The Oldie

Editor Harry Mount Sub-editor Penny Phillips Art editor Jonathan Anstee Supplements editor Jane Mays Editorial assistant Amelia Milne Publisher James Pembroke Patron saints Jeremy Lewis, Barry Cryer At large Richard Beatty Our Old Master David Kowitz

Kenneth Cranham (p17) is one of our leading actors. He was in Oliver! and starred in Shine on Harvey Moon. On stage, he's appeared in Loot, Entertaining Mr Sloane and An Inspector Calls. Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones (p18) is known as the Black Farmer. He f

Man in lederhosen sought The Press (York) Call for new Welcome to Colne signs Burnley Express Stunned detectorist finds hoard of old porn mags Sun £15 for published contributions The March issue is on sale on 8th February 2023. Go to App Store or Goo

Just before Christmas, historian Lady Antonia Fraser composed a verse on confronting that age-old companion to faith – doubt – at Farm Street Church, Mayfair. Nick Downes is one of the most treasured cartoonists at Oldie Towers (see above right for a

I have started the new year with a new hobby. I am taking a weekly walk down memory lane – literally. My physiotherapist, Finola, is doing her best to improve my posture and balance in the hope that I fall over less in the future than I have in the p

This time, it struck me at 4.30am – the halfway mark of a refreshing five-hour sojourn in A&E – I truly mean it. Admittedly, I'd been equally convinced that I meant it on three vaguely similar occasions in the last couple of years. The ultrasound on

The phrase Noblesse Oblige first appears in a Balzac novel, Le Lys dans la Vallée (1836). An elderly aristocrat tries to sum up for a younger friend how to live. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as ‘Noble ancestry constrains to honourable beh

Main character syndrome is when you find yourself behaving like the protagonist of some kooky Hollywood romcom. Or maybe it's a French arthouse movie for you, a Taylor Swift video, or a novel by John Le Carré. You imagine all the world is your stage

In February, I'll be performing a selection of poems by Rudyard Kipling, Wilfred Owen and Robert Lowell and I'll read prose by J B Priestley. The show explores the poignant experience of human beings in war. The first third of the show will be Kiplin

‘Molest me, Les. Molest me in my workplace, you dirty old devil!’ The replay on the CCTV screen froze on a shot of my bum. The boardroom at Oz House was as full as a pommy complaints box – with Australian dignitaries, all old mates, shitting themselv

I was watching daytime television, as a way of decompressing, when a charming old boy in a three-piece tweed suit appeared on the screen. He was sitting by a crackling log fire in a book-filled room with a dog at his feet as he answered, in alert and

In 1989, I moved from the country to live in a mansion-block flat in Battersea, with my family and bull terrier, Parker. Through Parker and his canine friends I met a variety of local people, including many of my neighbours. There was one who command

In the autumn of 1984, the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was invited to be the guest of honour at Harrow's annual School Songs. I was at the school at the time. Churchill Songs, as the event is known, involves the whole school together singin

Sponsored by The kitchens of the National Liberal Club are closed until May. So we have decided to go on tour, in aid of local charities (save the dates: 26th April at Fairlight Hall near Hastings; 9th May, back at the National Liberal Club) on Et Tu

We're in the age of compulsory equality – and now it has reached the community of the saints. The Irish celebrate St Patrick's Day across the world on 17th March. But this year, for the first time, St Brigid is to be given equal status with St Pat –

We've just been subjected to what the authorities call a ‘deep dive’. In reality, it is yet another ‘mocksted’. Where a full Ofsted inspection would examine the whole school at once, the mocksted takes place department by department, creeping insidio

• Napoleon owned 1,762horses. • The Queen owned more than 3,280 racehorses. • A horse is capable of almost 15 horsepower. • Horses have the largest eyes of any land mammal. • A horse's skin is more sensitive than a fingertip. • A horse's teeth take u

Gloria Dei est vivens homo – ‘The glory of God is man fully alive.’ That's the best-known quotation from St Irenaeus's theological work Against Heresies. A controversial figure during his lifetime in the second century AD, St Irenaeus was made a Doct

Property-developer, philanthropist and racehorse-owner Sir Robert Ogden co-owned See More Business, which won the 1999 Cheltenham Gold Cup. He was responsible for the £7-million Sir Robert Ogden Macmillan Centres for cancer patients in Harrogate and

‘Who the hell are you? What do you think you're doing here?’ shouted Sir Alex Ferguson. I looked over my shoulder. An interloper had got into Manchester United's Cliff training ground and was about to be ejected by the biggest name in English footbal

In the summer of 1976, I had a phone call from Ted Heath's PA. I was working at Westminster as a political correspondent for the BBC. Would I like to help set up an event on TV, I was asked, to celebrate Heath's 60th birthday? Heath had lost both the

By Robert Douglas-Fairhurst Jonathan Cape £16.99 A curse must have been placed on those teaching English at Oxford University. Richard Ellmann died of motor neurone disease (MND), and never saw the publication of his Oscar Wilde masterpiece, which he

