The Old Un’s Notes
Before Lord Lucan murdered Sandra Rivett, his children’s nanny, in 1974, his ancestor – the 3rd Earl of Lucan – was much more famous.
In 1854, the 3rd Earl was jointly responsible for the disastrous charge of the Light Brigade during the Battle of Balaclava. Lucan, along with Lord Raglan and Captain Nolan, all serving under the Earl of Cardigan, produced the order that led to the fateful charge against the Russians – as recorded in the Tennyson poem:
Someone had blundered. Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die. Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.
Lord Lucan survived the charge, was later promoted to field marshal, and died in 1888, aged 88. His descendant Lord Lucan, as in the 1974 murder, still hung on to his ancestor’s papers, even as he lost more and more at Mayfair’s gaming tables.
In the 1990s, Oldie reader Luke Honey, then a specialist at Phillips auctioneers in New Bond Street, spent several days with Veronica Lucan, Lord Lucan’s putative widow.
‘We sifted through stacked family portraits, books, tatty cardboard boxes and ephemera in the disused garage of her genteel yet shabby mews house, tucked away behind the original family house in Lower Belgrave Street, Belgravia,’ says Honey. ‘Underneath a pile of foxed antiquarian books, we discovered a battered despatch tin. Inside was an original letter from the 7th Earl of Cardigan, protesting his reluctance to lead the charge of the Light Brigade. Like others under his command, he obeyed orders. An awful man in many ways but, my God, a brave one.’
Lady Lucan survived her husband’s brutal attack on her in 1974 but killed herself in 2017, aged 80.
‘Lady Lucan reminded me of a frail, chirpy little bird,’ says Honey. ‘Bright as a button, damaged, although – how can I put it tactfully – not exactly the easiest client to deal with. She lived cardiganclad, in semi-seclusion, surrounded by flickering moths and yellowed photographs of her husband in silver frames.
‘Lucan’s golf clubs were still leaning in the corner, presumably where he had left them. I liked her.’
While reading Laurence Marks’s engaging piece about prostate problems and the police in the March issue of The Oldie, a friend of the Old Un was reminded of a similar incident involving the late George Melly.
Returning home to Notting Hill one night, Melly was taken short. After relieving himself, he turned to find a large policeman, who began to caution him. Melly explained that, like many older men, he was at the mercy of his prostate.
‘Very well, sir,’ said the copper. ‘But next time this happens, I suggest you don’t do it up against the wall of a police station.’
The packed house and long queues at the National Portrait Gallery for historian Robert Hewison’s talk on John Ruskin: The Argument of the Eye proved to be ‘our most popular lecture since the one on the Mitford sisters’, said Fiona Smith, who organises these events.
Hewison, Ruskin’s biographer, had suggested she introduce him as ‘the Ruskin bore’ but she preferred ‘pre-eminent authority’.
‘There will be questions after,’ added Fiona, ‘but we’d all prefer it if they had nothing to do with pubic hair.’
Hewison has scotched, in many of his books, the ‘frankly irritating’ story of Ruskin’s shocked dismay on his wedding night. Next day, at the Royal Academy, Hewison was assisted by his old Oxford contemporary Michael Palin as reader. It was 50 years since
he had last directed Palin, in a revue. The date, said Hewison in his talk, was significant: it was the very eve of the great man’s 200th birthday, on 8th February 2019. So he suggested that the audience sing, ‘Happy birthday, John Ruskin, happy birthday to you’ – probably a National Portrait Gallery first.
There is still time to go to the Ruskin show at 2 Temple Place – the late-victorian gem on the Embankment, built by William Waldorf Astor, which appears in Downton Abbey and Mr Selfridge.
The show, The Power of Seeing (until 22nd April), is captivating. It starts by telling us that, in 1906, the 29 Labour MPS elected for the first time were asked which book had influenced them most profoundly. Ruskin’s Unto This Last was the clear winner. What book would be most popular among current Labour MPS?
The Old Un was delighted to visit matinée idol John Fraser recently. Fraser, 88 in March, is best known for playing Flight Lieutenant John Hopgood DFC in The Dam Busters (1955).
‘I didn’t think anyone would be interested in a film about making a bomb,’ he says. ‘I was wrong.’
He played alongside the marvellous – but vertically challenged – Richard Todd.
‘I told one make-up girl I was wearing elevators in my shoes,’ he says. ‘I was embarrassed by my height. She said, “Don’t worry, Richard’s elevators are so high his shoes are peeping out of his flies.” ’
The Old Un has stumbled upon a ghost brewery in the middle of Wandsworth. When Young’s closed the Ram Brewery in 2006, there had been brewing on the site for 473 years, and the new owners agreed to include a microbrewery in a new development. But redevelopment takes time – and it looked as if the record for continuous brewing on one site might be lost.
