickly. Lagotto are highly intelligent and at just three months old, as I took her into the garden for a last pee, she started to dig.

She found three truffles in ten minutes. That we had truffles in our garden was astonishing enough; that I had wanted to become a truffle hunter, not knowing this, had to be a sign. And now Dulcie was a fullyfledged truffle hound, completely ready for action.

So it was time to start hunting in earnest. I bought paper maps, downloaded soil apps, hopped in the Land Rover with treats, snacks and the dog, and set off. For hours, weeks and months, we drove around the county until I got a good feeling for potential truffle habitats.

Obviously I nearly always needed permission from landowners, but we found some good sites. I reported our adventures to Tom and started to write on his blog as ‘trufflehuntress’.

Tragically, Dulcie died aged only three. We think it was Lyme disease, though I only found one tick on her and it was hiding in her ear. Dogs and humans alike, we all need to take great care not to get bitten by

these little buggers.

I imported another dog from Italy and we collected Romina from Heathrow. She was very traumatised and my husband couldn’t touch her for three months but she was a quick learner and soon picked up where Dulcie left off.

And then came Ralf. Bred by Tom and nurtured by his son, he arrived full of confidence and playfulness. Romina, known as Minnie, adores him. And my garden, by now a truffle nursery, has made training the dogs very easy.

Over the years, I have hosted a few truffle events, which mainly revolve around cooking. Bringing out the subtle flavour of our most popular and common English truffle (tuber uncinatum or Burgundy truffle) is challenging, and simplicity is certainly the best course.

Finely grating truffle into warm, melted butter is the most delicious way to eat it, either poured over chicken, fish or - my favourite - crab.

As I live by the sea, I have ample supplies. Truffles also like to be beside the sea for the salty air and chalky cliffs.

Along the way, I have made many good friends and had only the odd contretemps. Truffles are so desirable that they can lead to deceitfulness and hunting them has become much more commonplace over the last few years. Prices can range from £700-900 per kilo and many more of us are seeking the treasure now - but as far as I’m aware no-one has yet resorted to poisoning their competitor’s dogs.

I have planted my own truffle orchard which, as yet, has only produced a few very expensive hazel nuts. But my dream remains - to have visitors see the dogs at work –and enjoy our delicious potted crab with warm truffle butter on toast.

For more information about truffles go to www.fine and wild.com

Sasha with Minnie, left, and Ralf

My beautiful (Moroccan) hotel

Along time ago my university boyfriend, a mad scientist who helped put the men on the moon, spotted an advert in Gibraltar for day trips to Tangier. And so we landed in a single-engine plane on a grassy strip surrounded by perfumed wildflowers in the legendary haunt of artists, writers and ne’er do wells - only to be stranded overnight by the famous straits fog that descends suddenly out of a clear blue sky.

The airline BOAC – yes, it was that long ago – put us penniless students up in one of the world’s most evocative hotels, the Minzah. Built in 1930 by Lord Bute, it became the postwar haunt of such largerthan-life personalities as Aristotle Onassis and Rita Hayworth.

Outside, there were lepers in the still unmade dusty streets. Inside, fountains played in the tiled courtyard and roses and agapanthus bloomed in a garden which overlooked the port on one side and the restless town on the other.

Was it then I decided hotel living was the only way to go? Space plus privacy, a bar on tap, 24- hour room service and if the roof leaks it’s not your problem. Over the years, others have come to this conclusion. Warren Beatty lived in the Beverly Wilshire in Los Angeles. Colette eked out her days in the Negresco in Nice.

Somewhere along the line, I decided to do the same but I never dreamed it would be in my own hotel.Then, three years ago, I bought two rickety adjacent houses attached to the 15th century Kasbah wall in Tangier just fifty yards from where Samuel Pepys had lived when trying to administer the rebellious town for Charles II. Pepys gave up. In the face of marauding brigands he torched the harbour and went back to his Fleet Street wenching.

What a missed opportunity, I thought. If only he’d hung on, the English could have owned the entire gateway to the Med because within 20 years they had Gibraltar on the other side. No warring tribesmen now – how difficult could it be to get my crumbling stones, some dating back to the 13th century, into shape? After all, old buildings were my passion. I live in one in London. I’d been a councillor for the West End for some twenty years, specialising in planning. In fact, Tangier reminded me so much of my London stomping ground I had already nicknamed it Soho-on-Sea.

And so I pictured contented guests eating méchoui lamb in my rooftop restaurant overlooking Spain to the sound of Gnaoui music, carousing in my vaulted bar downstairs, unwinding in my hammam, drinking mint tea in my cafe overlooking the fishing port, or simply relaxing in their suites to the whir of colonial fans.

To oversee this dream, I rented an apartment with a sea view near the French consulate and engaged an architect recommended by one of the king’s relatives and a builder who said he knew all about the Kasbah. Soon I was asked to join a commission advising on the refurbishing of the old town. I gave a speech in front of the Wali - the local governor - and forty luminaries about my intentions. ‘If you bring me tourists,’ said the Wali. ‘I will give you permission tomorrow to make your houses into a hotel. What will you call it?’ ‘Al Zaytouna,’ I said on the spur of the moment, after the square next door. It means the olive tree. ‘Oh that’s a blessed name, ‘said the Wali. ‘This is a blessed enterprise. It will be very successful.’

That was in pre-Covid days. No sooner was the ink dry on the sale than Morocco was shut down, the entire town hall got Covid and no-one was allowed to leave their

When Glenys Roberts decided to build a hotel in Tangier, she soon learned that there’s no word for urgent in Arabic

The medina: X marks the hotel spot

How difficult could it be to get my 13th-century stones into shape?

house except to buy provisions. I daydreamed a lot during those early days alone with my single electric burner and Sky TV. I chose tiles and furniture from the internet, found Holler prints in the British Museum from Pepys’s time to hang in the foyer, reconfigured the doors and windows and decorated the seven suites individually, naming them after far flung desert cities. I applied for planning permission. Then it started raining.

When it rains in Tangier it’s not just a light trickle. You may think of it as a hot summer place, but that’s in summer. Now seagulls were swimming on my patio where previously the lavender had bloomed and, as for the hotel, the cracks in the mud walls surrounding the courtyard were beginning to yawn. I went to see the Caid, the functionary in charge of the Kasbah. ‘You need the Wali,’ he said. ‘But I have his permission.’ ‘You need it in writing.’

You have to give the Moroccans credit for holding their nerve. ‘If the cracks are not vertical or horizontal all will be OK. Inshallah,’ said the Wali’s right hand man. By now, the water was coming up through the floor. ‘What shall we do?’ I asked the architect. ‘We can’t do anything without planning permission,’ he said. ‘It’s a listed building.’ I sent pictures to the town hall begging for permission. ‘Ah,’ they said, ‘yes, you must have it immediately.’ But nothing happened. I wrote to the British Embassy in Rabat. The Moroccans admired the ambassador’s wafer thin embossed blue paper but didn’t budge. ‘Is this a question of money?’ I asked the architect. ‘Madame,’ he replied, ‘I am a professional with a reputation.’

And so I muddled through the winter sustained by Tahir Shah’s wonderfully funny book The Caliphs House. A British author with Afghani antecedents, he had renovated a wreck in Casablanca complete with live-in djinns ready to scupper the project. I only had cats and cockroaches. No sooner did the elusive permission arrive than the builder announced my houses had no foundations and would have to be rebuilt from scratch.

