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Daily Mail
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
From Byron to Elvis, history's most adored sex symbols: Swoon by Bea Martinez-Gatell
Swoon by Bea Martinez-Gatell (Biteback £22, 368pp) During one performance on Taylor Swift 's Eras tour in 2023, fans dancing in a Seattle stadium generated seismic activity to the equivalent of a 2.3 magnitude earthquake. On hearing of the death of Hollywood heartthrob Rudolph Valentino, a pair of Japanese schoolgirls dived into a fiery volcano. And while doggedly pursuing the mad, bad and dangerous-to-know Lord Byron, Lady Caroline Lamb sent the poet a lock of her own pubic hair complete with the blood from slightly too close a cut. Bea Martinez-Gatell's Swoon, a raucous prehistory of the fangirl, proves that rather than vacuous and foolish, fangirls have always been the 'central engine of pop culture'. She begins with Byron, as he is arguably the mould from which all modern celebrities are cast. His public and private personas, his affair with Caroline Lamb, his failed marriage to her cousin Annabella, his supposed incestuous affair with his half-sister, and the cult-like devotion his poetry garnered would slot him perfectly into today's media culture. Women adored the 'Byronic Hero' depicted in his poetry, but to the men in society Byron was a rakish, corrupting force from whom no woman was safe. Replicas of this 'Hero' are found throughout literature – most famously Emily Bronte's Heathcliff. After 'Byronmania' came 'Lisztomania'. According to Martinez-Gatell, 19th century composer Franz Liszt was the 'first proper pop star'. A beautiful young protege, he stole the hearts of Europe's elites. Hans Christian Andersen described how when he entered the room 'it was as if a ray of sunshine passed on every face', but when Liszt sat down at the piano, he 'was a demon nailed fast to the instrument'. There was something about the way he played that took emotional hold of women. The turn of the century brought with it Rudolph Valentino, a southern Italian who rose to peak swooniness in 1921's The Sheik. His dark good looks captured the hearts of women all over the world and struck fear into the hearts of many husbands. He was 'the physical embodiment of desire'. As the American film magazine Photoplay put it, after the premiere of The Sheik, 'never in the history of the screen has the public fallen so prostrate before an idol as they have before Rudolph Valentino'. Swiftly following on from Valentino were two of the swooniest crooners of all time – Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley. One night, at New York's Paramount Theatre, a girl was so overcome when Ol' Blue Eyes walked on stage that she fainted. As for Elvis, his gyrating hips made him a 'cultural lightning rod'. Then came four boys from Liverpool, who aligned themselves perfectly with the 'sexually charged winds of change' that were sweeping the country. The Beatles' lyrics brought the realisation that 'sex, emotion and desire were shared experiences' and their special brand of vulnerability took over the world. Nor was their popularity limited to teenage girls. At a party at the British Embassy in Washington, one older man slipped behind Ringo and snipped off a lock of his hair. Caroline Lamb would be proud...
