September 2022 | £4.95 £3.96 to subscribers | www.theoldie.co.uk | Issue 417 EARL SPENCER ON CHARLES I’S KILLERS THE KILLENMARYBYBRA Fall of the Ottoman Empire – Philip Mansel The art of publishing – Carmen Callil RIP Raymond Briggs – Harry Mount A N Wilson on British tourists ‘You are as old as you feel’ – HM the Queen Why do we go on holiday?
The Oldie September 2022 3 Features 11 When has a dog had its day? Ysenda Maxtone Graham 15 A picture of dear Raymond Briggs Harry Mount 16 End of the Ottoman Empire Philip Mansel 18 The final countdown to death Justine Hardy 20 Mothering middle-aged men Liz Hodgkinson 22 Playing cricket with Pinter Shomit Dutta 24 The Civil War tabloid hack Nigel Hastilow 26 Peter O’Toole, my teacher Annabel Leventon 31 The seven ages of woman Elinor Goodman 32 Stop criticising yourself Julia Bueno 36 England killed Van Dyck James Mulraine Regulars 5 The Old Un’s Notes 9 Gyles Brandreth’s Diary 10 Grumpy Oldie Man Matthew Norman 13 Olden Life: What was a party line? Imogen Thomas 13 Modern Life: What is skimpflation? Richard Godwin 28 Mary Killen’s Fashion Tips 35 Small World Jem Clarke 38 London Mouse Tom Hodgkinson 39 Brighton Mouse Nicholas Lezard 40 Postcards from the Edge Mary Kenny 41 School Days Sophia Waugh 41 Quite Interesting Things about ... Uttar Pradesh John Lloyd 42 God Sister Teresa 42 Memorial Service: Lord Remnant James Hughes-Onslow 43 The Doctor’s Surgery Theodore Dalrymple 44 Readers’ Letters 46 I Once Met… Harrison Ford Bruce Beresford 46 Memory Lane Ken Sheehan 59 Media Matters Stephen Glover 60 History David Horspool 63 Words and Stuff Johnny Grimond 63 Rant: Men’s hats Jean Buchanan 89 Crossword 91 Bridge Andrew Robson 91 Competition Tessa Castro 98 Ask Virginia Ironside Books 48 Tourists: How the British Went Abroad to Find Themselves, by Lucy Lethbridge A N Wilson 51 Act of Oblivion, by Robert Harris Charles Spencer 51 Blurb Your Enthusiasm: An A-Z of Literary Persuasion, by Louise Willder Carmen Callil 53 And Finally: Matters of Life and Death, by Henry Marsh Theodore Dalrymple 54 The Chief: The Life of Lord Northcliffe, Britain’s Greatest Press Baron, by Andrew Roberts Peter McKay 57 Northumberland: A Guide, by Stephen Platten Lucinda Lambton Arts 64 Film: Eiffel Harry Mount 65 Theatre: South Pacific William Cook 65 Radio Valerie Grove 66 Television Frances Wilson 67 Music Richard Osborne Moray House, 23/31 Great Titchfield Street, London W1W www.theoldie.co.uk7PA Editor Harry Mount Sub-editor Penny Phillips Art editor Jonathan Anstee Supplements editor Liz Anderson Editorial assistant Donna Freed Publisher James Pembroke Patron saints Jeremy Lewis, Barry Cryer At large Richard Beatty Our Old Master David Kowitz 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 WestHaywards9-16RockwoodSubscriptions,House,PerrymountRoad,Heath,SussexRH163DH Oldie book orders ● Please email bookorders@theoldie.co.uk Advertising For display, contact: Paul Pryde on 020 3859 7095 or Rafe Thornhill on 020 3859 7093 For classified, contact: Jasper Gibbons 020 3859 7096 News-stand enquiries mark.jones@newstrademarketing.co.uk Front cover D'Hey /JJS/ Alamy 68 Golden Oldies Rachel Johnson 69 Exhibitions Huon Mallalieu Pursuits 71 Gardening David Wheeler 71 Kitchen Garden Simon Courtauld 72 Cookery Elisabeth Luard 72 Restaurants James Pembroke 73 Drink Bill Knott 74 Sport Jim White 74 Motoring Alan Judd 76 Digital Life Matthew Webster 76 Money Matters Margaret Dibben 79 Bird of the Month: Chough John McEwen Travel 80 Lindisfarne William Cook 82 Overlooked Britain: Postman’s Park in the City of London Lucinda Lambton 85 On the Road: Jacqueline Wilson Louise Flind 87 Taking a Walk: The Somerset Levels Patrick Barkham Reader Offers Trip to Crete with Rick Stroud p43 Literary Lunch p77 ABC circulation figure January-June 2021: 49,181 Emailqueries?Subshelp@subscribe.theoldie.co.uk Raymond Briggs remembered page 15 Acting with Peter O’Toole page 26 Notes from the Holy Island page 80 subscribewhenSaveyou–andgettwofreebooksSeepage11
Carmen Callil (p51) is one of the world’s leading publishers. She founded Virago Press 50 years ago. She is the author of Oh Happy Day and Bad Faith: A Story of Family and Fatherland Frank with the BBC: Muir Tattyfilarious: Anne Dodd tickles Ken Dodd, Blackpool
The Old Un’s Notes Virgin publishedAntoniaAugust,machinerythat,reimbursement,receivedthemistakenlyfor‘WeoverdueaccountslateOld(AugustMatthewinsistenceMedia’sonpayingNormanbychequeissue)remindedtheUnofastorytoldbytheFrankMuir.WhenchasingtheBBCdepartmentforalong-payment,hewastold,regretwehavenomachineryexpeditingpayments.’Notlongafter,theBBCpaidhimtwiceforsamework.Whenhealetterseekingherepliedsadly,hehad‘noforpayingrefunds’.Heheardnothingmore.Tocommemorateher90thbirthdayon27ththehistorianLadyFraserhasprivatelyaversecollection,
Among this month’s contributors
Blackpool’s Grand Theatre, designed by Frank Matcham and opened in 1894, has just invited Sir Ken Dodd’s widow to unveil a new bust of herThehusband.bronze of Dodd with his tickling stick is by Graham Ibbeson, known as ‘the people’s sculptor’ because his pieces are actually recognisable and popular. The statue is a thank-you to Dodd for his efforts to save the Grand from demolition in the 1970s. The Grand publicised the statue by releasing ‘ten facts you might now know about Sir Ken TheseDodd’.included his recipe for the perfect jam butty: ‘Decrust two slices of bread and dip in a beaten mixture of egg and milk before frying in butter or margarine. Make a sandwich with a tablespoon of jam, then top with more jam and hand-whipped doubleBeforecream.’weare denounced by Sir Chris Whitty, let it be noted that Sir Ken Dodd lived to 90. Diet inventors Sylvester Graham, Herman Tarnower, Robert Atkins and William Hay died at 57, 69, 72 and 74 respectively.
.
One charming verse, When Mary Told Gabriel, imagines the Annunciation as told on social media. It includes these lines: When Mary read the news Sheonline,was rather surprised but it was fine Even if social media showed her Onlytum.–wasn’t an angel supposed to come?
Philip Mansel (p16) is Britain’s foremost expert on the Ottoman Empire. He is the author of Sultans in Splendour: The Last Years of the Ottoman World and Constantinople: City of the World’s Desire.
A N Wilson (p48), is one of Britain’s leading writers and journalists. He has written biographies of Tolstoy, Jesus, Betjeman and Hitler. His first memoir, Confessions: A Life of Failed Promises, is published on 1st September.
The Oldie September 2022 5
Earl Spencer (p51) wrote The White Ship; Prince Rupert: the Last Cavalier; and Killers of the King: The Men who Dared to Execute Charles I. He reviews Robert Harris’s novel about Charles I’s killers.
A Burst of Verse
‘Awfully sorry – I’m in the wrong cartoon’ Reg Curtis in Oosterbeek Cemetery with fallen friends, 2010 hospital
6 The Oldie September 2022 LAMBKATHRYN Lifeguards help man injured doing handstands Eastern Daily Press BMW stopped with ‘enough cigarettes to cater entire 1980s darts tournament’ East Anglian Daily Times £15storiesImportantyoumayhavemissedforpublishedcontributions NEXT ISSUE The October issue is on sale on 21st September 2022. FREE SAMPLE COPY If you have a friend who would like a free sample of The Oldie, tell them to call 0800 8565867. GET THE OLDIE APP Go to App Store or Google Play Store. Search for Oldie Magazine and then pay for app. OLDIE BOOKS The Very Best of The Oldie Cartoons, The Oldie Annual 2022 and other Oldie books are available at: corner/shoptheoldie.co.uk/readers-www.Freep&p. OLDIE NEWSLETTER Go to the Oldie website; put your email address in the red SIGN UP box. St Andrews didn’t just host the 150th Open Championship in July. It’s the home of beach cricket, too. Or, at least, Elie is – just down Scotland’s East Neuk of FifeYorkshiremancoast. and former banker Graham Bucknall is the captain, chairman, president and fixture secretary of the world’s only beach cricket club, with a full calendar of fixtures through the summer, tides permitting. Bucknall also owns the 17th-century seafront Ship Inn and restaurant. His is a unique club. Ropes of bladderwrack provide the boundary edge. Play can be stopped when a windsurfer passes behind the bowler’s arm. When it is windy, few LBWs are given –the soft cricket ball doesn’t reach the stumps. And everyone wants to field at mid-off or third man – so they can have a pee against theTheseawall.firstcompetitive beach cricket game at Elie was played in 1990. The pub lost by 366 runs. The traditional curtain-raiser to the offshore cricket season is a match against the University of St Andrews Seagulls XI –a team of undergraduates and graduates. The MCC also‘Grahamvisits. Bucknall is a natural beach cricketer,’ says a Ship Inn BCC insider. ‘He runs like a seagull and bats like a crab. He belongs on a beach. He’s been washed up for years.’There was a contrast of dress codes when Conservative MPs voted in their leadership election on the ‘hottest day in history’. Many of the dressedParliamentariansmalewereasifforabarbecue, in shorts, open-collared shirts and even one OverseeingT-shirt.allthis was a female doorkeeper who, as per Westminster custom, was in a three-piece tailcoat built of heavy cotton. She stood at the door to Committee Room 14, swaying slightly but never relenting. Not a single MP asked if she was OK or if she might like to remove a layer. The same happened in the Commons chamber, where the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, allowed male MPs to attend jacketless, even though the room was air-conditioned. The doorkeepers (and indeed Sir Lindsay) remained fully garbed overwhelmingwhereencircled1stnights.heldnorthgrounddaysseizingwhichthemilesparachutelandsomeholdingchildren1945,CemeteryatArnhemtheandflowersDutchofNetherlandscommemorationSundaythroughout.18thSeptemberseestheannualintheoftheBattleArnhem.Hundredsof‘flowerchildren’layatthegravesofBritishAlliedmenkilledduringfamousbattlefortheBridgein1944.TheceremonyhastakenplacetheOosterbeekAirborneeachyearsincewhenoverathousandfirstappeared,flowersforthegraves.On17thSeptember1944,10,000menbegantobehindenemylinesbyandgliderninefromthebridgeacrossLowerRhineatArnhem,theyweretaskedwithandholdingfortwountilrelievedbyBritishforces.AsmallgroupreachedtheendofthebridgeanditforthreedaysandfourHowever,mostoftheAirborneDivisionwereinnearbyOosterbeek,theyfoughtagainstoddsfornine
receive fabric to make laundry bags Carmarthenshire Herald
Glangwili
American beauty: Lady Peel (1795-1859) by Thomas Lawrence days before just 3,000 survivors were ordered to withdraw. The remainder were killed, wounded, or experiences,HeinregularlyParachutebeinganniversary,willInevitably,captured.fewveteransreturnforthisyear’stheyoungestnow96.RegCurtisofthe1stBattalionattendeduntilhediedaged952016.ReglostalegatArnhem.wroteabookabouthis
Mealtime celebrates the meals at the Royal Hospital Chelsea: We are all daft old codgers with many ailments. Deafness, blood disorder, aches and the odd torn ligaments. It is not these that we complain avidly about. Because nobody listens when our ailments we flout.
The Memory Endures, bequeathing proceeds to the Parachute Regiment and Airborne Forces Charity to help soldiers facing similar circumstances today. The Reg Curtis Fund to Support Our Paras has been established in his memory. The Old Un is not generally in the dogeat-dog trade of criticising otherButpublications.onedoeswonder how Cambridge University’s termly alumni magazine, Cam, will fill its pages now that Stephen Toope has departed as Vice-Chancellor. After a tenure rather mottled by allegations of political correctness, Toope has returned to his native Canada a little earlier than expected. Cam was his great cheerleader. In the final three issues of his reign, there was a lengthy account of a lecture by Toope, a feature about his undergraduate bedroom and finally a three-page gusher about the great helmsman, headed ‘Leading from the Front’. Given that Toope was skedaddling for Canada, leaving Cam’s unfortunate editor to fend for herself, ‘Legging It for Home’ might have been a more appropriateAmongheadline.thestar guests at The Oldie’s 75thbirthday party for the Duchess of Cornwall in July was Chelsea Pensioner RoyAsPalmer.wellas being a distinguished veteran, Roy is also a poet. His poem
pictured), Sir Robert Peel, 3rd Bt (1822-95), was a heroic wastrel and avid gambler. As Chief Secretary to Ireland, according to Diana Cavendish, he ‘managed in his usual, tactless way to antagonise people with his contemptuous remarks’. In 1871, desperate for cash, he flogged his father’s pictures, including a Rubens. He proceeded to sell off 10,000 acres and much of the town of Tamworth, where, in 1834, his father issued his hallowed Tamworth Manifesto, on which the principles of modern Conservatism are based. As Cavendish delicately puts it, the Peel family motto – Industria – did not quite apply to this Robert Peel. His son, Sir Robert Peel, 4th Bt (1867-1925), wasn’t much better. Like his father, he was an obsessive gambler. He lost so much money that he sold off the lovely Thomas Lawrence portrait of his granny (the one pictured). In fact, the picture belonged not to him but to the trustees of the Peel estate. A judge ruled that the picture should be returned to the estate, but it was too late. The picture had been sold on – and later ended up in the collection of Henry Clay Frick, the great American steel and railway tycoon. The painting is today one of the stars of the Frick Collection in New York. Surely, if the Elgin Marbles return to Greece, the Peels should be able to get the picture of Granny Julia back?
‘I think it might be pointillism’
The Oldie September 2022 7 COLLECTIONFRICKTHE©
We put the world to rights with our senile chat About Royalty, politicians, sport and anything else such as that. How dignified of all those heroes not to exchange details of their ailments – the ‘organ recital’ that the Old Un is all too used to boring his pals with. If only the Tory Party could choose Robert Peel as their new leader. Not only did he found the police, but he also reinvented the Conservatives for the modern age. The only thing stopping him leading the party today is the awkward fact that he died 172 years ago. Still, you can read all about him in a new book, A Short History of the Peel Family, by Peel’s (Minister.distinguisheddescendantsDianagreat-granddaughtergreat-Cavendish.Sadly,notallPeel’swereasasthePrimeHissonbyJuliaPeel
As an agent, she had clients including Joan Collins and John Osborne and (her favourite, I think) Ben Travers who wrote the famous farces and also lived to a great age. (He could still stand on his head at 94. And did.) She produced four fine films, including, in 1988, Madame Sousatzka (starring Shirley MacLaine, Peggy Ashcroft and, incidentally, my wife and son in telling cameos) and, in 1994, Country Life, an Australian retelling of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, directed by her fellow Australian Michael Blakemore, now 94, and one of my all-time favourite films. (If you’ve not seen it, there’s yet another treat in store for you.)
Want to be good at sex? Lose a leg
The late Robin Dalton, 101, said one-legged men do it better ‘Life is a mirror,’ according to William Makepeace Thackeray. ‘If you frown at it, it frowns back; if you smile, it returns theWhengreeting.’Iam asked to name my favourite novel, I usually opt for Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. Or The Old Wives’ Tale by Arnold Bennett. Or The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope. Or anything by Elizabeth Taylor (not the actress – the novelist. If you’ve not tried her, you must. Start with At Bertram’s Hotel. You are in for a treat.) Thackeray did have not have an easy life (his wife was a troubled depressive) and did not help himself by eating and drinking far too much and not exercising at all. He was only 52 when he died, in 1863, much loved by his friends and his readers. Seven thousand admirers turned up for his funeral. They loved his novels. And his philosophy: ‘Good humour may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society.’
‘A good laugh is sunshine in a house,’ said Thackeray.
Gyles Brandreth’s memoir, Odd Boy Out, is out now (Penguin) The Oldie
September 2022 9
One leg over: Robin Dalton (1920-2022)
I have been thinking about Thackeray because I was asked to say a few words at a dinner at the Reform Club in Pall Mall this month. The evening was jointly hosted by the Thackeray Society and the Trollope Society, to mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of Trollope’s The Eustace Diamonds. That’s another one you have to discover if you don’t know it already. The treats are piling up. And you can get all these books for free by borrowing them from the public library. When did you last go to the library? Yes, I thought so. If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. And you’ll miss it when it’s gone. One of the others speaking was Sir John Major, Knight of the Garter, former Prime Minister and noted Trollopian. His speech was great fun but, chatting to him afterwards (in 1993, I was the most junior member of his government – literally, the most junior: there’s always someone at the bottom of the pile), I found him a bit glum about the current political scene. I said he should take comfort in our Victorian literary heroes and look on what’s happening now as one of their three-volume novels. We are only halfway through volume two in the current saga, I suggested. ‘It’ll all come right in the end,’ I said. He did not look entirely convinced. ‘Which of us is happy in this world?’ Thackeray asks at the end of Vanity Fair ‘Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?’Iknowsomebody who is – or was. My friend Robin Dalton, literary agent and film producer, died the other day in her 102nd year and was sending out optimistic, positive emails to the last. Australian by birth, she came to the UK after the war in pursuit of her English lover, David Mountbatten, the 3rd Marquess of Milford Haven – cousin and best man to the Duke of Edinburgh when he married our future Queen in 1947. Robin was already a divorcee in her early twenties, as well as an Aussie – so marrying a Mountbatten was never on the cards. He married someone else and so did she. She loved her second husband (the father of her children) and her third (Bill Fairchild, a scriptwriter, a lovely man whom I knew) and assorted others along the way.
I recall the dinner at our house when she and another guest fell to talking about their best-ever experience in bed.
Gyles Brandreth’s Diary
Robin Dalton was happy in this world and certainly gave the impression of having her desires fulfilled. When it came to the greats, she’d worked with them all (from Laurence Olivier downwards) and slept with quite a few of them, too.
According to both women (they were in complete accord on this), the ultimate lover was Alfred Caplin, better known as Al Capp, the American cartoonist who created the satirical comic strip Li’l Abner, syndicated around the world for more than 40 years. What was special about Al Capp? He had only one leg. (He lost the other when he was run down by a trolley car when he was nine.) According to Robin, ‘A mono-ped always makes the best lover. It’s well known.’ She called her last volume of memoirs, published when she was 95, One Leg Over. Of course she did.
‘God give me strength,’ he responded.
Again, he had a point. The thing about consulting a plumber, apart from the absurd call-out fee, is that he or she might well find a problem that would require a fortune to fix. And, as the Two days on, it had reached Shamrock. A day later, and it was Emerald
‘What are you suggesting?’
Grumpy Oldie Man
Why is my bath green with algae?
briefest glance at it will attest, this house is no home to any kind of fortune right‘Look,now.I take your point,’ I told my son. ‘No one in their right mind… All right,’ I amended when he snorted on hearing the phrase in the paternal context, ‘no one in any sort of mind wants green water. ‘But the water,’ I went on, ‘isn’t terribly green, is it. It’s only a tiny bit Itgreen.’wasat this point that I dug out the ancient colour chart, and filled a tumbler with tap ‘Look,water.it’sbarely even Turquoise,’ I reassured Louis. ‘If anything, it’s on the pale side of Eau de Nil.’
For the first time in too long, a paintmaker’s colour-code chart has enjoyed a perusal – though not for a reason you would cite among the moreThereobvious.arethose who inspect such documents with painting in mind. These people are plagued by ennui after the Duck Egg Blue in the kitchen has lost its initial capacity to generate raw excitement. It should be changed, they conclude after poring over the chart, to Pigeon Wing Grey. I have nothing against such folk. Quite the reverse – I salute anyone with pride in their home. But this is no place for the houseproud. Rendered dismal by years bereft of energy, love and funds, this residence could win World Heritage Site status as a global mecca for the house-ashamed. Until a while ago, I assumed that no symbolism could better bespeak the nebbish who has given up on life than the presence in the front garden of not one but two years’ worth of browned, pine-less Christmas trees. And then, on one of his charity visits from Dorset, my son posed a pertinent question. ‘Dad,’ Louis began, a hint of alarm in his voice as he emerged from a shower, ‘have you noticed that the water’sIndeedgreen?’Ihad. You need not live in Baker Street and inject yourself with a seven-per-cent-cocaine solution to notice that the liquid emerging from the taps has a verdant tinge. Rather than show due respect for his sire’s observational powers, however, the boy had more questions. ‘How long,’ he wondered, ‘has it been green?’ ‘Oh, I dunno – six or seven weeks.’ ‘Yup, yup, oh yup,’ he murmured, sardonically nodding his head in that traditional expression of filial disbelief. ‘Have you considered doing something about it?’
I’ll risk being poisoned rather than call the plumber matthew norman
‘I suggest waiting until it hits Fern, or even Moss, before calling a plumber.’
10 The Oldie September 2022
As it happened, I had. What I’d considered doing was ignoring it until either the water recovered its conventional hue (not sure what Farrow & Ball call that – Off-White Aqua Delight?) or I became seriously ill. Louis again seemed unimpressed, reasoning that (a) it was unlikely to revert to its normal shade without intervention and (b) attractive as the shade might be, it wasn’t worth dying for.
I congratulated him on a compelling argument, but said it felt rather too soon to seek professional help. ‘Oh Christ,’ he said, ‘it’s the endoscopy all over again.’ He was referring to my rejection of medical advice, for five years, from fear that a gastroscope would find something distasteful on the oesophagus.
There followed one of those highly technical debates – in this case, concerning the cause of the greenness –that yield very little, if anything, of value when conducted solely by JewishCouldgentlemen.theculprit, wondered one of us, be copper pipes? It could, posited the other, but then again it might be the How,boiler.mused one of us, could the boiler turn the water green? Beats me, unless the boiler’s taken to eating spinach, said the other, but who the hell can say? ‘I’ll tell you who can say,’ said Louis, his patience visibly waning. ‘A plumber.’
He shrugged despondently, and left theTworoom.days on, nimbly bypassing these intermediate shades, it had reached Shamrock. A day later, and it wasTheEmerald.plumber, having exonerated both pipes and boiler, diagnosed the cause after a jaunt to the roof. The storms of several months earlier had seen fit to remove the wooden block covering the water tank. The water was already teeming with algae, and the bleeders were multiplying exponentially in theBeforeheatwave.estimating what a carpenter would want to build and fit a new wooden cover, the plumber quoted his own fee to drain and clean the tank, and treat it with algae-busting chemicals. ‘And that would return the water to its natural colour?’ He said it would. ‘It’s a bit steep for me,’ I said, fetching the well-thumbed colour chart. ‘What would you want to get it back as far as Mint or Pistachio?’
Ysenda Maxtone Graham learnt ten valuable lessons when her terrier hit old age
N o one mentioned, when I acquired my first-ever puppy 14½ years ago – a blackand-tan Norfolk Terrier called Samphire, who’s still alive, though fast asleep – that a good four or five years of dog-ownership would be spent having an old dog. She did come with an instruction manual, but it didn’t mention anything about the later years. Old dogs are under-represented in promotional literature. Advertisers dare to portray grey-haired humans enjoying themselves on cruises, but they hide old, tired, arthritic, toothless, thickset dogs fromHereview.are the points I wish the instruction manual had included, to prepare me for the Old Dog years.
3) You will think about the dog afterlife a great deal. Round the table you’ll discuss whether dogs go to heaven, and someone will pipe up, ‘Well, if heaven doesn’t have dogs in it, I don’t even want to go there.’ If you’re Catholic, you might genuinely be worried that dogs don’t have souls – but do not fear. Pope Francis decreed in 2014 that dogs, ‘along with all of God’s creatures’, can indeed get to heaven. Catholic dogs might just have to go through purgatory first, to be cleansed of their sins.
9) It will wake up in the morning, have breakfast, drink an absurdly large amount of water, vomit some of it up, and then go straight back to sleep for another five hours.
My dog’s last days * Europe: £55; USA: £57; Rest of world: £65 To order your writesubscribe.theolde.co.ukeithersubscription(s),gotoorcall03303330195,ortoFreepostRTYE-KHAG-YHSC,OldiePublicationsLtd,RockwoodHouse,9-16PerrymountRoad,HaywardsHeathRH163DHwithyourcredit-carddetailsandalltheaddresses.AlwaysquotecodeSP092022 This offer expires 31st October 2022. Subscriptions cannot start later than with the November issue. WHEN YOU TAKE OUT (OR GIVE) A SUBSCRIPTION12-ISSUEFOR£47.50*SAVINGYOU£11.90GETTWOFREEOLDIEBOOKSWORTH£13.90
5) You will discuss, within earshot of the dog, matters it will not want to hear, such as the fact that it has depreciated in value a great deal since you acquired it 14 years ago for £1,000, and that its successor might be a dog of a different breed.
6) You will wonder, with justification, whether the dog doesn’t sometimes put on a bit of a drama about being old. It will start limping self-pityingly round the park, making strangers look at you as if you’re cruel, and then it will come home, race downstairs and be absurdly puppyish when it’s suppertime.
8) An old dog is actually very boring indeed. It’s ages since it took any sustained interest either in another dog, or in a squeaky toy. You need to accept this.
2) But you can’t go on holiday, because no one else will want to look after this frail, aged, half-blind animal deeply set in its ways, who might die at any moment. Much as you adore the dog, you will start to fantasise about the time – how long? two months? – after its death before you acquire the next one.
7) Daily death-dread becomes a thing you live with. Each morning, you’ll brace yourself for finding the dog not breathing. When it crawls out from behind or under its favoured piece of furniture, and stretches, your relief will be huge. Living with this canine frailty prepares you for your own frailty.
1) Dog as ‘excuse for exercise’ will become a thing of the distant past. The dog walk will be the very opposite of exercise: it will be a test of patience, as you tug it round the park at a snail’s pace. But you are permitted to miss out the dog walk for two days at a time. Like a garden in winter rather than summer, the old dog is low-maintenance.
4) You will change the tense in which you talk to the dog. Instead of saying, ‘You’re a good dog’ you’ll start saying, ‘You’ve been a very good dog all your life.’ This present-perfect tense will soothe the animal, who likes to be reminded of the long arc of its goodness, and the key achievements of its epic life.
10) The terrible day will come on which you – you, who have loved and nurtured it since it was eight weeks old – will be the one who decides to end its life. Such a day is unimaginable until it comes.
The party line was a shared telephone land line, such as my parents had back in the early 1950s in Hertfordshire. They had a black Bakelite telephone on its own little table with a convenient chair nearby in the front hall. A new house was being built further down the lane by the well-known runner Harold Abrahams (1899-1978) – of Chariots of Fire fame – and his wife,TheSybil.post office contacted my parents to ask if they would be willing to share a party line. I imagine there was some reduction of rental involved. Thus began our friendship with the Abrahams family. Early telephones in private houses were connected by an actual physical line to a local telephone exchange, where a staff, mostly of young ladies, sitting in rows between banks of plugs, connected to these lines and exchanged them from one socket to another to make the connection. The caller had to ask for towering steel structures marched across the landscape, carrying the cables. In 1958, subscriber trunk dialling, which didn’t require switchboard operators, came in. Elizabeth II made the firstBycall.this time, telephones were omnipresent and there weren’t enough lines to accommodate all the requests. So the party line was invented. You literally shared the line: when a subscriber lifted the handset to make a call, he or she might hear a conversation already in progress. Nosy parkers listened in, often given away by a click followed by audible heavy breathing. The correct thing to do was to put the phone down, wait and try again after a decent interval. The party line featured in several comedians’ routines.
When I got married, our party-line friends, the Abrahams family, gave my husband and me a set of crystal glasses. Sixty-five years later, we still have the glasses – although the Abrahamses, sadly, and the party line are long gone. The Abrahamses are remembered fondly; I can’t say the same for the party line. Imogen Thomas shrunk by 2 per cent since 2020. Brexit + COVID = a mass exodus of the people who formerly kept cafés humming, hospitals clean and goods hauled. So there is pressure on wages, too. The Bank of England expects the overall inflation rate to reach 11 per cent by the end of the year. This means businesses have two choices. One is to raise prices and risk losing customers. Another is to offer a skimpier product and hope no one notices. Many are opting for the latter option. One sign of the times: the Harvester salad bar is no longer all-you-can-eat.Skimpflation has a cousin in shrinkflation, which is when a product diminishes in size while remaining the same price. The Cadbury’s Dairy Milk sharing bar has shrunk from 200g to 180g in the last year. A Channel 4 investigation in 2017 found that Sainsbury’s had raised the retail price
Lean skimpycuisine:choc bar
Skimpflation is an amalgamation of ‘skimp’ (economise or cut corners) and the economic phenomenon of ‘inflation’, which means prices rising over time. Many of us will have experienced it already in 2022. You spend your hardearned on something you’ve always enjoyed – say, lunch in your favourite café. Only, the café is understaffed. The food is served with an air of ‘Will this do?’ The meal is roughly 11 per cent less enjoyable than you remember it being. You can’t entirely blame the caféowner. The war in Ukraine, the coronavirus pandemic and a geopolitical turn against globalisation are pushing up prices in a way that Britain hasn’t seen since the 1970s. Gas bills are up 53.5 per cent, electricity bills 95.5 per cent, petrol has hit an all-time high and food bills are rising fast. The British workforce has the required number and the operator would reply, ‘Trying to connect you,’ while she (or occasionally he) pushed the plugThein.1920s saw the advent of the automated exchange. The original candlestick design was changed to the more familiar handset with a dial on theThefront.telephone became the must-have accessory in every home that could afford it. Lines looped from house to house, telephone posts lined the roads and of a packet of Taste the Difference chipolatas by 14 per cent (from £2.63 to £3), disguising an actual 42-per-cent price rise by reducing the number of chipolatas per packet from 20 to 16. Once you start to notice skimpflation and shrinkflation, you see they’re everywhere. Did your holiday involve more sleeping on the concourse at Luton Airport than you’d have liked? Did your garden furniture take seven months to arrive? We might broaden the terms to describe the Government’s general approach to care homes, hospitals, the passport office, the railways etc. The UK Customer Satisfaction Index shows complaints at a record high, with quality, reliability and availability the most common gripes. So the overall experience of being a British person is 11 per cent worse than it was last year. Still – lovely weather! Richard Godwin Only connect: operator and switchboard
The Oldie September 2022 13 what is skimpflation? what was a party line?
