Innehållsförteckning för August 2025 från The Oldie

Roger Lewis (p14) is author of Erotic Vagrancy: Everything about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, soon to be a TV series. His The Life and Death of Peter Sellers was made into a hit feature film. Ian La Frenais (p21), with Dick Clement, wrote some of our finest TV comedies, including The Likely Lads, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, Porridge and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. Ettie Neil-Gallacher (p22) writes about trying to swim the Channel on the 150th anniversary of Captain Webb’s doing it for the first time. She is a teacher and freelance writer, landlocked in London. Mary Killen (p30 and p51) and her husband, Giles Wood, are Oldie columnists. They wrote The Diary of Two Nobodies and Country Life: A Story of Peaks and Troughs.…

I learnt something quite important at Royal Ascot this year. A gentleman does not wear his top hat at a jaunty angle, however roguish and amusing he may think it makes him look. He wears it straight up or not at all. I am grateful to the lady who taught me this. A noted Irish owner and breeder, she did it with a smile and a twinkle, shortly after I had won ten pounds off her. I had been explaining to her that I wouldn’t be able to back her horse in the next race because, knowing next to nothing about racing, I have a rule that I only ever back horses ridden by Ryan Moore, the champion jockey who has never let me down. ‘I bet you can’t make…

WHAT IS mankeeping? Mankeeping refers to the ‘emotional labour’ women perform to ‘reduce the burden of men’s isolation’. The term was coined by two Stanford University psychologists, Angelica Ferrara and Dylan P Vergara, who described it as a ‘component of gender inequality’ in a research paper published late last year. The core idea is that heterosexual men are terrible at maintaining their own social networks. We let things drift with once dear friends. We leave WhatsApp threads dangling. Even if we do, miraculously, make it to the pub, all we do is exchange Alan Partridge quotes and describe guitar solos – failing to enquire after the health of Tom’s mum or t0 ask whether he has a girlfriend. It’s left men feeling lonely and isolated. One YouGov poll found that…

Have you come across an authorpreneur recently? This clumsy portmanteau word sums up the mindset and practice of a new breed of writers. They treat their careers like a long-term business and oversee all aspects, from brand creation to marketing and, of course, turning a profit. The marriage of literary and business skills might seem incompatible, but there are many successful authorpreneurs, some earning up to six figures. This term has been around for a few years now, coined alongside the growth of self-publishing. The unholy alliance of authorship and entrepreneurship wouldn’t have been possible, even 20 years ago, without new digital technology bringing seismic changes to the publishing industry. You no longer need a publisher to publish a book. Gone are the days when writers searched – often in…

As we convent-school girls faced our summer exeat, Mother Margaret Mary assembled us for a purposeful talk. Would this be a dark warning against the devil’s snares or the ‘occasions of sin’ that might tempt nubile teenagers? ‘Girls,’ the nun began, ‘when you start out on your working lives, my abiding advice is this: don’t be a touchy person. ‘Don’t look for slights and insults from others. Don’t take offence too quickly, or be oversensitive about trivialities. If people are unpleasant, just laugh it off! Don’t take someone’s bad mood or bad manners to heart. You will be much happier if you have a balanced attitude to tiffs and differences. Be resilient, and show your mettle by your character.’ Would such counsel pass muster today, when ‘injury to feelings’ can…

I was recently asked by a friend to proof-read something she had written. ‘I know how proud you are you can do it’ was her slightly dismissive, and not entirely accurate, way of asking. It is true that my first job after university was as a proof-reader and copy editor. And so I did develop an eye for the work, though I would hardly claim it to be my greatest achievement. In any event, halfway into the piece I pointed out a badly punctuated sentence; there was a comma in place of a semicolon. My friend does not always take criticism well. ‘I know perfectly well how to use a semicolon, but I think they are pretentious,’ she announced, determinedly, leaving the erroneous comma in its place. No sooner had…

