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The Oldie|December 2022Among this month's contributorsMadeline Smith (p13) played Miss Caruso, the Bond Girl in Live and Let Die who has her dress unzipped by Roger Moore with a magnetic watch. A Hammer horror star, she was also in Up Pompeii.Ronald Blythe (p3o) is our greatest living rural writer. He turned too on 6th November. He is author of Akenfield and Word from Wormingford: A Parish Year. His new book is Next to Nature.Anthony Haden-Guest (p34) lives in New York and is the model for Peter Fallow in Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities. He wrote The Last Party: Studio 54, Disco, and the Culture of the Night.David Hepworth (p65) presented Live Aid and The Old Grey Whistle Test. He is author of Abbey Road Studios at 90. He presents the Word in Your…1 min
The Oldie|December 2022My royal appointments diary‘Keep a diary and someday it'll keep you.’Whoever said it - Mae West used the line in a film in 1937, but both Margot Asquith and Lillie Langtry were reported as saying it in the 1920s - was bang on the money. I started keeping a diary in 1959 (when I was eleven) and I have been profitably mining it almost ever since.It's because I Keep a diary that I can tell you that I first met Queen Elizabeth II on the evening of Thursday 2nd May 1968.1 was a 20-year-old student at Oxford at the time and Her Majesty, 42, came to visit the university debating society, the Oxford Union.When she had gone, I reprimanded William Waldegrave (the Union President, now Baron Waldegrave of North Hill and Provost of…4 min
The Oldie|December 2022MODERN LIFEWHAT IS generative artificial intelligence?Generative artificial intelligence is the next wave of the digital revolution, if we are to believe the soothsayers of Silicon Valley.Most of us are familiar with common-or-garden artificial intelligence - when machines figure stuff out for themselves, usually by processing enormous amounts of data at a speed no human can match. One practical application is Facebook's surveillance software combing through your personal information to try to sell you the oven gloves you bought last week.The thing about this form of AI is that it's basically a glorified calculator. It can't make the creative leaps that are a feature of human intelligence.That's why generative AI is exciting. It can process all our lovely data and remix it into pictures, songs, poems, novels, programmes, articles and videos that…2 min
The Oldie|December 2022The Great British Teeth ProblemMore than 70 per cent of people aged 65 and upwards have some form of gum disease. Some of you will feel smug when you have finished reading this. Others will feel guilty and frightened.But don't worry – it is never too late to have gum disease halted by a dental hygienist. If you obey his or her orders, you may even have saved your life.The role of dental hygiene in our health is underrated. Who knew that your risk of heart disease, diabetes and even Alzheimer's can be considerably increased if you have inflamed gums?Lesley, a leading Harley Street hygienist, says, ‘Anything that causes inflammation stresses your body out – just as smoking hardens your arteries – and stress makes you more vulnerable to opportunist illnesses.’So how do your…4 min
The Oldie|December 2022Winter is comingI walk to Advent Matins in a thin, cold drizzle.Supermarket shoppers zip past. I can hear our church bells getting into their stride. How pleased Widow Sturdy would have been to know that the bell she created in her foundry was in good ringing order all these centuries later.The footballers are not yet in their stride. Damp, noisy and listless, they trot up and down and keep warm. Their dogs gaze from car windows, telling each other, ‘More fool they!’In church, strangers take up an entire pew. Well! I light the Advent candle, say the Advent words, sing the Advent tunes:‘Ring, bells, ring, ring, ring! Sing, choirs, sing, sing, sing!’What a dark day it is. Black, shiny lanes, lightless furrows, horses in their gloomy blankets – but my little white…3 min
The Oldie|December 2022Notes on a scandalDear Perusers,To be perfectly honest, I'm buggered. Mind you, an elder statesman like my good self can expect a bit of aggro at the festive season - and I've had more challenges than our tinted PM, God love him.The lezzo lynch mob have been up my blurter in no uncertain terms, to be honest. They reckon I'm something called ‘transphobic’. I had to look it up in a publication. Apparently I'm not meant to like blokes who are trapped in the body of a woman.Bullsh*t.One of my best mates in the political spectrum, Desmond Rafferty, had a sh*thouse experience recently. He was working late one night with his top research assistant, Tiffany (no, better call her Jayden - Tiffany's her real name). Anyway, he started to feel a bit horny,…4 min
The Oldie|December 20222022 and all that - a history of British blundersIt was the worst humiliation since Suez but, somehow, Suez remains the gold standard for fiascoes.Liz Truss completed her premiership in record time, like a gatecrasher who, after stumbling around drunkenly smashing things for a few minutes, is quietly ushered out by a group of halfway sober guests. Michael Howard popped up on the radio to affirm that Suez had been ‘far worse’, which was oddly comforting.In chaotic times, it is good to have some certainties to cling to - and Suez as our postwar nadir is one. Anthony Eden's bungled attempt in 1956 to re-establish imperial clout - comprehensively reverse-ferreted after the Americans told him to stop being silly - has lasted surprisingly well.There have been any amount of co*ck-ups, from Profumo to the Iraq War, from the ERM…4 min
The Oldie|December 2022Breastfeeding beats chestfeedingI sat across the table from the late April Ashley at a pre-pandemic Oldie lunch and thought her amazing.She was a beautiful old lady - she died in 2021 - as she once had been a beautiful young man. She made history as one of the first openly transgender people and she had to struggle against prejudice and mockery to affirm her right to be respected for who she was.But there's a difference between accepting and respecting an individual person who has gender dysphoria and rushing headlong into a rigid ideology of transgenderism - in which official organisations and powerful corporations have taken to alluding to women as ‘pregnant people’ and ‘people who menstruate’.It has been proclaimed that breastfeeding, known to all female mammals, should now be called ‘chestfeeding’ -…4 min
The Oldie|December 2022Quite Interesting Things about … the Olympics• The ancient Greek city of Megara held a version of the Olympic Games which included a kissing contest. Only boys were allowed to enter. • The fastest 100 metres run by an eight-year-old today would have won bronze at the 1896 Olympics. • The 1900 Paris Olympics included live pigeon shooting and long jump for horses. • Horses competing in the Olympics today have their own passports and fly business class. • Croquet was dropped as an Olympic sport after 1900 because only one spectator turned up to watch. • Players in Canada's 1904 Olympic lacrosse team included Rain-in-Face, Snake Eater and Man Afraid Soap. • At the 1908 London Olympic Games, Great Britain won gold, silver and bronze in the Tug-of-War. • In 1924, Jack Yeats, brother of…1 min
The Oldie|December 2022The healing power of artMy eye was caught recently by a small item in the British Medical Journal - ‘Art improves life.’It referred to a Canadian study during the COVID lockdown. Elderly people who were socially isolated and living on their own benefited from weekly virtual tours round the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, compared with those who did not go on such tours.Do we really need the BMJ to inform us that art improves life? Imagine a world in which there was no art and no possibility of there being any art: would anyone not understand that life in such a world would be deeply impoverished?The study divided 106 isolated elderly people at random into two groups: those who were offered tours of the museum and those who were not.For ethical reasons, they…3 min
The Oldie|December 2022Book of booksBy Christopher de HamelAllen Lane £40One August day in 1854, a man in a dark frock coat, with a black beard and a large head, was waiting in the market town of Broadway, Worcestershire, for a fly carriage to a big Georgian house three or four miles away.This was Middle Hill, stuffed from floor to ceiling, in corridors and bedrooms, with 60,000 unique manuscripts, obsessively, ruthlessly and ruinously collected by Thomas Phillipps.His visitor was Constantine Simonides, not yet known as one of the most astonishing forgers in history.They were made for each other. I'd come across Phillipps, then 62, in connection with his savage feud with his son-in-law James Orchard Halliwell, a collector of obscure lore. After Halliwell eloped with his daughter, Phillipps promoted accusations through the Times that he…4 min
The Oldie|December 2022Soft centreBy Jonathan CoePenguin Viking £20Sometime in the early 1990s, Jonathan Coe decided he had had enough of trying to be the next B S Johnson - this country's great under-acknowledged experimental novelist, on whom Coe is something of an expert.Instead, he wrote What a Carve Up!, an angry state-of-the-nation novel that dealt with the horrible behaviour of the Winshaw family, Thatcherite grotesques with a guilty secret in the past. The reviewer for the TLS (me) said that while the prose ‘runs on rails’ - ie is not exactly inventive - the plot was a cracker.Since then, Coe has produced many more state-of-the-nation novels, with recurring characters, fewer appalling ones and an equitable - or equable narrative viewpoint.Bournville is another: it relates the lives and loves of one Midlands family, the…4 min
