April 2014 by The Oldie

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‘The Oldie has long been a brilliant magazine’ STEPHEN GLOVER Me and my leprechaun – page 66

32-page books review round-up inside! Review of Bookthse ISSUE 27 SPRING 2014

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OVER 50 OF THE BEST BOOKS FROM THE LAST QUARTER INCLUDING

Hanif Kureishi Norman Mailer Alison Weir Nicholas Shakespeare Susan Hill Mike Tyson Johnny Cash John Williams Peter Conradi Alex Ferguson Jonathan Swift Penelope Lively John Julius Norwich Simon Garfield Patrick Marnham Spike Milligan Princess Michael of Kent Paul Hoggart …and many more

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April 2014

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Austen ion of Wodehouse and Sam Leith on a new generat logy The best jazz books Techno Farewell Doris Lessing ERS HE BESTSELL

GHOSTS, LEPRECHAUNS AND ROYAL SKELETONS MY UNCLE GORE BUSTY BLONDE EDITOR IN HAMMERED HACKS PUNCH-UP HORROR

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Ed’s letter… 65 Newman Street, London W1T 3EG www.theoldie.co.uk Editor Richard Ingrams Assistant editor Sonali Chapman Sub-editor Deborah Asher Art editor Joe Buckley Commissioning editor Jeremy Lewis Administrator & events Hannah Donovan Advertising sales manager Lisa Martin Senior sales executive Azmi Elkholy Sales executive Jack Watts Publisher James Pembroke At large Richard Beatty Our quiet American David Kowitz Sir Alan John Brown EDITORIAL Tel: 020 7436 8801 Fax: 020 7436 8804 e-mail: editorial@theoldie.co.uk ADVERTISING For display contact Lisa Martin or Azmi Elkholy on 020 7079 9361or 020 7079 9362 For classified contact Jack Watts on 020 7079 9363 e-mail: advertising@theoldie.co.uk SUBSCRIPTIONS & LITERARY LUNCH BOOKINGS Subscriptions tel: 01795 592 893 e-mail: subscriptions@theoldie.co.uk All subscription queries please write to: Oldie Subs, c/o Dovetail Services 800 Guillat Ave, Kent Science Park, Sittingbourne, Kent ME9 8GU Lunch bookings tel: 01795 592 892 e-mail: oldielunches@servicehelpline.co.uk OLDIE BOOKSHOP Tel: 01603 648 140

THE WORLD of the media – and that goes for book publishing too – is in a state of mild panic about the evergrowing appeal of reading everything on line or on a Kindle. There is little sign of panic here at Oldie Towers. I myself will continue to believe in the appeal of the magazine as something ‘to have and to hold’, in particular

to flick through and to look at the cartoons. You can’t do that on a computer. An advertising man assured me recently of the continuing prosperity of The Oldie because in adman’s parlance, it was a ‘bed, bath, bog’ product. I’ll settle for that. RICHARD INGRAMS

Review of Bookthse ISSUE 27 SPRING 2014

R E V I E W

FREE! The Oldie Review of Books

O F

T H E

R E V I E W S

What cs criti said

OVER 50 OF THE BEST BOOKS FROM THE LAST QUARTER

Our quarterly literary supplement provides objective summaries of reviews of more than fifty of the best (or most talked-about) books, together with features and comment. Find it stapled in between pages 50 and 51

CONTENTS

INCLUDING

Austen on of Wodehouse and Sam Leith on a new generati ogy The best jazz books Technol Farewell Doris Lessing ERS HE BESTSELL • NOT JUST T OF REVIEWS A ROUND-UP

14 STILL WITH US: RONALD BLYTHE THEN AND NOW 12 28 JOURNALISM Elizabeth Grice meets our ‘Sage of the Year’ John McEntee: nostalgic for the boozy old days

NEWSSTAND ENQUIRIES e-mail: mark.jones@newstrademarketing.co.uk

ABC Primary Figure: 44,555 Subscription rates for 12 issues: UK £39.50; Europe £45; USA/Canada £46; Rest of World £55 The Oldie is published by Oldie Publications Ltd, 65 Newman Street, London W1T 3EG ISSN 0965-2507. Printed in England by Wyndeham Group Distributed by COMAG, Tavistock Road, West Drayton, Middlesex UB7 7QE Tel: 01895 433600 All rights of reproduction are reserved in respect of all articles, drawings, sketches etc. published in The Oldie in all parts of the world. Reproduction or imitation of any of these without the express prior written consent of the publisher is forbidden.

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SATIRE 48 SPITTING Nick Newman looks at Spitting Image

23 WORLD’S WORST DUMPS Norman Deplume on New Broadcasting House

34 MY ‘UNCLE GORE’ John Bowen’s memories of Gore Vidal

OLDIE OF THE YEAR AWARDS 54 THE A roundup of this year’s awards ceremony

42 A GRAVE MATTER

Kaori O’Connor on the Richard III reburial controversy

014 THE OBA 2 RITISH

B THE OLDIE WARD ARTISTS A RIZE) P 0 0 0 5, (£

44 LITTLE MISS MOONSHINE Bob Pearson’s ghostly encounter

To enter see page 75

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COME TO ONE OF OUR

LITER ARY LUNCHES DATES AND DETAILS INSIDE

CONTENTS

See page 68

FEATURES & REGULARS 7 12 14 16 17 19 21 23 24 26 26 27 28 29 30 32 34 35 37 38 40 42 44 45 46 48 51 51

The Old Un’s Diary Still With Us Ronald Blythe Wilfred De’Ath Back to les foyers Olden Life What were Holloway’s Pills? Modern Life What is a hybrid bill? Living Hell Jeremy Lewis Whiteboard Jungle Kate Sawyer World’s Worst Dumps New Broadcasting House House Husbandry Giles Wood God… Melanie McDonagh …Mammon Margaret Dibben Fashion Tamasin Doe The Way We Were John McEntee Rant Michael Leapman Dr Stuttaford’s Surgery The dangers of cost/benefit analysis Roving Reporter John Sweeney Memories of Gore Vidal John Bowen Mind the Age Gap Lizzie Enfield Superbyw@ys Webster Brief Encounters Nigel Fountain East of Islington Sam Taylor A Grave Matter Kaori O’Connor Little Miss Moonshine Bob Pearson Profitable Wonders James Le Fanu Granny Annexe Virginia Ironside Spitting Satire Nick Newman Notes from the Sofa Raymond Briggs Pedants’ Revolt

53 53 54 56 61 62 64

Ed Reardon’s Month Send Us Your Txt The Oldie of the Year Awards Readers Write Unwrecked England Candida Lycett Green Out and About Travel Ben Mallalieu in Southern Crete and Catherine Mack in Carlingford 68 Oldie Literary Lunches 75 Oldie British Artists Award 98 Dear Mavis Mavis Nicholson

BOOKS 69 Edward Pearce on William Cobbett; Elizabeth Grice on Penelope Fitzgerald; Mark Seddon on Damian McBride; Carla McKay on Brian Sewell; Benedict Nightingale on complaints; Rachel Redford reviews audiobooks

REVIEWS 77 78 78 79 80 80 81 82 83

MUSIC Richard Osborne DVD Lucy Lethbridge WIRELESS Valerie Grove TELEVISION Richard Ingrams FILM Marcus Berkmann THEATRE Paul Bailey OLDIE MASTERS Philip Athill GARDENING David Wheeler EXPAT Derek Parker

AMONG THIS MONTH’S CONTRIBUTORS

JOHN BOWEN

CARLA MCKAY

EDWARD PEARCE

Eighty-nine-year-old John Bowen writes about his memories of Gore Vidal on page 34. Born in India and sent ‘home’ aged five to be reared by aunts, John has written novels, stage plays and TV drama, and briefly acted in rep at Watford. He lives halfway down a steep hill in Warwickshire in the house used as a location for his 1970 TV chiller Robin Redbreast (reviewed by Lucy Lethbridge on page 78).

is a freelance journalist who lives in Oxfordshire with her Patterdale Terrier Billy. She is the author of The Folly of French Kissing, a novel about expats in France, and a memoir, The Reluctant Yogi, about impending old age and her conversion to yoga. She reviews fiction for the Daily Mail and is hopelessly sentimental about animals: see page 73 for her review of fellow dog-lover Brian Sewell’s Sleeping With Dogs.

‘Get rid of him. He’s insufficiently loyal to Mrs Thatcher,’ said a press lord acknowledging Edward Pearce’s independence. Telegraph sketchwriter and Guardian columnist, he turned to serious history, including accounts of Home Rule, Robert Walpole and Pitt the Elder, and a recent edition of Charles Greville’s diaries. On page 69 he reviews The Opinions of William Cobbett.

Next issue on sale Wednesday 2nd April 2014

83 84 84 85 86

MEMORIAL James Hughes-Onslow RUGBY Brian Moore COOKERY Elisabeth Luard HOME FRONT Alice Pitman WINE Bill Knott

PLUS 89 90 90 91

CROSSWORDS Antico COMPETITION Tessa Castro SUDOKU CLASSIFIED

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April 2014 – THE OLDIE

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DIARY

The Old Un’s diary All the news that matters. And some that doesn’t That witness appeal in full

Israel’s African refugees

Dame Janet Smith’s report into the culture and practices of the BBC in the Jimmy Savile years has been long awaited. But how thorough will it be? One man’s experience leaves some room for doubt. Our insider is an awardwinning Executive Producer with many years of service in the Corporation. When the appeal went out to former employees to testify, he agonised about whether to respond. Questions of loyalty and trust seemed to arise. Finally, a fortnight or so after the enquiry began, he decided to speak out. Though he had had no dealings of any kind with Savile, and worked in a different area, he was aware of the explicit BBC priority to protect ‘the talent’ – the celebrity presenters who were thought to pull in big audiences. He had also experienced the culture of micro-management and bullying that had proliferated, particularly in the Birt years. Calling the advertised telephone number, he found that he was connected to voicemail, on which he was asked to leave his details. So he did – name, background, full contact information. Uneasily, he waited for the response. He needn’t have worried. There was no call back – he never heard a word.

Eighteeen months ago, The Oldie published an article about the plight of African refugees in Israel. It had been rejected by several national newspapers before The Oldie welcomed it and it went on to win a commendation in the 2013 Amnesty Media Awards. Alas, not much has changed in Israel since then. In January, thousands of refugees, mostly from the Sudan and Eritrea, marched in the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem demanding freedom from

what they described as the oppression and racism they are increasingly subjected to. ‘Being black is not a crime,’ one of the banners said. They were protesting against new Israeli laws that allow around 60,000 African refugees to be detained indefinitely in ‘open facilities’ in the desert. Racist and violent comments circulated on Twitter during the march. Named people likened the refugees to ‘poisonous black ants from Africa’ and suggested the authorities use their mass gatherings as an

opportunity to ‘exterminate’ the protesters with bombs, missiles and poison gas. The normally cautious UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) issued a rare press release, calling on Israel to consider alternatives to its current ‘warehousing’ of asylum seekers, entitled ‘Israel’s new laws and policies do not live up to the Spirit of the 1951 Refugee Convention.’ ‘I am particularly disquieted about the purpose of the socalled “open” residence facility, which, in its current form and despite its designation as “open”, would appear to operate as a detention centre from where there is no release,’ said UNHCR representative Walpurga Englbrecht. ‘This means in effect indefinite detention.’ Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu denies any wrongdoing. ‘I would like to clarify that we aren’t talking about refugees with whom we deal according to international treaties,’ he insisted. ‘We are discussing illegal migrant workers.’ But this is simply not true. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, refugee status has not been granted to a single one of the 1,800 Eritrean or Sudanese nationals who have so far applied for it and whose lives are at risk if they are sent April 2014 – THE OLDIE

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back. By contrast, European states have granted such status to more than 70 per cent of asylum seekers from those countries. The celebrated Israeli author, David Grossman, joined the protest in Jerusalem: ‘I feel embarrassed and ashamed that we have reached this situation,’ he said.

ILLUSTRATION BY HEATH

Voice from the Grave

★ Great Bores of Today ★ No.69

But that which troubles me most is that it hath rained all this morning, so furiously that I fear my house is all over wet; and with that expectation I rose and went into my house, and I find that it is as wet as the open street, and that there is not one dry footing above nor below in my house. So I fitted myself for dirt and removed all my books to the office, and all day putting up and removing things, it raining all day as long as hard within doors as without. Diary of Samuel Pepys, 20th July 1662 Sent in by Martin Stote £25 for published contributions

‘...due to the high volume of calls you are being held in a queue and you are number nine the waiting time is currently fifteen minutes or alternatively you can visit our website your call is important to us and we are doing all we can to connect you to one of our customer service team da-da-da-dida-da-da-da-di-da-da-da-di-da-da-da your call is held in a queue and you are currently number nine remember to have your policy number and your nine digit reference and

pass code ready when you speak to one of our customer service team did you know that we provide a new family holiday insurance and house insurance package with an exclusive introductory offer which is available to all policy holders over fifty for details visit our website or speak to one of our customer service team da-da-da-di-da-da-da-da-di-da-dada-di-da-da-da your call is held in a queue and you are currently number nine…’

No.69

Tips for Meanies

ILLUSTRATION BY MARTIN HONEYSETT

Printer ink, as all Meanies are aware, is more expensive than champagne and so much less enjoyable. Obvious savings include refilled cartridges or, if you print a lot of black and white documents, switching to a laser printer using toner. But how about the font? Thinner fonts use less ink than bold fonts like Arial Bold or Impact, and sans-serif fonts are more economical than serif fonts because no ink is wasted printing out little tails. Surveys claim the cheapest font is Century Gothic and switching from Arial to Century Gothic saves a staggering 31 per cent in printing costs. JANE THYNNE

Little girl won Shirley Temple, who died in February, made her name as a child star in the 1930s, but few know about her libel action against Graham Greene following his review of her 1937 film Wee Willie Winkie in Night and Day, a short-lived London equivalent of the New Yorker which was co-edited by Greene and included Connolly, Waugh, Betjeman and Osbert Lancaster among its contributors. ‘Infancy with her is a disguise, her appeal is more secret and more adult,’ Greene wrote, while noting how ‘her neat and welldeveloped rump twisted in the tap-dance’ to a ‘gasp of excited expectation from her antique audience’, and how ‘her admirers – middle-aged men and clergymen – respond to her dubious coquetry, to

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DIARY

JUNE AND GERALD by NAF

Not many dead Important stories you may have missed

the sight of her well-shaped and desirable little body, only because the safety curtain of story and dialogue drops between their intelligence and their desire.’ ‘That little bitch is going to cost me about £250 if I’m lucky,’ Greene remarked after learning that W H Smith had refused to handle the offending issue, and that the Lord Chief Justice had described his review as a ‘gross outrage’. It’s often said that the case put Night and Day out of business, but the magazine was on its last legs anyway. Although he entered into a friendly correspondence with Shirley Temple when she was the American ambassador in Ghana, the case remained a sore point with Greene: it was held against him when he joined MI6 in 1939, and when, in 1985, Chatto published a Night and Day anthology,

Greene only agreed to its inclusion if they indemnified him against another libel action.

Saving Mr Thompson ‘I am not altruistic by nature,’ Mary Kenny wrote in her recent article (Oldie 304) about acting as a carer for her bed-ridden husband Richard West. Daily Telegraph columnist Damian Thompson begs to differ. He writes: ‘Let’s go back to April 1994. I was present when a young man had to be helped to pick up a cup of coffee, so badly were his hands trembling after a near-suicidal drinking binge. The woman helping him was Miss Kenny, herself an ex-drinker, who had whisked him off to his first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. The young man was, as you’ll have guessed, me. I haven’t had a drink since. Mary Kenny saved my life. God bless her.’

««« New Oldie eBooks ««« AVAILABLE NOW! I Once Met and Richard Ingrams’s Quips & Quotes are now available as eBooks at only £4.99 each Available from all major eBook retailers including Amazon and iBooks

Maltese cross Remember Ken Livingstone’s efforts to make us into good continentals by introducing Mercedes bendy buses to the boulevards of London? It all went wrong, of course: the capital’s streets were too narrow and not straight enough so the buses blocked intersections and ran over the toes of pedestrians; they were impossible to overtake and prone to fare dodgers because they had three doors; and occasionally they caught fire. Boris Johnson’s 2008 election pledge to get rid of them proved popular, so they were sent to Malta and painted blue. The brave George Cross island was thought to be the ideal retirement home for these machines because it’s one of the few countries where they drive on the left. But the Maltese bendy buses, run by Arriva, a British subsidiary of German transport firm Deutsche Bahn, were not a success. The streets of Valletta, not to mention Malta’s smaller towns, were even narrower than London’s and the rural roads were pot-holed. They were just too big for a small island and in the searing heat of the southern Mediterranean they caught fire even more often. The joke was that they were the most dangerous German machines inflicted on Malta since the

Valentine’s Day is a bit special this year because the date – 14.02.2014 – almost reads the same backwards as it does the right way round. The Sun Transport Minister Susan Kramer has opened Gatwick Airport station’s seventh new platform which is expected to be used by trains. Transport Briefing Troops at Imjin Barracks, in Gloucestershire, have set a new world record for the most people dipping egg ‘soldiers’ simultaneously. Sunday Telegraph A 42-year-old Georgian labelled ‘The Magnet Man’ has broken his own world record for sticking spoons to his body. Orange News website A mother was stopped and questioned by police after a 999 caller told them her baby wasn’t wearing a coat. Metro £25 for published contributions

THE OLDIE APP The Oldie is now available in a digital format for iPhone or iPad. See: http://bit.ly/OldieApp Or for Android via Exactly at: http://bit.ly/exactlyandroid April 2014 – THE OLDIE

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DIARY

Stuka dive bombers of 1941. Pictures of bendy buses in flames were a frequent feature of the Maltese papers, and they were finally withdrawn from service in 2013. The Prime Minister Joseph Muscat then announced that Arriva had been sacked and in January the bus service was nationalised, pending bids from new consortia – a transition which will cost the already disgrunteld Maltese taxpayers several million euros.

Sixty is the new eighty... Our February literary lunch featured an all-female cast: historian Margaret MacMillan on The War That Ended Peace, Artemis Cooper on Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Broken Road and Rachel Cooke, who spoke about Her Brilliant Career, her account of ten remarkable women of the 1950s. Research for the book wasn’t easy, she said, as ‘most of the big books about the Fifties are written by men and are concerned

Rachel Cooke at the February Oldie literary lunch

with sewers and Anthony Eden’, but she soon came across Betty and Muriel Box, Rose Heilbron, Nancy Spain et al. The youthful Cooke inadvertently caused mirth in the room when she described another of her subjects, gardener Margery Fish, as an ‘old lady’ at the age of 60. • For future lunches see page 68

The survivor This month’s Top Chump (see right) William Roache, aka Coronation Street’s Ken

Barlow, announced that he wanted to get back to work after the jury delivered Not Guilty verdicts in his sex offences trial. Surprisingly the 81-year-old actor’s wish was warmly welcomed by Granada TV bosses. Granada has always been eager to have Ken on Corrie and the reason for this was discovered by a young scriptwriter, brought in in the 1980s to spice up the soap during one of its periodic troughs. ‘Have you

any bright ideas how to get us through this mess?’ the writer was asked. ‘Kill off Ken Barlow,’ was the instant reply. Shock and horror all round. ‘You can’t do that!’ croaked an ashen-faced producer. ‘But he’s not very good, and you’ve run out of stories for him because he’s slept with everyone in the Street, and the cat in the credits is beginning to look nervous,’ the writer persisted. The Executive Producer slammed his fist on the table: ‘Ken does the Obits,’ he pronounced. Later, over a drink, it was explained that when a long-standing member of the Coronation Street cast passes away, the next broadcast episode concludes one minute early and Roache is filmed standing under a gas lamp, from which position he delivers a short eulogy honouring the dear departed. ‘But why Roache?’ demanded the writer. ‘Because he’s been here since Episode One!’ he was told.

Fatal instruction

What were you doing 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 or 70 years ago?

This month’s £50 prize goes to Mick Harrod

years ago, at a time when there were not many jobs around, I joined Cody’s small travelling circus as a tentman and driver. We toured East Anglia and it was hard work moving to new venues almost every day as we mostly did one-night engagements. I had a number of duties, including driving a single-decker bus with the circus owner’s caravan behind, helping dismantle the big top and re-erecting it, positioning the seating, ‘spieling’ around the towns and villages with a loud hailer in the boss’s car, and keeping the generators running for lights and music during the shows. One day disaster struck when the owner, who was also the ringmaster, hurt his back and could do nothing but rest. Everyone had to move up a step. The chief clown had to be the ringmaster, the second

clown became chief clown, and so on. It fell to me to become the front half of Clara, the performing cow. How could I refuse? Although I already had enough jobs to do, I was being paid the princely sum of nine pounds a week, all in half crowns and florins from the box office. The bus was the box office. I had never practised the cow job. Nor had I even watched it properly. So when they zipped my bovine half to the rear half, I had to ask my partner, ‘What do we do now?’ He replied ‘Follow me’ – and he was in the back! We tumbled into the ring in a sideways fashion, but the kids loved it, and we got away with it. Practice on each show made us a little more perfect, but only a little. The worst night was when we were zipped up together and the man in the back was still smoking his cigarette. But then how many people can say they have performed in the circus ring?

Prescribed quinine bisulphate by his GP to deal with nighttime cramps, Oldie reader John Stafford was alarmed to read of the possible side effects. They included: ‘abdominal pain, headache, impaired hearing, loss of consciousness, irregular heartbeats and death.’ ‘Should any of these occur,’ the leaflet added, ‘please tell your doctor.’ Footnote: on the subject of night cramps, a lengthy correspondence in The Oldie some time back confirmed that corks in the bed were a reliable remedy. No side effects were mentioned.

The Obit Game Who was what? (Answers p.11) 1. Captain William Overstreet a. Pilot who claimed to have chased a German fighter plane under the base arch of

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DIARY

Market forces At the start of the public inquiry into the future of London’s Smithfield General Market, the developers Henderson Global Investors followed a time-honoured developers’ tradition by threatening that if they did not get permission to build an office block behind the market’s Victorian veneers, they would leave the buildings to rot rather than sell them. There was more drama when the developer’s architect, John McAslan, stormed out after being questioned by the conservationists’ lawyer about hiring in 2013 the former director of English Heritage’s London Region, Paddy Pugh. At a previous public inquiry in 2006, English Heritage had sided with the objectors, Pugh himself saying ‘The problem is that an office block, whatever its design, just isn’t in keeping with

WILLIAM ROACHE

the character of the buildings that surround it.’ But English Heritage has changed its tune and is now supporting the McAslan/Henderson office block scheme. David Cooper, solicitor for Save Britain’s Heritage, questioned McAslan about the timing of Pugh’s appointment. ‘I really find that offensive, the way you have tried to connect these two incidents,’ McAslan blustered. Cooper said in his opening statement, ‘English Heritage has a lot to account for at this inquiry and for their role in this scheme. They have completely changed their position, even though the fundamentals are the same.’ As Alan Bennett said: ‘If you go to St Bartholomew’s and then walk through Smithfield, it is like walking from one cathedral to another. You wouldn’t pull down St Bartholomew’s, nor should you pull down Smithfield.’ Because once it’s gone – it’s gone.

Waiter, waiter... Reminiscing to our contributor John McEntee (see page 28) at the Dorchester Hotel, best-selling author Barbara Taylor Bradford recalled her days working on the Yorkshire Evening Post with senior reporter Keith Waterhouse. Waterhouse once invited

her to a slap-up meal at the Kardomah, Leeds. Half way through the meal he produced a matchbox and extracted a dead fly which he placed on his food, then summoned a waiter and told him ‘I’m not paying for that.’ Barbara recalled ‘I was horrified. I ended up paying for the meal.’

Booty in the Bodleian A unique collection of Portuguese books, cosseted in Oxford’s Bodleian Library for the past 400 years, is about to become the subject of a battle. In a case that echoes the Greek pursuit of the Elgin marbles, the Foreign Office and the University of Oxford have received a formal request from a Portuguese cultural organisation to return the collection, which was looted by Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex, when his troops sacked the city of Faro in 1596. Essex presented the collection of 91 volumes to his friend Sir Thomas Bodley and it became part of the library he founded in 1602. Ownership of the pillaged books is clear since they each bear the armorial stamp of Ferdinand Mascarenhas, 5th Bishop of Faro and Grand Inquisitor of Portugal, who died in 1628. Apparently the bishop never discovered what had become of his treasured

CHUMPFILE

‘Her Yorkshire puddings are not a patch on my mother’s’ ★ Longest TV soap star

99% ★ Electioneering for Hamiltons 98% ★ ‘Cock Roache’ nickname 94% ★ Druid rituals 89% ★ Reincarnation belief 90% ★ ‘Boring’ libel writ 100%

books, which are mostly treatises on theology, scholastic philosophy and canon law. The Inquisition censors had already blotted out what they regarded as heretical sentences and pasted ‘offensive’ pages together – Dr Thomas James, the Bodleian’s first librarian, wrote that the books had been ‘tormented in a pitiful manner, that it would grieve a man’s heart to see them’. The Faro 1540 organisation made the request for their return last month and a number of Portugese politicians have vowed to pursue the matter. A response from the British authorities has not yet been forthcoming. This month’s contributors include: Francis Barnet, Mira Bar-Hillel, James Hughes-Onslow, Jeremy Lewis, Len Port, Ron Rose and Martin Stote The diary is edited by Sarah Shannon. Please send any contributions to her, care of: The Old Un’s Diary, The Oldie, 65 Newman Street, London W1T 3EG, or email diary@theoldie.co.uk Obituary Game answer: 1:a; 2:c; 3:a

the Eiffel Tower in 1944 b. Great white shark hunter who caught an 18-footer – the biggest on record c. British naval captain who survived two weeks on a raft after his ship was torpedoed in 1941 2. Sir Run Run Shaw a. Gurkha soldier who took part in the SAS raid that ended the siege of the Iranian embassy in 1980 b. Legendary Jamaican steel drum player c. Film mogul whose studio kick-started the kung fu movie genre 3. Henri Rechatin a. Tightrope walker who traversed Niagara Falls and once spent six months 66 feet above a supermarket b. French film-maker forced by the Nazis to make propaganda documentaries about the German occupation c. Canadian chef who invented fairy floss, later commonly known as candy floss

April 2014

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– THE OLDIE

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Still With Us

Ronald Blythe

The celebrated country writer – and Oldie ‘Sage of the Year’ – talks to ELIZABETH GRICE at his home in Wormingford

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PORTRAIT COURTESY OF NEIL SPENCE: www.neilspencephotography.com; PAINTING © The Barn, Wormingford, Nash, John Northcote (1893-1977) / Private Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library

a v ie w in w inter

he old flint track peters out before Bottengoms Farm comes lopsidedly into view, but my car slithers on, out of control, and stops in deep mud. It is a beautiful place to be stuck. The first catkins are dangling on the other side of the track. The swollen River Stour is glinting in the distance. Behind a screen of tangled trees, a light is visible in the big old yeoman’s house where Ronald Blythe has lived for 37 years. His refuge, and now mine. He appears in the doorway like a wild prophet, white hair blowing, brown face wreathed in welcome. Nothing is a worry or a bother. Not the mud. Not my lateness. Not even the fact that he is half way through a lunch of bread and cheese with an actor friend who has come down from London to saw logs for him. ‘Come and sit down. Would you like a coffee?’ He indicates a spindle-backed chair by the fire. It was the painter John Nash’s chair. Landscapes and wood engravings by Nash hang on the walls. In the next room is a black Steinway on which Nash used to play Schubert in the interval between tea and supper – until his fingers became fused together with arthritis. During the war, Nash designed the two-acre garden wilderness that is disappearing in the dusk. When the artist died in 1977, Blythe inherited the house and all its writerly and artistic ghosts. ‘He painted till almost the last week,’ says Blythe, who looked after him. ‘The Nashes sketched all day. When you were making dinner they sketched away, sketched the cat, sketched whatever was in sight. ‘I am aware that the house is very old and has been worn by people’s hands and feet. I often think of the farmers and their families who had 70 acres here. They walked on these floors, didn’t they? It is a lovely place to live. When I first came it only had oil lamps and candles. ‘People ask me if I’m lonely. I’ve never experienced such a thing. It doesn’t occur to me. I have friends but I live very quietly here on my own. Writers are not, on the whole, as jolly as artists. I love the solitary life. I see the village people on Sundays. I don’t go to old people’s clubs. In church, you meet quite a lot of old people. Some are very beautiful and fascinating to be with.’

Blythe, the most celebrated country writer alive, is 91 and still at his desk (or at the lectern). The days are orderly. He rises between six and half past six. ‘I come down and I don’t do anything at all. I just have some tea and look out of the window and drift, in a kind of dream. At 9am I go to my study upstairs and write. Almost on the dot of 12.30pm I stop and come down for some bread and cheese. In the afternoons I read or garden. I love gardening. Ideas for books come to me. Most people have retirement hanging over them. As an artist or writer you just go on working.’ He is most famous for Akenfield, his 1969 portrait of a Suffolk village in the first half of the 20th century, but he has written biographies, essays, edited the classics and is still in demand as a literary reviewer. His latest book, The Time by the Sea, about his days in Aldeburgh in the Fifties, working for Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, came out last year. He is

lay canon. He conducts funeral services, using the words of the old prayer book, with a scattering of philosophy rather than full-blown eulogy. Blessed are they who have Ronnie Blythe to see them into the afterlife. Then there is ‘Word from Wormingford’, his weekly column on the back page of the Church Times, a fixture for more than 20 years and now posted on the internet. Blythe rolls his life, his languid white cat, the changing seasons, the liturgical year, architecture and art into a ball of gentle, poetic musing that has been praised as ‘one of the most elegant and thoughtful columns in British journalism’. Wormingford is a brief whorl of excitement on the contour map, whose lovely folds John Nash called ‘the Suffolk-Essex highlands’. Thomas Gainsborough and John Constable knew it well. Blythe, the son of a farm labourer, was born in the Suffolk village of Acton, only 10 miles away.

