Indholdsfortegnelse for January 2025 i The Oldie

It is not this column's inclination –much less its desire – to frighten you unduly. Quite the reverse; its mission is to apply a dollop of soothing balm to the fractious soul in these wickedly alarming times. Yet, every now and again, when a threat level so dictates, alerting you to a grievous danger becomes a moral imperative. So it is that we must turn to the recent article in the Daily Mail that struck dread into this reader and others beyond counting. Never the journal to spread fear without compelling cause, the Mail is as responsible a harbinger of doom as the world of letters has known. Its proselytising of the link between the MMR jab and autism, as most diligently prosecuted by then columnist Mad ‘Melanie' Phillips (now,…

One snowy evening in December 1962, a 26-yearold, Brylcreemed family man from south London presented himself at the back door of the Wetherby Arms in the less fashionable part of Chelsea. He was there to audition for a job as the bass-player with what seemed to be an only fitfully promising start-up rhythm-and-blues group. The newcomer thought the pasty-faced teenagers who greeted him might last a year or two if they were lucky. They in turn had their doubts about his smart turn-out and taste for mainstream pop music, as opposed to their own obscure American blues favourites. The job-seeker did possess two distinct advantages. First, he brought with him a pair of fridge-size Vox amplifiers, capable of a volume beyond anything the aspiring young musicians had ever experienced. Secondly,…

There is a historical curve. In the 16th century, British people started to learn Greek. From those times until they stopped doing so, what we call civilisation prospered. Elizabeth I read Greek easily. Made jokes in the language. From her days down to the 1970s, when educationalists began to bugger up the education of the poor, ‘the elite' in Britain were, to put it in a nutshell, those who knew Greek. This included thousands of grammar-school children from poor backgrounds. I was taught by such people. Now ‘the elite' are know-nothings, with degrees in PPE or business studies. The Great Tradition is over. A few weeks before Christmas, a professor of social mobility at Exeter University, one Lee Elliot Major, asked for education to be aimed at working-class students. Rather…

I remember the day Miss World invited me to lunch in November 1966. She didn't have to. It wasn't a community-service order from Mecca, who ran the contest and were said to penalise awkward contestants. When the list was circulated through my college seeking volunteers to escort contestants on their day in Cambridge, I'd been allotted Miss Japan. So it was that, on a bright, cold November morning, I was standing outside King's College Chapel alongside an Oriental beauty. She sadly had no English to express her distress at being in a line of stunning young women paired with strange males, ranging from grubby teenage misfits like me to the occasional devious don. Our ramble continued in awkward silence until it was intercepted by a young Japanese man with a…

When the funeral director tapped me on the shoulder, possessed of a guilty conscience I naturally thought I had done something wrong. So I flinched. Far from it, the tall, sepulchral fellow with a yellow-ochre waxwork complexion and straw for hair was saying something in hushed tones. I leant in towards him. ‘If you don't mind my saying, sir,' he wheezed, ‘your conduct at this funeral service was exemplary – better than that of most celebrants who pass through these doors.' His rheumy eyes rolled in an attempt at affability. ‘And my assistant agrees.' The underling nodded obediently. Later, when I walked back through the cottage doors, the service and the ‘wake' behind me, I felt two feet taller. That's what I've been missing. It was my mother who used…

A minor operation, said the great physician Sir George Pickering, is an operation performed on somebody else. In like fashion, I suppose, a low risk is one taken by somebody else. Certainly, doctors and patients may evaluate risks differently, and doctors even think of different kinds of risks, not least among them that of being sued. This renders doctors either laudably cautious or obsessionally – even paralytically – overcautious. After all, there is more rejoicing in the chambers of malpractice lawyers over one missed diagnosis than there is regret over a hundred unnecessary, expensive, painful and intrusive medical investigations. When in doubt, diagnose. Among the errors doctors most fear committing is giving a drug to patients known to be allergic to it and who have a fatal reaction to it.…

