The Old Un’s Notes

In 1941, John Betjeman became British press attaché in Dublin.

To begin with, he disliked his time there, but increasingly he loved his three years in the country and took to signing off his letters, ‘le meas mór, do chara dhílis, Seán Ó Betjemán’.

And now a new book, Betjeman in Ireland, by Dominic Moseley, covers his visits to the country, from his first in 1925, as an Oxford undergraduate. Over 50 years later, he made a charming BBC programme, John Betjeman’s Dublin.

Betjeman wrote many poems in Ireland – and amusing letters, too. In 1943, he wrote to Myfanwy Piper, wife of artist John Piper:

‘Still do you run barelegg’d across the yard?

Still would you pillow with athletic curves

My bald, grey head upon your breasts?

Your stalwart body still excites me much

The thought of you, now spring is coming on,

Requires that I should exercise control.’

Though modest, funny Betjeman always played down his achievements, it’s clear he was good at the press-attaché job.

When he left Dublin, the Irish Times declared, ‘He took the highest possible view of his duties as press attaché and looked upon it as his duty not only to interpret England to the Irish, but also to interpret

Ireland sympathetically to the English, and if any English pressman or visitor went away with an unsympathetic view of Ireland, it was not the fault of Mr Betjeman.’

Lots of oldies were to the fore at Chichester’s Minerva Theatre recently, when the estimable Dame Eileen Atkins took the lead role as a nonagenarian New York grandmother in Amy Herzog’s 4000 Miles.

The run ends on 10th June, five days before Dame Eileen’s 89th birthday. It was directed by Sir Richard Eyre, a mere stripling of 80.

Regarding the play’s grandparental theme, Eyre reflected that he knew only one of his grandparents, the others having died young. His father’s father was a curmudgeon who ‘presided over meals with an air of

Among this month’s contributors

Bruce Beresford (p18) directed Oscarwinning Driving Miss Daisy (1989). A friend of Barry Humphries for 60 years, he directed him in The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972).

Nicholas Garland (p19) and Barry Humphries (right) illustrated and wrote Private Eye’s Barry McKenzie cartoon strip.

Oliver Pritchett (p23) wrote for the Sunday Telegraph for 40 years. His son Matt (also p23) is the renowned Telegraph cartoonist.

Kenneth Cranham (p32) starred in Oliver!, Shine on Harvey Moon and Hatton Garden. A friend of Joe Orton, he was in Entertaining Mr Sloane and Loot He will be in Angel with Rafe Spall.

silent disdain interrupted by eruptions of volcanic severity’.

One day, Eyre’s ten-yearold sister said someone had talked to her on a train. Eyre recalled, ‘My grandfather slammed his fist on the table, shaking the glasses and the cutlery, and shouted, “No one’s ever spoken to me on a train, thank Christ!!”’

Grandpa Eyre, one suspects, might not have approved of those inane ‘See it, say it, sorted’ announcements on today’s railways.

A new biography by Alicia Foster, Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris, shows quite how rich our regional galleries and museums are, in lovely pictures.

Gwen John and her brother Augustus John grew up in Pembrokeshire. Augustus John’s talent was first spotted by a tutor at a Tenby art school, Edward Joseph Head, a Royal Academician.

Gwen John (1876-1939), born in Haverfordwest,

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Soldiers spotted during huge military exercise in Wiltshire Wiltshire Times honed her skills in Tenby, too. She started painting Landscape at Tenby with Figures (pictured) when she was 19. The figure of the woman in the hat was modelled by Winifred John, Gwen’s younger sister.

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The only surviving picture by Gwen John of Tenby, it’s now in the Tenby Museum and Art Gallery, in the shadow of the castle, overlooking the sea. Tenby Museum and Art Gallery also has two pictures by Gwen’s mother, Augusta, an amateur artist.

What an artist’s colony Tenby was in the late-19th century, consisting entirely of the John family!

One of the annoying things about the House of Commons is that the anger is often so palpably fake.

A moment from Jamie Stone, Lib Dem MP for Caithness, Sutherland, and Easter Ross was a telling contrast.

Gordonstoun-educated Stone, 68, is a pukka gent who is almost always genial. He is widely liked at Westminster, most MPs being aware that he acts as carer to his disabled wife. But when he rose at Prime Minister’s Questions to complain about Edinburgh’s marine-protection proposals, Scottish National MPs started heckling him.

The result was remarkable. The mild-mannered, softlyspoken Stone combusted into fury, bawling that he would ‘not be silenced’ and that the policy mattered greatly to his constituents.

The very rarity of his anger meant it stunned the Scot Nats into silence and was met with cheers from elsewhere. Rage is at its most effective when deployed by gentle souls.

It’s quite a coup to be shot down by the Red Baron – and survive.

That was the fate of Tommy Lewis, the last and 80th man to be shot down by Baron von Richthofen, on 20th April 1918.

Flying a Sopwith Camel from 3(F) Squadron RAF in northern France, Tommy Lewis survived the crash landing with only minor burns.

The story is told in a charming new memoir, Beating About the Bush: The Memoir of a District Nurse, by Audrey Head, who nursed Lewis in later life.

Lewis kept a framed

‘I realise it’s a weeping willow, George, but there’s weeping and there’s weeping’ photograph of the Red Baron over his bed and exchanged Christmas cards with the von Richthofen family for the rest of his life. The Red Baron himself was shot down and killed at Vaux-sur-Somme on 21st April 1918, only a day after Tommy’s close shave.

Don’t be surprised if you see a film crew lurking outside the National Liberal Club the next time you’re in London at the weekend.

The historic Victorian club, overlooking the River Thames, closes to members at weekends.

That’s when dozens of TV dramas and movies have been shot there: from Downton Abbey to The Crown, and The Constant Gardener (2005) to the Christopher Nolan-directed sci-fi thriller Tenet (2020).

Entering the club is like stepping back in time to another era. Filmmakers are attracted by ‘the ornate, 19th-century interior which offers the perfect setting for period dramas’, says club member Seth Thévoz.

The club has doubled as everything from a gentleman’s club to a lecture hall, and a hotel to a restaurant.

One room was even recently turned into Harrods Food Hall for A Thousand Blows, a forthcoming Disney+ period drama.

Television and movie companies pay good money to film scenes at the club – which hosts the Oldie literary lunches, as it did the Oldie lunch for the Queen’s 75th birthday last year – and the additional revenue stream is ‘very welcome’, adds Thévoz.

Look very closely in the background of some shots of the club and you might see the portrait of Jeremy Thorpe, the disgraced Liberal leader. With admirable bravery, the club has kept the picture hanging, despite Thorpe’s downfall.

Watch out for Simon Collins’s new book, The Little Boke of Woke, which cleverly imagines examples of woke behaviour in the old days. Pictured (below) is an example – of a virtuesignalling vicar 70 years ago.

‘Are you wokeing from home again, Henry?’

Barbara Ker-Seymer (1905-93) was one of the great photographers of the 20th century.

And now a new biography, Thoroughly Modern, by Sarah Knights, tells the story of the pioneering life of the bisexual photographer.

Among her sitters were Evelyn Waugh, Margot Fonteyn and writer, heiress and activist Nancy Cunard (pictured).

Ker-Seymer’s friends spanned the generations. Her younger pals included the painter Beryl Cook (1926-2008).

Ker-Seymer became one of her models, too, appearing in Cook’s Bar and Barbara (1984) and Bermondsey Market (1987).