Blenheim Estate signs up to the Prince’s Foundation’s principles of responsible home building / VIDEO:HRH delivers the R.I.B.A. Trust Annual Lecture

August 9, 2018, 4:00 am

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Blenheim Estate signs up to the Prince’s Foundation’s principles of responsible home building

19 JUL 2018  ARTICLE

https://www.historichouses.org/resources/all-resources/blenheim-estate-signs-up-to-the-prince-s-foundation-s-principles.html

Blenheim Estate is joining forces with other large estates to champion the need for responsible housing development.

The Oxfordshire Estate is applying the principles created by The Prince’s Foundation, which state that landowners have a moral and social responsibility to build new homes that their communities actually want and that landowners can do this best by exercising control over how their land is developed.

In its ‘Building a Legacy – A Landowner’s Guide to Popular Development’ the Foundation reports: ‘With the right advice, commitment and resale values, the landowner has the choice of rejecting normal development models and ensuring their legacy is one of good stewardship, land husbandry and a moral concern for the quality of life for future generations’.

“The government has stated that nationally we need to be building 300,000 new homes annually for the foreseeable future in order to address the growing housing crisis and Oxfordshire in particular is suffering from a severe under delivery in recent years,” said Roger File, Chief Operating Officer and Property Director for Blenheim Estate.

“As an organisation we are fortunate enough to be in the unique position of having access to land suitable for development as well as both the experience and the expertise to develop and build high quality homes and communities,”

“Unlike many commercial property developers, we are inextricably linked to our local communities and we have a strong sense of responsibility for the socio-economic and aesthetic wellbeing of the area.

“We want to be able to share best practice, enhance our local communities and create developments we can be proud of and that people want to live in,” he added.

Building a Legacy makes the case that it’s not enough to just be building new homes but to be building new places that communities actually want.

Blenheim Estate is currently developing with Partners Pye Homes 300 houses on a site to the east of the historic town of Woodstock, where it will be applying the Foundation’s Building a Legacy principles to ensure housing is of the right quality and popular locally.

“Our housing and other development initiatives pre-date the drawing up of our 10 year goals but they are a crucial element in its success,” said Roger.

“They will help us meet the challenges we have set ourselves including our Affordable Housing delivery, Restoration of the World Heritage Site as well as creating an Endowment to ensure its long term sustainability and, to some extent, our Charitable goals,” he added.

A speech by HRH The Prince of Wales for the R.I.B.A. Trust Annual Lecture, London

12 MAY 2009 https://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/speech/speech-hrh-prince-wales-riba-trust-annual-lecture-london

Nowadays we might, perhaps, more accurately speak of “the young men who imitate the Parthenon – or who are, at any rate, beginning to value the lessons of history once again – and the old gentlemen who create abstract designs”, but the underlying message remains the same. If we can find the right path, perhaps you would care to accompany me to the middle of the maze?!

Mr President, Ladies and Gentlemen, I suspect the only reason I find myself here today is because your President, Sunand Prasad, who was a student of Keith Critchlow who founded my School of Traditional Arts, invited me. I felt I should oblige him. I daresay he may be regretting his invitation by now… as if the media are to be believed – it is a wonder to find this hall seemingly fully occupied!

But it is, after all, the Royal Institute of British Architects’ 175th anniversary – on which I can only offer you my sincere congratulations – and it does seem that a tradition is emerging whereby I am asked to join you in celebrating a significant anniversary every 25 years. In another 25 years I shall very likely have shuffled off this mortal coil and so those of you who do worry about my inconvenient interferences won’t have to do so any more – unless, of course, they prove to be hereditary!

Now there is something I’ve been itching to say about the last time I addressed your Institute, in 1984; and that is that I am sorry if I somehow left the faintest impression that I wished to kick-start some kind of “style war” between Classicists and Modernists; or that I somehow wanted to drag the world back to the eighteenth century. All I asked for was room to be given to traditional approaches to architecture and urbanism, so I am most gratified to see that, since then, the R.I.B.A. itself has initiated a Group for traditional practitioners.

To my mind, that earlier speech also addressed a much more fundamental division than that between Classicism and Modernism: namely the one between “top-down” and “bottom-up” approaches to architecture. Today, I’m sorry to say, there still remains a gulf between those obsessed by forms (and Classicists can be as guilty of this as Modernists, Post-Modernists, or Post-Post-Modernists), and those who believe that communities have a role to play in design and planning.

For millennia before the arrival of the modern architect, human intervention in the environment often managed to be beautiful, irrespective of stylistic concerns, because the “deep structure” of those interventions was consonant with a natural order, and therefore generated an organic, Nature-like order in the built world. And this is not just ancient history: as I recently pointed out in another context, there is still an echo of this sort of intervention to be found in so-called “slum cities”, such as Dharavi in Mumbai, where the work of Joachim Arputham and the Slum Dwellers’ Federation, whom I met there in 2006, has so well demonstrated the power of community action.

I hope we can avoid any such misunderstanding this evening of what I have to say – and to be helpful I propose to speak of “organic” rather than Classical or Traditional architecture. I know that the term “organic architecture” acquired a certain specific meaning in the twentieth century (as I was reminded only a few days ago when I visited Erich Mendelsohn’s Einsteinturm on the hills near Potsdam), but perhaps it is time to recover its older meaning and use it to describe traditional architecture that emerges from a particular environment or community – an architecture bound to place not to time. In this way we might defuse the too-easy accusation that such an approach is “old-fashioned”, or not sufficiently attuned to the zeitgeist.

This term “organic architecture” might also serve to distinguish what I am talking about from the “mechanical”, or even “genetically-modified”, architecture of the Modernist experiment – about which I will have more to say shortly…

Geoffrey Scott, writing as the First World War broke out, was most eloquent about the way in which buildings can mirror our selves: “the centre of Classical architecture”, he wrote, “is the human body… the whole of architecture is, in fact, unconsciously invested by us with human movements and human moods … We transcribe architecture in terms of ourselves.” In this sense, and above all in today’s world, it is surely worth reminding ourselves that Nature herself is a living organism; Man is a living organism, each of us a microcosm of the whole – mind, body and spirit. Because of this, what we refer to as “Tradition”, and the architecture that flows from it, is a symbolic reflection of the order, proportion and harmony found within Nature and ourselves.

There are equivalents to this in non-Western traditions also. In traditional Islamic architecture geometry is understood in ways both quantitative and qualitative, the combination of the two reflecting the complex order of Nature: its quantitative dimension regulated the broad form and construction of a building; its qualitative Nature established the more discrete proportions of architectural form. In this way the relationship between the architect and the surrounding world was one based more on reverence than arrogance; and both quantity and quality were each given their due attention.

Clearly, many people “out there” who aren’t architects, planners, developers or road engineers think about these matters rather differently from the professional mindset. When you provide them with an alternative vision based on the qualities represented by a living tradition, and with the quantitative element playing a more subservient role, people tend to vote with their feet. But the trouble is that nine times out of 10 they are never allowed an alternative, and they are all forced instead to become part of an ongoing experiment.

So I wonder if it might be possible to construct a series of seminars held jointly by this Institute and my Foundation for the Built Environment to explore whether we could ever come up with a more integrated way of looking at our alarmingly threatened world; one which is informed by traditional practice, and by traditional attitudes to the natural world?

After all, Nature, traditionally understood, is far, far more than a simple source-book of forms. One of the most important series of books of recent times, in my view – Christopher Alexander’s The Nature of Order – is both a compendium of living patterns seen in Nature, absorbed over millennia into human traditions of building, and a brave search for the underlying principles that give rise to these patterns everywhere we look. It reveals, as well as anything can, why we can often recognize Nature, and our own reflection more readily in a classical column, or in a humble farm building well-constructed, than in some glitzy new waveform warehouse. There have been architectural form languages and pattern languages practised over millennia that nourished humanity, and sustained human society, just as much as did our spoken languages.

But, still, we cannot entirely blame architects who think that mere imitations of Nature are sufficient: it is one of the legacies of the long Modernist experiment that we find ourselves so cut off from the real pulse of the natural world. To quote from the Victoria and Albert Museum’s foreword to its recent exhibition on Modernism: “Modernists … believed in technology as the key means to achieve social improvement, and in the machine as a symbol of that aspiration.” In many ways this emphasis on technology has brought us “social improvement”, and many significant benefits, but the side-effects caused by quite unnecessarily losing our balance and discarding and denigrating every other element apart from the technological are now becoming more and more apparent.

Perhaps we ought not to forget that Modernism was an urban movement. It did not arise in rural areas and I very much doubt that it could have done so. For Modernism largely rejected the influence of Nature on design. It preferred abstract thinking to contact with the patterns and organic ordering of Nature. Indeed, the exploiting of abstract concepts soon became the hallmark of Modernist architecture. The problem for us today is that this approach now lies at the heart of our perception of the world.

In so many areas, the only serious goals seem to be greater efficiency, inducing ever more economic growth, and increasing profits. Not to achieve these goals is to be marked down as a failure. The trouble is, these goals were only ever going to be possible if the apparent clutter and inefficiency of traditional thinking was swept away. It was only ever going to be possible if the bio-diversity in Nature was reduced to a much more manageable mono-culture. And it was only ever going to be possible if the inner world of humanity – our intuition, our instinct – was ignored, or over-ridden.

Instead, we conform more readily to the limited and linear process of the machine. Such is our conditioned way of thinking along purely empirical, rational lines that we now seem prepared to test the world around us to destruction simply to attain the required “evidence base” to prove that that is what we are indeed doing. And then, of course, it is all too late for the Sorcerer's Apprentice to summon back the Master to cast the necessary spell to restore harmony and balance.

Nature, I would argue, reveals the universal essence of creation. Our present preoccupation with the individual ego, and desire to be distinctive, rather than “original” in its truest sense, are only the more visible signs of our rejection of Nature. In addition, there is our addiction to mechanical rather than joined-up, integrative thinking, and our instrumental relationship with the natural world. In the world as it is now, there seems to be an awful lot more arrogance than reverence; a great deal more of the ego than humility; and a surfeit of abstracted ideology over the practical realities linked to people’s lives and the grain of their culture and identity.

Over the past 100 years, I think we might possibly agree that the old way of doing things literally fragmented and deconstructed the world into a series of “zoned” parts, without any inter-relationship or order such as is found in Nature. The difficulty I face, however, in asking you to consider the Modernistic approach of the twentieth century as flawed, and needing to be replaced, is that, clearly, this fragmented approach has produced so many great benefits. It is, however, hard to square these benefits with all the evidence that tells us that if we continue with “business as usual” we will fail to solve, indeed we are likely to compound, the deeply complicated and serious problems that this approach has already created. I feel that our philosophical response and our spiritual response to this problem are just as important as our empirical one. Empiricism does not deal with meaning, so if we rely upon it to undo all the wreckage we have caused, it will not be enough – because it can only reveal the mechanism of things. I know, by the way, that many contemporary architects agree with this critique of the flaws in the modern movement philosophy. Just as I know that a considerable number produce some very interesting and worthy buildings. In fact, two which I have seen recently are I. M. Pei’s new museum of Islamic Art in Doha, and David Chipperfield’s remarkable restoration of the Neues Museum in Berlin which I saw two weeks ago.

And if we are to respond philosophically and spiritually, as well as empirically, architecture is uniquely placed to help us do that. This is why, faced by such a broad range of interlinked challenges, I would like to suggest that members of this Institute might consider this question of refocusing and changing our perceptions and thus help change the course of our approach.

Let me point out that I don’t go around criticizing other people’s private artworks. I may not like some of them very much, but it is their business what they choose to put in their houses. However, as I have said before, architecture and the built environment affect us all. Architecture defines the public realm, and it should help to define us as human beings, and to symbolize the way we look at the world; it affects our psychological well-being, and it can either enhance or detract from a sense of community. As such, we are profoundly influenced by it: by the presence, or absence, of beauty and harmony. I don’t think it is too much to say that beauty and harmony lie at the heart of genuine sustainability. I believe that precisely because the built environment defines the public, or civic, realm it should express itself through the fundamental ingredients that define a genuine civilization – in other words, those civic virtues such as courtesy, consideration and good manners.

It was when I was a teenager in the 1960’s that I became profoundly aware of the brutal destruction that was being wrought on so many of our towns and cities, let alone on our countryside, and that much of the urban realm was becoming de-personalized and defaced. The loss was immense, incalculable – an insane “Reformation” that, I believe, went too far, particularly when so much could have been restored, converted or re-used, with a bit of extra thought, rather than knocked down.

I suspect that there are few among you here this evening who would now try to defend such things as the soulless housing estates that characterized that time. Albeit that they were pursued with the best possible motive. One of the problems that I think needs to be acknowledged is that so often we find the kinds of communities that work best cannot be built, due to the specialised and reductive nature of the modern planning process. The design standards imposed by the highway engineering profession, for instance, are particularly damaging to community as they ensure the dominance of the motor vehicle over the pedestrian, even within the neighbourhood. If I may say so, your profession could be of great help with this challenge of converting the planning and engineering professions, as surely you have noticed that the well-proportioned neighbourhoods of the Georgian and Victorian era hold their value far better than the monocultural housing estates of the past 50 years.

Indeed, compare these current rules with those established centuries ago right here, around Portland Place, by the Howard de Walden and Portland Estates. Those rules were intended to make good neighbours of us all – in regard to heights, rhythms and materials of building – and it is because of these firm and universal rules that this Institute can today enjoy being in such an enviable headquarters building. And who, looking at the sheer exuberance and inventiveness of 66 Portland Place, could argue that such rules inhibit creativity?

The organic/traditional approach – based on sensible “rules-of-thumb” rather than the more detached and bureaucratic way of ruling “by the book” – is a living thing, which doesn’t deserve to be called “old-fashioned”. It is better described as a process of continuous renewal – like those Japanese temples which are ever-renewed, yet remain ever themselves; or our – in my case rapidly ageing – bodies for that matter, the cells of which are continually replaced without replacing the thing that makes us uniquely us. And, as this very building testifies, Tradition has space for as much creativity as we can bring to it. The historian, F.A. Simpson – whom I remember well when I was an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge and he was a very senior Fellow – once wrote that “the mind of Man can range unimaginably fast and far, while riding to the anchor of a liturgy.”

My School of Traditional Arts, in Shoreditch, works hard to inspire its many students not just to copy the patterns of the past, but to conjure their own interpretations of traditional patterning by keeping within the overriding discipline of the grammar of its geometry. This is essential, for even wisdom can die if it is allowed to become mere mechanical repetition, devoid of love or any real understanding. Unfortunately, however, the culture of architecture schools in general still overwhelmingly encourages students to focus on the exciting and the new, at the expense of the truly “original” – which should always point to our common origins – and of evidence-based lessons of history and place. Indeed, traditional buildings and projects are still looked down on today by most teachers; too often dismissed out of hand as "pastiche" or worse. The sad truth, I feel, is that virtually all Schools of Architecture and Planning have persisted in teaching an approach which is deliberately counter-intuitive to the human spirit and to the underlying patterns of Nature herself of which, whether we like it or not, we are a microcosm. By so doing they have deliberately thrown away the book of grammar that contained, as it were, the “syntax of civic virtues.” It was because of this situation that I founded my original Institute of Architecture, to be succeeded by my Foundation for the Built Environment which is soon to launch an MSc in Sustainable Urbanism Development at Oxford. It will be an inter-disciplinary post-professional degree and, in addition to that, my Foundation’s Graduate Fellowship in Sustainable Urbanism and Architecture is entering its second year, along with an expanding Traditional Building Craft Apprenticeship Scheme.

Since the 1960s I have gradually become convinced that the “experiment” on our towns and cities that had such a profoundly negative effect on me at that time – and not just on me, I can assure you – is only a small part of a much larger experiment that touches every aspect of our lives.

I don’t believe I am the only one to mind about this; nor the only one to feel that the giant experiment (which has been unfolding at increasing pace over the last half-century) with our built environment, with our communities, with our identity, with our very sense of belonging, has gone too far and that it is no longer sustainable in the circumstances in which we now find ourselves.

The fact that these circumstances are in some ways a natural consequence of this larger experiment – being conducted in all walks of life – needs, I think, to be recognized and stated plainly. The trouble is that very few people dare to call it into question, for the very good reason that if they do they find themselves abused and insulted, accused of being “old-fashioned,” out of touch, reactionary, anti-progress, even anti-science – as if it was some kind of unholy blasphemy to question the state of our surroundings, of our natural environment, our food security, our climate and our own human identity and meaning. Little wonder, then, that most people shy away from pointing out that the Emperor isn’t actually wearing very many clothes anymore.

The crisis in the banking and financial sector – devastating though its consequences will be for some – has at least brought to light something of the short‑termist, unsustainable, and experimental nature of the way many professionals now operate in the world; a kind of surpassing cleverness in the devising of products and systems that no-one really understands. At a time when, believe it or not, we are hearing calls for a return to old‑fashioned, traditional banking virtues, might these calls not apply equally to the manner in which our built environment gives physical expression to the way we do business and live our lives, as essentially social beings?

Nothing argues for a re-evaluation of our way of doing things more than the state of the planet. Some twenty years ago – shortly after I made A Vision of Britain – I made another B.B.C. film called Earth in Balance in which I interviewed the then Senator Al Gore. I don’t think many people paid much attention to that film. It’s amusing watching it now! His subsequent bestseller, Earth in the Balance, played an important part in framing the debate before the Kyoto Conference on climate change. At that time, I argued that a rebalancing of priorities from short- to long-term was needed and that short-term thinking was at the root of the environmental crisis. I may have thought that then – I am convinced of it now! Sustainability matters. Durability matters even more. And perhaps more than ever, it matters now; for surely it must be true that the twin crunches of credit and climate together have highlighted the dangers of the short-term view – “consume today and let someone else pay tomorrow for the throwaway society.”

As over 60 per cent of our carbon emissions can be attributed to the built environment, all of us who are involved with the making of place have a great responsibility. Climatologists speak, and speak urgently, of the need to flatten the curve of rising emissions – starting now.

Not only that, but the great irony is that many of the social challenges we hoped economic growth would solve still remain deeply resistant to resolution, even after so many years of “growth”. Experience now tells us that poverty, stress, ill-health and social tensions could not have been ended by economic growth alone. At the heart of this dilemma is the issue of global urbanization, as more than sixty per cent of the world’s population will live in cities by 2030. And what kind of cities will they find themselves inhabiting? The primary response so far to this accelerating urbanization has been to view it as a short-term challenge of scale, and to respond to it by building bigger, more and faster, rather than questioning whether and to what extent such development – still based on an outmoded paradigm of planning and design – is actually sustainable, economically, socially and environmentally. Some, at least, are beginning to regard the growth of shanty-towns – a highly-visible consequence of rapid urbanization – as more than just a nuisance that needs to be cleared away, in the same way as the “slums” of our British cities were cleared in the 1960s, but as a possible clue to how we might respond better to growth in the future – from the bottom up.

The trouble is that we seem to have become programmed to see the individual elements of a problem only in isolation – which means that, often, in curing one problem we create many more. We see this way of thinking only too clearly in those flashy new buildings where just by adding a windmill, some solar panels, or other such “bling” to a high-rise glass tower it is considered to make everything “green”. My Foundation has always been committed to finding a more integrated approach to greening building, inspired by traditional environments in which even such things as the alternate planting and paving of courtyards – encouraging the movement of air, so obviating the need for air-conditioning – and the clever placing of verandas or porticos, can make a building greener. The Foundation’s Natural House, now under construction at the Building Research Establishment’s Innovation Park, is an attempt to introduce a new model for green building that is site-built, low-carbon and easily adapted for volume building. It remains, however, recognizably a house. It doesn’t wear its “green-ness” as if it was the latest piece of haute couture; it is much more concerned with what works on the High Street in terms of good manners and courtesy.

I must say, I find it baffling that we still consider “whole-istic” thinking to be a kind of alternative New Age therapy when, in fact, to see things in the round and take account of the impact upon the whole is the only effective way of addressing the many, seemingly intractable problems we now face, especially if we hope to solve them without compounding our troubles with yet more chaos and destruction. More and more of the world’s problems seem interconnected, so it would be wise, would it not, to consider – in architecture as much as in any other field – the wider implications of our actions rather than constantly narrowing our focus and reducing our ambitions down to the one element and its one outcome. Yet this is the way we have tended to operate ever since it became the conventional way of thinking about the world.

It seems to me that the only way to tackle this narrowness of vision is through collaborations across disciplines and divides. Your current President has encouraged your Institute to take an active role in addressing climate change in the run up to the Copenhagen conference, and if there is a compelling reason for my own Foundation to cooperate with you in the future it surely has to be around causes such as this. I can only say that along with many others I look forward to seeing a new, binding and fair treaty to emerge from the Copenhagen conference.

In bringing such matters to bear upon buildings and places, what is needed, it seems to me, is a three-stage approach: first, a grounding in precedent, building upon what has worked well in the past; second, an understanding of locality, the specific “D.N.A.”, if you like, of a place, incorporating local intelligence and community input; and third, the incorporation of the best of new technology.

As an enthusiastic proponent of “Seeing is Believing,” I realized 20 years ago that I myself had an opportunity to “give room” to an alternative way of doing things. I set out to try to embody these principles in the development – undertaken by the Duchy of Cornwall, under the guidance of the master-planner, Leon Krier – of an area on the edge of the town of Dorchester. There, over recent years – and increasingly on other sites owned or part-owned by the Duchy – I have sought to follow what I regard as a golden rule: which is “to try to do to others as you would have them do to you”; in other words not to build something that I would not be willing to live in or near myself. The other day an architect friend of mine asked “How many Pritzker Prizewinners are not living in beautiful Classical Homes?”; and we all know what he was getting at. Surely architects flock in such numbers to live in these lovely old houses – many from the eighteenth century, often in the last remaining conservation areas of our towns and cities that haven’t yet been destroyed – because, deep down, they do respond to the natural patterns and rhythms I have been talking about, and feel more comfortable in such harmonious surroundings – even though, presumably, they don’t all feel the need to wear togas to do so?!

Poundbury has challenged contemporary models for road design by introducing shared spaces, and designing for the pedestrian first, and only then the car; and it has challenged the conventional model of zoned development by pepper-potting affordable and private-market housing, and integrating workplaces and retail within a walkable neighbourhood. Thus we can enhance social and environmental value, as well as commercial. Why on earth all this should be considered “old-fashioned” and out of touch, when we took the greatest trouble to sit down and consult with the local community twenty years ago, is beyond me – for we find, so often, that communities have the best answers themselves if they can be engaged in a meaningful way. My Foundation has discovered this time and again in conducting planning exercises in places as far afield as China and Saudi Arabia. For what is tradition but the accumulated wisdom and experience of previous generations, informed by intuition and human instinct, and given shape under the unerring eye of the craftsman, whose common sense provides the organic durability we so urgently need?

I pray that a new and developing relationship between this Institute and my Foundation for the Built Environment can enable us to work together to create the kind of organic architecture for the twenty-first century that not only reflects the intuitive needs, aspirations and cultural identity of countless communities around the world, but also the innate patterns of Nature. As Sir John Betjeman wrote with such prescience back in 1931 – “The Revolting phrase ‘The Battle of Styles,’ wherein architecture is now considered a fighting ground between old gentlemen who imitate the Parthenon and brilliant young men who create abstract designs, can only have been coined by stupid extremists of either side. There is no battle for the intelligent artist,” he wrote. “The older men gradually discard superfluities. The younger men do not ignore the necessary devices of the past. Both sides find their way slowly to the middle of the maze whose magic centre is tradition.”

Nowadays we might, perhaps, more accurately speak of “the young men who imitate the Parthenon – or who are, at any rate, beginning to value the lessons of history once again – and the old gentlemen who create abstract designs”, but the underlying message remains the same. If we can find the right path, perhaps you would care to accompany me to the middle of the maze?!

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Summer Tweed Ride / ‘JEEVES’ in seersucker suit

August 10, 2018, 4:23 am

≫ Next: The Gentleman in DOZE 19 ( Summer 2018 ) by António Sérgio Rosa de Carvalho / Architectural Historian.

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 Remembering DE TWEED RIDE 2016 IN AMSTERDAM

Summer Tweed Ride / ‘JEEVES’ in seersucker suit

Thanks Misja B!

António Sérgio Rosa de Carvalho / Architectural Historian / “Tweedland”.

https://www.misjab.nl/tweed-ride-2016-amsterdam/

The Gentleman in DOZE 19 ( Summer 2018 ) by António Sérgio Rosa de Carvalho / Architectural Historian.