In his magisterial account of the siege of Stalingrad, Antony Beevor, without flinching or allowing his reader to shy away, covers all the horrors of war: agony, destruction, despair, squalor and fear, to name but a few. But the passage which has stuck most firmly in my mind has nothing to do with cruelty and brutality. It deals with a soldier’s reaction, in the middle of all the foul chaos, when he sees a white cup decorated with a red flower. It reminds him, however briefly, that normality exists and is, ultimately, a desirable possibility. It is a big mistake to denigrate ordinariness; without it, there is little chance of peace ever taking hold. One of the definitions in George Herbert’s sonnet ‘Prayer’ is ‘heaven in ordinary’. That this definition…

Mum’s porky pie SIR: Paul Heiney’s piece about a Fray Bentos-based dinner party (‘Nice as pie’, July issue) reminded me of a similar event given by my parents in the 1960s. My parents were academics and each year would give a party for colleagues. The numbers were too large for guests to sit at a table and eat; instead, my mother would serve something then regarded as exotic, such as chicken à la king or goulash with rice or potatoes from huge aluminium pans. (Guests would have been horrified to know that these were usually used to soak clothes prior to washing.) One year, the local grocer told my mother that Fray Bentos had tried going upmarket with a game pie but they had many left unsold. My mother bought…

Nothing but Wickedness: The Delusions of Our Culture By Theodore Dalrymple Gibson Square £14.99 Where medical anecdotes are concerned, you would be hard pushed to find a more scholarly and entertaining compilation than this. Dr Theodore Dalrymple, the psychiatrist and The Oldie’s resident doctor, has practised in British prisons and in many a far-flung overseas territory. He is also a popular and witty writer. In his line of work, he has observed at first hand the results of conventional and alternative medical treatments, as well as witch doctoring. Dr Dalrymple is almost excessively well-read. In these musings, he ‘riffs’ on a range of medically adjacent topics: on literary doctors (Chekhov, Conan Doyle) and on writers who were the children of doctors – including Oscar Wilde and Marcel Proust. A medical…

The Pentecost Papers By Ferdinand Mount Bloomsbury £18.99 The Pentecost Papers begins at the Beggar’s Hill Golf Club, N23 2HN. Diplomatic correspondent Dickie Pentecost, whom we met first in Ferdinand Mount’s previous novel Making Nice, is pushing his trolley along the fairway when he hears a voice from a blackthorn, demanding to know if he is alone: ‘The blackthorn blossom was cold, dazzling white in the April sun, so white it was like a wonderful blank space, as if there was a hole in the view.’ God, Dickie notes, spoke to Moses from a bush, but this voice belongs to a young man in a Pringle sweater who introduces himself as Timbo Smith. Also known as Timothy, Bimbo, Tim and T, Timbo will soon be reported missing, presumed dead, in…

Few radio characters have appealed more to Oldie-readers than Radio 4’s Ed Reardon, the Grumpy Bard of Berkhamsted. For 20 years, his rants on Ed Reardon’s Week have reflected our shared irritation with the fatuities of modern life. So a heartfelt hurrah to Christopher Douglas for carrying on writing and playing Ed in a new series, after the death in 2022 of his much-missed co-writer and friend, Andrew Nickolds. They had 42 years of laughter, epic lunches and gossipy discussions. Douglas says Nickolds was the one ‘more plugged into the news agenda’. I wonder who came up with Ed’s New Age daughter’s calling her son Smile. Douglas solo, under BBC constraints, has had to reduce the cast, impose a tighter narrative and make Ed more a traditional sitcom in a…

MARIGOLDS I associate marigolds with municipal gardens and urban parks, their garish yellow-orange flowers often planted in serried rows or precise geometrical patterns. They do not enhance a border in a private garden, in my opinion. But they have their uses in the kitchen garden. There are two different types of marigold: tagetes and calendula. The various tagetes, of which there are 30 or more species, originate from America – Central and South – though one of the varieties most relevant for the kitchen garden and greenhouse is known as French marigold. This marigold should flower within weeks of sowing and will grow to a height of no more than 12 inches. When it’s placed near tomato and cucumber plants, the scent of the flowers and leaves will help to…