The Oldie|December 2022Commonplace CornerA new series of sad, funny and intriguing insights from the great and the goodI want to be who I was when I wanted to be who I am now.Marilyn MonroeAs God said, and I think rightly…The opening of a speech by Field Marshal MontgomeryWorking is less annoying than amusing yourself.Charles BaudelaireO Duty, Why hast thou not the visage of a sweetie or cutie?Ogden NashI am beginning to see that brain counts for little but that character counts for everything.Harold NicolsonYou help me lay an egg. I'll put up the curtains, do the dusting and we'll live happily ever after. No, thank you.Russell Harty on broody womenThe classic alcoholic personality, cursed with that fatal combination of big ego and low self-esteem.Charles Spencer, former Daily Telegraph theatre criticCousin Taffy doesn't want…2 min
The Oldie|December 2022FILMOldie-readers will know all about The Admirable Crichton, J M Barrie's marvellous 1902 play, later made into a film four times.Crichton is the dutiful butler to the Earl of Loam. But when he and the Loam family are shipwrecked on a desert island, it is Crichton who becomes master of the household because he knows how to find food and cook it.Exactly the same premise has been copied - in a ham-fisted way - in Triangle of Sadness, Ruben Östlund's film about the appalling behaviour of today's rich.In this new version, the Loams are replaced by the modern aristocracy chief among them two supermodel influencers, a Russian oligarch and a computing billionaire - aboard a luxury cruise ship touring Greece.When the ship is blown up by pirates, the rich take…3 min
The Oldie|December 2022TELEVISIONIt now comes with a disclaimer explaining to younger viewers and those overseas that it is not a documentary but a work of imagination based on real events.This is because Season 5 of the series, argued Dame Judi, ‘blurs the lines between historical accuracy’ and crude sensationalism’.In one scene, Prince Charles (Dominic West) arranges a private audience with the Prime Minister in an attempt to oust his increasingly irrelevant mother from the head of the family firm. This, John Major has insisted, is ‘a barrel-load of nonsense’. That may well be the case but I don't hear him complain about being portrayed by Jonny Lee Miller, which is stretching the truth even further.If The Crown has become a soap opera, we can't entirely blame the showrunner, Peter Morgan. The saga…3 min
The Oldie|December 2022EXHIBITIONSCompton Verney to 15th JanuaryPEASANTS AND PROVERBS: PIETER BRUEGHELTHE YOUNGERBarber Institute, Birmingham, to 22nd JanuaryConnoisseurs of 17th-century Flemish and Dutch painting are well catered for in the Midlands this autumn. These comparatively small, well-focused exhibitions can be enjoyed together or severally, being just 30 miles apart.There is a closer connection between the two, in that Dr Amy Orrock, senior curator at Compton Verney, is an eminent authority on the Bruegel dynasty, with and without the h.The Dutch flower show is a travelling exhibition of nine splendid examples from the National Gallery, augmented by another from a private collection. They trace the first flowering (sorry) of the genre in the 17th century and brief Indian summer in the later 18th.Generations of art historians have argued about the meaning of floral still…2 min
The Oldie|December 2022COOKERYTop of the new cookbook crop is Jeremy Lee's no-nonsense Cooking: Simply and Well, for One or Many.The author is the chef/proprietor of London's Quo Vadis, He's an east-coast Scot who learned to cook at his mother's elbow. So it's no surprise that pastry and pies feature strongly, as do offal and smoked fish: haddock, Arbroath smokies, kippers and eel.The illustrations are sensible and usable. They match the author's enthusiasm and quality of writing. Brilliant stuff! Tuck a copy in every available Christmas stocking.Beetroot and barley salad with smoked fishA simple supper for a winter's evening, and the perfect dish if you're thinking ahead to the fasting supper of Christmas Eve. Serves 6.The fishSmoked trout, herring, mackerel, sprats (about 750g whole fish)For the salad6-8 small beetroots, cooked and skinned 5…3 min
The Oldie|December 2022SPORTIn this time of division and uncertainty, there is one thing we can all agree on: when it comes to sport and television, Desmond Lynam knows what he is talking about.The greatest of all broadcasting front men, Des was for a generation there at the heart of everything, making us feel, with his warm twinkle, as if we were right alongside him. He fronted the BBC's coverage of the Olympics, the Grand National, countless FA Cup Finals and a whole succession of Wimbledons. And he made all of them compelling viewing.But he reckons the most sizeable and significant event of the lot is the World Cup.‘No doubt about it,’ he tells me on the phone. ‘Much bigger than the Olympics. I mean, at the Olympics you have the athletics, the…3 min
The Oldie|December 2022Horrors of hard pawnA 3,000-year-old industry, regarded as a last resort for people on the breadline, is flourishing in today's economically pinched times.Pawnbrokers still lend small sums of money to people needing a top-up till pay day. Now there are also high-end pawnbrokers, who lend on Porsche cars and Rolex watches, yachts and works of art worth tens of thousands of pounds.Researchers at the University of Bristol Personal Finance Centre discovered that a quarter of pawnbrokers’ customers own their homes and seven out of eight have standard bank accounts.The other side of pawnbroking is selling the pledges that have been forfeited - gold, jewellery, watches, designer handbags - through their high-street shops, supplemented with stock they buy in. Those with websites advertise the items for sale, and some sell online.Shoppers won't find rock-bottom…3 min
The Oldie|December 2022Swish Family RobinsonAnne RobinsonHere's what I know: never be the indulgent granny providing the holiday villa for two grandsons, a son-in-law (faultless except for being an Everton supporter) plus a daughter whose ability to be on full-time quality control is as exhausting as it is a scientific phenomenon.This year, I knew better. ‘We are not,’ I announced, ‘having a month in someone else's hot house, where the brochure might not have conveyed the wobbly steps to the faraway pool, or the cook's limited repertoire.‘We are having six days of hotel luxury, with two significant advantages: all complaints can go directly to reception; and the trip will appreciably reduce the inheritance tax that might otherwise be an inconvenience after I've gone.’To this end, I booked us in to the Marbella Club - famed…8 min
The Oldie|December 2022On the bonnie banks ofLoch GartenMy children have been raised in a very flat place. So, rather than daunt them with a Cairngorms mountain walk, I took them for a stroll at Loch Garten, which is the Highlands - and nature for beginners.This RSPB reserve offers a walk between the woods and the water, Caledonian pine forest and scenic loch.We spilled out of the car and headed to the visitor centre. An RSPB helper greeted us and grilled the kids on their nature knowledge. ‘What do golden eagles eat?’To my dismay, my wild children were tongue-tied. ‘Badger?’ tried one. Oh, the shame.Visitor centre patronised, eco-friendly beeswax sandwich wraps bought, keen to sample local nature we began the Two Lochs Trail, a circular two-mile stroll from Loch Garten to Loch Mallachie and back.The osprey pairs who…3 min
The Oldie|December 2022BRIDGEWhen a professional bridge-playing friend of mine plays with a student, he has a code as dummy after his student has made a contract.‘Well done’ means ‘You were successful but played it wrongly.’ ‘Well played’ means what it says: ‘You played it correctly.’Dealer South Both Vulnerable(1) Fourth Suit Forcing, ‘We'regoingto game, partner. More information, please.’ (2) Implying his six-four shape. (3) Roman Key Card Blackwood. (4) Showing zero or (clearly) three of the ‘five aces’ (includingthe king of clubs). (5) Asking for the queen of clubs (logically with a grand slam in mind as the partnership are forced to Six). (6) Showing the queen of clubs and the king of hearts - perfection for South. On this month's 7♣ from an online tournament, the declarer at Table One won West's…2 min
The Oldie|December 2022Burning brightA recent article in the Times asserted that ‘Mediocrities are among the most promising people in the world.’ James Mariott went on to explain that those who have achieved only moderate success still burn with the energies necessary for serious achievement. He wrote that ‘because the media makes artists into brands, modern reputations are durable. The best work of Martin Amis and Ian McEwan is decades in the past. But they will be famous until they die.’I thought of this when the Booker Prize winner was announced last month. The winning title, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, was only the second published novel by the Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka (born 1975), while the shortlisted 88-year-old Alan Garner (Treacle Walker) has written more than 25 books (see review on…2 min
