Christopher Lee RIP

It would be silly to be too sad about a man dying at 93 full of honours and achievement but I do feel a little wistful knowing there'll be no more movies featuring Christopher Lee. He was, after all, still active and (it seems almost ridiculous to say it) at the height of his powers. He was a bona fide film star- a commanding screen presence- who- weirdly- almost never got to play the good guy. He was in a lot of bad movies but never- so far as I'm aware- gave a bad performance. Draculas come and go but his was definitive.

Family Day Out

Here are Mike and Su Young- my son and daughter-in-law. The house they're standing in front of (where they're staying until they get to move to a place of their own) belongs to the Methodist Church (long story).  It's a modest 1930s semi with a tiny garden but because it's in London and within walking distance of a tube station it's worth nearly a million pounds. The London housing market is mad, mad, mad.

We had lunch in a pub then had a wander through Trent Park. You wouldn't think this was London, would you?



At the heart of the park is a big house, Trent Park, built by Sir Philip Sassoon- the poet's brother- in the 1920s. He entertained the literati and glitterati there. During the war it was used as a POW camp for German officers and most recently served as a university. Now it's empty, awaiting the next transformation.



Also in Trent Park is an animal sanctuary. They have Shetland ponies, blind hedgehogs a fallow deer that was born in the local cemetery and thinks its human and a heron that someone hit with a broom when it tried to raid a suburban fishpond.

John Macnab: John Buchan

Three eminent middle-aged men decide that nothing is so likely to rekindle their joie de vivre as a spot of gentlemanly poaching. They issue challenges to three highland land owners and so find themselves dodging through haughs and corries in pursuit of game whilst themselves being chased by gillies and daughters of the big house and- in one instance- an army of navvies. It's rather like The Thirty Nine Steps- only with nothing very much at stake. There are those who think this is Buchan's best book.

Buchan is a High Tory- which means he's so far to the right (as is said of one of his characters) he's only a few clicks of the dial away from being a red revolutionary. You can read him for the thrills but also for the social philosophy. He believes privilege has to be earned and maintained by exercise of virtue. And he loves a bandit.