SUMMER SPARKLE One – come to think of it, perhaps the only – welcome aspect of the UK’s Byzantine new system for calculating alcohol duty is that sparkling wines are now taxed at the same level as still wines. There are (relatively speaking) some bargains to be had. This is generally not true in Champagne, where producers frown upon any attempt to dilute the prestige of their product; nor in England, where economies of scale have yet to emerge in our burgeoning, but still tiny, winemaking economy. Look to Spain, the Limoux and the Loire, however, and you can pop many a summery cork with gay abandon. There are several ways to make wine fizzy. You can simply pump it with carbon dioxide, which lends vinho verde its refreshing spritz.…

I am going to commit heresy: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not as impressive as we are being told. It will not kill us all or take over the world. It is not more important than the internet, or even the telephone. It might be about as consequential as either, but certainly no more so. Of course, Oldie-readers may not see these views as heresy, but there are many who would. Broadcasters are in thrall to AI all the time. Politicians (on all sides) yearn for their country to become an ‘AI superpower’. Investors worldwide are pouring huge sums into new companies trying to develop AI products that will make their fortunes. And existing businesses are jumping onto the bandwagon by urgently claiming they are using AI to improve their processes,…

‘How the wheat-ear and whin-chat [Saxicola rubetra] support themselves in winter cannot be so easily ascertained, since they spend their time on wild heaths and warrens,’ wrote Gilbert White (1720-93). Selborne, Hampshire, in the time of this pioneering naturalist – also Selborne’s parson, as his father had been – was all but inaccessible in winter. That can well explain his assumption that the whinchat, a summer migrant from Africa, was a British resident. It’s even more excusable as there have been December sightings. Gilbert White’s brother John, living in Gibraltar, one of the main pathways of bird migration from Africa to Europe, was his chief informant. But, as he wrote to John, bird migration was ‘a dark and mysterious business’. So it remains, for all the technological aids now available.…

Anything you can’t leave home without? My wife. Is there something you really miss? I’ve toured all my career, and I miss everything about being at home. Do you travel light? I travel light and my wife travels heavy. I once made a mistake of criticising how much luggage there was, and I’ll never make that mistake again. ‘Don’t you understand – I’m a woman…’ I like to take nothing, buy a couple of T-shirts, a shirt and a pair of jeans and when I leave, give them to charity. Your earliest childhood holiday memories? Harry Carr, a jockey who lived near us in Suffolk, told my father [Michael Havers, the Lord Chancellor] that his horse, Parthia, would win the Derby. Dad bet, and it won, and we leapt into…

In the Crimean War, it is alleged, there was a particular coffee house in Istanbul where British soldiers liked to play their own invented card game. They had to cross a particular bridge (the Galata Bridge) to get to their favoured café, and they called their card game … yes, you’ve guessed it … bridge. Or so the story goes. Bridge culture remains strong in Turkey to this day. Turkish players tend to bid a lot and they play the cards like an Anatolian leopard, cunning and accurate. Take Isin Kandemir on this month’s deal from the Turkish Mixed Championships, kindly shown to me by Erdal Sidar via the IBPA Bulletin. Dealer South Both Vunerable (1) Roman Key Card Blackwood, agreeing the last-bid diamonds. (2) Two of ‘five Aces’ (♦K…

Europe’s seaside resorts and major cultural attractions are invevitably hectic in the school holidays. But August can be an excellent time for a getaway, particularly later in the month, when families start drifting homewards. And the ferocious heat that can plague southern Europe tends to subside after July. Tempted to go beyond Europe? A little research will identify roads less travelled and many travel companies arrange bespoke holidays far off the beaten track. If organising your own holiday, avoid beaches and head inland. Romania, Armenia, Albania, Bulgaria have glorious mountainous conuntryside. Or pack some warm clothes and visit Iceland, a Sacndinavian archipelago or the remoter Scottish islands. Or take a cruise to the Arctic or Antarctic. South of the Equator, August is an exciting time to see game on an…