The Oldie|December 2022A HISTORY OF WATERWilliam Collins, 352pp, £25This is a book about Portugal's maritime empire seen through the eyes of two very different Renaissance figures, diplomat and archivist Damiao de Gois, and epic poet Luís de Camões. ‘At the heart of Edward Wilson-Lee's erudite and engrossing dual biography, A History of Water, is the stark contrast between the curious, questioning world view of Damiao and that of his more famous contemporary, Luís de Camões, the author of the Portuguese national epic poem The Lusiads, an Odyssey full of seafaring heroics,’ wrote Paul Lay in his review for the Times.‘As Wilson-Lee argues Damiao in his writings wanted to “temper the triumphalism of Portuguese and European narratives of history”; Camões flattered and celebrated his royal master's imperial dreams.’ Wilson-Lee's book ‘combines literary flair with deep historical…1 min
The Oldie|December 2022THE MANDELA BRIEFJohn Murray, 335pp, £25From a secular Jewish family and the son of a British MP, Sydney Kentridge practised law in South Africa for 30 years before pursuing a successful career back in the UK. He represented Nelson Mandela at the 1958 Treason Trial in Pretoria and represented the family of murdered activist Steve Biko at the inquest into his death.R W Johnson, in the Times, found that ‘the book's strength lies in its close exposition of his brilliant gifts in cross-examination, his command of voluminous evidence, his often sinuous irony and sarcasm and the way in which he led many of the champions of the apartheid state to destroy their credibility in court. Grant rightly emphasises that these extraordinary courtroom performances rested on herculean amounts of labour and an utter…1 min
The Oldie|December 2022DÜNKIRKEN 1940Osprey Publishing, 352pp, £20‘The noise, my dear, and the people!’ This, allegedly, was how an equivocal Guardee recalled Dunkirk. What German troops made of it is harder to gauge because, as Robert Kershaw reveals in his ground-breaking book, almost all of those involved were later killed on the Eastern Front. Their superiors saw it as a missed opportunity to capture men as well as matériel, while acknowledging that the battle for France took precedence. But the battle-weary Wehrmacht landsers, rightly proud of their historic victory, seem to have been too eager to grab their share of the loot left behind by the BEF to engage in retrospection. Nobody, including Hitler, was aware quite how many British troops would live to fight another day.Was Hitler's famous ‘Halt Order’ to the Panzers…1 min
The Oldie|December 2022APIPELINE RUNS THROUGH ITAllen Lane, 768pp, £35Once it became apparent that oil was a better fuel for battleships than coal and that motor vehicles were here to stay, no prisoners were taken by those determined to exploit this gilt-edged resource. For instance Royal Dutch Shell literally exterminated the unfortunate Sumatrans below whose land there was a huge oil field. A similar fate had already befallen the native American tribes of New York and Pennsylvania, the fiefdom of Standard Oil's John D Rockefeller. And when, in 1885, oil was discovered in Upper Burma, oil-less Britain promptly invaded.In the Times, Max Hastings said that ‘one of the many fascinating conclusions’ reached by Keith Fisher was that when we lost the American War of Independence, we had no inkling that we were forfeiting ‘not merely a…1 min
The Oldie|December 2022DIAGHILEV’S EMPIREFaber, 374pp, £25‘Part biography, part history of ballet in the 20th century, the book looks at how the larger-than-life impresario was able to take what was at the end of the 19th century the “childish business” of ballet and not only drag it, often through sheer force of will, into artistic maturity, but also establish it as “a crucial piece in the jigsaw of western culture”.’ So wrote Bryan Karetnyk in the Spectator.In the later chapters, Christiansen takes ‘a wide-angle view of Diaghilev's many rivals, survivors and successors, marshalling an impressive range of memoir, private correspondence and journalism to provide a convincing and genuinely illuminating sense of the many fields – ballet, art, literature and film – in which his legacy ebbs and flows today.’ Not only is it ‘written…2 min
The Oldie|December 2022REVENGEBlink, 452pp, £22Tom Bower's evisceration of the duch*ess of Sussex received so much coverage that it can hardly have mattered to his sales that actual reviews of the book tended to be either lofty or lukewarm. It was, wrote Melanie Reid in the Times (which had serialised long extracts of the juiciest morsels) an ‘eye-popping demolition job’. Anita Singh in the Daily Telegraph thought the takedown ‘so relentless that getting to the end feels like a slog’. But Singh still detailed the ‘best and most convincing’ accounts from ‘the little people in Meghan's line of fire’. Stories of her bullying behaviour are apparently legion: a British literary agent called Meghan ‘one of the most unpleasant people we've ever dealt with’.Stories of Meghan's bullying behaviour are apparently legionIn the Observer, Catherine…1 min
The Oldie|December 2022MISS WIILMOTT’S GHOSTSBlink, 352pp,£25In 1897, Ellen Willmott was due to receive the RHS's Victoria Medal but never turned up. Willmott, famous for her alpines, her bulbs and her talent for growing the ungrowable, was an ill-tempered eccentric who booby-trapped her bulb beds with shot guns and whose habit of sprinkling her rivals’ gardens with the seeds of an invasive sea holly gave rise to the plant's common name ‘Miss Willmott's Ghost’.Reviewing Sandra Lawrence's biography in the Spectator, Anne de Courcy observed: ‘She had a happy childhood in an affluent family of the rising Victorian middle class; from the age of seven she would come downstairs on her birthday morning to find on her plate a cheque for £1,000 (today worth £126,588) from her rich godmother. Unsurprisingly, she never learned the value of…1 min
The Oldie|December 2022WITHOUT WARNING AND ONLY SOMETIMESTinder Press, 394pp, £16.99‘If you want to find out how the sweet, clever, uncertain Mandy grew up to be Kit de Waal, bestselling author and tireless amplifier of working-class voices in literature, then read this book,’ wrote Lynsey Hanley in the Observer. ‘She grew up in 1960s Moseley, where her parents, a little woman from Wexford and a bus driver from St Kitts, raised five children without ever really growing up themselves.’Despite their financial struggles, described Fiona Sturges in the Guardian, Dad Arthur would blow his earnings on a pair of Chelsea boots or a fancy suit, while the children were hungry – always. In an effort to make sense of her life, mother Sheila becomes a Jehovah's Witness, which for the kids involved ‘interminable hours spent at weekly meetings…1 min
The Oldie|December 2022ABOMINATIONSBorough Press, 304pp, £20The novelist and Spectator columnist Lionel Shriver has become one of the most dauntless combatants in a culture war so vicious that fainter hearts have left the field altogether. Reviewing this collection of essays in the Wall Street Journal, Meghan Cox Gurdon noted that Shriver's ‘ornery observations’ have ‘brought upon her the full flaming rage of the Twittersphere. Unhappily for her enemies, she is not on social media, and her professional associates have stood by her, so the conflagrations have left her unsinged.’‘Abominations is organised thematically rather than chronologically, so the act of reading it means toggling in time. Before 2015, as one is reminded, it was possible to participate in cultural debate and literary comment without thinking about identity politics, freedom of expression or gender ideology.…2 min
The Oldie|December 2022The Old Un's NotesTheatregoers who are keen on Dickens face a joyful December.Almost wherever one looks, A Christmas Carol is being staged - not least Dolly Parton's Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol, which the show's star, Robert Bathurst, writes about on page 37 of this issue.The Royal Shakespeare Company is doing A Christmas Carol in Stratfordupon-Avon. London's Old Vic is doing a production. And Deborah Warner has scheduled it at the Ustinov Theatre in Bath. Sir Nicholas Hytner has recruited Simon Russell Beale for a version at his Bridge Theatre.Further adaptations are to be had this year in Kingston upon Thames, Windsor, Bristol, Doncaster, Coventry, Exmouth, Chesterfield, Woking, Portsmouth, Wilmslow, Salisbury, Crewe, Liverpool, Bolton and Buxton and at Sheffield Cathedral.Until a decade ago, Dickens's tale of redistribution was seldom known on stage. Since then,…7 min
The Oldie|December 2022I think it's all over. It will be soonThis question may look deceptively rhetorical, but it begs a starkly literal answer.Is laughter the best medicine?No, it is not. If it were, those diagnosed with atrial fibrillation would be prescribed a Seinfeld box set instead of a blood-thinner and beta-blockers.But imagine for a moment that laughter is a uniquely effective drug. In that event, anyone exposed to John Cleese these past several decades has been in the placebo group.Mr Cleese's bitter resentments and ravening sense of entitlement denied have transformed him from arguably the funniest man on the planet to the least amusing life form in this, or any, quadrant of the galaxy.Yet we cannot damn an apcrçu out of contempt for its mouthpiece. So the time comes, as every fourth year, to trot out the Michael Frayn line…4 min
