The Oldie magazine - November 2021 issue 406

40-PAGE CHRISTMAS GIFT GUIDE

November 2021 | £4.95

www.theoldie.co.uk | Issue 406

‘You are as old as you feel’ HM The Queen salutes our Oldies of the Year Leslie Caron, Geoff Hurst, Delia Smith, Sir Les Patterson, Roger McGough

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Leslie Caron, Oldie of the Year page 14

Features 13 I taught Christopher Hitchens John Harding 14 The Oldie of the Year Awards 2021 19 Confessions of a Co-op snob Liz Hodgkinson 20 My favourite cathedrals Simon Jenkins 22 Don’t worship drug-dealers Duncan Campbell 24 Private Eye turns 60 Elisabeth Luard 26 My radio times Libby Purves 28 My dad, Adrian Bell, rural writer Martin Bell 30 A lost letter by Roger Mortimer Charlie Mortimer 33 Sam Kydd, our most prolific actor Andrew Roberts 34 Mummy, I hardly knew you Barry Humphries 38 Norway's Christmas present to Britain A N Wilson

Regulars 5 The Old Un’s Notes 7 Bliss on Toast Prue Leith 9 Gyles Brandreth’s Diary 10 Grumpy Oldie Man Matthew Norman

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ABC circulation figure January-June 2021: 49,181

Sam Kydd, king of British flicks page 33

12 Olden Life: What were postcards? David Abberton 12 Modern Life: What is pegging? Richard Godwin 40 Town Mouse Tom Hodgkinson 41 Country Mouse Giles Wood 42 Postcards from the Edge Mary Kenny 44 Small World Jem Clarke 47 School Days Sophia Waugh 47 Quite Interesting Things about ... November John Lloyd 48 God Sister Teresa 48 Memorial Service: Lady Christie James Hughes- Onslow 49 The Doctor’s Surgery Theodore Dalrymple 50 Readers’ Letters 53 I Once Ran with… Roger Bannister William Wood 53 Memory Lane 66 Media Matters Stephen Glover 67 History David Horspool 68 Words and Stuff Johnny Grimond 68 Rant: COVID language David MacGowan 97 Crossword 99 Bridge Andrew Robson Editor Harry Mount Sub-editor Penny Phillips Art editor John Bowling Books editor Claudia FitzHerbert Supplements editor Liz Anderson Editorial assistant Donna Freed Publisher James Pembroke Patron saint Jeremy Lewis At large Richard Beatty Our Old Master David Kowitz

My Oz trials – Barry Humphries page 34

99 Competition Tessa Castro 106 Ask Virginia Ironside

Books 55 Noble Ambitions: The Fall and Rise of the Post-War Country Country House, by Adrian Tinniswood Nicola Shulman 57 George III: The Life and Reign of Britain’s Most Misunderstood Monarch, by Andrew Roberts Hamish Robinson 57 The Young H G Wells: Changing the World, by Claire Tomalin John Batchelor 59 Stars and Spies: Intelligence Operations and the Entertainment Business, by Christopher Andrew and Julius Green Alan Judd 61 A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries 2003-2020, by David Sedaris Maureen Freely 63 Orwell’s Roses, by Rebecca Solnit Isabel Bannerman 65 Silverview, by John le Carré Nikhil Krishnan

Travel 88 Treasure Islands: the Scillies Tanya Gold 90 Overlooked Britain: Towering Blackpool Lucinda Lambton Oldie subscriptions ● To place a new order, please visit our website subscribe.theoldie.co.uk ● To renew a subscription, please visit myaccount.theoldie.co.uk ● If you have any queries, please email help@ subscribe.theoldie.co.uk, or write to: Oldie Subscriptions, Rockwood House, 9-16 Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 3DH

93 On the Road: William Dalrymple Louise Flind 95 Taking a Walk: Norfolk’s Ice Age pingos Patrick Barkham

Arts 70 Film: No Time to Die Harry Mount 71 Theatre: Blithe Spirit William Cook 71 Radio Valerie Grove 72 Television Frances Wilson 73 Music Richard Osborne 74 Golden Oldies Bob Cooper 75 Exhibitions Huon Mallalieu

Pursuits 77 Gardening David Wheeler 77 Kitchen Garden Simon Courtauld 78 Cookery Elisabeth Luard 78 Restaurants James Pembroke 79 Drink Bill Knott 80 Sport Jim White 80 Motoring Alan Judd 82 Digital Life Matthew Webster 82 Money Matters Margaret Dibben 84 Getting Dressed: Sir Hayden Phillips Brigid Keenan 87 Bird of the Month: Greenfinch John McEwen Oldie book orders ● Please email bookorders@theoldie.co.uk Advertising For display, contact: Paul Pryde on 020 3859 7095 or Kami Jogee on 07983 097477 For classified, contact: Jamil Popat on 020 3859 7096 News-stand enquiries mark.jones@newstrademarketing.co.uk Front cover Shawshots/Alamy

The Oldie November 2021 3

The Old Un’s Notes

Gossip girls: Ada (Roy Barraclough) and Cissie (Les Dawson)

Blankety Blank, the panel game of yesteryear, is back.

The presenter is Bradley Walsh. Here’s hoping he can emulate the masterly Terry Wogan, who presented the first show from 1979 to 1983 – or the comic genius Les Dawson, presenter from 1984 to 1990.

Almost 30 years after Dawson’s premature death in 1993, aged only 62, his fans can console themselves with the book Les Dawson’s Cissie and Ada, by Terry Ravenscroft. Ravenscroft was Dawson’s scriptwriter from 1978 to 1983.

Cissie Braithwaite and Ada Shufflebotham, two Lancashire ladies with considerable bosoms, often heaved to the side, were created and played by Dawson and Roy Barraclough (1935-2017).

In a posthumous introduction to the book, Barraclough writes, ‘Cissie and Ada were based on the

“Over the Garden Wall” character created by Lancashire music-hall star Norman Evans (1901-61).’

Among other scriptwriters

on the show were David Nobbs (creator of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin) and Oldie favourite Barry Cryer.

The scripts are still terrifically fresh and funny, three decades on.

Here’s a little taster: ADA: Me and Bert have even took to bathing together to save on hot water.

CISSIE: Oh, I say. That’s a bit risqué.

ADA: It’s damn risky. It’s the last time I let him loose with a loofah, I can tell you.

My thighs have never been the same since. I make him use a flannel now.

CISSIE: Well, there’s nothing wrong with that, I

Among this month’s contributors Duncan Campbell (p22) was the Guardian’s crime correspondent and LA correspondent. He has worked for City Limits, Time Out and LBC. His books include If It Bleeds and The Underworld.

Simon Jenkins (p20) was Chairman of the National Trust and editor of the Times and the Evening Standard. His new book, Europe’s Hundred Best Cathedrals, is out on 4th November (Penguin).

Martin Bell (p28) was at the BBC from 1962 to 1997. He was diplomatic correspondent, Washington correspondent and Berlin correspondent. He was independent MP for Tatton, 1997-2001.

Roger Mortimer (1909-91) (p30) wrote Dear Lupin: Letters to a Wayward Son (2012).

He served with the Coldstream Guards in the Second World War. He was the Sunday Times racing correspondent, 1947-75.

suppose, as long as you keep him away from the erogenous zones.

ADA: Well, we’re not keen on holidays abroad.

Riches to rags: Sir David Tang

Sir David Tang (19542017) was the flamboyant Hong Kong businessman and zillionaire who founded the fashion brand Shanghai Tang, the Pacific Cigar Company, the China Tang restaurant at the Dorchester Hotel and the China Club chain of restaurants. He also wrote an ironic, rich man’s agony-aunt column in the Financial Times, in which he resolved readers’ social and financial problems.

Except all was not as it seemed. It now emerges he was a gambler, fraudster and, at the time of his death, broke.

Algy Cluff, the oil tycoon and former owner of the Spectator magazine, has written a deliciously enjoyable third volume of his memoirs, Off the Cluff, out in October.

In the book, he recounts the sad tale of Sir David, who once worked for Cluff.

The Oldie November 2021 5

Important stories you may have missed Firefighters called to shopping trolley fire Ledbury Reporter MP to be at conference Border Telegraph

Woman, 20, cautioned for slapping man’s rear Daily Telegraph £15 for published contributions

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6 The Oldie November 2021

Arcadian Derbyshire: Chatsworth, Arcadia, Now by John-Paul Stonard brings the house’s story up to date

Cluff writes, ‘David was really an extraordinary man possessed of exceptional gifts but also of two fatal flaws. He was cultured (concert-standard pianist), entrepreneurial, creative and great fun. His flaws were a disarming but ultimately destructive obsession to be not only a celebrity but also the peer of the grandest in the land.’

This desire to keep up with dukes and gazillionaires was way beyond Tang’s resources.

Cluff writes, ‘It led to his second flaw, gambling, which merely compounded the problem, leading him to adopt less acceptable tactics.’

Tang could be extremely generous. A waiter at one of Cluff’s clubs told him that previously he had been a croupier at a casino in Mayfair. Tang had once given the croupier a £90,000 tip, with which he bought himself a house.

As Algy Cluff writes, ‘Unfortunately, it emerged after David’s death that, for many years, he had been plundering the assets of various companies without the knowledge of the shareholders, in order to fund his mythomaniacal life. The intense pressure of sustaining this systematic fraud for 20 years must have been terrible and presumably hastened his death.’

What a cautionary richesto-rags tale.

It’s early days for firstyear students at RADA. In a coffee shop near Oldie

Towers in Fitzrovia, a stone’s throw from RADA, our art editor overheard two young thespians reflecting on their arduous morning.

‘How’s it been for you?’ one asked. The other said, ‘Well, I’ve been lying on the floor for four hours pretending to be a fried egg!’

‘You’re lucky,’ her friend replied. ‘Last year, we were naked, trying to be sugar lumps.’

Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington…

Chatsworth, Arcadia, Now is a new book about the great country house

by John-Paul Stonard.

‘I got the Arcadia idea fter a long day in the Chatsworth library,’ says Stonard. ‘The fountain was playing; the house was lit by evening sun. I thought, “I’m in Arcadia.” ’ Et in Arcadia ego, as Poussin put it.

In this issue, on page 24, Elisabeth Luard writes about her time as a

secretary at Private Eye, when the magazine was founde 60 years ago.

The writer Christopher Matthew recalls distributing that first issue at Oxford.

He walked into his college room to find a large parcel wrapped in brown paper and string. Attached to it was a letter from the Eye’s co-founder Andrew Osmond.

It read: ‘Dear Chris, One lot of 100 and one of 50 of our new paper. (NB This is just a trial run!) Could you arrange for the distribution of these as soon as poss this week. We would like you to create a rudimentary tins-incafés organisation.

‘Mention that this is the first of three trial runs of a new weekly starting in London and done by the old Mesopotamia (Foot, me, Usborne, Ingrams, Rushton, Wells, Picarda). That should get them.’

Paul Foot, Osmond, Peter Usborne, Oldie founder Richard Ingrams, Willie Rushton, John Wells and Noel Picarda had all worked on Mesopotamia, the satirical Oxford magazine named after a small island in the River Cherwell.

Matthew had been one of the Oxford Players, who had performed a few months earlier at the 1961 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Other Players included Willy Rushton, Ingrams, Osmond, Picarda and Candida Betjeman, John Betjeman’s daughter.

The troupe were fed with snacks made by Candida’s mother, Penelope Betjeman,

‘I see a tall, dark stranger – but he may not be exactly what you’re looking for’

from her Wantage café, King Alfred’s Kitchen: ‘Burnt cakes a speciality’.

The show, called In Revue Order, included a nightclub sketch in which Matthew had to shuffle round, clutching Candida Betjeman.

It was watched one night in some bewilderment by John Betjeman, sitting in the front row, while Candida muttered into Matthew’s ear, ‘Lech! Lech!’

During the show rehearsals, Matthew remembers, ‘There was much talk of the so-far-unnamed magazine that the principal members of the revue were planning to produce when they got back to London.

‘By the time I finally caught up with Rushton, Ingrams et al in the Coach & Horses in Greek Street, they had moved into another world that I barely recognised and to which I never contributed a single word; though, to this day, I can never quite resist the feeling that in some tiny way I helped the infant Eye on its historic way.’

The Old Un is much enjoying A Dictionary of Naval Slang, a new book by Gerald O’Driscoll.

The upshot is that, yes, sailors do swear like, um, sailors.

Among the entries – look away now, if you aren’t a salty seadog – are: Ring stinger – hot curry S**t on a raft – kidneys on fried bread Some of the entries are more poetic: Bombay oyster – a restorative after a heavy night.

It consists of an egg beaten into a quarter-glass of vinegar and well sprinkled with pepper and salt.

Bottoms up!

After the Metropolitan Police, the New York Police Department are the most famous police force in the world.

A new book, Policing the Big Apple: The Story of the NYPD by Jules Steward,

tells all about the Manhattan boys in blue, in wonderfully gory detail.

The juiciest story is about Frank Serpico, now 85, the cop who blew the whistle on his corrupt colleagues – later celebrated in the 1973 film Serpico, starring Al Pacino.

In 1971, Serpico was shot in the face by a heroin dealer in Brooklyn. The other officers with him failed to call for assistance – in retaliation for Serpico’s spilling the beans on the force in 1971.

Serpico describes the sensation of being shot: ‘He simultaneously heard the roar as the gun went off and saw the flash – an enormous burst of colours, merging reds and yellows – and felt the searing heat in his head, as if a million white-hot needles had been plunged into it.’

NYPD’s John A Leach (right) during Prohibition, 1921

Amazingly, Serpico survived and went on to be celebrated for his heroism in exposing the rotten world of New York cops in the early 1970s: where police pocketed cash and heroin from hoods, and even accepted hot dogs as bribes from grocers.

New York’s Finest weren’t always quite so fine.

December marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of Middlemarch (1871) by George Eliot, now seen as one of the greatest British novels of all time.

This was not always the case.

Edmund Gosse in the London Mercury (November 1919) said it was ‘a very remarkable instance of elaborate mental

prue leith

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resources misapplied, and genius revolving, with tremendous machinery, like some great water-wheel, while no water is flowing underneath it’.

D G Rossetti said Eliot’s other novels were ‘vulgarity personified’. His brother, the critic William Rossetti, called them ‘commonplace tempering the stuck-up’.

Swinburne attacked Romola with vigour as ‘absolutely false’.

The critic Edmund Gosse added, ‘I for one can find not a

Happy 150th birthday, George Eliot’s Middlemarch!

word to say in favour of Daniel Deronda.’ He rudely described her as ‘a large, thickset sybil, dreamy and immobile […] massive features, somewhat grim’.

Henry James, who met her

in May 1869, shortly before she had begun work on Middlemarch, agreed. In a letter to his father, he declared that she was ‘magnificently ugly – deliciously hideous […] a dull-grey eye, a vast

pendulous nose, a huge mouth full of uneven teeth […] this great horse-faced bluestocking.’

How silly – and wrong – the great and the good were about the very great, extremely good George Eliot.

SAVE THE DATE! On 8th December 2021, Gyles Brandreth and other Oldie friends will present a matinée show, plus drinks, at the delightful Reform Club in Pall Mall, from 2pm to 4pm.

Gyles will be talking about his new memoir, Odd Boy Out, and a life spent on stage, on the small screen – and in Parliament.

More details to follow in the next issue, readers!

The Oldie November 2021 7

Gyles Brandreth’s Diary

Hayley Mills stole my part!

I could have been a child star – if I’d been a girl I might have been a child star, had it not been for Hayley Mills.

Back in 1959, when I was 11, I had hopes for a career in the movies. I had the looks (so my mother thought), I had the talent (so my mother believed) and I had a film agent – a man named Landor who had offices in Soho, off Wardour Street. Week after week (encouraged by my mother whose motto was ‘Persistence pays’), I turned up at Mr Landor’s door to remind him of my existence, to be told, ‘Nothing has come up yet – but it will.’

And one week it did. ‘An English picture,’ said Mr Landor, smiling. ‘Good director. He did Ice Cold in Alex with John Mills. This is another film with Mills, but set in South Wales. It’s about a young boy who witnesses a murder.

Quite dark. Lovely script. You’ll be the boy. John Mills is the detective. They’ve seen your photograph, Gyles. They like the look of you.’

And when I went to meet the director, J Lee Thompson, he told me, ‘You’re what I’m looking for.’ I had the part in the bag. At least for a few days, I did. The fee was agreed, the time off school was sorted, there was some talk of whether or not to change my surname (Brandreth is a bit of a mouthful) and then came the call from my agent: ‘There’s been a change of plan.’

The part of the child who witnesses the murder in the film was now to be played by a girl rather than a boy – and the girl getting the role was to be John Mills’s younger daughter, Hayley.

I saw Hayley Mills in Tiger Bay in 1959.

She was completely wonderful. I did not feel even momentarily resentful. I simply fell in love with her there and then, and later, when I saw her in Pollyanna, The Parent Trap, Whistle Down the Wind and all her other films, I thought I had never seen any creature so lovely. Her eyes, her hair, her nose, her smile, her voice: I was mesmerised.

The rivals. Hayley Mills and Gyles are now neighbours and friends

Of course, I wasn’t alone. For a few years, Hayley Mills was the most famous child star in the world. At 14, she was voted Britain’s most popular actress and won an Oscar. Anyone who is called Hayley today, whether they realise it or not, is named after her. Hayley was one of her mother’s family names: no girls were called Hayley until Hayley Mills came along – just as no one was called Wendy until the arrival of Peter Pan. Sixty years on, I still love Hayley Mills and, happily for me, we are now near neighbours in south-west London and good friends. At our local book festival this month, I interviewed her about her childhood memoir, Forever Young (a New York Times bestseller and I reckon the best book about the reality of life as a child star you are ever likely to read), and she told me that she knew her break-out part had originally been written for a boy, but had no idea the boy might have been

I had the looks (so my mother thought). I had the talent (so my mother believed)

me. Very sweetly, she apologised for stealing my career.

I have no complaints to make about my life. I accept my lot. While there are hundreds of thousands of women in the world now called Hayley, as far as I know there is only one Gyles named after me.

This Gyles is the ten-year-old-son of one James Birdseye who emailed me recently to tell me that he and his boy ‘are both really enjoying listening to your autobiography on audio book’ and that ‘He loves that he is Gyles with a y as it makes him unique.’ Not wholly unique, of course, but special, certainly.

I like my first name, because it’s easy to remember. I like my surname less, because it isn’t. I would much rather have been called Birdseye. I could then have claimed possible kinship with one of my heroes, Clarence Birdseye (1886-1956), the American naturalist, inventor, and founder of the modern frozen-food industry. In my book, for comfort eating you can’t beat a fish-finger sandwich.

At a lunch party the other day, I was telling an American friend (a muchtravelled retired academic) how I had once shaken the hand of a man who as a child had played ring a ring o’ roses with Joseph Stalin. He countered my boast with one of his own. He had once kissed a woman on the lips who had kissed T S Eliot on the lips.

‘Who was she?’ I asked.

‘Valerie Eliot,’ he said. ‘T S Eliot’s widow.’

‘You kissed her on the mouth?’ I said.

‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘She was an old lady. I always kiss old ladies on the lips.

They like it. They expect it.’

Do they? I don’t think so. But my friend was insistent. Is this an American thing? If you are an old lady and have the answer, please let us know.

Gyles’s childhood memoir, Odd Boy Out, is published by Michael Joseph The Oldie November 2021 9

Grumpy Oldie Man

I’m so glad to be gay

I’m ideally suited to the lifestyle – except in one crucial way matthew norman Even in so blessed an era of sexualpreference enlightenment, coming out to a parent isn’t easy.

One might imagine it were otherwise.

One may, in one’s smugly hetero way, assume that any ‘stigma’ perished too long ago to make such a confession one iota more nerve-jangling than an admission to having left the milk out of the fridge overnight.

Yet it is. On this, I speak from recent experience. It is a matter of days since I came out to my mother, with a deceptively insouciant-sounding declaration.

‘Oh, by the way, I probably ought to mention,’ I murmured on delivering her morning coffee and newspaper, ‘that I’m a gay man now.’

She glanced up from her Daily Mail and spoke the four-word sentence that has long qualified as her mantra. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Matthew,’ she said.

I told her that I was in no way being ridiculous.

She arranged her mouth in the familiar shape that tacitly bespeaks affectionate contempt, and dredged up what I suppose could be regarded, prima facie, as an effective rebuttal. ‘But you don’t fancy men,’ she said.

With trademark acuity, she had put her finger on the core of my problem. I am not, as it happens, attracted to men. I have not consciously fancied any man since a pre-pubescent crush on Roscoe Tanner, the mega-fast-serving 1979 Wimbledon finalist from Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. And that evaporated the year he pitched up at the All England Club with a cataclysmic finger-in-the-light-socket perm.

Yet in every other meaningful way, I am not merely gay, but so unmistakably a classical gay stereotype from the oeuvre of Alan Bennett that it can’t be too long before I take to calling her ‘Mam’.

I am the dutiful middle-aged son who goes on dates with his mother.

10 The Oldie November 2021

In a most uncharacteristic act of selfishness, as mentioned here last month, my father recently vacated the planet. The legacy didn’t feature in his will, so no grant of probate was required to inherit it, but he bequeathed to his son the role of companion to his widow.

So it is that now, whenever one of her many friends asks her out, the invitation comes with a mandatory epilogue: ‘Of course you’ll be coming with Matthew.’

As indeed she of course will.

The saving grace is that I love my mother’s friends and hugely enjoy their company. For all that, these riotous outings leave in their wake the poignant sense of something missing.

That something, as if it needs stating, is the completion of this journey via the acquisition of a gentleman caller.

Everything else is rigidly in place. My gait has become markedly camper these last weeks, and only in part owing to the gout that’s been darting from ankle to knee and back to foot with such undisguised glee.

While removing the fluff filter from the tumble-dryer, I hum tunes from A Chorus Line – a mild oddity given that I have never seen it or heard the soundtrack.

I am one successful interview with a department-store menswear manager from answering my mother’s every summons with a falsetto ‘I’m freeeeeeeeeeee!’

Yesterday, during a genteel bout of stair-Hoovering, I overheard myself alternating between tutting prissily at the

Men already know from intimate acquaintance how revolting men are

dust and singing snatches of I Am What I Am from La Cage aux Folles.

And what am I, if not my own special creation: a gay man trapped in the arthritic, unhoned body of a pitiably straight, middle-aged schlub?

Obviously, given the option, any self-respecting male would choose to be gay, because any relationship between two men has a massive in-built advantage over that between a woman and a man.

Men, being men, already know from intimate acquaintance how revolting men are. This spares them the tragic realisation that afflicts a woman as she stumbles to the understanding that the creature she fell for was a construct – a wildly selfidealised version of the emotionally inadequate nebbish with whom she’s now saddled.

The solution to my conundrum remains unclear. Geographically, I am lucky. My mother’s house stands a short walk (for the gout-free, at least) from Hampstead Heath. The George Michael memorial park bench is within easy reach. But cruising can be no more than a utopian dream unless and until some physical attraction to the male form can be attained.

Somewhere in the United States, probably in Arizona, may be a conversion-therapy boot camp where males are sent to have the straight knocked out of them by religious maniacs. If so, I haven’t found it yet.

And so for now I am condemned to plough this bespoke incel furrow in solitude, as the last dregs of libido drain away miserably in the wrong direction.

Still, at least the diary is filling nicely with hot dates. A cousin’s 70th birthday approaches, for instance, and who would gainsay that Mam and I will hobble companionably to the dance floor for an Oedipal waltz there?

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The The The Oldie Oldie Oldie November October Month 2016 2021 11

Hitches Major & Minor On the tenth anniversary of Christopher Hitchens’s death, John Harding remembers teaching him and his brother Peter

DAVE HOWELLS

I

t’s ten years since Christopher Hitchens died of cancer, in December 2011, aged only 62.

The anniversary reminded me of the year I spent with him and his younger brother, Peter, 60 years ago.

In 1961, aged 21, I was working as an assistant prep-school master at Mount House School on the edge of Dartmoor.

Christopher, who scourged the reputations of Mother Teresa, Henry Kissinger, the Clintons and, indeed, God, was a 12-year-old boy in his last year at the school. Peter was two years younger.

Christopher was puckish: a lively, quizzical boy, quick-witted and funny. He was not a follower, always independent and challenging to masters and boys alike.

C T Witherington, his classics teacher, with whom I shared the staff house in the grounds of the school, once told me that Christopher was the most intelligent and imaginative boy he had ever taught.

Mount House School, set in magnificent hilly grounds, had a fairly spartan regime in those days, not unfamiliar to readers of Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall – cold baths, poorly heated dormitories and lousy food.

Christopher observed ‘that haggard and despairing convicts were more than once recaptured after hiding in the sheds of our cricket grounds’.

Almost true. One winter’s evening, cold and snowbound, Witherington and I retired to the staff house and heard a noise at the top of the landing.

We opened the airing cupboard to discover an escaped Dartmoor convict, cowering and shivering. We gave him a cup of tea and a sandwich before calling the police. Christopher, ever the budding journalist, pressed us for more information about the sad intruder the following day when the headmaster broke the news at the school assembly.

Christopher had a sense of the dramatic. Here is his short piece called ‘The Crash’ from the school newspaper in 1961:

He edited the class newspaper called Enterprise. Here he is celebrating the Battle of Trafalgar in verse: The ships heave to, the cannons speak The air is filled with powder’s and musky reek The powder boy dashes from gun to gun Then to the magazine does run A shot rings out, and Nelson falls And to his faithful Hardy calls ‘They have done for me, at last!’

Brothers in arms: Christopher (19492011) and Peter Hitchens (b 1951)

‘As I went round the corner at top speed, I was horrified to see another bicycle coming straight towards me on the wrong side of the road. ‘“Maniac,” I yelled. Suddenly my eyes became distinctly misty. There was a grinding crash and I flew over the handlebars. My last recollection before I landed in a ditch was of my acquaintance lying under a heap of scrap metal in the middle of the road.’

Peter, the Mail on Sunday columnist, broadcaster and contrarian, was a loner, mostly on his own in the school playground, nicknamed Bush Baby by his contemporaries. I taught him English. He was imaginative and gifted. I asked the class of nine-year-olds to use fitting adverbs to convey the flotsam and jetsam of a deserted beach at the end of a summer’s day.

He wrote, ‘The Sunday Times floated serenely on the waves.’

Christopher was the most intelligent and imaginative boy he had ever taught

My most serendipitous moment as a teacher occurred in a school outbuilding, overlooking the main drive.

The class, including Peter, took turns in reading Masefield’s narrative poem Reynard the Fox. Suddenly we heard the sound of the huntsman’s horn.

The Dartmoor Hunt had been given permission by the headmaster to ride through the grounds in pursuit of the fox.

‘Quick, boys – outside,’ I shouted, as the hunt in full crimson regalia passed by not 20 yards from the classroom.

‘Did you arrange that, sir?’ Peter asked.

‘Yes, of course,’ I lied, grinning from ear to ear.

In retrospect, to an outsider, like me, these extraordinarily talented schoolboy brothers were quite different in character and behaviour, as their subsequent career paths on either side of the Atlantic showed.

But Christopher always admired his brother for ‘great steadiness under fire from the cheap crowd who chose to mock him for being odd’.

Shortly after I left the school to go to university, the headmaster, Hugh Wortham, called Peter to his study for some misdemeanour.

Peter, small though he was, remained unperturbed. His mother recalled that he said to Wortham, ‘You may be in command now, but you will never quell the fire within me.’

The Oldie November 2021 13

The 2021 Oldie of the Year Awards honour a galaxy of dazzling oldies. Our Number One prize goes to a sublime film star and dancer

Leslie Caron THE OLDIE OF THE YEAR

W

e think of Leslie Caron as a film star, a remarkable front-line survivor from the Hollywood era. But primarily, she is a dancer. Rightly elected the Oldie of the Year, at the age of 90 she is spry, full of life and remarkably sympathetic.

In her memoirs, she wrote, ‘Life compels me, just as it does everyone else, to face the decline that advancing age imposes, at the risk of turning bitter, and I see bitterness as a cancer of the soul.’

She went on to declare that she has refused to surrender to this. Trained as a dancer, she does her exercises every morning and has remained as trim and fit as ever. She defies the years.

Today you may catch here in a cameo role in a film, but you are more likely to find her at the Wigmore Hall, relaying her memories of Paris during the Occupation, before a concert of French music, or reciting poetry with an orchestra for Amelia Freedman and her Nash Ensemble.

She lived in Paris during the terrible 1940s, something she recreated memorably in a scene with Orson Welles in the film Is Paris Burning? (1966).

So vivid was it, and so true to what she recalled – the German soldiers, the barking dogs, the survivors with numbers tattooed on their skins – that she retreated for several days to her hotel room to get over it.

So many of the stars of her generation were self-obsessed creations of the Hollywood machine, with a fortuitous appeal to the camera. Leslie Caron is nothing like that. She comes from that particularly rewarding, intellectual and artistic world of postwar Paris. She did not meet Colette, who wrote the novella Gigi, in which she later starred in 1958. But she knew Jean Cocteau, she danced in Roland Petit’s ballets and she danced with the great Jean Babilée.

Gene Kelly spotted her and whisked her away to Hollywood. She went to escape from a dangerous love developing 14 The Oldie November 2021

Thank heaven for Leslie Caron

between herself and Babilée (so recently married to Nathalie Philippart).

Though Hollywood put her into memorable films – An American in Paris with Gene Kelly in 1951, Daddy Long Legs (1955) with Fred Astaire, and later Father Goose (1964) with Cary Grant – she did not like the Hollywood life. Marlon Brando was the only actor who shared her need to find French films or films by Bergman, while Christopher Isherwood, after initial hesitation, became a godsend of a friend. By 1970, he was writing, ‘Her beauty and her trimness and her energy are so awe-inspiring.’

Her star quality depends not only on her dancing, acting and unique beauty, but also on her voice. That surprises her.

She admits to being a thwarted opera singer. Her singing in Gigi was dubbed.

My first bond with her is that film, not only because my parents more or less brought me up on the music from Gigi, but because Cecil Beaton excelled so

greatly in capturing the Belle Époque with his costumes and artistic design.

Alan Jay Lerner is another essential ingredient and thought that film so superior to My Fair Lady not only because it was filmed in Paris, in wonderful locations such as Maxim’s and the Palais des Glaces, but because a bit of Paris crept under the studio door.

This is but to capture a flashlight of Leslie Caron’s remarkable career. She excelled in The L-Shaped Room (1962), the director changing the part of an English girl to a French girl on the premise that English girls were not sexy.

Bosley Crowther of the New York Times wrote, ‘She pours into this role so much powerful feeling, so much heart and understanding, that she imbues a basically threadbare little story with tremendous compassion and charm.’

She blossomed – and suffered – from marriage to the director Peter Hall. He first saw her as the Sphinx in Les Rencontres – ‘It was as if a Renoir waif had strayed onto the stage and surprised us with her animal ferocity. Then I saw her films. I was half in love with her before I met her.’

She survived a phase of Warren Beatty and went on to run an inn at Villeneuvesur-Yonne, to overcome alcohol and addiction. Her autobiography, Thank Heaven…, published in 2010, was crucial to her recovery.

There is a story of a film star who talked non-stop about her film and then turned to her exhausted listener and said, ‘Listen. I’ve been talking about myself for 45 minutes. Tell me! What did you think about my film?’ So far from Leslie, who has none of that conceit. She is sympathetic, intelligent and modest and you can have a wonderful conversation with her.

I have a confession. Earlier this year, I wrote a profile of her for The Oldie. The generosity with which she responded to it was so touching that hot tears pressed in my eyes. ‘And that’s not so usual!’ as Diana Vreeland used to say.

Hugo Vickers

A right Royal affair

F

Royal seal of approval: ‘You are as old as you feel,’ says H M the Queen

Geoff Hurst

oldie golden boot of the year

Fifty-five years on, Sir Geoff Hurst, 79, remains the only footballer to have scored a hat trick in a World Cup final. Every four years, he must sit down and assume that someone is going to match his magnificent feat that mythical July day in 1966. But no one – not Pelé, not Johann Cruyff, not even Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo – has managed it. In the annals of football history, Sir Geoff stands alone.

And the remarkable thing about him is he looks as if he could still do it. During the summer, when England’s footballers promised they might finally win their

or the past 29 years, The Oldie has held the Oldie of the Year (aka TOOTY) awards to celebrate the achievements of those who have made a special contribution to public life while maintaining – in the phrase of our founding editor, Richard Ingrams – undoubted snap in their celery.

Previous winners have included all sorts, from Oscarwinners to Nobel laureates, from community-care nurses to veteran athletes, from the Queen Mother to David Hockney.

When we sounded out the late Duke of Edinburgh in 2011 about the possibility of his accepting an award, he replied from Sandringham, ‘I much appreciate your invitation to receive an Oldie of the Year award. There is nothing like it for morale to be reminded that the years are

passing – ever more quickly – and that bits are beginning to drop off the ancient frame.

But it is nice to be remembered at all.’

This year, at our judging lunch, Maureen Lipman wondered whether the time had come for us to honour Elizabeth II herself, in recognition of our sovereign’s leadership during the pandemic (‘We will meet again’) and in the run-up to her Platinum Jubilee next year.

I took appropriate soundings and received a lovely letter from Balmoral Castle (left).

Those warmest best wishes are of course heartily reciprocated by all of us at Oldie Towers and, I am sure, by all our readers.

Long live The Queen! Perhaps in the future we will sound out Her Majesty once more.

Meanwhile, at our awards lunch this year, we were honoured by the presence of HRH The Duchess of Cornwall, who, too young to be eligible for an award herself, presented them to this year’s galaxy of worthy award-winners. We are grateful to her, to our award-winners and to this year’s team of judges. Toot-toot-TOOTY! Gyles Brandreth

first trophy since his day, when they contested the final of the Euros, Sir Geoff was the guest of honour.

When he arrived at Wembley, there must have been several stewards who assumed he was a member of Gareth Southgate’s squad. Now approaching his ninth decade, he appears absurdly youthful, as if he could cheerfully lace up his boots and join the fray.

As he took his place in the royal box before kick-off, he believed he was about to witness the end of the trophy drought that has afflicted the England team since he lifted the World Cup. But it didn’t happen, partly because there was no one to deliver the kind of decisive intervention that was his trademark. With Sir Geoff in your side, with his lynx-eyed certainty in front of goal, you knew you were going to win.

Though, as it happens, as a young centre forward on his way up at West Ham, he was expecting to be merely a bit-part player when the World Cup was contested on home soil. But when the late Jimmy Greaves (who’s sadly just died at 81), the incumbent striker, succumbed to injury, he was called up to lead the line.

No one has ever seized opportunity the way Hurst did. First, he scored the only goal in the quarter final against Argentina; then, in the final, he destroyed

West Germany with three of the sharpest finishes you will ever see.

Sir Geoff was a natural sportsman. He represented Essex at cricket before dedicating himself to football. His power, drive and athleticism made him a joy to watch. And he could do the most important thing with an accomplished ease: he could score goals. He did it 24 times for England in 49 appearances. Still, despite his subsequent excellence as a manager at Chelsea, a coach with England and an all-round ambassador for the game, it was the three he got in the World Cup final that came to define him.

Dignified and restrained, he has never cleaved to the uniqueness of his achievement.

He has always wanted others to emulate what he did. But succeeding generations have failed to match him.

And, more than half a century on, even as time is called on so many of his 1966 contemporaries, how grateful we remain for what he gave us.

Sadly Roger Hunt, another member of the 1966 team, died in September, aged 83.

And both George Cohen and Bobby Charlton are cruelly stricken with dementia – which makes Sir Geoff’s preternatural youthfulness even more remarkable. He really is one of a kind.

Jim White The Oldie November 2021 15

The other award-winners Delia Smith

truly scrumptious oldie of the year

ILLUSTRATIONS BY GARY WING/PHOTO TIM STORRIER

Delia Smith, national treasure, turned 80 in June, with 21 million book sales and a 50-year career under her belt.

The woman who taught the nation how to cook is about to switch gear and do for the national consciousness what she did for the breakfast egg. Her new book, You Matter, out in March 2022, promises reflections on the most pressing problems of our times, including COVID and climate change, by the woman responsible for teaching home cooks what our mothers never did.

The Delia effect happened gradually: not so much a national culinary revolution as a gentle return to postwar gastronomic sanity in the 1970s. In the 1980s, curious cooks, already beguiled by Elizabeth David but still unsure of how to deliver, began to notice that the food at dinner parties was no longer likely to be something to be endured rather than enjoyed. ‘It’s a Delia,’ was the response from the cook hostess congratulated by grateful guests on the perfect roast chicken with tarragon.

A regular churchgoer and convert to Catholicism, Delia more than made up for leaving school without a single O level through the award of two honorary degrees, three fellowships and a pair of gongs from the monarch. She was appointed CBE in 2009 and Companion of Honour in 2017.

Delia and her journalist husband, Michael Wynn-Jones, suppor Norwich City. Even her half-time rant in 2005 at fans of her beloved Norwich (‘Let’s be having you!’) was endearing.

Michael does most of the home cooking while his wife gardens.

‘It’s all completely fine,’ she says, ‘as long as he sticks to the recipe.’

After announcing her final retirement

16 The Oldie November 2021

from the small screen in 2013, Delia remains a guiding light to home cooks through her books, online cookery school and cool, calm, collected YouTube videos – the perfect antidote to the antics of MasterChef, an enterprise for which she doesn’t have much time: ‘Food isn’t theatre… Our problem is we don’t think highly enough of it. It can speak for itself and it’s wonderful and it’s beautiful and it’s art – it’s everything.’

Quite so. National treasure indeed.

Elisabeth Luard

Sir Les Patterson

wizard from oz oldie of the year

It’s like the ravens leaving the Tower of London. Sir Les Patterson – that towering titan of international diplomacy, Australian cultural attaché to the Court of St James and Chairman of the Australian Cheese Board – is retiring.

Les, 80 next year, is stepping down to spend less time with his wife, top hand-model Gwen, and his children, Craig and Karen. There’s still plenty of lead in his pencil, though, as he explores exciting new openings with Holly, his glamorous personal assistant. Sir Les will maintain his hobbies: pocket billiards and sauna construction in Thailand.

He continues his column in The Old Fella, aka The Oldie – and will expand his literary oeuvre. Hot releases by Sir Les include The Traveller’s Tool (1985), The Enlarged and Extended Tool (2005), his platinum-selling LP, 12 Inches of Les, and his 1985 Christmas Number One, Give Her One for Christmas.

Born in Sydney in 1942, Sir Les has been showered with golden honours since his five-day crash course in world culture at Sydney University. An honorary Cambridge doctorate followed.

The award comes ten years after his compatriot Barry Humphries was recognised by the Oldie Academy.

Here’s hoping this honour will bring the two legends – who haven’t always seen eye to eye and can’t bear to be in the same room – closer together.

Harry Mount

Whispering Bob Harris

poptastic oldie of the year

Bob Harris, 75, keeps his records in a well-appointed Portakabin in the garden of his home in Oxfordshire.

When he left police college and fell in with the hippies in London in 1967, he got rid of some of the shorter-haired records. When he split up with his first wife in the early ’70s, he left a load of the longer-haired LPs behind. Thankfully the split was amicable enough for him to go back and visit them. When he was in a court case over a debt in the ’90s, he successfully argued that his records shouldn’t be seized because they were the tools of his trade.

During the 50 years Bob Harris has been a national figure, there have been tough patches. As the figurehead of The Old Grey Whistle Test in the ’70s, he was always the one who was going to get the abuse, some of it physical. He’s served his time in the less-celebrated regions of broadcasting. There has been more than

one health crisis. He came back from prostate cancer in 2007 and more recently a heart problem.

He was a casualty of Matthew Bannister’s mid-’90s night of the long knives at Radio 1.

Bannister later confessed his only regret was moving Bob from his overnight show. He’s stuck around long enough to have the last laugh, in his case as the undisputed owner of the segment of the market they like to call New Country – basically rock and roll with its shirt tucked in.

Ask him what his all-time favourite record is, and he’ll say it’s something that he’s only just discovered today. It’s a cute line. Then again, as his erstwhile tormentors the Sex Pistols would say, he means it, man.

David Hepworth

Dr & Dr Datta

oldie nhs angels of the year

Roger McGough

oldie people’s poet of the year At 83, Roger McGough is our much-loved ‘patron saint of poetry’ (according to Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate). This year, he confronted the dark times of COVID with a new volume of poems called Safety in Numbers: ‘Safety in numbers? Not any more/ The room starts to fill/ I’m out of the door.’

It’s five decades since McGough arrived on everyone’s bookshelves with The Mersey Sound, the 1967 Penguin anthology of three witty young poets from Liverpool – Adrian Henri, Brian Patten and Roger McGough.

Roger was the nicest and best connected: as one of The Scaffold, along with John Gorman and Paul McCartney’s brother, Mike McGear, he had a numberone hit with Lily the Pink in 1968.

How we enjoy his humour, aphorisms (Tomorrow Has Your Name on It is full of sound advice), fantasies (admen ‘turn[ing] the moon into a Coca-Cola sign’) and arch puns. My favourite is Icarus Allsorts, a satirical anti-war poem.

His verse memoirs about his childhood, as a docker’s son who won a scholarship to St Mary’s College, Crosby, are poignant; his poems about modern life are fierce. He sits in the armchair by the nation’s hearth, presenting Radio 4’s Poetry Please. McGough has clear-eyed, unsentimental views of approaching old age. ‘Let me die a young man’s death’ was his original sentiment; later he updated this to ‘Not for me a young man’s death.’

He is repelled by metal and unimpressed by speed. On capital punishment, he says, ‘I live in the capital and it’s punishment.’

Valerie Grove

Originally intending to return to India to be married, Mridul and Saroj felt so welcomed by Blackburn that in 1965 they were married at the Blackburn Registry Office.

Their family are following in their footsteps, with one consultant endocrinologist daughter and a granddaughter who is studying medicine.

Donna Freed

Margaret Seaman

oldie champion knitter of the year During the most perilous, pressured 18 months in the NHS’s history, one married couple in their eighties hit Olympian levels of work to keep the whole show on the road.

As COVID raged across the country and the world, Dr Mridul Kumar Datta and Dr Saroj Datta rolled up their sleeves. Working alongside each other, they have notched up over 110 years of exemplary service to the NHS. Both now 81, they qualified at the Medical College of Calcutta (Kolkata), attended by Mridul’s grandfather and great-grandfather. The doctors received their diplomas in 1964 and the following year travelled to the UK, where they became Members of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

Mridul opened his own Stepping Stones practice in 1971. That same year, he also launched the north-west’s first vasectomy clinic. Later on, he pioneered out-of-hours services in Blackburn when he founded Our Medical Services.

Stepping Stones moved to its current location in the Audley Health Centre in Stoke-on-Trent in 1974. It now serves more than 5,500 people.

Mridul was awarded an honorary fellowship from the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in 1992 and another from the Faculty of Family Planning and Sexual Health in 2006.

Saroj joined the NHS in 1965 as a locum at the Blackburn Royal Infirmary and moved on to the Obstetrics and Gynaecology department of Queen’s Park Hospital. She worked in various departments of the NHS, from A&E to pathology and public health.

Saroj, who is fluent in four languages, joined Stepping Stones in 1975. She still welcomes each infant patient into the practice and delivers their first immunisations, as she has continued to do throughout the pandemic. Often four generations of the same family have called on these two doctors’ services.

Margaret Seaman, from Great Yarmouth, did something exceptional in lockdown.

At 92, she’s spent the last two years making a magnificent model of the Queen’s Sandringham Estate – in wool.

Margaret used to knit for her children and grandchildren. After losing her husband, she joined a local knitting group and, as she told the BBC, ‘It all snowballed from there.’ The end result is this stunning scale model, 18 feet long by six feet wide.

