EDITOR’S LETTER
As a magazine editor, I need my finger on the pulse, but sometimes my best efforts to keep up to date with modern culture are scuppered by my Luddite tendencies. So it was with Slow Horses, the brilliant spy series featuring a tour-de-force performance from our cover star Gary Oldman (p22). Everyone I knew was raving about it, but it was on Apple TV+, which I wasn’t tech savvy enough to subscribe to on our smarter-than-me TV. There was no point asking my husband as he was already lobbying hard for cutbacks to our numerous TV subscriptions.
But the prospect of an interview with Oldman made this a work matter, and he reluctantly got busy with registration. Within minutes of the opening credits, we were both hooked and devoured all three series in record time. If you haven’t seen Slow Horses yet, I can’t recommend it more highly, and it’s great to read how much Oldman loves playing Jackson Lamb (below with co-star Kristin Scott Thomas).
The show is even better than One Day, the recent Netflix adaptation of the David Nicholls love story that spans 20 years. If you watch it, expect lots of tears and waves of nostalgia as the lovers discuss shoes from Saxone, pay phones, and the Vivaldi CDs they got free in The Sunday Times. I think I still have my copy of The Four Seasons somewhere in a drawer.
There have been a fair few tears shed in our house this month as my 91-year-old mum has been very unwell. Apart from my frustration at the way hospital wards seem to stop functioning at weekends, with the honourable exceptions of the nursing and catering staff, I cannot fault the care she has received. No expense has been spared, and – in our experience anyway – there hasn’t been a trace of age discrimination. Unfortunately, that is not something you can say about far too many of our institutions.
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