The Oldie|December 2022I was Peter Cook’s caddyOn Monday 25th August 1980, most people were asleep when Betjeman's Britain was aired at 10.40pm on ITV.A selection of John Betjeman's poems had been set to music by composer Jim Parker, and visually represented by various television heavyweights including Eric Morecambe, Peter Cook and Susannah York.Peter Cook (1937-95) played the dedicated golfer in Betjeman's poem Seaside Golf. I was his put-upon caddy, reluctantly trailing behind him on the course. Both of us were dressed to the nines in exquisite Edwardian costumes.Our poem was brought to Technicolor life on the windswept Sheringham links course in Norfolk.Australian director Charles Wallace had hawked his project around the TV stations for nearly two years. A half-hour programme of poems had little appeal to the networks.The idea was heavily influenced by the recent release…4 min
The Oldie|December 2022Poetry and emotionThe album was beautiful, made of red leather with gilt-edged pages. My late mother, Linda Kelly, who was a historian and lover of the 18th century, with biographies of Sheridan, Tom Moore and Talleyrand to her name, had been given it by her mother-in-law shortly after she got married in the early 1960s.She decided it was too precious to fill with anything so prosaic as recipes or addresses. She chose instead to keep it as a commonplace book - filled largely with poetry, and with bits of prose too - and she kept it on and off until the day she died nearly four years ago.Poetry had always been an enthusiasm of hers, which meant it became an enthusiasm of mine, and is something I've been writing about for some…4 min
The Oldie|December 2022Smyrna, joy of Asia‘Don't forget Smyrna!’ shouted Turkish President Recep Erdoğan in a speech this September.He was referring to Smyrna, the main port on Turkey's Aegean coast, and what happened to it 100 years ago.From 13th to 16th September 1922, starting just four days after the flight of Greek forces and the entry of a Turkish army, a fire destroyed the city centre.Greek and Armenian inhabitants fled to the waterfront, where they formed ‘a shrieking, terrified torrent of humanity’, according to George Ward Price, a British journalist watching from on board HMS Iron Duke (which eventually removed some of them). The fire, organised by Turkish soldiers, was followed by the murder or expulsion of 100,000 or more Greeks and Armenians.Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey's founding father, denied Turkey's responsibility, but he was the general…5 min
The Oldie|December 2022In the clubI first came across the Directory of British Associations when I was looking for the contact details of the Chewing Gum Action Group. I was wondering, ‘Do you take the stuff off bus seats or jam it on?’I'd opened up a treasure trove. I soon stumbled on the Car Park Appreciation Society, which collects ‘interesting data on car parks’.I found all this in the Directory of British Associations: A4-sized and the best part of two inches thick.Behind that tedious title lurks a fascinating A-Z of British bodies: 7,200 names, aims and addresses of trade bodies, professional bodies, busybodies; pressure groups, amenity groups, support groups; followers of the arts and throwers of darts.It is the gateway to everything from abattoirs to zoos, from the Adult Industry Trade Association (‘bondage, condoms, fetish,…2 min
The Oldie|December 2022The elephant manDebbie Dickinson particularly remembers her gig with Peter Beard (1938-2020), the playboy, conservationist, photographer and subject of a new biography. Unsurprisingly so.She was a model in her early twenties when she met him, already a veteran of Vogue covers and campaigns for alpha brands. The shoot was outside Beard's place in Montauk, Long Island. Jackie O and Truman Capote had come to dinner there. The Rolling Stones recorded Exile on Main Street there.On that day, Beard climbed a ladder, leant into his camera, took out a penknife, sliced his wrist and splattered blood onto the wide-open pages of his current diary below.Dickinson asked, ‘Uh, why?’‘Cause and effect,’ Beard said blithely. This was characteristic of the way he worked up his diaries into artefacts.He got on with the shoot, led her…4 min
The Oldie|December 2022It's my funeral - and I want a cheapskate's send-offLondon funerals have a very different quality from country funerals.They're more intense, and feel slightly unhealthy. They have something of the quality of a hangover. But they're also solid and grand.I recently went to the funeral of a friend, a poet, who died in his fifties. He went to paradise by way of Kensal Green: he was cremated at the General Cemetery of All Souls in London, Wio, built in 1833, three years before the publication of The Pickwick Papers. Kensal Green was the first of London's new ‘garden’ cemeteries, based on Paris's Père Lachaise.It's a gloomy, heavy, Gothic place, faintly oppressive, with ivy everywhere and not an ounce of cheer, which I suppose is how a cemetery should be. It's also intensely romantic. There are miniature Romanesque temples, Doric…4 min
The Oldie|December 2022My office dress code, courtesy of MotherMy delayed knee operation is still somewhere in the log-jammed NHS system. So my employees have kindly let me work from home for most of my working week.Sadly, this has made the day on which I do commute a festival of celebration and over-fussing at the Clarke residence.‘You'll need a coat - and your shoes are a disgrace. You'll never go far with shoes like that,’ Mother moaned.I didn't have the heart to explain that she was confusing me with my successful brother and I was just off to Doncaster, where the only use for a shiny shoe is catching the reflection of the man about to mug you.She bent down, regardless, and set to my shoes with polish and cloth, without seeking my permission.‘That's illegal buffing!’ I shouted, trying…3 min
The Oldie|December 2022Amazing graceAn old friend told me that he had been hearing about grace, endlessly, in sermons, but never with any specific definition as to what it actually is.He suggested to a clergyman friend that he should preach to clarify the subject, but nothing has been forthcoming.I said I would give it a go. Having checked the reference books, I now understand why the clergyman is so reticent. Grace is a minefield of controversy and requires a vast amount of theological and historical scholarship, which I distinctly lack.In the Old Testament, God gave to his people the capacity to do his will. ‘I shall pour clean water over you and you shall be cleansed.’ (Ezekiel 36:25)And in the New Testament we find grace shown to the unworthy and ungrateful on account of…2 min
The Oldie|December 2022READERS' LETTERSDr Stuttaford's full cellarSIR: We were amused by Dr Dalrymple's reference (The Doctor's Surgery, November issue) to his predecessor Dr Stuttaford's being a keen advocate of drink in moderation.We bought his house on Elm Hill in Norwich following his death. The sale included his cellar of claret and port which we are still drinking!If you come to Norwich, come and enjoy one with us.Julia Greaves and Jon Rosser, Norwich, NorfolkJeffrey Archer vs the truthSIR: In ‘Dare to be different’ (November issue), Andrew M Brown suggests there was ‘always at least one who affected 1950s Received Pronunciation…’; for those of us who grew up in the ’50s, RP was the way we spoke naturally as we grew up! Nothing affected about it.And in ‘A time for giving’ (Christmas Gift Guide), Jeffrey…8 min
The Oldie|December 2022New York timesBy Darryl PinckneyRiverrun £30In England, writing is not particularly respected as a profession, least of all by writers themselves.We work in bed, keep our own hours, and wear slippers to go the shops. Most writers I know potter along at their own pace and consider themselves drop-outs. None of them noticed lockdown.In New York, however, writers are glamorous and the most successful are treated as royalty. They get the best tables at the best restaurants and are courted, photographed and gossiped about.Back in the 1970s, when Darryl Pinckney's memoir is set, the king and queen of literary Manhattan were Robert Silvers and Barbara Epstein, editors of the newly formed New York Review of Books, and the duch*esses were Susan Sontag (essayist and intellectual, known as the cleverest woman in America),…4 min
The Oldie|December 2022All the world's a stageBy Marc MyersGrove Press £20The key thing about Live Aid, the event in 1985 that provides the full stop on this history of the early days of the live presentation of pop music, was it was a day when the sun shone.The members of the TV audience, most of whom had never experienced the uncertainties of music in the open air, were suddenly attracted by the idea of it. Any lingering notion that the rock concert represented the alternative died that day, almost 40 years ago, as the Age of Spectacle began.This survey of how the business of live grew in its first 30 years is presented by Myers, a veteran reporter on music for the Wall Street Journal, as a series of interviews with eyewitnesses.It begins with DJ Alan…4 min