Margaret spent between 10 and 12 hours on it, almost every day, for months on end. She was often up half the night.

The detail is delightful: from the latticed windows of Sandringham House to the crenellated battlements of the church tower. Knitted foliage reflects the towering trees that surround the Queen’s private retreat.

Last summer, Margaret’s creation went on show at the Norfolk Makers’ Festival, at the Forum in Norwich, to raise funds for local hospitals. ‘If I can think of something to do that we can show to people, and raise money for a charity, it would be something worthwhile,’ she reflected. Hear, hear!

During the Second World War, Sandringham’s lawns were ploughed up and planted with vegetables, to support the nation’s Dig for Victory campaign. To support Britain’s hospitals,we should have a Knit for Victory drive. Margaret Seaman must be in charge.

William Cook The Oldie November 2021 17

what were postcards?

Searching for postcards of Corfe Castle to send to my old French-exchange friend, I couldn’t find one for love or money. This is quietly tragic.

People don’t send many postcards any more. Last year, only 102,245 postcards were sent from the UK. In their pomp, they sold in their millions: introduced in 1870, postcards became popular overnight. More than 75 million were sent in 1871 alone.

By 1910, the total had swollen to 800 million. With them came a rich slice of British life.

Sent (and censored) from the Western Front in the First World War and from the POW Camps of the Second, they commemorated every event and season, from Cup Finals to coronations. Most particularly, they triumphantly celebrated holidays.

But slowly, the local scenes printed by firms such as Judges Ltd, Valentine and J Salmon Ltd gave way to the ugly, polychrome collages ranged in serried ranks on the seafronts of my youth.

Even Donald McGill was not immune.

His 12,000 naughty designs sold more than 200 million copies; the images were seared into our national consciousness.

George Orwell considered some witty (Judge: ‘Don’t prevaricate: did you or did you not sleep with this woman?’ Corespondent: ‘Not a wink, my Lord!’) and

what is pegging?

TRIGGER WARNING! PLEASE DON’T READ THE FOLLOWING IF OF A SENSITIVE DISPOSITION… Pegging is an extreme sexual practice whereby, um, the woman takes the role of the man by attaching an appendage and, as Oldie contributor Sir Les Patterson might put it, exploring a new opening.

Like many sexual terms, ‘to peg’ also has a metaphorical meaning, ‘to destroy’.

This was the meaning model Cara Delevingne intended at the 2021 Met 18 The Oldie November 2021

all heroic. He said he would be sorry to see them vanish.

But vanish they did: McGill was fined £50 under the Obscene Publications Act and the saucy-postcard market collapsed.

Competitors such as Bamforth of Holmfirth (at the end of the 19th century, they made more films than Hollywood) went into decline.

Others tried to fill the void. Holiday camps and hotels printed cards showing their premises. The boom in beauty pageants in the 1970s provided an excuse to send pictures of scantily-clad women.

Businesses and shops had postcards showing their excellent modern premises. Even the motorways got in on

the act. They were achingly dull: as a survey of the bleakness of postwar Britain, you cannot do better than Martin Parr’s Boring Postcards, which encompass motorway service stations.

Other than cards from exotic locations like the Costa del Sol or those produced for occasions such as royal weddings, postcards were being relegated to wet holidays when mothers would force their children to write to their grandparents.

In 2014, grandparents still received the most postcards. Valentine, the Dundee postcard company, printed their last monochrome card in 1967 and sold out to Hallmark (who no longer sell postcards) in 1980. Bamforth was sold in the same year and J Salmon Ltd closed after 137 years in 2017.

Fewer people make them now; those who do find it harder to make ends meet.

Stamps are expensive (85p 1st; 66p 2nd) and the young simply do not send postcards. My son can’t remember sending a single one: what’s the point when you have Instagram?

I mourn this. I like postcards. I have bought several boxes of the Penguin postcards, some too nice to send. I am certainly a deltiophile (from the Greek deltion – ‘small writing tablet’) but few pleasures are as simple and unexpected as a card from a friend.

Please, I beg you, be as resolutely PC (in an epistolatory sense) as possible. If all else fails, there is an app that can send your photograph as a postcard.

David Abberton

Gala in New York in September. She appeared in a bullet-proof Dior vest, emblazoned with the legend ‘PEG THE PATRIARCHY’. She explained to reporters that she hoped to ‘stick it to the man’ – and prompted a flurry of p-word Googling.

Patriarchy describes a social system in which men and male concepts hold sway, explicitly or implicitly, at home, at work, in politics – everywhere.

Once on the fringes of feminist thought, the patriarchy is now popularly understood to be the common thread between all manner of anti-woman phenomena, from anti-abortion laws in

Texas to the Taliban to the cost of childcare to the #MeToo phenomenon.

Hence the rallying cry ‘Smash the patriarchy’.

But hang on – peg the patriarchy?

A misprint, surely? Surely Cara meant ‘Peg back the patriarchy’? Or pig: ‘Pig to the patriarchy’?

But no: Delevingne very definitely pointed to ‘PEG’ and said, ‘If anyone doesn’t know what this word is, you’re going to have to look it up because I’m not going to explain it.’

I can’t help feeling that such coyness is not only a dereliction of duty; it upholds precisely the sort of sexual norms that

Joy of naughty postcards

pegging enthusiasts seek to disrupt. For there is nothing shameful about pegging, they argue – or any other sexual peccadillo, for that matter (except, perhaps, for missionary-position cis-het sex, which was cancelled in 2017).

Pegging was first described by the Marquis de Sade in his 1795 book Philosophy in the Bedroom. (‘Come now, Madame, embugger your brother’…) The LGBT columnist Dan Savage coined the term ‘pegging’ to describe it in 2001. And it has since formed a storyline in the sitcom Peep Show and inspired Cosmopolitan magazine to publish a helpful how-to guide. It seems everyone is doing it these days.

As Anna, 28, told Cosmopolitan,

Rude girl: Delevingne at the Met Gala

‘Pegging is great because it puts you in a role you’re not really used to being in as a woman. There are aspects of dominance, power, intimacy, and strength that I don’t think we get to experience in quite the same wordless way when it comes to vanilla sex.’ Taylor, 55, added, ‘He loved submitting to me and I loved him submitting to me.’

Which begs the question: if it’s such a treat, what has the patriarchy done to deserve a good pegging? Or was Delevingne implying that pegging was some sort of punishment as opposed to a perfectly healthy thing for consenting adults to do, sometimes? Cancel her immediately!

Richard Godwin

Confessions of a Co-op snob A couple of years ago, I did something very daring. I went inside a Co-op supermarket for the first time in my life.

This may not seem a particularly intrepid act. But, when you have seven decades of snobbery about the Co-op embedded deep inside your system, it begins to make sense.

When I was growing up in the then tiny town of St Neots, in Cambridgeshire, only common people shopped at the Co-op.

Anybody with a bit of money, such as my mother, would get their shopping from the more expensive food and clothes shops, even when the goods were identical.

Since its foundation in 1844 as the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, the Co-op has been associated with the ‘working poor’ and the north of England.

To us snooty southerners, it meant much the same thing.

Its customers could become a member of the Co-operative Wholesale Society, or

CWS as it was known, and be given a ‘divi’ number. This would entitle them to a few pence off their purchases; enough over a year, maybe, for the coach fare to a seaside resort in summer.

How wrong I was to be so snobbish about such an admirable institution.

Since 2009, the Co-op has ventured into education, with the acquisition of 28 academies, all in the north of England. By the end of 2022, it plans 40 academies, including sixth-form colleges. It’s also branching out into entertainment, with a 23,500-capacity arena being built in Manchester.

With its education push, the Co-op is actually going back to its roots. In the 1840s, there were schools above Co-op grocery shops. Now, the company is going all out to attract young people, not just with schools but with uniforms as well. Needless to say, my mother would never have bought my school uniform or

shoes from the Co-op. She would never have lived it down.

The Co-op declined badly during the 1960s and ’70s, when more glamorous supermarkets, such as Waitrose, soared ahead. Eighteen thousand Co-op shops closed. By 2000, the company had sold off many of its loss-making concerns, although ministering to the sick and dead, with its pharmacies and funeral services, continued to perform well. The Co-op is now the UK’s largest funeral director. With funerals costing an average of £4,000, this sector collected £317 million in revenue in 2018.

The Co-operative Bank, founded in 1867, collapsed in 2013. It was rescued, and is now wholly owned by private equity firms, although the name has been retained. So, lots of ups and downs. But it must be doing something right to have attracted moi as a customer.

It’s still a significant presence on the high street. The remaining 2,600 shops have been modernised, to the extent that some people even regard the once-humble Co-op as expensive, compared with cut-price supermarkets such as Aldi and Asda.

My local Co-op sells champagne, exotic foods, newspapers and magazines – although it has not yet come up in the world enough to stock The Oldie. For that, I have to go to M&S next door.

Seventy years after my Co-op snobbery first set in, I still find it hard to shake off my ridiculous, irrational attitude. When I cross the threshold of a Co-op, I feel I’m somehow doing them a massive favour by deigning to buy my groceries there. More fool me.

Liz Hodgkinson The Oldie November 2021 19

Simon Jenkins travelled across Europe to find the best cathedrals, but his heart still lies with Lincoln, Ely and Wells

The Three English Graces T

he English cathedral is one religious institution in rude good health.

Parish churches die by the week. Congregations shrink. The young are vanishing. But, lockdowns apart, most cathedrals are booming. Their worshippers have increased by a third over the past two decades, and that does not include tourists.

The reasons are variously attributed to the cathedrals’ promotion of music, their secular activities in the community and even their relative anonymity. As one dean confided to me, ‘We try not to bang on about God.’ But the chief reason must be their sheer beauty. For four centuries at the end of the Middle Ages, kings, bishops and city magnates decided to erect structures so colossal and so sensational in their design that, as the canons of Seville told their architects, ‘Build such that men will think us mad.’

Today these structures still constitute the supreme works of European art and architecture.

Two years of pilgrimage and study has left me, though not a practising Christian, both astonished and exhilarated. What in truth motivated these ventures, and among them which were the finest?

When I set out, I was biased, largely from familiarity, towards those I knew best, the cathedrals of England. Almost all built by the conquering Normans, they attracted the best builders in Europe, assisted with money and labour almost without limit.

Now older and wiser, I find my head is still buzzing with Chartres and Amiens, Toledo and Seville, St Basil’s and

20 The Oldie November 2021

St Mark’s. Comparison between them seems odious and I can only plead with friends to see them all before they die. Yet familiarity won the day.

Back home, I remain drawn to what I called my Three English Graces – Lincoln, Ely and Wells. They are for me in a class of their own.

The chief reason is that they possess, like few continental cathedrals, a sense of evolving over time and in style, of wearing their history on their sleeves, and their personalities with it.

Thus Lincoln is an ageing aristocrat, wizened and partly unrestored. Its domain once stretched from the Humber to the Thames. Its principal patron was an eccentric Carthusian, Hugh of Burgundy, who sought sainthood by kissing lepers and chewing a piece of Mary Magdalene’s arm. He built the bulk of his cathedral in the 13th century behind the old Norman west front. The central of his three towers grew to be the tallest structure in the world – taller than the Great Pyramid of Cheops – until it collapsed during the reign of the Tudors.

The interior of Lincoln is a perfect display of Early English Gothic,

Medieval toothache: Wells Cathedral

transitioning to Decorated. Hugh’s most bizarre creation is the ‘crazy vault’ of the choir, its ribs at no point forming a symmetrical pattern. The black Purbeck shafts, the transept rose windows, the undulating wall arcades and verdant stiff-leaf capitals show engineers, masons and carvers working in perfect harmony.

The east end is Lincoln’s splendid Angel Choir, erected in Hugh’s memory.

It is a gallery of Decorated art, from the devilish Lincoln Imp to the erotic Adam and Eve, with serpents eating their genitals. When it was opened in 1280 with Edward I in attendance, the entertainment was so lavish that ‘the bishop’s palace gutters ran with wine’.

Today, Lincoln is calmer. The northern cloister contains Sir Christopher Wren’s library, with its old book presses and chained leather volumes. In its arcade below rests surely England’s most sublime teashop.

Ely, like Lincoln, is a cathedral dating from a grander age than its surrounding settlement. Also built to deter Danes and overawe Saxons, it rises today over the mists of the Fens like a galleon at sea. Its west end is a fortress of Romanesque towers, while to the east rises a stupendous late-Gothic pile, rebuilt after a collapse in the 14th century. This rebuilding produced Ely’s jewel, a central lantern tower erected on 16 colossal oak beams brought from Bedfordshire – how it was done is a mystery.

Ely’s nave is a Norman army drawn up on parade, an arcade of round arches with, on its exterior, two elaborate 12th-century portals. One depicts Christ attended by angels with enormous hands and feet, like figures borrowed from East Anglian mythology. Where the nave

IAN DAGNALL/ MANOR/ALAMY

Once the tallest building in the world: 13th-century Lincoln Cathedral

meets the crossing, the view of the roof explodes upwards into a vault of unparalleled drama. Giant curving ribs arc upwards to the lantern opening, where windows illuminate a second vault. To lie on the floor beneath Ely’s crossing is to sense the greatest of Gothic experiences. Ely’s other joy is its Perpendicular Lady Chapel, the walls lined with exquisite carved stalls sadly defaced by iconoclasts. Oh, to see them restored.

Lastly Wells, its mammoth bulk lurking under the Mendip escarpment but leaping to life when a setting sun gilds its west front with gold. Like Ely’s chapel, its tiers of eroded and

unrecognisable sculptures cry out for restoration, but even its wind-blasted stone stumps seem curiously lovable.

Inside rise Wells’s famous scissor arches propping up the crossing, looking faintly 20th century but dating from the 14th.

They shelter a little-known gallery of some 200 pier capital carvings. These are not biblical scenes but a gazetteer of daily life in medieval Wells. A cobbler mends a shoe, a farmer chases a fox, boys steal fruit from a tree and a man has toothache. It is a miracle of Gothic art.

Beyond is Wells’s retrochoir and Lady Chapel, the latter’s ceiling the work of Thomas of Witney, who deserves to rank with the greatest of English architects. A keen geometer, he designed a Gothic cat’s cradle of ribs, forming to Pevsner ‘a pleasing confusion as intricate

and thrilling as German rococo or polyphonic music. It is architecture designed by Bach’.

Finally, Wells’s Chapter House is reached up a curving staircase.

Composed at the turn of the 14th century round a single central column, it is like the umbrella of a great palm tree, its 32 ribs splaying outwards to fall onto an octagon of windows. This is the most serene of chambers.

The great churches of France, Spain, Italy and Germany all have their moments, but I happily sit back and rest among my favourites, those old friends the cathedrals of England.

Europe’s Hundred Best Cathedrals

by Simon Jenkins is published on 4th November (Penguin) The Oldie November 2021 21

Dopy groupies Drug-dealers used to be condemned. Now they’ve become heroes, says Duncan Campbell

W

hen the cannabissmuggler Howard Marks died in 2016, aged 70, the obituaries were affectionate. He was portrayed as someone akin to a national treasure.

He had already been the subject of a popular film, Mr Nice (2010), starring Rhys Ifans, based on his bestselling 1997 memoir of the same name. A new book, Becoming Mr Nice: The Howard Marks Archive, has just been compiled by his daughter, Amber Marks. It includes a photo of him smiling broadly at the Notting Hill carnival with a group of Met police officers, cheerfully posing for a selfie with him.

Time was when only time a drugsmuggler would be seen in such close proximity to coppers was when they were linked by a sturdy pair of handcuffs.

Britain’s relationship with the purveyors of drugs has gone through many changes in the last century. In the Second World War, the Mayfair chemist Savory & Moore advertised sheets impregnated with morphine and cocaine as ‘a useful present for friends at the front’, where they were known to the troops as ‘fear-banishers’.

The mood was soon to change. The Dangerous Drugs Act of 1920 created a new class of national villain: the dopepeddler. The earliest and most prominent was Chan Nan, a Chinese restaurateur better known as ‘the Brilliant Chang’. At his trial in 1924 for opium-smuggling, he was told by the Recorder of London, ‘It is you and men like you who are corrupting the womanhood of this country.’ He used young women – ‘dope-runners’ – to import drugs from Paris, hidden in their bloomers.

After he was jailed, the Empire News suggested, ‘Mothers would be well advised to keep their daughters as far away as they can from Chinese laundries and other places that yellow men congregate.’

The Daily Express reported that ‘he was not … the cringing yellow man hiding his clasped hands in the wide sleeves of his embroidered gown’ but he did have ‘that 22 The Oldie November 2021

fixed Oriental smile which seems devoid of warmth and humanity’. The Daily Mail explained that he possessed a ‘strangely macabre – some say hypnotic – power to persuade women to sniff cocaine. It may be that he did so as a member of the yellow race to degrade white women.’

Another notorious dealer of the period was Eddie Manning, a Jamaican who supposedly kept his silver-topped cane packed with drugs. Again, race became a predominant aspect of the coverage. The News of the World hailed his arrest in 1923 with the headline ‘Evil Negro Caught’. After being arrested again for stealing goods from Lady Diana Cooper’s car, he was described by the arresting officer as ‘the worst man in London’. He died in Parkhurst prison’s hospital in 1931.

Not that all the drug-dealers of the time were seen as wily foreigners. Ada Lau Ping, sentenced to hard labour for supplying cocaine and described by the Marlborough Street magistrate as ‘the high priestess of unholy rites’, was, in fact, Scottish.

The dealers in drugs were soon established as villains who deserved whatever might happen to them. The News of the World reported how ‘Sapper’, the pen name used by H C McNeile, creator of gentleman adventurer Bulldog Drummond, had inspired the creation of a gallant team consisting of ‘young men

Mr Not So Nice: Howard Marks (19452016), treated as a national treasure

of energy’. They were so disgusted by what was happening in London’s West End that they had pounced on ‘dopepeddlers and other crooks’. They took them to a garage off the Great West Road where they were ‘flogged with dog-whips until they agreed to mend their ways’.

The paper also reported on the broken engagement of a young officer whose fiancée had become addicted to marijuana: ‘She has been going to these cigarette orgies. It will be years before she is well.’

By 1957, the Times was warning readers that ‘white girls who become friendly with West Indians are from time to time enticed to hemp smoking … this is an aspect of the hemp problem – the possibility of its spreading among irresponsible white people – that causes greatest concern to the authorities’.

Superintendent Robert Fabian usefully described the typical cannabisdealer in his 1953 memoir, London After Dark: ‘They have the brains of children, can only dimly know the cruel harm they do these teenage girls who dance with them and try thrilled puffs at these harmless-looking marijuana cigarettes.’

He helpfully added how to spot their clients: ‘Chelsea drug addicts! You wouldn’t think them glamorous if you could see them as I have… The middleaged woman with dyed hair streaky with grey. She wears black corduroy trousers and a purple utility box-jacket.’

It is nearly 70 years now since the wonderful Tom Lehrer, now in his 90s and living in California, wrote The Old Dope Peddler, a spoof on sentimental songs about lamplighters and the like: ‘Every evening you will find him/Around our neighbourhood/It’s the old dope peddler/Doing well by doing good.’

Little can Lehrer have imagined that one day an old cannabis-peddler like Marks would be doing quite so well.

Becoming Mr Nice: The Howard Marks Archive (Oldcastle Books, £19.99), edited

by Amber Marks, is out now

Private Eye began 60 years ago. Elisabeth Luard worked as a secretary there – and then married the owner – in its earliest days

1961 – that was the year that was H

appy 60th birthday, Private Eye! Some of us knew you when you were young. But a bird’s-eye view is not what’s usually to be found in the magazine’s biographies.

Birds – aka dolly-birds – were the handmaids in the Gilead of those times.

Trained as shorthand typists, we were considered temporary, pending marriage and babies.

The wind of change – social as well as political – took time to reach the ’burbs, let alone beyond, but what was happening in central London drew would-be writers, actors, artists and musicians to a fertile rubbish heap in which things grew.

Among the new growth was Private Eye, founded on 25th October 1961. I started working there on issue six at the suggestion of Andrew Osmond, the first proprietor – and the provider of enough money in the Eye’s kitty to print the early issues on scrappy, yellow paper, stapled together by hand.

Andy – tall (important in a dancing partner) and a little exotic, as he’d done his National Service as an officer in the Gurkhas – was a part-time debs’ delight.

The main attraction was not his good looks (though that certainly helped) but a willingness to discuss serious stuff with an uneducated young woman – as were most of us who were put through the season’s marriage market – unlike the chinless wonders heading for the City.

When Andy suggested I help out with the secretaries at a fledgling Private Eye for a fiver a week, that suited me just fine.

Previous experience in estate agents’ typing pools had led to my being chased round the desk by a heavily sweating, 24 The Oldie November 2021

unacceptably elderly, married boss. My employers at the Eye, installed rent-free up a narrow staircase in a warehouse in Covent Garden stacked with paperback copies of P G Wodehouse, were young, clever, schoolboyish and apparently uninterested in sprinting round the furniture.

The first editor, Christopher Booker (1937-2019) – endearingly bespectacled and kind to the office help – provided the campaigning journalism. Willie Rushton (1937-1996), portly and jovial, did the scissor and pasting for the printer, and drew the cartoons. Photographic illustrations – Candida Betjeman’s armpit, a rape scene in which my torso and boots figured – were provided by Maurice Hatton, known (accurately) as Spotty Maurice.

I, as Elisabeth Longmore, was called Lizzie Longpants (reason unknown, at least by me). Peter Usborne (the magazine’s co-founder, born in 1937) checked in occasionally just before pub opening. So did John Wells (1936-98) – model (maybe) for Rushton’s Little Gnittie, the Eye’s logo – on escape from his day job, teaching Eton schoolboys their letters.

The rest – the stories and jokes that defined the mag – were the business of Richard Ingrams, saintly founder of The Oldie (born in 1937 and happily still with us), who took over as editor in 1963 when Booker unwisely went on holiday.

Richard’s office presence was enigmatic

Most of us girls knew what Profumo and his pals were up to in the swimming pool

– a bit like the all-seeing eye in The Great Gatsby. And he always wore the same saggy-pocketed, corduroy jacket at a time when Carnaby Street was dressing dandies in frilly shirts and velvet bell-bottoms. Girls are naturally shallow – they notice these things.

Secretaries typed up hand-scrawled copy on an Olivetti manual, wrote the invoices, made the tea and, when push came to shove, sold the mag on the street.

The only other office help, Mary Morgan (later the first Mrs Ingrams), couldn’t type. Nor could the men, except Booker (with two fingers).

While the Eye gang were stapling together the first copies in someone’s girlfriend’s family’s basement in Chelsea, Beyond the Fringe was transferring from the Cambridge Footlights via Edinburgh to London.

Among the players – Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett and Dudley Moore – Peter Cook was the true subversive.

Riding on the success of the show, Peter and his Cambridge friend Nicholas Luard (1937-2004) – I married him – opened a satirical theatre club in Soho, The Establishment, modelled on Le Canard Enchainé and the underground cabaret clubs of 1930s Berlin. The Establishment, like Private Eye, opened in 1961.

While Private Eye and The Establishment looked like natural allies, the Eye thought The Establishment a bunch of pseudo-intellectuals and (I later learned) The Establishment considered the Eye a gang of overgrown schoolboys.

However, when the Eye ran out of money to pay the printer and Andy was keen to recuperate his £500 (about the price of new Mini), this secretary (in

Above: Richard Ingrams, Christopher Booker and Willie Rushton, Private Eye office, 1963.

Far left: Elisabeth and Nick Luard’s wedding, St Margaret’s, Westminster, 1963. Left: Peter Cook and Nick Luard, Establishment Club, 1961. Left: Little Gnittie, the Eye’s mascot, inspired by John Wells

miniskirt and boots) was dispatched to flog the mag to the audience at The Establishment while discreetly inviting investment by the club’s proprietors.

Peter Cook and Nicholas Luard duly invested in the magazine.

It worked for Private Eye – and for me too. My future husband, profiled in Paris Match as London’s golden-eyed king of satire, was knock-out gorgeous.

Others thought so, too. So much so that kindly Booker walked me round the block to warn me the Eye’s new proprietor wasn’t appropriate husband material.

Love is blind, but he was right.

If the Eye was my day nursery, an opportunity to join the boys in the playground, we were in agreement about our separate roles. I was willing to perch

on the edge of a desk and paint my nails for a TV programme about office life at the Eye. But the pay-off – the reason I took dictation and made the tea in a cramped office for little pay – was the chance to assist in any way I could in the unravelling of a patriarchy that had dominated my childhood.

At the rehoused Eye under its new ownership, Cookie was back from New York and it showed. Writs came in thick and fast. Many of the issues raised mattered to women. Police corruption wasn’t news to us. Don’t trust a policeman in a van in the 1960s – or now.

‘Give us a feel, darlin’ ’ was the least of it.

And it was no surprise when the

Profumo scandal broke. Most of us girls about town knew what Profumo and friends were up to in the Cliveden swimming pool.

There are times when everything comes together, and stuff happens because it must. My granddaughters no longer have to ask a man to guarantee a signature on a mortgage or passport application.

While women scarcely rate a mention in the Eye’s early history, this is not the whole story. Right now, if Carrie Johnson is the most powerful woman in government or outside it, I’ll bet she doesn’t cook – let alone type up office memos – even if she can.

Things change. Mostly for the better. I rest my case.

The Oldie November 2021 25

My radio times As Nick Robinson tells Boris Johnson to ‘stop talking’ on the Today programme, Libby Purves recalls working on the show

WESLEY/STRINGER/GETTY

S

ometimes an anniversary is marked by accident. The furore about Nick Robinson’s lordly instruction to the PM – ‘Stop talking!’ – raised a certain nostalgia for subtler days. Even then, Brian Redhead could have a fierce mongoose bite when roused to argument.

This autumn marks exactly 40 years since I resigned as a Today presenter after nearly four years. I was the first female and the youngest ever, people say. But, more interestingly, I was the only one ever to rise, as it were, through the ranks.

First as a staff producer, booking guests and sitting behind the glass in the dawn telling Brian Redhead to wind up for God’s sake, or John Timpson to fill 30 seconds while the sports guy stumbled up the corridor.

Then I was a freelance reporter with a portable, editing through long night shifts and waking up next day, speechless with fury, when they dropped my segment. So I knew this great BBC Radio 4 news ship from engine room to deck, and had no illusions about there being anything that special about presenters. Including me.

But in autumn 1981, I was sick of getting up at 3.30 four days a week and trying to keep up to date with every news story on the planet. I wanted to write, make documentaries and have a baby.

I managed all three, and mercifully got a weekly gig doing Radio 4 Midweek for 34 years, which shared the adrenalin element of going live with unpredictable guests. I still miss it.

But I never really missed Today shifts – until, this year, a similar call came. I had liked the breezy, intelligent Times Radio, bravely founded in the depths of lockdown. I did a couple of holiday-relief shifts as a presenter up on the 14th floor of the News Building. I was Michael Portillo’s stand-in from 7 to 10pm. I stood in for Hugo Rifkind on a jolly Saturday-morning show.

26 The Oldie November 2021

The way they were: Brian Redhead, John Timpson and Libby Purves. Today, 1978

Like an old warhorse, I clamped on the headphones and felt at home, relishing the anxious eye on the clock and the stimulating dread of lines going down. Even more exciting, there are jingles and actual ads from sponsors. To an ancient BBC hand, that feels pleasingly transgressive; borderline adulterous. There’s something honest about admitting where the money comes from for all this tech and research.

So when another holiday-cover request offered me two days on the dawn shift, the big four-hour marathon flagship, I jumped at it.

Who, after all, could have resisted the classic Oldie-reader pleasure of sharing with young producers that statistic of a 40-year gap since my time on Today?

I felt like one of those old Green Goddess army fire engines, which got wheeled out for the emergency in the 2002 firemen’s strike. This time, I wasn’t sitting next to Brian Redhead, that cheerfully bumptious old Geordie with his sharp-edged retorts to cheeky politicians. Nor was I next to John Timpson – with his ho-ho funnies from the papers, happy memories of his favourite job as a mega-respectful royal

correspondent, and his tendency to say to me, ‘Your problem, young lady, is that you’ve peaked 20 years too early.’

This time, I was the old codger, presenting alongside twentysomething Luke Jones, who is exactly the age I was when I started on Today.

I told him it was classic newsreadercasting, like Reggie Bosanquet and Anna Ford. Only this time, the woman was the veteran and the lad was the luscious young crumpet.

These days, it’s all done on screens, with not a scrap of paper in sight, except my private, anxiously scribbled emergency notebook. On the first morning, Luke and the producer had to nanny me a bit through a peculiar split-screen programme, when my view was slightly blocked by the microphone.

‘Luke, where are we?’ I had to say.

But, goodness, it was fun to be back, able to ad-lib, with that old feeling of being the kid who wakes up first in the morning and gets to run round the house telling everyone it’s snowed.

Apart from the screens, how does it compare? The Times Radio producers – some ex-BBC and all sharp journalists – are little different from us in the old days. Because the station was born under COVID, nearly every interview is remote and technically precarious.

At least when you had Denis Healey physically in front of you, he couldn’t get away. I hope Times Radio gets more solid bodies up in that lift to torment.

Stig Abell is becoming as strong a live interviewer as Redhead. Luke Jones was positively harsh on poor old Dominic Raab.

Mercifully Times Radio lacks the curiously peevish tone that afflicts long-term Today presenters, but avoids the other extreme of shock-jockery. It feels intelligent and fun. It hasn’t yet built a John Humphrys – but then Today hasn’t got him any more, either.

I liked my outing. If they ask me again, I’ll bite their hand off.

War correspondent Martin Bell introduces one of the classic rural columns written by his father Adrian Bell for 30 years

My dad’s ode to autumn

NEIL SPENCE

M

y father, Adrian Bell (1901-80), was a bohemian and man about town in London in 1920.

His first ambition was to become a poet in the style of Keats or Swinburne. In the 1930s, he actually had two slim volumes of poetry published, as a gesture of thanks from the publisher of his first and bestselling autobiographical novel, Corduroy (1930), which was about farming in Suffolk before it became mechanised and industrialised.

However, needing to earn a living, and wishing to escape the tyranny of an office life in London, he became an apprentice to Vic Savage, a yeoman farmer in Hundon near Haverhill, and there he lived the experiences that stayed with him through the rest of his life. He went on to own two small, unviable farms, both of less than 100 acres, one in Stradishall in west Suffolk and the other near Redisham in east Suffolk; and he married and brought up a family, of which I was a part.

But he remained a poet at heart. His columns in the Eastern Daily Press (EDP), from 1950 to 1980, were not really journalism but prose poems about the natural life around him.

Examine November, the first in this collection, printed below, and you will see what I mean. It was written two years before his death in 1980.

By then, I was a reporter ‘out in the great world’, as he put it, having wars in Vietnam, the Middle East and Africa behind me and many others ahead of me.

But I noted that he could find more of interest to write about in the pond life in his back garden than I could in the war zones of the world. These he expressed in his weekly columns for the EDP, entitled ‘A Countryman’s Notebook’.

28 The Oldie November 2021

The man in the white suit: Martin Bell

They were drafted on the Monday of every week. A certain amount of groaning and moaning from his study went into their composition (he suffered from migraines until he was 60). My first journalistic assignment, when I was a teenager, was to take them to the village post box every Tuesday. There was of course no email back then. They would then appear in the EDP on Saturday.

He was one of the newspaper’s two columnists. The other was his friend Eric Fowler, who wrote under the name Jonathan Mardle. Both were eccentrics who reflected, in a deep and personal way, the communities they served. My father was a regional columnist with a national audience: his devoted audience would clip out his pieces and send them by post to their friends all over the country.

He never lost his sense of wonder at the natural world and seldom travelled further afield than Norwich. On the one occasion when he did, to attend the birth of his third grandchild in Canada, he continued filing his columns for the EDP. He had hardly ever flown before. He described the experience, with whisky in hand, high above the clouds, as being as close to the angels as he had ever imagined. And then he lost his car in a multistorey Canadian car park. Norwich, his nearest city, had no such constructions but only the old cattle market.

His pieces belong not only to the literature but also to the history of East Anglia. He attended my passing-out parade as a soldier in the Suffolk Regiment in Bury St Edmunds in 1959, and he captured the occasion perfectly, using it to pay tribute to those amateur soldiers who had saved us in two world wars.

After his passing, I took over his column in the EDP’s Saturday edition to salute him and give an account of his funeral at Barsham church, which was then without a roof. My bereaved mother said, ‘I wept with pleasure, pride and sadness when I saw what you wrote.’

Adrian Bell’s column, November 1978

O

n my radio channel, they start the first of every month with a few poems from accepted authors. Well, here goes, and all my own work, but expect no rhymes.

Did any of those authors watch a dead leaf dancing from a gossamer? That’s November. Brown and bent, it twirled and bounded on the breeze. At moments, the single gossamer on which the brown leaf was hung could be seen to shimmer.

I was enchanted by the ballet of the dead leaf: it scooped itself up and whirled with frantic gaiety. Then it sank a little and turned slowly this way, that way, as a performer will bow

Earthy: Adrian Bell (1901-80), author of Corduroy, Suffolk, 1942

to applause from all parts of the house.

Next moment, it was twirling around and around like a skater who blurs himself going round himself so fast. Then began a series of bouncing somersaults as if it were fighting with its tether. All around it live rose leaves, ovals of green light, were trembling in the breeze, as with the thrill I felt at the dance of the one dead leaf.

Unbelievably tough was that single gossamer which shone at moments fine as a hair, but mostly was invisible. I sat staring at that merry husk until the sky seemed to turn pink from my fixed attention. What an entertainment – Nijinsky in the guise of an autumn leaf, dancing to the west wind that puffed into my open house of leaves.

This is it – the month we have dreaded even from April, at the beginning of the long, dark winter. October’s name is benign, even to its last day: the idea of it is golden, breathing a sense of ripeness.

This year it has been all it promised. The fallen leaves are dry; they crackle underfoot and smell like corn.

On October 31st, we were raking them up and mounding them in skeps that weighed like nothing. From the incinerator rose a column of smoke that was monumental; thick, vertical, fragrant.

I said to her, ‘This is not good for your sore throat.’ She said to me: ‘It is not good for your hay fever.’

But who could refrain from raking and loading those rattling leaves while it was so fine?

We picked walnuts out of them: ‘Here’s one;’ ‘Here’s another.’

Walnuts and chestnuts shed their leaves early. The sycamore’s leaves lie flat and turn

black and sodden and won’t burn and won’t willingly rot. I have peeled them up from the middle of the compost heap where they have become a kind of leather – thin, black leather.

How different from my young cherry tree, whose leaves hang on and turn a pale yellow, pure as candle flames surprised by the dawn – almost transparent – yet for a few more days transfixed on the tree.

They see November in, then fall suddenly as a shed garment.

So now ends this November day in darkness at five. The old wooden rake is housed. We sit either side of the fire, she coughing, I sneezing and both exuding an odour of leaf smoke.

November: but the fuchsias still dance before my windowpane, crimson in the light of my lamp after tea. I woke this morning and drew back my curtain with the glum thought, ‘November is here: we are right in it, and soon the clangour of Christmas advertising will be on us, distracting us from our God of the Beginning.’

Then I saw a scattering of beech leaves on the front grass – not too many yet, just a pattern of them as if waiting for a breeze to make them dance. In the early sun, they looked so beautiful I could only be glad of the day and of the impulse which immediately possessed me to fritter it away – say in watching a dead leaf

His columns were not really journalism but prose poems about the natural life gambling from a gossamer.

November has been detested ever since we became a city populace – umbrella-poked, gutter-splashed. Ever since Thomas Hood wrote his famous lines in November, that are all ‘no’, ‘no’, ‘no’, ending ‘No sun, no moon, no dawn, no dusk, no proper time of day … No-vember.’

We should all be farmers. As a farmer, I never disliked November. On the contrary: harvest all home, ploughing well forward, beans ploughed in, wheat drilled and harrowed, the fields smooth carpets of vital brown, some already pricked with tiny needles of new corn.

What a glad time November then was after a kind autumn such as this has been, the work that mattered all done. After that, our ‘go-slow’ (but any other industry’s usual pace) of littering yards, ‘shaving’ corn stacks and ‘pulling’ haystacks – it was as good as a holiday.

A Countryman’s Winter Notebook by Adrian Bell is published on 12th October (Slightly Foxed, £18.50) The Oldie November 2021 29

Charlie Mortimer has found a lost letter from his father, Roger Mortimer, to a childhood friend, written on the eve of his death

Letter to a dying friend A

t a recent evening at London’s Hurlingham Club, letters from my father, Roger Mortimer (1909-91), to me in my wastrel youth were dramatised. The bestselling collection of letters, Dear Lupin, was published in 2012.

When I arrived at the club, a kind lady gave me a letter I hadn’t seen before. It was to my father’s close friend John Pope, following a bad fall as Field Master with the Beaufort Hunt at Chavenage in October 1978.

Very sadly, this was a letter John was never going to read as he died from his injuries the next day. John and his charismatic wife Liz were longstanding friends of my parents, sharing a keen interest in racing, hunting and risqué humour. John was at Eton and in the Coldstream Guards with my father and was a godfather to my younger sister ‘Lumpy’.

In John’s box one year at the Cheltenham Festival, he asked my dear mother what she would like to drink.

Flicking through the race card, my mother, aka ‘Nidnod’, replied, ‘I’m most awfully in favour of companies who sponsor racing. I think I’ll jolly well sponsor one of them. I’ll have a large Massey-Ferguson please, John.’

The Chief of the General Staff (CGS), mentioned in the letter, is General Sir Roland (Roly) Gibbs (later Field Marshal). His son (my then business partner) is Joe Gibbs.

Budds Farm, Burghclere, Newbury 11th October 1978 Dear John, I am terribly sorry to hear you have had a stinking fall. Cynthia and I most 30 The Oldie November 2021

sincerely hope to hear good news of you soon, and that you are on the road to recovery. Anyway, we both think of you a lot and are slightly consoled by the thought that you have the resolution and the humour to bear up with the less enchanting features of a sojourn in hospital.

What are the nurses like? When I was in Newbury Hospital for stones in the kidneys, I was tended by a merry little Burmese dwarf who had to stand on a soapbox to give me a blanket bath.

When she was on night duty, she always fell asleep and I used to call on her with a cup of tea just before her tour of duty ended.

Last Saturday, Croome, the elderly and distinctly moody hurdler, of which I am a part-owner, won at Towcester.

He had been confidently expected to win at Plumpton, where he was opposed by horses I could have easily outpaced wearing gumboots and carrying a suitcase full of bricks, but he had refused to exert himself at all and looked an ideal candidate for inclusion in a tin in the cat food section of the local supermarket.

However, at Towcester, he wore blinkers and was ridden by a yokel called P Leach who used to partner him down in Devonshire.

The combination was successful, and he won at 5/1 with considerable ease. He is a crafty old sod, but he is capable of winning again in low-class company. The stable had a double that day as Dawlish won a chase at Chepstow.

Cynthia and I are just back from a week in Normandy where we stayed at Clécy with the Lempriere-Robins.

The hotel has been poshed up since we were last there. Even the urinal is floodlit,

and, at my age, I am not all that keen to have my cock exposed to arc lights every time I go and do a pee.

One day, we all went to Honfleur and had a big tuck-in at a fish restaurant. I noticed Mrs L-R making deep inroads into a gigantic pyramid of shrimps, down whose flanks rich mayonnaise was flowing in turgid streams.

That evening, Mrs L-R felt queasy and missed dinner. At 1.30am, she was in acute pain, semi-delirious and with an alarming temperature.

Raoul went to find the manager, but he slept out. The Brigadier therefore had to go out in his pyjamas and summon the local sawbones.

Luckily, I knew where that individual lived, as, from a certain café, you can see him examining his patients in his consulting room and I had taken a peep at this alluring spectacle once or twice.

The Dr consented to come and duly arrived, carrying what looked to be a fairly rusty garden-syringe, and announced that he proposed to give two massive injections.

Unfortunately, he had omitted to bring any surgical spirit but said gin would do every bit as well! The unexpended portion of a bottle of duty-free Beefeater was produced and he got to work. The patient was ‘out’ for 24 hours, waking up in rather a daze to consume a suppository, thinking it was a pill. However, a cure had been affected and the Dr’s charge of £20 was money well spent.

Cynthia insisted on dining at Honfleur on our way home and, with reckless bravado and scant regard for the bill, chose the richest and most expensive things on the menu.

Roger Mortimer: above, part-owner of a hurdler, in 1978; left, in Palestine in 1938 with interpreter Basil Madjoucoff; right, as a prisoner in Spangenburg, 1940

I was not all that surprised when she retired to bed on arrival at Budds Farm.

Today she has gone off to her weekly art class. I reckon she paints nearly as well as Lester Piggott plays the violin.

Louise was down here last weekend accompanied by her daughter, Hot Hand Henry [her husband] and by a nursemaid who was evidently determined to run no risk of injuring herself through overwork but made serious inroads into our rations. No wonder she was about three and a half stone overweight!

Charlie arrived in a huge lorry full of secondhand furniture which he hopes to

flog to the poorer type of Arab in Earl’s Court and Hammersmith.

He says he is prospering but I noticed that his partner, son of the CGS, had no soles to his shoes and was wearing openwork socks, possibly with the object of developing suntanned heels.

My wife paints nearly as well as Lester Piggott plays the violin

Well, au revoir and remember that all your old friends are thinking of you and wish you well.

Yours ever, Roger Roger Mortimer, captured by the Germans in Belgium in 1940, was a prisoner of war for five years in four camps. He was the Sunday Times racing correspondent 1947-75 Dear Lupin: Letters to a Wayward Son by Roger and Charlie Mortimer is published by Constable The Oldie November 2021 31

Play it again, Sam Sam Kydd appeared in more films than any other British actor. Fear of unemployment drove him, his son John tells Andrew Roberts

A

ny devotee of Talking Pictures TV soon learns the golden rule of post-war British cinema: there had to be an appearance from Sam Kydd.

He debuted in the 1946 Ealing drama The Captive Heart and appeared in around 290 pictures, more than any other British actor.

Over the past three years, Kydd’s son, actor Jonathan Kydd, has been editing his father’s memoirs, Be a Good Boy, Sam, published this October.

He says, ‘One reason behind my father’s career was his ability to make a part live, no matter how small it was. He possessed an incredibly expressive face and was very versatile, being able to do many different accents, improvise in character and write.’ One of Kydd’s best-known roles was the stuttering unionist in I’m All Right Jack, with lines he mainly devised himself.

Samuel John Kydd was born on 15th February 1915, in Belfast. He came to England when he was eight. On leaving Dunstable Grammar school, he worked at an Alvis car dealership and then at Whiteleys department store in London.

Kydd took part in talent contests in the evenings as an impressionist.

Jonathan says, ‘My father was so successful that the bandleader, Oscar Rabin, hired him as an MC. He would do his impressions, tell jokes, sing and tap dance, mostly at the Hammersmith Palais.’ This was followed by a residency with the band at Scarborough, supporting Bud Flanagan.

The Second World War intervened. In 1940, Kydd, who was in the British Expeditionary Force, was captured, spending the next five years in Stalag XX-A, a camp in German-occupied western Poland.

Jonathan says, ‘As soon as the Red Cross parcels started arriving, allowing the prisoners to believe they wouldn’t die of starvation, my father set up and starred in cabaret shows once again as

A man for all film seasons: Sam Kydd (1915-82) in Crane (1963)

a comic and acted in or directed every production available.’ It was such experiences that attracted the producers of The Captive Heart. Jonathan continues, ‘They initially used my father as a technical advisor for the German location, but it was obvious to the director, Basil Dearden, that he was a “find”. Once back in the studios, he offered him several lines of dialogue.’

