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
Light relief SIR: Like Gyles Brandreth, my husband and I are great fans of Bargain Hunt. As well as enjoying the banter between contestants, presenters, experts and auctioneers, we’re often amused by the discrepancies between what is actually said and the (presumably) computergenerated subtitles. The best we’ve spotted to date relates to one of Philip Serrell’s finds, ‘ewer and basin’, being rendered as ‘urine basin’. Maggie Cobbett, Ripon, North Yorkshire
Beatrix Potter gets lost SIR: Having recently spent a wonderful week’s holiday in the Lake District, I thoroughly enjoyed William Cook’s article ‘The Tale of Beatrix Potter’ (January issue). However, the Tower Bank Arms (great beer) and Hill Top Farm (Beatrix’s home) are in the village of Near Sawrey and not, as the article implied, in its twin village, Far Sawrey, half a mile away. Yours, Robin Vlies, Rossett, Wrexham
Æthelred the Ready
Bargain Hunt blunder
Shell toil SIR: I have just read Memory Lane in the November issue and it certainly brought back memories of my days as a petrolpump attendant back in the 1960s. I too had a holiday/Saturday job, at our local Shell garage, and in 1964/65 Super Shell was 5/6d a gallon while Shell-Mex was only 4/6d. One had to be very careful of blowback in those days, and unfortunately the only time I mistimed it was for a diesel vehicle and I was covered in the stuff. The clothes I was wearing had to be binned! I worked at the garage until I went to college in 1967 and, before that, in 1966, I met my future husband, who was working in the parts department. When I left college in 1968, I went to work for Shell in London and so the connection continued. Happy days! Yours faithfully, Fiona Youlton, Lavendon, Olney, Buckinghamshire
48 The Oldie March 2022
reminded me of an anecdote from Virginia Graham, lifelong friend of Joyce Grenfell, which you may like to pass on to him or her. Joyce’s handbag was apparently renowned for being stuffed with every manner of item, some seemingly inexplicable. On one occasion, when this subject was mentioned among a group of friends, Ginnie, with heavy irony, said that if asked, no doubt Joyce could probably produce a piece of beige braid from about her person. Joyce delved in her bag and extracted that very object with a small smile of triumph. Jane Bower, Cambridge
SIR: I was surprised to find no reference in Hugo Gye’s review of Æthelred the Unready (January issue) to the common misperception of that king’s nickname. It means not ‘unready’ but ‘unadvised’. The word ‘rede’ has long fallen from use, but it is there in Hamlet, Act I Scene 3, when Ophelia begs her brother not to be hypocritical, like the ‘ungracious pastor’ who ‘recks not his own rede’. Here, ‘rede’ is noted as meaning ‘counsel’ or ‘advice’, still in common use in Shakespeare’s time. We would probably say that the ‘ungracious pastor’ doesn’t practise what he preaches. The question posed by Gye as to whether Æthelred inadvertently signed the death warrant for Anglo-Saxon England tends to confirm that the king was ‘unadvised’. Brigid Purcell, Norwich
SIR: I’ve enjoyed Elizabeth David’s books and certainly wouldn’t question her profound influence on postwar British food. But Ann Morrow’s recollections certainly tally with other such accounts of her behaviour in restaurants and I’m just glad I was never her dining companion! She really does sound like hard work. I remember once reading an article in which prominent chefs were asked to name their favourite rubbish foods: one enjoyed eating cold baked beans straight from the tin while another liked tucking into the occasional fish-finger sandwich. I’m guessing that Elizabeth David would have been quite unable to make a contribution to that! Rhona Taylor, Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire
Joyce Grenfell’s handbag
At Oxford with Liz Taylor
SIR: I’ve just read the Old Un’s request for details of pocket contents. It
Scary Elizabeth David
SIR: Re your article ‘Burton and Taylor go to Oxford’ (February issue) – how well I remember this occasion! I was 20 at the time. I still have framed on my kitchen wall the glossy red-and-black souvenir programme showing a satanic Dr Faustus, leaning into the picture. A group of us English students were treated by medical students from Richard Burton’s old college, Exeter – they bedded down in sleeping bags on the street at the entrance to the Oxford Playhouse to assure us good tickets. Such chivalry or, rather, wetness and unawareness on our part, would exist,
