Henry Wyndham, the charismatic chairman of Sotheby’s, announced his resignation from the auction house yesterday after 22 years at the helm. Tomorrow he will go out with a bang — lots of them, in fact — as he presides over the sale of effects belonging to the late Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire, the last of the Mitford sisters.
Lot 47 is her collection of Elvis Presley memorabilia, which includes five fridge magnets, an ashtray, two tins of mints, a pair of Elvis earrings and a “Grow The King expandable toy”. The dowager duchess was an unlikely Elvis fan but an ardent one. At her funeral they played Elvis’s How Great Thou Art. Will Wyndham be unable to resist teasing the room with “It’s now or never” as the bidding falters?
The committee responsible for finding a new home for parliament during its forthcoming refurbishment took evidence from Lord Butler of Brockwell yesterday. The former cabinet secretary observed that, as well as vacating the chamber, lots of office space must be found. Butler suggested that some ministers might be interested in “hot bedding”. I think the phrase is “hot desking”, but he may have better sources of gossip.
Eric the striking
Everything is made into a musical these days. The latest is Jackie, about the magazine for “go-ahead teens” that ran from 1964 to 1993, which starts a national tour next week. Nina Myskow, its former editor, recalls one letter she received from a 12-year-old girl that read: “I love the pin-ups, but my dad is better looking than Mick Jagger.” She enclosed a picture as proof. That little girl grew up to be the Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson.
Soldiering languages
It used to be said that the British soldier was proficient in two languages: English and profanity. Things haven’t improved, despite the army announcing in 2014 that promotions beyond captain would depend on picking up language skills. The latest figures show that out of some 150,000 personnel, only 464 speak a foreign language well. About a third of them speak French but only 15 in the army, navy and air force combined can speak Russian. It’s lucky that the Russians are such a peace-loving nation.
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David Astor, who edited The Observer for 27 years after the war, was one of the towering figures of 20th-century journalism. A new biography of him by Jeremy Lewis says that he was not always good at letting his colleagues in on his thoughts. As Katharine Whitehorn, still writing for the paper 56 years after Astor discovered her, put it: “The editor’s indecision is final.”
Per pressure
Hollywood, schmollywood. Nothing is so glamorous for Mark Strong, the actor who is starring in the new Sacha Baron-Cohen film Grimsby, as meeting his football heroes. The Arsenal fan tells ShortList: “I work with all these massive stars like Leonardo DiCaprio and George Clooney but go weak at the knees at the sight of Per Mertesacker.” Not being a football fan, I had to look him up. Sounds more like a cheap Austrian chardonnay.