Alec Marsh

Alec Marsh is editor-at-large at Spear's magazine and is the author of Rule Britannia and Enemy of the Raj.

Tuesday

9 Aug 2022

Off the books: there’s more to Hay-on-Wye than the literary festival

Chances are you will have heard of Hay-on-Wye. You might even have been. It’s the town on the Anglo-Welsh border where more than 30 years ago a man called Peter Florence began what has become the world’s most famous literary festival. Now some 200,000 people descend on the place each May and June, and for 11 days it feels like the centre of the literary universe, with hordes carrying tote bags traipsing hither and thither and pubs and restaurants overflowing like Venice in high summer. If that’s what floats your boat, then get stuck in. But for my money, Hay is worthy of a visit in its own right – and preferably when all those other visitors (not to mention ex-presidents and Booker prize-winners) aren’t there.

Monday

4 Jul 2022

The Brompton bike has overcome its biggest drawback

Brompton is one of those brands that has Britishness baked into it; it's the reason why the bike has become a status symbol amongst China's metropolitan elites and why 75 per cent of Bromptons are exported. But it was always hard to tell whether riders loved the idea of the bike more than its reality. On paper, a folding bike is a no-brainer for city commuters short on space, but packing in so many mechanisms while keeping the bike light has proved more than a little challenging.If you’ve ridden a standard Brompton then – say it quietly – you’ll know that despite their massive success they do have a tiny bit of a weight problem: not that it’s polite to talk about these things any more. At 10 to 13 kilos (depending on the model and fittings) the steel version can be a bit of drag when it comes to lugging it about certain stations or when you’ve got lots of stairs to negotiate.

Monday

13 Jun 2022

Why the English love lazy sports

Once upon a time, when the fingerprints on the Wimbledon trophy were more or less exclusively British, you could win in SW19 whilst wearing trousers. Even a tie if you go back far enough. But then, back in those days, tennis was a no-sweat sport. Well, perhaps a drop or two, but essentially there was much less of it around than today, when sweatbands, perspiration and frequent towelling off are part of a fetishised display of effort and strain – one that’s often accompanied by verbal ejaculations of sometimes rather alarming severity. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s been forced to mute Wimbledon at times because of the repetitive baseline grunting. But it wasn’t always this way. Long before the relentless moaning, women once played tennis bowling underarm while dressed like Downton Abbey dowagers, while the men, like thrice-1930s winner Fred Perry, even wore sweaters.

Tuesday

17 May 2022

I’m a tip addict – are you?

You’ll know the feeling: it’s that moment when a large, bulky item – perhaps a plastic children’s sit-on tricycle or a degenerating Ikea bedroom unit – leaves your fingers after months, years of being tolerated. Despite the stink, there's no denying the unsurpassed elation that a trip to the tip can induce — a rare sublimity that some people pay thousands to achieve through exotic spa treatments in the Alps, or by snorkelling in crystalline waters with banjo-playing Buddhist monks in Borneo. As the detested tricycle or Ikea unit crashes down behind you, you are transported. You stride back to your car, a taller, happier homo sapiens, one that commands all the suburbia he surveys. You slap your hands together – you remember the A-Team, don’t you – and reach from the boot of your car for the next sacrificial offering to the great mortuary temple of consumerism.

Tuesday

22 Mar 2022

Why the British don’t do superheroes

I don’t know about you but I’m a rather a fan of Batman or The Batman, if you prefer to give him the definite article as the new film does. It’s also rather heartening to see so many fine British actors earning a pretty penny portraying him – Robert Pattinson dons the cowl in the new film, hot on the heels of Christian Bale. And it’s not just Gotham’s bone crushing vigilante that our acting schools are clearly adept at preparing actors for: Brits Tom Holland Andrew Garfield have both slung webs as Spider-man and of course Henry Cavill has done the blue leotard proud playing Superman four times. As well as the actors, our directors like Christopher Nolan have elevated the Batman story a new level and indeed our writers (namely Alan Grant) have also had a hand in this process: so why is it that Britain has never developed a homegrown Batman-style fictional vigilante of its own, or indeed any serious cultural contender to the steroidal mass musculature offered by the DC or Marvel worlds? If you look back at the heyday of British comics and their survivors then we have the likes of Roy of the Rover – a footballer – or Dan Dare, an urbane pipe-smoking space pilot whose only dark side is on a distant moon.