Most people have retirement hanging over them. As an artist or writer you just go on working’ currently editing a book of poems. ‘It is a scholarly-cum-imaginative world I live in.’ His full church life is equally agedefying. He is a lay reader at three local churches, taking matins and evensong every week and sometimes preaching at St Edmundsbury Cathedral where he is a

is story is criss-crossed with life-changing encounters. When he was ‘just a boy’, a poet, he soaked up art and literature, horticulture and French cookery as a part of the bohemian circle at Cedric

☞ continues over the page

Left: Blythe at this year’s Oldie of the Year Awards. Right: the view from Blythe’s home captured in Nash’s The Barn, Wormingford April 2014 – THE OLDIE

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24/2/14 10:28:59

• The Time by the Sea (£15.99, Faber, HB) will be published in paperback in June

Return to the foyers WILFRED DE’ATH contemplates a spell in France’s hostels for the homeless MY ARRANGEMENTS to rent a flat in Saumur have fallen through. I am driven back to living in cheap (one- or two-star) French hotels or even in the foyers (hostels for the homeless). The hotels really aren’t too bad. Many famous writers – Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Marcel Proust – spent large parts of their lives in them and found it helpful for their work. The great thing is, everything is done for you. The foyers are more problematic. I spent a decade (the 1990s) living in them, but I am older now (76) and being put out in the street at 6am, often in very bad weather, may not be so much fun. I am not only older but softer too, having enjoyed a decade of relative luxury and prosperity. We shall see. Whatever happens I shall battle on… The foyer in Caen is a grim fortress and the people hate the British because we bombed the s**t out of them in 1944. However, the directeur, twinkling away over his huge moustache and with a Légion d’honneur in his button-hole, took a fancy to me for some reason. He could never understand why my children weren’t taking care of me in my old age. That is something the French never understand. The foyer in Angers was filled with paranoid schizophrenics who would never let me sit at their table at dinner. Not that I wanted to. One of them once attacked me with a knife. In Saumur itself there is a very pleasant foyer, Les Quatre Saisons, where ‘la porte est toujours ouverte’. One evening, an

enormous Korean clochard (tramp) calmly removed all the food from my dinner plate and placed it on his. When I complained to the directeur, all he said was ‘Well, perhaps he was hungry.’ In Limoges the foyer was run by Michel, a tough ex-boxer with a broken nose. He was clearly homosexual. I have to admit that he brought out certain homosexual tendencies in myself, but I managed to keep them in check. I was looked after by the foyer tart, Aisha, who charged the others two euros for pipe (fellatio) but let me have it free.

Being put out in the street at 6am in very bad weather may not be so much fun, but whatever happens I shall battle on In Toulouse there is an enormous foyer, Antipoul, which accommodates hundreds of men in tiny double rooms. I had to share mine with a really disgusting, filthy Arab. One night, unable to bear his smell any longer, I ordered him to the wash-room to clean his feet. I followed him there and found him with one foot stuck in a wash-basin. ‘I’ll do the other one tomorrow,’ he said. In Avignon the foyer is run by the Red Cross. The other residents hated me and would knock off my cap or my spectacles for no reason at all. But the food was good – about what you would eat in a three-star hotel. I can’t wait to get back there.

ILLUSTRATION BY STEVE WAY

Morris’s East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing at Benton End, Hadleigh. He was a young research librarian in Colchester when Christine Kühlenthal, Nash’s wife, walked in one day asking for the score of Idomeneo. The Nashes persuaded Blythe to give up his job and write. They found him a bungalow in Thorpeness where he lived on £3 a week and wrote a novel. His Aldeburgh neighbour, E M Forster, pushed a note under his door in a snowstorm: ‘Would you care to come to drinks tonight?’ There was a small sherry but no food. ‘In those days it was like meeting Shakespeare.’ Benjamin Britten hired him to help run the Aldeburgh Festival, the awakening of his love of music. With Britten he explored ancient churches (he rates the first opening of a church door as ‘only a little less exciting than opening the pyramid’); with the botanist Denis Garrett he visited shingle beaches and learned about plants. Imogen Holst (the Festival’s artistic director) taught him frugality. ‘I had no money at all, but no one did. No one talked about money. My guide was Imogen Holst. She lived on practically nothing. It was inspiring.’ For all this, Blythe does not live in the past or even hermit-like at Bottengoms. There is nothing he enjoys more than going to Sudbury or Colchester with a friend. ‘Adventures’, he calls them, as if he is journeying to another world. And in a sense he is. ‘It’s fascinating to go into Waitrose or the church or walk about the streets. I love walking in cities. Watching people. I get enthralled by what people do, what they look like, how they speak, their clothes. I am an observer really. I don’t ask any questions. I notice things involuntarily.’ He has always lived alone. Were there romantic attachments? ‘Loving friends,’ he says serenely. ‘I think I was good at friendship.’ In his fifties, and therefore somewhat under-qualified, he wrote a consideration of old age, The View in Winter. That winter is upon him. Does the view look different? ‘It is philosophical to be old,’ he says. ‘There is nothing terrible about it, if you are not ill. When you are old, death seems natural.’ I leave him, meditating with his cat on his lap, looking as perfectly shaped to his ancient surroundings as a walnut in its shell. ‘And then there is gratitude. To have got this far. I love each day as it comes.’

THE OLDIE – April 2014

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24/2/14 10:50:17

THE MEDICINE MAN

Olden life

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE ROYAL HOLLOWAY UNIVERSITY

What were… Holloway’s Pills? THE SAYING that timing is everything certainly applied to Thomas Holloway when he launched his eponymous patent medicine business in 1837. It was a time of increasing interest in self-medication – proprietary medicines were becoming readily available in shops, and apart from being generally less harsh than those prescribed by physicians, they were, more importantly, cheaper. Prior to embarking on his great money-spinning project, Holloway was a foreign commercial agent. By a stroke of good fortune he was approached by Felix Albinolo, an Italian vendor of medicinal ointment, who sought his advice on selling his preparation in Britain. Holloway introduced him to surgeons at St Thomas’s Hospital who provided testimonials as to the efficacy of the ointment – a common enough practice in those days. Sensing the potential profitability of patent medicines, Holloway made a product of identical formula which he marketed as ‘Holloway’s Family Ointment’. His knowledge of the value of official medical endorsement prompted him to seek the assistance of a senior surgeon at the Middlesex Hospital, who agreed to endorse the preparation – no doubt for a cash consideration. In the meantime, Albinolo got wind of Holloway’s activities and issued a writ for fraud. However, good fortune was once again to smile on Holloway, as shortly after issuing proceedings, Albinolo was committed to a debtors’ prison and eventually disappeared. Encouraged by the success of his Family Ointment, Holloway embarked upon the business of making pills, a venture which was to make his fortune. The nostrum was mainly herbal, with a fair proportion of liquorice that acted

Above: the magnificent Royal Holloway College in Egham, Surrey, founded with the wealth generated by Thomas Holloway’s pills and potions

as a laxative, and as the Victorians were obsessed with bowel movements, his timing was spot on. He realised that it was an added bonus if the remedy produced some immediate perceivable effect such as belching or breaking wind. However the keystone to his success was the exploitation of an advertising style, then much used by patent medicine manufacturers, which proclaimed the pills to be universal curealls. (This was well before legal controls to curtail the claims made for patent medicines were introduced in 1936.) After saturating the UK, Holloway employed a network of foreign agents to exploit overseas and colonial markets, placing advertisements in newspapers in many parts of the world. So diligent was he in the pursuit of business that packaging and directions for use were

‘Narcissus is doing a selfie again’

produced in many languages, including Armenian, Arabic, Turkish and Chinese, as well as most of the dialects of India. This multifarious sales promotion brought about a period of spectacular growth, resulting in his business being larger than any other patent medicine manufacturer at that time. Eventually, with a large fortune to hand, and a continuing income stream from the business, Holloway went into semi-retirement to concentrate on investing his spectacular wealth. Philanthropy appealed to him, and subsequent to a discussion with Lord Shaftesbury, he decided to provide a sanatorium for the mentally afflicted. With this benefaction in mind, he purchased ninety acres of land at Virginia Water in Surrey, an ideal location for his first act of benevolence. Although the sanatorium had 480 rooms, it was dwarfed by his next philanthropic venture, the founding of the Royal Holloway College for Ladies which boasted more than a thousand rooms. This impressive building, inspired by a French château, was erected near the sanatorium and officially opened by Queen Victoria, who conferred the Royal prefix on the seat of learning. Now part of the University of London, it stands today, as majestic as ever, a lasting tribute to the patentee of those famous pills and ointments which had found their way into most households. Or looked at another way, it illustrates just how much our ancestors were prepared to pay for remedies to someone who had successfully commercialised the nostrums of quack doctors. ALAN THOMAS

THE OLDIE – April 2014

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24/2/14 10:55:00

words, words, words

Modern life

What is… a hybrid bill? A hybrid bill is a Parliamentary procedure to pass legislation that affects both private and public matters. In other words, there is both a widespread public, possibly national, interest but also a specific effect on particular individuals and organisations who may be adversely affected. The HS2 Bill is therefore the mechanism by which the Government will obtain planning permission for the controversial near-200km line between London and Birmingham. Steering a hybrid bill through Parliament is a difficult process and the HS2 Bill is the most complex of all such bills. The Crossrail legislation, the last similar legislation on this scale, was rejected at the first attempt, and its second incarnation took two and half years to pass through Parliament, with the MPs on the committee having to deal with hundreds of petitioners and their amendments. The HS2 Bill therefore has to be incredibly detailed to ensure that objectors cannot find loopholes to exploit and which might scupper the whole process as the committee effectively acts in a ‘quasi-judicial’ role. So here’s a health warning. Do not attempt to study this bill. It could potentially cause apoplexy or even a cardiac arrest because its contents are so abstruse and incomprehensible. A typical sentence reads – and this was genuinely chosen at random by the Wolmar supercomputer – ‘The nominated undertaker and its contractors will comply as a minimum with applicable environmental legislation at the time of construction, together with any additional environmental controls imposed by the hybrid Bill, except where such legislation has been dis-applied.’ That seems to say the Government will do what the law says except when it does not want to and then – two fingers to people’s objections. And not surprisingly,

there has been no shortage of objectors, all of whom will be seeking to have their day at the committee to give evidence – which will, incidentally, be under oath. Do not, moreover, attempt to pick up a copy of the Bill. That will certainly cause injury as it is 49,910 pages long, all but 400 of which make up the ‘environmental statement’ (fortunately for the nation’s environment and in particular its stock of trees, the Bill is mostly available online). It is reputed to weigh one and a half tonnes. Do not, either, even try to simply read this Bill. Apart from terminal boredom you risk causing permanent damage to the eyes since it runs to some 20–22 million words, representing about 80 times the length of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Originally, opponents of the Bill were given just 56 days to respond, the minimum requirement under the legislation, which would have required a reading rate of 900 pages per day. Fortunately, due to the inevitable errors in producing such a magnum opus, several hundred pages of the environmental statement were omitted and consequently those hoping to read the whole thing were given a further couple of months to ‘depose their petitions’ – the official term for making objections. This is a key part of the procedure as it enables objectors to put forward their arguments about the Bill which will then be given its Second Reading. The process that comes after that really is tortuous. A small group of MPs will be selected to sit in committee considering the Bill, line by line, and hearing the so-called ‘petitions’ against it. This is the job from hell given to MPs who have fallen out of

favour with their whips or, reputedly, on whom the whips have information that would be career-ending, such as an affair with a fellow MP’s wife or calling police officers ‘plebs’. There will certainly not be any volunteers for this Sisyphean task. The members of the committee must not have a constituency interest in the Bill, which rules out whole swathes of potential members and which means that the fate of the HS2 route through the South-East and the Midlands is likely to be decided by disinterested and uninterested MPs from the Highlands and Cornwall, sitting on the committee under duress. The Committee is expected to sit for at least a hundred days, quite possibly more. Even then it is not finished. The Bill will need to go through a Report stage, and be debated at a Third Reading involving the whole Commons, and then sent to the Lords, where there is a further opportunity for objectors to put their case and to appear before another select committee. Because of the complexity of the process, the Bill is expected to take two years to get through Parliament. Exceptionally, hybrid bills are able to straddle Parliaments and will not, unlike all other unfinished Parliamentary business, automatically fall when the general election is called. And here’s a final health warning. The official name of the current Bill is the High Speed Rail (London-West Midlands), which means that a whole new Bill for the second part of the line, the sections north of Birmingham to Leeds and Manchester, will be required. So be prepared for an even heavier and longer hybrid bill next year. CHRISTIAN WOLMAR

‘Stop it George, that death rattle is so annoying’ April 2014 – THE OLDIE

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24/2/14 10:55:50

Jeremy Lewis

LIVING HELL

Gripes and grumbles from The Oldie’s resident sage

ne of the minor irritants of living in Oxford in the 1970s was overhearing dons, flushed with port, boasting of how, if left to their own devices, they would soon sort out the Government or ICI or the merchant banks, or whatever needed sorting out at the time. Most of the dons I knew were amiable coves, but all of them were what Michael Frayn famously referred to as ‘herbivores’ – gentle, diffident, rather bumbling creatures, few of whom could be trusted to run a whelk stall, let alone the Ministry of Defence. Quite why a reclusive Egyptologist or an authority on mediaeval Spanish should be prone to such delusions remained a mystery, but it may reflect a mistaken assumption that only one kind of cleverness really matters, viz the academic. I was reminded of this when I began to write biographies. My first subject, Cyril Connolly, was a brilliant writer and a very funny man, but – like most

writers and academics – he was a selfabsorbed ditherer, unable to make up his mind and prone to see six sides at least of every question: as he once put it, ‘I believe in God the Either. God the Or, and God the Holy Both.’ A few years later, I wrote a life of Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin Books. Lane was a marvellous publisher, but – like many tycoons, I suspect – he was single-minded (and may well have seemed almost simple-minded to more literary types): he knew what he was after, seized every opportunity, made quick decisions, and withdrew at speed if things didn’t work out. He was more interesting for what he did than for what he said or thought, and as such he was Connolly’s antithesis. It takes all types…

ne of the things I have in common with our wireless critic, apart from writing biographies, is that we are both avid pickers-up of litter: she practises her craft on Hampstead Heath, whereas I keep my eyes peeled in Richmond Park. She is altogether more

professional, in that she sets out with one of those sticks with a claw at the far end, and a bag to put the rubbish in, whereas I totter home with my pockets jammed with Coke tins, crisp packets, cardboard coffee cups and plastic water-bottles tossed aside by joggers and Lycra-clad bicyclists. Litter louts, like graffiti ‘artists’, are bad for the blood pressure of senior citizens, and I long for them to be punished for their crimes. Could the stocks be revived? Debagging might be the answer, but since so many of the perpetrators are minors, anyone who tried to remove their trousers as part of a ‘citizen’s arrest’ could well end up in the dock on a charge of paedophilia.

hy is Channel 4 so obsessed with deformities and the more telegenic types of disease? Because I watch Channel 4 News, I assume that it’s rather a serious-minded set-up, but no sooner have Jon Snow and Krishnan GuruMurthy faded from view than one is bombarded with advertisements for forthcoming programmes, most of which feature enormously overweight or anorexic individuals in their underclothes, plus suppurating sores, goitres, the ravages of venereal disease etc. All those unfortunate individuals – midgets, fat women, giants – who used to appear in touring fairs along with sword-swallowers and two-headed cows can now be found on Channel 4. No doubt the programme makers would claim that they’re giving a voice to the disadvantaged, but I suspect they’re really catering to a form of voyeurism. My mother always claimed that she had thirty-six jobs before she married my father in 1939, including the supervision of a troupe of midgets. Whatever happened to the troupes that appeared in, for example, Danny Kaye’s The Court Jester? Perhaps Channel 4 could tell us. April 2014 – THE OLDIE

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JEREMY LEWIS ILLUSTRATION BY DAVID STOTEN

feel numb with boredom at the very thought of World War One, and the interminable telly programmes and groundbreaking histories that have been drummed up to mark its hundredth anniversary. It only seems the other day that the colour supplements were commemorating the fiftieth anniversary, with books by Alan Clark and John Terraine causing outrage in the Naval & Military Club and other bastions of the old guard. I don’t remember the television programmes – my parents hadn’t yet bought a set – but I assume they interlaced old film with interviews with veterans rather than, as now, with fresh-faced actors pretending to be nurses or cannon-fodder heading for the front. It’s quite a relief to know that I shan’t be around for the hundredth anniversary of World War Two.

24/2/14 10:57:51

words and harm

Whiteboard jungle KAte Sawyer

The uses and abuses of swearing

Illustrated by PETER BAILEY

e all take it as read that cursing should not occur around school, but accidents happen even among the best regulated. I’ve perfected the art of not hearing when a child swears, as long as it is a genuine and non-aggressive expression of displeasure. Drop your pen on the floor, curse, and I won’t hear. Obviously any swearing aimed directly at a teacher, or aggressively at another child, must be stopped. Particularly if the content is racist, homophobic, sexist etc. But when does this perfectly sensible rule turn into the crazy world of political correctness? There is a big drive going on at the moment against using the word ‘gay’, and of course ‘don’t be gay’ as a response to doing anything that might be feeble or pusillanimous is insulting. Recently a child came into my lesson absolutely outraged. She had been told that she was to be put on internal exclusion (a hideous punishment involving being kept in isolation all day with a teacher and piles of work) because she had, in frustration, called a triangle gay. Unfortunately when she told me I burst out laughing, which was not very professional of me – but what could that actually mean? Nothing. And if a child is locked away for calling a triangle gay, what should the punishment be for fighting till blood is drawn? I suggested that she explain to the teacher that she was talking about the pink triangles homosexual men were made to wear in the concentration camps, or the black ones worn by lesbians and Roma, but my amusing suggestion was lost in her righteous indignation. Recently off sick with the flu, I was told that a child in my class had totally lost her temper with a teacher covering the lesson, screaming ‘F**k you, f**k off’ at the cover teacher before storming

They both turned on me: ‘F**k off, Miss. This has f**k all to do with you.’ It was the word ‘Miss’ that made me feel safe... out of the room effing and blinding like a sailor denied his shore leave. When I returned (and she had been banned from my lessons for a week) the class asked me what I would have done had she sworn like that at me. The truth is, she probably would not have; if you develop any kind of relationship at all with a class, even the most troublesome member is unlikely to cuss you out. After a while a class begins to form its own identity and children often behave badly when cover teachers come in – partly because they think they can, but more because they feel in some way threatened by a change of routine. When they do swear at you, it is surprisingly shocking. Had she sworn at me like that I would have felt personally

attacked and betrayed; when a strange child swears at you, you may feel threatened, but it does not shake you in the same way. The most violent swearing I have ever had directed at me was when I stepped between two large boys who were squaring up to each other. Neither of them knew me, so I was aware I was taking a risk. And indeed, they both turned on me, violently swearing and threatening and making me feel I was, for a moment or two, in physical danger. However I suddenly realised I was safe. Because even in the midst of their ire, old habits stood hard – ‘F**k off, Miss. This has f**k all to do with you.’ It was the word ‘Miss’ in the middle of the attack that made me feel safe. While they called me ‘Miss’ they were not going to let their fists forget who they meant to thump – and it wasn’t me. I had a friend who worked in a Pupil Referral Unit. He had a violent boy hemmed in against the walls of the gym with his arms. Another boy walked in and shouted at the teacher for restricting his friend’s movement. The first pupil turned on the second. ‘Why don’t you f**k off. Sir and I know what we’re doing.’ My friend was astounded. Mostly because, he said, he was glad someone knew what was happening – he didn’t. It’s not just the children who slip up. Last week, for the first time in all these years, I let the F-word loose on a class. The reason? When asked to write a ghost story they all wanted to base it, not on the darkly atmospheric painting I had up on the board, but on some television show or computer game. So I went off on a rant about thought and imagination. And who got the F-word aimed at him? Something hideous henceforth to be known as ‘SpongeBob Fucking SquarePants.’ I think I’m still employed. I hope so. April 2014 – THE OLDIE

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24/2/14 10:58:32

New Broadcasting House

ew Broadcasting House did not enjoy the most auspicious of baptisms. Years behind schedule when it opened and £100 million over budget, NBH first came to national consciousness late in 2012 as the backdrop to the resignation of George Entwistle after 54 days as Director General of the BBC, following the Jimmy Savile/ Lord McAlpine disasters. Since then it has been the backdrop to reports on many other BBC management farces – entirely fitting for a building that has become a fiasco in its own right. If you are in Portland Place you can’t miss NBH – it’s the ghastly concave neon-lit extension to poor ‘Old Broadcasting House’, which now looks almost embarrassed to be there. Eric Gill may have been a dreadful old paedophile but he was a sculptor of extraordinary vision. Study closely his statue of Prospero and Ariel on the front of OBH, particularly Prospero’s anguished expression. Is that not the face of a man looking away from NBH in disgust? The unpleasantness begins as you approach NBH and hear disembodied voices emanating from the ‘plaza’ beneath your feet. You might think they are the cries of lost souls beckoning you to some Strindbergian hell; in fact you are listening to the output of what’s left of the World Service, which for some reason is played out across the concourse as montages of incomprehensible murmuring. And just like Hell, there are nine levels, or ‘circles’ at NBH. Boxed in by walls of glass, they look down on the vast ‘multimedia’ newsroom in the basement. Known (appropriately) as ‘the pit’, the newsroom teems with producers and editors of different programmes all lumped together, with

everyone knowing what everyone else is up to. At Television Centre and Bush House, the former homes of BBC News and the World Service, programmes and departments had their own space. Now all are agglomerated in vast office spaces where separate identity is in almost as short supply as natural daylight. The great idea was that programmes would cooperate more if they were all lumped together. But the managers and ‘editors’ guard their fiefdoms with even fiercer sectarianism than before, despite the fact that everyone can hear and see what they are up to. There is some cooperation here and there but that is mainly attributable to the deep cuts forced on the staff rather than the brilliant architecture of NBH. The floors are reached by the slowest lifts in London and there seem to be chronic problems with virtually everything, from the lavatories to the computers (forget about getting a decent mobile phone signal). After only a year the place is descending into squalor: food, old newspapers and smelly cycling Lycra clutter the work spaces, while you’ll be lucky to find a clean mug or a spoon in the communal coffee-making areas. And the least said about the squalid little staff canteen the better. On the plus side, there are 53 meeting rooms, far outnumbering the number of programme-making facilities, giving a clear indication of the priorities of today’s bureaucracy-obsessed BBC. The best thing about NBH is the outside, where cosy taverns and cafés offer respite for staff seeking to escape their depressing working environment. Hundreds are now applying for voluntary redundancy to get away from it. In a few years’ time the Corporation’s management may have the whole wretched place to themselves without having to worry about any beastly underlings and, possibly, programmes – just the way they like it! April 2014 – THE OLDIE

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PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY: © REX/EDDIE MULHOLLAND

With its nine levels and subterranean newsroom ‘pit’, the BBC’s new HQ bears more than a passing resemblance to Hell, says NORMAN DEPLUME

24/2/14 11:00:18

I DRINK THEREFORE I AM

House Husbandry with Giles Wood In which Mr Wood reflects upon his daughter’s highoctane social life

y nearly twentyyear-old daughter has yet to introduce me to a teetotaller among her student friends. Without exception they all seem to spend their student loans on a well-unbalanced diet. I am told the liver is a forgiving organ and can regenerate after abuse, but the concept of a night off is unknown to our girl and her alleged one thousand ‘friends’ on Facebook. With 365 days in a year that means two or three possible parties every night. Casting my mind back to our own student life, the wife and I, finding ourselves at a loose end on a Saturday evening, might phone around to ask a friend if anything was ‘happening’. More often than not, that friend, or all our friends, were out, as evidenced by the fact they did not answer their telephones. In those pre-cellphone days there was nothing for it but to accept that we’d missed the boat and so Saturday night could be spent agreeably, from my point of view, with a Vesta chow mein with crispy noodles in front of The Two

Ronnies in a Parsons Green bedsit. Today there is nowhere to hide for party poopers because everyone is plugged in 24/7. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that my daughter’s university course – English – required students to re-enact the lifestyles of alcohol-fuelled writers such as Malcolm Lowry, William Faulkner and Patrick Hamilton, the better to get inside their ‘heads’, but apparently not – her generation’s partying is in fact driven by FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and the philosophy of YOLO (You Only Live Once).

The concept of a night off is unknown to our girl and her alleged one thousand ‘friends’ on Facebook I turned to our schoolmaster friend Karl for insider knowledge. How did he explain this generation’s servitude to Bacchus? Was it to blot out existential angst? ‘No,’ said Karl. ‘They drink because twenty is the new fourteen.’

With this aphoristic reply he shed light on the issue. They just haven’t grown up. But it is difficult to discuss these things with someone so hypnotised by their iPhone that it takes three or four attempts to engage with them, like raising someone from a post-operative coma. ‘Can you hear me!?’ ‘There’s no need to shout, Dad. Chillllll!’ Being chilled seems to be the ultimate aspiration of her age group. ‘Never mind being chilled; how much alcohol are you all going to all drink at this party?’ ‘Don’t worry, Dad. Everyone will bring a bottle.’ The prospect of a flashmob arriving at her twentieth birthday party was daunting. The logistics of the cottage sleeping arrangements were bad enough (fifteen wanted to stay the night) but worse for me was the prospect of having grown men (some of them overgrown and sporting beards or moustaches) sleeping under the same thatched roof as myself. What if they became unruly? Some of these youths were virtually classifiable as ‘GM’, stuffed as they were with beefburger-derived growth hormones and antibiotics. Loud rhythmic music soon drowned out conversation, turning it to Neanderthal whooping. Our ill-fitting cottage windows, which often rattle in time to rhythmic trance music, reached a tipping point at which the whole room became a loudspeaker, but luckily a tempest was raging simultaneously and the village slept on. Naturally we hid a lot of the alcohol and, surprisingly, no one complained of the deficit and the party passed off as yet another resounding social success and triumph of chilling, leaving a legacy on Facebook of hundreds of photographs of twenty-year-olds pulling faces with their tongues out like Maori rugby players. When I counted the empties the next day I found not nearly as many as expected, though we learned that three of the GM giants had consumed fortyfive units between them. Clearly their systems are better evolved to process toxins than was mine at their age. ‘Yes, the party was fun,’ I admitted. Even I could see that as I scuttled about serving them my home-made fishcakes. ‘The only reason you didn’t have FOMO in your day is that you didn’t know what you were missing out on,’ said our daughter. ‘The difference is that we do.’

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s p a r i n g the n ei g h b o u r s

God...

by Melanie McDonagh

Life as an expatriate isn’t all sipping cocktails round the swimming pool. There are drawbacks as well, and none worse than seeing your Spanish home bulldozed because the authorities belatedly decided it breached local planning rules. Devastating as that is, Oldie readers who live abroad report many other irritations that are hitting their finances. Since the credit crunch none of them has been able to get a UK mortgage or even remortgage an existing property. Natasha, who now lives in Malaga, complained that she was having difficulty persuading Lloyds and Barclays banks to answer her letters. Mammon asked the banks to investigate. Lloyds said it had no record of receiving her letters but has now made contact. To apologise, it waived a £7.50 safe custody fee, credited her with £30 towards the cost of couriering a letter and added £40 for the inconvenience. Barclays quickly phoned to explain that it had in fact carried out her instruction to close her account when it received her hand-written note. It said it had no reason to contact her again after that.

John Cornwell’s book on confession, The Dark Box, which I referred to last month, may be sensationalist but it has the merit of stimulating thought about the subject of confession. And the most obvious feature of the modern practice of confession is that it is a private act. The dark box, the confessional, would have seemed rather odd to early Christians – the contrary of the whole practice of penance which was, like baptism, carried on in public view. The two sacraments were indeed connected. In the early church, baptism was the occasion for the forgiveness of sins and, as it took place in adulthood, the sins of a lifetime would be remitted in one go: the new Christian was clothed in white, to show inner squeaky-cleanness. There were, then, quite good reasons for postponing baptism for as long as possible; famously, Constantine held out for as long as he could on the basis that he didn’t really want to put aside his sins until the last minute. And if baptism was a public act so was penance, which was in the hands of a bishop – the representative of the community – and

later subcontracted to priests. Penitents came to him on Ash Wednesday and were readmitted to the church on Holy Thursday after they’d performed their (public) penance, in time for Easter. Herbert McCabe, the Dominican theologian, remarked that contemporary confession squashes both events into a single encounter: it has both the repentance of Ash Wednesday and the reconciliation of Maundy Thursday. But many Christians didn’t manage to keep themselves in a state of grace after their baptism in adulthood, so there arose the question of whether confession should be extended to those who fell from grace as Christians. Specifically there were the public and social sins of murder, apostasy (not an academic matter in the days of persecution) and adultery – another sin against the community. The mid-second-century text Shepherd of Hermas speaks of a second forgiveness for sins committed after baptism. Tertullian, at the beginning of the third century, first accepts the notion of a second repentance, then thinks again about it.

