COME TO ANOLDIE LITERARY

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C O N T E N T S

REGULARS

REGULARS

BOOKS

7 The Old Un’s Diary 14 Profitable Wonders James Le Fanu 16 Modern Life What is a Geddes Reader? 17 Olden Life What was a vamping chart? 20 Whiteboard Jungle Kate Sawyer 24 Notes from the Sofa Raymond Briggs 25 House Husbandry Giles Wood 26 God… Melanie McDonagh 26 …Mammon Margaret Dibben 27 Fashion Tamasin Doe 29 Brave New World Jane Thynne 29 Words Diarmaid Ó Muirithe 31 Granny Annexe Virginia Ironside 33 Mind the Age Gap Lizzie Enfield 35 Wilfred De’Ath plumbs the depths 35 Rant Norman Deplume 37 Superbyw@ys Webster 39 Dr Stuttaford’s Surgery Heart failure and macular degeneration 40 East of Islington Sam Taylor 42 Pearls of Wisdom Melanie McFadyean 45 Roving Reporter John Sweeney 48 Readers Write 52 Unwrecked England Candida Lycett Green 54 Oldie Literary Lunches 55 Readers’ Event Hay-on-Wye Festival 57 Out and About Rosie Boycott 58 Travel Eastern Uruguay; Berlin by train 90 Dear Mavis with Mavis Nicholson

61 BOOK REVIEWS Piers Brendon on Keith Richards; Christian Wolmar on Frank Binder’s ‘Sown with Corn’; Bill Hagerty on Victor Davis’s ‘Life Sentence’; Peter Lewis on Norma Farnes’s ‘Memories of Milligan’; Robert Fisk on ‘Gaza in Crisis’; Robert Fox on Colin Thubron’s ‘To a Mountain in Tibet’; Rachel Redford reviews audiobooks

REVIEWS

69 MUSIC Richard Osborne on masterclasses 70 SPORT Frank Keating remembers Moss Keane and other RU greats 70 COOKERY Elisabeth Luard on Margeurite Patten and Hannah Woolley 71 SHOPPING Alice Pitman on vacuum cleaners 72 THEATRE Paul Bailey on ‘King Lear’ and ‘End of the Rainbow’ 72 FILM Marcus Berkmann on ‘Somewhere’ and ‘The Tourist’ 73 OLDIE MASTERS Philip Athill on John Wheatley 74 MEMORIAL James Hughes-Onslow on Baroness Park of Monmouth 74 WIRELESS Valerie Grove’s radio roundup

A M O N G T H I S M O N T H ’ S C O N T R I B U T O R S

BERNARD DIXON was editor of New Scientist from 1969 to 1979, and is now European Editor for the American Society for Microbiology. He was awarded the OBE for services to science journalism in 2000. His latest book, Animalcules, is a collection of his columns from the ASM’s Microbe magazine. On page 17 he sets microbes aside to tell us about piano vamping charts.

SHIRLEY HUGHES is a highly respected children’s author and illustrator. She has written over seventy books, including Dogger and the Alfie series, and illustrated many more by other writers including Noel Streatfeild and Dorothy Edwards. As well as drawing the cover for this issue, on page 12 she remembers the trials and tribulations of ballroom dancing in 1941.

JODI CUDLIPP began her journalistic career at 17. After the war, during which she worked at Bletchley Park, she spent three years at Woman’s Own before editing a number of women’s magazines, including Woman’s Mirror. In 1963 she married Hugh Cudlipp, chairman of the Mirror Group. On page 16 she extols the virtues of the Geddes Reader, a very useful device.

Next issue on sale Friday 11th February

75 TELEVISION Richard Ingrams on ‘Macbeth’ and Mary Beard’s Pompeii 76 DVD Edward Mirzoeff on a new collection of British documentaries, 1951–1977 77 GARDENING David Wheeler on camellias

PLUS

79 WINE with Malcolm Gluck 81 COMPETITION with Tessa Castro 81 SUDOKU 83 CROSSWORD by Antico 84 CLASSIFIED

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