The Oldie

The magazine that dares to be interesting

The Oldie1 min read
The Oldie
Editor Harry Mount Sub-editor Penny Phillips Art editor Jonathan Anstee Supplements editor Liz Anderson Editorial assistant Amelia Milne Publisher James Pembroke Patron saints Jeremy Lewis, Barry Cryer At large Richard Beatty Our Old Master David Kow
The Oldie1 min read
Among This Month's Contributors
Martin Jarvis (p26) is the world master at recording P G Wodehouse and the Just William stories on the radio and on audiobooks. He appeared in The Forsyte Saga and Titanic. Bruce Beresford (p30) directed Breaker Morant, Don's Party and the Oscarwinni
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The Old Un's Notes
Many congratulations to the dazzling winners of the Oldie of the Year 2022. The Champion of Champions was the great Paddington Bear. Our star guest from Darkest Peru brought with him Karen Jankel, daughter of Michael Bond, Paddington's creator. The P
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Black Tie – Worse Than The Black Death
It came as a shock recently to discover, in some long-abandoned cranny of this ravaged psyche, a residue of what felt like self-respect. Any epsilon male sunk deep into middle age, and deeper into irrelevance, has no business caring what others think
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Not Many Dead
Teacher drove over wedding dress in bizarre Boxing Day row Dunfermline Press Colindale pub wins big at the Loo of the Year Awards 2022 Edgware & Mill Hill Times Customer wielded Nutella jar at staff Dundee Courier £15 for published contributions The
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The MPs’ Guide To Whips And Prostitutes
Flagellation has never really been a big thing with me. In fact, it's never been ‘a thing’ at all. I did go to a boys’ boarding school back in the early 1960s, but my kindly parents chose it specifically because the headmaster did not believe in beat
The Oldie2 min readCrime & Violence
Olden Life
Fifty years ago, on 2nd January 1973, Mr Justice James, who'd been the judge at the Great Train Robbery trial, made the first community-service order in the world, at Nottingham Crown Court. These orders are still issued today. That first order – 120
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The 2022 Oldie ofthe Year Awards
By royal appointment, this is Paddington's year. We had the judges’ lunch to choose the 2022 Oldies of the Year in late September, just a week after the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. Even before we had chosen our starters, we had agreed that this wo
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Modern Life
Grey rocking may sound like the kind of thing Neil Young does when he gets really into a guitar solo – but I'm afraid it isn't as exciting as that. It is, rather, a strategy for dealing with narcissists, attention-seekers and emotional abusers. Whate
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The Duke of Kent FIRST-TIME AUTHOR OF THE YEAR
The Duke of Kent became a first-time author in April, aged 86. His book, A Royal Life, has been reprinted twice and there are 12,000 copies out in the world. I had the privilege of collaborating with him on this, and it is the first time that a book
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Dr Henry Marsh OLDIE BRAINBOX OF THE YEAR
Henry Marsh, now an oldie at 72, practised neurosurgery, the most prestigious and probably the most nerve-wracking of all medical specialties, for many years. Neurosurgery entails the bearing of what for most of us would be an intolerable burden of r
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Siân Phillips and Edward Fox OLDIE STAGERS OF THE YEAR
Who can forget Dame Siân Phillips poisoning Brian Blessed's figs, in I, Claudius? Or the way she broke Alec Guinness's heart, as Lady Ann in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy? Siân always had enormous ice-queen poise – but was saved from caricature by a W
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Jane Goodall OLDIE QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE
In 1957, a 23-year-old Englishwoman called Jane Goodall boarded a ship bound for Kenya, to visit a friend who lived on a farm near Nairobi. It was her first trip to Africa; it was a journey that would change her life. In Kenya, Jane met the renowned
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Alan Garner WISE OLDIE MAN OF THE YEAR
At the age of 87, Alan Garner this year became the oldest writer ever to have a novel shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Treacle Walker, at only 15,000 words, is an Alan Garner classic, full of magic and strangeness and fairy tale. Though Garner tells