Other expatriate readers have seen their offshore bank accounts closed down as banks reduce the services they offer to non-residents. The Co-operative Bank has shut down its Guernsey branch and told customers to make other arrangements. Alison has lived in France for 20 years and now has to find another sterling bank account for paying UK bills but her applications are refused because she no longer has a UK address. HSBC has switched its non-resident Guernsey customers to its Jersey office. Peter Buckley moved to New Zealand five years ago and now wants to buy an annuity with the UK pension fund built up with Zurich Insurance. Every adviser he approached said they are not licensed to provide pensions to nonresidents – he has a British passport and bank account but no UK address. Zurich says few firms provide annuities for expatriates because of complicated tax implications. It is contacting him to explain his options. The euro and worldwide economic crises have tempted several countries to squeeze every penny from foreigners. Italy, Spain, France and Cyprus are

tightening tax loopholes and so too is the UK. In his last autumn statement, Chancellor George Osborne announced plans to impose capital gains tax on foreigners when they sell UK property, a money-raising plan that, perhaps inadvertently, scoops up Brits living abroad as well. Often people choose where to live because a low-cost airline flies into a nearby airport, only to find the airline pulls out a few years later making it difficult and expensive for them to visit friends back home. Richard Samwell left England for Australia 48 years ago, before low-cost airlines were invented. On a recent trip back to the UK, unaware of Ryanair’s reputation (coincidentally the subject of this month’s ‘Rant’ on page 29), he booked a flight for three with the airline from Liverpool to London. His failure to print out a boarding card until they reached the airport cost them an extra £210 which left him apoplectic: ‘The buggers upset me considerably and I don’t think I’m over it yet. Never again!’ Being an expatriate can only get more expensive.

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The change in penitential practice from a public act, performed once or twice in a lifetime, to a private one, was a large and important one. The decisive change is usually attributed to Pope Leo the Great in the fifth century, who wrote that it was quite unnecessary for penitents to read aloud a written list of their sins to the entire congregation; private confession to a priest was good enough. And you can see why: there must have been an exhibitionist element to reading a list of your sins to the congregation. I rather think that public confessions run the risk of seeming quite show-offy. Confessing the sin of murder in public – the ultimate offence against the community – is one thing; denouncing yourself to your fellow Christians as the worst of sinners is pure self-indulgence. Without wishing to be unkind to Methodists, quite a few nineteenth-century accounts of Methodist assemblies – one thinks of Flora’s nice neighbour in Lark Rise to Candleford – have precisely this character. Confessing your sins to God through a priest is at least not a trial to your neighbours.

...and

mammon by Margaret Dibben Got a complaint about a financial •institution? Perhaps Margaret Dibben can help. Write to Mammon, The Oldie, 65 Newman Street, London W1T 3EG or email mammon@theoldie.co.uk

Fashion With Tamasin Doe Following the thread HISTORICAL EXAMPLES of embroidery possible meet with local makers to see generally spend their fragile lives the techniques used. I can then rework sleeping in the vaults of museums or the this information and inspiration into private homes of collectors. It is rarer contemporary pieces that may also still to have access to examples from combine other aspects and ideas from the Middle East that have never been my travels in that area.’ further west than Dubai. This month The experience inspired them to a small but consummate collection of create a collaborative body of work Palestinian embroidery will be on display entitled A Palestinian Journey, also on at the Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch display. ‘We each chose a vintage crossshow at Birmingham’s NEC. The pieces stitched bodice top to buy and decided represent a fraction of the collection of quite spontaneously to use the bodice Yasser Barakat, a native Jerusalemite tops as inspiration for a series of textile who started collecting Palestinian pieces. Each bodice top was stitched costume when he in different colours and was just 19 years old. patterns and of course Barakat’s motivation each piece would have its was to preserve own personal history. We Palestinian heritage, could use the colours and especially embroidery, patterns from the bodice which was being lost tops and combine that and neglected in the with our inspiration and Seventies. reflections on our travels After Barakat in the surrounding area.’ graduated from Just as an accent A bodice from Hebron Roosevelt University, can root a person in Chicago, he returned one town or another, to Palestine where he turned his passion embroidery can place a garment within into a business. Dresses and art pieces a few miles of its creation. Barakat and were the foundation of his collection, his son Ihab will be on hand to take with cushions, hats and silver pieces visitors on a tour of Palestine through following on. Since then he has created the embroideries and garments they a studio to safeguard the special textiles decorate. Archibald says, ‘Earlier this year skills of his region and the historical we put forward the idea that they might examples which would have simply bring over a collection of pieces to exhibit disappeared over time. Barakat has also alongside our textile pieces and the idea worked to build his important collection has grown from that.’ and to create new work using damaged The colours and patterns of nonor neglected pieces, a sophisticated European decorative art, usually labelled example of recycling in order to preserve ‘ethnic’, the lazy, lumpen term applied the usefulness of less delicate pieces. to the fabulous arc of work that exists The reputation of his shop, secreted between the Adriatic and China, are a in the labyrinth of Jerusalem’s old constant presence in fashion. This is a city, makes it a must-visit for lovers of unique opportunity for fashion students, textiles and embroidery. Pat Archibald, textile artists and embroiderers to learn Janette Purdie and Gillian Travis, three about and see first-hand work created textile artists, visited it during a quilters’ from and for one of those regions, as well conference in the city. Archibald says, as the creative collaboration it can inspire. ‘With any of the countries that I visit • Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch, I am keen to find out about the local 20th–23rd March, 9.30–17.30 (17.00 on textile traditions and patterns. I research Sunday), NEC Birmingham. Tickets from the textile history of the place and if www.ichfevents.co.uk; 01425 277 988 April 2014 – THE OLDIE

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b r i g hto n r o c k ed

The way we were Fleet Street hack john Mcentee looks at the changes in the world of journalism over the last twenty-five years – with not a little regret... Illustrated by martin honeySETT

ast midnight and the dimly lit bar in Brighton’s Grand Hotel was thronged with high-spirited journalists. It was the second night of the Labour Party Conference and party leader Neil Kinnock and his local Welsh male voice choir had just finished belting out songs from the Valleys next door. His acolyte Alastair Campbell, then political editor of the Daily Mirror, and a yet-to-be-reformed boozer, was multitasking. Appropriately lubricated, he was playing the bagpipes and simultaneously attempting a reel. Behind him, glass of champagne in hand, was an equally well-refreshed

Keith Waterhouse, whose jerking and knee-bending suggested he was rehearsing Riverdance in advance of its invention at the Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin five years later.

A lubricated Alastair Campbell was playing the bagpipes and simultaneously attempting a reel In front of the musical duo, dozing on a bar stool, was Anthony Bevins, political editor of the Independent. Standing at the marble-topped bar was right-wing columnist Bruce

Anderson, deep in conversation with Eve Pollard, aka Lady Lloyd, then editor of the Sunday Mirror. Arriving thirsty from Kinnock’s singsong, future Oldie columnist John Sweeney and I edged up to the bar in search of refreshment. I spotted the statuesque Miss Pollard and, breaking away from Sweeney, attempted to introduce myself. Bruce Anderson, dazed after more than a whiff of the cork, took exception. ‘Fuck off, potato head,’ he said sweetly, referring to my Hibernian roots. I didn’t reply, but simply whipped off his thicklensed spectacles and put them in my jacket pocket. Blinking owlishly, Bruce swung a wild punch in my general

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BRIGHTON ROCKED

his Wild West-like recollection from 1989 is not to celebrate the joys of booze-fuelled brawling among members of the Fourth Estate, but it does underline the depressing reality of modern-day Fleet Street. No one drinks anymore. No one goes out any more. No one meets people any more. Modern practitioners with their Pret a Manger salad lunches and their five-a-day infusions at their work stations, their forensic reading of Hello, OK and Closer, sit from dawn till dusk at their winking computer screens. All the national newspaper newsrooms are now filled with Terracotta Armies of earnest young men and women rewriting magazine articles and churning out a grim mince of show business and celebrity stories about people they don’t know and will never meet. And as for drinking – it’s now confined to the canteen tea urn and the Styrofoam cups depressingly poised above the bubbling water cooler near the chief sub’s desk.

here was an unexpected postscript to the Grand Hotel incident. Two years after the late-night seaside punch-up Pollard was the newly installed editor of the Sunday Express. Unbeknownst to her I had been hired as a feature writer by her new deputy, Craig McKenzie. Deal done, he introduced me to Eve. As we shook hands she peered at me with a quizzical look and asked, ‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’ Reader, I lied.

rant IS Michael O’Leary, the boss of Ryanair, a devotee of George Orwell? The thought occurred when I re-read this paragraph from The Road to Wigan Pier just after enduring two Ryanair trips in a month: ‘This business of petty inconvenience and indignity, of being kept waiting about, of having to do everything at other people’s convenience, is inherent in working-class life. A thousand influences constantly press a working man down into a passive role. He does not act, he is acted upon. He feels himself a slave of mysterious authority.’ Substitute the Ryanair passenger for the working man and the parallel is almost exact. The worst of several indignities at Stansted comes when, after queuing to get through the boarding gate, passengers are incarcerated in a cramped, concrete stairwell for up to 15 minutes until an official opens the door to the tarmac. Once in the open air, you are chivvied up the steps to the plane (no passenger bridge – too expensive). The lock-in ensures that passengers are on hand the instant the plane is ready. That’s crucial to a modus operandi which allows a turnaround of just 20 minutes at many destinations. On one flight a woman was pulled out of line and made to stand in disgrace because her handbag didn’t fit into the single piece of cabin baggage permitted. Then there are the steep fees for putting luggage into the hold, the £70 fine for not printing your own boarding pass and the lack of a seat pocket. Ryanair’s rival, easyJet, has similar restrictions but manages to enforce them without humiliating us. There are signs that O’Leary is coming to recognise why his airline has such a terrible image. ‘We should try to eliminate things that unnecessarily piss people off,’ he said at the company’s AGM. That would be a cultural turnaround taking rather more than 20 minutes. Of course, nobody is forced to fly Ryanair. We could simply stay at home. And as the minutes tick by in that airless concrete stairwell, we begin to wish we had. MICHAEL LEAPMAN April 2014 – THE OLDIE

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ILLUSTRATION BY TOM PLANT

direction, but missed and instead struck Miss Pollard’s protruding embonpoint. As she staggered back the noise woke Anthony Bevins from his semi-slumber further along the bar. ‘Anderson, you cunt,’ he roared as he accelerated towards Bruce. Arching his elbow he tried to deliver an uppercut. He missed. Poor Eve’s chest was again the unfortunate recipient. Bevins began to wrestle with the myopic Anderson. Leaping into space like a blubbery Butch Cassidy and a skinny Sundance Kid, they toppled over onto Campbell. Domino-like, the bagpiper fell back. But his descent was temporarily halted. He had made contact with Keith Waterhouse, whose uncoordinated, energetic jigging was immediately brought to a halt .The author of Billy Liar and Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell tumbled to the floor. He was followed quickly by Campbell, then Anderson, then Bevins. The bagpipes continued to wail as the foursome rolled about the Axminster trying to disentangle themselves. I felt a hand in my jacket pocket. It was Eve Pollard. Had my romantic luck changed? Alas, no. ‘Give me Bruce’s glasses,’ she snapped. She found them in my pocket. Sweeney suggested it was time we made a discreet exit. So we did. Afterwards I discovered that Bruce had at some stage written derogatory remarks about mixed marriages. Bevins had been married to a lady from India. He had nursed a grievance until that eventful night in the Grand Hotel.

24/2/14 18:37:32

Dr Stuttaford’s surgery Your medical queries answered by our resident doctor

The dangers of cost/benefit analysis Health and priorities A Norfolk reader wonders how I react to recent condemnation of the ‘worried well’ and to alleged guidance from NICE that asks doctors to consider the patient’s value to society in relation to the cost when planning treatment.

Over forty years ago I complained that Britain was a wonderful country to live in but a ghastly country to die in. In past times visits by a local GP experienced in the use of heroin or other opioids, a district nurse, and the help of strong but sensitive neighbours and relatives seemed to give patients a longer life without any loss of control of their pain. Unfortunately changes in medical education and employment have deprived GPs of the necessary experience. A few good hospices, organisations such as Marie Curie Cancer Care, Macmillan Cancer Support and the development of hospital oncology and terminal care departments have revolutionised many aspects of terminal care, but others have deteriorated. The advocates of the Liverpool Care Pathway were appalled at how, especially when incorrectly applied, it had ceased to be a gentle pathway, and had, apparently, become an uncomfortable, inhumane fast track to save costs by clearing blocked beds.    An alleged leaked draft of NICE guidance said that in considering whether a patient should have life-prolonging therapy, one should not only assess costs in relation to likely benefits to the patient but should also include ‘a proportionate system that takes into account other social benefits’. This proposal displays an inhumane approach to the care of the elderly that totally lacks compassion. It’s open to free interpretation. What is a proportionate system? What are the benefits to society that NICE had in mind by deliberately shortening someone’s life? The cost of the drugs? The expense of nursing care? The saving of pensions and benefits for the terminally ill? The clearing of a blocked bed? This Orwellian concept

would terrify not only the patient but also their relatives, and would undermine what is left of the patient/GP relationship. Until relatively recently it was drummed into doctors that the worried well – patients who were obsessively anxious about their health – had a symptom that needed investigation and treatment just as surely as did people with obvious signs and symptoms. Time spent in consultation with the worried well and exploration of their symptoms might be expensive but could well prove lifesaving. Tardy diagnoses of cancer and cardiovascular problems are thought to be responsible for Britain’s appalling long-term survival rates compared to other western European countries. We perform especially badly when treating the over sixty-fives, and the older the patient the worse this becomes. Although cancer treatment worldwide is improving, our five-year survival rate for the over sixty-fives is arguably the worst in western Europe. Our record for treating prostate, breast, lung, stomach, ovary and kidney malignancies and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma is equally poor. For the over seventy-fives it is even worse: a British adult under 45 with lung cancer has an average survival time that is nearly 10 per cent

lower than in the rest of western Europe. By the time a cancer sufferer is over 75, this has slipped to 44 per cent lower. Something more extensive than the recently heralded, but actually only cursory, routine tests recommended for NHS patients is needed – I fear this new, much-lauded NHS routine medical screening will do little to increase earlier diagnoses and so improve our international status. Although I am delighted that some NHS patients will be offered modified screening for breast cancer, colorectal and prostate cancers, the scope of the screening in my opinion is inadequate. In some cases the intervals between screenings are too long and in others the investigations too limited. These modifications may save time and money, but as advocated are incapable of revealing every problem. As well as more comprehensive screening programmes, the most pressing need is easier access to GPs and longer consultations. Some practices still limit patients to discussing only one problem per visit, yet if the possibility of a patient’s problems being linked to other conditions is not explored the consultation will be inadequate, and the opportunity to arrange speedy investigations – essential for early diagnosis – may be missed. Patients would prefer the discomfort of investigative procedures if this ensured that their doctor’s reassurance was justified. The level of risk that the Government hopes the public will accept is clearly wrong. A survey in the West Country showed that 88 per cent of people quizzed by the universities of Bristol and Exeter would tolerate only a one per cent fault rate in missed or mistaken diagnoses. Patients who have possibly life-threatening diseases should not be prepared to suffer an earlier death than necessary while witnessing billions being spent on saving corrupt banks, on building noisy high-speed railways through some of Britain’s most beautiful countryside, and on the Middle East.

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T H E G A M E S P E O P L E P L AY

John Sweeney

R o v i n g R e p o rt er

The Vitishko affair Yet another critic is paying a very high price for daring to criticise Putin The possibility of any British citizen spending 15 days in the clink for swearing seems unlikely; the idea of doing that and spending three extra years in prison for peaceably protesting about the construction of a politician’s luxury home in a national park is extraordinary. It happened to a man I know and admire, although it is entirely possible that he did not utter a single swear word. His misfortune may be that he is not British, but Russian. Evgeny Vitishko is a geologist and environmentalist living near Sochi, the city hosting the Winter Olympics and Paralympics. For our BBC Panorama, ‘Putin’s Games’, he stood in a freezing spot for well over an hour last December as he patiently explained how it was wrong for the Russian government to build an entire Olympic city in a national park in the mountains. My ears pricked up when he explained about his visit to Moonglade – Lunnaya Polyana. He traipsed up to the mountains for two days, there being no road, to find a luxury dacha. As soon as he arrived, he was accosted by a military security team, dressed in black. ‘What are you doing here?’ said the man in black. ‘I’m an environmentalist and concerned that a UNESCO-recognised national park has been violated by an illegal construction. What is this place?’ said Evgeny. ‘It is a meteorological research station,’ said the man in black, ‘but you should not be here.’ ‘Who are you?’ asked Evgeny. ‘I am from the Presidential Security Unit,’ replied the man in black. Why on earth was a member of Mr Putin’s Praetorian guard wasting his time up a mountainside? Could it be that far from being a research station, Moonglade was, in fact, a secret base for Mr Putin? The story goes that Putin’s builders used helicopters to transport concrete, steel, bricks, mortar and manpower up into the mountains, that in 2003 a

helicopter crashed, killing all nine people on board, and in 2010 another crash killed two with a third rescued from the burning wreck. (None of this has been reported by the state media; none of this can be easily checked.) The story continues that one of Putin’s trips to Moonglade ended in a snowstorm, when, because there was no road out, he was trapped. So the ukase was issued: build a road to Moonglade. Russia is a peculiar kind of democracy – if democracy it be – and you might have thought that environmental activists like Evgeny would have had no chance in pushing back against the President of Russia. But Moonglade is in a national park recognised by UNESCO as a world heritage site. As such, no roads should be built in the park – and if they are, UNESCO might strip the park of its special status. And so no road has been built. Game, set and match to Evgeny and his chums from Environmental Watch on North Caucasus? Not quite. When Evgeny spoke to us, he was serving a suspended sentence for spraypainting graffiti on the fence of a dacha

which the environmentalists say was also illegally constructed in the national park. The dacha belonged to the Putinist governor of the Krasnodar region. Evgeny denies doing any such thing. On the day before the Olympic torch relay was due to come to Krasnodar – after I had interviewed him – Evgeny was arrested on suspicion of theft. This charge was dropped and a new one was brought against him, that he had been heard swearing at a bus stop. Unusually, his case went to court that very same day. Evgeny asked to see his own lawyer but the judge refused, insisting that he use the state lawyer provided. Evgeny declined this offer. The judge also refused to call the two witnesses who had allegedly seen him swearing, and whose signatures were on the court documents. Evgeny got 15 days for swearing, but while serving that sentence, his spraypainting case suddenly came before the high court. Because he was in prison for swearing, Evgeny could not defend himself in person. There was a video link but the technical quality was atrocious and he could not be heard for two thirds of it, his friends say. The sentence for the graffiti, which Evgeny denies, is three years in a penal colony. According to Yulia Gorbunova of Human Rights Watch, ‘The case against Vitishko has been politically motivated from the start. When the authorities continued to harass him it became clear they were trying to silence and exact retribution against certain persistent critics of the preparations for the Olympics.’ Reporters asked the International Olympic Committee’s spokesman, Mark Adams, about Evgeny’s case. Adams said: ‘We have had confirmation from Sochi [Games organisers], who got the information for us from the relevant authorities, that this is not Olympic related.’ The danger for the IOC is they may start to look like a proxy for an authoritarian regime that frames those critics it cannot shut up. Meanwhile, Evgeny is on hunger strike.

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Memories of

GORE PHOTO COURTESY OF: REX/Sipa Press

VIDAL

JOHN BOWEN looks back on his friendship with the American writer

ore Vidal, an irascible drunk suffering from dementia, died at his house in the Hollywood Hills on 31st July 2012, aged 86. Howard Austen, his partner since 1950, had died in 2003. Vidal left 37 million dollars to Harvard University and nothing to his family of half-siblings and their children, who are contesting the will on the grounds that he was mentally incompetent when the codicil leaving everything to Harvard was drafted. He enjoyed being contentious when he was alive, and seems to have made sure that the contention would continue after his death. My own memories of him are mostly pleasant. I remember a dinner given by my publisher friend Tom Rosenthal, and his wife, Ann, for Gore Vidal and Howard Austen, myself and my partner, David Cook, and Lynn Barber of the Sunday Times. During the first course there was a power cut. Candles were found but the meal could not proceed because there was no power in the kitchen. So Howard sang to us – sentimental songs from the Fifties – while Gore beat time on the dining table with his fist. After forty minutes the lights came back on. How had I come to meet Gore Vidal? I had reviewed his third novel, The City and the Pillar, for the Oxford student magazine, the Isis, under the heading ‘Kiss Me Hot-Lips: I’m Asbestos’, and his

British publisher sent a copy of the review to him. He was amused, and wrote to me, and when in 1952–53 I spent a year in the USA as a Fulbright Scholar, I visited him at his house on the Hudson River. He was a year younger than me, but he knew more, had seen more, done more, he gave advice like a friendly uncle, and from then on it became a joke between us that he was my Uncle Gore. After Oxford I came to London,

worked in journalism, then in advertising, published novels of my own, wrote for television and then for the theatre. My Uncle Gore and I kept in touch by letter and whenever he came to London he would stay at the Connaught and we would lunch together. I reviewed his novel, Julian, for one of the posh Sundays and earned his reproach. ‘Who needs a considered judgement?’ he said. ‘What’s wrong with unqualified praise?’

‘You’re right about those windmills, Sharon, they’re completely ruining the ambiance of our countryside’

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF BOOZE

He came for a longer stay and rented a house in Belgravia, where there was a butler and I was given oysters for dinner. I had never eaten an oyster before and stared at my plate, wondering how to begin. ‘Drench them in Tabasco,’ he advised. ‘And take lots of brown bread and butter.’ He gave a party where I met Paul Newman, and a birthday party at the Ritz attended by Princess Margaret, whom he introduced to David, whose film Walter had been part of the launch of Channel 4. David said to her, ‘The last time I saw you was when you came to watch a rehearsal at RADA when I was a student. You haven’t changed a bit,’ and she gave a great grin, and said, ‘Flattery will get you everywhere.’

have not kept his letters or copies of my own: neither of us was writing for posterity. He invited me to visit him at his villa in Italy, high on the cliffs above the Gulf of Salerno, but I never went. And my last memory of him is the least pleasant. Instead of lunch at the Connaught I suggested he should call at my flat in South Kensington and I would take him for a meal at the Chanterelle in Old Brompton Road, which used to be owned by another novelist, Walter Baxter, who wrote Look Down in Mercy. I invited a couple of friends – a director of opera and an academic who, I vaguely remembered, had met Gore at a festival he had run somewhere in the south of Italy. The opera director cried off at the last moment. The academic arrived early, beer-drunk after carousing with his students. Gore arrived late, gin-drunk. We walked to the restaurant and sat at a table at the back. The food was good and wine flowed freely. The academic grew more and more obstreperous, downright rude, called Gore a has-been, a second-rate writer and a third-rate mind. Something unpleasant must have happened at that festival, and I had not been warned. ‘Time for you to go,’ I said, and walked the academic to the door and into the street. ‘Can you get home safely?’ ‘I’m not going home. I’m going to Heaven.’ This was not a reference to life hereafter. Heaven was a gay night-club. I returned to Gore at the table. He fancied a liqueur. Then I walked him back to South Kensington station and put him in a taxi. That was our last meeting. No more letters. I had lost an uncle.

• See page 78 for a review of John Bowen’s 1970 BBC Play for Today Robin Redbreast, recently released on DVD by the BFI

Lizzie Enfield ‘WHAT IS NOILLY PRAT?’ My children are childishly amused by the name, which appears on a wine list. ‘It’s a French drink,’ I tell them, trying to pronounce it with more Frenchness than they do. We are perusing a wine list from 1966. The restaurant is doing a ‘1966 drinks with 1966 prices’ offer. It caught my attention mainly as I was born in 1966 – too young to be drinking anything other than gin (I know, I know, too young to be drinking gin, but mothers at the time did, and it filtered through their milk and made their babies sleep well – apparently those that formula fed added a teaspoon to the early evening bottle for the same effect). So, in the year in question I was largely unaware of Noilly Prat, Dubonnet, Worthington Green Shield or any of the other things that made it onto the wine list. I was just lounging in my pram, gently sozzled on a teaspoon or two of Gordon’s. The list interests me, though, because it has all the feel of a historic document. It’s faded and browning and covered in damp marks, but it’s the drinks and prices which are more telling and place it specifically in a certain period of time. My husband and I are University Challenge devotees and like to compete against each other. I come from a very competitive family and always win. I’ve no idea what qualifies you to be one but I’d love to be a question compiler and now I have a new round. ‘From the following three menus, identify the decade,’ says Paxman. They then show a menu which features Blue Nun and cheese fondue. Sussex Majetski buzzes. ‘The Seventies?’ he asks. ‘Correct,’ says Paxman. The next menu features Spam, powdered eggs and tea. ‘The Thirties?’ asks Sussex Renyard. ‘The Thirties?’ Paxman is scornful. ‘No, it was the Forties.’ The third menu shows scallop ceviche and whisky. ‘Now?’ volunteers Sussex Smith, and he is right.

Menus are constantly evolving. When I was a child my parents drank very little, but the drinks cupboard was stacked with gin, sherry, brandy, port and, very occasionally, wine. It was all for special occasions. People in pubs (for people, read men) seemed to drink beer. Everything else was too expensive and complaints would be made if someone asked for a spirit on a round. Women sipped sherries and fortified wines and some of them had hip flasks in their handbags that contained things for their ‘nerves’. Wine was generally such a rarity that every time it was drunk we’d ask to keep the bottle, a decadent artefact that could be turned into a lamp or used to store loose change. Nowadays recycling boxes overflow with empty wine bottles, everyone drinks everything and Bach flower remedies, which have an alcohol base, are the thing for daytime nerves. What’s interesting about the 1966 wine list is that there’s very little wine on it. It’s fortified wines, spirits, liqueurs and beers for a whole page before you even get onto the ‘table wines’, which can be counted on the fingers of one hand and include ‘Beaujolais’, ‘Liebefraumilch’ and a wine that needed no description other than ‘Rosé’. Fast-forward a few decades and the wine lists are invariably longer than the menus and feature more spirits and liqueurs than you could have dreamt of in the Sixties. There’s even a move towards drinking things other than wine or beer (or tea) with your meal, and it’s not uncommon to be offered the whisky or cocktail lists and urged to sip your way through seven different types of single malt or blended spirits with each of your courses. I’m strictly tea or wine with my meals but in the spirit (excuse the pun) of trying to persuade me otherwise someone has just sent me a consignment of various gins – six miniature bottles in all, each suited to being drunk with different types of food. There’s one for fish, one for red meat and a dessert gin – but none to go with milk, which back in 1966 was what I drank it with. A serious omission... April 2014 – THE OLDIE

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RANSOM NOTES

Attention all Windows XP users! Superbyways: your guide to digital life, by Webster IF YOUR COMPUTER is at least four years old there is a good chance, unless it’s an Apple, that it is using the Windows XP operating system, the central software that makes it work. If it is, then you need to do some thinking, because on 8th April Microsoft will stop their ‘support’ for it, leaving your computer increasingly susceptible to attacks by malicious scoundrels from all over the world. Don’t panic; it will continue to work just as before, it’s just that Microsoft will no longer be sending it monthly electronic repairs. This is a constant battle; the cyber-crooks are always searching for vulnerabilities in mass market software and when they find a crack in the defences they exploit it by sneaking something malicious through it. This might be to copy your passwords, or get into your emails, or worse. It’s very unwelcome, sometimes sinister, and always a nuisance. Hitherto this has not been a problem, because Microsoft issues free ‘patches’ to plug the newly discovered holes. These are downloaded automatically by your computer; you may not even be aware it’s happening. This is not the same as your anti-virus software, which is just as important, but does not protect your operating system – not reliably, at any rate. However, in April Microsoft will stop repairing Windows XP. To be fair to

them this date has been in the public domain since 2009 at least, so computer professionals have no excuse for not being ready, but even many of them have been caught out. The NHS, for example, has just shamefacedly admitted that it has over one million computers running XP and has to pay Microsoft over £100 per machine to keep them updated for a year; worse, that price will double annually. All operating systems retire eventually (support for Windows 7 will end in 2020, Windows 8 in 2023) but it’s Windows XP that is walking the plank this year. So what should you do? First, of course, this only matters if you are using Windows XP. If you are not sure, rightclick on the ‘Computer’ symbol on your Desktop and click on Properties; or go to this website, and it will tell you what you have: http://tinyurl.com/qhsfnad If you are not using Windows XP you can relax. If you are, you MUST give some thought to what to do after 8th April. You’ll have to do something sooner or later, and sooner is better. The trouble is that there are millions of computers all over the world running XP, and they make a juicy target for crooks, once they can find a way in. With Microsoft no longer providing security, that is going to happen at some point – it’s a certainty. So, unless you never connect your computer to the internet, you really only

Webster’s webwatch For Webster’s latest top tips, visit his blog at www.theoldie.co.uk www.cyberstreetwise.com An excellent Government-backed animated website that explains simply how best to keep yourself and your computers safe online. There’s a lot of rather obvious advice, but it’s none the worse for that. http://radiosearchengine.com/ A radio search engine: you enter the name of a track, genre or artist and it will try to find you a site that is playing it. If it fails it will offer alternatives. I’ve discovered some lovely music this way.

Ask Webster I will happily try to solve your basic computer and internet problems. Go to www.webstersblog.co.uk/ask or email me at webster@theoldie.co.uk have two options if you want to keep it safe: either upgrade your system from XP to Windows 7 or 8 (my choice would be Windows 7) or buy a new computer. I’m afraid the choice is that stark and expensive. The cheaper option is to upgrade the software, if your computer has the capacity (very old ones may not) but it will still cost you up to £150 for the software and it is not, I repeat not, a job to be undertaken by a novice. There are too many chances for it to go horribly wrong. Whoever does it, the process will wipe your computer clean, so you will have to make sure that you have backed up all you are storing on it before you start. You might think it’s outrageous that a company treat you this way, but it’s all in the small print, unfortunately. It’s how Bill Gates became so rich. April 2014 – THE OLDIE

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Brief encounters NIGEL FOUNTAIN looks at the lives of others

abs’s dressmaking job in the early 1960s was just off the Clerkenwell Road. ‘Once in February my guvnor says to come in early Saturday. It was perishing. Me and the cutter were standing huddled on the doorsteps for over half an hour when they pulled up. The guvnor’s mum comes out and she’s opening the door, and ooh my God! This cat jumped on the banister and I went “Who’s locked that cat in here?” ‘She says “Ooh my God, look at the tail! That’s not a cat, that’s a...” ‘I have never, never seen a rat the size of it. It was like…’ Babs hand-gestures its girth. ‘My legs went. We went back after the rat-catchers, there were big canvas sacks, you could see the feet coming through. They were sewer rats, downstairs was a leather place and they’d got at the glue and that’s what had swelled them, puffed them up.’ Her name is Barbara but everyone calls her Babs. We are in Leila’s Corner, a café off the Clapham Road in Stockwell. She is wearing a cardigan with black and white dots, a black and white patterned top, a blue and red chiffon scarf. She has grey-blonde hair, a candid, humorous face, an impossibly contagious laugh and she will be 71 in April. Babs was born in Dulwich Hospital and lived in Peckham until she was four, then came Camberwell, and Camberwell Green. Her father was in building, her mother sometimes worked as a cleaner. When she died, in 1989, Babs was devastated for months.