August 12, 2018, 5:27 am

≫ Next: JEEVES will be away until September ... Greetings.

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This is the follow up to "The dandy" ( O Dandy ) published in DOZE 18. 

This time "The Gentleman" ( O Gentleman ) in DOZE 19 ( Summer 2018 )

by António Sérgio Rosa de Carvalho / Architectural Historian.

JEEVES will be away until September ... Greetings.

August 14, 2018, 1:59 am

≫ Next: The Duke of Richmond previews Goodwood Revival 2018

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The Duke of Richmond previews Goodwood Revival 2018

September 1, 2018, 1:18 am

≫ Next: The Goodwood Revival is coming ! 7th – 9th September 2018 / VIDEO : Goodwood Revival 2018 Official Trailer

≪ Previous: JEEVES will be away until September ... Greetings.

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The Goodwood Revival is coming ! 7th – 9th September 2018 / VIDEO : Goodwood Revival 2018 Official Trailer

September 1, 2018, 1:19 am

≫ Next: « Le plus beau métier du monde » by Giulia MENSITIERI / Chanel shoes, but no salary: how one woman exposed the scandal of the French fashion industry

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ALL Information about The Goodwood Revival : https://www.goodwood.com/flagship-events/goodwood-revival/

The Goodwood Revival is a three-day festival held each September at Goodwood Circuit since 1998 for the types of road racing cars and motorcycle that would have competed during the circuit's original period—1948–1966. The first Revival took place 50 years since the 9th Duke of Richmond and Gordon opened the motor racing track in 1948 driving around the circuit in a Bristol 400, then Britain's state-of-the-art sporting saloon. Most people dress in period clothes. It is one of the world's most popular motor race meetings and the only United Kingdom event which recreates the golden era of motorsport from the 1950s and 1960s.

There was some opposition to the re-introduction of racing at the circuit, but a numerically strong lobby in the form of the Goodwood Supporters Association helped to lead eventually to approval.

The festival acts as a showcase for exceptional wheel-to-wheel racing around a classic circuit, untouched by the modern world and relives the glory days of Goodwood Circuit, which ranked alongside Silverstone as Britain’s leading racing venue throughout its active years. Between 1948 and 1966 Goodwood hosted contemporary racing of all kinds, including Formula One, the famous Goodwood Nine Hours race and the celebrated Tourist Trophy sports car race.

The festival includes Grand Prix cars from the 1950s and 1960s, sports and GT cars, as well as historic saloon cars and little-seen Formula Juniors. Many of these important historic racing cars are driven by famous names from motor sport past and present. Famous drivers who have taken part include Sir Stirling Moss, John Surtees, Kenny Bräck Sir Jack Brabham, Phil Hill, Derek Bell, David Coulthard, Damon Hill, Gerhard Berger, Martin Brundle, Bobby Rahal, Johnny Herbert, Wayne Gardner, Giacomo Agostini, Jean Alesi, Barry Sheene and Peter Brock, as well as celebrities such as Chris Rea, and Rowan Atkinson (as Mr. Bean) in 2009. There is a pedal car race for youngsters called the Settrington Cup. Austin J40s race in it. The restored circuit is unchanged from its heyday, apart from the inclusion of a Chicane on the start finish straight, and many visitors wear appropriate period clothing and no modern vehicles are allowed within the circuit perimeter throughout the weekend (except modern race fire and rescue vehicles). There are also theatrical sets that bring the past back to life including many historic aircraft.

Frederick Charles Gordon-Lennox, 9th Duke of Richmond, 9th Duke of Lennox, 9th Duke of Aubigny, 4th Duke of Gordon (5 February 1904 – 2 November 1989) was a British peer, engineer, racing driver, and motor racing promoter.

Freddie Richmond, as he was known, was the son of Charles Gordon-Lennox, 8th Duke of Richmond. He was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford. His interest in engineering started while he was at university and afterwards he was apprenticed to Bentley Motors. He began a motor racing career in 1929 when he took part in the JCC High Speed Trial. In the next year he became a member of the Austin team and won the Brooklands 500 Miles. He created his own team of MG Midgets in 1931 and won the Brooklands Double Twelve race, but then became more involved in the organisational side of motor sport.

He inherited the Dukedoms in 1935, along with the Goodwood Estate and the racecourse. Death duties meant he had to sell the family interests in Scotland, including Gordon Castle, and settle on the Goodwood Estate near Chichester. He designed and flew his own aircraft and served with the Royal Air Force during World War II. For a time he was based in Washington, working for the Ministry of Aircraft Production.

After the war he faced the task of rehabilitating Goodwood, and saw the potential for creating a motor racing circuit from the fighter station built at Goodwood during the Second World War. Horse racing was an important part of the Goodwood scene, but he did not share his ancestors' interest in the sport. The Goodwood Circuit became an important venue in motor racing. However, by 1966 the Duke was concerned at the increasing risks involved in motor racing and closed the circuit except for minor club activities and private testing.

The Duke was the longest-serving Vice President of the Royal Automobile Club, with which he was associated since 1948. As early as the thirties, he was the motoring correspondent of the Sunday Referee, and became the Founder President of the Guild of Motoring Writers.

« Le plus beau métier du monde » by Giulia MENSITIERI / Chanel shoes, but no salary: how one woman exposed the scandal of the French fashion industry

September 3, 2018, 2:42 am

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« Le plus beau métier du monde »

Dans les coulisses de l'industrie de la mode

Giulia MENSITIERI

La mode est l’une des plus puissantes industries du monde : elle représente 6 % de la consommation mondiale et est en croissance constante. Depuis les années 1980 et l’entrée dans l’économie néolibérale, elle est devenue l’image étincelante du capitalisme, combinant prestige, pouvoir et beauté, et occupe une place centrale dans les médias et les imaginaires. Pourtant, cette industrie, qui apparaît comme un horizon professionnel hautement désirable, repose principalement sur du travail précaire, et ce aussi bien là où la production est externalisée qu’au coeur de la production créative du luxe, comme les prestigieux ateliers des maisons de couture.

À partir d’une enquête en immersion auprès des travailleurs créatifs de cette industrie (stylistes, mannequins, créateurs indépendants, coiffeurs, maquilleurs, vendeurs, journalistes, retoucheurs, stagiaires, agents commerciaux, etc.), ce livre dévoile la réalité du travail à l’oeuvre derrière la façade glamour de la mode. Il met notamment en lumière les dynamiques d’exploitation et d’autoexploitation ainsi que le prestige social liés au fait de travailler dans un milieu désirable.

Des séances de « shooting » pour magazines spécialisés à la collaboration auprès d’un créateur de mode, en passant par des entretiens avec des stylistes travaillant pour de célèbres maisons de luxe et de couture, cette enquête dévoile une nouvelle forme de précarité caractéristique des industries culturelles du capitalisme contemporain, une précarité combinée au prestige, à la reconnaissance et à la visibilité. Il s’agit ainsi de décrypter les dynamiques invisibles sur lesquelles repose l’industrie de la mode pour mieux la «déglamouriser ».

http://www.editionsladecouverte.fr/catalogue/index-a__Le_plus_beau_m__tier_du_monde_a_-9782707195401.html

Chanel shoes, but no salary: how one woman exposed the scandal of the French fashion industry

A new book by academic Giulia Mensitieri, laying bare the working conditions of stylists and young designers, has sparked controversy. Will it lead to improved conditions for those forced to work for clothes vouchers instead of cash?

Stefanie Marsh

Sun 2 Sep 2018 15.00 BST Last modified on Sun 2 Sep 2018 16.44 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2018/sep/02/academic-exposing-ugly-reality-high-fashion-giulia-mensitieri

Giulia Mensitieri: ‘When we think of exploitation, we think of sweat shops or sexual harassment. But I was looking at the creative side.’ Photograph: Judith Jockel/Guardian

Giulia Mensitieri takes little to no personal interest in clothes. So it is likely to have been an ugly surprise to the French fashion industry that her PhD – now a book entitled The Most Beautiful Job in the World – has opened up its secretive profession in such a dramatically public way. In France, the book’s findings – that fashion, the country’s second-biggest industry, exploits most of the creatives who work in it – were quickly picked up by the media when it was published earlier this year. The resulting headlines included: “The ruthless world of fashion”; “Fashion’s dirty underside”; and “An extremely wealthy industry founded on unpaid work”.

The reality of fashion was illustrated by Mensitieri’s chance introduction, eight years ago, to her subject matter. She met “Mia”, a successful Italian stylist who had moved to Paris: “She was wearing Chanel shoes and carrying a Prada handbag, being flown across the world in business class. I never would have imagined that she was in the situation she was in.” Mia couldn’t afford to rent a room, so she was couch surfing at a friend’s house behind a screen in the kitchen. “Sometimes she had no money for her phone bill. She was eating McDonald’s every day. She never knew when she would be paid for a job and how much she would get. For example, for a week’s work, a very big luxury brand gave her a voucher for €5,000 (£4,500) to spend in their boutique.” True, Mia could have sold it (and, among hard-up fashion workers, there is a lively market in reselling luxury goods). But Mensitieri points out that working in fashion means being seen in a constantly updated uniform of beautiful, expensive clothes and accessories – paid for by vouchers such as the one Mia received instead of a salary. “This situation is nothing exceptional. Mia is just a paradigm of what is going on.”

The book is lively from the start. Mensitieri’s analysis and case studies build up a fairly damning picture of her subject matter. One interviewee, a former fashion journalist at a glossy magazine, describes how she was dropped by her coterie of friends and colleagues one day. They just suddenly stopped taking her calls or responding to her emails. There was no explanation. “This is the violence everyone told me about,” says Mensitieri. “Once you’re out, you’re out.” There can be a trauma attached to such sudden ejection. “All your social relationships are in that world. They’re gone.” From being exceptional, now you have transgressed in some unmentionable way. Or, simply, you are not special enough any more. “Finding work in a new sector can be difficult because ‘normal’ people behave so differently from what you’re used to.” Finding a job can be difficult, coming from an industry that those on the outside tend to look down on as fluffy and lightweight.

Mensitieri, an alumni of École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, one of France’s elite grandes écoles, is in London to talk about her book, although it has not yet been translated into English. “I was a little bit scared when it came out,” she says, “because it’s quite a strong renunciation, even though that was not my goal. I’m an anthropologist, not a journalist.” The book’s salient claim is that, “when we think of exploitation in fashion we think of sweat shops abroad or sexual harassment of models. But that’s not what I was interested in. I was looking at the creative side: stylists, makeup artists, young designers, interns, assistants. What I really want to make clear is that exploitation exists at the very heart of the powerfully symbolic and economic centre of the maisons de couture; the big luxury brands. But it is a different form of exploitation.” In some cases, also barely legal.

Critics of the book complain that Mensitieri only interviewed 50 people for her analysis, all of them off the record. There are no statistics. Some took Karl Lagerfeld’s general view: “Fashion is a total injustice. It’s like that. And that’s it.” “But no one,” claims the author, “has said that what I’ve written isn’t true.”

The big brands generally do not like the idea of an objective outsider meddling, but it seems that the people who work for them do. They have written to Mensitieri to say they had never considered themselves exploited before they read her book, wrapped up as they were in the industry’s glossy promise. “They say that, now they’ve read the book ... they began to see the big picture and little fragments of their own experiences,” says the author. “And once they understand the big picture, they can’t look at fashion and their job in fashion or themselves in the same way.”

Jean Paul Gaultier, the only well-known designer to have commented on the book so far, brushed it off, saying fashion was like any other industry, that, “[fashion] is like a family”. Sales of Mensitieri’s books suggest that the general public doesn’t entirely share Gaultier’s views. When ID France published an interview with Mensitieri, it was its most-read article. Perhaps tellingly, journalists who have written about the book for commercial fashion magazines have had their articles dropped at the last minute.

We meet at a London cafe where, I had read, staff are chosen for their looks and sex appeal. It is an example of the kind of social status that fashion is so good at conferring on those who work in it – in exchange, Mensitieri discovered, for not paying them enough, or at all. Or paying them in convoluted, unpredictable ways that cannot easily be turned into cash: an unexchangeable €1,000 voucher for a designer boutique, first-class flights to fashion shoots or accommodation in luxury hotels.

“The message is, you don’t have to be paid because you are lucky to be there at all. Working in fashion is hyper socially validating, even if you’re unpaid. That’s an important point for me. Fashion presents itself as something exceptional, a world outside the ordinary,” she says. “There is a kind of confused denial of the norms of labour conditions. The dream that French fashion, especially, projects is that of a life of effortless luxury – mundane everyday facts of life such as working for a living, or indeed even money, are considered vulgar, taboo, even dirty subjects.

“But is it really possible that France’s second most profitable industry after cars and before armaments – a €15bn industry – can be an exception in capitalism? To me, fashion is the very centre of contemporary capitalism – it upholds the old forms of exploitation; factories in Bangladesh and so on – and the new, very modern forms which are more a kind of self-exploitation, a blurring of the line between your work and everything you are outside of work.”

France’s fashion industry is intensely bound up with national identity. “Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never truly be elegant,” Balzac wrote in 1830, and it is an image that the world’s centre of luxury shopping is keen to uphold. Louis Vuitton’s new flagship store, in Place Vendôme, for example, inhabits a building designed by Louis XIV’s favourite architect, Jules Hardouin-Mansart, who helped design the Palace of Versailles. To understand fashion’s reach and power, Mensitieri explains, look at the parade of designers President Emmanuel Macron invites to the Elysée palace. “The government is keenly aware of the industry’s economic and symbolic power,” she says. If the film Zoolander sums up the general public’s ideas about fashion in other countries, “In France, to say ‘I work in fashion’ is something extremely important.”

To engage properly with her interviewees, Mensitieri had to learn the etiquette: “When to say ‘darling’, when to stay silent. Saying ‘no’ is uncool. ‘Yes’ can mean anything. And there is a kind of addiction to this adrenaline, this prestige, this idea of being exceptional. I talk in the book about ‘the jackpot’ – winner takes all. The economy of hope, I call it. ‘Maybe I will be next’, even though the statistics tell you it’s unlikely you will. Fashion is colonised by desirable projection. You are never present, because tomorrow will be better. It’s an addictive way of thinking.”

Her interviewees talk a lot about personas and the need to invent one if they are to have any hope of success. A teetotal model describes how her agent told her to be more “rock’n’roll” – to wear leather jackets and to be seen in certain bars drinking beer. An assistant makeup artist describes the tantrums his very famous boss threw if his favourite green cotton wool buds were not laid out in a perfect square.

 “What is amazing is that the workers justify this. They say: ‘Oh, but he’s a genius. That’s what geniuses do.’ A designer I interviewed worked for a luxury, edgy, well-known company. She dressed Lady Gaga, and so on. She had been working at the company for five years, designing the men’s and women’s collections with a third job in production. She was paid the minimum wage. When she was talking about it she said: ‘The creative director, he was my mentor, he was like a father to me, he was a genius.’” Mensitieri calls this “the glamourisation of domination” – the hero-tyrant who you put on a pedestal while she/he exploits you. “The biggest goal of neo-liberalism is the individualisation of structural domination; you leave everything at an interpersonal, subjective level.” It was only when the poorly paid designer left her work because of burnout that the bubble burst. She seemed confused when she told Mensitieri: “He was earning €13,000 [£11,700] a month but I was on the minimum wage. Just €100 [£90] a month more would have made the difference to me. But he wouldn’t do it.”

“It starts in fashion school,” says Mensitieri. “The students there know they will be exploited but they don’t see themselves as exploited.”

Who, then, are the exploiters? , the French leader of the world’s luxury goods market, owns 70 luxury fashion brands, including Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and Fendi. It saw its  in the first half of this year. Owners of the big brands make billions. Alain and Gérard Wertheimer, who own Chanel,  last year – four times the company’s profits. (In a further paradox, people in the industry’s business and marketing side tend to be paid well, or at least in line with other businesses their size.) Further down the chain, what about the responsibilities of top designers, whose annual salaries can run into the millions? Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel’s creative director, has an . Surely a well-paid designer is making a morally questionable choice by not paying workers more? Mensitieri lets designers off the hook on this point. They are part of a larger system, she says, it’s not up to her to make moral judgments. It is discouraging to hear that, despite the high praise Mensitieri has received privately from even very well-known designers, “Nobody has said: ‘Yes, I’m now going to pay my staff more.’”

It is not just people working in fashion who might recognise themselves in these descriptions. It is a similar scene across all the creative industries and academia, says Mensitieri. She also makes a good comparison with the charity sector where, it is widely held, “doing good” is incompatible with being paid well.

If her theory is true, does she think there is hope for reform? “If you want to change things, you have to look beyond fashion, or whatever industry you’re in, and talk to people in different fields who are working under the same conditions,” she says. “I’m not an optimistic person, but there are interesting things happening at the fringes. There is a strong anti-fashion movement in the UK and, in France, models are working together for better working conditions.” It’s advice that some people working in the fashion industry may not want to hear. “You need to start collaborating – which is an almost heretical thought in fashion. You need to stop thinking of yourself as special.”

French and noble in 2018: What remains of France's aristocracy?

September 4, 2018, 1:28 pm

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U and non-U English usage

September 5, 2018, 11:24 pm

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 U and non-U English usage, with "U" standing for "upper class", and "non-U" representing the aspiring middle classes, was part of the terminology of popular discourse of social dialects (sociolects) in Britain in the 1950s. The debate[clarification needed] did not concern itself with the speech of the working classes, who in many instances used the same words as the upper classes. For this reason, the different vocabularies can often appear quite counter-intuitive: the middle classes prefer "fancy" or fashionable words, even neologisms and often euphemisms, in attempts to make themselves sound more refined ("posher than posh"), while the upper classes in many cases stick to the same plain and traditional words that the working classes also use, as, confident in the security of their social position, they have no need to seek to display refinement.[1]

The debate was set in motion in 1954 by the British linguist Alan S. C. Ross, professor of linguistics in the University of Birmingham. He coined the terms "U" and "non-U" in an article, on the differences that social class makes in English language usage, published in a Finnish professional linguistics journal. Though his article included differences in pronunciation and writing styles, it was his remark about differences of vocabulary that received the most attention.

The English author Nancy Mitford was alerted and immediately took up the usage in an essay, "The English Aristocracy", which Stephen Spender published in his magazine Encounter in 1954. Mitford provided a glossary of terms used by the upper classes (some appear in the table at right), unleashing an anxious national debate about English class-consciousness and snobbery, which involved a good deal of soul-searching that itself provided fuel for the fires. The essay was reprinted, with contributions by Evelyn Waugh, John Betjeman, and others, as well as a "condensed and simplified version" of Ross' original article, as Noblesse Oblige: an Enquiry into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy in 1956. Betjeman's poem How to Get on in Society concluded the collection.

The issue of U and non-U could have been taken lightheartedly, but at the time many took it very seriously. This was a reflection of the anxieties of the middle class in Britain of the 1950s, recently emerged from post-war austerities. In particular the media used it as a launch pad for many stories, making much more out of it than was first intended. In the meantime, the idea that one might "improve oneself" by adopting the culture and manner of one's "betters", instinctively assented to before World War II, was now greeted with resentment.

Some of the terms and the ideas behind them were largely obsolete by the late 20th century, when, in the United Kingdom, reverse snobbery led younger members of the British upper and middle classes to adopt elements of working class speech (see: Estuary English and Mockney). Yet many, if not most, of the differences remain very much current, and therefore perfectly usable as class indicators.

U and Non-U Revisited Hardcover – March 29, 1979

by Richard Buckle

Heroes, Mavericks and Bounders: The English Gentleman from Lord Curzon to James Bond by Hugh David

September 10, 2018, 3:27 am

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Heroes, Mavericks and Bounders: The English Gentleman from Lord Curzon to James Bond– September 16, 1991

by Hugh David

The author of "The Fitzrovians" examines the fortunes of the English gentleman from the end of the 19th century to the present. Starting on the playing fields of Eton, he reveals the true origins of our modern idea of a gentleman and comments on how the gentleman has fared since his heyday in the Edwardian summer. From Lord Curzon and the "souls" to C.B. Fry and from Oswald Mosley to Guy Burgess, by turns glamourous, moving and startling, Hugh David unravels the story of a breed whose code of behaviour is recognized throughout the world as being that of the English gentleman.

The International Journal of the History of Sport, 9:2, 316-334, DOI: 10.1080/09523369208713797  Hugh David, Heroes, Mavericks and Bounders (London: Michael Joseph, 1991). Pp.xiv + 306. £18.99. ISBN 0-7181-3264-5. 

M. D. W. TOZER Northamptonshire Grammar School

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/306119938_Heroes_Mavericks_and_Bounders_Hugh_David

It was a clever idea, but it does not quite come off; but marrying popular journalism with serious scholarship is never easy. The author almost succeeds with the former, an approach that allows him to dip at will into the biographies of the famous and not-so-famous of the twentieth century. Here we follow the fortunes of the heroes, mavericks and bounders of the book's title. The sub-title - The English Gentleman from Lord Curzon to James Bond - signals the line of intended scholarship, but little that follows lives up to that first expectation. This surely is a scissors-and-paste job from a full suitcase of books borrowed from 'Science & Miscellaneous' in the London Library. But there is some fun to be had: Stanley Matthews makes a surprise appearance as one of nature's gentlemen; a gold-plated Sir Bernard Docker is at first cheered on by hoi-polloi, but then goes too far and gets his come-uppance; the class A James Bond intended for a class A readership becomes a runaway hero with his millions of BC readers; and Douglas Hurd denies that his titled father was anything other than a tenant farmer - though of 600 acres. It all makes good holiday reading. The scholarship is at its safest right at the start of David's period, the 1890s. Lord Curzon, inevitably, is his personification of the English gentleman, that  very superior person. The mantle passes to King Edward VII, John Buchan, Raymond Asquith and others, and becomes increasingly creased and worn as each decade goes by. By the time it has reached Oswald Mosley, it is decidedly threadbare. David's 'gentleman' simply did not survive the Great War, let alone the People's War and the coming of the Welfare State. Harold Macmillan may have affected the hauteur of a gentleman, Guy Burgess had indeed enjoyed a privileged upbringing, and John Profumo relished a high society redolent of Tum-Tum himself — but these are the trappings and trimmings of a gentlemanly style, not the solid stuff of the mantle itself. So back to the beginning. David properly charts the importance of the Victorian public schools in the inculcation of the gentlemanly ideal, and his assessments of Thomas Arnold's legacy and Eton's all-pervading influence are accurate. The Oxbridge connection is also reliably traced. The central role of sport is identified, whether at home, school or college, and its adaptation to fit both the education and the recreation of the gentleman is properly recognized. But this is where David starts to be led astray by his own cleverness. Gentlemanly sport is country sport: hunting, shooting, fishing and the like.  Modern sports were invented as school and college term-time substitutes, because local geography or magisterial veto curtailed the real thing, but once the holidays began so the country called once more. In the same way, London-based gentlemen might from Tuesday to Thursday play tennis or row, but each long weekend allowed easy escape to the serious round of country estates. It is true that many a gentleman became proficient at decidedly middle-class games, but only for the short duration of his education and the fling of a few years beyond; time enough perhaps to play at Lord's for Middlesex or for the Casuals in the FA  Cup, maybe even to answer his country's call in a Test or an International. Yet none of this was ever taken too seriously. The play had to appear effortless, and the company had to be congenial. In due course it was back to a lifetime of true sport in the shires. No 'pukka' gentleman would seek perpetual glory in cricket or football, and he would certainly never countenance making it his living. Thus the cricketers W. G. Grace and A. J. Raffles - the former always larger than life, the latter the fictional creation of E. W. Hornung - were inevitably on the periphery of the gentleman's world; outsiders looking in. Grace's ambitions were far too transparent for membership of the gentlemanly MCC, while Raffles's skills were merely enjoyed and admired like those of any other hired entertainer.  The 'Gentlemen' who annually met the 'Players' were unlikely to be real gentlemen;

C.B. Fry was not; nor was Prince Ranjitsinjhi. The middle classes and Indian princes might aspire to be English gentlemen, but that is another story. One of David's happier digressions follows the spivs on the make in the ration-book years of austerity: like their flashy wares, this book is not all it is cracked up to be, and it should be treated with marked circumspection.  M. D. W. TOZER Northamptonshire Grammar School

THE NEW BOOK OF SNOBS A Definitive Guide to Modern Snobbery By D.J. Taylor / Andrew Mitchell and the Plebgate affair.

September 11, 2018, 5:43 am

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THE NEW BOOK OF SNOBS

A Definitive Guide to Modern Snobbery

By D.J. Taylor

Illustrated. 275 pages. Constable.

