The Oldie

3 weeks ago | theoldie.co.uk | Harry Mount

At a lunch at the National Liberal Club today, the writers Antonia Fraser and Jilly Cooper recalled Anthony Powell on the 25th anniversary of his death and the 50th anniversary of his completion of A Dance to the Music of Time. The writer died in 2000, aged 94. Antonia Fraser, 92, Anthony Powell's niece, remembered lodging with Anthony and Violet Powell in 1949, when Powell was embarking on his 12-volume magnum opus - like seeing Homer start The Iliad.

3 weeks ago | theoldie.co.uk | Mark Ellen

Whatever happened to the idea of ‘cool’? Who was cool back in the day? Who’s cool today? And why does it now mean the opposite of what it used to? For us ’60s teenagers, the coolest rock stars were a cut above the rest. They radiated a sense of effortless talent, devil- may-care nonchalance and a cavalier disregard for the establishment. They gave the (artfully engineered) impression that they put no thought or consideration into anything they did or said and just made it all up as they went along.

3 weeks ago | theoldie.co.uk | Matthew Norman

How many people marooned in late middle age across this godforsaken planet show no signs whatever of cognitive decline? Most typically, this will manifest itself as the sporadic failure of short-term recall – although I write smugly in the abstract as one of the lucky few. My own short-term memory remains indecently perfect. How many people marooned in late middle age and beyond across… Forgive me, I find myself momentarily paralysed by an inexplicable sense of déjà vu.

1 month ago | theoldie.co.uk | Richard Godwin

Skibidi Toilet is a crudely animated online video series where disembodied human heads burst from toilets saying the word ‘skibidi’. The skibidi toilets wage war against figures with CCTV cameras for faces. It is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. The humour is rudimentary. The animation is basic. It might as well be made by AI. And so it is immensely popular with young children who delight in its low-grade inanity.

1 month ago | theoldie.co.uk | Harry Mount

43,626 puffins have been counted on Skomer. Harry Mount adores the island Skomer is the island that time forgot. A turtle-shaped island, just over a square mile in size, it’s moored a couple of hundred yards off the Pembrokeshire coast. It’s that tiny gap, whipped up by a vigorous, ten-knot current, between Skomer and the mainland, that makes it one of the world’s greatest nature reserves – the Welsh answer to the Galápagos Islands.