At school she loved maths, Bible stories and history. It’s the stuff of a Hue and Cry childhood, complete with the forbidden pleasures of bombsites, and Saturday cinema at the Camberwell Regal. ‘I was distraught! It was Flash Gordon and he was hanging over a cliff and I’m saying to my mum “He’s got to stay there, right to next week!” She says “No! It’s a film! They stop it! It carries on!” ‘I left Silverthorne school on the Friday,’ she says. ‘I was fifteen on the Sunday and I started work on the Monday.’ She began at a dressmaker’s off Goodge Street, before moving on to Gardiner’s Corner in Aldgate. There she met her husband, who was then a fireman. They married at Camberwell Registry Office in the early Sixties, had a son, split up, reconciled – and she became pregnant with her daughter. She thought the reconciliation wasn’t going to work. It didn’t. By the late Sixties she was finished with dressmaking. Later came a job at an Electric Avenue delicatessen in Brixton, She loved the banter and graduated to the chain’s Richmond branch. ‘They were very posh. One woman, she used to come in, and I’d say “’Allo my darlin’, how are you today? And what can I get for you today, sweetie?” When the big boss came down from the north, he said to me, “You cannot talk to customers like that.” She came in and I said “Good morning madam, can I help you?” and she said to me “What’s the matter?” And I tell her that he says I mustn’t talk to her like that. And she says, could she have a word with him, and she says to him,

“I come in here, and she makes my day. I lost my husband. I come out, and I get my shopping, I go home and I don’t see another soul. And I come in here especially to get served by her and have a chat and I love the way she is.” ‘He said to me, “Carry on.”’ After the deli came a job in print finishing. Later she took cake-making classes. ‘My friend and her chap, they had three kids and they decided to get married. I said I’d do their cake. My friend laughed and said was I serious? I’m serious, I said. And then I got another wedding cake order. I’ve done christenings, birthdays, babies, anniversaries…’ We contemplate cakes on Babs’s laptop; a seven-year-old’s Arsenal cake, an anchor for an octogenarian sea dog, a risqué cake for an 18-year-old – ‘My friend’s daughter wanted something different and she’s mixed race and said, “Don’t make it white!” “Alright! I know!” I said’ – a Tudor cottage for a 36-year-old, a Metropolitan Police cake, a cake for the Mayor of Lambeth and a celebratory cake for a friend getting her arts diploma. Bootees, footballs, bibles, flowers, blackboards and babies fly out at me, personal histories, triumphs, stunning folk art in icing and sugar paste. ‘I used to go into bed of a night,’ says Babs, ‘and cake would be on my mind. Suddenly I’d get a picture and I’d write down what I was going to do.’ Arthritis stopped her a couple of years back. But she aims to lose weight, and get back to it. ‘I didn’t think,’ says Babs, ‘I would ever accomplish it. Doing cakes was an achievement.’

THE OLDIE – April 2014

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East of Islington

The unusual life of Sam Taylor and friends

Cashless in Solihull Or the case of the counterfeit canine

ccording to Jane Austen, a man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. But what about the poorer souls? Those who are rather strapped, like Cashless for instance? Surely they are in greater need? When he announced to his nearest and dearest that someone had agreed to marry him, they could barely contain their relief. Beautiful, caring, clever, with her own money and an impressive family stately, Bountiful was everything they could have prayed for. The couple first met over a friend’s supper table and had been inseparable ever since. Lordy, her father, had never liked any suitors, but he was pragmatic. Money, he explained to his only daughter, is not everything, ‘as long as he is nice to the dogs.’ Dogs, or more specifically, pugs, had featured heavily in their family’s history for centuries. ‘You can tell a lot about a man by how he treats a small, unattractive creature,’ he told Cashless, who was hardly going to disagree. If loving a pug was what it took, then he would man up to the job, even if it did mean having one snoring on his pillow for the rest of his life. As an engagement gift, Lordy gave them the pick of a new litter and free reign of the stately – he himself preferred to live in the Bahamas. Cashless wasted no time moving in. ‘I’d always intended to have a moat,’ he boasted to his old friends invited down for the weekend. ‘I think it rather suits me.’ The puppy, Hogarth, was central to their lives. Or rather, it was central to Bountiful’s life. He was treated like a small child; albeit a rather squashed one. As the wedding approached, the pair temporarily parted for the traditional pre-nuptial celebrations. Cashless was hosting a low-key stag night in the north wing, while Bountiful was off to London for a rather more glamorous three-day ‘hen’ event. Hogarth was to be left

behind. ‘Don’t worry,’ Cashless called out as her limo pulled away. ‘I’ll take good care of him.’ These were, as they say, famous last words. It is unclear why or how Hogarth disappeared at midnight, but disappear he did. Twenty-four hours of frantic searching, several phone calls to the police and a trawl of the local dog homes garnered Cashless nothing except the conviction that pugs were poor navigators and his dream life was about to be cancelled. He had one night to save his would-be marriage. Mercifully, online shopping means you can buy anything at any time. You can even buy a pug at midnight as long as you are prepared to travel. And travel he did, to a housing estate on the outskirts of Solihull. Fighting off imaginary muggers at every turn, he arrived, sweating, at the seller’s door.

Bursting through, he ran towards a cage of squirming puppies, plucked out a Hogarth lookalike, thrust £1,000 into the woman’s hands and ran out. He arrived back at the stately just before Bountiful returned. Mercifully, all she wanted to do was sleep, with her beloved Hogarth. Cashless dutifully handed over the stunt puppy. ‘He seems smaller,’ she said, blearily. And it was true, he was smaller – three weeks smaller. ‘He pined for you,’ said Cashless. Bountiful was touched. ‘We must never be apart again,’ she told the bewildered animal. But in the morning things looked different. ‘This isn’t Hogarth,’ Bountiful barked, handing back the Solihull forgery. ‘Yes it is,’ Cashless insisted. ‘Well, if that’s Hogarth, who’s this then?’ And there, under the duvet, was one very smug-looking pug.

THE OLDIE – April 2014

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A GRAVE MATTER The discovery of Richard III’s remains in Leicester has ignited a bitter dispute over his reburial location. Battle lines have been drawn and the matter goes before the High Court this month. Kaori O’Connor reports

n 22nd August 1485, Henry Tudor, a Lancastrian candidate with a dubious claim to the throne, defeated the last Yorkist king, Richard III, at Bosworth. But the battle did not end there: since the autumn of 2012 it has been fought in the press, social media and the courts. At its heart are the remains of an anointed king of England. It began with the Richard III Society. Founded in the 1920s, its raison d’être has always been the promotion of research into the life and times of the king, in the belief that ‘traditional accounts of his character and career are neither supported by reasonable evidence nor reasonably tenable’. These accounts included Shakespeare’s twisted and treacherous

Richard, and distorted chronicles written under Henry VIII’s regime which led to him being reviled down the centuries, a victim of Tudor propaganda. Wary of being considered cranks, the Society worked to establish itself as an association for serious historical research – installing commemorative Yorkist plaques and stained glass windows, defending Wars of the Roses battlefields from developers, publishing a learned journal, and acquiring a royal patron, the Duke of Gloucester, a title once held by Richard III. It was all going so well – until they found their holy grail.

uried unceremoniously in Leicester, the closest town to the battle, Richard III’s remains had been lost for centuries.

THE OLDIE – April 2014

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WAGING WAR

PHOTOS COURTESY OF: REX, UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER, UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE, UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP

Facing page, top: Richard III’s remains in Trench One of the Grey Friars dig, Leicester; below: an illustration of Richard taken from Crabb’s Universal Historical Dictionary

The Society had long dreamed of recovering them, and honouring the king with a fitting re-interment. The historian John Ashdown-Hill and the screenwriter Phillippa Langley provided the scholarship and enthusiasm that led to the archaeological search for the king. Fortuitously, Leicester was seeking to promote its heritage, with little success. The search for Richard provided a muchneeded publicity opportunity, especially when a television company expressed interest in a documentary. The archaeology department of the University of Leicester agreed to become involved after the Society paid for a preliminary report that confirmed that the likely location was under the Leicester social services car park, but they clearly expected the dig to be a failure. However, on the first day of the dig the archaeologists landed on the bones that turned out to be those of Richard III, precisely where AshdownHill and Langley said they would be. It immediately became apparent that the king had suffered from scoliosis – curvature of the spine. To the Society’s dismay, it was the ghost of Shakespeare’s and Laurence Olivier’s Richard who clambered out of the grave and burst into the headlines: RICHARD III IN A CAR PARK – NO BONES ABOUT IT! I HAD A HUNCH IT WAS HIM! Fighting back, the Society protested that scoliosis had nothing to do with the king’s character and commissioned a facial reconstruction to show the face of the real man.

eanwhile, the University of Leicester took the remains and ran. The city authorities announced plans to build a Richard III museum, and to rebury the king in a largely Victorian former parish church that was only granted cathedral status in 1927 and was too small for the raised tomb normal for royal burials. Doubts were raised about the unseemly haste and suitability of these arrangements. Surely Westminster Abbey or York Cathedral, with whom Richard III had historic links, would be more appropriate? Leicester’s response was to forge ahead with their plans, going for a fait accompli. Leicester’s finders-keepers position was that the standard exhumation licence issued by the Ministry of Justice

specified that human remains should be reburied in the nearest appropriate place to the excavation. But the Ministry of Justice has the power to vary the terms of the licence. This was a matter of national interest. As soon as it became apparent that the bones belonged to a king of England, why had the Ministry not opened the matter to wider consultation? There was a groundswell of public opinion and questions were asked in Parliament. Leicester and the Ministry of Justice turned deaf ears. Then, at the eleventh hour, the Plantagenet Alliance appeared in the field.

ed by descendants of Richard III’s relatives, the Alliance successfully applied for a judicial review, alleging that the Secretary of State for Justice, the University of Leicester and others had failed to conduct due consultation with regard to the reburial. The Ministry claimed that the interment was not a matter of general public importance and that any interest was adequately served by the media debate, but the judge dismissed this as ‘flawed and heretical’: the discovery touched on sovereign, state and church and the due process of common law must be adhered to. The Ministry then tried to make the Alliance responsible for the government’s costs should they lose: the judge rejected this on the grounds that unless deserving applicants were protected, important cases in the public interest would be stifled for lack of financial means. In the event, the judicial review was abandoned, and a new date for the hearing, 13th March, has now been set. Hanging over it are larger questions. Is the right to consultation being eroded? Whose king is it anyway? The king’s remains are still in the possession of the University of Leicester rather than in the temporary sanctified place that many feel appropriate. For the Richard III Society, instrumental in the discovery, the outcome has been mixed. After the initial hysteria, they had the satisfaction of seeing their broader, more balanced view of the king prevail, but because they had no legal claim on the remains and wanted to maintain a neutral position, they have been forced to watch events from the sidelines. Their work will go on, but they have had cause to reflect on the old adage ‘be careful what you wish for...’

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April 2014 – THE OLDIE

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THE GIRL IN WHITE

Little Miss

MOONSHINE

Sober, level-headed BOB PEARSON was taken aback by his ghostly encounter in a Devon B&B

y wife Margaret and I stayed in a well-appointed B&B while we were on a short break at Bovey Tracey in Devon. On the evening we arrived, we had a hearty pub meal of duck, washed down, in my case, with a pint of bitter as an aperitif and half a bottle of claret with the food. Happily replete, we strolled the mile or so back to the digs and after swallowing the obligatory statins retired for a decent night’s rest – or was it? In the early hours I needed to visit the loo and sleepily began clambering out of bed. Then I saw what I thought was Margaret on the floor by the chest of drawers, but I soon realised she was slumbering beside me. This completely woke me up and, with thumping heart, I looked across the room again. What I saw startled me. It was a little fair-haired girl in a white dress, kneeling on the carpet and facing partly away from me. She was holding a black box or a book, into which she was staring

intently. I could see the soles of her feet protruding from the hem of her dress. She was sideways-on, preventing me from seeing her expression. There was some light coming through the curtains from the street, but the light from the apparition was quite different – rather like moonlight, but clearer. I don’t think the girl moved; she just faded away after several seconds. I got up

‘You’re fired – I’ve taken on a Romanian chap’

and checked the door, which was locked – the way we had left it. The following morning I told my wife what I had seen and asked her not to mention it to our hostess, Tina, until I had discussed it with her. After breakfast, Tina came to check if we were happy with the service and I asked her if anyone had ever seen a ghost in the house. She said several people had, including a good friend of hers, though she herself had not. Tina also mentioned that when she bought the house from the previous owners, the local Job Centre, they told her it contained a ghost and that they called it ‘Lucy’, which they had earlier been informed was the girl’s name. They also said that their card index was sometimes unaccountably jumbled up, which they had assumed was Lucy playing tricks. Had her visitors ever described the ghost? ‘Oh, yes,’ was the reply. ‘It’s the same every time: a little fair-haired girl dressed in white. It hasn’t only been seen in your room, but also in the tearoom. Is that what you saw?’ I replied that it was exactly what I had seen. She then said she might even have a photograph of the girl. She showed us a photocopy of a very faded Victorian photo, with a nun and a small girl dressed in white standing at the front door of the house, a second nun at the side of the house and what appears to be a visitor at the gate. When I asked about the nuns, she told me that the house, which was built in 1877, was once called the Mission House. It was a gift from a Canon Courtenay, who gave it to a group called the Sisters of Mercy who ran it as a mission for the ‘wayward girls’ of the town. I later looked up this order of nuns on the internet. They were Anglicans, known as the Clewer Community of John the Baptist, near Windsor. The order was founded in 1849 to care for socalled fallen women, and the nuns came to be called the Clewer Sisters. As the movement spread, they became known as the Sisters of Mercy. What should we make of this ghostly sighting? I saw it very clearly and a number of people had seen it before me. I was not drunk, I do not take illicit drugs, I had not eaten mushrooms, magic or otherwise, and I’m not a hysterical person. There were no screams or clanking of chains, no sulphurous smells and no deathly chill in the air – just a silent little girl reading or possibly looking into a box for a toy to play with.

THE OLDIE – April 2014

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T H E D R I V E R O F N AT U R E

Proﬁtable Wonders by James Le Fanu

Miraculous water IN ITS DIVERSE states water contributes more than any other form of matter to the beauty of the world – the source of ‘the evanescent changefulness of the clouds and the transcendent light of snow,’ wrote John Ruskin, ‘the waterfall and the rainbow that spans it, the deep crystalline pool mirroring the shore, the broad lake, the glancing river and the unwearied, unconquerable power of the sea.’ Two of the aesthetic attributes of water – the dynamism and movement of clouds, waterfall and sea and the purity of snow and crystalline pool – exemplify that ceaseless cycle of cleansing and renewal by which it fulfils its life-sustaining purpose. That ‘hydrological cycle’ is initiated by the sun’s evaporation of the surface of the oceans, the vapours ascending into the atmosphere to form clouds. The clouds drift over the continental masses and return by precipitation the rain and snow from the heavens to the earth, filling the lakes and ponds, nourishing the trees, plants and shrubs, percolating into the ground to reemerge as the springs and brooks that will swell the mighty rivers on their journeys back to the sea. The process is familiar enough; its scale perhaps less so: the volume of rain and snow falling across the earth every year is sufficient to fill a lake the size of France a mile deep; and it is estimated that over the past 3,000 years a volume of water equivalent to the oceans has passed through the atmosphere. This cycle of evaporation and condensation constantly renewing and refreshing the fabric of the earth is inseparable from water’s unique, almost magical, ability to shift between the very different physical states – dependent on the prevailing temperature and pressure – of solid, liquid and gas. This should be relatively straightforward to explain, for water is not only the most ubiquitous of all compounds but also the simplest, its molecules being composed of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, as demonstrated by the French chemist Antoine Lavoisier in 1783, who, when passing an electric current through a glass sphere containing these primordial gases, noted a small amount of dew on its inner surface – that seemed like pure water.

So imagining just one of those drops of dew magnified to the size of the earth, when it would contain billions of golf-ball-size molecules of water each composed of just these three atoms, it should be possible to predict how the physical forces binding them together should solidify into ice or dissolve into vapour. But it is not, for, astonishingly, this seemingly simplest of compounds has ‘a highly complex and anomalous character’ that defies the known laws of chemistry in its process of transformation from one state to another. Two examples must suffice. First, and counter-intuitively, it takes vastly more heat to raise the temperature of water than might be expected – more so than for any other substance. To illustrate, the sun when evaporating just a pound of water from the ocean’s surface expends the same amount of heat as would raise the temperature of five pounds of iron to 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, at which point it would be white hot and molten. This gives the ocean an immense ‘heat capacity’, the single most important factor in absorbing the substantial temperature fluctuations on the planet, thus maintaining them within the boundaries compatible with life.

At the other end of the temperature scale, water, like all liquids, should shrink and become denser as it freezes, as its molecules, rather than just rolling over each other haphazardly, become gradually packed together in an orderly fashion. By analogy, a room can hold many more people if, rather than milling around, they consent to stand still in regimented positions. And indeed as winter approaches the denser, cooler water on the surface of a lake falls to the bottom while the warmer water beneath rises to the top, creating an internal circulation. But four degrees short of freezing that process goes into reverse: those molecules of water rather than becoming regimented closer together start to spread apart, so when the ice crystals begin to form they are lighter than the water beneath them and float on its surface. Were this not so the lakes and the oceans would freeze solid from the bottom up, extinguishing all forms of marine life – without which there would be no life at all. Every aspect of this simplest of compounds verges on the miraculous, but its existence as a staggeringly improbable phenomenon whose physical properties contradict the laws of nature might almost be said to fulfil the criteria for a true miracle.

‘Oh, can I borrow a 21-year-old male PE student, please?’ April 2014 – THE OLDIE

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Virginia Ironside A call to arms

castles in the sandpit and I’d talk to other mums, mostly from the White City Estate. We’d make our way back past the tennis courts, the bowling green, and the basket-ball court, through the pretty Japanese Garden overlooked by the then BBC Building. Hammersmith Park was one of the very few areas of open space in our green-deprived area, and, like most people, I took it for granted that it would always be there for the use of local residents. Little did I know then how vulnerable the park was. Because all over England, local councils are going round spotting bits of green spaces and thinking: ‘I wonder how we could make money out of that?’ This activity is known, apparently, as ‘sweating the assets’. Yes, yuk. The Council have seen our park, decided they no longer want to maintain the sports facilities, and hope to lease half the park to a private football club, with 13 five- and seven-a-side pitches, bar and car park, all surrounded by a twelve-foot fence and open till eleven on weekdays and midnight at weekends. True, there is an agreement that two of its tiny pitches will be made over for community use, but a local football team’s already been told it can’t play at all because it didn’t support the planning application. The project, launched with virtually

no consultation, will involve the destruction of the tennis courts (on which local people still played, despite them being unmaintained), the dilapidated but still usable basket-ball pitch (on which local teams played until far into the night, for free) and the bowling green, along with the destruction of flower beds and at least 24 mature trees and bushes. After the first planning application I applied for a judicial review which stopped the diggers for a while, but since then the company’s applied a second time for planning permission and that too has been approved. We still have a couple of ideas up our sleeves – who knows what the outcome will be? All I know is that protesting and campaigning is incredibly hard work – and carried out, in the main, by a gangs of game oldies, the only ones with the time, the skills and the courage to fight iniquities like these. I hate every minute of it. I hate getting down and dirty in the grubby world of council politics, the wondering when to release the damning emails, the checking of the petitions to see if the signatures have been written by the same person, the scouring round to find kickbacks, if there are any, the endless rebuffs, the lies and the evasion. It’s late in life we realise that we all have civic duties to perform. But however much we may dislike it, it’s important that perform them we do. • Virginia’s one-woman show Growing Old Disgracefully is in Deal (April) and the Isle of Wight (May). For details see www.virginiaironside.org

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR ROBINS

hen I was a young mum in the Seventies I never had time to protest about my local council’s often scandalous behaviour. Splendid Georgian terraces were torn down, blocks of Stalinist flats erected, vile pedestrian precincts imposed, hideous works of art installed on public land, and my response was usually a muttering of ‘Wicked! Someone should try to stop it!’ But as I Get On and have more time and, more importantly, more confidence, I find, like many other oldies, that that Someone is, actually, me. I live in London, and in the last ten years I’ve been part of several small, tight-knit groups which have, among other things, prevented the local football club from using their pitch during the summer months as a pop venue and seen off a tram which was to roll down the main road, causing the destruction of local shops and mature trees. I’ve also helped prevent, by initiating a public inquiry, a bunker-like café – or any café, come to that – being built in the middle of Shepherd’s Bush Common. My latest campaign, along with a local residents’ group, has been to try to prevent Hammersmith and Fulham Council leasing half a local park to a private football company for no less than 35 years. In the Seventies, instead of protesting I was taking my small son up to the same local park. He’d paddle in the pool in the playground and make

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Spitting SATIRE

n the site of the original workshop that housed Spitting Image, the 1980s TV scourge of the establishment, stands a monument to Thatcherism and capitalism: Canary Wharf. Thirty years ago it was a group of dilapidated banana warehouses, home to a quasi art-school populated by young creatives often straight out of college, learning on the job about caricaturing, modelling and puppetmaking, under the paternalistic gaze of the show’s creators – Peter Fluck and Roger Law. Three decades on, the Cartoon Museum is celebrating the show’s legacy with its exhibition Spitting Image: From Start To Finish. Beginning with Fluck and Law’s early days as political cartoonists, it traces their evolution into threedimensional plasticine modellers, creating vivid political tableaux for magazines – and finally charts their creation of the puppets that featured in the TV gallery of grotesques. A few, such as Margaret Thatcher and the Queen, are on display. Many, like their subjects, have perished. I was lucky to have been involved with the show from the outset. Producer John Lloyd, fresh from the triumphant Not the Nine O’Clock News, was looking for new writers for the fledgling TV puppet satire show. He approached Ian Hislop

at Private Eye, who suggested myself, as a cartoonist. I had admired Fluck and Law’s plasticine work for years. So we began sending in scripts – and worked on the show from episode one. The first series, which began in February 1984, was a shambles – perhaps not surprising given the complexity of the enterprise. Writers, impressionists, caricaturists, modellers and puppeteers all had to be harnessed in creating a sketch show which, being an ITV half-hour with ad breaks, didn’t have any time in which to establish itself. Also, the show didn’t know what it was – sketch show or sitcom? As the chaotic first series progressed, it became clear that the puppeteers hated the scripts and the scriptwriters hated what the puppeteers were doing to the scripts – ruining punchlines by mugging for the camera. The only people who hated the show more than those involved were the critics. What everyone could agree on, however, was the brilliance of the caricatures. Fluck and Law had assembled a talented team of protégés, including Oldie cover artist David Stoten from Mad Magazine. The caricatures saved the day. Viewers loved the rubbery gargoyles as much as their victims disliked them. At the end of Series One there had to be change. To Roger Law’s dismay, the show lurched from being

PHOTO COURTESY OF:SPITTING IMAGE PRODUCTIONS LIMITED, REX/ITV

As a new exhibition charting the evolution of Spitting Image opens in London’s Cartoon Museum, NICK NEWMAN looks at the satirical puppet show from its wobbly first series in 1984 to its demise in 1996

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L AT E X H U M O U R

Facing page: the royal family (left) and President and Mrs Reagan. This page, clockwise from top right: Rupert Murdoch urinating on Britain, Michael Jackson, Neil Kinnock, Margaret Thatcher and Roy Hattersley

essentially political to embracing celebrity culture. It was to prove the show’s salvation – as celebs were mocked as never before. Whereas impressionists like Mike Yarwood had fondly mimicked their subjects, Spitting Image went for the jugular. Toupees, facial blemishes, inability to act – all were ridiculed. On the back of the celeb input viewers became more familiar with the cast of the cabinet – bovver boy Norman Tebbit, ice-cream-cone-head Douglas Hurd and blubbery Chancellor Nigel Lawson. Likewise the opposition – Welsh windbag Neil Kinnock, slobbery Roy Hattersley, and the SDP, in the varying sizes of Davids Owen and Steel. With the Royals providing regular support, the show suddenly had a following and a growing notoriety. ‘Spitting Mad!’ screamed the Sun, when it was revealed that there was to be a (very affectionate) puppet of the Queen Mother. Mock tabloid outrage was the order of the day. Also making the front pages was a sketch reference to Princess Diana having a nose-job when she gave birth to Prince Harry (a tiny detail leaked to me by a schoolgirl contemporary). Suddenly we were making news – and viewers rose to more than 15 million.

y Series Three the show was flying. The writing was more sympathetic to the puppets, the impressionists (including new comedians like Harry Enfield) caricatured voices rather than just mimicking – and the result was a show that was must-see TV. Politicians wanted to be on it. A hopeful Jeffrey Archer sent in voice tapes. Five years later Ian and I were burned out by the relentless treadmill of production. Our writing commission had risen to over 20 minutes a week. Script editors Rob Grant and Doug Naylor had moved on to write Red Dwarf, John Lloyd was producing Blackadder and was replaced on Spitting Image by the late Geoffrey Perkins. We had created specials with David Frost for NBC (a shocked executive said to us ‘Are you suggesting that President Reagan is an… asshole?’) – and in 1987 we had co-written the highlight of our career in rubber – a live election show that ended with our version of Cabaret’s ‘Tomorrow Belongs To Me’. One critic said that had it been on the BBC there would have been tanks around Broadcasting House.

This radicalism was at complete odds with the advertisements and merchandising that Spitting Image was also churning out to keep the studio going. (The dogchews, board game and slippers feature in the exhibition.) Syndicated shows opened all over the world. Premier Yeltsin liked the Russian version – but Putin was of a mind to have everyone shot. Ultimately, as the UK show lost viewers (weak governments, boring ministers and the declining novelty factor), it became too expensive and was axed in 1996. The writing and production was vastly superior to the early days, but its time had come and gone. Spitting Image launched countless careers and increased political awareness among the young, who suddenly knew who was in the cabinet. It also fostered a degree of cynicism about celebrity. Yet what was once a hotbed of recidivists and mischief-makers is now, in Docklands, a shrine to suits and bankers. Perhaps it’s asking too much of a puppet show to change the political landscape. After all, Sooty and Sweep never managed it. • Spitting Image: From Start to Finish, 26 Feb–8th June, Cartoon Museum, 35 Little Russell Street, London WC1A 2HH Tel: 020 7580 8155; www.cartoonmuseum.org April 2014 – THE OLDIE

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P E D A N T S ’ R E V O LT

Notes from the sofa Snow sadists: me and Hannibal Written and illustrated by RAYMOND BRIGGS ‘FOR THE SHEER number of little hearts broken in one summary execution, writer Briggs must stand high on the league table of snow sadists – rather like Hannibal.’ Golly! I must say I never thought I would see my name in the same sentence as little hearts broken, summary execution, sadists and Hannibal. Still, there it is in print, in the Evening Standard and written by Charles Saatchi, no less. I can only think it is part of a cunning plan of his to lure me into doing Art Paintings again and selling them in his gallery. Huge, sploshy, dribbling oils – pictures of sobbing infants half buried in snow drifts and menaced by herds of trumpeting elephants, urged on by Hannibal and me waving gigantic icicles like spears. Saatchi must have researched my spectacular career in the Arts and was so impressed he devised this ruse. In 1951, after two years at Wimbledon Art School and at the age of seventeen, I was awarded the Intermediate Art Certificate (my Mum framed it). This allowed me to proceed for a further two years and to be awarded the National Diploma of Design (in Painting), the NDD. This was followed by two years in the army in Catterick. Here, I did an Art Painting entitled 3am on the Catterick Flyer, the weekly midnight train from King’s Cross, packed with fellow conscripts getting back to Catterick after their 36-hour weekend pass. This was exhibited in the Young Contemporaries Show at the RBA Galleries where it was sold and also well-reviewed by the great John Berger, writing in the New Statesman. Saatchi must have researched all this and seen that here was a potential gold mine. It made me dig out my ‘Scrap Album’

for 1955 (only 59 years ago) where the first two stained and yellowing press cuttings in it were the only Art Painting reviews I’ve ever had. From then on the cuttings are all about baby books and nursery rhymes, not Great Art. Berger writes: ‘... whilst out of the hundred or so everyday scenes, accepted simply for their banality, there is one that arrests because it has been seen with passion, with concern – 3am on the Catterick Flyer by Raymond Briggs. Here, in front of soldiers uncouthly sprawling asleep on a train, one is moved – tenderly – by the commonplace, because of all that wells up behind but never over it. With its ferocious foreshortenings, disarrayed composition and raw colour, this picture is also to some degree a reaction against the convention of Art. Yet it is justified because it is a reaction against the inadequacy of that convention for a definite purpose. Of what use is Caravaggio in a city of fluorescent lighting? Of what use even the heroics of Picasso in front of the puppy dreams of khaki conscripts? And it is, of course, by asking just such questions that the convention is re-established. Caravaggio and Picasso asked them in their time, and Briggs pays his respects, proves that his questions are not arrogant, in another painting – a faithful adaptation of a Renaissance Pietà. Many other students could learn from these two pictures how to make use of their suspicion and scepticism.’ Golly gosh! First, me, sadists and Hannibal, then me, Caravaggio and Picasso! My cup runneth over. It went all down my trousers (again). Whatever next? I’d better retire now before it gets any worse.