The pick of the columns On old age
O ne of the great joys of Raymond Briggs’s column in The Oldie was that we got two geniuses for the price of one. As well as receiving his charming sideways look at life in the column, we got one of his peerless drawings every month. A compilation was later published as a popular book (pictured), called Notes from the Sofa, the name of the column. So now we had regular drawings by one of the most illustratorssuccessfulofthe last century. Among his best-known works were Fungus the Bogeyman, When the Wind Blows and Ethel & Ernest Raymond liked to cultivate a grumpyold-man air in his columns, raging against the horrors of modern life. In fact, as a contributor he was a joy to deal with. Really talented, very successful people usually are – they don’t feel the need to quibble about minor changes to their copy or drone on about how they’re not being treated with due respect. Raymond was a fundamentally modest man but, deep down, he knew how very talented he was – and how many millions of books he’d sold. So he didn’t feel the need to shout out about that success to the world. His drawings – and his writing – did the talking. The only time he very politely refused to play ball was at Christmas, when every year I rudely asked if he’d like to write and draw about his two enchanting books Father Christmas and The Snowman Every year, he very charmingly said no. That was another sign of success and talent. He didn’t want to dwell on past triumphs; he wanted to look forward to the future – another giveaway to the fact that he wasn’t really properly grumpy. Very grumpy people dwell on their olden, golden days and are too wrapped up in themselves to embrace the next job. Raymond clearly loved his work – and loved doing his Oldie column. He was recruited by The Oldie’s founding editor, Richard Ingrams, in 2007. His column continued until 2019. He never really left The Oldie, though. We kept his column available to him until his sad death on 9th August, aged 88. He was still able to draw, he said, when his last column arrived in 2019 –but he just got in too big a panic about the deadlines. In his memory, here are some of his loveliest drawings and thoughts in The Oldie over the years. On his time at Slade School of Fine Art, where he graduated in 1957 We were all working away silently, when the door opened a few inches and in slipped Lucian
lookedthefingersbothhisImmediately,Freud.hepressedbackagainstthewall,handswithwidespreadalsopressedagainstwallbehindhim.Heveryfrightened.Slowly,hemovedalongthe wall all round the room, saying nothing, until he came back to the same door, which he opened and disappeared without a word. Vera Lynn turns 100 in 2017 She was not one of the pin-ups I had stuck to the ‘ceiling’ inside my Morrison shelter; they were the usual saucy girlies, all legs and bosoms. Why on earth I was interested in them when I was under ten, I cannot imagine. Maybe I was an up-and-coming sex maniac. If so, I’ve certainly grown out of it now. I’m an officially retired sex maniac.
On the Second World War, when he was evacuated from London to Dorset Wartime was full of initials: ACK-ACK guns and HE bombs. My dad was in the AFS, which soon became the NFS. Our neighbour was in the ARP. After the war, Dad went back to being a milkman for the RACS in SW19. Just over the border was SW18 run by the LCC and that was CWS territory. Frightfully common. Raging against loo rolls I can’t stand the imbeciles who, when putting a new toilet roll onto the holder on the bathroom wall, arrange it so the paper does not hang in the air at the front but is hung at the back, where it soon gets stuck to the wet bathroom wall! On Jordan,everythingforgettingabouttheceleb model I rang up a friend: ‘Do I know a Katie Price?’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘but you saw her. She’s also called Jordan. You saw her outside the shop; you told me about it – huge black limo with blacked-out windows, chauffeur, three or four ladies with enormous bosoms, teetering around on nine-inch stiletto heels. You said it was surreal seeing these bizarre creatures in a sunny country lane. They seemed out of place. Should have been outside a nightclub in Soho at two in the ‘God.morning.’Yes,Iremember now. Drove past them… What does she do, exactly?’ ‘Well, that’s what we all wonder… She’s very successful, rich and famous, like‘Ho,you.’ho,’ I said. ‘Do you think we should get married? Not sure I could cope with that quantity of bosoms at my age.’
A picture of dear Raymond Contrary to his grumpy-old-man image, Raymond Briggs was a joy to deal with, says Harry Mount, Oldie editor
The Oldie September 2022 15
On being called ‘Raymie’
The Oldie September 2022
ALAMY/ARCHVIEPICTUREHISTORICALGRANGER/COLLECTIONEVERETT
Constantinople. Superdreadnoughts patrolled the Bosphorus; a Guards Brigade drilled in Taksim Square. Making the mistake – familiar to recent Iraqi and Afghan politicians – of overestimating a foreign empire’s power and commitment, Mehmed VI relied on British help and advice, despite British support in 1919-20 for the Greek invasion of Anatolia. On 15th May 1919, his favourite aide-de-camp, Mustafa Kemal, paid the Sultan a farewell visit in his palace at Yildiz above the Bosphorus. The Sultan pronounced the words ‘My pasha, my pasha, we must save the state.’ Kemal left on a mission to northern Anatolia as Inspector General of troops.
A century ago, on 17th November 1922, the last Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed VI, sailed away from Istanbul on a British battleship, HMS Malaya. On 29th October 1923, the Turkish Republic was proclaimed in the new capital, Ankara. Over the next 15 years, Turkey was cut off from its Ottoman past by the ruthless secularising President Mustafa Kemal, later known as Atatürk.Thefallof the Ottoman Empire, as the Sultan’s flight on a British battleship suggests, was the result of international politics. The empire had shrunk in the 19th century, culminating in the loss of its Balkan provinces in the wars of 1912-13.Nevertheless, in October 1914, the Minister of War, Enver Pasha, dragged it into the First World War as an ally of Germany and Austria. The Ottoman Empire had such a hold on Turkish hearts and minds that, unlike the Austrian and German empires, it survived military defeat in 1918. Few regretted the loss that autumn of the empire’s remaining Arab provinces to France and Britain. The empire was reduced to a Turkish rump in Anatolia and eastern Thrace. Sultan Mehmed VI, who had ascended the throne in July 1918, was physically unimpressive (relations called him ‘the owl’) and politically disastrous. British, French, Italian and Greek forces, against the terms of the armistice, occupied the whole of 16
On 16th March 1920, British soldiers in Istanbul closed the last Ottoman parliament. Its Speaker protested in vain to the British Parliament that its ‘violation’ was ‘contrary to all principles of international law’. Istanbul resembled a ‘ballet of lunatics’, as different countries intrigued for control –distracted by the arrival from the Crimea of thousands of seductive White RussianBritainrefugees.dreamed of making Istanbul a ‘Gibraltar in the East’. The last regimental cavalry charge of the British
Mehmed VI, the 36th and last Sultan, in Malta on HMS Malaya, 9th December 1922
Using the resources of the Ottoman provinces, and basing himself in Ankara, he was soon leading a national resistance movement.
Flight of Sultanthe
A century ago, the Ottoman Empire collapsed after 600 years – and 36 Sultans. By Philip Mansel
The Oldie September 2022 17 army, by the 20th Hussars, occurred in July 1920 against Turkish forces outside Gebze on the Sea of Marmara. In addition to international politics, dynastic biology played a part in the fall of the Ottoman Empire. In 1921, the Sultan took a new young wife, Nevzad, a gardener’s daughter (who lived to 90, dying in 1992). Mustafa Kemal himself is reputed to have asked for the hand of the Sultan’s charming and attractive daughter Sabiha Sultan. But, breaking with Ottoman conventions, Sabiha Sultan and her dashing cousin Omer Farouk were already in love. On 29th April 1920, they married in Yildiz. Omer Farouk’s father, Abdulmecid, the most impressive prince of the dynasty, called ‘the maintenance of Ottoman Empire most necessary from the point of view of Islamism’. For Ottoman Sultans were also – and had been since the 16th century – Caliphs or leaders of the world’s Muslims. For him, Mehmed VI was ‘the ruin of the country, the caliphate and the sultanate’. That summer, however, he refused Mustafa Kemal’s invitation to join him in Anatolia. If he had accepted (or if Kemal had been allowed to marry Sabiha Sultan), there might still be an Ottoman Empire today. In September 1922, as Kemal’s forces defeated the Greek army and advanced on Istanbul, the Sultan told his British advisers that he felt in ‘a position of complete helplessness and isolation’. About 7,600 allied troops in Istanbul and the straits faced about 50,000 Turkish troops. Only heroic efforts by British and Turkish commanders on the spot, including frequent disobedience of orders from London, prevented the outbreak of another war between Turkey and Britain. The Conservative Party, agreeing with their leader, Bonar Law, ‘that we cannot alone act as the policeman of the world’, lost confidence in the Lloyd George government. On 20th October 1922, Lloyd George resigned as Prime Minister, never to hold office again – not the last British Prime Minister to have ruined his career by intervening in the Middle East. On 19th October, Refet Pasha, one of Mustafa Kemal’s favourite generals, looking as if he had arrived from a dance rather than a campaign, was acclaimed in Istanbul by a fervent crowd. The Sultan’s soldiers and officials placed themselves under his authority. Two weeks later, the pro-British journalist Ali Kemal (through his first – English – marriage, great-grandfather of Boris Johnson) was arrested, taken to the Asian shore by boat (with lights dimmed to evade British patrols), and then stoned to death by a nationalist crowd. For his own safety, the Sultan asked to be guarded by British troops. When the Sultan went to mosque on 10th November, the imperial anthem could not be played as the band, like most of the court, had deserted. Six days later, the Sultan, who feared being put on trial if he stayed in Istanbul, sent a letter to the British general Tim ‘ConsideringHarington:mylifein danger in Constantinople, I take refuge with the British Government and request my transfer as soon as possible from Constantinople to another place.
Mehmed Vahdeddine, Caliph of theHeMuslims.’signedas Caliph, since he had accepted Kemal’s abolition of the sultanate on 1st November. On 4th November, the last Grand Vizier had resigned and the Sublime Porte closed its doors. The government moved to Ankara.At8am on 17th November, Mehmed VI left Yildiz by a gate in the palace wall. He took one son, two courtiers, six servants and a few suitcases. British Guards officers drove him away in an ambulance, with the red cross painted out, down to the shore. Later that day, ‘Billy’ Fox-Pitt, a Guards Brigade transport officer, wrote to his mother, ‘The road was appalling, it was raining hard all night and still is … the old Sultan got out and thanked everybody, shook the Brigadier warmly by the hand. We all bowed and scraped… Everything went very well…
‘The Sultan wasn’t much moved; he talked hard the whole time in the car, and said he hoped that we wouldn’t think that he was afraid, but he wished to save his honour; I don’t quite know how he worked this out!!’ At 8.45am, HMS Malaya sailed for Malta. The Sultan was not allowed to settle on British territory. When he died in San Remo in 1926, he was so poor that creditors seized his coffin and delayed his burial by two weeks. Despite his flight, the Ottoman dynasty remained popular in Turkey. On 19th November, Kemal decided to make Abdulmecid, the former Sultan’s cousin, Caliph, as ‘the most moral, learned and pious of this Accordingdynasty’.toBritish intelligence reports, Refet promised him that the sultanate would be restored, and threatened ‘consequences of a regrettable nature’ if he refused.
Kemal and the Caliph, however, could not co-exist. Kemal became more confident when the last allied troops left on 2nd October 1923 – after a few friendly football matches between one of the earliest Turkish teams, Fenerbahçe, and the Grenadiers. On 6th March 1924, the Caliph and all remaining members of the dynasty were expelled. For most Ottomans, it was their first journey outside the city where their family had reigned without a break since the Ottoman conquest in 1453.TheOttoman dynasty scattered to Paris, the Côte d’Azur and Egypt. They felt especially at home in France. The country gave them passports and, like most educated Ottomans including Kemal himself, they spoke its language. Since the lifting of the law of exile in 1974, some Ottoman descendants have moved back to Turkey.InIstanbul, the magnificent 19thcentury palaces of Dolmabahçe, Beylerbey and Yildiz survive as testimonies to the modernising tastes of the last Ottoman Sultans. Today, the Ottoman Empire has never been more popular with the Turkish public – although its multinational aspects are minimised, and its Turkish and Islamic character exaggerated, by the ‘new Sultan’, President Erdoğan. Few expect Erdoğan to leave power as quietly, or with as few possessions, as the last Sultan Mehmed VI, when he sailed away from Istanbul into exile, on the cold, wet morning of 17th November 1922.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938)
The final countdown ‘Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find.’ Walt Whitman Green Light Day As we sit in gridlocked traffic, we are bickering because we have just missed a turning and now we are stuck. The jam is making us late, and so we are burbling away in the same way as we always have since we first met 16 years ago. It is oddly reassuring – both right and human. It is because of these two things, being right and human, that we are trying to work out how to get back to the little road that we have just missed.
When Norah Vincent, a bestselling American writer, went to a Swiss clinic to end her life, her friend Justine Hardy travelled with her to those thoughts. In your mind, they constitute a substantial portion of the decor, like well-worn wallpaper, so familiar as to be invisible. They are always there, and you never talk about them with anyone – not honestly.’
It is a sentiment mirrored exactly in the character of Septimus Warren Smith, a shell-shocked veteran of the First World War in Woolf’s novel Mrs Dalloway (1925). Septimus throws himself from a window, rather than submit himself to the care suggested by a psychiatrist rather different from the one we are now trying to find. This man, the one at the end of the road we are searching for, is the next step in assessing whether Norah’s constellation of suffering qualifies her for a Voluntary Assisted Death, a VAD, as it is referred to over the days to come. She is jet-lagged but her ability to answer his questions, to articulate and flesh out her desire for death, is laserlike. This time she can be entirely honest. ‘Do you understand why she wants to die?’ he asks me, as her witness. I start, backtrack and over-explain. I do understand. I am prepared to witness her death, but I am an optimist and so a mustard seed remains that champions life. ‘He got me,’ she says as we drive away. He has indeed and Norah feels wholly seen. Travel Day
The book is as much autobiographical as fictionalised biography: Norah has attempted suicide twice since she wrote it in ways that cannot be described as ‘cries for help’. As Norah wrote later, ‘When you have spent the better part of your adult life vigorously entertaining and just as vociferously disavowing thoughts of self-harm, because you know that acknowledging them can be used as a pretext for committing you to a locked psychiatric facility against your will, over time, something very odd happens
The path is smooth. As a jumpy trio that hunkered away from all travel once the pandemic hit, each of us has anticipated every possible travel drama.
18 The Oldie September 2022
Norah Vincent has flown in from New York to meet a wise, careful psychiatrist who will decide if this is to be Green LightSheDay.is53, a New York Times bestseller author whose fourth and final book was Adeline, a novel based on her exhaustive research into the last part of Virginia Woolf’s life and her suicide.
Norah is afraid of being stopped at each border and asked why she has a one-way ticket. I am sure that British Airways will cut their summer strike schedule and that we will be lolling on plastic chairs amid sandwich wrappers at Heathrow as Norah’s death date ticks by. Jeremy, the third leg of our stool, is worried about whether England will knock off the runs against India at Edgbaston while we are in the air. No one asks Norah anything difficult. I am too busy trying to vomit tidily into air-sickness bags to worry about anything much. And Jeremy chuckles over his book. We become as one again in the taxi from the airport, as the meter ticks past the 100-Swiss-franc mark almost before the airport is out of sight. The utilitarian hotel in a nondescript Swiss suburb is easy to find, the clinic less so. While Switzerland is probably the most familiar of the 11 countries that allow this kind of decision, most of the world is still not at ease with the human right to be able to decide when and how we Thedie. anonymous clinic is shy and understandably so. We are ‘Do you understand why she wants to die?’ theaskspsychiatristme
D-Day Early morning and the café bar downstairs is in its rush hour. The tables are crowded with a mixture of construction workers in neon, billeted at the hotel while working on a station underpass, a damp tunnel that became familiar in the to-and-fro to the clinic ahead of today, D-Day. Among the construction workers are businessmen in slim-cut trousers and pointy shoes, talking loudly over plates of tiny pâté en croute and square-cut ham. Norah and a couple of others are the third kind of breakfasters. She still has a robust appetite. Food has remained a She is afraid of being stopped at the border and asked why she has a one-way ticket comfort and the countdown days have been a round of final lunches, suppers and milk and cookies in between. She has several croissants with strawberry and rhubarb jam, and very strong coffee as she would like one last hooray of a bowel movement. This is important to her – a last dignity. We walk among the vegetable gardens and maize fields on either side of the back route to the clinic. We are all exhausted after the vigil of the night, hours spent walking among the same strimmed patches of beans and cabbages, telling stories. It was not a whitewash of happyclappy, sun-kissed tales, but truthful: a line of Emily Dickinson in one breath, another round of faintly banal bickering the next. Norah is indeed being ‘CALLED BACK’*. It is now just after 11am in the cool, white room – the time she chose.
* ‘CALLED BACK’ is all that is written on Emily Dickinson’s gravestone in West Cemetery, Amherst, Massachusetts, besides her name and datesNorah Vincent on 5th July 2022, the day before she died
The Oldie September 2022 19 wandering around an industrial estate in bright, sweaty sun when a tall, tanned young man waves from an unmarked doorway. Norah hugs him in delight. ‘You’re a gorgeous specimen,’ she says. He smiles, with only the faintest blush beneath his goldenWhileskin.Norah talks, Jeremy and I look at bowls of Lindt chocolate balls and mini Toblerones, wondering who might want a sugar rush at the very eleventh hour.
In memoriam Norah Mary Vincent, 20th September 1968 to 6th July 2022
‘What time is it?’ she asks. ‘11:04,’ I tell her, reading off the phone I am using to scroll to the music she wants to hear. ‘The time doesn’t matter now,’ says the anaesthetist, another wise veteran in his field, who smiles almost all the time without a false note. He and his colleague leave the room for a while, and we can hear them next door chatting with Jeremy. It is the hubbub of the normal. I remember asking my father when he was dying if he minded us all chatting around him. ‘It is reassuring,’ he Forwhispered.Norah, it is a sound she has missed for many years in her pain and isolation. Yet its return now isn’t causing regret. She too is reassured. We are lying beside each other on a double bed, the cannula in her hand the only sign to separate this moment out from so manySheothers.issmiling as we listen to Nina Simone, to tracks either side of the one she has chosen. It is 11:30am now. ‘I’m ready. Now voyager,’ she says. The others return. Norah pushes the small wheel that opens the drip. She is held, her hand tapping on her leg as Nina sings, ‘I wish I knew how it would feel to be free.’ And then she is.
A new study from the Stanford School of Medicine has found that teenagers’ brains are wired to tune out their mothers’ voices from around the age of 13, when they simply don’t register what you are saying any more. It is the first step on the road to independence and separation, and their mother’s voice becomes an annoying noise to them, not to be heeded. I fear I am still pretty much an annoying noise to Tom andUnfortunately,Will. there isn’t a corresponding click in a mother’s brain (or perhaps a father’s) that tells you to stop treating your offspring as recalcitrant children. You cannot switch off from worrying about their health and finances; whether their marriages and relationships are working well; or even if they are having problems with their next-door neighbours. I also pass judgement on their eating, smoking and drinking habits. And I dish out advice, even when it is not asked for or wanted.Theyare old enough to make their own decisions. If they are sometimes the wrong ones, it’s not my job to interfere. And yet, however hard I try, it seems impossible to let go. I am not alone in my predicament. When the former Tory MP Sally Oppenheim was filing into the House of Commons with her son Philip, also a Tory MP, she said to him rather more loudly than she should have done, ‘For goodness’ sake, Philip, take your hands out of your pockets.’ Philip was then in his thirties and his mother has never lived it down. She said later, ‘I completely forgot myself.’ I can imagine myself saying something similar. Boris Becker’s mother, Elvira, 86, still clearly sees her son as the golden boy of tennis who won Wimbledon in 1985, aged 17. For her, he has remained an outstandingly gifted teenager for the past 37 years and never got a day older. Before he received his prison sentence, she pleaded for him not to be jailed, saying, ‘He’s a decent boyThisoverall.’54-year-old ‘boy’ not only has a colourful marital history but also has been found guilty of lying, fraud and embezzlement. I doubt that even his being in jail will dent his mother’s fond image of Anotherhim.tennis mum, Judy Murray, has been a constant presence at Wimbledon, urging on her sons, Andy and Jamie. She punches the air when they win points and grimaces when they lose them, much as parents cheer and jeer from the sidelines when their kids are playing in school matches.
Mother knows best
So far as I know, Tom and Will have not committed any crimes. They certainly have not won Wimbledon, although they do play Sunday tennis, and they remain – in my eyes at least –decent boys overall. But they are not boys. Even my grandsons are no longer boys, but six-foot-plus young men living in their own flats. They too are starting to bridle at being treated as kids. Although I have never had daughters, I feel that this reluctance to let your children grow up applies more to male than to female offspring. Most mothers don’t have the same difficulty in viewing their adult daughters as grown-upHoweverwomen.hardit may be, I have to face the fact that my sons left boyhood nearly 40 years ago and that they certainly don’t need me to helicopter over them. As they head with indecent haste towards 60 and I hurl with even more indecent haste towards 80, I must tell myself that, finally, the roles have to be Farreversed.from telling them what to do, I must accept that they are now in charge – not just of their own destinies but to some extent of mine as well.
It’s not my job to interfere. And yet it seems impossible to let go Mummy dearest: Judy and Andy Murray
20 The Oldie September 2022
A lthough I still somehow think of myself as a young mum, the reality is that my two sons, Tom (The Oldie’s Town Mouse) and Will (pop critic for the Times), are both in their fifties and have grown-up families themselves. Far from being young, at 78 I could be a great-grandmother by now. Even so, it is with the greatest difficulty that I attempt to treat my sons as the staid, middle-aged householders they are, rather than the naughty 12- or 13-year-old boys they used to be. When we meet, I have to restrain myself from telling them to comb their hair, clean their shoes or iron their shirts. Needless to say, I would not dream of commenting on the appearance of any other 50-year -old, however creased their shirt might be. So why do I continue to be a hovering, hectoring parent, especially as they long ago learned to ignore anything I said to them?
Liz Hodgkinson’s sons are in their fifties but she still longs to tell them to comb their hair and iron their shirts
WATSONGAVIN
strove in vain to be impartial). From then on, he would watch from the boundary. But this was no gradual stepping down. As chairman, he remained central to recruitment, selection, match management – everything. He was also a major draw for new players. Pinter was mentored by bowler and legendary six-hitter Arthur Wellard of Somerset and England. Wellard joined Gaieties after retiring, and provided him with the kind of stern yet avuncular presence Pinter in turn provided for us. He also gave him his England cap, which remains in the Gaieties’ possession. The club had other literary and theatrical notables. Tom Stoppard kept wicket. Sebastian Faulks batted. Sam Mendes was a fine all-rounder. Salman Rushdie played one game, and had to be saved – by one of his bodyguards who sprang onto the field – from being struck, possibly fatally, by the ball. But it was Harold who truly embodied the key traits of Gaieties players: a profound love of the game; an insane competitiveness; and a fierce independence of mind. He resigned the captaincy on the field (at mid-off) after a disagreement with his vice-captain (at Thingsmid-on).on and off the field took on the characteristics of a Pinter play:
Bowled over by Harold
Harold Pinter described cricket as ‘greater than sex’. In a Test Match Special interview with Brian Johnston in 1990 he said, ‘Cricket was part of my life from the day I was born.’ For the second half of his life – from the age of 39 until his death in 2008, aged 78 – Pinter played for and then presided over Gaieties CC, a wandering club of mavericks and dissenters, many with links to theatre. When I joined Gaieties in 2000, Harold’s playing days were over. A batsman with a gritty defence, he could occasionally hit sixes but, by his own admission, lacked concentration. In my second game, he did his last stint of umpiring (a role in which he
22 The Oldie September 2022
Shomit Dutta so loved playing cricket with the great writer that he’s written a play about Pinter, Samuel Beckett and our national game
Howzat! Harold Pinter with Alf Gover, a former Surrey and England player, at his Wandsworth cricket school, 1961
Left: Samuel Beckett, seated right in specs, in the first XI, Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, 1923. Above: Shomit Dutta’s new play Salman Rushdie was saved by a bodyguard from being struck by the ball
The Oldie September 2022 23 one’s territory had to be defended; language became a battleground; there was constant miscommunicationpiss-taking,andasubtext of menace and potential violence. Some players acted in his plays. Others directed them. Others wrote about him. This still continues. The current chairman has just directed Pinter’s early work The Dwarfs and I’ve made him a character in a new play, Stumped. Andrew Lancel plays Harold and Stephen Tompkinson plays SamuelBeckettBeckett.isthe only Nobel prize-winner to feature in Wisden, after two first-class games for Dublin University against Northamptonshire in 1925 and 1926. He scored 35 runs in his four innings, and conceded 64 runs without taking a wicket. A left-handed opening batsman, he was a left-arm medium-pace bowler. My first encounter with Harold was awkward. I rashly compared him to the overcoated tramp Davies, the eponymous protagonist of The Caretaker – partly through excitement, partly because I had just seen the play, and partly because it was June and Harold was wearing a mac‘Davies?indoors.What you do mean?’ he Atretorted.thenext game, while at adjacent urinals in the clubhouse, I ventured an opinion about an actor in a play of his, to which he took even greater exception (in terse Anglo-Saxon). Things gradually improved once I started scoring a few runs. A game or two later, he referred to me as ‘Yond Cassius’ before flashing a smile. One day, out of the blue, he asked me whether I played bridge. This led to many memorable evenings at his and Antonia Fraser’s house in Holland Park. Only once did Harold lose his composure, inviting his partner to take a disagreement ‘outside’. Antonia (who turns 90 on 27th August, incidentally) swiftly diffused the situation. In 2006, Harold asked me to become captain. Selection for games would sometimes take the form of long lunches at Harold’s regular Italian bistro, uncannily like the restaurant in the boozy lunch scene from his play Betrayal Occasionally the team would remain unselected; and once, I remember, he ordered a post-prandial bottle of champagne (very much surplus to requirements) to fortify himself against an impending dental procedure. In 2007, unable to attend the club’s 70th-anniversary dinner through ill heath, Harold sent a recorded speech. He talks about the club’s highs and lows, including a time when he single-handedly ‘buggered up’ the game at Dover.Healso tells a funny story, best delivered in his actorly baritone: ‘I’ve written only one cricketing poem in my life, and it goes like this: “I saw Len Hutton in his prime / Another time, another time.” I sent this poem to my friend Simon Gray, and the next day I rang him, and I said, “Did you get my poem?” He said, “I got it, yes.” I said, “What did you think of it?” He said, “Well – I haven’t finished it yet.’’ ’ Harold also loved the Gaieties story of Winston Stafford, a fiery bowler from Barbados. A fielder at deep midwicket missed a high catch off Stafford’s bowling. He was struck on the forehead and knocked out cold. Stafford marched up to him, picked up the ball, bellowed, ‘You fool!’ and had to be stopped by Gaieties teammates from hurling the ball at the unconscious fielder. Pinter told this story to Samuel Beckett and said it was the only time he saw Beckett reduced to fits of laughter.
Harold’s answering machine had him declaring gruffly. ‘I’m not here!’ His last tape (in Beckettian fashion) accidentally recorded a conversation we had about arrangements for the final game of the season in 2008 againstThoughHampstead.busywith final rehearsals for a double bill of his plays at the National, Harold was focused on the game. He ended by saying that, while the director (a recent Gaieties recruit) would not be able to play the game, he would absolutely be there; possibly his last recorded words. ‘What has informed the club over all these years,’ he says to conclude his 70th-anniversary speech, ‘is the extraordinary conviction, enthusiasm, belief, and sheer enjoyment – and relish – in playing the game.’ He signs off with a hope – it is clear in his voice that he thinks it unlikely – to see us at the club’s 75th anniversary. He died at the end of the following year, after our first and only unbeaten season. But, for us, his fellow Gaieties, Harold’s spirit remains very much alive. Shomit Dutta’s Stumped will be livestreamed from Lord’s on 10th September
SCHOOLGRAMMARROYALENNISKILLEN
Marchamont Nedham was the Piers Morgan of the Civil War – with ‘a public brothel in his mouth’. By Nigel Hastilow, his biographer
The first tabloid hack
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Nigel Hastilow’s The Man Who Invented the News (Halesowen Press) is published on 22nd Britanicus
This illegal paper was widely read. It campaigned on behalf of Charles I during the last two years of his life. It continued for a few months after Charles’s execution in 1649 and began to campaign for his son, Charles II, until Marchamont was arrested during a long lunch in London and thrown into Newgate Prison as a traitor.
Historians still pay some attention to Nedham’s writings, which were invoked by American revolutionaries Josiah Quincy and John Adams. He gave the English language the name Levellers and the term New Model Army, and was arguably the first medical man to use the phrase ‘first do no harm’. But his journalistic career, as a newspaper editor, jobbing hack and ‘triple turncoat’, has been sadly neglected.
On the advice of his friend the Puritan propagandist John Milton, Marchamont wrote a couple of grovelling books in support of the Commonwealth, arguing that the power of the sword was not worth fighting – better to accept the new regime than die a martyr to a lost Royalist cause. This was not just enough to get him out of jail. Also he was recruited to set up a new newspaper, Mercurius Politicus, dedicated to the support of the Commonwealth and Oliver Cromwell –even though a few months earlier he had been promising to have him executed. Marchamont wrote and edited ‘Prag’ for almost a decade, enjoying a nearmonopoly of the news business and making a good living. In 1658, Cromwell died and, after 18 months of political chaos, the world changed again. As Charles II arrived from Holland to take his throne, Marchamont fled in the opposite direction. He was afraid he would be hanged, drawn and quartered – and plenty of people hoped that was what wouldInstead,happen.hebought his freedom by bribing various courtiers and returned to England. He was banned from journalism – a monopoly had been given to Henry Muddiman, once Nedham’s apprentice – and instead he earned his living as a doctor. Nedham’s private life was as complicated as his political allegiances. As far as I can tell, his first wife was his cousin Lucy. He later married another Lucy, a Catholic, who died in childbirth in 1650, making him a bigamist. Then, in 1663, he married for a third time – even though his first wife was still alive and they were not, apparently, divorced.
August 24 The Oldie September 2022 The anti-royal newssheet Mercurius
A ugust 22nd marked the 380th anniversary of the day King Charles I declared war on Parliament in 1642. He raised his standard at Nottingham Castle. It blew down overnight. The English Civil War – which I like to think of as Brexit with swords – was the undoing of the poor King. But it was the making of 22-year-old Marchamont Nedham (1620-78), the Piers Morgan of theNedhamera. (it’s pronounced Needham despite the spelling), an Oxford graduate who tried teaching, the law and medicine before being recruited into the propaganda war between King and Parliament, was more or less universally loathed by the time Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660 and faced with execution. His first newspaper (they were called newsbooks in those days) was the misspelt Mercurius Britanicus, which backed Parliament against the Royalists. It cost one penny and was sold on street corners around St Paul’s and distributed to the provinces. Though adult literacy in London was about 50 per cent, newsbooks flourished partly because they were read aloud to large groups of people, especially in the competing armies. From the safety of Marchamont’s London office, he issued propaganda and news reports against the King. It was an era of invective. Nedham was accused of having ‘a public brothel in his mouth’ and of ‘being he that first found the way to make a fart sound in paper’. He gave as good as he got. The King was a ‘tennis ball of passion’ ruled by his wife, ‘the petticoat Machiavelli’. He was ‘a Tyrant, Traitor, Murderer, and a public Enemy to the Nation’. Cornwall was ‘the very arse of Christendom’. Scotland was ‘a country which sticks like a scab upon the fair body of this unfortunate island’. Lawyers were ‘the excrement of Justinian’. The French were ‘the monkeys of mankind’. And a Royalist rival, Sir John Birkenhead, was ‘a quibbling pricklouse, a known notorious odious forger’ and ‘an underling pimp to the whore of Babylon’. After being jailed for insulting the King by pointing out he had a Scottish accent and a stutter, Marchamont kissed Charles’s hand, swore allegiance to the King and set up a new Royalist publication, Mercurius Pragmaticus
It’s a pity Nedham’s chequered career is still relatively unknown. He worked during the first era in which news, opinion and propaganda in the press played a central role in the fortunes of politicians who found, much to their disgust, that they needed to pay attention to public opinion. And so I have written his autobiography for him, taking the known facts about Nedham’s career and trying to stitch them together by filling in the gaps. The result is his memoirs, published only 344 years after his death.
