Home//The Oldie/October 2021/In This Issue
The Oldie|October 2021Among this month’s contributorsDavid Bailey took our front-cover picture of the Kray twins in 1965. Bailey says, ‘I quite liked Reg even though, when he was 19, he slashed my father’s face with a razor. Ron was a basket full of rattlesnakes.’Mary Beard (p18) is Professor of Classics at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Newnham College. Her latest book is Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern.Nemone Lethbridge (p14) is one of Britain’s earliest female barristers, called to the Bar in 1956. She is author of Nemone: A young woman barrister’s battle against prejudice, class and misogyny.Henry Blofeld (p16) began writing about cricket, for the Times, in 1962. In 1972, he first appeared on Test Match Special. His new book is Ten to Win … and the…1 min
The Oldie|October 2021The Great Royal Bake OffI have put on three pounds this month and I know why. I have been going to a lot of tea parties and eating slice after slice of Victoria sponge.It’s all in a good cause, of course. I am the founder of a project called Poetry Together, which encourages schoolchildren and old people in care homes to learn a poem by heart and then get together to perform the poem and have tea and cake.Hundreds of schools and care homes across the country (and Commonwealth) take part and the poetry parties happen between National Poetry Day (7th October) and Christmas. You can find out more at the website www.poetrytogether.com.The website will also give you the recipe for the Victoria sponge, kindly supplied by the duch*ess of Cornwall. (It’s a controversial…4 min
The Oldie|October 2021OLDEN LIFEWHO WAS Blackie the donkey?Britain’s tabloid newspapers are a shadow of what they used to be, struggling to compete with online behemoths like Facebook and Twitter.Back in the 1980s it was a different story. Rupert Murdoch had tamed the print unions, new technology had cut printing costs, and so ‘red top’ papers such as the Sun and the Star could afford to splash their cash on spectacular stunts. And the greatest stunt of all was their dramatic rescue of Blackie the donkey.The Sunday Express broke the story, beneath the immortal headline ‘Poor El Condenado [Condemned One] Waits For His Fat Killer’. The story concerned a Shrove Tuesday festival, the Peropalo, in a Spanish village called Villanueva de la Vera, during which the fattest man in the village rode around on…3 min
The Oldie|October 2021My cuppa with the KraysIn 1958, I had recently obtained my first tenancy at 3 Hare Court, a modest set of prosecution chambers at the top of Middle Temple Lane.The Crown Prosecution Service was still a twinkle in the eye of the legislature, and all London prosecutions were in the gift of the Scotland Yard solicitor. And he didn’t like women.This put me in a difficult position. Chambers relied heavily on prosecution work. I was barred from it - even from humble traffic offences. The only work open to me was the lowly ‘dock brief’.Here unemployed barristers would present themselves at the sessions to be inspected by the unrepresented prisoners who would select someone to represent them, purely on the basis of their looks.One Friday evening, my luck changed. Jean, who doubled up as…7 min
The Oldie|October 2021A guide to con menHave you been scammed? I have. It knocked the stuffing out of me, mentally and physically. I’ve never experienced such a living nightmare before. Don’t think I am exaggerating. And please don’t think, ‘This will never happen to me.’It is happening all over, all the time - as much a pandemic as COVID. It has been cold comfort to discover how many other victims there are out there - sensible, professional, responsible people - who have been conned as I was, losing, with their self-respect, considerable sums of money.I reckon I’ve seen the last of some £30,000.When the truth emerges, the first reaction is to hide one’s shame. When my counsellor and friend asked if I had anyone I could talk to, I said I really didn’t feel like exposing…4 min
The Oldie|October 2021How bankers lost creditPrime ministers, archbishops, police chiefs, England football managers: none of them seems quite what they used to be.But what about bankers? Were the City chaps (yes, they were all chaps) of yesteryear wiser and nicer than the thrusters of today? Or does that career path perpetually attract a character type the rest of the world tends to despise?Before I answer, I’ll admit I escaped from a first career in banking 30 years ago – so you might think what I’m about to express is no more than the prejudice of age. But I believe there really is a generational difference.Let me transport you to a party hosted by a banker called Michael von Clemm in Beijing’s Forbidden City in June 1989 – actually on the day of the first prodemocracy…4 min
The Oldie|October 2021Yola, the Polish Socrates of north LondonIn Aldous Huxley’s novel Crome Yellow, published in 1921, when its author was 27, a young poet visits a grand country house as the guest of a literary hostess.At the party, he meets various grandees. It’s a satire of Huxley’s real-life experiences – one character was based on Bertrand Russell – and he’s obviously fond of his characters, even though he teases them quite mercilessly.The literary hostess in question was based on Lady Ottoline Morrell, and I was reminded of the book when I heard that Yolanta May had died. Her age was a closely guarded secret. For several decades, she insisted she was 29.Yolanta, or Yola, the wife of the late literary critic and nature writer Derwent May, was, like Ottoline Morrell, a grand literary hostess, and I was…4 min
The Oldie|October 2021Showbiz doesn’t pay‘You’re an act-orrhhh, are you? So how much do you earn?’Ah, here we go. How much do we earn? It’s a question frequently asked of thesps by guileless civilians. It’s little wonder, because actors’ salaries are the last conversational taboo in showbusiness.As a breed, we may be happy to talk endlessly about ourselves (‘But enough of me – what did you think of my performance?’), but ask us how much we’re pulling in and our natural talkativeness exits stage right.The popular perception is that actors earn fabulous sums for doing little more than pulling on a hat and pretending to be someone else for a few hours a week. But the truth is very different. And, remember, you see only the individuals who are working. Some 90 per cent of…4 min
The Oldie|October 2021The middle-class mummies who cheatRound and round and round it goes: coursework or exams? Who benefits from which and why?The last two years have been well out of the ordinary, and lessons were or weren’t learned by teachers and the government.The debacle of Williamson’s algorithm in 2020, followed by the shouts of exam inflation in 2021, have left parents and students confused: what do the results actually mean? And wouldn’t it be better if exams were cancelled and everything was judged on coursework?After all my years in teaching, I am absolutely of the belief that exams are the fairest way to judge a student’s performance. Some students respond well to the adrenalin rush of an exam and others don’t. Some students relish the extra time coursework gives them and some are too lazy to…3 min
The Oldie|October 2021John Charles Woodco*ck (1926-2021)After 18 months of dreary social distancing and recorded singing, a traditional funeral service was held for John Woodco*ck, former cricket correspondent for the Times for three decades and editor of Wisden.It was held at St Nicholas’s, Longparish, on the banks of the Test near Andover. A choir sang God Be in My Head and hymns included Blake’s Jerusalem and Praise the Lord, Ye Heavens Adore Him.John’s father had been the rector at the church for 63 years. John had lived in the curacy nearby since 1947. So the service was led by five clergymen who’d served there: Martin Coppen, Dodie Marsden, David Wippell, David Roche and Terry Hemming.Real hymns, psalms, lessons, prayers and readings were heard for the first time since March 2020. There was a rendition of the…2 min