His French, the Moroccan lingua Franca, was not good at the best of times. My Arabic did not stretch to RSJs. And so we haggled by Google translate. And then he tore the walls

down. Where previously I had had a tired if habitable property, I now had a hole in the ground.

The architect watched nervously as the largely African workforce wielded their masonry hammers.

‘This is tricky,’ said the architect. ‘One wrong blow and the whole neighbourhood will collapse.’ Indeed a similar old house in the medina,

where the buildings piggyback on each other like Brazilian favelas, had done just that. ‘The town is committed to reinforcing them,’ the Caid reassured me when I alerted him to a similar at risk property leaning perilously over my hammam. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but when?’

Stopping on my way home for a Syrian takeaway, I bumped into a dashing TV presenter fluent in four languages. ‘Sometimes I think there is no word for urgent in the local Arabic,’ I confided. He smiled. ‘What is the word for urgent?’ I asked. ‘There is none,’ he replied.

Pretty soon I was banned from the site. All the workmen had Covid they said. So it would be dangerous for me to attend. Once vaccinated and suitably masked, I was soon back on site, walking through streets that were now strangely unfamiliar. The Moroccans used the lockdown to embellish Tangier. New cedar blinds for the shopkeepers, new cobblestones in the medina, new street signs and playgrounds for the kids, a state of the art cancer hospital, and new cinemas where the films came out before they did in London. All sprung from nowhere. They had built a 21st which bore no resemblance to the dusty piece remembered from my student years.

My hole in the ground suddenly started to look like, if not yet an investment at least

My property has now been rebuilt with foundations that could support the Empire State Building, according to my expat-American builder neighbour. But wait, the little house that clings to my hammam is still hanging by a fingernail.

So will we open this year? My optimistic hotel manager assures me we will. ‘And then I will do everything for you, Madame Glenys. You will do nothing but sit on the terrace with a gin and tonic in one hand and a leopard on a diamond chain in the other. And people will come from all over the world to see this crazy English woman.’

Al Zaytouna will open in summer 2023 - inshallah

A work in progress: the Kasbah walls in various stages of renovation. Inset: Glenys Roberts

The Will to live - and die

Geriatric doctor David Jarrett’s living statement and will show you how to get the best care – and enjoy your last years

Having witnessed over many decades the multitude of sufferings and indignities nature, aided and abetted by modern medicine, can heap upon the elderly, I had a stab at my own living statement and living will.

These are my first attempts at expressing my wishes for the future, should I become mentally incapable of deciding things for myself).

The Living Statement of David Jarrett

I David Jarrett of Weary Cottage, Exhausted Lane, Knackeredton, do declare that I am of sound mind and hereby state my preferences for care if I become physically and/or mentally incapable of caring for myself.

I do not want much fuss made of me in any way and do not expect or want my children’s or grandchildren’s lives to be burdened with my care in any significant way. Their lives now take precedence over my declining life.

I would like to remain in my own home for as long as possible but if I need institutional care, then nothing should be done to unduly prolong that care (see my living will).

I do not take sugar in tea or coffee. I have always enjoyed the grain and the grape and would like this to continue until I die, whatever the medical advice to the contrary. I enjoy music and would prefer a selection from my favourite CDs: 1970s prog rock usually hits the mark. These are the albums and a few favourite songs, I have listened to all my life and feel it unlikely that I will ever tire of:

Close to the Edge, Yes; Trout Mask Replica, Captain Beefheart

Early Roxy Music;Astral Weeks, Van Morrison Soft Machine: Third and Seven

In Praise of Learning and ‘Oslo’ (on side 3 of Concerts) Henry Cow

Three Little Feelings, Miles Davis

Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue to calm me down and The Prodigy’s Fat of the Land to wake me up.

I am also partial to English songs of the Peter Warlock variety.

How much life might I be depriving myself of? A year or two? A few months? That is in the lap of the gods. Many human perceptions such as the passage of time can be measured accurately – say, using a clock. There is a hypothesis in psychophysics – Weber’s Law –which explains that what we can perceive as a change in a stimulus is proportional to the scale of the original stimulus.

So, as an example, if we have a 50g weight in one hand and a 60g weight in the other, we are able to tell which is the heaviest. But if we try the same test with 200g and 210g weights, sensing a definite difference is not possible.

We can hear a whisper in a quiet

There are certain films I love and am happy to watch again and again. So if I need distraction, put on The Godfather or The Godfather Part II, any film by David Lynch but particularly Blue Velvet or Mulholland Drive, Providence by Alain Resnais or Monty Python’s Life of Brian. If I cannot engage with these films, you can conclude that I am severely demented (see Living Will).

I eat almost anything but on high days and holidays I love an oyster or two and a glass (or two) of cold Chablis would not go amiss. I would like on occasions to see the sea and feel the wind and spray. Don’t worry if I get cold. That’s part of the experience.

Please do not have a reproduction of Constable’s The Hay Wain hanging in my room. His oil sketches are sublime but his big paintings are tedious. Giorgio de Chirico’s Mystery and Melancholy of a Street or Salvador Dali’s Basket of Bread – Rather Death Than Shame, or any Edward Hopper nocturnal city picture, except Nighthawks, would do nicely.

When I die, I would like to be cremated. The music for the service should be The Plains of Waterloo by Eddie and Finbar Furey, A Rainy Night in Soho by the Pogues and Angel Band by the Stanley Brothers and, as my coffin (cheap cardboard, please) is whisked away, Solemn Music by Henry Cow with A Soft Day by Charles Villiers Stanford, sung by Kathleen Ferrier, as family and friends leave.

Charity donations should be for something to do with animals but if people want to give to a human charity, my choice would be Faith to Faithless, which supports those giving up religion for atheism.

The catering arrangements should be sufficiently generous that everyone agrees it was ‘a good send-off’.

My ashes should be divided, with half sprinkled on the sea at Hayling Island and the other half scattered around the streets of Soho.

With every passing year, birthdays seem to come and go with terrifying rapidity

Still jumping: Jagger defies the years

room as it is a pronounced sound compared to silence, but we cannot hear the same whisper in a crowded room with a lot of background noise.

Weber’s law also applies to our perception of the passage of longer periods of time. When we were children, the year between one Christmas and the next seemed an eon. And it was.

The difference between being five-years-old and six is one fifth, or 20 per cent, of the life lived so far.

But the difference between being 80 and 81 is one eightieth of your life – just over one per cent. That is why we feel, with every passing year, that birthdays seem to come and go with terrifying rapidity.

So the time we gain in old age from interventions and medicine’s unrelenting pursuit of prolonging life is perceived as shorter by us than it seems to the younger generations of our family. The resources needed to sustain this life are the same, whatever the age. The flame of life burns bright

in youth. Sadly, in our dotage, it is often but a feeble spluttering flame that can be extinguished by the merest breath of wind.

So, any lost few days, weeks or months, or even years, in extreme old age would have flown by like the weaver’s shuttle.

It’s the law of diminishing returns again. A huge input for little discernible gain. For most of us, those extra months and years spent immobile, in pain, deaf, blind and disorientated are not going to be the most treasured of one’s life.

Extracted from 33 Meditations on Death by David Jarrett (Black Swan, £9.99)

For advice on how to make Living Statments and Living Wills, go to the Age UK website - www.ageuk.org.uk

The Living Will of David Jarrett

I, David Jarrett of Crumble House, Wizened Road, Decrepit-on-Seam being of sound mind, hereby declare my wishes in case I become mentally and/or physically infirm.