LEVENTONANNABEL©
26 The Oldie September 2022
The Petermaster-classGuv’nor’sO’Toolewouldhavebeen90on2ndAugust.
Ihave two-black-and white photographs (below) of an unforgettable job, where all my expectations were confounded. In one, Peter O’Toole (1932-2013), cigarette in hand, playing Jeffrey Bernard, listens intently as Muriel Belcher, queen of the Colony Room Club, far from sober, delivers a vicious put-down. In the other, Jeffrey’s chum Eva regales the pub with one of her stories and Peter is joyous in his appreciation. Muriel and Eva were both played by me, with superstar Peter as Jeffrey Bernard (1932-97), the Spectator’s Low Life columnist, infamous drinker, gambler and womaniser. Peter was born to play the part. Working with Peter then, in 1989, was a scary prospect. His unpredictability, frequent benders and ferocious temper were legendary. But it was a flattering straight offer: no audition, three weeks out of town in Brighton and Bath and then a run in the West End. As his son was only a year older than mine, Peter refused to do matinees, to be home for Lorcan – and the evening curtain was at 8pm. A perfect job for a single mother. This boded well. On the first day of rehearsals, four of us were due to show up. Sarah Berger and I arrived fully made up, hair freshly done; Royce Mills appeared in shirt, tie and blazer, apparently ready for Henley. (It turned out he always dressed like that.) We assumed Mr O’Toole would be late, hungover, would not know much about the play and might not even rehearse at all. Wrong. He was already there, immaculate, clean-shaven, beautiful He looked us up and down, eyeballing us in a fierce stare, put a hand under my chin, tilted my face up to him, nodded and did the same to Sarah, informing us we were his for ever. We were to read through the play and then be taken (by him) to the Groucho for lunch. It was clear from the outset who was in charge. Our director, Ned Sherrin, was there merely to do his bidding. No argument. The script, composed by Keith Waterhouse from Jeffrey Bernard’s Spectator columns, was a marathon for
Annabel Leventon learnt a vast amount from his acting lessons the lead actor. Huge paragraphs, endless sentences, written by an angel but not meant to be spoken. The rest of us had at least 15 parts each, many of them one-liners, short sketches interspersing giant monologues, there to boost his energy and keep him going. That first morning, we four nervously clutched our scripts, trying to find the rhythm of the piece, stumbling as we went. Peter, with no script in sight, lounging in his chair, twinkling if we got a line right, made it through the entire play word perfect. (I think he had only three prompts during the whole rehearsal period.) He then took us for lunch, making sure we had everything we wanted, while he drank only soda water – as he did for the entire run. Apparently his pancreas had been cut out and he’d die if he touched another drop. At the end of the first week’s rehearsal, one of us was fired. Next Monday, Tim Ackroyd was on board, something of a protégé for Peter. We held our breath lest any of us should go the same way.
At the Coach & Horses: Annabel (as Muriel Belcher, left, and Eva, right) with O’Toole as Jeffrey in Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell, 1989
The Oldie September 2022 27 In Brighton, we sold out. And in Bath. Peter was a triumph. Royce and Tim, who shared a dressing-room, said Peter came in every evening before the show to piss in their sink. (‘Droit de seigneur,’ whispered Royce.) He never did that to Sarah’s or my sink. He already held us in the hollow of his hand – as he held every single member of the audience, night afterWhennight.we moved to the Apollo Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, knowing we had a hit, I arrived to find my dressing-room and have a look round backstage. The set, already in place, was a reproduction of the Coach & Horses pub. I knew it because the staff of Private Eye in its glory days went there, and I’d worked at the Establishment Club up the road. The designer had reproduced the bar, the lighting and the engraved mirrors. The whole play takes place over one night there, when Jeffrey, very drunk,ALAMY slides under a table and wakes at 3am to find he’s locked in with the ghosts from hisIt’spast.amoody piece, shifting from racecourses to divorces, wetting the bed at school to cat racing and egg tricks. Peter lurched from one area to another in increasingly drunken mood swings, at one point setting the bar on fire. It had gone down brilliantly on tour. Now, however, he was in a towering rage. I found him kneeling in his dressing-gown at the front of the stage, shouting obscenities: ‘It’s a comedy, for fuck’s sake. I want Palladium fucking lighting, darling, straight into my eyes at all times. Do you get it? Palladium fucking lighting.’ He was right. Night after night, the audience rose to its feet. He deserved very bit of it. I learnt more working with him than in the rest of my career. His work in rehearsal, exploring every possibility of when to draw breath, light Peter O’Toole, King of the Desert: in Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
a cigarette, fill a glass, stumble and pause, set him free to be spontaneous everyOnenight.night, Waterhouse’s famously difficult egg trick failed. In complete silence, Peter looked at the audience, shook his head, went back and rebuilt the biscuit-tin lid, the pint mug, the egg and the shoe, and did it again. It worked – the egg, balanced on the matchbox, plopped into the pint mug after he’d flipped the tin lid away with his shoe. The audience went mad. ‘I was so terrified – I don’t remember doing the rest of the play,’ he confessed. All we saw was his nerve. He always had nerve, plus the comic timing of a genius and vocal mastery. He took his voice seriously. For half an hour every evening, we were barred from his dressing-room while he did his vocalWewarm-up.neverworked out where he drew breath during those huge monologues. We came to believe he could speak on the incoming breath. His rapport with the audience was total and he was generous to his fans: ‘Give us an autograph, guv’nor.’ He always did. If we tried something new and he liked it, he’d bark, at full voice, ‘Good gag! Good gag!’ On the last night of the run at the Shaftesbury Theatre, he took his final bow and beckoned to the wings.
Charlie Wentworth, his aged dresser, tottered on to the stage with a tray of champagne. Peter then made a farewell speech in which he referred to each of us with respect and affection. We were all in tears. Ten years later, when we were to reprise the show at the Old Vic, Peter knew how far away I was living. He called me in: ‘You are to stay in a hotel near the theatre for production week. No arguments. I shall pay.’ He did. It was the first and only time a West End production had come back a decade later, with the same cast and set. It was a short run of eight weeks. I think Peter knew it was his swansong, back in his favourite theatre. Night after night, the audience were on their feet, cheering. His performance was, if anything, richer, deeper and funnier than before – the essence of Jeffrey Bernard. It was also the essence of Peter O’Toole. Ferociously intelligent, worldweary, beyond talented, utterly charismatic. We were privileged to have been Annabelpresent.Leventon was in The Rocky Horror Show, Minder and Bergerac
When Chloe Kelly took off her top after scoring the winning goal in the European Women’s Championship final, the ecstatic crowd cheered on her exuberance. And yet my heart sank. As a woman with long experience of breast management, I could see that the sports bra Chloe had been wearing underneath was simply not fit for purpose. It might have been comfortable for running around a football pitch, but it was too flimsy to do the job required of it.
I first learned about the importance of supportive corsetry in 1985. I had been wandering along South Molton Street in London’s West End when I happened to glance up at a discreet shop sign on a second floor bearing the compelling legend ‘Rigby & Peller, Corsetières to HM The Queen’. I went promptly upstairs and talked to the three Dame Margaret Rutherfordstyle corsetières, who emanated authority. They were voices crying in the wilderness. They impressed on me that, owing to a shortage of trained fitters, hardly any British women were wearing the correct bra size. Just buying off the peg, taking a guess at the size, was resulting in nationwide discomfort, chafing, excessive wobbling – visible through clothing – and, worst of all, the loss of nature’s gift of elasticity andBreastspertness.are victims of gravity even without running and jumping. Just ask make-up billionaire Charlotte Tilbury, who sleeps with her bra on every night. They need to be housed in protective casing. Bespoke, protective casing requires the advice of a professional corsetière.
A reluctant Belinda now gasped at the transformation: ‘That’s amazing! I already look thinner.’
‘No!’ cried Belinda. ‘I don’t want a wired bra. Wires work their way out and spear‘Theyyou.’won’t if you don’t put them in your washing machine. I wash mine Storm in a D cup: Chloe Kelly
I was dismayed to think that unless Chloe takes advice from a proper corsetière in the near future, the continuous high-impact jarring, which is an inevitable part of women’s football, will take its toll on her now 24-year-old breasts.
You need a proper fitting to avoid chafing, wobbling and side spillage
Mary: ‘Remember that, Belinda. H for Hattie. Hattie Jacques.’
Jo: ‘Yes – that’s because all your breast tissue is now encased and protected by theEnthusedunderwiring.’bythe transformation, tennis-playing Belinda now tried on a high-impact sports bra. ‘What makes it high-impact?’ She laughed infectiously. ‘You will lose your elasticity with a high-impact sport,’ said Jo. ‘If I put you into a really snug bra by PrimaDonna, you will look after your bust. It won’t be able to move. This one – because it is a different brand – is 38F. So you are 34H for Elomi Morgan and 38F for Active Anita and they both fit you perfectly. This shows why you need to be measured professionally.’ ‘You two have helped me so much by being bossy,’ said Belinda. I treated Belinda to the wired bra (£44) because she’s a good sort, and she paid for the sports bra (£69) herself.
quickly in my shower with shower gel and just leave it in there to drip-dry. Now look in the mirror, bend right forward, give them a shake, fall into it and up you come.’
‘Can I keep this on?’ she asked as she left Mystique with a new spring in her step.
Jo corrected me. ‘No. Because she won’t be 34H for every brand. She will be a slightly different size for every brand.’
Mary Killen’s Fashion Tips
Jo: ‘You have got your waist back.’
28 The Oldie September 2022
Belinda (infectious laugh): ‘I look quite sexy, don’t I!’
Jo: ‘And you see the wire is looking after your breast tissue. Now pop your hands up so you can see there is no movement on the underband. Bend forward and you can see that you are absolutely filling that cup. This bra is an Elomi in size 34 with an H cup.’
These days, department stores are better at having in-house fitters in their lingerie departments, but too few women use the service. I used the service for my 40-something friend Belinda, busy mother of three, smallholder and chief of Marlborough tourism. With her open, freckled countenance and infectious laugh, Belinda reminds me of an enthusiastic Labrador puppy crossed with a human beach-ball – in that she is large and round but taut. One thing was letting her down. Her sizeable breasts were too low and too mouvementés. They were spoiling her otherwise strikingly attractive appearance. And so it was that Belinda and I entered the premises of Mystique Lingerie in Marlborough, where the owner Jo was forthright in her condemnation of Belinda’s existing bra, bought via the internet with a guessed-at size: ‘I can put my fist between the straps and your back. You need 80 per cent of your support from your underband and only 20 per cent from the straps. So this bra is not doing anything. I am going to get you a wired bra. I want to show you what a really well-fitting bra looks like.’
Belinda: ‘And the side spillage has gone from under my arms.’
Got the wrong bra? It’s a global problem
All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely Theyplayers;have their exits and their Andentrances;oneman in his time plays many Hisparts,acts being seven ages. Jaques in As You Like It F or years I tried to defy my age, refusing to move on to the next stage of my life as defined by Shakespeare. I scrambled up hills ahead of everybody. I ran up escalators and privately cursed the good manners of today’s young people when they offered me their seat on the tube. My conversion to the possible benefits of accepting old age took place at King’s Cross station on my way to see my 102-year-old aunt. According to Shakespeare, she should have reached her dotage years ago, but she most definitely has not. I had succeeded in buying a train ticket online the day before, but when I got to the station I discovered I hadn’t downloaded the app. Suddenly a digital angel appeared beside me in the uniform of a Northern Rail passenger assistant. He fiddled with my phone and lo, he found my ticket! He then offered to show me to the train. Briefly, I thought of the times when, to my fury, I hadn’t been able to walk across Florence station without having my bottom pinched, and wondered whether this obviously decrepit figure being guided across King’s Cross could be the same person. I realised there just might be a few advantages in gracefully accepting what benefits there are to entering what the bard classified as the penultimate age: ‘With spectacles perched on nose and pouch on side’ (in my case, a gaping handbag which my railway angel advised me to close). At a few points in the human cycle, growing older is a blessing; at others, a curse. Parents watch nervously to see their infants are reaching their developmental goals. As soon as they are old enough to count, schoolchildren, the second of Shakespeare’s seven ages, start exaggerating their ages, saying they are nearly five as soon as they reach four and half. So too do sighing adolescents, roughly equivalent to Shakespeare’s lovers. It’s when people reach their twenties and early thirties – the age group Shakespeare characterises as full of aggression and passion – that attitudes among them begin to diverge. On my 25th birthday, I invited guests to come to a party held jointly with my brother to celebrate ‘Andrew Goodman losing his job, and Elinor Goodman losing her youth’. That was the last birthday party I gave for over 50 years – for me, the years of resistance. In my case, I think it was particularly acute because I worked in television, where appearances mattered – though the management denied it. Also, I didn’t have children. Others who did were much more preoccupied by the cost of organising a themed birthday party in an ice rink for 25 schoolkids than with their own birthdays. Many of my female friends battled with their figures as they slipped into middle age – which Shakespeare associates with wisdom and wellrounded bellies. Other friends positively embraced not having to care so much about their appearances and celebrated their ‘big birthdays’ with gusto and cake. But cakes were anathema to me. Had I been Boris Johnson, I would have run away from the birthday cake in the Cabinet Room, not because the celebration broke his own COVID rules but because it might have been accompanied by a rendering of Happy Birthday. I so hated people’s singing Happy Birthday that I left the conference hall when Tory delegates sang it to Mrs Thatcher, whose birthday was the day before mine. On my 60th, I fled to Botswana to avoid hearing it, only for the staff to sing it to me in Setswana (which was lovely). By that time, I had left Channel 4 News and was doing a series of grown-up jobs such as sitting on the Leveson committee. But I still flinched when, in the press coverage of my appointment, my name was followed by my age. I never matured in terms of technical knowledge, either. At Channel 4, producers protected me from the digital age. When, years later, lockdown came, I couldn’t even Zoom – anyway, I didn’t want anyone seeing me. But I gradually lost count of time and began thinking how nice it would be to see all my friends again. So, once liberated, I invited 80 people to ‘Come and celebrate my coming out as a septuagenarian – no presents and no Whensinging.’Igot to Leeds, my 102-year-old aunt had shrunk, and was almost totally blind. Mentally, however, she hadn’t entered her dotage. We discussed Ukraine, religion, politics and the Latin derivation of a word. But though she is the most Christian of people, when I asked her what the advantages were of living to such a great age, she replied,The‘None.’Oldie
September 2022 31
The seven ages of woman
The Seven Ages of Woman by Hans Baldung (1544)
Elinor Goodman so hated getting older that she had no birthday parties for 50 years. When she turned 70, she changed her mind
ALAMY/COLLECTIONART
Van Gogh, an arch self-critic
August 32 The Oldie September 2022
Self-criticism produces anxiety, depression and loneliness. Psychotherapist Julia Bueno explains why we do ourselves down Iused to suffer episodes of anxiety of a very particular kind. I believed that I had done something terribly wrong, or that I would somehow cause a Manycatastrophe.yearsago,these episodes worsened. I woke up one winter’s morning with a familiar, free-floating sense that I was soon going to be Ireprimanded.openedmybedroom curtains to see my street coated in a dusting of snow. Immediately I worried that my young sons had frozen in the night because I hadn’t checked whether they were warmSeeingenough.myneighbour walking to work sparked a fear that he’d slip and injure himself as I hadn’t warned him of hidden ice under his feet. And then I spotted a man in a parked car, taking down notes in a file. I was convinced he had been sent to spy on me. His presence testified to my belief that I was, after all, a terrible person deserving of state surveillance. I had grown very used to criticising myself for imperfections, lapses in memory or care, and other mistakes. I would frequently lose sleep over things I’d said or not said, and pore over emails I’d sent, convinced I’d insulted the recipient because they hadn’t answered yet. My self-critic emerged in young childhood and was as familiar to me as my hands. That winter morning, she really put the boot in hard. I resolved to give her a P45. As a psychotherapist, I now know well that I wasn’t alone in turning against myself in the way that I did. Self-criticism runs like a thread through nearly all the problems my clients come to talk to me about: anxiety, depression, relationship problems, loneliness or even acute grieving that doesn’t abate. It also looms large in conversations I have with friends. Self-critics are everywhere. There is no ‘cure’ as such for
Asking yourself, ‘What would I say to a dear friend in the same situation as myself?’ is a good place to start. Inveterate self-critics will always treat someone else far better. The important question to ask is – why?
nappy.toooff-key,babyisbelieveself-critic.provenanceunderstandingalwaysdownquietenedButself-criticism.itcanbedown.Thisquietening-processisnearlyhelpedbyanoftheofaIdon’tanyofusbornjudgingourwailingasorourthighschubbyforourForverygoodreasons
we begin to create – and, in some cases, nurture too well –Overself-criticism.time,assailed by influences –from our parents, siblings, teachers, friends and enemies, religious and cultural backgrounds – many of us learn to internalise explicit and implicit criticisms and, thus, turn in on ourselves. Some of us become so expert at it that we don’t even realise we do it at all – it takes someone else to spot it. Evolutionary biology hasn’t helped us either. Our brains are wired to tilt towards negative thinking and ready detection of threat. When we became hunter-gatherers, we had to keep safe from predators and our brains developed to be primed to spot a threat coming our way. We wouldn’t be here today if our ancestors had translated the roars of a predator as songs from the gods. Nor would we be here if we were all Lone Rangers – we need a group of others to spread risks and keep safe. But being saddled with this ancestral brain today means we overestimate threats coming our way, which include the threat of rejection from another person. This is at the root of most self-criticism. If we learn to understand why a self-critic developed in us –and there is often more than one reason – this can help us view the self-critic for what it is: a pesky bit of old software that is no longer serving us well. In my work, I talk to people who have been bullied by a parent, a sibling or a fellow pupil at school – or even a teacher or a manager at work. Such bullying can make us feel that we must be ‘bad’ inside. If this began in childhood, the feeling can be veryBut,intense.overtime, it can become buried so deep – or even denied – that we can forget its impact. Being at the sharp end of racism, sexism or any other prejudice often plays a role too – as well as misdiagnosed learning difficulties or the crushing pressure on our younger generations for all-round ‘perfection’, beamed out through social-mediaUnderstandingplatforms.where our self-critic comes from rarely solves the problem entirely. Another step is needed – one that is more difficult to take. The true antidote to a self-criticism that can sabotage living life to the full is learning to relate to yourself with compassion, kindness and love.
Of course, we need to keep a check on our mistakes and culpabilities, but self-correction and humility are categorically different from self-attack.
Everyone’s a Critic: How we can learn to be kind to ourselves (Virago) by Julia Bueno is out on 25th
Stop beating yourself up
Mother was now wrestling the phone off me, yelling, ‘We’ll put a label on him.’
Father’s eyebrows tilted as he said, ‘Why don’t we scroll through the TV channels and see if we can’t find an advert for a crematorium that charges by height?’ your whole body donation if you pass away on weekends or bank holidays.’
‘No one will see you in a coffin,’ Father reassured me. ‘I’m not having a coffin. I’m getting collected by this damn idiot medical college. Oh – they’ve gone.’
Small World
I want to die cheaply, but even medical colleges don’t want my body jem clarke 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… Anyone, sat like my mother in front of many hours of daytime TV, is eventually seduced by the repetitive, quick-fire adverts with their abiding message: 90 is the new 75. Mother was the harshest critic of the old shopping channels. She once put toothpaste in the portable chocolate fountain I bought thanks to a TV ad. And now she has bought Father solar lights to see a safe path to the shed, even though he rarely gardens at night. For his birthday, she bought an all-in-one no-fuss funeral (no service – just a cremation somewhere in the Midlands). My father was fine with this. After three hours of Talking Pictures TV, I too had been lured in. I will soon have a doorknob spy camera for my bedroom – essential in my battle against Mother’s meddling. She’s already gone all Soviet dictator on me. She said that if I install it there will be ‘reparations’. That isn’t an empty threat. I’m already back on no-addedsugar Alpen as punishment for buying a wok. ‘We’ll be barbecued before Look North begins,’ she declared. Having more street smarts than my parents, I phoned round several no-fuss funeral-providers and began a bidding war for my own no-service/simply-sizzle affair. As an atonal phone-operator explained to me, ‘I’ve been on to the line manager and we will undercut by £10 any price offered by our main rival in the no-frills market, and we will include the crematorium’s dignity curtain.’ I suddenly had a revelation. I could go off-piste, contact a medical college and see whether, in exchange for my body, they’ll sort everything out for free. I’m now reaching the age of the ‘Suddenly, after a short illness’ brigade. A nearby medical college was keen on the idea – though they warned, on their website, ‘We will not be able to honour I was staggered that, even after death, there’s a Love Island for skeletons, where everyone has to be spectacularly samey.
I pleaded desperately, ‘Couldn’t you give me to a gifted and talented student to keep him on his toes, or a smart-arse second-year just for a giggle?’
My no-frills funeral
‘I’m not wearing a smock!’ I protested. My baseline sexuality was under threat from a post-death fashion choice.
It asked that serious donors phone to talk to their bursar. I was disappointed to be put through to the bursar’s team, who did the usual singsongy tele-questionnaire. The amount of times I have chanted my postal code back and forth – it now has its own distinct melody. When my interviewer asked if I suffer from any physical diseases, I offered her an impromptu top ten. Top of the pile was epiphyseal displasia – ‘Short, diseased, mutated bones,’ I explained. ‘A disease of the bones?!’ She didn’t hide her alarm. ‘Yes – it’s not contagious or anything,’ I reassured her. Mother barked from her throne in the sitting room next door, ‘Tell the students to put gloves on.’ ‘I’m sorry, we can’t take any bodies with mutated bones,’ my interviewer said with a voice of someone used to giving bad news, while selecting a Boots meal deal because Cheryl has got her coat on and is waiting to go on the lunch run. ‘The skeleton has to have normal proportion ratios and the bones can’t be malformed because, as first-years, they may get the wrong idea about human anatomy.’
‘Mother, I’m not entering the afterlife with a sign saying “Seconds” round my neck – well, my neckbone.’
I replaced the receiver, forlorn, as Father and Mother went into unhelpful but kindly solution mode. ‘Maybe we could ask your father’s cremators if they’ll do two for one. Neither of you amounts to much.’
‘I’m not a savage,’ Mother said. ‘I was going to sew it into the back of your shroud.’
WAYSTEVE The Oldie September 2022 35
When the Flemish master got into the London fast set, he fell victim to a stingy Charles I – and a lethal epidemic. By James Mulraine He spent too much – more than he could recoup in portraitspainting
But there are many gaps. We do not, for example, know his cause of death. It is extremely rare even to discover any new documentary source referring to Van Dyck in his lifetime, but we found a previously unknown legal case in the National Archives at Kew. If the complaint in Van Dyck v Thoroughgood 1639 were the only surviving evidence of Van Dyck’s life, we would think he’d been a merchant rather than a painter. The case brought in November that year concerns the debts of Robert Booth, a London salter who went bust owing more than £4,000 to his suppliers. His friend George LondonprovingBooth’spromisedThoroughgoodtoguaranteedebtsbuthewashardtopindown.‘SirAnthonyVandikeofknight’topsthelist of 22 named ‘orators’, or plaintiffs. Van Dyck is owed £200, equivalent to more than £50,000 today. It is not the largest individual debt. Van Dyck is named first by virtue of his rank as a knight, placing him before even the Master of the Mercers’ Company and a future Lord Mayor. What was Van Dyck doing here?
England killed Van Dyck
Soldiers always get straight to theIpoint.wasabout to give a talk, at the Belgian Embassy in London, about new Van Dyck discoveries, with Justin Davies, Van Dyck scholar and co-founder of the Jordaens Van Dyck Panel Paintings Project. In the project’s final year, we were presenting our findings to an august party of museum people andOurconnoisseurs.hostwasthe Belgian Ambassador, a proud Antwerper; the project’s other co-founder, the Jordaens scholar Dr Joost Vander Auwera, was in the audience. It was a company Van Dyck himself would have been used to. We’d drilled the talk thoroughly but before we could start, a retired general asked a killer question: ‘Don’t we already know everything about Van Dyck?’ Now, the project’s motto is ‘Never too late for new discoveries’. After five years of mining the sources, the answer is no. Plenty has been discovered and there’s plenty left to find. Members of the project teams have filled three issues of the Jordaens Van Dyck Journal with their findings. Like the contestants in the Summarise Proust Competition, Justin and I did a good, brisk job of running through them all in half an hour. The general was on the right track, however. Van Dyck is an elusive figure. We do now know where he lived in London – on the waterfront at Puddle Dock in St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe, next to That’sBlackfriars.thanksto records of three workmen – sawyers Richard Duckworth and Stephen Crayer, and carpenter John Sweat. Sweat built a landing-stage there, at Van Dyck’s studio show home, in 1635.
COMPANY&MOULDPHILIP
36 The Oldie September 2022
The events in Van Dyck v Thoroughgood dovetail neatly with these twin crises in Van Dyck’s career and his health in 1639. The meeting he attended with Booth and the other creditors can be dated between the end of August when he was at Bath and as far before then as might be understood by a lawyer’s use of ‘shortly’ in the 1630s. As such, it represents Van Dyck’s last appearance in the documentary record before he began to suffer from his finalWeillness.donot know if Thoroughgood eventually signed the agreement with Booth’s creditors or if Van Dyck ever received his £200. It is entirely possible that Booth’s debt remained one of ‘all such debts as are owing & due unto me by the Kings Majestie of England, or any of the Nobilitie, or by Any other persone or persons whatsoever’. That was the debit balance he bequeathed to his wife, Maria Ruthven, and their daughter, Justiniana, at his death in December 1641. Did he catch something in that late-summer creditors’ meeting? He died on 9th December 1641 on the day of Justiniana’s baptism. He was buried in the choir of St Paul’s Cathedral two days later. His tomb was obliterated in the Great Fire of London in 1666. By the time I’d finished looking into Van Dyck’s life and death – even translating sets of Latin case notes at the Royal College of Physicians, in case some detail revealed that the doctor had been treating Van Dyck – I was no clearer to a certain cause of death. But I know it was England that did it. Van Dyck, who’d been so prudent in Antwerp, lost his head in England. He got into a fast set at Court and spent too much – more than he could recoup in painting portraits, however fast he worked. He was underpaid and was unlucky in his investments.
London itself was a fatal place to live. Epidemics spread easily in town, especially in close-packed rooms, where 20 men might gather in late summer to shout and argue about a debt. When I said goodbye to the Ambassador, I shook his hand and thanked him for his superb hospitality. I thought about apologising on behalf of England for killing one of Belgium’s greatest painters. And then worshipping him ever since.
The Oldie September 2022 37 £200 would buy two substantial full-length paintings, but Booth wasn’t a picture client. Van Dyck v Thoroughgood is a rare brick in the wall of Van Dyck’s biography because the context is so unusual. We do not know if this represents Van Dyck’s only foray into wholesale trading. Did he diversify his business in London? Other painters certainly did, such as Van Dyck’s studio associate George Geldorp (c 1590–1664), who supplied his clients with Parmesan cheese and china, ‘hams and curious eatables’, as well as pictures and frames. Booth had ‘often times bought of your Orators as of severall other persons great quantities and parcells of wares’, which were ‘incident to his trade’ in oils, herbs and spices. Clearly Van Dyck dabbled in wholesale grocery supply. Van Dyck missed a meeting between Booth, Thoroughgood and his creditors on 5th September, but he was present for a head-to-head shortly before that date. At that meeting, Booth explained himself. He had ‘susteined greate losses and hinderances both by the slowe and bad paiement of such as were and are indebted unto him in severall great summes of monie’ and could not pay them for goods supplied by them on his credit. He offered to sell his whole estate to pay his debts but, for the time being, Van Dyck and the creditors trusted his promise of an instalment plan. The case fits with the wider circumstances of Van Dyck’s life at this date. It was not his only outstanding bill. In late 1638, the King still owed him £2,175 for pictures. Charles I wheedled this debt down to £1,603, which was paid in dribs and drabs over the next two years and probably never entirely cleared. By late August 1639, Van Dyck was ill. Two of his servants had died that year. Jasper Lanfranck, a Dutchman ‘from Sr Anthony Vandikes’, was buried on 14th February and Martin Ashent, ‘Sr Anthony Vandikes man’, was buried on 11th March. On 28th August, Ralph Verney wrote to Eleanor Countess of Sussex, ‘Now Sr Anthony Vandike is the Bath,’ suggesting that he was taking the water cure. By the beginning of November, Van Dyck was well enough to paint. In a letter received on 12th November, Lady Sussex told Verney that his father Sir Edmund Verney had written to say that Van Dyck ‘will do my picture now’.
James Mulraine works for the Jordaens Van Dyck Panel Paintings Project Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641): self-portrait, oil on canvas, c 1640
Just look at the amazingly complex, whizzing telepathy that goes on between human beings on the roads. You realise that self-driving cars are a silly sci-fi fantasy, concocted by maniacs who persist in believing that computers will one day become more intelligent than human beings. These people have still not managed to create an animal of the simplest kind – even a worm, let alone a humanTherebeing.isawider issue at stake here.
’
Cassini also says traffic lights contribute to pollution. They cause an excess of stopping and starting. This leads to cars’ drinking up more petrol and bunging far more emissions into the air than his free-for-all solution. He argues that the motorist or bicyclist can make better decisions than an automated system. He also maintains that, when left alone, harmony prevails, as people take turns to move into‘Youtraffic.see it when traffic lights break down,’ Cassini says. ‘Peaceful anarchy or self-government breaks out. We use common sense and common courtesy to filter. As a co-operative species, we respect the equal rights of others. As a taxi driver said to me, when lights are out of action “You just have to be a bit more careful on the junction – that’s all.”
There are those who believe, with Thomas Hobbes, that, without rules and regulations, disorder and mayhem break out. The strong would take advantage of the weak and mere anarchy would be loosed on the world. Then there are those who, like me, believe that the vast majority of human beings are considerate and co-operative. They aren’t, in fact, locked into an amoral Darwinian struggle for power and money, come what may. When I’m pootling around town on my bicycle, I’m amazed and delighted by how often a car will flash its lights at me to let me go first, or give me a friendly wave to say the sameCassinithing.estimates that the public purse contributes tens of billions of pounds annually to keep the traffic lights going. Is it really worth it? Should we tear them all down and trust in human kindness instead? And save me from another £50 fine.
London Mouse become more gentlemanly and courteous. We would exercise our own judgement rather than simply capitulate to the rules. Cassini runs a website, Equality Streets, which campaigns for equal rights between pedestrians, bicyclists and cars, rather than the system of priority which currently often puts cars at the top of the tree.
