Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2025 i The Oldie

Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran (p14) wrote Birds of a Feather, Goodnight Sweetheart and The New Statesman. Their new play, Dr Freud Will See You Now, Mrs Hitler, opens in September. Lady Antonia Fraser (p16) wrote her first book, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, in 1954. Her new book, The House that Spoke: The History of a Home, is out on 23rd August. Kenneth Cranham (p20) starred in Shine on Harvey Moon, written by Marks and Gran. He has appeared in many plays written by his friends Joe Orton and Harold Pinter. He was Noah Claypole in Oliver! Peter McKay (p57) has worked for the Daily Express, the Evening Standard and the Daily Mail. He edited Punch and wrote the Grovel column in Private Eye with…

I don’t know where you went for your summer holidays, but we spent most of ours down Memory Lane. It’s a great place to go. There is no airport hassle, and at the end of the day you get to sleep in your own bed. Apart from a day trip to Broadstairs (in torrential rain), we have stayed in London, going for walks in parks and streets I knew as a child 70 years ago, and visiting – or bumping into – old friends. We had a particularly happy chance meeting with Gail Rebuck, now 73, a dame and member of the House of Lords, and a titan in the world of publishing, as chair of Penguin Random House. Gail and I went to the French Lycée in South Kensington…

WHAT IS fast tech? Fast tech is the electronic equivalent of fast food or fast fashion. It refers to items of technology that we buy on the cheap, use for a couple of weeks and then chuck away, once they inevitably malfunction. You know the sort of thing. The USB desk fan you saw for £6 in the middle of Lidl during the last heatwave. That portable phone-charger you picked up at the airport for £8.99. The light-up drone toy you bought on Amazon for £16.99 last Christmas, imagining hours of family fun – only to receive mere seconds of distraction before the stupid thing broke. The research group Material Focus has calculated that the UK buys more than a billion such items per year – and throws away about…

For some time, I have followed an American YouTube chef called Jean-Pierre. He recently announced that, after 50 years of almost non-stop work in the catering industry, he was going to take a break. He tells the story of meeting an old friend (literally ‘old’) and casually asking him what his plans were for the day. ‘Nothin’. I ain’t goin’ to do nothin’,’ was the smug, contented reply. For Jean-Pierre, the idea of doin’ nothin’ was completely alien after a totally absorbing, frenetic working life. He had never experienced doin’ nothin’. That led to his taking a break and finding out, for the first time in his career, what it felt like. Well, Jean-Pierre, I can tell you. It sucks. I inherited a strong work ethic from both my parents,…

Those who recall the 1976 drought will be aware that this summer’s version – which terrified the farmers – was played out against quite a different backdrop. THEN – Pubs did brisk business. NOW – Pubs, apart from Wetherspoons, which manages to charge less than the others, are struggling to make a go of it, especially in the countryside. THEN – Pubs wouldn’t have dreamt of serving unfamiliar foreign ‘muck’. NOW – Without that foreign muck, they don’t stand a chance. Our own drinking pub, much appreciated by locals with tiny houses, had to close because the pub itself was too small to allow for kitchens, as opposed to just freezers and a microwave. Now that the young don’t drink, smoking is banned and predatory police wait outside pubs, fancy…

Do we have public historians any more? If not, would we want to? If anyone knows the answer, it is Adam Sisman, biographer of A J P Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper, the best-known public historians of the fairly recent past. Sisman has now turned to Asa Briggs (1921-2016), a historian who, while less of a household name than Taylor or Trevor-Roper, arguably made more of an impact. Briggs was a moving force behind that quintessential 1960s institution Sussex University. He was there from its opening in 1961, and became its Vice-Chancellor – ie the man in charge – in 1967. He was also instrumental in setting up the Open University. Sussex was the leading ‘plate-glass’ university, built for an expanding body of students, configured to break down barriers between disciplines…

