The Oldie

Edward Fox (p17) was in The Go-Between (1971) and Day of the Jackal (1973). He played Lieutenant General Sir Brian Horrocks in A Bridge Too Far (1977). He was our Oldie Stager of the Year in 2022. Quentin Blake (p22) has illustrated more than 300 boo

Around 20 years ago in Dublin, I was chatting to the eminent Irish psychiatrist Dr Anthony Clare – the one we remember from In the Psychiatrist’s Chair on Radio 4. I was asking Anthony about an old friend of mine who, when I had first known him, had

Man refuses to switch seats with passenger on flight Independent Local artist confirms he is NOT responsible for ‘Banksy’ drawing by Marlow school Bucks Free Press Horse bolts as pub closes for revamp Sentinel £15 for published contributions SIGN UP!

As one of Earth’s top-ranked hypochondriacs, I found one of the best things about the recent Olympiad was its efficacy as a diagnostic tool. Among the many ailments of which I live in fear is Sjögren’s syndrome. This auto-immune disease has various e

Like most children of my generation, I was brought up learning proverbs – not the Biblical ones, but the ‘More haste, less speed’ kind. At school, we ploughed through countless exercises which required us to fill in the gaps, eg, ‘A rolling ___ gathe

The stories of Babar are embedded in many an oldie’s childhood memory. But it wasn’t until Laurent de Brunhoff died this March, aged 98 (his father, Jean, the Babar creator, died from TB in 1937, aged only 37), that I realised how little I knew about

Temu is an online shop, operated by the Chinese e-commerce giant PDD Holdings and headquartered in Ireland. It features prices so implausibly low, and adverts so accurately targeted, that you can’t help wondering if witchcraft is involved. ‘Shop Like

In 2001, Robbie Williams, at the very height of his fame, wanted a break. His managers struck a deal with him. If he would agree to a book, they said, he could have a year off. I was signed up to write it, but I didn’t meet the man himself until I wa

Joe Biden once told me he got into the 2020 presidential race because ‘I want to make a difference.’ I was one of a crowd of people milling around the Boeing aircraft assembly line in Seattle when he swung by to announce his candidacy five years ago.

Before the pandemic, I was a regular at the pub. Once or twice a week I, and my elderly mates Boot, Mason and Riley would gather at our Cotswolds local and gas away over a couple of bottles of wine. And then Covid arrived. So we moved our pub to Zoom

The older I grow, the more aware I become of those writers who did not die fashionably young, like Keats or Novalis, nor retire, like lazy old E M Forster. Instead, they continued to work into their old age, raging against the dying of the light, and

It was in the summer of 1985 when my dad, who was Ronnie Kray’s solicitor, asked me to come with him to Broadmoor Hospital. I was a teenager doing work experience in his legal firm and he needed me to take notes. The journey to Crowthorne in Berkshir

Considering how useful the pocket is, it’s not nearly widespread enough in modern clothing. Pockets have been helping us for thousands of years. A perfectly preserved mummy of someone believed to have lived between 3350 and 3105 BC was found in the Ö

In November 1979, I joined Express Newspapers and became a copytaker in their Manchester office. There were 22 of us and, supplied with headphones and sit-up-and-beg typewriters, we typed other people’s stories at the speed at which they spoke. This

Have you ever felt you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you were taking the wrong direction in your life? This epiphany occurred to me on the night of 9th November 1989 – the date the Berlin Wall fell. I was on my feet at the Oxford Uni

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

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… For a man with a Costa café on my corner, and a desire to seek afternoon refuge from my

Television presenter Kirstie Allsopp gave the eulogy for her father, Lord Hindlip, former Chairman of Christie’s, at the Grosvenor Chapel in South Audley Street. Hindlip was a skilled auctioneer, who sold Van Gogh’s Sunflowers for £24m in 1987. In 19

The Medieval Scriptorium: Making Books in the Middle Ages By Sara J Charles Reaktion Books £16.99 A red pillar box outside 78 Banbury Road, Oxford, was installed by the Post Office in 1885 specially for James Murray, the first editor of the Oxford En