My definition of a friend is somebody who adores you even though they know the things you're most ashamed of. Jodie Foster When I ascended from the depths of the working class to the middle class, the higher I got, the more dishonesty I found. Steven Berkoff Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said. Mel Brooks Children, I grant, should be innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness. Mary Wollstonecraft Gladstone was not the first Prime Minister who lacked a sense of humour. But he was the first one of whom this was said. Harold Nicolson Mr Tibbs was to his wife what the o is in 90 - he was of some…

In The Story of Panto (Sky), Gyles Brandreth (as he writes in his Oldie column) shares his love of the 300-year-old uniquely camp Christmas tradition. As someone who finds pantomime numbingly dull, I watched this cheerful programme with anthropological interest. Would Gyles, with his infinite charm, manage to persuade me there is more to panto than smutty innuendo and audience participation? Not really, because The Story of Panto is not an apologia but a celebration of those who have panto in their DNA. This, for the Brandreth family, is literally the case. It was in a student production of Cinderella that Gyles met his wife, Michèle, in 1968, and they have since been, as he puts it, ‘breeding' in their children and grandchildren ‘the future audience of panto'. Together, Gyles…

CHARLOTTE JOHNSON WAHL Bethlem Gallery, Beckenham, 11th December to 29th March 2025 AND UK WINTER ROUND-UP Charlotte Johnson Wahl (1942-2021) was Boris Johnson's mother. In 1974, she spent eight months at the Maudsley Hospital, now linked with Bethlem Hospital, or Bedlam, in an NHS Foundation Trust. She was suffering from OCD, sometimes a precursor to Parkinson's. While there, she produced 78 paintings, and was given a sell-out exhibition. Mostly on her own, she brought up four children of diverse talents, and continued to paint. In 2015, she had her only other exhibition until now. This one, titled ‘What It Felt Like', has assembled as many Maudsley works as possible. They are of their time, flat and pop-art influenced, but emotions come through. Sometimes there are echoes of Claude Flight's tube…

GET YOUR RUNNING KIT OFF My friend John is a big enthusiast for running naked. This doesn't mean he terrifies the neighbourhood by heading out to the park bereft of clothing, delivering a full moon with every stride. Rather it means leaving his phone behind, not taking his Fitbit or his Garmin Forerunner fitness watch, dispensing of his headphones and just going out running, nude of tech. That, he tells me, is the way to have fun after slipping on your trainers. Don't worry about your time, stop checking your heartbeat or pace per minute. Forget about the voice in your ear informing you about your cadence or stride pattern. Strip yourself of nagging data and instead just look at the sky, the trees and the grass. Then, he says,…

At Christmas, the Ghost of Internet Past sweeps me back to 1997 – when I first connected myself to cyberspace. It was at home; not at work. The large company I worked for at the time did not have a website. We didn't use email; none of us had a computer. I dictated letters to my secretary, who typed them up on what we quaintly called a ‘word processor', put them into an envelope and posted them. Motorbike couriers roared around, taking documents to lawyers and clients, people still rang each other up – and we even used foolscap paper. Webwatch For my latest tips and free newsletter, go to www.askwebster.co.uk White Christmas askwebster.co.uk/white-christmas An annual treat – Father Christmas and his reindeer singing the only version of White Christmas worth…

Yes, you can take your walk in midsummer meadows of knapweed and butterflies! You can enjoy your easy stroll through the delicious shade of a wood in high summer, or your springtime delight when the air is filled with birdsong! But if you're seeking a truly transcendentally stupendous walk, you cannot beat a dry winter's eve on the north Norfolk coast. Dusk is the key that unlocks this magic door. I first stepped over its threshold with my friend Nick Acheson, who wrote The Meaning of Geese, a fabulous book. We set out from Burnham Overy Staithe on a simple out-and-back walk, north on the sea bank beside Overy creek. It was a short journey into a miraculous bowl of space and peace: salt marsh on one side, grazing marshes…