The funeral of Norman Tebbit, former Chairman of the Conservative Party and Trade Secretary, was held at St Edmundsbury Cathedral in his home town of Bury St Edmunds. Lord Dobbs, author of House of Cards and Lord Tebbit’s former special adviser, gave the eulogy. Michael Dobbs said of Tebbit, ‘You were one of the bravest men I’ve ever known, morally as well as physically. You were also a man of extraordinary tenderness.’ Referring to the Labour leader Michael Foot’s dig at Tebbit, Dobbs said, ‘You even incorporated polecats into your coat of arms – I assume they were polecats of the semi-housetrained kind? ‘And, my dear Norman, that motto you chose … Qui tacet consentit – “He who remains silent gives consent.” Well, as I recall, there weren’t many things…

As a pretty 17-year-old in the summer of 1942, Joan Lawrence, my late mother-in-law, went on holiday to Blackpool with a girlfriend. Walking on the seafront, they were approached by two airmen who befriended them. The girls were flattered by the attention of two young men in RAF uniform. One of them introduced himself as Peter and told them he was appearing in a show at the resort. They were given free tickets and saw him perform hilariously as a conjuror where, using funny voices, he capitalised on fluffing his act. Peter appeared to be very attracted to Joan. One day, when the four of them were listening to a band play in a tearoom, Peter jumped up, asking if he could play the drums. He was, clearly, good at it.…

Empire of the Elite: Inside Condé Nast, the Media Dynasty That Reshaped America By Michael M Grynbaum Coronet £22 You wait ages for a juicy, insiderish account of the glamorous world of magazines, only for a gush of them to spurt forth – a delicious geyser of gossip and anecdote. It began with Tina Brown’s The Vanity Fair Diaries. Then there were Nicholas Coleridge’s The Glossy Years, Dylan Jones’s These Foolish Things, Graydon Carter’s When the Going Was Good… The most recent addition to the glossy genre is New York Times reporter Michael M Grynbaum’s unauthorised biography of Condé Nast, Empire of the Elite. Although my enjoyment was enriched by my having already read all the above – I have a penchant for books that are basically like being invited…

The Genius of Trees By Harriet Rix Bodley Head £25 The cocoa tree, Theobroma cacao, was isolated in a pocket of South America during the last Ice Age. As the world warmed up, the tree spread across the continent astonishingly quickly. Trees can’t walk, but many – or their seeds – hitch a ride. The cocoa acquired mobility because it produced alluring theobromine, which is irresistible to primates. When they ate it, the monkeys got high, dancing through the canopy for miles, dispersing the seeds of future cacao trees as they swung. Humans followed, and Mayan civilisation was one of many societies to be shaped by its relations with one tree, just as pistachios became a keystone species for communities in Turkey; olives in Crete; and walnuts in Kyrgyzstan. The…

Surnames Where have all the surnames gone? From Netflix to British Gas, from Wiltshire Council to sellers of solar panels, every communication kicks off with a cheery ‘Hi Matthew’. My children’s friends don’t seem to know that I even have a surname; they call me Matthew and Matt (and sometimes ‘mate’) as if we’ve been friends for years. Most unsettling. Go to any party these days and people introduce themselves with just ‘Hi, I’m John.’ If you want to know someone’s surname, you have to root it out. Why is this? Maybe surnames remind people of school. Or is divulging one’s surname just what posh people do, hoping it will reveal a connection or relationship for the other person to exploit? There are plenty of characters in literature who are happy…

What is the difference between a programme and a podcast? Perhaps listeners no longer make any distinction, but you always know a programme when you hear one. In New York 1925, a four-part series produced by Katy (Start the Week) Hickman, she defined programmes as ‘made for a specific slot on radio, with a time limit’. Podcasts can ramble on as if we’ve got all day, and make us wait until host and guest finish joshing each other, boasting of their minimum of three careers (‘I’m Greg Jenner, public historian, author, broadcaster’) or advertising things. It’s laughable when spinmeister Alastair Campbell promotes Fuse Energy (without, admittedly, much conviction), followed by someone advertising incontinence pants. Perhaps my impatience stems from those Luxembourg years when we longed to hear the Everly Brothers…

