Brideshead Revisited: A tribute to Anthony Blanche

              

Anthony Blanche

Character Analysis

https://www.litcharts.com/lit/brideshead-revisited/characters/anthony-blanche

 

Anthony Blanche is a friend of Sebastian’s at Oxford University, and an acquaintance of Charles Ryder. Anthony is an outsider in British society for several reasons: he is foreign and has travelled all over the world, he is from a Catholic family, and he is homosexual. Anthony is picked on by other boys throughout his school years in England, and the bullying continues at university. He responds to this by embracing his unconventionality and using it shock people. He loves to break social conventions and to make people uncomfortable. However, although Anthony’s eccentric behavior is a defense mechanism and a way to protect himself, it does not make him likable or accepted the way that Sebastian’s similar behavior does. Anthony is slightly bitter about this and realizes that he is picked on because he is different, while Sebastian gets away things because people are taken in by his “English charm.” Anthony, as a foreigner, cannot rely on this and is jealous of Sebastian. He tries to tempt Charles away from Sebastian and seems irritated that Charles prefers Sebastian to him. Anthony is presented as a “devilish” figure who is the exact opposite of Sebastian’s angelic, youthful innocence. Anthony, in contrast, is worldly, experienced, and can be cruel. He thus represents the demonic side in the battle for Charles’s affections, and tries to steer Charles towards a life of lust, debauchery, and modern art, while Sebastian represents true love, and the wisdom and religious grace which comes from this. Anthony is an “aesthete,” someone who loves beauty and art, and wants Charles to unleash his inner artistic passion. He feels that Charles, who he thinks has potential to be a great artist, has been metaphorically “killed” by Sebastian because he has lost his interest in cultural exploration and, instead, wants to remain as he is and not allow change into his life. As Charles grows older, he realizes that Anthony is right in this sense, and that he must accept change to grow and develop as an artist.

 

Anthony Blanche

Character Analysis

https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/brideshead-revisited/anthony-blanche.html

 

Anthony Blanche is one of the most colorful characters you’ll meet in Shmoop Literature. "A nomad of no nationality," "the aesthete par excellence," and a "fine piece of cookery," Anthony practically leaps off the pages of Brideshead Revisited with "colorful robes" and exaggerated, affected stutter. We can’t really do much better than Charles’s description of him "waxing in wickedness like a Hogarthian page boy," or disguising himself as a girl on account of a bet, dining with Proust, practicing black art in Cefalu, getting "cured of drug-taking in California and of an Oedipus complex in Vienna." Most telling is this line: "His vices flourished less in the pursuit of pleasure than in the wish to shock."

 

Indeed. In addition to being colorful and hilarious, Anthony is also flamboyantly and stereotypically gay. He threatens to "stick [Sebastian] full of barbed arrows like a p-p-pin-cushion" and says to Mulcaster, "Who knows better than you by taste for queer fish?" He will later tell Sebastian, "If you want to be intoxicated there are so many much more delicious things [than alcohol]" while bringing him to who is most likely a male prostitute (though we could be way off here – who knows). He tells a group of mocking students that he would "like nothing better than the manhandled by you meaty boys." Sebastian later refers to him as "Charlus," a gay character from one of Proust’s novels. Aside from innuendo, we have clear statements of his sexuality. "I may be inverted but I am not insatiable," he tells a group of young boys at his door. ("Inverted" was the not-so-politically correct term at the time for being gay.) Charles also refers to Sebastian as "my pansy friend" later in the novel.

 

Aside from the comedy, Anthony, much like Cara and Cordelia, is around in Brideshead Revisited to give Charles – and therefore the reader – information second hand. His relationship with Charles revolves around three key encounters, all of which consist of Anthony talking. A lot. First is the famous dinner out at Oxford, when Anthony puts in his two cents (make that two dollars) about the Flyte family. From his scathing critique of Julia as "a passionless, acquisitive, intriguing, ruthless killer" to his unexpected description of Sebastian as "insipid," Anthony has opinions on everything and everyone. His lengthy discourse with Charles serves as our introduction to the Flytes, and raises the stakes on the discoveries to follow. When Sebastian later dismisses these comments as gossip and lies, Charles writes them off. But Waugh makes sure we’re still left wondering: Sebastian quickly changes the subject to that of his teddy-bear, just as Anthony suggested he would. Sounds like Blanche knows what he’s talking about…

 

And indeed, many of Anthony’s comments about the Flytes do turn out to be true. Julia is admittedly a semi-heathen like her brother, the history regarding Lord and Lady Marchmain’s marriage is later confirmed, and Charles concludes that Lady Marchmain is as manipulative as everyone says. But what about Sebastian? Does Anthony’s description hold true? Let’s take a closer look at what he claims about our favorite teddy-bear-toting student:

 

"Tell me candidly, have you ever heard Sebastian say anything you have remembered for five minutes? You know, when I hear him talk, I am reminded of that in some ways nauseating picture of 'Bubbles.' […] When dear Sebastian speaks it is like a little sphere of soapsuds drifting off the end of an old clay pipe, anywhere, full of rainbow light for a second and then – "phut! – vanished, with nothing left at all, nothing."

 

OK…so Anthony has a point. Sebastian isn’t exactly profound, and he tends spend most of his time talking about the temper of his stuffed bear. But what’s wrong with simply being light-hearted? Plenty, according to Anthony. He believes that Sebastian poses a particular threat to Charles, and more specifically to Charles’s artistic abilities.