IN COMPETITION No 313 you were invited to write a poem called The Closed Shop. Ted Lane remembered one that had sold antiquities ‘at Seven Dials,/ which had a faded note: “Back Thursday” on the door'. David Dixon's poem featured another door sign: ‘Just popped out for a second to pick up my cat./ I'll be right back in no time at all.' Peter Hollindale wrote of a long-gone wheelwright: ‘what they made/With hammer, compass, chisel, saw and plane,/ Was drawn by horses past the shop each day.' Commiserations to them and to Albert Caton, Dorothy Pope, Toddy Hoare and Iris Bull, and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus prize of The Chambers Dictionary going to GM Southgate. The little wool shop at…

PATTIE BOYD was a well-known model in the 60s, photographed by David Bailey, Terence Donovan and many more. Cast as a schoolgirl in A Hard Day's Night, she met and married George Harrison, whom she subsequently left to marry Eric Clapton. Today she's married to Rod Weston and is a photographer, food podcaster and author of a memoir, Wonderful Tonight. The Anglo-Guyanese novelist, LISA ST AUBIN DE TERÁN, used to be a perpetual traveller but now, in her dotage, she is based on the Thames. She lived in North Mozambique for 19 years and her heart is still there, invested in the community projects she runs with Teran Foundation (www.teranfoundation.org). Her new novel The Hobby is published by Amaurea. HUGH THOMSON'S many travel books include The Green Road into the…

Shoe sniffer given suspended sentence i Faster flushes on the way in Peebles Town Hall Border Telegraph Drink driver ‘could have killed someone' after fleeing police Leicester Mercury £15 for published contributions SIGN UP! SIGN UP! for the FREE Oldie newsletter Every Friday, we will send you the very latest stories and features – the more timely stuff which doesn't make it into the magazine. And a joke from the late great Barry Cryer. Plus you get advance notice of our literary lunches, reader trips and courses. Don't miss out. Go to www.theoldie.co.uk and enter your email address in this box: Sign up to our weekly e-newsletter…

WHAT WAS VistaVision? Seventy years ago, cinemas showed White Christmas, starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. It was the first film in the new high- and wide-screen VistaVision process. In 1954, theatre managers advertised White Christmas as an entirely new motion picture. They didn't want audiences to be confused with an earlier Bing Crosby film. Holiday Inn (1942), where he had previously sung the Irving Berlin standard White Christmas. The song got another outing in the film of the same name. White Christmas became the UK's second most popular film in 1955, after The Dam Busters, and America's most popular in 1954. In 1954, VistaVision was the latest screen development from Hollywood to try to lure people away from the TVs in their comfortable living rooms and back to the…

Elvis Presley would have been 90 on January 8th 2025. I was first struck by him when I was a 13-year-old boy in Stockwell, in 1957, when his second film, Loving You, came out. The closing sequence, with Elvis wearing denims – which he regarded as work clothes – was sensational. At the time, one critic said Elvis would never be as wild again. His beauty and energy were exceptional. Elvis's friend Muhammad Ali said, after beating Sonny Liston in 1964, ‘I shook up the world.' Elvis had already done that in Technicolor. I was hooked. Many years later, in 2001, I was on Broadway, playing the title role in J B Priestley's An Inspector Calls, with Rosemary Harris, a star on the Great White Way. She was a friend…

Do we do enough for our clever children? It's a question that often puzzles us. Schools are focused on ‘making you the best possible version of yourself' and ‘achieving your potential'. Both these clichés actually mean getting the best possible results for the pupil and the school. With the focus on SPI (subject progress index) per class, teachers know it is harder to succeed with top sets than with middling ones. The SPI is one of the many pieces of data that rule us. It means the level of progression a pupil has made in a subject since primary school compared with all the other children nationally who achieved the same primary-school result. The reasons your class as a whole is likely to get a better SPI if they are…

