Girls on Film (Duran Duran)

Eton Wall Game (1921)

My research at the BFI National Archives has uncovered footage of the Eton Wall Game from 1921. Played at Eton College every St. Andrew's Day. Note the slim physiques, proper haircuts (minus facial hair), and bone structure of the young chaps at play. I can imagine some of Evelyn Waugh's contemporaries amongst the spectators.

American Patriot

I like to imagine this angry young American is wearing a pair of black longwing brogues, perhaps from Alden, J.Press, or J.Crew. The specs and short-sleeve dress shirt, of course, I can do without, and so can you. However, it is what appears to be an Americanised version of the OE tie that would cause me to cross the street to avoid running into this irritated fellow. It's simply not on.

The Matador

The Four Yorkshiremen

The Four Yorkshiremen, with Harry Enfield, Alan Rickman, Eddie Izzard, and Vic Reeves. I watch this video regularly and it never fails to crack me up. If you don't understand it, you can be forgiven. If you do and you still fail (or refuse) to emit at least a chuckle, then you are beyond saving. Classic. Enjoy.

Tintin et moi (Hergé documentary)

"This drawing is printed in my consciousness" (5:06) 6/8
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Kerouac (en français)

Black Tie Affair

Tonight I co-hosted an investment seminar at a local beach resort. It was a casual event. I wore a lightweight Paul Stuart tweed coat in a tan and green check pattern, charcoal worsted trousers, black tassel loafers, ecru OCBD from Brooks Brothers, and a black knit tie. I normally don't wear knit ties, much less one in black, but I thought it was a subtle enough acknowledgement of the significance of the day. In other words, my very own black badge of resistance. I held court admirably, I think, as a mass of retirees, local executives, and business owners pressed upon me their concerns for the future. If one looked closely, one could see real fear in their eyes. It would have been quite a sobering experience, I imagine, if I had not downed so many whiskeys.

Born Mufti: George Adamson

The photograph (left) depicts George Adamson (1906-1989), the renowned East African game ranger, conservationist, author, and film maker. Born in India and educated at public school in England, at age 18 he went to British East Africa (Kenya) to work on a coffee plantation. After trying various professions, he settled on a career as a game warden with the Kenya Game Department. He retired in 1961 to a reserve to care for his growing collection of lions. His life with these animals resulted in, amongst others, the well-known movie Born Free. Adamson was assassinated by Somali bandits in 1989. In the illustration he is depicted wearing what appears to be a tweed jacket in a tickweave pattern, a shirt with a spread collar, grey flannel trousers, and the tie of the East African Wildlife Society. If a rugged chap who spends his life in the bush with lions can look presentable, surely we can too. What is our excuse?

pensées corsaires

"Les actions les plus efficaces, c'est-à-dire les actions d'avant-garde, ne furent pas menées l'insigne à la boutonnière et le drapeau au vent, mais en civil. Pour prendre une image militaire, elles furent conçues comme des opérations de commando derrière les lignes, mais avec le soutien de la population. Quant à l'esprit et à la technique, leurs instigateurs furent les Robins des bois qui précédaient l'arrivée du Roi Richard.

L'idée doit donc être de susciter quelque chose qui soit en même temps possible et juste et aille dans le sens voulu, mais sans l'encadrer directement. En d'autres termes, si l'on essaie d'être une avant-garde politique et sociale et non des chefs de bandes, des marchands de votes ou les roitelets mendiants de ceux-ci, on ne doit pas s'occuper des retours immédiats, de l'utilité directe, de la gestion personnelle de ce que l'on suscite. On doit agir, un point c'est tout. Et on doit le faire bien, autrement c'est inutile."

Gabriele Adinolfi, Pensées corsaires: abécédaire de lutte et de victoire (Les Editions du Lore, 2008)

Club Colours

The Bloody White Baron

Head Dress (Amazing Baby)

Video removed.

This is what I am listening to now.