CAT STEVENS: THE MOVIE! Why on earth haven’t they made a movie about the life of Cat Stevens, now 77? It’s an edge-of-seat story rippling with friction, folly, sex, faith, triumph, multicultural ambition and near-death experience. It ticks every box. Ben Whishaw playing the great man? Maybe Paul Mescal? I see the opening now. The camera pans across Shaftesbury Avenue in the early ’60s and discovers an impossibly handsome boy – part Greek, part Swedish; great ‘origin story’ – at a window above his parents’ restaurant, listening to the sound of the musicals drifting over the rooftops from London’s Tin Pan Alley. He picks up a guitar and strums. Cut to a scene where he’s bullied at school for being ‘artistic’; then trains to be a cartoonist; then sets out…

BLUEBERRIES Strawberries and raspberries are unquestionably British summer fruit, though inferior substitutes are available from elsewhere. But blueberries? Is there anything British about them? They are generally imported from North and South America, and various European countries, and can be bought here all year round. So I was surprised to see blueberry plants offered for sale recently in the Daily Telegraph. I was also surprised to learn that almost ten per cent of all blueberries eaten in this country are grown here, most of them on fruit farms in southern England. Growing your own in the kitchen garden is not really recommended, unless – which is not mentioned in the Telegraph offer – you have acid soil or keep the plants in containers filled with ericaceous compost. At least ten…

INTOXICATING CHEFS Has food become less boozy? I have been trying to devise a menu for a retro-themed dinner party, and almost everything I can think of has alcohol in it. Bœuf bourguignon, coq au vin, moules marinières, œufs en meurette: all classic, all French, all cooked with wine. In the mid-1980s, my first professional kitchen was awash with booze. Quite apart from wine, there were bottles of Pernod (for fish stew), marsala (for scallopini of veal), kirsch (for Black Forest gâteau), dry vermouth (for myriad sauces), Armagnac (for preserving prunes), rum (for setting fire to bananas)… Admittedly, not all of them made it into the food – a rather delicious bottle of Tobermory single malt failed to yield even the two tablespoonfuls needed for a cranachan – but still.…

The internet has simplified many things, not least giving money to charity. I am a trustee of a small charity. In the old days, we had to collect cash or cheques (card payments were prohibitively expensive), do lots of paperwork to balance the books and submit complex paper returns to collect the Gift Aid. We didn’t mind, and cash and cheques are still welcome, but nowadays the bulk of our income from the public comes through the internet. This became possible through the development of the many online services that manage the process for us. But how do these web-based businesses work? Make no mistake, by the way – they are businesses. There is certainly money to be made. Among the best-known, JustGiving.com made a profit of £29m and GoFundMe.com…

In A Journey Through Birds, James Macdonald Lockhart presents a list of the three species and 15 examples of birds of prey that breed in the British Isles. Collectively, they are the Accipitriformes. These are subdivided: the Pandionidae are confined to the osprey; the Accipitridae cover the ten broad-winged harriers, hawks, kites, buzzards, eagles; and the Falconidae are the narrow-winged kestrel, merlin, hobby and peregrine. Of them all, the merlin (Falco columbarius) is the smallest – not much bigger than a blackbird. Currently it is amber-listed, with 1,000 pairs. The number is increased in autumn by a passage of Continental birds along the east coast and a lesser passage in the west from Iceland and Scandinavia. Lockhart also emphasises the incredible eyesight of birds of prey. Their foveal area in…

Cardinal John Morton was a feared tax collector during Henry VII’s reign. Travelling from abode to abode, he collected from those living lavishly -they obviously had money to spare – and also from those living frugally, who had clearly stashed their money away. This reminds me: I had a school friend called John Morton – who had a brother, Chris. No one rated Chris’s chances of getting into his parents’ chosen public school (I think it was Radley), but get in he did. When asked for prose or poetry in his English paper, he was the only candidate who wrote a poem. Why? Apparently, he’d done this because he didn’t know what prose was. The school naturally thought he was an original thinker – I hope he flourished there. Bridge-players…

