Innehållsförteckning för Spring 2023 från The Oldie

Gyles Brandreth's Diary I am on the move. Well, I am 75 and time is running out. My friend Leslie Bricusse, songwriter and showman, lived to 90 and was busy (and travelling the world) to the last. Leslie told me how he had had dinner with the great Hollywood director and screenwriter Billy Wilder, when Wilder was in his mid-nineties. ‘How are you, Billy?’ asked Bricusse. ‘Good,’ said Wilder. ‘I'm working on a new project.’ ‘You know, Leslie,’ he added, ‘I really wasted my eighties.’ There is no time to lose, which is why I am hitting the road with a vengeance. I have just signed up to do a month on the Edinburgh Fringe, followed by a 40-date national tour. My wife thought of the title for the new…

WHAT IS premiumisation? Premiumisation is when a company persuades customers to spend more on a ‘premium’ or ‘luxury’ or ‘boutique’ version of an everyday product. It's a horrible word – premiumisation – and as such it's extremely popular in the English-abominating corporate world. ‘That's a great product, Henry. Can we premiumise it?’ Gin is a good example of a product that has been ‘premiumised’. Not so long ago, no one looked down on you for spending £12 on a bottle of Beefeater. Now, it has to be artisan gin, small-batch gin or craft gin in an unnecessarily heavy bottle. How do you know it's better? It costs £32. The soft-drinks brand Fever-Tree has enacted a parallel premiumisation of tonic water, creating an inflationary pincer movement that explains why the G&T…

I'm getting seriously grumpy in my old age, especially about hotels. I've recently been on the road with my one-woman tour and have slept in 30-odd inns round the UK. Mostly, the experience has been miles better than it would have been 20 years ago. But the little problems – that could so easily be put right but aren't – bug me. Do you think hotel owners or managers ever sleep a night in their own establishments? Surely, if they did, most of my niggles would get cured next day. Let's start with the obvious: those little bottles of shampoo, conditioner, bath gel and body lotion. If you aren't wearing your specs (and who wears them in the shower?), you can't read the tiny, pale grey print on the labels.…

This being a magazine that has – how best to put this? – a foot in the past, there is sometimes the feeling that things are not as good in some respects as they used to be. However, there are some things that not only are what they used to be but are still, amazingly, around, for the simple reason that they are unimprovable. So I give you, ladies and gentleman, the Ryman's Police Style Notebook. I was first put on to these by the writer Will Self. At the time – this was quite early in his career – he was often finding himself in situations where (again – how best to put this?) the police might be expected to take a keen interest. So I wondered if the…

Oldie Man of Letters The robots are coming! German photographer Boris Eldagsen won the Sony World Photography Award, and then handed back his prize. He admitted that the stunning photograph, of two women, one hunched behind the other's shoulder, was made by AI (Artificial Intelligence). The mood of the moment is to fear AI. But if intelligence, artificial or otherwise, produces beautiful art, wise government, and efficient machines, then why not? An article in the Times by William Hague aimed to make us scream with horror. AI is advancing at such a speed a nuclear war might break out, not on the say-so of some crazy Ayatollah or triggerhappy Putin, but because of a computer or a robot making the decision for us. Hague's rather sad solution to this nightmare…

I am looking down out into my north London street at the moment. It's a quiet street, mid-afternooon, and it is chocka with vans. What are they all doing? Delivering groceries, that's what. There is a Waitrose van – we have quite a few toffs in our street – plus a Co-op, a Morrisons and a Tesco van, waiting to find space to park. That one is for me. Bringing 24 bottles of New Zealand Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. How could I resist, when there is 25 per cent off for every six bottles? Rapture. The scene takes me back 80 years to my Carlisle childhood, during and after the war. No cars in the street then – no one had a car. The only car you ever saw was the…