The New Book of Snobs by DJ Taylor review – what is the new snobbery?

There are film snobs, garden snobs and inverse snobs, not just people who send their children to elite private schools. Snobbery is in all classes and is a very human failing

Bee Wilson

Thu 27 Oct 2016 06.59 BST Last modified on Wed 29 Nov 2017 10.11 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/27/the-new-book-of-snobs-a-definitive-guide-to-modern-snobbery-dj-taylor-review

 “I’m afraid we’ve become terrible salt snobs,” joked the late food writer Alan Davidson when he and his wife Jane had me round for lunch one day in the early 2000s. On the table were a panoply of special salts, from pink Himalayan to damp, grey fleur de sel from France. Announcing himself as a salt snob was a form of gentle self-mockery, something Alan was good at. He knew how absurd it was to have all these salts, when he could have made do with a cheap tub of Saxa. But it was also a modest kind of boastfulness. Alan wanted me to notice how superior his salt collection was, which I duly did.

The concept of snobbery is deeply complex, as the literary critic and biographer DJ Taylor cleverly explores in his “definitive guide” to snobs. Snobbery is a form of social superiority, but it can also be a moral failing. Snobs may laud it over others, but we, in turn, despise and punish them for it. Taylor starts his book with the “Plebgate” affair of 2012, in which the government chief whip Andrew Mitchell was forced to resign his official post, and later pay substantial damages, after it emerged that he had rebuked a police officer who asked him not to cycle through the gates of 10 Downing Street with the words: “Best you learn your fucking place … You’re fucking plebs.” As Taylor notes, Mitchell’s sin was not to swear, but his use of the word “plebs”, which, in ancient Rome, simply meant the common people.

In modern times, very few snobs are snobs all the time. To be a salt snob does not necessarily mean that you will be a snob in any other area of your life. Taylor confesses that he becomes a snob whenever he hears Adele on the radio or hears a Channel 4 presenter “tumbling over her glottal stops”, but hopes that he is not a snob per se. He is the son of a grammar school boy from a council estate and feels that he knew “all about petty social distinctions from an early age”. He is fascinated by the many forms snobbery takes, from the garden snobs who despise hanging baskets and patios (the correct word, apparently, is terrace) to the inverse snobs who feel superior to anything that smacks too much of “middle-class” behaviour. Taylor also identifies the film snob, a perverse individual who may consider Brian de Palma’s Body Double wildly underrated and sees no point in Meryl Streep.

In his The Book of Snobs (1846-7), the novelist WM Thackeray noted that some people were snobs “only in certain circumstances and relations of life”. Others, however, were what Thackeray called positive snobs, who were “snobs everywhere, in all companies, from morning to night, from youth to grave”. Thackeray argued that in the Victorian society in which he lived, many people could not help being positive snobs, because the whole of British national life was founded on the principle of hereditary privilege. The true snob, in Thackeray’s book, would find, as Taylor explains, that “his entire existence is governed by its logic: wife, house, career, recreations”. The Victorian snobs depicted by Thackeray might ruin themselves to pay for a fashionable hat or a pianoforte in the back parlour or an absurdly expensive truffle-laden dinner. This was because they felt it was social death to dine with people of the wrong class, such as doctors or lawyers, instead of “the country families”.

Maybe I move in the wrong circles (or do I mean the right circles?), but I wonder how many people in modern Britain, even posh people, still think or act like this. Taylor, the author of a biography of Thackeray, aspires to update The Book of Snobs to modern Britain. But for much of the book, it feels as if he has hardly updated it at all, writing as if all snobs were people who necessarily went to elite public schools and who insist, like Nancy Mitford, on being “U” and not “non-U”. Taylor anatomises many varieties of current snob: school snobs, country snobs, property snobs and so on, in novelistic sketches. But many of his different snobs end up sounding rather similar, and I don’t recognise much of contemporary society in his book.

By the end, Taylor’s snob seems to have become a very specific class of person, one who keeps labradors, eats potted shrimps and cares about whether someone went to Winchester or Eton. Such a snob is rather like the Sloane Ranger of the 1980s (his acknowledgments cite Ann Barr and Peter York’s The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook, on which he seems to have modelled some of his style). Snobs, Taylor writes, are “fond of mangling or truncating personal pronouns”. The “diehard snob doesn’t have a bath, he ‘takes his tub’”. Late middle-age snobs “talk artlessly of having ‘made a bish’”. The snob, Taylor airily claims, “is a person who uses a title ostentatiously”.

Yet we can all think of plenty of snobs, of one kind or another, who base their snobbery neither on title nor ostentation. And so can Taylor. What makes this book a missed opportunity is that he has taken what could have been a panoramic meditation on the place of snobbery in British society and crammed it into a needlessly narrow and archaic framework, giving the impression that snobs only belong to that class of people who are found on the grouse moor or in Debrett’s.

Taylor is an intelligent writer, however, and the best parts of this uneven book suggest that snobbery is far from limited to the upper classes. “Snobbery is universal,” he argues at one point. ‘“No social class, intellectual category or art form is immune to the snob virus.” The essence of all snobbery, Taylor says, is the making of arbitrary distinctions. It consists of “imposing yourself on a social situation, pulling rank, indicating, with varying degrees of subtlety, your own detachment from the people in whose presence you find yourself”. As such, it is both an unlikable characteristic and a very human one. Whether we are eating salt or deciding where our child goes to school, the person has not yet been born who never once secretly felt that his or her way of doing things was better. The snob is someone who hasn’t yet realised when to keep these feelings to himself.

‘The New Book of Snobs’ Updates the Shifting Science of Social Cues

By Dwight Garner

April 18, 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/books/review-new-book-of-snobs-dj-taylor.html

The English writer William Golding (“Lord of the Flies”) had a longstanding sense of social inadequacy. When he applied to Oxford University, the admissions interviewer noted that he was “N.T.S.” — not top shelf.

Golding wrote that he would like to sneak up on Eton, the elite private school, as if he were a cartoon villain, “with a mile or two of wire, a few hundred tons of TNT and one of those plunger-detonating machines which makes the user feel like Jehovah.”

There’s no sting like a class sting. There’s a bit of Golding, an imagined status-anarchist, in most of us. Who doesn’t hate snobs? Yet we’re all snobs about some things.

It’s among the contentions of D. J. Taylor’s clever and timely “The New Book of Snobs” that the world would be a poorer place without a bit of insolence and ostentation. “The cultivation of an arbitrary superiority,” he writes — whether we are in a refugee camp or a manor house — “is a vital part of the curious behavioral compound that makes us who we are.”

Often enough, you’d need a hydraulic rescue tool, a Jaws of Life, to pry apart snobbery from a simple human desire to get ahead. As Taylor puts it, “not all social aspiration is snobbish” and “to want to succeed and to delight in your success is not necessarily to betray a moral failing.”

Taylor’s book takes its title and inspiration from William Makepeace Thackeray’s “The Book of Snobs” (1848), in which that Victorian novelist defined a snob as one “who meanly admires mean things.”

Snobbery is no longer so easy to define. As in a string of binary code, the ones and zeros keep flipping. In a world in which reverse snobbery is often the cruelest sort, it can be hard for the tyro to keep up.

This is where Taylor’s book comes in. “The New Book of Snobs” will not help you navigate the American status system. It’s a very British book; so British that there are currently no plans to publish it in the United States. (I’m reviewing it because it’s new and interesting, and because copies can be easily found online.)

To understand Taylor fully, it will help to be conversant with the humor magazine Viz, as well as with the humor magazine Punch; with the reality-TV star Katie Price as well as with the writer Nancy Mitford; and with the Kray twins and the rapper Tinie Tempah, as well as with Evelyn Waugh and Beau Brummell.

Writing is hard because thinking is hard. Writing about class and snobbery, in particular, is so hard that doing it well bumps you a rung up the class ladder. In America, no one has made a serious attempt to unpick the multiple meanings of status cues since Paul Fussell did in his wicked book “Class” (1983).

As a myriad-minded social critic, Taylor is not quite on Fussell’s level. (Almost no human is.) But he’s astute, supremely well read and frequently very funny. In its combination of impact with effervescence, his book puts me in mind of a Black Velvet, that curious cocktail made from Guinness stout and champagne.

The English class system, with its hereditary titles, is vastly different from ours. But snobbery — class’s meddlesome twin — is a lingua franca. There’s plenty for an attentive student to learn here.

We are in the age of Trump, and, clearly, some forms of attempted snobbery will always take the form of conspicuous consumption. Taylor correctly points out, however, that the wiliest snobs “pursue their craft by stealth.”

He’s excellent on the distinctions that can be conveyed “by an agency as subtle as an undone button, a gesture, a glance, an intonation, the pronunciation of a certain word.” In England, it’s possible to be crushed by the sound of an attenuated vowel.

Americans in Britain, Taylor suggests, must remain on alert. Upper-class Brits like to ridicule American vernacular by stressing our usages, as in (the italics are his) “I think she’s gone to the restroom,” or “We’ll have to take a rain check on that.”

Don’t think you can escape this sort of game. “The man who most loudly proclaims his lack of snobbishness,” Taylor writes, “is most likely to be a snob.”

Taylor’s book is filled with small, tart taxonomies. He lists the great snob heroes of fiction, including Lady Catherine de Bourgh in “Pride and Prejudice.”

He offers tidy profiles of notable snobs, including the journalist and politician Tom Driberg (1905-1976), who would write the managers of hotels in advance, “demanding an assurance that there would be no sauce bottles or other condiments on the dining tables during his stay.”

The author probes some of the class resentment behind Brexit, Britain’s decision to leave the European Union. President Trump is not mentioned in this book. But leaning on George Orwell and Charles Dickens, Taylor discusses nationalism as “an extreme form of snobbery.”

A great deal of strong writing about class has been emerging from Britain in recent years. I’m thinking, in particular, of Owen Jones’s book “Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class” (2011). Taylor’s book is vastly different from Jones’s, but, in a sense, these men are climbing the same mountain from different sides.

To linger on the topic of class can seem like a sign of a sick soul. The subject can make us touchy, whether we are highborn or low or someplace in the middle. The critic Dwight Macdonald was a man of the radical left, yet a descendant of the old Dwight family of New England. In one grouchy 1947 letter, he wrote, “We can’t all be proletarians, you know.”

With nearly all status signifiers in flux, books like Taylor’s are more important than ever. Snobbery and immense learning, he makes plain, do not always walk hand in hand.

But in 2017, it pays to heed the advice of Ian McEwan, who wrote: “It is quite impossible these days to assume anything about people’s educational level from the way they talk or dress or from their taste in music. Safest to treat everyone you meet as a distinguished intellectual.”

Follow Dwight Garner on Twitter: @DwightGarner

Andrew Mitchell and the Plebgate affair explained for non-Brits

Why is ‘pleb’ a toxic word? How can a judge calling you a bit dim be a good thing? And how can two people sue each other at the same time? A guide for non-British readers

Peter Walker

 @peterwalker99

Thu 27 Nov 2014 18.33 GMT Last modified on Thu 21 Sep 2017 00.35 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/27/plebgate-andrew-mitchell-explain-non-brits

Andrew Mitchell, who resigned as chief whip over the 'plebgate' affair

A senior British politician, Andrew Mitchell, has lost a high-profile libel action against the publishers of the biggest-selling daily newspaper, the Sun. That’s the easy bit.

For non-Britons, or indeed anyone who has not been following each twist and turn in a two-year saga which takes in politics, policing, law, the media, language, class snobbery and the intricacies of who can use which gate at Downing Street, everything else gets a bit complex.

We’re here to help. Below is a handy guide to what happened and what it all means.

So what did happen?

It all began on the evening of 19 September 2012 when Mitchell, then chief whip of the government – effectively the enforcer for the ruling party, the person who keeps discipline and makes sure ministers vote as they are ordered – tried to cycle out of Downing Street. He was in a rush, en route to an engagement, and wanted to ride directly out of the main vehicle gates.

But to Mitchell’s displeasure, he was told to dismount and walk his bike through a pedestrian entrance. He argued with the officer on duty, PC Toby Rowland and, according to the officer’s account of the exchange, told him:

Best you learn your fucking place – you don’t run this fucking government – you’re fucking plebs.

All this was gleefully recounted in the next day’s Sun newspaper, and even though Mitchell denied using the word “plebs”, the continued bad publicity led him to resign just over a month later.

The row has rumbled on ever since, including minute examination of CCTV footage from the evening in question, and culminating in a legal case which finished on Thursday that saw Mitchell sue the Sun for libel over its story, while at the same time Mitchell was sued by PC Rowland for calling the policeman a liar.

The judge, Mr Justice Mitting, released a complex ruling, but one that concluded Mitchell did use “the words alleged or something so close”, including the word pleb.

What’s the big problem with pleb?

Meaning a common, or lower-class person, pleb is a largely outdated piece of slang in Britain, rarely heard by most in recent years before Mitchell inadvertently brought it back to prominence.

As insults go, pleb is relatively mild, and has a distinguished etymology, being derived from the Latin term plebeian, a member of the lower orders in ancient Rome. However, it is a class-based slur, and despite weekly newspaper articles decreeing the end of class, Britons remain obsessed by social status, especially the idea a compatriot might be judging them in connection with it.

This obsession is all the more the case in the government in which Mitchell served, which is dominated by the products of England’s top private schools, which are, confusingly, known as public schools. Chief among these is Eton, attended by David Cameron. Mitchell went to the very marginally less posh Rugby – current fees for boarders about £32,000 (just over $50,000) a year – but was later an army officer and investment banker, which makes him very posh.

The idea of a government minister using a class-laden insult to demean an ordinary policeman was seen as especially toxic. It didn’t help Mitchell’s case that he was annoyed at being held up while heading to the Carlton Club, an old and hugely posh private members’ club.

Who did people believe?

It depends who you asked, and when you asked them. Mitchell has something of a reputation for anger and blunt speaking – OK, for being very rude. The just-finished libel trial heard testimony about him calling one security officer “a little shit” and telling another, charmingly:

That’s a bit above your pay grade Mr Plod.

But there were also claims the police exaggerated the complaints, in part as a political manoeuvre targeting a government which has sought major restructuring of policing. The Plebgate affair, as it was inevitably know, was used as a campaign tool in fighting police cuts. Eventually, two officers were sacked, one for passing information to the Sun.

For about two days Mitchell was a semi-popular cause célèbre among British leftwing Twitter users, who liked to argue that if he could be fitted up by the police, what hope was there for young black men from the inner city. This didn’t last long.

Why did the judge decide against Mitchell?

In what might count as a slightly mixed verdict for PC Rowland, the judge ruled in part that he thought it unlikely the officer had invented the “pleb” exchange because he seemingly did not have the imagination to do so.

Karen McVeigh

@karenmcveigh1

 Not only did Rowland lack wit, inclination imagination to fabricate, neither did he inclination for pantomime invention needed #plebgate

Is Mitchell uniquely rude among British ex-cabinet ministers?

No. Not even this week. David Mellor, who served in government in the early 1990s, was in the news this week for raging at a London taxi driver he thought had taken the wrong route. Among the choice sentences recorded by the driver on his mobile phone was this volley:

You’ve been driving a cab for 10 years, I’ve been in the cabinet, I’m an award-winning broadcaster, I’m a Queen’s Counsel. You think that your experiences are anything compared to mine?

What’s the lesson from all this?

Don’t be rude to the police. And be wary of trying to take them on in the courts – the police trade union, the Police Federation, has spent a reported £1m ($660,000) backing Rowland’s case. And if you must be rude as a British politician – as Emily Thornberry also knows only too well – just don’t bring class into things.

A scandalous piece of opportunism and insensitive bad taste./ "Diana's funeral: re-enacted in Salford with Jill Dando and a mariachi band"

September 13, 2018, 4:52 am

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≪ Previous: THE NEW BOOK OF SNOBS A Definitive Guide to Modern Snobbery By D.J. Taylor / Andrew Mitchell and the Plebgate affair.

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A scandalous piece of opportunism and insensitive bad taste.

JEEVES/ Tweedland

“Whether you are a monarchist or a republican, some events should be beyond humour, and the funeral of Princess Diana is one thing nobody should be laughing at.”

"the recreation is nothing short of sick and twisted".

Charlie Proctor / Royal Central

“THIS was the disgraceful moment Princess Diana was "exorcised" in a reenactment of her funeral - 21 years after she died. The sick remake featured a smashed up vehicle imitating the crashed Mercedes Diana was travelling in when she was killed.”

Express / Fri, Sep 7, 2018

Diana's funeral: re-enacted in Salford with Jill Dando and a mariachi band

It provoked tabloid fury. But this bizarre spectacle, complete with car wreck, posed tough questions about death, royals and the social order. Our writer joined the procession

Dave Simpson

Thu 13 Sep 2018 00.06 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/sep/13/diana-funeral-re-enacted-salford-jill-dando-mariachi-band-princess-wales?CMP=fb_gu

 ‘Princess Diana to be EXORCISED in ‘sick and twisted’ FUNERAL re-enactment,” raged a recent tabloid headline, announcing a “satirical remake” at Salford’s White Hotel to mark the 21st anniversary of her death. The paper even quoted Charlie Proctor, editor of regal website Royal Central, who blasted: “Whether you are a monarchist or a republican, some events should be beyond humour, and the funeral of Princess Diana is one thing nobody should be laughing at.”

But are the artists involved in this event really laughing at Diana? Or is something more interesting going on? I decide to find out for myself, and so I join the procession as a coffin draped in flags is carried through the streets of Salford. As requested, everyone is wearing black and many carry flowers. The procession walks in respectful silence while traffic slows, bystanders gawp and people peer from behind twitching curtains. Genuine paparazzi hurry after the procession, just as they chased Diana’s Mercedes before the fatal crash in Paris. Someone says: “This is going to be the weirdest experience we’re going to have this year.”

They’re not wrong. The Funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales 2.0, is a free entry, word-for-word re-creation but with a mariachi band in place of Elton John. The event – put together by well-known faces from the arts and featuring novelist and film-maker Chris Petit as “master of ceremonies”, and writer and documentarian Jonathan Meades as Diana’s brother Earl Spencer – was always going to be controversial. Posters for the event (provocatively depicting Diana, Jimmy Savile, Jill Dando and Barry George) have been torn down across town.

“We sent out a press release knowing what would happen,” says author Austin Collings, who is directing the re-enactment. “But it’s very Chris Morris/National Enquirer to talk about an ‘exorcism’. The papers used a picture of the wrong building and said we’re having a Jimmy Savile impersonator, which is nonsense. So it’s already become an exercise in fake news.”

For most people in the procession, what awaits us at the hotel is shrouded in mystery. Those involved are being cagey. Film-maker and artist Stanley Schtinter says only that it will “reclaim the people’s princess for the people”. Even one of the actors – Little Anthony, once of Manchester band Intastella – has no idea what he’s getting into: “All I know is that my role involves a pair of union-jack boxer shorts.”

Collings, who ran with the idea after Schtinter suggested it, was brought up a staunch anti-royalist, but researching the project by watching hours of old footage made him reappraise Diana and her attitude to the royals. “I love the factshe was a passionate thorn in their side,” he says. “The more you watch, the more endearing she is. When you see footage of the Queen Mother approaching a crowd, she keeps her distance, whereas Diana bowls right in.”

Collings is old enough to remember the original, emotional funeral and the way that – briefly – the nation turned against the royal family because of the way they treated Diana. And he remembers how the press treated her:“She was the first woman to have her cellulite homed in on, when she was at the gym. It was the precursor of the Kim Kardashian treatment of celebrity, almost Ballardian.”

What about Jill Dando and Barry George (who was wrongly convicted of her murder)? How do they come into it? Collings says he sees both Dando and Diana as “ciphers, truth-tellers to power. Savile, as a friend of Charles, was a marriage counsellor to the royal couple. Diana had a terrible feeling about him from the start. She had emotional intelligence.

“At the time, putting her hands on black babies and all the stuff with landmines seemed like PR, but you look at it now and maybe she became a woman in a way they hadn’t let her. And the men she chose later on – an Indian doctor [Hasnet Khan]; Dodi [Fayed], a Muslim – were V-signs to the royals. So we’re essentially telling an absurd story of class, monarchy, racism and corruption.”

The procession arrives. The paparazzi are refused admission to the old club-turned-arts space. Everyone gathers in uneasy silence. But for all the mystery beforehand, it’s largely as Schtinter envisaged: a word-for-word re-creation, but taken vastly out of context. The rundown space, with its huge speakers and 24-hour licence, is no Westminster Abbey. It feels truly surreal, emphasising the strangeness of our social order.

Tony Blair, hissed and booed, is the pantomime villain, brilliantly played by Rob Thornber, a kitchen worker and club promoter. He had four days to learn the part but studied footage to send up the pomposity of the then-PM’s original speeches and bizarre, dramatic stutter. A car wreck – a Volkswagen, not a Merc – filled with flowers feels a bit crass, though Collings argues that it provides crucial context.

Earl Spencer’s emotional, almost vengeful eulogy about how Diana’s “blood family” will protect the princes is, however, received in awestruck silence. The words are delivered by Meades via a deliberately bad recording, so people hang on every word. We never do get to see Little Anthony’s Brexit boxer shorts: his role was dropped. Nor, despite subsequent tabloid reports, is there any reference to Savile, apart from on that initial poster. Instead, the Aloof’s The Last Stand – the most-played song on Radio 1 on the day Diana died – closes proceedings at punishing volume, while mist descends and George shoots Dando.

Afterwards, everyone I speak to has a different perspective. Alex Taylor, 28, from Stockport, sees it as an exercise in challenging the limits of free speech. Artist and musician Dalitso Moni believes dialogue about taboo subjects “brings people together – it’s an artist’s job to give you experiences you might not have thought of”. Isabel Aitken, who gave some of the readings, identifies with Earl Spencer’s idea that “people were drawn to her because they saw one of the dejected and vulnerable. She was such a part of the establishment, but struggled to assert her individuality, and I admire her for that.”

It’s not always clear how the creators intended the piece to be received. But for art student Alice Pennington, playing Dando in a performance about Diana has made her think about #MeToo. “For me, things haven’t changed in terms of growing up surrounded by idealised womanhood. I think Jill Dando was on the verge of exposing something, and there are parallels with these young women who were killed in mysterious circumstancesand who embodied female innocence. Diana was the fairytale princess who refused to play the game.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury, AKA TV producer James Norton, says: “People still get pissed off with William and Harry for being emotional and talking about depression, but that’s Diana’s legacy – and it’s still subversive. They don’t think royals should behave like that.”

“It’s the weirdest thing I’ve seen, but I think she’d have liked it,” says 19-year-old Huddersfield student Eve Pennington. “She was a rebel, wasn’t she?”

Princess Diana funeral remake with Mexican mariachi band sparks fury –'It's disgraceful'

THIS was the disgraceful moment Princess Diana was "exorcised" in a reenactment of her funeral - 21 years after she died. The sick remake featured a smashed up vehicle imitating the crashed Mercedes Diana was travelling in when she was killed.

PUBLISHED: 17:26, Fri, Sep 7, 2018 | UPDATED: 18:16, Sat, Sep 8, 2018

https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1014541/princess-diana-funeral-reenactment-manchester-White-Hotel-diana-exocism-outrage

It was organised by artist Stanley Schtinter at The White Hotel, a "rundown" popular rave warehouse in Manchester located yards away from Strangeways prison.

Around 160 people attended - and many of the mourners were no older than 30.

It included a Jimmy Savile impersonator and writer Jonathan Meades played the role of Diana's brother Charles, Earl Spencer - who read his original funeral speech in full.

The coffin arrived in an Uber and mourners threw broccoli and flowers as it was carried into the warehouse.

Photographer Karen Priestley, 49, attended the event yesterday - on the 21st anniversary of Diana's funeral.

She said: "There must have been around 160 people there and some of them looked emotional.

"People were carrying flowers and broccoli - a lot of those attending would be too young to remember the original.

"It was sick and disgraceful - there was a smashed up car imitating the vehicle Diana was in when she died.

"It was covered in flowers and they had a picture of Diana with roses next to it.

"The final service was a word for word reenactment of her funeral - and they even had an actor playing Diana's brother to read his speech.

"They had somebody dressed up as a priest and a man dressed as a high priest.

"The White Hotel is a disused warehouse where they hold raves - it's white but that's the only thing that is true to the name."

The procession started at 6.30pm and the route wound its way through the backstreets of Broughton in Salford.