The Oldie|October 2021Mother TeresaOccasionally, I would drive Mother Teresa when she came to London.The Missionaries of Charity had a minibus. I was a volunteer driver for their errands and night run, offering food and help to homeless people.On one occasion, some of the nuns asked me to ask Mother to tell the story about the donkey. There was a pecking order and they couldn’t ask her over the head of a superior.When we had finished the rosary and were heading for the Southall convent, I said, ‘Mother, what is the story you tell about the donkey?’At this, she became animated and began, ‘There was this businessman and he was out in the country going to an important meeting when his car began giving him trouble.’‘Oh,’ I thought, surprised, ‘this is a joke rather…2 min
The Oldie|October 2021Mistress of disguise TANYA GOLDThis Much Is TrueJohn Murray, £20Miriam Margolyes is more gifted and more serious than her multifarious roles suggest.Her performance as Mrs Manson Mingott in Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence, although she’s playing opposite Daniel Day-Lewis, is the best thing in it. Manson Mingott is kindly and cynical, buried under a mountain of her own flesh.Scorsese was wise to cast Margolyes. I think this is what she is like when she is still and not scheming for attention. But she has filled her career with blockbuster, pratfall and voice-over work.Her cleverness is undeniable, as is her eating disorder, though she rarely alludes to it, saying only that her mother Ruth’s ‘weight ruined all our lives – just as mine does now’. She mostly behaves like an itinerant minstrel wondering where the next gig…3 min
The Oldie|October 2021Paxo underground KATE HUBBARDBlack Gold: The History of How Coal Made BritainWilliam Collins £30The story of coal, Jeremy Paxman says, is the story of Britain. It’s one he tells well, deftly combining the political and the social in a brisk and bracing narrative, with plenty of scope for Paxmanian indignation and scorn.People have been digging for coal since the Middle Ages. But Paxman focuses on the 19th and 20th centuries, taking in the industrial revolution, two world wars, the first Labour government, the birth of trade unionism, nationalisation, strikes, smog and pit accidents, with much odd and interesting detail along the way.In the Second World War, miners were not exempted from conscription, which meant a shortage of labour. Bevin Boys (after Ernest Bevin, the Minister of Labour) were the solution: lay miners. After just four weeks of training, they were sent…3 min
The Oldie|October 2021Kremlin trolls are wasting their timeAccording to researchers at Cardiff University, Russian trolls have been inserting propaganda and disinformation in the reader comments of Western news websites. These include Mail Online, the Times, Le Figaro in France, and Der Spiegel and Die Welt in Germany.The pro-Kremlin comments are then fed back to a range of Russian media organisations. One example cited in the report by Cardiff’s Crime and Security Research Institute concerns a story on Mail Online about America’s ‘unwavering’ support for Ukraine, which appeared on 1st April.Many of the comments below the article were supportive of the Biden administration, but a few were strikingly critical. These were taken up by a number of Russian news websites and presented as being characteristic of what Mail Online readers believe.The Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti mendaciously…4 min
The Oldie|October 2021GOLDEN OLDIES RACHEL JOHNSONROCKING INTO YOUR 80SQuem di diligunt adulescens moritur – ‘He whom the gods esteem dies young’ – has been the unofficial motto of the music business.If you were a proper rock ’n’ roller, you didn’t remember the Sixties. Real hellraisers were in the 27 Club along with Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain.Plane crashes took Buddy Holly aged 22, Otis Redding aged 26 and Patsy Cline at 31. Ian Curtis of Joy Division hanged himself aged 23. Karen Carpenter died of a heart attack, aged 32. Dennis Wilson drowned at 39. John Lennon was shot dead aged 40. The list is long.But the list is far longer of those who have made smaller headlines and older bones. The Rolling Stones are a case in point. Bryan Jones…2 min
The Oldie|October 2021KITCHEN GARDEN SIMON COURTAULDSEA SPINACHI have often admired the glossy, dark green leaves of wild sea spinach when walking along a cliff path or on the shore above the tide line. But I am always reluctant to pick and eat it, as the spinach is also admired and sprayed by passing dogs.Earlier this year, however, I bought a packet of sea-spinach seeds (from Pennard Plants of Somerset) and am having some success. They will grow perfectly well inland on well-drained soil – we are on greensand here – and prefer a site without any shade. This perennial plant, also called sea beet, is the ancestor not only of all our cultivated beetroots but of leaf beet, seakale beet, Swiss chard and garden spinach.In a previous column I commented on the difficulty I have…2 min
The Oldie|October 2021DRINK BILL KNOTTWHY I’M A CIDER DRINKERWhat, do you suppose, are Brown Snout, Woodbine and Sweet Alford? Archaic brands of cigarette? And what links Prince William with the Fair Maid of Taunton?They are all, in fact, cider apples. A good cider apple needs a high level of sugar (that is where the alcohol comes from). Cider-makers also prize bitterness and astringency, and a crafty combination of different varieties will give the finished cider a pleasingly rounded palate. Single-variety ciders are the exception, not the rule.The process of making cider is about as simple as making an alcoholic drink can be, as I discovered, many years ago, during a weekend at a friend’s cottage in Dorset. It was October, his orchard was laden with ripe fruit and the cider man was due on…2 min
The Oldie|October 2021Look after the internet pennies…Jane Austen measured wealth by income, not capital. It wasn’t just Mr Darcy’s handsome features and noble mien that drew Mrs Bennet’s attention, but also his ten thousand a year.These days, there is an opposite calculation to be made. Lack of wealth (or my lack of it, at any rate) is easily measured by the absurd number of internet-related subscription services I realised I was paying for but no longer used.The trouble is they all seemed like a clever idea at the time. Don’t judge me too harshly. I run a couple of small online ventures – so it’s inevitable that I willhave more of these than many readers, but I still had too many.For example, I have a Zoom subscription (£90 pa). I shan’t renew it, as the free…3 min
The Oldie|October 2021The Tufted DuckThe jaunty topknot on the head of the drake tufted (Aythya fuligula) – allied to the species’s jack-in-the-box water antics – makes them the jokers in the duck pack.Those with only a passing interest in birds, such as children, are excited to find some ducks dive and zoom about underwater. The tufted does this incessantly, diving with particular panache – not at a slant, but on the spot.It emerges after as long as a minute, dry as dust, the water droplets, bright as its yellow eyes, slipping off the black (drake) or brown (duck) waterproof plumage like quicksilver.Until the 19th century, they were only winter migrants. The first record of a British nesting was in 1849, in Yorkshire. Today it is our commonest diving duck. The 19,000 residents are joined…2 min
