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)
Bicycles — in Britain, anyway — are the Marmite means of transport. I am among the bicycle-lovers, almost religious and certainly addicted in my need to have a daily bike ride. But I can see why people — and drivers in particular — hate some of us: for our smugness, our need to keep on
I never knew classicists could be so scary! Last week I wrote a Telegraph article saying classics exams had been dumbed down. It followed the news that Camden School for Girls — the last comprehensive in the country to teach Greek A-level — is planning to drop the subject in September. Soon after, the classics
The spectre of the Charlie Hebdo killings still hangs over Paris. Outside the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, opposite the Louvre, there’s a big poster of Cabu, one of the murdered cartoonists. The poster is peppered with fake bullet holes; underneath, the caption reads, ‘It doesn’t hurt at all.’ I didn’t realise, until I talked
In the giftshop at the new Elvis exhibition at the Dome, you can buy your own version of his flared white jumpsuits. I can’t think of anyone who could wear one and not look ridiculous — particularly if they had a bit of a weight problem. But Elvis, who would have turned 80 this year,
The first Marquess of Dufferin and Ava is largely forgotten today — rotten luck for the great diplomat of the Victorian age. In the second half of the 19th century, Dufferin zoomed around the empire, hoovering up the sweetest plums in the diplomatic service: Governor-General of Canada, ambassador to the courts of Russia, Turkey and
When did the advertising industry decide that swearing sells? Look around you, and you’ll start to see rude, unfunny double entendres everywhere. The latest company to jump on the bandwagon is Toyota — currently flogging cars with the catchphrase, ‘Go Fun Yourself’. Try not to split your sides laughing. I blame French Connection. In 1991,
2015 is the year of Waterloo and Wellington. The 200th anniversary will be celebrated with grand commemorations on the battlefield and in London. But today, January 8th, 2015, is also the 200th anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans – the last time Britain fought America, and the beginning of the special relationship. How smoothly
Broadhaven Beach in Pembrokeshire was once a sublime combination of the works of nature and man. The broad, deep, sandy bay is flanked by towering limestone cliffs. Two hundred years ago, a stream leading to the sea was dammed by Lord Cawdor, the then owner, to form the Bosherston Lily Ponds. Enter the National Trust,
For a melancholy example of the power of celebrity, head to the Alps. Since Michael Schumacher’s accident last December in Méribel, the use of ski helmets has soared in the mountains. My skiing instructor in Verbier, in the Swiss Alps, said the Schumacher effect was particularly acute among the young and the old — it’s
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_23_Oct_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Harry Mount and Aleks Eror discuss hipsters” startat=1572] Listen [/audioplayer]Calling all hipsters, it’s time to get the razor out! You have hit peak beard. You’ve had a decade of getting away with those narrow, short trousers and the studiously thought-out socks; with the Victorian archdeacon beards and the shaven sides to your heads.
Napoleon’s birthplace, Casa Buona-parte, in Ajaccio, Corsica’s capital, is pretty grand. It has high ceilings, generous, silk-lined rooms and a gallery that could double as a mini-ballroom. The house fits Napoleon’s upper-middle-class roots, as the son of a lawyer and Corsica’s representative to the court of Louis XVI. But the odd thing is, the home
When the late, great Ronald Searle and Geoffrey Willans conspired to create St Trinian’s and Nigel Molesworth, the archetypal English prep school boy, they wanted to evoke an air of -austere, post-war gloom. Molesworth’s school, St Custard’s, was, in his own words, ‘built by a madman in 1836’. For both St Custard’s and St Trinian’s,
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_07_August_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Harry Mount and Isabel Hardman discuss Boris’s parliamentary campaign” fullwidth=”no”] The View from 22 podcast [/audioplayer]So Boris has made his great leap. The blond king over the water has revealed his plans to cross the river, return to Parliament and assume what he believes is his rightful destiny — to be Prime Minister
At the beginning of The Art of Poetry, Horace tells a story that, he promises, will make anyone laugh: ‘If a painter wanted to put a horse’s head on a human neck, would you be able to keep your laughter in?’ Would you? I certainly would. That’s the thing about Roman jokes: they’re not really
The wisest words about learning Latin were said by that gifted prep-school boy, Nigel Molesworth: ‘Actually, it is quite easy to be topp in lat. You just have to work.’ But things have changed since Molesworth learnt Latin at St Custard’s in the 1950s. Over the last half-century, the work has been extracted from Latin
The 300th anniversary of George I coming to the British throne on 1 August 1714 is big news in his home town of Hanover in Lower Saxony. Five shows are being put on in Hanover and the Hanoverian country schloss in nearby Celle, an utterly charming town that largely escaped the attentions of Allied bombers
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_20_March_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Harry Mount and Ben Judah discuss how to buy your way into Britain”] Listen [/audioplayer]‘Money has won,’ Martin Amis said this week, promoting his BBC4 programme Martin Amis’s England on telly this Sunday. The class gulf has disappeared, he said, replaced by a money society. It’s a little more complicated than that. Class
I lost my misguided faith in black cabs last week, on the corner of Royal College Street in north London. It was the tiniest trip — 2.4 miles from Bloomsbury to my Camden flat at 11.30 in the evening. Hard to mess up, too: empty roads, good weather and the easiest of routes — practically
Sir Peregrine Worsthorne isn’t much looking forward to his 90th birthday on 22 December. ‘It’s awful,’ he cries. ‘It makes me so angry Diana Athill writing about the joys of old age. My eyes, teeth, heart — everything starts to go. Keeping alive becomes a full-time job. I’m so lucky to have a much younger
Anyone with a passing interest in old British buildings must get angry at the horrors inflicted on our town centres over the last half-century or so. Gavin Stamp is wonderfully, amusingly, movingly angry. And he has been ever since the early 1960s when, as a boy at Dulwich College, he saw workmen hack off the