Shortly after demob, Kydd appeared weekly at the Nuffield Centre, performing comic routines. He was determined to embark on a theatrical career, although, back at the family home in Turnham Green, west London, he was constantly urged to take a ‘proper job with a pension’.

By 1952, Kydd had made 119 films, but his mother was still complaining about actors being ‘dissolute’. As an expert voice actor, he was often called upon by directors to redub other performers. He was also a regular with the dubbing master of the time, Major De Lane Lea. Jonathan thinks that a further reason for his father’s success was his nature: ‘He was an incredibly affable man without any “side” and would talk easily with anyone on set. He was also a very modest man with a very strong work ethic – in his diaries, he constantly references his fears of being unemployed.’

By the late 1950s, Kydd was playing

leading roles. He played Sam Weller in the early 1950s TV series of The Pickwick Papers and, in 1959, he was in Antigone opposite Dorothy Tutin.

‘But his concern about unemployment meant he still took supporting parts in films,’ Jonathan says. ‘He loved working so much he’d do anything he was offered.’

In 1963, Associated-Rediffusion cast Kydd as the second lead in their Morocco-set drama Crane. This resulted in his starring in the spin-off Orlando, which ran for 126 episodes.

Despite Crane’s popularity, Kydd’s agent informed him she couldn’t find him any work after the first series, claiming typecasting. ‘My father’s response was to write to the director Jim Connolly, who gave him the part of a waiter in the B-film Smokescreen [1964],’ says Jonathan. His scenes opposite Peter Vaughan were a delight, illustrating how ‘he could take a straight part and infuse it with humour’.

Kydd died of emphysema, aged 67, on the 26th March 1982. His widow, Pinkie, a former international table tennis champion, died in 2012, aged 97.

Jonathan remembers, ‘I could tell how ill he was, especially in Coronation Street – his last television appearance. He would lean on anything to catch his breath.’

As for his father’s best performances, Jonathan says, ‘There are so many; Radio Cab Murder, The Voice of Merrill.

Vengeance Is Mine, A Tale of Two Cities, Appointment in London or saluting his fallen comrades in Angels One Five. He had suffered so much during the war, and I think people saw these experiences reflected in his face.’

Perhaps that’s why Kydd is a welcome sight in so many films. Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey resemble Brylcreemed minor deities, while Kydd has much the same look as the crowds in a newsreel.

Sam Kydd is British cinema’s man on the Clapham omnibus.

Be a Good Boy, Sam by Sam Kydd is published in October The Oldie November 2021 33

Mummy, I hardly knew you She scoffed at his shows, called the maid common and hated vulgar flowers. But Barry Humphries still loved his mother

‘Y

ou see, Barry – not everybody likes you.’

My mother offered this kindly reminder one morning at breakfast 69 years ago. The morning edition of the Melbourne Argus was propped up against a Weetabix packet, and I was gloomily reading and re-reading a less than enthusiastic review of one of my early shows. The theatre critic, Frank Doherty, was a respected senior journalist and, moreover, I had failed to amuse him.

It took a surprising number of years for me to apprehend that Louisa Agnes Humphries felt that it was part of her maternal duty to cast a sceptical eye on my theatrical attempts, to make sure I never got too big for my boots, and to make sure I realised that, one day, I would have to grow up and get a real job; a task I still pursue. Perhaps writing a column for The Old Fella is finally it!

I believed then that my mother’s censure was not unkindly meant. Later, she would take my part in the odd adolescent skirmish with my father.

‘We don’t know where Barry came from’ was another of her frequently uttered observations, delivered out of the blue at dinner parties when strangers were present. All eyes were then turned to me, the eldest son, whose very provenance was somehow

34 The Oldie November 2021

open to speculation. I was slowly learning how exceptionally gifted children can suffer at the hands of alien, but well-intentioned, parents.

But where did they, my parents, come from? I wondered. My father was a successful builder of suburban houses for the well-to-do. My mother, one of a family of five sisters, had been, in her spinster years, a modiste at the Misses Salon on the seventh floor of the Myer Emporium, Melbourne’s best department store.

I wonder if my perusers know what a modiste is? She is really a glorified shop assistant with dressmaking skills, carefully trained to accost ladies with the words ‘Can I help Modom?’ or ‘Is Modom being attended to?’

A far cry from today, when the surly, non-binary retail executive, wearing T-shirt, jeans and different-coloured fingernails, indistinguishable from her slatternly customers, is usually noticeable by her absence.

I have elsewhere told how I grew to notice my mother’s froideur and once

It was part of her maternal duty to cast a sceptical eye on my theatrical attempts

plucked up the courage to ask her if she loved me. ‘Of course!’ she protested. ‘I love your father, naturally, and my own mother and father and then, I suppose, well … you!’

I realised, then, that love was bestowed in a strictly hierarchical fashion – but at least I was not too far back in the queue!

Clandestinely she paid for my driving lessons, until the terrible day when the instructor came to the front door and was greeted by my father, who was unexpectedly at home. He was furious that I was being taught to drive, as he believed I was incapable of manipulating a motor car – and he was right. As it happens, I drive too slowly, or too fast, and I am the constant recipient of road rage. Now that my licence has expired, my driving has greatly improved.

The incident between my father and the driving instructor took place at the front door of our neo-Georgian residence, and this was also the setting in which my mother dismissed the Honey Man. For many years, a kindly First World War veteran had delivered jars of delicious honey to our house, but one morning at breakfast I noticed the honey tasted different. It was probably a superior and rare honey from some exotic flower-bed that the bees had discovered on their own. When the

Honey Man stopped calling, I assumed that my mother had complained about his ‘funny-tasting’ product, but Shores the housekeeper said, ‘Oh no – it is because he came to the front door.’

Our house had a very clearly marked tradesmen’s entrance, bearing the mysterious injunction ‘NO HAWKERS OR CANVASSERS’, as if the purveyors of birds of prey or textiles might be discouraged from proffering their wares.

Shores was Mrs Shores. Although not a full-time housekeeper, as she lived elsewhere, she was always there, leaning on the dormant Hoover in her faded floral bib apron and talking. My mother might be many rooms away –

upstairs, perhaps – but Shores talked on.

Her husband was in the furnitureremoval business and, in the old phrase, ‘took drink’.

But Shores – and later Mrs Ferguson – were there to entertain my mother. A personal cabaret double act for my mother’s exclusive amusement.

Ironing, dusting, washing-up – these were all duties beneath them. They were tasks for Valmai, a waif from the Salvation Army home. She did all the work around the house, lived in a maid’s small room and was treated by the whole family, except my kindly father, with total condescension. She had one night off a week, which she spent in town with her

elder sister, Wilma, whom my mother described as ‘ordinary’.

I often wondered what the sisters got up to together until one night, some years later, in the fast-photo booth under the Big Dipper at Luna Park, I saw a sunbleached display of young lovelies and revellers of yesteryear. There were Valmai and Wilma with cigarettes and sailors! So Wilma was ‘ordinary’ after all.

At least she had a life.

I had a nanny called Edna whom I loved. She must have cared for me for some time before the day she disappeared. Later my mother described her as ‘a bit too clingy’ – my mother’s word for affectionate.

Right: Barry’s father, Eric, drawn by Barry, 1945. Below: Barry with Louisa. Melbourne, 1934

‘My mother giving instructions to a gardener – Melbourne, 1958’ by Barry Humphries

The Oldie November 2021 35

A voyage round my mother: Louisa and Barry, sailing to Sydney, 1950

Apart from Shores and Fergie, another woman arrived (by the tradesmen’s entrance), who was to look after us four children while my mother was in hospital and away for a long convalescence from a mysterious illness.

Nervous breakdown? Miscarriage? We never knew.

Mrs Lane came from the country and she was, moreover, in my mother’s view, ‘countrified’.

After my mother came home, she spent most of the day in bed. She had long given up tennis, card evenings, cakebaking or donning hat and gloves for a shopping trip into town. I once saw Mrs Lane trudging up the stairs with my mother’s breakfast tray. I was unobserved, but I heard her mutter at every step of the ascent, ‘I hate her, I hate her, I hate her.’

I would love to have been present when my mother sacked Mrs Lane, but I think she probably left this task to my father. She later said Mrs Lane was far too ‘C-o- m-m-o-n’ and had a funny, talcy smell.

My father may not have been religious but he was a regular churchgoer and was constantly importuned by the vicar of St Mark’s, Canon P W Robinson, to repair the roof of the jerry-built church. My father’s workmen were recruited for this and other sacerdotal chores.

My father was the son of a Manchester builder who came to Australia after the Gold Rush in the 1880s, when Melbourne was, along with Buenos Aires, the richest city in the world. He survived the depression and was a millionaire by the 36 The Oldie November 2021

age of 45, supporting at least six members of his family, his parents and my mother’s improvident brother.

My mother was vehemently anticlerical and always had an excuse for not going to church. At the age of 15, uncertain of my pedigree, I decided that I preferred, given the choice, to be Jewish.

I like to think that my mother’s distrust of the Church of England sprang from some atavistic adherence to a more ancient faith. She had several of the same characteristics as the mothers of some of my Jewish friends. My father insisted on saying grace before every meal, sometimes, as I imagine, to the discomfort of schoolfriends who might be present. During this and other family prayers, I could not help but notice that my mother’s eyes were wide open.

I had long exhibited a precocious talent for painting and drawing. So when, at the age of 16, I said I wanted to study at the George Bell Art School in a nearby suburb, she secretly paid for the weekend classes – happily unaware that they were life classes.

In the suburban studio where I crouched at my easel, a mere schoolboy, surrounded by the beards, corduroys and sandals of my fellow students, we all scrutinised the naked model, a young

I heard her mutter at every step of the ascent, ‘I hate her, I hate her, I hate her’

hoyden, who must surely have been one of Valmai and Wilma’s least inhibited friends. In the freezing winter, she posed beside the studio stove so that one half of her was pink and the other blue, like a drawing by Dufy.

In the winter of 1958, my parents and my Auntie Elsie embarked on a world cruise. The highlight of this for my mother was Japan, the last place I expected her to enjoy. Its standards of cleanliness must have met with her approbation. They went only to grand hotels and my mother must have enjoyed the women’s exotic attire.

It was clothes she loved as much as she loved camellias. Our garden, from which she had banished worrying blooms such as the dissolute rose or the priapic gladiolus, was full of these coldly flowering bushes.

She showed an oriental taste when she decorated our family home with cane furniture, brass Buddhas, gongs and knick-knacks. These were discarded in the late 1930s for modernistic furniture and textiles, bearing the brown and orange chevrons and trapezoids of an enervated Cubism. By the 1950s, we had ‘feature’ walls painted in contrasting colours and Van Gogh prints.

All her clothes were made for her by Miss Wilmot or Mitzi of Vienna, an Austrian-Jewish refugee from Hitler whose beautiful dresses were almost entirely subsidised by my mother.

Now, in the Christmas Eve of my life, I look back at my parents with love and compassion. Like Bing Crosby, my father died playing golf, on the 14th tee of his club, at the untimely age of 68. I like to think that his last moments were happy.

My mother lived on in the big house for another 12 years.

It is a wonder to me how much we resemble our parents. They stand like ventriloquial ghosts, putting the old words in our mouths and the phrases we swore we would never use. In New York, 16 years ago, my son Oscar was living with us, and one evening he was out with some friends after a very clear injunction to be back by 12.30 at the latest. Of course, when I heard him creep through the front door at 3am, I snapped on the lights. ‘This isn’t a hotel, Oscar,’ I barked.

‘But it is, Dad,’ came the incontrovertible reply.

I had heard my voice – and my father’s voice.

In my mother’s last years, I know she struggled with remorse and grief. She grieved, as will I, as will we all over our sins of omission. About a word not spoken, a caress not proffered, a smile not bestowed, and love withheld.

Behind the famous tree in Trafalgar Square lies the tale of a heroic monarch, who saved Norway in its darkest hour. By A N Wilson

The King and the Christmas tree

E

very year, a 65-foot tree is erected in Trafalgar Square, and the people of London know that Christmas has begun.

At the base of the tree stands a plaque, bearing these words: ‘This tree is given by the city of Oslo as a token of Norwegian gratitude to the people of London for their assistance during the years 1940-45. A tree has been given annually since 1942.’

Though it comes and goes each year, and is to that extent as ephemeral as the seasons, the Norwegian Christmas tree could claim to be among the most remarkable memorials contained in that square, which is so packed with links to history. It is a token of the friendship between two northern democracies. It is also a memorial to one of the greatest advertisements for monarchy.

King Haakon VII (1872-1957) was undoubtedly one of the heroes of the

Second World War. His heroism consisted not merely in great physical courage, but also in his humility. He was prepared to lay down his life for the principle of parliamentary democracy, and a constitutional monarchy.

On 9th April 1940, German warships advanced up the fjord into the Norwegian capital, heavily supported by aircraft.

Determined as the Norwegians might have been to resist the invaders, they stood no chance against the mightiest military force in Europe.

What should they do? Their Scandinavian neighbours could see that the only ‘sensible’ option was to recognise the power of the Third Reich.

Sweden remained neutral in the war – as had Norway until it was invaded. It took Denmark just six hours, after the arrival of the Germans, to realise that armed resistance was pointless.

Haakon VII (above) defeated Quisling (left). His initial and crown (far left) were daubed everywhere 38 The Oldie November 2021

But the Norwegian Government saw that while the situation was, for the time being, militarily hopeless, this did not alter the political facts of the case.

Norway was a parliamentary democracy.

It was a new nation, which had achieved its independence from Sweden less than half a century before. The nation chose to become a constitutional monarchy, offering the crown to Prince Carl of Denmark. He had been crowned in Trondheim Cathedral in November 1906, taking the name King Haakon VII. He understood completely what his obligation was – to protect the fledgling democratic nation. And no constitutional monarch could have faced a more threatening challenge than Haakon faced in April 1940.

The German minister, or ambassador, Dr Curt Bräuer, informed the King that his new Prime Minister was to be the fascist Vikdun Quisling. Haakon was calm – and resolute. This, he replied, was impossible. He had undertaken, in 1906, to uphold the constitution of Norway, and Quisling had not been elected. His life thereafter was, in a phrase which became the rallying cry for the Norwegian resistance, ‘All for Norway!’

What happened after the German invasion was truly extraordinary. Haakon and his government were far more astute than most of the other European countries when invaded by the Nazis.

First, they realised that the Nazis were running a brigand state intent on plunder – especially of the national gold reserve.

Haakon arranged immediately for the entire Norwegian gold reserve to be smuggled out of the country on a vessel of the Royal Navy.

ALEXIS BRUCHON

Secondly, he realised the vital importance of the Norwegian merchant navy to the Allies’ cause. Though Norway is a small country, its merchant navy is substantial, and despite prodigious losses over the next five years it managed to keep the Allies fuelled and fed. Without the Norwegian merchant navy, the war at sea and in the air would have ended with an easy German victory.

Thirdly, Haakon saw that when he accepted the role of a constitutional monarch, he was not just becoming a ceremonial figurine. He was appointed to defend the vital principle of democratic freedom which, in 1940, the Nazis and the Communists looked as if they had all but obliterated from the political story.

He moved the Norwegian Government out of Oslo, and eventually set it up in London. Before he did that, refusing the suggestion that he should escape to Sweden, he evaded the Nazi assassins, travelling with his son and a small entourage through the snows, as snipers and bombers pursued them. He

eventually got out, again with the assistance of the Royal Navy.

For the next five years, the King and his government in exile kept alive the spirit of resistance to the Nazis. This was not just a form of words. Commando raids by Norwegian forces did vital work, never more so than when they destroyed the ‘heavy water’ of Norsk Hydro which would otherwise have enabled the Nazis to build an atom bomb.

Without those few commandos, history could have been horrifically different. Daubed on walls in paint, drawn in the snow, scraped on the ice, all over Norway, the cipher H7 – Haakon the Seventh – became for the Norwegians the focus of their resistance and their belief in the cause.

John Steinbeck, who wrote a marvellous novel about the Norwegian campaign – The Moon Is Down – expressed it flawlessly: ‘Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is

always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars.’

For Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, the Christmas tree enshrined the message of hope and love brought into the world, and into our homes, by Christmas.

They devoted their lives – his short, hers long – to promoting the sort of constitutional monarchy espoused by King Haakon VII of Norway, and it is one of the most appalling ironies of history that their beloved Germany, of all places in the world, should have become the seedbed for an ideology that nearly destroyed civilisation itself.

So the journey of the tree from Oslo to Trafalgar Square each year calls back not only the relatively recent alliance between Norway and Britain, but also the values of decency, love and home, of which the German domestic Christmas tree was a symbol.

The switching on of the Trafalgar Square tree lights is done by civic dignitaries. The people of London and the people of Norway do not need an autocrat to be present at such a celebration as this.

They are celebrating Christmas, yes, but, perhaps unwittingly, they are also celebrating their civic freedoms, their right to vote, their freedom of thought and expression; all the political beliefs for which their forebears fought so bravely in the Second World War. They gather to sing carols, not about an invincible Führer, but about a little refugee baby, lying in straw.

Professional historians long ago discarded the ‘great man’ theory of history. Nevertheless, most of us can sometimes look back at the past and recognise that it was the personal qualities of courage and goodness of one woman or man that did in fact alter historical events.

It would have been much easier for King Haakon and the Government of Norway to submit, in April 1940, to the inevitability of what happened.

Had they done so, had the Norwegian merchant navy passed into Nazi hands, those defiant Norwegians who scrawled H7 on walls, daubed H7 across the hated features of Quisling on the posters and drew H7 with sticks in the thick snow, knew that King Haakon VII embodied what they were fighting for, and that he too, in exile though he was, was fighting for them.

Victory in 1945, and the final triumph against the dark powers of Mordor, was indeed the Return of the King.

The King and the Christmas Tree by A N Wilson is out now (Manilla Press, £9.99) The Oldie November 2021 39

Town Mouse

Home deliveries mean closing time for shops tom hodgkinson

One of the most distinguishing characteristics of my fellow town mice is that they’re always in a terrible hurry, rushing hither and thither with a tremendous sense of self-importance.

That’s why I always make an effort to cycle round town as slowly as possible.

It’s a kind of protest against the work ethic and also, I think, brings peace of mind.

A phenomenon I’ve noticed recently on the streets of London as I pootle about has been an absolute plague of mopeds bearing the purple and yellow livery of a company called Getir. I also saw ads for Getir on the sides of buses. Alongside a picture of a banana was the slogan ‘groceries in minutes’.

We’d got used to Amazon’s next-day delivery times, which themselves seemed miraculous. And Ocado’s home-delivery service has been a massive success.

But those two behemoths now look somewhat sluggish compared with Getir, which promises to bring you bananas, beer or ice cream in ten to 15 minutes. I scoffed inwardly at this idea: it was a pretty grotty logo, had a silly name and would be bound to fail. Are people really that lazy?

40 The Oldie November 2021

How wrong I was. Getir is now bigger than M&S. Thanks to the enormous amount of money invested in it by people like Silicon Valley legend Michael Moritz, this apparently tawdry start-up with a foolish name is valued at $7.5 billion.

Getir was founded in 2015 by a group of Turkish entrepreneurs. The name means ‘bring’ or ‘import’ in Turkish.

In 2018, they raised $38 million in funding. In January 2021, Moritz invested $128 million. Later that year, it raised another $855 million in order to destroy the competition.

They’re not just in London; they’re all over Europe and already employ 20,000 people. Their ambition is to move into the States.

The system is briefly this: Getir encourages small-time entrepreneurs to set up so-called ‘dark warehouses’ in the cities where they operate.

These are small industrial units with low rents. Inside, they look like corner shops, but with narrower aisles. The warehouse manager fills them with the 1,500 products that Getir sells. Getir takes the order online. The warehouse workers pick the goods and a rider

delivers them. Getir charges around ten per cent more than traditional supermarkets – though less than corner shops – plus a £1.99 delivery fee.

It’s called the e-groceries market and Getir are not the only players in town. A recent entrant is Jiffy which has a similar business model. And there are several other annoyingly-named e-groceries start-ups: Zapp, Weezy and Flink. There’s also Gorillas – slogan: ‘Belly wants. Belly gets’ – which sells itself as the classy e-groceries service.

These companies crow about how clever and novel they are – but the idea that they are offering anything new is absurd. Delivery services are as old as the hills. My granny ran the local Interflora shop in St Neots, and my brother and I used to go out delivering flowers with her. Milkmen used to deliver milk and other essentials with eco-friendly electric vehicles. The butcher’s boy delivered to your door. None of these players ever boasted they were at the cutting edge of business. Deliveries slowed down as a method of getting our stuff only during the second half of the 20th century, when we in the West were encouraged to use our cars to drive to the supermarket.

What is different about Weezy, Getir, Zapp and the rest is that they are aiming to create enormous global monopolies, with all the economies of scale that follow and the massive wealth that results for a handful of founders and investors.

What’s worrying is that they are competing not with supermarkets but with corner shops. The lazy among us used to pop out to the corner shop, wearing our pyjamas, for ice cream, crisps and beer and we didn’t mind paying more than we paid Tesco in exchange for the convenience.

Those same lazy people will now move their custom to Getir or Zapp because there is no longer even the tedious necessity to leave the house.

Getir’s founders say they are ‘democratising laziness’ and also claim that using Getir will leave you more time to ‘do the things you love’ – a common claim made by tech start-ups. ‘To be a little lazy is human,’ says founder Nazim Salur, 59. He’s right: my son is 21 and says his friends regularly order packets of fags from Getir as they can’t be bothered to walk three minutes to the main road.

I went onto my computer to order some beer from Getir, but was dismayed to find that you need a smartphone.

Thankfully I have my own bicycle – so was able to cycle to the local Co-op (praised by my mother, incidentally, on page 19 of this issue of The Oldie) to buy my stuff. It took ten minutes.

Country Mouse

Mary’s burning anger over my log shed giles wood

Low productivity continues to act as a drag anchor on the British economy.

And low productivity has bedevilled my own careers in art, writing and, more recently, broadcasting.

My most conspicuous productivity shortcomings have been in my role as a smallholder. I ruled out keeping goats when I found out that regular hoof- and toenail-trimming would be required. As for keeping hens – I dislike their reptilian eyes.

My vegetable production this year has suffered from a freak spurt in tree growth which cast too deep a shade over the beds. Moreover, my attempts to provide the cottage with dry, seasoned, homegrown logs – Italian alder, wild pear and cherry from our own sustainably managed woodlands – have fallen short of my best efforts. In a classic own goal, I left the pile to season in a reed bed next to my pond, where dampness permeated.

I am a peasant manqué. And yet, after all these years, Mary is still comparing me to those alpha males from our daughters’ school days. They used to fly back from a day’s deal-making in Zurich in time to see their child in a nativity play and even fit in a bedtime story before wine o’clock.

In my defence: as a tortoise, not a hare, at least I can pride myself on not yet having suffered from ‘burn-out’.

So when she returned from a weekend away to find I had not fulfilled my promise of painting an up-cycled dressing table in duck-egg blue, Mary saw red.

But the lost weekend (one of my favourite films, by the way) was not a result of any of the classic male weaknesses – addiction to alcohol, gambling or watching sport.

‘I assume you wouldn’t thank me if we ran out of logs this winter,’ I clarified. ‘In

fact I have spent the whole weekend chopping wood.’

‘But I’ve already paid for a year’s supply of firewood from the sawmill!’

She had indeed ordered logs in. And it had taken me the whole of the previous weekend painstakingly to wheelbarrow them to our homespun log store, fashioned from recycled palettes, surmounted with a sloping corrugated iron roof.

Mary, bless, acting on initiative and remembering the lines of doggerel ‘Beechwood fires are bright and clear/ If the logs are kept a year’, had ordered £260 worth of kiln-dried beech.

As with other fuels, the cost of hardwood logs has shot up owing to supply problems and the popularity of woodburning stoves and open fires among urban relocators.

Yes, we had the beech logs. But in a world of diminishing resources, where I directly observe squirrels hoarding acorns on a daily basis, as someone of a miserly nature I was not prepared to let my own home-grown log supply

‘Before I give you your results, I’m going to put on some sad music’

go to waste just because some of it was rotting.

Hence I had been chopping them so that more of their surface area could be exposed to the sun (bearing in mind that we hardly ever see the sun) so as to speed up the drying process.

You can’t beat the pleasure of chopping a pile of big logs into smaller ones. There’s nothing like it for giving the illusion of growth. Like compound interest, your log pile instantly triples in size – although I would add a cautionary note that the process is addictive and chopping logs ad absurdum into pick-a-stick-size kindling may be an early sign of mental-health issues.

Sanding down the dressing table before repainting it, by contrast, had been a thankless task. It had been far more rewarding to turn to a chore that, as I explained to Mary, even Albert Einstein enjoyed.

‘I know why so many people like chopping wood,’ he once said. ‘You see the results immediately.’

We used to have visits from the Prime Minister’s sister’s husband, Oldie contributor Ivo Dawnay, on his way back from Exmoor in the days before the airborne moulds released by our thatch triggered his latent asthma.

He said the reason my logs hissed and ‘give so little cheer or welcome’ was that ‘You are using the fire to dry the wood, rather than to burn it.’

‘Ideally,’ he drawled, ‘you’re talking air dryness of around 20 per cent, which usually involves storage of logs under cover for a year after cutting.’

He added insult to injury by humiliating his host with advice on cottage economy. ‘You need to split and dry all the wood in advance to get the full calorific energy from the burn. You need a shed in sunlight with a concrete floor to dry logs, maybe with one side open like a bus shelter.’

Richard Jefferies might well concur. I made Mary listen as I read aloud the following passage from 1878: ‘The one great desire of the cottager’s heart – after his garden – is plenty of sheds and outhouses in which to store wood, vegetables, and lumber of all kinds.

‘It is only natural that, to a man whose possessions are limited, things like potatoes, logs of wood, chips, odds and ends should assume a value beyond the appreciation of the well-to-do.’

‘Fine,’ said my patient wife. ‘Please build a log shed. As long as I can see the results immediately.’

I fear I will have to crank up my productivity rate.

The Oldie November 2021 41

Postcards from the Edge

The 1950s Irish convent guide to green living

TOBY MORISON

Mary Kenny can handle an austere winter, thanks to her schooldays What with the energy crisis and the COP26 Climate Change event, I expect we’re all facing an austere winter.

But I do feel I’ve had good training for this – at my convent boarding school in 1950s Dublin. The rules then were exceptionally green.

Heating? Being cold was good for your character – and your soul. It built ‘backbone’, while central heating made you decadent and ‘soft’. Heating should never be turned on until rooms are absolutely glacial.

Lights? Switch off every unnecessary light – don’t waste electricity! People have made do with candlelight for eons – so don’t resort to electric light until it’s pitch-dark.

Baths? Too much bathing is selfindulgent. One bath a week is quite sufficient. ‘Top-and-tail’ flannel-wash is adequate the rest of the time.

Laundry: a clothes’ wash once a week – always on a Monday.

Fresh air? Plenty of it! Open windows – stuffy rooms are bad for the brain.

Food: it’s a sin to waste food – so finish off every scrap, please! Never buy more than you need. Think of the starving children in Africa.

Exercise: walk as much as you can, and as often as you can. Country children often walked three miles to school – in the rain.

Transport: use the bus or the bicycle – most families didn’t have cars anyway.

Clothes: ‘good-quality’ clothes were the cheapest in the long run. Invest in tweeds and wool and they’ll last you a lifetime. Don’t buy frivolous, cheap clothes for reasons of vanity.

Every young woman needs to know how to knit, sew, patch, repair, dye and, in effect, recycle garments.

Yes, the new protocols around virtuous ecology and prudent energy use are a surprising excursion in ‘back to the future’!

When Nadine Dorries, 63, was made Culture Secretary in Boris’s September 42 The Oldie November 2021

Ballymara Road, cruel nuns are like Nazis, orphans are punished for stealing apples and the threat of the gallows hangs over grisly murders. Conveniently, the death penalty wasn’t abolished until 1965.

Ms Dorries is not highbrow. The dialogue sometimes sounds artificial, descriptions can be clichéd, and the cast of characters is confusingly over-extended.

Still, Waterstones tell me a number of her novels are being reissued in November and I can be put on the waiting list. Smart career move for Nadine – getting to be culture supremo. reshuffle, the New York Times snobbily – and unfavourably – compared this working-class Liverpool lass, and author of popular fiction, with the French and German culture ministers, Roselyne Bachelot and Monika Grütters. La Bachelot had written a book on Verdi, while La Grütters was a trained art historian.

So, I thought I would examine this Nadine Dorries oeuvre of popular novels, frequently flagged as best-sellers. I was able to access three in our Deal library: The Ballymara Road, The Angels of Lovely Lane and Mary Kate, which was, impressively, a Sunday Times bestseller.

Ms Dorries – sometimes teased as ‘Mad Nad’ by colleagues – follows the first rule for debut novelists: write about what you know. She sets her stories between Liverpool and Ireland, with some scenes in America. She also sets them in a familiar time frame – from the 1940s to the 1960s. Knowledgeable about her narrative terrain, she exercises authority over the text.

Having been a nurse, she also writes medical scenes confidently, even with a kind of respect: tending a patient’s body after death, or watching a premature infant perish while hearing the posh consultant contemptuously dismiss it as a mere ‘foetus’ (Dorries is against late abortion).

And she obeys Henry James’s rule of ‘dramatise, dramatise, dramatise’. In

How informative to learn, in Michael Palin’s chronicle of travels, New Europe, that Yalta is twinned with Margate.

Most of the Channel coast’s twinning arrangements fell into desuetude during COVID but, hopefully, they’ll be starting up again shortly. I feel Margate might accomplish useful diplomatic work tackling the Russian presence in the Crimea.

Brits who have homes in the European Union are only permitted to spend 90 days in residence – and that means 90 days anywhere within the EU. When friends lament these restrictions, I’ve usually asked them if they might have, in their family tree, an Irish grandparent. Because, as I’ve had cause to mention, one Irish grandparent entitles any Briton to claim an Irish passport, which automatically bestows freedom within the EU. But I hadn’t realised how much revenue this flow of Hibernianisation was bringing to the old country. Emer Hughes of Moate in Co Westmeath has calculated that the 422,000 British people who officially discovered their Irish ancestry between 2016 and 2020 brought £407,850,603.75 into the Irish government’s coffers – £966.43 is the cost for each successful applicant.

Well worth it for many residents of the Costa del Sol!

Small World

The Berlin Wall of Cleethorpes

When I leave the house, I fight for my life – with 11-year-olds jem clarke

STEVE WAY

Jem Clarke is in his very, very early fifties, is five foot zero inches tall and has never left the family home in Cleethorpes, which he still shares with his parents…

A lady called Enid once wrote in a guesthouse book I saw, ‘Cleethorpes is like an acceptable piece of costume jewellery that you were initially going to throw out but have taken to wearing for low-key lunch meetings.’

This twinkling seaside secret of the east coast is home to some unlikely provisional world records. It was to be home to the world’s tallest artificial palmtree statue – a big fat stonking symbol of the regeneration of the north promenade.

And how symbolic it proved to be – the tree statue was cancelled owing to escalating costs and de-escalating interest. Alas, this cancellation came after the installation of pavement slabs inscribed with a lovely picture of a palm tree, a helpful arrow and an exciting countdown of how far you were away from this now imaginary attraction.

‘Calm down, kids, we’re only 200 metres away from the place where you would have seen a sculptor’s impression of an oversize palm tree,’ as no parent from Prestwick has said – ever.

It did occur to me, not to look a council-cock-up-crunching gift horse in the mouth, that I should source a palm-tree costume. I would then stand, living-statue style, at the proposed site, with a bucket for tourists’ coins.

I was put off this project by the proximity of a gent from Scunthorpe, between homes, who had set up residence in a tent near the non-existent tree. He was a hit with tourists, who were more than generous, thinking he might suddenly unveil a giant palm tree from behind his canvas windbreakers.

My own small contribution to Cleethorpes’s record-breaking ambitions is that I might live in Britain’s smallest gated community.

The cul-de-sac my live-in parents and I have called home since 1972 starts off like any suburban street. Its front 44 The Oldie Noveber 2021

gardens are full of wheelie bins. There’s a Costa Coffee on the corner and an eight-foot-long passage, acoustically perfect for late-night revellers to yell at a star-crossed lover, ‘Liam … don’t walk away, you knob, I luv ya.’

The last eight houses further down the cul-de-sac are on a road with no pavements. Our houses, on the private end of the road, have to provide our own tarmac and pay for it. So, to avoid overuse of our newly surfaced road, a fancy wall and gate were erected between the two halves of the street.

The only problem is that the gate’s not that fancy. It isn’t electronic, which forces us to scrape the awkward double gates open by hand. I either have to push them open – my muscles have atrophied during the COVID years – or else must climb up the three-foot wall by the side of the gate and lower myself over the other side. Because I’m only 5ft 0, and with artificial hips I’m still breaking in, this is more awkward than it sounds.

Once on top of the wall, I have to rotate on my back and buttocks exactly 180 degrees. If I ‘overshoot’ and do 360 degrees, I have sometimes lowered myself back into the gated community I am trying to escape from. Every so often I make a virtue of this, by simply going back home, to be greeted by my mother saying, ‘The idiot’s forgotten his hankie again.’ Once, while I was mid-rotation on

the wall, a group of children from the ‘rough end’ of the road assembled and yelled, ‘Watch this! The tubby man’s breakdancing on the wall again.’

If we leave the gate unlocked and open, the same dead-end kids will ride their bikes endlessly up and down our private part of the road, to avoid the larger amount of traffic they would encounter at the other end.

If it’s a case of weighing up the preservation of my current road surface (paid for out of my elderly parents’ savings – aka my inheritance) versus the lives of children, then tarmacadam is king. When I confront the bicycle gang, they find me endlessly amusing, rather than authoritative.

‘We’re tresper-whatting?’ they squeal.

They then encourage the girls in the gang to circle in a tight formation around me, as if herding a stray sheep.

I would have words with one of their parents, but I can see the dad out of the corner of my eye further up the street, giving a furtive thumbs-up to the proceedings. Besides, he often wears a Sons of Anarchy hoodie.

I should have it carved on my tombstone: Jem Clarke, Cleethorpes Man and Coward, provisionally more entertaining than a non-existent palm tree, less entertaining than a homeless man from Scunthorpe – and terrified of 11-year-olds on bikes.

Sophia Waugh: School Days

Good riddance, Gavin Williamson I can’t claim that the joy was unbridled in school staff rooms at the news that Gavin Williamson had finally been given the push as Education Secretary.

I am endlessly surprised at the lack of political interest expressed by my colleagues. I myself was dancing, in my heart at least, although of course still feeling that the sacking had happened far too late. My sources tell me that the joy expressed in the DfE was – if not unbridled, as they’re all too grown-up – at any rate mutedly decorous.

The DfE, like so many other organisations (but not schools, obviously), has been working away from the office, but there were some civil servants there that day. Perfect – our new Education Secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, could pay a visit. He did so to cheers and claps, and made a charming speech in which he pledged a familial love and loyalty to his staff. That might have been a bit much a bit soon, but it showed willing.

So what do we know about Zahawi?

We hope he did a little better in his A levels than the previous leader – rumoured to have managed a few Es, although this summer he claimed he could not remember his grades. I remember my History E as clearly as I do my better results – so I can’t really believe in his memory lapse.

Zahawi probably did do better, as he studied Chemical Engineering at UCL, rather than Social Sciences at Bradford.

I know that makes me sound like a massive educational snob, and perhaps I am. Educational rigour has been lacking for so long – can’t we hope for some serious thinking? At any rate from the people in charge of education?

Zahawi has worked at the DfE before, which I think we can take as a good sign.

At least he’ll know something about the job. He’s entering into it with an admirable level of vim and vigour – and a long list of clichés. He knows ‘what a beacon of opportunity this country can

‘Have you tried texting Romeo?’

be’. He has taken the oxymoron of ‘levelling up’ to his heart, and promises that education will play a part in that transformation the Tories so love to promise us.

And what else about Zahawi? Well, if nothing else, we know he gets things done. Not for him the meaningless Boris Johnson floundering flourishes. His success as vaccines minister – and, heaven knows, the roll-out of the vaccination programme has been about the only sign of competence from this government – is encouraging. I just pray he doesn’t conflate the two jobs and start forcing vaccines on the children.

We know he was in a minor expenses scandal about a Pritt Stick – so he’ll be delighted with the number of glue sticks rolling around any classroom. We know that he came to England aged nine with his family who had to flee Saddam Hussein; this is a welcome change from the old school of Tory politicians with their samey-samey backgrounds.

But what we don’t know – yet – is what he will do to our schools. Will he overturn the exam system and turn the wheel back to the days of coursework?

Will he fiddle around with the curriculum – again? And, above all, what will he do if we have another year of no exams?

I, for one, am waiting with bated breath – but with a sense of quiet optimism.

Quite Interesting Things about … November Russia’s October Revolution is celebrated in November.

25th November 2012 was the first day since 1960 on which no murder or manslaughter occurred in New York City.

Santa Claus Is Coming to Town was first sung in November 1934. By Christmas, it had sold 400,000 copies.

In Finland, 1st November is nicknamed National Jealousy Day, because everybody’s taxable income is made public at 8am.

The first Nobel Physics Prize was awarded to Wilhelm Röntgen, who discovered X-rays on 8th November 1895.

The first red British pillar boxes appeared on the island of Jersey on 23rd November 1852.

JOHN LLOYD

The only place in Britain that’s never burned a guy on its bonfire on 5th November is St Peter’s, York – Guy Fawkes is the school’s most famous old boy.

On 16th November every year, Americans celebrate National Button Day, which was established by the National Button Society in 1938.

For more on QI, visit qi.com and, on Twitter, @qikipedia

The Oldie November 2021 47

sister teresa

Christianity’s gift to art – Mother Mary Mary the Mother of God is perhaps the only Marian title that does not cause bitter controversy among Christians of various denominations.

It is sad that she should have become such a divisive figure, but there is some comfort to be had in that the image of mother and child is one of the great artistic contributions that Christianity has given to the world.

Tastes differ, but there is a huge amount on offer, from the icons of Mary with the infant Jesus painted as early as the sixth century up to and beyond Henry Moore’s sculptural masterpiece Madonna and Child, completed in 1944 for St Matthew’s Church in Northampton.

It is thought that children under the age of two have not fully absorbed the culture by which they are surrounded.

This means that it is easier to form an accurate view as to what Jesus was like as a baby than during the other stages of his life. It is therefore only right that any baby in its mother’s arms should remind us of the incarnate son of God. When we feel the need for an illustration

Loving embrace of a mother and child: A Goodnight Hug by Mary Cassatt

of Mary and her infant son, it can sometimes be helpful to step away from the great religious masters of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and to consider a painter far closer to our own times.

The outlook of American painter Mary Cassatt (1841-1926) was not religious in the specific sense, but her understanding of the affection and tenderness of motherhood, which is her main hallmark, shows us one of the most important aspects of God’s love for us. It is a love

that has no strings attached, demanding nothing of us other than our existence.

During her lifetime, Cassatt was criticised for being too humdrum, too domesticated and lacking in grandeur, but it is precisely the way in which she paints the naturalness of everyday life that later generations have come to admire. We know, in theory at least, that the life of the Holy Family was a very simple one, with no haloes, crowns or rich clothing.

Typical of her work is A Goodnight Hug. It is not difficult to imagine Mary and Jesus in just the same pose. There are no faces here – so no specific expressions – and yet the tenderness is unmistakable. The baby is responding to his mother’s embrace by putting his arm round her neck.

Exactly the same trusting gesture can be found in countless icons throughout the ages. Psalm 131:2 shows the same trust – the trust that comes from true humility: ‘I hold myself in quiet and silence, like a little child in its mother’s arms.’

Memorial Service

SAM STEPHENSON

Lady Christie (1937-2020) The London Philharmonic Orchestra celebrated the life of Mary Christie, widow of Sir George Christie. The couple lived at Glyndebourne and ran the opera house.

Elizabeth Findon led the sopranos for the Glyndebourne Chorus, Susan Bickley the mezzo-sopranos, Hal Cazalet the tenors, and Andrew Davies the basses.

The Christies’ second son, Gus, who has run the opera since 2000, led the tributes to his mother. ‘Mum carried on doing what she had always done since marrying Dad in 1958 – walking around the gardens with a critical eye during the day and entertaining folk at the opera in the evening,’ said Gus. ‘I remember, when we changed the name of the staff bar from the Pig and Whistle to the 48 The Oldie November 2021

Mary and Gus Christie at Glyndebourne

George and Mary, she looked at me with a slightly wobbly lower lip, but when we unveiled her magnificent rose garden in the spring of 2015, she was beaming.’

‘Dad referred to Mum in his book as the “heartbeat” of Glyndebourne and so

she was,’ said daughter Louise Flind, the Oldie interviewer. ‘Her love for the people and the place, her anxieties and excitement shone through.’

Eldest son, Hector, who runs the family estate in Devon, spoke with his brother Ptolemy of ‘Remembering Mum’. Gus’s wife Danielle de Niese sang from Porgy and Bess with Willard White. Gerald Finley sang Some Enchanted Evening. The LPO played an extract from The Marriage of Figaro. Former Glyndebourne administrator Brian Dickie spoke of ‘Memories of Mary’. Director John Cox spoke of ‘My First Encounter with Mary’. Family friend Susanna Johnston paid tribute.

JAMES HUGHES-ONSLOW

The Doctor’s Surgery

COVID – Florence Nightingale’s verdict Thanks to the great nurse, we can see the full effects of the pandemic theodore dalrymple

The Nightingale diagram – named after its inventor, Florence Nightingale – is the best and easiest way of visualising the effect of the COVID-19 epidemic on overall mortality.

It is a circle divided into 52 equal segments, representing the weeks of the year, the radii with a numerical scale giving the number of deaths in any particular week. I wrote about the diagram in the March issue – here is an update, using the latest figures.

When the plots are joined up and given different colours for each of the last five or six years, it is easy to see whether the overall number of deaths in any given year has risen, remained the same or fallen. As you would expect, 2020 and 2021 showed months of grossly increased numbers of deaths.

The diagram has its limitations, of course. It does not tell you what people died of, or how many years of life lost

the excess deaths represented. For the diagram, a death is a death, whether it takes place at six months or 95 years.

Some epidemiologists hypothesised, rather optimistically, that, since COVID killed the old and ill disproportionately, peaks of deaths would be followed by troughs – the most susceptible to death having already died.

So far, this has not happened, or has happened only to the most minimal extent, and only briefly. As I write, there is still an excess of deaths, though nothing (so far) like former peaks.

How many of the excess deaths were collateral damage from the virus, to adapt slightly military terminology?

Since it is necessary always to do double-entry bookkeeping, we shall have to consider the possibility that the response to COVID prevented some deaths, for example by traffic accidents.

But this will not be easy: such fatalities

‘Kids these days’

in Britain did decline in 2020, but only in the same proportion as they declined in 2019. Since counterfactual history is the playground of people with axes to grind, what would have happened without COVID must be a matter of conjecture.

One of the reasons there have been no troughs to speak of in the Nightingale diagram is that death rates from other diseases might have risen. For several months, medical screening, investigation and treatment were held more or less in abeyance. If all or any of those things save life, lives may have been lost.

A paper from Japan examined the effect of the various measures taken during the pandemic on the detection of gastrointestinal cancer in two hospitals.

The investigators found that not only were fewer cancer and bowel cancers diagnosed, but that those that were diagnosed were diagnosed at a later stage. They did not examine the subsequent death rates from these diseases – it was too soon to do so.

Supposing that earlier diagnosis results in greater survival rates and longevity, particularly with bowel cancer, it seems reasonable to suppose that these effects will sooner or later translate themselves into premature deaths.