It's high time there was a box set of Muriel Box films. In 1945, Box (1905-91) was the first woman to win an Oscar for best original screenplay, for The Seventh Veil. She wrote 22 films and directed a dozen of them in the 1950s, when she was the one of the only female directors. Sometimes she got a double credit – Muriel and Sydney Box – until her husband ran off with a leggy blonde. People would assume a film was by Sydney (1907-83), a producer and screenwriter, even when the work was mostly hers. I met Muriel in 1974, when she'd written a vivid memoir called Odd Woman Out. Her films reflect her personality: intelligent and original. With her amused face and smiley eyes, she seemed not too…

Country Mouse My wife has claimed I am ‘addicted’ to gardening. So why have I failed to buy a greenhouse all these years? It was inexplicable to Mary that someone who spends most waking hours in the garden should have a King Canute-like resistance to the most obviously helpful garden ‘tool’ of all. So I looked for the source of my prejudice. Isn't there something deeply unsexy about a greenhouse? Not that I am trying to be sexy. But don't they signal decrepitude, along with taking out your teeth and putting them in a beaker of Steradent? When you think of men of action – Ernest Hemingway, Herbert von Karajan or the sort of men who run with the bulls of Pamplona – you cannot see them pottering over a…

Ronnie Blythe, author of Akenfield, Britain's greatest writer about the countryside and an Oldie contributor, was also a lay canon at St Edmundsbury Cathedral, Bury St Edmunds. His memorial service was held there. Novelist Julia Blackburn, a friend of Blythe's, remembered how she was always startled by the way his face changed. ‘One minute, I saw a fragile man growing older year by year and in the next, I saw a boy, filled with the laughter and energy of youth.’ Blackburn told how Ronnie was the eldest of six siblings, all of them sleeping together in one room. ‘His father, a farm labourer, used to fetch a bundle of straw on cold nights and scatter it over his children to keep them warm like piglets in a barn.’ The poet…

‘How are you getting home?’ asked Jimmy Savile. It was 1965. I was a 17-year-old reporter on the Manchester Comet weekly newspaper. I had just interviewed him at the Top Ten Club in the New Elizabethan Ballroom, Belle Vue, east of the city centre. I said I would phone my parents. He asked where we lived. He said it was only a few miles from his place and that he would drive me home. And he did – in his bubble car. At the time, he also owned a Bentley and an E-type Jag, but no one in their right mind would have driven either of them anywhere near Belle Vue. At the time, of course, too, no one knew what went on in Jimmy Savile's mind. As we drew…

The Flavour Thesaurus: More Flavours By Niki Segnit Bloomsbury £20 There are cookery writers, recipe-writers and culinary historians. And then there's Niki Segnit. She's the real thing – a genuine, gold-plated sui generis (she's earned herself the Latin). Her first Flavour Thesaurus – the new one, More Flavours, is plant-led – has already been translated into heaven knows how many languages. Considering our island nation's lingering reputation for terrible cooking, that's quite a compliment. The idea behind both books is simple, the execution anything but. The cover promises ‘pairings, recipes and ideas for cooks’. That doesn't do justice to the breadth of knowledge acquired through book learning, allied to a deep interest in the science behind what happens in the mouth, that goes into each of the miniature ingredient portraits,…

British Museum, 4th May to 13th August Food historian Tasha Marks has cooked up a recipe to publicise this show. Her gilded walnut baklava was inspired by an account of the sweetmeats for one of Alexander the Great's feasts. When the courtiers wanted to eat it, ‘they took off the gold and threw that away in order that their friends might be spectators of their sumptuousness, and their servants might become masters of the gold’. At its greatest extent under Darius the Great, the Achaemenid Persian Empire (550-330 BC) covered an even greater area than that conquered by Alexander, spreading from his native Macedon in the west far into India and central Asia. The style and the styles of Persia already affected Greece and south-east Europe before his time. But…

Twenty-five years ago, the scriptwriter Colin Shindler wrote a memoir called Manchester United Ruined My Life. It charted how, as a lifelong supporter of the then perpetually stuttering Manchester City, he felt he was wilting under the shadow cast by the neighbours’ apparent relentless dominance. Fourteen years later, after his own favourites had been financially turbocharged by Abu Dhabi's oil, he wrote Manchester City Ruined My Life. Football, he believed, was something that could be enjoyed only in perspective: the ups worked only because of the downs. Constant success – especially that financed by a theocratic autocracy that chucks gay people off roofs – was a brew he found nauseating. And, for him, things appear only to have got worse. Because, in 2023, here he is hosting a podcast called…