The more freedom-loving oldies out there agree with me that excessive regulation on the streets removes our autonomy. I’m all for the under-reported anti-traffic-lights movement and its leader, journalist Martin Cassini. Cassini, described by the Mid Devon Weekly as a ‘roads anarchist’, says traffic lights and excessive signage on the road encourage aggressive driving and turn us intoLeftbabies.alone, he says, we would all
Caught red-handed in a red-light district tom hodgkinson ‘Stadtluft macht frei’ went the German saying in the Middle Ages. ‘City air makes free.’ The aphorism was about the thrilling sense of liberty experienced by peasants who moved from rural outposts to the new city states of medieval Europe. Finally emancipated from their feudal overlords, they could join a guild, start a business and do what they wanted, more or less. That was a long time, though, before the invention of the police, the motor car, tarmacadam and traffic lights. In 21st-century London, cyclists, pedestrians and motor cars when out on the streets are utterly hemmed in, confined and imprisoned by signs and rules and regulations. Stopping, starting, waiting – it’s a battle out there. When I bike, my brain is on permanent high alert as I read and interpret dozens of signs and symbols while also keeping a lookout for jaywalkers, car doors that suddenly open in front of you, electric scooters, buses and myriad other distractions. In fact, city air these days infuriates me and makes me quite angry. The other day I was cycling along Uxbridge Road in Shepherd’s Bush, where I live. It’s a lively medley of halal butchers, barbers, fried-chicken outlets, betting shops, Syrian supermarkets, Indian takeaways, pubs, tailors, and grocers, plus a church and a mosque. So far, so However,medieval.outside the tube station, there are two pedestrian crossings a few yards from each other, installed at a cost of God knows how much. That morning, the lights were red, though no pedestrians could be seen. Judging it safe to proceed, I cycled though the red light, only to be waved down by a policewoman who had been hiding under the bridge. She told me off and issued me with a £50 fine. Many readers will say, ‘Serves you right, Mouse. What makes you think the rules don’t apply to you? Red light means stop. It’s for your own safety.’
38 The Oldie September 2022
Brighton
I am, or was, a Londoner. Lezards have lived there for centuries (not many –about two of them). I would take my children to the top of Parliament Hill and announce the view, the vast panorama ‘that is your town, and wherever you live, it always will be’. I couldn’t see the point of other towns. East Finchley, where my parents lived, was too far out for me. Harpenden, where my in-laws lived, might as well have been the Gobi. Circumstances drove me, with the end of my marriage, deeper into London’s heart: a rickety 1850 building in Marylebone, miraculously affordable. It was affordable only because it was being sublet – by a gentleman, not for profit –against the terms of the lease; and after ten years, to the day, we were discovered, and I was ejected. I had to rethink my attitude to places that were not London. And it wasn’t that hard in the end: there was simply no way I could live on my own and afford theMeanwhile,rent. a friend had bought a flat in Brighton but had gone to work in America: she let me live in it for a very fair price. That was four years ago – and I am still here. I knew all about Brighton, or so I thought. I had both read and seen Brighton Rock. I had been amused by Keith Waterhouse’s description of the town as one that always looked as though it was helping police with their enquiries. I had friends here and had been visiting them since 1984 when, during my first visit, an IRA bomb scooped out a huge chunk of the Grand Hotel on the seafront. My friends were journalists, and we drove down through the empty streets after they had been called by their news desk. It was unbelievably thrilling, and I pretended to be a journalist too, Mouse interviewing Tory delegates in their dressing gowns with plaster in their hair. Nothing has matched that excitement since, thank goodness. But whenever I walk past the restored Grand, I still fancy I see, through some trickery of time and memory, the incredible gap in theManymasonry.people call Brighton ‘Londonby-the-Sea’, and there is some truth behind this. Most of my friends here are, like me, refugees from the capital; for some reason, almost all of them are or were music critics. But Brighton is not London. Instead, it is London transfigured. For London is being hollowed out by money, by the invisible tenants who use the space only for investment. There are people who complain that Brighton is becoming too gentrified, that it’s not the same as it was. But very few places are the same as they were, and nothing is yet going to alter the fact that this is a place where people end up, as if they have rolled down all the way south until they can’t roll any further without ending up in the‘Doctorsea.
Brighton’, Thackeray called it, for it is a place that makes you feel better. Maybe this is why so many of the homeless end up here. The place doesn’t seem to be doing them all that good; but they’re more or less permanent. I know quite a few of them by name now. The main point about Brighton is, of course, the sea. The beach itself is horrible with shingle – but imagine if it were sandy: the wealthy would have overrun the place many times over by now. I live in a shoebox of a flat, at eye-watering expense: but I have a view of the sea that is beyond price. Only a small patch of the sea, but it’s enough, and when storms blow in from the Channel I feel as though I am at the wheelhouse of a tramp steamer. Thunderstorms and full moons areAndmagical.theatmosphere here is slightly mad. West Hill is very staid, literally aloof at the top of a steep incline. That’s where I used to live, and it made me feel as though Brighton’s dirty secret is that it comes alive only on Friday and Saturday nights. Now I live close to the furred artery of Western Road. There’s always something alarming going on there, just yards from the curved façades of Montpelier Road. Wealth and poverty exist cheek by jowl; that’s the way I think towns should be. (Hove, though, is deadly dull, the only good thing about it being that it is very handy indeed for Brighton.)
I was talking last night to a new friend – and, oh, how easy it is to make friends here – who has been living here for 30 years. He asked me how I, a relative newcomer, an exile from the Metropolis, am finding the place. I have a set answer. ‘Every day I’m here, I love the place a little more; and after four years, that adds up.’ Giles Wood is away I’m tired of London – not tired of life nicholas lezard ‘It’s the spirit of your late mother –she says you never summon her any more’
The Oldie September 2022 39
Please keep some real people in my little railway station, says Mary Kenny
MORISONTOBY
The robotic age of the train
40 The Oldie September 2022
I realise strikes are exasperating for the public, but I had some sympathy for the train stoppages over the summer. I lament the way human beings are being erased from so many services, replaced by automatons, robots and on-line transactions. Our little railway station in Deal used to be a friendly place, with a helpful person issuing tickets and organising the complicated train journeys some of us take. But it has grown increasingly deserted and the ticket office is locked up, while the platforms and railway bed are flyblown and neglected. The railway company is gradually ‘phasing out’ personnel in favour of tickets bought online or via a machine. This trend is replicated in so many areas: it’s an ordeal trying to contact a human being to help with an airline query, or a phone problem. The local council invites you to ‘go online’ when you have a question about a payment. So many banks have shut their branches – while advertising how much they care about ‘local values’ – as part of a policy to discourage face-to-face encounters, it seems.Iamaware that we have to adapt to change and embrace technology – and many oldies are very adroit about all this ‘going online’. All I’m saying is that I like also to be in contact with a human being for everyday activities. We were moving towards a more robotised age anyway, and the pandemic lockdown accelerated the trend. Businesses found that they didn’t need to engage people to do a job that could be done by some form of artificial intelligence. And, as everything now is about money, that was the obvious courseHowever,taken.an action often prompts a reaction, and our response may be to develop a greater appreciation of human beings. I am profoundly thankful to the lovely staff at the post office just for few inarticulate sounds, her sight was impaired, and she couldn’t walk until she was ten. Yet Charles de Gaulle had a tender love for Anne, calling her ‘my joy and my strength … the grace of God in myThislife’.austere man, writes Professor Jackson, ‘who found it so hard to express affection, would spend hours playing with his child, singing her songs, telling her stories she could not understand, encouraging her to play with small toys or clap her hands’. We think of General de Gaulle as the politician responsible for barring Britain’s entry to the (then) Common Market in 1963, with his thunderous iteration of ‘Non!’ But how sweet a father he was to his handicapped daughter.
Postcards from the Edge
There is Emma Hamilton, Lord Nelson’s mistress, who expired in cheap lodgings, in debt and in drink, in Calais in 1815. There is the glamorous George ‘Beau’ Brummell, who, having fallen out with the Prince Regent and lost his fortune at cards, fled to Calais and died poor and insane in nearby Caen.
And there is Richard Martin, a renowned Irishman and a Unionist MP, who founded Ireland’s first theatre and was a champion, sometimes reckless, duellist. Dick Martin also loved animals and passed Martin’s Law in 1822 to protect them from cruelty, for which he was dubbed ‘Humanity Dick’. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (now the RSPCA) followed. He died in 1834 in Boulogne, and his life has been celebrated this year in Ireland, 200 years after the humane act he stewarded. His family seat is Ballynahinch Castle, Connemara, now a very grand hotel. being there, and stamping my parcel with a smile.Theshop girl may gain status because she’s a real person, not an online robot. The waiter may seem like a hero, just for ministering to our needs. The care worker may get social esteem because her work involves the human touch. Train services without personnel may come, despite protests, but people will always need people, and increasing robotisation will make us realise more acutely our need to engage with flesh and blood. My summer reading has included Julian Jackson’s much-acclaimed biography of Charles de Gaulle, A Certain Idea of France. It is an absorbing picture of the man’s life and times; and there is a most touching passage about the third child born to Yvonne and Charles de Gaulle. Anne had Down Syndrome, then commonly called Mongolism. In 1928, shockingly, the disability was sometimes blamed on ‘degeneration, inherited defects in the bloodline or even the morality of the mother’. Children affected were nearly always consigned to an asylum or hospital, but the de Gaulles chose to keep Anne within the family. She was unable to utter more than a
Anne died aged 20 – and eventually de Gaulle was buried next to her. Someone should write a biographical guide to the colourful Brits who died in the Pas-de-Calais region.
Quite Interesting Things about … Uttar Pradesh Uttar Pradesh in northern India is the most populous state in the country, and the most populous country subdivision in the world. Uttar means ‘north’ and pradesh means ‘province’. The land area of Uttar Pradesh is almost exactly the same as that of the UK, but over 200 million people live there. If Uttar Pradesh were a country, it would be the sixthmost populous in the world. The world’s largest public Pradesh lost a bet that he could eat 50 eggs. He died throughhalfwaythe42nd one. According to legend, both Rama and Krishna were born in Uttar Pradesh. According to tradition, the god Brahma performed the very first sacrifice in Allahabad.
The Oldie September 2022 41
Sophia Waugh: School Days
Another year has drawn to a close. Another cohort has been waved off, and our thoughts have turned to tidying our classrooms and wondering what rascals we will ‘get’ next year. Meanwhile, there has been time for summer concerts, sports days and (after two years without them) school outings. Outings had begun to take a bit of a bashing under the terrible fears of ‘safeguarding’ and ‘health and safety’ concerns. None of us really wants to leave a child behind on a geography trip, or accidentally let one fall off a cliff. But, luckily, a new buzz phrase is opening the door to more trips. ‘Cultural capital’ is not a new expression. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (how pleasing that he has God in his name) came up with his theory in 1977. But it was only in 2019, just before the world shut its doors for two years, that Ofsted included the idea in its requirements. Cultural capital includes not just education, but also ideas about how you speak and dress and your intellect. Ofsted’s take on it is ‘the essential knowledge that pupils need to be educated citizens, introducing them to the best that has been thought and said’. It is this ‘essential knowledge’ that will be considered by the inspectors when they finally turn up. So the trip to Bath, about which I recently wrote, will make the inspectors very happy. The students on the trip had read a book that was not on the curriculum, and had been given an added experience for ‘cultural capital’. They now have an idea of Georgian architecture, society and mores. This ‘cultural capital’ will not in itself get them a job, but it will make them what my grandmother would call ‘sortable’ (say it with a French accent and it sounds less snobbish). But when the Globe Theatre brought its Julius Caesar to our local theatre, the 350 seats weren’t sold out. The local Waterstones gamely tries to host author tours, but endlessly has to cancel them in the face of sales of fewer than ten tickets. Rod Stewart sold out when he played at the cricket ground, but anything less popular is in trouble. I would be astonished if as many as 20 per cent of our students had ever been taken to a theatre, art gallery or museum by their parents. Theatres are expensive – but the rest can be free. Most of our children say they were read to when they were little. And the majority of our parents play at least lip-service to encouraging reading. But if I had a pound for every time I heard ‘Bless him, he’s a boy – what can you do?’… And if you include an open attitude to food as part of cultural capital, what is to be done with a generation who say water is ‘rank’ and live off white food? How on earth will Ofsted be able to form a fair judgement about ‘cultural capital’? The trips are something, but they are not enough. Every teacher has to plug the hole left by society. We must talk around our subjects – not just stick to the exam content. We should all ‘show off’ a bit. Let the children know that life is about more than exams. English teachers can speak foreign languages; maths teachers can play the trombone; science teachers can read for pleasure. When children say, ‘Miss, why are you telling us that? You’re an English teacher, not a history/French/ art teacher’, I know I am showing them the links of a chain that will connect them to the outside world, a world bigger and more interesting than the rural town that is currently their universe. It is nowhere near enough for Ofsted – or the children – but it is something. It is a start.
Gandhi and Narendra Modi. Ravi Shankar was from UttarUttarPradesh.Pradesh has three UNESCO World Heritage sites, including the Taj Mahal. In the year lockdown,beforealmostsevenmillionpeoplevisitedit.UttarPradeshproduceshalfofIndia’ssugarcane.In2019,a42-year-oldmanfromUttar
Pupils must join the culture club gathering, the Kumbh Mela festival, takes place in Uttar Pradesh. At the 2019 event, there were 120,000 toilets for 120 million people. Uttar Pradesh holds the Guinness world record for the largest number of simultaneously lit oil lamps IndiraincludingprimeprovidedUttar(1,200,000).PradeshhasnineIndianministers,Nehru,Gandhi,Rajiv
JOHN LLOYD For more on QI, visit qi.com and, on Twitter, @qikipediaRavi Shankar ‘You are not going on a journey’
JAMES HUGHES-ONSLOW
Lord Remnant CVO (1930-2022)
So far, so good, and totally uncontroversial. It then goes on, ‘I don’t want to be a saint; some of them are so hard to live with.’
uncomfortable clarity, what my own shortcomings are. This brief and brisk prayer should be compulsory reading for anyone who is getting on in years. It is easily available on the internet. Among other things, it says, ‘Release me from the craving to An ancient nun’s prayer – don’t be bossy
From time to time, I go to the garden and pick, according to season, a handful of wild flowers, roses or autumn leaves. I put them in a jam jar on the windowsill in the kitchen for my own pleasure and, I hope, for Invariably,others’.when I go past later, I find that they have been rearranged. Sometimes, but not always, this is an improvement, but it is nonetheless annoying. The other day, I protested –and learnt an unlovely new word: micromanagement. It is a modern variation on the theme of bossiness and, as well as speech, it often involves physically moving objects around in major or minor ways. It is not part of GospelOverteaching.theyears, kind friends have repeatedly passed on to me copies of what is known as A 17th-Century Nun’s Prayer, often in beautiful script and with a pretty floralI’mborder.notquite sure why it is sent so often, and sometimes this worries me. Perhaps it comes from the same impulse that prompted a reader to tell me that I had a keen eye for the sins of the elderly. If I have, it is because, with Carmelite training, I have come to realise, with sister teresa straighten out everybody’s affairs. Make me thoughtful but not moody; helpful but not bossy. With my vast store of wisdom, it seems a pity not to use it all but thou knowest, Lord, that I want a few friends at the end. Keep my mind free from the recital of endless details; give me the wings to get to the point.’
cometh my help. My help cometh even from the Lord who hath made heaven andAboutearth.’200 City folk sang lustily and listened to the Parry anthem from Psalm 122, sung by the choir: ‘I was glad when they said unto me: we will go into the house of the Lord. Our feet shall stand in thy gates, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem is builded as a city that is at unity in itself.’
Philip Remnant paid tribute to his father, Lord Remnant, at his thanksgiving service at St Paul’s, Knightsbridge. Lord Remnant was a partner at the accounting firm Touche Rosse and a director of the Bank of Scotland.Hebegan by thanking the vicar, Rev Canon Alan Gyle, who conducted the service, for allowing it to be held in the beautiful church where his parents were married in Coronation year, 1953. This was followed by Psalm 121: ‘I will lift mine eyes unto the hills from whence Funeral Service
There is a joke that has been around in religious houses for some time: ‘There’s a saint living in that community.’‘Yes,andthere are 40 martyrs living there with her.’ This is not a correct view of what saints should be. They are supposed to be attractive because, if not, their spreading the good news of the Gospel will be an impossibility.
The grace and peace mentioned in Romans 1:1-7 sum up what we shall gain if we are prepared to aim for sanctity: tranquillity, harmony, serenity and charm are ours for the asking. There is nothing dull about all this; it is simply and straightforwardly bliss for all concerned.
The service concluded with the hymn ‘For all the saints, who from their laboursPhiliprest’.Remnant joked in his eulogy that his father was surprisingly quick over short distances. ‘This speed was put to best advantage in the fathers’ race at my prep school. After winning it comfortably in my first two years, he was then handicapped by having to start 30 yards behind the competition – and on the other side of a barbed-wire fence.’ Philip noted that his father died on 4th March, the same day as Shane Warne and Rodney Marsh, prompting his son-in-law to observe that the world had lost two cricketing legends and Rodney Marsh on the same day.
42 The Oldie September 2022
Hamlet, however, is better: Slanders, sir. For the satirical rogue saysthathereold men have grey beards, that their faces wrinkled,aretheir eyes purging thick amberplum-treeand gum … all of which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down…
Crete: Land of Heroes, with Rick Stroud 11th to 18th May 2023
Am I a victim of ageism? According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, I am: people who offer me their seats are exercising ‘discrimination rooted in others’ assumptions and stereotypes about older adults’. Researchers constructed an ‘everyday ageism’ scale. It included exposure to supposedly ageist messages in the media; ageist remarks; and ‘internalised ageism’. They then applied the scale to about 2,000 people aged between 50 and 80. Surprise, surprise – the older the subjects were, the more ageism they met. The authors correlated the everyday ageism score with the self-reported health of the subjects. They found that those with higher scores enjoyed, or suffered, worse health than those with lower scores. Some 94 per cent experienced at least one form of alleged ageism – such as a remark based on the person’s age – regularly. Those who spent more time on the internet or antisocial media received or, at any rate, perceived more ageist ‘messages’.
For the first three nights, we’ll stay at the Palazzo Duca and Ionas hotels in Chania. We’ll visit Rethymnon, Knossos (pictured left) and the Cretan wine country before moving to the Lato hotel in Heraklion.
For full itinerary, go to Courses & Tours on the Oldie website (www.theoldie.co.uk).
On the London Underground or Paris Métro, I sometimes offer to give up my seat. My wife reminds me I’m older and more decrepit than the targeted beneficiary of my self-sacrifice. This does not please me. Even worse is the self-sacrifice of others intended for my benefit – young men or even women who offer their seats to me. I should be pleased that kindly good manners aren’t entirely a thing of the past, but I’m distinctly irritated by it. How dare they suggest I can’t stand between Euston and Green Park!
‘Internalised ageism’ – thinking you are old, decrepit and declining in powers – was the most highly correlated with poor subjective health. The authors found that white people encountered more ageism than black people. They surmised that it might be because it was the first time in their lives that they had encountered prejudice. This should have given them pause –and suggested to them that ageism is not a ‘thing’ like a billiard ball or an asteroid, but more like that which, in order to be, has to be Everyoneperceived.–except the authors of articles in medical journals – knows that correlation is not causation. And so the authors say, ‘Our findings suggest that multilevel and multisector interventions may be most effective at reducing age-based discrimination and promoting more positive, nuanced views of ageing.’ This, surely, is a blueprint for nannying totalitarianism and the propagation of official lies. Watch what you say! Do not suggest a 50-year-old is unlikely to win Wimbledon because he is too old (after all, Stanley Matthews played football until he was 50), or that old joints are often not as supple as young ones. As a first step, I would suggest the removal of Matthew Arnold from the Dictionary of National Biography. He wrote the classic ageist poem Growing Old (and by today’s standards he wasn’t even old himself when he wrote it): What is it to grow old? Is it to lose the glory of the form, The lustre of the eye? Is it for beauty to forego her wreath? – Yes, but not this alone. And so on and so forth: pure ageist propaganda which harms our health.
The rampant victim culture is now preying on oldies theodore dalrymple
Me? Old? How dare you?
He makes an unanswerable case that rigorous censorship is health-giving.
The Oldie September 2022 43 The Doctor’s Surgery
invites you on a unique reader trip
TO BOOK: Call 01225 427311. Price per person: £2,250 including all meals, wine with meals, transport and entrances. Book and pay for your own flights. Single supplement £200. Non-refundable deposit of £750; full balance due 1st February 2023. Please email Katherine at reservations@theoldie.co.uk
Rick Stroud, author of Kidnap in Crete, writes, ‘Crete is a wonderful destination – a land of heroes, mountain ranges and fertile plains where sheep graze among olive trees and the air is filled with the scent of thyme. Nearly 2,000 years ago the island was home to the Minoans, whose legendary king, Minos, built the palace at Knossos. Crete has a rich architectural and artistic heritage.’
SIR: Ysenda Maxtone Graham’s article ‘Desperate to go’ (August issue) reminded me of a time 40 years ago when I managed a sales team in Crawley. On meeting the oldest member of the team, aged about 60, I was impressed with his organisational skills when he showed me one of those red county street-map books of his patch, Surrey. Each page was for a different town and was marked with a series of red Xs.
Yours sincerely, Rupert Marlow, Turnastone, Herefordshire A useful wee book
SIR: I’m surprised that the wise old bird A N Wilson (August issue) thinks that Anthony Thwaite should have ‘binned’ the less appetising of Larkin’s letters when he edited them. How safely to distinguish the acceptable from the unacceptable ones? And why deny a fascinating man, Larkin, his contradictions, complexity and even ugliness? Isn’t that what makes him one of us?AN surely wouldn’t want to promote the kind of thinking that led Isabel Burton to burn her husband’s racier translations and – though who knows for sure – Fanny Stevenson to provoke Robert Louis to destroy the first and maybe tougher version of Jekyll and Hyde. Maybe there was a bit of Hyde in the Jekyll A N postulates when he writes of his friend. That’s reality. That’s life. That’s me and even him. That’s the great poet, Philip Larkin, in the round. It’s also a pity A N felt it necessary to denigrate Anthony Thwaite, who died in April. He was a good poet and very far from a ‘hack’ editor, as many –most, or perhaps all – of us whom he published in the New Statesman and at André Deutsch would confirm. Benedict Nightingale, Fulham, London
Compton. Regardless, ‘Bowled over’ was a good Regards,read.
Tony Potter, Auckland New Zealand Life in the old dog yet
44 The Oldie September
‘Wow,’ said I, ‘are these the locations of all your clients?’ ‘No,’ said he, ‘they’re where all the public toilets are!” Regards, John Feeley, West Kirby, Wirral More sex, please; we’re oldies
The Oldie, 23–31 Great Titchfield Street, London, W1W 7PA letters@theoldie.co.uk
SIR: Oliver Pritchett’s article, mourning the death of British understatement (August issue). Top-hole. Roger Bickerstaffe, Bexleyheath, Kent Larkin, warts and all
Unreadable Boris SIR: Stephen Glover (‘Downfall of a hack Prime Minister’, August issue) describes Boris Johnson as ‘surely one of the outstanding columnists of his generation’.
HasReally?Mr Glover actually tried to read his stuff? Peter Tucker, Reigate, Surrey Brush up your Shakespeare SIR: I am prompted to write having read Richard Godwin’s Modern Life article ‘What is the summer of discontent?’ (August issue), in which he states that ‘in 1471 … Edward IV took the English throne back from his resentful brother, Richard III’. I don’t think so. While I do not claim to be a historian, I have studied Shakespeare and, in particular, his history plays. In 1471, the throne passed to Edward IV from Henry VI. Richard Duke of Gloucester did not become Richard III until 1483 after Edward IV’s sudden death and the notorious ‘disappearance’ of – along with his brother Richard –his son, Edward V (the ‘Princes in the Tower’). The ‘winter of discontent’ refers to the Yorkist’s discomfort under Henry VI, and ‘this sun of York’ is not just a pun (sun/son), but also a reference to Edward IV’s emblem ‘the sun in splendour’. As is often the case with Shakespeare, his cleverness with words creates a subtext to the subtext.
SIR: I would never dare challenge anything Theodore Dalrymple says, but I would like to tell you about our dog, a 14½-year-old fell terrier. Nine months ago, we were told she had chronic kidney failure and didn’t have long to live. We arranged to have her put down but, three days before the appointment, at the vet’s suggestion and as a last resort, we switched her from a conventional meat-based diet to one consisting largely of sweet potatoes, which contain more beta-carotene than carrots. She instantly got better, and now all her kidney readings are normal. She walks six miles a day and has recovered all her old bounce. The vet declares it to be a miracle.
To sign up for our e-newsletter, go to www.theoldie.co.uk 2022 In brief
SIR: The letter (Ask Virginia, August issue) from the ‘older lady’ (68-year-old) who would ‘love to experience good sex before it’s too late’ deserved a response that recognised a brave attempt to go public and get some help and advice.
Regards, Mike Nicholls, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire That’s not cricket SIR: Dick Clement (August issue) may have had a rocky love affair with cricket, but his memory is, sadly, even rockier. Len Hutton would have had difficulties hitting the winning run against Australia at the Oval in 1953 to win the Ashes, as he was run out after scoring 17. From memory – and I was merely perched in front of our TV set in Maidenhead – the winning run was struck by Denis´See how controlling he is?´
Dorothy Woolley, Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire Key points
SIR: Andrew Bamji (Letters, July issue) omits a common bugbear from his
Tessa Calvert-Linnell, Lichfield, Staffordshire Let them eat junk SIR: Re ‘Let them eat Granny’s cake’ (Ask Virginia, August issue). A young parent asked Virginia’s advice on what to do about a grandmother who persistently fed their children junk food, despite the parent’s protests and requests to refrain. Virginia counselled that the odd day of horrible food wouldn’t harm the children and being spoiled by their grandmother would ‘benefit them for ever’. The issue isn’t the food. The issue is the grandmother challenging the parents’ authority. I have six grandchildren and would never go against parental instructions re food or anything else while looking after them. The parents would be quite justified in not allowing the children to visit their grandmother unaccompanied. As for spoiling children ‘benefit[ing] them for ever’, if the spoiling happens without parental consent, all it is doing is otherwise admirable list. In most hotels that offer them, the complimentary bottles of shampoo, conditioner, body wash and body lotion are identical and labelled in faint, tiny lettering. All too often, I have got into a hotel shower, only to have to get out again, find my reading glasses and take the bottles to a good light in order to distinguish between them. Although shampoo and body wash seem interchangeable, body lotion is a different matter…
‘We used to be the opium of the masses – now we’re hardly a mild sedative’
SIR: Mary Killen (‘What goes up must come down’, August issue) has provided me with further proof – not that I need any – that my wife is exceptional. The sweeping generalisation that ‘Miniskirts can look good on the over-35s but only when accompanied by thick black tights’ could not be further from the mark in the case of my wife, who still looks fantastic in her 40s … and without a pair of black tights in Photographicsight! evidence for publication is available – at a price, of course.
The suggestion of therapy makes some positive (if expensive) sense – and I don’t have the answers, either – but the lady’s letter shows an openness to change that in itself bodes well for the future. This is a difficult and sensitive subject – to be treated with respect.
Jane Ainsworth, Newcastle upon Tyne My beautiful wife
George Roy, Edinburgh Salad cream days
‘I’ve been teaching him the value of money
SIR: Very many thanks to Elisabeth Luard for the recipe for English salad cream (Cookery, August issue). As soon as I saw it, I knew that it was a recipe I have wanted for the 40 years since my mother died. She made it every time we had salad – and, because she often forgot to make it until lunch was nearly ready, it was almost always served still warm, so that the lettuce wilted in its heat. I can still hear her scraping the spoon around the saucepan and urging it to thicken. It was delicious and I’ve missed it. Happy memories. Judy Davies, Tenby, Pembrokeshire Absolute shower
Instead, the reply had an impatient, dismissive tone (‘for heaven’s sake’) – as if the wish to have such experience at 68 was not a natural one, but somehow inappropriate and absurd. This sadly reflects a much wider attitude, which the film mentioned at least addresses. At a healthy 78, I must be one of thousands of women – and men – still very much alive, who miss an actively sexual life but rarely admit it; online dating is very age-restricted and ‘nice, kind, single’ men ready, willing and able to play gigolo too are rather hard to find!
The Oldie September 2022 45
Quaker query
SIR: Lucinda Lambton’s articles are always a delight, but I must be pernickety and correct one point in the July issue. Mr Watson could not have been dismissed by ‘the Brethren’ because there aren’t any in the Religious Society of Friends. Men and women are equal. He would have been dismissed by the Elders, who could have included women.
SIR: May I compliment Sharon Griffiths on her rant about car keys (August issue). I unfortunately bought a VW with one of these wretched appliances. It works most of the time, but can refuse to open or lock the car. Added to this, I sometimes forget to take the keys with me when I leave the car, meaning that the car is left unlocked. At least with a key and keyhole, you have to have your hand on the key to stop the engine. Best wishes, Andrew Sanderson, Solihull, West Midlands driving a wedge between the children and their parents, and between the parents and the grandparents.
Yours sincerely, Martin Bailey, London NW11
Harrison Ford
And who was I to disagree?
I Once Met still didn’t speak. My order was vocalised. I then thought it appropriate to bring up the project we were meeting about – Dodsworth. I was aware, of course, that the story was about a middle-aged couple who visit Europe and then find their relationship changing. I had assumed that the studio enthusiastic about the remake might have considered Harrison’s days as an action hero to be nearing their end, or that perhaps a transition to more realistic drama was his decision. I waited for a reaction. There was none. Our food arrived and we both began to eat. Silently. Once again, I brought up Dodsworth and asked Harrison if he’d seen the 1936 film. There was no vocal response. He didn’t even give an affirmative nod or shake his head in non-affirmation.Ipressedonwith remarks that an actor of his accomplishments would be able to handle the Walter Huston role with ease – a successful businessman who falls in love with an alluring European woman,
Bruce Beresford was the director of Driving Miss Daisy (1989) was relatively high-powered and could be received on medium wave, albeit very faintly, in Dublin. My friend who had a better receiver than me, and, crucially, keener hearing, could discern a postal address for the station, and so we made contact with them and arranged a visit. We were met in Colchester by the two lively lads who operated the station, and we received warm hospitality. The transmitter, the largest and most professional ‘rig’ we had seen, was housed in a shed in the back garden of the semi-detached family home of one of the duo. We were very impressed. Our visit coincided with the jamming by the authorities of the broadcasts of the pirate radio ship Radio North Sea International, then anchored off the Essex coast. During a subsequent visit to London a few years later, two other radio enthusiasts who were based in the Barbican Estate, and who had contacts in broadcasting, took us to visit BBC Radio London and LBC, the latter having been launched the previous year. The former declined to admit us when they heard that we were from Ireland, because of concerns about the security situation then, whereas LBC were interested in interviewing us – but we bashfully declined to go on air. My final memory of my departure from London in 1974, after my last visit there, is of being picked out and questioned by a security officer at Heathrow Airport as to what the purpose of my visit had been. When I remarked that I must look suspicious, he quipped, ‘Oh, we only stop the good-looking blokes!’
