The Old Un’s Notes
In the show-off world of journalism, crosswordcompilers are unsung, modest heroes.
The Old Un remembers a gathering of cruciverbalists at the Daily Telegraph, where they introduced themselves by the day of the week their work appeared: ‘Hello, I’m Tuesday.’
When they’re not days of the week, they have their own modest pseudonyms. Ever since 1999, ‘Antico’ has composed the Oldie Genius and Moron crosswords. Now, very sadly, Antico is standing down, due to ill health.
‘I had been recruited by Jenny Naipaul, who liked the puzzles I did for the Spectator, and it was she who encouraged me to introduce monthly thematic elements into the Oldie Genius puzzle, which had previously been a normal cryptic,’ says Antico, also known as Colin Gumbrell. ‘She also gave me the opportunity to choose an Oldie- specific pseudonym, and I lit on Antico as one suggesting both age and playfulness, which she thought ideal.
‘I have loved being Antico and I’m very glad that solvers seem to have enjoyed my work. It has been a joy to set the crosswords.’
In Antico’s sad absence, ‘El Sereno’ (the nightwatchman) is stepping into the breach. El Sereno – aka Jeremy Mutch – had his first puzzle published in the Financial Times (as ‘Orense’) over 20 years ago, and has set cryptic crosswords for the Telegraph since 1998. Turn to page 101 for the first of his Oldie crosswords.
A warm welcome to Oldie Towers, El Sereno, and au revoir, Antico!
The Old Un has completely embraced the internet age. All the highlights from the Oldie of the Year ceremony will be available on The Oldie’s website – theoldie.co.uk – from Friday 1st February.
Watch the greatest MC in showbiz, Gyles Brandreth, introduce all the prizewinners. And it won’t cost you a penny.
The Old Un was sad to hear of the death of Paddy Ashdown, admiring his narrowed eyes, chiselled features and revival of the ancient Liberal cause. If he had one fault, he wasn’t great at names.
Oldie contributor Mark Palmer recalls getting to know Ashdown during the 1992 general election while working for the Sunday Telegraph: ‘I was assigned to the Ashdown battle-bus for the duration of the three-week campaign. At public meetings, Paddy always liked to address people by their names and, in his speeches, he would say things like “I met a woman called Dorothy today who...”
‘Paddy and I got on well, often chatting at the back of the bus over a coffee and doughnut. After the election, he organised a battle-bus get-together dinner at Kettner’s in Soho, and I was asked to say something on behalf of the journalists. Which I did, after which Paddy stood up and said: “First, I’d like to thank David for those kind words...” ’
The new film Welcome to Marwen tells the real-life story of Mark Hogancamp. After being beaten up in New York in 2010, he recovered by building his own model village, a 1/16 scale Belgian village in the Second World War.
Miniaturisation is all the rage in America. In Gulliver’s Gate, in Times Square, New York, you can tramp, giantlike, through miniature versions of Manhattan, London and Venice.
You can even have a miniature version of yourself made and inserted into one of these mini-cities. A 3D scanner with 128 cameras takes photos of you. The pictures are layered together. A tiny model is then made of you, for $48. And you can also pick a romantic or historic spot in your favourite city where you can stand
your tiny replica. It’s a sort of minuscule egomania; better, the Old Un supposes, than the mega-egomania that afflicts most sufferers of the condition.
Happy birthday to the great spy novelist Len Deighton, who turns 90 on 18th February. As well as being a distinguished writer, Deighton is a considerable artist, studying at St Martin’s School of Art and the Royal College of Art.
His friend Raymond Hawkey designed this brilliant cover of Deighton’s most famous book, The IPCRESS File, in 1962.
Hawkey, who died in 2010 aged 80, revolutionised the world of jacket design with that cover. His designs were soon to be seen on the cover of books by Kingsley Amis, Ian Fleming and Frederick Forsyth.
Deighton, too, designed book covers, not least the British first-edition one for Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Many happy returns to a multi-talented man.
The melancholy Ionic portico pictured above belongs to the ruined façade of Mount Shannon in County Limerick.
The picture is taken from the cover of a new book by Robert O’byrne, Ruins of Ireland. For years, O’byrne, also known as The Irish Aesthete, has journeyed around Ireland and Ulster, taking his mournfully beautiful photographs.
The portico was built for the second Earl of Clare in the early 19th century by Lewis Wyatt, the nephew and pupil of the great James Wyatt. The house was largely burnt down in June 1920, with the light of the flames being seen in Limerick city, several miles away.
‘It used to be popularly thought that the majority of lost Irish country houses were burnt during the Troubles of the early 1920s,’ says O’byrne.
‘In fact, while several hundred did suffer this fate, many more were unroofed, abandoned or pulled down over the following decades as public indifference, and sometimes active hostility (the houses were seen as symbols of a widely detested landlord class), combined with high taxation and low incomes, made their maintenance in private hands impossible.
‘Ireland remains a country of ruins but the hope must be that their number no longer continues to rise.’
Hear, hear, says the Old
Un, himself in a semi-ruinous state.
The dreaming spires of Oxford provided the perfect preparation for becoming a peer of the realm. So the Old Un was told by the Liberal Democrats’ Lord Greaves, who studied geography at Oxford in the 1960s and went on to pioneer ‘pavement politics’ in the 1970s.
‘It taught me that people’s backgrounds don’t really matter very much – what matters is the sort of people they are,’ says the 76-year-old former Yorkshire grammar schoolboy. ‘There are really nice people from all backgrounds, and there are complete s***s from all backgrounds – so it was
good training for the House of Lords.’
The Oldie’s God columnist, Sister Teresa, writes about Sister Wendy Beckett on page 32. Sister Wendy, who has died at 88, wasn’t just a brilliant art historian, winning the top First (awarded by J R R Tolkien) in her year at Oxford, she was also extremely kind.
In the December issue of The Oldie, she wrote a condolence letter on the sad death of the magazine’s doctor, Dr Thomas Stuttaford:
‘Sir: I should have written sooner to express my admiration for and gratitude to Dr Stuttaford. It was always his piece I turned to first, confident of enlightenment. When I wrote to ask him if he might treat a certain topic, the next issue included a useful discussion on exactly what I wanted to know. But to my astonishment, he also wrote a personal letter to me, giving valuable information for which there was no space in his usual column. This was very helpful; more helpful perhaps, was the sheer kindness that induced him to take such trouble. I think of him as a friend, and am so glad to know a son was with him when he died. Gratefully, Sister Wendy Beckett’
The Old Un is looking forward to the Don Mccullin retrospective at Tate Britain (5th February6th May). Sir Don is renowned for his war photography, but he began his career in his native Finsbury Park, north London. An early highlight was his portrait of a notorious local gang, the Guvnors, taken for the Observer in 1958. The Old Un’s favourite is this one – Homeless Irishman, Spitalfields, London (1970).
Hats off to Beano cartoonist David Sutherland. In February, he celebrates his 60th year drawing for the famous children’s comic.
The 85-year-old began illustrating Dennis the Menace way back in 1959, when Harold Macmillan was Prime Minister.
‘I love drawing but nowadays work on a board propped up on the arms of my chair,’ says the Scotsman, who still draws two pages in every week’s issue.
‘I’d like to be scraping the board right to the end – I just hope I’ll get to finish the story I’m working on before I pop off!’