A letter from Virgin Money arrived at Jane's home, addressed to Wendy, the late wife of her partner, Andrew. The bank wanted to see her ID to update her account details. Wendy had died 20 years before, 400 miles away, aged 55. Andrew now has dementia and the letter left him distressed, thinking his wife was still alive and he needed to find her. He hadn't known about the savings account when Wendy died. So, he had asked Virgin Money to close the account. Jane has power of attorney for Andrew and, fearing fraud, contacted the bank. This was 18 months ago. She had no response and phoned again two months later. The bank apologised and lodged a complaint from her but, despite the promises, again nothing happened. Neither did…

She was ‘so beautiful, in mind and heart, in person and spirit; and whether with a crown upon her head or without it and nameless, a grace to the human race’. That was the author Mark Twain writing about the Empress Elisabeth of Austria and Queen of Hungary, who died 125 years ago this September, aged 60, murdered by an unhinged anarchist on the shores of Lake Geneva. In this anniversary year, the Empress, also known as Sisi, is back in fashion. An arty, gruelling film about her life, Corsage, has won awards. The Netflix series The Empress– a continental counterpart to The Crown – is getting a second series. It presents her as a free spirit, dubiously modern, a kind of cross between Princess Diana and the Duchess of…

Griff Rhys Jones (p14) starred in Not the Nine O'clock News and Alas Smith and Jones with Mel Smith. His BBC series A Pembrokeshire Farm covered the renovation of his holiday home. Prue Leith (p16) is a judge on The Great British Bake Off. Born in Cape Town, she founded Leith's restaurant and Leith's School of Food and Wine. Her Oldie column, Bliss on Toast, is now a book. Hunter Davies (p33) has written over 100 books. His book The Beatles is their only authorised biography. He wrote Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush and Wainwright: The Biography. Elisabeth Luard (p57 and p78) is The Oldie's cookery correspondent. She is author of European Peasant Cookery, Tapas, Family Life, My Life as a Wife and Squirrel Pie.…

Grumpy Oldie Man Given how few experiences qualify as unique in this miserably repetitive world, one would be demented to imagine oneself to be the only victim of fatigue induced by a grand old name in high-street banking. Indeed, one previous sufferer comes racing to mind. In his diaries, the late Kenneth Williams refers more than once to feeling tired having, the previous night, ‘had the Barclays’. Delicacy precludes a graphic translation. But for those unfamiliar with rhyming slang, it may melt the fog to mention that alternative phrases for the activity to which Williams obliquely referred include ‘a Sherman’ (tank), and ‘a J Arthur’ (Rank). My exhaustion stems from a rather different kind of exposure to the Barclays. Its genesis was my father's death some 20 months ago. An…

In recent years, interest in house history has grown tremendously, boosted by books and TV programmes such as The Secret History of Our Streets and A House Through Time. Even the smallest house has been bought, sold, leased and subject to rates and taxes, and its occupants have left any number of records. If we dig deep into the archives, uncovering the history of our homes, and breathing life into the forgotten inhabitants, a fascinating story will unfold. But where do you start? If your house is listed, you can read its listing on the Historic England website. It's also worth checking whether your home is covered in Nikolaus Pevsner's architectural guides to the counties. Architecture books are invaluable for background knowledge and to deduce a building's date. The best…

I was born in London in 1920, while my family was passing through the city. Two weeks later, with me a babe in arms, we moved to Gloucestershire, where life was hard – but we didn't see it that way. Today, of course, everyone's lives are so different, but one thing remains similar. People have always had dreams of one kind or another; from a very young age, mine was to have an interesting life and see the world. I was looking for adventure. When I was 15, I cycled around Germany with a friend, staying in youth hostels. We visited little cafés; in one, the waitresses discovered we were English and they thought it was a great joke to stand around saying ‘Heil Hitler’ to us, laughing. They paid…