FIRST GREAT WESTERN has invented a language all of its own. Announcements by ‘train managers’ (not guards) now describe numbers in an unusual way, thus ‘This service is delayed by eight – zero eight – minutes’. Another usage is new: ‘This service is full and standing’, i.e. there are passengers standing on it. The train itself is in motion. TIM PETERS WHY do women ‘fall pregnant’ these days? It’s a repellent phrase, redolent of both original sin (‘fall from grace’ and ‘fallen angels’) and sheer incompetence, suggesting that the unwitting victim has had pregnancy thrust upon her, metaphorically as well as physically. JEREMY LEWIS IT IS becoming increasingly common on programmes like Today to convey the words of someone interviewed through the medium of an actor. But the presenter will tell us that, to protect someone’s identity, the words are being ‘voiced by’ or, worse, ‘voiced up by’ an actor. What happened to ‘spoken by’? GAVIN BROWN • ‘OFF OF’ – what’s wrong with ‘off’ alone? • ‘Eventuate’ – what happened to ‘happen’? • ‘A short space/period of time’ – what’s wrong with ‘a short time’? • ‘Haitch’ – almost universal here. Ugh. NAN NIGHTINGALE, AUSTRALIA JOURNALISTS and presenters who say ‘At six am this morning’. It wouldn’t be six am this evening, would it? Are they unaware of the meaning of am and pm or are they just being slovenly? GEORGE CARNEY ‘ESCALATE’ – Why does everyone pronounce this word es-cue-late these days? CRAIG HARRISON Email infuriating jargon, tired clichés and other bugbears to editorial@theoldie.co.uk with ‘Pedant’ in the subject line, fax to 020 7436 8804 or post to Oldie Pedants, 65 Newman Street, London W1T 3EG April 2014 – THE OLDIE

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ED REARDON’S

MONTH

Broadsides from the Bard of Berkhamsted

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As told to ANDREW NICKOLDS

THE SHEER GRINDING poverty of vocabulary paraded by the current crop of television reviewers never ceases to depress me, the latest offender being the inappropriate use of the term ‘crunchy’. Biscuits are crunchy, celery is crunchy (apart from the wilted half-price pack I am obliged to take off a supermarket’s hands before its consignment to the food bank) – TV drama is not crunchy, unless it refers to the sound of boots on the gravel drive of a country house made by yet another detective and his equally vapid sidekick as they investigate a murder wearisomely placed before the second commercial break, the whole farrago about as crunchy as a banana. But then both television and its so-called critics are engaged in an unlovely race to the bottom, and the days are long gone of Philip Purser, Peter Black and Nancy Banks-Smith, who would never use ‘crunchy’ where a turn of phrase demanding the reader’s recourse to Brewer’s Dictionary would do. PRETTY SOON HOWEVER I won’t be able to afford a newspaper at all (By the pricking of my thumbs, / Another Guardian price increase this way comes) though that will bring with it the advantage of being able to pick and choose my morning reading online. That is, until the erection of the inevitable paywall, another step towards the Brave New World of knowledge available only to those who can afford it: a journey which has already claimed the Speaking Clock and the Daily Telegraph Information Desk. I’m surely not the only writer who misses this free service, and with it the chance of a pleasant conversation with some well-brought up gel, the degree of flirtatiousness depending on whether the query was before or after lunch. I well remember

plotting an episode of the science fiction series Blake’s Seven in which the Federation’s mainframe computer was sabotaged (or would have been had my episode not remained unproduced due to idiotic reasons of verisimilitude) by canny use of the phonetic alphabet. The helpful lass at the Telegraph talked me through it and by the time PapaQuebec-Romeo had been reached an early evening drink was a distinct possibility. Sadly when I rang again to suggest a date the bean-counters had taken over, my credit card details were demanded up front and that was that. How different life might have been. STILL, NOT HAVING the wherewithal for newspapers also means not having to suffer their arts coverage, and in particular some callow interviewee describing him or herself as ‘a storyteller’ (where once ‘troubadour’, though no less irritating, would have sufficed). We’re all storytellers dear, whether it be Ed Reardon or the ninnies on six-figure salaries tasked with inventing things for the sports stars in the Santander commercials to do. Or more accurately, to do with their hands, as any student of amateur dramatics will have noted. Thus Jessica Ennis can be seen adding dog-grooming to her hurdling and javelin-throwing talents, while the Irish golfer is baking a cake. As an alternative suggestion I’d like to see them jump into the Formula 1 man’s car, drive round to the nearest Santander branch and demand to know what happened to the eight pounds in my deposit account when it was still Abbey National. With the interest from the last dozen years it will be well into double figures by now, so I don’t mind offering the team a crunchy bit of commission.

● Latest EU madness – mousetraps to be illegal from 2015. Chris, Litton ● 2015 can’t get here quick enough, Chris. If you look at the genetic make-up of a mouse you will find that it is only 2 per cent from being a human being. Gillian, Islington ● At the first sign of mice, sprinkle mustard seeds around the skirting board. It never fails. Maureen, Putney ● Prince Andrew and Fergie should give us all a life and re-marry. Darren, Wellingborough ● The only Fergie I care about is Sir Alex. Come back and save us from almost certain relegation under this new bloke. Jeff, Plymouth ● Hayfever sufferers: try chewing lemon rind. Maurice, Redcar ● Lemon rind is also great for hair loss. My grandfather swore by it. Arnold, Finchley ● Heartfelt thanks to the young lady last Monday who gave me a tissue to wipe my train seat that was covered in bits of crisps. Brian, St Just ● For sale: Kenwood yoghurt making kit still in original box. £30. No dealers. Jane, Barnstable ● For Sale: German Vegetarian Recipes, 1954. Lots of ideas and very good instructions. Soup stains on the cover hence asking price. £2 o.n.o. Hilda, Cricklewood

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of the Year

SPONSORED BY

AWARDS 2014 Above, from left to right: Richard Ingrams, Sir Terry Wogan, Joan Woolard, Anne Reid, Mary Berry, Sir John Major, Nicholas Parsons, Ronald Blythe and Jacob Rees-Mogg Right, clockwise from top: Sir John and Sir Terry; Geoffrey Palmer and Peter Bowles; Anne Reid; Melvyn Bragg and former Oldie Pin-up Mary Beard Below: Giles Coren and Tony Blackburn salute the press

Oldie Sage of the Year

RONALD BLYTHE The rural writer Ronald Blythe is best known for Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village (1969), but he also has a long-standing column in the Church Times, ‘Word from Wormingford’. Now 91, he told guests the secret to his longevity: ‘Don’t watch lots of afternoon TV, do physical things and eat well.’

Oldie Pin-up of the Year

ANNE REID Fresh from her triumphant performance in the BBC drama Last Tango in Halifax, Anne Reid told us: ‘I’m older than Richard Ingrams, I’m older than Terry Wogan for goodness’ sake. I’m old enough to be Boris Johnson’s mother (I’m not).’

PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF NEIL SPENCE: WWW.NEILSPENCEPHOTOGRAPHY.COM

Forget the Oscars, to hell with the Baftas – the year’s most exciting awards ceremony, hosted by the brilliant SIR TERRY WOGAN, is right here

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Wannabe Oldie of the Year JACOB REES-MOGG Conservative MP for North East Somerset Jacob Rees-Mogg, 44, explained how he came to be such a young oldie: ‘It’s not so much that I want to be elderly; I was born elderly. My father took one look at me when I appeared and thought that he must believe in reincarnation and that a grumpy old man had returned. I’m trying to keep up that image for as long as I can.’

Campaigner of the Year SIR JOHN MAJOR

of the year 2014

Former Prime Minister John Major recently spoke out against the ‘privately educated elite’ which runs Britain: ‘To me, from my background, I find that truly shocking.’ Speaking to our guests, he joked: ‘I hadn’t realised I was qualified for this Oldie award until I was woken up during lunch,’ adding ‘prime ministers are getting younger and, at the present rate of regression, the next prime minister but four will actually be prepubescent.’

MARY BERRY The food writer, television presenter and queen of baking told our lunchers: ‘I don’t have botox, implants or any tucks, and that’s how it should be.’ Hear, hear! She does, however, make an excellent cake... Clockwise from left: Jean Marsh and Richard Wilson; Peregrine Worsthorne and Lucinda Lambton; Kate Adie; John Sergeant; Zoë Wanamaker

The Dorian Gray Award NICHOLAS PARSONS The longstanding host of BBC Radio 4’s Just A Minute quipped: ‘I’m a keen gardener and have recently had a fuchsia named after me. Go down to your local garden centre and find out where the fuchsias are, find the one with a label saying “Nicholas Parsons” and if you turn the label over you will find that it says: “Nicholas Parsons will do well in any bed. Feed well and you will have amazing results.”’

Oldie Heckler of the Year

JOAN WOOLARD

Berated Barclays bosses at the AGM, saying ‘I don’t understand how you can sleep at night’ Joan Woolard, 75, amazed guests with a tale of generosity: ‘When I heard there were 17,000 children starving in the UK, I contacted Camila Batmanghelidjh of Kids’ Company and offered her my house. I said, “If it’s going to help keep some kids off the street and give them a better start, you can have it.” I sold it in a day and made out a cheque to Kids’ Company. This award is the icing on the cake.’ April 2013 – THE OLDIE

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Readers write Taking a Peke

SIR: Some years ago my brother-in-law observed red kites take running rabbits in Thame Park. Last month I was watching one here, near Chichester. It began to circle lower and lower and I realised it was centred on my Pekingese, which is about the size of a rabbit. The dog was too thick to realise what was happening and as I came closer the kite moved away. The wretched animal often misbehaves and I threaten to put it out as kite bait, but get little reaction. Peter Rice, Chilgrove, Chichester

Stollidge mystery resolved

SIR: The reason that Raymond Briggs has been unable to find the word ‘stollidges’ (cask stands) in the OED (Notes from the Sofa, March issue) is because I think he will find it is the wrong word! The correct word is ‘stillages’ and you will find that in the OED, I have no doubt. My father took over a pub in Ipswich in the early Fifties and I used to help him from time to time. I have tapped barrels with a wooden mallet and the trick was to get the tap perfectly positioned – otherwise Cobbold’s bitter went all over the floor. I could go on but I would just like to mention the fact that I worked at W S Cowell in Ipswich for over twenty years and remember Raymond from his days with Jonathan Cape; or is it my turn to get something wrong? Colin Pooley, via email

A vicar writes

SIR: Almeric Rich (mentioned in Eric George’s Borstal memories in your Feburary issue) was a regular visitor to the House of the Sacred Mission at Kelham in Nottinghamshire, where a community of Anglican monks trained me and hundreds of others for ordained ministry in the Church of England. He must have been the one who arranged for small groups of theological students from the House to spend fortnights in another Borstal called (I think) Gaynes Hall, where we shared the life of the inmates, which in some

‘No, there’s no one else here. Except Stephen Fry, of course’

respects (for example periods of hard manual work) resembled life at Kelham. On our last night in Borstal, the bolts holding our beds together were surreptitiously removed so that when we tried to get into bed, a mixture of confusion and mirth ensued. Otherwise we were very kindly treated, and we learned a lot. Like Huntercombe Borstal, the House is no more, but Sir Almeric kept his connection with the Society of the Sacred Mission to the end of his life. He would surely have been proud of Eric. The Reverend Alan Cooke, Oldham

Another vicar writes

SIR: Your entertaining article ‘Going to the Baths’ (February issue) took me back to the Fifties when I became a C of S minister in the East End of Glasgow. My densely populated parish consisted of decaying Victorian tenements without a single bath. I was housed in a big old church used as a youth club, sharing the primitive conditions with a variety of wildlife both animal and human. The nearest thing I had to a bath was the canteen sink – it was just possible to squeeze into this with your knees up. However, a sink cannot provide a good, relaxing soak, so every Friday evening I went to the ‘steamie’. ‘Steamies’ were multipurpose institutions used by housewives to wash their

clothes, and locals to wash themselves. A towel and soap were issued for a small fee and you were allocated a cubicle with a big bath. The water was supplied by means of a key operated from outside to door by a nice Mr Darling who attended to cries for more water. The parish is enormous these days. The new houses have baths. The old youth-club-cum-church has been replaced by a modern youth centre. The ‘steamie’ has gone, and with it the smells and fleas it once washed away. But for me something else has gone – the never dull, colourful, community life of the old East End, which produced more university students than it did gangs. Bill Shackleton (Rev), Burnside, Glasgow

Preaching to the converted

SIR: Oh Lord! I fear the Sunday Assembly featured in Modern Life (February) is reinventing the religious wheel. Do you not have Unitarians in the UK? Unitarians are an inclusive, community-oriented, universal, liberal church who, though often accused of believing in nothing, actually believe in personal worth, justice, spiritual growth, the search for meaning, and the rights of conscience. We leave aside the matter of God to individual conscience and meditation, trusting that should He exist, He will forgive our lack of congregational supplication. Robin Hornby, Calgary, Canada

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SIR: Re ‘On a Wild Goose Chase’ (February issue) here’s a tip for Walter Ellis and any other Oldie readers who are legal Permanent Residents in the USA and wish to become eligible for health coverage under Medicare when they turn 65. Instead of paying in contributions from working for decades to build up your minimum of 40 ‘credits’ you can always just apply to become a US Citizen – and thus become enrolled automatically. This is not that difficult and is certainly much easier if you are willing to marry an American, swear allegiance to a flag instead of an old lady with a corgi, put on an extra 150 pounds of weight, and subject yourself to a prefrontal lobotomy. Ted Newcomen, Chestertown, Maryland

Twin studies

SIR: Derek Parker ends his article ‘Who Were the Dolly Sisters?’ (March Oldie) by saying that the 1945 film musical The Dolly Sisters is the major memorial of the Deutsch twins. Anyone familiar with the work of the Romanian-born sculptor Demetre Chiparus would probably argue

Demetre Chiparus: The Dolly Sisters

that this accolade belongs to the 74cmhigh chryselephantine sculpture of the famous dancing duo executed circa 1925. An example (only five are thought to have been made) was sold at auction by Bonham’s in London in November 2012 for £277,250. Although Chiparus produced more than 130 different bronze and ivory figurines, The Dolly Sisters is regarded as one of his most successful studies. Marcel Escudier, Willaston, Cheshire

Loos talk

SIR: Vice Admiral Baird’s memories of the Rosta Twenty Holer (March Oldie)

FAT T Y PU FFS

reminded me of other unusual loos of that era.. In late 1945 I was en route to Palestine aboard the troopship Capetown Castle. There were two wooden constructions on deck (port and starboard). Each housed a knee-high board with loo-size holes, with a trough underneath containing sea water. A modesty shield allowed us to enjoy the sea view. Any pitching of the ship caused the water to slosh from one end of the trough to the other, providing the end seat users with a bidet function. At RAF Aqir in Palestine, the loos were quite different. The toilet was a large, circular, deepish hole in the ground – but with an unusual superstructure. Essentially, this was an annular wooden platform divided into six or eight segments by wooden partitions, each segment having an appropriately shaped hole, a wooden lid, and deflector plate below. A roof (with central vent pipe) and a wall with open entrances completed the installation. If another user allowed his lid to drop, one felt a distinct draught in the nether regions. Worse things could happen. One night, one of the toilets collapsed into its hole (‘disappeared up its own orifice’ would be the RAF vernacular at the time). After this incident, one automatically took the seat nearest an entrance. H Bentley, Beverley, East Yorkshire

is like primitive tribesmen using a motorcycle to cross the road’ found its way into the Oxford Dictionary of Medical Quotations (published in 2004). Terry Mott (Retired Consultant Oncologist), Woodbridge, Suffolk

Lord of the ring

I always thought the entries in the ‘Obituary Game’ were too bizarre to be real, so imagine my chagrin when I recognised the name of Baby Jake Matlala in the February edition. Many years ago, I was travelling between Johannesburg and Pietersburg (now called Polokwane) when I stopped for a coffee break. In those days, I could still put names to faces, so imagine how thrilled I was to see, getting out of a small car, the smallest boxer in the world. Baby Jake was a South African icon but suffered at the hands of people who were only too happy to organise his career and his money, so he died a poor man, despite his boxing success.

Quips and quotes

SIR: I was interested to read the column by Jeremy Lewis (Living Hell, February Oldie) in which he describes the damage done by the increase in professional managers. This applied also to hospitals around 1990 and, as a hospital consultant, I suffered much frustration. A sentence I included in a report – ‘The over-use of computers by management

‘Baby’ Jake Matlala (centre)

He had charisma and charm and somehow you wondered how he could get into the ring and batter the bejesus out of an opponent. I could not resist

☞ continues over the page April 2014 – THE OLDIE

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PHOTO COURTESY OF: HARRY HOW /ALLSPORT

Letter from America

24/2/14 13:00:02

going up to him and telling him I thought he was great. With immense charm he shook my hand, gave me one of his wonderful smiles and we wished each other well. His death was somewhat eclipsed by Mandela’s passing, but to me, Baby Jake was special and I never forgot meeting him. Penny Clemson, Johannesburg, South Africa

Trailer trash

SIR: It is not just the BBC that disguises programme trails as news (February letters). ITV is equally guilty if not more so. The main news frequently features such items and local news is littered with them. Whenever a new drama series is coming up on ITV there is always a big feature. Occasionally there is an attempt at a local link, e.g. one of the actors once went to school in the region. Then there are unrelated items which are common across the country and are clearly syndicated across the whole network. The giveaway is that reports now rarely give the location they are from. Adrian Rudge, Deal, Kent

Of Nogs and Clangers

SIR: How delightful it was to be reminded of Peter Firmin (and the late Oliver Postgate) in my February Oldie. My childhood memories are of Noggin the Nog, Graculus and the sombre mists of their northern lands as well as the excitable and eccentric Clangers. Stories of such quality, whether enjoyed as books, TV cartoons or audio tapes, give children a welcome pause in their day. Today’s children often seem to live frenetic lives, with a background

‘...and a private swimming pool’

of noise and constant activity but little relaxation. So I make a plea for ‘slow childhood’, which would allow time for the unfolding of wonderful tales of wellcrafted characters, intricate illustrations to be explored and exotic accents and languages to be fathomed. Margaret Conroy, Brighouse

A family magazine

SIR: My daughter informed me at Christmas that she thought I now qualified as an ‘oldie’ and she was giving me your magazine for a year as a present. There had however been a cock-up online on the administrative front and I would not be receiving the January issue. All then went quiet until early this month when the March Oldie arrived with the quote at the top of the cover, ‘I love The Oldie, I love its devilmay-care attitude’. Looking through the contents I noticed an article by my sister-in-law Diana Melly which struck a friendly note. I didn’t know she had taken up ballroom

dancing – a bit different from Oxford Street in the 50s. I then noticed the article about Rita Tushingham and was striving to remember the name of the film George [Melly] had written in which she appeared. Lo and behold there it was, all written up and my struggling memory could relax. I somehow felt The Oldie had redeemed itself and had organised a family reunion to compensate for the difficulties. Thank you very much, Bill Melly, Hindhead, Surrey

Bear up, Brucey

SIR: Re the Fiona Bruce controversy: anyone who appears on television must get used to people assuming that they can condemn them fiercely for no other reason than some tremor of personality. I recall, many years ago when I was an announcer and interviewer on TWW-TV (long, long deceased), I went harmlessly into a Cardiff pub for a drink and was accosted by a rather beautiful though mildly drunken blonde. ‘You’re on the television,’ she said. ‘I am,’ I admitted. ‘Every time I see you on the screen...’ she said with some intensity. ‘Yes?’ I said encouragingly. ‘I want to put my foot through it,’ she said. Do not weaken, Ms Bruce. Derek Parker, New South Wales, Australia

Translation required

‘They’re a bit over the top’

SIR: My partner and I have been in correspondence with Scottish Power and received this advice from them in a recent letter: ‘It is important that you start to retain this information going forward. There is no need to contact us for historical information at this time.’ We are rather mystified by this and would be grateful to any Oldie reader who can offer an interpretation. Mari Griffith, via email

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Unwrecked England Ledbury, Herefordshire Candida Lycett Green

e had gone to look for Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s childhood home, Hope End. Hidden deep among small hills at the bottom of a steep, snaking drive, we found all that was left of it – a strange Moorish-looking cluster of enormous rounded gate piers, stables and outbuildings. Beside it was the site of the now vanished house which Elizabeth’s tyrannical father, Moulton Barrett, had built in an exotic eastern style at the beginning of the nineteenth century. A high rock cliff, now smothered

in ferns, had been cut back to give a better view down the narrow valley towards the line of the Malvern Hills which appeared to rise halfway up the sky as though we were suddenly in Switzerland. The Barretts’ picturesque trees, shrubberies and ponds remain. But it’s a sad place and we were happy to leave. I had always imagined Elizabeth’s local town of Ledbury would be dreary – because of its name, I suppose – but when we sailed out of the dark shade of yews down the Worcester Road and into the town, we felt uplifted. Just short of the High Street we passed the handsome red brick offices of Masefield Solicitors,

founded by the father of Ledbury’s famous son, John Masefield. Then we were there, right in the middle of this most glorious of towns. Ledbury is the perfect size. The wide straight High Street follows the shallow undulations of the hills and you can see it all in one go. It’s easy to walk its length and back without feeling daunted. On the southern corner of Worcester Road, the early seventeenth-century Ledbury Park, one of the best black and white houses in England, stretches along the High Street, grand and imposing with its five gables and great walled park behind. A plaque tells how Prince Rupert used it as his headquarters for the battle of Ledbury during the Civil War. The town is renowned for its half timbering and the woods whence it came form a sheltering eastern backdrop. Where the High Street widens, the beautiful black and white Market House, sitting on sixteen faded oak stilts, takes centre stage. Opposite, the galumphing Barrett Browning Institute looks incongruous, but everything else along the High Street is a good-looking blend of styles and dates. Nothing jars. Narrow alleys and mews lead off to smaller, jumbled buildings behind. It’s as though the whole town has been woven together like an elaborate piece of needlework. There is a block of wonderful almshouses and dozens of independent shops – butchers, greengrocers, delicatessens, ironmongers, cheese shops, bookshops – even the Tesco at the north end (opposite a brilliant cruck-frame cottage) is discreet. There may be a few too many ‘lifestyle’ shops, but there are also some of the nicest ancient inns you could wish for. The Feathers for instance, with a sumptuous over-sailing first floor, is full of gentrified local oldies wearing clothes the colour of ploughed fields, some reading the Daily Telegraph in comfortable armchairs in the heavily beamed foyer, others talking in hushed tones in the dining room. But it’s Church Lane we love the best with its small cobbles and comforting scale. We eat French onion soup in Chez Pascal, a packed café where, above faint strains of Edith Piaf, you can hear local gossip on the next table. At the end of the lane the huge triple-aisled church is set in a sloping graveyard from which footpaths lead between high red brick walls screening grand Georgian houses. Despite its beauty, Ledbury does not feel quaint. April 2014 – THE OLDIE

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PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF © CANDIDA LYCETT GREEN

B arrett ’ s ho m e

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Out and About To fly. To serve. To ignore... How to complain to an airline

‘I was forced to pay the full on-the-day fare, Business Class, from Delhi to London in November last year when checking in to catch a very early morning BA flight,’ writes reader Colleen Fleming. ‘The seat had already been paid for for an earlier flight – but due to illness I had to fly out the following day. I’d given my credit card details over the phone to the BA Executive Club in London to cover the cost of the changed flight, and assumed that would enable me to board. But there were problems when I tried to check in. ‘Numerous letters to BA on my return were ignored – but I did receive templatestyle emails telling me they were sorry I was not satisfied, and assuring me that they put great importance on looking after their customers. After three of these I sought advice from legal beagles at the Institute of Directors, who suggested I contact the Civil Aviation Authority with my complaint. This I did and, at their request, forwarded all details to them. ‘It was only after I had the CAA behind me that BA sat up and took notice. Ten months after the Delhi Airport fiasco I received the full amount I’d had to pay on the day – less what I believed I had already paid for the change of flight – an amount BA disputed. My final letter from BA told me that they valued me as a Silver Executive Club member and would welcome me on my next flight. ‘If BA was prepared to ignore a frequent Business Class global traveller with about 300,000 air miles then what hope would inexperienced Mrs Nobody travelling in Economy have? And what if she did not have the funds to buy another ticket at 4.30 in the morning? My advice – don’t give up. Go to the CAA – a body that has the muscle to help you sort out a complaint. And do not necessarily believe BA’s slogan “To Fly. To Serve”.’

Horses welcome

We’ve recommended places to stay with your children, grandchildren, dog and

even rabbit. But now a new initiative has taken the concept of total family even further. Hotels are being encouraged to welcome your horse. The British Horse Society’s ‘Horses Welcome Scheme’ encourages hotels to offer quality-assured horse-friendly breaks that provide excellent facilities for both steed and rider. Accommodation boasting the Horses Welcome sticker must have stables, grazing paddocks, hayracks, mucking-out forks and access

ship for hours, and disembarked about 2.30pm. We were not the last by any means – there were long queues behind us. What a waste of a sunny Floridian day. The delays seem to be worst on Sundays, or when there are many ships in port, or when the ship carries high numbers of British passengers (who take longer to process than US citizens). If all three apply the damage is cumulative. There is an answer. If you are prepared to carry your own luggage you can walk off at about 7.30am, beat the queues, keep your blood pressure low, and make your connections. For this to be viable you’ll need a case with wheels, and you should also be careful not to pack too much in it (though if you are flying back then the weight of your luggage is in any event restricted). Chris Butler

Last mango in Paris? Equestrian-friendly Coworth Park

to the local vet. You can saddle up at the self-catering cottage Old Tack Room, Dorset, where owners and animals sleep in comfort in adjacent buildings. At five-star hotel Coworth Park in Ascot you can practise your polo or dressage steps. And more beaches are now allowing you to canter along them, including Northumberland’s Holy Island and Studland Beach in Dorset. www.hoegrangeholidays.co.uk/horse-holidays www.dorchestercollection.com/ascot/ coworth-park

Dea Birkett

Avoiding cruise queues

Blogs and personal experiences reveal that cruisers docking at the popular Port Everglades at Fort Lauderdale are suffering very long delays at immigration. This can be disastrous for passengers hoping to make connections or to fly home the same day. The last time we disembarked from Cunard’s Queen Victoria after a transatlantic crossing we were hanging around in the

How many of you have been on a city break to Paris and returned uncomfortably constipated, your healthy eating regime in tatters? A solid weekend of croissants, patisserie and steak frites in this apparently fibre-free zone can wreak havoc with your digestive system. In a desperate attempt to mitigate the clogging effects of 48 hours of French restaurant food, Oldie reader Sandy Coolidge ordered the Salade Gauguin aux gambas et fruits exotiques in the delightful restaurant at the Musée D’Orsay. But alas, delicious though the dish was, the exotic fruits consisted of no more than a homeopathic sliver of mango. Advice to travellers: take a bag of apples and a packet of prunes.

Readers’ contributions wanted Send your travel tips or stories by post to Out and About, The Oldie, 65 Newman Street, London W1T 3EG, by fax to 020 7436 8804, or by email to editorial@theoldie.co.uk with ‘Out and About’ in the subject line. Maximum 300 words £50 paid for all contributions printed

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Does the hippie Greece of the 1970s still exist? ben mallalieu went to Crete’s southernmost resort, Matala, to find out

always regretted not going to Matala. One snowy night in the early 1970s a bearded hippie told me stories about a miraculous beach in Crete where the sun shone all winter and you could sleep in caves and live for next to nothing. Unfortunately I was already set on heading east, and by the time I got home and could afford to go travelling again Matala’s best days were officially over. All that remained was Joni Mitchell’s catchy, gently optimistic song ‘Carey’, which celebrated drinking wine at the Mermaid Café, getting beach tar on your feet and listening to scratchy rock and roll beneath a Matala moon – a eulogy for the carefree times before Aids, mortgages, Thatcherism and heroin. Matala was the first famous hippie beach and many respectable people became seriously upset (‘worthless,

sponging idlers,’ harrumphed the otherwise sensible travel writer Ernle Bradford). ‘Bohemians’ behaving badly had been a feature of many European beaches throughout the twentieth century, but for some reason this was different, something new and worse. Perhaps they were offended because hippies did not seem to care about money (rich idlers might have been more acceptable), or maybe it was the drugs: even the better Greek governments have never approved of cannabis – too Turkish – and those were especially mad days under the Colonels. The hippies and the Matala locals coexisted reasonably happily; young Greeks were impressed, particularly the reluctant national servicemen stationed in southern Crete who preferred it to fighting for colonel and country – but the Mermaid Café failed to survive

TRAVEL TALES

the Seventies. The owner had built an extension to his kitchen without the correct permission – hardly a serious offence, particularly in Greece – but he was locked up and tortured, and his café was closed. The caves were fenced off with barbed wire and the party was over. They paved the streets, put up a parking lot and Matala quickly became popular with package tourists. When I finally got there nearly forty years late for the party, I wasn’t hitchhiking any more or sleeping on park benches, and our hotel room had clean white linen. In Joni Mitchell’s time Matala amounted to a few small single-storey houses (none particularly beautiful), two beach cafés and a grocery shop. Now it has a few hundred buildings, none taller than three storeys, nor particularly ugly, although you would have to look hard to

PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY © PanosKarapanagiotis / THINKSTOCK, Mieneke Andeweg-van Rijn / Alamy

Paradise lost

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PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY © PanosKarapanagiotis / THINKSTOCK, Mieneke Andeweg-van Rijn / Alamy

SOUTHERN CRETE

bars – ‘Bob Dylan’s 119th Dream’, ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’, lots of Bob Marley – was up to scratch. From a distance the caves look like a natural phenomenon, but close to you can see that they are man-made, even older than Petra, carved into the honeycombed stone in early classical times and still full of echoes of former occupants: the Romans used the caves as catacombs; lepers lived there in the days before beautiful beaches were something special to be exploited and ruined. The heat of the sun sinks deep into the rock, keeping it warm at night and possibly all winter. I could see myself in the 1970s living in a cave with a cheesecloth curtain over the doorway and a sleeping bag on the stone bed. But you can’t sleep there any more.