After our summer holidays, September can seem like a fresh start - an opportunity for some autumn resolutions. This is the time to take up a hobby, or learn a language or practical skill, as numerous institutes, community centres and colleges open their doors for a new term of adult learning. My local community centre in west London offers courses in maths and IT alongside a variety of keep-fit, pottery, art and sculpture classes. There's an Elders Programme with a weekly tea club and creative courses, including arts and crafts and theatre workshops. Or opt for an online course and learn from highly skilled professionals, including interior designers, novelists and chefs, at BBC Maestro. Bake bread with Richard Bertinet or write a children's book with Julia Donaldson. London's biggest provider…

Prudish daughter Q My daughter upset me during the summer holiday in Greece by saying she thought I was too old for a bikini – and even short skirts! She also implied that it was time to go grey! At 75, I think I’ve still got a nice figure and a decent pair of pins. Should I listen to her? Name and address supplied A Obviously you can wear what you like, but if your daughter feels embarrassed by your mutton-dressed-as-lamb look, wouldn’t it be kind to tone it down when you’re out with her? I remember being terribly embarrassed by friends of my parents when we went on holiday. The man’s swimming trunks were too loose, and the acres of red, leathery skin his wife exposed on the beach…

Although what follows will surely be referred to the authorities – the police in the first instance; mental-health services after that – let this plainly be stated. I am on the verge of stalking the actor Michael Kitchen. Mr Kitchen should know that I mean him no harm, and wish only to be his friend. On reflection, that will be less reassuring than intended, it being verbatim what every stalker tells the stalkee a moment before the bundling into the car boot commences. Yet it happens to be true. For years I have not only admired but been mildly obsessed with a performer you may know from various productions, most likely Foyle’s War. In this defunct but beloved ITV wartime drama, Mr Kitchen is a senior detective in Hastings in…

Michael Grade, a giant of British television, once told us Nat Hiken (1914-68), a giant of US television, defined comedy as ‘two Jews fighting’. Hiken created the brilliant Phil Silvers Show (Sergeant Bilko, to you) and wrote or co-wrote most of the 144 episodes. So who are we to argue? Although we could, because Hiken’s Law says so. Nat wasn’t talking only about the art of playing comedy, but about the art of writing comedy, which, in the 1950s, his heyday, was a Jewish speciality second only to the smoked-salmon bagel trade. Of course, you don’t have to be Jewish; we allowed other faiths into comedy years ago. But it certainly helps if there are two of you. Though some classic sitcoms have been the work of single writers –…

One evening in 1963, my father came home from work looking distinctly out of sorts. He went straight into conclave with my mum in our suburban kitchen. Sensing a crisis, I listened through the door. My dad owned a small clothing factory in central London, making designer knock-offs for a chain store alongside film extras’ costumes for Berman’s, the theatrical wardrobe people. ‘We’ve had the bloody Maltese round demanding protection money,’ my father was saying. This naturally meant nothing to an eight-year-old. Why was he talking so gloomily about Maltesers? I have no idea how the problem was resolved, but it cemented the idea in my mind that ‘the Maltese’, whatever they were, were somehow sinister and criminal. Ten years later, after my dad had died – not as a…

Is there such a thing as a malicious hairdresser? A person who sets out to sabotage clients’ happiness and selfconfidence by urging on them the wrong colours, lengths or styles? I certainly used to think so in the 1960s, when my mother would go out looking lovely and come back with her hair compressed into such tight little curls that her whole head resembled a nylon bathing cap. This was the result of a perm or permanent wave. It suited no one yet every one of her contemporaries had one. Fifty years on, I find that another disfiguring hairstyle is surging in popularity. When I go into our local high street and observe women of my own vintage, I ask myself, ‘What has possessed so many of them to have…

The journalists Paul Levy and Ann Barr invented the word ‘foodie’. I’m not sure I thank them. Their Official Foodie Handbook (1984) gave oxygen to the irritating obsession, now a nationwide affliction, of endlessly talking about food rather than just eating it. It was (is – you can still get a copy from AbeBooks) informative, fun and a witty read. The cover boasts, ‘A true Foodie travels with Gault-Millau; judges you by your veg; name-drops the world’s 18 best restaurants; thinks Guérard is God; has outgrown kiwi fruit, and lives to eat.’ A fair summary, except today you might have to substitute Raymond Blanc for Guérard. Foodies, for whom being on trend is everything, have by now probably outgrown burrata, if not whipped feta and smashed avo on toast. Pandering…