Keffiyeh

As you may have heard, my new editor just bought me a Bedouin keffiyeh, or shemagh, to help me cope with the recent cold, damp weather here in Southern California. This particular item was exported directly from the souks of the Near East and sports large, long tassels at each end. I owned a keffiyeh when I was younger. Like my schoolmates and friends, I occasionally wore one in London as a schoolboy; they were particularly popular amongst European students. The special forces in Britain and Australia wear the keffiyeh on campaign. Today I wear it to ward off the chill of a winter climate. I tie it around my neck ascot-style, stuffing the ends down the front of my Filson flannel shirt-jacket or Brooks Brothers tweed coat.

Young Fogey Trio

As you know, the climate here in recent weeks has been positively freezing, with some nights actually dipping into the 40s. Arctic conditions require warm gear and naturally I have turned to my meagre collection of cardigans and Fair Isle knitwear. The rare photo (above) depicts the type. For pipe and pint of bitter, one may substitite cigar and whisky. Pensive gaze, optional.

Under My Flag, I Am Free

Western Star Blazers

...Come, my friends.
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

- Ulysses, Alfred Tennyson

Chap Shop

Pop the champagne! The gents at The Chap journal have set up a shop (here) selling, amongst other things, brogues, trilbys, and cravats. In their own words:

The Chap is constantly being asked such plaintive questions as "Where can I buy a decent trilby?" and "Which shops sell sock suspenders?" We have therefore decided to open a modest little general store for gentlemen. The Chap Shop contains six departments, each serving an essential area of the gentleman's wardrobe. These items are currently only available to residents of the British Isles.

The Chap has painstakingly combed the aisles of the remaining British suppliers of gentleman's necessities, to find what we consider to be the very best items available at the most reasonable prices.

It's a promising enterprise and I for one will drink a celebration toast with a glass of Veuve Cliquot. Best of luck to them.

A Perishing Model

"...The Western way of life is less and less likely to become the leading model.

There are meaningful warnings that history gives a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, the decadence of art, or a lack of great statesmen. There are open and evident warnings, too. The center of your democracy and of your culture is left without electric power for a few hours only, and all of a sudden crowds of American citizens start looting and creating havoc. The smooth surface film must be very thin, then, the social system quite unstable and unhealthy.

But the fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive, you can feel their pressure, and yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?"

A World Split Apart, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Harvard University, 8 June 1978

India (Roxy Music)

Out With The Old Brogues, In With The New

I delivered an old pair of Loake brogues to a local cobbler two days ago. It was my first time inside this particular shop. I requested a re-soling. The Asian proprietor grabbed my brogues and examined them, turning them over and over in his hands. He called to his colleagues to have a look (or so I surmised). They gathered round, peering at the shoes, and congratulated me on having such a nice pair of shoes. It was an unexpected event.

Waltzing Trad

Can you dance? Believe it or not, I can. It’s not something about which I am very talkative. But when I was aged 10, my mother enrolled me in a year’s worth of ballroom dancing classes at a dancing school in New Canaan, Connecticut. I mention it because a recent news article about the growing popularity of ballroom dancing amongst Czech teens in Prague has nudged my memory.

I attended evening lessons twice a week. The first few times filled me with acute apprehension. As we pulled up in my mother’s green Mercedes-Benz motor car, I sat, silent and unmoving, in the cold leather seat, absolutely dreading the next two hours. Outside the school doors congregated a group of nervous and chatting youngsters, school friends, our neighbours' children in New Canaan, a shivering mass of blue blazers and frilly dresses. For boys, the school dress code demanded a navy blazer, dark worsted trousers, OCBD, tie, dark socks, and dress shoes. Most boys wore penny loafers such as Weejuns or a variation thereof. A few daring chaps wore tartan trousers (see photo above), an audacious innovation of which I was secretly envious.In the ballroom itself the girls lined up along the wall on one side, the boys on the other. When we were told to choose a partner, the boys walked across the room, offered a hand to the girl of their choosing, and asked her to dance. The music started and we were on our way, the teachers calling out instructions and occasionally intervening to guide a wayward couple. I became particularly fond of Waltz music, which I found to be a more formal and dignified style and more in keeping with my family's cultural tastes.

