Former acrobats' arena in Lambeth now for sale as live-work space for £1.1m
More surprising is the 120-year-old building's interlude as an acrobat arena, which it served as before becoming the legendary Mambo Inn, an African and Latin clubland institution (where DJs such as Gerry Lyseight, Max Reinhardt and Rita Ray cultivated the eclectic sound that attracted 100s of people every night).
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Evening Standard
5 hours ago
- Evening Standard
Former acrobats' arena in Lambeth now for sale as live-work space for £1.1m
More surprising is the 120-year-old building's interlude as an acrobat arena, which it served as before becoming the legendary Mambo Inn, an African and Latin clubland institution (where DJs such as Gerry Lyseight, Max Reinhardt and Rita Ray cultivated the eclectic sound that attracted 100s of people every night).
Spectator
a day ago
- Spectator
Pope Idol: Leo's singing should be celebrated
'But will anyone be interested?' the vicar asked cautiously. It was a fair response to my latest madcap scheme. One of the vicar's 12 churches, St Candida and Holy Cross at Whitchurch Canonicorum in Dorset, hosts one of the country's only three remaining pre-Reformation saints' shrines with the relics of the saint still present. In this case, the shrine is to St Wite, a ninth-century virgin princess martyred by the Vikings. Her saint's day was coming up. Could we, I asked, recreate a pre-Reformation church service in honour of it? The vicar, the Revd Virginia Luckett, who is sometimes heard on Radio 4, agreed to my proposal – but with trepidation. She is used to conducting pilgrimages to the shrine, and knows the spiritual value of this medieval tradition. But how many people would want to sit through more than an hour of complex Latin plainsong on a Saturday evening in summer, stewing in incense? Maybe half a dozen? I don't think the new Pope would have asked this sort of angst-ridden question. Leo XIV is the first proper singing pope since St John Paul II, and one of his first acts as pontiff was merrily to belt out the Regina Caeli (simple tone) in Latin from the Vatican balcony to the delighted crowds in St Peter's Square. Spurred by this papal expression of confidence in tradition, a Dominican friar, Father Robert Mehlhart, has started offering online singing lessons – 'Let's Sing with the Pope' – using clips of the Holy Father intoning plainchant to educate the many faithful who have never been taught how to do so. There have been hundreds of thousands of downloads in just a few weeks. Going by the miserable and mumbling attempts at congregational singing I've heard recently (even in a full Westminster Abbey), we desperately need someone glamorous and full-throated in the Church of England to do something similar. Do we have a bishop musical and valiant enough to get on YouTube and proudly reacquaint us with the best tunes of the hymnal? Oswestry has a fine booming voice that would be the envy of many a Father Christmas impersonator, Ramsbury has released some albums and I hear that Chelmsford is a good musician. Where are you all? There is a ready audience that wants to reconnect with the great English tradition of hymn-singing, now dismally neglected by schools. Are we going to leave this multitude captive to Rome? As I plundered the local churches for vestments for the Whitchurch service (before the Reformation, even choristers generally wore fine embroidered copes), I couldn't help pondering how we have so quickly lost confidence in another national tradition: dressing properly. When Hamlet was apparently going off his onion, we knew about it from the way he dressed: 'his doublet all unbraced;/ No hat upon his head; his stockings fouled,/ Ungartered, and down-gyvèd to his ankle'. Yet since lockdown, this now seems to be our national costume. Even in Clubland, where one would hope for the confident maintenance of standards, there is the stench of sartorial decay. While having lunch a couple of weeks ago at a St James's institution which has recently abolished the requirement for neckties, I gloomily marvelled at how this relaxation has suddenly cast a tramp-like appearance on many of its members. Crumpled shirts and escaping chest hairs are now rampant. If dressing properly is a sign of good mental health, not to mention courtesy to others, what does this say about the current state of the nation? Ties aren't the only thing disappearing from the great dining rooms – portraits are too. Dinner recently at Clare College Cambridge, to find in Hall bare stretches of blank white walls where grand canvases of eminent alumni recently hung. After dinner I discovered one, Charles Townshend, an 18th-century Chancellor of the Exchequer, awkwardly stuffed at the top of an inaccessible staircase. The Indian Governor-General Lord Cornwallis and the completely inoffensive Archbishop of Canterbury John Tillotson were nowhere to be seen. The Reformation martyr Bishop Hugh Latimer is apparently off being restored, but he might not make it back into Hall on his return. I suppose all this is just, in a way, given Latimer's own iconoclastic tendencies – but it's hardly the way to cherish the memory of the college's most eminent sons. More than 100 people filled the church at Whitchurch to hear the pre-Reformation service for St Wite. They sat silent, rapt, contemplative, as the choir – finely arrayed in borrowed copes – made its unhurried way through the Latin psalms, hymns and responsories (singing, I'd say, quite as well as the Pope, though untutored by him). They then, still silently, followed the choir procession out to a recent statue of St Wite on the church tower (iconoclasm can be wound back) and back indoors to her shrine. Both sites were censed and asperged with holy water as we continued to chant. Afterwards, I asked the vicar what she thought. She could not speak. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. These old traditions, offered with confidence, still have their power.
