CATEGORIES

What a Dame!
The Oldie Magazine

What a Dame!

The late Vera Lynn – Oldie of the Year in 2018 and a great friend to the magazine – wrote her last piece for us in May, aged 103

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4 mins  |
August 2020
Profitable Wonders: Batting for bats
The Oldie Magazine

Profitable Wonders: Batting for bats

Besides elegantly wielding his bat at the crease, former England Captain David Gower is a long-standing admirer of the other, flying version.

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3 mins  |
August 2020
Christopher Robin did adore his bear
The Oldie Magazine

Christopher Robin did adore his bear

He told me he loved Winnie-the-Pooh – and his father, AA Milne

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4 mins  |
August 2020
The strongest link
The Oldie Magazine

The strongest link

Lockdown reunited Anne Robinson and daughter Emma Wilson in her Cotswolds barn. It brought joy, chaos – and ‘home screaming’

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6 mins  |
August 2020
The Oldie Magazine

London's finest egg-loos

Behind its Georgian, stucco façade, a Mayfair restaurant heralds a new dawn in British lavatorial design

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4 mins  |
August 2020
The Oldie Magazine

The Mayflower's Essex boy

Four hundred years after the fabled ship sailed to America, William Cook salutes its captain

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6 mins  |
August 2020
The Oldie Magazine

Raise a glass to the greatest TV chef ever

As Bill Knott reopens his restaurant, he remembers being slapped by Keith Floyd – a great pal, a disastrous restaurateur and a telly genius

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6 mins  |
August 2020
Getting Dressed: Puttin' on the glitz, Dynasty style
The Oldie Magazine

Getting Dressed: Puttin' on the glitz, Dynasty style

Pamela Bellwood dazzled viewers in Claudia Carrington’s jewels

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4 mins  |
August 2020
An odyssey round my treasured islands
The Oldie Magazine

An odyssey round my treasured islands

As Greece opens to tourists, Taki Theodoracopulos sails home across the Ionian Sea

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5 mins  |
August 2020
What's the point of the cactus?
The Oldie Magazine

What's the point of the cactus?

‘It seemeth a strange herb,’ wrote the Spanish physician Nicolás Monardes in his Joyful News out of the New World (1568) of his first encounter with a cactus. ’One of its thorns pricked me. They are as sharp as needles and did hurt.’

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3 mins  |
July 2020
Travel On top of the world
The Oldie Magazine

Travel On top of the world

As a boy, Melvyn Bragg biked up and down the fells. At 30, he bought a cottage there. Now 80, he is still bewitched by the Lake District

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6 mins  |
July 2020
Reaching for the stars – in their dressing rooms
The Oldie Magazine

Reaching for the stars – in their dressing rooms

For 20 years at the BBC, Jenny Bardwell sprinkled stardust over dull broadcasts. Now she’s found the old tapes – with their rich, lost voices

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5 mins  |
July 2020
Hunter on the Heath
The Oldie Magazine

Hunter on the Heath

For 60 years, Hunter Davies, 84, has walked – and swum – on wild Hampstead Heath

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5 mins  |
July 2020
Home, sweet Gothic home
The Oldie Magazine

Home, sweet Gothic home

Ever since moving into the Old Rectory at Hedgerley 40 years ago, I’ve kissed its walls every day

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5 mins  |
July 2020
Their finest hour – in their finest planes
The Oldie Magazine

Their finest hour – in their finest planes

Eighty years ago, the Battle of Britain changed the course of history, thanks to the Hurricane and the Spitfire, says Leo McKinstry

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7 mins  |
The Oldie magazine - July issue (389)
The oldie easy riders
The Oldie Magazine

The oldie easy riders

Country roads are crammed with OAP bikers, says Peter McKay, a ton-up boy for 60 years

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4 mins  |
The Oldie magazine - July issue (389)
Radio's King of Comedy
The Oldie Magazine

Radio's King of Comedy

Martin Jarvis has now recorded 195 Just William stories and PG Wodehouse’s funniest books, he tells Valerie Grove

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4 mins  |
The Oldie magazine - July issue (389)
Peter Sellers, the mad magician
The Oldie Magazine

Peter Sellers, the mad magician

On the 40th anniversary of the actor’s death, his biographer Roger Lewis admires a sinister genius, who was quite off his head

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6 mins  |
The Oldie magazine - July issue (389)
Naked truth of modelling
The Oldie Magazine

Naked truth of modelling

Deni Bown became a life model as a broke single mother – and ended up loving it

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5 mins  |
The Oldie magazine - July issue (389)
The best of times...
The Oldie Magazine

The best of times...

The great novelist died 150 years ago, on 9th June 1870, aged 58. Four writers tell Simon Hemelryk their favourite Dickens moment

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6 mins  |
June 2020
Las Vegas, Yorkshire
The Oldie Magazine

Las Vegas, Yorkshire

In the late Sixties, a miners’ club near Leeds hosted stars from Louis Armstrong to Eartha Kitt, discovers Reverend Steve Morris

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5 mins  |
June 2020
The awkward art of acting English
The Oldie Magazine

The awkward art of acting English

Diffidence, restraint, over-politeness... Robert Bathurst, the modern master of playing Englishmen, salutes the craft of his heroes

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5 mins  |
June 2020
She's a Lady!
The Oldie Magazine

She's a Lady!

I first became a Lady in 1961.

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2 mins  |
June 2020
My Canterbury tale
The Oldie Magazine

My Canterbury tale

850 years after Thomas à Becket’s murder, Ferdie Rous revisits his Kent school, the oldest in the world, and exorcises his bullies’ ghosts

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5 mins  |
June 2020
Treasured island
The Oldie Magazine

Treasured island

Tamsin Calidas left London for a Hebridean crofter’s life. She found heartache, rejection by locals – and redemption through swimming

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5 mins  |
June 2020
More eccentricity, vicar?- LUCINDA LAMBTON
The Oldie Magazine

More eccentricity, vicar?- LUCINDA LAMBTON

The Rev Stephen Hawker designed his own Cornish vicarage, was friends with Tennyson – and liked dressing up as a mermaid

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6 mins  |
June 2020
Hammer glamour girl recalls the horror!
The Oldie Magazine

Hammer glamour girl recalls the horror!

When ailing Hammer Films needed a boost 50 years ago, budding actress Madeline Smith discovered nudity was a must

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5 mins  |
June 2020
Farewell to the garden of a lifetime
The Oldie Magazine

Farewell to the garden of a lifetime

Christian Lamb helped plan D-Day. Now, as she turns 100, she leaves a beloved garden

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5 mins  |
June 2020
Eyes and the needle
The Oldie Magazine

Eyes and the needle

After cancer surgery, Lucy Deedes thought she was tough as old boots – and then she faced the agony of a cataract op

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4 mins  |
June 2020
The birds that weave magical nests
The Oldie Magazine

The birds that weave magical nests

We had already spent an entrancing hour birding on Tanzania’s Lake Manze – imperious, white-chested fish eagles soaring overhead; glossy, blue, wire tailed swallows flitting over the water; stately yellow-billed storks patrolling the shore.

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3 mins  |
May 2020