The Spectator - 29.02.2020

the spectator | 29 february 2020 | http://www.spectator.co.uk 53

What is the dental etiquette

regarding the ownership of

gold fillings?

— Dear Mary, p61

High life

Taki

Gstaad

It feels like a sepia-tinged melodrama, one

directed by the great schlock master Sam

Wood. Driving along the winding valleys

through 17th-century villages, Gruyères

Castle on one’s right, the heartbeat would

quicken as Gstaad beckoned in the dis-

tance. Gstaad in those days meant beautiful

women, parties galore, challenging, snow-

covered slopes to swish down, and a friendly

atmosphere. Only the lucky few knew about

the place.

All that has gone down the drain, except

for the prices, which have gone through the

roof. It’s called progress. I used to be able to

identify the mood of a time, especially here

in Gstaad, but no longer. For starters, there

is no more snow from upstairs, only the man-

made white stuff. The last February with no

snow whatsoever was back in 1964, and I

spent it hitting tennis balls with Irwin Shaw

on the Palace hotel outdoor courts.

Nobody talked about climate change

in those days, and those who did were as

wrong as the modern maniacs trying to

shove it down our throats. One such Extinc-

tion Rebellion asshole who drives a Porsche

tried to collar me the other day, and he got

a somewhat rude response. ‘Talk to the Chi-

nese, tell the African Bushmen to stop burn-

ing wood, and the Markles to offset their

carbon footprint by staying put in Holly-

wood,’ I said. ‘I use a sailboat, a mini, and

walk everywhere, so shut up.’

From my chalet high above on the Wisp-

ile, I can see green all around me. The white

stuff is far away, up on the glaciers in the

distance. Man-made paths of snow have

the suckers going up and down the ski lifts

like robots, après-skiing being the operative

word. Still, there are those, like my own son,

who insist that there is snow and good ski-

ing, but the venue changes a lot — daily, in

fact. The only good news in all this is that I

will have to give up skiing in the near-future

and the lack of the white stuff makes it eas-

ier to do so.

Low life

Jeremy Clarke

Joyce Marriott of Pyrton, Oxford, has writ-

ten a letter to the Times on the subject of

how a person’s imagination can be undu-

ly influenced by one particular film. The

film Old Yeller, she says, had such a pow-

erful effect that for the past 30 years she

has devoted her life to animal welfare, dogs

particularly. ‘Such is the power of movies,’

she concludes.

Although I haven’t seen Old Yeller,

I agree that a film can sow seeds in the

imagination which prosper and flourish

and eventually overrun it. My own imagi-

native Japanese knotweed was sown by the

first film I ever saw, aged seven, on the big

screen at the Ritz cinema in Southend-on-

sea in 1964: Zulu, starring Stanley Baker,

written by John Prebble and Cy Endfield,

directed by Cy Endfield and produced by

Stanley Baker and Cy Endfield.

Zulu is basically one long battle scene, a

dramatic retelling of the defence of Rorke’s

Drift by a company of South Wales Border-

ers against 4,000 Zulus, the untested section

of the massive Zulu impi which earlier in

The lack of snow was offset by karate

camp, with the arrival of my karate sen-

sei Richard Amos and Ben, a tough mem-

ber of the Swiss team. Implicit in karate is

a sense of personal dignity, once a character-

istic of the samurai, although even that has

now given way to American-style commer-

cialism. But the way of Bushido, at least to

some of us, remains a code of moral prin-

ciple. Richard Sensei, Ben and I went at it

hard, but then I noticed they were cheating,

taking it easy on the old boy. I truly felt like

quitting. But it is the way of Bushido: one

does not attack old men. Still, a few bruis-

es make it easy to fool oneself and I cele-

brated the finish of the three-day camp with

a bottle of vodka all to myself.

Throughout these 55 years of karate,

especially before sessions that require hand-

to-hand fighting, I have inspired myself by

reading about real combat, as in James Hol-

land’s brilliant Normandy ’44. I read about

my wife’s uncle, a battalion commander

in the Panzer-Lehr-Division, ‘the urbane

and aristocratic Major Prince Wilhelm von

Schönburg-Waldenburg’. Eight Princes

Schönburg were killed in action in the sec-

ond world war. Seven died on the Russian

front, Wilhelm on the counterattack in Nor-

mandy, taking a direct hit in the turret of

his Panzer and dying instantly. The Nazis

made sure that nobles were in the thick of

the fighting, and the extremely good-looking

Wilhelm was all of 25 when he died.

And now for the good news: the

group of Spectator readers who came up

to Gstaad for lunch and a short speech

by yours truly turned out to be the nic-

est bunch of men and women I’ve met in

a hell of a long while. Even the Anglophobe

Alexandra, my wife, has become an instant

Anglophile on their account. There were

about 40 of them, and what struck me was

that they were not a silly, jolly bunch, but

serious men and women who had obvious-

ly reached the top of their professions such

as the law, academia and business. Yet they

were a happy group who knew more about

The Spectator than the little Greek boy and

had very interesting things to say. There was

not a single bore among them, most likely a

first ever here in Gstaad.

My plan was to talk about my 62 years

in Gstaad as compared with my 43 years

as a Spectator columnist, and how Gstaad

has gone to the dogs, whereas the Speccie

has gone from strength to strength. It was

a good idea but I wasn’t able to do it jus-

tice because I couldn’t go full out. Anyway,

my visitors were happy to be in the sun and

they even thought to bring me a bottle of

the great Lagavulin scotch whisky: ‘Your

sainted editor’s favourite,’ as my friend

Michael put it.

‘He used to be just a manspreader.’

Life_29 Feb 2020_The Spectator 53 26/02/2020 10:53