Harry Mount is editor of The Oldie and author of How England Made the English (Penguin) and Et Tu, Brute? The Best Latin Lines Ever (Bloomsbury)
Osterley Park on the western fringes of London is a rare survival. A Robert Adam house, with splendid Adam interiors, it’s still surrounded by its Elizabethan stables, an 18th-century landscape and classical follies — in the middle of urban Hounslow. Over the past decade, this Georgian gem has been increasingly despoiled and dumbed down by
RIP the Bullingdon Club, 1780–2017. It isn’t quite dead — but it is down to its last two members. That’s barely enough people to trash each other’s bedrooms, let alone a whole restaurant, as the Bullingdon was wont to do, according to legend — not that we ever did that sort of thing in my
While he was on the campaign trail, Donald Trump was asked an intriguing question by Bob Lonsberry of WHAM 1180 AM, a local radio station in Rochester, New York. ‘Is there a favourite Bible verse or Bible story that has informed your thinking or your character through life, sir?’ Lonsberry said. Trump’s answer? ‘An eye
Alexander Chancellor, who died this morning aged 77, created the modern Spectator. Since 2012, he has also been a weekly columnist with his Long Life column – which darted from the vagaries of growing old, to memories of his time as editor of The Talk of the Town in the New Yorker, to the wicked
During David Cameron’s years as prime minister, an unobtrusive figure could be seen slipping out of the back entrance to Downing Street. At the end of each day, Julian Glover, then Cameron’s chief speechwriter, made his way across St James’s Park to the Institution of Civil Engineers, a Palladian palace off Parliament Square. There, burrowing
On two occasions, sainted members of my family have offered me a car for nothing. Both times, I turned them down — and not out of selflessness or for green reasons. I said no because I knew it would mean me sitting still in a metal box for hundreds more hours every year. If I
Last week I took the Eurostar to the Gare du Nord in Paris. We had lunch next to the station at the Terminus Nord brasserie, unchanged since 1925. The art deco clock on the wall has literally stopped, and everything else is frozen in the world of Fred Astaire, from the mosaic floor to the
On New Year’s Day I went for a swim off Broad Haven beach in Pembrokeshire. The water was 10.3ºC: pretty good agony, but not as bad as the cold on the soles of my feet as I changed on the icy sand. Cold-water swimming is on the up — 700 people took part in the
There’s a small corner of Clerkenwell where the communist dream never died. The Marx Memorial Library has been in its big, classical 1738 building — originally a school for children of Welsh artisans living in poverty — for 83 years. The library was set up in 1933, the 50th anniversary of Karl Marx’s death. British Marxism and
The make-up lady at the BBC’s Millbank studio in Westminster has noticed a change in Boris Johnson’s look. ‘His hair is much smarter now,’ she told me as she slapped anti-shine talc on my pate for the Daily Politics show. ‘But he still messes it up a bit after I’ve combed it.’ Boris Mark II
We’re so used to looking at the abbeys smashed up by Henry VIII — particularly Rievaulx and Byland, in north Yorkshire — that we forget quite how odd they are. It’s not just that they’ve been preserved as ruins for 500 years, although that’s odd enough in a country that’s only saved ruins properly for
The latest National Trust row highlights a depressing truth: the Trust is rapidly becoming a mammoth eco-warrior, rather than the preserver of historic houses and beautiful landscapes it is meant to be. It’s just paid £200,000 over the guide price to buy land at Thorneythwaite Farm, Borrowdale in the Lake District, without buying the old farmhouse
Walking along the Brighton seafront, I was struck by posters advertising endless tribute acts; among them Suspiciously Elvis, the Small Fakers and The Kinx. The Edinburgh Fringe is much the same. Shows this summer include Dirty Harry: The Ultimate Tribute to Blondie and Billie Holliday: Tribute to the Iconic Lady Day. Or how about Gary
Walking along the Brighton seafront, I was struck by posters advertising endless tribute acts; among them Suspiciously Elvis, the Small Fakers and The Kinx. The Edinburgh Fringe is much the same. Shows this summer include Dirty Harry: The Ultimate Tribute to Blondie and Billie Holliday: Tribute to the Iconic Lady Day. Or how about Gary
Elvis only ever appeared in one commercial in his life — for Southern Maid, his favourite jam doughnut shop. That commercial appeared on the Louisiana Hayride radio show in 1955. But since his death in 1977, Elvis has appeared in adverts all over the world: ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ has been borrowed to flog
Classics is a boastful subject. Even the name — classics — has an inner boast; as does the classics course at Oxford, Literae Humaniores (‘more humane letters’), and the course’s second half, Greats. Michael Scott, a classics professor at Warwick University and a telegenic media don, tries to put an end to the boastfulness in
As Boris Johnson will know from his love of Greek tragedy, hubris leads to nemesis. And it is Boris’s own hubris — in playing cricket with Lord Spencer the weekend after Brexit, and not finishing his leadership speech on time — that supposedly led to his downfall. I well know from working with Boris at
Men don’t look good in black tie. They might think that they look like Sean Connery in Dr No, but they end up looking like David Brent at the Wernham-Hogg annual Christmas do. Black tie doesn’t lend parties glamour; it just makes them depressing. The one good thing about black tie is that it is
‘The isles of Greece! The isles of Greece! Where burning Sappho loved and sung, Where grew the arts of war and peace, Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!’ I couldn’t agree more with Lord Byron about the joys of the Greek islands. Here in Cephalonia, the poppies are out, back-lit by a strong spring sun.
It’s no coincidence that everyone – from Elvis to George W. Bush to Barack Obama – managed to get a selfie with Muhammad Ali. Ali invented celebrity culture – and the selfie. He was the first global figure to throw aside the early 20th-century cults of self-deprecation and privacy, and fully embrace the modern gods