I have enjoyed at least sixty years of healthy life, for which I am grateful. I have always believed life is for living. The presence of life itself without the mental or physical capacity to enjoy or participate in the world has no appeal to me. I do not believe suffering has meaning or gives meaning to life. To that end, I will outline how I want the final period of my life to be managed for my own best interest and the interests of my loved ones.

If I develop dementia, I do not want any life-saving treatments or primary or secondary preventative medicines such as blood-pressure treatments, cholesterol-lowering medications or disease-modifying drugs for heart failure, diabetes or any other common ailments of old age.

I do not want influenza vaccinations or pneumonia-protecting inoculations. If I develop pneumonia, I do not want antibiotics but would want symptom-controlling medications such as oxygen and opiates. If I have a heart attack or a stroke, I do not want interventional treatment, operations or life-prolonging medications.

If I am unable to swallow, I do not want intravenous, nasogastric or other methods of feeding and hydration. Distressing symptoms should be managed as for palliation. Non-life-threatening infections such as skin and bladder infections can be treated to relieve any distress.

Cancer treatments should focus on reducing suffering rather than prolongation of life. I am at this time, when sound of mind, willing to accept one course of radiotherapy and one standard course of chemotherapy but if, or when, the cancer returns, then I want no secondline chemotherapy or radiotherapy. I certainly do not want bone marrow transplants or immunotherapy.

When the end is in sight, I want morphine in generous doses. I do not want doctors or nurses hounded if I choke on some food or have a pulmonary embolus in my last days.

We are all part of the complex web of nature and I, for one, am consoled by the fact that when I’m gone, the universe will grind on indifferent to my bit part in its immense and meaningless pageant.

Signed………………..Date……………….

Witnessed by……………………………Date……………………………

I would like, on occasions, to see the sea and feel the wind and the spray

Never too late for HRT

Carla McKay on the astonishing advances in hormone therapy

Old Age ain’t no place for sissies, as Bette Davis said It certainly ain’t for women. No sooner are the demanding child-bearing years over, than the mighty menopause comes along to whisk the wind out of your sails.

Literally. Say goodbye to your friendly hormones oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone (yes, women have that too) and say hello to what can be all the debilitating and long-term consequences of not having those hormones – ranging from symptoms like hot flushes and night sweats, to anxiety, depression, brain fog, poor memory, lack of energy and lack of libido.

All this would have been of no concern to the average new-born girl in 1841 – not expected to see her 43rd birthday. But it is of immense concern to women now, who still have a third or even half a life ahead of them post-menopause.

But I bring glad tidings! There is hope for us oldies who have been suffering in silence. While on holiday recently with some women friends, I was complaining about feelings of low mood and self-esteem, lack of energy and the way in which my joie de vivre seemed to be seeping away with every passing year. I was astonished when two of them revealed that they too had suffered similar symptoms but since taking HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) had felt much better.

But I’m far too old (at 71) to take HRT, I wailed. No, you’re not, they chorused. And so I discovered women’s medicine has moved on from the days when I was menopausal. It was possible to find enlightened doctors who would not only prescribe HRT for postmenopausal women but positively encouraged it.

However, it is still not nearly enough widely known. The understanding of women’s hormonal health is a woefully underfunded and under researched area of health, in spite of the fact that the greater part of an ageing society will primarily comprise women.

The medical treatment and care of post-menopausal women in the

past have been seriously inadequate but there are signs that progress is being made at last.

HRT has always been controversial, largely due to the perceived breast cancer risk. However, recent research suggests the risk is now minimal; partly because HRT now uses regulated body identical hormones, as opposed to the synthetic ones used in my day; partly because we now know that

the world, helps women to make an informed choice about HRT. It was born out of her frustration with women finding it difficult to access impartial information and treatment and being put off HRT through cancer scare headlines.

‘Alarm is a natural reaction when you hear the words ‘breast cancer’ in the same sentence as HRT,’ she says, ‘and my fear is that the headlines, rather than the drugs themselves, will impact negatively on women’s health’.

HRT is not just about breast cancer risk. Numerous studies have shown that women who take HRT have a lower risk of heart disease, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, type 2 diabetes, depression, bowel cancer and dementia.

All these diseases increase in women who have gone through the menopause and have low hormone levels in their bodies. Women are seven times more likely to die from heart disease than breast cancer.

Dr Newson says, ‘The women I see at my clinic are constantly thanking me for “giving their lives back” after starting treatment. I have seen so many women who have been suicidal due to menopause whose depression has lifted after hormonal balance is restored.’

modifiable lifestyle factors, such as obesity, lack of exercise and smoking – not combined HRT – are the real risks for breast cancer.

A 2022 paper from the International Menopause Society says there is an urgent need for risk levels to be put in context and considered together with other factors: ‘Preventing a woman from the sound benefits of a properly instituted hormonal medication, just for the fear of rare side effects, is not satisfactory medicine.’

Leading GP and menopause specialist Dr Louise Newson is one of the loudest voices in this country to champion the benefits of HRT for women of any age and at any point in their lives. Her app, Balance, the largest dedicated menopause app in

One of her chief concerns is that healthcare professionals still have no mandatory menopause training and often misdiagnose patients: ‘They need to be given more confidence in prescribing body identical HRT which, for the large majority of women, is safe, effective and also cost-effective to the NHS and the economy from wasted referrals. We must empower women with the right information so that they can make the right choices.’

As she points out, the NICE (National institute for Health and Care Excellence) guidelines are clear that women can continue to take HRT as long as the benefits outweigh the risks.

For most healthy women, this is for ever.

For more information go to www.balance-menopause.com

Bette Davis cushions the blows of old age

My joie de vivre was seeping away with every passing year

Let’s spend our lives together

Hephzibah Anderson finds out about co-housing – where young and old alike live under the same roof

By the time Luli Harvey reached her 70s, her entire adult life had been spent in London. It was where she’d worked hard, married – and divorced –twice, and raised her three children, happily forging a rich, busy existence. Even so, the countryside called to her.

It’s a fantasy familiar to many of course, nourished by Escape to the Country and an endless list of books stretching back to H E Bates’s 50s fiction The Darling Buds of May and beyond. The difference was that Harvey made the dream a reality –and not just as a septuagenarian, but single-handedly and during Covid lockdowns.

Its pursuit forced her to focus on a question that too many of her peers ignore until it’s too late, she says: how to facilitate convivial, dignified living in older age.

The solution she hit upon is one that ought to have policy-makers as well as individuals sit up and listen.

Soon to turn 77, Harvey is a spry figure. Her flair for brightly patterned knitwear jives with the flowers and paintings in the new home she’s made in a one-bedroom, ground-floor flat. There’s also an airy conservatory with views of what she simply but feelingly calls ‘this’ –trees, a wintry sky and small birds flocking round a feeder.

Harvey still works part-time as a counsellor and weighs her words carefully, yet she doesn’t hesitate to admit that her move to the country required some bravery. Indeed, she might never have found the courage, she believes, were it not for the sudden availability of a hard-tocome-by property in a co-housing community in the rural south-east.

Community is the thread that runs throughout Harvey’s description of how she ultimately made the leap – a tale of pluck and luck, in which yearning and realism play equal parts. Community, she

knew, would be vital in helping her settle in a new home – vital, too, in ensuring that her new life in the country would be sustainable as she aged and her needs evolved.