In 1990, after the unexpected success of Driving Miss Daisy I was declared a ‘hot director’ by the big Hollywood studios. One of the many calls I received was an enquiry as to whether I would be interested in a remake of a 1936 film, Dodsworth. The leading actors were Walter Huston and Ruth Chatterton. The lead proposed for the remake was Harrison Ford (who, incidentally, turned 80 in July). Wary of a remake of any description, especially one directed by the great William Wyler, I was captivated by the allure of such a big star – and, no doubt, a huge budget. A lunch was arranged between Harrison Ford and me at the exclusive and secluded Hotel Bel-Air. No agents or studio executives would be present. Harrison arrived on time and we were shown to a discreet table. We shook hands and sat down. Harrison looked rather sullen – so I began by saying how exciting it was for me to meet him and how much I had admired him in Peter Weir’s excellent films Witness and Mosquito Coast. Harrison accepted my praise with a nod but said nothing, although there was a low, grunting sound. He glanced at the menu and when the waiter arrived, he pointed to some items but resulting in his formerly stable marriage eroding. There was still no response – maybe one or two indecipherable grunts. By now, I was exhausted. I stood up, saying nothing – as this seemed to be the modus operandi – and walked to the hotel exit. I knew the studio would be picking up the bill – so Harrison wouldn’t have to break his vow of silence while paying it. I went out to the car park, climbed into my rental car and drove off, greatly relieved. The next day my agent called to tell me that Harrison had told the studio executives that I had been very rude to him. I suppose that my unannounced departure did qualify as that. No remake of Dodsworth has appeared to date. At least my encounter with Harrison Ford was strikingly different from meetings I’ve had with so many other actors, who’ve insisted on telling me at great length of their accomplishments and awe-inspiring talent.
By Ken Sheehan, Dublin, who receives £50 Readers are invited to send in their own submissions400-wordaboutthe past
In the early 1970s, I was part of a subculture, a small group of radio enthusiasts in Dublin who engaged in what were known as hobby pirate radio stations, or what we preferred to call Free Radio. We were inspired by the pirate radio ships of the era. A friend and I made what was for us an adventurous trip in 1970 to visit a land-based pirate radio station operating from a suburban house in Colchester, which went under the name of Radio Marian. Unusually for a hobby pirate station, Radio Marian An Irish pirate in Colchester
46 The Oldie September 2022
Ken (far right), at the Free Radio Rally in Hyde Park, 1974 Ford: the quiet man
48 The Oldie September 2022
Travel sickness
A ll humanity’s problems stem from its inability to sit quietly alone in one room, according to Pascal – a tiresome figure by my reckoning, but surely he’s on to something here.
A N Wilson enjoys a new history of British tourists and wonders why we frantically rush abroad every summer
The old Second World War question on the poster is a metaphysical one – ‘IS YOUR JOURNEY REALLY NECESSARY?’ No one asks it of the tourists. One of the most mysterious of news items, on TV every summer, Christmas and New Year, is the sight of miserable families sitting on suitcases at airports as flights are cancelled, or baggage-handlers go on strike. This summer, there were 30-hour queues at Dover. You ask yourself: why on earth did you shell out good money for what you knew would be an unenjoyable experience? Whereas young families put themselves through the nightmare only once or twice a year, oldies – with all their grey pounds – often have four or five such experiences: of cruises on ships the size of floating factories, all going to places no sane person would wish to visit, or to places which would have been nice before they were wrecked by tourism. Lucy Lethbridge, a percipient social observer and deep thinker, has addressed herself to the story of Tourists: How the British Went Abroad to Find Themselves. Enjoyable as her book is, I am not sure she has supplied me with an answer: why do they do it? It isn’t like Dr Johnson and second marriages – it is not the triumph of hope over experience. If you have had two or three holidays, there is no hope left. You know – absolutely know – that the holiday will be an unenjoyable interruption to life. Expensive. Uncomfortable. Boring. Yet, time and again, you sign up for it. Robert Graves, Majorca’s most famous British resident, settled there in the 1920s. Thirty years later, he was giving a talk on the BBC, complaining about the trippers and comparing young Englishwomen on the beach – he imagined ‘a pretty typist’ as typical – ‘to a plump white plaice on the grill, trying to collect a tan worthy of that tremendous solar male’. He attributed the typist’s sun worship to reading too much D H Lawrence, ‘England’s most fanatical Sun-cultGraves’srevivalist’.broadcast – amusing if you realise polite men do not speak about women like that any more – is typical of our snobbery about tourism. We – if ‘we’ happen to be anywhere on the face of the globe – are there because we are discerning travellers, whereas the others are the mindless ‘tourists’. It is certainly hard not to think that Thomas Cook, the Leicester bookseller, and the other pioneers of modern tourism did much to spoil the world. One of Cook’s earliest coups was to transport 65,000 people to the Great Exhibition in 1851. ‘Hurrah for the trip, the cheap, cheap trip!’ was his motto. Soon Sir Henry Lunn, a Methodist lay reader, was following Cook’s bandwagon, pioneering cheap European travel. Their genius was to invent an activity that was completely unnecessary – tourism – and almost never enjoyable, and to sell it to a huge public as the most desirable thing in life.Itis interesting that the Lunns, the Cooks and others in the early ‘travel industry’ were ranting preachers, and one wonders if there is a connection between the promises of their misleading, colourful brochures and the hope of a sunlit, blueskied afterlife, peddled from their pulpits. Lucy Lethbridge is a good guide to the whole story. She has read everything there is to read on the subject. She has a breezy tolerance of the ‘British know-nothings’, blundering over formerly beautiful sites with their guidebooks and their ignorance of European languages and culture. She sees it all as a natural extension of democracy. Watering places, spas, Italian cathedral cities and French ports which had previously been visited by the rich on grand tours could now be reached easily by rail and by Mr Pooter. Most such modern tourists, from the beginning, were inspired by an incoherent restlessness, which was not exactly explained. You might say we all
The Morning Paper for Sophisticated Classes noted in BadenBaden in 1830 that, of the 8,000 to 10,000 who traipsed through the town every year, only 2,000 used the baths. (Lethbridge is especially funny on water cures and Equally,hydropathy.)sheiskindly, and amused, when describing the quest for the picturesque which has been drawing us to ‘beauty spots’ all over Europe, from the early Romantic travellers with their watercolour boxes to the present. ‘Is that the famous volcano?’ asked Hester Lynch Piozzi of a friar in Naples, gazing across the bay. ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘that’s our mountain which throws up money for us by calling foreigners to see the extraordinary effects of so surprising a phenomenon.’Onestrandof the story that surprised me was the number of do-gooders who saw (more or less indiscriminate) travel less as the chance for some fun, and more as an opportunity for moral improvement. We meet the Rev Samuel Barnett of the Toynbee Travellers Club in the East End of London, afraid that the working classes were going to spend too much time enjoying themselves at home on their ‘hobbies’. To be canary-fanciers or tulip-growers, happily at home, was of no use to the canon, who wanted them to swarm round the Uffizi and learn about art before returning to their uncomfortable pensioni. Surveys taken afterwards showed most of them had found Florence a grave disappointment. The Holiday Fellowship in Sydenham hosted visitors from all over the world, and the Youth Hostel Association had, by the 1930s, more than 3,000 hostels in Europe.AsLethbridge points out, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were especially favoured tourist destinations. Dachau concentration camp was popular.
The Oldie September 2022 49 WINGGARY need to escape our humdrum existence, but surely existence itself isn’t humdrum – it is holidays that are the boring bit. Moreover, tourist are – and were, from the beginning – persuaded to visit places in which they have no obvious interest. Look at the blank, unhappy expressions on the faces of those led round cathedrals or stately palaces, being fed usually inaccurate and always dead boring accounts of the abbots, kings and such who once walked there. Likewise, people went to spa towns with no desire to take the waters. So why did they go?
One young English cyclist, Robert Dummett, wrote home approvingly to say that the tourists had been given lunch in the same room as the prisoners who were ‘wasters, social undesirables, Jewish profiteers and riff-raff’. Fifteen years later, caravanning was all the rage. Some 75,000 social menaces in Britain alone were clogging the roads – presumably Mrs Margaret Beckett among them – while the rest of us had apoplexy behind the wheels of our cars, crawling behind them up the A9 to theSunbathing,Highlands. fresh air, a change of scene … by 1953, Lethbridge tells us, two million Britons were holidaying abroad. By 2000 it was 30 million. The truly mysterious thing about tourism is that it makes almost no one happy. Very few people, having been conventional enough to spend money having a holiday, will admit that they have not enjoyed it. Yet, year after year, we nearly all indulge in this completely unnecessary activity. As it steadily – and, in some places, such as Venice, rather rapidly –wrecks the world, we all claim it is not only a vital part of economic life, but also such jolly fun.
Lucy Lethbridge’s Tourists: How the British Went Abroad to Find Themselves is published by Bloomsbury (£20) Is your journey really necessary? No one asks it of touriststhe
The Oldie September 2022 51
Richard Nayler is a classic relentless pursuer, in the mould of Clint Eastwood in his later Westerns. He carries the wounds of the Civil War on his body and in his heart. He has a particularly painful link to Goffe and Whalley, after the pair roughly ended the celebration of Christmas one day, costing Nayler all he held dear. The flame of vengeance within him never dies. When the story of Whalley and Goffe cools in America, Harris is able to deploy Nayler elsewhere. Starting as an eyewitness to Charles I’s execution, he is also on hand when three regicides are captured in the Netherlands, and when another is assassinated in Switzerland. It is a bit of a stretch, though, when Harris credits his fictional character with sowing the seeds that led the English to capture what would become New York. Harris has no need for depth in his remaining characters, because he does not wish to slow the narrative. So Charles II and his brother the Duke of York are presented merely as oversexed and lazy, and the aristocrats are fat, drawling and entitled, while the colonial famers are muscled sons of the soil. The Puritans’ womenfolk are endlessly loyal and faithful, with their children saying cute things and wanting a puppy. Meanwhile the posse who help Nayler in one foray are grim ne’er-do-wells, Scots who have suffered slavery through defeat in the civil wars. Harris’s favour is with Parliament, not the King. Harris gives us interesting snippets: of Cromwell’s fallibility, and also of his welling up at the sound of fine music. New England in the mid-17th century is well painted, and studded with familiar landmarks – Boston, Harvard and the Harriscountryside.isparticularly good at the lyrical description of a wilderness, a sky, or a sea. We learn how grim the transatlantic voyages were, with infested food, and cramped conditions below deck. And Harris kindly gives the dialogue in recognisable form rather than some attempt at 17th-century verbiage.
desperately close calls, as they rely on Puritan help to save their necks, living in a cave, behind a fireplace and in a barn, all the time hunted for their lives. And then came heroic fighting against NativeHarris’sAmericans.mainproblem, when telling a tale that covers two decades and involves both frantic energy and long periods of nothing much, is how to hold it together. He therefore introduces a central character, Richard Nayler, who did not exist, as the person who led the manhunt.
Murder most royal CHARLES SPENCER Act of Oblivion By Robert Harris Hutchinson Heinemann £22 When Charles II returned from exile in 1660, Parliament and people were keen to draw a line under the uniquely bloody period of the three civil wars. The monarchy was to be restored without recriminations against the Parliamentarians, leaderless in the wake of Cromwell’s death. But the new King insisted that one group be excluded from the general amnesty: the regicides – the men who had taken part in the beheading of his father, Charles I, whether as judges, signatories of his death warrant or functionaries on the scaffold. The surviving killers of the King made excellent scapegoats, allowing the nation to move forward after the savage sacrifice of men who had held sway during the 11 years when England was a republic. While some of them surrendered, expecting a pardon, others were arrested without a struggle. One, who had grown rich under Cromwell, hid in disguise in London – until the authorities grew suspicious that particularly expensive food was being delivered to an extremely modest address. He would have got away had a blind man not recognised his voice. While some of the regicides endured imprisonment so grim that they begged for release through death, the condemned killers faced agonising execution. Hanging, drawing and quartering involved public degradation: being hanged until unconscious, then being revived, castrated and disembowelled while alive, before being beheaded and split into quarters, such parts being displayed as deterrents to others contemplating high treason. After their initial rich haul, the Royalists looked abroad for those who had escaped. Robert Harris’s Act of Oblivion builds on the drama of a chase which his publishers call ‘the greatest manhunt of the 17th century’. The pair Harris concentrates on were two Parliamentary colonels, Edward Whalley and William Goffe. Whalley was Oliver Cromwell’s cousin, while the religious zealot Goffe was Whalley’s son-in-law. They sought safety in America. We know a lot about this pair, and their attempts to avoid the grisly fate decreed for them. Their true tale more than matches any fiction. There are
Equally, Harris portrays Charles as ‘handsome’, when he was famously anything but. There are also two references to Northamptonshire being flat – most puzzlingly at Naseby, where the folds in the landscape greatly assisted the Parliamentary army in its Butvictory.Harris’s many fans will ignore these small issues and enjoy the set pieces, as well as the way this seasoned story-teller keeps the tale moving forward. He has taken a truly extraordinary factual tale and turned it into a fun fictional version, with pace throughout, and a crowd-pleasing finale.
Cover stories
There is a surprising moment when Goffe thinks of his wife and children, across the Atlantic: ‘Frances, Dick, Betty, Frankie, Nan and Judith. What time was it in England? What might they be Moredoing?’than two centuries before the imposition of time zones, and in an era when a transatlantic crossing could take two months, it seems improbable that anyone knew of time differences between New England and England.
By Loiuse Willder Oneworld £14.99 ‘Work out what you want to say before you say it,’ writes the wise and witty Louise Willder. So, using this advice, I state immediately that this is a book to be valued. It is not boring. Yet its subject – it purports to be about blurbs, book blurbs, the copy you read on the back, and sometimes the front or flaps of every book you buy – is boring. What could be worse than trying to condense into 100 or so words the mysteries of, say, Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow? Or pondering on buying a book and being presented with such cover copy as ‘Back in Paris for a quiet, sane fortnight, Sasha Jansen has just been rescued by a friend from drinking herself to death in a Bloomsbury bedsitter’ (to capture Jean Rhys being mournful again, of course, in Good Morning, Midnight [1939]). Encapsulating the sense, value, singularity and appeal of every book is the job of a book copywriter. That, and obedience to the marketing, sales and global money bosses hovering above every editor and blurb-writer in the
CARMEN CALLIL Blurb Your Enthusiasm: An A-Z of Literary Persuasion
A doctor’s last words
Marsh, the neurosurgeon who has written a couple of very fine memoirs, and who himself has lived healthily, does not share the illusion that Nature always either does or should pin the medal of longevity on the chests of those who follow the latest, and therefore the best, instructions. Nature is neither just nor unjust: it is indifferent. But this is not to say that there are no foreseeable consequences of our actions or omissions. And Mr Marsh, by ignoring the symptoms and signs of his increasing prostatism, allowed his cancer of the prostate to progress to the point at which, though still treatable, it was not curable. And this in turn confronted him sharply with his own mortality and approaching death: hence these meditations. business today, urging them towards words that will sell, sell, sell. Louise Willder has been writing such blurbs, over 5,000 of them, for over 25 years, for Penguin Books. She should be a jaded creature, but instead she is full of vim, blessed too with an unusual sense of enquiry, a comic turn of phrase and a talent for investigation into almost every nook and cranny of the business and pleasures of books. She uses these talents to range well away from blurbs and marketing into the world of literature, great and popular, and the craft of publishing generally.
A constant do-it-yourself tinkerer with his house, he now realises that his efforts were second-rate and often deleterious in their effects. He relates, possibly as evidence of his advancing senility, how he was twice the victim of an obvious and crude scam by roofers, or pseudo-roofers. This last bit is painful to read. If ‘It doesn’t have to say “Chairman and CEO” ’
The Oldie September 2022 53
THEODORE DALRYMPLE And Finally: Matters of Life and Death By Henry Marsh Jonathan Cape £16.99 Some years ago, an American magazine sent me seven memoirs of serious illness to review simultaneously. (There are now academic courses on this kind of literature in university departments.) They were secular meditations on mortality and death, and some of them had an almost querulous quality. Hadn’t the writer followed all medical advice, kept to a good diet, exercised frequently, attended check-ups etc.? And here they were, seriously ill before their time (serious illness always comes before its Henrytime).
For Blurb Your Enthusiasm – a terrible title for this delicious book – is actually about loving, reading, selling and working for books. And for ‘books’ here I could have well written ‘writers’: this is an essential handbook for any young human being (or old, if they are given the opportunity, though that is most unlikely) who aspires to a life in book-publishing.Willderisformidably well read, with an exceptionally good and beady eye for quotation and literary gossip. She covers almost everything: adjectives, puns, the importance of book titles, straplines, hacking golden words out of foul book reviews and pondering on clichés are only a few of the joys of this book. There are writing tips, analyses of dedications, typefaces, chapbooks, pamphlets, dots, dashes and ellipses. She has heroes and heroines: Dickens, Roberto Calasso (an Italian publisher famous in my day, unknown now), Kate Atkinson, Muriel Spark and Sue Townsend. She is very partial to George Orwell. One quote she chooses – ‘England is “a family with the wrong members in control” ’ – has been particularly useful these past months. She is sound on not cancelling authors for being disagreeable, fascist or politically incorrect, and acute as to how Brexit triumphed, and how Trump came to power by using simple words. Another good thing about this book is that, as it goes on, it gets better, with excellent chapters on children’s books, genre fiction, Enid Blyton, Shirley Conran, Nabokov and Lolita – the ultimate text for a good copywriter. Her choice of the ‘greatest line in the history of the written word’ is the strapline for Shirley Conran’s Lace: ‘Which of you bitches is my mother?’ Working in publishing, she hedges her bets, adding ‘probably’ before that choice. Warning: this is a book with flaws, thank goodness, and one of them is the repetition of the publications, blurbs, lifestyle et al of that global giant of paperback publishing for which she works. Not that Willder ignores other imprints – all of blurb and book life is here – but my comment of ‘Not again’ pops up a little too much, as Penguin paperbacks stalk her pages. She can overstretch her language and her jokes – ‘Let me channel my inner Mary Beard’ is just one tedious example; is prone to using words like ‘upcoming’; and is sometimes given to unfortunate and often embarrassing asides in caps –such as ‘PLEASE GOD, NO! I have a mortgage!’ She uses far too many exclamation marks (publishers of my generation were taught to avoid them at all costs). Such imperfections match her subject, publishing being an imperfect trade – as every writer knows. These tiny peccadillos could well be cut in a reprint, of which I imagine there will be many. In a trice, he passed the regrettably porous frontier between being the invulnerable and omnipotent healer to being the vulnerable and powerless patient. In a doctor’s case, this passage is painful for two reasons. The first is that the doctor is professionally inclined to suppose that illness is what laymen suffer from (notwithstanding the obituary columns of the British Medical Journal, which doctors of a certain age always turn to first). At least three times in my life, I have disregarded symptoms of serious illness on the insufficient grounds that I was a doctor. I could easily make the same mistake as Mr Marsh did. Becoming a patient also naturally causes doctors to reflect on their own professional past. The waiting around, the casual delay, the offhand remarks and the humiliations, many of them inflicted unnecessarily though not always with intent, encourage them to look back on their own careers, and they do not always like what they see. Though not religious, Mr Marsh seems to have a need – or at any rate a taste – for confession. When he looks back, he wonders whether he was quite the colossus he took himself to be. True, he had triumphs of meticulous skill, but there were also disasters: patients who were the worse for his ministrations. Having worked pro bono in Ukraine for 30 years, training Ukrainian doctors and operating on patients who would otherwise be inoperable there, he now wonders how much good all his efforts did, though he prided himself on his work at the time.
Near Wolverhampton by John Louis Petit, c 1835. From J L Petit: Britain’s Lost Pre-Impressionist by Philip Modiano (RPS Publications, £20)
Scheming to become proprietor himself, he visited a Ludgate Circus however, it cannot be denied that he was one of the great men of his era.’
King of Fleet Street PETER MCKAY
Unhampered by a university education, Harmsworth became a jobbing journalist aspiring to become a press proprietor. Aged 21, he became editor of Bicycling News, revamping the paper by cutting paragraph lengths, introducing short stories and hiring a female columnist, which first alerted him to a great, then-untapped female audience later targeted by his Daily Mail.
The Chief: The Life of Lord Northcliffe, Britain’s Greatest Press Baron
Considering Lord Northcliffe’s character, Andrew Roberts advises, ‘Great men are seldom nice men. They can display assertiveness, ruthlessness and other unattractive features in their quest to change the world around them and to fashion it in their own image. There are plenty of occasions in these pages when Lord Northcliffe displayed traits of discourtesy which marred his personality. To set against all that, papers – the Daily Mail, Daily Mirror and Times – all made money, but he risked their profitability by feuding with the Government and frightening advertisers – a spirit that lives on in today’s Daily Mail Who was this boyishly handsome man (until a final illness which killed him, aged 57, in 1922, after literally driving him mad) who invented newspaper journalism here and influenced it abroad, especially in America?
By Andrew Roberts Simon & Schuster £25
54 The Oldie September 2022
Alfred Charles William Harmsworth was born in Chapelizod, a suburb of Dublin, in 1865. His father, Alfred, was a schoolteacher; his mother, Geraldine, the daughter of a Protestant land agent. They were not grindingly poor, but an early biographer, J A Spender, said in 1927 that ‘Northcliffe had known the pinch of poverty in his childhood, and with his usual directness appears to have made up his mind quite early in life that this obstruction to happiness must be put out of the way for himself and all of his family before anything else was done.’
Even Lord Beaverbrook, a rival press proprietor, admitted, ‘Whatever the political world may think of Northcliffe, one factor can never be disputed. He was the greatest figure who ever strode down FleetKaiserStreet.’Willem II, his country damned off the face of the earth up to, during and after the First World War by Northcliffe, confessed, ‘What a man! If we had had Northcliffe, we would have won the war.’
Press tycoon Rupert Murdoch is often attacked for encouraging his newspapers and the Fox TV network of America to back politicians such as Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, but he usually doesn’t involve himself personally. Incidentally, Northcliffe became a mentor to Rupert’s father, Keith, then a small-time Aussie newspaper publisher, who thanked him in an emotional letter ‘for all you have been for me and done forTheme’.Chief did get stuck in personally, feuding with wartime PMs (Lloyd George) and generals (Kitchener) over their conduct of the war. He raged personally against our scandalous shortage of shells, especially that ‘the Hun’ had more lethal ones. He later raged that blaming the Versailles Treaty for causing the Second World War was intended to ‘let Hitler, Stalin and Western appeasers off the hook’. Politicians were terrified, and sometimes threatened to ruin him. His a man of Mr Marsh’s intelligence, knowledge and experience is so easily swindled, what about the rest of us? But is the public bringing forth of this story bravery, honesty, false modesty or exhibitionism? Certainly, I would not like to put such episodes from my own past before the public: the temptation for most of us is to dwell on our grosser mistakes, if at all, in the privacy of our own minds. In public, we dwell on our triumphs; we are the joker, rather than the butt of jokes. Like many people confronting death, the author veers, or even careens, between resignation, hope and despair. He tells himself, with David Hume, that post-death oblivion is no more to be feared than the pre-natal variety: but it is surely the having existed that makes theMrdifference.Marshhas many of the thoughts that most of us probably have when thinking about death. When I go to the greengrocer now, for example, I think, ‘If I were to die today, people would still come here tomorrow to buy their lettuces and their cucumbers as if nothing important had happened.’ Is this reassuring – the show must go on – or a reason to lament one’s own totalOninsignificance?hisownaccount, Mr Marsh’s personality has mellowed with age. He now realises better than at the height of his pomp what is important in life – namely love and friendship. But if everyone concentrated on those things all the time, who would do the neurosurgery?
Dr Theodore Dalrymple is The Oldie’s doctor
The Oldie September 2022 57 Northern delights LUCINDA LAMBTON Northumberland: A Guide By Stephen Platten Sacristy Press £30 Squelching bare feet on wet moorland and surrounded by soothingly beautiful views of green wilderness … these are my joyful memories of Northumberland. Look down and rejoice in the squelching feet and look up at the green wilderness, particularly in the Cheviot Hills, and your happiness is complete. I grew up partly in Northumberland – as well as its polar opposite, County Durham – and just thinking of its pure beauty makes me feel weak with the desire to be there to this day. Read this new guide, inspired by the Shell Guides, and relish the charms of the county town of Wooler, known as ‘the Gateway to the Cheviots’, settled most endearingly in their foothills. Here, where three churches march forth, you can delight in the parish church of St Mary, with its wealth of outstanding stained glass of richly caparisoned figures of the early 20th century; the men with their wondrously luxuriant beards, the women with their beauty and their wondrous robes. They were all designed by the great and glorious Percy Bacon, as well as his twin Charles and a third brother, and they set you quite shivering in admiration.Thestream Wooler Water runs through the town before joining the River Till. Humbleton Hill is where Harry Hotspur routed the Scots. The town is thickset with border history, as indeed is the whole Northumberlandcounty. is famed for its castles rearing forth throughout the land. Great and small, they are loved and lived in, as well as mournfully derelict and often the more beautiful because of that.How my heart stirs at the memory of galloping a horse along the North Sea shore as the sun rose at dawn over the jagged ruins of the great Dunstanburgh Castle. It was built between 1313 and 1322 by Thomas Earl of Lancaster who was soon to be executed before his whopping great building became the property of the Crown. Chillingham Castle is quite another story, having been entirely rebuilt from being a guano-filled wreck to a luxurious stately. It was originally a monastery, built in the late-12th century. In 1298, Edward I stayed here on his way to Scotland to do battle with William Wallace. As an act of greatest rarity, one of the first framed, glazed windows in the country was installed here in his honour. In 1344, licence to crenellate was issued by Edward II to allow battlements to be built. At last a fortified castle, it has remained so until this day. In 1982, it was bought by Sir Humphry Wakefield, a man as colourful as his achievements of saving the great stronghold and subsequently cramming it with a wealth of exhilarating treasures. During numerous skirmishes between the Royal Lancastrians and the Yorkists, it was never to recover from the various campaigns. By the 16th century, it was described as having fallen into ‘a wonderful great decaye’. So it has remained ever since, with the added bumper bonus of being only a stone’s throw from where the delectable Craster kippers have been produced in their original smokehouse for nigh on 100Suchyears.is the wilderness of the Northumberland countryside all around, there are even rich smatterings of prehistoric art to be found embedded into the rocks here and there. Concave depressions of cup and ring marks show themselves off in abundance, suddenly appearing without any warning, deeply etched into the rocks. All is not geared to rural life; in Newcastle upon Tyne, for example, to the extreme south of the county, there is a wealth of especially fine and innovative bridges, marching along in the most marvellous row over the river. There is the Swing Bridge of 1876, the High Level of 1849, the Tyne Bridge of 1925, the High Level of 1849 and the Gateshead Millennium of 2001. Modern marvels too are to be seen in abundance, such as the Monkseaton High School of 2009, completed by Devereux Architects. Dashingly white and bright, its modernistic profile is based on an oval design, with triangular classrooms looking outwards and colourful windcatchers avoiding overdependence on air-conditioning. External shades counter the impact of the sun. And there are umpteen such modern treasures to admire throughout Northumberland. At the northernmost point of the county, Berwick’s Old Bridge dances forth. With 15 arches and 366 yards long, it is as delicate as a spider’s web. What an architecturally delectable sandwich, to be sure!
Lucinda Lambton is author of the A to Z of Britain‘It’s Gucci’ (adjoining Fleet Street) restaurant to study senior press men, recalling, ‘Neither their eating nor their conversation impressed me. I was astonished to see such a collection of mediocrity.’Hewasmuch taken by a weekly magazine called Tit-Bits, which specialised in ‘strange facts, light articles on a wide variety of subjects, very short stories, jokes and puns, and paragraphlong pieces of information’ – snootily described by Punch magazine as ‘giblets journalism’ (and not unlike The Oldie, you may think). When it folded in 1984, it was selling ‘only’ 200,000 copies per issue, says Wikipedia. It had a feature called Answers to Correspondents, which Northcliffe set up as a standalone publication. It survives today as a daily column in the Mail, a monument to The Chief. The Chief’s private life was unusual. He had two mistresses, tolerated by his childless wife, Mary. She had two lovers, whom Northcliffe not only tolerated but treated as extended members of his family. A passionate believer in the Empire – he idolised Cecil Rhodes and believed we were a force for good in the world –he was critical of insensitive colonists in India but supported the creation of Israel. Like many of his class then, he was prone to jokey antisemitism, once posing the question, ‘Can Jews rideWhenbicycles?’hisfatal illness began, he was confined to what was virtually a rooftop shed in Carlton House Terrace. He sent a message to the Mail news desk: ‘I hear they are saying I am mad. Send your best reporter for the story.’ His dying words were ‘Give a kiss and my love to mother, and tell her she’s the only one.’ Peter McKay has worked for the Daily Mail for over 25 years
Rishi Sunak can count on scant media support – and Liz Truss even less –except from a smattering of loyal friends in the Tory press, some of whom will run for the hills if things go seriously pear-shaped, as they well might. My only advice to them is not to feed the beast more than is necessary. This entails not giving interviews to every media outlet at the drop of a hat, and trying to avoid soundbite responses to every trivial incident. But I don’t offer these suggestions in a spirit of great hope. Our voracious round-the-clock media devour Prime Ministers. Which of us would fancy trying to cope with them? Liz or Rishi is about to get a whole lot older. When I became a journalist, there was a quaint, old-fashioned idea that you reported on the past and speculated about the future. This distinction has been largely forgotten.
Boris aged 10 years in office, thanks to 24-hour news stephen glover
One thing is certain about the Tory leadership contest. The victor will look an awful lot older in a year’s time. Observe poor Boris and his hooded eyes. In his three years in No 10, he has aged ten. This is in large measure because of the problems that have beset him – COVID, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Partygate, to name a few. It is also because of the unremitting pressure of the modern media. There was a time when, however burdensome the duties of office, a Prime Minister could escape the remorseless leviathan. While thousands were dying on the fields of Flanders, Asquith would spend his afternoons reading novels at his club, the Athenaeum. When he was in No 10, Harold Macmillan found time to immerse himself in Trollope and JaneLeadersAusten.in the past naturally had their difficulties with the media. They had to put up with unfavourable comment in the press, which sometimes wore them down. Stanley Baldwin famously took on newspaper barons Beaverbrook and Rothermere with his jibe (supposedly provided by his cousin Rudyard Kipling) about ‘power without responsibility [being] the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages’. What Prime Ministers of earlier generations did not have to endure, though, was 24-hour media driven by TV news demanding instant responses about every subject under the sun, many of them trivial. Woe betide the modern leader who doesn’t have a ready solution. Nor, of course, did previous PMs have to live with the raging torrents of social media, which can quickly turn into a tsunami. Being by nature somewhat lazy and inattentive, Boris began as PM in a laid-back manner, and responded to the demands of the media as he pleased. It has been claimed that the reason he skipped five COBRA meetings during the weeks before the pandemic struck was that he was working on his much-delayed book about Shakespeare at the official country retreat of Chevening (Chequers then undergoing minor refurbishment). Yet even Boris could not escape for long, and he was soon hosting regular press conferences with Professors Doomster and Gloomster at his side, and addressing the nation on TV in apocalyptic terms about the need for lockdowns and other restrictions. As the pandemic slowly faded, so Partygate began to preoccupy him and his media advisers, and they were so busy fighting fires that they barely had time to think. Often during his prime ministership, Boris was photographed at primary schools moving plastic cubes around in a mindless way, or chatting amiably with children who seemed neither overawed nor even particularly interested. The purpose of the exercise was to obtain pictures of a sympathetic PM with the ‘kiddies’ for the six-o’clock news. But I suspect there was an additional motive in Boris’s mind behind these excursions. The last thing any of these children was likely to do was to ask a difficult question, and so he was able to enjoy a few precious moments of peace. Admittedly, one recent Prime Minister, David Cameron, was notorious for trying to ‘chillax’. A biography published in 2012 claimed that, during a typical weekend, he might practise tennis on a machine he called ‘the Clegger’, after the Deputy PM. He would reportedly then cook dinner, have a few glasses of wine and sing My Way on his personal karaoke machine. I wonder if he would have been a more effective leader had he got more stuck in. The next Prime Minister will face far greater problems than Cameron ever did. He or she will also have to deal with a largely hostile media, since it is surely indisputable that most broadcasters are gunning for the Tories as never before.
