The Oldie

Much of the fun has disappeared from the book pages with the death in January of Fay Weldon at 91. For journalists, she was a gift, being prolific, playful and madly quotable - for four decades. The archetypal northLondon female novelist, with childr

The Duchess of Kent will be 90 on 22nd February. Throughout much of 2021, I conducted a number of Zooms with the Duke of Kent, which became the book of conversations, A Royal Life. The question I was frequently asked was ‘How and where is the Duchess

Who can forget the scene in Carry On Again Doctor (1969), when Jim Dale’s saucily named character Dr Nookey crashes through a window on a hospital trolley after taking a boneshaking descent down a flight of stairs? It was the actor, comedian and sing

When I was married to Colin [Lord Glenconner, r926-2010], I was always on the go. Now I can plan my day and do what I want. I was shy when I was young. Being married to Colin, I wasn’t noticed. He was so flamboyant. I followed in his wake - and I fol

What does Gyles Brandreth have in common with Elvis Presley and Marlene Dietrich? No, it’s not that they’re all iconic sex gods. They all had a huge crush on the same beauty, namely the late, great Joan Rhodes (1921-2010), known as the Strongest Woma

It is perpetually damp in my part of the forest. I can see no reason to join in the idiotic outbreaks of goodwill about 2023, since more or less the only certainty is that my Parkinson’s is not going to get any better. I have not bothered to keep a t

North by Northwest (1959) isn’t abou t what happens to Cary Grant. It’s about what happens to his suit. The suit has the adventures, a gorgeous New York suit threading its way through America. The usage of calling a guy a ‘suit’ if you don’t like him

I don’t want to over-glamorise myself, but I need to explain that I was once nominated for that singular honour, a Welsh BAFTA. (And, before anybody starts, I am very much aware that it should really be a WAFTA. Not a Welsh British Film and Televisio

After the death of my husband in 2021, when he was 76, someone described me as the most eligible widow in London. That’s as maybe. I intend to stay a widow for ever. The world is full of blithering idiots and predatory males who consider me fresh on

John Gielgud never did voiceovers - despite his instrument being described by Alec Guinness as ‘a silver trumpet muffled in silk’. Now almost every thesp, knighted or not, is keen to race into Soho or, with the new upsurge in working from home, duck

W e do death superbly in Britain. Nothing demonstrates that more than our state occasions. The Queen’s funeral showed that military precision and attention to the tiniest detail were no enemies of grand emotion, giving us a reassuringly reliable publ

We’re all “getting older”. In most cases, that means slowing down, having less energy, and accepting a greater risk of serious agerelated health conditions that could stop you in your tracks. But what if you’re enjoying life and just want to keep goi

N ot long before his death 300 years ago, Sir Christopher Wren had a terrible shock. Looking at the final plans for St Paul’s Cathedral, he saw his dream vision for the cathedral had been brutally altered. Wren wanted to punctuate the London skyline

Jem Clarke is in his very, very early fifties, is five foot zero inches tall and has never left the family home in Cleethorpes, which he shares with his parents… Mother had noticed my fugue state. She was not wrong. It’s because I’ve outgrown my rema

My late cousin once looked up at her large and impressive Scottish baronial stronghold - with its turrets, spiral stone staircase, huge roof and windswept hall - and sighed, ‘There are times when I wish I lived in a cell.’ The maintenance of such a h

Martin Kenyon was a publisher, church governor and supporter of overseas students, a lifelong campaigner against I apartheid and a feminist. Kenyon achieved 15 minutes of fame in December 2020, when he drove himself to Guy’s Hospital to become one of

SIR: Ysenda Maxtone Graham’s lovely article (January issue) about the merits of short sermons put me in mind of my excellent vicar when I lived in Lancashire. I once said to him that he never preached a boring sermon and asked how he managed to achie

In 1982, just out of university, I was asked by a new magazine to interview the actor, author and documentarymaker Kenneth Griffith. When I arrived at his large home in Islington, the fiery Welshman opened the door wearing nothing but a dressing gown