The Oldie|December 2022Loo-paper dispensersOver the years, I've been to loos in cafés, pubs and public conveniences and often left embarrassed and angry. Why? It hasn't been the graffiti. It's simply from trying to get my hands on the toilet tissue.Take those single-sheet dispensers. The paper is ridiculously flimsy - so I have to yank out one at a time to make a wad thick enough to absorb anything.And no - you can't force open the top of the dispenser to get a handful without the aid of an industrial screwdriver.Don't be fooled by those side-by-side double-roll models. I've pulled from one end and out came the final sheet - so I tried the other roll. Nothing happened. Foiled by a mysterious lever underneath that's permanently stuck.I once had to pull the paper from…2 min
The Oldie|December 2022THEATREMY NEIGHBOUR TOTOROOne of the compensations of lockdown was being able to curl up on the sofa and take a trip round the world by watching foreign movies on TV. And of all the films my family watched during that strange interlude, our favourite was a Japanese cartoon called Tonari no Totoro, aka My Neighbour Totoro.My Neighbour Totoro was made in 1988 by leading Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, under the auspices of Studio Ghibli, Japan's answer to Walt Disney. It's a sort of modern fairy tale, about a nerdy academic who moves his family to a remote village in the Japanese countryside, to be near his wife, who's in a rural hospital suffering from some mysterious, unspecified illness.The couple have two young daughters, Satsuki and Mei, and the film revolves…3 min
The Oldie|December 2022MUSICIt was a strange coming-together of events. Daniel Barenboim used his acceptance speech for a Lifetime of Achievement at this year's Gramophone Awards to announce that he was temporarily stepping back from active music-making owing to ‘a serious neurological condition’.A multitasking musician like few others, Barenboim is 80 on 15th November. Being asked to write the cover feature on him for Gramophone's Awards issue turned out to be both an exploration of an extraordinary career and a trip down memory lane.1967 was the year this 24-year-old pianist-conductor astonished the musical world with a raft of memorable recordings. It was also the year I was asked to join the reviewing panel of Records and Recording, part of Philip Dosse's Hansom Book empire. His weird and wonderful ways are memorably chronicled in…4 min
The Oldie|December 2022GARDENINGWinter. Short days. Low temperatures.Off, then, for a spot of rewarding garden-visiting. Treats aplenty await the intrepid and curious green-fingered adventurer in this unlikely season.Why? Gardens stripped of their foliage and flowers reveal the creative hand of the skilled designer. Gardens in warmer (usually coastal) locations display a wealth of botanical beauty not seen in kindlier months. And gardens illuminated after dark form unworldly conceptions and hauntingly mysterious innovations.On Dorset's Jurassic Coast, Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens - the setting of the recent film adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1911 novel The Secret Garden, starring Colin Firth and Julie Walters are worth exploring at any time of the year. And their winter strobes endow them with thrilling shadows and unexpected pools of light that outshine any extravagant string of urban Chris tmas…2 min
The Oldie|December 2022RESTAURANTSLast month, I went to Paris. And, like Barry Humphries in the last issue of The Oldie, I couldn't help thinking the old girl was in bad need of Botox.This was brought home to me at my last lunch near the misery’ that is the Gare du Nord, when I mistakenly settled for a 28-euro menu du jour. I didn't bother to read the blackboard because The Oldie's drinks correspondent, Bill Knott, had recommended the gaff.How Bill must have danced with mirth in the anticipation that I would be served egg mayonnaise, followed by creamy rice with ham. Not even Dotheboys Hall would serve up such detritus.I would be vowing never to return to Haussmann's paradise (without a large picnic hamper), were it not for the wonderful dinner I enjoyed…3 min
The Oldie|December 2022MOTORINGAlthough not a doctrinaire VW family, we've owned nine over the years. They were mostly Golfs, with a sprinkling of Polos, an Audi A4 estate, a couple of Passat estates and an Up!.We bought them (all used) because they suited our needs, were affordable and reliable, looked right, fell wellmade and were good to drive. There's one in the current fleet, a 2018 Polo - an economical one-litre petrol runabout that does exactly what it says on the tin.Would we buy another? A few years ago, I'd have unhesitatingly said yes; now I'm not so sure.VW and Audi have not fared well in recent reliability surveys. In 2019, J D Power rated VW 12th out of 24 brands, but put Audi at 22nd. The 2022 What Car? survey didn't have…3 min
The Oldie|December 2022Come and stay at Château Beychevelle, in Bordeaux with Bill Knott 5th-9th June 2023Bill Knott writes, “Based at the palatial Château Beychevelle (www.beychevelle.com), often called the “Versailles of Bordeaux”, our jaunt around Bordeaux will take in a clutch of the Left Bank's finest estates, including the hard-to-visit Château Pontet-Canet and the delightful Château Pichon-Baron. We have also lined up trips to Château Smith Haut Lafitte in Pessac-Léognan, awarded too Parker points for their 2009 vintage, and an exclusive visit to Château Canon, the beautiful Saint-Émilion estate owned by Chanel, home of one of the appellation's very best wines. Expect plenty of delicious gastronomie bordelaise, too.’The château has 13 bedrooms: two suites; nine large doubles and two small doubles for single use.ITINERARY• Monday 5th June — Cité du VinDepart Gatwick with EasyJet at 0800; arrive Bordeaux at 1050. Tour of La Cité du Vin…2 min
The Oldie|December 2022My glorious dog daysFlint was a grey-brindle, rough-haired whiskered lurcher. He died when he was only two years old, after a much too short but happy life. He was killed at the thundering gallop chasing a muntjac, after being pierced straight through his lungs by a long thin spear of a stick which barely left a mark.He did not die immediately. We found him walking with an odd staggering gait through the woods. Subsequently no human could have had better medical treatment and few as good.He survived an operation lasting several hours (paid for by our insurance - woe betide not being covered), and then his heart gave out.I was at the time making a film about memorials to animals. What could have been a more soothing salve or a more than suitable…5 min
The Oldie|December 2022EL SERENOX stands for the same word wherever it appearsAcross7 Singer like this professional must keep a number (7) 8 Massage men lacking in enthusiasm, possibly (7) 10 Could Kierkegaard be one of man's best friends? (5,4) 11 Abandon holiday (5) 12 Trick person who's averse to cold? (5) 13 Conservative getting on train (3,6) 15 Ignorant article in Paris about a struggle (7) 17 Root giving flavour in drinks (English) (7) 18 Cheat is an awful × (4,5) 20 European surrounded by worst attack on all sides (5) 21 Wants rapid growth, with leader going east (5) 23 Barbie redesigned in tin for ×? (9) 24 Bored, having lost case after European agreement for blot on the landscape (7) 25 Provided protection, being cautious (7)Down1 Traffic measures may be serious…2 min
The Oldie|December 2022TESSA CASTROIN COMPETITION NO 286 you were invited to write a poem with the title Pudding. I White was told by his gran not to call it ‘afters’. Con Connell's narrator remembered ‘The day that “pudding” changed into “dessert” ’. For Vic Cole, the war was between Yorkshire and Bakewell puddings. Of the former, Mary Hodges remarked, ‘You need only eggs, milk and flour/ And a strong arm to beat it and beat it./ It won't take you more than an hour.’ Fiona Clarke wrote of a saintly hermit, Asphodel, for whom ‘When Christmas church bells chimed, from snowy skies, / Strange puddings floated down, to her surprise.’ Commiserations to them, and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus prize of The Chambers Dictionary going…3 min
The Oldie|December 2022DEVIL DOGSWilliam Collins, 604pp, £25For Gerard DeGroot, reviewer for the Times, Saul David understands the ugliness of war. ‘The gruesome detail is brutally accurate, never gratuitous. David is obviously fascinated by war, held in its seductive grip, yet his passion for the topic never causes him to whitewash war's loathsome nature. David examines the Pacific War from August 1942, when the first American combat troops arrived, to the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima three years later.’ David has rendered the Pacific War ‘in painful and poignant detail’.The Devil Dogs ‘included an extraordinary number of talented writers who recorded their experiences in diaries, letters and memoirs. Yet the real credit must go to the author who knits together this vast collection of material into a narrative that reads like war…2 min
The Oldie|December 2022THE MAKING OFTHE MODERN MIDDLE EASTPicador, 368pp, £20As befits its title, wrote Justin Marozzi in the Times, this is a ‘very personal story, covering the period from Bowen's arrival as a 29-year-old correspondent reporting on the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 to today’. Ian Birrell in the Spectator described Bowen as necessarily ‘drenched in the blood and misery’ that soils the Middle East, a view shared by Marozzi, who described the book as covering ‘an awful lot of bloody wars, taking in everywhere from Tunis and Tripoli to Cairo, Damascus, Jerusalem, the occupied Palestinian territories, Baghdad, Beirut and beyond’.It is to Bowen’s credit that this is not an ego tripBirrell thought it was to Bowen's credit that this work is not a ‘selfglorifying ego trip’, adding that a bit more of the personal might…1 min