‘Who put salt in the sugar bowl? ‘Who put fireworks in the coal?’ These were the opening lines of Terry Scott's naughty-schoolboy song, My Brother, back in 1962. The song was indicative of an era when pranks and practical jokes were more or less expected from youngsters. At Rishi Sunak's school, Winchester College, many years ago, a group of boys learnt that a teacher was standing as a Labour councillor at the local elections. The teacher was the proud owner of a bright red Mini Cooper. On the eve of the election, a group of boys managed to paint the car a resplendent Conservative blue. It was a prank that is still recounted today. I doubt that anything so daring happened by the time Rishi arrived at the school some…

History He remembered Adlestrop. And Ainsdale, Airmyn, Aldeburgh, Aldermaston and Aldridge. And so on, through more than 2,000 ‘passenger stations and halts to be closed’, before the final tolling of the bell at Yeovil Town, Yetminster and Yorton. In Scotland, the shadow of his gaze fell from Abbeyhill to Yoker Ferry; in Wales, from Aberaman to Ynyslas. He was Dr Richard Beeching (1913-85), and the lists of the condemned formed the doleful appendix to the report that bears his name, printed 60 years ago in 1963. In fact, it only bears his name in popular recollection. The Reshaping of British Railways, to give it its proper title, was published under the authorship of the British Railways Board, and Beeching's name doesn't appear on it anywhere. Beeching's intervention – what quickly…

Postcards from the Edge Janan Ganesh, a writer on the Financial Times, has claimed there is a shortage of reactionary voices in Britain today. Mr Ganesh could nominate only one true reactionary in British public life: the commentator Peter Hitchens. There just aren't enough people who would, like Evelyn Waugh, say that Conservatives are hardly worthy of the name, since they ‘hadn't turned back the clock one minute’, despite holding power for years. Actually, many of us probably do nurse some secret reactionary views. But it's a tendency that dare not speak its name, for fear of our being accused of ‘hate speech’. The French have a phrase describing the reactionary reflex: ‘c’était mieux avant’. It was better before. Even when it wasn't always better before, the ‘c’était mieux avant’…

• The most frequently used noun in English is ‘time’. •The Amondawa people of the Amazon have no word for ‘time’. • Danish has no word for ‘please’. • Sanskrit has no word for ‘emotion’. • Winston Churchill was the firstto use ‘sniper’ in print. The word came from India and meant someone who shot snipe – small, fast birds with an erratic flight path. •The word ‘strike’, as in refusal to work, dates from 1768, when angry sailors in Sunderland disabled ships by ‘striking’ their sails. • Onnagata is Japanese for an actor who specialises in female roles. •An abbey-lubber is a lazy monk. • Sussex dialect has more than 30 words for mud. • Borborygmi is the technical word for stomach rumbles. •The first written record of the…

The Doctor's Surgery Am I right to be obsessed with walking thousands of steps every day? Once upon a time, epidemiology had some kind of connection with epidemics, that is to say with outbreaks of infectious diseases. Then it discovered that smoking was the cause of lung cancer, and it hasn't looked back since. Now it searches for statistical associations between factor X and disease Y: and, of course, it finds them. That is because, if you study enough factors, you are bound to find associations. The danger of this kind of research is that, if taken too seriously, it turns the whole of life into a medical procedure: what you eat, what you do, and so forth. Recently, for example, I have taken to counting the number of steps…

Thirty-five years ago, I was in New York, reporting for BBC radio from their US studios high up in the Rockefeller Centre. Suddenly, one Wednesday evening, I sprang to my feet as a very familiar face passed by my door. It was Alistair Cooke (1908-2004). He was coming in, as he had done for years, to record his weekly Letter from America, which would then be broadcast by the BBC to millions all over the world. For Americans, he explained the English. His was the voice of Britain. He was the main reason for my becoming a journalist. As a small boy, I had been glued to the wireless, later to be called the radio, to be mesmerised by his soft, sure, seductive voice. He was the man who understood everything,…