Support for the monarchy is lower among younger people today. Some 65 per cent of the 18-24 age group say they would abolish the monarchy, and choose instead an elected head of state. Perhaps British advocates for a president should watch, as a case study, the election this autumn of a new Irish President. Anyone over 35 with an Irish passport, who can secure backing from four county councils (or 20 parliamentarians), can run for president. I even thought of doing so myself once – not from political ambition, but because I thought it would be amusing to call myself ‘Mary the Third’, following Presidents Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese. Michael D Higgins, 84, has been First Citizen for the last 14 years, and my only connection with the office…

On 25th April, I was walking down the English corridor at school towards the last lesson of the day, when God picked up his biggest, heaviest frying pan and hit me very hard on the back of the head. I did not pass out, but I could not see and, clutching my head in an effort to keep my brain inside my skull, I staggered like an animal to its hole towards my classroom. I was vaguely aware of voices: ‘Miss, Miss, are you all right?’ But I could not respond. It was not – until a teacher said my actual name, fielded me and guided me into my room that I began to have any awareness of what was going on. It turned out, after endless scans and lumbar…

I have always despised golf – perhaps unreasonably so. It has always symbolised for me a decline into fatuity, by comparison with which Shakespeare’s seventh age of man is a consummation devoutly to be wished. Golf is, as someone once said, a perfectly good walk spoiled. As for golf, in which the players do not even walk, but ride round the course in their ridiculous little carts, my powers of invective fail me completely. Now I have another argument against golf: it adds to the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease. A study from the United States found that the further away from a golf course people lived, the lower their chance of developing the disease: the risk declines with a measurable effect up to 18 miles from the course. The…

Dancing Socrates SIR: I always hope that there will be at least one item in my Oldie mag that will make me laugh out loud. I am seldom disappointed. Sure enough, in the August issue there is the statement that ‘Towards the end of his life, Socrates took up dancing lessons’, in Town Mouse’s ‘The Socrates Guide to a Happy Death’. Can this be right? True or not, at dismal moments in the future, such as accidentally watching the news, I shall just picture Socrates in his dancing shoes and all will be well. Anne Penney, Hamble, Hampshire Saucy sign SIR: Re your tasty Garton’s HP story (August issue), I bought a large, ancient enamel sign (5ft x 3ft 6in) from a junk shop when I lived in Birmingham many…

The Mirror of Great Britain: A Life of James VI & I By Clare Jackson Allen Lane £35 You wait ages for a biography of King James I of England and VI of Scotland and then three come along in a row. You can imagine desperate-eyed publishers flipping through Ye Olde Desk Calendars and discovering with joy that it’s 400 years since James’s death. Clare Jackson’s is the third book in six months to mark the anniversary and is undoubtedly the best. It loses something from her refusal to give us a straight narrative, substituting a more thematic treatment that leads occasionally to chronological confusion. At times, too, her writing is dry as parchment. But overall she understands the importance of looking at James through his own words – and…

In his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing (2022), Matthew Perry, then 53, described how he spent his days ‘sitting in a huge house, overlooking the ocean, with no one to share it with, save a sober companion, a nurse, and a gardener twice a week’. He forgot to mention that 59-year-old Kenny Iwamasa, now facing 15 years in prison, also shared his huge, empty house in the Pacific Palisades. Perry, aka Chandler Bing in Friends, might have seen Iwamasa as ‘no one’. But Iwamasa described himself on his LinkedIn profile as having been Perry’s ‘executive assistant’ for ‘25 years (on going)’. ‘I thrive in chaotic situations which call for order,’ Iwamasa wrote. ‘I am discreet, loyal and honour absolute confidentiality’. Perry, a chronic addict, was the definition…