In the 1940s and 1950s, the most sought-after job in Ireland was a position at the Guinness Brewery in St James's Gate, Dublin. The reason? Nothing to do, in the days when the Irish drank heavily, with the free pint of Guinness served daily to each staff member over the age of 25. It was because the philanthropic Guinness family provided their workers with free medical care, a pension, free lunch and, best of all, regular social events at which singletons had a good chance of meeting a romantic partner. The most popular event in the social calendar was the tall man's dance. There was much laughter and conniving at the entrance point to this event, as the door was six feet tall and only men who had to duck…

It's 30 years since Keith Joseph died – on 10th December 1994, aged 76. I'm glad to note he's been included in Vernon Bogdanor's recent book about six of the most consequential modern British politicians. Joseph, aka ‘the Mad Monk', had a formative influence on Margaret Thatcher. He was one of the quirkiest people I ever interviewed in the course of my journalistic life. His political career effectively came to an end when he made a speech criticising poor people for embarking on parenthood – ‘children born to mothers least fitted to bring children into the world'. I told him I disagreed with this: poor people should be supported in becoming parents. He had had to apologise profusely for this ill-judged speech, and he did so again, quite humbly. ‘You…

In Old and New Testament times, there was full acceptance of the reality of dreams and visions. The more direct they were, the more they were valued as the revealed word of God. In the infancy narrative of Matthew's gospel, Jesus's early life is the subject matter of five dreams. Four were sent to Saint Joseph. The fifth, which is of vital importance, was sent by God to the three kings, otherwise known as the three wise men, or Magi. ‘But they were warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, and returned to their own country by a different way.' (Matthew 2:12) The scholarly scripture commentaries that I have consulted elaborate very little about this dream. Given its extraordinary importance, I find this odd. In art throughout…

Judi Dench v Eileen Atkins SIR: I adore Judi Dench and have celebrated her in print scores of times. But ‘our greatest living actress', as Gyles Brandreth says? I suspect Judi herself would give at least equal billing to Eileen Atkins, also 90 years old. Take just one of many remarkable achievements, her performance in Tennessee Williams's The Night of the Iguana at the National in 1992. I'll never forget the way she held the first-night audience rapt for long, long minutes with the stillness, precision, warmth and depth she brought to one of the strangest, saddest monologues ever written. Benedict Nightingale, former Times theatre critic, London SW6 Dagenham Girl Pipers FC SIR: Your December-issue Olden Life (Dagenham Girl Pipers, by Mike Foley) reminded me of my favourite football riddle.…

Tuning the radio I had to calm an unusual source of road rage the other week. ‘I can't find Radio 4!' hollered my wife from behind the steering wheel of an ancient hire car that had only an old analogue tuner rather than a modern digital receiver. ‘Where do they keep it on the dial?' As I spanned the tuner to the right place - 93.9FM - it struck me how what was recently a universal skill was now becoming a forgotten art. Nowadays, we just choose a radio station from a menu. Before, we had to know about different bands and frequencies: how some worked better in different parts of the country, how long wave was easier to pick up and had a lovely rich timbre in comparison with…

Blythe Spirit: The Remarkable Life of Ronald Blythe By Ian Collins John Murray £25 Ronald Blythe (1922-2023) was the greatest writer about the English countryside of the 20th century. The author of Akenfield (1969) which has now sold more than 400,000 copies - was also the greatest of driving companions. When I drove him and his friend, my aunt Francie Mount, around his native Suffolk, he donned rural X-ray specs. Sitting in the passenger seat, he'd pick out a dried-up horse pond in a passing field. Or tell you about the Suffolk of his youth, when the copses were full of cavorting couples - there was nowhere to do it at home. ‘All country children were conceived in woods,' he said. He was softly spoken, with impeccable manners. But, as…

The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra By Toby Wilkinson Bloomsbury £25 Incest was prevalent among the rulers of ancient Egypt. The marriage between Ptolemy VIII and his sister, Cleopatra II, needn't have attracted much scandal had the king not gone on to seduce his wife's daughter - his own niece - the future Cleopatra III. Ptolemy's act of bigamy led to civil war in 132 BC, with mother and daughter on opposing sides. The elder Cleopatra gained the upper hand, and Ptolemy and his new family were forced to take refuge in Cyprus. It was a peculiar kind of victory for the thwarted former queen. The Ptolemaic dynasty, for all its explosive drama, has been comparatively overlooked by modern historians. Spanning the period from the…