Too Thin for a Shroud By Crispin Black Gibson Square £20 On 8th June 1982, during the Falklands conflict, the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Sir Galahad was bombed in Port Pleasant by Argentine aircraft with the loss of 48 personnel, including 32 men from the Welsh Guards. Crispin Black was on board; only now has he felt the need to put his ‘side’ of the story. I have never met Crispin Black but I know and admire a number of Welsh Guards officers and warrant officers who, along with most of their comrades, take a more balanced view than his. They have expressed their misgivings with this book, especially as the author, who has publicly declared his ‘hatred of the Royal Navy in general and the Royal Marines in particular’, is…

Driving is no fun these days. Cars used to represent freedom and enterprise, but now misery seems to be the motorist's constant companion. I used to have a car but got rid of it a decade ago. I have only good memories of bombing around town in the nineties and noughties. But a recent family illness necessitated a near-daily commute to south London in my mother's old banger, and it was a rude awakening. I was stunned by the crap driving all around me. Hatchbacks dawdlied along at 22mph in (increasingly rare) 30mph zones. Unable to resist after the third or fourth time it happened, I flashed one bloke (it's always a bloke) who promptly stopped dead, kettling me in, three inches behind him. The ‘post-lockdown’ malaise and increase in antisocial behaviour…

With a coronation on, I found myself taking down from the shelves Paul McCreesh's fascinating two-disc anthology An English Coronation: 1902-1953. Cast in the form of the ceremony itself, it marries the coronation liturgy with some of the best music from the 20th century's four coronations. It's all very splendid. Music by Tallis, Gibbon and Byrd sits happily alongside bespoke coronation pieces by Purcell and Handel – Zadok the Priest sung at every coronation since 1727 – Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Walton. Walton wrote two popular coronation marches, and in 1953 he was also asked to set the Te Deum. ‘Having a spot of bother with “the Virgin's womb”,’ he wrote to a friend, ‘the kind of trouble I always get into – don't tell the Archbishop!’ In fact, it's…

‘“Sexist”? What's wrong with being sexy?’ asked Nigel Tufnel, lead guitarist of Spinal Tap, whose amplifier went to 11 because ‘it's one louder’. This is my preface to an (arguably) sexist generalisation about my acquaintances among the fair sex when it comes to paying the bill in restaurants. I know plenty of generous women. Maybe not enough to form a football team but, definitely, sufficient to make a up a four in mixed-doubles tennis. But, since my first date at the age of 15, when I took Ailsa Berrie for dinner at the Old Granary in Wareham, I have been led to believe that the bill is Man's Work. Many women cling to the antediluvian notion that lunch for two costs £40. There is a clear exception: Jan Moir, former…

You may have seen advertisements for motorway.co.uk. I hadn't, but my nephew reported an easy sale of his VW Passat. So I gave them a try. It's an online network of dealers – no private buyers. Dealers pay to be on it, you advertise your car, they bid against one another and you get the highest offer. No selling fee – and you don't have to accept if the offer's below the reserve price you agree with Motorway. The buyer then contacts you and picks up the car from your home, usually within days. After an inspection to confirm that it's no worse than you described, and possibly a test drive, you are paid on the spot. No tyre-kickers, no callers who don't turn up and no haggling, unless the…

All places yield to him ere he sits down; … I think he'll be to Rome As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it By sovereignty of nature. William Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Act 4, Scene 7 The osprey (Pandion haliaetus) is avian royalty. Few sights are more magnificent than this fish-eating eagle crashing into water from 150ft. The monarchy brings millions of tourists to Britain. And birdwatchers have travelled in millions to the British osprey HQ, Loch Garten in Scotland's Cairngorms National Park. Restoration of the dynasty, once banished by egg-collecting and taxidermy, began at Loch Garten in 1955, which witnessed the first nesting in Britain since 1916. The osprey, one of six land birds with a global range, has a European summer population, which migrates from West Africa.…

