Harry Mount introduces the November 2026 issue of The Oldie
As the nights draw in, we all need a lift – and the answer is here: the November issue of The Oldie.
Our columnist Mary Killen compiles the ingredients of a perfect party – and how those ingredients change with age. Farewell to glamour and dancing till dawn. All oldies want is ‘access to comfortable seating with adjacent surfaces for our drinks and, ideally, no music at all’.
Charles Hawtrey died in penury in 1988, aged 73. But now his reputation is restored in Roger Lewis’s Charles Hawtrey – The Man Who Was Private Widdle. Stephen Fry salutes the book and the achievements of the mistreated generation of postwar comic actors, from Tony Hancock to Kenneth Williams.
Leonard Rossiter, of a slightly younger generation, died in 1984, aged only 57. He would have been 100 on October 21st. This issue celebrates the 50th anniversary of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. Peter Dyke celebrates Rossiter and his tribute to suburban life.
And we have a new recruit to the team list of Oldie contributors: Nancy Dell’Olio. Brought up in Puglia from the age of five, she reveals the region’s hidden treasures – and its most delicious ice cream.
On the sad news of the death of Esther Rantzen, her That’s Life colleague Paul Heiney recalls another show of hers – The Big Time. It was on that programme, 50 years ago, that Fanny Cradock destroyed her career by attacking the recipes of an innocent amateur chef, Gwen Troake. Her culinary tribute to Ted Heath was a seafood cocktail, duck with blackberry sauce and a coffee cream pudding with rum, a family favourite and a nod to sailor Ted.
We also have a 40-page Christmas Gift Guide. AN Wilson, the biographer of Jesus, examines the truth of the Nativity. Peter York reveals his favourite gadgets. And celebrities – from Tony Adams to Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, writers of Porridge – tell us their favourite charities.
Enjoy!
Harry Mount, Editor, The Oldie