Friday

4 Mar 2022

What the flight of Russian money means for the London property market

Ever since the early 2000s, London’s luxury property market has been the preserve of foreign investors, many of whom are purported to be Russian. In Chelsea, Highgate and Hampstead, streets of empty mansions quickly became an inevitable part of city life, while the Russian investment phenomenon was dubbed ‘Londongrad’. Thanks to the use of myriad offshore companies and ownership structures, and the practice of buying properties in the names of third parties – so called nominee accounts, it is all but impossible to identify the owners of these houses. Short of posting a private detective outside of each one for weeks on end and hoping the real owner shows up, the exact number of Oligarch-owned homes remains a mystery.

Tuesday

22 Feb 2022

There’s more to Essex than TOWIE

That Essex County Council is spending £300,000 on an advertising campaign to rehabilitate its reputation can’t come as a surprise. The only surprise is that it didn’t think to do it before – or that somehow they believe £300,000 is enough to turn the tide. As far as I can tell, £300,000 won’t touch the sides. And in a strange way, I'm glad. Because Essex, as Britain's most underrated county, is something of an undiscovered haven for ex Londoners like me. Don’t believe me? Let’s do a test: if I say the word ‘Essex’ to you, what images come to mind? The cast of Birds of a Feather, perhaps? The boy band Bros, a Mark III Ford Escort and perhaps Sir Alan Sugar? If you’re under 35 then Essex may summon thoughts of the television programme TOWIE, populated by orange-fleshed folk blessed with strange teeth.

Friday

28 Jan 2022

Roy Hodgson and the death of retirement

The news that former England manager Roy Hodgson is the new manager of Watford Football Club at the grand old age of 74 has generated quite a lot of excitement. Much of it, of course, is focused on his age – 74 is undoubtedly old for a Premiership Football manager, particularly when you consider he’ll be three times the age of his players. Don’t forget that when Sir Alex Ferguson retired as manager of Manchester United in 2013 he was 71, which is positively Jurassic in the land of football. Hodgson’s even older. But we shouldn’t be surprised or indeed sceptical about this, because come 2050, chances are we’ll all be doing a Roy Hodgson. Not managing Watford, but working.This is more out necessity than choice; we’ll probably need to work – just to keep the lights on.

Monday

10 Jan 2022

There’s no virtue in Veganuary

Despite appearances, the word ‘Veganuary’ is not a part of the female anatomy – nor is it a venereal disease. It’s probably as irritating as the latter, however, and I dare say just as resistant to even the most powerful antibiotics. In case you are unfamiliar with this unsavoury neologism, its refers to an annual initiative, first launched in 2014, to get people to forgo meat, poultry, fish and dairy products for the first 31 days of the year. That’s right, it’s like an especially joyless form Dry January dreamt up for masochists – those seeking the black-belt in self-denial, and a sure-fire way to usher in the January blues. Despite this, it’s been more successful than you’d suppose. So far Veganuary’s organisers claim millions of people have given it a go over the years, with some 500,000 alone signing up for the 2021 ‘one month vegan pledge’.

Monday

20 Dec 2021

The death of ‘Father Christmas’

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the F-word is vanishing. It’s been insidious, but where once perhaps 20 or 30 years ago it was ubiquitous at this time of year, now – well – you can hardly find it. In fact, look carefully, and you’ll see that Father Christmas is disappearing quicker than an ice cap. That’s because Father Christmas is being supplanted by a stronger, altogether better-resourced foreign invader: Santa Claus. Browse the shelves of Tesco, Morrisons, Asda and yes, my friends, even Waitrose, and you’ll find dozens of ‘Santa’ themed products – but hardly anything associated with Father Christmas. He is being airbrushed out of Christmas, one paper napkin or foiled chocolate facsimile at a time. And just like another great American cultural export, the Terminator, Santa feels no pity and takes no prisoners.

Monday

13 Dec 2021

Why the Aga classes have fallen for the Thermomix

Say it quietly, but a new must-have accessory is stalking the bank accounts of Britain’s middle classes. Like several of the other essential baubles of bourgeois life (BMWs, Audis etc) it hails from Germany, and just like these brands it’s pitiless in its quest for your dosh. But it’s also very, very good. Step forward the Thermomix. At first glance it could be the world’s most expensive blender, but as the name implies it also cooks. Yes, it chops, whisks, sous-vides, steams, boils, it acts as weighing scales, it makes sauces and batters, virtually anything you could wish for – it even self-cleans. Better still it actually tells you what to do and when to add the ingredients for your recipe. It’s like having Keith Floyd in the room without the banter or the dent in the cellar.