Business Times
15-07-2025
- Business
- Business Times
Europe's best family firms have a secret weapon money can't buy
BERRY Bros & Rudd is a magnificent piece of Old England. Founded in 1698 to cater for the new craze for coffee, the shop still displays 'the sign of the coffee mill' above the door despite having moved into the wine business two centuries ago. The walls are panelled in the darkest oak. Leather-bound volumes record the weights of 'notable customers' including William Pitt, Lord Byron and Beau Brummell. Yet the company has not allowed its reverence for tradition to divert it from innovation. Berry Bros led the charge into Asia (particularly China) in the 1980s. It now has outlets in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore and stocks Chinese wine on its shelves. Everything from the company's wine cellars (including a huge one in Basingstoke) to its computer systems are state of the art. It is fashionable in global business circles to pass over Europe with a sigh. US companies dominate the world's technological frontier (with Chinese competitors snapping at their heels). Asian companies have mastered the art of mass-producing middle-class prosperity. What are European companies good for? Part of the answer lies in longevity: The best European family companies have survived everything that history can throw at them – plagues, famines, world wars, recessions, revolutions – and continue to thrive. The Henokiens Association, an international club of 57 family businesses that have survived for at least 200 years, includes only 10 non-European members, all Japanese. The British have created their own club, the Tercentenarian Club, of companies that are more than 300 years old. A familiar English proverb suggests that family companies seldom survive more than three generations ('from clogs to clogs in three generations'). A glance at corporate actuarial tables suggests that the three-generation rule is generous. The typical life expectancy of any company, family or non-family, is only a couple of decades, and is falling. What explains the longevity of the best European family businesses? European business schools have done some excellent work answering this question. The IMD Business School in Switzerland has identified '25 principles necessary for long-term success' and has even come up with a model, the Family Business Secrets of Success Model. Bocconi University in Italy teamed up with the search firm Russell Reynolds Associates to identify 10 principles. For the sake of simplicity, I will focus on five culled from reading this research and my own cogitations. Put the family business first. This may mean sidelining individual family members for the sake of the business. Long-lived family businesses are skilful at 'pruning the family tree' (encouraging less committed or talented family members to choose private life). Paradoxically, it may also mean exiting the founder's business for something more profitable. The Italian Falck family exited the steel industry, hitherto their core business, for renewables in the 1990s. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up Celebrate tradition. Tradition is a unique resource which newer firms cannot match regardless of how much money they have. Thousands of companies produce wine, for example, but only the Frescobaldis in Tuscany can boast that their ancestor, Dino, rescued the first seven cantos of Dante's Divine Comedy from destruction. Tradition provides impossible-to-quantify corporate benefits: pride in collective achievements; the self-confidence to make difficult decisions (including the self-confidence to exit the family's ancestral business); and, perhaps most important of all, a sense of perspective (family companies are much better than public companies at resisting the pressure of quarterly results for long-term results). One of the biggest problems with families is that they multiply over the generations. Successful family businesses counter that by making a conscious effort to keep tradition alive. Some live close to each other (though fans of Dallas or Dynasty will recognise that this is not always a formula for harmony). Most use less-drastic methods: holding regular family meetings, informal as much as formal, going on holiday together, telling stories of family achievements, visiting family archives, founding corporate museums. Secure a pipeline of talent. The greatest curse of the family business is the incompetent son and heir. Successful family businesses secure a reliable supply of family members by encouraging lots of members of the family to go into the business and then subjecting them to a succession of tests. Exor chief executive John Elkann, the chosen heir of his maternal grandfather Gianni Agnelli, had to prove himself by working incognito in several different family-related businesses. Focus on justice. The other great curse of family businesses is hurt feelings – and there is no greater source of hurt feelings in a family (particularly when money is involved) than a sense of injustice. All 10 of the long-lived family companies in the Bocconi study have developed scrupulously fair internal markets for shares which allow family members who want to exit from the company to sell their shares at a fair price and allow those who want to increase their involvement to buy them. Provide safety valves. The ideal complement to a sense of justice is a system of safety valves. The best way to cope with family members who will not make it to the top is to provide them with alternative employment in family foundations. The best way to cope with impatient high-flyers is to give them opportunities to create subsidiaries or set up their own companies. Younger members of the Mulliez family have used family money to found new companies such as Decathlon (sports), Pizza Pai and Flunch (catering), Leroy Merlin (do-it-yourself) and Boulanger (electrical appliances). Most successful families have a behind-the-scenes 'leadership orchestrator', or godfather, who plays the role of preventing quarrels, suggesting opportunities and guiding future leaders. The world has much to learn from Europe's long-lasting companies. Entrepreneurs who prospered during the glory years of globalisation are beginning to hand over their businesses to their children, a tricky process at any time, but particularly difficult in countries such as China that have suffered under communism; or Saudi Arabia, that has modernised only recently. They could do no better than to consult Europe's godfathers. For their part, big public companies often suffer from a 'crisis of banality': in a world that is hungry for meaning, all too many of them adopt identical virtue-signalling language or forgettable names or logos. They should study the art of storytelling practised by the likes of Berry Bros & Rudd. Even as some American tourists like to lament Europe's supposed decline into a collection of monuments without any economic prospects, some of those monuments contain clever and innovative companies that will continue to thrive even after the giants of Silicon Valley have gone the way of Shelley's Ozymandias. BLOOMBERG
Bloomberg
11-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Europe's Best Family Firms Have a Secret Weapon Money Can't Buy
Berry Bros. & Rudd is a magnificent piece of Old England. Founded in 1698 to cater for the new craze for coffee, the shop still displays 'the sign of the coffee mill' above the door despite having moved into the wine business two centuries ago. The walls are panelled in the darkest oak. Leather-bound volumes record the weights of 'notable customers' including William Pitt, Lord Byron and Beau Brummell. Yet the company has not allowed its reverence for tradition to divert it from innovation. Berry Bros. led the charge into Asia (particularly China) in the 1980s. It now has outlets in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore and stocks Chinese wine on its shelves. Everything from the company's wine cellars (including a huge one in Basingstoke) to its computer systems are state-of-the-art.