For those of us plagued by doubt about the purpose of human existence once we’re entrenched in middle age (quite the columnar Mrs Mopp, am I not?), an antidote is discovered. His name may be unfamiliar to you. But you may well recall the judder of astonishment occasioned by first exposure to him. It was so long ago that even this precocious little bleeder, whose midlife crisis struck at 19, hadn’t succumbed to age-related existential Weltschmerz. One Thursday evening in 1974, at glam rock’s high tide, John Peel introduced perhaps the most singular band ever to grace Top of the Pops. The camera panned between an unfeasibly pretty, curly-haired lead singer and the keyboard player beside him. The latter sat behind his instrument, wholly static but for the movement of…

It was a joyful death. The memorial service, held at St James’s Church, Piccadilly, was for Charles Handy, business expert and philosopher, who died last year at 92. St James’s Piccadilly is one of my favourite London churches, built by Christopher Wren in 1684. It’s by Jermyn Street and Fortnum & Mason, haunts of Burlington Berties and London flâneurs. Just a single step from the commercial hubbub and you find yourself in a calm and beautiful place. The church is friendly and progressive, with a programme of art shows and talks. There’s a groovy café and a garden stocked with trees and benches – just the place to eat your sandwich at lunchtime. William Blake was baptised there in 1757, in a marble font designed by Grinling Gibbons, who also…

In the mid-1980s, Motörhead were close to the peak of their popularity, riding high on the back of their early 1980s hit single ‘Ace of Spaces’. Motörhead, however, were never about hit singles: they were about raucous gigs, cussing and snarling and living life in top gear. To a timid student like me, at Reading University at the time, dressed in my M&S jeans and V-neck jumper bought by my mother, such a rock-and-roll attitude was alien. The university’s students’ union was the place for all flavours of students to hang out – an eclectic mix of rockers, Goths, Sloanes, bookish types and out-and-out nerds. And this is where Motörhead were rehearsing for their forthcoming evening gig in front of several hundred boozed-up students. Passing by the closed double doors…

The Rev Steven Brookes, Chaplain of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, presided over the thanksgiving service for Sir John Nott, Defence Secretary during the Falklands War, at the Royal Hospital’s Wren Chapel. Former Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine, 92, gave the address. Heseltine and Nott were elected as Tory MPs on the same day in 1966, when Harold Wilson won a landslide. Lord Heseltine said, ‘John was very clear in his ambition about what he liked and wanted. ‘He wanted a military experience that associated him with his great-great-great grandfather’s involvement in the 19thcentury Afghan wars. He wanted to make money and have a political career, with the latter lasting no more than 15 years. He loved the countryside, and it is here that you must search for the heart of…

I recently helped my son pack up his stuff at the end of his degree in Manchester. One prized possession that had made it through four years of student life was his map of the city and its outskirts. The city occupies the top left part of the sheet. Dead centre is Bredbury, whose greatest claim to fame is as the birthplace of Mike Yarwood. Who – apart from the Yarwoods – would make a small Cheshire suburb the centre of attention, rather than its much more important neighbour? The map’s title tells you more: not Manchester, Bolton, Stockport and Oldham, but МАНЧЕСТЕР, БОЛТОН, СТОКПОРТ И ОЛДЕМ. It was, in fact, a replica of a Soviet military map; scale 1:25,000. It was created in 1975, at the height of the…

