The Old Un’s Notes
The Oldie sends its deepest sympathies to all readers in these sad times.
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This is a tricky moment for oldies but, as Vera Lynn, who’s just turned 103, says, the blue skies will drive the dark clouds far away one day.
Lady Antonia Fraser has kindly composed a timely poem for The Oldie.
Self-isolation – To Myself
So we’re stuck together, You and I. Let’s make the best of it; Then I’ll die. Come to think of it, So will you. We don’t need lawyers To say, ‘Me too.’ How would you feel If we parted now? OK, OK… Just tell me how!
Many congratulations to David Hare, once the progressive enfant terrible of
British theatre, who has finally realised, aged 72, how gifted oldies are.
Writing in the Garrick Club’s magazine, Hare admits that when he started off in the business, he wanted ‘to sweep away all the archaic rubbish which I believed was clogging it up’.
All his life, he’d argued that ‘The new play was more important than the old.’ But now, thank God, he’s seen the oldie light.
‘To my shame,’ Hare writes, ‘I did not realise how much the vitality of new plays depended on actors who had been classically trained.
‘Time and again, people like Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton, Tony Hopkins and Maggie Smith would arrive with all the skills and mastery they had learned by doing plays far more technically challenging than my own.
‘They proved the truth of Nijinksy’s words “Technique is freedom.” ’
Welcome to the oldie club, Sir David, and its trusty motto, ‘The only way forwards is backwards.’
How the Old Un misses Kingsley Amis. Thank God his pithy lit crit has emerged once more from beyond the grave.
In the latest Anthony Powell Society newsletter, an old friend, Tom Miller, quotes Amis’s opinions, delivered in restaurants and pubs in the ’80s and ’90s.
Here are Amis’s measured thoughts: ‘ Lolita is bullshit... The French Lieutenant’s Woman is bullshit’; ‘By comparison [with Shakespeare], George Bernard Shaw is a pygmy’; ‘There hasn’t been a great novelist since Dickens’; and ‘One must remember that Henry James was an American, and therefore no good.’
Good old Kingers!
The Evening Standard has sacked the paper’s oldest columnist, chess writer Leonard Barden.
At the end of his chess column on 31st January, Barden, 90, modestly wrote, ‘Today is my final chess article for the Evening Standard.
‘The series began on 4th June 1956 and has continued for 63 years, 7 months and 27 days without missing a day, a world record in all journalism for a daily column by a single individual.’
The old boy told British Chess News his departure had been caused by budget cuts: ‘Otherwise I might have continued until I dropped.’
Dropped? Shouldn’t a chess maestro say, ‘until I was taken’?
In many hotels, British hospitality is an oxymoron. But not in wise hotels that employ oldies.
Many congratulations, then, to Kingsmills Hotel in Inverness, which had the wisdom to hire 89-year-old Bill Sloan. Bill welcomes guests, helps them with their luggage and gives them the benefit of his deep knowledge of Scotland, acquired in over 70 years working in hotels.
‘Older workers have got to be aware that there can be resentment from younger employees, whose attitudes are totally different,’ he says.
‘Older workers have got to make an effort to be involved. I try and relate to their interests
and am slightly humorous about things.’
As he approaches 90, Bill has no plans to retire. ‘One of the great joys of working at my age is that I feel useful – valued, even – to be here.’
The Old Un raises a dram to you, Bill.
On page 14, Craig Brown writes about the Beatles splitting up 50 years ago.
Don Short, the Mirror journalist who first revealed the split, tells his story in a new memoir, The Beatles and Beyond.
A Beatles contact told him Paul Mccartney was quitting the band. Short tracked down a second source, just as his deadline was approaching at 8pm.
An Apple Records executive confirmed the news and the Mirror splashed the next day, 10th April 1970, with the headline ‘Paul is quitting the Beatles’. Mccartney confirmed the news that day, with an official statement, adding later, ‘I have a better time with my family.’
Beatlemania – a term Short invented – was over.
The Old Un’s Easter reading is sorted out: the first biography of the greatest Sherlock of them all, The Curse of Sherlock Holmes – the Basil Rathbone Story, by David Clayton, published in April.
South African-born Rathbone (1892-1967), aka ‘Ratters’, fought bravely in the First World War before he embarked on the role that was to define him.
Sadly, though, writes Clayton, Rathbone ‘came to loathe a character he saw as one-dimensional, condescending, cold and mean-spirited.
‘Even worse, he despised the tacky, almost mocking recognition he received in everyday life that became almost unbearable for him. His efforts to extricate himself from the great detective were ultimately doomed to failure and there would only be one winner.’