Left: Matala beach; below: the sea wall with its revamped graffiti

find any that are not rental apartments, gift shops, travel agents or tavernas. Most of the bigger package tour hotels are further up the narrow valley, out of sight from the seafront, which helps maintain the illusion that little has changed. The famous old graffiti on the sea wall – ‘Welcome to Matala, George. Today is life. Tomorrow never comes’ – has been repainted with more flowery, more obviously Sixtyish lettering and you can buy ‘Today is life’ T-shirts. But despite the package tour commercialism, Matala has somehow retained a slightly raffish hippie air. A few recidivist old wrecks may even have been there ever since the Sixties. There are also younger, fashion-statement Euro-hippies with blond dreadlocks, and American babyboomers looking for the misspent youth they might have had if they hadn’t accepted the graduate traineeship at IBM. But most people are typical tourists, although not many are English and even fewer are Greek. In the afternoons the beach fills up with coachloads of nouveau bourgeois Russians on day excursions from the bigger resorts along the coast. They are interested in the hippies – an episode in recent history they missed out on – and I overheard a group asking the sunlounger man what the village was like then, but he wasn’t there either.

blinding, the silence almost deafening and there are moments on the walk when you can imagine that not much has changed since Minoan times. A Belgian sculptor has carved animals and ancient Egyptian symbols into the rocks. The sand is large-grained and soft to walk on, with outcrops of black granite smoothed and sculpted by the sea. The water is safe, protected by cliffs on either side, and warm enough for swimming long after autumn has come and gone in England. In the evening, when the crowds had left, my wife and I sat outside the Lion’s Café on the Matala seafront drinking Cretan wine and watching the last of the sunlight on the caves. Sunsets don’t change much. The night was still full of stars, slightly obscured by the floodlights on the caves, and the old rock and roll drifting across the water from the other

n the Lion’s Café the paper tablecloth was decorated with a map of Crete with, just below it, a tiny triangular island almost obscured by the metal clip holding the cloth to the table. ‘Didn’t St Paul go there?’ I asked, as its name – Gavdos – rang the faintest of bells. ‘Oh yes,’ said the manager confidently. ‘That was where he was shipwrecked, he and the ninety-nine saints,’ but I didn’t believe him as I was pretty certain that Paul had only been shipwrecked once and that was on Malta, and I would have remembered the ninety-nine saints if the Acts of the Apostles had mentioned them. I asked what the island was like now and the manager pulled a face as though realising he was about to lose another customer. ‘It’s like Matala was forty years ago,’ he said sadly.

ut just up the coast, the oncefamous Red Beach has changed very little, protected from development because it can only be reached by a twenty-five-minute scramble over the headland. The cliffs are the colour of rock candy, the earth covered in fine white dust. The light is

‘Failure? He’s never even had his phone tapped!’ April 2014 – THE OLDIE

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Looking for the LITTLE PEOPLE With or without leprechauns, Carlingford in County Louth is a magical place says CATHERINE MACK

PHOTO BY HENRY CLARK; ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL SMITH

s Kevin Woods and I walked up Slieve Foye mountain together, I found myself wanting to believe that this was, as he told me, ‘the only place in Ireland where leprechauns live’, not just because the affable Kevin has seen three leprechauns in his life on this mountain but because this is, for me, one of the most magical spots in my home country, Ireland. Carlingford, in County Louth, is a coastal town located on the Carlingford Lough, the sea inlet which forms the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The Cooley Mountain range on the southern side of Carlingford Lough looks straight out over this dividing piece of water to the Mountains of Mourne in the North, an invisible border going with the flow between them. Leprechauns don’t appear to everyone, according to Kevin, and indeed he shared many people’s cynicism twenty odd years ago when local publican P J O’Hare found a small suit and collection of tiny bones up on the mountain, as well as a few gold coins. Doubting their origin, Woods decided to make the most of the ‘find’ and organised a leprechaun hunt in his capacity as Regional Tourism Chairman. It worked and the hunters came in hordes but, as if to warn him that there were too many people on the mountain, the leprechauns then appeared to Kevin on a walk in the hills one day. I asked Kevin what they looked like as we continued our hike up the Slieve Foye. ‘They look just as you might imagine them – like in the cartoons really. That is how they appear to me, because they are spirits. They are about eighteen inches tall, have top hats, green jackets, trousers and shoes which are pointed or round and always with gold buckles. They were cobblers because they spent so much time dancing, and so they wear out their shoes.’ ‘I can see some sheep or goats grazing up there on the heathland,’ I said, soon to be corrected by Kevin who told me, quite nonchalantly, ‘One of those is the Ghost Horse of Mountain Park. There was a fella called Cocker Reilly – he was known as that because he was cocksure of everything. He used to come up by this part of the Mountain Park, passing a fairy mound every night. One night he relieved himself close to the fairy mound. When he woke up in the morning he couldn’t get out of bed, as he had two extra legs. They – the fairies – had

TRAVEL TALES

turned him into a horse. He took off up into the hills and that’s who you can see there. You’ll often see him up there.’ Kevin told these stories in such a matter of fact way that I wanted to believe him. And so by the time we approached the Slate Rock, a massive ramp of granite which emerges from the hillside, and the place where he first saw the leprechauns, I asked him if he thinks I will see them. ‘It’s up to you – if you have the gift,’ he said. ‘I am not sure whether you have the gift or not.’ So, keeping my eyes and mind well open, Kevin went on to tell me more about his gift, which allows him not only to communicate with the leprechauns’ chief elder, Corrig, learn about their history and lifestyles, but also gives him the ability to bring happiness to others and be happy for the rest of his life. The leprechaun hunt still happens every April. It’s not to make money, Kevin tells me, ‘but because for every person who stops believing, another leprechaun spirit dies – the hunt increases the likelihood of more people believing.’ As we headed back down the mountain towards Carlingford town, with sadly no leprechaun sightings to record, and headed for a drink in O’Hare’s, I couldn’t help wondering if I would be laughed at in the pub as they saw me walking in with Kevin, knowing that another tourist was ‘being had’. But no, we were met with joviality rather than jeers and welcomed to this lovely local gathering spot. This gift of spreading happiness must be working, I thought to myself. I may have been tricked, or I might not have the gift, but there are few belief systems which make me smile as much as this one. And if Kevin’s gift is to continue spreading the word and happiness with it, who am I to argue? And anyway, I don’t want a dead leprechaun on my conscience. To be sure, to be sure. • www.carlingford.ie www.thelastleprechaunsoﬁreland.com For exploring the hiking trails of the Cooley Mountains see www.walkni.com and www.irishtrails.ie

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In association with

Literary Lunches AT SIMPSON’S-IN-THE-STRAND TUESDAY 20TH MAY 2014

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ MARY BERRY Recipe for Life This year’s Oldie of the Year, 78-year-old Mary Berry, published her first cookery book, The Hamlyn All Colour Cook Book, in 1970. Since then she has written more than 70 food books and become one of our best-loved cookery presenters, most recently on BBC Two’s Great British Bake-Off. She will talk about her autobiography, Recipe for Life.

TUESDAY 24TH JUNE 2014

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ TRISTRAM HUNT Ten Cities That Made An Empire Historian, broadcaster and Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt’s new book looks at the lives and structures of ten of the most important cities which shaped the British Empire. His previous books include The English Civil War at First Hand and Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City.

MARY BEARD Confronting the Classics

SIMON JENKINS England’s 100 Best Views

JOHN BANVILLE The Infinities The Booker prizewinner’s novel The Infinities is set in Ireland in a house called Arden. Its main characters are the two Adams: one old and dying and the other young but ineffectual. ‘There is no end of irony and sophistication and brilliance, and no end of a sense that an infinity of different egos lie out there beyond our grasp’ – London Review of Books

BEN MACINTYRE A Spy Among Friends

Guardian journalist and best-selling writer Simon Jenkins is also Chairman of the National Trust. His new book is ‘a celebration of the hills, valleys, rivers, woods and settlements that are the landscape of England’ through the medium of a personal selection of his hundred favourite views. ‘His virtues are the well-turned, pragmatic English sentence in the plain style: decisive, unsentimental, well-informed, smart...’ – Spectator

Times columnist and Associate Editor Ben Macintyre’s latest book tells the true, untold story of Kim Philby, Soviet mole and one of Britain’s most notorious defectors. Philby’s closest friends, Nicholas Elliott of MI6 and the CIA chief James Jesus Angleton, thought they knew Philby better than anyone but discovered they didn’t know him at all. ‘Arguably his most ambitious account yet: a penetrating portrait of the double agent Kim Philby...’ – Daily Telegraph

TUESDAY 22ND JULY 2014

TUESDAY 8TH APRIL 2014

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ JOHN CAREY The Unexpected Professor

John Carey, English professor at Oxford, controversial commentator, book critic and beekeeper, reflects on a life immersed in literature. He describes the events that formed him – an escape from the London Blitz to an idyllic rural village, army service in Egypt, an open scholarship to Oxford in the 1950s and an academic career that saw him elected, in his early forties, to Oxford’s oldest English Literature chair.

★★ OTHER SPEAKERS TO BE CONFIRMED ★★

PHOTO COURTESY: JONATHAN RING

The Cambridge University classics professor, author, broadcaster – and former Oldie Pin-up of the Year – makes the case for studying classics in Confronting the Classics. ‘Classics are embedded in the way we think about ourselves, and our own history,’ she maintains. ‘Witty and erudite’ – Sunday Times; ‘The memorable characters who appear, from Livia, the murderous wife of Augustus, to the insane Caligula, offer the very classiest of entertainment’ – Observer

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

DOUGLAS HURD Disraeli or The Two Lives ‘Gripping’ – Matthew Parris, The Times

SOLD OUT

CHRISTOPHER MATTHEW The Man Who Dropped the Le Creuset on His Toe and Other Bourgeois Mishaps Mordant and witty cautionary verses about the British bourgeoisie and its foibles and failings.

ROGER BANNISTER Twin Tracks: The Autobiography Sir Roger’s frank memoir tells the story of his sporting achievements and his life as a distinguished neurologist.

ldie Literary Lunches TO BOOK CALL THE LITERARY LUNCH HOTLINE ON 01795 592 892 OR EMAIL: oldielunches@servicehelpline.co.uk TICKET PRICE: £62 for a three-course lunch including wine or soft drinks ★ Fish and vegetarian options available upon advance request ★ Meet the speakers from 12 noon; lunch at 1 pm

FORTHCOMING 2014 DATES – BOOK AHEAD August 19th ★ September 9th ★ October 14th ★ November 11th ★ December 9th ★ December 16th 068-Lit Lunches Ad 307 v1.indd 63

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B O O K S edward pearce

The Opinions of William Cobbett Edited by James Grande, John Stevenson and Richard Thomas Ashgate £25 Oldie price £21.50 (+p&p). Call 01603 648 140 to order

‘The Opinions of...’ is a good idea for a book. It wouldn’t get you too far with the prose stylists Sir Thomas Browne or Charles Morgan, being respectively above and not up to opinion. With Kingsley Amis, drink-fired misogyny clogs the talent. Opinion can take over the writer – witness Hilaire Belloc, for whom being pro-Catholic and anti-Jewish turned a gay wit into a snarling bore. Failure helps – something which made Swift, a disappointed ecclesiastical politician, turn indignation at English episcopal merit confined in an Irish deanery into a raging resentment passing as cosmic irony. Although also unfair to the Jews for involvement in finance, Cobbett is different – full of himself but not about himself. The opinions change, certainly, as he forsakes Yeoman/ NCO Toryism for a rage against corruption, then looks untrustingly around. This is growth, a man casting off fervent misconceptions to look about, then declaim against the whole glibly acquisitive world. The word ‘Society’ has been ridden to its knees by sociologists and the tedious Left. But Cobbett, whom I don’t remember using it, was preoccupied with it. His opinions on anything are not held but thrown, flung in the face of individuals. Irony is effete, polite plain facts anaemic. He does not say that Peterloo, the riding down of a peaceful meeting by the Manchester yeomanry, was an illustration of bad government. He needs to hit somebody, so he hits William Wilberforce, a good man in the right cause, but a loyal vote for

Lord Liverpool whose government had congratulated sabres and horsemen. Cobbett is peremptory and raging: ‘Wilberforce, I have you before me in a canting pamphlet... You talk a great deal about the partiality of the laws in the West Indies. What you say about the inhumanity of these laws is right enough; but have you Wilberforce, have

Cobbett’s opinions are not held but thrown, flung in the face of individuals. Irony is effete, polite plain facts anaemic

you ever done anything to mitigate the laws... with regard to those free British labourers of which you so cantingly talk?’ For Cobbett, the opponent is generally the enemy. It follows that, seventy years before the Labour Party was cautiously created, he is a plain, unapologetic class warrior. Famously he wanted the stockbrokers commuting by barouche or curricle to the City along ‘their fine, newmetalled road above Hindhead’ to break their necks on it. He is as bitter toward the makers of opinion, ‘Scotch feelosofers’ or ‘Malthus and his crew of hard-hearted ruffians’. His lip curls on the italics as he contemplates ‘those cool calculators of

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PORTRAIT COURTESY OF: Hulton Archive AND ISTOCK PHOTO

Beyond opinion

Francesco Bartolozzi’s engraving of William Cobbett April 2014 – THE OLDIE 69

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BOOKS

how much national wealth can be made to arise out of the misery of millions.’ Cobbett declaims against the driving out of the family-patch farm because that small farm had once ‘received a great addition from the fruit of the labours of spinning, knitting and the like’. But ‘when these were taken away by the lords of the loom... the little farm did not afford a sufficiency of means to maintain a considerable family’. However when the Surrey boy goes to the spinning and weaving North, he finds new victims. The ‘lords of the loom have in their employ thousands of miserable creatures... kept fourteen hours in each day, locked up summer and winter, in a heat of from EIGHTY TO EIGHTY-FOUR DEGREES... this statement was published at Manchester by J. Phrenix No. 12 Bow-street in that blood-stained town.’ He turns to his readership and invites reflection: ‘Now, then, do you duly consider what a heat of eighty-four is?’ The previous 31st August to 3rd September had been very hot, he says. ‘The newspapers told us that men had dropped down dead in the harvest and many horses had fallen dead... and yet the heat never exceeded eighty-four degrees in the hottest part of the day’, while all year round cotton operatives were locked up in eighty to eighty-four degrees, denied water and fined for opening a window. Confronting ‘optimistic economic history’ and ‘trickledown’ with seen, recorded realities, he moves beyond opinion.

POETS’ CORNER ‘Farewell to Juliet’ by Hilaire Belloc How shall I round the ending of a story, Now the wind’s falling and the harbour nears? How shall I sign your tiny Book of Glory? Juliet, my Juliet, after many years. I’ll sign it, One that halted at a vision: One whom the shaft of beauty struck to flame: One that so wavered in a strong decision: One that was born perhaps to fix your name. One that was pledged, and goes to his replevining; One that now leaves you with averted face. A shadow passing through the doors at evening To his companion and his resting place.

Chosen by John Julius Norwich 70

Lights and bushels ELIZABETH GRICE

Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee Chatto & Windus £25 Oldie price £21.50 (+p&p). Call 01603 648 140 to order

PENELOPE FITZGERALD once apologised to an audience at Somerville College that she could only speak to them as ‘an old writer who’s never been a young one, because I started so late in life, and therefore missed the most dramatic part of a writer’s life’. It was a nice self-deprecating opener but only partially true. The oddity, catastrophe and struggle of her early life contained all the stored-up drama a writer could possibly need, and in the long years of waiting to transmute these experiences into novels and short stories she seemed to know that nothing was spoiling. Still, it was a close-run thing. She was not published until she was sixty and did not become really famous until she was eighty – that is, three years before her death in 2000. Hermione Lee’s softly damning account of how Fitzgerald’s first publishers undervalued her, and the condescension meted out to her when she won the Booker Prize in 1979 for Offshore, are typical of the literary snobbishness she endured. And yet Fitzgerald herself could be mischievous and evasive, encouraging misunderstandings about her personal life and in interviews deliberately obscuring the sharpness of her intellect with daffy comments about getting back to the ironing. ‘People took for granted the stocky, ruddy-cheeked, now whitehaired figure, just off the bus or the train, with her Marks & Spencer’s coats, her buttoned-up blouses, wide skirts and sensible shoes, carrying her capacious William Morris bags,’ writes Lee. The unwary were taken in by her ‘mildvoiced, scatty-seeming persona’. Her combination of self-belief and apparent lack of confidence was a very English paradox. It threw people off the scent. She described herself as ‘an ineffectual person, not the sort who is ever noticed when they come into a room’, but she knew full well that there would be a day, perhaps beyond the reach of earthly patience, when her quiet presence would not go unremarked. There was actually nothing vague or insecure about her. She was a member of the furiously intellectual Knox family,

the granddaughter of two bishops, niece of the famous cryptographer Dillwyn (‘Dilly’) Knox and daughter of the editor of Punch. After a double-first at Oxford, she became a scriptwriter for the BBC, fell in love with an older man there ‘without the least glimmer of a hope of any return’ (a recurrent theme in her books) and went on to marry a handsome Irish officer, Desmond Fitzgerald, who was awarded the Military Cross for his bravery but returned from the war a damaged man. Desmond resumed legal work after the war but his ability to support his wife and three children was far from convincing. He took to drink. After an ignominious trial, he was disbarred for forging cheques. Unable to pay their bills, they left their over-ambitious Hampstead house in a hurry and moved to Southwold, where Fitzgerald’s experiences at the quirky Sole Bay bookshop eventually furnished the setting for her novel The Bookshop. The impecunious family scuttled back to London in 1960 where they lived on a leaky Thames houseboat. The children ran wild and were often hungry. Desmond was a door-to-door encyclopaedia salesman and Penelope held things together by teaching at a tutorial school. In her free periods, probably to stop herself going mad, she started to write books. She was always tired. Inexplicably, she eats blackboard chalk from a packet and notes: ‘I have tried dyeing my hair with a teabag.’ The barge sank one night with all their possessions but she tuned up for work next day with the words: ‘Sorry I’m late. My house sank.’ Her quiet heroism and dogged literary endeavour are movingly revealed in scene after scene of precarious existence and, in one form or another, they are the wonder of this biography. Fitzgerald described her theme as ‘the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities which I have done my best to treat as comedy, for otherwise how can we manage to bear it?’ Lee writes out of admiration and love for Fitzgerald’s work, but she does not shy away from unflattering incidents in her life (some light-fingeredness on an Italian trip points to ‘years of deep anxiety about money’) or suggest that she was a wholly lovable person. Nor does she pretend to understand everything about her elusive subject. There are many things that are unknowable about Fitzgerald: she made sure of that. But this is probably as close as anyone will get to explaining the extraordinary stuff she was made of.

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BOOKS

The Antichrist’s tale mark seddon

Power Trip: A Decade of Policy, Plots and Spin by Damian McBride Biteback Publishing £20 Oldie price £17 (+p&p). Call 01603 648 140 to order

Judging by the explosive reactions to Damian McBride’s demolition job on those who crossed Gordon Brown’s path, you might think he had spun a dossier of deceit that led Britain into an illegal war. He did nothing of the kind: McBride was symptom, not cause, of Blair and Brown’s ‘New’ Labour experiment, which allowed Special Advisers to run amok over the civil service and, in the case of Blair, favoured spin over substance from the comfort of the Downing Street sofa as opposed to the Cabinet room. But was it all a big game that suckered the media, while persuading millions that voting was a mug’s game? Here is McBride in full flow on that Blair/Brown feud: ‘As long as their feud continued it was the only political story that mattered. No one else, least of all the Conservative Party, could get a look in...’ And it could all be boiled down to ‘the Cola wars’. ‘Cola versus Pepsi,’ writes McBride, ‘remains the only choice there is – despite being – to the undiscerning palate – essentially the

‘No good. Their computer’s down’

The Family of Sir Thomas More by Rowland Lockey, after Hans Holbein the Younger, taken from The King’s Pictures, Francis Haskell’s illustrated study of the acquisition of artworks by Charles I and his courtiers, and the dispersal of those collections following the Civil War (Yale University Press £30) Oldie price £25.50 (+p&p). Call 01603 648 140 to order

same product.’ But for those who followed the substance rather than the froth, there was a difference between the gravity and substance of Brown, and the frivolity of the ‘great actor manager’. That much does emerge from this relentless, drink-fuelled gallop by the man his enemies christened ‘McPoison’. Some of those enemies, in the Westminster press pack, come poorly out of the story, since they seemed so malleable to McBride’s manoeuvrings. The attempt to settle scores has detracted from the extraordinary honesty, in part, of McBride’s revelations. On his concordat with Gordon Brown, McBride says: ‘The unspoken word was from me to him, and said: “Don’t question my methods.” I offered him the best press he could hope for, unrivalled intelligence... and access to parts of the right-wing press that no other Labour politician could reach.’ But for all that, and the meeting of minds between Brown and Paul Dacre, McBride’s mastery of the media couldn’t save Brown from its unremitting hostility during his brief, unhappy tenure as Prime Minister. Should Brown have questioned McBride’s methods? Of course he should, but I suspect he knew that Blair would never do the same with Mandelson or Campbell. Brown’s reliance on Charlie

Whelan and then on Damian McBride may be partly explained by his naive trust in Blair to keep his word – most famously his Granita restaurant promise that he would eventually make way for Brown if given a clear run at the Labour leadership. Could it have all been different? McBride suggests that it could, but only if Gordon had joined with his old intellectual adversary, Robin Cook, and pulled the carpet from under Blair over Iraq. Iraq barely makes more than a paragraph in Power Trip – which could be because Brown, and therefore McBride, were kept at arm’s length. I recognise the Gordon Brown described by McBride, and understand why those who worked closely with him remain loyal. He will be better remembered by history than Blair. Brown was at heart an old-fashioned Labour chieftain: ultimately he was for the workers, whereas Blair sucked up to the bosses. I ended up almost warming to McBride because of his reaction to Gordon Brown’s appalling decision to invite Margaret Thatcher to inspect the curtains in Downing Street, before, say, Denis Healey. Asked to meet her, McBride thought of what his father and mother would say, of the Irish hunger strikers, and of the miners, and said ‘No’. Good for McPoison! April 2014 – THE OLDIE

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BOOKS

Love, actually CARLA McKAY

Sleeping with Dogs: A Peripheral Autobiography by Brian Sewell Quartet £12.50 Oldie price £10.63 (+p&p). Call 01603 648 140 to order

‘The High Street’s regenerating – not so long ago these shops were all standing empty’

remarks that ‘those who have dogs must not be squeamish, but must take in their stride their pets’ unexpected voidings of food, faeces and urine’. Penny was the dog Sewell found immediately after the war ended. Since then, at any one time, he has had as many as four dogs sharing his life, his bed and his food. They range from Alsatians to whippets. Many were rescue dogs, quite a few from the marvellous Mayhew Animal Home. One dog he found tied to the railings of Kensington Gardens where it had been all night in the drenching rain and cold; another in Turkey where it had been left to die of its injuries, entangled in a savage thorn bush. This was Mop, named after the ruined city Mopsuestia, an Alsatian-type dog who survived being flung away by a Turkish peasant, who endured six months’ lonely quarantine, and who became maybe the closest of Sewell’s canine companions, devoted to him alone. As with all his dogs, Sewell gives her a proper funeral when the time comes, wrapped in his cardigan, with cubes of chocolate and cheese as grave goods, the gifts that he had taken to her every week while she was in quarantine. Why, he asks, should a comparatively sane man be so stricken by the death of a dog? ‘I can only answer that between us there was an understanding that did not much depend on any conventional means of communication

between man and dog, the bark and the command; in my relationship with her I sensed, not mawkish sentiment, but something beyond scientific recognition, almost lost, but natural and ancient beyond the numbering of years.’ None of the bite and bile that Sewell reserved for humankind in his very funny memoirs Outsider and Outsider II is evident in this honest and poignant homage to dogs, and I, for one, applaud him for his taste.

ILLUSTRATION BY ROBERT GEARY

The first dog owned by the maverick art historian and critic Brian Sewell was Prince, a stray mongrel who came into his life when he was a small boy and sealed his lifelong passion for dogs. Three days before the outbreak of World War Two his stepfather deemed it necessary to move the family from Whitstable, vulnerable on the Kent coast, to London, and took Prince onto the beach to shoot him with his revolver. A clean way to deal with a difficult problem perhaps, but for Sewell a hard lesson that to love a dog, to let a dog into your life, is to invite heartbreak at some point. Even though his slim book chronicles in affectionate and joyful detail the lives of the seventeen dogs Sewell has owned throughout his life, it is as sad a tome as I have ever read simply because of their inevitable sorrowful endings. When Sewell howls at their loss, the reader howls too: it is a book best read indoors on one’s own. Sewell is a proper dog lover. If that sounds odd, it’s because far too many dog owners are not. They have dogs for all kinds of reasons. A particular kind of Englishman will own a black Labrador, ostensibly as a game dog but in fact because he thinks it sets off his status as a gent nicely; a particular kind of woman will own a small dog to pet and carry like the baby she no longer has. A dog is all too often treated as just another possession, useful when you need it, neglected when you don’t. But real dog lovers appreciate the dogginess of dogs – their unquestioning love and loyalty, even when kicked in the teeth, their perception, their intelligence, their innate grace, their companionship. I think it is a privilege to share one’s life so harmoniously with a member of another species. Sewell evidently thinks so too. He even appreciates the occasional downsides to dog ownership. When his puppy Penny, exhausted from a walk, empties her bladder whilst asleep on his lap on the London Underground, Sewell’s first instinct is to laugh – he

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BOOKS

Audiobooks RACHEL REDFORD

Philomena Martin Sixsmith read by John Curless Recorded Books

Gripes of wrath BENEDICT NIGHTINGALE

Outraged of Tunbridge Wells: Original Complaints from Middle England Nigel Cawthorne Gibson Square £9.99 Oldie price £8.49 (+p&p). Call 01603 648 140 to order

15hrs 27mins, unabridged, £25.99, download (www.audible.co.uk)

Motherless Philomena was sent to an Irish convent in 1952 to have her illegitimate baby. According to the nuns, it was a just punishment for her sin to labour for three years in the laundry and then have her adored son sold to an American family. It’s a true and heartbreaking story of a mother’s irrepressible love and an orphan’s search for his mother, even if there’s too much about the son’s lovers and not enough about Philomena’s search.

A Golden Age Tahmima Anam Read by Tania Rodrigues 9hrs 43mins, unabridged, £14.99, download (www.audible.co.uk)

It’s 1971 and widowed Rehana and her adolescent children are caught in the upheaval of the civil war between East and West Pakistan which will result in the formation of Bangladesh. Rehana’s adored son Sohail and her daughter Maya have become freedom fighters, and she becomes unwillingly embroiled by keeping alive – and falling in love with – a rebel general hiding in her home. Alone, she tries to understand the killing and turmoil around her. Beautifully read.

Barchester Towers Anthony Trollope Read by David Shaw-Parker www.naxosaudiobooks.com 21hrs 44mins unabridged, download £36 or 17 CDs £55

Embroiled in the turbulence of church reforms and a struggle for control of the diocese, passions in Barchester are running high, not least in contending with the new bishop, Dr Proudie, and ‘the Medea of Barchester’, his overbearing wife. Shaw-Parker’s narration is just right: leisurely and soothing as though he’s spreading oil on the troubled waters of the once tranquil cloisters, and yet conveying Trollope’s sense of affectionate humour for this fierce battle for supremacy between archdeacon, chaplain and bishop.

JOE ORTON enjoyed writing spoof letters to the papers, always signing them Edna Welthorpe (Mrs). ‘Today’s young playwrights flaunt their contempt for ordinary decent people,’ went one. ‘I hope ordinary decent people will shortly strike back.’ That voice is often heard in the collection of letters, running from 1900 to 1954, that Nigel Cawthorne has culled from the Tunbridge Wells Advertiser. Whether Old Fashioned is claiming that television is a ‘loathsome disease that will turn our youth into myopic, open-mouthed sheep’, or Bee complaining that blasphemous Mormons are entrapping the town’s maidservants, or A B worrying that grocers are disguising their bills to ensure ‘poor deluded husbands’ don’t know that their wives are secretly buying alcohol – yes, Edna’s stilted outrage is everywhere. That outrage is familiar to me since, having two years to kill before university, I worked for the Advertiser in the 1950s. I calmed elderly flower arrangers furious that the paper had called them ‘women’ rather than ‘ladies’. I was reproached by my editor after amateur actors objected to my comparing their play to ‘a pudding’. I certainly met the likes of the correspondents who sign themselves Confirmed Grouser, A Ratepayer and (of course) Disgusted. And I probably interviewed Disillusioned, who wails that local louts have ‘regaled me with the greeting “Wotcher, shorty”’. Cawthorne’s letter writers complain of everything from ‘scorcher’ motorists to noisy roosters, from Catholics advancing ‘the restless schemes of Rome’ to dogs urinating in the empty milk bottles left outside houses, from the dangerous microbes left in the air by street sweepers to the ‘sugar daddy general’ who has let his ‘female relatives, friends or fancy bits’ join a Home Guard that should be all-male. There’s also a ferocious row about the congestion caused by prams, Misogynist answering an upset mother with ‘Bah! Let them bulldoze their way down crowded pavements with their

bloated baby carriages at their own risk when I’m around!’ But there are even fiercer disputes about domestic pets. In September 1953 Dog Lover claims that children are a greater menace than his ‘faithful doggie pal’, inciting Law and Order to call him a ‘psychopathic case’ and dogs ‘disgusting quadrupeds’. Next month Angry and Disgusted suggests that any dog that chases a ‘poor little cat’ be destroyed, and Infuriated Tail-Wagger ripostes with a tale of feral cats eating the fish he’s left on his table. Angry and Disgusted then suggests that it’s Infuriated Tail-Wagger’s fault that ‘some poor half-starved cat’ has pinched his fish, adding that he’s seen dogs behaving ‘disgustingly’ in the street. Next week Infuriated Tail-Wagger picks up on the moral impact of that ‘disgusting’ behaviour – ‘There is not much one can teach the modern child in that respect, they appear to be more wellinformed than their parents’ – and the correspondence is closed. And still they come. Would fans please clap rather than shout at local football matches? Is it wise to grow loganberries on sewage farms? Couldn’t the ‘hefty girls’ playing stoolball cudgel the hooligans interrupting their games? Isn’t drink turning the town’s youths into ‘sickly, stunted men’? Are men who don’t remove their hats during the National Anthem really British? And would the organ grinders torturing Mr W H Griffin’s ears stop staring and shouting through his window when he refuses them money? Dear old Tunbridge Wells. I still miss it.