The Oldie|December 2022SCOTLANDYale, 512pp, £25A Californian who has lived in Scotland since 1980, Gerard DeGroot was an interesting choice to review this compendious history for the Times: the Scots were once a ‘global people’, he noted, which ‘might explain why foreigners regard them more highly than they regard themselves’.DeGroot found Pittock's listing of eminent Scots through the ages a dull start, but urged sticking with it for the ‘forgotten multitude’ who represented Scottish soft power abroad (doctors, botanists, law students et al) after Culloden fuelled a diaspora. There is, he noted, a Yak and Yeti Burns Night in Nepal. Pittock's discussion of the 18th and 19th centuries was the high point, tracing the origin of both ‘military’ Scotland and the ‘romantic’ brand.Allan Massie in the Scotsman sourced Pittock's intellectual skills to Aberdeen…1 min
The Oldie|December 2022PERSONALITY AND POWERAllen Lane, 490pp, £30This book contains 12 essays about 20th-century European leaders, ‘who for good, and most strikingly ill, succeeded in bending the arc of history’, wrote Philip Stephens in his review for the Financial Times. ‘Organised around a series of individual portraits, the book is more than the sum of its parts. We learn that [Thomas] Carlyle was right. To chart the place of Hitler and Stalin or Churchill and De Gaulle is to appreciate the profound impact of individuals. But Marx, we see, also had a point. Churchill and De Gaulle were among the consequential leaders made by the moment.’Robert Service, writing in Literary Review, considered the chapter on Hitler ‘a wonderful distillation of a lifetime's research’ and said that ‘another sparling chapter is about Konrad Adenauer, West…1 min
The Oldie|December 2022A NORMAL FAMILYMonoray, 320pp, £16.99Chrysta Bilton's far from normal life story has generated many column inches. She has not just 35 new siblings (strictly speaking, half-siblings) but potentially hundreds, even thousands. All, including her younger sister Kaitlyn, share a father, a male-model-beautiful Californian called Jeffrey Harrison – ‘Donor 150’ – who supplemented his small income as a strippergram with twice-weekly deposits at a sperm bank.As Marianne Power noted in her Times review, the characters in Bilton's account of her upbringing deserve a book each. Some already have one, as they include Warren Beatty and Jeff Bridges, early boyfriends of Bilton's mother Debra, before she came out as a lesbian. Harrison is a conspiracy theorist, convinced aliens will come to harvest women's eggs. The real star of the book was Debra, who paid…1 min
The Oldie|December 2022CHARLIE’S GOOD TONIGHTMudlark, 344pp, £25Victoria Segal in the Sunday Times found this generous portrait of the Rolling Stones’ drummer frustrating: ‘There was clearly a turbulence behind [Watts's] pristine façade and Sexton describes his eccentricities without ever quite unpicking them. His fastidiousness extended far beyond a preference for handmade shoes and suits that once belonged to Edward VIII… He sketched every hotel bed he ever slept in.’‘Watts was borderline OCD,’ explained Mick Brown in the Telegraph, and remarkably contradictory, ‘an essential part of the group, yet at the same time curiously apart from it. He described playing with the band not as a vocation but “a job”, for which he dutifully turned up for work, drummed brilliantly and largely kept to himself.’ A frustration for Brown was that ‘the book largely skates over…1 min
The Oldie|December 2022ALLEGORIZINGSFaber, 207pp, £14.99The late Jan Morris was writing right up to the end of her life, and the posthumously published Allegorizings collects a final grab-bag of her whimsical and upbeat essays. Her guiding principles, says Morris in an Introduction, are the importance of kindness and the notion that everything, read right, is allegorical.The essays collected here are ‘vivid’, ‘funny’ and ‘cheerful’, full of ‘pleasure and sensuality’, thought Prospect's Sarah Moss, though she cautioned that to a younger generation Morris's flippant view of Empire might be ‘problematic’: ‘Readers who love Morris's work do so not because she is a professional historian or because she moves with the times, but because she celebrates her intellectual and aesthetic pleasures in deeply considered and grammatically gorgeous prose.’Writing in the New York Times, Sarah Moss…1 min
The Oldie|December 2022NOT MANY DEADMan ‘hid three snakes in pants’Drunken barber tried to break into car Dundee CourierEmpty canoe retrieved by police Orcadian£15 for published contributionsNEXT ISSUEThe January issue is on sale on 14th December 2022.GET THE OLDIE APPGo to App Store or Google Play Store. Search for Oldie Magazine and then pay for app.OLDIE BOOKSThe Very Best of The Oldie Cartoons, The Oldie Annual 2023 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.HOLIDAY WITH THE OLDIEGo to www.theoldie.co.uk/courses-tours…1 min
The Oldie|December 2022OLDEN LIFEWHAT WAS a British Visitor's Passport?The British Visitor's Passport (BVP) was a simplified version of the standard passport and was introduced in March 1961. It could be used by any British citizen, British Dependent Territories citizen or British Overseas citizen who had been resident in the UK for more than eight years.It could be obtained from any post office, as long as the applicant could provide a passport photograph and a birth certificate or valid ID. It could be used for holidays or private visits of no more than three months’ duration to specified European countries - and Bermuda!The visitor's passport was valid only for a year. However, if you booked a last-minute break and then discovered that your BVP had expired, there was no need to panic. You had…2 min
The Oldie|December 2022A vintage road trip to BrightonOn 2nd November 1952, the main cast of a new Rank Organisation comedy joined the start of the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run.The management at Pinewood was unenthusiastic about the film's prospects. None of the four leads was well known.Who would pay 1/9d to see a film about the owners of two elderly vehicles?The inspiration for Genevieve was from the expatriate American writer William Rose, who witnessed the 1950 Brighton Veteran Car Run pass his Sussex cottage.The South African-born director Henry Cornelius finally optioned the script, but his alma mater Ealing Studios turned down the production, claiming lack of space.Eventually, Rank agreed to provide 70 per cent of the £115,000 budget, with the remainder from the National Film Finance Corporation.Cornelius's original choices of leads were Dirk Bogarde and Claire…4 min
The Oldie|December 2022School days with an IRA terroristWhen someone is in a class above you or below you at school, they might as well not exist. The age gap appears much greater during your childhood.Rose Dugdale (born in 1941), the notorious IRA terrorist, was two classes above me at Miss Ironside's day school – my two spinster great-aunts’ dame school in Kensington. Even though she was three years older than me, she made a great impression not only on me but on every girl in the school.She was a bit gawky and masculinelooking – a big girl with a deep voice – and not conventionally pretty, but she exuded such energy, positivity, intelligence, generosity and, yes, even kindness that she was instantly attractive.The last thing I would have imagined, at school, was her dropping bombs, constructing missile-launchers,…6 min
The Oldie|December 2022Upwardly mobileI have friends the same age as me (81) and many much younger – here I include grandchildren. The greatest difference between them is my ability to contact them and communicate with them.With friends of my own age, I am very restricted in my ability to contact them. I can write a letter – pen to paper, envelope, stamp, shuffle to the post box – and hope that it is picked up by the increasingly depleted Post Office.On the other hand, I can ring them. Invariably this has to be on a landline because although they own a mobile, it is never switched on. ‘I put it on only when I want to call out.’This means that the great convenience of the mobile phone - you can answer it by…3 min
The Oldie|December 2022Not the retiring typeThe cost of living is rising, heating bills soaring, and more and more older people are going back to work.It's been called Britain's ‘great unretirement’. From April to June 2022, 173,000 over-65s returned to work, as inflation took a toll on their pensions.No wonder, I'm thinking, as someone who's just retired after 30 happy years in teaching. Yet financial pressures are just the start of it. What no one ever tells you about are all the other awful things about retirement.Here are just six of them:1. Once you're retired, every time you meet someone you used to work with, even a month or two later, you know deep down they'll be thinking, ‘Isn't s/he looking older!’ They'll be too polite to say it aloud, but that unmistakable look of pity…4 min
The Oldie|December 2022When Dolly met DickensMy discovery of Dolly Parton won't go down in the record books.Like Scott of the Antarctic, I find that other people have got there first. However late to the party, I find I am unabashedly hooked.Preparing for a role in the stage show Dolly Parlous Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol, I did some research into her career, now in its seventh decade.She has had 25 number-one hit singles and 41 top-ten albums. Her staggering ability is underpinned by a rare quality identified by music historian Bill Malone: ‘She's a member of the last generation of performers who had working-class roots or who could remember real rural experience.’Born in 1946 into an Appalachian farming family, she had a grounding in old-time-music traditions. It is also the foundation for our Christmas Carol project,…4 min