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Jeremy Paxman CUDDLY OLDIE ROTTWEILER OF THE YEAR
Jeremy Paxman, known for his roasting skills as ‘Paxo’, cruised the British airwaves for 50 years, taking off at Radio Brighton in 1972, and landing this year in a brave and poignant film, Paxman: Putting Up with Parkinson's. He worked on Tonight, Pa
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Stay-at-home Grandpa
My wife used to persuade me, when I was applying for a passport, to put ‘Fruit farmer’ rather than ‘Investment manager’ in the space for ‘Occupation’, though I was nothing of the sort. She didn't like the flavour of ‘Investment manager’. Next time I
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I'm Dreaming Of A Comic Christmas
C hristmas, as portrayed in the Beano – oh, wonder of wonders! During its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was selling way over a million copies a week, I gorged upon this fabulous comic. The Beano and the Dandy – they came to form the twin pil
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Single Bells
Christmas is a time for families. Yet families can come with complications – if they come at all. Children have to go to their in-laws, or prefer to celebrate their new babies in their own little nuclear families. Fused families often don't fuse beca
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My 1939 Pub Crawl
In 1939, the illustrator Edward Ardizzone (1900-79) combined with his friend Maurice Gorham, a journalist (1902-75), to produce The Local. In 1947, there was a sequel, Back to the Local. Beginning at their base in Maida Vale, it was a guide to pubs,
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Once More Unto The Breach
I was recently invited to direct Shakespeare's bizarre comedy in America. ‘Oh no, not another Twelfth Night.’ I've acted in it four times already. Never cot it right yet. First time, at school, in 1953, performing in the classroom. As an 11-year-old,
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Fringe Benefits Of Colourful Hair
Well-crafted and well-tethered wigs, as I described in the July issue, can dramatically enhance a woman's appearance. It makes the head/body proportions better. But wig-wearing is a palaver, unless you are a professional beauty. So how do you increas
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My Oz trials
When I was a teenager in the 1950s, my parents always took my sister and me, in December, to a relative's farm about 300 miles from Sydney. The journey took most of the day, chiefly on unsealed roads. The farm was over 3,000 acres, and around 20 mile
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Grandad's Perfect Present
The problem with old people is they often seem to be equipped with everything they need already. What do you buy the generation that has everything? What kind of present brings YOU the most pleasure when you open it? Something you would actually use,
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Mrs Who
’The moment this brilliant young producer started telling me about Doctor Who, I was hooked. I told her, “This is going to run for five years” – and look what happened!’ So said the first Doctor Who, William Hartnell, about Verity Lambert. 22nd Novem
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The Jeremy Lewis Prize for New Writing
In 1983, younger, much poorer and between jobs, I was staying with a friend in Brixton to go to a second friend's photographic exhibition. I went and it was enjoyable. I met a lovely American lady who offered me a lift ‘home’. At the end of the stree
The Oldie3 min readMathematics
It Doesn't Add Up
I f I were still at school, my worst nightmare would be to have to take maths in the sixth form. Sixty years after leaving, I still shudder at the very thought. I had no ability at the subject and wasn't even allowed to take it at O level. So to comp
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You're Nicked!
Like most motorists, I have often wondered unflatteringly about the man behind the speed gun. Do they get a buzz out of it? Or is it just a quota thing – fulfilling performance targets? Now I know, after enrolling as a community Roadwatch volunteer –
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Knock Me Off My Pedestal!
Hello, possums! My old New Zealand bridesmaid Madge Allsop is transitioning. She has never been a stranger to hormonal imbalance, bless her. As far as I am concerned, she has been transitioning for as long as I have known her. Now, the artful minx ha
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Make It Snappy, Vicar!