By Anne Glenconner Hodder & Stoughton £22 As she enters her tenth decade, her spirits unflagging, her memory undimmed, and her pat rician beauty unchanged, Anne Glenconner has clearly discovered the fountain of truth. Four years after publishing her

By Rory Knight Bruce Mount Orleans Press £20 Rory Knight Bruce was one of Fleet Street's characters in the 1980s and ‘90s: a bit of a legend in his own lunchtime. A Puck-like, Will-o’-the-wisp Withnail in everyone's peripheral vision, he seemed to ap

Either the camera will dance – or I will. Fred Astaire on how to film his dance sequences Beauty is not the only thing in life. Money, power, intelligence, humour … these are forms of beauty, too. Charles Aznavour The rules [of manners], laid down cl

Green bins make me see red. The owner of the bin is throwing away a valuable resource – brown gold – and paying someone (about 50 quid a year) to take it away. Some garden waste needs to be removed: branches, roots and soon. But that can be done via

Britons are obsessed with the weather, so why doesn't it play more of a part in our view of history? As far as British history is concerned, that might be because extremes of weather have been quite rare. By the standards of the tropics, or the unfor

One successful British export to the United States is journalists. They don't attract any tariffs under World Trade Organisation rules. The latest person to be dispatched westwards is Emma Tucker, who is swapping the editor's chair at the Sunday Time

Released on 17th February ‘The weasel under the cocktail cabinet’ – that's what Harold Pinter said his plays were about. Well, Alan Bennett's plays are about the rock in the rock bun. By his own admission, Bennett isn't the cuddly national treasure h

Only a month ago we were mourning the sudden death of Andrew Nickolds. He was co-creator of Ed Reardon's Week, the best satire on a freelance writer's life since – well, since George Gissing's New Grub Street, on whose character Edwin Reardon the mod

Pity those people who don't get a Valentine's card. Age is no excuse. It's unlikely but, should I be in your amorous thoughts on 14th February, no red roses please. These flowers are not exactly abundant in British gardens at this time of the year an

It was Apollo's pursuit of Daphne, who escaped him by changing into a laurel tree, that spawned the laurel wreaths used as rewards for the military heroes, athletes and poets of ancient Greece. Hence laureate and baccalaureate and the herb Lauras nob

Tuck up in a cosy corner of the ki tchen with a fortifying bowl of soup. And read two books about what it means to be English at table. Emma Kay's sturdy, pocket-sized paperback, Fodder & Drincan, dives deep in to the Anglo-Saxon way of life. The oth

We're in the depths of Dry January: the month of sobriety and austerity. I'm utterly skint. I've already made some raids on the freezer, discovering mackerel from June and an iceberg of various stocks which I have dragooned into soups. Last night, I

There is no more terrifying sporting place of work than a ski-jump tower. Forget walking out at Wembley with 80,000 voices bellowing out their affiliation. Never mind the summit of an Alpine climb in the Tour de France before you make the descent. Th

Thanks to our capricious climate, you may be reading this on a sun-dappled terrace in shirtsleeves (I do hope so). But now, as I gaze through frosty windows at the garden, even our fiercely territorial local cats are huddling together for warmth. I a

A seven-year-old Range Rover Sport hybrid suffered complete main-battery failure. It was the hybrid battery, not the ordinary car battery. A partial failure would apparently not have been too serious because sections can be replaced. But replacing th

A new year is the time to make predictions for the next 12 months. But, as somebody once said, prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. Looking back at my past prophecies is a salutary business. Some years ago, I predicted that, as

La Foce was the Tuscan home of Iris Origo, which she immortalised in her wartime memoir War in the Val d'Orcia. In the 1920s, she commissioned Cecil Pinsent to design the world-famous gardens. Four years ago, her granddaughter renovated the 15th-cent

Fraudsters will steal anything. Even people's homes are being stolen – house-hijacked – with several instances a year. Since 2009, the Land Registry has prevented 400 fraudulent applications being registered, worth more than £207 million. One propert

Iwould rather this article was more about Arcadia than about me,’ says Wendy Copage, quite sincerely – although she has done more than anyone in recent times literally to put this fabled but very real part of Greece on the map. So, yes, let's talk ab

Is there anythingyou can't leave home without? My long-haired miniature dachshund, Maurice. I paid huge amounts of money to bring him from America to England last summer. He's even been to the Palio in Siena. Is there somethingyou really miss? My fam

1 Boracic (sl) (5) 4 Altitude (6) 9 Abnormal (5) 10 Sad, infelicitous (7) 11 Stretches out (7) 12 Allowed within the law (5) 14 Fasten; draw (3) 15 Freezing cold (3) 16 Young of goat (3) 18 Personal (3) 21 Tooth (5) 22 Assert, state (7) 23 Student di

IN COMPETITION No 288, you were invited to write a poem called Always Carry Water. For Paul Holland it was simple: ‘Always carry water is terrible advice/It's the same weight as beer and doesn't taste as nice.’ So it was for Jennifer Coville: ‘Person

Q My husband has always been a workaholic, spending long hours at the office, and away on business. I'd long dreamed of the day we could at last have time to ourselves, being able to travel, spend relaxing evenings watching television together, go ou