‘As it’s your own fault you’ll have to wait two weeks for an appointment’

xx74 THE 76 THE THE OLDIE OLDIE OLDIE– October –Month April 2005 2014 2013

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and

PRESENT Above: OBA winner Malcolm Ludvigsen’s winning painting, Filey Below: Chair of the judges Maggi Hambling with Oldie Editor Richard Ingrams and OBA 2013 winner Malcolm Ludvigsen (left)

Brian Sewell

The Oldie British Artists Award (prize of £5,000) to recognise the achievements of British Artists over the age of 60 THE OBA, which has a prize of £5,000, was launched in 2012 as a counterblast to the unmade beds of the YBAs (Young British Artists). Now in its third year, the Award is a celebration of figurative art: pictures which are recognisably derived from the real world. We are delighted to announce that Brian Sewell has agreed to chair the judging panel this year. He has been the Evening Standard’s Art Critic since 1984. Known for his brutal honesty and vehement dislike of conceptual art, Sewell brings a wealth of knowledge and a discerning eye to the Awards. Anyone over 60 who is a UK resident can enter. Entries should be on paper or canvas (no larger than 36" x 30") and using any materials (oil, watercolour or acrylic). Strictly no formaldehyde and no prints. Works must have been executed since 1st January 2013. The shortlist of ten works of art will be announced on 24th July 2014. The shortlisted artists will then be asked to provide a portfolio of their work (which will form part of the final judging process) by 8th August. Additionally, Abbott and Holder in Museum Street will exhibit the ten shortlisted works prior to the Award Ceremony. The winner will be announced and presented with the OBA at a ceremony on 10th September at Petyt Hall, 64 Cheyne Walk, London SW3 5LT.

HOW TO ENTER

The closing date is 10th July 2014. There is no entry fee ★ Applicants must have reached the age of 60 by the end of 2014 ★ Applicants may only enter one piece of work. This cannot have been submitted as an entry for previous OBA Awards ★ The maximum dimensions of the unframed work must be no greater than 36" x 30" ★ Download a full application form and terms and conditions at

075_OBA_307 v1.indd 75

www.ecclesiastical.com/oba or request them via email from oba@ecclesiastical.com or call Frances Allitt at Ecclesiastical on 020 7680 5887 ★ Please email your application form and a jpeg of your picture to oba@ecclesiastical.com or post your form and a photograph of your picture to The OBA, c/o The Fine Art Team, Ecclesiastical Insurance, 19-21 Billiter Street, London, EC3M 2RY to arrive no later than 5pm on 10th July 2014

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REVIEWS

MUSIC

richard osborne

Sir Thomas Beecham’s quip about the English not understanding music but absolutely loving the noise it makes has always struck a chord with me because it pretty well sums up how I’ve always felt about organs. There’s a rare LP in my collection, which the bailiffs will almost certainly miss because it’s in a plain white sleeve, that’s labelled 84 Key Mortier Organ ‘The Trumpeter’. Built in Antwerp in 1919 and famous for the phalanx of superbly engineered brass trumpets which grace its melody section, The Trumpeter is one of the most celebrated fairground organs ever made. I remember seeing it years ago in the Devon Museum of Mechanical Music owned by that legendary figure in the world of mechanical organs, Ronald Leach. As I write, I’m playing its rousing rendering of Mozart’s Rondo alla Turca. Such sonorities and such panache! If Mozart were here he’d be beside himself with pleasure. It’s a far cry from Mortier’s fairground organs, with their pre-set programmes cut into strips of folding cardboard, to the multi-million-pound machines built by the great Aristide Cavaillé-Coll (1811–1899), the engineer, craftsman, musician and aesthetician whose instruments single-handedly transformed the French organ repertory. Cavaillé-Coll was the Isambard Kingdom Brunel of the organ. His family had been organ-builders for two generations but after moving to Paris (on Rossini’s recommendation) in 1833, the 22-year-old Aristide quickly began rescuing organ-building from the doldrums into which it had drifted

since the late eighteenth century. True, he had one huge piece of good fortune – and that from an Englishman. Charles Spackman Barker’s so-called ‘Barker Lever’ was a new type of bellows. It helped equalise the air flow to instruments (no organ can stay in tune if the wind supply is uneven) and, rather more radically, it allowed the keys to be operated at much higher wind pressures. Power-steering for the organ console. So began the battle between the sacred and the profane, the French organ wars which to some extent dogged Cavaillé-Coll’s career. Stage left in a red cape was Louis Lefébure-Wély, master on these fine new instruments of Gothic storm-on-the-lake effects; stage right was the austere and scholarly Belgian organist J-N Lemmens with whom Cavaillé-Coll – a sure link between the old classical order which he revered and the new ‘symphonic’ organs which he pioneered – eventually sided. There’s a sense in which Cavaillé-Coll’s long career is an inventory of French social, commercial, political and religious life from the early 1830s to the late 1890s. It’s an extraordinary tale that takes us from the singer Pauline Viardot commissioning an instrument on which the music of Bach could be played at her fashionable samedi soirs through to the late nineteenth-century

trillionaire and Wagner fetishist Baron de L’Espée, whose great salon organ is now in the church of Saint-Antoine des QuinzeVingts in Paris. Astonishingly there had been no filmed documentary of Cavaillé-Coll’s life and work until 2011 when Will Fraser of Fugue State Films used the bicentenary of Cavaillé-Coll’s birth as a cue to embark on just such a journey. Released last year, The Genius of CavailléColl comes as a five-disc pack. The first DVD is a superbly narrated threepart 150-minute film biography shot chronologically in and around fifteen of Cavaillé-Coll’s finest organs. The second DVD, which runs for over three hours, takes us deep into the instruments themselves, with longer extracts to follow. The third is largely given over to improvisations on five celebrated Cavaillé-Coll instruments by such players as the titulaire of Saint-Denis, Pierre Pincemaille, and Notre-Dame’s Olivier Latry. The CD survey begins with a piece by Boëly played on the groundbreaking 1840 instrument in Paris’s Saint-Denis and ends with César Franck’s Fantaisie in A played on Baron de l’Espée’s 1894 salon organ. There are those who think the 5-disc set expensive but over ten hours of superb film footage and music for £68.50 strikes me as being something of a bargain. The 150-minute documentary can be hired for church or society showings, after which the set itself is offered at a much reduced price. So what in the end was the genius of Cavaillé-Coll? Well, in the words of an old friend of mine, it was his ability to make all the parts of an organ, however big, sing together. ‘Put any two stops of a Cavaillé-Coll organ together at random and you’ll never hear a bad noise.’ Listen to the unbelievably beautiful sound of one of his greatest organs, the sevenstorey-high structure with a drawingroom attached which he built for SaintSulpice in Paris, and you’ll get the gist. • The Genius of Cavaillé-Coll is available from

‘Your father’s doing a sponsored good mood’

www.fuguestatefilms.co.uk and music shops April 2014 – THE OLDIE

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REVIEWS

DVD

lucy lethbridge Robin Redbreast BFI, 70 minutes

To order for £15.99 including free UK p&p call 0844 376 0009 quoting The Oldie

Bernard Hepton (Mr Fisher) and Anna Cropper (Norah) in Robin Redbreast

In telly-land it is a truth universally acknowledged that any metropolitan type who strays beyond the safe limits of the M25 is likely to be driven insane by supernatural encounters or hacked to death in an ancient druidic blood-fest. Because, as everyone in London knows, rural England is mysterious indeed, red in tooth and claw and populated by rum peasants given to gnomic utterances. It comes as rather a surprise to find that the commissioners of television dramas forty years ago laboured under exactly the same fearful delusion: I had thought it particular to our own scurrying urban age. But John Bowen’s Robin Redbreast, a BBC Play for Today in 1970, is from the outset comfortingly familiar; one has only to settle back on the sofa and watch the horrors of the English countryside reliably unfold. The moment that script editor Norah, (superbly played by Anna Cropper), announces to her smarty-pants London friends that she intends to go and live in a cottage in the country for a rest, we know it won’t be long before she finds something very nasty in the woodshed. Out in the sticks and trying to stave off boredom, Norah’s first visitor is the local historian Mr Fisher, played by a bespectacled Bernard Hepton in a Norfolk jacket and trilby. ‘You don’t speak the Old Tongue do you?’ he says giving her a sinister, searching look.

Walking in the woods, Norah encounters a naked young man called Rob doing some weird and manic exercises at a wooden post. With her biological clock racing wildly, Norah invites Rob back to for supper only to discover that though he’s a crashing bore he’s a disturbingly attractive one. After that, awful things happen in quick succession: it would be spoiling the story to reveal them all but they include a dead bird, a strange marble and many dark hints about long forgotten fertility rituals. Norah’s telephone is cut off and her car is disabled – escape is futile and the villagers are all in cahoots. In London, her friends Jake (Julian Holloway in a dashing floral neckerchief) and Madge wonder vaguely if she’s all right but can’t be bothered to make the long drive down to check. Filmed in black and white, Robin Redbreast is a bit creaky and stagey to the modern viewer accustomed to fast moving special effects. It is redeemed, however, by the quality of Bowen’s writing: the dialogue is sharp and the characters (brittle Norah in particular) so convincingly delineated that disbelief is willingly suspended, just about, for most of the time. There were some moments that were truly terrifying. And there’s always something particularly enjoyable about the timehonoured rituals of television terror – their few real surprises being part of their pleasurable Sunday night cosiness. When screen locals talk of Harvest Festival, the seasoned viewer twigs immediately that they really mean something hideous incorporating corn dollies, pitchforks and human sacrifice.

‘Next March, war with Iran, are you free?’

W I RELESS valerie grove

In the last century, on the day LBC went on air (8th October 1973), I was there to cover its first day for the Evening Standard. Under the headline ‘Sound of Newzak’ I said the pitfall of this new station was that 24 hours of talking heads is not an exciting formula and news bulletins every ten minutes would get on one’s nerves. (I also ticked off a newscaster for saying ‘protadgonist’). Fronting the breakfast show were Paul Callan and Janet Street-Porter – an inspired pairing: ‘He sounding walrusmoustached and monocled, she with her hot-potato-in-the-mouth.’ More callers objected to Street-Porter’s streetporterish Cockney accent than anything else that day. But there seemed no end, I reported, to the supply of listeners ringing in, day and night. Forty years on there is still no end to the phoners-in, and LBC has just gone nationwide, labelling itself ‘Leading Britain’s Conversation’. Gillian Reynolds, doyenne of wireless commentators, thinks highly of the LBC morning programme’s front man, Nick Ferrari (who trained on Kelvin MacKenzie’s Sun) so I listened in. Ferrari, a fat fellow, has a richly-timbred voice, but his prog seemed to me reminiscent of the Radio 4 spoof Down the Line: mostly right-wing rants about immigrants, interspersed with hectic ads for new bathrooms and windscreen repairs. Ferrari interrupts his callers with ‘Briefly, please’ or a spuriously sympathetic ‘Ah, sorry mate,’ if someone rings in with a sob story. I did catch an edition of Call Clegg, part of the Ferrari show on Thursdays. But for a politician to arrest our attention on air, he must have oodles of audible character. Denis Healey used to have it, but now only Boris has; certainly not Clegg. Gillian says what all audiences want is the company. ‘Think of the voices, the personalities you switch on for. Count them. I bet you don’t get beyond seven or eight fingers. The art of sounding close, companionable, trustworthy, is rare.’

THE OLDIE – April 2014

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REVIEWS

TELEVISION RICHARD INGRAMS

One difficulty facing the producers of Coronation Street these days is that events in the real world featuring the stars of the long-running soap have become more interesting if not more sensational than anything the scriptwriters can think up. A few months ago Michael Le Vell, who plays garageowner Kevin Webster, was up in court charged with sex offences then finally acquitted in September. A few weeks later the Street’s oldest living inhabitant, 82-year-old William Roache, alias Ken Barlow, followed him into the dock to answer abuse allegations from five separate women. He too was acquitted.

and only as a result of meeting the star Anne Reid at our Oldie of the Year awards lunch (see page 54). She is far and away the best thing about the series and there are any number of touching moments featuring her ‘Indian summer’ romance with fellow oldie Derek Jacobi. But an oldie romance was not considered enough to sustain a longrunning series, so each of the partners was provided with a dysfunctional family, thus allowing themes of adultery, lesbianism, alcoholism, suicide, etc – the traditional subject matter of the degraded modern soap opera such as Corrie – to be introduced and played for all they are worth. ’Appen it’s a shame. The BBC must be pleased by the success of Last Tango if only because they have so little to be pleased about these days. Scarcely a day goes past without a well-aimed volley of ridicule or abuse directed at those in charge. Yet the solution is obvious. The BBC can only survive if it cuts itself down to size, abolishing all unnecessary extravagance like the 24/7 news channel. You can tell how strapped the BBC is for real news by the way the bulletins are padded out with non-news items – advice about pensions, a little-known novelist interviewed about his new book (repeated twice!). The channel won my prize for the worst bit of reporting during the recent flood crisis when BBC man Chris Eakin asked a senior citizen through the window of his flooded house if it hadn’t been a mistake to build a canal between two rows of houses. ‘Actually the canal was here first,’ the old boy replied. Sarah Lancashire as barmaid Raquel Watts in Coronation Street (1994)

The last time Roache was in court was when he famously brought an action for libel against a newspaper which had accused him of being boring. He had made the mistake of consulting the infamous solicitor Peter Carter-Ruck who assured him he could win record damages. Although he won the case he had to pay record costs and was bankrupted. In the dear dead days when I watched Coronation Street the beautiful blonde barmaid at the Rovers Return was Sarah Lancashire. She reappears now in the BBC’s popular series Last Tango in Halifax which has a great deal in common with the Granada soap. Like the Street it is set ‘oop North’ and there are even a few ‘’appens’ in the script. I have come to it late in the day on DVD

PHOTO COURTESY OF REX/ITV

I agree, so I abandoned Ferrari for Andrew Marr and co, followed by the Book of the Week, Barbara Taylor’s The Last Asylum, fabulously read by Maggie Steed. Hers is a voice to stop you in your tracks. Tweet of the Day might win a Broadcasting Press Guild award this year, in recognition of its novelty. (We were all captivated by the bird that says OOOOH! just like Frankie Howerd.) But nobody will take much notice: only recipients of television awards get emblazoned on front pages. Everyone listens to radio, yet it is marginalised by the small screen. We do now have Audio Drama awards – with Bafta-style ceremony, and a reception at the Radio Theatre. But they don’t yet seem to reap press coverage, paparazzi, or promotion. And if you look on the BBC website for the prizewinning plays you missed, you find the usual refrain: ‘No longer available on iPlayer’. If only all radio plays and features were stored accessibly, and retrievable in perpetuity. I seethe, I rage. There must be so much stored away in some cloud above the ether. The Afternoon Drama on St Valentine’s Day was radio gold. John Banville was the writer of Bowen and Betjeman, set in 1942 in the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin, where Elizabeth Bowen and John Betjeman might have met for lunch. An opportunity for two aural impersonations. Toby Jones (a marvellous actor, son of Freddie) caught exactly Betjeman’s toothy, mischievous manner (‘Look here, let’s have some wine!’) and Miranda Richardson was idiosyncratically hesitant as Bowen. There were also cameo parodies of Isaiah Berlin, Goronwy Rees, Maurice Bowra and Rosamond Lehmann: I wonder how many listeners would appreciate their accuracy? The play was meticulously directed by Gemma McMullan. Finally, news of two of The Oldie’s favourite grand dames. The gracious Jocelyn Hay, who founded the Voice of the Listener pressure group thirty years ago to stop Radio 4 becoming a newsonly network, has been much mourned, at 86: without her intervention we’d have lost so much. And Dame Ann Leslie’s tales of old gropers, apropos Lord Rennard, have been much replayed: on PM, she was just saying (of Sir Nicholas Fairbairn) ‘And he put his hand on my crotch’ when Eddie Mair stepped in: ‘On that bombshell, Dame Ann Leslie, I think we’ll leave it there.’

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REVIEWS

FILM

MARCUS BERKMANN

August: Osage County (15) is what they used to call a women’s film, mainly because it actually has some women in it. We’re in dusty, baking Oklahoma in a house in the middle of nowhere, where Sam Shepard (boozy old poet) and Meryl Streep (pill-popping wife) pass the empty days with all the blinds drawn down, day and night. It’s an American vision of domestic hell, but Shepard perks things up by taking his motorboat out on the nearest lake and leaping over the side with his pockets weighted down. Family members flock back for the funeral. There’s Julia Roberts, waspchewingly furious daughter married to Ewan McGregor. There’s Juliette Lewis, skittish rock ’n’ roll daughter who brings along her latest useless beau. The third daughter is Julianne Nicholson, the quiet, put-upon one who never really left. Margo Martindale and Chris Cooper are the blousy sister and her husband, and good grief! is that not Benedict Cumberbatch, as the even quieter, more put-upon young cousin everyone bullies remorsely? After the service they all go back to the house for lunch, and the fun really begins. Films based on successful plays often have a slightly claustrophobic feel, and this is no exception. Meryl turns out to be off her trolley on assorted

Domestic hell: Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep in August: Osage County

medicaments and has several scores to settle. Her character has had cancer and has chemo-hair under a luxuriant black wig; although everybody else sweats unceasingly, she actually looks a bit chilly. But though frail in body, she is fuelled by a terrible rage. Who of her relatives will be the first to crack and give her a good thump? Events inevitably loosen tongues, and over the next day or so a number of family secrets dribble out. Screenwriter Tracy Letts (male, by all accounts) gives his starry cast some

‘Perhaps you should stop listening to the Today programme’

crackling dialogue and a rare opportunity to look as unglamorous as possible. Julia Roberts’s roots haven’t been done and everyone needs at least one shower and a change of clothes. But you always know where the film is going, and its downbeat, rather theatrical ending will remind you of countless plays you have seen over the years. There’s nothing like cliché to deaden the big feelings you were quite looking forward to having. It’s still a better film than American Hustle. Osage County is all browns and beiges, while Inside Llewyn Davis, set in the early 1960s, is mainly dark brown and grey. I’m a great fan of the Coen brothers’ films, and this is the first one for some time I didn’t enjoy. Oscar Isaac plays Llewyn, a folk singer trying to make it in the pre-Dylan folk scene in New York and, it’s clear from the first frame, doomed to failure. He is too intense, his beard is too dark, and his rather lovely songs are a dozen years too early. Every mistake he could make, he makes, and then makes again a bit later. All the Coen signatures are here – supporting actors with craggy faces, apparently random events adding up to a picaresque plot, moments of high comedy distracting you briefly from the film’s underlying gloom – but the atmosphere is stifling. After a while I realised I was just sitting there waiting for it to end.

T H E AT R E PAUL BAILEY

There is a scene towards the end of King Lear in which the blinded Gloucester and his outcast son Edgar are finally reunited. In Sam Mendes’s production at the Olivier Theatre, Stephen Boxer and Tom Brooke play it with a tenderness that is deeply affecting. Nothing that precedes or follows it attains a comparable authenticity. Mendes has set the tragedy in something like a police state, ruled over initially by Lear and his sinister attendants. Given that King Lear is, in essence, a domestic drama, that parallel with Gaddafi’s Libya, say, or Tito’s Yugoslavia is rendered irrelevant as soon as Regan and Goneril get into their nasty stride. For the first hour or so, Simon Russell Beale offers us not so much a king, born to command respect, as a strutting despot, bellowing orders into a microphone. He is clad in black leather. Why is it that black leather is meant to indicate depths of evil or satanic sexual practices? The answer is that it’s a cliché, and like all theatrical clichés it has served its time and is ready to be scrapped. It could be said that Simon Russell Beale is the cleverest actor in Britain. Last year he excelled as the camp Captain Terri in Privates on Parade, revelling in the impersonations of Carmen Miranda and Vera Lynn, and as Timon in Timon of Athens, whom he played as a City mogul brought low by wealth and flattery. These fine impersonations were notable for their fidelity to the characters, investing each with tics and mannerisms that registered as natural. As Lear, however, his cleverness is everywhere apparent. His performance is a masterclass in Great Acting. It solicits admiration, but it doesn’t engage the heart. I wanted – as I didn’t want with Donald Wolfit, Paul Scofield, Robert Stephens and John Wood – the carers to come on and cart him off to a comfy hospice. Mendes does contrive something similar near the end, with nurses tending him in an Intensive Care Unit, but a contrivance it remains.

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To return to my praise for Stephen Boxer as Gloucester and Tom Brooke as Edgar, it is they who make the evening memorable, and there has to be a message in that observation. Sam Troughton is suitably unpleasant as Edmund, but Kate Fleetwood (Goneril) and Anna Maxwell Martin (Regan) seemed to be auditioning for a Hammer horror movie. Genuinely great acting, of a kind that is rarely on display, can be found in Richard Eyre’s production and adaptation of Ibsen’s Ghosts at Trafalgar Studios. Lesley Manville as Mrs Alving is the frustrated, lonely and unhappy woman to the very life. Her voice is quiet, her speech measured, before she gives expression, both physical and vocal, to her unhappiness. I remember Peggy Ashcroft and Irene Worth in the same part, but Lesley Manville is more than their equal.

This is a Lear for the psychiatric ward, a case history rather than a terrifyingly flawed and helpless human being. It is commonly assumed that Shakespearean acting fifty years or more ago was a barnstormimg affair, with lines declaimed rather than spoken. Things are meant to be better now. I am old enough to recognise ham when I see it, and Stanley Townsend, whose Kent has been much praised, offers it up in kilos. When in doubt, SHOUT might be his motto. There’s a great deal of shouting in the theatre these days, especially when essential information has to be conveyed. In that respect, nothing much has changed. The only difference is in the interpretation of parts such as Hamlet and Macbeth, among others, where mumbling is assumed to be closer to real life than accomplished verse-speaking.

She is surrounded by an excellent cast, with Adam Kotz as a chilling Pastor Manders and Jack Lowden a tormented Oswald. There is a single claustrophobic set and the play runs without an interval,

Lesley Manville and Jack Lowden in Ghosts

which makes perfect dramatic sense. I was moved and enthralled. There is nothing better, or more subtle, on the London stage at the moment.

OLDIE MASTERS

A Guide to Neglected Artists No. 153 Christopher Pemberton (1923–2010) Hugh Trevor-Roper (2003) Pencil. 69 x 53.5 cms. Provenance: the artist’s estate

This is a description of Christopher Pemberton drawing by one of his Camberwell School of Art pupils: ‘He started a drawing next to mine on the paper. He worked at a steady pace to start with but gradually speeded up, then stopped and took off his jacket, started again building up the drawing in quick spurts – dots and quick lines dashing about, stopped again, took off his sleeveless jumper to reveal braces, loosened his tie and off he went again. Gradually the marks accumulated to make a beautifully sensitive, knotty drawing of the figure. He then breathed an exasperated sigh and said “Well, I can’t do it either.”’

From Abbott and Holder, 30 Museum Street, London WC1A 1LH Telephone: 020 7637 3981 Fax: 020 7631 0575 Email: gallery@abbottandholder.co.uk Website: www.abbottandholder.co.uk

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REVIEWS

GARDENING DAVID WHEELER

Viburnum carlesii

At some expense (for they are not cheap) I have found daphnes too iffy on our soil. It’s a pity, as the genus contains plants that emit some of nature’s most exquisite perfume. Their tiny flowers – from a yellowish apple green through purply pink to pure white – are generally small, proving that a flower doesn’t need to be the size of a cabbage rose to excite our olfactory glands. Other floral diminutives can be found among winter- and spring-flowering shrubby honeysuckles, evergreen osmanthus and some of the bone-hardy viburnums that deserve a place in every garden. A quartet of, say, Lonicera fragrantissima, Sarcococca confusa, Osmanthus x burkwoodii and Viburnum carlesii – bought for well under £35 anywhere except the classic rip-off joints – will steam away in some shady corner like a Provençal perfume distillery on frenzied overtime. Underplant them with a few similarly shade-loving violets (troublefree Viola odorata, for example, that will spread agreeably over the years) and you have the source of non-stop fragrance from New Year to Easter and beyond. As the new RHS Botany for Gardeners (Mitchell Beazley, £14.99) puts it, the scent – the evaporating volatile compounds – of many winter-flowering and cold-season plants can be so very strong because of

the scarcity of pollinating insects at that time of the year, forcing them to produce flowers that must ‘advertise themselves as widely as possible to attract pollinators from far away’. April, we know, can bring days of Arctic chill just as easily – and misleadingly – as periods of balmy warmth that make you think picnics. Plants, like us, must somehow cope with these extremes and there are more than enough thoroughly tried and tested examples to satisfy the most discriminating gardeners. My own modest collection of viburnums never fails, coming into their visual and fragrant glory right now. In addition to the aforementioned V. carlesii I cherish the closely related V. carlcephalum which, bred in the early 1930s, has been around just about as long as the average Oldie reader – but we mustn’t speculate whether said reader is equally sweetsmelling. V. x judii (also with carlesii blood) is an even older sweetie, raised in the USA in 1920 by one William Judd, a propagator at the Arnold Arboretum on the outskirts of Boston, Mass. Its pinktinted flowers last through April and into May, pleasing our nostrils until it’s almost time to bend much closer to the ground to catch a whiff of the fabulous clove-scented pinks (Dianthus species) that flower right through the summer months. Skimmia fragrance is often overlooked: they are planted merely for their welltempered evergreen bulk. Skimmia japonica ‘Fragrans’ smells of lily-of-thevalley, while richly scented S. x confusa is the best in show. Mahonia japonica is a tough and virtually indestructible shrub with frilly, holly-like evergreen leaves. It also has a knockout perfume that fills the air for yards around, inclining me to think of it as the plant world’s boxer in drag. It seldom outgrows an allotted space of about three feet in each direction, but if and when it intrudes too boisterously on its neighbour I cut it to the ground and watch with delight as it regains its presence –and its pollen-laden flowers – within just a year or two. It was such a mahonia and its honey-scented waftings below my open bedroom window that charted the lengthening days of April and May a while ago as I lay recuperating from serious illness. It’s not too fanciful to say that the mahonia’s magnificent propulsion was pulling me out of despondency, directing me towards recovery. Plants do have that ability – but you can’t say so on the label.

E X P AT

derek parker

Australia So that’s another Australia Day over and gone. The last community barbecue has cooled, the last outdoor concert is over, the last tot has won the last children’s race, the last glimmer of the largest firework display in the world has dimmed over Perth. In Sydney the crowds have left the foreshore, the now elderly ferries have resumed normal service after their traditional race down the harbour, the Australian of the Year (an Aboriginal footballer) has been appointed and the last of several thousand immigrants, having taken the oath of allegiance, can call him or herself a New Australian. Everyone has had a good time. But Australia Day has never been free from controversy, and persistent, often shrill voices are heard demanding change – this year, perhaps, more than ever. The anniversary is of the day – 26th January 1788 – when Captain Arthur Phillip led his little flotilla into ‘the finest harbour in the world’ and in the name of King George III proclaimed British sovereignty over New Holland. Within twenty years it had become customary to celebrate the date with ‘drinking and merriment’; in 1818 it became ‘Foundation Day’; and on the fiftieth anniversary the first public holiday was declared, with fifty guns fired as the Royal Standard was raised and the first official display of fireworks. It was, the Governor said,

‘There’s a free arm band with every copy Sir!’

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REVIEWS

MEMO R I A L

james hughes-onslow

Roger Lloyd Pack (1944–2014)

STARS of the TV comedy Only Fools and Horses, including Sir David Jason (Del Boy), Nicholas Lyndhurst (Rodney), John Challis and Sue Holderness turned out at St Paul’s Covent Garden to say farewell to Roger Lloyd Pack, who played the dim-witted road-sweeper Trigger in the series. Nigel Havers, Gwyneth Strong, Vanessa Redgrave and Joely Richardson were also in the packed congregation at the Actors’ Church. Broadcaster and actor Richard Hayward, who knew him from childhood and from RADA, recalled 65 years of friendship, his gift of laughter, family holidays in Scotland and Sussex and theatre visits to Stratford. ‘We saw Hugh Griffith as Falstaff,’ he said. ‘We were still imitating him a few months ago.’ Actor Ken Cranham, another RADA contemporary from fifty years ago, told how they both fancied themselves as members of the ‘in crowd’ but Roger didn’t like being recognised and wore a Worzel Gummidge hat as a disguise. ‘It didn’t work, though,’ he said. ‘We once went to Iceland to see the Northern Lights. We were in the outer suburbs of Reykjavik when we saw a woman some distance away in a blizzard. She came up and said “All right, Dave?”’ ‘He was a cultured, well-read, old-

school left winger, a Shelley Romantic whose politics stemmed from the fact that he saw beauty everywhere and was heartbroken by the idea that some human beings connived to rob others of the chance to enjoy such things,’ said Dan Carrier, a journalist on the Camden New Journal who went with him to Spurs matches. ‘Fans would ask him for a photograph and he found it all very embarrassing. I wondered why it bothered him and realised he was strangely shy for an actor. He hated the idea of celebrity and the strange concept that just because you’d been on the telly you were somehow more important than the person standing next to you.’ BBC cricket commentator Jonathan Agnew, who occasionally shared a cake with the actor in the TMS box at Lord’s, read ‘Cricket in Heaven’ by Roger’s youngest son Louis Lloyd Pack. Widow Jehane Markham read her own poem, ‘On That Day it was Raining’ and her sister Kika Markham sang Brahms’s ‘Lullaby’. Daughter Emily Lloyd read ‘On Death’ by Kahlil Gibran, and cellist Melissa Phelps played ‘Prayer’ from Ernest Bloch’s From Jewish Life, perhaps in memory of Roger’s Jewish mother who fled from the Nazis. Family friend Sam Lee sang a traditional song, ‘The Tan Yard Side’, Roger’s brother Christopher read a moving and affectionate letter from eldest son Spencer Lloyd Pack to his father, and middle son Hartley read a poem. The Vagabond Trills, led by Tallulah Brown, sang ‘The Water is Wide’. The hymns were ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘Amazing Grace’. The vicar, Simon Grigg, called for a standing ovation, as he always does.