But John Hatch, the last master brewer, refused to leave. He now brews a couple of barrels of beer a month in the middle of the brewery building site. He’s not allowed to sell the beer, for licensing reasons, but he can hold comedy nights in the old dray stables – where the horses that delivered ale to local pubs were kept – and give the audience free beer. Quite by accident, he has created by far the best comedy night in London: what comic Adam Bloom called ‘the perfect audience in the perfect venue’.
This issue of The Oldie is a Northern Ireland special, with articles on Belfast by Jenny Mccartney (page 89) and Londonderry by William Cook ( Go Away supplement, page 20).
At a time when Ulster is high on the news agenda, thanks to Brexit, artist Lindy Guinness is revealing another side of Northern Ireland at a new London exhibition.
Inspired by Constable’s studies of Hampstead Heath, she’s been painting her Clandeboye estate (pictured below), a green haven between Belfast and Bangor.
‘I’ve spent days gazing in wonderment,’ she says, ‘watching the trees, the shadows, reflections and refractions. They’ve all been filling me with more wonder and the understanding of what Constable and Wordsworth were trying to express. They so longed for us
to share in these free gifts of nature – which is what I am trying to do with my paintings.’
The exhibition is at Browse & Darby gallery in Cork Street (28th March-26th April).
More notes on a Northern Irish theme! The Ulster-born sculptress Anne Acheson (1882-1962) is
hitting the headlines. Not only has there been a BBC Ulster documentary about her, and a blue plaque unveiled on her local church, but there is also a new show of her work coming up in Portadown. What’s more, she was a great-aunt of The Oldie’s agony aunt, Virginia Ironside.
Awarded the CBE for inventing the first plaster cast for broken limbs of soldiers during the First World War, Acheson was the first woman to be elected to the Royal Society of British Sculptors. Trained at the Royal College of Art, she was known for twee – but highly commercial – garden figures and ornaments. They showed coy cherubs, little boys with rabbits, and girls with lanterns, with titles such as ‘The Pixie’ and ‘Leprechaun’. She was also a fine sculptress, being commissioned to make the bust of Gertrude Bell that sits in the Royal Geographical Society today.
The exhibition Anne Acheson: A Sculptor in War and Peace is at the Millennium Court Arts Centre, Portadown, from 5th April to 18th May.
Not many 20th-century concrete sheds are Grade Ii-listed buildings – but one of the latest additions to the list is the tidal observatory in Newlyn.
This undistinguished blockhouse contained a tidal gauge which has recorded the sea level for the Ordnance Survey since 1915. The average sea level in Newlyn between 1915 and 1921 is the ‘Ordnance Datum’ – which means that, on any Ordnance Survey map since 1921, ‘height above sea level’ means height above mean sea level in Newlyn. The listing is the first stage in an attempt to get more recognition for Newlyn in time for the anniversary in 2021.
There is disappointment locally that there are none of the brass lines, laser beams or school outings you get at Greenwich – but there is a growing campaign to publicise the tidal observatory and put Newlyn on the map.
Tony’s Last Tape, Andy Barrett’s play based on the diaries of the late Tony Benn, is coming to Clapham’s Omnibus Theatre, from 2nd to 20th April. Since Benn’s death, in 2014, aged 88, Barrett has experienced the strange feeling of seeing his own words being wrongly attributed to Benn.
In 2016, Barrett was at a Labour leadership rally.
‘Jeremy Corbyn’s warm-up act began to extoll the “words of the late, great, Tony Benn”,’ Barrett remembers. The warm-up act went on to quote Benn: ‘There is no final defeat or final victory – just the same old battles fought again and again. So toughen up – bloody toughen up!’
The crowd started cheering. Barrett turned to his wife and said, ‘I think I wrote that.’
Indeed he had. Benn had been responsible for the first sentence. But Barrett had added, ‘So toughen up – bloody toughen up!’
The words were tweeted by someone who had seen the play the night after the 2015 general election. Then they were erroneously added to a selection of ‘Most Inspiring Tony Benn Quotes’ web pages, sometimes with Barrett’s addition in capitals. When Trump was elected, Global Justice Now used it as one of its ‘nine quotes of hope in the face of US election despair’.
‘And it’s spreading like wildfire,’ says Barrett. ‘It’s on mugs; it’s on T-shirts. Sorry, Tony.’