Culture
The Oldie Magazine
An Old Man And The Sea
Peter Ireland was persuaded by some friends to join a flotilla sailing holiday in Greece. It was wonderful – in parts.
5 min |
September 2016
The Oldie Magazine
Speer's Confessions At His Last Supper
Mayfair, August 1981, and Hitler’s industry and architecture chief is revealing why the Allies won the war. Next day, he is dead.His host, historian Norman Stone, looks back.
6 min |
June 2017
The Oldie Magazine
Cravats And Bedroom Telly
Mark Palmer used to keep his getting-old habits firmly in the closet. Now he positively enjoys putting them on show.
3 min |
June 2017
The Oldie Magazine
Beaten By The Bastards
Ferdinand Mount on an underrated prime minister, and how the Eurosceptics finished him off.
6 min |
September 2016
The Oldie Magazine
Why France Is So Vulnerable
The French government has reacted to the Nice attack by flooding the streets with armed men. This will have very little effect, says former Paris correspondent Patrick Marnham.
5 min |
September 2016
The Oldie Magazine
Living The Danish Dream
Living the Danish dream Beaches, bikes, smoked fish and wood-burning stoves: Nick Curtis and his wife spend a week in Scandi-heaven.
5 min |
September 2016
The Oldie Magazine
The Curse Of The Elysée Palace
As France risks getting a British woman as its First Lady, Patrick Marnham warns Penelope Fillon to watch out.
7 min |
February 2017
The Oldie Magazine
Still With Us Tom Lehrer
Michael Barber celebrates the great iconoclast, now 88 and long retired from singing and songwriting.
4 min |
February 2017
The Oldie Magazine
Farewell, Alexander
The editor of The Oldie, Alexander Chancellor, died on 28th January. Craig Brown pays tribute to his great friend, the natural journalist who retained a child’s sense of mischief.
7 min |
April 2017
The Oldie Magazine
A World Of Colour And Concentrated Joy
This is a bumper year for the 87-year-old abstractionist Gillian Ayres, with several shows and a book. It is not before time, says Andrew Lambirth.
4 min |
April 2017
The Oldie Magazine
A Country On The Cusp
Myanmar is at a turning point as outside money flows in and tour companies scout out the territory. Tanya Harrod gets in first.
6 min |
April 2017
The Oldie Magazine
A Posh Girl's Summer Of Love
It was 1967, when hippie dreams of peace and love migrated from San Francisco across the Atlantic. Ingrid Jo Boissevain was a sixteen-yearold grammar school girl, an architect’s daughter, living in Tadworth,Surrey. Fifty years on, here is her diary of those sunny months.
4 min |
The Oldie magazine - July issue (439)
The Oldie Magazine
A Touch Of Class In The Garden
Down a west London lane, Jeremy Musson visits the tiny forge that made garden ornaments for Vita Sackville-West and Gertrude Jekyll.
5 min |
The Oldie magazine - July issue (439)
The Oldie Magazine
The War Hero Who Became Britain's Greatest Historian
Sir Michael Howard, venerable academic and adviser to primeministers, is 94. James Hanning met him in his bucolic Berkshire home.
6 min |
The Oldie magazine - July issue (439)
The Oldie Magazine
My Old Master
James Innes-Mulraine achieved his lifetime’s aim of discovering a lost Gainsborough – with not a little help from his Dad.
6 min |
The Oldie magazine - July issue (439)
The Oldie Magazine
Going solo
Sometimes there is no option but to holiday alone. You may even have your best experiences that way, as Kirsty Fergusson discovered.
6 min |
The Oldie magazine - July issue (439)
The Oldie Magazine
Mad About The Dog
Nigel, the golden retriever, is the star of Gardeners’ World, while Frances Wilson is in thrall to her poodle, Daphne. Meanwhile, there’s a new slew of canine biographies, in line with a grand British tradition.
5 min |
The Oldie magazine - JANUARY issue (343)
The Oldie Magazine
Horror And Heroism At Shoeburyness
In 1885 Tony Gould’s great-grandfather was one of seven men killed in an accident at the School of Gunnery on the Essex coast. Here he recounts the moving details of the tragedy.
8 min |
The Oldie magazine - JANUARY issue (343)
The Oldie Magazine
Quintessentially English
Paul Nash wooed modernism and leant towards surrealism but he was first and foremost a great landscape artist, says Andrew Lambirth.
5 min |
The Oldie magazine - JANUARY issue (343)
The Oldie Magazine
The Mystery Cat Of Shugborough Hall
‘For picturesque grounds and garden furnishings few houses can compete with Shugborough’; no mean praise from Sir Nikolaus Pevsner himself in his The Buildings of England series, covering Staffordshire.
3 min |
June 2017
The Oldie Magazine
In His Own Words
An extract from Lewis’s Grub Street Irregular.
4 min |
June 2017
The Oldie Magazine
My Grandfather Wrote The Princess's Speech
Seventy years ago, the Queen made her most famous broadcast to mark her 21st birthday. Charles Utley reveals how it came to be written.
4 min |
June 2017
The Oldie Magazine
Britain's Alarm Clock
The Today programme is a British institution. It has a new editor, and in October turns sixty. Harry Mount got up early to pay a visit.
6 min |
June 2017
The Oldie Magazine
My Vicarage Lessons With A Four-year-old Theresa May
In 1961, Detlev J. Piltz, a German teenager, was thrilled to stay with a vicar’s family in the Cotswolds. He learnt about English tea rituals,cricket and class with their little daughter.
6 min |
September 2017
The Oldie Magazine
I've Got You Under My Skin
Nicky Haslam befriended Cole Porter in Sixties New York. Today he performs his songs, in tribute to a childhood idol.
5 min |
September 2017
The Oldie Magazine
Pilgrim's Progress
Six centuries after Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, pilgrimages are booming. John Walsh joins Christians, pagans, atheists and Buddhists as they make their way along Kent’s holy road.
6 min |
September 2017
The Oldie Magazine
King Of Britain
It is four decades since Elvis Presley, the quintessential American, died.Yet his roots lie in the British Isles, reveals Andrew M Brown.
4 min |
August 2017
The Oldie Magazine
She's Dead,' We Mouthed. ‘she's... Dead
Reporting the death of Diana, 20 years ago, belongs to another age – one of faxes, francs and analogue phones. That night, amid conflicting accounts, the BBC’s John Curran had to think fast.
6 min |
August 2017
The Oldie Magazine
How To Look Absolutely Fab At 71
Eat vegetables, climb stairs, try not to look fussy, and never wear shorts in the city, Joanna Lumley tells Brigid Keenan.
4 min |
August 2017
The Oldie Magazine
A Pair Of Unsung Waterloo Heroes
Lucinda Lambton on the magnificent horse admired by Napoleon, and its brave rider.
3 min |