More than a decade earlier, her Brixton neighbours had relocated to the same rural co-housing estate.

Harvey kept in touch and became a frequent visitor at monthly volunteer days, when residents would meet to tackle the upkeep of the grounds. Having made her living as a community education worker, she found a set-up that felt like home the moment she set foot there.

But could she really leave behind the roomy Victorian house where her children had grown up and the neighbourhood she’d helped flourish as a volunteer engaged in local politics as well as conservation?

There wasn’t time to dwell on it. She was told that if she wanted the flat, she had to bid that day. And so she did, eventually allowing herself to be driven up to the asking price.

Then came the reality of downsizing. She had four storeys to tackle, including five bedrooms, an attic and a basement – all chockful of belongings amassed over decades by her family of hoarders. With the charity shops and recycling centres

closed, Harvey took to leaving things out on the street when the weather was dry and using websites like Freecycle – again, drawing on the community around her.

There were nevertheless moments when she hoped it would all fall through. ‘It was just so frightening,’ she recalls. Instead, the barriers tumbled one by one, and finally, on a summer’s day in 2020, mask-wearing removal men pitched up to load the fraction of her worldly goods that remained into a van. Arriving in the countryside, the welcome she received included a steady supply of homegrown produce left on her doorstep.

Harvey is a passionate advocate for harnessing personal agency. It’s her view that, in general, people don’t think seriously and soon enough about their later-life plans.

It’s vital, Harvey insists, to reach decisions while you still have the physical and financial capacity. ‘You have to adapt – adapt now’, she now urges those as young as 50.

Harvey knew she didn’t want a purpose-built retirement village. Not only would it feel like a ghetto, but because most folk relocate to them only in their later years, ‘It means you’re a bunch of old crocs trying to help each other but you’re buying in the main support. No, no – I don’t want that.’

For those, like Harvey, looking to relocate to a community in which they’ll have chance to age in place supported by friends and neighbours, co-housing is proving an increasingly appealing alternative.

The first thing to note is that, while co-housing living arrangements do entail an element of communality, they are not communes. Despite – or perhaps because of – living through the Sixties, those don’t appeal to Harvey.

Instead, co-housing seeks to strike a balance between autonomy and collective decision-making,

Luli Harvey: radiant with purpose

privacy and shared experience. Like other practical innovations including adjustable wrenches and flatpack furniture, co-housing turns out to be a Scandinavian import, originating in Denmark in the 1960s.

Then, as now, it provided residents with their own living quarters (complete with kitchens) along with shared spaces that might include a dining area or laundry facilities, gardens or a car-share scheme. Independent incomes and private lives coexist with the expectation that residents will pull together to collectively manage those communal spaces and facilities, and there are opportunities to gather for meals, meetings and activities.

The freehold of a co-housing site will usually be held by a non-profit company, whose shareholders are the residents themselves. A service charge covers the upkeep of common areas and management decisions are reached in a non-hierarchical way, with all residents given an equal say.

Many co-housing developments are intergenerational but some are dedicated to senior residents. In the Netherlands, where co-housing is incorporated into national housing policies, there are hundreds that cater solely for oldies. In the UK, where co-housing’s roots stretch back only to the 1990s, New Ground, a community dedicated specifically to women over 50, opened in London’s High Barnet in 2017.

While it’s not free of day-to-day challenges – neighbours can desire differing levels of privacy. And just

because consensus decision-making is favoured, that doesn’t mean things don’t get heated, claims for the benefits of co-housing are high.

Studies have shown that by fostering mutual aid, connectedness and social participation, it can do plenty to enhance physical and mental health, as well as general quality of life.

One surprise for Harvey has been just how long the list of communal chores is – a sizeable rural acreage means there’s always something that needs doing.

Yet there’s no note of weariness in her voice – in fact, she seems positively radiant with purpose.

‘What you put in, you get out threefold. I think there is a longing in all of us to be useful but if you’re stuck in a box, you just feel like a burden,’ she says.

Above all, collaborative living arrangements provide a ready-made community of supportive, likeminded neighbours, something that’s especially valuable in later life. They can even stave off the need for more formalised care.

‘It’s really not good for an older person to be left stranded,’ Harvey notes, pointing to mounting evidence of a link between loneliness and dementia.

In Harvey’s community, as in most other co-housing set-ups, there is a weekly potluck supper for anyone who fancies eating with their neighbours. Someone will always be around to help out with babysitting or to offer a lift.

Most residents also join a task force group devoted to a particular aspect of the estate’s running. And there’s a monthly meeting to reach decisions about expenditure.

Harvey is the joint eldest member of her community. While her neighbours pursue a wide range of careers, families with children make up the vast majority of the association’s households. Far from making her feel like a burden-inwaiting, however, she says they welcome the presence of elders.

Despite their proven social advantages, it remains tough for such endeavours to come to fruition.

There are things that the government could do to make planning applications quicker and easier, Harvey notes. ‘It’s in their interests. People will support each other taking the pressure off the NHS and social services, but it’s a real uphill struggle.

Attention, kindness, care – the need for these qualities is great.

How much better for everyone if they can flow from friendships and community.

For further information, go to www.cohousing.org.uk

Rubbing shoulders: three generations of the Trotter family co-habit in Only Fools and Horses

People don’t think seriously – or soon enough – about their later life plans

I started a literary festival

How Anne de Courcy brought Bibury to book

It all began at a garden party on a summer evening in 2018. Guests were strolling over the lawns or chatting in groups when I spotted my friend Victoria Summerley sitting behind a pile of her books.

Victoria runs Bibury’s Gardening Club and our host had rightly thought her beautiful books on Cotswold gardens would embellish the evening.

I think both of us may have had the idea, but it was certainly Victoria who said, ‘Why don’t we have a Literary Festival here in Bibury?’ In the slanting sunshine, with the sound of classical music drifting softly from some far corner and a glass of champagne in our hands, anything seemed possible.

Days later, we met to hash out the first steps for a 2019 festival. The first essential was to get Bibury’s vicar, Tim HastieSmith, involved. Apart from his sharp intelligence, vast network of friends and unrivalled gift for getting people to help, Bibury church was the obvious venue.

This beautiful building, dating back to Norman times, is the only place in the village large enough for the number we hoped would come.

Like most public buildings, it has public liability insurance, which meant one expense we didn’t have to think about.

Above all, we agreed, our festival had to be fun – for the writers, for the audience and for us. It would be biennial, to keep people’s interest up and we needed a committee.

This had to be as small as possible - the larger a committee, the more likely it is to include professional naysayers and those who want to hear their own voice.

We planned on five members –an odd number because that avoids deadlock. Our immediate choice was Jackie Colburn, former actress and a living exemplar of the maxim ‘If you want to get things done, ask a busy person’.

We soon co-opted Michelle Holt, an expert publicist, who set up a website for us and designed and

organised posters and leaflets.

Monthly committee meetings were held in the sitting room of my cottage in the next village, over glasses of wine and quails’ eggs – a particular favourite of the vicar’s.

Everything was done on a shoestring and through generous donors – our garden party hosts, Sir Christopher and Lady Evans, gave us £600, matched, by the Bibury Parish Council. This covered the £25 cost of the website, the £78 bill for the printing and the hiring of Portaloos for £250.

The WI provided wonderful cakes, hot soup and Ploughman’s lunches for our visitors. Food and

answer questions from the visitors, and give directions.