Monday

29 Nov 2021

Offices are back – but not as you know them

Like a lot of things it began with the cleaners. You may be old enough to remember when there were actual cleaners in offices before they all vanished about 20 years ago. In fact they didn’t disappear, they just got outsourced. That usually meant that nothing much got cleaned especially anymore, but bins were changed at night by unseen hands – the invisible Morlocks in fluorescent bibs, wearing the last person’s name-badge. Now there are plans for us to outsource our offices altogether. In this case it might make sense: after all, if it’s not your core business, why bother? You’re better off leaving it to the experts. Of course, the arrival of contracted out offices was well underway before the pandemic (Wework, notwithstanding its mishaps, operates in more than 100 countries, evidence of putative demand and business ambition, if not of profit).

Monday

11 Oct 2021

Do we really need to send actors to space?

The news that Russia has beaten Tom Cruise and NASA in the latest bout of the space race – by sending actress Yulia Peresild and director Klim Shipenko to the International Space Station to film a movie – almost certainly heralds a pointless new low in cinema. Just like the difference between erotica and pornography, we all know that you don’t need to go in to space to shoot a film about it. In fact, it’s almost certainly better if you don’t. I’m all in favour of method acting – whether it’s Timothy Spall sporting a paintbrush for his role in Mr Turner or Adrien Brody getting to grips with Chopin for The Pianist – but propelling actors into space defies the principal purpose of the space movie. There’s artistry to be found in the gap between our idea of space and its reality.

Tuesday

28 Sep 2021

Britain should harness the soft power of James Bond

Have you ever wondered what Vladimir Putin thinks when he watches a Bond movie? When the credits roll at the end, does he glance at his mobile phone and wonder if anyone else is listening? Does he stroke his cat and gaze meditatively at the wall-to-ceiling fish tank in his dacha and feel some unease? James Bond is made up – and everyone knows it. But just like The Crown, 007 has a habit of shaping global perceptions for better or worse. Why else did China censor the Skyfall's Shanghai scenes and cut out references to torture by the Chinese authorities, however fantastical the plot may have been? So you can bet your bottom dollar that after the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un sees the new James Bond film, No Time to Die, this week (assuming he hasn’t seen it already), that he’ll be upgrading the CCTV or doubling the guard outside his bedroom.

Friday

10 Sep 2021

Revenge and retribution: why we’re still watching Westerns

What is it about Westerns? They are the Chinese takeaway of film – they’re no one’s first choice, they haven’t been fashionable in living memory, and yet you never have to look too hard to find one. One might also compare Westerns to cockroaches or sharks; pre-Jurassic survivors who have seen off much mightier beasts time and again scuttling from the dark shadows after the latest apocalypse. So here’s a prediction: Hollywood’s finest will be dusting off their chaps and six-shooters in years to come, long after the present glut of comic-book led mega franchises have hung up their CGI leotards for good. But already a glance at the film schedules might indicate that Westerns are experiencing a bit of a bounce: Paul Greengrass’s adaption of Paulette Jiles’ novel, News of the World starring Tom Hanks was a streaming sensation of the lockdown and garnered eight Oscars and Baftas.

Friday

27 Aug 2021

Scotland is sailing’s best kept secret

Among the glorious shores of these islands, there is one of the best-kept secrets of sailing. It’s a ragged and rocky coastline that is blessed with the sort of idyllic, empty sandy beaches stretching on for miles that would make Tom Hanks's castaway shake from method acting-induced PTSD. Here the blue waters are scattered with islands rising from the depths with the kind of muscular topography that would have your average geography teacher reaching for their colouring-in pencils. This, my friends, is the west coast of Scotland. Forget the Caribbean, wonderful though the punch, the people and the terribly reliable temperature all are. The untouched beaches of the Western Isles are every bit as beautiful, just permanently 15 degrees Celsius colder.

Friday

30 Jul 2021

Buy a boat, not a holiday home

One of the most striking features of the second Covid summer has been the soaring prices of holiday cottages. How dare the owners of static homes in the vicinity of the coast be charging quite so much for the uneven pleasures of a week in a caravan park? Well, get used to it because as Britain’s population continues to soar – we’re on track to hit 75 million in the next two decades –pressure on property and prices is only going to increase. As Mark Twain remarked: ‘Buy land, they’re not making it anymore.’ All right, you say, we’ll go abroad instead, plus the weather’s better over there. Well good luck with that, too. As we approach a world of 11 billion people in 2050, don’t forget that potentially north of five billion of them will be defined as middle class – with the spending power to match.

