The Oldie

Bruce Beresford (p18) directed Oscarwinning Driving Miss Daisy (1989). A friend of Barry Humphries for 60 years, he directed him in The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972). Nicholas Garland (p19) and Barry Humphries (right) illustrated and wrote Private Eye’s Barry McKenzie cartoon strip. Oliver Pritchett (P23) wrote for the Sunday Telegraph for 40 years. His son Matt (also P23) is the renowned Telegraph cartoonist. Kenneth Cranham (p23) starred in Oliver!, Shine on Harvey Moon and Hatton Garden. A friend of Joe Orton, he was in Entertaining Mr Sloane and Loot. He will be in Angel with Rafe Spall.…

✽ In 1941, John Betjeman became British press attaché in Dublin. To begin with, he disliked his time there, but increasingly he loved his three years in the country and took to signing off his letters, ‘le meas mór, do chara dhílis, Seán Ó Betjemán’. And now a new book, Betjeman in Ireland, by Dominic Moseley, covers his visits to the country, from his first in 1925, as an Oxford undergraduate. Over 50 years later, he made a charming BBC programme, John Betjeman’s Dublin. Betjeman wrote many poems in Ireland - and amusing letters, too. In 1943, he wrote to Myfanwy Piper, wife of artist John Piper: ‘Still do you run barelegg’d across the yard? Still would you pillow with athletic curves My bald, grey head upon your breasts? Your stalwart body still excites me much The thought…

Soldiers spotted during huge military exercise in Wiltshire Wiltshire Times Drug dealer branded ‘a risk to pigeons’ The Leader Mystery after missing guinea pig is returned Aberdeen Press and Journal £15 for published contributions NEXT ISSUE The July issue is on sale on 28th June 2023. GET THE OLDIE APP Go to App Store or Google Play Store. Search for Oldie Magazine and then pay for app. OLDIE BOOKS The Very Best of The Oldie Cartoons, The Oldie Annual 2023 and other Oldie books are available at: www.theoldie.co.uk/readers-corner/shop Free p&p. OLDIE NEWSLETTER Go to the Oldie website; put your email address in the red SIGN UP box. HOLIDAY WITH THE OLDIE Go to www.theoldie.co.uk/courses-tours…

Our new king is a Shakespeare buff, so quite familiar with the famous line spoken by Francisco on the ramparts at Elsinore at the beginning of Hamlet: ‘For this relief, much thanks.’ This line was repeated by quite a few of us oldies lucky enough to be invited to the Coronation as we arrived at Westminster Abbey and found the ancient building almost surrounded by portaloos. There had been a rumour that ‘facilities’ would be in short supply at the royal peculiar. People were upping the pre-crowning bladder panic by repeating apocryphal tales of ‘accidents’ that had occurred at the last Coronation in 1953. The Daily Mail called me to ask if I would contribute a feature they were hoping to headline ‘The Royal Wee’. I declined, and how wise I was. Every…

In contemplating the toilet-plunger ordered this week in response to a blockage, as so cordially invited to do by Amazon, the mind flashes back to the quagmire football pitches of lateVictorian England. On reflection, I’m not convinced that the above makes any sense. It could well be that I’ve been at the magic mushrooms, and am in the midst of a mildly hallucinogenic reverie. If it isn’t the ’shrooms, the point may perhaps concern the touching tale of the Corinthian Casuals football team and the penalty kick. The Casuals, the story goes, were so outraged by the unfairness of shooting unchallenged from 12 yards out that in protest they deliberately missed all penalties. I mention this vignette from the glory days of British amateurism only because those days, hugely against the odds in a…

WHAT WAS a thank-you letter? The earliest surviving letter from Winston Churchill was a handwritten note to his mother. In 1882, aged seven, he wrote to thank her for his gifts of ‘soldiers, flag and castle’. The painstaking italic penmanship of the very young Churchill later gave way to the easy, flowing script of a man who dashed off handwritten thank-you letters most days of the week, as can be seen among the million items in the Churchill Papers. Handwritten thank-you letters have made their mark in every civilisation. Persian Queen Atossa wrote the earliest surviving one in about 500 BC. Before a national postage system and the launch of the Penny Black first stamp in 1840, the cost of receiving any letter had to be borne by the recipient, rather dimming the thoughtfulness of…