The Old Un’s Notes
Oldie Towers is in mourning after the death of Edward Enfield (1929-2019), our columnist extraordinaire.
Recruited by Richard Ingrams at the suggestion of Edward’s son Harry Enfield, he was a columnist with a natural, gifted touch.
His column began in 1992, soon after the first issue of The Oldie, and continued until his 80th birthday in 2009.
Like so many people who are professionally grumpy, Edward Enfield was an utter delight to work with and meet. His daughter Lizzie Enfield and Anne Robinson, who recruited him to Watchdog, remember him on page 23 of this issue.
Our radio columnist, Valerie Grove, has been with The Oldie since that first issue in 1992, and befriended Edward soon after.
‘We agreed to have lunch at the Academy Club, newly opened by our fellow columnist Auberon Waugh,’ says Valerie. ‘Edward brought his son Harry, aged 31, and I brought my 16-year-old daughter Lucy, a fan. I called him Enfield Senior and he called me Grove of Wireless.’
Valerie and Edward continued their lunch date every year.
‘Even if we had not been ad idem (his phrase) on most subjects, Edward was the easiest man in the world to get along with,’ she says.
‘I loved all his books and he at least read mine, even if he disliked the subjects, especially John Mortimer – for his “tiresome”, adulterous ways and his stance against any boundaries on free speech which was just “daft”.’
Edward told Valerie, ‘Supposing you put a notice up in the pub: “We’re going queer-bashing in the park. Midnight Sunday – all welcome. Sign below.” Is that allowed?’
One year, Edward left their annual lunch early for a TV appearance – ‘A terrible lapse of taste and judgement,’ he said – and duly spent ages hanging about. ‘For the next hour, I did absolutely nothing,’ Edward said of being made up and rehearsing, ‘which made me grind my teeth in a frenzy.’
In another terrible year, Valerie totally forgot their date, in the Divan Room at Simpson’s, and was walking the dog when she remembered. She rang Simpson’s, but Edward had gone. He had no mobile. Valerie faxed an abject three-page letter describing her humdrum day, terrified of falling into disfavour. Edward wrote her an equally detailed description of his day – and forgave her.
‘Now that we know that we are both frightened of each other in exactly equal degrees, our relationship is on a thoroughly sound footing,’ he wrote.
‘His handwriting was neat, like him,’ says Valerie. ‘I loved his company, his letters, his way with words, his vast knowledge and his cheerful common sense about everything.’
Nicky Haslam, interior designer, man about town and regular Oldie contributor, publishes The Impatient Pen – his collected journalism – on 5th April.
The book includes his Oldie articles on Cole Porter, Martin Luther King, Princess Margaret and not going to university. Because Nicky is such a funny, witty figure, it’s easy to forget what a good writer he is.
As AN Wilson writes in the book’s foreword, ‘Nicky loves puns, jokes, gossip, but he is not malicious. He reflects on grand and famous people but he is not a snob. He finds class much too funny to take it with the seriousness that snobbery demands.
‘There’s nothing judgemental in [him]. That is such a very rare quality. Nicky Haslam is out of step with our fiercely puritanical, peevish times.’
A N Wilson says that Nicky even saw the point of Nigel Dempster – a ‘remarkable man, elevating gossip to something like art’.
According to Wilson, ‘Dempster was a divided
self, a ruined angel, who half-hated the fashionable world he loved to describe.’
We’re all gripped by gossip but pretend not to be. As A N Wilson writes, Haslam and Dempster saw that ‘Gossip was simply another word for finding other people, and the extraordinary world in which we find ourselves, interesting.’
The book will appeal to anyone who loves juicy nuggets of gossip – ie, all of us, especially the Old Un.
Oscar Wilde was constantly quoted — and misquoted.
‘Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken’ is commonly attributed to Wilde, but he never wrote it or said it. Nor did he say, ‘Why was I born with such contemporaries?’ That was George Bernard Shaw.
The Oscar Wilde Society has combined with The Oldie to run a Wilde Wit Competition for our readers and their members, where entrants write their own Wilde witticism.
Entries will be judged by the Society’s committee. The winners will be those sayings that sound most like something Oscar would have said, with additional points given for originality – a Wildean paradox.
Three prizes will be given, including signed copies of Oscar: A Life, the new biography by Matthew Sturgis. The winners will have their quotes featured in Intentions, the newsletter of the Oscar Wilde Society, and in The Oldie. The winning quotations will also be displayed with a photo of Oscar on the Society’s website (though, to avoid confusion, we will have to reveal they are frauds). And, yes, Gyles Brandreth, Oldie columnist and expert Wildean, you’re allowed to enter.
Submit your entries at oscarwildesociety.co.uk/ wilde-wit by April 27, 2019. Enter as often as you like.
