The Oldie

Editor Harry Mount Sub-editor Penny Phillips Art editor Michael Hardaker Supplements editor Charlotte Metcalf Editorial assistant Amelia Milne Publisher James Pembroke Patron saints Jeremy Lewis, Barry Cryer At large Richard Beatty Our Old Master Dav

John Humphrys (p14) presented the Today programme on Radio 4 from 1987 until 2019. He presented the BBC’s Nine O’Clock News, 1981-87. In 1966, he covered the Aberfan disaster. Nick Newman (p33) is a cartoonist for the Sunday Times. He writes for Priv

Happy 100th birthday to Roy Cross, the artist who painted the iconic covers of Airfix models – so close to the heart of so many oldies now. Roy turned 100 on St George’s Day. In 1942, when Roy was only 18, he had his first published work with line dr

Police inspector demoted for selling trousers online Times Man fined £50 for not buying parking ticket blames puddle Eastern Daily Press Appeal for information after large storage basket stolen from B&Q Scarborough News £15 for published contribution

If the details are paltry at this embryonic stage, the same could once have been said for Jesus, and the Buddha. The gist is this. I have decided to start a religion. If you want to get very rich very quick, but lack the criminal talent to cash in on

‘I killed Rod Hull – the emu man.’ Well, of course I didn’t, but I have an awful feeling those seven words will be my epitaph. I spoke the words in passing, almost as an aside, but I am fearful they will come to define me. The other day, on my Rosebu

Kensington News? Kensington Church Street in London was part of the Swinging Sixties – especially the lower end, when Biba the boutique arrived 60 years ago, in 1964. But, in the less fashionable bit near Notting Hill Gate, there was a business that

A vertiport is where our flying cars will come in to roost in the not-too-distantfuture. Yes, that’s right: actual flying cars, as in The Jetsons or Back to the Future II – only cheap, sustainable, environmentally friendly, and available at the push

Of all the oddities that make The Third Man so compelling, the oddest is that its sublime Vienna setting was an accident. If things had gone differently, the film – released 75 years ago, on 31st August 1949 – would have been set in London. The origi

I have James Callaghan to thank for teaching me everything I needed to know about politicians. He was Foreign Secretary at the time of our encounter and I was the BBC’s man in America. I was a very young man. I had to interview Callaghan for TV news

I was once a Penthouse Pet – and had the time of my life. At 26 years old, with long, dark, curly hair and shapely legs, I wanted to do something exciting and different. My gorgeous, blond, blue-eyed boyfriend was a croupier at Charlie Chester’s club

One summer’s day in 1979, I was wandering along Camden Passage, a maze of little antique shops in Islington. There was a stall selling old magazines – and the cover of a Picture Post from 1945 caught my eye. ‘How much?’ I asked. The dealer said that

'Are you downsizing?’ asked the estate agent sympathetically, as I squeezed past her to view a potential flat. As a fellow oldie, she had guessed right. Like thousands before me, I was having to face up to the fact that the time had come (accelerated

For centuries, Britain was known on the continent as das land ohne musik, the land without music, and – ouch – it was apt. After our brief purple patch of Tudor brilliance, we tumbled down the European rankings, not re-emerging until the Stanford and

My first job was as a clerk to a South African judge during apartheid. Green as grass, I was outraged when he sentenced Xhosa, who’d raped a white woman, to death, but gave a suspended sentence to man who had raped and beaten his 11-year-old niece wh

No offence, but many oldies heading for the sun may now be cringing at the thought of exposing themselves. The beach will force a moment of truth for those whose figures have gone. Whether we let our figures go, or they went of their own accord, is a

There was a legendary Oxford don called Bruce McFarlane, who supervised Alan Bennett’s thesis on Richard II’s retinue from 1388 to 1389. McFarlane used to say Bennett was the best pupil he ever had – ‘before he went off and joined the circus’. This w

Consternation comes in many forms. A hundred and thirty years before those Household Cavalry horses caused mayhem through the streets of London in April, the capital had an equestrian crisis of a very different kind. Welcome to the Great Horse Manure

Like many people, I suspect, I have mixed feelings about the migrants who arrive in Kent on dinghies. Yes, it’s illegal, dangerous and the numbers are concerning; but wouldn’t you also be sorry for individuals and families who take huge risks to find

‘Mary set out at that time and went as quickly as she could to a town in the hill country of Judah. She went into Zechariah’s house and greeted Elizabeth.’ (Luke 1:39) Often the Gospels fail to provide their readers with the sort of details that woul

Lord Falconer of Thoroton KC, the former Lord Chancellor, gave a tribute for Lord Morris of Aberavon, the last surviving member of Harold Wilson’s Cabinet, at St Margaret’s, Westminster. As John Morris, he was Secretary of State for Wales, 1974-79, a

On 28th June 1914 – 110 years ago -Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated, sparking off the First World War. My great-uncle Dr Richard Pollak tried to save his life. In 1951, when I was four, my parents took my older brother Michael and

I worked at 10 Downing Street from 1966 to 1973, first under Harold Wilson and then Ted Heath, as a ‘garden girl’ – one of a dozen or so Civil Service secretaries. We were so called because our large office, situated below the Cabinet Room, overlooke

The Quality of Love: Twin Sisters at the Heart of the Century By Ariane Bankes Duckworth £18.99 In 1935, Norman Parkinson photographed two lovely twin sisters wearing ruffles and with their beautiful profiles shown to best advantage. The celebrated P

The Missing Thread: A New History of the Ancient World Through the Women Who Shaped It By Daisy Dunn Weidenfeld & Nicolson £25 She had a dream, of a Greece that might be peaceful and free. She attempted to put it into effect, deploying the unheralded