Whether these effects will be large enough to affect the Nightingale diagram is again as yet unknowable. Moreover, the diagram is graphic but crude.

A study in the United States estimated that the decline in the rate of cancer detection caused by COVID in 2020 will lead to nearly 34,000 cancer deaths.

A single death is a terrible loss, of course, if it occurs in someone near and dear to you; 34,000 is equal to 1.2 per cent of annual deaths in the country. It is equal to about 0.5 per cent of all the deaths directly attributed to COVID. I wish I had a clear doctrine to propound. If I did, I could be an economist, or perhaps a financial adviser.

The Oldie November 2021 49

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

Chips – the missing woman SIR: The fifth person (marked anonymous) in the photograph accompanying the piece about Chips Channon in September’s Oldie is in fact my mother, Patricia Morrison-Bell.

As a child, I would listen unnoticed to many hushed conversations about Chips, and his deceptive, scurrilous behaviour among the grown-ups, before they spotted me and would say, ‘Pas devant les enfants.’

Jessica Douglas-Home, London W14

The error of your Krays

Patricia Morrison-Bell; Chips and Lady Honor Channon; her sister Lady Brigid Guinness and Prince Frederick of Prussia (later her husband). Kelvedon Hall, Essex, 1939

Peter Cook’s 100 guineas SIR: The article ‘Showbiz doesn’t pay’ (October issue) reminded me of a story about Beyond the Fringe, which may even be true.

In their early days, the four protagonists were asked to do a one-off performance somewhere. Messrs Bennett, Miller and Moore, being amateurs at the time, were paid £100 each.

Peter Cook, being a professional, was paid 100 guineas – but had to pay 10 per cent of that to his agent.

John Duffield, Loughton, Essex

SIR: Was it really necessary to feature the Krays on the front cover (October issue)?

Shame on you, selectors…

These two evil characters were criminals whose ruthless and wicked behaviour/exploits brought misery to many. Their history is best left in the shadows, where it belongs, as we do not need reminders of their existence, their schemes or the misery they caused.

Come on, Oldie staff, your regular and devoted readers deserve better reading than this muck-raking.

Beryl Fleming, Worthing, West Sussex

Criminal delight SIR: There is so much good writing in The Oldie that it’s almost pointless to single out a particular piece of work, but single out I will. Nemone Lethbridge’s

50 The Oldie November 2021

Poor Giles Coren SIR: Let us all spare a moment for Giles Coren.

He doesn’t like Oxford; he doesn’t like Paris. He didn’t like Westminster School.

He hates writing and being on telly.

I humbly offer a few words of advice.

He doesn’t have to do either. He wouldn’t be missed. His father was a genius. Some of it he passed on to his daughter.

Perhaps Giles should think about really working for a living.

Millions do.

Donald Jones, Honiton, Devon

The Sun’s top headlines

Request for female fogeys SIR: Edith Sitwell?

Alan Hall, Tatsfield, Westerham, Kent

‘My cuppa with the Krays’ (October issue) was an utter delight. The mere mention of the twins’ name adds drama to any piece, of course, but then the narrative was full of surprises.

The conversations with the Krays were natural but also eye-opening, and there was room for memorable details such as the embossed red velvet walls and lace curtains with satin bows in their mother’s house and the crocodile handbag the boys were so desperate to give her as a thank-you.

With the final surprise of an annual Christmas card from Ronnie in Broadmoor, an absolute joy to read.

Ken Wilson, London W6

‘Yes, baby, of course I brought protection!’

SIR: William Cook’s article ‘Who Was Blackie the Donkey?’ (Olden Life,

October issue) reminded me of the clever and funny headlines the Sun newspaper used to come up with in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

For example, after the eccentric Liberal peer Lord Avebury had said that when he died he wanted to donate his body to Battersea Dogs’ Home for pet food, the Sun headline was ‘Pedigree Chump’.

On New Year’s Eve, when a Sun photographer tracked down Ronnie Biggs to his Brazil hideaway and snapped the old robber putting up two fingers, the accompanying headline was ‘Old Lag’s Sign’.

And then when George Michael’s close liaison with another male in a public place was noticed by the Old Bill, the Sun gave us another memorable phrase: ‘Zip Me Up Before You Go-Go’.

Nicholas Bostin, Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire

Neglected members SIR: David Horspool’s as usual witty and stimulating review of our (male) parliamentarians who have turned their hands to writing as well as making history didn’t go back in time quite far enough. Well before (T B) Macaulay, a certain Edward Gibbon retrospectively deemed the eight sessions he sat as MP for Liskeard ‘a school of civil prudence’.

He also used them to tell a rather good joke. Why is a fat man like a Cornish voter?

Because both very rarely see their member.

Professor Paul Cartledge, Cambridge

Randall’s ducks in a row SIR: Your account of John Woodcock’s funeral service (October issue) reminds me of his comment on the England and Nottinghamshire batsman Derek Randall, which I treasure as the best single sentence in the history of cricket reporting. I think I have it by heart: ‘Randall made 0 and 1 in the first Championship match of the season, against Northamptonshire, but was less successful in the second, against Middlesex.’

Peter Hollindale, York

Tales at Oxford’s high tables SIR: I don’t at all mind reviewers disliking my books, but I do tend to think that they should read them carefully before passing public comment on them.

I mention just one issue in Nicola Shulman’s review of my book Being a Human (September issue) – an issue that is going to cause me personal and professional embarrassment. Shulman

‘Your printing press will spread knowledge throughout the world for 500 years. After that – pffft! ’

says that the Enlightenment section is centred on some high-table conversations at the Oxford college where I am a fellow.

Not so. On page 332, I write, of my college, that ‘the dysfunctional dinner with Professor Black could never have happened there’. On page 9, I say that ‘You will search the Oxford cloisters in vain’ for the protagonists of those conversations. I’d hoped that was clear enough.

Professor Charles Foster, Green Templeton College, University of Oxford

Ich bin ein Berliner SIR: Regarding the recent article ‘I once guarded Rudolf Hess’ (August issue), Valentine Cecil was incorrect when stating that the Russians were ‘allowed … continued access to the British sector’ because of guarding Hess and the others. The Soviet Union military had access because this was part of the Four Power Agreement on Berlin, which permitted unrestricted movement by the all the former Allies within the whole of Berlin.

I enjoyed a total of 13 happy years serving in Berlin with 3 East Anglian, 3 Royal Anglian, 2 Royal Anglian, 3 RRF, BGAU & 29 Sigs.

John Lawton, Cyprus

Nazi snowmen SIR: In her letter (September issue) Elizabeth Cowan wonders what technique is used in the UK to assemble a snowman.

She asks whether the head is prefabricated and lifted onto the body, claiming that this is how it is done in North America.

She notes that this method was used

by Rudolf Hess during his incarceration in Spandau Prison, as reported by one of his guards, Valentine Cecil (August

issue), who wondered if this mode of snowman building had a particularly Nazi link. Elizabeth mischievously hints that here in the UK we don’t have enough snow, and have to resort to scraping and patting into a little mound.

Let me assure her that the separatehead method is well established here. I remember constructing one during the winter of 1963. The head was made by rolling a ball of snow, and hoisting it onto the shoulders by means of a wooden ramp.

The eyes were apples, the mouth was a banana and the ears were vinyl records.

As for its being a Nazi method, all the people who built the snowmen lived through the Second World War and will be appalled at such a suggestion.

Rudolf Hess made a solo flight to the UK in 1941, and was arrested after bailing out near Glasgow. There has been much speculation about the reason for his visit.

My own view is that he came to study our method of building the perfect snowman.

Great magazine.

Trevor Snowden, Isle of Wight

‘Henry has the secret of eternal youth.

He still gets acne’

Kids say the funniest things SIR: Jem Clarke’s piece about nipples (September issue) set me off. Several decades ago, one of my 12-year-old pupils came to me to tell me something very confidential.

His family had enjoyed a Butlin’s-style holiday which included an event in which water was chucked over T-shirt-wearing ladies. The boy stepped closer to whisper in my ear that one lady in particular caught his attention especially. He said, ‘I could see both her nimbles!’

Maybe Jim’s great-aunt Jessie might find ‘nimbles’ a nicer word: certainly more interesting, in my opinion.

Here’s another example from my teaching chuckle box. In a creative writing class, a young teenage girl wrote about being driven to Ipswich by a boyfriend to do some shopping. ‘After a few minutes, he put his hand on my knee.

Then he slid his hand higher up my leg, so I quickly grabbed his hand and put it firmly on the clutch.’

Best wishes, Martyn Lloyd, Lowestoft, Suffolk The Oldie November 2021 51

I Once Ran with

Roger Bannister In 1954, I was ten years old and not much interested in the news, but my imagination was set on fire when Roger Bannister ran the first four-minute mile that year. This was news no one could have missed even in those days before social media and colour television. At school on the following day, we all made drawings of the event.

Seventeen years later, I was sent to Madras on my first British Council posting, which according to an envious London colleague was ‘the last outpost of graceful living’.

One of my first tasks was to look after Dr Roger Bannister, then still only 42, who was touring and lecturing as a neurologist.

At the weekend, I took Dr Bannister to the beach for a picnic lunch along with my wife and baby son. At that time, the seafront was accessible to all. There were no hotels or private beaches and there was plenty of space. When we had swum, eaten and drunk a few beers, I broached the subject I had been hesitant to mention. I feared that the now-respected

academic would be fed up talking about his athletic past.

He did not show any irritation when I asked: ‘Do you still run?’

He replied: ‘When I can. Shall we run along the beach?’

We ran barefoot on the soft sand along the water’s edge, and how I wished I had

eaten less. I thought I was fit but I could not keep up with him for long. I returned breathless to my amused wife, still sitting among the picnic remains with our son.

I felt ashamed of my poor performance but exultant that I had run with Roger Bannister.

William Wood

Roger Bannister runs the first sub-four-minute mile, Iffley Road track, Oxford 6th May 1954

Joy of pumping petrol, aged 15

The current petrol crisis reminded me of my time as a teenage petrol-pump attendant.

I was fortunate as a 15-yearold schoolboy in 1968 to secure such a coveted part-time job at my local Shell garage. The rate of pay (four shillings an hour) was twice that of a paper boy.

For 16 hours a week (two evenings plus Saturday or Sunday), I was immersed in the world of motor cars – Ford Anglias, Triumph Heralds, Hillman Imps – and soon learnt the location of the petrol cap on every make and model.

By the end of a shift, your hands were grimy and you reeked a bit, but at least you

had free Swarfega from the repair workshop.

The basic choice was two-star leaded petrol (6s/2d per gallon) or four-star (6s/6d). Service was straightforward – you wound the handle on the side of the pump to reset the dials to zero, inserted the nozzle in the tank and pulled the trigger until the desired volume of petrol was dispensed.

But you needed to be wary of ‘slow fillers’ (Ford Prefects were particularly bad) which required dexterity to avoid the petrol’s blowing back and soaking your leg.

There were no credit cards – cash only,

unless you were deemed trustworthy enough to buy on account.

Four gallons was the most popular order because that entitled one to receive quadruple Green Shield stamps. Sometimes the order was ‘four and four shots’, which meant squirting a mysterious substance called Redex into the tank before the petrol. I never discovered the purpose of this.

Some customers would also request an oil check, which meant lifting the bonnet and locating the dipstick, usually followed by a request for a pint of oil to be tipped into the hot engine – either Duckhams or the more expensive Castrol GTX. Occasionally we were asked to check tyre pressures, which

we would do only if there was no queue – but which usually resulted in a good tip.

An occasional highlight was the arrival of the Shell tanker to replenish the underground petrol reservoirs.

This involved scrambling onto the roof of the tanker to check the volume – typically 4,000 gallons.

It was not long before the petrol-pump attendant fell victim to the march of automation. Now it’s all self-service – so everyone is their own attendant.

But still to this day, I feel a wave of nostalgia whenever I stop to fill up and that familiar aroma hits my nostrils as I squeeze the trigger.

By Robert Jackson, London N8, who receives £50 Readers are invited to send in their own 400-word submissions about the past The Oldie November 2021 53

Books Brideshead regurgitated NICOLA SHULMAN Noble Ambitions The Fall and Rise of the Post-War Country House

By Adrian Tinniswood

GARY WING

Jonathan Cape £30 ‘Never sell, Johnny! Never sell.’

If you saw the film Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes you may recall these words, spoken by Ralph Richardson, as the older Earl of Greystoke, to the younger (Christopher Lambert).

The young heir had been discovered living amongst a tribe of chimpanzees and was now removed to his Scottish estates and turreted ancestral abode.

The advice wasn’t followed by many aristocrats, as it turned out. The hundred years after 1875 saw a thousand great British houses destroyed, and many more sold along with their lands. Falling rents and rising taxes forced the Johnnys of this world to retrench and diversify their activities in such a way that, if Greystoke had become a movie franchise, we might have looked forward to Greystoke II: Lord of the Holiday Cottages, Greystoke III: Lord of the Organic Farm Shop and Greystoke IV: Lord of the Biomass Boiler.

This story, of the decline of the English stately home, has been analysed to exhaustion: sentimentally and comically by writers such as Evelyn Waugh, and sometimes with an indignation bordering on rage, as in the 1974 V&A exhibition The Destruction of the Country House. In that show’s final room, the Hall of Lost Houses, the organisers mocked up the collapsing façade of a fine old house, with each stone slab a photograph of a lost stately.

Noble Ambitions purports to offer us a counter-narrative to this familiar story.

Yes, many houses vanished, but many did not. They became schools and public buildings or were caught in free fall by the National Trust. Some had showmanlike owners who went into partnership with the likes of Billy Smart and Jimmy Chipperfield. They repurposed animals from the big top and the zoo (never from the wild – though Longleat got ten lions from the set of Born Free in Nairobi).

Some blew up the ballroom and moved the kitchen upstairs.

If this sounds like something you’ve heard before, it’s because Tinniswood’s idea of a counter-argument seems to be to tilt the old stories 180 degrees. He tells them not as stages of decline but as a tale of triumphant, upward flight, as the country-house-owning classes reacted with suppleness to changing times.

He does make a couple of novel points here. I liked the chapter about interior decorating, which shows how traditional, ‘grand country-house style’, which might appear to have been in place since time immemorial, was in fact another

innovation of the Janus-faced fifties.

Tinniswood also touches on more recent types of owners, especially the symbiosis between toffs and rock stars – who tended, inter alia, to avoid the long 18th century in their architectural preferences, preferring early Tudor (Bill Wyman) or High Victorian Gothic (George Harrison.) It would be interesting to know why.

The mystery of this book is: why does it read as if time stopped at the time of the V&A exhibition? Since 1974, any number of events have affected the shape and prospects of large country houses.

They include, but are not limited to, Thatcherism, the Big Bang, Cool Britannia, the inrush of money from Russia and the Far East, the rewilding movement, Brexit, the contemporary art boom and, yes, the COVID-19 pandemic.

That caused an explosive demand for this type of house, as the rich have fled our pestilential cities with their chefs, nannies, Mandarin tutors, tennis coaches and art advisers in train.

The Oldie November 2021 55

There is so much of interest for Tinniswood, who writes wittily, to address. Why then is he dusting down these anecdotes emeritus about Marianne and the Mars Bar, Longleat’s lions, Georgie Fame, Debo Devonshire, John Profumo and all; when, yonder, before us lie such new developments as the Soho House country set and Beckingham Palace.

Do footballers live in country mansions? And, if so, what do they plan to do with them? Will the new owners, such as Leon Max, the Russian fashion mogul who bought Hawksmoor’s Easton Neston from Lord Hesketh, raise their children with a debt of loyalty to ‘the old place’, like Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, who said, ‘Whereas most people possess their belongings, I, paradoxically, belong to my possessions’?

Opportunity has practically flattened the door with knocking, but Tinniswood doesn’t appear to have heard it.

Magic of George III HAMISH ROBINSON

George III: The Life and Reign of Britain’s Most Misunderstood Monarch

By Andrew Roberts Allen Lane £35 In a brief introduction, Andrew Roberts lists those against whom this superb royal biography is pitched.

They range from the 18th-century radical Thomas Paine to Lin-Manuel Miranda, the writer of the hit musical Hamilton, via a host of Whig, Whiggish, or otherwise unsympathetic, 19th- and 20th-century historians and biographers.

For all these, George III was either a brutal tyrant or an incompetent buffoon, or a combination of the two.

Roberts counters this long tradition of denigration, propagated by the American Founding Fathers, still thriving anarchically in remote corners of the American press.

There are passages of trenchant reasoning, including a point-by-point rebuttal of all but two of the 28 charges against the King in the Declaration of Independence.

It is largely by quoting the King’s own words that he makes his case. Roberts is one of the first biographers – along with Jeremy Black, whom Roberts calls his mentor – to make use of tens of thousands of documents from the Royal Archives and Royal Library published online as part of the Georgian Papers Programme inaugurated in 2015.

There is almost no incident in the life of the longest-reigning monarch before Victoria that cannot be reported from

first hand. The King’s own letters and memoranda are usually dated, like email, not merely by the day but to the hour and the minute. There are also those of other members of Royal family, along with the memoirs of those in close service at court such as Fanny Burney and Robert Fulke Greville, and the correspondence and memoirs of his various ministers and other senior officials.

At one point, Roberts protests, ‘If, as Jefferson, alleged, George had held any desire, let alone plan, to establish a dictatorial tyranny over America of the totalitarian kind implied by the language of the Declaration, there would be some evidence of this. And yet, among around 100,000 pages of George’s personal archive, not a single scrap of paper exists to support such a contention.’

Character will out. In politics, George was a passionate, lifelong defender of the constitution and showed no inclination to expand the royal prerogative.

If he supported the war against the rebellion in America, it was to uphold the rights of Parliament to tax those to whom it afforded its protection.

If he touched a nerve at home, it was precisely in disturbing a complacent Whig establishment. He sought to form less oligarchic and more consensual, ‘broad-bottom’ governments with Tory ministers. Thereby he transformed a political landscape based on the divisions created by the Glorious Revolution.

Roberts shows that it was under George III, and in no small part owing to his personal influence, that the modern constitutional monarchy and cabinet government came fully into being.

On a domestic scale, too, George set the pattern even more than Victoria. The very idea of the more modest and workaday Royal Family, as opposed to a full-scale court, was his. He was a keen promoter of public pageantry. George commissioned the hugely expensive and uncomfortable Gold State Coach. He backed proper

‘We’re going shopping – Colin’s just making a list’

formality at levees. And he was the first working Royal engaged in a busy round of patronage, serving interests that ranged from astronomy to pig-farming.

This new royal ethos did not suit everyone. George was naturally hardworking and uxorious – Roberts describes him as enjoying the company of bishops more than of statesmen.

But the Prince of Wales, the dissolute ‘Prinny’, the future George IV, found it hard going. At one point, the prince’s personal debts were equal to one quarter of the kingdom’s annual non-military expenditure. Roberts calls him ‘a spendthrift of sociopathic proportions’.

Of George III’s madness, famed in film, Roberts also has new things to say.

Guided by expert advice, he rejects the diagnosis of porphyria, arguing that the King suffered from a severe form of bipolar disorder.

A book so diligently researched cannot fail to be rich in curious detail and amusing turns of phrase. There are plums on almost every page.

When a farmer, unaware that he was addressing the King, remarked that he had heard he ‘dresses very plain’, George replied, ‘Aye, as plain as you see me now.’

Wells springs to life JOHN BATCHELOR The Young H G Wells: Changing the World

By Claire Tomalin Viking £20 The young H G Wells established his career as a novelist with his extraordinary scientific romance The Time Machine.

The book, first published in 1895, was conceived when he was a student. The sales were sensational: this unknown young writer had found a wonderful concept with which to dazzle his public.

‘I doubt if anyone forgets their first reading of The Time Machine,’ says Tomalin.

Indeed, the freshness, daring and complete originality of the book are long-lasting in its readers’ minds. It projects the class divisions of late Victorian England forward to the year 802701. The Morlocks, the terrifying underground creatures of the remote future world, are descended from the Victorian working class. And the Eloi are descended from the cultivated and privileged upper class. These two levels of humanity have evolved into separate branches of mankind.

The young Wells had personal experience of the separate settings The Oldie November 2021 57

in which these classes lived. His father kept a desperate and failing small shop in Bromley where his children lived in a dark basement, while his mother moved out when she was offered a job as a housekeeper at Uppark, a great country house in Kent. The disparity between these two settings contributed to Wells’s invention of a future world in which the underground Morlocks farm the Eloi, the descendants of the upper class, and eat them.

The War of the Worlds, first published in serial form in 1897, reflects the expansion of the British Empire. The Martians arrive on earth to colonise it.

They settle on the smug south-west London commuter belt in Horsell, near Woking. It was an exhilarating target for Wells. Through the mouthpiece of a sturdy soldier, he revels in the disappearance of all the amenities to which this prosperous middle class have become accustomed, such as ‘nice little feeds in restaurants’.

Feeding is again a theme: the Martian invaders feed themselves by blood transfusion from humans. This is their undoing. They have no resistance to the microbes and infections common to lateVictorian England, and are wiped out.

Tomalin shows how English class distinction propelled Wells’s perception of himself as a small child. His mother sent him to a ‘dame school’, with an admonishment not to mix with ‘rough or common boys’. The rough and the common in society and their threat to good order are felt intensely in The History of Mr Polly. Wells’s sturdy antihero saves himself from the fate of Wells’s father by setting fire to his own failing shop. He settles himself in the Potwell Inn, a pub based on a place Wells remembered fondly from his childhood.

Mr Polly’s central discovery is that if life does not please you, you can change it.

When Wells was eight years old, images of Britannia and France as lightly clothed women aroused his sexual desire: ‘When I went to bed, I used to pillow my head on their great arms and breasts.’ In this early start, Claire Tomalin sees the basis of his ‘unhesitating sense of entitlement’ in adult sexual encounters.

His need for freedom seems an overriding theme. In his first relationship, with his cousin Isabel, he was ‘almost entirely faithful’ during the six years of their engagement but embarked on ‘enterprising promiscuity’ once they were married. This established a pattern for life: ‘long and passionate affairs’ as well as casual encounters.

Claire Tomalin feels that most of the affairs were with women strong enough

‘The books are stored alphabetically – they’re under “B” for “books” ’

to cope, though she shows appropriate sympathy for Wells’s second wife, Jane.

She quietly made a life of her own while he spent time ‘in the sun’ with his other partners, leaving Jane ‘to put a good face on the situation’.

Tomalin writes accurately that the best of Wells’s books will ‘go on being read for generations’; that he had a central passion for social equality and for a government of Britain dedicated to making a better life for all its citizens.

There is sadness in the story of his quarrel with Henry James. It is hard to see Wells’s behaviour as anything other than cruel. Tomalin handles this matter with delicacy and restraint. James had befriended Wells and applauded his work but had also published his reservations about Wells’s methods. Wells did not share James’s dedication to the novel as an artistic form. In Boon (1911), Wells published a merciless, though very funny, parody of James’s literary manner. The friendship could not survive this, and it was naïve of Wells to imagine that it might.

This is a fresh, stimulating and admirably controlled biography, giving a clear sense of the development of one of our most remarkable writers.

John Batchelor is author of How the Just So Stories Were Made: The Brilliance and Tragedy Behind Kipling’s Celebrated Tales for Little Children

Hollywood spies ALAN JUDD Stars and Spies: Intelligence Operations and the Entertainment Business

By Christopher Andrew and Julius Green Bodley Head £20 Relations between the entertainment industry and the second-oldest profession have long been close. A former Chief of MI6 used to say that doors would

open to his officers almost anywhere in the world because of James Bond. Such relations have often been more extensive than we think. Maybe they still are.

This accomplished and very readable survey of 2,500 years of espionage makes the point that spies and entertainers deploy similar skills. Role play, disguises, deceptions and sleights of hand are common to both. Entertainers who spied often concealed their links – the American singer and dancer Josephine Baker spied prolifically for the Free French in the Second World War – but some simply played themselves.

The latter varied from medieval troubadours – ‘stateless wanderers who often provided valuable intelligence to princes’ – to Noël Coward and Somerset Maugham. Maugham’s fictionalised account of his activities in Ashenden: Or the British Agent (1927) represents the best and most realistic example of early modern spy writing.

In Elizabethan times, connections between espionage and the theatre were almost taken for granted. Nearly everyone in Hamlet spies or is spied on, while in Richard III we find an early example of the word ‘intelligence’ meaning secret information. Shakespeare’s fellowplaywrights Christopher Marlowe and Anthony Munday were spies, as was his clown Will Kemp and his fellow-poet Thomas Watson. Casanova was also a playwright spy, when he could spare time from his 120-plus sexual conquests. He was probably the first to use the modern term ‘secret agent’.

The playwright and architect Vanbrugh did a good deal of spying, although not as much as Daniel Defoe, described by Allen Dulles (first civilian head of the CIA) as ‘one of the greatest author-spies in history’.

Defoe was sent to Edinburgh in 1706 to foster the Act of Union between England and Scotland, his mission being ‘to Dispose people’s minds’ and to prevent ‘Partys forming Against the Union’. He regarded espionage as ‘the soul of government business’ and proposed a permanent intelligence service in his ‘Scheme of General Intelligence’.

But it was the 20th century’s world wars and the subsequent Cold War that multiplied the links between the entertainment industry and espionage.

In each case, there was an overriding cause – national survival – which touched upon almost every area of life.

During the First World War, the writers Edward Knoblock and Compton Mackenzie were active along with Maugham, although the most famous – and arguably most entertaining – spy of the period was the Dutch dancer and courtesan Mata The Oldie November 2021 59

‘I don’t see this as a problem – I see it as an opportunity to fire you’

Hari. As Agent H21, she was paid by the Germans to seduce Allied officers and get information from them – ‘I love officers.

I have loved them all my life… My greatest pleasure is to go to bed with them without thinking of money…’

Pillow talk is not, however, always useful and her reports were less than satisfactory. She was twice interviewed

by MI5 who, apart from observing that ‘Time had a little dimmed the charms of which we have heard so much’, concluded there was not enough against her to mount a prosecution. The French thought differently and she was executed by firing squad, having refused a blindfold.

Before and during the Second World War, well-known writers, actors and producers had intelligence roles – Coward, Graham Greene, Dennis Wheatley, Malcolm Muggeridge, Ian Fleming and Alexander Korda.

But the least-known and perhaps most surprising were the entertainment links with MI6’s highly secret Enigma codebreaking operation at Bletchley Park.

Actors and singers such as Pamela Gibson, Jill Medway and Douglas Craig put on reviews and shows under the benign patronage of the deputy director, Frank Birch. Though little-known now, Birch was a First World War codebreaker who, before and after wartime service, found time to appear in over 50 films, plays and TV dramas.

Espionage was the Cold War’s hot spot. Unlike the military, the spies weren’t merely practising and the consequences of getting caught could be lethal. Russian intelligence, with its mission to undermine all aspects of Western public life, targeted the BBC from its inception in 1927. They had a good run with the spy Guy Burgess, a BBC producer from 1936, almost getting

him into Bletchley Park. Fortunately, he was rejected by Frank Birch.

Since the Second World War, public perception of the links between entertainment and intelligence can be summed up in two names: Ian Fleming and John le Carré. There are many other examples quoted in this enjoyable and well-informed survey but is is Bond and Smiley who have ensured that, for all the differences between intelligence and entertainment, stars and spies will for ever be inextricably linked.

Diary of a somebody MAUREEN FREELY A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries 2003-2020

By David Sedaris Little, Brown £20 Throughout his twenties and well into his thirties, David Sedaris was an embarrassment to his family.

He was always on the move, dropping in and out of college and flirting with hard drugs, as he drifted from one odd job to the next. The only constant was the diary in which he recorded every bad or funny thing that happened to him or his family.

His big break came in Chicago in 1992, when the radio host Ira Glass invited him to read from it on his show. A blink of an eye later, Sedaris was on National Public Radio to talk about the Christmas he spent working as an elf at Macy’s in New York. His reminiscences, drawn from the notes he’d kept at the time, had the ring of truth, though Sedaris was happy to admit that he’d changed the story wherever he found a chance to make it funnier.

No one seemed to mind. Everyone wanted more. Almost overnight, his

charmingly barbed and almost-true stories had become New Yorker and This American Life staples. Soon they were out in book form. With each new collection came a coast-to-coast tour. By the noughties, he had become a household name, and so, too, had the relatives whose dirty linen he routinely improved on for maximum comic effect.

They accepted their hair shirts graciously. For almost 30 years now they have worn them without much complaint. They could have broken ranks in 2007, when an Alexander S Heard took it upon himself to investigate just how much truth there was in Sedaris’s stories, and how much invention.

But the only ones to speak to him were Tiffany, his unflappable and endlessly forgiving sister, and Lou, his father, who admitted that he’d resented being cast as a loud-mouth, homophobic reactionary, but only sometimes, and not so much.

You had to forgive the boy because he was just so funny.

After the Heard article came out in the New Republic, though, Sedaris’s publishers got a little nervous. Too much time might have passed for anyone to sue them about Sedaris’s almost entirely invented tale about a midget guitar teacher. But there were schools, mental hospitals and nudist colonies with reputations to think about. Some of his employers began leaning hard on their fact-checkers. Others began labelling his work as fiction.

How Sedaris feels about the shifting of goalposts is one of many topics skipped over in this, the second volume of his diaries. It covers 18 years, amounting to just under 600 pages, with a great deal of material he later improved on for greater comic or dramatic effect, and with good reason. Has he decided to release these lesser versions to get back at the fact-checkers, I wonder? Or does he genuinely wish for Brand Sedaris to be properly referenced and understood?

He goes out of his way not to mis-sell the product. He is not in the business of introspection, we are told. His interest, as always, is in recording the quirky offcuts of everyday life. But by 2003 there is little in his everyday life that will bring the shock of recognition to any reader who isn’t a rock star. He changes cities and countries with every new entry.

His deepest conversations are with the drivers who pick him up at 1,001 airports and the fellow passengers with whom he strikes up conversations in first class, even though their aftershave smells like sanitary urine cake.

The fans who flock to his shows and spend up to four hours in the signing The Oldie November 2021 61

line afterwards become his main sources of new material. We hear about the funniest English-language menu you’ve ever seen in China. T-shirt slogans you can’t believe are still legal. Why and how often women take off their bras the moment they get home from work.

In the lulls between tours, he goes shopping and pees 14 times a day. Hugh, his partner, makes him côte de boeuf and apple pie with fruit from their own trees.

Every few years, he buys a new house.

Paris gives way to La Bagotière, London to Rackham. Then it’s back to New York City and a beach house in North Carolina, which would be perfect if the neighbours would only stop voting for Trump.

As the tours go global, his nerves start fraying. There are times when he doesn’t even want to talk to his drivers. As he waits for his luggage in Albuquerque, he imagines a child’s coffin sliding onto the carousel. In Santiago de Chile, his credit card fails him totally, and the airline people treat him like the indigent he once was. The mishap leaves him badly shaken: ‘At what point did my airline status come to determine my identity?’

The pandemic gives him time to think it through. By Christmas 2020, he’s come to understand that, as much as he likes the money he’s been raking in and the prestige it’s brought him, what he’s craved most, and now misses most dreadfully, is the attention of adoring strangers. It’s hard to see, though, how he’s going to win them back, though, with this dreary mishmash of anecdote, casual narcissism and complaint.

Vegetable farm ISABEL BANNERMAN Orwell’s Roses

By Rebecca Solnit

INCAMERASTOCK/ALAMY

Granta £19.99 Rebecca Solnit is a prize-winning author and Guardian journalist, a friend of Robert Macfarlane and part of what I term the environocracy.

She is keen on persuasion by avoiding moralising, by means of humour with self-awareness. What is her utopia? A place and time ‘when some kind of common humanity and common non-violence becomes the norm’. I was new to her work, but swiftly seduced by her prose, and the way her intellect effortlessly encompasses the round earth’s imagined corners.

She scoops up awkward Orwell, gardens plants and landscape, social and political history in dreary London and the home counties in the 1930s and 1940s – and also international socialism, Stalinism, planet

‘Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets’ by Édouard Manet, 1872. From The World According to Colour: A Cultural History by James Fox, Allen Lane, £25

damage, landscape and romanticism. I can think of so many people to whom I would like to give this book.

Solnit opens with a pilgrimage to Orwell’s crumbly rented cottage in Wallington, Hertfordshire, following his mention in an essay of the inexpensive roses and fruit trees he planted there.

‘The sum total is five fruit trees, seven roses and two gooseberry bushes, all for twelve and sixpence… I am not suggesting that one can discharge all one’s obligations towards society by means of a private re-afforestation scheme. Still it might not be a bad idea, every time you commit an antisocial act, to … push an acorn into the ground.’

She finds the apple trees have been cut down but the roses – a few at least – are still there. She describes ‘unruly bushes’ of Rosa ‘Albertine’, ‘exuberantly alive’ and in bloom in November. She is building a picture of an Orwell engaged

with the earth and husbandry – a different Orwell from the bleak, Euston Road School mythology. ‘The man famous for his prescient scrutiny of totalitarianism and propaganda … had planted roses.’ I still wasn’t sure where this was going.

Solnit proceeds to catalogue, but with the lightest of touches, the incidence, often overlooked, of Orwell’s engagement with the natural world, and its wonder.

She suggests that gardening offers a ‘stepping out of the whirlpool of words’ and that ‘the pleasures of immediate experience’ were very much part of what Orwell believed in. The poet Ruth Pitter recalls taking him a bunch of grapes from her mother’s greenhouse and a red rose in London during the blitz: ‘a smile of admiration and delight on his face … cupping the rose in his wasted hands, breathing in the scent with a kind of reverent joy.’

The Oldie November 2021 63

That doyen of the sofa Anthony Powell complained, ‘If you went on a country walk with Orwell … he would draw attention, almost with anxiety, to this shrub budding early for the time of year; that plant growing rarely in the South of England.’

And Orwell always had that most levelling of things, an allotment.

Solnit’s chapter on the Colombian rose and flower trade is shattering. A large chunk of the book deals with Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four – but this is the real thing. The whole cut-flower industry in the equatorial regions of South America and Africa – forced year-round growth and zero-hours contracts – is systematised and secret.

Solnit’s investigations are conducted by stealth. She calls the greenhouses that poison the land and steal the water surrounding Bogota ‘invisible factories of visual pleasure’.

These flowers are 60 per cent water – the industry is, among other crimes, exporting water out of Colombia. Solnit suggests that an immense aeroplane, whose sole freight is bud roses, burning its carbon to deliver its burden to westerners ‘may be as perfect an emblem of alienation as you can find’.

She quotes Orwell in The Road to Wigan Pier: ‘It is only very rarely, when I make a definite mental effort, that I connect this coal [keeping him warm in London] to the far-off labour of the mines.’ The Colombians tell her in their heart-breaking elegiac language, ‘Today a flower is produced not with sweetness but with tears.’

The book’s central riff – the importance of making and appreciating small beauty – is very heartening. In 1940, Orwell wrote, ‘Outside my work, the thing I care most about is gardening , especially vegetable gardening.’ In his final battle with TB, Orwell moved to the Hebridean island of Jura, to finish Nineteen Eighty-Four and to garden in a gesture of defiance.

In January 1949, he wrote an essay about Mahatma Gandhi. It shows that, for all his tortured awkwardness, Orwell

‘Shh... ut’

remains a great human being, truly rooted in the soil.

‘No doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth are things that a saint must avoid, but sainthood is a thing that human beings must avoid.’ He goes on to say that ‘our job is to make life worth living on this earth, which is the only earth we have’.

OLDIE NOVEL OF THE MONTH

Le Carré’s farewell NIKHIL KRISHNAN Silverview

By John le Carré Viking £20 Julian Lawndsley, notionally the protagonist of John le Carré’s last novel, arrives in a Suffolk seaside town to put aside his past in the City and start a highbrow bookshop.

He is befriended, half against his will,

by Edward, a charming Polish émigré (immigrant is the wrong word for him) who is nursing a dying wife, a retired spy.

Elsewhere, a senior spy, Stewart Proctor, is investigating a data breach. Everyone is keeping things from everyone else.

As always in le Carré, the characters are cynics with a streak of innocence.

They face moral dilemmas, in the strict sense of a choice between options that both involve doing something wrong. It is possible for an act of integrity to be an unforgivable betrayal, and for an act of kindness to be suicidal.

Readers may well suspect a publisher’s swizz in a ‘final’ novel, rescued from a drawer by executors and agents after the author’s death, and who can be more suspicious than a le Carré reader?

Perhaps the gentlest way to put it is to say that Silverview ought not to be anyone’s first encounter with le Carré.

The two plotlines – Julian’s friendship with Edward, and Stewart Proctor’s investigation – converge rather predictably. The central mystery is a little too simple to sustain the attention, and several of the plot’s many twists will provoke no surprise. The writing lacks the intensity and tautness of le Carré best prose. Aspects of the main characters’ motivations – the details of which would be spoilers – are baldly stated without the detail that might make them psychologically credible.

The best parts – the flashbacks to the moments a spy or double agent is recruited – feel familiar from other books by le Carré. He did it compellingly with the East German agent Dieter Frey, a central figure in his first book, the excellent and

underrated Call for the Dead (1961).

Even in the last book to be published in his lifetime, Agent Running in the Field (2019), the charming, badmintonplaying recruiter is a more fully realised character than anyone in Silverview.

Someone coming to Silverview a le Carré virgin could reasonably wonder what the fuss has been about. But a posthumously published swansong by a major British writer, pre-eminent in a sub-genre he could plausibly be said to have invented, asks to be treated with more respect.

And there is much here to respect. The portraits of the spy as an old man or a dying woman, spending their days reading in the newspaper about the prices of houses they will never live in, have a tragicomic poignancy. The landscape of rural Suffolk is beautifully and succinctly evoked: ‘The one café was a clapboard shack squeezed behind a row of Edwardian beach huts under a blackened sky packed with screaming seabirds.’

Since the early 1990s, it has been asked what le Carré would write without the Cold War to sustain his imagination.

Books such as The Night Manager (1993), about arms dealers, and The Constant Gardener (2001), about pharmaceutical money, were a decisive riposte to such critics.

In any case, the question is wrongheaded. The Cold War was le Carré’s setting, not his subject. His subject was the moral character of peacetime espionage. His great gift was to create a world that could satisfy seekers after thrills even while he insisted, persuasively, that the spy’s biggest secret is that much of his job is a bore.

From those unpromising materials, he assembled a corpus that raises serious questions still worth asking. Does the spy’s honour stand and fall with the morality or ideology of the government he spies for? Can one be on the side of the angels and yet do the devil’s work? Like a serious version of the Nazi in the David Mitchell and Robert Webb comic sketch wondering, ‘Are we the baddies?’, his characters – George Smiley only the most celebrated – are always asking the question: are they, as they hope, tragic heroes, or, as they fear, tragic villains?

Either way, of course, they are tragic figures, who will take their uncertainties to their graves. In Silverview, the central plotline involves a cybersecurity breach, and in its predecessor a central character ranted at some length about Britain’s exit from the EU. But the impression of up-to-the-minuteness is a distraction.

The questions that concerned le Carré have always been the oldest ones.

The Oldie November 2021 65

Media Matters

Andrew Neil’s loss is Piers Morgan’s gain The decline of GB News can only boost Rupert Murdoch’s talkTV stephen glover

Although Rupert Murdoch was 90 last March, he did not publicly celebrate his birthday until September.

Some 200 friends and acquaintances from the media, business and politics were invited to a bash at the media mogul’s Georgian pile near Henley, where he had been sequestered during the pandemic.

His daughter Elisabeth introduced an affectionate video tribute in which the theme tune from Succession, the television series based on Murdoch family intrigue and supposed backstabbing, was played. Journalists present included former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre, columnist Sarah Vine and Spectator editor Fraser Nelson.

One person not there was Andrew Neil, once a protégé, senior employee and favourite of Rupert Murdoch’s.

The two men have long been estranged.

If Mr Neil had wandered by and pressed his face against the steamy window to gaze at the throng, he would have had some complicated feelings that might not have been untouched by jealousy.

Days before the party, it was announced that Piers Morgan is joining Murdoch’s new right-of-centre currentaffairs channel talkTV, due to be launched early next year. The telegenic and irrepressible Morgan, who reportedly is to be paid zillions, will also write a column for the Murdoch-owned Sun and New York Post, and has a book deal with HarperCollins, also owned by the tycoon. He is the new favourite at Murdoch’s court.

In painful contrast, around the same time, Neil resigned as chairman and anchor of the right-wing GB News, in whose founding he played a leading part.

At any rate, his name and high reputation as a forensic political interviewer helped the station raise £60 million. But he left a 66 The Oldie November 2021

couple of weeks after the news channel’s botched launch last June, ostensibly to take a holiday but in fact to lick his wounds, and never to return.

Andrew Neil gave the Daily Mail a long and torrid account of the almost unbelievable technical incompetence behind the GB News launch. He told the interviewer (a former colleague, Rebecca Hardy) that he had come ‘close to a breakdown’. Those who know Neil, who usually comes across as a self-possessed and even quite hard-bitten sort of chap, may have been surprised to read that during the interview tears fell.

His career as a would-be TV titan is over – though he has other fish to fry, being among other things Chairman of the Spectator.

As for GB News, now that Neil has departed, it languishes in near obscurity, though it won a little notoriety by hiring Nigel Farage as its main interviewer. It surely can’t survive without raising more cash and, with talkTV as a professionallyrun competitor, it may not survive at all.

Will Rupert Murdoch succeed where Andrew Neil couldn’t? It is tempting to think he might.

For one thing, he has very deep pockets. Piers Morgan will attract viewers, and there will doubtless be other high-profile recruits. The new channel has already hired Erron Gordon, who helped launch ITV’s Good Morning Britain, where Morgan flourished until he stomped out of its studio last March, voicing his disdain for the Duchess of Sussex, aka Meghan Markle.

At the age of 90, Murdoch plainly relishes one last throw of the dice

And yet success for Murdoch can’t be certain. He used to suspect that the costs of a rolling-news channel comparable to Sky News would be too high to deliver a financial return. Sky News, founded by Murdoch but no longer owned by him, loses tens of millions of pounds. One also wonders how large an appetite there is in Britain for a right-ofcentre news channel, though talkTV is intended to be less raucous and strident than the Murdoch-owned Fox News in the US. Somehow the tycoon has convinced himself, or been convinced, that a new news channel can succeed after all.

At the age of 90, he plainly relishes one last throw of the dice. Has he the energy and hands-on commitment he once had? I suspect it is going to be uphill work, but if recent media history teaches us anything, it is never to write off Rupert Murdoch.

Radio-only licences were abolished in 1971. We can all of us listen to the radio without having to pay a penny to the BBC. Could Auntie therefore justify her treatment of me and doubtless countless others? Like many people, I often listen to BBC radio on my smartphone.

Recently, after months of happily doing this, I was asked to sign in.

What a palaver. I tried to sign in by guessing a password I might have used in the past but was told this wouldn’t do.

After a long rigmarole, I finally succeeded in acquiring a new password, and was able to listen to Radio 4 again.

Why is it necessary to sign in to radio stations that are supposed to be free?

Auntie presumably wants to harvest my data, but I am not at all sure she has the right to do so. Might the new Culture Secretary, Nadine Dorries – who recently wondered whether the BBC will exist in ten years’ time – intervene?

History

Remember the 5th of November

A big day for Guy Fawkes – and William of Orange, landing at Torbay david horspool For hundreds of years, when Britons remembered 5th November, they usually meant at least two significant dates.

The first was 5th November 1605, the day we still mark with bonfires and fireworks when we’re allowed to (you can have too much liberty, you know). That was the date of Guy Fawkes and co’s failed plot, a deliverance from terrorist evil that provided the pretext for an outpouring of anti-Catholic bigotry tamed only within living memory.