The White Hotel said of the event: "The World Cup may not be coming home but our Queen of Hearts has just ordered a taxi and she's on her way.

"Commissioned by The White Hotel's arts cabinet, artist Stanley Schtinter has cooked up a word for word remake/re-enactment of Princess Diana's funeral to mark the anniversary of the original and popular 1997 production.

"The funeral will benefit from the natural incorporation of the Jill Dando/Barry George fit-up/Crimewatch cock-up, and Jimmy Savile cock-in(to) the mix for goodbad measure.

"With an original score by a live Mexican mariachi band (includes a specially adapted version of Candle In The Wind), and appearances by writer and TV star Jonathan Meades (as Earl Spencer) and writer and filmmaker Chris Petit's Museo de la Soledad (as Master of Ceremonies)see it as a purge after another year of pointless patriotism."

Thanks Bookster!

September 19, 2018, 2:18 am

≫ Next: Vanity Fair | This September | ITV

≪ Previous: A scandalous piece of opportunism and insensitive bad taste./ "Diana's funeral: re-enacted in Salford with Jill Dando and a mariachi band"

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Some months ago (March 2018) during a short trip to Lisbon, Jeeves  took some photographs of himself wearing a ready to wear Hacking Jacket, made by Bookster (https://tweedlandthegentlemansclub.blogspot.com/2018/03/jeeves-short-trip-to-lisbon-wearing.html)

In a very pleasant follow up, Bookster, tailored using the same “tweed” fabric, a pair of trousers following my specifications (very simple and functional.)

 High Waist Trousers. (to wear with suspenders)

Double Pleats Inward

Plain Waistband with Button Side Adjusters

Turn-ups (5cm)

Two Back Pockets

ZIP fly

Lining half to the knee

What I really wanted was a timeless, comfortable and functional suit, away from the “Italian syndrome” who has dominated the scene of “business” life, in a great paradox, transforming people who want to look responsible, in “fat babies” wearing too small clothes.

Thanks Bookster!

JEEVES / Tweedland / António Sérgio Rosa de Carvalho / Architectural Historian.

All Photographs by  MisjaB

https://www.misjab.nl/

All Photographs by  MisjaB

https://www.misjab.nl/

Model:  Hacking Jacket

Cloth: Thistle Tweed

Cloth Weight:  550gms / 22oz

Weight Category: Medium Weight

Cloth Pattern: Check

Cloth Colour: Green Gold Mix with Purple/Wine Windowpane Over Check

Lining: Purple Viscose Twill Lining

Buttons: Dark Horn

Style: 3 Button Front

Lapel: Notch Lapel with Collar Tab Feature

Outside Pockets: 3 Extra Slant Flap Pockets and Welted Breast Bocket

Inside Pockets: 2 Inside Breast Pocket with Security Pocket Right, Pen Pocket and Card Pocket left

Cuff: 4 Button Real Cuff

Vents: Twin Vents

Trim: Purple Undrcollar

https://www.bookster.co.uk/mens-bookster-thistle-tweed-hacking-jacket/

BOOKSTER

BOOKSTER TAILORING

Customer Service: +44 (0)113 887 8424

Email: info@bookster.co.uk

OUR STORY

https://www.bookster.co.uk/history/

Bookster was established by Peter and Michelle King in Herefordshire in 2007 and was borne out of selling vintage clothing in the 1970s which, over time, became renowned for specialising in Tweed.

This specialisation was due to a continued frustration that tweed clothing was only available in a limited number of small sizes. With a growing customer base of demand for Tweed garments (in a variety of shapes and sizes) they decided that the best way to serve their clients was to actually start making Tweed jackets in custom sizes.

Thus Bookster Tailoring was established to introduce The Bookster Original made to order Tweed Jacket. Popularity for the product rapidly grew and soon demand had seen the product range widen significantly, whilst maintaining the Bookster Tweed Jacket as its core focus.

In 2014 Bookster Tailoring was acquired by new owners, with a rich tailoring heritage stretching back over 100 years, and subsequently the company’s headquarters moving to Leeds, a famous heartland for tailoring and cloth production.

The acquisition has only strengthened Bookster’s client offering in terms of product range, customisation options, selection of cloth, fit, tailoring quality and customer service. Today Bookster, still specialising in Tweed, has a customer base of satisfied clients who appreciate the quintessentially British style of a Bookster garment, its’ premium quality and perfect fit.

Vanity Fair | This September | ITV

September 21, 2018, 4:55 am

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Vanity Fair review – this adaptation fizzes with all the energy of its social-climbing heroine

4 / 5 stars 4 out of 5 stars.    

Yes, it’s yet another version of Thackeray’s novel, and it has its sights set on a modern audience, but Olivia Cooke is an ideal Becky Sharp – and the sumptuous sets are worth tuning in for all on their own

Emine Saner

 @eminesaner

Sun 2 Sep 2018 22.05 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/sep/02/vanity-fair-review-becky-sharp-olivia-cooke

 ‘So that was school and this is the world,” says Becky Sharp, on her way to London with the “too good to be true” Amelia Sedley, who has taken pity on Sharp and invited her to stay for the week. After that, Miss Sharp will take up her new job as a governess in “darkest Hampshire” – a terrible fate. “I cannot bear to be a governess,” she says, dramatically. “I was not put on this Earth to be a poor and friendless spinster.” She has a few days to try to get out of it.

“How far can she get in a week?” says Amelia’s mother (Claire Skinner), peering over her glasses at her husband (Simon Russell Beale). But this is Becky Sharp we’re talking about, so don’t underestimate her. Miss Pinkerton (a wonderfully austere Suranne Jones), headmistress of her Academy for Young Ladies, where the orphaned Becky grew up, did. “You see how a Christian may seek to do good, girls?” she says to the room of graduating ladies in marshmallow-coloured empire-line dresses about the ungrateful Sharp. “Only to find she has nursed a viper in her bosom.”

Does the world need another adaptation of Vanity Fair? On the strength of this start to ITV’s new series, the answer would have to be yes. It feels as energetic and sparkly as a social climber’s zeal. Michael Palin plays the author William Makepeace Thackeray, introducing his story about “a world where everyone is striving for what is not worth having”, while the opening track playing behind him is a version of All Along the Watchtower. “There must be some kind of way out of here” might serve as Becky’s words to live by if she didn’t have a pretty good ideal already: “I want to make sure tomorrow is better than today,” the lowly daughter of an artist and an opera girl says to Amelia in their coach as they travel through London.

In this first episode, this will mostly be achieved by trying to seduce Amelia’s brother, the ghastly Jos, who has returned from India, where he is a rich civil servant (his title: Collector of Boggley Wollah). This “lardy loafer” is brilliantly odious – vain and full of tall tales of his heroics. Despite being terrified of young ladies, as his sister tells it, he has rather fallen for Miss Sharp. “She’s a nice, gay, merry young creature,” he says, waddling along, all pompous and porcine, in peach silk trousers. His attempts to propose are routinely thwarted, twice by the arrival of tiffin (“Ooh, tiffin!”) and, most amusingly, by his terrible behaviour at a night out at the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, where he gets drunk on a bowl of rack punch. “Bloody fool,” says the saintly Captain Dobbin – all early-years Princess Di blond bashfulness – escorting a nauseous Jos back to his lodgings.

Hungover and remorseful, Jos doesn’t come round the next day to propose, which means time has run out for Becky, who has to leave for her new job. “Oh, that was a long week,” says Mrs Sedley, pleased to see the back of her. At the gloomy Hampshire mansion, Becky is unimpressed by her new employer, the coarse – and, worse, tight-fisted – Sir Pitt Crawley (Martin Clunes). But things are looking up – a handsome young soldier has just arrived on horseback and Becky already has his attention.

This seven-part series has been made with Amazon money, and it looks and feels wildly expensive – CGI London, including the great hedonistic spectacle of the Vauxhall party, is a treat, and it’s almost worth tuning in for the set designers’ selection of sumptuous wallpaper alone. The cast is fantastic, especially Olivia Cooke, who makes an ideal Becky Sharp. Her knowing looks to camera are spare enough to be conspiratorial without being annoying.

Gwyneth Hughes’s adaptation is close to the novel, but has its sights set on a modern audience. The Sedleys’ servant, Sam, who is black, has a reasonably fleshed-out character, at least by (admittedly low) costume drama standards; he is visibly appalled by the racist Mr Sedley – Becky may be low-born, but at least, he says, she is a “white face … Better than sending him back to India into the arms of some dusky maharani, better than a dozen mahogany grandchildren”. And it may just be me, but Amelia’s fiance, George Osborne, seems to have far more in common with his modern namesake – haughty, snobbish – than I remember from the book. As for Becky, if you’re part of the generation growing up with endless self-promotion and #livingmybestlife tags on social media, her quest for influence and riches will make so much sense as to be unremarkable. Whatever she’s after may not be worth having, but it is worth watching.

Return of Alan Clark

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Alan Clark was not 'wonderful'. He was sleazy and cruel

The diarist and Tory minister made his wife wretchedly miserable

Dominic Lawson

@indyvoices

Tuesday 15 September 2009 00:00

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/dominic-lawson/alan-clark-was-not-wonderful-he-was-sleazy-and-cruel-1787343.html

Oh dear, not Alan Clark again. Ten years after the death of the so-called "Samuel Pepys of the 20th century" out comes the official biography. On the BBC Today programme yesterday the book's author, Ion Trewin, described how "wonderful" Clark was. This is the popular view, reinforced by the way in which that marvellous actor John Hurt portrayed Clark's own account of himself to a mass audience, in the BBC dramatisation of his diaries.

Alan Clark was not wonderful. He was sleazy, vindictive, greedy, callous and cruel. He was also a thorough-going admirer of Adolf Hitler, although his sycophants persisted in thinking that his expressions of reverence for the Fuhrer were not meant seriously. They absolutely were.

When Alan Clark died, in September 1999, the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, led the tributes, saying: "We will all miss him". One MP had the courage to offer an honest view of his late colleague: David Heathcoat-Amory – who had the genuine article's ability to see through Clark's phoney imitation of the upper-class Englishman. Heathcoat-Amory told the BBC that "he wasn't a particularly nice man. He could be very cruel with colleagues. One incident that sticks in the mind was when we were having a whip-round for a colleague and he [a multi-millionaire] refused to chip in ... I also think he was very conscious of his own image and status, and his own reputation as a diarist."

 That rang true. When the London Evening Standard began publishing some spoof Alan Clark diaries, he sued them for a considerable sum of money, although it must have been clear to any reader that these were nothing more than a form of humorous homage. Yet Clark, for all the witty demolitions of his colleagues in his diaries, took himself very seriously indeed – it was a source of great bitterness to him that neither Margaret Thatcher nor John Major could take at all seriously his insistence that he should be Foreign Secretary.

He made it to Minister of State for Trade, however, in which role he did something truly wicked. At the time, this country had an embargo against selling weaponry to Saddam Hussein. Clark did not agree with this policy, and so gave the nod and a wink to a company called Matrix Churchill to sell machine tools to Saddam, which he knew were for military use. This was against the law, so when HM Customs discovered the shipments, the Matrix Churchill executives were arrested. They protested that the then Trade Minister Clark had given them the all-clear; but when he was visited by the police, he lied and said that he had done no such thing.

So the executives went on trial – and would have received substantial prison sentences, were it not for the fact that the judge overturned so-called ministerial public interest immunity certificates, which had kept from the court documents revealing Clark's involvement. Clark, of course, had signed those certificates, and must have thought that this would end any chance of his lies being uncovered.

Immediately, the Matrix executives' lawyers put to Clark in the witness stand the incompatibility between his remarks to the police, and what was now being revealed. Clark drawled, "it's our old friend economical... with the actualité": in other words, he admitted that there had been a conspiracy between him and the Matrix Churchill executives to disguise the nature of the exports to Saddam. The trial collapsed – and Clark became an instant hero. It was felt that he had told the truth in the dock, and thus saved the defendants from unjust incarceration. The truth was that Clark had been content to see the men locked up on the basis of his perjurious evidence – for which he should have been prosecuted – and only came clean when the forced disclosure of documents he had connived in suppressing had put him on the spot.

It turned out that Clark had earlier explained his motives for clearing the exports to Saddam: "The interests of the West were well served by Iran and Iraq fighting each other, the longer the better." He was indeed a notable historian of wars, one of his most acclaimed works being Barbarossa, an account of the Eastern Front in the Second World War. He was intent on proving Hitler's talent as a military leader, but over the years it became clear that there was more to it than mere technical admiration of Hitler the war strategist. In 1981 his diary records: "I told Frank Johnson that I was a Nazi; I really believed it to be the ideal system, and that it was a disaster for the Anglo-Saxon races and for the world that it was extinguished."

Johnson, who was then on the staff of The Times, gulps and tells Clark that he can't really mean it. Clark really did mean it. But even when he complains in his diary that Johnson "takes refuge in the convention that Alan-doesn't-really-mean-it", his readers continue to believe that this is all an uproarious joke. Yet, and this is to his credit as a diarist, he does not attempt to mislead his readers about his true opinions: at one point he records his thoughts of defecting to the National Front, and when two NF emissaries come to visit him he writes, "How good they were and how brave [those] who keep alive the tribal essence."

All this filth has been submerged by the tidal wave of obsession with Clark's sexual exploits. On that score Trewin's biography will not disappoint. We knew that the 30-year-old Clark married the 16-year-old Jane Beuttler in 1958. Yet Trewin has unearthed the following diary entry, written when Clark's wife-to-be was just 14: "This is very exciting. She [Jane] is the perfect victim, but whether or not it will be possible to succeed I can't tell at present."

He did succeed in the endeavour of making this child a "perfect victim": in the course of their marriage he made her wretchedly miserable with his continuous betrayals. Sickest of all, perhaps, was the way in which on his death-bed he made this much younger woman promise him that she would never remarry. Naturally his "perfect victim" consented.

Again, the reading public seems to find Clark's frenzied extra-marital rutting merely amusing: or perhaps it is just that they appreciate his lack of hypocrisy in admitting all to his diary. They should consider what it was like to be in receipt of his unwanted attentions. Some years ago the (married) journalist Minette Marrin recorded her own experience of it. They had both been invited to a "political" dinner at a private house. He instantly pressed himself on her in a most unsubtle way, demanding that she leave their hosts, join him for a private dinner and then...

Marrin recalled: "He thought 'no' was a form of flirting ... When at last he came to believe that I was impervious to his charms and would not rush off with him into the night, he turned to me with a particularly vicious look. And this is what this self-styled gentleman, this intellectual, this flower of our civilisation, then said: "Well, fuck you then. Fuck off. I'm not talking to you any more."

I think it would be better if we heard no more about the "wonderful" Alan Clark.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1211376/A-hell-life-Alan-Clarks-secret-love.html

Alan Clark

Alan Clark, who has died aged 71, was an irrepressible free spirit on the Conservative benches with a habit for outspokenness that ensured he never gained high office.

Alan Clark at the 1994 Conservative Party Conference in Bournemouth  Photo: Brian Smith

12:23PM BST 08 Sep 1999

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/7623889/Alan-Clark.html

Clark was renowned not only for frequent public rows, but also for the candid and outrageous content of his very readable diaries. He said things of a kind many readers kept to themselves.

The Diaries gave a surprisingly open account of his own vanity, hopes, lusts, political ambitions and amused contempt for his fellow politicians and constituents. He exulted in driving fast cars and testing his physical fitness and courage (by exploits such as climbing ruinous walls).

He also revealed an anxiety about becoming unattractive to women in old age and a fear of sickness ("I am now convinced I have got cancer of the jaw," he wrote erroneously in 1987, after looking in the shaving mirror.) His jaundiced attitude and cynical laughter were reminiscent of Philip Larkin.

Clark admired animals and hated cruelty to them, strongly opposing battery chicken rearing and fur trapping. An emotional passage in his Diaries describes his ill-managed shooting of a heron that was eating his fish: "I was sobbing as I went back up the steps: `Sodding fish, why should I kill that beautiful creature just for the sodding fish?'"

There were endless surprises in Clark's character. He was a country landowner but was repelled by hunting, a loving husband yet a flagrant womaniser, an admirer of the martial qualities of the SS but a stout defender of Britain's capacity to defend her liberties.

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Clark worried about the drain on his wealth of the upkeep of Saltwood Castle in Kent (from which the knights had set out to murder Thomas Becket), a 27,000-acre estate at Eriboll in Sutherland, a chalet in Zermatt (he was a daring skier) a house in north Devon and rooms in Albany (to him a place of "cold and miserable squalor").

Dashing and languid, he combined sensibility and arrogance, and made friends in high places - and enemies. His enthusiastic knowledge of military history and strategy well qualified him as a defence minister. But his honesty, sense of humour and contempt for stupidity disqualified him from higher office.

Much of Clark's character was to be explained by his similarity to his father, the art historian Kenneth Clark. To him he owed his money, sharp intellect and breeding. In his Diaries he admitted a constant inability to communicate with his father, but in the end, as Kenneth Clark lay dying, there was a moving declaration: " `Papa, I think you're going to die very soon. I've come back to tell you how much I love you, and to thank you for all you did for me, and to say goodbye.' He mumbled, but his breathing calmed right down. Quite remarkable and fulfilling."

Alan Kenneth McKenzie Clark was born on April 13 1928. The family's roots were bourgeois - Clark's grandfather made his fortune from cotton. Saltwood, the boyhood home of the Daily Telegraph journalist W F Deedes, was bought "for a song" in 1953.

Alan spent his childhood miserably "behind the green baize door" from his father. He hated Eton, receiving "an early introduction to human cruelty, treachery and extreme physical hardship". He and his House Tutor, L H Jacques formed an instant antipathy, and he was caned for bursting a paper bag in Chapel and writing "not dusty" on some untouched furniture. "These were not the worst things I did," he confessed later.

During 185 days' National Service in the Household Cavalry, Clark acquired a third share in his first Jaguar and a taste for strong language. In 1948 he went up to Christ Church, Oxford, to read History, enjoying lectures by Robert Blake and Hugh Trevor-Roper.

He spent the summer of 1950 in America, staying with the Astors - which he liked - before working as a bellhop; on his travels he developed a life-long distaste for America.

After taking his degree, he combined dinners at the Inner Temple with a colourful career as a "runner" for a used-car dealer in Warren Street. When unemployed he would "nip round to Annabel's where the barman would cash a cheque for pounds 50". He was called to the Bar in 1955, but never practised. Instead, the super-fit Clark became involved with the Festival Ballet, and in 1957 passed himself off as a wrestler to gain experience of Russia.

In July 1958, now 30, he caused a stir by marrying 16-year-old Jane Beuttler, whom he had courted for two years, collecting her from convent school in a Cadillac. His bride declared: "I am not even nervous. I intend to have a lot of fun in my married life." So did her husband. A former girlfriend turned up on the honeymoon in Positano.

In 1961 Clark published his first book of military history, The Donkeys, A History of the BEF in 1915. It heaped obloquy on British generals - particularly Haig - for their readiness to sacrifice lives to an unimaginative strategy. It provided much material for Joan Littlewood's musical Oh! What a Lovely War.

Clark enhanced his reputation as a military historian with The Fall of Crete. In 1965 he published Barbarossa: The Russo-German Conflict 1941-45 and in 1973 Aces High: The war in the air over the Western Front.

But he was never far from controversy. In 1984, in The Daily Telegraph, he contrasted the "inefficiency" of Eisenhower's army in Normandy with the "physical splendour" of the SS infantry who resisted it. In 1993 he outraged many by claiming that Churchill lost the Empire through not making peace with Hitler in 1941.

In 1971 his father moved out of Saltwood, to lessen death duties, and Clark moved in. He loved the castle with its Norman buildings partly rebuilt by Lutyens, its vast vaulted library, the works of art, the grounds thronged with wildlife. There was space to tinker with his three Jaguars, Silver Ghost and Porsche. Saltwood was a refuge for the Clarks and their Rottweilers.

But money was always a nagging consideration. At first, Clark had no access to the family trust, and mortgaged Saltwood to Hoare's. He opened the castle to the public, but closed it again because of thefts and vandalism. After Lord Clark's death, the family sold a Turner for pounds 7.4 million to meet death duties.

Clark never thought himself rich enough, lamenting in 1987 that, despite having pounds 700,000 in the Abbey National, "I'm not rich enough to have servants, we have to do everything ourselves and we just haven't got the time." He worked out how much the windows cost to clean and rued the price of claret for dinner parties at pounds 100 for a decent bottle.

Politically, Clark yearned to be in the Cabinet. But, he judged, "I am not a hungry fighter, being too full of my Baldwinesque leisure and hobbies." In the late 1960s, armed with pounds 30,000 in royalties from Barbarossa and convinced that Labour was ruining the country, he sought a seat, despite his father's view of politics as "degrading".

He spurned Swindon in 1969, considering it unwinnable. Edward Heath then reputedly barred him from the candidates' list as a reactionary. It was 1972 before Clark was chosen to fight Plymouth, Sutton. Elected in February 1974, he held the seat for 18 years, developing little affection for the constituency or most of the worthies he had to humour.

Singled out by Whips as "the most dangerous man in the Commons", Clark was an early supporter of Mrs Thatcher, not just because he thought her the most sexually attractive woman in politics: "Eyes, wrists . . ankles!" He took a robust line on race, law and order and Europe, campaigning for a "No" vote in the 1975 referendum.

He always took his own line. He called protests at the treatment of Soviet dissidents as "preposterous and desperately dangerous". He voted against reforms to the Anglican liturgy, and spoke strongly against abortion.

When Mrs Thatcher took office in 1979, he appealed to her not to give in to "faint hearts" on Europe and to resist Treasury pressure for defence cuts. He was blunt in public with her ministers. When the De Lorean car plant in Belfast closed with the loss of millions of taxpayers' money, Clark blamed the Labour government but told the Northern Ireland Secretary Humphrey Atkins: "Do you realise that you are the laughing stock not only of the international motor industry but as far as I know of the criminal fraternity as well?"

When Rex Hunt, Governor of the Falklands, surrendered to Argentine forces in 1982, he tabled questions alleging "collusion" between the Foreign Office and the junta. He was one of several Tories to threaten rebellion unless Britain secured a "dual key" for American cruise missiles at RAF bases.

Convinced he had no prospect of office, he launched an unsuccessful bid for the ownership of The Spectator. But after the 1983 election, Mrs Thatcher, admiring his stand on the Falklands and his rakish demeanour, took a risk and made him junior employment minister.

Already 55, he was not cut out for Whitehall and by the end of his first day was convinced that his private secretary Jenny Easterbrook, "her sexuality tightly controlled", thought him "an uncouth chauvinist lout" likely to last weeks rather than months.

Though Clark was not a heavy drinker, in a celebrated incident he made the mistake of accepting an invitation to a wine tasting before making his first important ministerial speech. He read in a mocking tone a passage on equal rights for women. After Clare Short accused him of being "incapable", he gabbled the rest. In his own words, he was brought down by "odious over-confidence" and three particularly fine wines.

Clark sought the role of court jester, as when on a prime ministerial flight he insisted on treating the black-tied Sir Geoffrey Howe as head waiter. He explained: "Like many who have had an unhappy childhood, I am frightened of being laughed at. Perhaps that is why I like making people laugh with me."

In 1985 Clark - motto "only servants apologise" - outraged the Foreign Office by describing sub-Saharan Africa as "Bongo-Bongo Land"; the remark was made in private, but leaked.

An even more explosive episode in April 1984 required Mrs Thatcher's intervention to keep him in the Government. Clark - an anti-American protectionist representing a naval constituency - attacked on the BBC's Question Time the decision to buy an American missile for the Royal Navy instead of the British-developed Sea Eagle. The Defence Secretary, Michael Heseltine, wanted him sacked for this, but Lobby correspondents were rapidly informed that the Lady stood by him.

That October, Clark had what he took as a providential escape from death. He and his wife decided on a whim to leave the party conference in Brighton a day early. That night the IRA bombed the Grand Hotel. Clark noted apocalyptically: "What a coup for the Paddys. The whole thing has a smell of the Tet Offensive."

His time at employment had its high spots. One was his piloting of a trade union Bill through the Commons with Labour pitting against him John Smith, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair; he emerged with honours more than even.

In January 1986 Clark, who had come within a whisker of resigning through boredom, rejected a sideways move to transport. His pretext was that owning land close to the likely Channel Tunnel portal raised a conflict of interest. Within days he got a better offer; after the resignations of Michael Heseltine and Leon Brittan over Westland, Mrs Thatcher made him Minister of State for Trade. Douglas Hurd advised the Prime Minister not to appoint Clark because of "Bongo-Bongo Land". (His own characterisation of Hurd was: "Might as well have a corncob up his arse.") President Bongo of the Ivory Coast jokingly sent Clark a poster reading: "Gagnez avec Bongo!" which he displayed at his 1987 adoption meeting.