The Old Un was visiting Westminster Cathedral when he spotted this charming mosaic of St Wilfridus, aka St Wilfrid.
With his beard, intelligent, mournful eyes and Christian interests, he reminded the Old Un of our very own St Wilfrid, Wilfred De’ath (see page 45 for his latest church visit).
The original St Wilfrid was Bishop of Northumbria in the 7th century. A keen intellectual, he studied at Lindisfarne, Canterbury, Gaul and Rome, and was a leading figure at the Synod of Whitby in 664AD. He converted the pagans of Sussex to Christianity.
Unlike our Wilfred, St Wilfrid lived high on the hog with a large retinue. That apart, the parallels between the two are striking – although, the Old Un thinks, it’ll be some time before our Wilfred is canonised.
Visiting Venice has never been easy on the wallet but it is about to get more expensive.
Day-trippers to La Serenissima are to be charged a tourist tax of three euros a head, starting this summer, rising to six euros per person from the start of 2020.
When the city becomes really jam-packed and overcrowding becomes critical, the surcharge will rise to 10 euros.
The measures are an attempt to persuade people to spend more than just a few hours hoovering up the main sights before climbing back on their coaches.
Visitors who spend one night or more will not be subject to the charge because they are already hit with a hotel tax.
‘Keeping Venice clean costs us €30 million a year,’ said Luigi Brugnaro, the Mayor of Venice. ‘Right now, the expense falls on the shoulders of Venetians and Venetian businesses.’
The tourist tax is all part of efforts to manage the annual assault of around 20 million tourists – in a city where the permanent population has dwindled to just 55,000.
Mr Brugnaro gleefully recounted how the city is cracking down on
anti-social behaviour, citing the case of two tourists who were recently caught urinating beneath St Mark’s Basilica. ‘We fined them 3,000 euros each. It was the most expensive pee-pee in the world,’ he said.
Talking of Venice... 60s pop artist Joe Tilson is still going strong, aged 90.
From 10 April to 18 May, Tilson has a show at London’s Marlborough Gallery, devoted to his love of Venice. On 30 April, the Grande Albergo Ausonia & Hungaria on Venice’s Lido will unveil its Tilson-designed Murano glass panels. London-born Tilson has also been commissioned
for this year’s Biennale in Venice, beginning in May.
The Old Un wonders what drives this unassuming, endlessly inventive figure. His sculptress wife, Joss, said: ‘Well, you just have to keep on working, don’t you? It’s an inner urge.’
For all the miracles of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, it only tends post-1914 graves.
A new body, The Remembrance Trust, has stepped in to restore the pre-1914 graves and memorials of British and Commonwealth servicemen and women.
Military epitaphs were standardised in the First World War, not least thanks to Rudyard Kipling, whose son John was killed at the Battle of Loos in 1915. It was Kipling who came up with the epitaph ‘Known unto God’.
For all Kipling’s brilliance, the lack of epitaph standardisation before the First World War gave inscriptions a heartfelt individuality.
Among the tombstones to be protected by The Remembrance Trust is that of James Charles Pitt (pictured). The youngest son of William Pitt the Elder, the Prime Minister, he died at 19 while in command of HMS Hornet in 1780. He’s buried at St Paul’s, Falmouth, Antigua.
The moving epitaph reads,
‘The Genius that inspired And the Virtues that adorned the PARENT Were revived in the SON Whose dawning Merit Bespoke a meridian Splendor Worthy of the Name of PITT.’
Britain’s Sistine Chapel is open once more. The Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval College has been dazzlingly refurbished after an £8.5m conservation project.
Built by Christopher Wren in 1705 on the site of Henry VIII’S Greenwich Palace, the hall was a dining room for the Royal Hospital for Seamen.
Sir James Thornhill took 19 years, between 1707 and 1726, to paint this vast tribute to our naval power, mercantile riches and Protestant monarchs.
Prominent among the hundreds of painted figures are William and Mary, Queen Anne and George I.
At one moment, William III, cradling an olive branch, passes the cap of liberty to the kneeling figure of Europe – cue your favoured Brexit joke...
Meanwhile, William III is trampling all over a crouching figure representing tyranny and arbitrary power – aka Louis XIV of France.
What’s more, unlike the real Sistine Chapel, the Painted Hall was always half-empty when the Old Un visited before the restoration.
The Old Un was much cheered by reading the baggage allowance section on Qatar Airways:
‘We allow you to carry one falcon in the Economy Class cabin of an aircraft, and a maximum of six falcons are permitted within the Economy Class cabin of any one aircraft (country regulations may apply).’
Yes, but what are the rules on budget airlines: only one budgerigar permitted in economy?