The second date was 5th November 1688, the date of the landing at Torbay of Prince William of Orange, the Dutch Protestant nephew (and son-in-law) of the Catholic James II, with the biggest invasion fleet in British history. Facing little opposition and much approval – he had, after all, received an invitation to invade from seven eminent men, including five earls, a baron and a bishop – William marched to London.

Meanwhile James chucked the Great Seal in the Thames and escaped in disguise.

The bloodless coup of William and his wife Mary (James II’s daughter by an earlier marriage) came to be known as the Glorious Revolution. For a long time, it was celebrated – or co-opted – by ruling classes and the ruled alike as a standard to rally to, or the first step on a long road to freedom.

More recently, it has faded from memory. Only in Northern Ireland, where King Billy’s Protestant credentials – and rather more bloody impact – still inspire one side of the sectarian divide, is it remembered at all.

William himself did his best to make remembering easy for us. He supposedly William of Orange by Godfrey Kneller, 1680s

timed his arrival to coincide with the date. According to eyewitnesses, the ‘bells were ringing’ to mark ‘gunpowder treason day’ when he made landfall in Devon.

In fact, William had to rely on an unusual change in wind direction (the ‘Protestant wind’). He had first mooted his own birthday, 4th November, for his arrival. And he had to calculate the different dates according to the different calendars, Gregorian and Julian, then in use by the Dutch and the English. So perhaps his arrival time owed a bit to coincidence. Because he was a Calvinist, though, that is not how he saw it. As he landed, William asked his Scottish chaplain, Gilbert Burnet, if ‘I would not now believe predestination’.

One reason we forget the Glorious Revolution is that its supporters and opponents have managed to convince us over the next three centuries that it wasn’t that important. To radicals of the 17th and 18th centuries, and their historian heirs, 1688 was a missed opportunity.

Rather than the establishment of liberty, it was a moment when, as the Marxist historian Christopher Hill put it, ‘with the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, the position of the ruling class was assured’. That invitation had, after all, come from the Lords, not the Commons, let alone the general populace.

Meanwhile, conservatives thought the Glorious Revolution was merely a touch on the tiller, directing Britain towards a balanced constitution, freedom of speech and tolerance – a direction towards which our history’s course has perennially corrected.

Less a revolution, then, than the resumption of business as usual, after an ill-advised experiment with a Catholic monarchy with

absolutist tendencies. Neither side thought about what was in it for William of Orange.

The answer is obvious. Surely the offer of a crown and a place as the head of one of Europe’s great powers was one that any mere prince, whose control over his own state was a practical arrangement subject to constant checks by his republican subjects, couldn’t refuse.

Well, yes, but probably not because Britain was such a hot ticket in the lottery of geopolitics. To William, it was the key to keeping the real power in Europe, his Catholic arch enemy, Louis XIV of France, in check. Under James II, Britain seemed inevitably to be destined to become an ally of Louis. The best way to stop that happening was to be at the head of Britain himself. That is why William said yes to the ‘Immortal Seven’s’ invitation.

With characteristic insularity, if we remember 1688 at all, it is for the Declaration – then the Bill – of Rights, issued by William. By putting monarchy below Parliament in the pecking order, the Bill of Rights was certainly a blow against despotism. But the electorate who chose those parliaments remained vanishingly small – by 1760, only a quarter of a million voters out of a population of around six million.

With the introduction of the Septennial Act in 1715, reversing a Triennial Act passed under William, parliamentary elections were held only every seven years. Even with today’s Government, the Bill of Rights is seen as the historical origin of untrammelled parliamentary government, when a party with a big majority acts rather too much like an absolute monarch for many tastes.

These constitutional arguments hide a starker historical truth – 5th November 1688 was the day when England greeted a foreign prince at the head of an invading army with open arms. For all the political mistakes of the next 300-odd years, it was a good thing, too.

The Oldie November 2021 67

Johnny Grimond: Words and Stuff

Don’t seek sense in nonsense There was an old man on a Bycicle, Whose nose was adorned with an Icicle;

But they said – ‘If you stop,

It will certainly drop, & abolish both you & your Bycicle.’

TOM PLANT

When a researcher came across this lost verse by Edward Lear the other day, she ‘laughed out loud – it was humorous and nonsensical’. I shared her delight.

I rank Lear among the greats, for his watercolours and even more for his nonsense. I was less enthusiastic, though, about her next comment: ‘I think this is a really major find for 19th-century literary studies.’

For me, the pleasure to be had from a limerick by Lear is more likely to be diminished than amplified by literary study. It’s not that there is nothing to be said about this merry, melancholic, complicated man. Jenny Uglow’s Mr Lear, published in 2017, is one of the best books I’ve read in recent years, filled with interesting description and analysis. But the whole point of Lear’s nonsense is that it has no point: it’s simply fun. It makes one laugh, particularly when it’s illustrated with his drawings.

Some, however, feel they must find a purpose, or a hidden meaning. They think the absence of meaning in Lear’s nonsense is satirical: he is drawing attention to the pretentiousness of people whose writing is purportedly sense, not nonsense. And yes, you could certainly

COVID language I can’t watch the COVID press briefings any more, particularly with the possible threat of a new lockdown. The scientists are fine – they use precise facts, quote peerreviewed data and answer the questions succinctly.

They even use sensible metaphors.

When the PM (or any one of 68 The Oldie November 2021

argue that, in this letter to his friend Evelyn Baring, Lear was mocking English spelling and punctuation: ‘Deerbaringiphowndacuppelloffoto grafsthismawningwitchisendjoo thereiswunofeechsortsoyookankeep bothifyouliketodooso… Yossin seerly DwedL.’ But Jean-Jacques Lecercle, a French philosopher of language, believes Lear mocks more than spelling. He cites another letter to Baring: ‘Thrippsy pillivinx, Inky tinky pobblebockle abblesquabs? – Flosky! beebul trimble flosky! – Okul scratchabibblebongibo, viddle squibble toga-tog… Flinkywisty pomm, Slushypipp.’

Here Lecercle thinks Lear is lampooning all those who write official letters full of clichés and empty emotions.

Well, perhaps. Perhaps he was also lampooning botanists when he named his flowers Nasticreechia Krorluppia or ridiculing cooks with his recipes for Amblongus Pie. Or perhaps his parodies were written just for the pleasure of turning everything skimble-skamble.

Lewis Carroll, whose nonsense works came after Lear’s, has also been subjected to critics’ scrutiny. Carroll’s nonsense, with puzzles and hidden riddles, was more intellectual than Lear’s, and his peculiar (to us) interest in young girls has also made him an object of psychoanalytical study. They were different in other ways. Whereas Carroll extolled the ‘innocent unconsciousness’ of

his cronies) opens his or her mouth, the meaningless jumble of stuttered phrases is toe-curlingly awful. Over the last 18 months, the politicians have become figures of ridicule, while the scientists have rightly gathered respect.

It’s as if the politicos’ eyes instantly glaze over when they are told the information from professional scientists (whose work during the pandemic has been nothing short of miraculous), despite the ‘follow the science’ mantra they espouse. When did ignorance and not listening become the new excellence?

In no particular order, I list my top 10 most-loathed clichés and phrases from the long

children, likening it to ‘something sacred’, Lear, in Uglow’s words, liked their animal side – not the ‘sacred’.

Yet the two poets had much in common besides nonsense. Both were bachelors, liked children and were welcomed by their families. Both suffered from an unusual form of epilepsy. They were also alike in refusing to attribute any significance to their nonsense. When asked whether his longest poem, The Hunting of the Snark, bore any meaning, Carroll would just say, ‘I don’t know.’

Lear was equally unforthcoming.

Before attributing motives to Lear’s work, the critics might look at his character. Lear was not a conformist. He was amiably irreverent, even subversive, about those in authority: the unidentified ‘they’, who so often appear in his limericks. ‘They’ are usually killjoys.

Lear loved words. He liked reduplicative phrases like ‘YonghyBonghy’, ‘Pipple-Popple’ and ‘twikky mikky bikky’. He liked rhythm and onomatopoeia. He liked puns: ‘Are you a tome or R U Knot?’ He liked making people laugh. He did not want to change the world; he wanted to invent a mad, fantastical land for children, and some grown-ups, to inhabit. I like to think in doing so he might have made fun of absurd academics who took his work, and they themselves, unduly seriously.

But, as Baring said, ‘He was too warm-hearted to be satirical.’

months of lockdown. I have left out words such as ‘amazing’ and ‘unprecedented’ because they are already overused.

1. Stay home. We’re not Americans. We stay AT home.

2. Loved ones. Do we ever refer to ‘loathed ones’?

3. At pace. A pace can be slow.

SMALL DELIGHTS When, at the end of the whole wash-dry-air process, all the socks match up P LINDA HOPGOOD CHANDLER’S FORD, HANTS Email life’s small delights to editorial@theoldie.co.uk

What’s wrong with ‘quickly’?

4. It is what it is. Really? NOW I understand!

5. World-beating. No, it’s not.

And it never will be.

6. The ‘R rate’. It isn’t a rate, because speed isn’t involved.

It’s just a number.

7. The virus knows no borders.

A thoughtful revelation.

8. ‘It’s a great question, Laura.

And I don’t have an answer.’

9. Flatten the sombrero. Spoken like a true maths expert.

10. Now more than ever…

Ever? How far back do we go?

I hope that all these words are thrown in the language dustbin as soon as we reach the ‘new normal’.

Damn it ... there I go again.

DAVID MACGOWAN

Arts FILM HARRY MOUNT NO TIME TO DIE (12A) Bond is back – and he’s in a threebutton suit!

In the opening set piece – a car chase through the ancient streets of Matera – Daniel Craig wears a beige cotton jacket with that old-fashioned, stylish number of buttons.

It’s a signal that this is uberconventional Bond. The Broccoli family didn’t get where they are today – making a fortune out of the Bond films ever since the first one, Dr No, in 1962 – by playing around with a winning formula.

So all the old ingredients are here.

That car chase in Matera is agreeably heart-stopping – so heart-stopping that I moved back four rows from the front row, where I normally sit for full, smack-youin-the-face action.

There are the divine Bond Girls: Léa Seydoux, with a winsome, subtle performance as the love of Bond’s life, Madeleine Swann; Lashana Rasheda

Lynch as the new, understated 007, who’s taken over Bond’s job now he’s theoretically gone into retirement.

There are two terrific baddies.

Christoph Waltz is wonderfully creepy as Blofeld. Rami Malek, as Lyutsifer Safin, is reminiscent of his last big part as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, though this time more like an evil Freddie Mercury with a terrible skin problem and a strange desire to attack the human race with a deadly virus.

No Time to Die was filmed before the pandemic – which endlessly delayed the movie’s launch. But it is spookily prescient in its plot: the deadly virus, Heracles, spreads from person to person and is impossible to cure altogether.

The great joy of James Bond is that – like Bible stories and productions about the Royal Family such as The Crown – everyone knows the history and the characters already. There’s no need to waste time explaining who M (a sympathetically depressed, worried Ralph Fiennes) and Q (a neurotic, quirky, camp Ben Whishaw) are.

That means you can play around with

Vintage Bond: Daniel Craig in a three-button suit in Matera, Italy 70 The Oldie November 2021

the stereotypes – as Mike Myers did so funnily in the glorious Austin Powers films.

Or, as director Cary Fukunaga has done here, you can stick to the stereotypes and drench them in nostalgia. That produces its own pleasure, with Bond driving his old Aston Martin and returning to his beloved Jamaica. The most poignant moments are when Louis Armstrong’s We Have All the Time in the World – the best thing in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) – is played at the beginning and end of this Bond film.

But sticking to the stereotypes produces its own longueurs, too – and the film is altogether too long, at two hours and 43 minutes.

The final scenes are particularly dreary, played out in, yes, a concrete hangar beneath the island lair run by Safin. This cliché is brilliantly lampooned as Dr Evil’s Secret Volcano Lair in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999). But here it’s played completely straight – with Bond tackling his adversaries in a series of concrete rooms that look like 1970s school gyms.

Still, Craig looks perfect – not just in the three-button suit, but also in black tie and a cable-knit Royal Navy jersey, topped by that angular face, carved out of granite. If anything, he is a little too expressionless and measured – on the verge of becoming flat. But the script, co-written by the normally very funny Phoebe Waller-Bridge, is so unflashy – with only one or two touches of Roger Moore eyebrow-raising irony – that Craig’s downplayed style suits it. His under-powered approach also paradoxically heightens the extreme violence when Bond turns rough.

Craig has been a fine Bond, but here’s hoping his replacement will be allowed to grapple with the franchise clichés in his next outing.

GARY SMITH

THEATRE WILLIAM COOK BLITHE SPIRIT Harold Pinter Theatre, London As Noël Coward observed, while musing on the supernatural, ‘We have no reliable guarantee that the afterlife will be any less exasperating than this one.’

That’s the central premise of his timeless comedy of manners, in which a self-centred writer (is there any other kind?) inadvertently summons up the ghost of his first wife, much to the chagrin of his second.

Blithe Spirit is so cleverly crafted, and full of such good lines (‘Anybody can write books, but it takes an artist to make a dry Martini’) that any competent revival is bound to be enjoyable. And yet it’s been revived so many times that I must admit a bit of me did wonder, ‘What’s the point?’

More fool me. The main point of any play is to entertain, of course, and this polished production is a harmless pleasure from start to finish. Richard Eyre’s deft direction is like an intricate piece of antique clockwork, moving the actors around this cluttered stage with effortless precision. Yet the thing that makes this show unmissable is a brilliant central performance by Jennifer Saunders as the eccentric, enigmatic medium Madame Arcati.

When Blithe Spirit opened in 1941, critics likened it to Oscar Wilde’s perfect comedy The Importance of Being Earnest, and in Madame Arcati Coward created that rare and precious thing – a great comic part for a mature woman, a sort of paranormal Lady Bracknell.

Saunders has big shoes to fill. Margaret Rutherford played the role in the first run, and the first movie. It’s since been played by all sorts of stars, from Beryl Reid to Angela Lansbury.

It’s a wonderful role, but it’s also rather tricky. The suspense of Coward’s play depends on our not knowing whether Madame Arcati is a genuine psychic or a shameless charlatan. Shrewd and scatterbrained by turns, Saunders manages this balancing act superbly. She gets loads of laughs, but her affectionate portrayal isn’t just a comic turn. By the end of the play, you feel genuinely fond of her – something you can’t say for any of the other parts.

The rest of the cast are all pretty faultless. Madeleine Mantock is suitably alluring and seductive as Elvira, the first Mrs Condomine, who returns to haunt Charles Condomine, the cynical writer who stages a séance to get material for a

Psychic or charlatan? Jennifer Saunders as Madame Arcati

novel. Lisa Dillon is especially good as Ruth, his exasperated second wife. Yet since everyone in the play (apart from Arcati) is really rather beastly, it’s hard for the other players to create characters of any emotional depth.

Whenever Saunders isn’t on stage, the energy level dips.

Coward admitted as much himself.

‘You can’t sympathise with any of them,’ he reflected. ‘If there was a heart, it would be a sad story.’ Like a lot of his plays, there’s a certain coldness at its centre. This doesn’t prevent it from being entertaining – far from it – but it does leave you feeling rather empty, rather than lifting your spirits, as the greatest dramas invariably do.

The play has an interesting history.

Coward wrote it in just six days (not quite as quickly as Private Lives, which he wrote in four) while staying with his friend Joyce Carey – an accomplished character actress who appeared alongside him in a subsequent production of Blithe Spirit – in the Welsh seaside village of Portmeirion (he’d been bombed out of London in the Blitz).

Initially, Coward had worried that a ghostly comedy might be badly received by wartime audiences, for whom death was very close at hand, but he eventually dismissed these fleeting concerns, and he was correct to do so. Punters welcomed the opportunity to laugh away their troubles, and for those who’d lost loved ones, the hope of a hereafter was some comfort.

‘I knew it was witty, I knew it was well constructed, and I also knew that it

would be a success,’ wrote Coward, and he was quite right, as usual. Blithe Spirit was a smash hit, becoming the longestrunning straight play in West End history, until it was eventually overtaken

by The Mousetrap.

This production of Blithe Spirit was disrupted by a more modern catastrophe – nothing like the Second World War, naturally, but something pretty serious nonetheless. After opening in Bath in 2019, it transferred to the West End in 2020, only to be almost immediately derailed by COVID. Its ebullient return, after such a long hiatus, feels like a happy omen.

Welcome back.

RADIO VALERIE GROVE ‘Podcasts now get more review space than programmes – but not more customers,’ said Gillian Reynolds in her eulogy at the memorial for John Tydeman, the radio-drama chief who discovered Orton, Stoppard and Sue Townsend.

She’s right: it’s a youth/age definer. If you’re home all day, you listen to the radio. Out in commuterland, in and out of meetings, you might consult a website such as 51 Smart Podcasts That Will Make Your Commute Way Better – and off you go.

Back at home, breaking out from radio habits, I find even podcasts that win plaudits contain excessive witterings, unscripted and under-edited, with ‘I’m like’s and ‘kind of’s (‘He went to kind of China,’ I’ve heard) and platitudes: The Oldie November 2021 71

‘Mum’s death was a genuine shock. When she popped off, it was like, “F**k, she’s gone, and I’m next.”’ That was the popular veteran podcaster Adam Buxton.

To hear his guest Georgia Pritchett, the comic scriptwriter and Succession producer, interviewed about her excellent memoir, My Mess Is a Bit of a Life, one had to endure Buxton’s tiresome self-regardings first.

In the much-praised podcast The Rest Is History, on Ian Fleming, Dominic Sandbrook quoted Paul Johnson’s 1958 New Statesman review of Dr No. ‘The nastiest book I have ever read,’ growled Johnson. ‘It has three basic ingredients, all unhealthy, all thoroughly English: the sadism of a schoolboy bully, the mechanical sex longings of a frustrated adolescent and the crude snob cravings of a suburban adult… Badly written to the point of incoherence.’

There was a finely crafted Archive on 4 on the Nuremberg trials. William Shawcross, born in that historic year, 1946, grew up hearing records of his father, Hartley Shawcross, Attlee’s Attorney-General, giving his 19-hour closing speech at the trials, sending 21 leading Nazis to the gallows.

Lord Shawcross once pointed out to me that vengeful, retributive justice had not actually deterred later genocidal tyrants Idi Amin, Pol Pot or the Khmer Rouge. But hearing Niklas Frank speak to Shawcross Jr with vituperation about his odious father Hans, Hitler’s lawyer, was mildly satisfying. The memories of the offspring of other defendants such as saintly Hermann Graebe, who tried, Schindler-like, to save hundreds of fellow Ukrainians from slaughter, but could not, were painfully moving.

Did Richard Osman imagine he could get away with his Birthday Cake Game, the most pointless panel game ever?

‘Guess the ages of famous people who have birthdays this week. Couldn’t be simpler,’ said Osman. Or more simpleminded, vacuous and witless. This is radio for daytime telly-watchers. To every wrong answer Osman mused, ‘Interesting.’ Not so, Richard. Who cares that Meatloaf is 74?

Here in oldieland, clarity of diction and audibility are highly prized. Miriam Margolyes, topping the bestsellers at 80, would be Radio 4 listeners’ Oldie of the Year, for the sitcom Charlotte and Lillian alone. Miriam plays Lillian, 85, and Helen Monks is her 20-something volunteer ‘befriender’. The gulf between them is beyond age: a matter of diction, emotional literacy and vocabulary.

‘You’ll never get lost in a book,’ accuses Lillian.

72 The Oldie November 2021

‘Books are over!’ says Charlotte. ‘And I do read! I read tweets, I read Insta, I read loads of news.’

‘Hah! On your phone.’

The generation gap is nailed by writers Kat Sommers and Holly Walsh. And the crystal clarity of Margolyes is captured on a YouTube video, Tongue Twister Challenge, where she recites in Maggie Smith tones that famous poem about the pitfalls of English pronunciation: ‘corpse, corps, horse and worse’/ heart, beard and heard’ etc.

Goodbye to Perry Pontac, who wrote several of the funniest radio plays ever, including Hamlet Part II, where everyone, except the Ghost, is dead – and now Pontac, too.

And I hope an only temporary farewell to Antonia Quirke and Francine Stock, of Radio 4’s The Film Programme. ‘Our revels now are ended,’ said Antonia.

‘Here’s looking at you, Francine.’ Sob.

TELEVISION FRANCES WILSON Josh Widdicombe is the first subject of the new season of Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC1) I had no idea who he was either (apparently he’s a comedian). And Josh, in turn, had no idea that his great-grandmother, whose maiden name was Baring-Gould, was a scion of Barings Bank, or that his ten-timesgreat-grandfather was the 1st Earl of Holland (the London park, not the country).

Blue blood: Josh Widdicombe, a descendant of Lord Holland

‘You are,’ explains the glamorous genealogist, ‘uber posh.’

Posh Josh, who has the gift of bathos, laughs like the emoji icon with the closed eyes and the tears spurting from both sides of his face.

‘I should have googled synonyms for bizarre, because I’m running out of words for this’,’ he says on discovering that Grandpa Holland was ‘groom of the stool’ to Charles I; in other words, that he took His Maj to the lav. Sounds like the definition of a crap job, but it was apparently the one that everyone in the court wanted because wiping the king’s arse ensured you also had the king’s ear.

Captured by Cromwell’s men after the Battle of Surbiton (‘Sounds like an argument over a hedge’), Lord Holland was then beheaded (emoji sad face). But the story doesn’t end there because Holland’s own great-grandmother, Catherine Knollys, apparently looked after Queen Elizabeth I’s pet parrot, as a result of which she is now buried in Westminster Abbey.

Her daughter, however, was less loyal: Lettice Knollys secretly married the Queen’s favourite, the Earl of Dudley, for which she received a box on the ear and was banned from court.

‘Proper EastEnders, isn’t it?’ says Josh. Tudor history is wasted on him.

American history is tackled in Impeachment: American Crime Story (BBC2), a post-#MeToo-era dramatisation of the Lewinsky affair, based on Jeffrey Toobin’s book A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President.

‘I want that treacherous bitch to see what she’s done to me,’ says Monica, betrayed by an arachnoid Linda Tripp in blue-tinted John Lennon glasses. The glasses do most of the work in Tripp’s character study, just as Monica’s puffy arms are asked to express both her current innocence and her incipient rage.

Tripp is outraged that Hillary Clinton uses the communal lavatories rather than the ones reserved for the FLOTUS: clearly not everyone wants to be groom of the stool.

The women get all the best lines, which shows how the glamour of fiction improves on the official version of events, where they got no lines at all – at least none that I heard.

Paula Jones, a giant bow poised on the top of her voluminous hair, tells her lawyer that Governor Clinton first tried snogging ‘on her’ and then took ‘it out, his business, right out in the air, and then he asked me to kiss it …

I said no, I’m not that kinda girl. I’m from Lonoke – my daddy was a preacher. I’m not going around to

Anthony Smith

‘And comb your face before you go out!’

quality management conferences giving out oral sex.’

Her out-of-work husband, meanwhile, looks murderous on the other end of the sofa. Josh would compare the series to the EastEnders Christmas omnibus but it’s actually the West Wing equivalent of The Crown.

In the new season of Shetland (ITV), DI Jimmy Perez buries his mother on Fair Isle, which means he can look lost and stricken for another six episodes.

The death rate on Shetland continues to rise when a popular lawyer is shot dead on his doorstep with a ghost bullet from a Second World War Walter P38.

‘Remember,’ Perez instructs Sandy and Tosh, ‘to know how a man died, you must first learn how he lived.’ The team now know more about murder than the Miami Vice bunch. They also know everyone who lives on the island and ‘no one on Shetland seems to fit the bill’, as Sandy puts it, referring to the owner of the murder gun.

As a cute sidekick, Sandy is up there with Lewis in the first season of Morse. The best character, however, is the landscape, which is filmed principally from above – so we float like seagulls over the empty roads and harbours. Meanwhile, the soundtrack booms away in the foreground because the islanders are spare with their words.

MUSIC RICHARD OSBORNE BRITTEN’S GERMAN MUSE The Scherchens were remarkable.

First, there was Hermann, the selftaught son of a Berlin innkeeper who would become one of the century’s most influential and radically minded conductors. Then there was his longsuffering second wife, Auguste (‘Gustel’), whom Scherchen helped flee Germany in 1933 when a Nazi labour camp looked the

likely destination for Gustel and her Leftist relations.

Finally, there was their son Karl, affectionately known as ‘Wulff’, who in nine remarkable months in England in 1938-39 would form a relationship with the young Benjamin Britten that would change both their lives for ever.

Wulff has long needed a biography of his own, and that we now have in the meticulously researched and beautifully produced private press Wulff: Britten’s Young Apollo (Shelf Lives, £24). It’s by Tony Scotland, late of Radio 3 and author of, among other things, an admired biography of Lennox Berkeley, Britten’s friend and older contemporary.

One such admirer was the Australian domiciled John Woolford, Wulff Scherchen as he formerly was, a spry, sharp-witted, 91-year-old great-greatgrandfather, whom Scotland had met in London in 2011.

Wulff’s early life reads like a classic German Bildungsroman. Brought up in 1920s Berlin, he became a refugee in MI5-haunted 1930s Cambridge, where the life-enhancing friendship with Britten took root, before witnessing the living hell triggered by Churchill’s notorious ‘Collar the lot’ deportation of German nationals in May 1940. Hundreds lost their lives and Wulff came within a missed boatconnection of losing his.

He returned to England in 2003 to play a key role in John Bridcut’s superb TV documentary and book Britten’s Children. Not that Wulff was one of that youthful tribe that so delighted the ‘boy eternal’ in Britten. True, Ben had met the Scherchen family, and shared a mackintosh with Wulff during a downpour in Siena, while attending a contemporary music festival in Florence in 1934. But at the start of the relationship in 1938, Wulff was 18, Ben 24.

A liberal-minded German, Wulff never looked to deny the affair or sanitise the evidence, as we Anglo-Saxons inevitably did. Witness the first two volumes of Britten’s Letters and Diaries, published by Faber in 1991, where crucial exchanges are omitted and all endearments removed. Not until the archive was opened for Bridcut in 2003 was it possible to read such revealing remarks as Wulff’s envoi, written soon after the consummation of the affair late in 1938, ‘Your eternal pursuer (or pursued?)’.

Unsurprisingly, the relationship survived neither the war nor the machinations of Peter Pears, whose plan for a North American trip in April 1939 was designed in part to prise Britten away from Wulff. Successfully so.

The Oldie November 2021 73

me, the power of beauty sets me free,’ cries Aschenbach. No wonder Pears loathed the project.

When Wulff first visited Snape in 1938, he slipped to the floor and wept as Britten played a Beethoven piano sonata – overwhelmed by the music, the old Suffolk mill and the astonishing person in whose presence he now was.

In 1976 he wrote to Britten, asking if he remembered that day. Britten was too ill to reply. But you bet he did. As Auden had envisaged, it was the start of the relationship that turbocharged Britten’s entire creative life.

GOLDEN OLDIES BOB COOPER BEATLES GO UNDERGROUND Young Apollo: Wulff Scherchen

Not only would Wulff be sidelined; so was some of the music he had inspired.

The first piece to be embargoed was Young Apollo, the dazzling seven-minute ‘fanfare’ for piano and strings which Britten wrote shortly after leaving England. The title comes from the asterisked final lines of Keats’s Hyperion. ‘Apollo shriek’d; – and lo! from all his limbs celestial ***.’ No one in Britten’s circle was in any doubt as to to whom those ‘limbs celestial’ belonged. Certainly not an overjoyed W H Auden, who had long argued that Britten’s innate reserve and dislike of physical contact were a bar to his creative development.

Also supressed were three superb Gerard Manley Hopkins settings: the coded ambiguity of the second poem, ‘O God, I love thee, I love thee!’, equally plain to hear.

Soon history itself was being rewritten, as works that had very little to do with Pears were assumed to have been created for him. They include the homoerotic Verlaine settings of 1939, Les Illuminations, proposed by Auden, inspired by Wulff, and written for soprano Sophie Wyss; and the similarly erotic Michelangelo settings which Wulff later revealed were conceived at much the same time.

And so it goes on. Even today, you will generally look in vain for Wulff’s name in programme essays or CD booklets. Let’s hope that Scotland’s fine new biography will alter that.

Young Apollo returned, of course, in the ‘Games of Apollo’, the beach sports that Tadzio wins at the end of Act 1 of Death in Venice. ‘The boy shall inspire 74 The Oldie November 2021

Visiting Liverpool’s Cavern Club has to have been one of the most exciting times of my life, in my late teens and early twenties. The club, which opened in 1957, hosted its first performance by the Beatles 60 years ago, in 1961.

Most days, I would dash there at lunchtime to watch the Beatles perform, for only one shilling. They were supposed to appear at 1pm, but were always late, after clowning around, smoking and chatting.

One time, while waiting for them to start, I couldn’t help yellin’, ‘John! I’ve got be back at work in 15 minutes!’

He looked at me and retorted, ‘All right, lad. We’re goin’ on now, OK?’ One surprising song in their repertoire, I remember, was Frank Ifield’s I Remember You sung by Paul.

Several of my friends worked in NEMS record department on Whitechapel, which was owned by the family of Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ manager.

One day, while in there listening to Richie Barrett’s Some Other Guy which the Beatles featured in their act, I realised that John and Paul were in the next booth. Paul popped his head round and remarked, ‘That’s cool, man.’

They were soon to be signed up by Brian Epstein.

Near to the club was the Grapes pub which I visited on my Cavern nights. It was a typical backstreet city pub, frequented by the Beatles and the Liverpool beat scene.

Ben E King headlined one evening at the Cavern and I watched him perform, from the back of the stage. Afterwards, the NEMS crowd and I went with him to the Blue Angel club where he was also appearing. Another huge star I saw at the Cavern was a 16-year-old Stevie Wonder!

Another favourite haunt on Merseyside was the Tower Ballroom, New Brighton. One spectacular night, Little Richard appeared, with the Beatles as his support act, billed as being ‘back from their fabulous tour of the Isle of Man’!

The last time I saw the Beatles on stage was at the Majestic Ballroom, Birkenhead, the night before the release of Please Please Me. Today, the Cavern is still thriving and attracts visitors from around the world. I wonder how many of them know that the original club almost closed in 1966 and many fans barricaded themselves inside to keep it going. Thankfully it remained open until 1973; then the original club closed for good, for Merseyrail work. In 1984, the ‘new’ Cavern was opened, close to the original.

I was so glad to be part of that piece of musical history and am proud to say I still have my membership card from 1966.

Rachel Johnson is away

It was 60 years ago today: the Beatles first played the Cavern Club in 1961

A Dance to the Music of Time by Nicolas Poussin, c 1634-36. From left: Pleasure, Poverty, Riches, Labour. Time plays the lyre

EXHIBITIONS HUON MALLALIEU POUSSIN AND THE DANCE

WALLACE COLLECTION

National Gallery 9th October 2021 to 2nd January 2022 Like many other people, I spent one or two lockdowns re-reading Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time.

At the outset, he explains his appropriation of the title of one of Nicolas Poussin’s most famous paintings, ‘in which the Seasons, hand in hand and facing outward, tread in rhythm to the notes of the lyre that the winged and naked greybeard plays’.

The musical nature of Poussin’s art was also noted by Helen Hillyard, introducing a Dulwich Picture Gallery exhibition five years ago, in reference to his first series of the Seven Sacraments: ‘Every juxtaposition was carefully considered, where a rhythm of figures cascades into the drama of each scene.’

As this show demonstrates, there is a great deal of dancing in Poussin.

Poussin was born in 1594 in Normandy, the son of an aristocrat fallen

on hard times. At 18, he ran away to Paris. Despite making a modest start, he did not fit into the French art world. In 1624, a patron enabled him to travel to Rome where, with one short interlude, he remained until his death in 1665. There, with his younger contemporary Claude, he established the formulae of the ‘ideal landscape’, which infused European painting for the next two centuries.

Poussin’s methods were described by Joachim von Sandrart, who saw him at work in 1635, and wrote it up 40 years later. He ‘went sketching with friends; then first made two or three quick composition sketches. Next he modelled small, wax figures in the nude, placing

‘I really like this artist’s message’

them on a smooth board squared in a grid. He dressed them in wet paper, taffeta, &c’, marking the relationships and distances with thread.

This last technique is similar to Gainsborough’s ‘tabletop arrangements of stones, pieces of mirrors, broccoli and the like’. Until 13th February, a show of early Gainsborough landscape drawings is at York Art Gallery. It includes 25 recently attributed examples from the Royal Collection.

One of the valuable features of this National Gallery exhibition is that the 20 or so exhibits include preliminary drawings as well as finished masterpieces. There are also antiquities Poussin sketched, and a reconstruction of some wax figurines.

Now that the Wallace Collection is allowed to lend, A Dance to the Music of Time is there, as is a preparatory study from the National Gallery of Scotland. A great deal changed between them, including the removal of a sturdy palm tree separating Time from the dancers. I am intrigued that the painted Time appears to be blind, while in the drawing he is merely absorbed in his music. Is Time shown sightless anywhere else?

The Oldie November 2021 75

Pursuits GARDENING DAVID WHEELER FOCUS ON CROCUS Little pots of emerging crocuses remind me of birds’ nests filled with nestlings, beaks primed to open greedily. Little pots, moreover, weigh little, allowing us frail ones to move them about the house without help.

As Remarque put it in All Quiet on the Western Front, ‘We are little flames, poorly sheltered by frail walls against the storm of dissolution and madness, in which we flicker and sometimes almost go out.’

Well, the only going out I’m doing is into the garden. It’s there, working alone or with others, that I best combat frailty.

I don’t always win, of course. Age is against me and major spinal surgery a couple of years ago has curtailed my endeavours – if not my expectations. I’m cross if I don’t achieve the day’s goal; crosser still if I have to retire indoors for a rest before ambition is fulfilled.

Manual labour is both tiring and rewarding; but lesser toiling is equally gratifying. Hence bulbs. Not the agony of deeply planting hundreds in ungiving, shaly ground, but the joy of filling small pots.

The rustle of papery husks, the smell of damp compost, the pencilling of labels, the anticipation of future colours and scents…

These are among the relaxed and, yes, frail (dammit!) bulb-planter’s chief returns.

Plan the task ahead of time. Coincide with a favourite radio programme – a play, an opera or a feisty debate. Or share the job with a pal, gossiping fruitfully.

Because of moving house a few months ago, I failed to trawl the bulb catalogues this year, thinking there’d be enough on my plate without my worrying about mounds of brown paper packages staring at me unloved from the corner of a strange room. Instead, when I found the time to indulge myself, I relied on

what the local garden centre had to offer, thereby rediscovering the joys of such familiars as Narcissus ‘Tête-à-tête’, ‘Hawera’, ‘Ice Wings’ and good ol’ indispensable ‘Thalia’.

Nor did I buy in what might be called ‘garden quantities’, feeling satisfied with just a dozen or so of each.

Similarly, restraint ruled when it came to crocuses. I was mindful only to choose carefully to extend their flowering time.

Earlies chosen included ‘Cream Beauty’, ‘Vanguard’ and ‘Blue Pearl’ – each thoroughly reliable, exquisitely coloured and of pleasing demeanour. Each, too, destined to be tucked up under garden shrubs when their blooms have waned.

My passion for grape hyacinths remains unabated. I can still conjure up childhood memories of their lapis-blue drifts that bordered a small lawn at our family’s Cotswold home. They’re just as happy in pots and there are now many different kinds to enhance that remembered blue of the ubiquitous Muscari armeniacum.

I bought a few common New Yearflowering snowdrops, Galanthus nivalis, to prove there’s life after Christmas, and they’ll be followed in quickly by those diminutive bulbous irises that come labelled ‘reticulata’. The specklings and

Irresistible irises: ‘Harmony’ in bloom

striations of their petals never fail to intrigue and delight me. If you have these dwarfs in pots, they can easily be brought to eye and nose level to be savoured all the more. This year’s small haul brought pale blue ‘Cantab’, violet-purple ‘George’ and ‘Harmony’, with vibrant, royal-blue flowers bejewelled with a white-rimmed gold crest. Beat that.

I might miss some of the more botanically interesting bulbs I’ve nurtured hitherto. I might also miss the swathes of countless different bulbs that gradually built up over many years in our previous garden. But having moved to this property in August, I have no inkling of what lurks beneath the sod. New treasures, indeed, perhaps, or more of the glorious same.

David’s Instagram account is @hortusjournal

KITCHEN GARDEN SIMON COURTAULD VIETNAMESE CORIANDER A few years ago, in Saigon, I was introduced to a clear soup called pho which contained, in addition to strips of beef, rice noodles, bean sprouts and spices, a number of fresh green herbs.

I was able to identify mint, Thai basil and morning glory, but not the long, pointed leaves of what I learnt was Vietnamese coriander.

In other parts of south-east Asia, Vietnamese coriander is the principal ingredient of laksa, also a spicy noodle soup.

Having added to my scant knowledge of this herb, I did not expect to see it again in England. But this year it turned up at a plant stall in our local market in Devizes.

I bought a small plant of Vietnamese coriander in early spring and kept it in the greenhouse until May. Since then, it has flourished outside with practically no assistance from me, and at the end The Oldie November 2021 77

of September had grown into a bush about three feet across and two feet high.

In the kitchen garden, it stands next to clumps of sorrel and tarragon, but would look equally well among flowers.

Vietnamese coriander looks nothing like the conventional herb coriander, nor does it smell very similar. The Vietnamese version has long, lime-green leaves tapering to a point, with a dark, V-shaped smudge on one side and a mid-rib on the underside which may turn red towards the stem. Unlike ordinary coriander, it flowers only rarely and does not run to seed.

The smell is slightly musty, and fragrantly spicy – the more so if the leaves are dried in an oven. It is traditionally grown and eaten by Buddhist monks, who believe that, in spite of its fragrance, the herb will suppress sexual urges. Beansprouts are said to have the opposite effect.

Though classified as a perennial, Vietnamese coriander will not survive an English winter. Cuttings should be taken in autumn, and immersed in a jar of water for a couple of weeks until rooted. They can then be overwintered indoors in compost and planted out the following spring.

ELISABETH LUARD

COOKERY ELISABETH LUARD QUEEN OF CLUB MED The star of this year’s crop of autumn books is Claudia Roden’s Med. Simple title, relaxed recipes and gorgeous illustrations – many of them taken in the author’s own north-London kitchen – deliver a practical cookbook that’s as beautiful as it’s useful.

Roden’s first publication, Middle Eastern Food, was a ground-breaker.

Published 18 years after Elizabeth David wrote of the sun-drenched dishes of the northern shores of the Mediterranean, Claudia was the first to write about the far less familiar, southern shores.

After her Jewish family’s forced exodus from Egypt in the wake of the Suez debacle, she settled at art school in London via boarding school in Paris and set about recording memories – others’ as well as her own – through the medium of authentic recipes.

‘I felt it was important to tell their stories,’ she told food writer Bee Wilson in an interview on the work of which she is most proud, The Book of Jewish Food.

I once asked Claudia why so many cookery writers have a Jewish line of descent (including mine on my mother’s side). ‘Diaspora,’ she said. ‘We need to remember who we are.’

The new book is a distillation of family favourites gathered over five decades of 78 The Oldie November 2021

and mix with the rest of the milk and the rosewater. Pour into a wide, shallow container and freeze for three or four hours, then scrape and crush the ice with a fork. Repeat every hour or so at least three times, till you have small sequinlike flakes. Before serving, fork to lighten.

Best within a day or two but can be frozen in an airtight container for longer.

RESTAURANTS JAMES PEMBROKE PLANE FOOD travel after the children left home, asking questions and invading kitchens. With Med, Roden has come full circle with recipes that are perfectly compatible with what’s now available on island Britain.

Meanwhile – no question – she has discharged her responsibility to her own Middle Eastern heritage in full.

Chicken with grapes Grapes, in season right now, are a popular combination with chicken in both Spain and Italy. Serves 4 4 tablespoons olive oil 2 rosemary sprigs, leaves only, chopped 8 chicken thighs, bone in, skin on 8 whole garlic cloves, peeled 500g seedless red grapes Salt and black pepper Heat the oil in a large sauté pan wide enough to hold the chicken pieces in one layer. Add the rosemary and the chicken, skin-side down. Season with salt and pepper, and cook, covered, over a medium heat till the skin browns and has released some of its fat. Turn the pieces and brown the other side.

Add the garlic cloves and the grapes, cover and cook very gently for about 25 minutes, turning the pieces once, till the chicken is tender and cooked through. The grapes should be very soft: some will have burst and added their juices to the chicken fat to make a rich, delicious sauce. Check the seasoning as you need salt and pepper to balance the sweetness of the grapes.

Serve with instant polenta – just follow instructions on the packet.

Nadia’s milk and honey granita This is Claudia’s daughter’s elegant recipe (more in Nadia’s Granita Magic). For 6-8 servings, you’ll need 800ml fullcream milk, 6-7 tablespoons honey, 4 crushed cardamom pods and 2 tablespoons rosewater. Simmer 200ml of the milk with the honey and cardamom, stirring till the honey dissolves, remove from the heat and leave to infuse for 20 minutes. Strain

Maureen Lipman recently compared the horror of the arrivals hall of Heathrow’s Terminal 5 to Bruegel’s Gateway to Babel.

Yet at 8am, en route to Greece for the recent Oldie trip, the departures lounge seemed full of hope and expectation. Not a lost soul in sight – but where to eat?

T5 has given away most of its retail space to luxury brands. If only Gucci sold panini, they might get some customers.

I bypassed the bar of Caviar House & Prunier, where you can get 30g of caviar for the price of the three then compulsory COVID tests, and asked a customerservice lady where I could get something to eat. She recommended Giraffe. Well, I refuse to eat in madly named restaurants.

Why do they think we identify amazing grub with a long-necked, leaf-chewing African quadruped?

In despair, I texted Dominic Green, the tour leader. ‘Head straight for Gordon Ramsay Plane Food,’ he advised.

‘You can get a brilliant full English for £13.95 or £20 if you feel like a Bloody Mary.’ What is it with the British obsession with early-morning drinking at airports? At Stansted, mums and dads knock back pints of lager from 6am; at Terminal 5, the elegant lady next to me at Fortnum and Mason’s circular bar – there was a queue chez Ramsay – enjoyed a solitary liquid-only breakfast of two glasses of blanc de blancs. Would they drink the same at King’s Cross before catching an early train to Edinburgh? ‘Abroad’ clearly begins at the airport. Start as you mean to go on.

I happily sipped tea at Fortnum’s with my avocados and chilli on toast, for £10.95. Dominic later told me Gordon Ramsay also offers a takeaway option (‘Plane food to go’). He then confessed to having boarded with their chicken curry on a flight to Boston.

Earlier last month, I walked from Minehead to Combe Martin with my son: 36 miles of slopes, violet with heather. A halcyon time, marred only by my appalling decision to stay at the grisly Valley of the Rocks Hotel in Lynton.

Apparently, Hitchcock turned it down as

the location for the Bates Motel because it was too spooky to be credible. The history of sunny Lynton and Lynmouth is beset with gloom, not least the great flood of 1952, which killed 34 people.

George Newnes, the father of magazine publishing, who launched the Strand Magazine and Country Life, poured money into the twin towns. In 1890, he opened the vertiginous water-powered cliff railway linking them both. Yet, to commemorate his early death, the suffragettes burnt his house down, forgetting his encouragement of literacy and that his first title, Tit-Bits, was for women.