How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir Molly Jong-Fast Picador £16.99 The kind of memoir that describes terrible abuse, monstrous parents and life’s more horrific vicissitudes has come to be known as victim porn. Molly Jong-Fast’s wry and sad book about her nightmarish mother, Erica Jong, 83, the famous author of Fear of Flying (1973), is rather different. She never presents herself as a victim – and the porn is provided by her mother. With many graphic descriptions of her sexual journey, Jong’s book became a cultural phenomenon, selling more than 20 million copies. While the book was regarded as a rallying cry for liberating women from conventional sexual shackles, Jong was actually rather late to the feminist party, the foundations of which Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan and others…

MAGNA CARTA 1225 Society of Antiquaries of London, 23rd July to 19th September Even if Sellar and Yeatman didn’t consider it a memorable date, most people do remember that Magna Carta was signed in 1215. Well, yes and no. In that first form, it was indeed forced on King John by the barons at Runnymede on 15th June 1215. It was intended to be a peace treaty between them. That did not work, but an expanded and amended version was reissued in 1217 by the Regency for the young King Henry III. The Forest Charter, dealing with rights for ‘free men’ rather than just the barons, was added to it. In the story of democracy, the Forest Charter is arguably more important. These agreements were then reissued in 1225, of…

JAM TODAY The secret of happiness in a northern climate (global warming notwithstanding) is sweetness. Take jam, for instance. Now’s the time to favour stone fruit: plum, apricot, damsons – with quince and medlar on the way. Mrs Beeton, Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson agreed that the fine raw materials available on this blessed isle should be allowed to speak for themselves. Fruit, in the form of jams and jellies, does exactly that. So when you’re done with the glory of pies and tarts, scrub out the empty jam jars and stock up the larder. Basic rules for jam-makers The great Eliza Acton, Mrs Beeton’s inspiration, offers ‘General Rules and Directions for Preserving’ in Modern Cookery in 1845. Here’s the gist: 1) Make sure all utensils are clean and dry,…

GOD ON THE TYNE The idea for a book can come from all sorts of places. For sportswriter Spencer Vignes, it was at his local pub quiz that inspiration struck. ‘Which foreign-born footballer,’ was the question that caught his attention, ‘holds the record for the most goals scored in a season in English top-flight football?’ Easy, he thought: Erling Haaland, Man City’s prolific Norwegian. Wrong: Haaland was actually born in Leeds, where his old man was playing the game. All right then: Mo Salah. No, not him. Sergio Aguero? Cristiano Ronaldo? Thierry Henry? Didier Drogba? None of them. The answer had Vignes scratching his head. It turns out the record still belongs to a striker from the distant past. In fact, he was the first foreign-born player to grace the…

A guaranteed yield of 2.1 per cent on your capital does not sound like much. But what if that return on both the capital and the dividend were indexed to inflation? It sounds almost too good to be true, and would certainly look suspicious but for the fact that the guarantee is from HM Government. In other words, this is about as risk-free as investment gets, provided you can be patient, since this government stock will not be repaid until 2054. It’s unlikely that either of us will still be around then, but hear me out. The stock I have in mind, called 1¼-per-cent Index-linked Treasury Gilt 2054, cost around £85 per £100 of stock at the time of writing. In other words, pay £85 today and get back £100…

Oasis tribute band very much like the real thing Hampshire Chronicle Residents ‘can’t open windows’ from over-whelming takeaway smell Lincolnshire Echo New book on sale Eastern Daily Press £15 for published contributions NEW! Tune into Radio Oldie Every Tuesday, you can find the latest weekly interview by Harry Mount or Charlotte Metcalf with some of our Oldie friends, such as Stephen Fry, Craig Brown and A N Wilson. And we release three more podcasts on Top of the Pods, our selection of the best podcasts and comedy clips on the internet. Just sign up for the newsletter on the homepage of the website. Sign up to our weekly e-newsletter…

