Readers’ Letters

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

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

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 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

My 15-year-old mistress

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

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

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

different the history of the 20th century might have been, had Ms Macfarlane’s version prevailed. Yours faithfully, Christopher Goulding, Newcastle upon Tyne

Witches’ brew

SIR: To Be a Pilgrim is a favourite hymn which I play as often as I dare in our village church, and I’m grateful to the Old Un (May issue) for drawing attention to the words that diverge from Bunyan’s original, which I hadn’t appreciated.

The three hymn-books in the house, including a 1933 edition of Harrow School’s English Hymnal, all have the modernised version. However, in Songs of Praise from Bedford, 2011, the BBC gave us the full and proper text, including the opening lines ‘Who would true valour see, /Let him come hither; /One here will constant be, /Come wind, come weather’. Long live the BBC! Also, as it happens, before opening my copy of the May issue, I, who almost never drinks or buys beer, fancied one after a bike ride, and bought a bottle of Hobgoblin from the village shop, Hobgoblin: simply because it had the low in lowest alcohol content. It is spirits brewed by Wychwood Brewery, of course. The label depicts a grinning mischievous creature wielding an axe. Hobgoblins are definitely alive and well in the 21st century! Kind regards, Nicky Cross, Llandysul, Carmarthenshire

Jean Rhys’s real champion

SIR: Jean Rhys’s champion was Francis Wyndham, not Wyndham Lewis (Books, May issue, Alan Judd’s review of Miranda Seymour’s Jean Rhys biography). Wyndham Lewis is my son and was my father and my great-grandfather. The latter was also Oldie deputy-editor Jeremy Lewis’s grandfather’s brother, in Monmouthshire at the turn of the last century.

There was also the Vorticist painter Percy Wyndham Lewis, 1882-1957, who went blind. Whether he knew Jean Rhys I have no idea.

Francis Wyndham (1924-2017) was the editor and reader at André Deutsch who helped shape Wide Sargasso Sea. His introduction to the first edition (1966) still appears in Penguin Modern Classics reprints. He became Jean Rhys’s literary executor and, with Diana Melly, edited the correspondence. Yours, Roger Lewis, Hastings, East Sussex

‘A divorce would give us something to talk about’

Bomber Harris under fire

SIR: I found the article about Bomber Harris (May issue) a difficult read.

This ‘practical and kind’ man made it his personal mission to destroy the morale of Germany by slaughtering its civilians by the hundreds of thousands. There have been many books written on the subject. Most cast doubt on the efficacy of this policy’s even shortening the war. I am no fan of wokeism, but the fact that his statue is still standing frankly perplexes me. Malcolm Willgress, London N20

Gentlemen in dresses

SIR: I was amused by the letter headed ‘Which side do you dress?’ (May issue). It brought back memories of a gentlemen’s WC in Redcar, North Yorkshire. I was only a child in the 1950s and ’60s, and the sign on the wall next to the door amused me. It requested, ‘Gentlemen: please adjust your dress before leaving the premises.’

Most men did not wear dresses in those days. Stewart Tough, Marske-by-the-Sea, North Yorkshire

Dangerous vitamins

SIR: The article on Vitamin D by Theodore Dalrymple (May issue) was right on the nail, but I can assure him that Vitamin A is not the only vitamin that is toxic in the wrong dose. A patient admitted under my care seriously unwell with a high calcium level proved to be taking a vastly increased dose of Vitamin D. She got better immediately it was stopped. It could unquestionably have killed her. Dr N P Hudd MA FRCP, Consultant Physician, Tenterden, Kent

London’s last spats

SIR: I was interested to read in The Old Un’s Notes (May issue) of the demise of the suit among professional young men in London.

My late grandfather, a barrister born in 1879, used to proclaim proudly that he was the last man to travel to London daily wearing spats. Quite what he would have made of ‘midtown uniform’ is anyone’s guess! David Greig, Tiverton, Devon

lies about its age

SIR: Am I alone in spotting that there were (and still are) only 19 visible candles on the ‘The Oldie Turns 30!’ March-issue front-cover birthday cake? Or was this some kind of test to see if we oldies still retain our keen powers of observation? (I really must get out more…) Sincerely, Wilfrid de Freitas, Montreal, Canada