Mr. Fox van Rutter’s photograph was sent by a lady friend, who perhaps is more qualified to answer the following questions than we are. Why is he wearing a newspaper for a shirt, a pair of curtains for a waistcoat, a cushion cover for a cravat and a Santa Claus cuddly toy for an epaulette?… … Keep Reading
“This is a picture of me relaxing to the music of my 1922 Victor Victrola-50 portable gramophone in the garden,” writes Michael Kramer (or rather someone wrote on his behalf, for he clearly isn’t human). Even the shop dummies in British Home Stores are slightly better dressed than this piece of impertinent plastic. … Keep Reading
“My name is Allan Robinson and, after reading your fine periodical for some time and seeing many foreign Chaps winning the coveted label of being a chap, have decided to put down my pipe and move from my club chair to the writing bureau, to send you a photographical plate recording the jolly day out… … Keep Reading
“It is in my belief,” somberly intones Gavin Ingo, “that a true gentleman aims to improve himself in all matters, and always remains positive in a stiff situation.” There may be some truth in that, but if so, why are you seated in a room with such nouveau riche furnishings and such a ghastly rug… … Keep Reading
Rev’d Oliver Harrison: Somewhere between the vulgarity of checking the time on one’s phone and the sheer pomposity of tugging out a pocketwatch’s gold chain lies the wristwatch. And of all the accoutrements a man might acquire, it is surely his watch that says most about him. Here I must confess to a penchant for… … Keep Reading
Steve Pittard: Armchair sleuths tackling Cluedo this Christmas might be in for a shock. The traditional Hampshire country mansion has been bulldozed to make way for an Essex style gangster’s gaff. The library has gone, with an integrated garage in its stead. The biggest crime here is not Dr Black’s demise, but the wholesale killing… … Keep Reading
William Smith, newly installed as Head Cutter at Douglas Hayward, incredibly finds the time to pen an instructive tract on overcoats. As the nights draw in and the weather turns, the annual ritual of retrieving heavy, woollen overcoats from their summer hideaways begins. The heady scent of mothballs brings a feeling of impending frosty days,… … Keep Reading
Nathanial Adams: On 13th October 1898, the fourth Marquess of Anglesey died at the family seat of Plas Newydd, an estate won by the First Marquess for the price of one leg at Waterloo (his bloody trousers are still on exhibit there.) His heir, Henry Cyril Paget, was now the Fifth Marquess, newly-minted master of… … Keep Reading
A Pakistani man is determined to maintain his impressive lip weasel despite death threats from the Taliban. Malik Amir Mohammad Khan Afridi, a resident of the northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province on the Afghan border, is currently in hiding with his moustache. Mr. Afridi’s face furniture originally measured 30 inches from tip to tip, easily making it… … Keep Reading
Nathaniel Adams: Our message,” says Peter McGough, “is about history and time and the trap of the calendar.” Since the 1970s, McGough and his partner David McDermott have been living in the past. Under the name McDermott and McGough, they have been making art – painting, performance, film, photography – about time. In those early… … Keep Reading
Steve Pittard: Charters and Caldicott, two cricket obsessed English gents, stole the show in Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes. Cinema audiences chortled at the whimsical badinage between the bluff heavy-set Basil Radford (Charters) and dapper mild-mannered Naunton Wayne (Caldicott ). Their marvellous rapport owed to inspired casting, as the chaps had only met once before, appropriately… … Keep Reading
Neapolitan Nights – Patricia Hammond and Matt Redman 2013 Patricia Hammond, the silky-voiced singer often described as the Canadian Nightingale, familiar to readers of The Chap as the singer with headline act Albert Ball’s Flying Aces at the Grand Anarcho-Dandyist Ball last December, has recorded an exclusive track for The Chap, to coincide with her… … Keep Reading