Mike Pini, set up the projector and sound system. Another great thing about villages is that if you don’t know the right expert, someone can always tell you someone who does.

As for the authors themselves, the most important thing, we said that although we couldn’t afford to pay them, we would do our best to see they had a good time. On the last evening, my son gave a splendid writers’ dinner party; plenty of people wanted to have them to stay Getting publicity for our festival was key. We left flyers in nearby pubs, hotels, and book stores and contacted local media. Tickets began to sell steadily.

As Festival Day drew nearer, there was the inevitable last-minute flurry of nerves and difficulties.

One writer cancelled because of illness. Another said she suffered so badly from stage fright that she had to lie down before her ‘turn’ and we had to improvise a makeshift bed.

After dreaming all night that no one would turn up, I drove nervously to Bibury on the day to see people pouring in.

Cake and sales: for a fine book festival

drink for the writers in their Green Room (a small room with nearby loo above Bibury school, forty yards from the church) cost £50, in addition to the quiches and salads we provided.

Through Tim, we were given wine for the drinks party we planned for the audience at the end of the day. Although you need a licence to sell alcohol, it is perfectly legal to offer a free glass of wine with a ticket.

We kept the cost of tickets low£35 for the whole day – so that the audience would have more money to spend on books. Volunteers flocked to help us. In any British village, there is a vast reservoir of goodwill and, usually, people with a bit of spare time on their hands who enjoy helping others.

These wonderful people helped serve lunch, look after authors,

There was a proud Michael Howard watching his wife Sandra, as she described her glittering Hollywood life. Angela Levin, in a foretaste of Megxit, told us how Prince Harry had said to her, ‘I don’t think anyone would choose to be born a prince.’ Pretty crimewriter Jane Corry held everyone spellbound with her description of life as a writer-in-residence at one of HM’s prisons for serious offenders: ‘After that first day, I knew never to wear a skirt again.’

Was it all worth it? Absolutely – if only for the number of people who came up to us afterwards, asking, ‘When is the next one?’

The pandemic put a a stop to it. We relaunched again last year and – in case you are asking – our next will be in spring 2024.

For more information, go to www.biburyfestivals.com

Are you suffering from optical delusions?

Life being what it is – a temporary experience –insightful readers will be familiar with the question that arises when visiting a doctor. ‘Is this it?’

And anyone who has sat in the waiting room for a first visit to the ophthalmologist will know the inner voice which asks, ‘How am I going to face the possibility of going blind?’

Both anxieties, while reasonable, tend to exaggerate the likelihood of catastrophe. When it comes to eyes, the exaggeration is greater. As far as we know, everybody, in the end, gets an interview with St Peter, but very, very few people become blind, at least in the sense that the word is generally understood.

The distinction between properly blind (unable to see) and technically blind is worth making. The difference between them is great, and the scope for unnecessary worry and distress equally great.

Blind means blind. It means you cannot see – the lights have gone out. But the threshold for eligibility for registration as a person with severe sight impairment is lower –and looser - than you might imagine.

The great majority of people registered as blind can see. Their sight may be blunt and their field of vision restricted, but they can see. The lights are still on.

Having satisfied ourselves that we are unlikely to become totally blind, let’s consider what eye trouble we are actually likely to develop. What are the principal disorders? Why do we get them? How shall we experience them? What is to be done?

Cataracts

The cataract is as good a place to start as any.

If you haven’t already been told you’ve got one – or even two – it is only a matter of time before you will.

In the meantime, plenty of your friends and relations will already be on a waiting list, or have had their

cataract ‘done’. If you define a good operation as a favourable benefit:risk ratio, cataract surgery is the best operation in the history of medicine.

Cataract is the name given to the lens in your eye when it has become less than perfectly clear. ‘Cataract’ because of the River Nile, where, over time, the water loses its youthful clarity, foaming white over six waterfalls or cataracts.

And the thing in your eye was originally called a cataract because it looked white – as densely opaque as Nile cataracts. Modern microsurgical techniques have changed all that, and now any lens that is less than absolutely clear can be operated upon – but it is still called a cataract.

The processes by which the lens may lose its youthful transparency and optical perfection are intriguing and varied. They share the common feature of accumulating disorganisation of cells and proteins.

Why does the lens lose its transparency? More interestingly, how does it? The lens is a highly organised body of accumulating cells, permitting light rays to be cleanly transmitted, to focus a clear image at the back of the eye.

Associated conditions, including diabetes and steroid treatment, inflammation, and trauma, may

contribute to the process.

But the end result is the same: a lens which can no longer focus a clear image for the light receptors in the retina, at the back of the eye, to convert into nerve signals to send to the visual brain.

The effect of cataract on your vision is a gradual reduction in clarity. It is often associated with glare or dazzle in the face of oncoming car headlights.

There is also an unnoticed progressive reduction in transmission of short-wavelength (green and blue) light, due to filtering of these rays by the developing cataract. The instant restoration, and intensity, of these colours, when the cataract has been removed, is commonly a subject of happy celebration.

Cataract surgery takes 20 minutes, give or take. You are wide awake, the eye is magically numbed, and the lens with the cataract is replaced with a plastic one (intraocular lens or IOL) of appropriate focussing power.

The eye’s optical geometry is measured to calculate the right power of IOL to implant. It also provides a useful opportunity to correct pre-existing long or shortsightedness by adding the power of previously worn glasses.

Some surgeons offer to cure presbyopia (the need for glasses to see close up) and astigmatism (aspheric focal error) while dealing with your cataract, by implanting a non-standard multifocal, accommodating, or toric IOL. These options are generally available only in the private sector at an often high, additional cost.

No surgery comes with a guarantee, and there are risks that a cataract operation may not go according to plan. If things go badly wrong, the operated eye may lose sight completely.

There can be serious surgical

Ophthalmic surgeon Nicholas Evans shines a light on three common eye conditions and what can be done about them

Visionary: the earliest known depiction of spectacles, Germany, 1403

complications. The eye can develop an infection. In less severe cases, you may still see, though less well than you had hoped. While low, the risk of a suboptimal outcome is not negligible.

The benefit side of the risk:benefit equation depends on the magnitude of your existing visual problem. You don’t have to have your cataract removed. Opt for surgery when you estimate the visual trouble you are currently experiencing is great enough that the risks of surgery are outweighed by the potential benefit.

Age-related macular degeneration

Just as the performance and organisation of the lens fibres deteriorate over time, giving rise to cataract, the performance of cells in the retina may deteriorate after many years of faithful service.

These cells – rod and cone receptors, and their close relations the bipolar and ganglion cells –receive light rays and process the optical image into a pattern of nerve impulses. These are conveyed to the occipital cortex of the brain, where the visual experience is produced.

Structural and functional deterioration occurs particularly in the macula, the central zone of the retina, where the cells are most hard-working. AMD causes progressive loss of central visual definition, and with it the frequent, though unwarranted fear of impending blindness.

AMD does cause difficulty with tasks that require sharp central vision (‘acuity’), such as reading print and car numberplates, and recognising faces. But it always spares peripheral vision – that element of the visual experience we

use to orientate and navigate our way through life.

People developing AMD are sometimes told they are blind, or will become blind. Their dismay is understandable but misplaced. In reality, they will never become blind, but will always retain the peripheral vision required for getting around, and for independent living.

AMD is classified as “dry” and “wet” (neovascular). Dry AMD is the commoner one. It describes a general wearing-out of the macular cells and their metabolic support. It is not catastrophic, but causes a gradually progressive blurring of central vision over a period of years.