The Oldie September 2022 59 Media Matters
´Shall I compare thee to a summer of discontent’s day?´
Beware of the media, Liz and Rishi
A recent front-page headline in the Daily Telegraph declared: ‘Recession to cause record drop in income’. Meanwhile, on air, a BBC reporter described the recession as a ‘fact’. A recession may be highly likely – the Bank of England predicts one – and it could cause a record drop in income. But it hasn’t happened yet. The future shouldn’t be written about as though it is the past.
The debate is at least as old as Socrates. Is history best understood as the past actions of ‘great men’ and their consequences, or are larger, impersonal forces more important? The historian R G Collingwood, in The Idea of History, framed Socrates’s answer like this: ‘No one can resist the forces of his environment. Either he conquers the world or the world conquers him.’ Versions of this discussion have played out ever since. Montesquieu thought people ‘are governed by many things: climate, religion, laws, maxims of government, examples of things past, customs, manners’. Marx declared, ‘Men make their own history, but not as they please, in conditions of their own choosing, but rather under those directly encountered, given and Tolstoyinherited.’wasevenmore sceptical. War and Peace might have been about the Napoleonic Wars, but as far as Tolstoy was concerned, ‘the influence of Napoleons on the progress of … events is superficial and fictitious’. To most academic historians, at least since the Second World War, Tolstoy and co were right. Great men were less important than the world they lived in. What about daily life and the experiences of the colossal majority of past people who were not ‘great men’ (ie all the women and 99.9 per cent of the men)? Or the weight of social, environmental, labour or intellectual history? And that is before you get to the postmodernists, who suggest it’s all just a story we tell ourselves anyway, and there’s no such thing as truth, let alone greatness. In spite of all the chips stacked against them, the great men have not folded. If anything, they have made a comeback. Some of the most impressive history books of the 21st century have been historical biographies, from Robert man mean old-fashioned history is back? NotWhennecessarily.weread history, we are perfectly aware that individuals are important. But we’re also aware that they are limited, because we see the same dynamic in operation every time we open a newspaper or switch on the television. We wouldn’t expend so much energy on Boris Johnson or Donald Trump if they didn’t matter. But, then again, we know that their actions are dictated by a combination of personality and circumstance. COVID provided a perfect global test case for wannabe great men and women. Whatever democratic leaders from Trump to Jacinda Ardern chose to do, they were at the mercy of that most impersonal of forces – a virus. They were also limited by their democracies (however much some of them chafed against those limitations). Undemocratic leaders had no such limitations, but were still not masters of their fate. Xi Jinping couldn’t banish COVID to a re-education camp. Even Kim Jong-un couldn’t keep it out of his hermeticSimilarly,state.historians are at pains to emphasise that even titans like Churchill and Hitler were catapulted into power by the situation they found themselves in. So can we spot great men and women only in retrospect, and is today’s world less likely to produce them? The historian’s answer to the first part is an emphatic ‘yes’. Few of Churchill’s contemporaries recognised his greatness during the war, and the British electorate didn’t give it much consideration when they booted him out of office in 1945. As for the second part, I hope not. There is, surely, a bit of Bonnie Tyler in all of us: we’re holding out for a hero.
Ian Kershaw’s Personality and Power: Builders and Destroyers of Modern Europe (Penguin) is published on 29th September Caro’s ongoing multi-decker on LBJ to Ian Kershaw’s Hitler As for the superficial, fictitious Napoleon, every ‘definitive’ volume is soon joined by another: two more are announced for later this year, by two distinguished historians, Michael Broers and William Doyle. Kershaw himself will soon publish a book explicitly addressing the great-man theory. Personality and Power focuses on the ‘builders and destroyers of modern Europe’ after the Second World War. There is, at least, room for one great woman in this collection – Margaret Thatcher, whom the unsinkable Henry Kissinger also included in his recent book Leadership. If the description of Mrs T as ‘great’ does not sit well with you (and even if it does), it is worth pointing out that most historians scrupulously distinguish between the great and the good. That is, great men and women might be good, but it’s not a requirement.
History 60 The Oldie September 2022
A new book asks whether great men – and women – make history david horspool Napoleon crowned at Notre-Dame, 1804
Even Thomas Carlyle, the greatest cheerleader for great men, more sympathetic to the likes of Oliver Cromwell than most of us could ever be, didn’t think Cromwell’s greatness made him good when he included him in his collection On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History. So does the return of the great Who is the greatest of them all?
Johnny
Monoglot Britons are missing out on a lot.
Secondly, the dominance of English is not always popular abroad. Since 1994, the French have been trying to find a way of protecting their language in public discourse and at the same time recognising the dominance of English in technology. It has not proved easy. Discomfort has also been shown in the generally anglophile Netherlands and Scandinavia, where the adoption of English for areas of further education has brought regrets.
Grimond: Words and Stuff
The third issue may be the hardest for Britain: most of the benefits of the spread of English accrue to America. This further reduces the effectiveness of British foreign policy, which now sails under the fatuous slogan ‘Global Britain’ and bases most of its claims of influence abroad on ‘soft power’ – the ability to get other countries to do things through attraction rather than coercion.
‘A country’s soft power,’ says Joseph Nye, the man who coined the phrase, ‘rests on its resources of culture, values and policies.’ For Britain, that means above all the English language.
Suddenly remembering the name of a person you’re trying to think ANGELAof.
If the Americans have snaffled most of our soft power, we’ve got little else of pre-eminence but the monarchy.
NORFOLKSHROPHAM,LYNNE, Email life’s small delights to editorial@theoldie.co.uk DELIGHTS
The Oldie September 2022 63 SMALL
Here’s something that Britain is good at: English. I’m not talking about oratory, novels or even Shakespeare. I’m referring to English as the world’s dominant lingua franca. In achieving this role, it has become ‘an economic skill, a marketable commodity and a form of cultural capital’. That is the view of Rosemary Salomone, whose recent book, The Rise of English, explores the many uses of a once-minor European tongue as it spreads across the world. Roughly 1.5 billion people – about a fifth of the world’s population – have mastered English, though barely 400 million are native speakers. It is a linguistic force like no other in history. More people speak English than speak Mandarin Chinese, though not as their first language. Spanish, too, ranks higher as a native tongue, and Hindi is not far behind. English, though, is used differently from its rivals. As a lingua franca, it is more like Latin than like Chinese. English started its expansion, as did other colonial languages, through ‘conquest, conversion and commerce’. It lubricated the imperial apparatus, and even proved useful in helping to unite competing ethnic groups after colonies became independent. That doesn’t mean it was always popular. Since most languages are linked to national identity, foreigners often resist the colonisers’ language. But as memories fade, English has become detached from Britain. That allows its proliferation. The main force behind its rise is the spread of technology. English is the language of the worldwide web, bringing American music, films, television and an entire way of life to anyone with a mobile phone or a computer. The young may criticise the West, but many enjoy its entertainment and aspire to its comforts. In business, English is considered a huge advantage. It is not just the language of vast multinationals. It is ‘the language in which the Brazilians speak to the Dutch and the Japanese speak to the Italians’, says Salomone. English is thus the language of advancement and of globalisation. It is the language of international institutions, the UN and its agencies and so on. It also commands the realms of further education and medicine. If you aspire to a career in international law or science, you will probably need to know English. That is as likely to be true in Latin America and Asia as it is in Africa and Europe. And in business, even if yours is humble, you will turn to English if you can. All over the world, advertisements and signs are often in English, first-floor ‘academies’ offer English classes and friendly strangers want to chat in order to improve their mastery of this alien tongue. English is even the language of reform: from Myanmar to Ukraine, whatever script the locals use, protesters carry placards with slogans in English. This looks like something of a triumph for Britain, but it’s not all good. First, Britons’ ability to speak a foreign language of any kind is diminishing. A recent survey revealed that only 38 per cent can speak a foreign language, compared with 56 per cent of European Union citizens.
Some African countries, too, welcome the efforts of France and China to displace English, even as French-speaking Morocco and Rwanda have taken to English.
How English conquered the world
Lucy in Peru would have beenTheappalled.realPaddington has exemplary manners. Readers will remember how he removes his hat when he is outside the Browns’ house and about to be introduced to their housekeeper, Mrs Bird. Ignorance of men’s hat etiquette is now widespread, and can be observed in recent film and TV productions set in the past. This alters the rhythm of conversations, mucks up the sense of period and looks like carelessness. In the opening sequence of the 2019 film Radioactive, set in Paris in 1901, the young Pierre Curie retrieves a book that a young lady has Men’s hats It was the picture of Paddington Bear having tea with The Queen that did it. Paddington is wearing his signature blue duffel coat and red hat. He is wearing a hat, not just inside a home (in a lady’s drawing-room) but in the presence of The Queen. Wrong on both counts. Michael Bond and Aunt dropped on the pavement, and is astonished to see that it is a physics textbook. He goes to return the book. Does he remove his hat before he speaks to her? Does he, hell! Later on, does he take his hat off when he wishes her good night, having escorted her home? Or when he kisses her in the street (highly unlikely) after she’s agreed to marry him? Absolutely not. Film-makers vie to tell us the vast sums they’ve spent on costumes, sets and locations for period dramas, and the efforts they’ve made to get details right. So why can’t they spend a few quid on an etiquette adviser to infuse historically appropriate manners? Drama schools can put this right by teaching period etiquette, so that actors know what to do with their hats, even if directors don’t. Because knowledge is power – or at least a bit less egg on your JEANface.BUCHANANPLANTTOM
64 The Oldie September 2022
HARRYFILMMOUNT
EIFFEL (15) Forget the hunchback of Notre-Dame. Enter the honeybuns of the Eiffel Tower. Who’d have thought a romance about an engineering project would come off? Well, it does – thanks to the understated acting and knockout looks of Romain Duris (playing Gustave Eiffel, builder of the tower) and Emma Mackey (the half-French, half-English actress who plays Eiffel’s lover, Adrienne Bourgès). With her mile-wide mouth and whopping, melancholy eyes, Mackey makes the film – as the girl the widowed Eiffel falls for, only for her to desert him. When it emerges that she has always loved him – but has been secretly prevented from marrying him by her snobbish family – your heart breaks. ‘Twenty years too late,’ Eiffel says, when they are reunited. ‘Too late’ – the saddest words in the world. The romantic effect is intensified by the couple’s sunset clinches on the Eiffel Tower as it rises – you at the back, no jokes about erections. It could easily be naff but the fine acting, charming actors and the script make it awfully touching. Writer Caroline Bongrand freely admits she threw in the made-up story of a forbidden love affair on top of the tale of the Eiffel Tower – only to find out that Eiffel did in fact have a doomed affair. The story of the Eiffel Tower alone is gripping. Built for the 1889 World’s Fair, it was attacked by architects and writers, including Guy de Maupassant. In 1887, they wrote a letter to Le Temps: ‘A giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic, black smokestack, crushing under its barbaric bulk Notre-Dame, the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Louvre, the Dome of les Invalides…’. Once the tower was up, public opinion began to change – although Maupassant supposedly had lunch in its restaurant every day because it was the one spot in the city where you couldn’t see the tower. The rising tower makes for a stirring backdrop. You can see Maupassant’s point about its ugliness. In its early stages, its four legs look like a jagged, unruly set of ugly girders. When it’s finished in 1889, though, with the tower narrowing to an elegant point at the top, it suddenly looks absolutely magnifique Brooding shots of the half-built tower by the Seine can’t help but summon up memories of another great, recently half-destroyed Paris landmark – NotreDame. The romance only intensifies. The film’s two stories are pretty simple. The hated tower becomes a much-loved tower. Boy meets girl; boy loses girl; girl says she never stopped lovingThehim.screenplay, too, is straightforward and unflashy. And director Martin Bourboulon could have shaved 20 minutes off its 108 minutes. But, still, it ends up being the French equivalent of a really good Merchant Ivory film – a Marchand Ivoire, peutêtre? Only the French have the romantic power to make a weepie about two and a half million iron rivets that really does make you weep.
Riveting: Gustave Eiffel (Romain Duris) rouses the workers in Eiffel
Arts ALAMY
WILLIAMTHEATRECOOK SOUTH PACIFIC
SMITHGARY
Nothing like a Dame: Nellie Forbush (Gina Beck) and Emile de Becque (Julian Ovenden)
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‘Come on, man! What you doing radio programmes for? Podcasts are the future,Thusman!’spoke Alastair Campbell to Rory Stewart in their shared podcast, when Stewart plugged his Radio 4 series, A Long History of Argument from Socrates to Social Media. Alas, Campbell is probably right. Does anyone else still listen on a radio set, catching programmes at the time they are broadcast – eg the Six O’Clock News, 100 this year? ‘To the six-o’clock news and a lime-juice and gin’, as Betjeman wrote, of visiting Joan Hunter Dunn’s Surrey home. When first broadcast, the 6pm bulletin was read once at normal speed, and then again s-l-o-w-l-y, ‘so that listeners can take notes’. Hilarious! Imagine noting the repetitive platitudes of the Tory The Oldie 2022 65 Touring nationwide Is there anything more rejuvenating than a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical? From Oklahoma! to The Sound of Music, Richard Rodgers’s soaring melodies and Oscar Hammerstein’s witty lyrics are guaranteed to lift your spirits. Yet their finest musical, South Pacific, isn’t mere escapism. Written in America during the bad old days of racial segregation, it was that rare and splendid thing – a feelgood show with something new to say. In 1949, when it premièred on Broadway, it was revolutionary. It still feels radical today. The story is a kind of ‘42nd Street Madame Butterfly’ (as the Daily Express described it, when it came to London in 1951), about the culture clash between US servicemen and Polynesian women, set against the backdrop of America’s bloody maritime battles with Japan during the Second World War. It was based on Tales of the South Pacific by American author James A Michener, a collection of short stories inspired by his wartime service in Polynesia. Out of his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Rodgers and Hammerstein fashioned an archetypal tale about the tug-of-war between love and duty. The Americans have established a bridgehead on a Polynesian island, from which they plan to invade the surrounding islands, currently occupied by the Japanese. However, they can’t defeat the Japanese without some inside knowledge of these other islands, and the only man who can help them is a French plantation-owner called Emile de Becque. Emile is reluctant to risk his life because he’s betrothed to an American nurse called Nellie Forbush. But then Nellie (who comes from Arkansas, in the segregated South) discovers he already has two children, born of a Polynesian bride. South Pacific was a critical and commercial hit on Broadway, but its bold critique of American racism was incendiary, especially in the southern states. Rodgers and Hammerstein resisted fierce pressure to tone down this aspect of the show. They rode out that storm of protest and established a new kind of musical theatre. As Kenneth Tynan observed, South Pacific was the first romantic musical with a serious adult subject. It showed that this glitzy genre could tackle controversial issues in an entertaining way. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s genius was to parcel up this daring theme in a bright and shiny package. Most of the musical is gloriously upbeat, full of fun and laughter, and that’s what makes its progressive message so persuasive. You come out humming the songs rather than discussing the script. And what wonderful songs! Some Enchanted Evening; There Is Nothing Like a Dame; I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair… With such a string of sure-fire hits, and such a powerful storyline, you might think it would be difficult to make a mess of South Pacific, but the clumsy 1958 movie proves that Rodgers and Hammerstein’s delicate blend of humour and pathos is actually quite a tricky balancing act. This touring production (first performed at Chichester Festival last summer) treads that tightrope pretty well. The raucous ensemble numbers fizz and crackle with lusty athleticism; the romantic solos and duets are tender and sincere. The comic elements are rather clunky, and slow down the story, but any production of South Pacific ultimately stands or falls on its Emile and Nellie, and both these central performances areInsuperb.aclassic musical like South Pacific, it’s no good merely belting out the big numbers. You have to act these songs as well as sing them, and Gina Beck and Julian Ovenden both create characters of real depth. Ovenden is a suitably enigmatic Emile, while Beck’s Nellie is a complex mix of self-confidence and insecurity. You fall in and out of love with her as she falls in and out of love with Emile. The thing that makes this show so challenging is that Nellie is terribly bigoted, yet immensely endearing. The moral subtext is clear: people can be both kind and cruel, prejudice is something we’re taught rather than something we’re born with, and it’s never too late to make amends. Yet while Nellie and Emile are reunited, the islanders are left empty-handed. As the curtain falls, Liat, the Polynesian girl who’s fallen hopelessly in love with an American marine (a lyrical performance by Sera Maehara) is left all alone onstage, abandoned and forgotten by the nation that seduced her. It’s a beautiful, heartbreaking ending to one of the greatest musicals of any age.
September
Understated: Bertrand Russell, 1954
The final episode, in which Molly Bloom, lying next to her sleeping husband, remembers the other men she has loved, is 33 pages of stream of consciousness without punctuation, ending with her triumphant embrace of life and love and the forward flow of it all: ‘…then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes’. My god, what it must have been like for the reader in 1922. Today we are less shockable, but we still battle against the book’sAdamdemands.Low’sfeature-length documentary, James Joyce’s Ulysses (BBC2), opens with the poet Paul Muldoon recalling his first encounter with Ulysses: ‘It was not, I can tell you, a happy occasion.’ leadership contest, dragging on through the hot dog days of summer. My young (now middle-aged) are captivated by podcasts: This American Life, Uncanny, High Performance, The Rest Is History, Adam Fleming on Boris, true crime with Paul Britton, and Times Radio’s Stories of Our Times My old habits die hard. Switching on, on a Sunday morning, I am happy to hear a succession of oldie friends: Sara Wheeler on writing Jan Morris’s life; Michael Palin on the ostrich; Jim Naughtie on catchy novel-openings; Maureen Lipman on the Lionesses –‘clean, fresh, and nobody pretends they’reLater,dying’.Ihear my friend Roy Foster on Times Radio’s Times Literary Supplement slot, talking of Rose Dugdale, debutante turned IRA guerrilla, now 80, ‘in a nursing home run by the Poor Servants of the Mother of God, where the nuns take tea with her and think she’s great’, said Foster. ‘It’s like an Iris Murdoch novel.’
Ulysses is 100 years old, and still way ahead of its time.
Wrong!Butunrestrained self-advertisement – ‘Hi! I’m Dr Julie Shaw, clinical psychologist! And I’m Sofie Hagen, stand-up comedian! And our Bad People podcast has science and jokes! Funny jokes!’ – has become the norm. As Oliver Pritchett asked in last month’s Oldie, where did British understatement go? I found a corking example in Matthew Syed’s Sideways on nuclear warfare. In a 1959 clip of Bertrand Russell at a CND meeting, Russell said, ‘Modern weapons have the power to destroy the entire human race’– and then added, in his venerable, ancient voice, ‘which many of us are inclined to agree would be rather a pity.’
James Joyce’s novel – 265,000 words divided into three books and 18 episodes – is based on a day in the life of a Jewish advertisement canvasser called Leopold Bloom, and modelled on Ulysses’s meandering journey home to Ithaca from the Trojan War. The day itself is 16th June 1904, chosen because that was the date on which Joyce first met his muse, Nora Barnacle, on a Dublin street and she gave him a hand job. It’s an ordinary day for Bloom. He takes Molly, his wife, breakfast in bed (the same bed in which she will later welcome her lover, Blazes Boylan), goes to the post office, ogles women, buys lemon soap from the chemist, unwittingly gives a friend a tip on the horses, attends a funeral, eats a gorgonzola sandwich in a pub, masturbates on the beach, visits a maternity hospital, meets up with a young man called Stephen Dedalus and returns home to Eccles Street. All the while, he is thinking about life, death, religion, food, sex and history.
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I even heard Peggy in The Archers (June Spencer, 103) giving her last wishes – to commission a stained-glass window marking the birth of her new great-grandchildren. A moving valedictory.Radio4Extra (one of my refuges) is moving online. Let’s hope they continue to put out reruns of The Write Stuff, and books like the current gem – Peter O’Toole’s 1992 memoir Loitering with Intent, read in his lilting, lyrical, mellifluous voice: ‘these brick rabbithutches had been studded up, squat and meagre, back to back, row upon row along criss-crossing, cobblestoned miles of nasty, sunless, narrow streets’. Notice the Under Milk Wood-like cadences? I scurried back to the book, to check. Then to YouTube, for Melvyn Bragg’s 1992 South Bank Show on O’Toole, which I urgently recommend. As Annabel Leventon writes on page 26, O’Toole would have been 90 in August. He is so intelligent, honest and modest, and in close-up, oh my, those beautiful eyes, and the lips enunciating every syllable.Thetale of how he ‘blundered into RADA’ is priceless. He chanced on its principal, Sir Kenneth Barnes, and they swapped tales of George Bernard Shaw. O’Toole was a newspaperman first, which explains much. He describes Siân Phillips, still happily with us at 89, as ‘my widow, an estimable, haughty bird, andHere’sbeautiful’.atest. ‘I am outgoing, nice, genuine, loyal, honest. Friends say I’m funny, and people seem to like my company, and smile and laugh when they’re with me.’ Male or female? Michael Rosen was challenged, on his Word of Mouth about the lingo of online dating (‘woke phishing’, ‘caking’, ‘cookie jarring’ etc), to guess the sex of this would-be date. ‘Female,’ said Rosen.
Dublin’s Homer: Joyce by Man Ray, 1922
Packed into this work of outrageous audacity are, said Joyce, enough ‘enigmas and puzzles’ to ‘keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant’. One episode is written in newspaper headlines, one in musical motifs, and another replicates the entire history of the English language, beginning with Latinate prose and moving through parodies of Pepys, Dickens and Carlyle. Yet another is presented as a playscript.
‘Because he invents the modern novel,’ says Jacobson, the star of the show, Joyce also ‘invents the modernAdamreader’.Low’sgenius is to make the difficulty of Ulysses fall away, so we are left with the immensely funny and moving story of one man’s love of his wife (‘Love loves to love love’) and ambivalence towards his country (‘Let my country die for me’). Low allows us see the beauty in banality, and hear the splendour of theEvenwriting.the soundtrack is sublime: a heartbreaking folk rendition of David Bowie’s Heroes – perfectly chosen –accompanies the credits. Will I watch this documentary again and again and recommend it to everyone I know? Yes, I will Yes.
setting and even plot can be reinvented at will) is a condition that, in Britain at least, is more endemic than pandemic.
Ed McLachlan ‘Can I borrow the pale horse tonight, Dad?’
‘I think we’re allowed to do a little bit of skipping here and there,’ Howard Jacobson reassures us, ‘and to not always know what it means.’ But the effect of the next 90 minutes is to make you want to read nothing but Ulysses from now on, to savour every sentence (‘The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea’) and dig deep into every word – especially what Stephen Dedalus calls ‘those big words which make us so unhappy’. You will want to search out maps of old Dublin, return to Homer, order a copy of Joyce’s filthy letters to Nora (‘You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you’), visit Trieste, where the novel was begun, and Zurich, where it was finished, and make a shrine to Sylvia Beech, who was brave enough to publish the book when no one else would. It’s such an understated and witty piece of film-making. The footage includes Joyce, with his round dark glasses and stick, walking with Nora in her cloche hat. There are scenes from Joseph Strick’s 1968 film of Ulysses, shot in the Dublin streets with Milo O’Shea as Bloom, spliced together with the 1954 Ulysses shot in a Hollywood studio with Kirk Douglas as the Greek hero. Low masterfully blends a biography of Joyce – whose middle-class father drank his family into destitution – with readings from the book by Eimear McBride, Anne Enright, Colm Tóibín, Salman Rushdie and Howard Jacobson.
Three cheers, too, for Garsington Opera’s memorable staging of Dvořák’s Rusalka. It’s a work that’s suffered a good deal in the hands of these preening makeover merchants. Rusalka is an elaboration of Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid, the tale of the water nymph who wishes to become human to gain the love of a handsome young prince. Less famous than the Walt Disney adaptation, the opera is grander and more imaginatively complete. Dvořák’s talented young librettist Jaroslav Kvapil called it a ‘lyric fairy tale’. Yet, for all that we’re beguiled by the world of nixies, witches and forest fairies, it’s the tale’s tragic outcome that strikes powerfully home in one of Dvořák’s finest scores. There are a couple of well-publicised videos of the opera, one of them currently shortlisted for a Gramophone Award. If you’re wise, you’ll give both a wide berth. In Christof Loy’s 2020 Madrid staging, the mermaid Rusalka is played as a crippled ballerina attended by men in bowler hats. In an older Regietheater production from Munich, we’re invited to ponder the possibilities of Rusalka as a ‘survivor’ of ‘abuse’ by the long-suffering water goblin Vodník. The Garsington production involved no such shenanigans. Superbly designed and sung, it was based on the kind of imaginatively thought-through, multilayered staging that, back in 1900, its creators must have imagined it would receive. I saw it before it travelled to Edinburgh. There, it will have added lustre to a festival which, operatically speaking, is a ghost of its former self. Both as a town and as a festival, Buxton rarely fails to give pleasure, not least in its annual offerings of rarelyheard and frequently off-the-wall operas. This year’s sideshows included Jonathan Dove’s amusing take on Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park and Johann Hasse’s gender-bending chamber opera Antonio e Cleopatra. That was first seen in Naples in 1725 with the legendary castrato Farinelli as Mark Antony. Meanwhile, Frank Matcham’s
RICHARDMUSICOSBORNE
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Opera North’s musically superb semi-staging of Wagner’s Parsifal made no attempt to bypass or distort the religious nature of the sublime swan song. Wagner called it his ‘stage festival consecration play’. Compare that with Germany in recent times, where the opera has been variously treated as a sex show and a rerun of the tragedy that was the Third Reich.
PARSIFAL, RUSALKA, LA DONNA DEL LAGO Given the dire state of British theatre at present – the neglect of the classic repertory and the mangling of most of what is revived – we must be grateful for the work in the nation’s opera houses and privately funded music festivals. There are horrors still to be endured. Still, Regietheater (German-inspired ‘director’s theatre’, by which an opera’s
In sum, he had a charmed career until he got bored (I have a theory that nobody survives success) in 2017 and vanished – until his Risorgimento this summer of 2022. He’s touring to sell-out crowds. The sure-fire hit is Through the Echoes – and this is where I have to make myIconfession.wasinTuscany when he played in Pistoia this July and, reader, I didn’t go. I had guests. But my friend Emma did, and I have no hesitation in cutting and pasting her expert verdict here (why pay the dog ‘Nutinietc).was sensational. At the risk of sounding like a knob, I swear it was the most soulful concert I’ve been to. Set in Pistoia piazza among ancient buildings, Nutini sang with his heart and made the 99-per-cent-Italian audience of 5,000 feel special and very lucky to be there.’ Through the Echoes proves that Oliver was almost right 20 years ago. An artist who can convey crying and shouting in the same song is guaranteed a special place in the history of pop.
Christine Rice (left) as the witch and RusalkaRomaniwNatalyaas
68 The Oldie September 2022 WIREPRESSZUMAVIAMARTINI/LPSANDREA
He’s a production line; one of those singers whose latest number one – and he had hit after hit – was forever on a loop in the All Bar One after work, every Friday throughout the noughties. He has a distinctive sound – a cross between Rod Stewart and a Mumford with the high sweetness of Cat Stevens. If you like James Morrison or James Blunt, you’ll like Paolo Nutini. And you’ll have sung along to all his previous bangers – New Shoes, These Streets, Jenny Don’t Be Hasty (about his relationship with an older woman –hurray!) – and you will love his new album, Last Night in the Bittersweet, too. Or your money back, as they say.
GOLDEN OLDIES RACHEL JOHNSON IT’S CRYING TIME AGAIN When we used to watch Top of the Pops as a family bonding exercise, my son, Oliver, then aged four, made the following astute observation. He said most pop songs divided into only two genres: either ‘crying’ or ‘shouting’. This still holds up. But some artists manage to combine both crying and shouting. This is where Paolo Nutini comes in and why he’s back with a number-one album after six years of not troubling the charts. Nutini is a Paisley-born singer-
Paolo Nutini in Pistoia, Italy, July 2022 I last saw the opera at Garsington in 2007. That self-styled specialist in audience alienation David Alden reduced it to a series of routines worthy of a Billy Connolly show, with a drunken King, lager-lout huntsmen and cigar-smoking deer reading Country Life. Whatever its inconsistencies, the Buxton revival was innocent of any such folly.
songwriter of Tuscan descent (he is an honorary citizen of Barga) who signed to a major label aged 18. The Scottish lad cornered the market early in teenageboy-in-bedroom charm, writing tender, sensitive songs with raw, thin-skinned lyrics about his feelings. He has claimed to have smoked weed every day of his adult life, which may have something to do with the recent hiatus. If you’re thinking, ‘But I’ve never heard of Paolo Nutini,’ all I can say is ‘Oh yes you have.’
famously intimate Buxton Opera House played host to new stagings of Gypsy and a pair of Italian gems: Donizetti’s send-up of the entire operatic business in a youthful farce, played here in an English adaptation by Kit HeskethHarvey as Viva la Diva, and Rossini’s picturesque and vocally thrilling La donna del lago Derived from Walter Scott’s 1810 poem The Lady of the Lake, the Rossini is a tale of romantic love and clan warfare set amid Scotland’s lakes and mountains during the reign of James V. Historically, it’s tailor-made for Buxton. It was to Buxton’s Old Hall (now a well-favoured hotel) to which James V’s daughter, Mary Queen Scots, was occasionally taken. Less well known, I suspect, is Rossini’s friendship with the music-loving Italophile William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire, the ‘Bachelor Duke’, whose father created Buxton as a spa resort. Rossini would have loved the elegance and intimacy of Matcham’s Opera House as surely as he would have been baffled by the rag-bag of designs undermining the essential integrity of Jacopo Spirei’s new staging. This was at its most compelling in moments of sustained stillness – such as the wonderful Act I meeting between Ellen, the young lake-dweller, and the King, disguised and pursued by rebels. The scene haunted Wagner’s imagination. Máire Flavin’s Elena and Nico Darmanin’s King came closest to meeting the demands of music Rossini wrote for a Naples company that was vocally without equal in its day. There was also some fine choral work, and incisive conducting from festival director Adrian Kelly, proto-Verdian in its drive and élan.
the move. As he wrote to a friend, ‘I HATE LIFE unless I WORK ALWAYS.’
His career bridged the gap between Grand Tourism and Cook’s Tourism, and the illustrated Journals he published of his travels – like David Roberts’s views in Spain and the Holy Land – caught the public mood perfectly. In effect, he was the inventor of the travel book. As his friend Lord Tennyson wrote: … all things fair, With such a pencil, such a pen, You shadow forth to distant men, I read and felt that I was there. This show in Birmingham of some 60 works examines Lear’s working methods and demonstrates how his style was Janus-faced, looking back to the 18th century and forward to the 20th.