The 1987 campaign gave Clark new scope to break ranks. With the government committed to the tunnel, he attacked the project, enraging Michael Howard, who as MP for Folkestone faced strong local objections to it. The furore dashed Clark's hopes of promotion to the Cabinet. Mrs Thatcher moved him sideways to become Defence Procurement Minister; he wrote: "For the first time I really like my job."

He devoted his energies to undermining Tom King, his former boss at employment whom he described as "an awful person to work with - indecisive, blustering, bullying, stupid and cunningly cautious even when he didn't need to be", yet came to see as a potential prime minister.

He gained Mrs Thatcher's support for an unofficial defence review, recommending a world-wide capability with drastic cuts in the the Rhine Army, saving pounds 2 billion a year. The document caused a sensation when leaked in May 1990, but was stifled by the MoD with its less radical post-Cold War review, Options for Change.

King berated Clark for "passing notes to the PM down the chimney"; Clark ridiculed Options, saying: "There shouldn't be any f**ing options. It should be: `It's like this. Now get on with it.'"

Clark was an outspoken supporter of Mrs Thatcher when Sir Anthony Meyer made his "stalking horse" challenge in November 1989. But he saw the party slipping away from her, and when Sir Geoffrey Howe dramatically resigned and Heseltine challenged for the leadership he despaired for her. He came to see first King and then John Major as the only candidate able to stop Heseltine.

On November 21 1990, at the height of the crisis, he barged in to see Mrs Thatcher, commended her decision to fight on into a second ballot as "heroic", but warned that she would lose. After her resignation, Clark was keen to write her official biography, but she preferred first to publish her own memoirs.

Clark had expected to "go out" with Mrs Thatcher, but Mr Major reappointed him with a Privy Counsellorship. The Gulf war was imminent, and Clark had recently visited the Gulf to reassure friendly Arab states; but when Operation Desert Storm was launched to recapture Kuwait, officials kept him muzzled.

Hoping for a peerage, Clark decided not to stand for the Commons again. By now, he was embroiled in the Supergun and Matrix-Churchill affairs, concerning covert British arms sales to Iraq before the Gulf war. Clark would have liked to hail the order for gigantic gun barrels as a triumph for British exports but the row erupted before he could make this public.

Matrix-Churchill caused Clark much greater difficulties. He had arrived at the DTI with Iran and Iraq at war and Britain committed not to sell arms to either side, yet firms were quietly encouraged to supply Saddam Hussein through third countries to prevent Ayatollah Khomeini scoring a victory by destabilising the Middle East. Clark regarded the guidelines on sales to the warring countries as "tiresome and obtrusive". In January 1988 he met executives of the Matrix-Churchill machine tool company who were frustrated by delays in getting licences for sensitive exports. Clark suggested specifications that implied the machinery "would not be seen as suitable for military purposes". When this was leaked in December 1990, the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robin Butler, had Clark hauled in to explain himself to the Prime Minister.

Despite Sir Robin's realisation that three Matrix-Churchill executives (facing trial for making false claims to evade the arms embargo) would argue that Clark encouraged them, the prosecution went ahead in November 1992. Clark had denied on oath to Customs officers that he advised the businessmen how to circumvent the embargo, and repeated this in court. But when the trial judge admitted in evidence documents proving the opposite, Clark conceded he had been "economical with the actualite". The trial collapsed, greatly embarrassing the government.

Yet within months, Clark tried to revive his Parliamentary career, applying for the Newbury nomination as a Eurosceptic Major supporter. He was blackballed by Sir Norman Fowler, the party chairman. There was nervousness about the impending publication of his Diaries, for which Weidenfeld had bid pounds 150,000.

On publication, colleagues were devastated to find that Clark regarded them - after his publisher had toned down the language - as "spastics" or "creeps". Kenneth Clarke was dismissed as a "pudgy puffball", Heseltine as "jerky, wild-eyed, zombie" and a "charlatan" and Sir Peter Morrison, Mrs Thatcher's hapless PPS, as "sozzled".

Clark did not help his chances of a comeback by revealing that MI5 had bugged his telephone, suspecting him of contacts with the National Front.

In his Diaries, Clark discussed frankly his sexual experiences before and outside marriage. He recalled the halcyon summer of 1955 when he was "running" three girls within half a mile, one of whom - a nurse named Marye - gave him "the ultimate sexual experience" while her matron banged on the door.

He fantasised about his female civil servants and girls on the Folkestone train, confessed himself "in love" with his 1983 Labour opponent and hinted at a spectacular range of sexual escapades. He observed: "I only can properly enjoy carol services if I am having an illicit affair with someone in the congregation". Yet he confided that his wife was his personal rock. "I could not, never would wound her, the best human being in the entire world," he wrote.

The spirited Jane Clark told an interviewer: "Women, that's what we row about. All the time - incredible rows." She added without a trace of the doormat: "I do feel hurt. But fidelity, I think, is a higher priority for some than for others. I think it's important that people should be faithful, but then I have only ever known Alan."

Clark's most scandalous revelation concerned a "coven" of three women, Valerie, Alison and Josephine; he disclosed the temptation, at least, to bed all three at the Ritz after dinner at Brooks's the day he was made a Minister in 1983. What he omitted was that Valerie was the wife of a judge who had emigrated to South Africa, and the two girls her daughters. In 1994 she went public in the News of the World, stating that her affair with Clark lasted 14 years, even though she knew well before the end that he had slept with her daughters.

The judge, his wife and Josephine flew to London to confront Clark, hiring the publicist Max Clifford on Lady (Benvenida) Buck's recommendation. Clark eventually conceded: "I deserve horsewhipping."

Meanwhile he had been obliged to appear before the Scott inquiry in December 1993 to explain his part in the Matrix-Churchill affair. Lord Howe, in his evidence, said of Clark: "He is a walking illustration of the word `reckless'. He couldn't see an apple cart without wanting to overturn it." Sir Richard Scott censured Clark for signing "inaccurate and misleading" statements.

By the mid-1990s Clark claimed to have mellowed. In 1994 he signed a contract for a second volume of diaries, but these proved harder to edit, and did not appear.

In 1995, even to his own surprise, he decided to try Parliament once more, securing the candidature at Kensington and Chelsea only after the deselection of Sir Nicholas Scott. In May 1997 he returned to the Commons, aged 69.

In a party halved by the Labour landslide, he stood out: abstaining in the ballot that elected William Hague to the leadership, scorning the Eurofighter as less use than a cheaper British aircraft would have been, and enraging the Whips by advocating the shooting of 600 IRA men to end the troubles once and for all.

In 1998 Clark sued the Evening Standard over spoofs of his diaries. Clark claimed readers would think he had written them. He won his action, but during cross-examination, every aspect of his colourful private life was exposed.

Clark was constantly aware of mortality. "A hesitation in the tail rotor and the frail little machine would have crashed," he wrote in 1990 after a helicopter flight. "I draw strength from reflections such as this. Because if God wants to plunge in the knife, then He can do so - at any time."

Recently Clark was received into the Roman Catholic Church.

He is survived by his wife and their two sons.

Alan and Jane were married in London on July 31, 1958. Jane was 16, Alan 30

The postcard showing Alan and Pamela, circled, dancing in Zermatt in the Fifties

A hell of a life: Alan Clark's secret last love

By ION TREWIN

UPDATED: 00:27 BST, 6 September 2009

Sunday, Sep 23rd 2018 7PM 14°C 10PM 14°C 5-Day Forecast

A hell of a life: Alan Clark's secret last love

By ION TREWIN

UPDATED: 00:27 BST, 6 September 2009

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1211376/A-hell-life-Alan-Clarks-secret-love.html

The first great love and the last infatuation of the late Tory diarist and philanderer Alan Clark are revealed exclusively by The Mail on Sunday for the first time today.

The sensational revelations include the startling fact that his first love had an abortion, and record his reaction when he found out she was pregnant: ‘We’d have to keep it if it was a baby boy.’

Mr Clark’s secretary Alison Young is identified as the mysterious ‘X’ in his rakish diaries – the woman he was so infatuated with that he almost left his wife.

Writer Ion Trewin spent five years unearthing details of the relationships for a new biography.

When Mr Clark’s wife of 41 years, Jane, read a draft of the book she remarked that she ‘hadn’t known the half of it’.

Mr Trewin was given unfettered access to a ‘treasure trove’ of personal papers at Saltwood,the politician’s castle in Kent.

In a locked ministerial Red Box, he found a note to Jane saying: ‘Darling, please don’t rootle here. There are papers that might upset you even tho referring to matters now long past.’

Inside were letters from Ms Young, the MP’s secretary from the late Eighties until the 1992 General Election.

And in another box were letters charting a two-and-a-half-year relationship from 40 years earlier.

They came from Pamela Hart, a beautiful 18-year-old dancer with the London Festival Ballet with whom Mr Clark was similarly infatuated – and also wanted to marry.

After Alan Clark's death in 1999, at the age of 71, his Parliamentary papers were sent to Saltwood, his castle in Kent.

Jane, the wife he had married in 1958 when she was just 16, gradually began sorting through them.

When I started work, at her suggestion, as Alan's biographer, she showed me three ministerial Red Boxes, each with the rubbed gold letters 'Minister for Trade, Department of Trade and Industry'.

Jane had discovered them hidden among cardboard boxes from Westminster, and was immediately curious. Two opened at her touch and proved to be packed with House of Commons notepaper. The third was locked.

In a desk drawer she found a key ring with the right-size key. She inserted it in the lock and the key turned. Easing open the lid, she found a pile of letters, many in their original envelopes. On top of them, in her husband's unmistakable hand and with a typically quirky signature and drawing of a tortoise, was a note on Commons embossed paper:

Jane Darling, please don't rootle here. There are papers that might upset you even tho referring to matters now long past.

The writer of most of the letters was a woman Jane knew: Alison Young, who had been Alan's secretary from the late Eighties until the 1992 General Election, when Alan made one of the biggest mistakes of his career by resigning from the Commons.

Jane had assumed there had been letters between them and had wondered where they might be. Now they had turned up, the envelopes addressed to Alan at the exclusive Brooks's Club in St James's or the House of Commons.

Nor were they unique. Elsewhere I found a box of letters from the first love of his life, a dancer to whom he had been close in the early Fifties.

I also discovered the aptness of the writer Simon Hoggart's description of Alan: 'a philanderer obsessed with his wife'.

When Jane read a first draft of my biography she commented that, although married to her husband for 41 years, she 'hadn't known the half of it'.

During the final four years of Alan's time as MP for Plymouth Sutton, he became infatuated with his secretary, to the extent that at one point he even contemplated leaving Jane and 'starting again'.

Alison was in her 20s when she succeeded Peta Ewing as Alan's constituency secretary in October 1988. Alan recorded the fact in his diary: 'Peta is leaving to get married. Tedious. Her name is Alison Young. She was not Peta's preferred candidate, but at the interview she showed spirit. I noted that her hair was wet, for some reason, although it was a fine day.'

Wet? 'Too much hairspray,' recalls Alison.

Working for Alan was only her second job. In those days MPs' secretaries' offices were widely spread, and her desk was round the corner from the Commons in the Cloisters, Dean's Yard.

There were ten desks in an open-plan office. Alison sat, as she recalls, between two Labour MPs' secretaries. 'I don't think you'd have that now: everything is segregated. Everything then was quite relaxed and old-fashioned.'

When Alison first worked for Alan he had an office in the Department of Trade in Victoria Street, where she often had to go. When he changed jobs in July 1989 to Defence, her trek was longer, but Alan's driver would sometimes act as her chauffeur.

Alan, like other Ministers, also had a second office in the Commons. It was never a '9 to 5' job, more 10 until 6 or 7pm.

Loyal wife: Alan with Jane at their castle in Kent

Loyal wife: Alan with Jane at their castle in Kent

By January 1989 she was regularly accompanying Alan on his constituency visits, using the train journey to Plymouth to catch up on correspondence. Alan thought her 'more efficient than Peta, and more fun to be with'. He also noted the colour of her eyes: blue-grey.

When did the relationship change? Alison thinks it must have been the Trade and Industry departmental Christmas party in 1988.

For Alan's part, this is confirmed in a chart-like graph which he devised: the year and months across the top, each point of significance to him numbered with a key alongside: December 1988 - DTI Christmas party; February 1989 - 'says yes to Bratton trip'.

Through the next two years he identifies significant moments by place names such as Lewtrenchard and Albany (his London flat), and events such as the December 1989 MoD Christmas party. And in October, 1990: 'too much of everything'.

At Christmas 1989, in a diary entry written in Albany, he tells of completing the 'great Defence Review' with Alison's help. Their reward was: 'A glass of champagne in the Pugin Room, came back here ... she was resistant ... We talked a bit ... she cried, which was dear of her. . . today is the anniversary of the Christmas party. It's always a low point. I don't know what's going to happen.'

Alison says it was not a physical relationship, just a very intense friendship. Searching for a word, she uses 'companion' as an appropriate description.

At the best moments she called him Dearest M. C. (the initials derived from Mr Clark) in her letters. He called her Aly.

In June 1991, Alan wrote on the back of a sheet of Sotheby's notepaper: 'I bear you no ill-will my darling. Nothing but love and gratitude for everything you gave me - even the pain.'

On more than one occasion Alan wrote in his diary that they would talk for hours on the telephone, often into the small hours, she from her flat, he from Albany.

For more than a year Alan led a double life. 'It's preposterous,' he wrote in February, 1991. 'I'm actually ill, have been for months, lovesick, it's called. A long and nasty course of chemotherapy - but with periodic bouts of addiction therapy when I delude myself that I may be cured without "damage".'

In the midst of his infatuation for Alison he recorded a visit to St Leonard's (Hythe's parish church, near to Saltwood): 'I knelt and reflected on "it" all. I almost asked Norman [Canon Norman Woods] to hear my confession, but didn't/ couldn't, though afterwards Jane said he would have. I was rather shocked to find how I prayed so selfishly. It was quite an effort to focus on the real purpose and to release darling Jane of her pain and sense of betrayal. She's going through exactly what I did in February - and I know what it's like - total hell. Only feebly did I give thanks for this wonderful life and all my blessings. Disgraceful.'

Jane knew Alison only as Alan's constituency secretary. In a diary entry for March 4, 1991, he writes: 'Darling Jane is looking a wee bit strained. She knows something is up, and is quiet a lot of the time. But she doesn't question me at all - just makes the occasional scathing reference. I do want to make her happy --she's such a good person.' In the same entry he adds that he must get rid of Alison. When Jane eventually learnt of his feelings for Alison it was a body blow.

She noticed Alison was deliberately dressing like her, using the same hairstyle, something Alison firmly denies. Where Jane and Alison were in agreement was over Alan's state of mind. Jane recalls saying to him: 'You are infatuated,' and in one row suggested he look up the word in the dictionary. Alison says she tried to use his infatuation to get what she wanted, 'which was for him to settle down and do the job'.

She thought Alan was in mid-life crisis, had been, she said, since he was 30 - he was actually 60 when she went to work for him.

'There were times when I probably had to be nasty just to try and get back on an even keel, a professional relationship. 'Afterwards you think when you've been purposely nasty to someone to force an action you want then that wasn't very nice. I would feel guilty that I'd been particularly unkind or cruel.'

Alan swimming in the moat of his castle

Alan swimming in the moat of his castle

Alison remembers how fed up she was. Here she was in her early 20s with a career to think about. Looking back nearly 20 years later she recalls: 'I appreciated I worked for somebody interesting, and that he was a Minister. In terms of career progression, you either worked for an MP or you worked for a Minister. So I already had one of the best jobs. I really liked the job, and all I wanted was to do it well and learn more about politics. I worked for someone interesting, who gave me freedom to do lots of work on my own.'

Alan, though, wanted more, as Alison relates: 'A by-product of all this was a certain amount of being chased around the filing cabinets.

'I suppose being quite naive, or stupid, or unhappy, pick a variety of reasons why, at times I sort of relented because it was easier than just carrying on fighting, which didn't seem to make any difference and which seemed to encourage him more. I couldn't win either way.

I didn't particularly want to give up the job because I enjoyed it. I didn't see why I should be hounded out of a job for that sort of reason. But there could never be a balance with Alan.

'I would say, "Stop all that! and let's work." But then in a way that would be a bit dull, because it wouldn't be quite as much fun. It was interesting to accompany him to places or some event. But it was trying to find a balance between these two extremes. But there couldn't be one.'

Alan thought Alison had political potential. She recalls that 'one of the problems working for someone with a personality like Alan's, if they say things often enough you tend to believe them'.

When he said she should stand as a candidate she responded that she was far too young and had not done enough preparation. Alan, however, thought that an upside.

She was already working for the Conservative Party where she lived and had attended a women's conference where she met Baroness Seccombe, a party vice-chairman, who told Alan that 'she has great potential ... I am sure that she will be a great asset to the party'.

At the 1991 Conservative Party conference, with Jane accompanying him as usual, Alan records running Alison through the ladies' cocktail party, to provide her with 'some good "contacts"'.

A significant handwritten exchange between them appeared on the back of a daily ministerial engagement sheet dated July 9, 1991. It opened with Alan asking Alison: 'Will you marry me? (please)'

'Why?' asked Alison. 'Aly PLEASE don't be cross. I can't bear it,' he replied.

To which Alison has written: 'Tough s***.'

She wanted a relationship with someone who would never be unfaithful. With Alan she knew that was impossible. She also knew he would never leave Jane.

Alison was setting off for a long holiday to South America, which caused Alan to write a lengthy diary entry, dated July 23, 1991: 'Last night I was so dejected. When I actually face up to the fact that it is over I feel quite ill and weak and yesterday, quite blithely, she was talking about arrangements for Sarah to do the mail; wouldn't even tell me when she was coming back (serve me right for asking - what does it matter anyway?)

'Later on, she rang. Instantly I felt incredible. Just her voice saying hello, sweet and friendly. I said as much. But we never broke the ice. It's crazy, isn't it?

'Every night this month we just go back to our separate empty flats, then talk for up to one-and-a-half hours on the telephone. Why aren't we talking side by side in bed? I've held on for so long because, as the stars foretold, I'm emotionally enslaved, but I must summon some strength now. I'm consumed, emaciated by jealousy. How in hell do I exorcise it?

'Perhaps someone will smile at me? I'll just steer the Porsche on to the yellow roads. It'd be fun to drive really fast and recklessly, and on my own. Yet I know that if I do meet someone it won't do any good. I'll pine always for my Aly and her sweet waist and hips and quizzical expression and changing moods.'

The ongoing professional problem for Alison, a major cause of their fighting, was the way Alan neglected his Sutton constituency.

In September 1991 she wrote: 'As from today it will only be necessary for you and I to meet twice a week for an hour. I suggest Tuesdays and Thursdays. Any other business can be dealt with over the phone and Pat [the driver] can bring your signing. Please do not contact me unless it is to do with the constituency.' She followed this up the same day with an itemised list:

'1. We have no links whatsoever - except that I am currently in your employment.

'2. I would gladly return "the stone" [a gift] to you - particularly as it is another symbol of all the lies and hypocrisy you stand for. You said it was worth a lot of money (and all that bull**** about it being meant for me) - but it is valueless. I resented having to pay good money to have it set and buy a chain (just to shut you up) and so I am only keeping it because of the value of the setting. Even an amateur gemmologist could tell it was of poor quality - like its donor.

'3. I won't ever want you. You must understand that. There is nothing and never was anything of meaning. I don't want to see you because basically I am sick of those pathetic scenes - schoolboy gloating, crude manhandling, the simpering and begging which is all an act.

'We could never be "mates", as you say, because the two things that you value most - your ego and your money - mean nothing to me.

'My future lies with someone else who has a surfeit, unlike your poverty, of principles. I am sad that you wore away some of my own, and lowered me in some respects to your level, but I, at least, am young enough to change my ways, and do not suffer from the debilitating insecurity which you have.

'4. Please return the stone I gave you or throw it away.

'DO NOT REPLY.'

Alan ignored this admonition. Alison tore up his next letter, clipped a note saying 'unread' to the pieces and sent them back.

At another point that autumn Alison wrote, in a letter that passed backwards and forwards between them, that she hoped Alan and Jane would make things up. 'It was never my intention that this whole thing should get so out of hand ... know she thinks it is all my fault, but she shouldn't have put up with being treated so s******y for so long - and it was inevitable that after years of your infidelities it would all come to a head at some point. [Alan added a comment on the letter: 'Yes. Because at last I fell in love.']

'I wanted you to make a sacrifice for me,' continued Alison, 'but you didn't - and if you want her to stay you will have to sacrifice all the other women, too, including me. Please let's be sensible and do the dictation properly. I know you want me to leave, but it isn't fair. [Alan added: 'Please don't.' Alison replied: 'What is the point if you are being so difficult?'] We could be professional about everything on your return in October. ['Never,' wrote Alan. 'We were in the beginning,' retorted Alison.]

'You always promised me (for what it was worth) that you would keep business and personal separate. If you only ever keep one promise to me let it be that one now.

[Alan: 'I'm terribly, truly, sorry that I broke the important one. Please forgive me.']. Always, Alison.'

Two months later, with Alan behaving very much as before, she wrote: 'I said I would tell you how things would have been on my return . . . I won't write it, and you will probably never know if you keep acting as you do - always talking and presuming -never listening and learning ...

'But remember you changed things. You disturbed the fine balance which was beginning to go in your favour --and now we lurch from side to side. You betrayed me once (that I know of) and there is no reason why you wouldn't do it again. You will always have my respect, admiration and tender feelings of affection - or do I mean love? A xxx.'

If there was a truce, it did not last for long. One day Alan took Alison's diary from her handbag, leading her to fume on December 10, 1991: 'How dare you read my diary? Particularly when you do not let me look at yours without supervision.

'I can't believe you can be so obnoxious. You say your diary needs explanation, well, so does mine. Now you are all cross, hurt, and being petty... and precisely because it is one rule for you (ie invade someone else's privacy, read their personal notes - but they can't do it to you because it is full of secrets of bonks with other women etc) and another for someone else ... If you are upset by what you read, you deserve to be.'

In his diary during spring 1992, by which time Alan had decided to resign his seat, his confusion of emotions is clear. In February he wrote about the prospect of 'the pang of a final parting' from Alison. Ten days later, Jane accompanied him on a ministerial trip to South America, leading him to reflect: 'She is really so good and sweet. That's what makes the situation so impossible. I mean what do I want? Certainly not to leave her and cause her pain. And yet as she herself admits, Alison's appearance has revived our sexual tension by all the jealous crosscurrents it arouses.'

Just before the General Election in April 1992, he wrote: 'The wonderful, excruciating, highly dangerous Alison "affair" has burned itself out and, to my utter nostalgic depression we are now only, and I fear never again can be more than "good friends".'

Enlarge   Graphic

At the Election, the Conservatives under John Major were returned for a fourth term.

Two months later Alison wrote to Alan: 'I do hate it when we part at railway stations. I hate it when we are apart too much, but we both have things we have to do and I have to explore the world a bit more while I have the chance. You are so sweet to me in many ways, but we can be so cruel to each other as well. I know I'll think about you when I'm away - and because the imagination can be so fertile and unpredictable, sometimes I'll be cross + jealous, and other times serene and content.

'Either we will remain attached, or we will grow apart, but either way we will always be special to each other. I know I've been rotten and cruel to you sometimes and that it is very difficult for you at the moment ( particularly this week) - but what are we to do? Look forward to a good chat soon. Take care. Love Aly xx.'

Occasional cards reached him via Brooks's, some from overseas. On learning he was publishing his diaries, Alison was worried: 'I hope you haven't forgotten that you said I could look at the parts of the book where I am mentioned and decide if I agreed. You even said you would make it a legal agreement. So I trust you will keep to it.' (When she later saw the published diaries, she thought the references to her were harmless.)

Alan tried to revive the relationship, but she was firm: 'There has never been any point trying to explain things to you as you always make up your own story and interpretation anyway.

'All I can say is that we have been over all the arguments hundreds of times - and nothing has changed, and it never will. And it is for the best that way. You know that, too. I'm about to begin a new life, in many different ways, and you should, too. Beginning with taking care of those in your charge.'

But she found this disengagement difficult, as a later postcard demonstrates: 'You nearly made me cry this morning - you can be so disturbing. I just don't know what to do, which is why I keep running away abroad.'