No treatment usefully reverses the process. Various dietary vitamin and mineral supplements are often suggested though none is of any convincing value.

Wet AMD describes the less common condition, in which capillaries beneath the retina leak and bleed. The consequence can be a deeper, more rapid impairment of central vision. But injections of ingenious antibody-based agents can stabilise, and sometimes reverse, the process. The treatment may need a number of repeat injections and imaging to assess the response.

Glaucoma

Glaucoma isn’t a single disease. It is the name given to a number of otherwise unrelated conditions.

They each have three common features: raised intraocular pressure

(IOP), loss of retinal nerve fibres serving the visual periphery, and a corresponding reduction in the field of vision (without compromising central vision: the converse of AMD).

The glaucoma most people get, or are told they have, is chronic (which means it is not here-and-gone) open-angle glaucoma. It doesn’t hurt, and generally people seem not to have noticed its effect by the time they are diagnosed.

It is believed that high pressure in the eye damages retinal nerve fibres, and that treatment to reduce the pressure helps to preserve the peripheral field. That is the theory but, as there are a number of assumptions and many unknowns, the truth may be more complicated.

Treatments for chronic open angle glaucoma include drops, surgery and laser treatment. Like all treatments, each has its benefits and risks. Treatment with drops for glaucoma generally reduces intraocular pressure moderately well, but not always sufficiently.

The drops often cause inflammation as a side effect. Because they need to be used in the long term, this can be a serious ongoing problem.

Around 70% of operations for glaucoma are successful, producing a once-and-for-all solution by permanently reducing IOP. Some surgeons augment this surgery by adding agents intended to inhibit scarring. This may increase the success rate, but adds an additional risk of complications.

Finally, laser treatment (argon or selective laser trabeculoplasty –ALT or SLT) is sometimes used either instead of, or to supplement, treatment with drops

If your vision becomes problematic, you first have to discover whether you need a change of glasses or have a disorder that needs treatment. Visit a reputable high street optometrist (aka optician) who is trained to recognise eye disease – free for the over 60s.

If there’s a condition, you’ll be referred to an ophthalmologist (aka eye doctor). This specialist surgeon will diagnose and treat the condition, either medically or surgically, on the NHS or privately.

For further information, go to www.nhs.uk and search eye care

It’s good sight from him: The Two Ronnies, proud spectacle-wearers

Very few people become blind, at least in the way the word is understood

Just who do you think you are – royalty?

Biographer Jane Ridley on how to trace your family history

Family history research used to be a matter of people in woolly hats and anoraks looking for tombstones.

Today, genealogy is cool. The TV series Who Do You think You Are?, which reveals the forbears of celebrities and their secrets, regularly attracts 6 million viewers.

The boom in family history research is one of the unexpected consequences of the internet revolution. The digitisation of so many records which until recently were inaccessible or unknown has prompted a new and exciting way of engaging with the past.

Family history uses computer skills which appeal to younger people. A new profession of skilled family historians has emerged.

I teach a course in biography at Buckingham University, and many of my students join because they want to research their family history.

Thanks to sites such as Ancestry, the world’s largest genealogy website, you can build your family tree, using birth and death certificates and many other records.

The census enables you to see where your ancestors lived and how many people there were in the house. Passenger lists allow researchers to track long journeys across the world. Documents such as wills yield unexpected secrets. Military records from the First and Second World Wars are also available online.

One of the richest sources for researching family history is old newspapers. The British Newspaper Archive is a massive database of newspapers, local and metropolitan.

Using this resource, it’s possible to excavate people in your family and trace their life history – people who sometimes weren’t even known to exist before. Some of these sources are available from local libraries –the digitised Times, for example, an indispensable resource, is available through your local library.

The family historian dreams of finding a suitcase in the attic packed

with old letters. Holograph letters from the Victorian period down to the middle of the last century are one of the greatest sources.

All too often, family letters are thrown out, condemned as clutter when people move house.

There is one golden rule – don’t separate the letters from the envelopes. The envelopes are date-stamped, and if the letters are dated just by the day of the week, as they often are, the chronology can only be established from postmarks.

Don’t forget to visit the places you are researching. Sometimes you might be lucky enough to gain access to the house where your subjects lived. That really does help you to imagine their world. Old photos and albums are also valuable here.

For family history researchers today or in the future, the problem will be the absence of paper documents. People don’t write letters for the post any more, but instead send emails which are ephemeral. In place of the letter, the interview has become a crucial source for family historians. It’s easy to record an interview with an iPhone, but transcribing the interview is a lengthy and rather tedious business. You should do it as

soon as you can, when the interview is still fresh in your mind.

Doing the research is one thing; using it to write a narrative or perhaps a book uses quite another set of skills. First, read around the research, and put it into a historical context. Because family history research takes you back to the primary sources, it’s easy to lose sight of the books and journals that are relevant to your subject.

I ask my students to write a bibliography listing the archives and also the secondary sources - the printed material and material on the web. Once they have done this, they write a research proposal, reviewing the literature on the subject, showing where their proposal fits in.

These exercises are designed to make them think hard about the story of their research.

The first step is to put together a chronology. Sometimes this is enough – if you are writing about someone who has never been written about before, the aim might be simply to trace their life story.

But the best family histories use a wide range of books and documents to assemble a coherent narrative of their subject. The advice here is start writing as soon as you have some sense of what the story is about –don’t hide behind your research.

Writing is a way of thinking, and once you start the writing process, you will be surprised how much your idea about the story changes.

One final cautionary note for the family historian. Digging up old quarrels or disinterring buried secrets can have a devastating effect for other members of the family.

It isn’t easy to predict how they will react, but you need to think of all the possibilities.

Sometimes it’s simply not worth risking a family quarrel.

Jane Ridley’s latest book is George V: Never A Dull Moment (Chatto, £30)

Explore your family tree online at www.ancestry.co.uk Father of us all? William the Conqueror

Everyone’s a winner at Parkrun

Richard Askwith salutes the octogenarians (and over) still embracing the five-kilometre challenge with gusto

It’s an overcast Saturday morning in September and the world’s most famous parkrun is about to begin. Runners of many shapes and sizes have assembled at Parkrun’s birthplace in Bushy Park and there’s the usual hint of anticipatory tension. In the Diana Fountain car park, however, the mood is one of uninhibited hilarity. At least it is if you’re anywhere near the bit of cardboard on a stick reading ‘80 AND OVER MEET HERE’ (right).

A few yards beyond, octogenarians are milling and bantering like over-excited children.

‘Are you sure you’re 80? You don’t look it’, says George Frogley, greeting yet another grizzled new arrival.

Frogley, who is chronologically 86 but looks a robust 60 insists he is not the instigator of the gathering. He blames it instead on Richard Pitcairn Knowles, 87, a retired osteopath from Sevenoaks.

‘It started a few years ago,’ explains Frogley. ‘Richard said, “Come along for a jog and it grew from there. In 2017, they persuaded 18 over-80s to join them. By 2019, before Covid snuffed out the momentum, they had reached 48.’

Everyone is welcome at a parkrun event: old and young, experienced or not; the slow, the sedentary and the shy, just as much as the focused chasers of records and personal bests. It isn’t a race; there is no right or wrong speed to run at; anyone who finishes is a winner.

That’s why, in this throng, a few dozen octogenarians shuffling along are barely conspicuous.