Which of these two lines, if you came across them on a church noticeboard, would entice you more? 6.30: Evensong or 6.30: Evensong with sermon. For me, there's no contest. I'd be tempted by the first, and repelled by the second. I've sat through thou
The Oldie3 min readRegional & Ethnic
In London, The World Is Your Oyster
Sometimes I feel a bit sorry for my country cousins. They may have fresher air than us city dwellers, but their choice of foodstuffs is extremely limited. They have their farm shops with their lonely chutneys and dirty carrots. There is the occasiona
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My Journey To Tropical Hell And Back
By courtesy of this exceptionally mild late winter, red admirals are floating by the cottage window. Mexican orange blossoms are flowering for the second time. And soon we will have scarlet nasturtium flowers to decorate the festive salad bowl. Winte
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Gay Hero Of The SAS
My elder brother Carlos was a pal of Paddy (real name Robert) Blair Mayne (1915-55) – one of the prominent SAS men in the BBC TV series Rogue Heroes. Back in the 1950s, they went carousing together around the many Dublin pubs. PBM was from a strict P
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My Brief Encounter At Cleethorpes Station
A warrior's Valhalla is an endless banqueting table with flowing ale, chicken drumsticks and the backing dancers from a mid-'70s Top of the Pops. For commuters like me, the afterlife will be more like my wet Wednesday morning. I was sitting in a rail
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Wicked War Against Classic Books
The Cupcakes and Classics group gathers one lunchtime a week, overseen by my head of department and me. We read classics, old and new, with clever children. They are mostly girls, although a couple of boys have infiltrated. One is only 12, with a hum
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Quite Interesting Things about … owls
• Most owls have a right ear larger than their left. • Owls can hear their prey under the earth. • If you look into an owl's ear, you can see the back of its eye. • Unlike most birds’ eyes, an owl's are on the front of its face, rather than at the si
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Mary, A Picture Of Patience
Last Christmas, I received a lovely card of a hare against a snowy landscape. I kept it. The sender wrote that he had looked hard for a religious card, and apologised for sending what he thought was second best. If I looked carefully, I would find a
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Dame Carmen Callil (1938-2022)
Funeral Service The publishing world gathered at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, to pay tribute to Carmen Callil, one of the most influential publishers of the last century and an Oldie contributor. Fifty years ago, in 1972, she founded Vi
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To Screen Or Not To Screen?
Is prevention always better than cure? It is worse than cure if it fails to prevent, for it both raises anxiety and costs money. In the case of mass screening, it is often not easy to decide whether the light is worth the candle. From time to time, I
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Readers’ Letters
SIR: I enjoyed Natasha Fraser on ‘Karl Lagerfeld, my heavenly boss’. This French poster showed his impressive blend of humour and serious intent. Yours, Peter Kendall, Balaruc les Bains, France SIR: Town Mouse need not worry (‘l want a cheapskate sen
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Robbie Coltrane
My twin brother, Peter, and I endured our secondary education at a Scottish private boarding school, Glenalmond College, near Perth, between 1962 and 1967. In our second year, I began to see a distinctive new boy wandering around the school with a le
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A Messerschmitt Angel In India
My father was a career soldier, who joined the Royal Engineers as a sapper in 1926. By 1935, he had attained the rank of Staff Sergeant. He was then seconded to the Indian Engineers with the rank of Second Lieutenant and took his pregnant wife first
The Oldie5 min read
Rise And Fall Of Daddy's Girl
The jaw-dropping trajectory of Ghislaine Maxwell's fall from grace has been chronicled so often that surely there's nothing left to say. She plummeted from the upper echelons of British society to a US Federal Prison in Tallahassee where she is servi
The Oldie3 min read
Top Score For Surrey
By Charles O'Brien, Ian Nairn and Bridget Cherry Yale £45 From start to finish, Charles O'Brien's revised Pevsner Guide to Surrey is a beautiful book – from the magnificent photograph on the front cover of Horsley Towers, designed by Byron's son-in-l
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Tangled Up In The Blues
By Bob Dylan Simon & Schuster £35 If you read Bob Dylan's magnificent memoir Chronicles: Volume One or the sleeve notes to his album World Gone Wrong, you'll know what to expect in his new book. As you might imagine from a songwriter so wildly invent
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More Glee, Vicar
Edited by Justin Lovill Bunbury Press £20 Reading this book, I was shocked to discover what had been happening in St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London – my old parish – in 1959, before my time there as rector: ‘Fined – John Wilkins for going
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Art Of The Deal
By Anthony Speelman Paul Holberton Publishing £30 Anthony Speelman is one of the most respected art dealers of his generation. He has spent some six decades in the business, selling paintings to the world's greatest collectors and museums. His memoir
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Guitar Man
By Daniel de Visé Grove Press £20 In June 1983, the prominent citizens of Indianola, Mississippi, both black and white, got together to throw a garden party for the city's most famous son. Nobody was more surprised than the man himself. B B King (192
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Commonplace Corner
As cheerful as a leper bell. Simon Raven on Gore Vidal Repose ‘comes easy in a gloomy place’. Joseph Mitchell (1908-96) The ideal restaurant is one where I walk in and the food is already on the table. The waiter says, ‘I knew you were coming’ – he l
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General Knowledge
In my gap year on a local paper, I was sent to meet an 80-year-old woman who had ‘performed with Gertie Gitana!’. Who? The Edwardian music hall was long dead. But, at 18, I at least knew enough – eg Marie Lloyd's ‘A little of what you fancy does you
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Have Yourself A Merry Roman Christmas
Who invented Christmas? The smart answer is the Victorians – and, for those who want bonus points, ‘Coca-Cola’. The usual Victorian suspects are Prince Albert and Charles Dickens, while Coke is the ‘reason’ Father Christmas dresses in red, not green.
