I belong in an era of elegance, and personal hygiene
There are times – when technology defeats or annoys me, or the attitudes displayed online, in print and on TV seem so counter to my own – when I think that I should have been born in another age: an age of grace and elegance; of good manners and even temper; an age of fine architecture and fine writing; a time when the niceties of life were valued and when all levels of society took pleasure in doing what they did well, regardless of educational opportunities and wealth. Yes, all right; such an age never existed, but for the sake of amusement I like to ponder what life could have been like in a bygone age, without being constrained by too many bitter realities. In short, I would like to cherry pick. So where shall I start in my quest for perfection? Television adaptations like Wolf Hall and The Tudors would put off anyone pining for life in the reign of Henry VIII. At the bottom end of the scale you would be lucky to reach the age of 30 without dying of starvation or the plague, and in the upper echelons of society there Man from a bygone age: Damian Lewis as Henry VIII in the new series ‘Wolf Hall’ was always the risk of offending the monarch and losing your head by the time you were 40. The creature comforts one has become used to were thin on the ground then, even for the nobility and gentry. And being of tidy mind I simply could not have thrown the bone of a chicken drumstick over my shoulder for the hounds to eat or the serfs to pick up. The costumes were handsome, but personal hygiene was a low priority, and we are reliably informed that the odours emanating from 16th-century society were rich in the extreme. And the drains… The 17th century was a distinct improvement, unless you happened to be king in 1649. And Cromwell wasn’t exactly a laugh a minute with his Commonwealth either. He had his good points, though: Celebrity Big Brother, I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here and The X Factor wouldn’t have stood a chance of being commissioned in his day. I’ll gloss over the next few reigns and settle on the Georges. Here I feel much more comfortable: elegant clothes and the finest architecture ever conceived in Britain (no Cheese Grater, no Shard and no Gherkin for the Prince Regent). Yes, he ate rather too much, and his private life left a lot to be desired, but furniture making was at its elegant best from the mid-18th century onwards, and we had the music of Handel to accompany our lives in frock-coats and wigs. Victorian England offered much in the way of improved travel, thanks to the railways, plus electricity and industrialisation, but medicine was still relatively primitive. If you could afford a doctor the chances are he would have bled you at the slightest doubt as to your true condition. But we did get better drains under VR. The Edwardians fared even better – the motor car made its debut at the turn of the century and was increasingly improved during the reigns of the two Georges who followed. Central heating appeared (all right, only in the grandest of houses at first) and hemlines were raised, which made getting about a darned sight easier for the ladies. So what would I like from these earlier reigns if I were allowed to cherry pick? From the 17th century the architecture of Sir Christopher Wren, the clocks of Thomas Tompion and the music of Henry Purcell. From the 18th century the landscaping of Capability Brown, the furniture of Thomas Chippendale and the artistry of Matthew Boulton. From the 19th century the manners of the period, the writings of Jane Austen and shrub roses. Couple all these things with the 20th-century music of Vaughan Williams, toothpaste, Twenties Bentley motor cars, interior sprung mattresses, advances in medicine, water I can drink from a tap and a nice gin and tonic, and maybe I’m in the right place after all.