Saturday

17 Jul 2021

Why Powys should be on your property radar

The word Powys is not filled with onomatopoeic potential and, to the English ear at least, doesn't conjure up a particular image. And yet the region has a dizzying lineage, one that stretches back to antiquity. In the fifth century, the Romans scarcely off the stage, Powys was ruled one of the last kings of the Britons named Vortigern – that’s according to the Venerable Bede not the comedically venerable Monty Python. Later still Powys was ruled by Brochwel Ysgrithrog (‘the fanged’ or ‘of the tusk’) and did battle with the Saxons before Alfred the Great had even been born – let alone burned his fingers on a cake. It thus qualifies as one of the most ancient place names in Britain – predating the Saxon era. Bordered to the east by Shropshire and Herefordshire, Powys straddles middle Wales, and is the largest of its counties by far – with mountains, forests and the fertile valleys of the Severn and Wye rivers of arresting beauty.

Wednesday

14 Jul 2021

Richard Branson is the Thomas Cook of space travel

When Sir Richard Branson blasted off into space on Sunday he broke – or rather established – several important records. While he wasn’t the first billionaire to go into space – the extra-terrestrial ten-digit honours belong to Hungarian-born Microsoft Office software magnate Charles Simonyi, who went up to space on a Russian rocket in 2007 – Branson was the first man (billionaire or no) to go to space in a rocket that he had funded and built himself. For what it’s worth, he’s also the first knight of the realm to go into space, which has a certain anachronistic cachet, like a time-travelling Roman senator. In achieving his ambition, which began with the foundation of Virgin Galactic in 2004, Sir Richard has also pipped at least one vastly richer American to the post.

Saturday

3 Jul 2021

In praise of the Ford Escort

It’s safe to say that the Ford Escort does not enjoy a straightforward place in the British national consciousness. And it’s not a position, furthermore, that is simplified in any way by being reminded that the Prince of Wales actually bought one of them for Lady Diana Spencer as an engagement present in 1981. I challenge you to think of a less romantic engagement gift – albeit the car did have a frog mascot on the bonnet – for a bride-to-be, especially one due to be joined in holy matrimony to the heir to the throne. (God alone knows what Meghan Markle would have said if Prince Harry had turned up with a Vauxhall Astra to celebrate their engagement.) But more than that, news that the Mark III Ford Escort Diana once owned has been sold at auction in Essex – appropriately enough, some would argue – for £52,640 also calls for a moment of reflection.

Wednesday

23 Jun 2021

Why the British should eat more oysters

Back when the dinosaurs still thought they were the bees-knees, another little creature was gently making its way into the big wide world. And now, more than 150 million years later – having withstood at least one planetary-wide annihilation (the one that knocked T-Rex off his perch) – the humble oyster may be on the cusp of making history itself.That’s because this simple bivalve mollusc, cultivated on our shores since Roman times, really could help save the planet, albeit this time from an annihilation of man’s own making.And here’s how: as most of are aware, we humans face two enormous challenges over the next 30 years: first, we have to prevent climate change from destroying the world as we know it; second, which is not entirely unconnected from the first, we need to work out how to feed sustainably the estimated 11 billion people that experts think will be living on Earth come 2050.

Tuesday

15 Jun 2021

Sprawling forests and space galore: is this Britain’s next property hotspot?

There comes a point in every metropolitan potentate’s journey from London to Edinburgh, when he or she looks up from their laptop in First Class and gazes from the window of the train. At this point, they suddenly realise that whatever’s been absorbing their interest for the last hour or two, is completely irrelevant. Chances are they are gazing out at some of the 60 or so miles of Northumberland that the doubtlessly ageing LNER rolling-stock is careening through at 100 miles per hour. That’s because whether you’re talking Alnwick – the seat of the Duke of Northumberland and spiritual home of all Harry Potter fans everywhere – or Hexham with its sensational abbey, or Alnmouth, with its sandy beaches and picture postcard town, or Berwick-upon-Tweed (for which the English should be grateful to Richard III – otherwise it would be in Scotland), then Northumberland is the glint at the heart of the flawless diamond of Britain.

Monday

24 May 2021

From Suffolk to Essex: why moving east makes sense

You might remember, back before Covid, when life was ‘normal’, at three o’clock on a Friday afternoon, the Volkswagens, Audis and Jaguars clogging up the pavements of Kensington, Parsons Green and Hammersmith would one by one nudge out, and make for the Great West Road, duly clotting the A4 like a fast-food addict’s aorta. To all points west they would go – to the dewy hamlets of Hampshire, to the honeyed villages of the Cotswolds, to the pebbled beaches of Dorset’s Jurassic Coast, to the curvaceous nooks of Devon’s South Hams. But there is another way you can go, my friends, one which isn’t west. You can go east. And, boy, does it pay dividends. Among the great bifurcations of life – coffee versus tea, sirloin versus ribeye, pheasant versus partridge – there is one that stands supreme: east versus west.