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Murdoch Wants The Spectator For Christmas
Rupert Murdoch is hoping to buy the Spectator magazine. So I am informed by an excellent source. If he succeeds in prising the esteemed weekly from the Barclay family, it will mark the final stage for the press tycoon in his journey from outsider to
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Theatre
BEST OF ENEMIES Are there any oldies who saw the fiery TV debates between Gore Vidal and William F Buckley Junior, when they were first broadcast in America in 1968? Nowadays the footage is all over the internet but until YouTube came along, they wer
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Film
This admirable film about Harvey Weinstein is Hamlet without the prince – or without the serial sexual predator, to be precise. Every detail of Weinstein's rapes and sexual assaults is carefully and correctly recounted. But Weinstein (played by Mike
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Radio
Richard Morrison, Times columnist, recently wrote about the 65th anniversary of the Today programme, which has lost 600,000 listeners in a year. Morrison tried listening for two hours, ‘a masochistic way to start the day’. He fondly recalled the 1960
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Music
‘Groggy with joy after three days of unparalleled delight that is to be had in the bottom right-hand corner of Ireland every year in late autumn.’ That's how the late Bernard Levin reported on his first visit to the Wexford Festival in 1967. Nowadays
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Golden Oldies
It's not Florence Welch's fault – and I can't blame her father, Nick Welch, a journalist I commissioned when I was at the Lady, or her uncle, Craig Brown, for this. Or her mother, the new ViceChancellor of Bristol University. Every time I think of th
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Exhibitions
THE VAUGHAN BEQUEST OF TURNERS When it comes to the annual January Turner show in Edinburgh, we must pay homage to the benefactor, Henry Vaughan, a pioneer in cultural levelling-up. His grandfather, father and brother, all called George, were success
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Television
There is nothing shocking about the Netflix adaptation of Lady Chatterley's Lover. Those viewers who have not read the novel by D H Lawrence will wonder what all the fuss was about. The original story was sold in a bowdlerised version until 1960, whe
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Gardening
Committed gardeners have a plentiful sprinkling of flowers to enjoy at the year's low ebb. There are weird and wonderful crocuses and precursory daffs such as ‘Cedric Morris’ and ‘Rijnveld's Early Sensation’. There are the honey-scented mahonias and
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Kitchen Garden
After the drought of last summer, it has been interes ting to recall which fruit and vegetables flourished and which did not. Thanks to a frost-free spring, we had a record crop of apples and quinces – but no plums. The raspberries suffered from lack
The Oldie2 min readRegional & Ethnic
Restaurants
Londoners are loyal to their compass points. Anyone born and brought up in north London is likely to live, drink and dine in north London. We all converge on the West End, but few north Londoners will head into south or west London, and vice versa. I
The Oldie2 min readRegional & Ethnic
Cookery
This Christmas, go with the flow. Embrace austerity and skip the turkey in favour of home-cooked ham. It's the traditional Christmas meat throughout eastern and northern Europe – and was, until recently, in the rural households of Britain, as observe
The Oldie2 min readDiet & Nutrition
Drink
He may have been a brilliant poet, but I cannot agree with T S Eliot about April being the cruellest month. For one thing, I rather like April. For another, January is definitely more miserable. To make matters even worse, a sizeable chunk of the pop
The Oldie3 min read
Motoring
Stephen Vizinczey's bestselling novel In Praise of Older Women was published in 1965. It hasn't spawned successor volumes praising older men. Understandably and I'm not going to attempt one now. But I do think we should praise older cars. Not because
The Oldie3 min read
Sport