What are your earliest childhood holiday memories? I'm one of six kids and Dad worked for the electricity board. We lived in a council house, so there was very little money, but there would be day trips to Weymouth. When I was older, we went on a caravan holiday which, in retrospect, was absolutely awful. The caravan was cold, there wasn't sufficient bedding and the toilet was a corrugated-iron shack. At the time it was a paradise. Did you always want to be on the stage? In infant school, I remember playing the part of a funny queen – somebody with a lorgnette – and being thrilled to be on stage and say a line and hear the audience laughing. Do you write to perform? The vast majority of things…

Across 1 Heavy (7) 5 Ticket profiteer (4) 7 Subject (5) 8 Achieve (6) 10 To harvest (4) 11 Boo-boos (8) 13 Partner(anag); snare (6) 14 Get away (6) 17 Dispossession of home (8) 19 Mimics (4) 21 Deeply religious (6) 22 Pulsate (5) 23 Relieved, pleased (4) 24 Drive back (7) Down 1 Height reached in reservoir (5,5) 2 Palm nit (anag) (7) 3 German white wine (4) 4 Annually (6) 5 Small insectivorous bird (8) 6 Join forces (5) 9 Apparent (10) 12 Burgers, Lake-aways etc (4,4) 15 Clothes (7) 16 Medical practitioner (6) 18 Model of excellence, perfect (5) 20 Measure; pace (4) Genius 424 solution Winner: Jennifer Olney, Romsey, Hampshire Runners-up: Susanne Sexton, Liverpool; Dan Mahony, Bromley, Kent Moron 424 answers: Across: 1 Marked, 4 Wayne…

IN COMPETITION No 292 you were invited to write a poem called The Walk. How good and numerous were your entries. Congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus prize of The Chambers Dictionary going to Anthony Young. I'm going home, it's nearly dawn, My spangled skirt is slightly torn, My mum would say I look a sight; Shite more like. The heel has snapped off my left shoe, My shirt is stained and it was new, Some sozzled tender words were said; Bed more like. Now I'm on the walk of shame, I only have myself to blame, I drank and danced and laughed and kissed; Pissed more like. I'm out alone, I can't look weak, Mascara smudges down my cheek, I've got my…

Ask Virginia Confused granddaughter Q My granddaughter of 15 has decided she was born into the wrong body and is now insisting everyone call her Michael, instead of Vanessa, which is how we've known her ever since she was born. I find all this ridiculous and so does her grandfather. She has now declared that unless we call her Michael, she's not going to come round to see us – and the idea really has destroyed us because we love her so much. Her mother is very upset about it all and thinks it's just a phase, but goes along with calling her Michael just to indulge her. We feel very strongly that her name is Vanessa and always will be. Is there any way out of this situation? Name…

WHAT WERE clothes props? ‘A clothes prop?’ The young sales assistant in the timber merchants looked baffled. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘A long piece of wood with a notch in it. Holds the washing line up.’ She still looked blank. Once, every garden had a clothes prop and a washing line. Our line was slung between two apple trees over grass full of daisies. My mother-in-law's was between hooks in a tiny backyard. Both had clothes props – so that the line was low enough to peg the washing on but could be pushed high enough to clear the ground and catch the wind and sun. It was – and is – the cheapest, easiest way of drying laundry. Going past back gardens in the 1950s and '60s you would see…

The time has come for me to disappear. I knew that when the Queen died, the game was over for me. As a small boy (back in 1959), I attached myself to her coat-tails by a long, invisible, metaphorical thread and flew happily behind her for decades. Occasionally I flew alongside her, and those moments were special. Her death on 8th September was like the sounding of the Last Post. Until this May, the Coronation needed to be explained – an arrogant statement, but few had studied the ritual and few remembered the last great service in 1953. I had written a book about it, and that kept me busy with talks in Britain, New York, Washington and California, and as part of the ITN team on the day. After…