WHO WAS Frederick Garton? Fifty years ago, Britain’s food scene was nothing like today’s cornucopia of ingredients and recipes from around the globe. But at least a legendary brown sauce could add tang to a bacon or corned-beef butty. Why did a largely forgotten Nottingham man invent this 19th-century condiment –which in the 1960s became known as ‘Wilson’s gravy’? Frederick Gibson Garton, born in 1862, started his working life as a grocer’s apprentice before opening his own shop. Making pickles and jams as a sideline, he experimented with sauces made from locally supplied vinegar and imported spices. He sold his wares off a handcart which he lugged around the city. Of all the sauces he developed, the most successful was registered in 1895 as HP Sauce. Garton got himself into…

As the 80th anniversary of VJ Day on 15th August approaches, the old war-movie soundtracks start ringing in my ears – particularly as played by Geoff Love. Love (1917-91) was a prolific British trombonist, bandleader and composer. Part of the postwar music scene, he worked with such garlanded artists as Shirley Bassey, Connie Francis, Marlene Dietrich, Vera Lynn, Judy Garland, Frankie Vaughan and Johnny Mathis. Love also wrote for most of the major record labels. But it is for his film and TV music for the commercially successful budget label MFP (Music For Pleasure) in the late ’60s and early ’70s that he is probably best remembered. At the time, we made do with three channels. VCRs were still in their infancy and movie-streaming the stuff of science fiction. So…

Last year, I failed to swim the Channel. This isn’t unusual for attempted Channel crossings, but it was particularly devastating after years of training. I was 45. The blow was softened by the camaraderie of my cheerfully eclectic relay team – a motley crew, ranging in age from 35 to 78, who cut through the swell at bewilderingly different rates. But it was a blow nevertheless, and one I felt particularly keenly as I’d wanted to do it for 40 years. My mother never learned to swim. So she determined that we would as soon as we could stand. She sourced a series of appropriately sadistic coaches, including a retired Australian special-forces officer, and a vast former Commonwealth medallist. He taught me to dive at the shallow end of the…

Just as I was becoming an adolescent and due to start worrying about my appearance, I had a stroke of luck. My best friend Ruth’s father became manager of the Bank of Ireland. So he moved into the living quarters above the fine art-deco building in the centre of my provincial Northern Irish town. This meant that, each day, when school ended, Ruth and I could swarm quickly back to her house and take up our position on the window seat of our eyrie in the centre of the town’s main street. Humans never look up. And so no one realised we two were staring down from our very informative vantage point. It was the custom at our grammar school for most pupils to head straight to the main street…

When our cheery postman caught me slipping out to the car and asked the simple question, ‘How are you, Giles?’, I struggled to think of a simple answer. Feverish was the word that sprang to mind when I tried to analyse my early morning state of being. My nocturnal activities are starting negatively to affect my outlook on life. At least I am not a so-called parasomniac – one of those unfortunates who order random goods from eBay while asleep. But I admit to having inherited from my father a tendency to watch television into the small hours, as well as an addictive personality. YouTube is my latest nocturnal addiction. As the head of the household, I operate on a need-to-know basis. With a decision needing to be made about…

On one of those blazing days a few weeks ago, we went to Smallhythe Place in Kent, the home of the great Victorian actress Ellen Terry (1847-1928). She was born into a theatrical family – a bit like Vincent Crummles and his daughter the Infant Phenomenon – and she first trod the boards as Puck in 1856. Not bad going – she was still acting on the stage seven decades later. Smallhythe was a farmhouse when she and the great impresario Sir Henry Irving (‘We were once terribly in love’) found it in the 1890s. It had been a boat-building shed in the reign of Henry V, in the days when Smallhythe was still coastal, and it would have looked out to sea. Now, as you stand in the upstairs…

From 1966 to 1969, I was the Moscow Correspondent of the Daily Mail. After three years of trying to decipher the inner workings of the Kremlin, the daily lives of the Soviet people, and the implications of Communist diplomacy, I was being posted to Rome. At Sheremetyevo Airport, I bumped into the British Embassy’s chief of MI6. ‘Why don’t we travel together?’ he suggested. After take-off, I said, ‘Let’s have a glass of champagne.’ ‘Why don’t we wait until we are out of Soviet airspace?’ he replied. It struck me as a peculiarly ominous response. Once we were beyond Soviet territory, he said, ‘Now let’s have that champagne.’ The next day, in London, I lunched with the Mail’s editor. He asked how long I had been in Moscow. I told him…

