The Oldie, 23–31 Great Titchfield Street, London, W1W 7PA letters@theoldie.co.uk To sign up for our e-newsletter, go to www.theoldie.co.uk
David Niven’s empty horses
My 15-year-old mistress
SIR: David Horspool’s beautifully judged search for a Historian Laureate (May issue) misses one trick. When Joshua Reynolds established the Royal Academy, he was careful to have appointed, as Honorary Professor of Ancient History, a fellow member of Samuel Johnson’s Literary Club: one Edward Gibbon. A current equivalent post-holder is Dame Professor Mary Beard, though her RA title, since 2013, is Professor of Ancient Literature. In the same issue, Nick Brown’s excellent survey of the career of film director Mihály Kertész alias Michael Curtiz omits his 1936 The Charge of the Light Brigade. Possibly apocryphally, Curtiz is said to have demanded on the set of that movie, ‘Bring on the empty horses!’, which injunction David Niven used as the title of his admirably gossipy 1975 memoir of 1930s and ’40s Hollywood. Yours sincerely, Paul Cartledge, Clare College, Cambridge
My experience as a pupil at a coeducational grammar school in Cornwall in the 1940s was very different from Liz Hodgkinson’s ten years later (May issue). In the sixth form, boys and girls not only shared a classroom, but were allowed to share a desk, sitting side by side. During the lunch hour, if we brought a packed lunch instead of going to the canteen, three girls and I regularly went down the hill to the nearest beach for a bathe (photograph available on request). After school, a mixed cast stayed behind to rehearse the school play, often retiring to a neighbouring classroom to rehearse a scene. A regular pairing would be taken lightly: one teacher referred to the closest of my friends as ‘your mistress’. If 15 was seen by anyone as a dangerous age, no one, teacher or pupil, seemed to know it. Derek Parker, Bognor Regis, West Sussex
Elvis, the King of Films SIR: Besides Casablanca, Michael Curtiz (‘Here’s looking at you, kid’, May issue) in a long career made a number of memorable films; one that is often overlooked is King Creole, which was Elvis Presley’s fourth film. The story is based on a book by Harold Robbins and starred Walter Matthau, Carolyn Jones and Dean Jagger. Elvis made over 30 films and most were lightweight – more like travelogues, with awful music and bikini-clad girls. King Creole was different, with strong songs and a director who knew what he was doing. After King Creole, Elvis did two years in the army, and when he came out he never again showed what he was able to do on screen. Opportunities were lost, but thanks to Mr Curtiz we were able to see what Elvis could do, given the chance. Like many of Michael Curtiz’s films, King Creole is worth repeat viewings. Robin Wood, Kilmarnock
46 The Oldie June 2022
Best book ever SIR: The Old Un (May issue) gives the welcome news of a new Everyman edition of Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate. I have read this novel twice and I think that it is one of the greatest books about war – perhaps one of the greatest works of literature – ever written. While the Battle of Stalingrad lies at the centre of the story, there are multiple plot lines, against the background of a
struggle between two totalitarian states. Episodes take place in both Russian and German prisoner camps. Grossman criticises Stalinism, which led the KGB to do everything in its power to prevent publication, but a copy was eventually smuggled out to the west, with first English publication in 1985. An earlier book, Stalingrad, a precursor to Life and Fate, professed loyalty to Stalinism and was published in Russia in 1952, though not published in English translation until 2019. I found it, too, an outstanding historical novel. If you have a list of ‘things to do before I die’, make sure that you add reading Life and Fate to it! Best wishes, Graham Galer, Beckford, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire
Communist hobgoblin SIR: The Old Un’s concern about historic bias against hobgoblins (May issue) omitted one famous example. English translations of Marx and Engels’s Communist Manifesto famously begin with the sentence ‘A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism.’ However, an 1850 translation by Helen Macfarlane became notorious for the unintentionally hilarious opening line ‘A frightful hobgoblin is haunting Europe…’ One cannot help but wonder how
‘He’s bringing a friend with him … he’s nasty, brutish & short – you’ll like him’