The Oldie|October 2021A farewell to qualmsIs there anything you can’t leave home without?My Kindle because I used to pack at least one book per day – so there was never any room for clothes.Is there something you really miss?London water for drinking and making tea.What are your earliest childhood holiday memories?Corfu and Ibiza were the two places my parents used to go. We’d go for a fortnight and rent a villa. It was the early ’70s: choc ices, Uvistat sun cream if there was any, and buying Disney comics in Spanish, Portuguese or Greek – and my dad pretending to translate them.What are your memories of your dad, Alan Coren, on holiday?My dad loved his holidays, didn’t wear sun cream, always burnt, always wore little Speedos.Were there family arguments on holidays?Lots of arguments, all the…4 min
The Oldie|October 2021BRIDGEThis month’s deal was one of several swings necessary to overturn a deficit of 67 International Match Points in the Vanderbilt Knockout Teams, one the US Majors.Dealer North Both VulnerableThe bidding(1) Best played as 15-19 and forcing to game after a two-over-one response.(2) Quantitative slam try.(3) When you’re accepting a quantitative slam try, it is best to bid naturally. North likes his top cards for suit play and offers Six Diamonds as an alternative slam with his three-card support.West led the knave of clubs; declarer, Eric Rodwell, ducking the trick to East’s king. He won East’s knave of hearts return with dummy’s king, and drew trumps, West discarding a club. He cashed the queen of clubs, crossed to the ace of hearts and cashed the ace of clubs, East discarding…1 min
The Oldie|October 2021Winners and losersThere seem to be more and more prizes for fiction every year. Good news for authors, then. But are they really so fortunate? Forget the JK Rowlings, Dan Browns and Stephen Kings of this world, and think of the ‘average’ writer – whoever that is. According to a recent survey, the top 10 per cent of writers account for 70 per cent of revenues, with under 14 per cent of authors making their living solely from writing. And apparently the average author income has been dropping over the past 15 years or so. So perhaps it’s better to pause before quitting the day job.This year’s Booker Prize winner will be announced in November but, as Robbie Millen exclaimed in the Times, ‘What a shocker! Fire the Booker judges! How dare…2 min
The Oldie|October 2021Biography & memoirALEXANDRIATHE QUEST FOR THE LOST CITYEDMUND RICHARDSONBloomsbury, 352pp, £25Reviewers thrilled to Edmund Richardson’s account of the extraordinary life of the 19th-century archaeologist, explorer and eccentric adventurer Charles Masson. In the Guardian, William Dalrymple called it ‘utterly brilliant’. It is, wrote Bijan Omrani in the Literary Review, ‘a tale of intrigue, espionage, blackmail, disguise, rebellion, treasure and the discovery of lost civilisations’. Thought the Spectator’s ASH Smyth, ‘I’ve not read anything this rollicking in years.’The ‘quixotic and wildly colourful’ Masson was, observed James McConnachie in the Times, ‘One of the great early travellers in the subcontinent, he was also a pioneering archaeologist, ferocious critic of British imperialism and reluctant spy. The book’s publicists call him a real-life Indiana Jones; the likeness, for once, is not so far off.’ As Smyth put…14 min
The Oldie|October 2021Forgotten authorsNever meet your heroes. As a wannabe writer, I learnt that lesson early on. I was ten years old, and my favourite writer was Leon Garfield. Imagine how thrilled I was when my mother arranged for me to have tea with him! My mum was friends with Philippa Pearce (author of the children’s classic, Tom’s Midnight Garden) and Philippa was friends with Garfield, so a date was set for high tea, at Philippa’s lovely country cottage, near Cambridge.I arrived giddy with excitement, hoping some of his literary magic would rub off on me. Fat chance. Garfield was perfectly polite, but the occasion was excruciating. I was hopelessly tongue-tied, and so was he. Looking back, the fact that this successful author was so shy in the presence of a pre-pubescent fan…4 min
The Oldie|October 2021MiscellaneousTHE PAINFUL TRUTHTHE NEW SCIENCE OF WHY WE HURT AND HOW WE CAN HEALMONTY LYMANBantam Press, 286pp, £20In The Painful Truth, Monty Lyman, a doctor, though not a pain specialist, examines the chronic pain that is becoming a ‘silent pandemic’ in the UK. Chronic pain is pain that lasts for 12 weeks or longer, despite getting treatment. ‘It ruins socialising, your sex life, your daily functioning. It is the highest cause of work-related absence.’ Backs are the worst affected, followed by joints, muscles, and headaches.Conventional medicine has regarded pain as a ‘detector’, warning you not to do more damage to the affected part. Lyman maintains that this is a serious misconception, encouraging the sufferer towards inertia when moderate exercise might be more helpful. The fact that pain thresholds differ so…7 min
The Oldie|October 2021FictionSHOULD WE STAY OR SHOULD WE GOLIONEL SHRIVERBorough, 266pp, £18.99Lionel Shriver, a writer of strong opinions, known for her pro-Brexit, anti-lockdown journalism, once again challenges our views in this novel about a suicide pact. Kay and Cyril Wilkinson have witnessed the slow dementia of Kay’s father. When they turn 80 they plan to take back control and drink of the hemlock to spare themselves, their children and the NHS the burden of their old age. ‘That’s when the fun starts,’ said Louise R Brown in the Spectator.David Grylls in the Sunday Times agreed. He enjoyed the ‘mingling of comedy and horror’, as Shriver ‘gleefully’ constructs 12 possible outcomes of the central situation. ‘Through the potent spell of Shriver’s language, horror gets alchemised into amusem*nt. Fiery phrases spit and crackle. Disgust…11 min
The Oldie|October 2021PaperbacksFans of Elena Ferrante (author of the Neapolitan Quartet) can cheer: she has written a stand-alone novel also set in Naples, The Lying Life of Adults (Europa Editions, trans Ann Goldstein, 322pp, £8.99). Kathryn Bromwich in the Observer explained that the narrator, Giovanna, tells her coming of age story, ‘charting her development from the sweet girl who adores her parents to a sulking, aggressive teenager who finds pleasure in self-abasem*nt and making those around her uncomfortable’. She continued: ‘What immediately distinguishes this book from its predecessors is its focus on the upper echelons of Neapolitan society in the early 1990s.’ Alex O’Connell in the Times had a few reservations: ‘The story is compulsive, but the characters are more cartoonish than in the Neapolitan Quartet...The writing can be overcooked – characters…2 min
The Oldie|October 2021The Old Un’s Notes✻ Were you one of those schoolboys who in 1973 salivated about the new range of ‘pocket money’ model kits of tanks, warplanes and ships?The Matchbox kits were cheap and simple to make, with tremendous, nostalgic power for Second World War buffs.Fans will love The Golden Years of Matchbox Art, a new book by Roy Huxley, now in his eighties.Huxley painted the pictures for practically all the boxes over nearly 20 years.Here is his stirring picture of the Supermarine Spitfire Mk IX, Britain’s most famous short-range, high-performance Second World War aircraft, with its Merlin engine and its distinctive roar.More than 20,000 of them were built between 1938 and 1948. The Mk IX was the most-produced version after it entered service in 1942.Chocks away, chaps!✻ Fran Lebowitz, the New York writer,…6 min