The Oldie|December 2022My brilliant diet? Buy disgusting foodWill it be this winter? Civil unrest? Will this be the year that, armed only with billhooks, we have to defend our village and its meagre resources from the ravenous zombie hordes?I haven't got much to defend - a few winter squash which, like the Mayan farmers, I have already hoarded for months, waiting for winter really to bite.The relapse into barbarism hasn't happened yet, and the forces of law and order still exist - or do they? Although they infest the motorway, I haven't seen a policeman in a Wiltshire town in years. Two members of the Wiltshire force are usually tied up with ‘domestic’ incidents in Melksham or Trowbridge - traditional centres of unrest.How long could we live off the land? I'm not even sure my air rifle…4 min
The Oldie|December 2022I adore my Latin loverNow that the pandemic is behind us, we are back to normal with our extra-curricular school visits.This means an occasional ‘crash day’, when the timetable is scrapped and educational activities are put into place. My Year-8 tutor group were sent off to the Eden Project. Alas, as an English teacher, I wasn't allowed to accompany them. We English teachers are important, see. Or that was the message we were meant to take home, although I'm not sure how that made the teachers sent to Eden feel.In any event, mocks are coming up for Year 11 and so they were given a full day of revision techniques - words that make my heart sink into my boots. I was to teach the same lesson four times to four different sets of…2 min
The Oldie|December 2022Lord Sainsbury KG (1927-2022)Neil MacGregor, former Director of the British Museum, gave a moving eulogy for his friend Lord Sainsbury, head of the family supermarket chain, at St Martin-in-the -Fields in Trafalgar Square, across the road from the National Gallery.MacGregor stressed Lord Sainsbury's generosity in giving the money to construct the Sainsbury Wing at the gallery. It was the grandest act of private cultural philanthropy since the war.MacGregor said, ‘National Service had taken John to Palestine at the unhappy end of the British Mandate - an experience that left him with an abiding sympathy for the homeless, refugees and asylum-seekers.‘It's especially appropriate in this church, St Martin's, with its long tradition of work with the homeless, to pay tribute to his work in this area as well. Here the Sainsbury Wing played a…1 min
The Oldie|December 2022Malcolm XArriving in Africa from Australia in 1964, I hooked up with a Peace Corps worker and parlour revolutionary from New York, known to his associates as Johnnie-the-Punk. Together we hitchhiked from the Cape to Cairo.Johnnie-the-Punk was anti-imperialist, anti-American, anti-bourgeoisie and agin most things I held dear. It was therefore with great excitement that he read that Black Muslim leader Malcolm X was in Cairo and staying at Shepheard's Hotel. (As you do, if you are dedicated to the overthrow of capitalist society, Shepheard's being at that time the most luxurious and costly hotel in Africa.)Punk was on the phone to Shepheard's in a trice. I expected to hear a smooth, disembodied voice repeating a mantra that Mr X was unavailable or had just checked out but, much to my surprise,…2 min
The Oldie|December 2022Pasta masterBy Luca Cesari and Johanna BishopProfile Books £16.99It might come as a surprise to non-Italians that pasta in all its forms was invented in Italy.Particularly to anyone - Chinese, French, Ukrainian or whatever - who's been rolling, scraping or stuffing a basic flour-and-water dough ever since a handful of grain was pounded into flour at the cave mouth.But this is the message convincingly delivered by culinary historian Luca Cesari in A Brief History of Pasta.The subtitle, always a giveaway of the author's real intention, is ‘The Italian food that shaped the world’. The Italians would agree. They are quietly convinced they invented olive oil, tomatoes, garlic - and pasta, the non-negotiable primo piatto on every self-respecting Italian menu.All Italy eats pasta. Even the Tuscans - mangia-fa*gioli, bean-eaters - slip a…3 min
The Oldie|December 2022Milton Gendel's endless Roman holidayIn 1954 the - now perhaps rather corny - film Three Coins in the Fountain revealed the urban splendour of Rome to a still shell-shocked world.Baroque façades shimmered in chiaroscuro sunlight; flights of staircases rushed to distant obelisks. The fabled fountains leapt and fell from sumptuous heights.That these location sequences were in fact shot a mere nine years after Monte Cassino and the Allies’ liberation of the capital from Nazi occupation is incomprehensible.A year later came the heaviest snowfall of the century… ‘Roma era tutta Candida, tutta pulita e lucida’, as Mia Martini sang. The snow layered the cities’ seven hills in deep, glistening white. Just as interwar Paris was the lure for Hemingway and the F Scott Fitzgeralds, these romantic images allured American literati, primarily young and recently released…4 min
The Oldie|December 2022A hack's best training? The university of lifeThe Left-leaning journalist Ian Jack, whom I once knew well, has died at the age of 77.He was an excellent editor and a beautiful writer, as his obituarists have noted. What they have generally missed is that he was one of the last of a breed once common in journalism - the autodidact who hasn't been to university.For much of the 20th century, some of the greatest journalists were in the same mould. J L Garvin, editor of the Observer from 1908 until 1942, was the son of a labourer who left school aged 13. Not only was he the influential editor of a paper that in those days was broadly of the Right; he was also the biographer of Joseph Chamberlain.Sir William Haley, Director-General of the BBC from 1944…4 min
The Oldie|December 2022RADIOIt is quite fun, every 25 years or so, to be reminded of moments from BBC history.As its centenary (14th November 1922) loomed, I dug out my shiny, gold vinyl double album from 1972, when Auntie was a mere 50. Readers who own a copy will know how priceless this is, starting with ‘Two Emma Toe - Writtle calling!’ and ending with Lord Reith's memorial service at Westminster Abbey, 1971.All so familiar: Beatrice Harrison's cello and the nightingale; Howard Carter relating the drama of discovering, in dead silence (except for the ‘gasp of wonderment that escaped our lips’) the sarcophagus and the golden effigy of Tutankhamun; ‘The fleet's lit up’ by drunken Wing-Cdr Tommy Woodrooffe; Edward VUI's abdication, with the immortal words ‘the woman I love’; Chamberlain's bulletin and its…3 min
The Oldie|December 2022GOLDEN OLDIESOn the Tube to the 02, a Glaswegian detained me to tell me about his lifelong love of Roxy Music.This was the sixth time he'd seen them, he said, recalling the time he'd belted up Sauchiehall Street in 1982 to the hotel the band were staying in, found the lead singer and told him he'd thrown a sickie to see them play the Apollo.Bryan had ticked him off for slacking and then said, ‘Well, seeing as you've taken the day off work, le t me buy you a drink.’The Glaswegian spoke of this evening's upcoming gig, I noted, as if it had already happened, which maybe - in one wav - it had.Though there are rumours that Bryan Ferry will take it to Worthy Farm for a teatime slot on…2 min
The Oldie|December 2022KITCHEN GARDENCelery is a vegetable that has no t been seen in my kitchen garden, and I rather doubt if there will be a place for it in future. Too much work for not much reward.The wild celery plant is usually found in damp ground, often close to rivers or the sea, which probably explains why cultivated celery must have plenty of moisture. Germination of the seeds is slow, and during growth the plants are liable to run to seed if they have not been hardened off before going to their final positions, and if the soil temperature is not warm enough.Trenches must be dug and the plants earthed up to blanch the stems as they grow above 12 inches tall. Regular watering should be continued during the summer, along with…2 min
The Oldie|December 2022DRINKBack in 1996, when the mania for Beaujolais nouveau was still at its height, as a stunt for a new food and drink magazine I had the idea of taking a few cases of English wine over to France.Further research revealed that my startlingly original wheeze had first been staged in 1911, but no matter. On the morning of the third Thursday in November - the official release date for Beaujolais - a Rolls-Royce containing a trio of rosbifs rocked up in the town square of Beauieu, the capital of Beaujolais.The car's capacious boot was filled with wines from Three Choirs and Lamberhurst and we poured them enthusiastically for the town's residents.Well, that was the idea. As it turned out, the whole town had been celebrating the new vintage the…2 min