Eventually I learned to enjoy the experience. But it was not something I anticipated with anything like excitement. What my mother was thinking when she enrolled me, I can only guess. Maybe she wanted to soften the rough edges she could already perceive starting to form around me. True, I was a querulous youth, independent and headstrong, apt to spend weekends and summer holidays on my own, tanned, blond, and barefoot, exploring the woods or the rivers and ponds. Ballroom dancing class, I think, was a way to ameliorate the selfish tendencies of a burgeoning little savage. It was an opportunity for me to socialise with peers and to develop confidence with the opposite sex in a more decorous setting.But soon afterwards, as I have mentioned before, my mother left for a drug-soaked New Age commune in San Francisco. I did not sign up for another year of ballroom dancing. What if anything can I salvage from the debris? What remains? Only this: I am grateful for having had the chance to learn something new. I am still able to cut a mean rug today. Most of all, I have warm memories of my ten-year old self, anxious and grumpy in navy blazer and itchy wool trousers, grasping my dance partner's white begloved hands and bravely stepping on to the floor together, and, quite possibly, leaving her heart flickering in my wake. Or so I like to imagine.

Reds Don't Surf !

Merry Christmas 2008

Truefitt & Hill 1805

The Australian

Imperial German Dueling Club

Today's university students, one might argue, are inveterate louts. Our ancestors were a sturdier breed. In the photo (above) note the horn-rimmed spectacles, repp tie, and the blood on the face of the chap at lower left.

First Love: A Tribute to Gin

For my 15th birthday in South Kensington, one of my neighbours surreptitiously gave me a bottle of Beefeater gin. My neighbour was a buxom French-Egyptian woman with blonde hair and green eyes and two children my age who attended Wellington College and the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle. The gin bottle was in a gift box. I hid it in my room upstairs. Over the course of a couple of months, I drank it straight. No tonic, no water, no lime. I had been drinking ale, bitter, and lager for almost a year. Even whisky and vodka. But the Beefeater was something new, my introduction to more sophisticated material, the beginning of a love affair. No other substance affected me the same way, except perhaps wine and whisky. I participated in messy pub brawls and snogged svelte public school girls. My first jail term was due to drinking too much gin. Over the years gin has served me extremely well, on the whole, and today I can attribute new horizons to drinking it. To gin, I raise my glass.

Black Shoes, Black Heart

As you may have heard, I have a new-found appreciation for my black shoes. And not just any old black shoes, such as those plastic, square-toed Kenneth Cole horrors that increasing numbers of chaps in the office seem to be wearing. I am referring to proper English shoes in an oxford, brogue, or tassel loafer style. These are the only shoes, in my opinion, that should be worn with a business suit. (I have specific views concerning dress boots, which I shall address in a later post).

My revived enthusiasm for black recently has led me to spend hours reassessing my footwear collection, much to the consternation of my new editor. I have even considered, in a phase of madness, liquidating all dress shoes in cabernet and oxblood colours; I rarely wear them to the office. I have worn black oxfords and loafers for ages. At school, convention required black loafers from New & Lingwood. Brown shoes, as everyone knew, are unsuitable for urban environments, solicitor's offices, and trading floors.

Black oxfords project an aura of professionalism and seriousness, which is especially helpful if these are qualities you yourself do not possess. Professional success is largely a result of dressing well and looking good, and wearing the right shoes to the office plays a large role in the equation.

Photo: Shipton & Heneage

Hergé in Tweed

From the top floor of my uncle's five-story townhouse opposite the Victoria & Albert Museum, I could see the sparkling traffic lights on Cromwell Road far below. It was there that I did my evening reading. Not all of it was academic work. I enjoyed, amongst other things, the works of Hergé, creator of the Tintin character. I had most of his books. A girlfriend gave me a Tintin keyring. I even wore on occasion a Tintin sweater that had been bought for me from the Tintin store in Covent Garden.

Around the top edge of the townhouses ran a narrow embankment enclosing a channel for rain water. It was possible to climb out of the windows on to this wall, and, if you wanted, walk completely around the rooftops of the square, stopping to peer in each window. Our next door neighbour's daughter, a lithe 15-year old blonde at the Royal School in Hampstead, crawled out on to this narrow walkway and one evening appeared at my window on hands and knees looking for a smoke and conversation.

On the top floor of my uncle's house we would lie together, with the windows open, having a cigarette or two and some cocktails, listening to CDs, talking and leafing through the Tintin books.