The Oldie|October 2021Don’t stop all the clocks – my dad’s diedDoubts persist as to whether my father’s last words will join those of Oscar Wilde (that wallpaper) and Bognor-buggerer George V among the most memorable yet uttered.For one thing, my dad’s last words weren’t uttered. For another, they were not, in fact, his last words.Nonetheless, he was absolutely convinced that the words he committed to paper one early-July afternoon, some seven weeks before he did die, would be his last. And they deserve, I feel, to be remembered.My son Louis and I didn’t realise this at the time, when we were stricken by disbelief at their apparent incongruity in the context. On reflection, I realise how remarkably perfect they were.My dad was a most unusual man with a most unusual working history meandering over six and a half decades. He…4 min
The Oldie|October 2021MODERN LIFEWHAT IS A bookhotel?Bookhotels cater for compulsive readers.They have libraries and literary attractions, from writers in residence to rooms dedicated to authors. For some hotels, it’s an appealing additional service; others were conceived from an idiosyncratic passion.Hotel Sonnenburg in the Austrian Alps has wooden boxes of selected titles in each room. Berlin’s Hotel Friedenau focuses on local writers. Le Pavillon des Lettres in Paris has 26 rooms, featuring authors from Andersen to Zola.We first heard about bookhotels in Germany in 2018. Our friend Gerd had moved his second-hand bookshop, Mephisto, online and to a village where he hoped to turn the Schloss into a bookhotel furnished from his huge stock, following the example of others in Europe (and America) that began to blossom in the previous decade.We headed north to…3 min
The Oldie|October 2021My dream teamMixing the perfect cricketer co*cktail quickly becomes a barman’s nightmare.This human pick-me-up would have to be able to bat and bowl right-handed and left-handed with equal facility, which would not be easy.But even trickier would be the need for this team of one to develop jack-in-the-box qualities that would enable it to keep wicket to its own bowling. This composite player would also have to be the captain, and placing the field would mean he or she would need to be in 11 different places at the same time without spilling a drop - or, it must be hoped, a catch.This imaginary, liquid figure would be, for a start, distinctly Bradmanesque. Don Bradman was the most successful batter ever, averaging 99.94 in his 52 Test Matches. He scored 309 runs…4 min
The Oldie|October 2021A traitor and a gentlemanKim Philby (1912-1988) was born 110 years ago this coming New Year’s Day.His early years were influenced by a remote, domineering and often absent explorer father – the cause of his stutter, he claimed. Affronted by the injustices of the 1930s, he became fired with indignation at the treatment of the downtrodden – and what he assumed was the British government’s willingness to collude with the even more oppressive forces of fascism.So far, so understandable. Lots of people joined the Labour Party or the Communist Party. Between 1933 and 1938, membership of the Cambridge University Socialist Society increased fivefold. But Philby was in a hurry. He had visited Germany with his lifelong friend Tim Milne and saw the dawn of the Third Reich with his own eyes.He had seen the…6 min
The Oldie|October 2021My brush with the Grim ReaperThe scrotum is very forgiving. These comforting words were recently uttered by a distinguished surgeon before he deracinated a nasty excrescence in a dark part of my anatomy. I had the very rare extramammary Paget’s disease, first noticed under the shower – so it was a general anaesthetic and the knife. Ladies sometimes get Paget’s on their breasts but it rarely, if ever, assails a man’s front botty*.I haven’t been in hospital for ages. Not since a burst appendix which was undiagnosed for ten days because my appendix was hiding on the wrong side. Most of my life-threatening ills are, it seems, unique.On that occasion, a funny thing happened to me on the way to the operating theatre. Fear had made me rather chatty. As we trundled down a long…5 min
The Oldie|October 2021The strange death of our village house martinsAs the mighty Colorado River has been reduced to a mere trickle, so my marriage is now measured in small acts of mutual kindness.I bring the wife meals on a tray and drive at 20mph. In return, she mends my expanding man-trouser buttons and thoughtfully fillets the tsunami of news media to present me with articles of ecological interest to read while I’m soaking in the tub.The other day, Mary, who is overworked, had mistaken a guide to weekend retreats in the West Country for something of eco-relevance. Nevertheless it seemed to await my urgent attention.The words ‘bolthole’ and ‘escape’ jumped out at me as I leafed through page after glossy page of immaculately presented chocolate-box retreats. As I reflected that Suffolk pink has been somewhat overused as a shade,…4 min
The Oldie|October 2021The schlock of the newHave you noticed that, as a group, prophets tend to be a grumpy lot?From Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Isaiah, right down to Carlyle, Ruskin, Spengler and beyond: gloominess and bad weather as far as the eye can see.There are many reasons for this, beginning perhaps with what Kant called ‘the crooked timber of humanity’. The sun might be shining, but evil lurks in the heart of man and besides – haven’t you noticed? – standards are plummeting, evidence of maladies real and fabricated (racism, climate change and trans-, Islamo- and hom*ophobia) are rife, and intolerance, ‘whiteness’ and a lack of ‘diversity’ are ubiquitous and need to be stamped out, hard, right now.At The New Criterion, the American cultural review I have been editing since about the time John Stuart Mill’s maid…4 min
The Oldie|October 2021Quite Interesting Things about … OctoberDuring the three-month breeding season starting in October, the greatest density of wildlife per square metre in the world occurs on the island of South Georgia.A survey of 1.8 million office projects and 28 million individual tasks found that the most productive time of the year is 11am on a Monday in October.In October 2008, inflation in Zimbabwe reached 231,000,000 per cent.The First World War officially ended on 3rd October 2010.8th October is World Octopus Day.On 9th October 2013, NASA’s Juno spacecraft travelled round the Earth at 50 times the speed of a bullet.On 12th October 2017, Austrian police arrested a man in a shark costume for breaking a newly enacted ban on wearing facecoverings in public.On the evening of 13th October 1947, Chuck Yeager got drunk and broke two…1 min
The Oldie|October 2021The shocking truthMy first car had a design fault. It had a distributor cap immediately behind the radiator grille. Whenever I drove in heavy rain, water would enter the cap and bring the engine to a stuttering halt, often in the most inconvenient of places.When that happened, I would get out of the car and give the radiator grille a good kick, first to punish the car and second in the hope that it might work. It did – once.I always felt that electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) was about as sophisticated as my mechanics. It was like giving the skull a good kick to give the brain within a jolt. But, oddly enough, I became convinced that it worked – in the right cases, of course.Early in my career, there was a lady…3 min
The Oldie|October 2021The joy of brass - aged nineAt the age of nine, I was given by Mr Oliver, the school caretaker, a soprano cornet. It was battered and beaten, had seen far better days and I instantly fell in love with it.I drove everyone mad playing it but, against all odds, I became quite decent, and by the time I was ten, I was first cornet in the school’s brass band.Living in South Yorkshire meant that coal-mining was everywhere and, along with that, most pits had their own brass band. Grimethorpe, Carlton Main, Frickley and many others played, marched, raised funds for local causes and competed in competitions.My local pit was Yorkshire Main in Edlington. On a dark and rainy Tuesday night in 1972, I and four others from our little brass band piled our instruments into…2 min