Wednesday

12 May 2021

The remorseless rise of ‘so’

So, a question for you. Are you bothered by the fact that you hear the word so, quite so often? Does ‘so’ grate on you? It grates on me. A lot. Every time I hear it I shudder, which makes certain television channels frankly hazardous. In fact, I’ve reached my absolute 'so' saturation point. It happened the other morning when my son, who is just five, walked into the sitting room and announced portentously: ‘So, the question is...’ I didn't catch the question because I was wracking my brain as to where he had come up with that form of words. And then it dawned on me... Over the next half an hour I must have caught myself either saying ‘so’ or very nearly doing so, about half a dozen times. It has rapidly become the verbal brain burp of the epoch, heralding the arrival of a new thought from a speaker.

Monday

3 May 2021

The problem with driving in Britain

Admit it, the joy of driving is a myth - in Britain at least. Drivers who talk about the thrill of getting behind the wheel should ask themselves, when was it that they last really enjoyed driving somewhere? Because the grim truth is that unless you are on an isolated country road miles from the nearest speed camera – and certain that no one else is around – you simply can’t let rip anywhere now. The traffic never subsides enough for you to get a decent run up and, if it did, you’d be flashed by speed camera or break the average speed limit before you could even hit fourth gear (let alone hit the near-mythical realm of Fifth Gear). The situation is only going to worsen as the population of Britain climbs remorselessly to northwards of 70 million by 2050.

Friday

23 Apr 2021

Spare a thought for introverts

How do you feel about 17 May, when the next major set of lockdown restrictions are due to be lifted in England? Are you looking forward to going out to dinner with friends inside an actual restaurant, or are you breathless with anticipation at the prospect of hosting your first, legal, dinner party for as long as you care to remember? Quite how you feel about any of the above will relate closely to how strongly you perceive yourself to be either an extrovert or an introvert. If you’re the former, then 17 May, followed by 21 June (when apparently lockdown will be ‘over’), will have you salivating with joy at the prospect of virtually untrammelled social contact. Bring it on. But if you’re an introvert then it’s the opposite story.

Monday

12 Apr 2021

It’s time to revive the handshake

Those with a watchful eye might spot something this week (or next) not seen in a while. And I’m not talking about a freshly poured pint, or the sight of your forehead after three months without a barber’s care. Rather, as England and the whole of the UK, begins to ‘open up’ after the third national lockdown, and as we emerge socially emboldened into the spring sunshine inoculated to the tune of some 32 million first doses of Covid vaccine, there's a chance we might see the handshake make a tentative return. I can't be the only one who has begun to wince slightly every time I see someone on TV shaking hands in a social setting, in a film or programme evidently filmed in the world before Covid robbed us of such basic, everyday civilities.

Wednesday

10 Mar 2021

You’ll miss Piers Morgan when he’s gone

Why is anybody offended by Piers Morgan? That’s the point. It’s his job to be offensive. It’s his job to say out loud what many in society are thinking but lack either the courage or the platform to voice. He is the Wat Tyler of the Whatsapp age. Now of course you won’t always agree with him — perish the thought — but the fact of his existence within the mainstream media ensures the expression of opinions that polite society might find distasteful. There is something almost dialectic about Morgan’s performances. His job is to provoke, and in their response the viewer better knows his or her own mind. But here’s the catch, sometimes his assertions are abrasive and his questions challenging, just as they were in respect of the Duchess of Sussex.

Sunday

21 Feb 2021

Princess Eugenie and the perilous business of baby names

Naming a child turns out to be one of the hardest things you can do. The secret to nailing it is to avoid choosing something outlandish or freakish at one extreme – but then sidestep the trap of settling on something profoundly mundane at the other. Unless you are a rock star or a tech billionaire, for instance, it best to avoid the following: Tree-stump, Treble Clef, or a non-verbal sign that was formerly adopted by the artist Prince when he was still a going concern – these are not the imprimatur available to the majority of us who have to occupy terra firma. And yet... and yet, you don’t necessarily want to give your bundle of joy a name that has about as much unique appeal as BMW Mini. You want something that your son or daughter can own and make their own.