In Pursuit of Love: The Search for Victor Hugo’s Daughter By Mark Bostridge Bloomsbury £20 Mark Bostridge first came across Adèle, the second daughter of Victor Hugo, when he saw François Truffaut’s L’Histoire d’Adèle H in 1975. The film, starring Is

The Giant on the Skyline: On Home, Belonging and Learning to Let Go By Clover Stroud Doubleday £18.99 In our Instagram world, the real-time memoir, celebrating and ‘sharing’ the smallest detail of daily life, is big business. Over three previous memo

The Lost Paths: A History of How We Walk from Here to There By Jack Cornish Michael Joseph £20 ‘An old path electrifies weary legs,’ wrote Alfred Barron. That must be one reason for the increasing number of sprightly walkers afoot in Britain. There a

Long Island Colm Tóibín Picador £20 If you really squint, the chasm between Colm Tóibín and Simon Bates can shrink to nothing. Imagine the ardent strings of Radio 1’s Our Tune sawing away under the story of a teenage girl from provincial Ireland sent

Until you’re known in my profession as a monster, you’re not a star. Bette Davis The world has lost a comic genius. I’ve lost my best friend. Stan Laurel on Oliver Hardy’s death in 1957 The body is like a car: the older you become, the more care you

It takes an outsider to spot the best – and worst – things about the British. When that outsider is Martin Scorsese, you’re in for a treat. Scorsese, a Times Literary Supplement subscriber, could have been a terrific film critic if he hadn’t been suc

The bagging area There’s something joyful about the self-checkout. Maybe the lack of gigantic trolleys in the queue. Perhaps the promise of no human interaction. Ultimately, it offers the ability to whizz straight through. But all this comes with dow

Recent reports of a boom in primary-school Latin may be exaggerated. It turns out that the impressive-sounding 400 schools that teach the language make up a less impressive 2.8 per cent of the total. French and Spanish still, quite sensibly, rule OK.

Now that the old Roberts radio has been replaced by BBC Sounds and podcasts, how very odd the Edwardian tones of Beatrice Harrison seem. ‘I used to wander about the garden at night, you know, with a cello. And, one night, when I’d been playing for ho

For light relief, turn to Baby Reindeer (Netflix), the psychological horror show dominating the British news. Written by and starring Richard Gadd, the events described are not, we are told, based on a true story. They are a true story, which Gadd is

Forty years ago, something happened that hadn’t since the ascent of the Beatles. One group – also Liverpudlians – dominated Britain’s radio, charts and pop and national press coverage for 12 months solid. They sold eye-watering quantities of singles,

I was amused by the Oldie drinks correspondent Bill Knott’s description of a low-alcohol Vinho Verde in the Spring issue as a ‘perfect gardening wine’. So I began to think about other essentials for outdoors enjoyment in these all-too-few midsummer w

In the Czech Republic, it is said that a young woman going out on a date may hang a little bag of lovage round her neck – though whether as an aphrodisiac or a deodorant, I am not sure. In Germany, lovage is called Liebstöckel, or little love stick.

Silver linings, anyone? Our unusually wet spring and straitened national circumstances might combine to preserve this year’s roadsides from the municipal lawnmower. So our native wildflowers can set seed, go forth and multiply for the benefit of thos

My son, Leo, is working at Arlington (formerly the Caprice). He’s ‘front of house’. I don’t think you’re allowed to call him or any of his colleagues ‘a waiter’ any longer because that comes with the negative connotations of service, tantamount to th

Twenty or so years ago, I had a splendid lunch at La Famiglia in Chelsea with the late Alvaro Maccioni. The restaurant’s illustrious owner, since the 1960s he had counted A-list celebrities not just as customers, but as friends. While Alvaro was a pr

One sunny Monday morning in May, something unexpected happened in downtown Manhattan. The Empire State Building, the proud architectural symbol of American life, was lit up with, of all things, an ad for a cricket tournament. Flicking the switch to c

I heard recently of an Austin 7 driver who was pottering happily along on his four-inch-wide tyres when he came to a puddle covering almost the entire road. Sensibly, he pulled into the centre, but he was then forced by an oncoming Mr Toad to swerve

Do you have a smart meter? Of course you do. You’ve been badgered to convert to one by your energy company, and by all those pictures of smiling happy people with miraculously lowered fuel bills, until you gave in. It’s free, after all. That is, ‘fre

I bet that if you’re reading this column, you’ve used Google in the last 24 hours – probably even in the last hour. Such is its prominence in the web search market that it has become a verb (to ‘Google’), just like Hoover or Sellotape. This distincti

My daughter is a very annoying climate fanatic. She arrives at my barn, heads for the kitchen, opens the rubbish drawer and huffs and puffs as she rearranges the garbage. Quite often, there is the telling of one particularly sad tale. A lobster is sw

Is there anything you can’t leave home without? A travelling knife and fork. Is there something you really miss? The dogs. I’d love to take the dogs on tour, like Maria Callas. Do you travel light? After touring from my 20s to my 60s, it’s now a fine

‘Unlucky,’ said dummy. ‘I’d have got the hearts wrong, too.’ ‘Thanks,’ said declarer. He then turned to Mrs Voyant, a shrewd player who’d been kibitzing. ‘Claire,’ he asked, ‘Should I have got that right?’ (1) Weak two, showing 5-10 points and a dece

FOR COMPETITION No 306 it was time for the annual, ever popular challenge of bouts-rimés, writing a poem with specified rhyme words in order. The rhyme scheme was based on a poem beginning ‘Set me whereas the sun doth parch the green’ by Henry Howard

Q I’ve been asked to sketch out a family tree from the 1800s to put up at my aunt’s 80th birthday. I’ve had quite a bit of experience with genealogy and, as we are a very fertile family, there’s a lot of work to do. My problem is that one of my cousi