The Oldie|October 2021Daddy’s girl JANE RIDLEYMary Churchill’s War: The Wartime Diaries of Churchill’s Youngest DaughterTwo Roads £20Mary Churchill (later Soames) was just 17 when the Second World War broke out.She began to keep what she described as a ‘diary of an ordinary person’s life in wartime’. In fact, she wasn’t an ordinary person at all. She was Winston Churchill’s daughter, and her account of Churchill family life is what makes this diary historically significant.The war uprooted Mary from her life as a priggish, horse-mad teenager at Chartwell, where she was brought up almost as an only child – the nearest sibling to her in age was Sarah, who was eight years older. Chartwell became a hospital. Mary accompanied her parents to London, first to a flat in Admiralty House and then to Number 10 when Winston became Prime Minister.Her diary makes plain her worship…3 min
The Oldie|October 2021Irish eyes aren’t smiling ALEX CLARKThe Letters of John McGahernFaber £30John McGahern said letters are ‘never quite honest. Often out of sympathy or diffidence or kindness or affection or self-interest we quite rightly hide our true feelings.’He was writing in 1991 to the critic Sophia Hillan, who had asked for permission to quote one of his letters in a monograph.It’s impossible to work out whether his opinion of letters reflected general misgivings or a more specific anxiety – even admission – about his own.How would we know? McGahern’s novels – from his first, 1963’s The Barracks, to Amongst Women and That They May Face the Rising Sun – are taut masterpieces of the art of showing through concealment. They are stories that operate through constraint – an unhappy family, inescapable location or overwhelming emotion. And yet they suggest something…4 min
The Oldie|October 2021La lingua della musicaPythagoras thought maths was the language of music. It was an ambitious claim, though not altogether absurd: modern musicologists delight in discerning mathematical patterns in the works of Bach and Mozart. Nowadays, though, the language of music is surely Italian.How on earth has this come about? Music has, from the first grunts of mankind, been made by everybody everywhere, and Italy might seem an improbable country to lead the world in musical influence. It has been a single independent country for scarcely 150 years, with little political power to impose any language on anyone far beyond its borders.So is Italy’s musical dominance a fiction? Just look at ‘bebop’, ‘fado’, ‘lieder’, you may say, or ‘mazurka’, ‘polonaise’ or ‘tango’. Remember, too, that French has provided ‘plié’, ‘entrechat’, ‘arabesque’ and nearly all…3 min
The Oldie|October 2021FILM HARRY MOUNTTHE SERVANTThe Servant (1963), re-released in cinemas this September, is a toxic version of Jeeves and Wooster.Dirk Bogarde’s Barrett isn’t just brighter than his master, Tony (James Fox). He’s also a lot nastier.The idea of the intelligent servant goes all the way back to Plautus, who features a clever slave in several of his plays in the third century BC. But to make the servant clever, horrible and ultimately his master’s master is the brilliant idea by Robin Maugham (Somerset’s nephew) in his 1948 short story, The Servant.Directed by Joseph Losey with a subtle screenplay by Harold Pinter, the film is wonderfully menacing, its melancholy strain intensified by John Dankworth’s jazz soundtrack, including All Gone, sung by Cleo Laine.Pinter, only 32 at the time, also has a bit part in…3 min
The Oldie|October 2021TELEVISION ROGER LEWISWhat I’d commission were I in charge – Freddie Fox starring in his dad’s old role in a six-part serial of The Day of the Jackal, set in 1963, recreating a France since lost underneath the unrestricted immigration of British expatriates.I’d want to find the new Jack Hargreaves, who can impart pearls of wisdom from his potting shed on how to eradicate seagulls. There’d be a classic series based on my own Seasonal Suicide Notes, destined to be funnier and more beloved by audiences than Fawlty Towers, and starring Simon Russell Beale and Rosamund Pike.Perhaps this has been done and I missed it – but Miranda Hart was surely born to play Aroon, the gawky daughter of a decaying big house, in an adaptation of Molly Keane’s Good Behaviour. A…3 min
The Oldie|October 2021EXHIBITIONS HUON MALLALIEUFIRLE PLACE: THE REGENCY WARDROBE 29th August 29 to 26th OctoberCHARLESTON: DUNCAN GRANT 1920 18th September 18 to 13th MarchHOLBURNE MUSEUM, BATH: ROSSETTI’S PORTRAITS 24th September 24 to 9th JanuaryStephanie Smart is a most remarkable artist and craftswoman; in her case, the always dubious distinction does not exist.She creates dream figures, using many types of paper, paper-craft techniques and embroidery thread – 30,000 yards for this project – combined with illustrated and written details. Like all good dreams, her figures give the illusion of reality. She says, ‘The ambition behind every piece is that it be simultaneously visually beautiful, technically ambitious and conceptually interesting.’ Had she wished to be a fashion designer, she would have been a good one – but what a waste that would have been.At first sight,…2 min
The Oldie|October 2021COOKERY ELISABETH LUARDLET ME EAT CAKEArtisan baker Dee Retalli’s Baking with Fortitude has arrived just in time to replace the sourdough mania that swept the nation during last year’s winter.Mostly about cakes, it’s intelligently illustrated, quietly confident in its time-tested recipes and mercifully short.The author established the London bakery from which the book gets its title four years ago, not long before we were all confined to quarters. As a pioneer of the organic movement in the olden days of the 1980s, she is interested in traditional baking processes that include fermentation, the method that produces leavened bread through natural yeasting.Anyone who’s been hesitant about starting their own starter (me too) will find a warm welcome to the world of microbial activity without all the fuss. As an Irishwoman who bakes her…3 min
The Oldie|October 2021SPORT JIM WHITEKENT’S W G GRACEAt this time of year, we start thinking of the most appropriate recipient of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award.Who gave us the most pleasure in sporting competition? Who best represented our values and ideals? And this year, never mind Adam Peaty and Max Whitlock; forget Lewis Hamilton and Dame Sarah Storey; stand aside, Joe Root and Harry Kane. For us oldies, there can be only one candidate. Step forward the remarkable, age-defying and apparently unbreakable Darren Stevens.This last season, the Kent cricketer became the oldest player since Norman Armstrong in 1938 to score three centuries in a Championship season. And he didn’t hang about achieving that record: playing for Kent against Leicestershire at the end of August, he scored 107 off just 70 balls.…3 min
The Oldie|October 2021Tips on tippingRestaurant and café staff are delighted to be back at work, and earning tips, now that we are able to eat out again.It used to be standard practice to pay gratuities in cash. When we realised it was more convenient (and, since the pandemic, more hygienic) to add a percentage to the bill, we frequently paid it all with a credit or debit card. You might not realise that this usually means the staff receive less money.The way that restaurants handle workers’ tips, whether paid in cash or on cards, has long been a contentious subject. There is no law to guarantee staff will receive the money customers leave for them. Even the government’s code of best practice allows bosses to keep some of the money for themselves, and many…2 min