By Salman Rushdie Jonathan Cape £20 Aged nine, Pampa Kampana watches her mother, and all the women of the tiny province where she was born, build a huge bonfire and walk ‘unflinchingly’ into the flames. The reason is ostensibly a humiliating military

W ho and what exactly am I reviewing here? Apparently this book is ‘full of insight, revelation, self-examination and hardwon wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief. It purports to be the memoirs of Prince Harry, but it is ghost-written by

By Blake Morrison Borough Press £16.99 Blake Morrison may think he has written a memoir about his dead sisters but he has, unconsciously, written a book about himself. Who are they? There is his younger sister, Gill, ‘the plump pink infant with golde

By Edward Stourton Doubleday £20 Three subjects once forbidden in dinner-party conversation dominate Edward Stourton’s memoir: sex, religion and politics. A fourth - class, the snob factor - has been used against him in his career as an international

Censorship obliged creators to find a way to show, without showing, thus giving the viewers liberal range for their imaginations. Janet Leigh on the shower scene in Pyscho Happiness is a useless subject for a writer. Especially in English. Why do you

By Rev Fergus Butler-Gallie Transworld £16.99 Touching Cloth is Butler-Gallie’s memoir of his first year, mainly in a Liverpool parish, after his ordination to the Anglican priesthood. He writes like an overpraised teenager with breathless literary a

Don’t you hate it when one person takes up two seats on public transport - one for themselves and the other for their luggage? You politely ask them to remove their stuff so that you can sit down. They either fix you with an icy glare at your imperti

Phoenix Theatre, until llth March In 1970, Michael Frayn wrote a play called The Two of Us, first performed by Lynn Redgrave and Richard Briers. Watching it backstage one night, he found it a lot funnier than when he’d seen it from out front. This re

Funny Woman (Sky), with Gemma Arterton in the title role, is an adaptation of Nick Hornby’s seventh novel, Funny Girl, set in 1964. Hornby’s earlier novels, High Fidelity and About a Boy, were made into two very funny films, and Arterton’s cool scree

Tom Linley was the musician and friend Mozart never forgot. ‘He was a true genius,’ Mozart told the Irish tenor Michael Kelly, as they sat at supper in Vienna in 1784. ‘Had he lived, he would have been one of the great ornaments of the musical world.

This year is all very exciting already! Elton is headlining Glasto for the first time. Stormzy is doing an all-day gig at All Points East. Reading and Leeds festivals are both looking tasty (the Killers, Billie Eilish, inter alia). British Summer Tim

V&A, llth February to llth June This unprecedented Donatello show began at the Bargello and the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence last year. Since then, many of the exhibits have visited the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, and now they have arrived at the V&A. R

Again, alas, I’m hors de combat irksome in the extreme at this time of the year when, everywhere, the sap is rising. Following major life-changing surgery in December (don’t worry, I’m still a bloke), I’ve been told not to lift anything heavier than

Lent this year is from 22nd February until 6th April. It makes for 40 days of short commons in the run-up to Easter. And it’s a chance to repurpose what’s lurking in the back of the store cupboard and recycle the unmarked leftovers from the freezer.

In her acceptance speech at the 2022 Oldie of the Year awards, Dame Jane Goodall said chimpanzees differ from humans by only just over one per cent. Her Kenyan mentor, Dr Louis Leakey, chose her to do the chimpanzee study because she had not been to

Every one of us is at risk of harm, says the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and we are at even more risk if we are in a vulnerable situation. The impact of the pandemic, the lockdown and now the financial downturn has left increasing numbers of p

On the bookshelf behind me is a statuette of the Hindu god Ganesha, remover of obstacles. When I was sitting chewing my pencil, attempting something for The Oldie’s Jeremy Lewis Prize for new writers, I promised Ganesha that if he helped me win, I’d

1 Leap forward by obscure Conservative… (9) 6 … to confound rumour of defect (5) 9 Social status of a good person in church (5) 10 Jump on stage as companion held by request (9) 11 Peer’s hope dashed, with king interrupting stockholder (10) 12 Killer

Did you always want to be on the stage? I always wanted to be the centre of attraction. Do you remember John Lennon at primary school? He was a good laugh. I got on well with him, but I was more sport-minded than him. I went to school just to play fo