Spectator
a day ago
- Spectator
Letters: How lads' mags spawned OnlyFans
Bad lads Sir: The articles on Britain's relationship with porn were fascinating and frustrating in equal measure. Fascinating in that Louise Perry and Michael Simmons's contributions ('Devices and desires' and 'Dirty money', 14 June) provided a thought-provoking analysis of the extraordinary growth of the industry. Frustrating in the juxtaposition of these pieces with Sean Thomas's delusional thoughts about 'lads' mags' ('Age of innocence'). Mr Thomas seems to recall these publications with the same dewy-eyed fondness that folk of my generation reserve for Spangles and Bagpuss. He is unable to see the direct line that joins them to the worst excesses of OnlyFans. It's all there in both – the same objectification of women, the betrayal of sex, the sad loneliness and repressed shame of the consumer, the denial of the negative effect on society and the castigation of those who wince or demur as dinosaurs or prudes. The only difference between FHM and OnlyFans, apart from the magazine's inability to grow its figures, is that the internet has enabled the production of and access to this sort of content on a much greater scale. Michael Harrison Belfast Derby match Sir: In her admirable exposé of the dirty deeds on OnlyFans, Louise Perry notes that two of its most depraved performers are 'oddly' both from Derbyshire. Perhaps it is more predictable than odd for some. Brought up in prim Peterborough in the 1950s, I was used to hearing that girls who turned to prostitution had 'gone to Derby' – which very often they had. Christopher Gray Oxford Mass appeal Sir: It is a pity that Damian Thompson ('Critical mass', 14 June) trivialises the issues vexing Pope Leo XIV as regards the treatment of the Tridentine form of the Mass. The current debate about the liturgy is not just about Latin. Indeed, the reformed liturgy (the Novus Ordo Mass) can be said anywhere, and in Latin, by any Catholic priest. And yet, as Damian rightly says, there is an increasingly vocal campaign, especially among Generation Z Catholics, for the tolerance and even the full legalisation of the Tridentine Mass. But this is not simply an argument about 'bells'n'smells' or even trying to preserve a beautiful and ancient liturgy. It is a war between the old pre-Vatican II Church and the post-conciliar movement which has been imposed on Catholics since 1965. The Tridentine Mass expresses the traditional theology taught by the Church since the death of St John the Apostle and it cannot be allowed to coexist alongside the new theology (some would call it ideology) which the bishops are trying to enforce. Countless pronouncements by Pope Francis and Cardinal Roche have confirmed that we now have a theology which runs in direct opposition to that taught for almost 2,000 years until the Second Vatican Council. This is why there can be no tolerance of the Tridentine rite, which represents a flagship of opposition to the conciliar reforms. Latin Mass lovers are accused of opposing Vatican II and the New Mass, something they hotly deny. I would say that those who campaign for the Tridentine Mass and ignore the underlying doctrinal contradictions it represents are no more than romantics. It is for this reason that the Church authorities will sweep them aside. Joseph Bevan Dover, Kent Pros and cons Sir: Prue Leith makes many good points about prisons and charities ('Jail break', 14 June), but she doesn't make the key one: that two-thirds of prisoners shouldn't be in the sort of prisons they are. Of Britain's 90,000 inmates, about 30,000 are extremely dangerous and should be kept away from the public. About 30,000 are mentally inadequate and should probably be under lock and key – but don't need to be in Category A, B or C prisons where they are bullied and learn nothing, not least because most of them can't read. The remaining third are addicts, and should be in rehabilitation centres where they might be cured. Instead of building more high-security prisons at vast expense, we should build lock-up centres and rehab centres, both of which would cost less. I visited about 20 prisons when I helped Action For Prisoners' Families, and they all told the same tale. David Astor Milton-under-Wychwood, Oxfordshire Good hare day Sir: Charles Moore's thoughts about hares (Notes, 14 June) reminds me of the day I went to the local post office to obtain a licence to sell game. I needed this as I was proposing to sell hares, which were then plentiful on the Kent marshes. The woman behind the counter said she needed to ask me three questions. 1) Was I an innkeeper? No, just a farmer. 2) Was I the driver of a stagecoach? Definitely not. 3) Was I a higgler? Stumped by this question, I asked what one was. She said 'someone who higgles for trade outside a cattle market': in other words, picks up return loads of livestock after an auction. Again, no. She then asked for a very small sum and gave me my licence. These requirements are set out in the 1831 Game Act and as far as I know are still in force. The three professions mentioned would all be capable of handling game illegally killed by poachers. Stephen Skelton London SW6 Animal instinct Sir: Anthony Whitehead's piece on lonely-hearts ads ('Notes on…', 14 June) reminds me of the glorious misprint I found in one posh Sunday paper: 'Looking for a significant otter.' Larry Spence Girvan, South Ayrshire Write to us letters@