THE RED SHOES RSC, Stratford-upon-Avon, until 19th January Always read the small print. When I heard the Royal Shakespeare Company were mounting a new show called The Red Shoes, I blithely assumed it'd be a theatrical version of Powell and Pressburger's 1948 movie. That masterful film, about an innocent ballerina who's destroyed by her untamed talent, remains a byword for all that's best in British cinema. What a brilliant idea to adapt it for the stage! In fact, this is a reinterpretation of the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, upon which Powell and Pressburger's movie was (very loosely) based. This Red Shoes wasn't what I expected, but it was still a very nice surprise. Nancy Harris's retelling of Andersen's fable is engrossing and entertaining. It also does something rather…

DONIZETTI, MASCAGNI AND STANFORD AT THE WEXFORD FESTIVAL There's been no shortage of entertainments that take us backstage into the world of dream and disillusion where theatre folk live out their lives. Watched from the safety of a stalls seat, they can be a particular pleasure. I think of the Prologue to Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos. Or there was the joyous evening nigh on 60 years ago when the Bristol Old Vic opened its bicentennial celebrations with a double bill. It featured Sheridan's The Critic and Terence Rattigan's Harlequinade, that timeless comedy in which a pair of superannuated luwies attempt to play the leads in Romeo and Juliet for one last time. I hadn't seen The Critic since – until a staging of Charles Villiers Stanford's rarely-seen operatic version…

DINNER FOR IMMORTALS It was inevitable after all this gourmandising: the health check-up everyone dreads. The appointment with fate; the long walk to the guillotine; the beating of the puritan drums; the tricoteuses, who have just seen off Sidney Carton, knitting a tapestry of my liver and stomach. I climbed the steps to eternity … when suddenly, the Scarlet Pimpernel, aka Dr MacLaren, whisked me away, singing his diagnosis of my health: ‘Blood pressure: perfect; cholesterol: excellent; liver: very good; kidneys: very good.' Yes, fellow bons vivants, you might make 120 but I am here for good. So, with this new mandate, I have been making whoopee … but without breaking the bank. It's the bistro era. First stop: Rabbit in the King's Road, part of the Gladwin Brothers' British…

BUDGET SUPERCARS Alex Robbins of the Daily Telegraph recently did the car-buying public a favour. He wrote about cars that most people want and can afford. That is, cars that are neither super-fast nor super-expensive but are reasonably reliable, with enough room for families and clobber and don't cost a fortune to run. All – like the great majority of cars traded – are used. What's more, they're SUVs, the sports utility vehicles that have largely superseded estate cars. They're often referred to dismissively by petrolhead writers because they're high, upright and capacious and don't handle or perform like the cars petrolheads like to drive. But they do what very many drivers want. Robbins surveyed seven models for under £10,000, starting with the SEAT Ateca from 2016. He praised its…

Quick: which dollar bill is most numerous? If you answered $1, you were not paying attention. The commonest dollar bill is the $100. The US Treasury has printed 19 billion of them. In the past ten years – the decade that saw increasing replacement of paper money by electronic transfer – the total outstanding has doubled. So what's going on? Simply, the $100 bill has become the world's cash currency. For anyone from drag dealers to arms salesmen, despots to petty fraudsters, it is a convenient blend of value, anonymity and portability. More than four out of every five Bens, these scraps of paper bearing the portrait of Benjamin Franklin, are held outside the US. You may even have a few yourself, in case your plastic lets you down when…