In August 1992, Alan and Jane were at Eriboll, their estate in the Scottish Highlands. 'I hardly think of Alison any longer,' he wrote. His diaries testify that was untrue, but the infatuation was over.

Later that year, a trip to Zermatt, the Swiss village where the Clarks had a house, proved to be the beginning of the renewal of his marriage to Jane. 'We started again out here,' he recalled a year before he died. 'Absolutely delicious, never been sexually happier with Jane.'

Jane says she was true to her marriage: she never slept with another man. Inevitably, in the course of researching and writing Alan's biography, our conversations turned to the subject of his womanising. How did she feel?

'I absolutely hated it. All these journalists who say, well, she only stayed for the castle. Come on. How long was I married to him?

'There were moments with Al when I hated him, I really, really hated him. I just felt - I always looked at things much, much longer, not the immediate thing. And I knew that in spite of everything he loved me, loved the boys. You can't really wreck their lives just for your convenience.

'He wasn't actually making everyone's life a misery except mine. I just had to look at it like that. I did actually feel that all these ladies - not one of them could have coped with him. If I had moved out someone else would have moved in, but not one of them would have understood. They only saw him, his glamour.

'I was desperately unhappy at certain periods. I did wonder was it worth it. You get particularly bad bits. We had a terrible row. I went into my bathroom, shut the door and said, "I'm going to pack".

'He had a complete breakdown outside the door. I was lying there laughing. Little did he know. I threw out the odd remark. I was rather enjoying this.

'He was amazingly selfish. I remember going for a walk. We always used to lean on Lord Clark's Gate with a view of the sea. I thought, "Why don't you come closer? ... You just don't get it, do you? Why should I move closer to you? Let's have a cuddle or whatever. It's your job to woo me."

'He never got that. He never seemed to understand. I don't know if he did understand how much he hurt me. I think he probably did before the end. He used to say "I have ruined your life". But I don't know; I don't know.'

Clark wooed his first true love, an 18-year-old ballet dancer called Pamela Hart, with outrageous flattery - and a dinner of vol au vent and chips. But when she fell pregnant, he couldn't cope with having a child...

One Sunday afternoon in June 1951, Pamela Hart, an 18-year-old dancer with the London Festival Ballet, was cycling beside the Thames with Judith, a school friend, when they spotted a suave, good-looking young man and an elegant young woman coming out of the Bray Inn.

As Judith and Pamela began cycling back to Judith's home, they didn't realise the young couple were following in a car. Then, as Pamela recalls, she and Judith had to stop: 'I had a fly in my eye. Suddenly a car drew up; it was the young man, who came across to me, introduced himself and said, "You are the most beautiful woman in the world."'

This was Alan, and the woman turned out to be Celly - Colette, Alan's sister.

Pamela remembers thinking the car must be his father's. 'Then Alan asked me for my name and address. I just gave it.' It was a significant moment for Alan: in his engagement diary he circled the date and wrote: 'See Pamela for the first time.'

Alan was 23, had graduated from Oxford two years earlier and was now reading for the Bar. Pamela was his first true love.

Next morning there was a letter from him, but as Pamela was dancing six nights a week, her first meeting with him had to be lunch. Alan took her to Le Caprice. 'He told me what I would eat: vol au vent and chips! And to drink he ordered me a White Lady.'

This cocktail of gin, Cointreau and lemon was completely new to her.

'I had nothing to say; I was tongue-tied. I just couldn't make any conversation.' After lunch, he took her for a drive to Upper Terrace House, the Clark family's large house in Hampstead. 'I live there,' he said nonchalantly. Finally, he drove Pamela back into town, just in time for her evening performance.

Alan had no hesitation about asking her out again, nor she about accepting. His diary entry for June 10 was: 'Pamela down to Oxford.'

Pamela as a magazine's covergirl

Pamela as a magazine's covergirl

The following Wednesday, they went to Battersea pleasure gardens. Alan was smitten; he could not see enough of her, as his diary records. By mid-July they were sleeping together, Alan circling her initial in his diary each time.

Pamela was different from the young women he had met at Oxford. She was down-to-earth and financially self-supporting. When she could get time off, she would go to Switzerland with him.

On one occasion they drove across France to Zurich in his XK Jaguar. 'Incredibly cold and great roaring winds,' he recorded. A photograph shows them dancing together in a Zermatt bar.

On returning to England, Pamela would receive letters and postcards from Alan, who stayed on, ostensibly to work at his writing. Typical were photographs of the two of them that had been turned into postcards: 'God, who's that divine little number dancing with that awful man? What a waste, she only looks about 16, too. Love xxxxxx "awful man".'

She noticed a number of other character traits. He declared his love; he was always honest (even telling her when he had been seeing other women). He was the boss, which suited her: 'I like my man to be in charge. It's tribal, it's natural.'

Alan would sometimes call Pamela 'Bluebie', a nickname that started when an American remarked on her blue eyes.

Little more than a year after their first meeting, Alan's parents bought Saltwood Castle, in Kent, for £28,000. Pamela was often a visitor, billeted in a turret room, she recalls. Staying there made her nervous, giving her stomach cramps.

Once she had supper with the family. It was a buffet with a whole salmon. Alan's father Kenneth motioned her forward to help herself. 'I don't think I'd seen a whole salmon before,' she says. She hesitated, but remembers neither Kenneth nor Alan stepped forward to guide her, a point of manners that still rankles.

'I simply picked up the servers and cut across the middle of the salmon, through the bone and all.' If the Clarks as a family looked on askance, all she remembers is Kenneth saying: 'That's a bold stroke, my dear.' The family now took their turn, each delicately easing away pieces of salmon in the approved manner.

The London Festival Ballet toured a lot, but Alan had a habit of turning up unannounced at the stage door. Otherwise they kept in touch by post. Pamela reckons Alan wrote at least 100 letters to her, but in a clear-out at her parents' home her mother burnt them. However, Pamela's letters to Alan have survived.

While the country was celebrating the Coronation in June 1953, Alan sat his Bar exams - and failed. He retook them the following year, but failed again. Pamela told him: 'You do nothing but chase girls." He decided on one more attempt.

The postcard showing Alan and Pamela, circled, dancing in Zermatt in the Fifties

The postcard showing Alan and Pamela, circled, dancing in Zermatt in the Fifties

Pamela wrote to Alan from Harrogate in December 1954, saying he sounded 'rather depressed - how do you feel now that your exam is over? Relieved I suppose. One week today and I will be with you again. I am looking forward to it so much because except for that one day it has been ten weeks which is longer than any other time we have been apart ever.'

Awaiting the results meant five weeks' nail-biting. Then Pamela got a postcard: 'I PASSED BAR FINALS!! M & D very pleased.' And surprised: Pam says he had not told them he was retaking the exams.

Alan did not appear to see contraception as his responsibility. For women in the early Fifties it was still primitive and unreliable. Half a century later, it seems remarkable that it was Alan's mother who organised these matters for Pamela.

In 1953, a little more than two years after they first met, Pamela was in Cardiff with the Festival Ballet when she thought she might be pregnant. Alan arranged for pregnancy test at a laboratory in Great Portland Street - he gave his name as Dr A.K. Clark.

Pamela says he drove to Cardiff from London with the test result. 'We're going to have a baby,' he said. Pamela was pleased, and then he added: 'But we don't have to.'

In a letter to her that Alan never sent, but which lay for years in a filing cabinet, he wrote: "Dearest Pam - need I say that I have spent the whole day in a blue panic! On the other hand I kept thinking to myself that it must be all right as I don't see how it can have happened.

'Every time I get worried I promise to myself not to do it again, as you know, and you always make me. I don't know, I'm in a terrible dither.

'I got a little extra money from Autextra [a car parts company Clark was involved in] the other day and I thought we might slip down to Switzerland for a very short little tour, but of course all this makes it impossible to think. If only it comes alright we must go abroad to celebrate. But what we will do about love-making I just don't know.

'I can't bear these panics, they literally make me sick. I've been thinking about it all day... It would be so awful for you and what about your parents? I suppose we could keep it from them if you came to live in London, but then what about the ballet? You would have to stop dancing after a bit and you couldn't start again for months. And then what about it?'

Alan's next sentence is revealing: 'We'd have to keep it if it was a baby boy.

'This is a fine way to go on after my saying that "it must be all right", I know, but just the way I'm thinking.

'I know, Bluebie. I am a cad for not asking you to marry me. Please forgive me for that.

'No one is nicer or sweeter or more lovable or means more to me, and everyone knows that when I see your photos on all the presents you've given me I want to cry. But I just think how solemn those marriage vows were when I went to Michael's [Briggs] wedding and the parson who confirmed me told me never to marry a girl immediately because she was going to have a baby and I think it would be a mockery if we had a rush marriage after all this.

'I'm afraid all this is a meaningless ramble and reflects very badly on me. Please forgive me for everything, Bluebie, and whatever way this ends I will stand by you. All my love xxxxxx Alan.'

In the end, the Clarks organised everything. Alan's mother signed the consent form and Pamela went to Harley Street to have the abortion. Her parents never knew.

An undated letter to Alan from his mother has survived. 'Hope you enjoyed Le Mans and have good news of P. on your return.'

The pleasantries over, she became stern: 'In case you see P. before we see you I assume you will only behave as a friend until you and I have had a further talk - which won't be possible till Thursday when I hope we'll all have an evening at home.'

Thirty years later Alan showed how his views had changed over what he called 'convenient' abortions. In an 'extremely private' letter to Hugo Young, then a Sunday Times columnist, he had no hesitation in describing such abortions as 'sinful'.

Pamela's abortion had stayed on his conscience. Nearly 20 years later, he wrote in his diary about still dreading retribution being visited on his sons: 'Filled with remorse and sadness for Pam and the aborted child.'

When, during my research, Jane first heard of Pam's experience it became clear why her husband held such strong pro-life beliefs.

After this upheaval, Pamela's and Alan's relationship became less stable. At her 21st birthday party in October, 1953, Alan gave Pamela a brooch from Asprey's. He drove her home and then said: 'I think we ought to part.' Pam started crying and said: 'How could you possibly say you loved me and say that?'

Looking back on those years, Pamela says that even after saying they should split up, Alan would 'turn up like a bad penny, as if he'd never been away' and they soon restarted their relationship.

Just before Christmas 1955 he wrote about Pamela in his diary: 'I wish I could love her and marry her and be "settled", with at least half of me I wish that.'

In April 1956, while hoping to make a killing on the stock market, he wrote: 'And then perhaps I could marry dear Pam.'

Alan moved to Rye, East Sussex, in the summer of 1956. One Sunday evening he and Pamela went to a local cinema. A gaggle of schoolgirls sat behind. Thinking back, Pamela wonders if Jane Beuttler, Alan's future wife, who then lived in Rye, was among them.

Why Alan finally decided to end the relationship is not clear. Certainly he did not have the nerve to tell Pamela to her face - he wrote to her instead.

She replied by registered post: 'My dear Alan - your letter didn't come as a great surprise to me and yet it still managed to hurt me a great deal, mainly because it was cold and to the point. Also because you must have felt that way on Monday morning and it would have been less cowardly to tell me straight away - you know I have got past the stage of crying and making scenes now.'

Unfinished business remained between them. In autumn 1956, the Bolshoi Ballet Company was visiting London, and Alan had got tickets to see them before the final breakup with Pamela. She now addressed the situation. 'I do so want to see the Russians as it is too wonderful an opportunity to miss,' she wrote.

'Please don't ask me not to come because I need not even see you if you wish, I can meet Celly in the foyer before the performance if she has the tickets . . . All my love always, Pamela.'

Alan was embarrassed, as his diary entry on October 3 shows: he refers to 'a sad encounter with dear Pam, real Pam. It is firmly in my mind and although trivial in detail had the stamp of finality and is too painful to record'.

Later, when Alan was engaged to Jane, he wrote to tell Pamela. She remembers his letter, this 'bolt from the blue'. She wrote back: ' Congratulations, hope you will be very happy.'

But that wasn't the end of the story. One morning Pamela was driving through London, when one of her passengers spotted Alan. She gave chase and caught up with him in Piccadilly.

'He looked up at me, registered "mock horror", put his hand over his face, and said would I like to go to the Caprice "for old times' sake?" He was getting married the following Thursday.'

She was 'dying of curiosity' to learn about Jane and asked him over dinner: 'What's she got that I haven't?'

Alan replied: 'I can mould her. I know she is pliable. You are too strong.' Pam burst into tears, 'and that was the end of it'.

The 'fabulous girl' he married at 16

When Alan first met his wife Jane, he was 28 and she was just 14.

But previously unpublished extracts from his diaries reveal that, despite their age difference, he rapidly became obsessed with Jane and was determined to sleep with her  -  to the fury of her parents ...

Jane's first glimpse of her future husband was when she and her family were picnicking at Camber Sands, near Rye in East Sussex: 'I remember seeing this person walking along in the distance with this huge dog behind him, a great Dane,' she says. 'I remember him mincing along, I remember thinking I don't think I've ever seen anyone with such a conceitedly pompous walk. That was the very first time.

'There was this click - I used to say later that I had magic powers - it sounds absolutely dotty if you mention it, but there was a voice inside me saying, "That's the man you're going to marry," and it was most extraordinary because at 14, I was not into the opposite sex.'

It is not clear whether Alan noticed Jane that day. It was almost certainly mid-August 1956, and by September 6, when Alan resumed his diary after a two-month break, Jane was at the centre of his thoughts. For the next eight weeks his entries are devoted to her.

Jane was the daughter of Bertie and Pam Beuttler. He worked in the War Office and the family lived in Rye, the town Alan had recently moved to after buying his first house.

Even though Alan knew Jane was only 14 - half his age - the diary reveals how rapidly she became his sexual obsession. In the entry for September 6 he is quick to make up for lost time: 'This is very exciting. She is a perfect victim, but whether or not it will be possible to succeed I can't tell at present.' He had been seeing Jane, he writes, for two-and-a-half weeks.

'Our first contact when I slid my fingers between hers when we held hands walking back across Rye Green after dinner the day we took our first walk by the lakes.'

It was still the school holidays and although Alan had promised himself he would work on his planned novel, set in the stock market, his obsession with Jane excluded everything else.

'For about a week we would walk in the afternoon ... and I would kiss her hand and stroke her neck and calves,' he wrote. 'Finally there came the high point so far, as one lay by the shore of the little promontory, out of the wind, and I studied her high thighs through her thin, yellow-striped summer frock, and she, half-mesmerised, pretended to retaliate by pricking my face with a thistle.

'She comes straight to Watchbell Street [his home in Rye] in the evenings. Coming through the back door, but as she only stops for about five minutes it has not been possible to make much progress.

'I have mismanaged it a bit in the last two days, going neurotic after she told me that two people had tried to kiss her before.'

Jane thought him 'absolutely super'. She says: 'My natural thing was flirting. It didn't mean anything, just the way I am. It got me into trouble.'

Alan was, as he wrote, 'a bit afraid of her mother clamping down, or worse, catching us one evening on the sofa at my house. Already there is gossip.'

By late September, the relationship was becoming serious. Jane's younger brother Nick started to follow them around. Alan was sure this was at the behest of Jane's parents, who must have been worried. 'Worried?' retorts Jane at the suggestion. 'They were absolutely furious.' As for Alan's age, she says, 'He behaved more like he was 12, he was permanently juvenile'.

Alan's frustration leaps off the pages of the diary. When he tried to assert himself she continued to be resistant. He recorded the dialogue:

'I'm sick of you,' she said. 'You don't want to see me again, then.'

'Not much, no ... ' Towards the end of September, a development in her father's Army career changed everything, according to Alan's diary. ' TERRIBLE NEWS of their impending departure to Malta. Oh God.'

That Sunday Alan was invited round to their house 'for drinks with her Ma'. Bertie was not at home. 'Went quite well,' he wrote.

An air of melancholy coloured Alan's brief account of Saturday, October 6. 'A last walk and hug. The tide was coming in fast and we were out of the wind with the sun on us. Then to Saltwood [his parents' castle in Kent] to lunch and back in time to take her to the station.' As ever, Alan fantasises: 'She would almost have run away with me.'

Alan got a letter from Jane's mother on Christmas Eve, written from a beach in Malta, where 'the young are bathing'. Alan wrote in his diary: 'Oh dear... to think of her out there maturing in that hot climate tempting other young men.'

By Easter, the Beuttlers were back. Alan went round. It was, as he put it, 'an unfortunate visit'. Jane was 'looking so attractive it's agony'.

'Came back pretty depressed. I know I must end this, but she is so attractive this annoys me.' He added a PS: 'No more, ever. . . stay blander, more controlled, at all times.'

By June, the relationship was in top gear again: 'Relations with Bertie and Pam pretty OK now. Jane is just fabulous to look at these days with her lovely plumpish little legs and ultra-prim breasts.'

He notes 'a delicious evening walk out over the sands with Jane and the dogs. We crossed the river at its mouth, she was wearing a new blue poplin dress and pulled it high up over her thighs, holding it there afterwards as her legs were wet, and got her feet and ankles covered with black slippery mud --very provoking!'

Before leaving for a trip abroad on July 27, he wrote: 'My lust for her has waned, though this may give rise to a position of strength. Also she seems to make me "nervous".' On reading this, Jane recalled that he used to say he was frightened of her.

On his return - although he wrote: 'Tired of Jane and her **** teasing, so there!' - she was increasingly to dominate his life.

They had known each other for more than a year now, but she was still only 15. No matter how much Alan wanted to take her to bed, his diary entries are clear that consummation in defiance of the law was something that frightened him. 'I know what a mistake it would be,' he writes at one point.

As autumn approached he was pleased to report: 'Great progress with Jane, on the verge one might say, as about a fortnight ago she suddenly took to deep kissing.'

On October 10, he wrote that he now had, he was sure, 'an absolute mastery over her' and felt himself becoming overpowered again by 'massive lust for her'. Looking for ways round 'the problem' he sought advice about 'safe periods'

But in December he noted: 'I am sitting in the study waiting for her to come round. It's 4.15 and she said she'd come at 3. I don't know what can have happened. I always suspect the worst.'

The 'worst' was a meeting with Bertie and Pam. From Alan's account it is clear they had had enough. After a heart-to-heart talk with Jane they wanted to know what he thought he was up to. Bertie, wrote Alan, was 'shaking with rage'.

But Pam, to Alan's surprise, took his side. 'Anyway I coped as best I could with Bertram who threatened police, publicity, ringing up Papa, etc - and this sparked off by Pam telling him that I wanted to marry Jane. I rang him when I got back to Saltwood and apologised, but the whole affair left me very shaky.'

When he thought Jane might be pregnant, Alan 'absolutely panicked, dry mouth, not joining in the conversation, etc. Driving over this afternoon I thought I might be wrecking everything . . . hopes of marriage, settled life, the chalet, writing, everything.'

But it was a false alarm: 'Thank God, and I mean thank GOD.'

Alan and Jane were married in London on July 31, 1958. Jane was 16, Alan 30 

Clark published the first volume of his political and personal diaries in 1993, which caused a minor embarrassment at the time with their descriptions of senior Conservative politicians such as Michael Heseltine, Douglas Hurd, and Kenneth Clarke. He quoted Michael Jopling—referring to Heseltine, deputy PM at the time—as saying "The trouble with Michael is that he had to buy all his furniture" and judged it "Snobby, but cutting". His account of Thatcher's downfall in 1990 has been described as the most vivid in existence.Two subsequent volumes of his diaries cover the earlier and later parts of Clark's parliamentary career. The diaries reveal recurring worries about Japanese militarism but his real views are often not clear because he enjoyed making "tongue in cheek" remarks to the discomfiture of those he believed to be fools, as in his sympathy for a British version of National Socialism.

“Alan Clark Diaries: Into Power, Page 280, Phoenix Paperback 2000 Edition, 8 December 1981: Frank [Frank Johnson, sketch writer for The Times] pretended he wanted to talk about the Tory Party, but he really prefers to talk about the Nazis, concerning whom he is curious, but not, of course, sympathetic. Yes, I told him, I was a Nazi, I really believed it to be the ideal system, and that it was a disaster for the Anglo-Saxon races and for the world that it was extinguished. He both gulped and grinned 'But surely, er, you mean … (behaving like an unhappy interviewer in Not the Nine O'Clock News after, e.g., Pamela Stephenson had said something frightfully shocking) ideally in terms of administrative and economic policy … you cannot really, er …' Oh yes, I told him, I was completely committed to the whole philosophy. The blood and violence was an essential ingredient of its strength, the heroic tradition of cruelty every bit as powerful and a thousand times more ancient than the Judaeo-Christian ethic.”

“Alan Clark held strong views on British unionism, racial difference, social class, and was in support of animal rights, nationalist protectionism and Euroscepticism[citation needed]. He referred to Enoch Powell as "The Prophet". Clark once declared: "It is natural to be proud of your race and your country", and in a departmental meeting, allegedly referred to Africa as "Bongo Bongo Land".[32] When called to account, however, by then Prime Minister John Major, Clark denied the comment had any racist overtones, claiming it had simply been a reference to the President of Gabon, Omar Bongo.[33]

Clark argued that the media and the government failed to pick out the racism towards white people and ignored any racist attacks on white people. He also however described the National Front chairman, John Tyndall, as "a bit of a blockhead"[34] and disavowed his ideas.

When Clark was Minister for Trade, responsible for overseeing arms sales to foreign governments, he was interviewed by journalist John Pilger who asked him:[35]

JP "Did it bother you personally that this British equipment was causing such mayhem and human suffering (by supplying arms for Indonesia's war in East Timor)?"

AC "No, not in the slightest, it never entered my head. You tell me that this was happening, I didn't hear about it or know about it."

JP "Well, even if I hadn't told you it was happening, the fact that we supply highly effective equipment to a regime like that is not a consideration, as far as you're concerned. It's not a personal consideration."

JP "I ask the question because I read you are a vegetarian and you are quite seriously concerned about the way animals are killed."

AC "Yeah"

JP "Doesn’t that concern extend to the way humans, albeit foreigners, are killed?"

AC "Curiously not. No."

While involved in the Matrix Churchill trial he was cited in a divorce case in South Africa, in which it was revealed he had had affairs with Valerie Harkess, the wife of a South African barrister (and part-time junior judge), and her daughters Josephine and Alison.[36] After sensationalist tabloid headlines, Clark's wife Jane remarked upon what Clark had called "the coven" with the line: "Well, what do you expect when you sleep with below stairs types?", and referred to her husband as an "S, H, one, T".

“Ion Trewin tells an enthralling story of the life that Clark himself chose not to discuss: an unhappy childhood with neglectful parents (his art historian father Kenneth Clark, best known for his 'Civilisation' TV series). Fire destroyed his first school; he endured wartime Eton, at Oxford he read history under Hugh Trevor-Roper and drove large cars (he was known as 'Klaxon' Clark). His parents insisted he read law; passing his exams at the 3rd attempt, he never practised. His first novel - accepted on the 13th submission - was pulped because of libel, but went on to gain praise. The Donkeys, his first work of history, brought down the wrath of military historians. Clark changed course and into politics in his forties. Readers may think they know Clark's political life from his diaries, but Clark himself neglected to tell all, about Mrs T's downfall, the Matrix Churchill arms to Iraq scandal and much more.

He adored women - Trewin has tracked down his first great love, a ballet dancer, and his last infatuation - and courted a schoolgirl he first met when she was 16 and he 30. This was Jane, to whom he remained married - if not faithfully - until his death from a brain tumour in 1999. The extent of his extra-marital escapades is now revealed. Here for the first time the unknown Alan Clark stands revealed.”

Father and Son. The Father, Kenneth Clark ...

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Cultural colossus... and a cruel cad: A new book reveals revered Civilisation presenter Kenneth Clark was also a bed-hopping, wife-stealing rogue

Kenneth Clark was known for 1969 television documentaries Civilisation

But the 'happily' married man was a serial adulterer and seeker of affairs

The trait is revealed in a new book by official biographer, James Stourton.

By TONY RENNELL FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 00:52 BST, 3 September 2016 | UPDATED: 02:38 BST, 3 September 2016

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3771760/A-new-book-reveals-revered-Civilisation-presenter-Kenneth-Clark-bed-hopping-wife-stealing-rogue.html

Full-bosomed, voluptuous and with long golden hair, she gazes wistfully into the middle distance. And the grand cultural connoisseur (some might say, commissar) Kenneth Clark adored this vision of pure womanhood so much that he made her the showpiece of his many grand houses.