I was in a sauna suckin’ on a coldie When I got this email from my mates at The Oldie: ‘We're having a big lunch at the Savoy There'll be Royalty present.’ I said, ‘Oh boy!’ It was then that I read the bit under my thumb: It said, ‘No offence, Les, but please don't come.’ So now I'm cancelled as if I didn't count, Thanks to that bald bastard, Harry Mount He probably thought I wouldn't be missed, Or make a pass at Camilla or turn up pissed. It's true when I make a speech, there's seldom much doubt That when I reach my climax, something slips out. But when something slips out, the ladies protest: They yell, ‘Good on you, Les – now show us the rest.’ They're…

Mary Killen's Fashion Tips Tights were slow in coming to Northern Ireland – so I started teenage life in stockings with suspenders. Suspender belts – worn around the waist or hips with hook-and-eye fastening – were uncomfortable because they dug into even slim bodies, causing pain and bulging. The four or six elastic suspenders which dangled from the belt gave minor injuries to the wearer. You stretched them down to attach them to the stocking tops and they were invariably too short – so they snapped back at you. The plastic discs that fed into the metal grasps were always breaking off their tethers, and many girls, like me, would have to substitute a 5p piece. You have heard of the VPL or visible panty line – in suspender-belt days,…

Town Mouse ‘Look out for the rats,’ said my friends and relatives, when I told them I was going to New York for a week. According to the Atlantic magazine, there are more than two million of my most-feared enemy living in the Big Apple. And they're really mean. ‘They've got scars, they're missing eyes, they're missing part of their tails,’ said rat expert Dr Jason Munshi-South. ‘Their life is fairly brutal. They'll gnaw through walls. They'll gnaw through wires. They'll destroy cars.’ In the end, it wasn't the rats that bothered me. It was the poverty and sheer madness of the inhabitants of this harshest of cities. I braved going underground several times for trips on the subway. What you see down there is pretty chilling. Every carriage contains…

I deliberately chose to live as an enclosed Carmelite nun, with all that this entails of strict enclosure. I was at least partially aware of the sacrifices that might be involved. I knew that what I needed in my life was totality of commitment. But, even after 40 years, there remain occasions when I am tempted to jump over the wall. If I am missing from the monastery in May, I shall be found at Emma Tennant's exhibition in London. I shall be sent a catalogue, which will give me hours of delight, as well as inspiration for quiet prayer. Alas, the catalogue cannot do full justice to the scale of the plants, flowers and leaves – nor to the extraordinary translucency of the watercolours. There is an expression of…

The Seaside: England's Love Affair By Madeline Bunting Granta Books £20 The seaside, as Brits popularly conceive it, promises fun and sun, bucket and spade, fish and chips. It originated as an English idea, the beach as a place of R and R: to go to the edge of the land for a briny renewal in our island fortress's baptismal moat, as it doesn't quite say on the posters. What it does say is ‘Skegness is so bracing!’ Other countries caught on, though as recently as the 1980s Blackpool still had more hotel accommodation than the whole of Portugal. But what begins must end, and what goes up must come down, and that is the story of Madeleine Bunting's tour of England's biggest resorts. As a title, The Seaside feels…

Orwell: The New Life By DJ Taylor Constable £30 Why – how – does Orwell matter? It is because of Animal Farm. Like so many decent people, Orwell espoused the aspirations of the Left during the dark years of the European dictatorships. Being honest as well as decent, he saw how inexorably the idealistic dreams of the William Morris socialist era developed into the Gulag. And he told the story with immense sympathy, pathos and humour, making it into an allegory so clearly written and so limpidly wise that any reader could understand it. Disillusion was the dominant emotion of his life. First, disillusion with his own class and background. P G Wodehouse, meeting Orwell towards the end of the war, marked him down as ‘one of those warped birds…

I recently led a morning Eucharistic service in Burlington, Ontario, using the Book of Common Prayer (BCP). At the end of it, a student from the local university approached me and said, ‘Hey, Rev, cool language. Never heard that before in church. I may even come again.’ I was about to explain the origins of the text and its evolution when, entirely wisely, the young man stuck his earbuds in, turned on his music and waved goodbye. ‘I'll be back,’ he shouted as he left. I doubt he was listening to William Byrd or Thomas Tallis, but he has indeed been back. It often happens. Contrary to what we've been told for decades about new generations wanting the contemporary and the modern, my experience – as a father and as…