The Oldie|October 2021The joy of Devon’s fake lakeThe vast lake snaked onwards – a collage of headlands, forest and silver water that appeared without end. The scene at Roadford Lake looked, to my uneducated eye at least, as ancient, natural and unchanging as any ‘wild’ part of Britain.So it was disorientating to read on my pink-jacketed OS map, which I still considered more or less contemporary, that this vast Devonian lake did not exist when the map was printed in 1986.The map marked open fields, farms, the valley of the River Wolf and, in blue script, ‘Roadford Reservoir (under construction)’.This landscape of lake, forest, footpaths and distant wind turbines had been assembled in the 30 years since the dam was completed in 1990 to supply Devon towns with water.The drive to the lakeside cafe and walking trails…3 min
The Oldie|October 2021TESSA CASTROIN COMPETITION No 271, you were invited to write a poem with the title Convenience. It was an inconvenient match between so many good entries and so little space to print the winners. Katie Mallett gave a recognisable account of stopping in for a delivery: ‘And so you pick the time, the week, the day / When this will happen, though deep down you know / From your experience it won’t be so.’ Anthony Young observed that the savings of convenience are always of their time and equipment: ‘The ticket for my flight’s online, / The printer that I need is mine.’ Adrian Fry had a quirkier conceit: ‘Mama can’t use the convenience store, / Convenience being a Sin.’ D A Prince, contemplating the difficulty of preserving valuable architectural details…3 min
The Oldie|October 2021Not forgetting…important titles recently reviewed in The OldieIssue 57 Autumn 2021Churchill’s Shadow by Geoffrey WheatcroftThe Sins of GK Chesterton by Richard IngramsFamily Business: An Intimate History of John Lewis and the Partnership by Victoria GlendinningIndex, a History of the: A Bookish Adventure by Dennis DuncanTurning Point: A Year That Changed Charles Dickens and the World by Robert Douglas-FairhurstBeing a Human by Charles FosterHarlem Shuffle by Colson WhiteheadThe Sea Is Not Made of Water by Adam NicolsonHogarth: Life in Progress by Jacqueline RidingEthel Rosenberg: A Cold War Tragedy by Anne SebbaRe-educated: How I Changed My Job, My Home, My Husband and My Hair by Lucy KellawayReading Walter de la Mare, edited by William Wootten…1 min
The Oldie|October 2021Reading list‘Men of power have no time to read; yet the men who do not read are unfit for power.’ So wrote Michael Foot, who grew up in a house that contained 70,000 books, wrote several himself, and is arguably the most literate British politician ever to have held high office.I’m sure the Publishers Association would agree with Foot’s assertion (despite its gender bias), which may be why, to mark their quasquicentennial, they canvassed MPs, peers and peeresses for their recommended read for the Summer recess. Sadly, it would appear that those set in authority over us either don’t have much time to read, or are reluctant to show their hand, because out of a total of approximately 1,450 parliamentarians, only 65 replied, three of them anonymously.The Prime Minister, lest we…4 min
The Oldie|October 2021Current affairsTHE AUTHORITY GAPWHY WOMEN ARE STILL TAKEN LESS SERIOUSLY THAN MEN, AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT ITMARY ANN SIEGHARTDoubleday, 384pp, £16.99Sieghart opens her book with the story of Mary McAleese, president of Ireland, on an official delegation to the Vatican in 1999. The Pope (John Paul II) walked past her outstretched hand and instead held out a hand to her husband, standing beside her, and asked: ‘Would you not prefer to be President of Ireland rather than married to the President of Ireland?’ It is the first of many such anecdotes in a book which argues that the wrong attribution of expertise and power is wasteful of available resources and harms men as well as women. It seems not to have occurred either to Sieghart or to her reviewers…8 min
The Oldie|October 2021NOT MANY DEADFish found dead at beauty spotWest Sussex GazetteCarnivorous plant being grown in secret locationCongleton ChronicleNew landlords relaunch pub with three-course dog menuEastern Daily Press£15 for published contributionsNEXT ISSUEThe November issue is on sale on 20th October 2021.FREE SAMPLE COPYIf you have a friend who would like a free sample of The Oldie, tell them to call 0800 8565867.GET THE OLDIE APPGo to App Store or Google Play Store. Search for Oldie Magazine and then pay for app.OLDIE BOOKSThe Best of The Oldie Cartoons 1992-2018, The Oldie Annual 2020 and other Oldie books are available at: www.theoldie.co.uk/readers-corner/shop Free p&p.OLDIE NEWSLETTERGo to the Oldie website; put your email address in the red SIGN UP box.…1 min
The Oldie|October 2021Top of the leagueThere has never been a football writer quite like Brian Glanville and, given the game’s enslavement by television, there never will be another.Glanville, who turns 90 on 24th September, in his glory days at the Sunday Times bestrode the press boxes of England like a monarch. In his autumnal years, younger journalists continue to make the pilgrimage to his home in Holland Park to share gossip and, if they’re lucky, receive a kingly blessing.Glanville is much more than a sportswriter. He has published novels and short stories, and contributed to That Was The Week That Was when satire meant more than spewing four-letter words. But it was his writing on football that set him apart. As Patrick Barclay, one of his most gifted successors, noted, ‘There are two kinds of…3 min
The Oldie|October 2021Raise a glass to non-stick bar tablesThere is nothing worse than sitting at a table in a pub or restaurant and finding one’s hands or arms sticking to the table surface.Waiting staff have always been helpful in wiping tables between guests, but the development of spray bottles of cleaning fluid has led to an accumulation of gunge on the surface.Long gone is the day when waitresses used a scrubbing brush with soap and water to leave a clean wooden surface. Pubs and restaurants increasingly have tables that are varnished or have plastic surfaces. The varnish or paint gradually softens. Along comes the next customer: not only do their fingers stick to the table top, but so too do any papers belonging to the unsuspecting individual.Cleaning of tables has become even more of a ritual with the…1 min
The Oldie|October 2021Hail, Caesars!We are still surrounded by Roman emperors.It is almost two millennia since the ancient city of Rome ceased to be capital of an empire. But even now – in the West, at least – almost everyone recognises the name, and sometimes even the look, of Julius Caesar or Nero.Their faces not only stare at us from museum shelves or gallery walls. They feature in films, advertisem*nts and newspaper cartoons. It takes very little (a laurel wreath, toga, lyre and some background flames) for a satirist to turn a modern politician into a ‘Nero fiddling while Rome burns’, and most of us get the point.Over the last 500 years or so, these emperors and some of their wives and mothers, sons and daughters have been recreated countless times in paint and…5 min
The Oldie|October 2021The Stones keep on rolling along…When the nascent Rolling Stones began performing around London in 1962, the notion that a rock ’n’ roll band would last anything remotely like 50 years was not just absurd – it was inconceivable.‘I didn’t expect to last until 50 myself, let alone with the Stones,’ Keith Richards said. ‘It’s incredible, really. In that sense, we’re still living on borrowed time.’Mick Jagger takes a more expansive view of its ongoing evolution.‘You have to put yourself back into that time,’ he says about those early days in London, when he, Richards and guitarist Brian Jones shared a legendarily squalid flat at 102 Edith Grove in Chelsea (Richards described the place as a ‘beautiful dump’) and hustled gigs wherever they could find one.‘Popular music wasn’t talked about on any kind of intellectual…6 min