CHUNKY CHUTNEY Time to batten down the hatches, tidy up the store cupboard and make chutney. This isn’t an excuse for a general clear-out – call it a seasonal repurposing. Take a stash of windfall apples, courgettes that have turned themselves into marrows, pumpkins not needed for Hallowe’en and plums picked too early to ripen. Chutney forgives them all. Marrow-and-apple chutney An all-purpose recipe that works with any vegetable-fruit combination. Chop the main ingredients to more or less the same size, taste as you cook and don’t add the sugar till everything else is soft. Serve with cold roast chicken, ham, pork pies, baked potatoes and anything else that needs a little excitement. Enough to fill 4 jam jars. Pack everything except the vinegar and sugar into a preserving pan,…

ARISE, SIR LOU MACARI Almost as soon as the Lionesses had won the European Championships, attention turned to how to reward their endeavour. The cry went up: make Hannah Hampton a Dame for saving penalties, turn Chloe Kelly into a Baroness for scoring them and appoint the manager Sarina Wiegman as Prime Minister. That’s one of the lovely things about this country: we have a system in place to honour our heroes and heroines, sporting or otherwise. But, as with every system, the omissions leave you scratching your head. The other day, I was interviewing Ron Atkinson, the long-retired manager and television pundit. He had something on his mind he wanted to share. ‘Tell me, why has Lou Macari not been knighted? It’s getting beyond a joke that he hasn’t.’…

Long ago, Allan Leighton headed the team that rescued Asda. In November last year, he was invited to do it again, under tougher conditions – and, boy, does the supermarket chain need the treatment. Since he left in 2000, the stormtroopers from Lidl and Aldi have arrived and are running amok. Where there were four big supermarket groups, there are now six. If you want an example of how competition works for the consumer, this industry is a shining example. In 1999, Walmart bought Asda for £6.2bn. Walmart may bestride the US like a colossus, but UK food retailing defeated it. In 2020, the Americans admitted defeat and sold the business for the same price. The buyers were the Issa family, who ran a successful chain of petrol stations, but…

IN COMPETITION No 322 you were invited to write a poem called The Last Night. By far the most popular subject was death. They were stark, funny and sad. Terry Baldock’s acrobat fell on the last night that the circus was in town. Philippa Bower’s narrator’s regret began with her cousin’s suicide. Con Connell’s narrator regretted unsaid words. Ann Hilton’s narrator looked back on the night of her death. Martin Elster’s theme was the last night that the Moon overslept: ‘Wolves refused to howl, while owls,/ instead of hooting, cried.’ John Moore’s was the dinosaurs’ last night before the asteroid struck. Mike Morrison celebrated the last night in 2002 of Grouts the draper’s in Palmers Green. Peter Hollindale’s night was the last before a village was drowned for a reservoir.…

Less than 3% of ScotRail services cancelled in 2024 Herald Complaint upheld against Belgian ticket inspector who said ‘Bonjour’ in Flanders Guardian New toilet block back on agenda Salisbury Journal £15 for published contributions NEW! Tune into Radio Oldie Every Tuesday, you can find the latest weekly interview by Harry Mount or Charlotte Metcalf with some of our Oldie friends, such as Stephen Fry, Craig Brown and A N Wilson. And we release three more podcasts on Top of the Pods, our selection of the best podcasts and comedy clips on the internet. Just sign up for the newsletter on the homepage of the website. Sign up to our weekly e-newsletter…

The moral of this tale is – when it comes to the royal sons – much depends on the wives. If you had the patience of the author, Andrew Lownie, you could compile horror dossiers about King Charles III and Prince Edward: the same patterns of rudeness; the same weird, schizoid behaviour; one moment wanting to be liked, and the next climbing on their high horse and demanding to be treated as royal. The first time round, Charles married a wife who could not stand it, and eventually went public, with catastrophic effect.The second time round, however, he married an ace companion, who is polite, normal and funny and who covers up for his character defects. In a gentler but no less effective way, the Duchess of Edinburgh makes journalists…

