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

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

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

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

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

Joyce Grenfell’s handbag

SIR: I’ve just read the Old Un’s request for details of pocket contents. It 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

Scary Elizabeth David

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

At Oxford with Liz Taylor

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,

‘It’s amazing – you can’t see his lips move’

I am sure, no more! I shall never forget Richard Burton’s voice, like heated treacle, and Elizabeth Taylor’s tout ensemble.

I shall always remember David Wood, too – such a familiar figure on the Oxford student theatre scene for his huge comedic talent. I thank The Oldie for reminding me of those days, so suffused with glamour and promise, and I look forward hugely to David’s book, describing what became of his early gifts – something meteoric, I feel sure. Sue Tyson (née Yarker), Bramhall, Cheshire

Poor Boris

SIR: Stephen Glover may or may not have cooked Boris’s goose at the Garrick (February issue), but even he surely knows by now that the Prime Minister, poor chap, is a pauper who relies on others to pay his bills. Yours sincerely, Roger James, London SE5

Irish Tutankhamun

SIR: Reading Eleanor Doughty’s enjoyable article about Lord Carnavon and Howard Carter (February issue) reminded me of a curious incident in my own background.

My father, who died in 1971, was alleged to have met Carter and obtained from him certain Egyptian artefacts. I have been unable to verify this meeting and the current Lady Carnavon had no relevant information. What I know for certain is that my father donated about 50 items to the National Museum of Ireland, in Dublin. I have been there to check. So, if the source was not Carter, where did he get them from? While he was certainly in India, there is no record of his ever going to Egypt.

One cannot now approve of the export of such indigenous artefacts to foreign lands, as was the habit in the early-20th century, but the mystery of how my father, an ex-soldier, obtained these, remains. Yours faithfully, Kevin J Last, Hinton St George, Somerset

Kingsley’s lordly tenant

SIR: I much enjoyed Roger Lewis’s salute to Kingsley Amis (February issue), but there is one small point I would like to make. My wife and I were good friends of Hilly and Lord Kilmarnock, or Ali as we knew him, and visited the house in Primrose Hill they shared with Kingsley on several occasions.

Although we never met Kingsley, my recollection is that the house belonged to Kingsley and it was Hilly and Ali who lived in the basement while Kingsley occupied several of the substantial rooms upstairs. Yours, Michael Fletcher, Wivenhoe, Essex

New York state of mind

SIR: Daniel Koch’s affectionate portrait of New York State (February issue) rightly tried to emancipate the north of the state from the tyranny of people’s knowledge of the city in the south. However, even he in his references to ‘upstate’ never gets far enough north to mention the place I once lived in for a year.

Champlain occupies a reach beyond the Adirondacks, a bit of land that a New York City dweller insisted to me was actually Canada, despite my protestations that I lived there. This is where the folk describe everywhere that isn’t Clinton County or thereabouts (London, Uganda, California) as ‘down there’, by which they mean south of Plattsburg or perhaps Albany, which is actually the state capital.

Thirty-five years after leaving, we were revisiting and, crossing south from Canada, were greeted by an immigration official in his early forties who remembered everything about us, including where we had lived. I guess not much had happened in Upstate New York in the intervening years! It’s a beautiful, gentle plot of the USA always overlooked.

To come back to Daniel Koch’s comparison to England, I wonder if there are any areas here that he would characterise as being so unnoticed. If so, I would like to move there. Martyn Offord, Crich, Derbyshire

It was 30 years ago today...

London on home leave from Switzerland with my husband, I celebrated my 60th birthday and invited an old friend to join us. He arrived with a very appropriate birthday present, the first issue of a new magazine. It was, of course, The Oldie.

After reading it, I took out a subscription and have received and enjoyed every issue since – and I hope to continue doing so on and after my 90th birthday in a few weeks’ time!

Thank you for the enjoyment that you have provided!

Long may you continue. Yours sincerely, Renate Walsh (Mrs), West Chiltington, West Sussex

Long live tea cosies

SIR: I thought Edward McParland (Rant, February issue) might feel reassured by this picture of my nutty, home-made tea cosy. Yours warmly,

Cup that cheers: Glennis’s tea cosy Glennis Gomersall, Havant, Hampshire

Antonia Fraser v Milton

SIR: There is a misprint in my poem, Crashing, published in the January issue. The correct version is below.

I’m sure Milton made less fuss about Paradise Lost! Yours, Lady Antonia Fraser, London W8

If it’s true about Adam – There was only one fall – Why blame Madam that he fell at all? Old age is a stage When most people crash And frequently smash But God made Adam Pure without sin. He had his chance. I wish I were him. Yet we have to believe That he fell once. So why blame Eve For the work of a dunce?