Anything you can't leave home without? My music – and, believe me, I've done that before. Also, a notebook that I write into sometimes. Do you travel light? I've got concert clothes, concert shoes, rehearsal clothes, millions of black T-shirts and rehearsal trousers that I go through like nobody's business. Then you've got to dress up for dinners and meetings, you need normal clothes, and then there's the music bag. So I don't travel light and neither does my wife –but that's for different reasons… Your earliest childhood holiday memories? Mainly Italy, visiting my grandparents, or driving to Margate and sitting on a very cold beach with rain threatening. Did you grow up in a musical house? My father was a voice teacher, and from the age of ten I…

I don't care what you say. I love Eurostar. I blooming well love it. It's a wonder of the modern age and –almost always – a joy to travel on. That's not to say Eurostar doesn't wind its passengers up just as much as any cheap, crappy airline does. Don't get me started on my seven-hour delay to Rotterdam a month or so ago. Don't get me going on Eurostar's maddening, tone-deaf, bloody-minded refusal to resume services post-Covid from Ashford International. Ashford International?! Was any station less appropriately named? When it works, though, Eurostar is bliss, and I forgive it everything. Just think about it: you can get to Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris and Rotterdam direct, in no time, and all manner of other places – such as the ABCD of…

Lunching outdoors with a group of oldie travellers at Villa Cetinale on a cloudless November day, I found myself musing upon what it is about Oldie trips that brings me and my wife Dawn back time after time. We've just done our 50th trip in little over a decade - record-holders. In 2012, I first mooted an Oldie trip to Dawn: ‘The good news is I have booked a holiday, a wine tasting trip to Burgundy. The bad news, it's with The Oldie - so we will probably be with a bunch of crushes.' How wrong I was. Some we met became, - and remain - good friends. The trip did get off to a somewhat inauspicious start. A ten-hour coach trip from central London to La Maison du Chateau…

Even though most oldies have spent half their lives without them, it becomes increasingly difficult remembering how we coped before mobiles. Today we rely on them when late, lost, stranded or in similar stressful situations. Yet it was precisely the lack of that instant fix that could lead to extraordinary adventures and certainly honed our now dwindling capacity for initiative. In the late 90s, I made documentaries in Africa. Early one morning, I'd flown into Uganda's capital, Kampala, to make a BBC film in Kapchorwa, a remote northern region. After a long day procuring permits, booking transport and making arrangements, I set out with Okulu, a local driver, to pick my Zimbabwean crew from Entebbe airport. He'd been briefed by Philip, his boss - so I sank into my seat…

Back in the mid-1960s, when Harold Wilson was Prime Minister, Harry Corbett (1918-89), the Bradford-born magician, puppeteer and creator of Sooty, was awarded the OBE intended for the Labour-supporting actor Harry H Corbett (1925-82), the creator of the sitcom character Harold Steptoe. Mistakes can happen, I regularly wonder if it isn't the wrong Byron who has been honoured with a memorial stone in Westminster Abbey. The Byron immortalised in Poets' Corner, next to the memorials for Lewis Carroll, D H Lawrence and Dylan Thomas, is George, 6th Baron Byron (1788-1824). Is this as it should be? Who reads Lord Byron now? Seriously. Who in 2024 is reading Childe Harold's Pilgrimage? Nobody I know. Be honest: nobody you know, either. IMHO (see below), the Byron who should be remembered is not…

WHAT IS a photodump? A photodump is when you upload a whole bunch of photos onto your Instagram feed all at once. To qualify as a photodump, the photos must appear as artless as possible – as if you just selected them at random in five seconds while sitting on the loo. Still, there are unwritten rules. You must open with a picture of yourself looking incredibly hot but in an insouciant sort of way. Your ‘carousel' (that's the technical term) may also include: salad; a couple of your friends laughing hysterically; and maybe two or three more selfies in which you again look smoking hot. The photodump is, in some ways, the antithesis of how social media used to work. Instagram launched in 2010, the same year the iPhone…