EDWARD LEAR: MOMENT TO MOMENT Ikon Gallery, Birmingham
9th September to 11th November Edward Lear (1812-88) would have been saddened, as by so much in his life, by the way his posthumous reputation has come to value his hobby – nonsense verse and limericks – so much more highly than his otherOnwork.theother hand, this is partly his own fault. In her 1988 book on his travels in the Levant, Sarah Hayman wrote that he left ‘a visual and verbal record of foreign lands that was unique in his own time and possibly unequalled in any other’, and he was one of the most original artists of his day. He, though, dismissed his work as mere topography, and often he could not resist the inclusion of visual jokes and verbal puns in his drawings. So still, for many people, he remains a writer of nonsense verse and limericks who, they may know, happened also to paint. In 1958, there was an Arts Council exhibition, and in 1985 a major show at the RA – which had originally rejected his efforts to court it with huge oil paintings. Last year, the dealer Guy Peppiatt offered a selling show of watercolours, and now the Ikon Gallery bills its larger exhibition as ‘the first solely devoted to his sketches and landscape drawings’ over the length of hisLearcareer.wasun-self-confident, an asthmatic and an epileptic, a condition of which he was ashamed and tried to keep hidden. Problems with his eyes meant he had to abandon his brilliant early work painting birds and animals, and the uncertainties of the English climate led him to spend much of his life abroad. Despite all infirmities, he was a determined traveller, preferring to travel on foot even in the roughest places, and his compulsion to work also kept him on
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How pleasant to travel with Mr Lear (From top): Dehmyt, Egpyt, 1867; Maharraka, Egypt, 1867; A view near Doukades, Corfu, 1862
HUONEXHIBITIONSMALLALIEU
DAVIDGARDENINGWHEELER
BORDER CONTROL Summer inevitably draws to a close, but the thoughtfully planned flower garden blazes on. Many late-season perennials just can’t stop giving, animated by flowering grasses swaying to autumn’s nascent tunes. I hanker for excess at this time of the year, to fortify myself against winter’s onslaught. I crave plants with tireless flower power or an unexpected second coming, magicked by delphiniums and campanulas having a repeat ‘go’ if their spent June and July spikes are snipped off. Still looking good are tall, pale yellow yarrows and comely flat-headed umbellifers. They contrast elegantly with the likes of stout blue monkshoods (Aconitum) or meld themselves among stiff pokers (Kniphofia) in citrus shades of lemon and pale orange. Here too belong purple bobbles of good ol’ lanky Verbena bonariensis, caged among burnished stems of such refined grasses as the pennisetum, stipa, miscanthus and panicum clans. The latter – thankfully clump-forming, not spreading – do well in poor soil. In varietal names such as ‘Dallas Blues’, ‘Prairie Sky’ and ‘Shenandoah’, they reflect the wide open plains of the American midwest, where they roam freely among goldenrods (Solidago) and asters. Sun-loving salvias, whether annual, biennial or perennial, are among the aristocrats of the late-summer border. Easily identified by square stems and, in many of them, a whiff of blackcurrant from their leaves, they bear long stems of uplifting, ripe-cherry-coloured flowers. They bring valuable blasts of deepest purple, sapphire, pure indigo, ultramarine, cobalt and lapiz. They emerge from coal-black calyces in many varieties, especially ‘Argentine Skies’, ‘Purple Majesty’, the open and wiry ‘Nachtvlinder’ (Night Moth) or – with anis-scented foliage this time – any that carry the word guaranitica on their label. Vastly different, rodgersias also claim some noble blood. Grown in moist soil in partial shade, principally for their majestic palmate leaves, they nevertheless bestow handsome though less showy plumes of flowers, ranging from white to pink and dark red. I especially value them for plugging gaps left behind by such earlier flowerers as lupins, whose remaining foliage is by now most likely mildewed and fit only for the compost pile. Phloxes have unaccountably seldom featured in my late-summer borders. I grew some white ones in an all-white border a few years ago. I’m now ready to try some of the blues in a new interlocking series of blue- and yellow-themed beds. Phlox paniculata ‘Blue Paradise’ –seemingly more violet than true blue, and with a magenta eye – comes highly recommended. It’s fragrant, too. The wholly reliable and inspirational Marina Christopher of Phoenix Perennials in Hampshire (open by appointment) singles out ‘Blue Evening’, ‘Cool of the Evening’ and, to my ear, the Pernod-andGitanes-sounding ‘Toits de Paris’. If it’s pink you’re after, try ‘Utopia’, ‘Monica Lynden-Bell’ or ‘Rosa Pastell’. They’ll grow to between three and five feet tall. When licked by the flames of fiery crocosmias, heleniums become indispensable at this time of the year, in a range of long-lasting, daisy-like flowers strongly pigmented deep yellow, burnt orange, rust, red and almost brown. The Chelsea chop (cutting them back to half their height in late May) will result in manageable plants of about three feet in height.
I can’t imagine a late-season border worthy of its name without the likes of ‘Moerheim Beauty’ (reddish brown), ‘Dunkelpracht’ (rusty red), ‘Rubinsberg’ (mahogany red) and, best of all, ‘Sahin’s Early Flowerer’. It shows striations of ochre, red and Dundee marmalade in a heavy crop of flowers which will continue until the first hard frost. But I must stop. I could go on until the sun finally sets on these gilded borders and the first cold nights bring the curtain down on September’s floriferous pageant.
David’s Instagram account is @hortusjournal KITCHEN GARDEN SIMON COURTAULD DAMSONS
I don’t think I have ever come across damsons in France. Prunes de Damas is the name for them, suggesting their origin in Syria. The English damson has also been called ‘damascene’, which supports the connection, and another small plum, the mirabelle, has the Latin name Prunus domestica syriaca Whatever the link to that benighted country, damson trees grown in Britain are hardy, and modern varieties require very little space. Farleigh Damson and Prune Damson are said to be full of flavour and reliable in colder areas, and both are self-fertile. Trees and cordons are available from Pomona Fruits, for planting in winter and early spring.
Damsons like clay or loamy soils, The Oldie September 2022 71 Fragrant phlox
JAMESRESTAURANTSPEMBROKE OYSTER-SHUCKING TIME
On hearing this, put your napkin on top of the table and exit. The best words? ‘Let’s get half a dozen oysters to kick off!’ Then, of course, still haveForstarters.thosewho still cling to the obsolete rule that one must eat oysters only when there’s an ‘r’ in the month, the eight-month season is about to begin. Welcome back. The ‘r’ myth is technically relevant only to Natives, our indigenous bivalves, which the Romans used to tow below their ships to the Eternal City. That’s because Natives are busy spawning during the summer and become milky. (The French call this laiteuse, and they rather like them that way.) Yet they are still edible and certainly should be as safe to eat as at any other time of year. Flat-shelled, they are a little more delicate than the cup-shelled Rock or Pacific oysters, taking five years rather than three to grow to an edible size. Oysters were our proteinaceous staple right up until disaster struck in the mid19th century. We were pulling them out of the Thames as late as the 17th century. A combination of over-fishing and pollution saw our beds’ harvest reduced to a twentieth of their former scale. Prices went in the opposite direction. In 1851, Henry Mayhew interviewed a shellfish-seller, who was selling three oysters for a penny. The 1881 Baedeker’s Guide to London advised its readers that half a dozen would cost between 1s 6d and 3s – in real terms, between 48 and 95 times the price of Mayhew’s street seller 30 years previously. In 1942, when rationing spread to restaurants, they
The worst five words in the English language? Simple. ‘Shall we skip the starters?’
LUARDELISABETH
Food writer and editor Jill Norman recommends a simple pumpkin soup with Indian spicing. To serve 4-6, allow 1kg (untrimmed weight) peeled, de-seeded, chunked pumpkin. Heat 2 tablespoons sunflower oil in a roomy pan and gently fry ½ teaspoon coriander seeds and 1 teaspoon turmeric till the aromas are released. Stir in a finely chopped onion, 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger root and 2 chopped garlic cloves, and fry for another few minutes. Add the pumpkin chunks, 2 dried chillies and 2 bruised lemon-grass stalks and stir over the heat. Add 600ml vegetable stock, cover the pan and simmer till the pumpkin softens. Add 400ml coconut milk, reheat gently and simmer till the pumpkin flesh is soft enough to mash with a wooden spoon. Remove the chillis and lemon grass and blend till smooth. Taste, add salt and maybe a squeeze of lime juice.
Matt Coward’s sunflower buds with butter and lemon The sunflower, says Matt, is a remarkably edible plant. Apart from the seeds and somewhat tough and hairy leaves, the petals can be used to colour rice or added to salads, while the open flower-heads can be simmered till tender and eaten stuffed, like flat field mushrooms. But best of all, he says, are the green flower buds, sunflower artichokes, that haven’t yet opened. They can be picked any time after midsummer. The nearer they are to opening, the more pine-y the taste. To prepare, cut the bud from the plant and pull off the bitter green sepals at the base. Slice off the remains of the stalk and its raised base so that the back of the bud is now flat. Steam or boil for 3-5 minutes, till tender enough for a sharp knife to go right through. Finish trimming the bud, using scissors or a sharp knife to remove the rim of tough outer leaves and serve with melted butter and lemon quarters.
Hot on the heels of Saharan heatwaves come three inspirational books. They’re suitable for gardeners planning for more of the same next year – as well as those of us contemplating a move towards a vegetarian diet (bacon permitted). Newest is The Kew Gardens Cookbook, edited by Jenny Linford. This handsome hardback is stuffed with photos of hothouse vegetation, elegant glass architecture and recipes contributed by Claudia Roden, Yotam Ottolenghi et al (me too). A more modest offering is Mat Coward’s Eat Your Front Garden. This friendly, pocket-sized botanical manual explains how to identify, grow and prepare common garden plants. Most inspirational of all is a handsome new hardback edition of Pamela Michael’s classic compendium of recipes and remedies, Edible Wild Plants & Herbs. First published in 1980 when Richard Mabey’s hedgerowforaging was all the rage (as now), it’s too heavy for a field manual but perfect for the kitchen table. The sheer joy of it is the illustrations – 100 exquisite plant portraits by the great Christabel King, head botanical artist at Kew. Kew Gardens spiced pumpkin soup
EDIBLE GARDENS
Pamela Michael’s yarrow leaves with garlic and crème fraîche Fill a colander with yarrow leaves – pick the younger ones from the middle and top of the plant – rinse and drain. Bring a couple of inches of water to boil in a saucepan. Add the leaves and cook briskly for 5 minutes. Drain. Heat 2 tablespoons of oil and the same amount of butter in the pan, add a crushed clove of garlic and fry gently till soft. Stir in a teaspoon of ground coriander, add the yarrow leaves, cover the pan and sweat gently until the leaves are tender. Uncover, and chop the leaves with a wooden spoon over the heat to allow extra liquid to evaporate. Season with salt and freshly milled black pepper. Stir in 2 tablespoons of crème fraîche.
72 The Oldie September 2022
and well-rotted manure to retain moisture, but the site should be welldrained, as all plums hate being waterlogged. Containers are a good alternative, but the potting compost must never be allowed to dry out. As damsons are among the earliest fruits to flower, a sunny, sheltered spot is advisable to protect the blossom from frost. Yields can be greatly increased by the addition of a nitrogen fertiliser, but beware of branches snapping under the weight of fruit. Pruning should be done in summer, when there are fewer spores to enable silver leaf disease to develop on the plants. Similar to damsons, although spherical rather than oval, are the wild plums on a tree that has grown here for years and is probably a bullace. They are purple/blue when ripe, and last autumn we gathered more fruit from the one tree than from our five apple trees. Very few plums have appeared this summer, but we still have plenty of plum chutney from last year’s crop. Driving through Normandy last month, we enjoyed not damsons but the delicious greengages the French call Reine Claude, and an eau de vie made from mirabelles. These little plums, of Syrian and Anatolian origin, are grown in abundance in north-eastern France and widely used for making jam. If you want to try growing a different plum, Mirabelle de Nancy and Mirabelle de Metz are recommended.
ELISABETHCOOKERYLUARD
A few years ago, I was standing in a vineyard in the Alentejo, Portugal, with the winemaker. I noticed that his vines were being irrigated, something usually frowned on by the rules of European appellations. ‘Is that allowed?’ I asked. ‘Only in exceptionally dry years,’ he replied. I asked him when the last time had‘Lastbeen.year,’ he told me. And, it transpired, the year before that. Portugal is no stranger to drought nor forest fires. Mix drought with searing temperatures, strong winds from the Atlantic and tinderbox forests of pine and eucalyptus, and that is what happens. Nor is it a new phenomenon: the scariest coach journey of my life was in 1983, by night from Lisbon to the Spanish border. Portugal’s train drivers were on strike, and so we were piled into buses instead. Forest fires raged to left and right, so brightly that our driver turned off his headlights. It remains to be seen what effect drought and fires will have on this year’s vintage in Portugal. Even if the vineyards themselves are untouched by fire, ‘smoke taint’ in the grapes can be almost as ruinous, as California’s winemakers have discovered to their cost. But there are plenty of previous vintages on offer, and Portugal is perhaps the best-value-formoney wine producer in the world. The Douro Valley is a case in point. As demand for port has declined, so the valley’s winemakers have increased their production of table wines, invariably from the same grapes (Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz, Touriga Franca) but fermented until dry. DBM stock the richly fruity Vinha Grande 2019 from Casa Ferreirinha (£14.99, dbmwines. co.uk). It’s made by Sogrape, the Portuguese wine giant, who also make the spicy, elegant Tesco’s Finest Douro 2020 (£10, or £8 with a Clubcard, tesco. com). They are both improved by being vigorously decanted and left for an hour before you drink them. Portuguese whites have much to recommend them, too, from the fragrant wines made from Alvarinho (aka Albariño, over the border in Spain) to the central Tejo region (previously called Ribatejo). There, characterful native grapes – of which Portugal has many – are often happily blended with international varieties. Try the Wine Society’s crisp but nicely rounded blend of Arinto and Chardonnay, made by the ultra-reliable Quinta da Alorna (£9.50, thewinesociety.com). DBM stock their chewy, complex Tinto 2018 (£11.99). For something wonderfully frivolous, the Wine Society also stock Hortas do Caseirinho Frisante (£7.50), a semisparkling wine from Vinho Verde country that weighs in at a mere 10.5 per cent. Despite its having one of the worst labels I have ever seen, it is impossible to drink it without smiling. And this month the estimable Max Graham, restaurateur (Bar Douro) and scion of the famous port family, is launching the Festa Bottle Shop (wearefesta.co.uk). More than 150 Portuguese wines are listed – the biggest selection of any UK merchant – allowing you to explore Portugal’s vineyards from the comfort of your own home. Without getting your fingers burned.
The
pricepriceFleurieMarguerite’,‘PrésidenteCavede2020,offer£11.99,case£143.88 Seductive
NB Offer closes 10th October 2022.
BILLDRINKKNOTT
could be ordered as a supplement for 3s 6d – the same price as caviar. Not any more: prices have tumbled. £3 a pop is the standard price; but tiny, green-tiled Parsons in Covent Garden is offering three Jersey Rocks for £3. OK, so still a long way to go to honour Sam Weller’s comment about oysters and poverty – but a step in the right direction.
The oldest purveyor of bivalves (at £4 for Rocks) is, of course, Rules, started by Thomas Rule as an oysteria in 1798, but they have nothing like the selection of Boisdale in Belgravia, which hosts the annual British Oyster Championship. Few restaurants are brave enough to cook oysters, for which Rocks are better suited. In prelapsarian times, they used to act as ballast in steak pies and were often cooked in ale and breadcrumbs.
Fleurie cru Beaujolais with bags of juicy red fruit and rounded, soft tannins. Drink lightly chilled. Crémant d’Alsace, Blanc de Blancs Brut, Dopff and Irion NV, offer price £13.99, case price £167.88 Fresh and andmadeclassic-methoddelightfulfizzfromPinotBlancAuxerrois. notch up from normal Mâcon, from a famous old Burgundy name: very pure fruit and great length. Mixed case price £151.88 – a saving of £24.99 (including free delivery) Oldie September 2022 73
£155.88£12.99,2021,Talmard,Mâcon-ChardonnayBurgundyofferpricecaseprice A
However, last month, my old friend Adam from Oz took me out for dinner at the Oystermen, in Covent Garden, who offer six differently cooked oysters. Ads has always eschewed menus, preferring to order multiple batches of chips, or poppadoms in Indian eateries, and prawn crackers in Chinese restaurants. Yet he’s mad about oysters (albeit to accompany his chips) and insisted on our working our way down the list. And they were delicious: tempura with champagne aioli and smoked-herring caviar or, more classically, with pickled samphire, brown butter and preserved lemon – two per portion for just £7. Sensing I was a little overwhelmed by the quantities of Chablis Premier Cru he was pouring, Ads went in for the kill, and ordered three lots of the spiciest oyster dish in London: calamansi, jalapeño and dill. Taxi!!
WHEN IN DROUGHT
This month’s Oldie wine offer, in conjunction with DBM Wines, is an entirely French affair, a 12-bottle case comprising four bottles each of three wines: a beautifully made sparkler from Alsace that benefits from some bottle age; a Mâcon that would partner roast chicken admirably; and an elegant Fleurie from one of the region’s best producers. Or you can buy cases of each individual wine.
Wine HOW TO ORDER Call 0117 370 9930 Mon-Fri, 9am-6pm; or email info@dbmwines.co.uk Quote OLDIE to get your special price. Free delivery to UK mainland. For details visit co.uk/promo_OLDwww.dbmwines.
74 The Oldie September 2022
For Chris and Anne Smith, autumn is not the best time of year. That’s when the cricket season draws to a conclusion. The couple from Rotherham spend their entire summer watching Yorkshire county cricket matches. Every day from April to September, for every minute of play, they are there, on the boundary, taking it all in.
JIMSPORTWHITE SPORTING CHANCES
For nearly a decade now, the pair have sought solace in the sound of leather on willow, in following the Yorkshire team round the country in their caravan, in being among like minds. It is at the cricket that they best find something to lift their spirits – even when Yorkshire are 33 for six before rain stops play on the first morning of the game. They are not alone in using sport to mediate their despair. In The Breath of Sadness, Ian Ridley’s heartbreaking account of how he coped after the death of his wife, Vicky, the veteran sportswriter explains that spending a summer following the cricket lifted him from the depths of misery. There was something about being part of a wider community that brought him solace. That and the fact that during a county championship match at Lord’s, if at any moment he felt the urgent need to be alone, such was the paucity of the crowd, there were plenty of quiet spots to which he could withdraw. For far more people than you might initially appreciate, live sport offers significant therapy. It will be the same at football or rugby matches this coming winter. Many who’ll be heading to watch the action will be relying on its processes to illuminate their personal darkness. For the lonely, bereft and despairing, there is nowhere else they can find distraction to match it. For those unsure of where they belong, their team gives an immediate sense of identity; they become part of the gang. And, let’s face it, everyone feels a little bit better after shouting at the referee. There’s no point going to the theatre if you want to let off a bit of steam; yelling about the director’s shortcomings is likely to get you evicted from your local cinema. At the football, the rugby and even the cricket, you can shout what you want. There is nowhere, other than at a sporting event, that allows you in quite the same way to confront your frustrations, lose your inhibitions and escape for a moment your personal pain.
As for Mr and Mrs Smith, it won’t be long now before their deckchairs are put away and they park the caravan in their drive. ‘During the winter, I just spend the time counting down the days till the cricket starts,’ Mr Smith told me. ‘That’s when I come alive again.’ There will be many people who know precisely how he feels.
THUMBS DOWN TO ONLINE DEALS
Hitherto a social-media virgin, I was persuaded by my brother to sign up to Facebook Marketplace in my quest for a cheap ride-on mower, available locally. Despite feeling I was breaching some hallowed but unarticulated principle, I did – and found one that weekend. I’ve since bought two chainsaws and a wheeled garden hose. I’ve no Facebook friends or any of that nonsense, but I browse the market daily. The site also sells cars, of course, which makes it irresistible. Last week, I found a smart Land Rover Defender 90 XS, with less than 43,000 miles on the clock, a long MOT and no finance. Described as in excellent condition, it belonged to a lady who had taken a new job in Germany, intending to keep it there. She had changed her mind and now wanted £8,750 for it, price to includeHalf-price,shipping.Ithought. Or less – a local dealer has one a year younger, slightly higher mileage and similar spec on the forecourt for £27,995. In carbuying, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. But you never know – maybe it’s like an old Rover I heard of, being
MOTORINGALANJUDD
I met them at the Scarborough Cricket Festival, the magnificent four-day extravaganza that has become a nostalgia trip for a certain kind of old-school Yorkshire spirit, in which Geoff Boycott and Dicky Bird appear as guests of honour (Michael Parkinson must have been busy) and the Yorkshire Elvis plays at the Spa Theatre every evening. Mr and Mrs Smith were sitting at the back of the west terrace of the gloriously unspoilt Scarborough Cricket Club, watching Yorkshire toil against Hampshire, on a pair of deckchairs they bring along and leave overnight. The stewards routinely put them out for them every morning. ‘Cricket’s been our saviour,’ explained Mr Smith. ‘We used to go and watch our son motorbike racing. Followed him everywhere. When he died of cancer, we despaired. Sank, really. Then we found cricket. Honestly, I’m not sure what we’d have done if we hadn’t.’
sold by a woman whose husband had run off with his secretary. ‘He wants me to sell the car and send him the money,’ she said. ‘So that’s what I’m doing. Pay what you like.’ I emailed the seller, requesting its registration number, which was blanked out in the photos. Nothing for a week, and then a full reply naming the shipping company and describing the purchase procedure. It was simple: I pay the shippers the whole amount and have ten days after delivery during which I can reject the car and be refunded. The shippers pay the seller only when I confirm I’m content. I checked its MOT history and mileage via the DVLA website and then paid for an HPI check to confirm it wasn’t stolen, an insurance write-off or subject to finance. All good. The shipper’s website looked respectable and it confirmed the procedure – except that there was no company name on the lorries pictured and a Companies House look-up suggested a man-and-a-dog outfit rather than a transnational business. I rang the number given and got the man, or maybe the dog, who confirmed with suspicious promptness that the car was in their German warehouse pending shipping. Then I checked the seller. No telephone number and a not uncommon name. The most likely candidates were an executive with a well-known company near where the shippers were registered – and with a German office – and a Scotswoman with a record of car fraud. I emailed again, asking if she’d scan a copy of the V5C registration document, adding that I was inclined to fly over and pick up the car myself. No response. I sent another message, this time prompting a reply with no V5C but including the vehicle identification number and engine number. An online VIN check confirmed the vehicle’s details. But there was no response to my offer to pick it up. Meanwhile, a friend specialising in top-end classics told me that his £130,000 Bentley was advertised on Facebook for £18,000, using his text and photos with different contact details. ‘Don’t touch it,’ he said. I wasn’t inclined to – but wanted to tease them out a little. So I emailed yet again, saying that a German-based friend had offered to visit the warehouse and give the car a onceover, if she’d give me the address. No Buyingresponse.unseen is always a risk. Caveat emptor, warns this column’s Latin consultant (also known as the Editor). Have I missed a bargain? I think not.
I suppose there is the risk that the company looking after my data may go bust, but I’ll take that chance. It is unlikely, after all, that it will go bust on the same day my hard drive fails. So I’ll have time to find a replacement service. The key attraction to using any of these services is that everything is done for me. No remembering, no equipment, no worries – and I sleep at night.
price Traffic Changetraffic-simulation.deJams simulatorthelayout,traffic speed, driver behaviour and more, and see how traffic jams appear and disappear. Oddly compelling Parks and emailGocomputerIaccess (ifdesignedon 10,000 UKAparksandgardens.orgGardenscharitythat provides informationparks,gardensandlandscapes withdetailsofany),historyandmore.willhappilytrytosolveyourbasicandinternetproblems.towww.askwebster.co.ukormeatwebster@theoldie.co.uk Webwatch For my latest tips and free newsletter, go to www.askwebster.co.uk
Matthew Webster: Digital Life The hard facts about hard drives
Banks are reluctant to grant mortgages to older people who no longer have an earned income (even though pension income is more dependable). So record numbers of people are now releasing the equity in their property. Equity release is predicted to total more than £4 billion by the end of this year, accounting for £1 in every £90 spent by retired people. Equity release is a mortgage that lasts regarded as a pot of money you have built up over time just like a pension fund – an asset to be used to fund your way of life and maintain your standard of living.Those of us fortunate enough to have started buying property decades ago have huge amounts of wealth tied up in our homes. So it is not surprising that people want to access it without having to sell up and move.
Home used to be simply the place where you lived. Homes are also regarded today as a commodity for making money –through buy-to-let, holiday rentals or turning over doer-uppers. You can even treat your own home as a cash machine by remortgaging to fund big purchases. Not only has this changed our attitude to owning property; it has encouraged the investment industry to argue that the value built up in your home should be Bitter experience tells me there is a third certainty in life beyond death and taxes: all hard drives fail eventually. I’ve lost three in 25 years. The hard drive is your computer’s memory, where much of the software that makes it work lives and where all your files (documents, music, photos and so on) are stored. Hard drives are more reliable than they used to be, but they still fail. Backblaze.com, a datacentre, has over 200,000 running all the time. Last year, about one per cent of them failed, while 15 years ago it was five per cent. Now, one per cent may not seem much, but consider this: there are 49 households in our village, so I bet there are at least 100 hard drives. That means the odds are that one of them will fail each year – and that’s without burst pipes, theft and natural disasters. So take heed.
Margaret Dibben: Money – a
Matters Equity release
at
There are two levels of backing up: everything and, well, not everything. If you copy absolutely everything (an ‘image back-up’), an expert can replicate your old computer, with all its faults, on a freshFormachine.me,that’s overkill. You are going to buy a new computer anyway; it will be faster and slicker than your old one. So it’s a great opportunity to ditch all the neverused nonsense with which you encumbered your old machine and start afresh. You can re-download the programmes you do want in their latest form; all respectable vendors will help you. Now you need to recover your personal files from your back-up. There are two ways to create a back-up – off-line and on-line. Off-line means copying all the files onto a physical hard drive, perhaps a memory stick, and keeping it safe. Nothing wrong with that, except that it’s always going to be a bit out of date, even if you do it daily, and it’s a chore. The alternative, my preference, is to back up on-line, continuously and immediately, with no effort at all on myIpart.usetwo services: Dropbox and OneDrive. Dropbox is independent; Microsoft owns OneDrive. They are similar. You have a Dropbox or a OneDrive folder on your computer, and you create a series of subfolders – as many as you want – for your files. Then you save everything you do on your computer in one of these subfolders. As soon as you change or add any file within those subfolders, a copy is uploaded to Dropbox or OneDrive; and they also back it up somewhere else (goodness knows where). Google offers something very similar, as do countless smaller organisations. So if your computer dies, as soon as you have re-established contact with your back-up on a new one, all your data is restored, having been kept safe in the warm embrace of ‘the cloud’.
76 The Oldie September 2022
Of course, these are not free; nothing is. Dropbox costs me £96 pa for 2,000 GB of storage (plenty for me). OneDrive gives me 1,000 GB as part of my subscription to all the Microsoft programmes I use (Word, Excel and so on) for £80 pa. Both allow me to recover earlier versions of a file. Recently, a spreadsheet I was working on became corrupted, but I recovered a version from an hour earlier, ditched the broken one, and was back up and running.
TO BOOK TICKETS email reservations@theoldie.co.uk or call Katherine on 01225 427311 (Mon-Fri 9.30am3pm). The price is £79 for a three-course lunch including wine or soft drinks l Fish and vegetarian options available on advance request l Meet the speakers from 12 noon; lunch at 1pm l Authors speak 2.30pm
Peter Snow on Kings & Queens: Reals Lives of the English Monarchs, also by Ann MacMillan Lucy Lethbridge on Tourists: How the British Went Abroad to Find Themselves A N Wilson on Confessions: A Life of Failed Promises, a piercing memoir
At the National Liberal Club, 1 Whitehall Place, London SW1A 2HE
The Oldie September 2022 77 when they were heavily marketed 25 years ago are turning to equity release as the only way to repay those loans. Unlike ordinary mortgages, equity release involves no affordability checks. This makes it available to people with debt problems who would not be allowed credit elsewhere. With today’s pressures on household budgets, this is tempting even people in their fifties into equity release to pay for day-to-day expenses with possibly 40 years of interest payments ahead of them. Equity release is not suitable for people with financial difficulties: there are better ways of dealing with debt. Following this fast growth, the regulator is keeping a close watch on how equity-release plans are sold by brokers. The Financial Conduct Authority is concerned that older, vulnerable people could be persuaded into unsuitable equity-release mortgages without properly understanding what they are buying. You must take financial and legal advice before committing to equity release. Make sure the adviser is specially trained and tells you about other options available. And discuss it with your relatives. sell for when they died, and equity release had a justifiably bad reputation. Today’s products are more flexible and most give a negative-equity guarantee. Borrowers are using the money to pay for home improvements, furniture and cars; to help younger relatives buy their own property; and even for food, clothes andAentertainment.significantnumber of homeowners who took out interest-only mortgages your lifetime, with nothing to pay back, not even interest, until you die or go into care. Interest rates are higher than standard home loans and roll up at compound interest. So you pay interest on the interest that has been added in previous years. As you will be paying this interest for the rest of your life, it is expensive.Inthepast, some borrowers’ estates had to repay more than the home could Sponsored byLiterary Lunch
Tuesday 15th November 2022
At Paradise Park near St Ives – founded in 1973 by former copywriter (the Milky Bar Kid) Mike Reynolds (1914-2007) and his wife Audrey (d 2017) – one can see choughs as part of the zoo’s conservation project Operation Chough.
Come on, sir; here’s the place: stand still. How fearful And dizzy ’tis, to cast one’s eyes so low!
The Chough by john mcewen illustrated by carry akroyd originally assigned to the jackdaw. But ‘chuff chuff’ is also a call – and ‘kwarr’ at the summation of an aerial arc. The ‘Cornish crow’ is Cornwall’s emblem, surmounting the county’s coat of arms, and has a rich mythology, not least that King Arthur – Tintagel regarded as fabled Camelot – was reincarnated as a chough. But Canterbury also claims the bird. The red legs and bill, exceptional for crows, derived from its consoling the murdered Thomas à Becket; hence the bird’s inclusion in the city’s coat of arms. The reduction of pasture by the mid-20th century meant only small western colonies held on. They were extinct in Cornwall for 30 years until a wild pair recolonised the Lizard from 2001. Birds of Conservation Concern (2019) has the chough listed ‘green’, as of ‘least concern’.
Oldie September 2022 79 AKROYDCARRY
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air Show scarce so gross as beetles… William Shakespeare, from King Lear, Act IV, Scene VI Shakespeare’s scene is set near Dover. Today British choughs are confined to westernTherecoasts.are300 breeding UK pairs –half of them in Wales, with others in Jersey, Cornwall, Isle of Man, Islay, Jura and Colonsay – and more than that in Ireland; mostly in Donegal. My first sighting, a passing flock instantly distinguishable from jackdaws by broader wings and black density, was in the Welsh seaside town of New Quay. We soon found them on a coastal pasture, their favourite worm- and grub-rich feeding ground. In Britain they are maritime birds –not tree perchers like other crows. A glimpse of the sea is usually required even if they are colonising inland cliffs or quarries. In Europe, they are mountain birds, familiar to skiers along with the yellow-billed Alpine chough. Another chough species has been seen at 20,000 feet, on Everest. Choughs are the gentlest of crows, their courtship notably tender. The male presents food to the female, who quivers her wings like a nestling. They mate for life and flock when not breeding. Both gather tinder for the crevice nest, which the female builds and lines with wool and hair; never seaweed, however dry. And both feed the clutch of up to seven nestlings, almost always returning to the nestSpectaculartogether. flyers, they invariably dive from a height to the rock face. Cornwall is their immemorial home, hence the ‘Cornish crow’. ‘Chow’ is how the Cornish pronounce ‘chough’, a name
Paradise Park choughs have been successfully released in Jersey via the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and, since December, introduced via the Wildwood Trust at Herne, near Canterbury. It is hoped Kentish choughs will flourish in honour of St Thomas, even to the extent of recolonising Shakespeare Cliff near Dover.The
80 The Oldie September 2022 In Durham Cathedral, that magnificent monument to the robust majesty of Norman architecture, the Rev Charlie Allen, the Cathedral’s Canon Chancellor, is showing me the shrine of one of Britain’s greatest saints. This tomb, a place of prayer for a thousand years, makes Durham Cathedral unique. ‘Its history as a centre of pilgrimage gives it a really distinctive flavour,’ Charlie tells me. ‘It’s shaped around hospitality to all those who come – so it’s a very inclusive place.’