Will there be an epidemic of deafness in the future? Whenever I go to a restaurant these days, with its deliberate amplification of noise to give the impression of liveliness, I think that there will be. Not, of course, that such an epidemic will be of any consequence to me. For I shall long since have sunk into that most profound of silences, commonly known as the grave. The prevalence of the use of earphones by people on buses and trains, or while out jogging – even just walking in the street or park – will lead to an epidemic. Two thirds of people over the age of 70 already have significant hearing loss. That is to say, two thirds of people who reached adulthood before the modern era of…

I’m not a naturally funny man. I find that I can only be funny if I become someone else. Rowan Atkinson There’s nothing to being a butler, really; when you’re in the room, it should be even more empty. Cyril Dickman, a butler at Buckingham Palace for 50 years, who advised Anthony Hopkins on playing a butler in The Remains of the Day (1993) It’s not true I had nothing on. I had the radio on. Marilyn Monroe If you would be pungent, be brief. Robert Southey That’s what showbusiness is – sincere insincerity. Benny Hill If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh. Otherwise, they’ll kill you. George Bernard Shaw If my films make one more person miserable, I’ll feel I have done my job. Woody…

To the Sea by Train: The Golden Age of Railway Travel By Andrew Martin Profile Books £18.99 Within the first few pages of Andrew Martin’s strangely uplifting lament about the failings of a national railway system, you realise this malaise has long been with us. Up until 1923, there were 120 railway companies in Britain – ‘a relatively sensible number compared to 1846, when there’d been 272’. The Railway Magazine in 1906 reported how a reader had seen, near Basingstoke, a train drawn by a London & South Western Railway engine, consisting of: 1) South Western Railway’s carriage 2) North Eastern Railway’s horsebox 3) Great Northern Railway’s carriage 4) Great Eastern Railway’s horsebox 5) Great Western Railway’s horsebox 6) Great Central Railway’s carriage Fast forward to 2025 and it’s just…

THE CONSTANT WIFE Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon Until 2nd August 2025 Has any writer fallen so swiftly and sharply out of favour as Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)? From the 1890s to the 1960s, he was one of the most prolific authors in the English-speaking world. Yet nowadays only a few discerning oldies read his novels, and even fewer remember that he first made his name on the stage. In 1908, Maugham had four shows running simultaneously in the West End. It wasn’t until the 1930s that his novels eclipsed his plays. When I heard that the RSC were staging his 1926 hit, The Constant Wife, I was thrilled. Unfortunately, like a lot of modern theatre, this suave revival isn’t quite what it seems. The show got off to a flying start, but…

THE QUEEN OF SPADES LA TRAVIATA The most consequential of this year’s summer opera season offerings have probably been Verdi’s La traviata at the Grange Festival, in Hampshire, and Tchaikovsky’s late masterpiece, The Queen of Spades, at Garsington. I say ‘consequential’ because here are two of the 19th century’s greatest composers at critical moments in their lives creating music dramas that tell us of the social values of their age and the psychopathologies of the composers who chose to confront them. Alexander Pushkin’s short story The Queen of Spades concerns Herman, a rigidly self-disciplined yet emotionally unstable German-born engineer in the Russian Imperial army. He eschews gambling, yet ends up losing both his money and his mind in pursuit of an ageing countess and the identity of three cards that…