Fifty-seven years ago, an annual institution died. Nobody realised it at the time, but on 25th December 1965 an English football league match was played on Christmas Day for the last ever time. After Blackpool beat Blackburn Rovers 4-2 at Bloomfield
The Oldie3 min readSecurity
Russia's Keyboard Warriors
You might think that if two countries are at war, the fighting would always be pretty obvious. This isn't the case online. Plenty of online guerrilla warfare takes place, and virtual armies are being raised which don't even have to cross borders to e
The Oldie2 min read
Funny With Money? Here's A Cure
People's attitudes to money – whether spending, saving or borrowing – are as diverse as human nature. We notice people being profligate or stingy, charitable or greedy. We readily spot gambling addicts, spendthrifts and those in denial about out-of-c
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The (1)Idie Invites You To Experience The Luberon: In The (unsteady) Footsteps Of Keith Floyd With Bill Knott 2nd To 9th September 2023
Bill Knott writes: ‘My first real introduction to the wines and cuisine of Provence was in the mid-1990s from Keith Floyd, who was living near Avignon and had once owned a restaurant in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue. Floyd loved nothing better than a long lun
The Oldie5 min read
In Paddy's footsteps
I wonder what Paddy Leigh Fermor would have made of it. The doyen of travel writers, a dedicated pedestrian who trudged across Europe from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople and always embraced St Augustine's creed of solvitur ambulando – it is so
The Oldie2 min read
The Turkey
You ruffled black blossom, You glossy dark wind. Your sort of gorgeousness, Dark and lustrous And skinny repulsive And poppy-glossy, Is the gorgeousness that evokes my most puzzled admiration. D H Lawrence, from Turkey-Cock Bird of the Month is confi
The Oldie3 min read
Brighton Belles
The architects Humphry Repton, John Nash and William Porden were three of the greats who drew up brilliant plans for the Prince of Wales's oriental schemes in Brighton. Some were built, others were not and many were neither acknowledged nor paid for.
The Oldie3 min read
Paddington's Marmalade Hangover
On the Road Paddington is our Oldie of the Year for 2022. What's it like acting opposite Paddington – presumably you don't actually see him? Oh, I saw him – absolutely. And I get very cross with people who claim that he doesn't exist. It's like sayin
The Oldie1 min read
Moron crossword 421
1 Bonce (4) 3 Frank, reliable (6) 8 Recreational, unpaid (7) 9 Priest (5) 10 Thick (5) II Obsequious (7) 12 Twee (6) 14 Verse form (6) 18 Beg, entreat (7) 20 Electric car maker (5) 22 Wear away (5) 23 University administrator (7) 24 Flee, get away (6
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El Sereno
1 Cast the girl lead in drama (4) 3 One supporting struggle of American GP in trouble (10) 9 Measure part of mountain chain (4) 10 Homeless forever? Without doubt (10) 11 Swimmer using 1ac. to hold a party (7) 13 Realize that is five in pain (7) 14 H
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Bridge
It was very considerate of Mr and Mrs Eddis to have four children – the perfect number for our game. Charlie (South), Hugo (West), Harry (North) and Johnny (East) all play to a high standard – witness this deal from an online game. Dealer South Neith
The Oldie3 min read
Tessa Castro
IN COMPETITION No 287 you were invited to use given rhymes to make a poem in a game of bouts-rimés, popular since the 17th century and popular with you. The rhyme words came from ‘Death lies in wait for you, you wild thing in the wood’ by John Masefi
The Oldie4 min read
Virginia Ironside
Q Just after my wife died, I met a widow in the village I live in and, to start with, we got on very well. Sex was great and we had interests in common. But soon she was spending rather too much time round at my house and now she's talking about sell
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The Fog On The Tyne Was All Mine
I love a great northern city – and Newcastle must be England's greatest. It has an abundance of fine stone buildings, a proper river, most shops are bars and the shops that remain sell the cheapest toothpaste ever found on sale in the 21st century. T

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