The Oldie|October 2021Back to blackIt used to be easy to define the Gothic.A castle on a precipice, silhouetted against a gibbous moon. Next door, a ruined church with arched windows, the gravestones at crazy angles. Something unholy and transgressive stirring in the shadows under the twisted yew tree. The mist would be optional, but the bats and screech owl compulsory.This makes the Gothic a product of northern European climes: the Alpine heights where Frankenstein’s monster roams; the wild forests of Scandinavia; the bleak cemeteries of London or Edinburgh, where bodysnatchers lurk.But if these are some of its places of origin, it has since exploded across the planet. The Gothic now speaks in many languages. In a single evening, one might play a level of a Japanese survival horror game while plugged into a doomy…3 min
The Oldie|October 2021My Italian glamourpuss pal was Boris’s mother-in-lawTo be blonde, beautiful, brainy, acquainted with the Mafia and a member of the Italian Communist Party – what more could a girl have wanted back in those golden 1960s?Gaia Servadio, who’s just died at 82, seemed to me to be the Zuleika Dobson of Fleet Street, appearing in the offices of the London Evening Standard swathed in fox furs and wafting in subtle but expensive scent. Charles Wintour (father of the more famous Dame Anna) was utterly smitten with the glamorous Gaia, and instructions would be issued to ensure her reportage was given splash treatment.She was divine: the quintessence of ‘radical chic’. I couldn’t understand a word she wrote about the dastardly Mafia – it seemed to be translated from the Sicilian – but the ace page-designer Dick Garrett…4 min
The Oldie|October 2021My first acting job – as a dwarf jesterAs a very short man living in a very small seaside town, my only problem in the summer is seagulls with poor vision who swoop down on me, in search of prey.But this year I have a new nemesis: the algorithm. For some reason, whenever I fill in a form online, I always get results that put the psycho into psychometric.While awaiting the start of my new job, I thought I would put myself forward for any seasonal work I fancied, and not limit myself by talent or experience.Rather than apply again for Rosetta’s Roast Chicken Caravan, I put myself on the virtual books of an acting agency. I completed all the personal physical information and provided a head shot – perfectly at the intersection between wistful and wise and…4 min
The Oldie|October 2021Christ’s guide to good mannersWith Jesus, there is no longer a sharp distinction between acting and speaking.Attention is not to be focused on ourselves and on our striving to be beyond reproach, but on other people and how our conduct or speech can whittle away their wellbeing, their sense of security and their happiness. Very specifically, this is done by our rudeness.‘Whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says “you fool” shall be liable to the fire of hell’ (Matthew 5:22).Jesus’s condemnation of abusive language is not to be taken lightly: he sees it as being contrary to the will of God because of its lack of love.In that most famous passage in of all St Paul’s writing – 1 Corinthians 13 – we find ‘Love is never rude.’A…2 min
The Oldie|October 2021READERS’ LETTERSWhy Boris is BorisSIR: I write to correct some clear inaccuracies in the September issue. My wife was the great niece of Boris Litwin, a wealthy Jewish businessman in Mexico City. His daughter, Barbara (Bapsi), my wife’s cousin, knew Stanley Johnson at the time when he was proposing a tour to the Americas. Barbara said to Stanley that if they got to Mexico City they should look up her father. This they did, and Boris Litwin entertained them.Stanley’s partner was pregnant and Boris, concerned about the long journey back to New York by bus, gave them air tickets to fly direct. It was then that Stanley said that if the child was a boy he would be called Boris. This can be corroborated if necessary.Lindsay East, Rickmansworth, HertfordshireRudolf Hess’s snowmanSIR:…7 min
The Oldie|October 2021Not so super Mann RUPERT CHRISTIANSENThe MagicianViking £18.99Colm Tóibín has already ambitiously written a novel about a great novelist – The Master, focused on Henry James, published in 2004.He’s now returned to the peculiar challenge posed by the genre, in telling the story of Thomas Mann. He moves in a fairly straight chronological line from Mann’s birth in mercantile Lübeck through to his final years of exile in California and Switzerland.The result is frankly disappointing and a bit of a slog. I didn’t feel that Tóibín managed to render Henry James’s mercurial intelligence and fine sensibility in The Master, but he nobly tried. Here he seems positively uninterested in Mann, tracking his 80-year journey in an elegantly fluent prose. There’s not a clunking or pretentious sentence in over 400 pages. But the prose never rises to…3 min
The Oldie|October 2021Spad cad FRANCES WILSONMaking NiceBloomsbury £16.99How does he do it?It wasn’t a year ago that I was reviewing Kiss Myself Goodbye, Ferdinand Mount’s glorious account of his amoral Aunt Munca, whose every word, as the novelist Mary McCarthy said of playwright Lillian Hellman, was a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’Now this novel lands on the doorstep and it’s another peach. Making Nice is a satire on spads and dukes of dark corners like Dominic Cummings, but Mount’s aunt and his latest villain, Ethelbert Evers, have so much in common that they might be two versions of the same person.Munca, who took her own fond nickname from Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Two Bad Mice, was otherwise known as Eileen Constance Sylvia McDuff, Patricia Elizabeth Baring, and Mrs Greig Mount. Ethelbert, who models himself on…4 min
The Oldie|October 2021Modern hotel roomsThe Fairmont Hotel in Azerbaijan is a 500-foot monument to Central Asian bling done out in oligarch-chic. It does, however, boast fantastic views over the Caspian Sea. So on a recent stay, the first thing I did was open the curtains of my huge window on the 12th floor.Or rather, I tried. The curtains were operable only via an electronic control panel that, like the hotel itself, ignored the maxim that less is sometimes more. There were five options – none of which seemed to include the basic command of ‘Please, just open the bloody curtains.’ After half an hour in darkness, I had to call the concierge for help.It isn’t just the curtains, where the simple act of drawing them by hand is no longer an option. Hotel-room lights…1 min
The Oldie|October 2021THEATRE WILLIAM COOKMARY POPPINSPrince Edward Theatre, LondonWhen you tell people you’ve been to see Mary Poppins on the West End stage, the question they always ask is ‘Is it as good as the film?’The short answer is, ‘Yes indeed. In fact, it’s even better.’The original film is still charming, after all these years (I saw it again just the other day, and it hadn’t dated in the slightest), but Cameron Mackintosh’s theatrical production has far more depth and a lot more light and shade.Don’t get me wrong. Like the vintage Walt Disney movie, it’s supremely entertaining, but the characters are more rounded, the storyline more complex. It’s thrilling to watch this magical yarn unfold up close and personal rather than on a flat screen. You’d think the stage show had inspired the…3 min