HEAVEN-ON-THAMES Foreign tourists always marvel at the thousand acres of London’s parks and gardens. But few of them make it down to our glorious river, even when we pronounce the ‘TH’ for their benefit. And the Thames is London’s great saviour, a huge watery blast of fresh air from the flat lands of Flanders. My favourite stretch is the north bank from Hammersmith to Barnes Bridge but I keep finding myself drawn to the South Bank area. I used to think I was visiting only to see a wonderful film at the BFI, but that’s not really true – I find it impossible to struggle to the end of their foreign epics. Does anyone make it to the credits? My last attempt was The Piano Teacher (La Pianiste) with Isabelle…

END OF THE ROAD FOR DRIVERS There is a media fuss about the prospect – threat, as some see it – of autonomous vehicles ie self-driving cars. Predictably, all manner of problems and potential disadvantages have been quoted. The problems, technical and legal, are real enough. But, nevertheless, the advent of fully self-driving cars could be a boon to Oldie-readers. The reason for the fuss was taxi firm Uber’s announcement that they intend to test self-driving taxis in London next year. This was made possible by the government’s bringing forward rules allowing driverless taxis and buses from 2026. The Uber trial is in association with Wayve, a Cambridge-based autonomous-driving and AI start-up. It’s not yet known which breeds of car they’ll use. Like many technological developments, experiments with autonomous vehicles…

Christopher Wentworth-Stanley moved to Vienna in the early 1980s and has never looked back. He has led a previous Oldie tour of his adopted city, which was described as ‘unforgettable’, not least because Christopher took people to places they would never have known about – the hallmark of the best Oldie tours. So, here again, Christopher has plotted an itinerary of his favourite haunts in Vienna, including a winetasting and dinner at the Austrian Jockey Club, a visit to Schloss Ernegg, the delightful home of Georgie Newall, before we head to Prague. Please expect quite a bit of walking. And laughter. Thursday 7th May – Depart Heathrow at 12.55 on BA flight 724; arrive Vienna Schwechat at 15.45. Transfer to Hotel Wandl, chosen by Christopher mainly for its great location.…

Many memorable walks begin in adversity. If braving Cambridge Railway Station does not sound like the start of a hero’s journey, you haven’t been there lately. Show me a more dismal and overcrowded station in Britain. On an ordinary Friday morning, there were a dozen unfortunates queuing to use the women’s toilets. I hope they weren’t as bad as the men’s, which stank. For me, a rare stroll in Cambridge is usually overwhelmed by heady fumes of nostalgia. The students somehow look unchanged from my day. But today I turned away from the memory places and the crowds and headed west down leafy Brooklands Avenue. It was populated by Victorian villas so vast they housed organisations encapsulating multiple civilisations, such as the Ancient India and Iran Trust. Wrens were song-duelling…

IN COMPETITION No 321 you were invited to write a poem called Countdown. ‘Man’s countdown to extinction has begun,’ wrote Sue Smalley. This was a popular theme, rivalled only by the countdown towards death that we all experience. But Vivien Brown wrote about appearing on television on Countdown and not doing well, concluding unconvincingly, ‘Alas, I’m just not very bright.’ Veronica Colin’s countdown was to the day that the children flown from home would return to the nest. David Dixon gave an account of the countdown to a bungled attempt to ask a girl out to a concert. Among other surprises were D F Bailey’s imagining Cassandra’s countdown to the fall of Troy and Basil Ransome-Davies’s countdown to the perfect boiled egg. Commiserations to them and to Hilary Kirkland, D…

Let them eat fish fingers Q When my four-year-old grandson comes to visit, I’m upset to find he’s terribly fussy with his food. With me, he refuses to eat anything except spaghetti and tomato sauce. When I offer him, say, beans and potatoes, he refuses. His mother says he’ll eat fried eggs at home, and odd bits of fruit, but I’m afraid he’ll grow up to be faddy – and I can’t believe this diet is doing him any good. Elaine, by email A Don’t worry – I refused to eat broccoli or fried bacon fat when young and now I eat everything; even raw eggs! I remember a friend of my son’s coming to tea when he was eight and his mother told me he liked his fish fingers…