Who could have predicted back in 2004, that the Bushy Park TimeTrial, as it was initially called, would take root, grow, flourish and self-replicate into the Western world’s fastest growing massparticipation sporting movement?

Who could have imagined such a transformative and life-enhancing institution being created by a man,

Willing in spirit: over-80s assemble for the Bushy Park annual Time -Trial event Paul Sinton-Hewitt, whose life in 2004 seemed defined by mid-life failure? He’d been sacked from his job, dumped by his girlfriend, sidelined from running by a brokendown body.

His subsequent struggles with depression led to a breakdown. And yet, at his lowest adult moment, he turned his back on despair and did something positive. The fivekilometre time trial he organised for his friends became a weekly fixture and a template that caught on globally, for millions of people.

This phenomenon is now so well-established – with seven million people registered to take part in parkrun events in 23 countries, and around 350,000 actually doing so each week (140,000 if them in Britain) – that it all seems as natural, permanent and inevitable as the avenues of old oaks, limes and horse-chestnuts that line our route.

We pause too rarely to marvel at such benign creations as parks or parkrun, or to give thanks for them.

But today the air is vibrant with gratitude, especially as the octogenerians, singly and in clusters, eventually arrive at the finish.

Several are visibly struggling to keep going to the end. A casual observer might flinch at the sight of so many dusty, heavy-footed, worn-out old people.

It is the precise opposite of shiny, Instagram-ready, youthful perfection. But it is also the precise opposite of defeat, because, in each

straining gait, you can discern the vigour of the soul within. On each of those weary faces, you can see the most triumphant of smiles.

Grubby, sweat-stained and radiant, the octogenarians potter and mingle near the finish. Some have run astonishingly fast. Graeme Baker from Teignbridge Trotters was fastest of all, completing the 5km course in a fraction over 28 minutes.

John Holland from Chelmsford and Amos Seddon from Harwich were about half-a-minute behind, with Dennis Carter and Eva Osborne, both from Wymondham, also breaking half and hour. Eva’s time is a new age group record, as is the 31:08 recorded by 85-year old Tom Harrison from Reading.

None of the runners seem drained by the experiences. Instead, they clap energetically as the oldies continue to arrive. Yogi Allen, a snowy-haired Hash House Harrier from East Grinstead, cruises in at a patient floating plod. Subsequent finishers drag their feet but bubble with high spirits nonetheless.

Some are tall; some short; some thin; some fat. But they all share smiles of childish delight.

The two 90-year-olds – Dermot Lynch, a Bushy Park regular, and Geoff Jackson, who has come up from Didcot – both record times in the low 50s. But the happiest finisher may be 89-year-old Albert Yee (grandfather of Olympic silver medallist triathlete Alex Yee), who plods home proudly with his walking

poles in well over an hour. This is nearly half-an hour slower than his previous attempt, two years earlier.

He explains afterwards, ‘I had an operation. So I’m back to square one.’ Today, he is at square two.

Meanwhile, beaming, headbanded Geoff Jackson who usually offers post-run cakes to fellow parkrunners in Didcot, declares to anyone who will listen, ‘I just can’t stop running’.

Hilary Bradt, a girlish-looking 80, takes a more measured view. ‘I keep going,’ she explains, ‘because I know that if I stop, it will be the end’.

Bradt is a hiker at heart rather than an athlete, with a lifelong enthusiasm for backpacking. It not only strengthened her knees for life (she believes) but also led her, back in the 1970s, to found an influential publishing company, Bradt Travel.

In recent years, her adventurous energies have increasingly found an outlet in running. She enjoys it as part of a three-woman group, who call themselves the Old Crones with the slogan ‘We do because we can.’

Parkrun, Bradt, says has been a blessing. ‘I don’t think any of us would still be running if it wasn’t for that weekly challenge and swapping times – usually “personal worsts” and so on’.

The Crone formula for a satisfactory old age is simple. ‘It’s about finding joy in what there is rather than moaning about what there isn’t. I’m stiff and slow but that’s the penalty of being 80. It’s still a wonderful world, and if you find it wonderful, then the fact that you feel stiff and sore and creaking doesn’t matter as much as getting out there and seeing it.’

By the end, it turns out, 42 runners over 80 have finished the 5km run, with a combined age of getting on for 3,500 years. Their average time is around 43 minutes for the women and about 40½ for the men.

Globally, getting on for half of all recreational running is done by people over 40 and these, too, are getting older. There’s a big drop-off in participation between 40 and 65 but the ‘survivors’ – the people who are still running beyond retirement age and into their 70s and80s – are an increasingly visible minority.

In the 2021 London Marathon, 471 of the finishers of the actual and virtual events were over 70: 145

women and 326 men. More than 100 of these were over 75 and 17 were over 80.

Sport England’s ongoing Active Lives survey suggests that in 2020-21 there were nearly 200,000 English adults over 65 who ran at least twice a month, and 31,600 in the 75-84 range who did the same.

That’s a significant portion in a general UK running population of about 2.5 million.

These figures are tiny, relative to the wider population. But the messages are big and unambiguous. Lots of people run when they’re in their 40s: roughly one in seven. It simply isn’t unusual.

But only a few – perhaps one in 50 – will still be running when they’re 65; and even fewer will keep going into serious old age.

If these figures tell us that most people can’t keep running in much later life, they also prove that some people can.

Statistically, it remains unlikely that I – or you – will make it through the physiological minefield of our 60s and 70s without losing the ability to run. But we can enjoy trying.

And we may even find that, with the right expert guidance, we can adjust the odds in our favour. So the message from Bushy Park’s annual gathering of octogenarians is that, for those who do keep going, the rewards appear to be just as rich in terms of joy, companionship, well-being and laughter as they were at earlier stages of life.

As improbably but just-aboutachievable sporting targets go, this is not a bad one to aim at.

Maybe the London 2012 Olympics really did succeed in its declared aim to ‘inspire a generation’. It just wasn’t the generation the organisers had in mind. The difference is that we oldies and oldies-in-waiting have often experienced the lifeenhancing benefits of a running habit already.

Of course we want to keep going for the rest of our lives. Why wouldn’t we?

For more information go to www.parkrun.co.uk

Oldie of the Year 2013, Fauja Singh, 100; Ginette Bedard, champion over-70 marathon-runner; Ed Whitlock, first man over 70 to run a marathon under 3 hours

Edited extract from The Race Against Time: Adventures in Late Life Running by Richard Askwith (Yellow Jersey, £18.99)

Beware the crypto gurus

Garry White warns against the snake-oil salesmen of currency

Experts are excellent. Specialising in a subject created professions and professionalism, giving birth to the middle classes, the foundation of Britain’s wealth.

Despite claims to the contrary, Britons are not dismissive of those with expertise. It is so-called (and often self-appointed) gurus you should beware.

One area with more than its fair share of gurus – and where people have lost significant amounts of money - is cryptocurrency. With their voices amplified through social-media platforms, the cryptoevangelists talked a good story about the future of money.

Fans of cryptocurrencies want to take the government out of money. Many people – arguably justifiably given their recent track record –don’t trust central banks, believing these institutions will devalue their wealth by manipulating the value of money to suit the whims of the state.

This subject can inflame passions and has been a stomping ground for the self-appointed gurus to create many “true believers”.

Digital evangelists created a “fear of missing out”, convincing many that digital currencies were the future of money and if you weren’t on the bandwagon, you would be a long-term loser.

Unfortunately, for many, the opposite has proved the case.