In these days of modern medicine, do we have the right to ask for miraculous cures? I have no intention of answering this question. I prefer to go to John 4:48 -Jesus’s somewhat astringent answer to the court official’s request that Jesus go to his h

SIR: In his column in the August issue, A N Wilson says that if private schools are done away with, the only people left will be (his words) ‘stupid people’. To bolster his case for cleverness he mentions Iris Murdoch, ‘who would have loathed the pri

I’d heard all about Dr Tim Spector’s fashionable theory: what matters more than calorie-counting is the bacteria in your gut. I cook from scratch, don’t buy junk and eat lots of veg. So I’d resisted joining Zoe, Spector’s personalised nutrition progr

I never expected to find myself considering the subject of male impotence while researching in the British Library. Then an extraordinary coincidence took place, involving that research in the British Library and a cricket match in Berkshire. It all

The Newsmongers: A History of Tabloid Journalism By Terry Kirby Reaktion Books £20 Years ago, when I was a young sub-editor on the Mirror, the boss called me over and asked if I’d done the stars for the Saturday just gone. Yes, I had. ‘Well you put n

Tell Me Everything By Elizabeth Strout Viking £16.99 If you haven’t read a novel by Elizabeth Strout, where’s best to start? Probably with Olive Kitteridge (2008), which tells of a crotchety pillar of the community living by the sea in Strout’s home

On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything By Nate Silver Allen Lane £30 You need to be a statistician or maths geek to get full value from Nate Silver’s latest book. But then you can get a considerable percentage of value even if you are not. In fac

DAISY DUNN The Voyage Home By Pat Barker Hamish Hamilton £20 ‘Men begin and end their lives as helpless lumps of flesh in the hands of women, and all the years between -power, success, wealth, fame, even victory in war – are merely a doomed attempt a

Oliver Cromwell: Commander in Chief By Ronald Hutton Yale £25 Those of us who have written about Oliver Cromwell and the extraordinarily dramatic period of British history he dominated can still be surprised at just how contentious a figure he remain

Have we spoiled Europe? By ‘we’, I mean the British. And by ‘Europe’, I mean the bits we visit on our summer holidays. Mass protests against tourists have been taking place in Mallorca and Barcelona. Ever since the advent of mass tourism, and the org

Who really enjoys life? Kids when you get down to it – kids are the only ones who really get a kick out of being alive. Nell Dunn I’m the shyest megalomaniac you’re ever likely to meet. Kate Bush What is character but the determination of incident? W

Builder’s tea Chai? Camomile? Ayurvedic masculine support? No, thanks; just ordinary tea, please. Oh dear. Here we go again. Eyebrows raised, lips pursed – my hosts are looking as if I’ve asked to borrow their haemorrhoid cream. But no, all I want is

Clever oldies will remember disaster films from Titanic (1953) to The Towering Inferno (1974). They never really went away – there have been six Titanic films alone in the last 70 years. But they have gone out of fashion a bit. So Twisters is a welco

The last time I took a month off from The Oldie was 30 years ago, when I was away in beautiful Boston writing a book. Peter Black of the Daily Mail stood in: he wrote welcoming the new station Classic FM (apart from its ‘idiotic’ ads). He wondered ho

Every time a major movie star washes up on a minor television series, I’m reminded of Norma Desmond being told by Joe Gillis that she used to be big: ‘I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.’ Sam Neill, aka Damien Thorn, the anti-Christ in Omen I

David Hepworth has a theory – and, having worked with him on magazines, TV and podcasts for over 40 years, I can assure you he’s never wrong. The rock career, he declares, is essentially a three-act play. Act One is the devil-may-care first flush of

Gardeners of my vintage (the NHS was not yet invented and our present king was but a twinkle in his mother’s eye) grew up without the plethora of today’s department store-like garden centres. We were nourished instead by numerous small-scale nurserie

I first came across Padrón peppers in a tapas bar in Santiago de Compostela, north-west Spain, not far from the town where they were first grown in Europe and which gives the peppers their name. I have been growing them in an unheated greenhouse for