Times
26-06-2025
- Times
I went on a £1,000 writing retreat — this is what I learnt
Back in 1816, during a summer where the rain never stopped, Mary Godwin found herself in the Swiss Alps with her future husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron. With hiking off the menu, the trio decided to have a competition: who could write the scariest story? The result, of course, was Frankenstein. You could see this story as proof of the benefits of bad weather on holiday; I choose to see it as proof of the benefits of writing retreats. I know I'm not the only person who has had an idea for a novel bouncing about in their brain for years — more books than ever are being published in the UK each year (about 200,000, compared with 120,000 ten years ago) and that's without the further thousands being self-published online. There's a reason so many people want to write books. The idea of crafting your own manuscript, immersing yourself in a world of your own making and then it being enjoyed by others is intoxicating. The idea of actually sitting down and churning out 90,000 words? That's less intoxicating. Life, work and social commitments were crowding out the time I'd set aside to reach my already rather low goal of writing 1,000 words of mine each week. The hours I did manage to ringfence I spent rewriting my opening paragraph for the twentieth time. So when I discovered that Hawkwood College in the town of Stroud, Gloucestershire, was launching a series of writing courses I jumped at the chance to try one out. Hawkwood is a mere 10-minute drive from the centre of Stroud, but as the taxi driver navigated the potholes of the college's long driveway, inching past biodynamic vegetable gardens and the resident herd of cows, I realised I'd be escaping all the trappings of urban life. The main house dates back to 1845 (it was named, rather strangely, after a 14th-century English mercenary) but has been functioning as an adult educational centre since 1947. Then, it focused on Steiner methods (indeed, we shared the building with a group of Steiner teachers, tunic-clad women who toted very fetching lutes), and soon expanded to a huge range of short-term courses. Today Hawkwood's 150 courses each year include forest bathing, basket weaving, spoon carving and embroidery (you can see the influence of hippyish Stroud here), but it also hosts conferences, corporate retreats and, now, writing retreats, as it offers accommodation, with 28 rooms. If you're looking for total luxury, Hawkwood isn't for you. The old house has a well-worn feel to it, all creaking floorboards and slumping sofas. Some of the bedrooms have en suites, some have shared bathroom facilities. But for me, this was all part of its charm. No one worries about tramping mud into the dining room after a walk around the grounds, no one cares if you tiptoe down to the kitchen in your pyjamas for a bedtime cup of tea. 'We want people to feel cared for and looked after,' Hawkwood's CEO Alicia Carey explained to me over lunch. 'We want them to switch off from the busyness of life.' And Hawkwood's food provision made me feel more than cared for. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are all homemade with fresh, organic ingredients (many of them harvested from the Hawkwood garden) and served promptly with a ringing bell. But you'll also enjoy 11am biscuits, fresh from the oven, and afternoon tea at 4pm. I'm still thinking about the meatballs with potatoes — and the sticky hot cross buns. And what about all the writing these meals were supposed to fuel? Writing courses can be strange beasts, as the kind of people who want to pen novels tend to be characters themselves. We had a marvellous mix of seven people on our five-day course — including a private chef, a stand-up comedian and even an opera singer — and I was nervous about how we'd all get on. If worse came to worst, I reckoned, I could retreat to my attic room with a view. • Seven of the best UK retreats for aspiring writers Step in the horror writer Ally Wilkes and the freelance editor Cat Camacho, the double act who were leading the course. The pair have impressive industry experience and — even more useful — worked together on Wilkes's first manuscript. That means they could share the proper details of the writing, editing and publishing process, even the bits that are usually hidden for confidentiality reasons, such as Wilkes's first draft and Camacho's comments on it. Each day had at least one masterclass, on topics ranging from structure to novel openings. These were dense with information, but