My first trip to New York as an adult was around a year ago. I went for only three days, to ‘walk’ the fashion designer Peter Do’s Helmut Lang show. I was put up, just off one of Times Square’s endlessly linear roads, in a VERY large hotel, constructed with long metal beams stretching into the sky. In my 16th-floor hotel room, I felt like an oppressed ant in a metal cell, with 10,000 rooms, below, above and beside me – identical, from bedside tables to air-conditioner units. The following day’s fashion show was glamorous and – of course – much larger than any you’d find in London. After the standard procedure – hurriedly manoeuvred through a whirlwind of make-up bags, manicures and gossip – I prepared for the ‘line-up’.…

After cycling round London for ten years, I’m still constantly amazed by how often I bump into friends and acquaintances. In a city of eight million people, it seems extraordinary that you should cycle past one of them on the Mall or Shaftesbury Avenue, but these chance encounters happen a lot. I’ve lost count of the number of these bumpings-into in the last month. In Regent’s Park one afternoon, I bumped into a friend I hadn’t seen for 25 years and her daughter. In Piccadilly Circus, I bumped into Kevin Rowland, the ’80s pop star in Dexy’s Midnight Runners. I’d last seen him in the Colony Room Club in 1999. In Uxbridge Road, I bumped into my friend Toby, crossing the road in front of me. In Chinatown I bumped…

Mustn’t grumble! But, naturally, we do – with increasing regularity. And yet, just occasionally, it’s worth considering those things in modern life that have improved. Some times, it pays to look on the bright side of life. Home delivery The weekly trek to a supermarket with no architectural merit never lifts the spirits. There’s the parking; the trolley with dodgy wheels; the queueing at checkout or wrestling with the self-service machine. Not any more. Instead, you wait for a knock on the door and a usually friendly delivery person is standing there, laden with all the goodies you’ve ordered. Decent coffee Not so long ago, a sought-after coffee meant unscrewing a jar of instant Gold Blend and dispatching a scoop or two into a mug. It was watery, tasteless and…

The Bible is taken for granted – both by those who read it and those who don’t. This is surely not ideal, whether one agrees with it or not, and whether one likes it or not. The Bible is the first substantial book to have been printed in Europe. It has never been out of print. Its history is fascinating by any standards. The world’s debt to St Jerome (342-420) defies description. I once heard him more or less dismissed in a sermon as a ‘crusty old bachelor’ – not a helpful way of designating one of the greatest Biblical scholars the world has ever known. In the late-fourth century, Jerome translated the books of the Bible into Latin – not only from Greek, which he knew, but also from…

The Mitford sisters are back, in the new TV series Outrageous. I once met one of them in the flesh. In 1983, I was a 24-year-old journalist, and extremely proud, and somewhat terrified, to be asked to research and co-write a television series for the then new Channel 4. Called The Outsiders, it was a collection of nine half-hour interviews with people who were in some way outside the mainstream. It’s how I came to meet Jessica Mitford (1917-96), one of the famous or infamous clan, committed Communist, and author of The American Way of Death (1963) and the compelling memoir Hons and Rebels (1960). She was 66 when she flew over from her home in California to our studio in London; she had lost none of the energy and…

The Colonialist: The Vision of Cecil Rhodes By William Kelleher Storey OUP USA £30.99 The years have not been kind to Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902). His early biographers saw him as a visionary and philanthropist, a man whose restless energy had called whole countries into being. As the 20th century progressed, there was more interest in his sharp business practices. Then he became a symbol of racism and imperialism. During the demented Black Lives Matter summer of 2020, crowds gathered outside his old Oxford college, Oriel, demanding the removal of his statuette. By now, he had ceased to be a flesh-and-blood historical figure and become an avatar for Evil Colonialism. The protesters’ placards denounced everything from slavery (abolished 20 years before he was born) to apartheid (established 46 years after he…

Exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you, and just before you realise what’s wrong with it. Rex Harrison I would rather watch somebody buy their underwear than read a book they wrote. Andy Warhol Of course one should not drink much, but often. Toulouse-Lautrec I’ve always been the breadwinner and men don’t like that. They turn on you. They bite the hand that feeds them. Eventually, too, they become very jealous of the love one has with an audience. Shirley Bassey We learn from history that we do not learn from history. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Something attempted, something done, has earned a night’s repose. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow All humanity inspires me. Every passer-by is my unconscious sitter; and, as strange as it may…

THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR Shakespeare’s Globe, London, until 20th September Standing in the drizzle at this ersatz Elizabethan theatre, among the modern groundlings in their plastic anoraks, I wondered, heretically, whether anyone would bother to stage The Merry Wives of Windsor if it had been written by anybody else. It’s a good way of assessing which of Shakespeare’s plays deserve reviving -and which ones would be better left alone. Most of his tragedies and histories would still be revered, even if someone else had written them. But I can think of several comedies that fail this test, and this erratic play is one of them. Shakespeare buffs adore The Merry Wives because it’s so different from his other dramas. Unusually for Shakespeare, it’s predominantly written in prose rather than…

ERIC COATES Eric Coates (1886-1957) is the only guest to have appeared on Desert Island Discs preceded by his own music, his waltz serenade By the Sleepy Lagoon. Not that there was any risk of Mr Plomley’s docking Mr Coates one of his allotted eight discs. What a chill that would have cast over the Garrick Club lunch to which guests were invited before repairing to Broadcasting House and the famous old BBC Record Library, where the individual discs would be chosen. As a prolific conductor of recordings of his own music, Coates would have been no stranger to the library, as I’ve been discovering after several enchanted weeks spent exploring the complete run of the studio recordings he made between 1923 and 1957. They’ve just been released by Lyrita…

DORSET’S BAY OF NAPLES My least favourite work expression? ‘Today, I’m gonna have lunch “al desko”.’ We spend all year cowering from the weather, uncertain whether even to nip to the shops for fear of a thunderclap. And this everlasting summer’s lease is about to expire – so we must make hay. Best place to start is on a farm. My best outdoor lunch this year was at the Parlour, set on Bredy Farm near Bridport, close to the Seaside Boarding House at Burton Bradstock, purveyors of the best cocktails. The owners have turned a barn on their 300-acre farm into an Italian restaurant, complete with pizza oven and a mural of the Bay of Naples and Vesuvius. The Italian wine prices are half those of London Italian restaurants and…

WITTGENSTEIN ON THE ROAD Asked a question I couldn’t answer about tyres, my first thought was to turn to the late L J K Setright (1931-2005), who died 20 years ago this year. Then doyen of motoring correspondents, he was a tall, rabbinical, bearded patrician, provocatively pedantic, engagingly discursive, courteous and eccentric. Who else could tell you that the speed of a raindrop unaided by wind is 18mph? Or that there were more deaths on British roads in the first two years of the Second World War than in the armed forces? (The blackout was largely responsible.) He proudly held the record for appearances in Private Eye’s Pseuds Corner. When asked by an editor to tone down his style, he submitted his next column in Latin. He became known as…

We must thank our lucky stars that one of our greatest Victorian buildings survives – even thrives – to this day in Scotland. What a beauty, what a perfectly glorious beauty there is to be found on Glasgow Green – now known as Templeton on the Green. It was designed with tremendous aplomb by William Leiper in 1889. ‘There is nothing finer to be found outside of Italy,’ crowed the designer’s junior partner, the Scotsman W H McNab. Its colours and form are indeed quite tremendous, with a wealth of brilliant hues picking out the finest architectural features. Bright blue, Venetian Gothic detailing wars splendidly with the vividly red Guelf battlements on high. What with such variety and such splendour on such a massive scale, the shock of it all…

Moorland is most magnificent in late summer, when its rolling expanses glow purple with heather and the air smells of honey. So it was a good time to take a walk up Skiddaw, a Lake District fell I had only ever admired when I was climbing busier peaks. Skiddaw is distinctive, standing aloof and alone in the northern Lakes, admired by Wainwright for its ‘smooth’ lines and ‘graceful’ curves. It was the summer holidays and the rest of the Lake District was rammed, but I parked easily and, astoundingly, for free in a granite-walled car park on a rough lane. The northern fells must be for connoisseurs. I took a granite track bending around the end of Blencathra and following a stream into the Skiddaw massif. This is known as…