Calling all jam-makers, preservers and picklers – trainees and old-timers. It’s that time of year. Apricots, peaches, damsons and plums are ripe and ready in orchards, hedgerows and gardens throughout the land. Eliza Acton gets straight to the point

The old theory about racing yachts was that it would be a lot less damaging if the owners sat fully clothed in the shower tearing up £50 notes. And nothing has ripped through the fortunes of ambitious rich men with quite the force 10 gale of the Amer

In the internet Olympics, the gold medal for most popular search topic has for ever been won by pornography. Weather has always won bronze, while it is received wisdom that silver has long gone to ancestry research. This may have been true 20 years a

Len Evans, who was born in Wales, grew up in England and emigrated to Australia, was famous for many reasons. He was Australia’s first wine columnist. He turned his hand to winemaking, at Rothbury Estate and Petaluma. And his – shall we say? – ‘broad

Why buy a Jaguar? It was easier to answer the question in the past. I’ve had five – three 1960s Mark 11s, a 1970s XJ6 and a 2003 XJ (X350). I bought them because they looked good, felt good to drive and were value for money. And you could always sell

Twenty years ago, one of the most regular questions I had was how to protect our computers from attacks by viruses, worms, Trojans, malware and other dire threats. In other words, which antivirus software should we buy? It used to be a hot topic; non

Investment shouldn’t be exciting. Unless you are in it as an intellectual contact sport, slow and dull is the way to accumulate a sound portfolio. Luckily, one class of share has already done it for you, in the shape of investment trusts. These are ‘

On the last day of a ride through the Sierra de Cazorla, we have ridden 17 miles. Dusty and hot, we untack in a pine glade where we will feed, water and rope in our eight Andalusian horses for the night. Vultures circle high on the thermals. All is q

Is there anything you can’t leave home without? At least one volume of poetry and, as I’m Scottish, sunblock and sunglasses in any season. Is there something you really miss? I enjoy investing in being somewhere else. I quite enjoy missing people as

‘Eight ever, nine never’ means that when you have an eight-card fit missing the queen, you should ever (ie always) finesse; when you have a nine-card missing queen-lowlow-low, you should never finesse. It isn’t a favourite, implying a certainty when

Q I have fallen out with my daughter-in-law over a very trivial thing – I thought she owed me money when she didn’t. Now she’s pregnant and, following our argument, she says she doesn’t want me to have anything to do with the baby. Both my son and I

IN COMPETITION No 309 you were invited to write a poem called An Ill Wind. I was surprised by the popularity of breaking wind among the entries. And I don’t know whether the wind blew some competitors’ verse into lines of unmanageable length. Even so

‘You expect me to talk?’ ‘No, Mr Bond. I expect you to die!’ Even those who wouldn’t normally watch a James Bond film can quote that exchange from Goldfinger (released 60 years ago, in September 1964). It is spoken as Bond follows the progress of a l

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

‘You expect me to talk?’ ‘No, Mr Bond. I expect you to die!’ Even those who wouldn’t normally watch a James Bond film can quote that exchange from Goldfinger (released 60 years ago, in September 1964). It is spoken as Bond follows the progress of a l

Edward Fox (p17) was in The Go-Between (1971) and Day of the Jackal (1973). He played Lieutenant General Sir Brian Horrocks in A Bridge Too Far (1977). He was our Oldie Stager of the Year in 2022. Quentin Blake (p22) has illustrated more than 300 boo

Man refuses to switch seats with passenger on flight Independent Local artist confirms he is NOT responsible for ‘Banksy’ drawing by Marlow school Bucks Free Press Horse bolts as pub closes for revamp Sentinel £15 for published contributions SIGN UP!