Every evening, we made our way to the Rising Sun pub on the quay down at Lynmouth. Their Exmoor Gold is excellent but it’s the sunset view of the orange-pink cliffs across the little harbour, with its Rhenish Tower, that drew us and a throng of locals back. We ate at the Old Bank, which was perfectly adequate, because we couldn’t get a table at the Oak Room, booked up weeks in advance. Renowned for its great tapas, it’s the toast of Lynton, and a hop from Newnes’s wonderfully grandiose Arts and Crafts town hall. If only he had designed Terminal 5…

The Oak Room, Lee Road, Lynton, Devon EX35 6HW; tel: 01598 753838; www.theoakroomlynton.co.uk

DRINK BILL KNOTT LEBANESE GEMS I have been to many wine-tastings over the years, but none has been quite as memorable as my trip to Château Marsyas, in the Beqaa Valley, an hour and a bit’s drive south-east of Beirut. My guide, Rania, drove us there in a bright red, open-top sports car, which was great fun, until we found ourselves embroiled in a Hezbollah rally.

I will admit to feeling a little flustered as machine-gun fire rattled the air, especially when a man approached the car and started talking to me rapidly in Arabic. Rania, who as a girl had cycled to school through bombravaged Beirut’s no-man’s-land, unperturbed, said a few words to him – and he left. I looked at her quizzically. ‘He just wanted to sell you a Hezbollah T-shirt,’ she told me. ‘I declined on your behalf.’

By contrast, the château, owned by brothers Karim and Sandro Saadé, was an oasis, and their wines were splendid: they somehow manage to make wine in Syria, too, at Château

Bargylus, just outside Latakia. I thoroughly recommend the wines from both properties.

The Beqaa Valley is an extraordinary place, scattered with ancient ruins – the Roman temple complex at Baalbek is especially fine – and home to a dozen or so wineries: at an average altitude of 1,000 metres, the valley is perfect for growing grapes, with plenty of winter rain and hot summers.

Lebanon has made wine for many thousands of years. The most profound influence on its modern wine industry is French, dating back to the 1920s. Its most famous winery, Chateau (sic) Musar, was founded in 1930 by Gaston Hochar, who had been inspired by trips to Bordeaux and – with the exception of the 1976 vintage – their eclectic reds have been made every year, even during the darkest days of the civil war. Waitrose stock the 2012 vintage – made by Gaston’s grandson, also called Gaston – for £32.99.

The oldest winery in Lebanon, however, is Château Ksara, founded by Jesuit monks in 1857. At a recent tasting, I found their whites especially alluring: the fragrant, almond-scented Blanc de Blancs 2019 (£12, vinvm.co.uk), for instance, a blend of Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay; and the tangy, lemony Merwah 2019 (£14.79, allaboutwine.co.uk), made from an indigenous grape variety that probably dates back to Phoenician times.

That Lebanese wine is resolutely Old World, not New World, is part of its considerable charm: that, and plenty of French finesse and savoir-faire: ‘Bordeaux on the Med’, as Lebanon is often described.

The day after my sojourn in the Beqaa Valley, back in Beirut I had a very jolly lunch with Michael Karam, author of Wines of Lebanon, at Tawlet, a terrific restaurant which showcased the skills of village women and their traditional dishes. I saw Michael again recently: he told me that Tawlet was destroyed in the chemicals explosion that rocked the city in August last year. Undeterred, owner Kamal Mouzawak somehow prepared thousands of meals for local hospitals, showing the same stoicism and tenacity that has allowed the winemakers of the Beqaa Valley to defy nearimpossible odds.

Sadly, for the foreseeable future, I suspect my affection for Lebanese wines will have to be expressed from afar: still, never mind.

Been there, done that, haven’t got the T-shirt.

Wine This month’s Oldie wine offer, in conjunction with DBM Wines, is a 12-bottle case comprising four bottles each of three wines: a mineral-spiked Assyrtiko from the mountains of Crete; a delightful Lebanese red from one of the Beqaa Valley’s best producers; and a rich, spicy Fronsac from the banks of the Dordogne. Or you can buy cases of each individual wine.

Assyrtiko ‘Vóila’, Crete 2020, offer price £11.50, case price £138.00 More textured than most of its Santorini counterparts, with plenty of citrus and a hint of spice.

Massaya ‘Le Colombier’, Beqaa Valley, Lebanon 2019, offer price £14.25, case price £171.00 A heady blend of Grenache, Cinsault and Tempranillo: supple tannins, lovely fruit and a waft of mountain herbs.

Château Du Bergey, Fronsac, France 2016, offer price £14.99, case price £179.88 Very classy Bordeaux, with bags of plush fruit and great length.

Already drinking well and will keep.

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For details visit www.dbmwines. co.uk/promo_OLD NB Offer closes 29th Novmeber 2021.

The Oldie November 2021 79

SPORT JIM WHITE ROWING PAINS Rowing is a weird sport.

It involves some highly intelligent people – the great Dame Katherine Grainger has about five PhDs – putting themselves every day through a relentless programme of drudgery. Hours sitting there, repeating the same thing time and again; back and forward, pull and let go.

Hurting themselves in the process, too: an Olympic rowing race is 2,000 metres of pain. And it is only by the daily embrace of agony that the body can be prepared for the depredations of top-level competition.

In order to steer their athletes through the misery of their calling, British rowing for 30 years employed the former East German coach Jürgen Gröbler. He knew what he was doing. Every Olympics between 1972 and 2016 (bar the 1984 Los Angeles edition, which the Eastern bloc boycotted), he took a boat to a gold medal.

Since he joined the British set-up in 1992, he made it the finest in the world.

But rowing is a weird sport. And last year, those in charge of the British set-up decided that, despite the many medals in their trophy cabinet, they were going to question what Gröbler did. They initiated a consultation among the younger rowers about his methodologies. And it became clear many of the younger generation found him too extreme, hard and demanding.

Too old school. He was interested only in those who succeeded, they suggested, and ruthlessly excised those he thought not up to it. Plus he could be verbally brutal.

When he was presented with the findings and asked to consider toning down his approach, Gröbler decided it was time to go. So he resigned. And in Tokyo, the soft, new, touchy-feely British Rowing operation failed to win a gold medal for the first time since he had arrived all those years ago.

It did not take long for many of those who had succeeded under Gröbler to put two and two together: to succeed in a sport as physically demanding as rowing, there is not much point being empathetic.

Rowers such as James Cracknell, Andrew Triggs Hodge and Moe Sbihi said they owed their success to Gröbler’s unflinching demands. Yes, it was horrible at the time. But victory was worth it. Sbihi is unequivocal, insisting that if he had never met the coach, he would probably now be working in his father’s barber’s shop. Gröbler had changed his life.

The rest of the world was clearly watching what was going on at Caversham, the magnificent national 80 The Oldie November 2021

Head of the river: Jürgen Gröbler

rowing centre built on the back of the success the German brought. And the French, anxious to ensure they will be properly competitive at their home Games in three years’ time, moved first.

Gröbler was announced as lead coach by the French Rowing Federation.

For sure, at 75, he will be unlikely to be able to create the lasting dynasty over the Channel that he did in Britain. But he will be heading there determined to demonstrate that his ways remain the most effective in delivering gold. In a sport as tough as rowing, he will be anxious to show that you get nowhere by being nice.

Why Britain let him go is extraordinary.

How you can decide that the bloke who put you at the top of the world is somehow not fit for purpose is a question for the ages. As I said, rowing is a weird sport.

MOTORING ALAN JUDD ALCOHOL-FUELLED CARS We are what we eat, or so we’re told.

But cars, being less adaptable, are not what they drink. Since the summer, most will have to drink something designated E10 (if there’s any left at the pumps, that is). Will it affect them? Very likely not – but if it does, it will be for the worse.

For ten years now, ordinary, unleaded petrol has been designated E5 because it’s blended with five per cent ethanol, an alcohol-based fuel derived from plants, particularly sugar cane and grain. Ethanol’s absorption of CO₂ helps your car produce less of this greenhouse gas. It is estimated that, over ten years, use of it has meant a reduction of CO₂ emissions equivalent to taking a million cars off the road.

The new E10 designation means that the ethanol content is now increased to ten per cent, in order further to reduce CO₂.

All new petrol cars sold in this country since 2011 are designed to take E10, as were many – but not all – sold as far back as 2002. Indeed, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders estimates that 92.2 per cent of petrol vehicles on UK roads are E10-compatible. But if you

drive something registered before 2002, it almost certainly isn’t.

The problem older cars have with E10 is that ethanol is corrosive of the seals, gaskets, resins and other materials used in their engines. Over time, it causes serious problems and, even in E10-compatible cars, it very slightly reduces fuel consumption. But despair not – this isn’t the end of the road for your pet Hispano-Suiza or your late mother’s Metro.

That is because E5 petrol will still be available in the form of super unleaded, which you can find at most large filling stations. It costs 10p-15p a litre more than premium but that’s a lot cheaper than replacing engine components.

It’s also higher-octane, yielding better performance, and contains cleansing elements, which help with smoother running. I’ve used it for years, following a not very scientific trial in which it improved economy in my old Land Rover by bestowing much-needed extra oomph, with less changing-down on hills.

Manufacturers use it to boost their 0-62mph figures.

If your car is post-2002 but pre-2011, you can check whether it’s E10compatible by visiting gov.uk/checkvehicle-e10-petrol. If in doubt, go for super unleaded. Knowing that your car will swallow a little less of it makes swallowing the extra cost a lot easier.

Of course, the same applies to motorbikes, lawnmowers and outboard motors of all sorts, especially the latter two as they tend to sit idle for much of the time, allowing E10 quietly to corrode their innards if they’re not compatible.

Again, it’s worth spending the extra on super – they don’t use much anyway.

Nor need you despair if you accidentally fill your E5 car with E10, as long as you don’t make a habit of it and you revert to super next time. Unlike petrol and diesel, the two fuels mix happily. Diesels, by the way, are exempt from all this – UK diesel (designated B7) is already seven per cent biofuel and produces less C02 than petrol anyway.

E10 has been widely used in other parts of the world for some years and the scientific consensus seems solid. But is it unreasonable to wonder whether full account is taken of the emissions and other environmental costs of growing extra sugar cane and grain, especially if – in the worst case – forests are cleared to do it?

Is producing fuel rather than food really the best use of land and does E10 really save as much CO₂ as claimed? As with what we eat, we just have to swallow and hope.

Ed McLachlan

The Oldie November 2021 81

Matthew Webster: Digital Life

End of the landline Hutber’s law states that ‘Improvement means deterioration’.

In the 1970s, journalist Patrick Hutber noticed that if an organisation tells you that it is ‘improving’ its service, it usually means that the service will worsen, or become more expensive, or both.

I thought of Hutber when I read of BT’s plan to shut down, in just four years (December 2025), the copper-wire-based telephone landline network that has been working well for generations. BT proposes to improve this service (they say ‘modernise’) by ripping it up and making us use an internet-based system

Webwatch For my latest tips and free newsletter, go to www.askwebster.co.uk

Plotaroute.com This site helps you find new walks in any area, with many suggested by users. It’s free – while for £18 pa you see no adverts, can use it on your phone and access OS maps.

Digital switchover tinyurl.com/webs406 is BT Openreach’s advice page on the digital telephone upgrade but it’s pretty unhelpful. Age UK has a better one: tinyurl.com/webageuk I will happily try to solve your basic computer and internet problems.

Go to www.askwebster.co.uk or email me at webster@theoldie.co.uk

(VOIP: Voice Over Internet Protocol) delivered through fibre-optic cables.

You’ve probably used VOIP already; if you’ve ever made calls using Zoom, Skype or WhatsApp, that was VOIP. Along with over 20 million others, I still use a landline; in my case, it’s because the mobile signal here is dreadful. I expect I’ll cope, but the people I worry about are those who have a landline but do not have the internet or mobile phones. There are more of them than you might think, and they are mostly older people.

Now, according to BT, these people will be offered a very basic internet connection that is adequate for VOIP (we’ll see – and we don’t yet know the price). This will be a magic box sitting between the phone and its socket; they say we won’t notice the difference. Maybe.

Those of us who already have broadband will have more to do. We will have to plug our phones directly into the router, if it has a phone socket (not all do). I don’t yet know how other phones in the house – all far from the router – will be connected.

But it’s not just people. There are thousands of fire alarms, traffic lights, cash machines, motorway signs, door entry systems, CCTV and railway signals that rely on landlines. Do you know someone with a pendant to press in a crisis? That needs a landline, as things stand.

To be fair to the industry, it has known about this for years and plans are afoot to prevent, for example, the traffic lights from going out. But there remain a vast

number of roads to dig up and customers to advise in a short time. Each provider of internet or telephone services will have their own unique solution. We should all end with a better internet connection, but it is brewing up to be a splendid muddle while we get there.

I have two main worries. First, this changeover requires a massive national infrastructure upgrade, with many different companies co-operating to replace masses of equipment to a strict deadline. What could possibly go wrong?

Secondly, in these green-aware days, the new system uses more power. Worse, as landlines currently supply the electricity to run the network (that’s why your landline works in a power cut), every new VOIP gadget – phone, traffic light, fire alarm – will need its own source of power. This means millions of batteries, all of which will one day die and need to be disposed of cleanly.

I have mixed feelings. The current system works well and, as the man said, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

However, in reality, I’m afraid it is broke, or at least it soon will be. All over the country there are wires and junction boxes many decades old that are quietly decaying. All will eventually fail.

Perhaps invoking Hutber’s law is unfair. In truth, BT doesn’t have much choice. It should probably just get on with it because the alternative is that it’ll never be done.

Forewarned is forearmed. If you rely on a landline for any purpose, or know someone that does, you and they need to be ready. There are big changes coming.

Margaret Dibben: Money Matters

Don’t keep your cash in the attic Gone is the age when you could open a savings account and forget about it.

These days, you should constantly monitor whether you are still getting the best deal. To make it even more timeconsuming and tedious, you’ve probably got a number of cash accounts to keep an eye on – for regular saving, with fixed life spans or with interest rates moving up and down.

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In response, a few companies have devised a new way to control savings accounts, although it comes with drawbacks. The product is called a cash platform. A platform is an online service, sometimes through an app, where all your bank savings accounts are held and operated in one place. They have been used for years for managing investments, but have only recently appeared for cash.

The platforms currently available are Insignis Cash Solutions, Flagstone, Hargreaves Lansdown Active Savings, Akoni and Raisin UK. Each platform-provider has signed up a limited number of banks and building societies – it can be as few as ten and no more than 50, all with a selection of accounts. You cannot slip an existing savings account onto a platform, but

‘Yes, it sounds very nice but my chance of promotion is nil!’

must first pay cash into a hub account directly via the platform. You then choose from the range of accounts offered – and however many accounts you open, there is no form-filling to do.

The onus is still on you to decide when and whether to switch accounts to better-paying ones. To help you, the platforms send regular updates when savings rates on individual products change. All the accounts available through platforms pay at least

close to the best rates available in the open market, and some claim to have top-paying, special deals.

But having your choice restricted to the accounts contained on each platform means you cannot assume you’re getting the best-paying one available anywhere.

So, if you need to cash in an existing account to fund the hub, check that your account is not already paying a better rate.

All platforms require a minimum starting amount: usually £1,000, but it

can be £50,000. Some platforms charge an annual fee for the service – from 0.1 per cent to 0.25 per cent a year, plus, occasionally, a one-off start-up fee. That cost eats into the amount of money you can earn, which means platforms do not suit savers who keep an active interest in their money.

On the other hand, if you are the sort of person who overlooks their savings accounts, you could have money languishing in an account paying nothing.

Certainly, platforms are more used to people with large amounts of cash savings. You can see all your accounts in one place, and at the end of the tax year, the platform sends a single tax certificate, which saves you collecting them from each bank.

You should not keep more than £85,000 with any one bank, because that is the maximum guaranteed under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. You have the same guarantee with each bank you use on a platform.

Remember: it’s each bank – not each account – that’s guaranteed.

For more information, the savingsadvice website Savings Champion compares cash platforms.

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Getting Dressed

The not-so-naked civil servant

Hayden Phillips, star of the Iranian siege – and the new Bond film brigid keenan

DAFYDD JONES

In 1980, civil servant Hayden Phillips (now Sir Hayden) was holed up in an emergency office in the Royal School of Needlework. He was alongside the officer commanding the SAS and the Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, desperately trying to think of a way of ending the siege of the Iranian Embassy three doors down the road.

The siege involved six gunmen and 26 hostages – planes were even diverted from Heathrow over Hyde Park to drown out the sound of surveillance drilling through the embassy walls. After five days of tense negotiations, the order to attack was given by Phillips, Assistant Secretary at the Home Office and the on-site representative of the Government. Those unforgettable images of black-clad SAS soldiers abseiling from the roof of the building filled our TV screens.

Over 40 years on, Phillips – now 78 – really does appear in a Bond film, No Time to Die – which premièred in September after 18 months of COVID delay. This time, Phillips is not one of the heroes of the day but a villain, Blofeld’s Spectre Agent 4. His main role is to die on camera – ‘In a stiff-upper-lip English fashion,’ he was instructed by director Cary Fukunaga. ‘Very hard, dying – we had to do lots of rehearsing,’ says Phillips, laughing.

Urbane and witty – he has been described as the Mandarin’s Mandarin – Phillips reached the peaks of the Civil Service in a more-orless straight run. Educated at Cambridgeshire High School for Boys and then at Clare College, Cambridge, he went to Yale for two years and then into the Home Office. There he worked for Roy Jenkins both when he was Home Trousers, jacket, trilby Peter Christian; shirt Charles Tyrwhitt; shoes Peter Jones 84 The Oldie November 2021

Secretary and later as President of the European Commission.

Phillips’s next posting, to the Home Office, had seemed a bit dreary after Brussels. ‘I was in charge of rioting and terrorism but there hadn’t been any of either – and then came the embassy siege followed by endless riots. From Brixton to Bristol, the whole country seemed alight.’

Moving onwards and upwards through various ministries and departments over the year – including immigration. ‘What is left of the British Empire is now being run from a rather ugly office in Croydon by a young Under-Secretary, Hayden Phillips,’ said historian Peter Hennessy at the time.

He moved on to the Cabinet Office, the Treasury and the Ministry of Culture, Media and Sport.

Phillips reached the giddy heights of Permanent Secretary of the Lord Chancellor’s Department (now the Ministry of Justice). Seven times a year, including for the Opening of Parliament, he was obliged to wear the lavish ceremonial garb (pictured).

This was something he revelled in – inside the civil servant lies a showman. This first showed itself at Yale, where he joined the Russian Chorus and toured America with them (he learned the words phonetically). Much later, a colleague who watched Phillips and Lord Falconer perform a sketch from Yes

Sir Hayden in ceremonial court dress, House of Lords, 2003

Minister (something they did a few times, with other friends, in a charity show), said, ‘They didn’t have to act – it was them.’ In Wiltshire, where he lives, he played the narrator in Under Milk Wood, for charity, in a local church.

Phillips has always dressed well: ‘My parents brought me up to believe that it was only good manners to look smart whatever you were doing; it mattered. I didn’t think much about it, but T-shirts were never part of my wardrobe. My clothes became slightly sharper when I was at the NT; I wouldn’t have worn purple moleskin trousers before then, or a red trilby.’

Phillips and his wife met the new Bond film director Cary Fukunaga through their daughter, who works in TV. Fukunaga was filming Jane Eyre at the time, and Phillips jokingly asked when he would be given a chance ‘to show off my latent talents’. A few weeks later, he was asked to appear in Jane Eyre as Colonel Dent. Recently, Fukunaga joked that he’d taken on the Bond film only to give Phillips, then Chairman of the National Theatre, a part.

The Greenfinch by john mcewen illustrated by carry akroyd One have I marked, the happiest guest In all this covert of the blest: Hail to Thee, far above the rest In joy of voice and pinion!

Thou, Linnet! In thy green array, Presiding Spirit here to-day, Dost lead the revels of the May; And this is thy dominion.

William Wordsworth, from The Green Linnet Wordsworth associated the ‘green linnet’, now greenfinch (Chloris chloris), with May. But autumn and winter are when it flocks and particularly resorts to today’s bird tables and feeders.

Peanuts and sunflower seeds are a preference. Garden feeding is partly blamed for its worrying decline, as it is prone to trichomonosis. This is caused by a protozoal parasite, Trichomonas gallinae, and is an often-fatal disease, known as ‘canker’ in pigeons and doves; ‘frounce’ in birds of prey.

It originated in British greenfinches, supposedly infected by chaffinch carriers.

First detected in 2005, it peaked in Britain in 2006, and has decimated greenfinch numbers here and in Europe. Chaffinches have remained largely unaffected.

Pre-trichomonosis, the UK greenfinch population was in millions, but at the last 10-year count (2008-18) had declined 68 per cent to 750,000. And this year’s Garden Birdwatch showed a 20 per cent fall since 2020. Happily, our illustrator Carry Akroyd reports from Cambridgeshire, ‘Our greenfinches are absent for hours, then arrive in a gang and dominate all bird feeders and drop a load on the ground.’

The disease is thought most contagious when regurgitated food is fed to the young.

As greenfinches can have three broods between March and June, contaminated feeders and baths have been blamed. Bird lovers are urged to clean both regularly.

The parasite is not transmitted to humans.

The greenfinch’s recognisable call, a repeated ‘cheese’, was until recently

common even in central London. ‘Cheese’ – in singing months, punctuated with trills and twitters – is also described in rustic tradition as ‘peasweep’; and ornithologically as ‘tsweee’, ‘dzhwee’, ‘wheeze’ and ‘juit’.

The maximum refrain is ‘jupp-jupp-juppjurrrrrrrrrr tuy-tuy-tuy-tuy-tuy juit chipchipp-chipp-chipp-chipp durdurdurdur jurrrrrrrrr’ (Collins Bird Guide)!

Intensive farming has diminished its food supply. Predominantly a seed-eater, it can damage fruit trees by nipping buds.

It nests as readily in suburban evergreens as in country hedgerows. Its singularity among finches was recognised by its sole Chloris classification, reinstated after a

2012 scientific paper. The broader beak distinguishes it from the goldfinch and chaffinch but is not comparable with the ‘grosbeak’ of the hawfinch and crossbills.

Singular too is the male’s courtship flight – a slow, stiff-winged ascent with song.

Ringing has revealed a bird travelling 1,242 miles. In Britain, it has extended its breeding range to include all but the most barren parts of Scotland. It has been successfully introduced far and wide – so one can hear that call for ‘cheese’ even on New Zealand’s South Island.

The 2022 Bird of the Month calendar is now available: www.carryakroyd.co.uk The Oldie November 2021 87

Travel Treasure islands

Tanya Gold escapes the tourists and heads underground – to find the Bronze Age graves of Scilly Isles natives

T

he boat is called the Surprise.

It is long, low and open to the sky: a bourgeois, Vikingstyle longship, filled with people wearing very clean walking clothes and very clean masks. We are outdoors and on the Atlantic Ocean but you can’t be too careful.

The Surprise stops a few feet from Teän, a tiny island between Tresco and St Martin’s. We were to jump into the water here and walk to the beach. But, on embarkation, the captain sees the average age of the passengers – is it 60?

– and wonders aloud if we will break our ankles.

So he asks his mate to bring a black, inflatable dinghy from St Mary’s Harbour – the harbour where Wally the walrus destroyed boats for sport this summer before floating away.

‘I saw him ten times a day,’ says another boatman when I ask him about Wally. ‘I saw him too much.’

But this is a resort for sea life; a humpback whale was spotted off the Scilly Isles in September. So we leave the Surprise for the dinghy. The mate hauls it up the beach and the Surprise waits offshore.

88 The Oldie November 2021

The Isles of Scilly are 28 miles from my home in Newlyn, west Cornwall: smudges on the horizon. The isles are lovely – no water looks so clear from the mainland and no sand so bright – but in Scilly I prefer the dead to the living. They seem more vivid; happier, even.

Scilly was colonised by the white upper-middle classes long ago – at least in summer. Winter is another thing entirely. If you seek the real isles, go in winter, if you can tolerate the wind.

The colonisers spend May to September traipsing between the five inhabited islands, saying things like ‘Do they have granola?’ and providing 85 per cent of the islands’ income while, in leasing holiday cottages, depriving the natives of homes to live in. If winter is brutal here, summer is merely an uneasy peace.

St Mary’s – the biggest island of the

Scilly’s resident population is 2,000.

Underground, there are many more

archipelago – sells resort wear to amateur sailors who anchor off Tresco, a land of golf buggies, passive-aggressive, dog-related signage and a museum called Valhalla, dedicated to the figureheads of wrecked ships.

But I am on a boat entirely open to the Atlantic with 30 masked people. So, like Charon, I seek the dead. The resident population of Scilly is just over 2,000.

Underground, there are many more.

We are on Teän for an archaeological tour with Katharine Sawyer, a local expert and stalwart of the Community Archaeology Group. The day after I leave, she searched Gugh (pronounced ‘Goo’) for a lost kelp-pit. Here people do things for themselves. They have no choice. The supply boat, the Gry Maritha, can be delayed for weeks.

Teän is small and madly shaped – the map looks like a headdress. Here, at the top of a small hill surrounded by bracken, I find I am standing on a Bronze Age entrance grave. This isn’t unusual for the isles. Scilly is all hilltop – you used to be able to walk from St Mary’s to Land’s End – and Bronze Age people built graves on high ground.

We hum with curiosity at the grave,

DAVID CHAPMAN/ALAMY

Teän: now uninhabited, it has entrance graves dating from the Bronze Age

once we know what it is – it is another surprise. A man in a straw hat asks a question about the rising waves, and is shushed for pressing the point.

We tramp downhill to examine a 17th-century ruined house attached to an eighth-century Christian chapel and Roman midden, in which Sawyer once found an animal jawbone.

Some of the corpses, we are told, had leprosy, which was not then a British disease – evidence of international life!

The ruins are attacked by bracken and grass. They are beautiful.

I love uninhabited islands. I wish I could visit Samson, the twin-humped island that looks like a bra, but there is no boat today. Samson was abandoned in 1855 as there was no drinking water and the population – two families – survived on potatoes and limpets.

I stay on St Agnes because it is the doughtiest and least-developed island, home to 80 people and owned, as almost all the isles are, by the Duke of Cornwall. He is a kindly landlord if you value aesthetics over life. There

aren’t any of the ugly houses you find on St Mary’s that remind me so much of Bournemouth.

I stay on a farm campsite with views over the Dogs of Scilly – blackish rocks, which, in 1707, scuppered the HMS Association and killed 1,500 men in one night. The Bishop’s Rock lighthouse (1858) rises among them; it looks like a spacecraft.

With my binoculars, I search for Rosevear, another blackish rock, for the ruined houses of the men who built the lighthouse. I cannot see the houses – but my husband would like to live there.

I read a series of novels where murders are committed on the isles.

They are formulaic – there is one killer per island and there is always a lockdown while the case is solved – and insulting: the perpetrators over four books are three natives to one incomer. I don’t think they’re for locals, who are peevish rather than murderous, but they’re sold everywhere.

If I walk 200 yards from my tent, I find I am standing on a prehistoric field system. I know this because, at some point, someone arranged the granite blocks in a row. Here is a tiny maze in

granite stones, made by a lighthousekeeper in 1729. The birds are extraordinarily tame because they fear no predator and accept pieces of ice-cream cone from my hand.

St Agnes is proud to be rat-free.

There are signs inviting the visitor to share if they see a rat. ‘Rat on a rat,’ it says, as if being a rat was some kind of moral choice which the rat unconscionably made.

There is a good pub – the Turk’s Head (they probably meant the Spaniard’s head) – another lighthouse (1680), now transformed into a house, and a post office. Beyond that, there is only the sea, which is the whole point of Scilly: the beauty and the pain.

It is an eerie place: a combination of savagery and tourist culture, which spreads itself on granite like jam. Without us, the islanders would be subsistence farmers.

They sometimes pretend, from behind the tills in the shops selling Scilly soap and driftwood sculpture, they would prefer it that way.

Skybus flies to the Scilly Isles. The Scillonian III ferry sails from Penzance to St Mary’s. islesofscilly-travel.co.uk The Oldie November 2021 89

Overlooked Britain

Blackpool’s towering achievements

LUCY LAMBTON/ ARCHIVE IMAGES/ALAMY

lucinda lambton For over 200 years, the Lancashire town has witnessed joyous buildings soaring above the ultimate pleasure beach

I will never forget driving along Blackpool’s seafront in the early 1950s, waiting for the illuminations to blaze into life, as they had been doing since 1912.

My mother was driving me and my three sisters – one more and a brother to go – in a giant mobile home. I can so well remember the sense of excitement as we contemplated the promise of our surroundings which were about to be transformed in such a novel and exciting way. HURRAY! The town had one of the oldest fairgrounds in the world, opened in the 1730s. From the first visitors who had enjoyed the doubtful pleasure of drinking the prescribed dose of 25 gallons of seawater – a pint at a time – on to the roaring terror of the rollercoaster, Blackpool has provided ever more frenzied entertainment to attract the crowds.

In the 1890s, there was the outlandish scheme of training hundreds of parrots to screech about the delights of the Winter Gardens, before leaving them with their enticing jabbering in hotels and restaurants all over Lancashire. They had a good deal to screech about.

The two main centres of entertainment have for decades been the Tower, with the Tower Ballroom, and the Winter Gardens, built with the art and architecture of the fantastical.

It would be hard to find a more 90 The Oldie November 2021

opulent spot in the British Isles than the Ballroom, commissioned by John Bickerstaffe – pioneer of Blackpool’s popularity and always known as Mr Blackpool – in 1898. It was created by the hand of Frank Matcham, king of theatrical design.

Reminiscent of a giantess’s boudoir upholstered in gold, tiers of boxes bulge forth amid the glittering ornamentation. Swelling up to the ceiling, a pageant of gilded plasterwork embraces paintings of celestial scenes – one with an alarming devil, embracing flower-bedecked maidens. ‘BID ME DISCOURSE AND I WILL ENCHANT THINE EAR,’ from Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, is emblazoned over the proscenium arch.

In June 1929, a mighty gold and white organ was installed, to rise up amid a fog of dry ice, to the enticing strains of ‘Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside’, played with vim and verve by Reginald Dixon between 1930 and 1970.

One terrible morning, on 14th December 1956, this stupendous glory of a place was gutted by fire, caused by a single cigarette. With inspired grandeur, Douglas Bickerstaffe, whose father had given so much of the land for the pleasure grounds, decreed that it be entirely rebuilt to its original designs. It was said that he was ‘hewn of the same granite as his father’.

Life had become luxurious, with such splendours as the Imperial Hotel staging Gilbert and Sullivan operas and grand dinners, where it was obligatory to ‘dress’. The Palm Court Orchestra would play the night away.

Above: 1900 postcard. Right: Frank Matcham’s Tower Ballroom (1898)

The Turkish baths were richly encrusted with decorative tiles. Having fallen into a state of disrepair, they are being meticulously restored.

In 1910, the tempting draw was Little Emmie Tweedsale, otherwise known as La Petite Pavlova. Time was kind to her, and she was still billed as ‘Little’ in 1935.

The Spinsters’ Ball was a regular feature, with rose petals showering down on the

dancers. During the Second World War, the ballroom was given over to silkparachute-making.

At the Spanish Hall in the Winter Gardens, whole model villages sprouted forth from the balconies. They are still alive to this day. They were all created by Andrew Mazzei, chief designer at Gaumont Studios in the 1930s.

At the Winter Gardens, I tracked down late-19th-century tiled tableaux merbabies, as well as 1930s chandeliers wrought into crowing cockerels. Gaudiesque ceramics streak up stairways and plaster figures of ‘antique distinction’ enhance the walls of the main concourse.

Then there is the ornate Pavilion Theatre, where Sarah Bernhardt played in 1882, giving an irksomely inaudible performance in French, to cries of ‘SPEAK UP, LASS!’ And there was the Tower, the beacon of Blackpool, built in 1896, when the season had boomed to bursting point.

One visitor from Burnley found the sitting room of his lodging house so full of visitors that there was nowhere either to sit or to stand. His bedroom had been let to a honeymoon couple and he was forced to share with nine bachelors – with only three beds between them.

The Tower shelters, of all glorious surprises, a most magical Moghul circus.

The ring is dead centre beneath the tower, surrounded by the richest architectural exotica, ablaze with gold leaf.

At the circus, you are relishing the show when the ring sinks and, blow me down, in 60 seconds flat, is filled with 40,000 gallons of water, for a dazzling aquatic act. There are no longer any animals in the circus but their curious quarters still survive, along with the faintest smell.

Along Blackpool’s Golden Mile, Joseph Emberton was commissioned in

the 1930s to give identity and order to the place, with masterly examples of the Modern Movement – smooth, suave and curvilinear – the style that gave such hope for a streamlined future.

There are other architectural landmarks at the Pleasure Beach. Noah’s Ark was built in the 1920s and the 1904 river caves have the most surprising structural secret. After the Second World War, when they needed repairing when materials were in short supply, they were re-roofed with the scrapped Mulberry harbours – which made possible the liberation of Europe in 1944.

The oldest ride of them all – the oldest in Europe – is the Hiram S Maxim ‘flying machine’ of 1904, designed by Maxim to raise funds for his attempts to be the first man to fly the measured mile. In the end, his steam-powered machine was too heavy to leave the ground, whereas the aeroplanes in Blackpool have remained in constant use.

The Oldie November 2021 91

On the Road

My passage to India Writer William Dalrymple, brought up in drizzly Scotland, has adored his tropical Indian home for 40 years. By Louise Flind

Is there something you really miss?

When I’m in India, I really don’t miss Britain and when I’m in Britain, I really don’t miss India.

What’s your favourite destination?

India is endlessly amazing. My books have covered the whole of Asia but it’s India that keeps drawing me back. There are two bits of India I really love – Kerala in the middle of winter when it’s gorgeous, tropical and hot, and the Himalayas.

What are your earliest childhood holiday memories?

Bizarrely, the opposite of my adult life was in my childhood: I never went anywhere at all. I was the last boy in my class to go abroad, and my family, who lived in this beautiful part of south-east Scotland, always took the view that in the summer people came to Scotland. In the Easter holidays, we’d go to the west coast of Scotland, which was even wetter and colder. So I had an idyllic childhood on the beach in North Berwick making sandcastles with Nanny cooking bacon baps and me and my brothers running into the water in all seasons – there are pictures of us on a Lilo in midwinter.

When did you first go to India?

Aged 18 with my best friend, who’d got himself a teaching job in the foothills of the Himalayas.

What were your first impressions?

Complete confusion because it was freezing cold. I arrived in January 1984.

The Jewel in the Crown had just been on the telly and I was expecting warm plains and the tropics and people wearing white cotton and khaki.

Instead, it was thick fog and everyone was wearing blankets and turbans. I had only my swimming trunks.

Why did you love it so much?

When I started travelling and I realised the density of the history; the sheer amount of ruins.

Is India the great economy of the 21st century?

Up until the 18th century, India was producing 40 per cent of the world’s domestic gross products, and China 30 per cent. Under the Raj, this shrank to two or three per cent. Now the balance has been re-established. The ultimate economic logic is that by the end of this century, India will be back producing a third of the world’s goods.

Where do you live in India?

We rent a farm on the outskirts of Delhi.

We’ve got about four acres of land, goats, vegetables and bees. My wife’s an artist who works at home, too.

What’s your favourite part of Scotland?

The Borders.

How wicked were the British colonists of India?

The East India Company was the original evil multinational, growing opium in India to sell in China, buying up tea in China to sell in America.

holiday quite a lot of the year anyway. If I won the lottery tomorrow and never had to do another day’s work, I would continue without a change, I think.

Do you lie on the beach?

I will be going next week to lie on a beach for my birthday – going to Goa to a wonderful place called Elsewhere, which is a kind of secret spot and I’ll be lying on a hammock between two trees.

And I read fiction on holiday.

Hotel or apartment?

In Elsewhere, there’s a lay priest’s house, a piggery and a couple of other ramshackle buildings, hidden from one of the best beaches by just a berm of sand. This time we’re staying in the piggery.

Strangest thing you’ve ever eaten?

Brain soup – I presume it was lamb.

Do you have a go at the local language?

Can you speak Hindi?

Not as well as I should. I can speak a little Italian.

How has travelling changed since you started?

I think travelling can be much the same if you want it to be, although Syria would be very difficult now and Iran is currently a bit more dangerous. So much of the change is on the surface and in the cities – scratch that surface and the old India is still very much there.

What’s your biggest headache when you’re travelling?

I love travelling – I don’t associate travelling with headaches. Occasionally in the Himalayas, you can get cut off by a landslide. But I’m not a fearful traveller; I’m an enthusiastic traveller. I don’t associate travelling with problems; more with pleasure, freedom, escape and relief.

Where did you go on your honeymoon?

To my other favourite place, Italy.

They’re very similar countries: that density of culture; the localisation of food and art; mountains at the top and an island at the bottom, mother complexes, beautiful women…

What is the strangest place you’ve ever slept in?

One of the most romantic was on a Xanadu trip between the Pakistan border and Kashgar in a deserted, ruined caravanserai. I enjoy sleeping rough in palaces.

Do you go on holiday?

To Italy every year. To be honest, I’m on

William Dalrymple’s The Company Quartet (Bloomsbury) is out now The Oldie November 2021 93

Taking a Walk

Norfolk’s Ice Age pingos melted my heart

GARY WING

patrick barkham

When you first arrive at Thompson Common, it appears simply to be a quiet place with an anonymous name in the middle of rural Norfolk.

On a previous visit, oblivious of its unique qualities, I enjoyed its grassy glades and broadleaved woods much like other ordinary commonland.

But a 1:25,000 map reveals its extraordinary character – this long, leg-shaped slice of green common is pockmarked by scores of small ponds.

Thompson Common is not a famous place, nor a honeypot, but it should be. It is the pingo capital of Britain.

Not bingo – no legs eleven here – and not the clay, animated penguin (although the Norfolk accent does turn ‘pingo’ into ‘Pingu’) but an Inuit word for hill. These ponds were once hillocks of ice beneath the tundra. When the Ice Age ended, some 400 small pinnacles of ice slumped into perfect little pingos.

The most striking change between the 1797 map of Norfolk and today’s is not deforestation – the landscape is more wooded today – but the loss of hundreds of commons, snatched and enclosed by

big folk and a few little people too.

Thompson Common survived because its incredible concentration of ponds made the land unfarmable. Even so, many of the ponds around its edges were filled in as land was ploughed and ‘improved’.

Today, the common is protected

by Norfolk Wildlife Trust, which is also expanding it again, buying adjacent farmland to excavate more ghost pingos.

The minute I ducked into the woods on a dripping wet day, mundane stresses were sloughed away by this peaceful green space. The wood opened into some gorgeous, sheltered glades, filled with the yellow flowers of fleabane. Two roe deer gazed serenely from the wood edge.

The pingos were not immediately apparent, for reality is more subtle than the map, and they were clothed by centuries of marsh plants.

Most pingos were about the size of a typical small village pond and each one was a different, miniature world of marsh plants and insects, with the species varying depending on whether the pond was in sunshine or in deep shade beneath

oaks and ash. It would be possible to walk past almost all of them and barely notice them. This time, they were brought into focus because my walk was a guided one, led by Nick Acheson, a brilliant and witty naturalist.

‘Ice Ages are like teenagers,’ he said as he explained the full glory of the pingos.

‘They don’t clean up after themselves.’

As he spoke, a scarce emerald damselfly darted past. It was considered to be extinct in Britain in the 1980s but turned up on Thompson’s pingos. There are 57 other particularly rare species associated with this pondscape, including the pond mud snail (a minuscule beast) and the northern pool frog, the country’s rarest frog, which has been successfully reintroduced here.

Most of these rare and exotic creatures are not visible to casual walkers, which is why there was no café, pay-and-display car park or hordes of visitors. Instead, there were tranquil meadows, scrubby bits and marshy bits, each natural room offering a subtly different experience.

Just the knowledge there are rare things pootling through the undergrowth added a sprinkle of stardust to the walk. I wondered if all the unusual residents of the pingos – the plants, amphibians and invertebrates – have a cumulative effect on this place, and on us.

The richness of Thompson Common can be measured by ecologists and perhaps it can be felt, too. It feels like a place where we can breathe more deeply.

It’s certainly one of those places from where you emerge refreshed, the drive home a considerably calmer experience than the journey there.

Thompson Common car park, NR17 1DP, is behind a layby. Enter common via kissing gate. Follow a path around the common or join the old railway line and walk out and back. Or continue to the Peddars Way footpath and Thompson Water for a longer six-mile round.

Another walk is provided by the Great Eastern Pingo Trail The Oldie November 2021 95

Genius crossword 406 el sereno A normal crossword where G is a definition in common Across 1 Example of fraud involving king and succession (6) 5 G may be reformed supremo, capturing hearts (8) 9 Bring on, for instance (8) 10 G’s person on panel missing start surrounded by drivers (6) 11 G’s quiet call about Gaelic (10) 12 Place for sitters as yet unfinished (4) 13 G - a city with millions taken in by rampant greed losing resistance (8) 16 Difficult - like a rhinoceros on heat, ultimately (6) 17 Angel fish must stifle fear occasionally (6) 19 Part of ship’s structure offering the last word in hammocks? (4-4) 21 Silly me - top’s come off enclosures (4) 22 Quiet prisoner upset a G (10) 25 Attire for international after endless cycling (6) 26 A way sound waves generate shocks (8) 27 Frustrated marine salvage expert losing wife and disregarding dangers? (8) 28 Secret court holding sole criminal (6)

Down 2 G’s essential to reality check (5) 3 Religious leaders’ writings should support current master (5) 4 Hobbles in, say, set up for a look (7) 5 Opening coming from Spooner’s Chinese spy? (7) 6 Compound lease (including a vacant garage) (7) 7 Expect to import Coors?

Unlikely prediction here (9) 8 A Parisian engineer given a penalty for being crude (9) 14 G, hearing of hairstyle tied in knots (9) 15 Standard staff needed to support police HQ (9) 18 Use font, seeing bishop and note in altar space (7) 19 Man shortly to be surrounded by fish as source of fuel? (7) 20 Raising US intelligence agents to keep month to get clean (7) 23 G is left in place, with nothing (5) 24 Reminder from head of government wearing nothing? (5)

How to enter Please scan or otherwise copy this page and email it to comps@theoldie.co.uk. With regret, owing to the coronavirus epidemic we are temporarily unable to accept postal entries.

Normal procedure will be restored as soon as possible. Deadline: 17th November 2021. We do not sell or share your data with third parties.

First prize is The Chambers Dictionary and £25.

Two runners-up will receive £15.

NB: Hodder & Stoughton and Bookpoint Ltd will be sent the addresses of the winners because they process the prizes.

Moron crossword 406 Across 1 Fake; impostor (6) 5 Eschew (4) 8 Small biting fly (4) 9 Despot (8) 10 Package (6) 11 Serviette (6) 12 Blockage (11) 15 Heavy burden (6) 17 Mexican tortilla (6) 19 Hurried repair (5,3) 20 Ready (of fruit) (4) 21 Nought (4) 22 Subtract (6)

Genius 404 solution Down 2 Hair dye (5) 3 Becomes aware of (7) 4 Warble (5) 5 Character; emboss (5) 6 Idealistic (of world) (7) 7 Typical of its type (6) 12 Exploit to the detriment (7) 13 Approve and express assent (6) 14 Hurt, harmed (7) 16 Small lizard (5) 17 Bamboozled (5) 18 Theme (5)

Eagle-eyed solvers may have noticed a bonus House in the above! Dog, Slaughter, Glass, Terraced, Transport, Public, Trinity, Somerset Winner: Stephen Beetlestone, Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire Runners-up: Ralph Allemano, Pontyberem, Carmarthenshire; Clyde Jeavons, London N5

Moron 404 solution Across: 7 Ghetto, 8 Ferret (Get over it), 9 Metamorphosis, 10 Idleness, 12 Curt, 13 Kiwi, 15 Cheapest, 17 Disappointing, 19 Stolen, 20 Coolly. Down: 1 Thread, 2 Strategically, 3 Dodo, 4 Off-piste, 5 Preoccupation, 6 Senior, 11 Escaping, 14 Idiots, 16 Singly, 18 Itch.