‘I was expecting someone taller’ April 2014 – THE OLDIE

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Photo courtesy of: REX/Richard Saker

Australia Day – ‘a day for everyone’. Yet the indigenous inhabitants of the country were not invited to celebrate. ‘Australia’ was not, it seemed, for them. In any case they had little cause for celebration. The arrival of the First Fleet resulted not only in the confiscation of their land and the denial of their culture, but the death of whole tribes from the diseases brought by the Europeans. For a century and a half they silently looked on as the white Australians celebrated ‘the lucky country’, but in 1938 they began, quietly, to protest, naming Australia Day an Aboriginal Day of Mourning. Gradually their opposition grew stronger: January 26th became ‘Invasion Day’, then in 1992 ‘Survival Day’, celebrating the fact that despite two hundred years of at best indifference and at worst physical oppression, they had somehow contrived to retain their identity and culture. ‘Australia Day’ is still enthusiastically celebrated by the overwhelming majority of Australians – it’s a great family day out – but the pressure for change grows, and not always quietly. This year, two days before the anniversary, literally miles of graffiti messages were sprayed, painted or chalked over fences, hoardings and buildings in all the major cities, calling ‘shame’ on the country for celebrating the 1788 invasion. As usual, extremists did themselves no good – defacing for instance the reconstructed cottage of Captain Cook’s parents as though the fact that Cook bumped into the continent more or less by accident made him responsible for the death of Aborigine culture. Australia Day may be too entrenched to disappear in the near future, but other events will put pressure on it. The move to recognise Aboriginal Australians in the nation’s Constitution will shortly be satisfied; there is popular pressure to remove the Union Jack from the Australian flag, replacing it perhaps with an aboriginal symbol. There will almost certainly be change when Australia finally makes up its mind to cut its links with Britain and become a republic. No nation can change its past, and at present the nostalgic link to the Crown is stronger than it has been for many years; but fifty years of Australian history is probably equivalent to a couple of centuries in European history, and while it may have taken a couple of hundred years for Britons to stop complaining about those pesky Normans who came over in 1066 and changed everything, things may move more quickly here.

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REVIEWS

RUGBY brian moore

The reason why the Six Nations Championship stands out as the premier international competition in world rugby is not because it produces the best standard of rugby; that accolade goes to the Southern Hemisphere’s Rugby Championship. It is because it never fails to surprise. At the time of writing, last year’s Wooden Spoon winners, France, sit atop the table, with Wales, last year’s Grand Slam Champions, fighting to rescue their season. Add to that the titanic home games for England against Ireland and Wales and you get a sense of how this very short event galvanises the imagination of the rugby public. Each year it is the unenviable task of a rugby writer to predict a final table, and though forced at metaphorical gunpoint to do this it remains the one task I loathe above all. Why? Because I, and to be fair everyone else, just never get it right. Common wisdom is that the French tend to do well in the Championship that follows a British and Irish Lions tour, and it is looking that way again. The claims of post-tour fatigue should not hold this time as the relevant players have been given a decent rest period, nevertheless Wales, who provided the majority of the tour squad, have looked strangely indolent. I suppose what you cannot measure is the mental lassitude that can affect players who play under the highest pressure for long periods. Given the proximity of the 2015 Rugby World Cup (RWC), this year’s form has greater significance because ideally, a team wanting to make a serious challenge at the RWC will have its starting XV pretty much set. This is probably the last chance an uncapped player has to make a team and be ready for the RWC; left any later and they do not have enough time to be ready for the biggest rugby stage. Ireland and Wales are close to this but England, in part due to injuries, still have to find a settled back line to

augment what is starting to look like a handy set of forwards. England’s failure to find a settled centre pairing since 2003 is the single factor that will hamper their development, and Coach Stuart Lancaster has to find a favoured combination and stick to it, whatever its strengths and weaknesses. At this point the rugby has been of an indifferent standard, but that will certainly change with the combination of games still to be played. It is arguably the most open Championship for some years and is better for that fact. The denouement will be dramatic, as it often is, and only a fool would bet his wife on the outcome.

‘I’ll read you the symptoms on my list. Shout “Bingo” when you get a line’

Whilst traditional favourites are going about their business, the focus on the performances of Italy and, more importantly, Scotland, has intensified. Scotland’s performances have been so poor that some are questioning whether they should be there at all. This is bound up in a wider debate about expanding rugby in the Northern Hemisphere to give emerging, and swiftly improving, nations the chance to play in the premier international competition. A true meritocracy would see several subsidiary championships with automatic promotion and relegation, and ultimately, that is the only way that emerging nations can become selfsufficient and end reliance on hand-outs from the International Rugby Board. Though plainly right, this democratic approach will be resisted fiercely by countries that fear relegation would become permanent. All they have on their side is the emotive ‘This is a tournament of tradition’ argument. Even this might not be enough unless their standards improve.

C OO K ER Y ELISABETH LUARD

Forty days of Lent, a period of abstinence conveniently popped into the church calendar at a time of year when spring is not yet sprung and there’s not much left in the winter store cupboard, is an opportunity as well as a penance – a good reason to join the lentil and rice brigade as a temporary vegetarian. Abstinence from meat and sweet things is good for the waistline as well as the soul. For this you will need The Dal Cookbook by Krishna Dutta (Grub Street, £16.99). Elegantly produced, with paisley borders to each page, it’s a pleasure to read as well as use, delivering all you need to know about a protein-rich food which comes in as many shapes and colours as there are dodgy cardinals in the Curia. While Indian cooks can choose among some 60 varieties of pulses – and many of their dal recipes combine three or four for texture and flavour – the commonest varieties are readily and cheaply available in supermarkets and Indian grocers. Ms Dutta says that masoor dal (red lentils) are the first choice for beginners. Most familiar to western cooks are chana dal, yellow split peas also known as gram dal. Moong dal are small mung beans, dark green when left whole but yellow when skinned and split. Arhar dal, also known as toor or toovar, are yellow pigeon peas hulled and split. Urad dal are small, black, ovoid pulses, off-white when hulled and split. Matar dal are yellow split peas of the matar variety also sold fresh as gunga or Congo peas. Brown and green lentils, chickpeas and red kidney beans belong to the same group of high-protein storable pulses

‘It does nought to sixty in three days'

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which, together with rice or flatbreads, provide the staple diet of the Indian subcontinent. Eight ounces of dal requires about three times its own volume of water to soften to a puree. Cooking time varies from 20 to 40 minutes, depending on type and age, though if the dal are very old and hard, pre-soak in hot water to swell. Don’t add salt, tomatoes or anything acid till the end of cooking, or the dal won’t soften properly. Flavourings which aid digestibility are asafoetida, cumin, ginger and black pepper. As a general rule, the cooking of northern India is rich in spices; the south prefers to flavour with sour tamarind and coconut milk, eastern Indians like their food delicately spiced, while western Indians like it fiery with chilli. Punjabi masoor dal This simple one-pot dish is the midday meal of the Punjab’s hardworking peasantry. Ghee (clarified butter) can be made by melting ordinary butter and discarding the milky residue which drops to the bottom. Serves 4 to 6 with rice and flatbreads. • 1 lb masoor dal (whole red lentils) • thumb-sized piece fresh ginger, finely grated • 2 or 3 garlic cloves, crushed • 4 green chillies, seeded and sliced • 2 tablespoons ghee • 1 large onion, finely chopped • 1 teaspoon garam masala • salt To finish • 2 tablespoons single cream or natural yoghurt (forked to blend) • 2 or 3 spring onions, chopped Cook the dal with the ginger, garlic and chillis in a roomy pan in about 1½ pints water till mushy, allowing about half an hour and adding more boiling water if necessary. Mash with a wooden spoon to a creamy consistency. Meanwhile, heat the ghee in a heavy frying pan and fry the onion till light brown (sprinkle with a little salt to get the juices running). Add the garam masala and fry for another half minute to release the fragrance. Stir the contents of the pan into the dal as soon as it’s ready. Taste and add salt. Finish with a swirl of cream or yoghurt and a sprinkling of spring onion. This is a very basic recipe, so feel free to improvise. Possible additions are cauliflower florets, shredded greens, diced carrot and chopped tomatoes (don’t add these till the dal is perfectly soft).

H O M E F R ON T ALICE PITMAN

AFTER a prolonged four-month stay in various NHS hospitals, the Aged P is now a resident of Whiteley Village retirement home (a big thank you to brilliant brother-in-law George for finding it). Hidden away behind the pines and rhododendrons of the Surrey stockbroker belt just over the road from St George’s Hill (bolt-hole for today’s Russian oligarchs and three of the Beatles in the 1960s), Whiteley is a small corner of England preserved in aspic from the first half of the twentieth century. The buildings are a fine example of the Arts and Crafts architectural movement, with dear little almshouses for those on limited means, its own dairy, church, village hall, shop and even a museum. The Aged P is in the nursing home, where the standard of care is excellent. The Village was founded over a hundred years ago as the result of a £1m bequest made by William Whiteley, the founder of the eponymous department store in West London. During its heyday in the 1890s, Whiteleys employed over 6,000 staff. Mr Whiteley dubbed himself ‘The Universal Provider’ and boasted that anything from a pin to an elephant could be purchased at his store. The Universal Provider’s imposing statue in the pleasant village grounds portrays a typical beaming philanthropic Victorian entrepreneur (from Yorkshire, like the Aged P) complete with an

impressive set of mutton chop whiskers and a twinkle in the eye. ‘Good old Mr Whiteley’ is still reverently referred to by appreciative oldies of Whiteley Village. Yet further research reveals that Mr W was in fact a disgraceful old rogue whose serial assaults on shop girls make today’s high profile celebrity gropers look like paragons of decency (excluding the odious Savile). In her second week at her new abode, the Aged P suddenly remembered why his name was vaguely familiar to her. In 1907 William Whiteley was shot dead by a 29-year-old man of impecunious means claiming to be his illegitimate son (judging by the old boy’s philandering, I expect he was probably right). She had written about the crime for The Encyclopaedia of Murder back in 1961. This pleased her so much it made the unsettling move from her Surbiton house where she has lived since 1977 to her little room in the Village easier to cope with. ‘Shot in the head twice,’ she told mildly astonished staff. ‘Died instantly.’ Alas, at the time of writing, the poor Aged P is back in hospital after breaking her hip. She had just finished watching horrid Piers Morgan interview Mary Berry on the TV (enough to make anyone keel over), stood up to prepare for bed and came over all funny. St Peter’s in Chertsey won’t discharge her until her blood pressure stabilises. Determined not to let this latest setback lower her spirits, she makes the nurses laugh and reminisces to me and my sister about the past. Today it was the time she and my father stayed in Harold Wilson’s bungalow in the Scilly Isles in 1962: ‘I looked through the kitchen window one morning and saw the most enormous rat rummaging through his bins.’ She wishes she had kept Wilson’s household instructions written in tiny, immaculate script. (‘I liked Mary. Didn’t care for him very much.’)

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WINE

Bill Knott on wine This month’s mixed case from Waitrose is offered to Oldie readers for £99 including UK delivery – a saving of £36.88 on the RRP of £135.88

had an intriguing invitation a couple of months ago: the opportunity to go hunting for truffles in the Spanish region of Somontano. This interested me for two reasons: firstly, because it had never occurred to me that Spain might be blessed with truffles, and secondly because I had no idea where Somontano was. Given its linguistic connection with Piedmont I could, perhaps, have guessed that Somontano would be somewhere in the foothills of the Pyrenees. What I was not prepared for was just how beautiful this hidden corner of Spain is. We stayed in a glorious village called Alquézar, perched on a limestone outcrop above the Rio Vero valley. Our young truffle hound managed to unearth a few precious black diamonds; augmented by several other specimens, and shaved lavishly over the creations of a local chef, they made a splendid supper. The wines were a revelation. Somontano has an extreme climate: snow-covered hills in January, fiercely hot sun in August. The natives, I was told, describe the climate as ‘nine months of winter and three months of hell’: not a slogan that would find favour with the local tourist board, I suspect, although the weather seems to have a particularly benign effect on the Garnacha vines. The same phrase has also been applied to La Rioja, Madrid and the Douro Valley, to name but three. All I can say is that, on a gloriously sunny February day in the vineyards, with lamb chops grilling over vine wood and a glass of red wine in hand, gazing at the snowcapped Pyrenees, there were few places in the world I would rather have been. Our hosts were González Byass, the winemakers best known for Tio Pepe, the classic fino sherry made 700 or so miles to the southwest, in Andalucía. They own vineyards in

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Somontano, too: our barbecue was in the Secastilla vineyard, where the ancient Garnacha bush vines produce low yields of wonderfully dense and brambly red wine. Spanish specialists Vinissimus (www.vinissimus.co.uk) stock the 2008 for a hefty £20.56, but, for a special occasion, I heartily recommend it. González Byass also make what the trade calls ‘entry level’ (i.e. cheaper) wines under the Viñas del Vero label: the heady, floral Gewürztraminer is available at Majestic (www.majestic.co.uk, £9.99), while Ocado (www.ocado.com) and Vinissimus both stock several others. This month’s offer, in conjunction with Waitrose, features two bottles of a delightful white from Viñas del Vero, from an unusual blend of Chardonnay, Macabeo (the grape known as Viura in Rioja) and Sauvignon Blanc. You will also find a familiar claret, a Rioja in the modern style, an elegant Aussie white, an Austrian of Alpine purity, and a richly rewarding red from the Rhône. As they say in Somontano, salud!

Barranco, Viñas del Vero, Somontano, Spain 2012, RRP £7.99 Barranco means ‘ravine’ in Spanish, giving a clue to the Pyreneean provenance of this characterful but easy-drinking white: perfect as an aperitif, or perhaps – for the full Somontano effect – with roast chicken, some slices of truffle slipped under its skin before cooking. Samson’s Range Sauvignon Blanc Semillon, Plantagenet, Western Australia 2011, RRP £9.99 I featured Plantagenet’s excellent Shiraz/Cabernet blend last summer: this medium-bodied white shows similar winemaking skill. Tangy flavours of grapefruit and herbs, a little bit of weight on the palate and a long, clean finish.

Terraces, Grüner Veltliner, Domäne Wachau, Austria 2012, RRP £9.99 Grüner Veltliner is fast becoming a UK favourite, perhaps because there is a new generation of wine drinkers that doesn’t remember the antifreeze scandal of the mid-1980s. This example has splendidly pure apple and citrus fruit and just a hint of white pepper. Beronia, Rioja, Spain 2009, RRP £12.99 Like Viñas del Vero, another bodega owned by González Byass: here on top form with a modern-style, fruit-laden Rioja Reserva. Time spent in the bottle has turned its tannins silk-smooth, making it a deeply satisfying glass on its own, as well as with hearty stews. Esprit de Puisseguin, St-Emilion, Bordeaux, France 2011, RRP £12.99 The 2010 vintage of this plummy, smooth, elegant claret was part of last April’s offer: the 2011 is every bit as good, perhaps a little lighter and more perfumed. Sunday lunch cries out for it. Les Gravières, Crozes Hermitage, Jean-Luc Colombo, France 2012, RRP £13.99 From one of the best-known winemakers in the northern Rhône, a richlystructured Syrah with layers of dark, dense hedgerow fruit. Drinking very well now, especially with food, but will keep for ages should you be in a patient mood.

HOW TO ORDER Order online at www.waitrosedirect.com (enter ‘Oldie’ in search box). NB this is offer ‘Oldie issue 307’. Or call 0800 188 881 (quoting ‘Oldie issue 307’). Lines open 8am–10pm Monday to Friday, 8am–9pm Saturday, 9am–7pm Sunday. Delivery is free to all UK postcodes, but orders for delivery to the Highlands, Islands and some parts of Northern Ireland cannot be made online. To order for these areas, please call 08456 100 304, 9am–5.30pm Monday to Friday.

NB offer closes 31st March

«The Oldie takes no commission on this offer to ensure that our readers get the best deal«

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Genius crossword 307 by Antico Each of nine clues contains a misprinted letter in the definition part; corrections of misprints spell the name of the author of a ten-word quotation reading clockwise in the perimeter from a square to be deduced. In twenty-two clues, cryptic indications omit reference to parts of the answers to be entered in the grid; these parts should be shaded in to reveal the name of the person to whom the quotation refers.

Across

8 Referring to flag now out (6) 9 Calm partner holding ace (5) 10 Quiet call to drop out (2) 11 Fish ends in the fridge (3) 13 Not bothered by work ahead (2,3) 15 Joint denial reversed (4) 16 Fiver acceptable in time (4) 17 Botham? Not available to return (3) 18 Path of a toy altered (7) 21 Sound of cat, I declare, lacking volume (5) 23 Mass alien conveyed (3) 26 Energy in dry experiment (4) 27 Strengthen church after support (5) 29 Very absorbed by notice about town in Roman Britain (4) 31 Insure force going west (3) 32 Custom involving northern lichen (5) 34 Links up stories about Iceland (7) 37 Page with current turnover? (3) 38 Rust’s beginning in poor nail (4) 40 Leaders of note against tide (4) 41 Broad bridge carrying weight (5) 44 Female sorry in retreat (3) 46 Measure even parts of veins (2) 47 That is it, after drag (2,3) 48 Smooth sign broken by gun (6)

Down

1 Answer about housing estate’s first period (4) 2 Cover old pool (4) 3 Shelter from terrible enemy (3) 4 Nothing caught by brown claw (5) 5 Hungarian woman, tranquil one in part (5) 6 Start to mull over whatever upset bird (4) 7 Party following cues changed monetary unit (6) 12 See ray oddly missing small region of ionosphere (1,5) 14 Some collect wooden lumber (3) 17 Feet as separated by doctor (5) 19 Work in verge round edges of drive (3) 20 Tax obligation consuming time (5) 22 Country without a lemur (5) 24 Side losing English cap (3) 25 Echo raised anger, scary (5) 28 Hundred hail reformed ruler (6) 30 Scene excluding wide struggle (3) 33 Right to enter smart card (6) 35 Mail stamp, not large (3) 36 Familiar noun, personal (5) 37 Father cheers Italian food (5) 39 Lawyer clutching at information (4) 42 Jump river with energy (4) 43 Amount of power lifting marble, tons (4) 45 Sprite in cruel form (3)

Entries to: ‘Crossword 307’ by post (The Oldie, 65 Newman Street, London W1T 3EG), email (editorial@theoldie.co.uk) or fax (020 7436 8804) by 17th April 2014. First prize is the latest edition of the Chambers Dictionary and a cheque for £25. Two runners-up will receive cheques for £15.

Name................................................................................................................... Address............................................................................................................... ............................................................................................................................. ............................................................................................................................. .............................................................................................................................

Moron crossword 307 Across

3 Damage (6) 7 Town in Surrey (5) 8 Centre of target (4) 10 Pivotal line (4) 11 Weightiness (7) 12 Broke (5) 13 Scornfully (13) 16 Accolades (13) 20 Severe (5) 22 Thin, stiff fabric (7) 23 Celebrate (4) 24 Continually (4) 25 Behind (5) 26 Pulse (6)

Genius 305 – solution

Down 1 2 3 4

Stuck (6) Large clippers (6) Annoy (8) Feign lack of interest (4,4,2,3) 5 Wading bird (4) 6 John ______, art critic (6) 9 Fatty substance from wool (7) 14 Detach (7) 15 Essential (8) 17 Bivalve mollusc (6) 18 Decorated (6) 19 Flight of steps (6) 21 Rent (4)

Moron 305 solution Across: 1 Jenner, 4 Vive [Genevieve], 7 Din, 8 Globetrotter, 9 Ale, 10 Glee, 11 Urbanity, 13 Brogue, 15 Oregon, 17 Theorist, 21 Wept, 22 Led, 23 Intelligence, 24 Ray, 25 Easy, 26 Unless. Down: 1 Jugular, 2 Noose, 3 Execute, 4 Viola, 5 Intense, 6 Elect, 7 Drab, 12 Yen, 13 Bet, 14 Gaolers, 15 Octagon, 16 Oppress, 18 Hinge, 19 Relay, 20 Idly, 21 Wince.

LARRY ADLER, leading exponent of the HARMONICA or (as he preferred to call it) MOUTH ORGAN, was born on 10th February 1914. Definitions of links in the chains of five-letter words (TOUGH, THONG, TANGO and LAYER), supplied by extra letters in clues, were difficult, sandal, dance and stratum.

Prizewinners First prize: George Pitcaithly, Rhynd Runners-up: Barry Lowry, Halstead; Jack Shonfield, Keston

April 2014 – THE OLDIE

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BOUTS-RIMES

The Oldie Competition by Tessa Castro

IN COMPETITION NO 173 it was back to bouts-rimés. The rhymes came from the A E Housman verses beginning: ‘For these of old the trader / Unpearled the Indian seas.’ Metre let down quite a few entrants, but many deserved to win even though the challenge was not as easy as it seemed. The most troublesome rhyme word was ‘nard’, and several competitors hoped to adjust it to Cunard, canard, Reynard or even Rennard (the lively peer). Gail White sailed over the jumps with a tale of a Spanish lover. Martin Parker’s subject was a vulpine City trader. Basil Ransome-Davies touched on cannibalism, a surprisingly common theme. The nard attracted some retellings of the anointing of the feet of Jesus. From Patrick Bennett I learnt that matweed is an ingredient of nard. The best of Martin Elster’s entries told of a spaceman’s love for a robot. Commiserations to these, and congratulations to those below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus prize of a Chambers Biographical Dictionary going to Penelope Woolley. Now, by this man (we thought him just a trader) Menelaeus’ queen was borne off o’er the seas. The shame if it! Our pride was at the nadir; Although ’twas whispered she was one of these Who strays – young men became quite pale and haggard From her wiles. The king grew wrathful, ranted, hurled Wild imprecations at the rape: ‘I’m staggered!

SUD|OLD|KU Each row, column and box must contain the numbers 1 to 9. Each number can only appear once in a row, column or box. (Solution next month.) Last month’s solution:

Scurvy Trojans think they own the world! To war! Our honour never must be tarnished! Sharpen up your spears! Away! Away!’ Thus soon our sails were set, our altars garnished, ‘Gods go with you,’ said our wives, as they Watched sadly while the sacrifice was eaten. O the war was long; however you regard The cause, no songs of gallantry could sweeten Corpse-pyres reeking through the scent of nard. Penelope Woolley

I am a Deaths-Head trader And I sailed the seven seas, From the zenith to the nadir, Seeking islands like to these.

Two thousand years ago a Syrian trader hauled into port from battling Eastern seas; his heart was heavy – he had reached his nadir; he’d never known hard times so bad as these. His ship was berthed. With features gaunt and haggard his curses to the gods above he hurled, as to a nearby dockside inn he staggered, swearing his enmity against the world. Sitting hunched o’er a goblet, dull and tarnished, his mind, concerned with debts, was far away but slowly noticed dishes, spiced and garnished, brought to a crowded table: jovial they. A woman entered when the men had eaten, taking no notice of their shocked regard, but knelt before one. With faint smile to sweeten she bathed his feet in contrite tears – and nard. Anne Wild

Who the asphodel have eaten, Live again in high regard, Where Pacific breezes sweeten, Breathing cassia, balm and nard. John Whitworth

Where the hooded Harpies haggard Hung and hurricanoes hurled, Where the Devils stamped and staggered In the morning of the world, Where sad Reputation tarnished Snored his seeling night away, Long John Silver, battle garnished, Shares their fellowship. For they

Some men are born to be a freelance trader, Bold, venturesome; some sail the seven seas; Some reach their zenith; some achieve their nadir; Some burn, some freeze; but I’m not one of these. Some wear the look – resolved, austere and haggard, Of pioneers and heroes who have hurled, Defiance at the odds-against and staggered, By charismatic force, the watching world. That’s not me either. I’m more: slightly tarnished, But mostly decent. I don’t play away Or tell lies for advantage. I’m not garnished, With trophies, just with trusted friends, and they, Quite average themselves, are never eaten With envy if I prosper. I regard The ups and downs of life as games that sweeten My days, like two old Parsees playing nard. G M Davis COMPETITION NO 175 James Le Fanu was writing in a recent Oldie about the intelligence of plants. A poem, please, on another side of plant life, entitled ‘Vegetable Love’. Maximum 16 lines. Entries to ‘Competition No 175’ by post (The Oldie, 65 Newman Street, London W1T 3EG), fax (020 7436 8804) or email (comps@theoldie.co.uk) by 4th April 2014.

THE OLDIE – April 2014

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Dear Mavis…

Mavis Nicholson

Loneliness or compromise? Sometimes you have a choice

SOMEONE WROTE an angry unsigned letter in response to Elsie’s letter in the February issue, which was about not knowing which child to live with as all three want her to do so if and when she cannot manage on her own. Mrs Angry could not believe that Elsie doesn’t want to go to any of them. Fair is fair, she said. Mothers looked after them all their young lives; now it’s their turn. She admits that not one of her children have ever offered her the chance. I’m not surprised, given her tone! And on the same theme...

DEAR MAVIS, With the best will in the world you are never as comfortable in someone else’s house as you are in your own. You worry about disturbing people if you feel like a cup of tea at 2 am, you worry about the flush if you need to use the loo at night, and you’re never quite sure where you should be when visitors come. Besides, most oldies will have pictures, books etc that are meaningful to them, but difficult to cart from place to place. My mother (89) is almost blind, but moving into her sheltered accommodation insisted on bringing as many of her books as possible even if she will never read them again. They are old friends, and comforting. HELEN LITTON DEAR HELEN, You make very good points about the worrying that goes on when people move into another person’s house. But you’d get better at it with practice and maybe the loneliness of living on your own is worse than adapting to other people.

DEAR MAVIS, decades ago we fixed up a ‘ring’ with a loudspeaker for my mother-inlaw so she could hear conversations. This was followed by a ‘modern’ hearing aid, but with her poor vision and arthritic fingers the device was unusable. Another relative has tiny objects, with tinier batteries – a huge cost, and he still can’t hear and gets a high-pitched whistle. I am searching for an ear trumpet if the time comes when I cannot hear, though I’m told they are unavailable and impracticable. We used to go down the road and phone my 98

ma-in-law from the phone box – she could hear that. Why can’t they install whatever is in your phone in your ear? And why is deafness often a joke? People don’t joke about the poorly sighted. The deaf are told to ‘wash their ears out’ or worse – yet a totally deaf friend is more cut off than my poorly sighted husband. SHEILA, FRANCE

A MARVELLOUS story, and how lovely of your aunt. The next letter comes from John Davies, who was, yonks ago, my grocer and delivered my groceries when I lived in London. One foggy freezing day, when I was pregnant, he asked what else I needed and insisted on going to the chemist as well to save me going out.

DEAR SHEILA, I’ve also wondered why deafness is treated as comic and haven’t found an explanation. An ear trumpet could be the thing for me too. I could pretend to be Kay Kendall playing that trumpet in Genevieve.

DEAR MAVIS, During a visit to my doctor, I asked him, ‘How do you determine whether an older person should be put in an old age home?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the person to empty the bathtub.’ ‘Oh, I understand,’ I said. ‘A normal person would use the bucket because it is bigger than the spoon or the teacup.’ ‘No,’ he said. ‘A normal person would pull the plug. Do you want a bed near the window?’ JOHN DAVIES

DEAR MAVIS, Julia’s letter (February issue) reminded me of my aunt’s experience in Donegal in the mid-1950s. She used to meet up with friends from her village for regular bridge sessions, which included her local doctor. On one occasion she mentioned casually that she was having some trouble with indigestion. The doctor said ‘Come round to the surgery in the morning’, which she did. Within two days she was sent to Belfast Infirmary, was diagnosed with bowel cancer and had a major operation. She had thirty more years of active, healthy life, and every year she would go to Belfast and hand the surgeon a freshly caught salmon as a thanks offering. One wonders if such things are possible in today’s bureaucratised NHS. PETER B GUNN

DEAR MAVIS, Do other readers find they can get along very well, as we do, with minimum engagement with new technology? My aging computer has been off-line for seven years. I use it simply as a word processor. I have a basic nine-year-old mobile phone. We bought a new TV five years ago but have never recorded anything – we’re happy with DVDs. We shun the machines in banks and have never dreamt of buying a satnav. And as for e-books, well... A recent report said that readers of on-line newspapers spend 46 seconds with them on average compared with more than twenty minutes with a printed paper. Pointless or what? B YOU ARE THE SAME as our very clever editor who never touches a computer. It’s your choice, really, isn’t it? Some people love technology. They feel they gain by it. You happen not to. Do you feel your life could be contaminated by it?

Write to Dear Mavis, ‘He can’t think of anything to rant about’

The Oldie, 65 Newman Street, London W1T 3EG or email: dearmavis@theoldie.co.uk

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