Travel
ALAMYARCHIVE/HISTORYWORLD/IMAGESPA/PHOTOLIBRARYSKYSCAN
Notes from the Holy Island
Durham Cathedral was built to house the body of St Cuthbert, patron saint of Northumbria, that Anglo-Saxon kingdom which stretched from the Tees to the Tweed. The modern county of Northumberland is a fragment of its formerNorthumbriaterritory. ceased to be a separate kingdom back in the tenth century, but it remains a potent presence for people in the north-east. And its most precious relic is the Lindisfarne Gospels, a transcription of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. This precious book is usually housed in London, at the British Library.
This autumn, it’s coming home, and religious and cultural institutions across the north-east are throwing a party to celebrate.Inourungodly world of antisocial media, why is this archaic book so important to the people of the north-east? The answer lies in Durham, at the shrine of St Cuthbert. His cult inspired William Cook on the Lindisfarne Gospels – and their ancient home A page from the eighth-century Gospels the book. Normally, it’d be a struggle trying to find out much about anyone who lived so long ago. Thanks to the Venerable Bede (c 673-735 AD), Cuthbert’s biographer (and Britain’s first and foremost historian), who’s also buried in Durham Cathedral, we actually know quite a bit about him. Cuthbert was born in 634 AD in Dunbar (now in Scotland, but then part of Northumbria). In 664 he became Prior of Lindisfarne Priory on Holy Island –that wonderful windswept patch of land just off the Northumbrian coast. He became Bishop of Lindisfarne and on his death in 687 was buried there, famed for his piety and healing powers. His grave became a site of worship and, at the end of the seventh century, a subsequent Bishop of Lindisfarne, a monk called Eadfrith, set about creating a book of the Gospels in his honour. Back then, making a copy of the Gospels was a colossal undertaking. Each and every word had to be handwritten on sheets of vellum, made from cowhide (the Lindisfarne Gospels required the skins of well over a hundred calves). Usually, producing such a book was a team effort, but Eadfrith did it all
Left: Lindisfarne Priory, built in the seventh century, is now a Grade I listed ruin
I finished my own pilgrimage at St Mary the Virgin, Lindisfarne’s parish church, which stands beside the ruined priory. It’s actually older than the priory: it dates back to the 12th century at least, and some parts may be Anglo-Saxon.
Inside, I meet the vicar of Holy Island, the Reverend Canon Dr Sarah Hills. ‘It’s a massive privilege,’ she tells me, of her ministry on this island, where St Cuthbert lived and preached. What a fitting ending to my trek around this rugged corner of the country. It still feels like a place apart, where the distant past feels so close. The Lindisfarne Gospels are at Newcastle’s Laing Art Gallery, 17th September to 3rd December 2022 himself, including the intricate illustrations. No wonder it took him 20 Theyears.result was, and is, one of the most stunning artworks of the Anglo-Saxon era. Its diverse influences – Latin, Celtic and Germanic – reflect the sophistication and internationalism of the region. It’s the apotheosis of Northumbria’s so-called Golden Age, in the seventh and eight centuries, when this kingdom led the way in artistic and literary innovation. This book refutes the myth with which so many of us grew up – that the centuries between the fall of Rome and the Norman Conquest were a cultural and intellectual wasteland. Much of the rich heritage of that era was destroyed (which is why it has been unfairly dismissed as the ‘Dark Ages’) but, against all odds, the Lindisfarne Gospels survived. In 875, the Vikings invaded Lindisfarne, and Eadfrith’s book would have perished if the monks hadn’t fled to the mainland, taking Cuthbert’s body and the Lindisfarne Gospels with them. For a hundred years or so, this sacred coffin and this sacred book found sanctuary at the Abbey of Chester-leStreet, near Durham, where an unknown monk added Old English subtitles to the Latin text (the first-ever translation of the Bible into English). In 995, further Viking raids forced the monks to move Cuthbert’s coffin yet again, via Ripon, to its final resting place at Durham Eadfrith’sCathedral.bookprobably arrived in Durham at the same time, but what happened to it then remains a mystery. There are no written references to it until 1605, when it somehow wound up in the Tower of London. A few years later, it was acquired by an English bibliophile called Sir Robert Cotton (1571-1631). After his death, his heir bequeathed it to theItnation.subsequently formed part of the founding collection of the British Museum. When the British Library was founded, 50 years ago, the Lindisfarne Gospels became part of its collection. Lots of people in the north-east would love to have this iconic book back in the land where it was made. I share their sentiments. In the British Library, it’s just one among many treasures. If it was in Durham or Lindisfarne, it would feel far more special. For now, this priceless book is staying in London, but every seven years or so (a little longer this time, owing to COVID), it’s allowed to leave the British Library
Above: The Lindisfarne Gospels, probably produced in around 715-20 AD
The Oldie September 2022 81 for a few months, so people outside London can see it. In 2013, it came to Durham. This year, it’s coming to Newcastle, where it will form the centrepiece of a new exhibition at the city’s excellent Laing Art Gallery. Naturally, you’re not allowed to leaf through it – visitors will see only two pages. Yet, given its significance in the evolution of the English language, the pages the Laing have chosen are particularly apt: the first chapter of John’s Gospel, starting, ‘In the beginning was the Word…’ I travelled on to Newcastle, to meet the Laing’s Chief Curator, Julie Milne, and to look round the galleries where this exhibition will be held. ‘It’s a work of incredible beauty and artistry,’ she tells me. ‘It was an act of devotion andTospirituality.’getadeeper sense of the magic of the Lindisfarne Gospels, you need to go to Lindisfarne, where the book was written. All too often, you go to one of these pilgrim sites in search of solitude and enlightenment and end up browsing in the gift shop or queueing to use the loo. What a cynic I’ve become! Lindisfarne was amazing. Yes, it was crowded but, even on a busy day, the aura of the place was palpable. How thrilling to walk in Cuthbert’s footsteps, and visit the site where Eadfrith wrote the Lindisfarne Gospels, 1,300 years ago. No one knows exactly where the Anglo-Saxon abbey stood – it was made of wood, and nothing survives. But it’s a fair bet that it’s beneath the Norman priory which replaced it. Abandoned after the dissolution of the monasteries, it’s now a ruin, but it’s still impressive and intensely atmospheric all the same.
ALAMY/HERRETTROBERTO/VIDLERSTEVE
Somewhat uncharitably, it was recorded that ‘he may have been intoxicated at the time of the accident’. Then there was John Cranmer Cambridge, a 22-year-old London pride: the heroes’ memorials, made of Royal Doulton china
82 The Oldie September 2022
it is bound to be read with more than a glimmer of a smile. Alice Ayres was the ‘daughter of a bricklayer’s labourer who by intrepid conduct saved 3 children from a burning house in Union Street Borough at the cost of her own life, April 24 1885’. On the memorial to Mary Rogers, a ‘stewardess of the Stella’, we read that she died on 30th March 1899 – ‘Selfsacrificed by giving up her lifebelt and voluntarily going down in the sinking ship’. Walter Peart was an engine-driver and Harry Dean a fireman on the Windsor Express, who on 18th July 1898 ‘sacrificed their lives in saving the train’. James Hewers, who died on 24th Sept 1878, was killed by a train at Richmond ‘in the endeavour to save another man’.
Overlooked Britain Agony in the garden
lucinda lambton Show me a spot that’s as charming as it is mournful as Postman’s Park in the City of London and I will munch away at my hat. It’s an amalgamation of three burial grounds – Christ Church Greyfriars; St Leonard’s, Foster Lane; and St Botolph without Aldersgate. They have all been eased into one picturesque garden, peopled with as rare and as delightful surprises as you are ever likely to comeCreatedupon.as a memorial to ‘heroic self-sacrifice’, it’s an assembly of memorials, with the names recorded in an ornate typeface by William De Morgan on Royal Doulton china. There were to be 54 such plaques, with blue flowers entwined with various arrangements of leaves and some with Tudor roses. Each story was separated by tiles of a glowing brown. They were proposed by the great Victorian painter G F Watts. They were originally intended as decorative extras for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee celebrations in 1897. The garden was opened to the public in 1900, with the avowed intent that it should honour the ordinary men and women who had died saving the lives of others; whose everyday modesty determined that they would otherwise be forgotten. A sheltered loggia was built to house the memorials. At the time of its opening, 120 tablets were in place, with a further nine planned during Watts’s lifetime. He died in 1904, when his saintly wife Mary took over and oversaw the installation of another 35. In 1972, key elements of the park, including the memorials, were Grade II listed. In 2009, a city resident Jane Shaka added a new tablet – the first in 78 Theyears.list of the memorialised is heart-stirring and exciting, although I fear that, by dint of its old-fashionedness, Since 1900, heroes who’ve died saving people’s lives have been celebrated at Postman’s Park, London
Silvertown 19 Jan 1917’. And so it goes on and on… A runaway horse, a comrade in the sewage pumping works, an aged mother dying on a staircase; Ellen Donovan of Lincoln Court ‘rushed into a burning house to save her neighbour’s children and perished in the flames’. Last but by no means least is Leigh Pitt, a 30-year-old ‘reprographic operator’, who in 2007 ‘saved a drowning boy from the canal at Thamesmead, but sadly was unable to save himself’. How did they amass such a wealth of obscure detailing? What an assembly it is! Every rescuer is given an ennobling identity. Three heart-warming cheers for George Frederick Watts and his worthy companions. clerk on the London County Council, drowned near Ostend while ‘saving the life of a stranger and a foreigner’ on 8th August Soloman1901.Galaman was only 11 when he was struck down by injuries after saving his little brother from being run over in Commercial Street. Samuel Rabbeth, a medical officer of the Royal Free Hospital, ‘tried to save a child suffering from diphtheria at the cost of his own life’; he died on 26th October 1884. Edward Morris, aged only 10, was ‘bathing in the Grand Junction Canal’ when he ‘sacrificed his life to help his sinking companion’. Perhaps most dramatic was Henry James Bristow of Walthamstow, who died on 30th December 1890, saving ‘his little sister’s life by tearing off her flaming clothes but caught fire himself and died of burns and shock’. He died of poisonous gas. Ten years earlier, George Blencowe was only 16 ‘when a friend bathing in the River Lea cried for help’ and George ‘went to his rescue and was drowned’. Oh dear, oh dear.
Above and left: The Watts Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice. Far left: G F Watts in a Vanity Fair cartoon, 1891
The Oldie September 2022 83
Of PC Edward George Brown Greenoff of the terribledevotionlivesPolice,Metropolitanweread,‘Manyweresavedbyhistodutyattheexplosionat
What’s your favourite food? I like nursery food: baked potatoes with cheese, anything with loads of fresh vegetables. I try to be vegetarian but have a weakness for birds.
Author Jacqueline Wilson tells Louise Flind about her parents’ rows, her kidney transplant and the heroines in her children’s books
What is the strangest place you’ve ever slept in – while being away? When people used to put travelling authors up in their own houses, a lovely lady showed me into this room, and there was no bed. There was a shelf about a foot from the ceiling and a rope ladder up to it.
The Oldie September 2022 85
Is there something you really miss? If I travel for work, I miss my lovely partner, Trish, and my pets. Do you travel light? Very light. Once I did a tour of Australia, New Zealand, then America, for three weeks – but I managed with carry-on. What’s your favourite destination? It used to be Boston in America. Now we go on holiday to north Norfolk. What are your earliest childhood holiday memories? My parents didn’t get on, but we still went on holiday and they had enormous rows – whispering in case generallynoticed.anybodyItwasaweek in Clacton. The sea was freezing cold – so I came out absolutely navy blue. How do you get into a child’s mind? I find it quite easy. When I was a child, I had to be a bit wary and work out the kind of mood my parents were in. I can remember vividly what it felt like to be six or eight or ten. What were your favourite children’s books when you were a child? Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree books, Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild, Little Women, What Katy Did and A Little Princess What was it like working on the magazine Jackie? Was it really called after you? Was it good for story-writing? It was great fun. The two men in charge, Mr Cuthbert and Mr Tate, told me their new magazine was called Jackie and said, ‘After you.’ It helped me to be versatile and to write quite quickly. Did you enjoy writing crime fiction? Not really. Was it helpful being a late success? I think so because I was very naive. Do children like reading about scary subjects and broken families? I think even the happiest-seeming child has fears and anxieties and it comforts them to know that other kids feel the same way. Where do your ideas come from? I might read a little paragraph in the newspapers about some child going off with his dad, and his mum doesn’t know where they are.
Where do Tracy Beaker and Hetty Feather come from? With Tracy Beaker, it was seeing photographs of children in care. Hetty Feather was from when Rhian Harris, the head of the Foundling Museum (which I became involved with), suggested I write a book about a foundling.
Do you lie on the beach? I tend to think I’ll like lying on a beach, but then I get there and the sun’s in my eyes – and if it’s sandy, it gets gritty, my back hurts and I get fidgety.
What’s your biggest headache? Modern technology. In New Zealand in a hotel, there was an iPad to lock and unlock your door and of course I managed to lock myself in my room.
How does it feel having someone else’s kidneys? Trish donated a kidney, but we’re not compatible in our blood and tissue type. So we entered into one of those schemes where you and your donor go into a sort of tombola to see if you can get matched up with another couple – and it worked.
What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever eaten? Crocodile in Australia.
My journey into a child’s mind
Where did you go on your honeymoons? After my first marriage, we didn’t have a honeymoon. For my civil partnership, we had a wonderful week in Boston.
Which book are you most proud of? Hetty Feather, because it was such a different book for me to write. Did you always know you were a lesbian? No, and I don’t think I was particularly repressed. I think I’m just somebody who falls for a personality. I was married for 30 years and before that I had boyfriends. Then I met Trish and just fell for her.
Do you like coming home? I love coming home to a family. In the six years when I was single, I could be up onstage having hordes of children desperate to have photos with me – and yet come home to a silent house. Now there’s generally a meal, and an enthusiastic welcome from the dogs. What are your top travelling tips? Always travel very light. And although people always say you should wear your comfiest clothes on a plane, I find I’m stupid enough to prefer to dress in my usual slightly odd way and feel myself. Baby Love by Jacqueline Wilson is published by Penguin
On the Road
Boiling point on the Somerset Levels
patrick barkham
I’d like to say the swim was blissful, but the tepid brown water did not encourage me to cool my head and I circled the shallow pool twice, wondering what discarded farm implement would rise from the depths to score my flesh. At least this dip cooled me enough for my walk briskly back along the lanes –skipping the beautiful church of Isle Abbotts for another day. And it fired feelings of rage and defiance. We need a rural revolution, so our rivers are restored and life – and most of all, people – returns to our desolate and abused green and pleasant land. I followed the footpath north beside the river from the hamlet of Ilford and circled back south on the lanes.
OS Explorer Map 128: Taunton & Blackdown Hills
Simply walking along a footpath felt like a radical declaration. Swimming, as Deakin found, was positively revolutionary. I squirmed under the electric wire, comedy-commando-style, only to be confronted by a posse of curious cows. It was a relief to correspond with other beings, even if these ones chased me to the far Pastgate.ablank-windowed farm and after wriggling under more electric fencing, I finally found a stretch of the Isle where the river recovered its memory of what it onceTherewas.were riverside alders, duckweed, trailing water plants and a distinct pool on the bend. When a reed warbler began singing in the reeds, it was like hearing an old friend. An efflorescence of Himalayan balsam glowed pinkly but at least it provided a pathway down the steep bank. As I slid into the balsam, I wondered why I felt so embarrassed and furtive taking a swim on our hottest ever day. There were no people to mock, cheer or scold me; only nettles which stung my feet (the stings were so severe they kept me awake that night) and a horsefly which sucked my blood.
On the hottest day ever recorded in these isles, I sought a climate-resilient, future-proof stroll beside the River Isle. A heatwave walk to keep us cool. With luck, I hoped, our grandchildren will still be able to enjoy a walk beside water in the supposedly damp landscape of the Somerset Levels when 40oC summers are standard fare. I set out from the hamlet of Ilford in the hot mid-afternoon, the sky bruised purple and yellow, darkening by the minute as if the world’s end was nigh. The most striking feature was not the sultry air but the silence. No human sound anywhere: no tractors, strimmers, trimmers, mowers or chatter. Every living person seemed to be silently hunkered down inside rural Somerset’s deliciously cool, old stoneThehouses.onlyfigure
Taking a Walk
I encountered on a 90-minute walk was a headless scarecrow slumped in a wheelbarrow clutching a bottle of wine. Never mind the apocalypse – the world had ended. I crossed a parched meadow to reach the Isle. In places, the river seemed quite perky, riffling cheerfully over shallow, gravelly sections decorated with languorous aquatic plants. But mostly it looked despondent: a sluggish, silty brown flow trapped within impossibly steep banks, shaved of all plant life except resurgent nettles. The river had been dredged and the banks sculpted, so water couldn’t spill out over this low land. It wasn’t a landscape of damp, riverine pasture at all; only beans and barley and parched earth. I trudged beside the river, searching for the ‘perfect little swimming hole’ of ‘startlingly cold’ water that Roger Deakin discovered in his British swimming journey recounted in the classic Waterlog. Here floated a fertiliser bag; there sank an old tyre. Two hot crows flapped slowly away. The countryside is the setting for plenty of horror stories and no wonder. It can be a remarkably hostile environment. Passing a dredging digger, paused as if it was playing musical statues (no music here – too hot for the birds to sing), I found the public footpath blocked by an electric fence. In a land emptied of anyone enjoying it, those who remain can do what they like and to hell with the law.
WINGGARY The Oldie September 2022 87
First prize is The Chambers Thesaurus and £25. Two runners-up will receive £15.
Winner: Brenda Bishop, Lowestoft, Suffolk Runners-up: Hilary Veale, Weymouth, Dorset; Frank Lyness, Kingston upon Thames Geniussolution415
Across 1 Drive backwards 8(7) Paradise (6) 9 Caresses (7) 11 Canadian city (7) 12 Destined (5) 14 Critical point in time (8) 16 Person with a degree (8) 17 Uninterested, fed up (5) 20 Boom, bellow (7) 21 Equivocation (7) 23 Not uniform (6) 24 Tornado (U.S) (7) Down 2 Over, surplus (5) 3 Call to mind (5) 4 View (3) 5 Confidentiality 6(7) Kind, like an uncle (9) 7 Stymied (9) 10 Framework (9) 12 Absent-minded 13(9) Valued highly (9) 15 Unusually quiet 18(7) Watering hole 19(5) Wear away (5) 22 Promise (3) Across 1 Respect shortly gets a learner wings on this (7) 5 Venomous snake consumed by desire (7) 9 Confronts experts on origin of flu (5) 10 Chap that ordered a new drink? (9) 11 Port and impressive English river (3,6) 12 Free facilities finally available (5) 13 Player’s instruction to leave vehicle with daughter (4) 15 Left after seeing country gent sheltering Republican (endangered species) (8) 18 The beginning of spring may be fine, boss (8) 19 Group offering advice after son shows evidence of healing 22(4) Getting on a carriage about noon (5) 24 Spring pudding as butt of joke? (5,4) 26 Suitable material? (9) 27 Smile wryly, swallowing a bit of corn (5) 28 Angry outbursts from one taken in by deals (7) 29 Soldiers foot the bill for sanctuary (7) Down 1 Have enough for a fine crossing (6) 2 Note dispute in chamber - this could heat things up (9) 3 Step up seeing jockey has a change of heart (5) 4 Show light if clue’s mine originally (9) 5 Pull a face as Charlie’s covered in alcohol (5) 6 Pieces of America? (5-4) 7 Opening bars in Spain? Trouble! (5) 8 Journalist supporting worker caught in this way? (6) 14 Pleased by action to include illumination (9) 16 Lingerie subject to deteriorate (9) 17 Doctor able to speak and explain further (9) 20 Complain - and French must get special welcome (6) 21 Mars may offer clear support for mountain climbing 23(6) Private meal with no end of food (5) 24 A maiden is out of order (5) 25 Warning sign may be just having to change sides (5) 7 clues lead to answers that require a definition not shown in the wordplay. There is one word common to each that can be added for an expanded solution
The Oldie September 2022 89
Genius crossword 417 el sereno
Moron 415 solution: Across: 1 Collar, 4 Untie (Collar and tie), 8 Slash, 9 Elegant, 10 Lantern, 11 Stir, 12 Sad, 14 Edge, 15 Idle, 18 Dip, 21 Nose, 23 Oxidise, 25 Tactics, 26 Equip, 27 Paste, 28 Attest. Down: 1 Costly, 2 Learned, 3 Achieved, 4 Used, 5 Trait, 6 Entire, 7 Means, 13 Diligent, 16 Leisure, 17 Instep, 19 Poise, 20 Despot, 22 Sacks, 24 Site.
Moron crossword 417
NB: Hodder & Stoughton and Bookpoint Ltd will be sent the addresses of the winners because they process the prizes.
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: 21st September 2022 We do not sell or share your data with third parties.
The pricey clip on my best ballpoint pen Unclipped itself, got lost; its day is past. Bank passwords? No, their system’s changed, again.
C Paul Evans examined our experiences with domestic appliances: ‘At first we find our purchase works / But built-in obsolescence lurks.’ Commiserations to them, and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus prize of The Chambers Dictionary going to David Shields. Indeed they do, with what panache, By slow decay, not sudden smash, Then migrate to a dresser drawer By some sub-clause of the Second Law Of
David Shields The freezer died last year – its light went Andout then its heart. The fridge runs warm, not Thecold.watering can has split its mended Myspout.favourite sandals (only six years old) Have shed a strap. The greenhouse steps Are(cement)crumbling to non-picturesque decay. Standards in public life, the government? –All shredded, tattered rags of disarray. My scanner doesn’t scan, nor printer Theprint.broadband’s on and off, depending Someon inner magic. Filter full of lint, The tumble dryer’s failed, so now that’s gone.
As elder child, I comfort you with tales Of sailors’ spirits gliding from the deep, Of sunken cities, mermen green and pale: ‘They’ll take our castle – guard it while we sleep.’
D A Prince We clamber barefoot down the crumbling Oncliffs,slimy steps embedded in the clay. Where waves creep in and brown foam idly drifts, We wade to watch our castle melt away. All afternoon we’ve scooped the sand and Pileddelved,pinnacles and sculpted sturdy Flownwalls, seaweed flags and studded it with shells –Now to the moat the icy water crawls.
Susan Greenhill COMPETITION No 285 What with fleeces and anoraks, perhaps coats play less of a part in life. But from childhood to age, in town and country they used to be with us always. So a poem called A Coat, please. Maximum 16 lines. We still cannot accept any entries by post, I’m afraid, but please do send them by e-mail (comps@theoldie.co.uk – don’t forget to include your own postal address), marked ‘Competition No 285’, by 22nd September.
I’ve stopped expecting anything to last.
As serpentining fingers coil and claim Our fortress for their own, you’re not Youconsoled:know my far-fetched stories are in Thevain,tide’s relentless – and our dreams grow cold.
John Clark When I was young I was curvy and fun, But age is not kind To body or mind. You once loved my tits, My legs and my ‘bits’, But now you prefer The meals that I cook, A pint down the pub And a bloody good book.
This month’s hero is English international player Gunnar Hallberg, originally from Sweden (who knew from the name?). As Hallberg says, with the customary twinkle in his eye, ‘My family in Sweden, old Vikings that they are, are now quite proud of the wayward youngster who left a traditional way of life and his country to become a bridge professional.’ Now that he’s in his late seventies and not as mobile as he was, you could be fooled into thinking Hallberg’s mental capacity has lessened. Don’t be – or he’ll eat you for breakfast (or dagmal in Viking-speak).
Watch Hallberg make Four Spades doubled with only three high-card points –the only declarer to do so in the Online Contract Bridge League tournament. Dealer West North-South Vulnerable (1) Weak Two. (2) Take-out. North would rather have a fourth spade, but you can’t have everything. West led the ace of hearts and continued with a second heart, declarer ruffing in dummy and advancing the jack of spades. East rose with the ace, cashed the ace of diamonds (a bit panicky but not in itself fatal), then led a third heart (this, however, was fatal –allowing declarer to shorten his spades). Ruffing the third heart in hand (and discarding a diamond from dummy), declarer crossed to the king of diamonds and led a spade to the seven. He now crossed to the ace of clubs and ruffed the nine of diamonds, a necessary play to shorten his trumps to the same length as East’s (both with two left). At trick ten, declarer led a second club to dummy’s king. He then led dummy’s queen of diamonds. East, who was down to queen-eight of spades and a heart, was poleaxed. If he ruffed, declarer could overruff, cash the king of spades (felling East’s queen) and enjoy dummy’s queen of clubs. If East discarded, declarer could release his third club and ‘coup’ East’s spades in the two-card ending, with the lead remaining in dummy.
Doubled game made. ANDREW ROBSON The Oldie September 2022 91 North ♠ J 4 3 ♥ 9 ♦ K Q 9 7 5 ♣ A K Q 2 West ♠♥ A Q 7 6 5 4 ♦ J 10 3 ♣ J 10 7 4 East ♠ A Q 8 2 ♥ K J 8 3 ♦ A 8 2 ♣ 9 3South ♠ K 10 9 7 6 5 ♥ 10 2 ♦ 6 4 ♣ 8 6 5 The Southbidding West North East 2 ♥ (1) Dbl (2) 4 ♥ 4 ♠ Pass Pass Dbl end
Competition TESSA CASTRO IN COMPETITION No 283 you were invited to write a poem called Things Fall Apart. Martin Brown wrote some close parody of Yeats, and when his shopping bag burst, ‘The best splat all the kitchen, while the walls / Are caught with passionfruit at velocity.’ Dorothy Pope had some good lines of her own on solitary old age: ‘My crossword friend phones less. He was a boon. / The man still comes on Fridays with my cod. / The postman’s here some days though not till noon. / He rushes off but gives a friendly nod.’
OfAndEngland’sYourThisAndThatThatTheEntropy’sThermodynamics.themotiveforce,burdenoftheTrojanhorsesundersornamentfrombase,disengageszipfromcasecracksceramics.isthefateinstoreforall:spectacles,Hadrian’sWall,toporder,everyragfibreofarain-soakedbagbooksfromHammicks.
92 The Oldie September 2022 Ed McLachlan ‘Now our team’s been relegated again, I wonder if the club’s found a new sponsor this season´
The Oldie August 2022 93 UK Travel Overseas Travel Tours Gifts
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The Oldie September 2022 97 To advertise, contact Jasper Gibbons on 0203 859 7096 or via email Jaspergibbons@theoldie.co.uk scc rate £45+vat. The copy deadline for our next issue is 5th September 2022 Mobility
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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. own. I have friends but they are mainly couples, and I just can’t find anything to occupy me when I’m not Whensocialising.myhusband was alive, I used to have lots of interests outside marriage, but now that he’s not there to tell me about things when I come home, I’ve become depressed and uninterested, particularly when we were locked up. My friends say I must learn to be on my own, and even my therapist seems to think that I’m somehow odd being unable to cope on my own, but I’ve always needed company, ever since I was small. Zoom doesn’t do it for me.
I used to be a strong supporter but now I’m very much against their ‘woke’ agenda, and shrink from giving any money to them. What am I to do? I know my friend agreed with me, but she obviously never told her daughter.
A J, by email
Q We used to love our son coming over but now he and his new partner seem to rejoice in coming round to bully and criticise us. According to them, we’re doing everything wrong. We’re using clingfilm, we’re not rinsing out the jars and bottles properly, we’re putting shiny paper in the recycling, we’re buying the wrong sort of car, using the wrong washing cycle, not collecting everything for compost… It is getting so wearing. We don’t want to fall out with him and his partner but it’s as if he hates us suddenly. Jim and Sheila, by email A He’s trying to show you, his partner and, most importantly, himself that although he loves you, he doesn’t need you. He wants the world to know that he has grown up and is not umbilically attached to you any more. It’s not that he hates you at all. He is just trying to make clear that he is completely separate from you, now that he’s a man. I would, as far as you can, just grin and bear it. Listen to his views but change your ways only if you want to. I think once you understand where he’s coming from, his ranting won’t upset you so much. He’s like a little boy marching out of the house with his tiny suitcase declaring that he’s running away from home. Stand firm and you’ll find he soon returns. At the last resort, suggest that, in future, if your home and your behaviour anger him so much, you might meet in a local café or shop. If he offers to pay, let him. It’ll make him feel less dependent.
98 The Oldie September 2022 Ask Virginia virginia ironside
A I would give money to Restore Trust (restoretrust.org.uk), the charity that is pro the National Trust in principle, but wants it to return to its original remit. That way, you’ll be supporting both your friend and her daughter. If you become a member of the National Trust as well, then you can vote at their AGMs and hopefully bring more sanity to this once fantastic organisation. As for flowers, again, I’m with you. Cut flowers are a harmless metaphor for sacrificing animals at funerals, and the sight of those dying blooms brings home the beauty of life and the tragedy of death in a way nothing else can. Don’t flaunt them at the funeral if they’re unwanted, but buy some for your own home and remember your friend and honour her every time you pass them, till the last petal drops. I hate being on my own Q Bereaved a couple of years ago, I am horrified at how difficult I am still finding being on my The Oldie is published by Oldie Publications Ltd, Moray House, 23/31 Great Titchfield Street, London W1W 7PA 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 £47.50; Europe/Eire £55; USA/Canada £57; rest of world £65. To buy a digital subscription for £29.99 or a single issue for £2.99, go to the App Store on your tablet or mobile and search for ‘The Oldie’.
Flowers for a late friend
A It was E M Forster who said, ‘Only connect’ – and he was right. Human beings aren’t constructed to be loners. On the whole, we’re shoal animals like fish; not walk-by-herselfers like cats. A goldfish in a bowl alone is an absolutely tragic sight. There’s a reason that solitary confinement is the worst punishment there is – worse, I’d say, than death. Cruse (cruse.org.uk) would probably be able to put you in touch with other widows and widowers in your area who feel the same as you. If you could arrange with one of them to have a weekly walk and a daily chat on the phone, it would be better than nothing.Andobviously if you have a spare room, try to let it out to someone. They’d probably be company for the occasional coffee, and hearing their step in the house, their shower running or even their bedroom door close could make a huge difference. If you’re worried about where guests would go, get a luxury zed bed and put them up in your living room.
Q A dear friend of mine has died –a friend who loved her garden, and who had a herbaceous border which was a riot of colour. I had known her since we were at school. I was just planning to send a bouquet –one I know she would have loved – for her funeral, when I got a rather cold note from her daughter, saying, ‘No flowers, please. Donations to the National Trust.’
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Our son seems to hate us