still collaborative and relaxed. Often they came with optional homework, which we could choose to share with the class — and this was Wilkes and Camacho's real skill. They made each of us feel comfortable enough to share our work with strangers and have it inspected live in front of us — a process that was completely invaluable for me. How else would I have found, for instance, that the piece of Northern Irish slang I'd unthinkingly slung into my opening scene meant nothing to English readers? We could also sign up for as many as six 30-minute one-on-one tutorials with either Wilkes or Camacho. A few other people on the course had previously attended Arvon courses, which have a similar format (and price) to this one. They were shocked by the difference. At Arvon, you could only have a maximum of 30 minutes of one-on-one time and — sacré bleu — you have to cook your own food. By contrast, Wilkes and Camacho made it clear that we could chat to them about our work any time we wanted — even if that meant interrupting their knitting or wild garlic foraging. By the end of the week our little group genuinely became friends. One afternoon the private chef sneaked us out of the estate in his vintage convertible. With the Gloucestershire valleys opening up around us, we headed to the Woolpack, the pub Laurie Lee immortalised in his autobiographical novel Cider with Rosie. We ordered pints of local pale ale and toasted our own writerly endeavours, even if the trip meant we just missed the bell for dinner that night. And what about my novel? Well, when I arrived it was a hazy idea, flashes of a character and a setting. I worried it would never take full form. But by the end of day one I had a structure for the whole plot. By the end of day two I'd reworked my opening to something that fitted better. By the end of the week I had a first chapter and confidence that one day I may actually write the whole thing. Laura Hackett was a guest of Hawkwood College and the Writing, Editing and Publishing Your Novel courses with Ally Wilkes and Cat Camacho, which have three nights' all-inclusive for £747pp from September 4-7, and four nights for £950 from November 3-7 ( Times+ members can save an exclusive 30% on courses at Hawkwood. Visit for more information The bestselling author of Foster and Small Things Like These is running a summer retreat in Co Carlow, Ireland. The focus here is on theory, with lectures on narrative, time, character and dialogue — and there's a reading list you'll need to complete beforehand. But if that sounds exciting rather than daunting, you'll have the chance to learn from one of contemporary fiction's great writers. It's held at Teach Bhride Holistic Centre in Tullow, which has accommodation, in single en suites, and is held from August 1-9. Details Eight nights' all-inclusive €3,000 ( Fly or take the ferry to Dublin If daily lectures make you want to run away and hide, an untutored retreat might be best for you. In Llanystumdwy, the ones hosted at the Tŷ Newydd Writing Centre simply provide the time and space (and food) for you to work on your novel in your own time, with no distractions. When you're not scribbling away in your private room, you can go walking along Cardigan Bay or into the woods, or retreat to the library, and come together with fellow guests over home-cooked meals. The next is held from August 4-8. Details Four nights' all-inclusive from £550pp ( Arvon is the best-known name in the UK writing retreat game — it hosts one almost every week at a couple of venues. So you can choose the date that suits you, or the tutors who pique your interest: the authors Sarah Moss, Eliza Clark and Nina Stibbe are all present on different weeks, but come prepared to show off your cooking skills and help wash up. Coming up (currently with availability, though many others are fully booked) is a five-night tutored fiction-focused retreat with Marcel Theroux, Kamila Shamsie and Caroline Brothers, July 21-26, at Totleigh Barton, a thatched 16th-century manor house. Details Five nights' all-inclusive from £895 (
The National
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Capital link to writer of landmark vampire story should be celebrated