The nude Baigneuse Blonde by the French impressionist Renoir was ‘my blonde bombshell’, as he liked to call her, and she took pride of place on his art-filled walls.

And who could fault his judgment? Here was a man with impeccable taste, a giant of the artistic world who swept all before him in 20th century Britain, laying down markers of what was good art and what was not, expanding awareness of beauty, bringing culture to the masses, all culminating in his ground-breaking series of television documentaries in 1969, the brilliant and unrivalled Civilisation.

Together with his actual peerage, it earned him the accolade by which he will always be known — Lord Clark of Civilisation. For decades he was the haughty panjandrum of the arts, admired and feared in equal measure. Kings and prime ministers sought his advice, the great and the good flocked to his salon parties, artists sat at his feet and courted his patronage.

Jobs cascaded into his lap like manna, from Oxford professorships to running the National Gallery at the age of 30 and presiding over the likes of the Arts Council and Covent Garden Opera House. He was even invited to be a founding father of ITV, despite at the time not even owning a television set.

There were few figures quite so respected in public life, and seemingly respectable to a fault.

But behind all this grandness and glamour, Clark had a secret — to which his adoration of the ‘blonde bombshell’ was a clue. Though ostensibly a happily married man with a dutiful and caring wife by his side in all his high endeavours, he couldn’t keep his manicured hands or his swooning heart away from other women. He was a serial adulterer, a constant seeker of affairs, even with the wives of his close friends.

This upright pillar of the Establishment was in fact, as one of his detractors put it most succinctly, ‘a frightful s**t’.

This side of Clark’s character is revealed in a new book by his official biographer, James Stourton. An art historian and until recently UK chairman of Sotheby’s, he hails Clark’s great achievement as a populiser of the arts and a disseminator of culture and taste.

But he does not shy away from the murky private life that lay behind it.

Clark’s behaviour was unseemly and sordid. He drove his wife to drink, dumped at least one mistress in circumstances that were downright shameful and passed his penchant for bed-hopping onto his son and heir, the outrageous Conservative politician Alan Clark. It is not a pretty picture.

Kenneth Clark was born into family money, lots of it, a fortune equivalent to more than £500 million by today’s standards, made from cotton. His father was a drunken extrovert, his mother shy and retiring, and the boy grew up rattling around virtually alone in a large country mansion on a vast sporting estate in Suffolk. Much to his bluff father’s disgust he opted for the books in the library rather than taking a gun to the pheasants.

At prep school, he already had the solemn and self-assured air of an archbishop about him, but it was tempered, even then, by a delight in the company of girls. He met some for the first time at a school dance and ‘I was enchanted beyond words by the aura of femininity,’ he recalled. That enchantment, for good and ill, lasted the rest of his life.

From Winchester, where he frequently had to ‘sport an a**e’ (ie, bend over to be caned) for precocity and speaking his mind, he progressed to Oxford, in whose quads he quickly made his name as an aesthete and an intellectual.

H is chums were the brightest dons of the Twenties’ generation, clever, witty, well-read, aloof. He fitted the pattern perfectly. A summer vacation in Italy introduced him to the artistic and intellectual delights of Florence, and his future course in life was set.

Oxford also provided him with a wife. He’d flirted around until then — there was an Eileen and a Sybil — but with Jane Martin it was the real thing. She was Irish with large blue eyes and dark hair, middle-class, elegant, high-spirited, a history graduate and . . . engaged to one of Clark’s best friends.

When the friend had to go overseas for a while, Clark offered to keep an eye on her. When the friend got back, there was a letter from Clark saying he was about to marry Jane himself. He told the abruptly jilted lover that, ‘in the end you will find this is better for everybody’.

It was typical Clark arrogance. He always assumed that, however caddish his behaviour, what was good for him would be fine for everybody else.

It was the same with their wedding.

Jane wanted romance, bridesmaids, the full works, but Clark was having nothing so commonplace. He insisted on a quick hitch in a church — just 14 minutes from start to finish, he recorded proudly — followed by a stiff lunch with his parents.

However, they proved to be good for each other at many levels, and things were going well. With his family wealth and his work as an art historian blossoming, money was no problem. They set up a home with staff, son Alan was born, they travelled and entertained lavishly, throwing dinners and parties for the high-society set where the fashionably dressed Jane was as much of a magnet as he was.

She was a bewitching hostess, open and affable where he could be more diffident and reserved. The combination worked.

Increasingly, the Clarks were on the radar of those who mattered, a power couple much in demand for their conversation, company and connections.

The cracks were covered up. Behind her party face, Jane was moody and mercurial, with a fierce and frequent temper and a drink problem.

She carried what she called ‘cough medicine’ in her handbag and a nasal spray containing morphine and cocaine to calm herself down in times of stress. She was always prone to drama and quarrels, dividing the world into allies and friends. The placid and appeasing Clark usually bent with the wind when she was in one of her strops, but there were still too many nights at home when he stomped out because she was being ‘so bloody’ and walked the streets wondering if he’d made a terrible mistake in marrying her.

He was, of course, partly to blame. His wandering eye cannot have helped her state of mind, though which came first — her tantrums or his infidelities — is an unresolved chicken-and-egg argument.

For a long time, Jane suspected he was being unfaithful. His high-powered jobs gave him access to lots of women and he lunched a deux with the likes of actress Vivien Leigh. There were also secretaries he dallied with, and once Jane caught him cuddling one of the maids at home.

But in the late-Thirties, things escalated when he began seeing Edith, the married sister of ballet choreographer Frederick Ashton, and fell in love. They would meet at her house when her naval officer husband was away, and we can only speculate at what happened there. On this occasion, Clark confessed his indiscretion to his wife and was forgiven.

S tourton argues that the upper-class Clarks were not unusual among their kind in having affairs, and that Jane was not short of her own admirers anyway. These included the composer William Walton, with whom she had a prolonged romance when living away from London during World War II.

A particular French ambassador took to calling on her and was seen in a passionate embrace, while the sculptor Henry Moore, one of her husband’s proteges, was a long-time admirer.

But the bonds between husband and wife ran really deep, and neither Clark nor Jane ever seriously contemplated divorce, which anyway would have been social death in those days.

Nonetheless, they tested each other’s devotion on a regular basis. Feeling hard done by, he felt justified in seeking solace for his wife’s bad behaviour, pouring out his troubles to this fancy woman and that. His cheating did nothing to cool Jane’s temper or her need for escape via alcohol. They were trapped in a vicious matrimonial circle, which he showed no wish to break out of.

As his eminence increased, so, too, did his tally of lady friends and lovers. He became sly, urging them to write to him at his club in Pall Mall, a safe place because letters arriving at home were intercepted.

It is impossible to say how much physical sex was actually involved in these liaisons. Undoubtedly there was some but, tellingly, he dismissed one woman he was close to as ‘too lecherous, don’t like her’.

What mainly captivated him and sent him weak at the knees was that ‘aura of femininity’ he had first noticed as a boy, typically over an illicit, intimate lunch or dinner at the Etoile or Wheeler’s fish restaurant.

He found women generally ‘more receptive, more appreciative and more stimulating’ and basked in their adoration. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that it was all very much about him. His own daughter, Colette, nailed the truth when she said: ‘He was a compulsive charmer and very put out if women did not fall in love with him.’

Occasionally love knocked him for six. Mary Kessell was a young artist who wore exotic clothes and ribbons in her hair and lived in a little house he bought for her close to his grand Georgian semi-mansion in Hampstead.

He visited when he could and she wrote to him about ‘a most perfect unforgettable evening. There is no one else in the world for me. When I put my arms around you, I feel whole. God means us for one another’.

She begged for more of his time — raising a crucial question about Clark and his lovers. With all the committees he was now sitting on, all the different jobs he held down, all the receptions, dinners and parties he attended, not to mention a wife and three children, how did he ever find time for such a promiscuous love life as well?

The answer was that everything was rigorously compartmentalised and timetabled, including the mistresses. Nothing overlapped, so poor Mary was dumped. Jane had got wind of her, saw the danger and this time threatened to leave Clark unless he stopped seeing her.

He complied, leaving Mary bereft. ‘I shall always love you,’ she wrote to him but never to see him again was ‘a bitter blow’. Broken-hearted, she died an alcoholic. And still he philandered.

There was another Mary, surname Potter, to whom he declared, ‘you are, without exception, the most lovable human being I have ever met’. And Morna Anderson, wife of an old Oxford friend, to whom he wrote: ‘I love you, and have for years, and always shall.’

And Myfanwy, wife of Welsh artist John Piper. And university lecturer Maria Shirley. And librarian Margaret Slyth. And glamorous multi-millionaire New Yorker Jayne Wrightsman.

To Jane, he dismissed all his flings and fancies, whether sexual or just platonic, as ‘my silly fits’. He hoped to ‘contain them better and become less tiresome’, he wrote to her, before instantly falling into the arms of red-haired Barbara Desborough from Australia, who left her husband and children for him.

The indiscretions piled up, the pledges of undying love, the false promises, but through all the mess he created in his and other people’s lives, Clark clung onto Jane, now getting older and sicker, ‘tumbling’ more and more (the family’s word for falling over when drunk), lonely at their new home, Saltwood Castle in Kent while he was a star in London.

A stroke knocked her flat and with all the love and care he could muster he nursed her until her death in 1976. He was bereft. All the sparkle went out of him. For all his dalliances, she had been the love of his life.

As Stourton puts it: ‘Jane was ultimately the ringmaster in the curious performance of Clark and his girlfriends. She had been his excuse to disengage.’ He missed her terribly.

At which point came perhaps Clark’s greatest betrayal of all.

Photographer Janet Stone, a bishop’s daughter and married to a master wood engraver, had been his most devoted mistress for the past 15 years. He unburdened all his problems on her, particularly about Jane, in a mass of letters and at their clandestine meetings once a month. He led her to believe he was madly in love with her and would one day leave his wife for her.

She — perhaps not grasping the truth about all the other ladies in his life — believed him. With Jane now gone, Janet was, as she saw it, on a promise. In a letter six months later, he declared his love for her . . . followed by the bombshell news that, despite this, he was marrying someone else! He was lonely, needed a wife and a reason to live, and had settled on a rich widower he’d briefly met in France, Nolwen Rice.

Janet was understandably devastated. So, too, were his family, convinced their illustrious father had been picked off by a predator.

N olwen turned out to be a toughie. She was not going to put up with all the nonsense Jane had. Clark’s roving days were over. When Janet tried to renew her relationship with him — encouraged, surprise, surprise, by Clark himself, a little spirit still left in the old dog — she was told firmly by Nolwen to ‘go get a life’ and leave her husband alone.

He was now firmly on a marital leash for the first time in his life and remained there until his death in 1983.

It was the end of a great and grand life, which enriched the world in many ways. Sometimes this paragon seemed too aloof and remote to be real. Many people felt put down and put off by him. His feet of clay, exposed in this biography, bring Lord Clark of Civilisation down to earth. It’s no bad thing.

 Adapted from Kenneth Clark: The Authorised Biography by James Stourton, published by William Collins on September 22, at £30. © James Stourton 2016. To buy a copy for £22.50, P&P free, call 0844 571 0640 or visit mailbookshop.co.uk. Offer valid until September 9.     

Kenneth Clark by James Stourton review – Mary Beard on Civilisation without women

Clark’s patrician manner, and the ‘great man’ approach of his famous TV series, now seem outdated. This biography retrieves his influence, but has worrying sexual politics

Mary Beard

 Sat 1 Oct 2016 07.30 BST Last modified on Wed 29 Nov 2017 10.16 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/01/kenneth-clark-life-art-civilisation-james-stourton-review

In February 1969, I watched the first episode of Kenneth Clark’s famous TV series, Civilisation. I can still picture him, standing on barbaric northern headlands, explaining that “our” civilisation had barely survived the collapse of the Roman empire. We had come through only “by the skin of our teeth”. It was an incongruous scene: Clark – Winchester and Oxford educated, connoisseur and collector, former director of the National Gallery – looked every inch the toff as he walked in his brogues and Burberry over the battered countryside, where wellington boots and a woolly would have been more appropriate. But I tingled slightly as he repeated that phrase, “by the skin of our teeth”. I was just 14, and it had never struck me that “civilisation” might be such a fragile thing, still less that it might be possible to trace a history of European culture, as Clark was to do, in 13 parts, from the early middle ages to the 20th century.

 Civilisation had shown us that there was something in art and architecture that was worth talking, and arguing, about

A few years later, now more a devotee of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing (a TV series and book devised in hostile reaction to Civilisation), I began to feel decidedly uncomfortable with Clark’s patrician self-confidence and the “great man” approach to art history – one damn genius after the next – that ran through the series. I was very doubtful, too, about the image of wild barbarians at the gates that Clark conjured up in that first episode: it was as crude an oversimplification of barbarism as his dreamy notion of ideal perfection was an oversimplification of classicism. Nonetheless, Civilisation had opened my eyes, and those of many others; not only visually stunning, it had shown us that there was something in art and architecture that was worth talking, and arguing, about.

Some of the best chapters in James Stourton’s careful biography discuss the making of this series. Clark was then in his early 60s and a considerable catch for its commissioner David Attenborough, who was trying to give the first wave of colour TV on BBC2 a more highbrow image than it had acquired in the US. What better than a series that would feature “all the most beautiful pictures and buildings” of the last 2,000 years of western European history?

Despite the commonly held belief that Clark was an upper-crust scholar plucked from some dusty museum basement who luckily proved to be a “natural” on screen, he had already made dozens of programmes for ITV, including one featuring an argument with Berger over Picasso’s Guernica (the two men were ideological enemies but personal friends). He was the obvious man for the job. Less obvious was the director assigned to the series: Michael Gill, father of the critic AA Gill, who did not share Clark’s aesthetic viewpoint (“Michael would probably have wanted to be the barbarian at the gate,” his wife observed). To begin with, getting the pair to collaborate was, according to one BBC source, rather like “mating pandas”.

For some viewers, Civilisation was life-changing. In the letters Clark received after the broadcasts, no fewer than nine correspondents claimed they had been dissuaded from suicide simply by watching (modestly, Clark wasn’t sure whether to believe them). Even the Sun hyped Clark as “the Gibbon of the McLuhan age”, and he was promptly given a peerage. The rumour was that Mary Wilson said to Harold, after one of their regular Sunday evening viewings in 10 Downing Street: “That man must go to the House of Lords.” And so he did.

But Civilisation was not an instant ratings success. At its first showing, it captured less than 2% of the available audience (compared with 35% for The Forsyte Saga). And Berger was not the only critic of Clark’s “top-down” approach to cultural politics; others complained that they were watching the elitist musings of an Edwardian critic. Clark’s silly jibes at “pseudo-Marxists” (for some reason, a notch below “real” ones), and his boasts of being a “stick-in-the-mud” laid him open to this.

 On one of his ITV programmes on 'good taste' he seems to have taken a line closer to Grayson Perry than to Brian Sewell

As Stourton shows, some of the criticisms do not stick. Although the programmes concentrated on western Europe, Clark was not blind (as he was charged) to other artistic traditions: he had been devoted to Japanese art since childhood. And however patrician his manner, he was a lifelong Labour voter. In fact, in one of his ITV programmes on “good taste” he seems to have taken a line closer to Grayson Perry than to Brian Sewell.

But Stourton frankly concedes one glaring omission in Civilisation. This was a “great man” approach in the most literal sense. Hardly any women got a look-in, and when very occasionally they did, it was not as creative artists or even patrons, but as hostesses, temptresses, Virgin Marys, or something woolly called the “female principle”. Almost the only woman credited, briefly, with an independent role was Elizabeth Fry, the prison reformer – and, it so happens, the ancestor of one of Clark’s long-standing mistresses.

Contested though they still are, it is far easier to evaluate Clark’s TV programmes than the rest of his life. On the surface, his was a golden career. Born in 1903 into a family of the idle rich (“many richer … few idler”, as he put it), he made his way through school and university against the usual background of loyal nannies, vicious schoolmasters and cranky dons, before managing to get himself apprenticed briefly to the art historian Bernard Berenson in Florence. A glittering CV followed: keeper of fine art at the Ashmolean, director of the National Gallery, keeper of the king’s pictures, chairman of the Independent Television Authority, and so on, ending up a member of the Order of Merit, an august body that he found, predictably enough, full of his old pals.

Reading between the lines of Stourton’s account, it seems clear that he was good at big ideas, not so good at attention to detail (always a peril for men, like Clark, who don’t actually need a salary to survive). His tenure at the National Gallery is a case in point. Appointed when he was just 30 in 1933, he scored some great successes: he installed electric light; he opened up early on FA Cup final day to encourage fans to visit; he masterminded the evacuation of the major paintings to the Welsh mines during the second world war; and he reinvented the gallery as a cultural centre for wartime London (with hugely popular concerts organised by Myra Hess). Yet the staff were almost entirely against him, and it was partly their opposition that led to his resignation as soon as the war ended.

Clark’s supporters tend to paint his subordinates as small-minded bureaucrats, narrow scholars or, occasionally, psychopaths; and so they may have been. But one of Stourton’s anecdotes hints at a different story. Clark was going home one evening when he was surprised to see a newspaper hoarding: “National Gallery. Grave Scandal.” It turned out that one of the gallery’s accountants had had his fingers in the till for years, and all had been made public. Although director, Clark knew absolutely nothing about it.

 It is dangerous to investigate marital wars from beyond the grave, and even more presumptuous to try to apportion blame

But it is women, again, who are the most uncomfortable part of Clark’s story. His wife, Jane, had read history at Oxford; they married in 1927 and soon had three children (including Alan Clark MP, of Diaries and other fame). By the end of the 30s, Clark “started being unfaithful to his wife” and had multiple dalliances – “a vigorous private life” in Stourton’s euphemism – until her death in 1976. Jane, meanwhile, is said to have become increasingly difficult and dependent on alcohol and prescription drugs. It is always dangerous to investigate marital wars from beyond the grave, and even more presumptuous to try to apportion blame. But biographers should watch their rhetoric and at least let the different parties keep their dignity. Stourton tries, but does not always succeed.

There is little room for independent women in Stourton’s version of Clark’s life. Jane wins his praise early on for her elegance and her dress sense; she was “a natural and beautiful hostess”. When she doesn’t fit that type, she gets written up as the monstrous, unstable spouse of a long-suffering husband: “The more she tormented him, the more he sought solace elsewhere.” Stourton occasionally recognises that this logic could be reversed: “The more he screwed around, the more screwed up she got.” There are simply different ground rules for men and women. When Clark breaks down and cries in a gents’ lavatory in Washington DC in response to a rapturous reaction to Civilisation, that is a sign of his sensitive ambivalence to fame. When the women cry, they are being hysterical.

The mistresses generally fare no better than the wife. Stourton only mentions in passing that Janet Stone, the descendant of Elizabeth Fry and mistress of Clark for almost 30 years, was an important photographer in her own right. But he does clearly see the poignant side of a discovery made after Clark’s death: a box of letters from her that he had never bothered, or brought himself, to open.

Clark’s television presentation of women as objects of desire or inspiration was not all that far from the way women in his own life continue to be portrayed: “a muse without a role”, as he once dubbed Jane.

• Kenneth Clark: Life, Art and Civilisation is published by HarperCollins. 

Kenneth Clark: arrogant snob or saviour of art?

Famed for the TV series Civilisation, Clark has long been accused of patrician arrogance. But he was also a brilliant wordsmith whose books changed the game, argues James Hall

James Hall

Fri 16 May 2014 14.00 BST First published on Fri 16 May 2014 14.00 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/may/16/kenneth-clark-arrogant-snob-saviour-art

Italians call the great 14th‑century authors Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio i tre coronati – the three crowned laureates. In Britain, during the middle third of the 20th century, art history had its own tre coronati in the formidable shapes of Nikolaus Pevsner, Ernst Gombrich and Kenneth Clark. What made them stand out from their contemporaries both here and abroad was not just their extraordinary erudition and prolific output, but an eloquence and popularising skill that made them public figures. They became the subjects of biographies, and many of their books remain in print. Pevsner, as the author of the landmark Buildings of Britain series, could be found in countless car glove compartments; Gombrich wrote the bestselling art book of all time, The Story of Art; and Clark was the maker of a number of pioneering TV series that were broadcast internationally, the most famous being Civilisation (1969).

Of the three, Clark's reputation is most in need of rescue. Two people bear most responsibility for his eclipse: John Berger and Clark's son Alan. Berger's brilliant TV series and book Ways of Seeing (1972) threw down a lethal Marxist-feminist gauntlet to Clark's Olympian worldview. Clark is the only art historian to be named, and he is cited and ticked-off twice over. His description of Gainsborough's portrait of Mr and Mrs Andrews on their country estate in Landscape into Art (1949) as "enchanting" and "Rousseauist" is denounced: "They are not a couple in Nature as Rousseau imagined nature. They are landowners and their proprietary attitude towards what surrounds them is visible in their stance and their expressions." Berger well knew that Clark, thanks to substantial inherited wealth (the family fortune came from Paisley cotton), had lived since 1955 in Saltwood Castle in Kent surrounded by a moat and a large art collection that included old masters and impressionists.

Berger also took to task The Nude: a study of ideal art (1956), Clark's longest and most intellectually ambitious book: "Kenneth Clark maintains that to be naked is simply to be without clothes, whereas the nude is a form of art." While Berger concedes that the nude "is always conventionalised", he insists it "also relates to lived sexuality". The female nude is subservient to the male "spectator-owner … men act and women appear". Civilisation ended with Clark in his study at Saltwood fondling a Henry Moore reclining nude (he also owned Renoir's Blond Bather).

If it has become hard not to consider Clark through Berger-tinted spectacles, it is even harder not to blot out the "lived sexuality" of his son – the Thatcher-adoring, boozy sexual predator Alan Clark MP, whose sybaritic diaries outsold his father's art books, and who was proud to be Lord Clark of Civilisation's barbaric antithesis (this roguish persona was also a rebellion against Clark senior's diffidence and emotional aloofness). When, in 1997, Alan Clark offloaded to the National Gallery his father's serenely austere Zurbaran still-life, A Cup of Water and a Rose (c1630), my admiration for Clark senior's discernment (and envy of his deep pockets) was disturbed by a stray thought – did Clark junior get rid of it because its sobriety irked him?

In many ways, Kenneth Clark became a victim of his meteoric success, though what shouldn't be discounted was his patrician arrogance, which many found infuriating. Having gone to Oxford to read history in 1922, he entered the artistic circles around Charlie Bell, keeper of the Ashmolean, and immersed himself in the museum's superb collection of old master drawings. Bell was a pioneering aficionado of Victorian architecture, and he proposed the subject of Clark's first book, The Gothic Revival (1928), published when he was only 25. Despite lambasting "these monsters, these unsightly wrecks stranded upon the mud flat of Victorian taste", Clark also admired certain neogothic buildings and thus became a catalyst for the re‑evaluation of Victorian architecture. He succeeded Bell at the Ashmolean in 1931, and, having been groomed by the connoisseur Bernard Berenson and Bloomsbury art critic Roger Fry, became, at 29, the youngest ever director of the National Gallery two years later. During the war, he was a heroic figure because of his patronage of British artists and especially the displays and concerts at the National Gallery; after the war he became chair of the Arts Council and the Independent Television Authority (a commercial regulator) – as well as a prolific author, globe-trotting lecturer and consummate TV presenter. Of his museum director successors, only Neil MacGregor – the second youngest director of the National Gallery and now in charge at the British Museum – has the same proselytising zeal and public profile.

Books such as Landscape into Art and The Nude are now gleefully derided, but in their day they were ground-breaking surveys that mapped and synthesised vast fields for the first time. The Nude singlehandedly revived interest in antique sculpture and its influence on western art and culture after a century of Ruskin-induced neglect. The subsequent vogue for Grand Tour studies, and Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny's standard survey Taste and the Antique (1981), are inconceivable without it (in an otherwise positive review, Gombrich criticised Haskell and Penny for failing to mention The Nude). Now there are shelfloads of books about nudity in art, all using The Nude as springboard and whipping boy, and nudity has been a key component of recent art.