Sometimes running a pub at Christmas can be a joy. As I write, a local choir is singing carols; both our inglenook fires are blazing; candles are flickering on all the tables. For a few wonderful moments, the low, slow voice of Bing Crosby has stopped singing White Christmas through the pub speakers. The slight whiff of turkey and stuffing abounds; the Christmas decorations are sparkling; a wonderful aroma of mulled wine and cider permeates the bar. And, as the choir goes silent, I look at my watch. It's 8.20pm and I smile. My dear old gran used to say if it's silent at 20 to the hour or 20 past, there's an angel flying overhead. Christmas day is still a few days away and, after the last few years…

Whatever happened to the promise of self-driving cars? As I pedal my mousy way across London every day, I peer with interest at the various vehicles on the road. But I have yet to see a taxi or any sort of vehicle gliding past me without a driver. This is not what the overlords of Silicon Valley foretold. For over a decade, they have been promising the conquest of the roads by driverless taxis and cars, and their propaganda has been effective. Ten years ago, I remember my friend Mr Fox confidently asserting, ‘In five years' time, Uber's entire fleet will be driverless.' There have been some steps forward towards this goal. A company called Waymo, owned by Google, has a handful of self-driving cars on the streets of San…

A thanksgiving service for Baroness Gardner of Parkes, the first Australian-born peeress, was held at Westminster Cathedral. Father Matthew Blake was the celebrant. Trixie Gardner, who died aged 97, was born in Parkes, New South Wales. She qualified as a dentist in Sydney and was a London dentist from 1955 to 1990. She was made a peer by Margaret Thatcher in 1981. Peter Willis, her nephew, a Melbourne lawyer, gave the first tribute. Noting that she came from a highly educated family of Catholic girls, he invoked Germaine Greer, who attended Melbourne and Sydney universities, and then Cambridge: ‘Trixie was born in 1927 into a family of strong, accomplished women who made a mark wherever they went. She was the eighth of nine children. There were six girls, one of…

A few years ago, I found myself in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Room of the British Library, reading a prophecy. The Tudor commonplace book containing ‘In the Yere of Our Lorde', as the prophecy is known, can be dated to about 40 years after the events it describes – or, if this is really a copy of an older original, the events it predicts. There I read that, in 1483, ‘betwixt the departing of April and not far from May,/ The bull shall depart and pass away'. That, plausibly, was King Edward IV, who died – a little before this schedule, admittedly – at the end of April that year. The text also ‘predicts' that ‘Wales shall bear arms and to Albion go'. That might just be a reference…

‘Christmas comes but once a year,' my mother was apt to sing out on Christmas Eve, ‘but when it comes, it brings good cheer.' Since this was 1945 and my father (the politician Frank Pakenham) was due to stand for Parliament in the coming summer general election - in the Labour interest, in Oxford - I though it tactful to ask, ‘Will Father Christmas vote Labour?' My mother did not seem to like the political question very much. ‘Of course he will vote Labour,' she snapped, ‘and bring us a lot of good things, just as Labour will.' Clem Attlee duly won. That night, our uncle John Harman arrived for Christmas: he was our mother's unmarried brother. He later went on to marry and become the father of the distinguished…

Gliff By Ali Smith Hamish Hamilton £18.99 It is a truism that, still, even so long after they were published, dystopias take after either Nineteen Eighty-Four or Brave New World. That is, either things are so grim that life is horrible, or things are so superficially cushy that things are horrible. Ali Smith's latest, set in the near future, name-checks the latter repeatedly but her reality is definitely on the grimmer side. It's a two-tier society, of which we get to see only the lower rung: the unverifieds, who are obliged to go off-grid and scratch a living somehow from a world that denies them credit, or agency, or anything like a decent job. If you do manage to get some kind of employment, chances are it'll be scraping the…

HAROLD WILSON V THE MOVE Rock stars are always attacking the Government, but it's not often that Prime Ministers bite back. Tony Secunda (1940-95), flamboyant, paisley-shirted manager of the Move, T Rex and Motorhead, died 30 years ago this month. As did Harold Wilson, three months later. The court case between them in 1967 ticked every box – fizzing political scandal, a red Rolls-Royce, flower power in the dock – and the nation ordered popcorn and pulled up a ringside seat. Secunda practically invented the world of stunt-filled publicity, and this was the first time things had gone wrong. To attract attention to his psychedelic minstrels, The Move, he got them to smash TV sets with axes and set fire to the stage. He had them wander the streets of…

