Culture
The Oldie Magazine
What a Dame!
The late Vera Lynn – Oldie of the Year in 2018 and a great friend to the magazine – wrote her last piece for us in May, aged 103
4 min |
August 2020
The Oldie Magazine
Profitable Wonders: Batting for bats
Besides elegantly wielding his bat at the crease, former England Captain David Gower is a long-standing admirer of the other, flying version.
3 min |
August 2020
The Oldie Magazine
Christopher Robin did adore his bear
He told me he loved Winnie-the-Pooh – and his father, AA Milne
4 min |
August 2020
The Oldie Magazine
The strongest link
Lockdown reunited Anne Robinson and daughter Emma Wilson in her Cotswolds barn. It brought joy, chaos – and ‘home screaming’
6 min |
August 2020
The Oldie Magazine
London's finest egg-loos
Behind its Georgian, stucco façade, a Mayfair restaurant heralds a new dawn in British lavatorial design
4 min |
August 2020
The Oldie Magazine
The Mayflower's Essex boy
Four hundred years after the fabled ship sailed to America, William Cook salutes its captain
6 min |
August 2020
The Oldie Magazine
Raise a glass to the greatest TV chef ever
As Bill Knott reopens his restaurant, he remembers being slapped by Keith Floyd – a great pal, a disastrous restaurateur and a telly genius
6 min |
August 2020
The Oldie Magazine
Getting Dressed: Puttin' on the glitz, Dynasty style
Pamela Bellwood dazzled viewers in Claudia Carrington’s jewels
4 min |
August 2020
The Oldie Magazine
An odyssey round my treasured islands
As Greece opens to tourists, Taki Theodoracopulos sails home across the Ionian Sea
5 min |
August 2020
The Oldie Magazine
What's the point of the cactus?
‘It seemeth a strange herb,’ wrote the Spanish physician Nicolás Monardes in his Joyful News out of the New World (1568) of his first encounter with a cactus. ’One of its thorns pricked me. They are as sharp as needles and did hurt.’
3 min |
July 2020
The Oldie Magazine
Travel On top of the world
As a boy, Melvyn Bragg biked up and down the fells. At 30, he bought a cottage there. Now 80, he is still bewitched by the Lake District
6 min |
July 2020
The Oldie Magazine
Reaching for the stars – in their dressing rooms
For 20 years at the BBC, Jenny Bardwell sprinkled stardust over dull broadcasts. Now she’s found the old tapes – with their rich, lost voices
5 min |
July 2020
The Oldie Magazine
Hunter on the Heath
For 60 years, Hunter Davies, 84, has walked – and swum – on wild Hampstead Heath
5 min |
July 2020
The Oldie Magazine
Home, sweet Gothic home
Ever since moving into the Old Rectory at Hedgerley 40 years ago, I’ve kissed its walls every day
5 min |
July 2020
The Oldie Magazine
Their finest hour – in their finest planes
Eighty years ago, the Battle of Britain changed the course of history, thanks to the Hurricane and the Spitfire, says Leo McKinstry
7 min |
The Oldie magazine - July issue (389)
The Oldie Magazine
The oldie easy riders
Country roads are crammed with OAP bikers, says Peter McKay, a ton-up boy for 60 years
4 min |
The Oldie magazine - July issue (389)
The Oldie Magazine
Radio's King of Comedy
Martin Jarvis has now recorded 195 Just William stories and PG Wodehouse’s funniest books, he tells Valerie Grove
4 min |
The Oldie magazine - July issue (389)
The Oldie Magazine
Peter Sellers, the mad magician
On the 40th anniversary of the actor’s death, his biographer Roger Lewis admires a sinister genius, who was quite off his head
6 min |
The Oldie magazine - July issue (389)
The Oldie Magazine
Naked truth of modelling
Deni Bown became a life model as a broke single mother – and ended up loving it
5 min |
The Oldie magazine - July issue (389)
The Oldie Magazine
The best of times...
The great novelist died 150 years ago, on 9th June 1870, aged 58. Four writers tell Simon Hemelryk their favourite Dickens moment
6 min |
June 2020
The Oldie Magazine
Las Vegas, Yorkshire
In the late Sixties, a miners’ club near Leeds hosted stars from Louis Armstrong to Eartha Kitt, discovers Reverend Steve Morris
5 min |
June 2020
The Oldie Magazine
The awkward art of acting English
Diffidence, restraint, over-politeness... Robert Bathurst, the modern master of playing Englishmen, salutes the craft of his heroes
5 min |
June 2020
The Oldie Magazine
She's a Lady!
I first became a Lady in 1961.
2 min |
June 2020
The Oldie Magazine
My Canterbury tale
850 years after Thomas à Becket’s murder, Ferdie Rous revisits his Kent school, the oldest in the world, and exorcises his bullies’ ghosts
5 min |
June 2020
The Oldie Magazine
Treasured island
Tamsin Calidas left London for a Hebridean crofter’s life. She found heartache, rejection by locals – and redemption through swimming
5 min |
June 2020
The Oldie Magazine
More eccentricity, vicar?- LUCINDA LAMBTON
The Rev Stephen Hawker designed his own Cornish vicarage, was friends with Tennyson – and liked dressing up as a mermaid
6 min |
June 2020
The Oldie Magazine
Hammer glamour girl recalls the horror!
When ailing Hammer Films needed a boost 50 years ago, budding actress Madeline Smith discovered nudity was a must
5 min |
June 2020
The Oldie Magazine
Farewell to the garden of a lifetime
Christian Lamb helped plan D-Day. Now, as she turns 100, she leaves a beloved garden
5 min |
June 2020
The Oldie Magazine
Eyes and the needle
After cancer surgery, Lucy Deedes thought she was tough as old boots – and then she faced the agony of a cataract op
4 min |
June 2020
The Oldie Magazine
The birds that weave magical nests
We had already spent an entrancing hour birding on Tanzania’s Lake Manze – imperious, white-chested fish eagles soaring overhead; glossy, blue, wire tailed swallows flitting over the water; stately yellow-billed storks patrolling the shore.
3 min |