Around 20 years ago in Dublin, I was chatting to the eminent Irish psychiatrist Dr Anthony Clare – the one we remember from In the Psychiatrist’s Chair on Radio 4. I was asking Anthony about an old friend of mine who, when I had first known him, had

As one of Earth’s top-ranked hypochondriacs, I found one of the best things about the recent Olympiad was its efficacy as a diagnostic tool. Among the many ailments of which I live in fear is Sjögren’s syndrome. This auto-immune disease has various e

Like most children of my generation, I was brought up learning proverbs – not the Biblical ones, but the ‘More haste, less speed’ kind. At school, we ploughed through countless exercises which required us to fill in the gaps, eg, ‘A rolling ___ gathe

Temu is an online shop, operated by the Chinese e-commerce giant PDD Holdings and headquartered in Ireland. It features prices so implausibly low, and adverts so accurately targeted, that you can’t help wondering if witchcraft is involved. ‘Shop Like

In 2001, Robbie Williams, at the very height of his fame, wanted a break. His managers struck a deal with him. If he would agree to a book, they said, he could have a year off. I was signed up to write it, but I didn’t meet the man himself until I wa

Joe Biden once told me he got into the 2020 presidential race because ‘I want to make a difference.’ I was one of a crowd of people milling around the Boeing aircraft assembly line in Seattle when he swung by to announce his candidacy five years ago.

Before the pandemic, I was a regular at the pub. Once or twice a week I, and my elderly mates Boot, Mason and Riley would gather at our Cotswolds local and gas away over a couple of bottles of wine. And then Covid arrived. So we moved our pub to Zoom

The older I grow, the more aware I become of those writers who did not die fashionably young, like Keats or Novalis, nor retire, like lazy old E M Forster. Instead, they continued to work into their old age, raging against the dying of the light, and

So here we are again. Another year over, another set of students shuffled off and the longed-for hiatus between this set and the next. The cycle continues. It hasn’t been a good end to this year, I must admit. I am wondering if I am beginning to run

It was in the summer of 1985 when my dad, who was Ronnie Kray’s solicitor, asked me to come with him to Broadmoor Hospital. I was a teenager doing work experience in his legal firm and he needed me to take notes. The journey to Crowthorne in Berkshir

In November 1979, I joined Express Newspapers and became a copytaker in their Manchester office. There were 22 of us and, supplied with headphones and sit-up-and-beg typewriters, we typed other people’s stories at the speed at which they spoke. This

Considering how useful the pocket is, it’s not nearly widespread enough in modern clothing. Pockets have been helping us for thousands of years. A perfectly preserved mummy of someone believed to have lived between 3350 and 3105 BC was found in the Ö

I’ve just published Idle Thoughts, a humble collection of 40 letters. They were written and addressed to the readers of the Idler, the magazine I edit, over the last few years. While assembling it, I reflected on the lost art of letter-writing. Lette

This year, I have cut no corners in the preparation required for growing my own gourmet vegetables. I doubt sincerely that there is an economic argument for growing them, once you have factored in the vast amounts of bought seed compost, alpine grit

Have you ever felt you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you were taking the wrong direction in your life? This epiphany occurred to me on the night of 9th November 1989 – the date the Berlin Wall fell. I was on my feet at the Oxford Uni

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… For a man with a Costa café on my corner, and a desire to seek afternoon refuge from my

I’d heard all about Dr Tim Spector’s fashionable theory: what matters more than calorie-counting is the bacteria in your gut. I cook from scratch, don’t buy junk and eat lots of veg. So I’d resisted joining Zoe, Spector’s personalised nutrition progr

In these days of modern medicine, do we have the right to ask for miraculous cures? I have no intention of answering this question. I prefer to go to John 4:48 -Jesus’s somewhat astringent answer to the court official’s request that Jesus go to his h

Television presenter Kirstie Allsopp gave the eulogy for her father, Lord Hindlip, former Chairman of Christie’s, at the Grosvenor Chapel in South Audley Street. Hindlip was a skilled auctioneer, who sold Van Gogh’s Sunflowers for £24m in 1987. In 19

Diagnosis by video clip is always hazardous, especially for conditions such as dementia that develop over time. But few people can have observed the sequences of President Biden losing his drift in mid-sentence, being unable to find his way off a sta

SIR: In his column in the August issue, A N Wilson says that if private schools are done away with, the only people left will be (his words) ‘stupid people’. To bolster his case for cleverness he mentions Iris Murdoch, ‘who would have loathed the pri