This AI thing. Artificial intelligence. Scary! Already China has an AI news presenter, dead-eyed. Radio 4 gave us A Documentary: By ChatGPT, proving that an AI artist – named Aida after Ada Lovelace, Byron's mathematician daughter – could talk the talk (in a squeaky voice) and paint the portrait. David Aaronovitch's The Briefing Room warned us just how terrified we should be. Online, you'd be told David is ‘from Golders Green’. Not so. Who trusts online information? What's genuine; what's fake? No doubt there will soon be Audia, a chirpy AI radio reviewer. But will she know the catchphrases from ITMA? Or recall who sang My Old Man's a Dustman to the tune of Je Ne Regrette Rien, on Clue? Possibly, via Google. But will she get the jokes? I…

Years ago, I had a few plants of hyssop. When I moved house, I left the hyssop behind. I don't remember using it to fl avour food or to edge a border, but I have recently learned there are several good reasons for growing this herb again. Perhaps the best reason is that hyssop apparently repels cabbage white butterfl ies. According to the gardening writer and seed-supplier Sarah Raven, three plants, in the ground or in pots, around a 5ft x 15ft bed of brassicas, should keep the little horrors away during summer. Hyssop can be grown from seed sown outside now, or from cuttings taken in summer. While white- or pink-fl owering hyssop can be found, most varieties will produce blue fl owers, not unlike those of bugle or…

Every year, in the second weekend in May, 120,000 mint juleps are served at the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, Louisville. Unlucky punters have a lot of sorrows to drown but that's still a phenomenal number of cocktails. It is a fine drink. Shake 75ml of bourbon with 2 tsp of sugar syrup, a dash of Angostura and a handful of mint leaves. Then strain over crushed ice into a cold highball glass – or, more authentically, a silver julep cup – stir it a bit with a long-handled bar spoon, top it up with more ice, stir again and serve. Or get someone else to do it for you. At Block, a steakhouse and bar in St Anne's Court, Soho, drinks maestro Tony Vega has compiled an astonishing list…

I am a happy user of Spotify, the biggest online music-streaming service, but I am beginning to wonder if it's worth the money. Music enthusiasts of my vintage have seen a steady progression from one medium to another. I can just recall 78rpm Bakelite records, and I've bought vinyl, tapes, cassettes, minidiscs and CDs. I still have most of them. Now we have the streamers. They hold gigantic online libraries of music, and we pay a subscription for the right to listen to it; performers are paid a tiny fee when we do. But why would I need to listen online when I already have records and CDs? It's for the convenience. I can easily listen to almost anything I want wherever I have an internet connection. And the quality…

Taking a Walk I'm breaking various promises by sharing this stroll. It is one of those too-good-to-share, secret walks, a miraculous coastal wander along a beach that is unpopulated on the sunniest of days. But it also seems wrong to keep it to myself, when it is transcendently beautiful, and free. The sense of liberation began when my friends and I parked in a muddy layby for no charge. We were close to the enigmatic white golf ball at Trimingham, a military radar station set on a high point that's visible for miles along the north-east Norfolk coast. The mysterious rays from within the ball are invisible – on one occasion, many years ago, they scrambled cars’ electrics when they drove past. We've had an enervating wet and grey spring…

George Loater, West, was full of himself after this deal from a friendly(ish) rubber. ‘I was in such trouble responding to partner's take-out double (of Two Diamonds).’ No one looked up – they'd been there. ‘I had to bid Three Clubs confidently or you'd have doubled me.’ No response. Undeterred, he added, turning to South, ‘But couldn't you have made Four Spades?’ South turned puce with irritation – but was Gloater right? Annoyingly, he often was. Dealer South North-South Vulnerable (1) Take-out – for hearts and clubs. (2) No need to bid Two Hearts now East having promised the suit. West had led the knave of hearts, declarer winning the ace as East encouraged with the nine. Declarer had crossed to the ace of spades and returned to his king-queen,…