The Oldie|December 2022Serious business of computer gamesA reader recently asked me for my views on the latest version of a popular computer game, and I had to admit that I had no opinion.I'm afraid the appeal of computer-based video games has simply passed me by. This is not just a peevish aspect of my growing older; I have never enjoyed them.I recall that, long ago, in the 1970s, when I was young, that Space Invaders game started appearing in pubs. Such games were undoubtedly an innovation and offered us a golden opportunity, for the first time, to feed 50p coins into a tabletop screen and press buttons to shoot at wave after wave of computerised aliens.I never enjoyed playing Space Invaders. I was no good at it, it was expensive and I badly missed the bar-billiards…3 min
The Oldie|December 2022The AvocetBefore the arrival of the collared dove, rose-ringed parakeet, little egret and red kite, the most exciting addition to the British bird list was the avocet (Recurvirostra avosetta).To appreciate how exciting it is, one must see a living avocet up close, as at Paradise Park near St Ives or, by appointment, at Deepdale Farm, north Norfolk.Lovelier there could not be O that slim upcurving bill, The ivory and ebony Feathers! She sees them still.Not one other plumaged thing In that room her senses met, Nor sound, nor flicker of a wing, Sweet blue-legg'd avocet.River, no, nor breasted seas, Nor the once-shared star of dawn, Nor alley's linden-scented breeze. Nor emerald flash of lawn…As that shadow of a bird, Vision on a plateless leaf, From childhood's memory bestirred To cast a…2 min
The Oldie|December 2022We have a chance of winningWhat's your favourite destination?Barcelona because I lived therefor three years. Ibiza - having really long lunches on the beach. And LA because I've got a lot of mates there.What are your earliest childhood holiday memories?Probably a couple of day trips to Skegness when I lived in Leicester. I remember my grandparents taking us away to Majorca, which was the first time we went on a sunshine holiday abroad. I was about eight or nine.Is there something you really miss when you're on holiday?Probably cooking, which is a new passion. Having been single now for about seven years, I got sick of eating out on my own and takeaways. I said, ‘Come on, Gary. Learn to cook.’I cook all the time and if I do go away, I genuinely miss not…3 min
The Oldie|December 2022Moron crossword 420Acrossl Spectre (5) 4 Intoxicating, invigorating (5) 8 Make a mistake (3) 9 Inflammation in throat (11) 10 Regular maintenance (7) 12 Verify; stop (5) 13 Imprison before trial (6) 14 Arachnid (6) 17 Cancel (5) 19 Displayed (7) 21 Additions (dietary) (11) 23 Thus (3) 24 Foe (5) 25 Sleepy, as if drugged (5)Down1 Moveable barriers (5) 2 Possess (3) 3 Teaching, instruction (7) 4 Divided by two (6) 5 Loft room (5) 6 Dry tea-yes! (anag) (9) 7 Lorry driver (7) 11 Talk of the past (9) 13 Practical type (7) 15 Ancient Egyptian tomb (7) 16 Dale (6) 18 Slight mistake (5) 20 Sexually attractive (5) 22 Pinch (3)Genius 418 solutionWinner: James Bibby, Preston, LancashireRunners-up: Brigid Gunn, Sparkford, Somerset; William Moore, Houghton-le-Spring, Tyne and WearMoron 418 solution:…1 min
The Oldie|December 2022VIRGINIA IRONSIDEAm I a lesbian?Q I'm sure you'll think I'm ridiculous: I'm a 70-year-oldwoman and I'm starting to wonder if I might not be gay. I did get married and had two children whom I adore, but I've always felt an outsider. I've always had very close friendships with women and felt happier with them than I have with men. My husband and I no longer have sex – it was always fine at the time but, watching TV the other day, I saw a woman and suddenly found her very attractive. I am so confused. Should I follow up on these sexual urges – or just let sleeping dogs lie?Name and address suppliedA Because it's rare for older women to discuss this kind of thing, when such thoughts enter our…4 min
The Oldie|December 2022TWO HOUSES, TWO KINGDOMSYale University Press, 480pp, £25‘Written with verve and based on impeccable scholarship, Two Houses, Two Kingdoms is peppered with human stories about the struggle to maintain a dynasty,’ Helen Carr wrote in the TLS. Everything depended on the smooth succession of one king to the next. Without it, there was anarchy. Nothing illustrates this better than the capricious shifting of power between the rival royal houses of France and England during the 12th and 13th centuries, their stories irrevocably intertwined by familial feuding, war, intermarrying and attempting peace.Katherine Harvey in the Sunday Times described it as ‘an era of dysfunctional family politics … it reads like the plot of a soap opera peopled by larger-than-life characters’. While praising ‘Hanley's fluent storytelling and deep knowledge of the period’, she admitted that…1 min
The Oldie|December 2022CHINA AFTER MAOBloomsbury, 375pp, £25‘For an understanding of the getting, exercising and holding of power in the People's Republic of China, historian Frank Dikötter has few rivals,’ wrote Isabel Hilton in the Observer. ‘His latest volume, China After Mao, is a clear-eyed and detailed account of the period between Mao's death in 1976 and 2012, the year of Xi's arrival in the top job.’In his review for the Financial Times, Jonathan Fenby wrote that Dikötter is able to offer ‘a blow-byblow account of the uneven, reactive and sometimes chaotic course of economic policies with a wealth of detail about their impact as the leadership veered between hectic growth and retrenchment… The basic lesson to be drawn… is that Chinese economic policy is a function of politics whose core concern is to maintain…1 min
The Oldie|December 2022MAGNIFICENT REBELSJohn Murray, 494pp, £25‘This is indeed an electrifying book, in its illuminated portraits, its dynamic narrative and its sparkling ideas,’ Adam Sisman wrote rapturously in the Guardian. Andrea Wulf tells the story of ‘the Jena set’, a group of writers, philosophers, poets and translators who, ignited by the cries of liberty, equality and fraternity coming from Paris in the 1790s, turned Jena into a hub of revolutionary thinking. One of the most prominent of their group was the young professor, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who declared that ‘the source of all reality is the Ich’, placing the self at the centre of everything.‘For all their progressive politics, it was the male self that the Jena Romantics mostly wanted to liberate,’ Ben Hutchinson noted in the TLS, a woman had to submit…2 min
The Oldie|December 2022LUCY LETHBRIDGE on Sylvia Townsend Warner's 1920s novel Lolly WillowesSylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes is a tale of witchery, devilment and transformation. What starts as a beady, satirical comedy of manners about a poor and eccentric middle-aged spinster dependent on her relations takes a sudden turn into chaos and surreality. Miss Laura ‘Lolly’ Willowes, odd but very much her own person, loses her beloved father and is moved (because she is not expected to make decisions for herself) from her beloved childhood home in Dorset to London to live with her pompous brother and his family. In their stifling household, the years unfold with unremittingly timetabled dreariness, Lolly enduring stoically the dutiful care of a family which regards her as pet oddity and useful appendage.Then, halfway through the book, when Lolly is 47 and the reader is wondering how…4 min
The Oldie|December 2022GROWING UP GETTYGallery, 336pp, £20‘How cheap was the oil tycoon J Paul Getty?’ asked Alexandra Jacobs in the New York Times, before listing the legendary examples of his meanness, such as installing a pay phone for visitors to his Tudor mansion and refusing to pay the ransom for his kidnapped grandson John Paul Getty III. These myths are debunked in this ‘brisk and sympathetic chronicle of the man and his many descendants’ by Reginato, writer at large for Vanity Fair. His aim, Jacobs told us, is to ‘shake the dust from the name and show us that the majority are not drug-addled wastrels but productive citizens’.The problem though, wrote Constance Craig Smith in the Daily Mail, is that the younger generation of Gettys are ‘not as interesting as the monstrous paterfamilias and,…1 min
The Oldie|December 2022KIKI MAN RAYTwo Roads, 304pp, £20Kiki de Montparnasse, born Alice Prin in 1901, was one of the queens of the rackety, seedy, riotously creative artistic scene in Paris in the Twenties. A chanteuse and artists’ model, she is most famous now for providing the gorgeously curved, cello-shaped nude back in her lover Man Ray's famous photograph. But was Kiki also an artist in her own right? Mark Braude seems to think so and Joanna Scutts in the New York Times seemed to agree: ‘This exuberantly entertaining biography sets out to rebalance the much-told story of Left Bank Paris, in which Kiki – model, memoirist and muse – is usually cast as a bit player. He brings that milieu to life in all its grit and energy – but also the larger sociopolitical…1 min
The Oldie|December 2022TERRY PRATCHETTDoubleday, 448pp, £25By the time Terry Pratchett died, of a rare form of Alzheimer's (he called it ‘the embuggerance’), in 2015, he was a storytelling phenomenon. As Laura Freeman said in the Times: ‘He wrote more than 50 books – 41 set on the Discworld – and sold more than 100 million copies in 37 languages. He kept a picture in his office of WH Smith's book-pulping machine as a warning against too much writerly pride. The man with no degree to his name was given so many honorary doctorates he ended up Dr Dr Dr Dr Dr Dr Dr Dr Dr Dr Pratchett, not forgetting the professorship (2010) and the knighthood (2009).’ Pratchett started the book and it has been finished by Rob Wilkins, his devoted assistant and amanuensis.In…1 min