The Oldie November 2021 97

Competition TESSA CASTRO Let’s face it. It is easy to cheat at bridge.

And, unfortunately, several players, whether on their own (a quick peek), or (worse) collusively as a partnership, have, over the years, succumbed to the temptation.

Enter whistleblower Boye Brogeland from Bergen, Norway, who has done more to clean up the game than any other. Many top players spoke privately about the need to investigate alleged collusions. He went public (in 2015) and made it happen.

Sadly, cheating online is even easier. When all bridge went virtual in March last year, worldclass tournaments were hastily arranged on BBO (Bridge Base Online). Top sponsors paid good money to hire professional players. And I’m afraid a few of those professionals worked out how to ‘self-kibbitz’. If they used a separate machine, they could see all 52 cards.

But let us not dwell on such ghastliness. Let us look at Brogeland’s brilliance at the table.

Dealer South Neither Vulnerable

West ♠ A 10 9 5 ♥ Q 10 3 ♦93 ♣A 6 5 3

North ♠ KQ ♥A8 ♦A64 ♣K J 9 8 7 4

South ♠ J42 ♥KJ9752 ♦J985 ♣-

East ♠ 8753 ♥64 ♦ K Q 10 2 ♣Q 10 2

The bidding South West North East 2♥(1) Pass 4♥ end (1) Weak Two, showing about 5-10 points and a decent six-card suit.

West led the ace of spades – he had three almost certain defensive tricks, so it was reasonable to cash an unsupported ace to have a look at dummy. At trick two, he switched to the nine of diamonds.

Declarer, Brogeland, played a low diamond from dummy, East winning the queen. At trick three, East reverted to a second spade.

Winning dummy’s king, declarer ruffed a club, crossed to the ace of diamonds and ruffed a second club. He next cashed the knave of spades and discarded dummy’s remaining diamond.

At trick eight, declarer led a third diamond. It would have done West no good to ruff in, so he discarded a spade. Declarer ruffed in dummy and ruffed a third club. He then ruffed his last diamond with dummy’s ace of hearts to leave a three-card ending in which he held in hand king-knave-nine of hearts, and West held queen-ten-low.

Declarer was guaranteed to win two of the last three tricks. He ruffed a club with the nine, West overruffing with the ten, then having to lead from the queen-low round to declarer’s king-knave. Game made.

ANDREW ROBSON

IN COMPETITION No 272, you were invited to write a poem called The Umbrella.

The subject brought out such weird imaginings in many competitors that ordinary death seemed mundane. Katie Mallett warned against ‘Hemlocks, brollies to close down / All human hopes and dreams’. Fiona Clark and Max Ross conjured up grandmothers’ umbrellas of mystery. For D A Prince, the broken umbrella metaphor was clear: ‘It’s the same / With love, ending in unexplained despair – / Smashed in some sudden storm or vicious blast / That turns it inside out.’

Con Connell’s lines were of amazing length, hendecameters; Peter Craig’s were in the shape of an umbrella. Commiserations to them and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus prize of The Chambers Dictionary going to Richard Spencer.

Beneath that dazzling, domed Verona sky, In azure blaze of noon, my mistress stepped.

‘To shrift!’ she’d told them, with averted eyes, While on her porcelain skin my shade I stretched.

Into St Peter’s Church she flew, to make A world-without-end promise, hand in his, Forgetful of me now, for her love’s sake, Unsheltered, rushing onwards to her bliss.

Long hours I waited in a dusty pew: A witness merely, furled, and stiff, and thin.

I heard the thrum of rain, a beat which grew To pounding thunder as they carried in My Juliet, now ghostly white, returned, Her pure skin paler now, her lids like lead.

She lay, while all around her, tapers burned, In shade more deep than I had ever spread.

Richard Spencer Boy in our street said you were bad Cast iron poker-back folds of black Unjoined jug handle ivory nosed Puckered-in mouth like a press stud closed Boot button jet eye, steel finger ends Pterodactyl elbows of hemmed-in silk Burnt paper rook wings trapped unflapped Mothballed mackintosh furled and strapped Camphor and lozenge lost property breath Stick-man woman, a walking cane Were you ever a child with soft limbs free Dancing in deluge, running in rain?

Boys in our street all said you were mad Said you had poison in your tip

Knobbed knuckle grip and crow feather boned Never opened or teemed on or held or owned Jane Bower The tree held me in fascination, His hard toughness covered by an umbrella of leaves.

This tree was after all just wood … wasn’t he?

Why then did he seem to stir when I was near?

Why did he beckon with crooked fingers, His branches shaking with agitation?

I know my umbrella wanted to encircle me, and I desired him (was it love?)

I had to put my weak arms around him, and feel his hard strength.

My husband laughed when I told him I loved the tree.

But then he spat out words of hate and fetched his axe.

Was there a storm that night?

Did it make those strong, gnarled arms lash out?

I don’t know, I only know that my husband is dead.

I am having to go away, but I know the tree will wait for me.

With patience, his umbrella unfurled.

Marie Maher My dad had one, he furled it tight, The handle had a golden band And curled, he always held it in the right Hand in glove.

It made him something-in-the-City, A badge to show he had arrived.

He’d always been in uniform, so pity Him in his Mac. The rain was different in those days, More uncertain, caution needed.

Umbrella in the hallway always With his bowler hat.

We later heard he’d got the sack.

The train came in, his seat was empty, The brolly found far up the track, Another jumper.

Anthony Young COMPETITION No 274 Telephones are not what they were, for good or ill. A poem, please, called The Phone. Maximum 16 lines. We still can’t accept entries by post, I’m afraid, but do send them by e-mail (comps@theoldie.co.uk – don’t forget to include your postal address), marked ‘Competition No 274’, by 19th November.

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The Oldie November 21 105

Ask Virginia

virginia ironside Kissing and telling

Q

On the subject of kissing, I have a revulsion of kissing on the mouth. I am in my sixties, a widower, and have formed an affectionate relationship with a widow, with serious prospects of marriage. The problem is she is all for kissing and cuddling and close intimacies, most of which I can tolerate, except kissing on the mouth. I feel a strong desire to wipe my lips after the salivary contact. My late wife wasn’t very physically demonstrative – so we didn’t have any difficulties there. However, I am worried my ladyfriend might consider me a cold fish if I told her and would be put off the relationship. Is there anything I could do about it? I would hate to see her go.

Name and address supplied The first thing to do is to tell her about this. Kissing can be done everywhere and not only on the mouth – and it doesn’t have to be with your mouth open. If she really finds that frustrating, then all you can do is to see if you can find a psychologist who’ll help you get over what is only a mild phobia. If it means a lot to your friend, and you can be seen to be trying to overcome the problem, she’ll surely admire you rather than shun you. Most of us have odd sexual preferences – some minor, like yours, and others huge, which can cause problems. Thank your lucky stars you don’t have some weird and embarrassing kink that would make her feel really queasy.

A

Benefits of subtitles

Q

I want to share this tip with other readers. My grandson is six and has been finding it very difficult to read. I read recently that it

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106 The Oldie November 2021

can make a difference if when children are watching television, the subtitles are put on. I have to say it’s had a profound effect on my grandson.

Steph, Banbury And if you’re sitting next to him, point out some of the words as well, which will make even more of a difference. His spelling is bound to improve at the same time, if he’s constantly exposed to correct spellings, and generally, if he has to watch television, it’s much better for him to watch with the subtitles on than with them off. Of course, on granny days, telly should be kept to a minimum, but sometimes we all need a break and gratefully reach for the box.

A

Will I spot Alzheimer’s?

Q

I stave off Alzheimer’s by being secretary of a local society, and I am editor of a regional journal, and I go to the theatre, opera and cinema. I have made my will and a lasting power of attorney and tried to talk to my family about when I’m not here, but they don’t want to know, saying it won’t happen, but of course it will! What I want to know, and probably many others do too, is what happens next?

When will I notice things are not going as well as they should, that my faculties are fading and that maybe I shouldn’t be driving any more? Will people tell me, and will I listen? Will my writing become incoherent, my sentences unfinished, my memories fading? Will I go with a bang or with a whimper?

Sandra, Kent If I could tell you this, I’d be a rich woman. You obviously like control over your life, but one of the reasons the end of life is so utterly grisly is precisely because of its ghastly

A

ISSN 0965-2507. Printed in England by Walstead Group. Distributed by Seymour Distribution Ltd, 2 East Poultry Avenue, London EC1A 9PT; www.seymour.co.uk To order a print subscription, go to subscribe@theoldie.co.uk or call 0330 333 0195 Print subscription rates for 12 issues: UK £45; Europe/Eire £51 USA/Canada £52; rest of world £61.

uncertainty. Generally, because of genetic factors, you’re far more likely to suffer if your parents suffered. I’m afraid you can do crosswords till the cows come home and it won’t make a lot of difference, if any. Alzheimer’s doesn’t come on one day suddenly with a bang and it sounds as if you’ve got quite enough self-awareness to spot when you’re starting to lose the plot.

If not, it really won’t affect you. I would take steps to exit stage left before you get to this point but, of course, it’s easier said than done.

Cruel excuse for break-up

Q

My daughter and her boyfriend stayed with me during the last lockdown. I thought we got on OK and I cooked for them a lot, but we all had our separate areas of living.

However, now they’ve moved out and my daughter suddenly tells me that her boyfriend, who wanted to marry her a year ago, has suddenly changed his mind because he’s frightened that when she grows older, she’ll change into someone like me. I find this very hard to cope with because I thought we’d always got on well. Shall I confront him?

BR, by email What a very cruel thing to say! It sounds as if this bloke is flailing around for reasons to explain why he’s got cold feet. Is he suddenly terrified? Has he fallen for someone else?

Those are much more plausible reasons than this ludicrous excuse. And it’s easier to blame you than your daughter. Or, more likely, himself.

A

Please email me your problems at problempage@theoldie.co.uk; I will answer every email – and let me know if you’d like your dilemma to be confidential.

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Christmas Gift Guide 2021

Our brilliant guide to shopping from home

How Coal Warmed Up Christmas - Jeremy Paxman Win a Partridges Golden Christmas Hamper New Year’s Eve Island Hideaways Presents Books Music Quiz Fine food Winter 2021 | www.theoldie.co.uk

Christmas Gift Guide 2021 Welcome to our Christmas Gift Guide! There are some brilliant gift ideas in these pages, but don’t forget that a subscription to The Oldie is the best present of all (see below).

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The Oldie October 2016

All presents great and small CHARLOTTE METCALF finds something for everyone Get High

Afghan Chic

Afghans know a thing or two about the cold, which is why I brought my father, a keen gardener, a traditional Mujahideen waistcoat home from my travels there. He wore it non-stop.

The authentic article is currently tricky to get hold of but Sirplus does a smart, warm, near-as version: the tweed Nehru waistcoat, with deep lower pockets and a chest pocket. The advantage of Sirplus’s version is that it’s elegant enough to take a hardworking gardener straight from the flowerbed to a smart lunch table. £195 sirplus.co.uk

Pet hate

Indulge a pet and a pet hate simultaneously with these chewable toys ‘stuffed with satire’. If you know a pet-owner who particularly loathes Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump or who is constantly ranting about Nicola Sturgeon or Priti Patel, a ‘Pawlitician’ will make them chuckle as they throw it to the dogs. A catnip-padded range is now available for cats. £17.50 pethatestoys.com

Stay Tied to the Apron Strings

As we get older, how many of us waste gardeningtime scouring the flower beds or pots for that buried gardening fork? At last, help is at hand – or hip – in the shape of this smartlooking, handmade, suede tool-apron.

Gardeners can stuff the pockets with everything they need and never mislay their secateurs again. It ties at the waist (adjustable strap – so one size fits all) and protects from earth and brambles. £69.95 sarahraven.com

4 The Oldie Christmas Gift Guide 2021

For the adventurous oldie who enjoys thrilling the grandchildren, buy a gift voucher towards part or all of a balloon trip. The lucky party will be able to float above beautiful countryside over most of Britain, or can take a ride over London and along the Thames with a bird’s-eye view of St. Paul’s, the Tower and the Dome – far more fun than queueing for the London Eye. A family trip of a lifetime. Prices depend on location. scenesabove.co.uk

Uncorking the Secret

The metal Durand corkscrew for older wine and fragile corks has garnered rave reviews from sommeliers. It’s been dubbed the best thing that ever happened to vintage wine. It spells the end of collapsing corks and wine ruined by cork dust. It’s simple to use, with its stabiliser bar and blades to hold even the most delicate corks in place. Any serious wine collector will love you for it. £159 thedurand.com

Walk with Dickens

For the literary-leaning oldie, a beautifully illustrated map from the Literary Map Company provides a leisurely stroll in the company of their favourite author. ‘A Walk with Charles Dickens through A Christmas Carol’ follows Scrooge’s footsteps and transports the reader back into the foggy, snow-bound streets of Victorian London.

The map includes illustrations and excerpts from the story with hand-drawn landmarks, and is also available to buy as a limited-edition print. £9.99 www.literarymapcompany.com

Love and Joy

The tiny, ornamental Myrtle Tree represents love and joy. It has aromatic leaves all the year round, with star-like, fragrant, white flowers in the late summer and edible, blueberry-like fruits in the autumn – steep them in alcohol and they’ll yield a bottle of delicious Mirto liqueur. It arrives beautifully wrapped with details of how to look after it. It can be personalised with a message on a brass heart, star or plaque. £58 thepresenttree.com

Baby Blues

Know someone with a penchant for adventurous swimwear? Buy them a pair of Dr No swimming trunks from Orlebar Brown (£245) or – even more daring – this baby-blue Goldfinger Onesie, the 007 Riviera Towelling All-In-One, inspired by the one Sean Connery wore. Type ‘Goldfinger Onesie’ into the search engine if you can’t find it on the main Orlebar Brown site. It won’t fail to cause a stir on the beach. Or, if you’re the jealous type, it’s for your eyes only. £345 orlebarbrown.com

Neither Shaken not Stirred

This is no ordinary bottle of Bollie. It’s a cracking Christmas present for any Bond aficionado.

It’s flying off the shelves but still available from Selfridges. £59.99 selfridges.com

Time Saver

Let’s face it: most of us are at the age when we spend quite a lot of time each day looking for our phone or keys.

Here’s the solution. A nice little wooden affair for all your bits, from earpods to car keys. Rather blandly called a Personalised Accessories Holder, it’s actually more of a lifesaver and certainly a timesaver. You can personalise the gift and put someone’s name on it in case they forget that, too. £24.99 notonthehighstreet.com

Travelling Martini

This is a very serious present indeed but it’s simply exquisite.

Designer Sebastian Conran, son of Terence, designed this 007 Cocktail Case in the same Connolly Vaumol leather that has adorned Bond’s Aston Martin DB5 since 1964. The case contains a pair of Martini glasses, cocktail shaker, metal cocktail sticks, two metal flasks and a pair of tins for lemon and olives. £4,000 connollyengland.com

Put your Foot in It

Socks are obviously the most boring present anyone can give, unless…. Well, these are still socks, but they’re well-made from combed cotton, are hand-finished and, better still, they’re fun, silly and will bring a smile to even the grumpiest Christmas grinch. As they say on their website, they ‘do love a good yarn’. So, for your feet only, Double-0 or Thunderball socks at £12 a pair or £30 for an Agent Gift Box set of three. thelondonsockexchange.net

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Most discerning oldies love Floris. After all, it’s stayed in the same family for nine generations and is the only perfumer to hold a Royal Warrant to HM The Queen (and one to Prince Charles). No. 89 is named after the address of their timelessly elegant, Jermyn-Street store. This classic gentleman’s fragrance was adored by Cary Grant and Alec Guinness and was the firm favourite of Ian Fleming. £80 florislondon.com

The Constant Gardener

We’ve all tried those gimmick,y grow-yourown salad contraptions that yield a lettuce leaf or two a month if you’re lucky. Here comes the real thing. The Sprout mini-greenhouse is self-watering, climate-controlled and protects from pests. It provides greens, salad and herbs all year round, inside or out. It’s been tested on the gale-ridden coast of west Wales and proved durable and unbreakable yet small enough for a small yard, patio or conservatory. From £199, dependent on size. www.harvst.co.uk The Oldie Christmas Gift Guide 2021 5

Hot Shot

Who hasn’t ruined their tie or silk shirt by dribbling coffee from an inefficient cup or thermos in the car? A non-leak thermos could be the perfect gift for someone who didn’t know they needed it.

This 12oz Rambler bottle, that keeps temperatures piping-hot for hours on end, is blessed with a unique, 100% leakproof HotShot cap. You can drink from any side too, so no more nearly crashing the car while you try and work out which way to twist it. Available in six colours. £24.99 uk.yeti.com

Old Style

Robot Chat

Convert a technophobe by buying them an Alexa disguised as an old-style wireless and pair it with Tabitha Goldstaub’s book How to Talk to Robots (£12.08 uk.bookshop. org). As founder of CogX, Tabitha chairs the Government’s Artificial Intelligence Council. She writes in a simple and funny way so that even someone who’s never owned a smartphone can understand how to talk to Alexa.

Steepletone Old Style Radio with Amazon Alexa £140 notonthehightstreet.com

Panning Up

Yes, this is a mightily expensive pan. But this generous 28 cm Platine Casserole designed by Marie Guerlain is worth every penny. It’s hand-crafted and hand-assembled by Italian craftsmen from pure, non-toxic titanium.

It works for both oven or hob and is beautiful enough to take straight to the table. It’s an heirloom, to be passed on to the next generation. You’ll be thanked profusely for it and, one hopes, invited to dinner. £535

It takes a couple of oldies to know how to entertain properly with flamboyant elegance.

Anyone who likes to lay on a lavish Christmas will love the newlypublished Entertaining Lives, The Nancy Astor & Nancy Lancaster Cookbook. Written by oldie Jane Churchill, with Emily Astor, it’s a literary and photographic monument to ‘tablescaping’ with 75 recipes from two of the greatest early 20th century chatelaines. £40

All the best ideas are simple and seeing this Magimix Vision Toaster it’s simply a wonder no-one’s thought of it before.

Watch your toast as it browns to perfection through its doubleinsulated glass windows. This sleek, good-looking toaster has extra wide-slots for chunky slices, so no more digging around with a knife trying to extract stuck, burnt toast. £160

uk.bookshop.org

magimix.co.uk

ondine.com

Visions of Toast

Snappy bag

Home Sweet Home

Simon Cavelle has been drawing and painting for over 30 years and paints beautiful portraits – of houses. He can paint from life but if you want to remind someone of their childhood home or of the house that they’ve been most happy in, he’ll do it from photographs. He’ll also paint a boat or even a plane – his aunt was one of the first women pilots on the Dakota DC3. Recently he’s added to his repertoire by painting portraits of vintage cars. Prices upon request. pavilionart.com 6 The Oldie Christmas Gift Guide 2021

For the photographer who likes a proper SLR camera it’s time to replace their ugly, old synthetic camera bag with an elegant, personalised one. This handmade leather bag can be embossed as you like. Lined in canvas cotton, it’s large enough for an SLR with a second lens and charges. The sides are padded for extra protection, and it has three outside pockets and an adjustable shoulder strap, combining vintage style with practicality. And for each bag sold, they’ll provide a school bag for a child in need in Cambodia. £85 thehightstreet. com

A book at Christmastime The best presents for avid readers – by LUCY LETHBRIDGE For those, young or old, who enjoy Japanese pickles. There are 200 getting their teeth into life’s Big Slater recipes to enjoy here. (Fourth Questions, Youniverse: A Short Estate, £30). Slater reads it on Guide to Modern Science by Elsie Audible (£11.37 or free Burch Donald (Duckworth, £9.99) is for subscribers). full of fascinating titbits of scientific Dan Saladino is one of the knowledge, from atoms to genetics presenters on BBC Radio 4’s The and biotech to recent discoveries in Food Programme. In Eating to proto-humans.

Extinction: The World’s Rarest A chapter called ‘Getting Real’ lays Foods and Why We Need To Save out the criteria that determine life: Them, he has had the arduous but ‘The ability to grow, reproduce, enviable task of scouring the globe respond to stimuli and changes in for strange and wonderful food environment, keep a stable traditions: fermented mutton in the FM Mayor’s The Rector’s Daughter metabolism and be vulnerable to Faroe Islands, for example, or wild evolution.’ From then on, it’s a heady honey harvested with the help of (www.handheldpress.co.uk), you sweep through the mysteries of birds. Yet the book is much more can enjoy one of the particular biological existence. than traveller’s tales. pleasures of a Handheld book In ‘Fellow Travellers,’ Saladino makes a call for delivery – the beautifully wrapped, Burch Donald looks at learning about ancient old-fashioned, brown-paper parcel. the topical topic of and unusual means of On the subject of lost classics, viruses: they are food production to Persephone, purveyor of discerning parasites but are preserve genetic reading with lovely endpapers, is they alive? ‘Possibly biodiversity before reprinting F M Mayor’s 1924 novel swept there by the it’s too late.

The Rector’s Daughter. This is a wind, some 800 (Jonathan Cape, £25). novel so heart-wrenching, astute and million viruses are said Saladino reads it on moving that it’s guaranteed to give to descend daily on to Audible (£27.99 or free Christmas a whole new perspective. every square metre of the for subscribers).

(Persephone Books, £12).

Big appetite: earth.’ Or what about bacteria There are many small It’s another Jack Reacher novel!

Ed Balls – ‘the enzymes of which wash publishers currently In fact, it’s the 26th. Lee Child’s your clothes, ferment your unearthing and reprinting lost latest, Better off Dead, is written by food and drink, treat sewage and classics and Handheld Books has lots Lee and Andrew Child (Lee is help fertilise soil’. So diverting. of gems. Among their most recent is retiring and handing the baton to his Ed Balls continues to make giant a collection of ghost stories by Elinor brother). It has spicy ingredients – a strides in his journey of reinvention.

Mordaunt called The Villa and the merciless desert sun, an abandoned In Appetite: A Memoir in Recipes of Vortex, originally published between jeep and that enigmatic righter of Family and Food (Gallery Books, 1916 and 1924, a golden age for tales wrongs, Jack Reacher himself. £16.99), the former Shadow of the supernatural (£12.99). It is (Bantam, £20). The authors read it Chancellor of the Exchequer writes available from bookshops but if you on Audible (£27.99 or free about the food of his life. With the order direct from their website to subscribers). dust jacket adorned with a picture of the young Ed in puddin- bowl haircut and flowery orange shirt, it is a homage to the memorable grub of growing up in the 1970s, political ambitions in the 80s and 90s and the unexpected celebrity turn (both Strictly and Bake Off) that Balls’s career has taken in the last decade.

Every recipe comes with its own Balls story. He reads it on Audible (£12.59 or free for subscribers).

Nigel Slater wrote the best-known chronicle of 1970s cuisine in his memoir Toast. Now, out in time for Christmas, he has followed it up with A Cook’s Book, in which, like Balls, he uses recipes as triggers for memories, from his first jam tart to his discovery in foodie adulthood of cosmopolitan treats such as A taste of honey: Dan Saladino investigates bees in Eating to Extinction 8 The Oldie Christmas Gift Guide 2021

Pollyanna and The Not exactly Jack Parent Trap. In Reacher but, like Forever Young: A him, always in the Memoir, she writes right place at the movingly of her right time to redress childhood as the injustices, Mma daughter of cinematic Ramotswe of the No.1 royalty Sir John Mills Ladies Detective and then as the protégée Agency directs her of Walt Disney himself formidable sleuthing skills to No.1 voice: (W&N, £20). She reads it on a new adventure, chronicled Adjoa Andoh Audible (£19.24 or free

by Alexander McCall Smith. for subscribers).

The Joy and Light Bus Company Patience Gray’s classic memoir of (Little, Brown, £18.99) features a living in rural Greece, Honey from a wedding and, rather more Weed, was beautifully illustrated by unusually, some talking shoes. The Corinna Sargood. Now Prospect wonderful actress Adjoa Andoh is Books has published Sargood’s own the narrator of the audiobook on story of moving to a remote village in Audible (£24.49 or free Mexico to live the simple life. for subscribers).

John Le Carré was working on his final novel when he died last year. Silverview has now been published in time for Christmas and will be a winner with fans of the master spy-writer. In it, a highflying city financier resigns from his job for a simpler life, running a bookshop in a small seaside town.

He encounters the mysterious figure of Edward, a Polish émigré whose behaviour begins to look suspicious.

Gripped already? (Viking, £20) Also in audiobook form on Audible (£25 or free for subscribers).

Devotees of the interesting and complex women in Elizabeth Strout’s fiction (Olive Kitteridge, Lucy Barton et al) will be delighted to hear her next novel is out this autumn. Oh William! (Viking, £14.99) returns to Strout’s heroine, the writer Lucy Barton, now widowed and living in New York, and her relationship with her first husband who has suddenly Corinna Sargood’s Mexican village reappeared on the scene. (Audible, She was then in her fifties with a £25 or free for subscribers). recently acquired new partner, Hayley Mills, arguably the Richard, a furniture-maker. The best-known British child star of the Village in the Valley is enchanting 1960s, is now, astonishingly, 75. She and full of the author’s lovely artwork. has written a memoir of her career (Prospect Books, £17.50). as the lead in films such as It’s not quite the simple life but the story of Jeremy Clarkson’s flawed efforts to farm his estate in the Cotswolds has been a television hit for Amazon. Queues of cars now wait for hours to buy £13.50 jars of honey from Clarkson’s farm shop near Chipping Norton. The farm may be called Diddly Squat, a ho-ho reference to its annual profits, but the Top Gear presenter is banking on his popularity to churn out the merch in time for series two. Fans will enjoy his account of Diddly Squat: A Year on the Farm. It is Chip off the old block: Hayley Mills

published just in time for Christmas (Penguin, £16.99).

Beatles completists will be raging to get their mitts on a desirable boxed set of Paul McCartney’s lyrics.

‘A self-portrait in 154 songs’ is how it’s described – it is Sir Paul’s response to numerous requests to write his autobiography.

As befits the musings of a twentieth-century icon, the black and white packaging is deliciously discreet and classy. The collection is edited by the Irish poet Paul Muldoon. The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present (Allen Lane, £75).

While we’re on the subject of fans, Naomi Parry’s biography of Amy Winehouse is a work of art in itself, with sumptuous illustrations of never-before-seen Winehouse memorabilia, costumes, notebooks and lyric sheets. All sorts of celebrity admirers have piled in to contribute their recollections of the singer too – including Vivienne Westwood and Bryan Adams. Amy Remembering Amy Winehouse: Beyond Black (Thames & Hudson, £30).

The Folio Society collection is always a trove of gorgeous Christmas-book ideas. And, for young readers yet to discover Roald Dahl, what about a boxed-set golden ticket in the shape of the Folio’s trio of tales of disgusting behaviour (mostly by adults). James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Twits – all in heirloom hardback with the original illustrations by Quentin Blake and in a covetable box. The Roald Dahl Collection (Folio Society, £75). Also check out the Dahl audiobooks: lots of well-known voices, including Dahl himself, reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Audible, £17.99 or free for subscribers).

Younger children, parents and grandparents will love J K Rowling’s new book, The Christmas Pig, (Little, Brown £20). A boy sets out on Christmas Eve to find his lost pig, who has inexplicably gone missing.

Amaka Okafor reads it on Audible (£15.99 or free for subscribers).

Julia Donaldson (legendary creator of The Gruffalo) has also produced a seasonal book, The Christmas Pine. It is inspired by the story of Norway’s gift of the huge tree which graces Trafalgar The Oldie Christmas Gift Guide 2021 11

TWO NEW OLDIE BOOKS FOR CHRISTMAS

Square each year (Alison Green Books, £12.99).

And J K Rowling diehards might also like to know that a sequel to the

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Woolly Harry Potter

bestselling Harry Potter Knitting Magic by Tanis Grey has just been published. New Patterns from Hogwarts and Beyond (Pavilion, £22.95) includes instructions on how to make a Quidditch pullover, a stuffed Niffler and a Gigglewater shawl. Irresistible.

Readers 11 and up will be interested in Dirk Reinhardt’s The Edelweiss Pirates: Teenage Rebels in Nazi Germany (Pushkin Children’s Books, £7.99).

When an old man gives Daniel his teenage diary to read, we learn of the rebellious ‘pirates’ in 1930s Germany and how they planned dangerous missions against the fascist regime.

‘Powerful, moving and important’, says Michael Rosen in his introduction.

Books or boxes of postcards make attractive and sometimes intriguing presents and they come in handy, too. Try out designer Eleanor Tattersfield’s Lockdown Secrets.

Locked down in London, Tattersfield put out a call on Instagram (as you do), offering to exchange a postcard for a secret.

To her amazement, the secrets poured in – anonymous and revealing. Here they are collected as a snapshot of a strange year.

(Batsford, £12.99).

Or what about some reliably educational Robert Macfarlane?

Tattersfield’s naughty postcards

The Wild Cards is a 100-postcard box set of pictures by illustrator Jackie Morris, which are each accompanied by a quotation from Macfarlane on the wonders of the natural world.

There is a blank space to do some of your own drawings and ponderings, too (Hamish Hamilton, £14.99).

Little Toller books are always interesting. Ken Worpole’s study of a pacifist community in Essex during the war is absolutely fascinating. No Matter How Many Skies Have Fallen: Back to the Land in Wartime Britain (£14) is an account of how the community created both a productive working farm and a hive of radical political ideas. Little Toller has also reprinted Geoffrey Grigson’s An English Farm, which is both elegiac and topical (£15).

Professor John Carey has rounded-up a collection of work by his favourite 100 poets, from Homer to Sylvia Plath, covering the familiar and the less common.

Carey gives us what he believes are the best poets and from each has made a choice of their finest poem. A Homer truths bedside-table book of portable proportions and in durable hardback. 100 Poets: A Little Anthology (Yale University Press, £14.99).

Finally, whodunnit enthusiasts will surely thrill to pathologist Carla Valentine’s Murder Isn’t Easy: The Forensics of Agatha Christie (Sphere, £16.99).

It lifts the curtain on Christie’s novels, examining how the author’s expertise in forensic science, in particular the effects of often obscure poisons, was crucial to her masterly plotting. Valentine reads it on Hachette Audio (£17.49).

Order from uk.bookshop. org to support your local booksellers Quoted prices subject to change.

The gift of giving These charity champions are filled with the Christmas spirit, choosing organisations that get help to those who need it most I am a firm supporter of the not-forprofit Dignity in Dying, which fights to give terminally ill people the choice to die on their own terms, a right supported by the overwhelming majority of the public and no doubt many readers of this magazine.

I became convinced of the need for an assisted dying law after witnessing my own parents’ deaths.

Both would have been comforted by the option to die swiftly and peacefully at a time and place of their choosing, and it would have soothed my own grief to know they died with ease and dignity. dignityindying.org.uk

Joanna Lumley

I suggest Help for Forgotten Allies, a charity which supports the surviving veterans and widows of the Burmese Army who fought alongside our allied forces in South-East Asia during the Second World War. The hill peoples of Burma/Myanmar, the Karen, Chin and Kachin, were particularly brave and deserve to be remembered, especially in the UK. h4fa.org.uk

Nicholas Owen

The Children’s Trust gives children and young people with brain injury and neurodisability the opportunity to live the best life possible. Every year in the UK, 40,000 children are left with a brain injury as a result of an accident or illness. They may not be able to walk, talk, stand, sit or feed themselves. Some lose all of those abilities.

The Children’s Trust aims to help rebuild as many of their skills as 14 The Oldie Christmas Gift Guide 2021

possible through play, exploration, laughter and having fun; things that are often lost when a child has limited mobility or other challenges.

Each year, the charity needs to raise over £8 million to run vital services for children with brain injury, and help reach out to more children and families across the UK. thechildrenstrust.org.uk

Henry Blofeld

Chance to Shine, founded primarily

by Mervyn King when he was Governor of the Bank of England, makes the game available to youngsters who would not normally have had the chance to play cricket.

The charity has brought cricket to thousands living in sink estates in our inner cities. King’s own persuasive charm, determination and the dynamic ambassadors he has attracted have been crucially important to its success.

The most notable have been the former England captains, the eternally enthusiastic Mike Gatting and Heather Knight, the captain of the England ladies side.

Another celebrated ambassador has been one of the game’s supreme advocates, that superb television commentator, Mark Nicholas.

Chance to Shine deserves and needs every penny that comes its way. chancetoshine.org

Kate Adie

I’m aware that my dog hears much better than I do, having lived with being ‘a bit deaf’ all my life. But ‘a bit deaf’ is very different to living in an almost silent world.

For deaf people, often faced with

loneliness and isolation, there’s an enormous change to their lives – more independence, more safety, less stress – when a trained Hearing Dog joins them, alerting them to everyday sounds and situations. And there’s the companionship. A wagging tail, a paw on your knee, means you’re not on your own.

Training takes substantial time and money, but every Hearing Puppy learns to connect in a special way: to bring confidence and support. Every Hearing Dog is a life-line – and loveable. hearingdogs.org.uk

Loyd Grossman

I’d like to bring your attention to two charities - one national and the other very local - that simply and effectively address the big problem of wasted talent and unrealised potential.

I am a great fan and long term supporter of Give a Book, set up in memory of the late playwright Simon Gray. The charity gives books to prisons and schools in high deprivation areas.

The other charity is Campden Edge, based in the Cotswolds, which helps fund the arts education of 8 to 26-year-olds who can’t afford such opportunities. With a declining emphasis on the arts in schools, local charities like this are helping to keep the arts alive for everyone. giveabook.org.uk campdenedge.org

Dr Jane Goodall, DBE, UN

Messenger of Peace Climate change is related to the choices we make and there’s no question that we humans have had an

Delia Smith: albanpix, Jane Goodall: © Stuart Clarke’, Lloyd Grossman: Pal Hansen

Jenni Murray

From left: Jenni Murray, Henry Blofeld, Kate Adie, Loyd Grossman, Jane Goodall, Maureen Lipman

enormous impact on the gradual heating of the planet.

I first established The Jane Goodall Institute in 1977 and it now has offices in 24 countries around the globe, working to make the world a better place for people, animals and the environment we all share. Through empowering local communities, JGI is tackling the problems damaging our planet and educating new generations to become better citizens to ensure a sustainable future for all life on Earth. My greatest hope is our young people. Thirty years ago, I created ‘Roots & Shoots’, JGI’s humanitarian and environmental programme for young people of all ages, now active in more than 60 countries to develop the compassionate change-makers our world needs. janegoodall.org.uk

Julian Fellowes

The Lord Kitchener National Memorial Fund is a charity set up in memory of Lord Kitchener, to grant scholarships to originally the sons, but now the sons and daughters, of those who have served in the forces, to increase their chances of higher education. These are valuable to the students as they do not have to be paid back, and can be very helpful to would-be students from disadvantaged backgrounds. lknmf.com

Anneka Rice

As an ambassador for the end-of-life charity, Marie Curie, I’ve seen first-hand the important work they do for people experiencing death, dying and bereavement.

I wish I had known about support available from Marie Curie when I was caring for my two elderly parents, who both had dementia.

From campaigning to ensure proper support is available for

everyone at end of life, through to providing nursing care at home and in their nine hospices across the UK, to providing a listening ear and round the clock advice through their Information and Support Line, Marie Curie really do make a difference for so many people at a time when they need it most. mariecurie.org.uk

Maureen Lipman

The brainchild of Josephine Segal and Vanessa Crocker, Spread a Smile is a small charity devoted to providing entertainment and enjoyment to children in long-term hospital care.

Spread a Smile send gifts, treats and surprises alongside actual magicians, musicians, fairies, artists and therapy dogs to break up the monotonous days and distract from the sometimes painful or invasive treatments.

Heidi Nathan works for the charity and compiled a book to which I contributed, called This Book Is Toast, all in aid of Spread a Smile. spreadasmile.org/toast

Delia Smith

It’s a personal thing but, for me, out of the continuing flow of harrowing nightly news bulletins, what pierces my emotions more deeply than anything is the plight of refugees.

In 1933, in America, two of my personal heroes, Albert Einstein and educational reformer and philosopher John Dewey, along with 50 people of influence formed a group to try and assist Germans fleeing from Hitler and, soon after, those from other countries escaping fascism.

Out of that, a very significant charity began to emerge called the International Rescue Committee, whose sole purpose was to assist refugees. This is now

beyond anything that small original group could have imagined. It has operations around the world, giving untold help to refugees everywhere.

And overseen by another of my heroes the President, David Miliband. So an absolute no-brainer. rescue-uk.org

Geoff Hurst

It’s more than half-a-century after I walked up the steps to the Royal Box at Wembley Stadium, where our Queen handed over the World Cup to Bobby Moore. I invoke the memories of that momentous day – which are still fresh in my mind – because too many members of that special team have been affected by dementia.

They’ve inspired me to raise awareness of dementia, which is why I’ve supported Alzheimer’s Society for a quite a few years now, taking part in Memory Walks and becoming a Champion for the charity’s Sport United Against Dementia campaign, which will use the power of sport to change lives for the better in the sporting community.

The work of the Alzheimer’s Society is especially important over Christmas, one of the hardest times of the year for people affected by dementia. alzheimers.org.uk

Leslie Caron

I’m keenly aware that there are many communities whose organisations suffer from a lack of financial support. I believe education is the key to helping families best raise their children, feed them sensibly, encourage sports and allow them to grow into who they want to be. I support Save the Children because they focus on great education, good food and medicine to help children thrive regardless of their situations. savethechildren.org.uk The Oldie Christmas Gift Guide 2021 15

Dreaming of a black Xmas King Coal created modern Britain, says JEREMY PAXMAN

You’d better watch out, You’d better not cry, You’d better not pout, I’m telling you why: Santa Claus is coming to town.

Even those who can endure Michael Bublé murdering a beloved Christmas song appreciate that there’s no need to take it seriously.

Father Christmas might have decided you deserve to have only a measly lump of coal in your stocking, but we all know he’d be hard put to find one nowadays.

Even much of the free coal that retired miners are given each month as a reward for risking their lives underground has been imported from some place like Poland or Colombia. The sweating and the dying happens elsewhere now. The ‘black gold’ which made a few rich beyond imagination and sent many more coughing their way to an early grave is consigned to Britain’s past.

Without coal, there would have been no Dickens novels No-one knows who first discovered that if you could get this filthy rock alight, it might burn for hours. But there is a very strong case for saying that coal made modern Britain. Those who could extract it from the generous beds beneath Britain became very rich indeed and coalpowered steam fuelled the Royal Navy and helped build the Empire. It was midwife to genius and drove the Industrial Revolution, fundamentally transforming everything from locomotive manufacturing to the folding of envelopes. Its by-product, gas, lit the streets. Without coal, there would have been neither the energy to print Dickens novels, nor light to read them by.

The landowners were the most obvious beneficiaries. The poor people who tramped the country to toil in their pits often considered themselves blessed, too, despite the dreadful injuries and dangers they faced underground, for they knew that they had also become a sort of aristocracy. You didn’t mess with the million miners in 1913. Thirteen years later, the only General Strike in British history grew out of a mining dispute.

16 The Oldie Christmas Gift Guide 2021

Coalminer in the Midlands, 1944

Out of sight (and usually out of mind), the miners discovered for themselves the best way to mine coal, and then organised themselves as the process became mechanised, with great roaring machines which filled the air with choking dust. Many had ‘coat buttons’ on the vertebrae down their backs – blue-black scars caused by the sharp rocks when working bent double.

Hundreds more died – crushed, gassed, burned in infernos. Precisely how many perished? No-one knows.

DH Lawrence, who grew up in an ugly Nottinghamshire pit village, has left us an unforgettably brutish picture of the sort of men who toiled underground, but it is hard to believe they were much worse than any other group of manual labourers.

The life or death bonds of dependency gave the miners an edge when their churches and the labour movement sought leaders from their amassed ranks.

Among the clusters of gimcrack houses with no running water, the miners’ autodidacticism nourished brass bands, allotment societies, male-voice choirs, dogracing and giant vegetable competitions. Naturally they were, from a party political point of view, mainly Labour-voting communities although most tended to be social conservatives.

Nationalisation of the mines was first proposed by one of the founders of the Independent Labour Party, Keir Hardie, in 1893, and soon became the prime political objective

of the miners’ trade union. The great post-war Labour government eventually delivered their dream in 1947. But it meant that, from then on, instead of squaring up to black-hearted pit-owners, the miners were fighting the state. They brought down Ted Heath’s Conservative government in 1974 but, thereafter, no government could contemplate bending the knee.

Arthur Scargill, President of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) 1982-2002 (‘Remember, you’re talking to the inventor of the flying picket,’ he would boast) met his match in Margaret Thatcher, Heath’s successor as Tory leader.

When Scargill’s strike began in 1984, there were 170 working collieries in Britain. All are now closed.

Boris Johnson was talking what his friends would affectionately call ‘utter bollocks’ when he tried to claim Margaret Thatcher’s closure of the mines had something to do with environmental worries, for the woman had not an environmental bone in her body. She shut the pits because she wanted to break the industrial and political power of Scargill’s union. She won the battle and the union now has under a hundred members. The NUM’s sparkling headquarters were opened in 1988 and occupied for just four years before remaining empty for a further 25 years. Britain goes into the great climate-change dance competition with no coal industry to promise to close.

We should never forget the filthy example we set the world The last ‘great smog of London’, when you could hardly see the cinema screen on a night out, and police used canes to tap a way along their beat occurred in the 1950s, after which clean-air legislation was introduced.

But King Coal was once almighty. We should never forget the filthy example we set the world.

Jeremy Paxman’s Black Gold: The History of How Coal Made Britain is out now (William Collins, £25)

Hebridean haven: the waterfront at Tobermory, Mull

Hogmanay hideouts

Hate New Year’s Eve? Head for an island, says SARA WHEELER Mull

I’ve been to three Scottish islands this year and recommend them all for crisp Hogmanay breaks. First, Mull, second largest of the Inner Hebrides.

I travelled round on double-decker public buses, which are wellventilated, seldom busy and offer splendid views from the top deck.

They turn off the main road to visit hamlets – so you get a good look round Mull. Most buses begin and end their journey in the capital, Tobermory – buy lunch at the splendid Tobermory Bakery on the front. Have a walk around the public garden and grounds of the Glengorm Castle estate in the far north – the pile, built in 1860, looks out onto the Atlantic and the Outer Hebrides, and there won’t be anyone else there. Mull has many cottages for hire. booking.com

Iona

I took one of the buses to Fionnphort and, from there, hopped onto the passenger ferry to Iona (private cars are not allowed on the island). Most visitors go for the day, but I recommend staying for at least one night for walks across sweeping, salty beaches where, again, there was no one. Go to evensong in the abbey as the sun sinks into a furrowed strait.

It’s free, but you had to book online when I was there (iona.org.uk). The St Columba Hotel is next to the Abbey and Reilig Òdhrain burial ground. www.stcolumba-hotel.co.uk

Skye

The Caledonian Sleeper from Euston to Glasgow Central is the way to go to Skye. The train takes dogs, but they need their own hound ticket (www. sleeper.scot). In Glasgow, you change to Queen Street station and take one of the most glorious train journeys in 18 The Oldie Christmas Gift Guide 2021

the world up the west coast to Mallaig, where you catch the ferry to Skye.

Armadale Castle, near the ferry terminal in the south-east, run a range of events and exhibitions. My disabled mum used one of the Armadale disability scooters to get around the gardens. Skye has a sophisticated food scene with two Michelin-starred establishments, but we had a fine Scottish meal at Red Skye, a cosy-boho restaurant in Breakish, specialising in seasonal, local fare. The Swordale House Bed and Breakfast in Broadford was a convenient and comfortable stay. swordalehousebedandbreakfast.co.uk

Isle of Wight

I have a soft spot for the Isle of Wight.