Almost 80 years before Stoker's Dracula, Edinburgh medical graduate John William Polidori (1795-1821) wrote The Vampyre: A Tale (1819), said to be the first English-language vampire novel. Polidori's work, based on an abandoned scrap of a story by Lord Byron, was a huge hit because its authorship had initially been misattributed by the publisher (accidentally on purpose?) to the scandalous pop-star poet. Whatever the reason for its popularity, Polidori's tale speedily gave rise to stage adaptations in French and English and sparked the genre that today is still spinning money. Except in Edinburgh – which has never made capital of its connection with this huge literary 'first'. READ MORE: I knew I needed Sir Geoff Palmer in my documentary instantly Dr John Polidori is influential for having shifted the vampire tale from lore to literature, introducing the aristocratic, salon-friendly vampire into the literary bloodstream. He had graduated in Edinburgh in 1815 with a thesis on nightmare, in 1816 being employed as personal physician to the Anglo-Scottish poet Lord Byron during his Swiss stay by Lake Geneva. During this famous summer of incessant rain, Byron and his friends swapped ghost stories. What emerged were Mary Shelley's Frankenstein's monster and the first literary vampire, and discussion leading to both was influenced by the work of Edinburgh-trained medical men – Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) and Gorgie-born James Lind MD, FRS (1736-1812). Polidori died very young – the consequence of a carriage accident or, some say, by suicide. Although their vampire tales were written almost 80 years apart, Polidori has a connection with Bram Stoker in that he was an uncle of the artistic Rossettis who became part of Bram Stoker's circle. READ MORE: Glasgow region needs 'elected mayor and devolution deal' A few years go, when researching for my dramatised lecture 'Vampire and Monster', I was fortunate in being able to able to identify, with the kind help of the University of British Columbia Library, the student lodgings in Edinburgh of John Polidori – even learning the name of his landlady. This flatted tenement, in the vicinity of St Cuthbert's Chapel of Ease, was demolished in 1947 in the face of much opposition, but in recent years has risen from the dead in the form of a tenement property built on the site in a similar style – over the historic trance which would have known the feet of Polidori, the diligent Anglo-Italian medical student whose inclination was rather toward literature and politics. A Polidori plaque – or something more ambitious and attractive to visitors – should surely be placed in this southside location. This would accord with City of Edinburgh Council's recent decision to prioritise the transformation of The Causey into an urban oasis. At the very least, could the local graffiti be regularly cleaned off? Carolyn Lincoln Edinburgh THE Donald, for once, has seriously undersold himself. His military parade – while surpassing the more muted affair held in London by a real king earlier in the day, and making a fair stab at the sort of roll-out of kit we associate with the likes of Russia, China and North Korea – fell well short of what he knows in his heart he truly deserves. Donald is no wannabe king, he is a wannabe Caesar. READ MORE: David Pratt: Israel attacks, Iran bleeds, and America plays God Should he survive another year and not meet his Brutus and co en route to Congress to deliver his State of the Union address, he will surely rework the event into the sort of triumphal procession truly befitting his magnificence. Amidst the tanks and the soldiers, probably by then 'goose-stepping' in the manner beloved of dictators, will be groups of chained 'illegals' en route to who knows where, and of course some tarred and feathered judges, senators and maybe even a state governor or two, 'pour encourager les autres'. Maybe Congress will even vote him a triumphal arch for the occasion? Michael Collie Dunfermline I WRITE in response to Susan FG Forde's letter concerning St Valery-en-Caux, and the capture of the 51st Highland Division. My father was there, he was a Lieutenant, and a Territorial, so part-time. He and his friends were shipped off from the Outer Hebrides to France; some had never even seen a train before. They had armoured personnel carriers which bullets just went straight through, anti-tank weapons but no ammunition. He latterly had to use a German automatic weapon. They were told at one point by the French to hold a line, and that the French would reinforce behind them. When the Camerons fell back the French had gone. Eventually they ran out of ammunition, destroyed all their equipment and surrendered. He spent five years in a German prison camp, and returned after the war to have the equivalent of five years' bed and breakfast deducted from what he was due from the Ministry of Defence. Norman Robertson via email