MELONS It may seem an odd time of year to be writing about melons, but I do want to celebrate my first melon, grown last summer. I have to say that the plant, which I trained up to and along the roof of the greenhouse, produced only one edible fruit, which I supported with netting. But its orange flesh was sweet and delicious – and I was proud of it. The Royal Horticultural Society says that melons are ‘not the easiest fruit to grow'. But I will try again this year and hope for a better summer and more success. The seed requires at least 20°C to germinate, ideally in a propagator. Warmth, regular watering and feeding are all-important, and the plants should not be grown outdoors. Pollination is the…

REVIVAL OF THE FITTEST Forgotten grape varieties are all the rage these days, in part at least because of the need to find grapes that can withstand the rigours of global warming. Take Carménère, for example – one of the six grape varieties allowed in red Bordeaux. Wiped out by phylloxera in the late-19th century, it was thought too difficult – late-ripening and prone to disease – to bother replanting, and more obliging Merlot and Cabernet Franc vines generally replaced it. Carménère, so everybody thought, had died an ignominious and unlamented death. Except that it hadn't. Exactly 30 years ago, French vine expert Jean-Michel Boursiquot was shown a new Merlot vineyard Viña Carmen had planted in the Alto Maipo Valley in Chile. He spotted that the stamens of the vines'…

On this month's deal from a supervised practice session at the ARBC in southwest London, how would you play six spades on the passive eight-of-diamonds lead - which you win? Dealer South Neither Vunerable The bidding (1) Transfer to spades, (2) It pays to break the transfer liberally after opening two notrumps – in order to clarify that spades are trumps. (3) Control bid, looking for a spade slam. (4) Controls everywhere else. Give yourself one mark if you drew trumps and led a club to the queen, the 50-50 approach, unsuccessful here as the king is offside. Give yourself two marks if you played the elimination and throw-in line, drawing only one trump, then playing ace-king of hearts, ruffing a third heart, crossing to a trump (noting the two-two…

Stop my son relapsing Q Ten years ago, when my son was a chef, he got into drugs – cocaine. Eventually it all became too much for him, he got into terrible debt, and finally we bailed him out and got him into rehab – and he's been clean ever since. He's had a lot of odd jobs and remains clean after five years, and he still goes to NA – Narcotics Anonymous. We've been so proud of him because we know how difficult it is. Now, at 57, he's got a new job – which suits him and gives him a steady income. The only problem is that it involves working in a kitchen. My wife and I are sick with worry that he'll get back into drugs. Is…

I grew up in London as a mixed-race child with a nagging curiosity about my African roots. At 40, I promised myself that at 50 I'd go to Mali and set up a chain of libraries (a win-win situation, as most of the books would get stolen but still circulate widely). But then I fell in love with Mees van Deth, who'd chucked in filming to pioneer luxury tourism on a virgin beach opposite the 1,000-year-old Mozambique Island. I ditched my Mali plan and became his groupie. After camping for months on the lagoon's edge, feasting on lobster, staring at the Indian Ocean while lolling on powdery sand, I woke up one day, like a restless Happy Valley dweller, to ‘another f**king day in Paradise'. I had to find something…

‘You 'ave a new 'eep!' I'd just been turned onto my back when I heard the surgeon's stirring words. We all know people who've waited months or even years for a hip replacement. One friend recently gave up and paid £13,000 to have hers done. My hip replacement was effected within 24 hours for a trifling sum, although I wouldn't necessarily recommend my method. My eight-day skiing holiday in St-Martin-de-Belleville had begun badly, with two charming compatriots, Matt and Ellie, rescuing me after a tumble in falling snow – for which I never really thanked them properly. But after that it was plain schussing, and on my last morning I thought I'd have one more session in the sunshine. My skiing is straightforward and uncompetitive. Some years ago, I skied…