Last time I was there, I visited Quarr Abbey and took a book into the bindery for repair. It was my greatgrandfather’s small bible, carried in his tunic pocket all through the Second World War. The Quarr monk-craftsmen did a splendid job and posted the bible back to me. Inquire in advance (bindery@quarr.org).

If your budget is modest, you might consider an IoW Warner’s break. You will save on your New Year holiday if you wait till after the festivities – Warner has a three-day chalet package in Norton Grange Coastal Village, including dinner for £139 per person with entertainment – a murder-mystery weekend is scheduled for February. warnerleisurehotels.co.uk

Anglesey

Ever thought of Anglesey? I had a lovely winter excursion there a few years ago. I love north-west Wales.

You can get to the island via a bridge (as you can to Skye). Anglesey includes Holy Island and its Holyhead

port, the largest settlement. Almost the whole coast (all of it facing the North Sea except at the Menai Strait, the location of the bridge) has been designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The coastal path is reasonably accessible and other highlights range from the 13thcentury Beaumaris Castle, built by Edward I, to thriving bird colonies.

The sea cliffs at South Stack provide nest sites for puffins, guillemots and peregrine falcons. Airbnb has availability on Anglesey for the New Year, including a boathouse in Rhosneigr with views of Crigyll beach which sleeps two – it is £224 a night. airbnb.co.uk

Lindisfarne

Lindisfarne, freighted with history, is an ideal spot for toasting the future, preferably with Lindisfarne Mead.

It is also known as Holy Island, not to be confused with the one belonging to Anglesey. The National Trust owns the small, 16th-century castle.

Beware: at least one vehicle gets stranded on the causeway each month.

Hurry up if you want to go for New Year itself. Airbnb has only two options left; one is a shed that looks absolutely super. airbnb.co.uk

Mersea

I like the idea of an island, like Lindisfarne, accessible only when the tide is right, as it offers the possibility of getting stranded and having an adventure. Oldies in this market might like the lesser-known Mersea between the estuaries of the Blackwater and Colne rivers, south of Colchester. It might be safer to stay nearby, in the gatehouse apartment of Tudor Tower – Layer Mareny. www.airbnb.co.uk

A connoisseur’s collection ROGER LEWIS watches his favourites from the worlds of film, theatre and television, all available on DVD

The Father (2020) Anthony Hopkins has always been good at staring into space and looking bewildered. His Academy Award-winning blank intensity is just the job for this tale of an old boy losing his marbles, fading away with dementia. Characters come and go – are they real or are they figments of a disintegrating consciousness? I imagine Florian Zeller reckoned he was directing a serious study of memory and meaning. In the end (the presence of Mark Gatiss is a clue), what we have is a glorified episode of Inside Number 9, with twists and counter-twists. Olivia Colman is on hand as the cheerful and long-suffering daughter. I thought it all added up to a very good case for assisted dying – compulsory assisted dying. (£9.99)

then died in 2017. Here Jonathan Pryce plays Quixote and he is adequate although I thought Eric Sykes would have been better casting. But he also died. Adam Driver is an obnoxious director who, in a film-within-a-film, or fantasy sequence, is taught the error of his ways by Quixote, receives his comeuppance and learns to exploit people less. Or something – it is all rather banal. But, as ever with Gilliam, the visual virtuosity counts more than the narrative, and surely Cervantes’s stubborn and eccentric knight-errant is his idealised self-image. As Quixote also was for Orson Welles, who likewise struggled for years to finish his films, battling against all manner of bizarre odds, to an extent that made you think (as with Gilliam) chaos is the one element he felt absolutely at home in and possibly sought out. (£9.99)

Wuthering Heights (1958)

This was broadcast from Brooklyn as a live NBC transmission on 9 May 1958. It was long considered lost, until a primitive recording or “kinescope” was unexpectedly found in 2019, amongst a pile of old game shows acquired by the Library of Congress. It is important, because Heathcliff is played by Richard Burton. He is exactly as you’d imagine him to be as Heathcliff, declaiming in an Old Vic way, swaying from side to side with emotion, smacking the furniture with a riding crop, banging doors, threatening to beat up Denholm Elliott, the epicene Edgar Linton.

Grumbling away under wrinkled retainer make-up is Bernard Miles.

Cathy is a very lovely, gamine Rosemary Harris. (£13)

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From top left: The Father; Wuthering Heights; The Man Who Killed Don Quixote; A.J. Wentworth BA

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018)

Frankly, the film Terry Gilliam finally released, in 2020, is less gripping than the documentary, Lost in La Mancha, about the film he had to abandon. This was in 2002, when the sets were destroyed by floods and his main actor, Jean Rochefort, fell ill with herniated discs. Rochefort

A.J. Wentworth BA (1982) I adored Arthur Lowe in everything he did, except Dad’s Army, which I never could stand, owing to the ropy scripts and duff, ill-rehearsed acting (and over-acting – Clive Dunn and John Laurie were bores). Lowe having died in April 1982, this series of six episodes was broadcast posthumously, and it is a lost gem – completely charming. Lowe is the eponymous schoolmaster, muttering about the price of pen nibs, and I suppose we are not a million miles from Walmington-on-Sea, with an unruly class instead of the platoon.

Captain Mainwaring’s irritable pomposity, however, has been replaced by a Wentworth who is

more of an idiotic day-dreamer. John Bird is Major Faggott. (£7.19)

The Day of the Jackal (1973) I never cease being gripped by Fred Zinneman’s film – held together as it is by Michael Lonsdale’s dogged detective and Edward Fox (never better) as the ruthless assassin, organising his mission, testing his gun, planning his escape routes.

There’s an extra dimension now, however – the way we can look back at the Sixties, at a France now gone, at police procedures before computers and when everyone smoked, frowned over Manila folder files and used, heavy, Bakelite telephones. The supporting cast is superb: Badel, Jacobi, Sinden, Cusack, Pickup. (£7.31) An Englishman’s Castle (1978) The Nazis invaded successfully in 1940. Churchill was executed. There was a token resistance but in time everyone capitulated, collaborated. A racial purity programme got rid of the Jews, the blacks, anyone tinted or tainted. Flash forward to 1978, when this series was made and set, and the British have long since come to full accommodation with a Fascist, German-run Europe. Off-stage, as it were, and ever-present, there are death camps and secret police well-trained in torture methods to deal with anyone rocking the boat.

Which is where Kenneth More comes in. He is a television scriptwriter, churning out propaganda, and he lives a comfortable life – but he has a nagging conscience, pricked by his mistress, Isla Blair, and his son, Nigel Havers, who think the time has come for the British to revolt. What a great actor More was – very underrated.

His face alone registers an amused weariness and integrity; a sense he’ll do the right thing.(£9.49) Callas Forever (2002)

Franco Zeffirelli’s final work, a fictionalised biopic about the opera singer, which is full of his typically boisterous peasant crowds and lively café-scenes. The plot centres on a temperamental Maria Callas (Fanny Ardant) deciding, in the last year of her life, to make a film of Carmen, secretly lip-synching to a recording of her younger self. She then gets an attack of nerves, realises this is a deception and has the celluloid destroyed. Ardant is marvellous, with her sneers and glares. Callas’s real singing voice is used, karaokefashion. Made in 2002, this curiosity

Top: Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud in Home; left: Frenzy

insane asylum, the characters dangerous fantasists, suicide risks and sex perverts. (£18.49)

Frenzy (1972)

was scarcely seen. I am glad to have found it at last. Joan Plowright bumbles about as a journalist, but I can’t recall if she approves of or wants to expose the scam. (£9.86)

Home (1972) A straightforward recording of David Storey’s stage play, directed in 1972 by Lindsay Anderson, and starring John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, I wonder if this would possibly work with other, lesser actors? It is about absolutely nothing – characters killing time in a care home or a residential hotel, pottering about in the garden, talking about clouds and chrysanthemums. Then Mona Washbourne and Dandy Nichols come on, to share the table and wrought-iron chairs in the gazebo.

Polite bickering ensues. There are paper leaves underfoot, the atmosphere autumnal. It turns out that all along we have been in an

Hitchcock’s London film, made on location (largely) in Covent Garden, when it was still a fruit and vegetable market. Barry Foster is well-cast as a smiling serial-killer, whose strangled victims are hidden in a potato lorry.

Jon Finch is the man who is framed.

Bernard Cribbens is the sneering pub landlord, Alec McCowen the policeman and Vivien Merchant his wife, serving terrible gourmet meals.

As always with Hitchcock, there is an air of black comedy – but the murders and rapes are graphic. ‘Lovely!

Lovely!’ grunts Foster, as he throttles Barbara Leigh-Hunt, the camera closing in on the saliva glistening on her tongue. One wonders if Foster was deliberately meant to sound like the cackling Sid James? (£17.52)

Peter the Great (1986)

Very lavish and epic, with people like Laurence Olivier and Trevor Howard in walk-on roles, this 350-minute mini-series won Emmy Awards in 1986, before disappearing. Maximilian Schell is the tsar who tours Europe to glean ideas, his ambition being to push and shove Russia out of its medieval past and into the modern world – well, the 18th-century world, of tricorn hats, cannons and Vanessa Redgrave. (£26.99) All from Amazon - prices fluctuate The Oldie Christmas Gift Guide 2021 21

Get your motor running

Petrolhead’s paradise: Brooklands

A century ago, Brooklands, just outside Weybridge, Surrey, was the Ascot of motor-racing. The world’s first purpose-built motor-racing circuit opened in 1907. Nowadays, Brooklands – which closed as a race track to convert to an aircraft factory during the Second World War – is a museum. While you’re there, visit the London Bus Museum, tour Concorde and learn all about the British Grand Prix, before sitting down for a scrumptious lunch.

HOW TO ORDER: An individual membership, which gives free entry to the museum for a year, as well as a bi-monthly magazine, costs from £45, and a double from £68. brooklandsmuseum.com

Idle away the hours

‘I love to loaf, loud and long and clear… I love to loaf, it’s getting worse ev’ry year…’ With apologies to the cast of Mary Poppins, this could be the theme tune of Tom Hodgkinson’s The Idler magazine, which was launched in 1993, the name deriving from a collection of essays by Dr Johnson. Published bi-monthly, The Idler promotes the art of loafing, making idling around an art form.

HOW TO ORDER: A year’s subscription costs £39.95 by direct debit. As they say, ‘We want you to slow down, have fun and live well!’

It’s hard to argue with that. idler.co.uk

Cook on the wild side

Imagine waking up of a morning to find a tempting box of exotic meat on your doorstep. Dream no more: Oslinc, a family-run ostrich farm in Lincolnshire, is here. This is no ordinary meat box. Ostrich is one of the more familiar meats on Oslinc’s menu – try out their kangaroo, crocodile, zebra and buffalo selections too, in the form of sausages, meatballs, mince, burgers, fillets and steaks.

HOW TO ORDER: Gift packs are popular, and rightly so: Oslinc’s seasonal selection of four meats across five different cuts makes for a

Join the club

Gifts that last a year,

by ELEANOR DOUGHTY

tasty menu, and an economical one, too, at £29.95. oslinc.co.uk

Baking inspiration

Ahh, that’s the smell of freshlybaked bread. And yes, it’s the same one as you baked last week. Looking to be freshly inspired by the oven?

Enter BakedIn, a baking subscription box with a new recipe every month, where the dry ingredients are sent already weighed out for you to bake up a storm.

Choose from a baking subscription, where past recipes include lemon and blueberry biscotti, raspberry ripple cake and mocha Swiss roll – or a bread baking subscription, to whip up a perfect loaf.

HOW TO ORDER: Subscriptions start at £30, for three months, and junior boxes, for those aged 5-11, make a lovely gift for little ones. bakedin.co.uk

Make arrangements

In certain places, if you look carefully on a weekday morning, you might spot a curious little man on a bicycle with a box of flowers on the front. The chances are that he works for Freddie Garland, founder of Freddie’s Flowers, the smartest flower-delivery service around.

Seasonal flowers arrive nationwide in cardboard boxes, complete with a handy guide to arranging.

HOW TO ORDER: Send a one-off box to your green-fingered friends for £28, or send them regularly – weekly, fortnightly or monthly – starting from £75 for a box a month for three months. freddiesflowers.com

For bookworms

Few gifts are better than a good book. There are countless book subscription services but, for the eco-friendly bookworm, Hand Me Down Book Club has come up with something a bit different: a preloved book subscription, so you can do your bit for the planet as well as enjoy a good read. Books come in perfectly readable condition: as they say, ‘we would never send out anything that is anything less than what we’d be happy with ourselves.’

Choose from five genres (plus two more for younger readers), or choose to be surprised with up to six books each month.

HOW TO ORDER: Subscriptions for two books a month start from £9.99. hmdbookclub.co.uk

Heritage-lovers. rejoice!

Abbotsford House, Melrose

You ’ve spent a lifetime traipsing around National Trust properties, but the Trust’s collection only scratches the surface. Historic Houses (formerly the Historic Houses Association) has 1,500 privately-owned country houses of varying sizes, over 300 of which are open to the public.

HOW TO ORDER: Individual memberships cost £56, and doubles £89 for a year for free entry to hundreds of country piles. From the Duke of Argyll’s fairytale Inveraray Castle off Loch Fyne, to the rockpalace Knebworth in Hertfordshire, Historic Houses has it all. historichouses.org

Step out in style

Know a sock-lover? Send a sock subscription for Christmas and your chosen recipient can receive up to three box-fresh pairs a month.

There’s a sock in every colour, style, and size, too, from welly-boot socks to trainer socks.

HOW TO ORDER: Subscriptions start from £10 a month for one pair.

When your sock drawer gets full, you can easily pause your subscription, and pick it back up again when your favourite pair is looking tired.

londonsockcompany.com The Oldie Christmas gift Gift guide Guide2021 202123 23

Sweet honey boxes

Sweeten the merry yuletide with an aromatic honey-tasting box from London bee-keepers Bermondsey Street Bees.

Founder Dale Gibson keeps beehives on his roof and is a strong advocate of bee-keeping as a way of ensuring there are enough pollinators. The honeys – their own and from across England – are named-variety, artisanal, raw honeys that have their own distinctive flavours. Perfect for anyone who hasn’t grown out of Winnie-thePooh, and probably never will.

HOW TO ORDER: Find an exclusive Oldie offer at provenancehub.com/theoldie £40 (free postage in the UK, excluding Northern Ireland) for three 150g jars of two different country honeys and one London honey, an olive-wood honey-dipper and Hattie Ellis’s award-winning Spoonfuls of Honey.

Offer ends 19 Dec provenancehub. com/producer/bermondsey-streetbees Tel.0203 920 7800

Welsh roses

Sprinkle a little summer sunshine on the Christmas trifle with artisan distillers Desdemona and Denise’s Welsh rosewater. It’s edible (of course) but also suitable for spritzing over your face when you’re hot and sweaty in the kitchen. The flower is Rosa damascena, the perfume-rose, and the roses must be gathered before the sun rises and burns off the oils. The whole flower-heads are then infused in Welsh spring-water and distilled in a copper still housed in a 17th-century barn, producing a fragrance that is startlingly fresh.

HOW TO ORDER: £21 plus p&p each 100ml gift-packaged Welsh Rosa Damascena comes with a copy their recipe book, offer ends 17 Dec petalsofthevalley.co.uk Tel.01873 856201

Flour power

Anyone gripped by sourdough-fever in lockdown needs to take the next step with a Mockmill grain-mill from Suffolk-based pulse-and-grain

Edible presents Comestibles that come to you, by ELISABETH LUARD

specialists Hodmedod. The difference in flavour, fragrance and food-value from freshly-milled grains explains itself at first sniff. Since the Mockmill range comes from Germany (delivery takes 7-10 days), make sure you don’t miss out. All you need to do now is rescue that gloopy jar of fizzy starter from the back of the fridge, roll up your sleeves and get kneading.

HOW TO ORDER: £229 for an entry-level Mockmill, plus a voucher for a starter-pack of grains. Go to hodmemdods.co.uk/oldie and also receive Christine Macfadden’s comprehensive tome, Flour, all bundled up in one generous package at £249 inc. UK delivery hodmedods. co.uk Tel.01986 467567

Chocoholic fix

Christmas needs chocolate like Santa needs reindeer and birds need nests.

Feather your own with exquisite, little chocolate, wild birds’ eggs in beautifully painted shells from master-chocolatier Chantal Coady, who started Rococo. Chantal has added them to her new enterprise: rare chocolates direct from farmer to customer. Jumble up the eggs in a bowl, don’t tell anyone they’re chocolate (the shells are very realistic) and see if anyone can guess which one is which.

HOW TO ORDER: £6.95-12.50 plus p&p. They have created a dedicated Oldie page: chocolatedetective.co.uk/ product/oldie-birds-eggs, where you can choose any combination of birds eggs and bars; Use the discount code: Oldie2040 which sets the 20 % discount for orders over £40. Offer

ends 31 Dec, subject to availability chocolatedetective.co.uk Tel.03450 170858

Easy cheesy

Order the Oldie Christmas Special cheese-board-in-a-box from Wendover’s No2 Pound Street, prize-winning affineurs – the folk who bring young cheeses to perfect maturity – who specialise in British artisan cheeses, of which the national choice now runs to over a thousand.

HOW TO ORDER: £40 inc. mainland UK delivery for 1 rind-washed cheese, 1 goats cheese, 1 blue cheese, 1 cheddar, 1 box of crackers and 1 pot of chutney. Email subject heading Oldie Christmas Special to shop@2poundstreet.com, offer ends 12 Dec . www.2poundstreet.com Tel.01296 585 022

Fish food

Order a whole smoked eel – bronzed, beautiful and just a touch barbaric – from Lambton and Jackson. You could order it ready-filleted, but the preparation is easy: start stripping off the skin from the head downwards – it comes off like an Edwardian lady’s kid-glove – then carefully lift the fillets from the bone. If you prefer salmon (or they’ve run out of eel), indulge in their award-winning smoked salmon. Their eel is from Devon, their salmon from the Shetlands and smoked in small batches over 24 hours or longer. Serve either (or both) for the Fasting Supper of the Eve with a big plate of plaincooked winter vegetables and an aioli, as they do in Provence.

HOW TO ORDER: £45 + £5.50 p& p, weight around 750g for a whole smoked eel, while supplies last. Oldies get a 10% discount on orders of any of the following award-winning smoked salmons Maldon Cure, Maldon Deep or Juniper. Use code: Oldie10 at check-out. Offer ends 22 Dec lambtonandjackson.co.uk Tel.01621 853 710

Shropshire charcuterie

British charcuterie – salt-cured, air-dried hams and sausages – is now The Oldie Christmas Gift Guide 2021 25

firmly settled into the national larder.

Serve prosciutto, coppa, pancetta, salami and bresaola, ready-sliced from award-winning Wenlock Edge Farm in Shropshire with the mulled cider (cinnamon, cloves, sugar). No need to worry about pre-dinner nibbles with drinks, or what to serve as a starter for the Christmas meal, or what would work with reheated roast potatoes and sautéed sprouts.

HOW TO ORDER: £25 plus p&p for the Wenlock Edge Farm salami selection (one each of Pork, garlic & fennel salami, Pork, garlic & chilli salami and Hunters salami) and they will include an antipasta board for two. Mention OLDIE OFFER in the comments box at check-out. wenlockedgefarm.co.uk Tel.01694 771 893.

Organic roots

Play it deliciously safe with the vegetarian in your life with a special

HOW TO ORDER: £20.55 inc. delivery for a large seasonal veg box riverford.co.uk Tel.01803 227227

Vital reading

delivery of enough winter roots and greens to carry you through the holiday from Riverford Organics.

There’s a very noticeable difference in taste between bagged-up supermarket stuff and a vegetable that’s direct from farm to plate. Roast a creamy-curded cauliflower as the veggie centrepiece of the Christmas feast: bring to the boil first in salted water and drain thoroughly (essential, whatever anyone says), rub with olive oil and set it to roast patiently with your favourite flavourings.

Send your best foodie buddy a subscription to Vittles, a UK-based newsletter publishing serious, in-depth articles. Post-pandemic editorial attention is focused on coping with climate change, how to navigate shortages, regular updates on restaurants, community projects, fundraisers and other forms of local activism. All this plus regular supplies of bright and breezy chefs’ recipes, cookable by the most cack-handed newbie – yes indeed! The newsletter is actually free to everyone who signs up, but a subscription ensures that contributors receive a decent fee for their time and knowledge – unusual in these times of literary belt-tightening.

HOW TO ORDER: vittles.substack.com

On the first day of Partridges… by JOHN SHEPHERD Partridges, the London food shop, opened in 1972 with the purpose of offering ‘good things for the larder’.

As we approach our golden anniversary, we celebrate our customers, some of whom are very famous indeed.

1 Honorary Member of Staff Dirk Bogarde developed a great rapport with some of our staff and mentioned them in his book, A Short Walk from Harrods. He joined us at one farewell party and helped with our Christmas Party. We were proud to make him our only Honorary Member of Staff.

2 James Bonds: Sean and Roger Sir Sean had an affinity with our delicatessen chef Louis Ghibaut who hailed from the same area in France as Sir Sean’s second wife, Micheline.

6 Academy Award Winners

12 Members of Parliament

Lauren Bacall, Faye Dunaway, Alec Guinness, Michael Caine, Dustin Hoffman, Antonio Banderas. We were pleased to count Luise Rainer, the first-ever Academy Award winner in 1936, and then again in 1937.

My brother, Sir Richard Shepherd, was an MP for 36 years. Many of his colleagues and several Ministers from both sides of the House visited us. I suggested we install a division bell so that in the evenings members could dash back to the House to vote.

7 Knights of the Realm Too many to mention. This is Chelsea after all.

8 From the Royal Household Team We have supplied the Royal Household for 30 years and been Grocer to HM Queen Elizabeth personally for 25 years.

9 Ambassadors to the Court of St James

Lord Chamberlain’s Rules for discretion apply here.

When we organised the Coronation Festival (2013), we found that many ambassadors were regulars. The Italian Ambassador was particularly keen on Chocolate Bath Olivers.

4 The Royal Family

10 Lords-a-Leaping

Ditto on this one.

Lords, and Ladies! See 7 above

5 Football managers

11 Royal Warrant Holders

Fabio Capello and Roy Hodgson (England), José Mourinho and Ruud Gullit (Chelsea) and Martin O’Neill (Republic of Ireland).

We held a party when I was President of the Royal Warrant Holders Association with at least 100 Royal Warrant Holding attendees.

3 Ex-Heads of State

26 The Oldie Christmas Gift Guide 2021

Partridges, celebrating its 50th Christmas, has created this ‘Golden Hamper’ for Oldie readers, including a bottle of Bottega Il Vino Poeti Gold Prosecco (75cl), a bottle of Moet & Chandon Brut Champagne (375ml), a jar of Partridges’ own mixed nuts (75g), a box of Charbonnel & Walker Chocolate Orange Thins (195g) and a jar of Brezzo Alpine Flowers Honey (400g) with dipper, all packed inside a Partridges festive red hamper box.

HOW TO ORDER: Exclusive Oldie price of £109 inc. mainland UK delivery.

Use discount code: GH1 at checkout partridges.co.uk Tel.0207 730 0651

British bubbles BILL KNOTT on the joys of domestic sparkling wine Oh, how I have missed this, I thought, as I gazed across a vineyard planted with Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. It was bathed in a warm evening glow, I had a glass of fizz in one hand, some fine charcuterie in the other, and all was right with the world.

I was not, however, surveying the Côte des Blancs or the Montagne de Reims. I was about 300 miles north-west of Champagne, a short drive from Arundel in West Sussex, at a dinner to celebrate English wine.

The vineyard is in the grounds of The Pig in the South Downs, which opened in late summer, and the charcuterie was described – more patriotically – as ‘Piggy Bits’.

The Pig has long championed local food on its ‘25-mile Menu’; more recently, group sommelier Luke Harbor told me, they have done the same with English wine. They were pouring Nyetimber instead of Champagne back in 2014, then switched to Hambledon Classic Cuvée (widely available, and a great introduction to the joys of English fizz: around £30) and now, as vineyards have mushroomed all over the south of England, more local offerings are poured at each hotel.

Kent, for example, is rapidly becoming the Wine Garden of England - names to try include Simpsons Wine Estate, Hush Heath, Chapel Down and Biddenden - while Hampshire, Sussex, Dorset, Cornwall and Somerset all have notable producers, too. There are a few in Wales and a handful as far north as York. Should you want to find one near you, winecellardoor.co.uk has a useful map of more than 200 vineyards that welcome visitors.

English sparkling wine first flourished in the mid-1990s, when Stuart and Sandy Moss, a wealthy American couple with a passion for sparkling wine, released their first vintage of Nyetimber, despite the man from the Ministry of Agriculture telling them to give up.

They ignored him and - despite the predations of the Great Storm of 1987 that memorably left Sevenoaks, 40 miles away, with only one oak planted the first vineyard in England dedicated solely to the three major Champagne grape varieties. They also built a small, modern winery, 28 The Oldie Christmas Gift Guide 2021

Bottoms up!

releasing their 1992 vintage in 1997 to a fanfare of praise. Its quality confounded both the critics and a sceptical wine trade, and won a hatful of prizes.

Before then, English wine had largely been made on a small scale by amateurs and hobbyists. On the back of Nyetimber’s startling success, English sparkling wine started to attract serious investment, turning a cottage industry into a modern, high-tech, multi-million pound

The royals started pouring English fizz, not Champagne, at official dinners business. The royals started pouring English fizz, not Champagne, at official dinners, and wines from a whole clutch of English vineyards started to win awards at prestigious international wine competitions.

A few years ago, even Taittinger snapped up an old apple orchard in Kent and planted vines.

Sacrebleu and zut alors!

The most compelling reason to plant Champagne grapes in southern England was what lured the Mosses to their ancient estate in West Sussex: the soil.

The South Downs (and, for that matter, the White Cliffs of Dover) are part of the same belt On tap at the Pig

of chalk that runs through some of the best vineyards in Champagne.

‘Aha,’ said the French. ‘But terroir is not just about soil. It is also concerned with aspect and climate, and England is too far north.’

They had a point. Thanks to the Gulf Stream, winters in southern England are generally milder than in the more Continental-influenced Champagne region.

And summers are cooler, the sun is lower in the sky for most of the day, and grapes in poorer years will struggle to ripen. There is also the potential here for late frosts, catching vines when they are at their most vulnerable and – literally – nipping them in the bud.

Nevertheless, by using the most suitable clones of grape varieties, the right techniques to train vines and by employing modern methods in the cellar, the Mosses and other plucky English winemakers persevered, and (perhaps with some help from global warming) they have triumphed.

While English fizz will never match the scale of production that Champagne can boast, it has transformed itself from a wine enjoyed only by the most patriotic to a product that we all can be proud of, a wine to drink for its quality as well as its provenance.

It is, I think, the perfect tipple for the festive season and a more interesting gift than Champagne.

Recent bottles I have tried and enjoyed include Gusbourne’s Blanc de Blancs 2016, and Ridgeview’s Blanc de Noirs Limited Release 2014 (the Wine Society, £53 and £35, respectively thewinesociety.com). Do try the red fruit-scented Wiston Estate Rosé 2014 from the South Downs (Hawkins Bros, £38.50 hawkinsbros.co.uk).

Then there’s the multiple award-winning Chalklands Classic Cuvée 2018 from Simpsons Wine Estate (Roberson Wine, £28 robersonwine.com, or £168 for a case of six bottles simpsonswine.com).

Waitrose also stocks a commendably extensive selection of English fizz: 48 of them at last count.

Santé, or - as we say in England - cheers!

Bright lights, big gardens

Kew fireworks

The gardens at Kew are always magical, but the excitement goes up a few notches at Christmas with the advent of over-the-top illuminations.

After-dark attractions include trees lit up in stunning colours, brilliant reflected images in the waters, and a fantastic Palm House light show.

Festive treats will be on sale, and a certain Father Christmas is likely to put in an appearance.

4-10pm, 17 Nov-9 Jan; family ticket (2 adults + 2 children) £65 kew.org

Fairest panto of them all?

Pantomimes have become known for the bizarre exploitation of famous names (remember David Hasselhoff as Captain Hook?). But perhaps it’s no surprise to find veteran bad girl Lesley Joseph (man-eating Dorien from sitcom Birds of a Feather) starring as the Wicked Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at Bristol Hippodrome. It seems that when she looks in the mirror, she will be seeing good guy Rob Rinder of TV’s Judge Rinder.

Sensational special effects are promised but the prospect of Joseph facing the Judge should be the draw.

4 Dec-2 Jan; from £13 pp. atgtickets.com

Cold comfort

Frozen the Musical, with its melodramatic Snow Queen-esque tale of estranged sisters Elsa and Anna, is here at last and it’s definitely one for the kids.The Frozen movie phenomenon has driven little girls wild – so the prospect of seeing it as a live-action show at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane is beyond exciting. My Frozen live

Family fun

NIGEL SUMMERLEY finds the perfect way to fill the Christmas holidays with delights five-year-old grand-daughter, Tulip, gushes: “I like Frozen because of Elsa’s high heels! And I like everything about the way she dresses – and her beautiful plaits! I wish I could just be like her and go into the magical forest and be on a horse...” And so on... Basically, she can’t wait to see it. It’s a spectacular production by anyone’s standards, as packed with special effects as it is with high emotion. From £20 pp. frozenthemusical.co.uk

Even colder comfort

If you really want to get into the Frozen mood, go ice-skating at London’s Natural History Museum.

This is the last Christmas you’ll be able to, because there’s a plan to transform the space into a permanent wildlife garden. Fairy lights and frosty trees will add to the festive atmosphere. For grandparents who prefer just to watch, the museum’s Café Bar has a bird’s-eye view of the rink and is open to everyone, skating or not. 22 Oct-16 Jan. Closed 25 Dec; adults from £12.65, children from £8.80, family discounts.

rising and the only way you can all escape is to cooperate. Sounds kind of timely, doesn’t it? It’s not just totally topical; it’s also beautifully puttogether and designed so that each game can be different. It’s a great team-building exercise which should bring the family together – rather than lead to sulks.

Up to four players; £19.99; board-game.co.uk

Follow the Herd

You have neither the time nor money to head to the North Pole to meet Father Christmas and his reindeer?

How about Gloucestershire instead.

The Cotswold Reindeer Herd (plus Santa) will be receiving visitors young and old at Ampney Crucis, near Cirencester. Five years ago, this family-run business decided to add more Arctic reindeer to the two animals they already owned, and the arrival of more calves since then has helped create a large, permanent – and extremely cute – herd. This really could be a Christmas treat the kids, and you, will remember for ever. £15 pp; 20 November-31 December (closed Christmas Day and Boxing Day); 07977457724. cotswoldreindeerherd.co.uk

Michael Caine & Muppets

nhm.ac.uk

Kermit as Bob Cratchit

Brightonians will probably claim – understandably – that their ice rink, alongside the brilliantly illuminated and ever-exotic Royal Pavilion, is even more magical. On top of that the ice is said to be generated entirely by green energy.

30 Oct-9 Jan; £40 family ticket.

The Muppet Christmas Carol movie was the TV puppets’ finest hour – thanks to Michael Caine’s brilliant performance as Scrooge – and it’s now doing the rounds with a live orchestra.

With Kermit’s Bob Cratchit alongside Caine, it will grace the Royal Albert Hall on 11 December, but it’s also screened at Liverpool Empire (28 Nov), Bridgewater Hall, Manchester (29 Nov), Symphony Hall, Birmingham (30 Nov), SEC Armadillo, Glasgow (1 Dec), Usher Hall, Edinburgh (2 Dec) and Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham (14 Dec).

The Muppet Christmas Carol Live in Concert will be performed by the Novello Orchestra. Prices vary.

royalpavilionicerink.co.uk

Let’s go to treasure island

It’s best not to play Monopoly or Risk at Christmas, thus avoiding family fallouts.

Instead, try a game where you sink or swim together – like Forbidden Island. The waves are

royalalberthall.com The Oldie Christmas gift Gift guide Guide2021 202131 31

Where classical recordings are concerned, 2020 and 2021 stand every chance of being remembered much as the 1968 and 1969 Bordeaux vintages were. With despair.

The blunder of the year must be Deutsche Grammophon’s ill-fated decision to press ahead with recording the five Beethoven Piano Concertos with Krystian Zimerman and a ‘socially distanced’ London Symphony Orchestra. ‘It was a bit like sending smoke signals across the mountains,’ said conductor Simon Rattle. And so it sounds.

Mozart in Iceland: Víkingur Ólafsson

Still, all has not been lost. Limited communication between soloist and orchestra might, for other reasons, have been a feature of Icelandic prodigy Víkingur Ólafsson’s Proms debut. His solo recitals, however, remain something other. His latest anthology Mozart & Contemporaries (Deutsche Grammophon 4860525 £12.75 prestomusic.com) is very fine, with music by Galuppi, CPE Bach, Haydn, and Cimarosa all getting red-carpet treatment.

The year’s most remarkable record must be Proust, Le Concert Retrouvé (Harmonia Mundi HMM902508 £9.56 prestomusic.com), a recreation of the private concert hosted by Marcel Proust at the Ritz in Paris in 1907 in honour of his friend, Gaston

Proustian: Gabriel Fauré 32 The Oldie Christmas Gift Guide 2021

Rare classics Classical music picks

by RICHARD OSBORNE Calmette, the controversial editor of Le Figaro. The choice of music, from a pièce de clavecin by Couperin to Liszt’s transcription of the Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan, provides a remarkable insight in the mind of this most fastidious, yet at the same time most impassioned, of music lovers. Fauré’s first Violin Sonata sits at the heart of the programme, a work Proust describes in Sodome et Gomorrhe as ‘inquiet, tourmenté, schumannesque’.

Fauré was unable to attend the recital but Proust’s friend and former lover Reynaldo Hahn, whose music opened and closed the evening, did.

Violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte and pianist Tanguy de Williencourt – whose very names have a Proustian ring – recreate this most intriguing and therapeutic of programmes as though they’d been there.

Francophile music-lovers, for whom Hahn’s Ciboulette and André Messager’s Véronique are priceless late additions to the French tradition of opéra comique, will be charmed by Messager’s 1926 musical comedy Passionnément (Bru Zane, BZ1044 £26.35 prestomusic.com).

As with all releases from this super-civlised Venice-based label, the disc comes as part of an elegantly produced and richly informative 200-page hardback book, complete with French and English texts. The texts are crucial here, since they include the spoken interludes (not included on the CD) of this somewhat Wodehousian tale of a philistine American millionaire’s attempt to rip off a cash-strapped young Frenchman whilst trying to protect both himself and his glamorous actress wife from all things French.

The French pride themselves on their mastery of the clandestine affair, though there’s quite a lot of that, more earthily expressed, in British folksong – The Foggy, Foggy Dew, for example, made famous in a setting of incomparable slyness and charm by Benjamin Britten. We still don’t know precisely how many Britten folk-song

settings there are, but the 47 included,

by English tenor Mark Milhofer and Italian pianist Marco Scolastra in Britten: Complete Folk Songs (Brilliant Classics 2CD 96009 £9.25 prestomusic.com), seem near enough. This delightful pair of discs is notable as much for Milhofer’s ripe tone and exemplary diction as for the sense of rural theatre the performances generate, something Britten himself clearly relished.

The Britten reminds me of two fascinating but little-known English operas about which I wrote in these pages in June: John Eccles: Semele, libretto by William Congreve (Academy of Ancient Music 2CD AMM012 £32.50 prestomusic.com) and Stephen Dodgson’s Margaret Catchpole: Two Worlds Apart (Naxos 3CD 8660459-61 £19.99 naxosdirect.co.uk). To which might be added a superb documentary and accompanying set of CDs about the 2016 rebuilding of the organ of

Folk musician: Benjamin Britten

King’s College, Cambridge, which I review this month, A Legend Reborn: the Voice of King’s, Fuge State Films 2DVD + 2CD FSFDVD013 £38.50 prestomusic.com).

Earlier this autumn, the fabulous Berlin-born Viennese soprano Gundula Janowitz was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by Gramophone. The award sent me back to her role in actor-director Otto Schenk’s classic 1972 staging of Vienna’s favourite New Year revel, Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus (Deutsche Grammophon DVD 0734371 £15.50 prestomusic.com).

Conducted by Karl Böhm with a peerless all-Viennese cast, the last-act appearance of Schenk himself (now 91 and still with us) as Frosch the inebriated jailer is alone worth the price of the disc.

Back in the 70s, when I worked in a record shop, the week leading up to Christmas was only our second busiest of the year. The busiest was was the seven-day period which followed Christmas, when everyone came in to spend their record tokens.

Much has been lost in the shift from the long playing record to the download to the stream. There’s nothing the music business mourns more than the money it used to make out of the record token market. ‘This Christmas, give the gift of music,’ as an old ad campaign used to put it.

You can still do that. It’s still a good idea to give a festive CD as a

King of Christmas: Nat King Cole

Christmas present. It’s like turning up at a party with a chilled bottle of champagne. None but a churl turns that sort of thing away.

The music business recognises this, which is why they keep putting Christmas CDs out. There will be no shortage of collections of old favourites done by talent-show winners such as Kelly Clarkson whose When Christmas Comes Around (Atlantic £11.99 hmv.com) – her second collection of frosted favourites – and firm-jawed country heartthrobs with the likes Brett Young And Friends Doing The Christmas Classics (Big Machine £10.99 hmv. com). You don’t have to be a stick in the mud to realise that, when it comes to the cardies-andcomfort Christmas album, the last word was spoken a long time ago. The Christmas Song (UMC £8.12 amazon. co.uk) by Nat King Cole, A Charlie Brown Christmas (Concord £8.25 amazon.co.uk) by the Vince Guaraldi Trio and A Christmas Gift For You From 34 The Oldie Christmas Gift Guide 2021

The gift of music Christmas pop CDs

by DAVID HEPWORTH Phil Spector (Philles £2.99 amazon. co.uk) still touch the parts that others can’t reach, no matter how many years have gone by.

When we’re giving the gift of music, we are not simply seeking to please the recipient. We’re often trying to say something about ourselves. That’s why people of true taste and discernment may also arrive at the front door bearing a chocolate log and Tinsel and Lights (Buzzin’ Fly currently only available as an MP3 download or vinyl LP), the carefully secular but still seasonal 2012 set by Tracey Thorn, A Holly Dolly Christmas (Butterfly £12.99 hmv. com) by that infallible crowd-pleaser Dolly Parton or even The New Possibility (Takoma £11.40 amazon. co.uk), a record of Christmas tunes played on the acoustic guitar by the late John Fahey, which has accompanied the wrapping of presents consistently since 1968.

2021 has been an unusual year for album releases. The artists who were prevented from touring to support an album tended to hold their records back. Elton John took advantage of the time he was confined to barracks to record The Lockdown Sessions (EMI £10.99 hmv.com), in which he collaborated – in some cases via Zoom – with the likes of Dua Lipa and Gorillaz.

Bruce Springsteen has finally agreed the release of The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts (Columbia £22.99 hmv.com) which features him and the classic line-up of the E Street Band playing Madison Square Garden in the last days before he became an international superstar. No human being ever exerted himself on a stage more than he did at the time.

Very few new releases Survivor: Marianne Faithfull

will create as much of a stir as The Beatles’ Let It Be (Apple £7.99 hmv. com), which is getting another airing thanks to Peter Jackson’s epic movie re-working of the original footage shot back in 1969. As is the custom nowadays, you can spend anything up to £130 on your version, depending upon whether you’re satisfied with the CD or would prefer the full-blown 180 gram half-speed mastered (search me) version with the hard back booklet. There’s a rich irony in all this fuss being made of the reissue of a record which was supposed to mark the end of the fuss about the Beatles.

If you want to give a record which you might like to listen to yourself, allow me to recommend Heart & Soul (EMI £8.99 amazon.co.uk) by Eric Church, who came up with the original idea of making a triple album where you wrote the song in the morning and recorded it in the evening of the same day, thereby preserving the freshness that often gets lost in the post-production period. Church tends to get marketed as a country act but his appeal is a lot broader. This would appeal to anyone who ever bought a Bob Seger or

Hard-working Boss: Bruce Springsteen

Stones record and he also does a mean Elvis impression. As one of his songs puts it, Put That In Your Country Song.

Finally if you’re going anywhere between Christmas and New Year and you want to prove how soulful you are, arrive shyly clutching a copy of She Walks In Beauty (BMG £7.99 hmv.com) by Marianne Faithfull with Warren Ellis. This is a collection of her readings of her favourite works of the Romantic Poets set to ethereal music provided by one of Nick Cave’s key men. You don’t have to know that she recorded this after almost dying from COVID to appreciate its bruised beauty. Hand it over with the words ‘I thought you might be the kind of person who would appreciate this’ and anyone would be flattered.

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Christmas Quiz

A luxury Partridges Golden Oldie 50th Anniversary Hamper goes to the winner of our prize quiz. By MARCUS BERKMANN 1 Which female newsreader and TV presenter was the first winner of Strictly Come Dancing, back in 2004?

2 Marlboro

cigarettes get their name from Great Marlborough Street in London’s West End (the road on which Liberty’s can be found) because that’s where they were first produced. True or false?

3 Which British newspaper, in 1900, became the first anywhere in the world to be able to boast a circulation of one million? It’s still with us.

4 ‘All my life I’ve been waiting for

someone, and when I finally find her, she’s a fish.’ A memorable line from which 1984 film?

1 1 Which London

16 What is the Irish name for a

12 Which fictional detective had a servant called Magersfontein Lugg and was portrayed

by Peter Davison in two BBC series of 1989 and 1990?

17 Which vitamin is necessary for

palace is the monarch’s official home?

13 Which (possibly mythical) figure was played on-screen by Mel Ferrer in 1953, Nigel Terry in 1981, Sean Connery in 1995, Richard Harris in 1967, Clive Owen in 2004 and, perhaps best of all, Graham Chapman in 1975?

8 Who, after 1960, only took

showers if she had no alternative? If she did have to take one, she left the shower door open, together with the door to the bathroom, having first locked all other doors and windows.

5 Who kept a diagram of the London Underground under his pillow every night, just in case he should awake having solved one of the structural problems that bedevilled him... such as where exactly to put Mornington Crescent?

cudgel traditionally made from the wood of the blackthorn bush? the proper clotting of blood?

18 Lord Lucan is now officially

dead, 47 years after his disappearance. In his Times obituary, it was revealed that not only was he a classmate of one of the Beyond The Fringe quartet, but that they were good friends ‘who would sneak off to the West End to watch films’. Who?

19 In 1915, what did Albert Einstein introduce as the fourth dimension in his theory of special relativity?

20 An autopsy, carried

out by the Russians in 1945 and made public in 1968, revealed that this item was missing, and a further autopsy, carried out in 1972 by a team from the University of California, confirmed it. What item was this?

14 Which are there more of in the Oxford English Dictionary: words ending in -ology, or words ending in -ography?

6 In English, only one day of the week is named after a Roman god.

Which one?

7 What did Jorge Mario Bergoglio become on March 13th, 2013?

9 Which English Romantic poet’s mother, sister and lover were all called Fanny?

10 Who did Richard III dismiss as ‘an unknown Welshman’?

38 The Oldie Christmas Gift Guide 2021

15 Who was the first person to be buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey? It was in the year 1400, although it was bureaucratic service rather than poetic achievement that earned him his place there.

A fabulous Partridges Golden Oldie 50th Anniversary Christmas Hamper (see p. 26 for more details or visit www. partridges.co.uk – exclusive Oldie price £109) is the prize for the first set of correct answers drawn out of a hat. Email your entry to: comps@theoldie.co. uk, subject heading Xmas Gift Quiz Prize Draw. Or post to Xmas Gift Prize Draw at the Oldie address. Closing date: 26th November 2021