Civilisation, a product of his seventh decade, hasn't worn so well, despite its director Michael Gill's high production values. It is marred by slack windbaggery and loose connections, but Clark's keen awareness of the fragility of cultures – whether of the Vikings, Franks or Nazis – commands respect: "At some time in the ninth century one could have looked down the Seine and seen the prow of a Viking ship coming up the river. Looked at today in the British Museum it is a powerful work of art; but to the mother of a family trying to settle down in her little hut, it would have seemed less agreeable – as menacing to her civilisation as the periscope of a nuclear submarine." He wouldn't have approved of the British Museum's current exhibition, Viking, in which the mass-murdering slave-traders are reinvented as entrepreneurial free-traders. His views on housing seem positively prescient: "If I had to say which was telling the truth about society, a speech by a minister of housing or the actual buildings put up in his time, I should believe the buildings." Despite his hostility to Marxism – especially when applied to art – the sections on the slave trade, the industrial revolution and poverty remain powerful and moving indictments. Perhaps the most shocking thing about Civilisation is the state of Clark's teeth.

Clark's critics have lamented his Eurocentrism; his patronage of neo-romantic Nash, Piper, Sutherland and Moore (but not Bacon); and his dislike of purist abstraction (Ben Nicholson's reliefs, which he nonetheless collected, were less "cosmic symbols" than "tasteful pieces of decoration"). But the condescension of posterity is disproportionate, and not just because "it is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art" (Oscar Wilde). In retrospect, Clark was right about purism: it was a cul-de‑sac, however magnificent at times. Mondrian's road to abstraction is thrilling; once he gets there, his art becomes drily academic and repetitious. In 1935, Clark published a pessimistic essay in the Listener entitled "The Future of Painting", in which he argued that a viable new style "can only arise out of a new interest in subject matter … We need a new myth in which the symbols are inherently pictorial." Jackson Pollock is a case in point – he yearned to infuse abstract art with profound content and, by the time of his premature death, had returned to semi-figuration. In post-1960s art and theory, impurism – conscious and unconscious subject matter – is all the rage.

One of Clark's most radical and least remarked innovations was his obsession with details. While director of the National Gallery, he produced the first ever "details" book, which is still in print: One Hundred Details from Pictures in the National Gallery (1938). Although it looks like an amusing potboiler, it is his most influential book. Clark wanted to encourage viewers to look more attentively at artworks, and to see images in a fresh way. He juxtaposed details from pictures by different artists, often from different periods, inviting his readers to compare and contrast. His interest in details was fostered by his knowledge of the sleuthing techniques of psychoanalysis.

The impact of Clark's book was immediate. In December 1938, WH Auden wrote his celebrated poem "Musée des Beaux Arts" while staying in Brussels. He must surely have had One Hundred Details on his desk or in his mind's eye. The poem is a perfect amplification of Clark's thesis: it explores the important entities sometimes located in the margins or background of artworks, and human obliviousness to great events. One can go through Auden's poem footnoting the relevant details in Clark's book:

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position: how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

Auden's poem concludes with a meditation on Bruegel's idyllic landscape in which a tiny Icarus crash-lands into the sea: "how everything turns away / Quite leisurely from the disaster".

Clark ends with a detail of the tiny crucifix that is hidden in the midst of a charming animal-filled landscape in Pisanello's Vision of Saint Eustace (c1438-42). There is no commentary: he lets the tragic, easy-to-overlook image speak for itself.

Paradoxically, Berger exploited details in Ways of Seeing and today's art historians are intoxicated by them – none more so than social art historian TJ Clark (no relation), whose short book The Sight of Death (2006) features 70 delirious details of two paintings by Poussin. The fascinating exhibition currently at the National Gallery, Building the Picture, could almost be dedicated to the former director, for it focuses on the architecture in the background of Renaissance paintings. The curator, Amanda Lillie, explains how the spotlight is on what is usually considered a minor detail: "Buildings in paintings have too often been viewed as background or as space fillers that play a passive or at best supporting role, propping up the figures that carry the main message of the picture. By looking afresh at buildings within paintings, treating them as active protagonists, it becomes clear that they performed a series of crucial roles." She exhibits a Beccafumi whose fantastic architecture was zoomed in on by Clark.

Above all, perhaps, Clark was a brilliant wordsmith, the most seductive writer on art since Ruskin and Pater, whom he greatly admired. Today, when most art historians write as joylessly as lawyers and accountants, such verve is sorely needed. His writing is seen at its probing and evocative best in his classic 1939 book on Leonardo, which remains the best introduction to his art (the reprint has an excellent preface by Martin Kemp). Clark had established himself as the world's leading Leonardo scholar in 1935, when his great three-volume catalogue of the Leonardo drawings in the Royal Collection was published.

His influential interpretation of Leonardo's grotesque heads is a tour de force: rather than a frivolous hobby, as was often assumed, they were made central by Clark to Leonardo's art and life. Clark was always fascinated by polarities, especially between the ugly and the ideal, and this underpinned his notorious distinction between the naked and the nude. He inherited this preoccupation from late 19th-century decadent writers, and from Freud. In Oxford in the 1920s, he alternated between studying the "unsightly wrecks" of neogothic architecture, and the Ashmolean's sumptuous sketches by Raphael and Michelangelo. See-sawing from the monstrous to the supremely beautiful was the art historical equivalent of Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, where's Dorian's ageless beauty contrasts with his disintegrating portrait.

But Leonardo was the greatest single embodiment of these polarities. Having noted that he loved drawing freaks, Clark observed: "Mixed with his motive of curiosity lay others, more profound: the motives that led men to carve gargoyles on the gothic cathedrals. Gargoyles were the complement to saints; Leonardo's caricatures were complementary to his untiring search for ideal beauty. And gargoyles were the expression of all the passions, the animal forces, the Caliban gruntings and groanings that are left in human nature when the divine has been poured away." Clark's son Alan would take it on himself to embody the "Caliban gruntings and groanings", leaving the divine roles to his father.

Clark further believed that Leonardo's grotesque man with "nut‑cracker nose and chin" was the counterpart to "the epicene youth", and these types can be found scarcely modified at all stages of Leonardo's career: "These are, in fact, the two hieroglyphs of Leonardo's unconscious mind, the two images his hand created when his attention was wandering, and as such they have an importance for us which the frequent poverty of their execution should not disguise. Virile and effeminate, they symbolise the two sides of Leonardo's nature … Even in his most conscious creations, even in the Last Supper, they remain, as it were, the armature round which his types are created".

Perhaps it's now time for the Caliban critical gruntings to give way to a fairer assessment.

• James Hall is  the author of The Self-Portrait: A Cultural History (Thames & Hudson)

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David Hockney Interview: Photoshop is Boring

September 30, 2018, 7:55 am

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Hockney's style evolution: wearing a stripey tie in 1981, a spotty bow tie in 1975, and trademark round-framed glasses in 1965. PHOTOS: REX

David Hockney: back on the fashion map

David Hockney's Royal Academy of Arts landscape show 'A Bigger Picture' opened to the public this weekend, sparking Hockney-mania in Fashion Land.

BY ELLIE PITHERS | 25 JANUARY 2012

http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/columns/ellie-pithers/TMG9037761/David-Hockney-back-on-the-fashion-map.html

David Hockney at the preview of his landscapes show for the Royal Academy of Arts

Hockney's fashion credentials have been undisputed for decades - this is the man, after all, who successfully exported the English dandy aesthetic to Los Angeles - but this week, with the opening of 'David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture' in London, the veteran painter has found himself firmly in the style spotlight once again.

Fashion types flocked to the show's preview at the Royal Academy of Arts last week, which celebrates the artist's depiction of the English landscape, finding focus in the Yorkshire wolds of his childhood. Among those paying homage were Jasper Conran and Dame Vivienne Westwood, a close friend who has even named a checked jacket after him. Hockney himself was working the colour blocking trend, with a red knitted tie and a yellow rose in his lapel.

Hockney's depiction of the ever-changing seasons in 'A Bigger Picture' provides a pert parallel with fashion's relentless pursuit of the new - almost as though he is acknowledging his status as 'flavour of the month' in his paintings.

Those who have been doing their fashion homework will know that Hockney is the man around whom Christopher Bailey of Burberry has drawn whole collections, honing in on his striped ties and clashing sweaters, calling him "my icon".

He popped up in the show notes for John Galliano Homme for spring/summer 2012, with Bill Gaytten naming his catwalk collection 'Big Splash' in homage to Hockney's famed 1967 painting A Bigger Splash .

Also taking inspiration from Hockney this season is Osman, whose "art-led" spring/summer 2012 catwalk show was redolent with zingy, Californian brights: "I was inspired by the colours of David Hockney from his Splash series, but I wanted to punctuate this with cobalt, cherry red and ivory to loosen it up but still give the clothes a sense of gravitas."

This week, on the back of the tidal wave of publicity that has surrounded Hockney's opening weekend at the RA, Mrporter.com have taken the great British painter as their main source of style inspiration.

Mr Porter invite you to ' Shop Mr. David Hockney ', running a collection on their website crammed full of Hockney classics to accompany an interview with the outspoken British painter. Injecting a flash of Hockney's dandy aesthetic into your wardrobe is as simple as purchasing a pair of round-framed tortoise shell glasses, a herringbone tweed flat cap, a stripey shirt (unironed, naturally) or a bright silk tie.

Flavour of the month? Hockney is a man for all seasons.

'David Hockey RA: A Bigger Picture' is on at the Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly, from Jan 21 - April 9.

Los Angeles, lovers and light: David Hockney at 80

Art and design

From cool blue pools in LA to Yorkshire woodland to desert highways, a major Tate retrospective to mark Hockney’s 80th birthday celebrates his vibrant vision

Olivia Laing

Fri 13 Jan 2017 12.00 GMT Last modified on Thu 22 Feb 2018 17.08 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/jan/13/los-angeles-lovers-and-light-david-hockney-at-80

As a small boy in Bradford, David Hockney would watch his father paint old bicycles and prams. “I love that, even now,” he remembered decades later. “It is a marvellous thing to dip a brush into the paint and make marks on anything, even a bicycle, the feel of a thick brush full of paint coating something.” He knew he was going to be an artist, even if he wasn’t sure exactly what an artist did. Design Christmas cards, draw signs, paint prams: it didn’t matter, so long as his job involved the unmatched sensuality of making marks.

He’ll be 80 this July: the best-known living British artist, his verve and curiosity undiminished. In 1962, he spent a painstaking day lettering a note to himself on a chest of drawers at the end of his bed. “Get up and work immediately,” it said, and he’s been obeying it ever since. From monumental paintings of swimming pools and seething summer fields to tender, meticulous pencil portraits, from cubist opera sets to vases of flowers drawn on iPads or sent by fax machines, Hockney has always been a relentless reinventor, an artist who appears familiar while refusing to stay still.

As a spectacular new retrospective at Tate Britain makes clear, these twists and turns in thematic preoccupations and new techniques do not represent a lack of discipline or focus. Instead, they are staging posts in Hockney’s great quest: his passionate, obsessive attempt to remake the solid, moody, fleeting world in two dimensions. What do things look like, really, to stereoscopic human eyes, connected to a human heart and brain? Never mind the camera, with its rigid Cyclopean vision. There is a better way of seeing, though it might take a lifetime to master.

He was the fourth of five children, born in 1937 to creative, politically radical working class parents. His father had been a conscientious objector and was a lifelong campaigner for nuclear disarmament, while his mother was a Methodist and vegetarian (years later, asked by Women’s Wear Daily what he found beautiful, he picked his mum).

From the off, Hockney was canny if not outright machiavellian at pursuing his ambitions. At Bradford Grammar, art was only taught to people in the bottom form. “They thought art was not a serious study and I just thought, ‘Well, they’re wrong.’” A bright scholarship boy, he promptly went on strike, idling in all his other subjects in order to gain access. At 16, his parents finally consented to art school, first in Bradford and then, in 1959, at the Royal College of Art.

A cheeky lad in cartoonish glasses and weird, elegant clothes, he stood out at the RCA immediately, not least for the Stakhanovite intensity of his working day. Drawing was the foundation, the bulwark of his buoyant self-belief. If you could draw, he reasoned, you could always make money. The bloke selling sketches in the park was a comfort, not a fear, though in fact before he’d even graduated he was already making substantial money from his work.

In the late 1950s, abstract expressionism – the sploshes and splashes of Jackson Pollock – was casting a long shadow over British art. At first, Hockney played along, but the figure burned at him, a source of illicit fascination. It took a fellow student, the American RB Kitaj, to nudge him towards representation, suggesting he try mining his real interests for subject matter.

Their conversation unlatched a door. Hockney had known he was gay since boyhood. Reading the poets Walt Whitman and CP Cavafy in the summer of 1960, both of whom attested freely to their love of men, he saw a way of inhabiting his sexuality that was at once frank and fruitful. Desire could be his subject; he could make what he described as “propaganda” for queer love. The paintings came fast. In We Two Boys Together Clinging pastel escarpments of pink and blue announce a mood of romance, while in Adhesiveness two squat scarlet figures like pornographic Mr Men engage in oral sex, one sporting an alarmingly fanged mouth nicked straight from Francis Bacon.

Coming out so emphatically took courage. Until the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, homosexual acts were illegal even in private. These new images were a political act, as well as a fantasy he willed into being. Take Domestic Scene, Los Angeles, in which a lanky pink boy in pinny and socks soaps the back of a naked hunk standing beneath a solid blue jet of water. Hockney was imagining California permissiveness before he had even been there, conjuring a utopia that would become both his home and best-known subject.

Mr Whizz, as his new friend Christopher Isherwood nicknamed him, first visited LA in 1964, and immediately recognised a scene in need of a chronicler. The swimming pools, the sprinklers and jungle foliage, the taut, tanned people in their glass houses full of primitive sculpture were simultaneously raw material and aesthetic problems to be solved.

Light on water, iridescent ribbons of glitter, a splash: he could deploy all the lessons of abstraction here, among them Helen Frankenthaler’s trick of diluting acrylic paint with detergent, so it would flood the canvas with reflective pools of colour. As for the people in his paintings, the lovers and friends, the central question was how to depict bodies in space while simultaneously capturing something of the relationship, the currents of emotion between them.

That many of his subjects were famous, the glamorous beau monde of Tinseltown and swinging London, can distract from the seriousness of his investigation, the weirdness of his solutions. The first of his double portraits was 1968’s Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy. The novelist sits in hawkish profile, eyes locked on his much younger lover. A bowl of fruit, behind a phallic cob of corn, distorts the horizontal line into a triangle, forcing the viewer’s gaze to circle restlessly around the canvas.

This marriage of artificiality and liveliness returns in a visionary portrait of the curator Henry Geldzahler sitting on a pink sofa, haloed by a glowing window. Standing to his left is the rigid, transfigured form of his boyfriend, Christopher Scott, who in his belted trench coat has something of the air of a messenger angel, causing the museum curator Kynaston McShine to compare the painting to an annunciation. Though both men’s feet rest emphatically on the same tiled floor, they exist in different orders of reality.

Over the next few years, Hockney’s work became increasingly naturalistic, culminating in portraits such as Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy and 1972’s melancholy Portrait of an Artist, in which his former lover Peter Schlesinger peers coolly down at a distorted body moving through the troubled light of a swimming pool. At first, naturalism had felt like freedom, allowing him to spring away from his contemporaries’ obsession with flatness, their need to labour the artificiality of a painting. He became fascinated by one-point perspective, a development that coincided with a growing interest in photography.

But by the mid 1970s, naturalism too had become a trap, a convention of seeing that failed to accurately capture the world. “Perspective takes away the body of the viewer. You have a fixed point, you have no movement; in short, you are not there really. That is the problem,” he observed. “For something to be seen, it has to be looked at by somebody and any true and real depiction should be an account of the experience of that looking.” In short, he wanted to invite the viewer inside the picture.

The two main zones in which he discovered his new approach were opera and the camera. In 1974 he was commissioned to design a production of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress at Glyndebourne, and over the next decade he returned repeatedly to set design, gripped by the puzzle of incorporating real bodies into artificial spaces.

The camera offered possibilities far removed from voguish photorealism. In his 1982 exhibition Drawing with a Camera he showed the composite cubist portraits he called “joiners”, made by collaging Polaroid photos, an approach that quickly inflected his paintings, too. The eye is bounced continually, alighting on small details; though the image is still it gives an illusion of motion, capturing the subject’s joggling hands and shifting emotional weather.

New technologies were always a thrill. Just as mastering etching, lithography and aquatint had opened horizons for possible pictorial constructions, so too did the photocopier and fax machine, the latter fondly described by Hockney as “a telephone for the deaf”. He became so addicted to sending friends enormously complex images, comprising hundreds of pages to be pieced together by the recipient, that he created an imaginary institute, The Hollywood Sea Picture Supply Co Est 1988. The smartphones and tablets of the new millennium would prove equally irresistible (many of his 1,500 iPhone and iPad drawings can be seen in a capacious new survey, David Hockney: Current, published by Thames and Hudson this month).

Hockney first realised he was going deaf in 1978, when he couldn’t hear the voices of female students in a class. He painted his hearing aid in cheerful red and blue, but the diagnosis depressed him, especially when he remembered how isolating deafness had proved for his father. The loss was progressive, gradually inhibiting his ability to hear conversations in groups or in the noisy restaurants he had once loved. There were compensations, though. He suspected it induced a compensatory sharpening of his vision, clarifying in particular his sense of space.

The other long shadow in those years was Aids. During the 1980s and early 90s, dozens and dozens of his acquaintances and closest friends died, among them the film director Tony Richardson and the model Joe McDonald. “I remember once going to New York and visiting three separate hospitals. It was the worst time of my life.” Years later, he confided to a friend that he did sometimes consider suicide, adding “we all have a deep desire to survive, because we like the experience of loving”.

You might expect death to darken his palette, but what emerged at the century’s end were revelatory landscapes. In 1997, Hockney was back in Yorkshire, making daily visits to his friend Jonathan Silver, who was dying of cancer and who suggested he might make a subject of his native county. Driving each day across the Wolds, he was struck by “the living aspect of the landscape”. It was seasonality that captivated him now, the slow decline and stubborn regeneration of the natural world. “Some days were just glorious, the colour was fantastic. I can see colour. Other people don’t see it like me obviously.”

The Yorkshire paintings that emerged over the next decade were vast, often made from multiple canvases joined together. Damp, fecund England, as luxuriant as a Matisse, the hedgerows writhing with renewed life. There is something cartoon-like and unadulterated about them, even gluttonous, a need to seize the mad abundance before it becomes something else, bud to leaf, puddle to ice, the endless migration of matter through form.

Hockney has long since attained the status of national treasure, a passionate cardiganed dandy vocally impatient with the nannying anti-bohemianism of the 21st century. In 1997 he was made a Companion of Honour by the Queen; in 2011 the first volume of Christopher Simon Sykes’s warm and knowledgeable biography Hockney was published.

A small stroke in 2012 didn’t inhibit his interest in breaking new ground. Card players have his attention now. Sometimes these group portraits have the look of photographs, and then you spot one of his own paintings hanging on the wall, a witty rejoinder to different kinds of pictorial truth. But as well as the wit, lightness and exuberance of Hockney’s constructions they have a weighty quality, too.

“If you come to dead ends you simply somersault back and carry on,” he once said. The English are perennially suspicious of this kind of acrobatic ability, finding it easier to commend the diligent ploughing of a single furrow. When faced with negativity or bafflement about his new avenues and experiments, Hockney’s response has often been to note tersely that he knows what he is doing.

Learning to look, that’s what he’s been up to, and learning too that looking is a source of joy. Asked a few years ago about the place of love in his life, he answered: “I love my work. And I think the work has love, actually ... I love life. I write it at the end of letters – ‘Love life, David Hockney.’”

• David Hockney is at Tate Britain, London SW1P, from 9 February. tate.org.uk/visit/tate-britain. Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone is published by Canongate.

Charles Aznavour obituary / VIDEO: She - Charles Aznavour

October 1, 2018, 9:13 am

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Charles Aznavour obituary

Singer, songwriter and actor, best known for She, who personified French culture to the world

Michael Freedland

Mon 1 Oct 2018 16.24 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/01/charles-aznavour-obituary

The singer, songwriter and actor Charles Aznavour, who has died aged 94, was one of France’s best-loved entertainers and its most potent show-business export since Maurice Chevalier. Edith Piaf was one of those who encouraged his early career, and in many ways Aznavour could be seen as the male Piaf; his slight frame disguised a similarly huge talent. He was as important a composer and songwriter as he was a singer – and he could be a great actor even without singing a note on screen.

There were times in Aznavour’s career when he was as popular outside France as he was in his own country. His recording of She, a sweet, soulful number composed by Aznavour and Herbert Kretzmer, topped the British charts for several weeks in 1974. Aznavour’s songs were in the great dramatic tradition of the chanson, storytelling to music, rather than mere verse sung in the way of the conventional pop song. Even when he performed in English, his songs sounded as though they had first been minted in Montmartre. He was often called the French Frank Sinatra and the comparison was apt. When he sang The Old Fashioned Way or Yesterday When I Was Young, listeners somehow caught his nostalgia kick and remembered those days, too.

In films, he was a character actor who was always the most interesting figure on the screen. His lead role as a musician clashing with criminals in François Truffaut’s 1960 drama Tirez sur le Pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player) established him internationally.

Aznavour, however, was always self-deprecating. He would refer people to a crumpled piece of paper on which, as a very young man, he had written his weaknesses. They were, he said: “My voice, my height, my gestures, my lack of culture and education, my frankness and my lack of personality.”

No one doubted his frankness, but his personality was one of his greatest characteristics, and he seemed to personify French culture to the English-speaking world. His height (5ft 3in) was the only thing that he could do nothing about, but it was one of those great trademarks that help to mark out a show-business personality – that and his gravelly voice, and the facial features that got craggier as he got older. Aznavour recalled: “They used to say, ‘When you are as ugly as that and when you have a voice like that, you do not sing.’ But Piaf used to tell me, ‘You will be the greatest.’”

Aznavour’s family were Armenian and went to France in the wake of the Turkish massacres of their people. His parents, Mischa and Knar Aznavourian, were living in Paris at the time of their son’s birth, in a poor part of the Latin quarter, where his father worked as a cook and his mother as a seamstress. His father was also a part-time singer and his mother a sometime actor, but neither made a living at what they wanted to do most.

Encouraged by them, he danced, played the violin, sang and aspired to act. He got work as a film extra from the 1930s onwards and in 1941 joined the Jean Dasté dramatic troupe. During the second world war, having adopted Charles Aznavour as his stage name, he joined the singer-composer Pierre Roche in a nightclub act and gained experience writing lyrics and in cabaret. In the postwar years they went on tour with Piaf around France and in the US, but split up when Roche married.

Aznavour wrote songs for artists including Piaf, Gilbert Bécaud and Juliette Gréco, and in the 1950s began to have some success in his own right, first in France and then internationally. By the early 1960s he was able to sell out Carnegie Hall in New York. He appeared in films such as Les Dragueurs (Young Have No Morals, 1959) and La Tête Contre les Murs (The Keepers, 1959). By the time he made Le Testament d’Orphée (Testament of Orpheus, 1960), he was enough of a star to be featured in a cameo role as himself. After his acclaimed performance in Shoot the Piano Player, he starred in US and British films including Candy (1968) and And Then There Were None (1974), an Agatha Christie adaptation, and in the Oscar-winning German drama The Tin Drum (1979).

In 2002 he appeared in Atom Egoyan’s drama about the Armenian genocide, Ararat. Aznavour retained close ties to his family’s homeland. When an earthquake hit Armenia in 1988, killing more than 20,000 people, he formed the charity Aznavour for Armenia and wrote Pour Toi Arménie, which he recorded with a lineup of well-known French singers, to help support those affected by the disaster. In 2004 he was made a National Hero of Armenia, and a few years later an Aznavour museum was opened in the capital, Yerevan. He was appointed Armenia’s ambassador to Unesco and in 2009 Armenian ambassador to Switzerland.

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Across his eight-decade career, he wrote more than 1,000 songs and was said to have sold more than 180m records. He continued to record popular albums, including Duos (2008), a collection of duets with, among others, Elton John, Carole King, Liza Minnelli and Plácido Domingo. In 2011 he held a month-long residency at the Olympia music hall in Paris.

Aznavour was married three times and had six children. “I know my life is a flop,” he said once. “A flop as a father, a flop as a man. You must make a choice: a successful life as a man, or show business. Now it is too late even to make a choice. I belong to the public or to my pride. My only salvation is to become a greater artist.” A legion would say he achieved that salvation.

He is survived by his third wife, Ulla (nee Thorsel), whom he married in 1967, and their children Katia, Mischa and Nicolas; and by Seda and Charles, the children of his first marriage, to Micheline Rugel. A son, Patrick, from his second marriage, to Evelyne Plessis, predeceased him.

• Charles Aznavour (Shahnour Varenagh Aznavourian), singer, songwriter and actor, born 22 May 1924; died 1 October 2018