The Oldie|October 2021MUSIC RICHARD OSBORNEEDINBURGH’S FALSTAFFIn the late 1960s, as I waited for the curtain to go up on a matinée performance in Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre, I confided to one of the city’s fabled Morningside ladies that I was tempted to move to Edinburgh, so addicted had I become to the city and its festivals.‘Och, no,’ she counselled, ‘it’s vairy quiet in the winter.’This year, it was ‘vairy quiet’ in the summer, too. And not before time, some would say. It’s estimated that, in 2019, 4.4 million people arrived in the city to witness 25,000 performers in some 5,000 events. Whatever your point of view, it’s a situation that had become unsustainable.Has 2020-21 provided a welcome firebreak to the expansion, here and elsewhere? I suspect so, though it may also have provided the cue…4 min
The Oldie|October 2021RESTAURANTS JAMES PEMBROKEDORSET VS CHELSEAThere’s a saying that for every ten miles out of London, one retreats a year in gastronomic terms.Not so in Dorset, one of only eight English counties without a motorway. Daily rail commuters were a rare species before the pandemic. They are now all but extinct and ready to fill a display case in the recently reopened Dorset Museum in Dorchester, complete with a halffinished crossword and empty miniature Bell’s whisky bottle(s).The best entry point to the county is via the extortionate Sandbanks Ferry with its fabulous views of Poole Harbour, the second-largest natural harbour in the world. A couple of miles after disembarking, you will follow the sandy beachline to Studland, the home of the Pig on the Beach.In 2014, Robin Hutson’s Pig group snapped up the…3 min
The Oldie|October 2021MOTORING ALAN JUDDTHE BENTLEY BOYS – AND GIRLSIn 1903 Mary Anderson, a real-estate developer from Alabama, patented a window-cleaning device.There were few cars then and no one wanted her invention but, after 1920, when the patent had expired, her design was widely adopted by the motor industry. By the time she died in 1953, it was ubiquitous. We call her invention windscreen wipers. She never made a cent from it.In 1910, a 15-year-old girl became the first woman in Britain to be fined for speeding. She stood five feet two and rode a Matchless motorbike. In 1926, as the Hon Mrs Victor Bruce, she won the inaugural Monte Carlo rally, Coupe des Dames, in an AC, driving the whole way from John o’Groats. She next persuaded W O Bentley to lend her…3 min
The Oldie|October 2021Get me to the church in styleWhat should a woman priest wear?The first Anglican women priests were ordained in Britain in 1994. There were just 32 of them then; there are now 1,380 in the Anglican communion around the world.They often choose traditional cassocks for services. But there are no strict rules for their civvies.A woman priest is caught in a bit of a bind: she can’t dress too sexily, flamboyantly, expensively, cheaply or drably. No wonder the Reverend Catherine Llewelyn-Evans has found herself thinking that perhaps the original sin of Adam and Eve was just getting dressed. ‘Once you have to put on clothes, you differentiate yourself – and, in my case anyway, you go through years of self-consciousness. Had we all remained naked, none of this would have happened.’Catherine, as she likes parishioners to…4 min
The Oldie|October 2021Edinburgh’s glass menagerieMany are the minutes – even hours – that I have sat in contemplative wonder, looking at the fragments of the first stained-glass window in the country, if not the world, dating from 670 AD.The window is hard by the centre of Sunderland, within the walls of St Peter’s Church, Monkwearmouth, County Durham, one of the most important Anglo-Saxon churches in the country. If you dwell on what was subsequently to be produced with this glowingly translucent art, you are quite floored with delight.With stained glass being associated most generally with the Church for well over 1,000 years, I find it particularly appealing in a secular light. What about the shock-a-second sight of the excellent and elegant crowd of Victorian notables and sportsmen, portrayed in both stained glass and tiled…5 min
The Oldie|October 2021Genius crossword 405EL SERENOThis is to all intents and purposes a normal cryptic crossword. However, 2 clues lack definitions, and an extra word has been added to one clue. This word is an anagram of the solution to 23 down. These provide the answer to a mystery.Across1 Striker must lose one for a great deal of money (6)4 Sweeper keeps everybody on their toes here! (8)10 Runs in desperate hope – wins possession (9)11 Issue seeing boss initially cross (5)12 City formed from mostly ecclesiastical district (5)13 Bird having split crest (9)14 Firm’s only source of liquidity (7)16 Appear ominously close to depression – not good (4)19 Creature that may appear before March? (4)21 Sun involved in slander (7)24 Son loses heart with a racehorse that may be beaten (5,4)25 Plant that…3 min
The Oldie|October 2021VIRGINIA IRONSIDEThe Guest from HellQ Just before we were locked up, an old artist friend of my husband’s occasionally stayed with us – always telling us at the last minute – as we live near to where he has an occasional job.We didn’t enjoy having him to stay as he invariably arrived drunk, and insisted on smoking – albeit outside – and left a mess. He always made my husbandfeel bad because he’d say, ‘Don’t go to any trouble! Just a rough blanket and I’ll sleep on the floor!’This is not how we operate at all and we were relieved when his work was curtailed by COVID. But now he’s started asking to stay again. How can we tactfully say we don’t like this arrangement?S J, HastingsA Next time he comes…3 min
The Oldie|October 2021HistoryOPERATION PEDESTALTHE FLEET THAT BATTLED TO MALTA 1942MAX HASTINGSWilliam Collins, 336pp, £25In 1942, a British convoy set out to relieve the starving people of Malta, which was our crucial military base in the Mediterranean. Regarded as a suicidal mission, only five out of 14 merchant supply ships made it through and 500 lives were lost. This is ‘an eye-level view of mortal danger set against a major inflection point during World War II’, wrote Jonathan W Jordan in the Wall Street Journal. ‘Mr Hastings paints a portrait of naval combat with an artist’s brush guided by more than a half-century of combat reportage. Compassionate toward men who braved bombs, torpedoes, fire and a cruel sea, he showcases the Royal Navy – along with the merchant vessels it guarded – at…18 min
The Oldie|October 2021ArtsTHE KING’S PAINTERTHE LIFE AND TIMES OF HANS HOLBEINFRANNY MOYLEHead of Zeus, 575pp, £35Hans Holbein created our image of Henry VIII: the ruthless, swaggering, cod-piece-thrusting symbol of kingly authority. But, despite his gloriously vivid portraits of the Tudor court, very little is known about the artist himself. In the Times, Laura Freeman was delighted by the sheer gorgeousness of Franny Moyle’s new biography of Holbein: ‘I take my feathered cap off to Moyle and her publishers. It is an expensive and difficult business getting permissions for reproductions. There is hardly a painting mentioned in the text that isn’t printed in colour and across a whole page. You can count the hairs on Holbein’s beard, peer at every pearl. This is a triumph of bookmaking as well as biography.’In the Sunday…8 min
The Oldie|October 2021DiseaseVAXXERSTHE INSIDE STORY OF THE OXFORD ASTRAZENECA VACCINE AND THE RACE AGAINST THE VIRUSSARAH GILBERT AND CATHERINE GREEN, WITH DEBORAH CREWEHodder, 352pp, £20Laboratory scientists make unlikely public heroes and heroines; but in the age of Covid that’s just what has happened to some of them. Sarah Gilbert and Catherine Green – two eminent but unassuming vaccinologists – found themselves the objects of a standing ovation at Centre Court on the first day of Wimbledon. They were two of the key figures in the development of the AstraZeneca vaccine – and their book on the subject, delivered in almost comparably record time – reads like a ‘biomedical thriller’, thought the Guardian’s Mark Honigsbaum. They tell their story in alternating chapters, and ‘are at pains to point out that they are not…4 min