The most-recent high-profile implosion has been cryptocurrency exchange FTX, a centralised cryptocurrency exchange specialising in derivatives and leveraged products. Its founder and CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried was cited as “the next Warren Buffett” by Fortune magazine. Venture capital firm Sequoia even hailed him as a “future trillionaire”.

But FTX filed for bankruptcy protection in the US in November last year. American prosecutors have announced an eight-point fraud indictment against Mr BankmanFried, alleging he defrauded customers and investors of FTX and lenders to FTX-affiliated hedge fund Alameda Research.

Damian Williams, Attorney for the Southern District of New York, has claimed it was one of the “biggest frauds in financial history”.

Regulators are looking into whether FTX used customer funds to prop up Alameda Research, a trading company founded and almost entirely owned by Mr Bankman-Fried. Mr Bankman-Fried denies all charges.

Clearly, Bitcoin and other such tokens aren’t money at all. One of the most important characteristics of

on Mr Musk’s purchase announcement it’s likely you lost a lot of money. The Bitcoin price currently sits at about $20,000, having peaked at nearly $50,000.

It’s not just the murky world of crypto assets where gurus operate. One of the most brazen frauds over the last few years was Theranos, a consumer healthcare technology start-up. Set up by Elizabeth Holmes when she was 19, and despite never being listed on a stock exchange, it was once valued at $10bn. Its leadership claimed it would revolutionise the blood-testing industry. However, the technological breakthrough that chief executive Ms Holmes and former president Ramesh Balwani was selling to investors was never demonstrated.

It was a deceit. But it allowed the pair to talk up Theranos’s valuation to professional investors. It’s shocking that Wall Street professionals bought her story but it demonstrates how easily frauds can develop and how even seasoned investors can be bamboozled.

money is that it acts as a store of value but the volatility of cryptocurrency prices means they do not meet that definition. It is not money; it is not an investment – it is a gamble.

One oft-cited guru that has come to regret his evangelism is billionaire Elon Musk. At the start of February, a US regulatory filing revealed his electric-vehicle company Tesla made a $140m net loss last year on Bitcoin.

Under the direction of chief executive Mr Musk, Tesla put $1.5bn into Bitcoin in early 2021 and said it would accept the coins as payment for its vehicles. Widely broadcast on Twitter, this helped send Bitcoin’s value up by a quarter to a then record of about $48,000.

But shareholder pressure caused Mr Musk to U-turn in a matter of weeks. Tesla has since sold most of its Bitcoin holdings, with about $184m left. If you piled into Bitcoin

Ms Holmes was found guilty of wire fraud and conspiring to commit wire fraud in January 2022. She is serving a sentence of 11 years and three months at a minimum-security prison camp in Texas.

A new cadre of “finfluencers” are very internet savvy, using YouTube, Instagram and TikTok to reach a wide audience. Unregulated personalities offer shallow quick takes without fully setting out the dangers of the investments they are promoting.

The Financial Conduct Authority has warned social media sites that it may act if they continue to promote risky, and sometimes fraudulent, investments.

It believes DIY investors are taking big financial risks by investing in high-risk products promoted by a group of finfluencers with no skills or experience.

Beware the gurus: they are often merely purveyors of snake oil.

Garry White is chief investment commentator at Charles Stanley Wealth Management

Fallen idol: Sam Bankman-Fried

Cryptocurrencies are not money – they are a gamble

Make sure your last words really matter

Rev Gillean Craig’s insider tips on how to deliver a eulogy

Every profession has its particular joys and particular trials. That’s certainly true, for us clergy, of funeral or memorial service eulogies.

They can delight and enlighten, revealing marvellous un-looked-for truths about the deceased, her life, work and influence – or they can gravely embarrass, dwelling on everything you’d rather not know about the departed.

Or they can be, at great length, excruciatingly boring. We clergy have a way of dealing with this – you don’t get to be a CofE vicar without learning that expression of benign interest (it fools no-one).

If you’re invited, coerced or blackmailed into delivering a eulogy, then the basic rule of life obtains: context is all, influencing not just what, but how it is said – and context embraces what and where.

First, is it within a funeral or a memorial service? Each of these has several subdivisions. The best funerals are those that take place in the church where the deceased and the family worshipped. It may be a place where proclaiming the Word is pre-eminent, where congregants expect to settle down for lengthy dissertations.

Or else, where the worship is carried largely by glorious music, choir, organ and hymns, raising hearts and minds to heaven, with words taking a subsidiary role. Or it may be a Funeral Eucharist, where the eulogy is just one section within something far more important: the Holy Communion, the foretaste of the Heavenly Banquet which we share with the departed.

Each of these determines a different approach to what, and how much, you say. So, as well as getting the fullest possible information from the family (assuming you’re not part of it yourself) about how they see the service, it’s worth checking with the officiating clergy.

If you’re arranging the service yourself, remember that in these church contexts the simplest and

most personal is often best, far more moving than a polished recital from someone outside the community or family. Sometimes, incoherence and emotion convey, paradoxically, what we all want to be expressed.

The chief anxiety of unpractised public speakers is whether they will break down in tears. It’s not ideal - but we read that Jesus wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus. What’s good enough for Jesus is good enough for me.

Remember that it doesn’t even have to be a single speech, delivered by a single speaker. One of the best was by the 12 grandchildren of a wonderful, opinionated matriarch, lining up in height order to deliver ‘Granny’s Twelve Commandments’. It was funny, true and made her real.

quite as personal as yours – or colleagues, or golf club chums?

A trio of speakers often works: one for the family story, one for professional, one for social life.

And the biggest context is the subject: was it someone who lived a full and rich life, eventually dying surrounded by love and respect, or was it a tragic early death, with promise unfulfilled, leaving behind a grief-stricken family? What is appropriate for one will certainly not be for the other.

I reckon that the ability to judge appropriateness is something we’re steadily losing. At a solemn church funeral, I heard a very expensively educated nephew deliver a eulogy more like an innuendo-ridden best man’s speech – perhaps the only public speaking he’d ever listened to.

Material: don’t produce an obituary, setting out the detailed story of a life, itemising the schools, exams passed, promotions achieved, and plaudits gained.

Such a recital is fraught with difficulties: first because half your audience will know more about it that you do (‘Actually, the stint with ICI was after they moved to Penge’) and secondly because it’s jolly boring. Far better to offer a few telling personal anecdotes that illustrate the character.

In a church, there is a resonance that you can catch and build on. But, in a crematorium chapel, used for one thing only, you have to work much harder with less atmosphere.

But I imagine that you’ll most frequently be asked to deliver a eulogy, not in a funeral but at a memorial service.

Even here, the context is crucially important. Is it in a church (which the deceased might never have entered) or a purely secular venue?

Who are you addressing – is it predominantly family and close friends, who will have memories

Be partial, not magisterial. Don’t try to say everything – on the contrary, the best eulogy is the one that animates the congregation to add their reminiscences, over the sausage rolls afterwards.

Be funny, by all means, as long you’re good at telling jokes. Include failings and mistakes – if you know the widow/widower well enough to be certain not to cause offence. The best eulogies – and I have heard many such – are those that make a stranger long to have known the deceased. Oh, and don’t preach a sermon: leave that to us.

Funeral Blues: John Hannah eulogises

The Rev’d Prebendary Gillean Craig is sometime Vicar of St Mary Abbots, Kensington

12 grandchildren delivered granny’s 12 commandments