 

In Charles’s "Character Analysis" we talk a lot about Charles’s aesthetic education and the progress he makes, artistically, throughout the course of the novel. Anthony and his comments on "English charm" are a big part of this education. He touches on the subject briefly during this first big speech at Oxford, but it’s not until his final scene in the novel – out with Charles after the big exhibition – that the point really hits home for Charles (and for the reader, of course). Take a look:

 

"I was right years ago – more years, I am happy to say, than either of us shows – when I warned you. I took you out to dinner to warn you of charm. I warned you expressly and in great detail of the Flyte family. Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you."

 

While everyone else is going gaga over Charles’s new, feral paintings, Anthony is unconvinced that Charles has managed to escape British charm and become a true artist. He says of the artwork: "It reminded me of dear Sebastian when he liked so much to dress up in false whiskers. It was charm again, my dear, simple, creamy English charm, playing tigers." Charm has strangled (or even "thwarted," an important word in Brideshead Revisited) Charles’s artistic potential.

 

And of course, Anthony blames Sebastian for siccing this charm on Charles. Over and over again the word is used to describe Sebastian and his "Bubbles"-like manner of speaking. In just his first conversation with Charles, Anthony says that "Sebastian has charm […], such charm," suggests that in a church confessional he was "just being charming through the grille," reiterates that "he has such charm" and that "[he’s] so charming, so amusing," claims that "those who are charming [like Sebastian] don’t need brains," calls him "a little bundle of charm," concludes that in fact all the Flytes are "charming, of course," and finishes by saying "there was really very little left for poor Sebastian to do except be sweet and charming." He says the only reason Sebastian still visits is father is "because he’s so charming," and advises that Charles not blame Sebastian for being "insipid," "simple," and… "charming."

 

OK. We think we’ve made our point. But now you can understand that when Anthony says "It is not an experience I would recommend for An Artist at the tenderest stage of his growth, to be strangled with charm" that what he’s really warning Charles against isn’t just good manners; he’s warning him against Sebastian. And he might be right to do so. Consider the fact that Charles is a Captain in the army telling his story and seems to have abandoned art altogether. In fact, Charles straight out agrees with Anthony’s interpretation of his paintings as "British charm playing tigers." "You’re quite right," he says to Anthony, and that’s the last we hear from him in the subject of art. When Lord Marchmain asks him at the end of the novel whether he will become an Artist, his response is simple, "No. As a matter of fact I am negotiating now for a commission in the Special Reserve." And that’s that.

Nickolas Grace remembers playing Anthony Blanche in the glorious TV version of Brideshead Revisited

 

May 24th, 2020rosalyn51

https://rosalyn51.tumblr.com/post/618995758952218624/nickolas-grace-remembers-playing-anthony-blanche

 

Nickolas Grace remembers playing Anthony Blanche in the glorious TV version of Brideshead Revisited - The Oldie

On Brideshead Revisited’s 75th anniversary, Nickolas Grace recalls the joy of playing the camp, eyelid-fluttering Anthony Blanche

 

Had I been born two years earlier, I would be as old as Brideshead Revisited, published 75 years ago! Still, I’d rather be younger.

 

One sunny morning in 1979, my agent asked me to read for a new series, Brideshead Revisited. My heart leapt – I adored the book at school. I dared to ask the question: which part?

 

‘Anthony Blanche.’

 

‘Oh God, isn’t that the queer guy with the stutter?’

 

‘The very same,’ responded my agent.

 

I went off to meet the director, the classically handsome, cigar-smoking Michael Lindsay-Hogg; the producer, the charmingly effusive Derek Granger (who turns 99 on 23rd April); and the casting director, Doreen Jones. She didn’t want me for the role! There was no reading at all; just an informal chat and an invitation to a screen test in Manchester.

 

I found Blanche’s stutter a genuine challenge. When the screen test happened, I just went for it, and found my eyelids fluttering with each stutter.

 

They said they’d be in touch the next day. I wandered back to the station, where I bumped into Lindsay-Hogg.

 

On the train, he declared, ‘You’ve got the part – so you can relax and we can chat all the way back to London!’

 

The next morning, I received from Derek Granger a huge package of letters and articles about Waugh’s contemporaries, including Maurice Bowra, Peter Quennell, Bryan Guinness and Harold Acton and Brian Howard – the two inspirations for Blanche.

 

The best information came from the puppet master himself, Mr Waugh. His first description of Blanche includes ‘part Gallic, part Yankee, part perhaps Jew: wholly exotic’. That gave me a huge canvas on which to paint.

 

Acton and Howard had been rivals at both Eton and Oxford, both vying for the title of ‘aesthete par excellence’. Like Blanche, Acton had stood on his balcony at Christ Church, declaiming Eliot’s The Waste Land through a megaphone to the ‘meaty boys’ walking below; as an undergraduate, Howard varnished his finger and toenails. When he was an AC2 in the RAF, he dragged up at weekends and worked as a waitress at the Ritz.

 

By the time I played Blanche, Howard had been dead for 21 years, and Acton locked away in his beautiful Villa La Pietra in Florence.

 

Marie-Jacqueline Lancaster’s Brian Howard biography is packed with outrageous tales of his extrovert behaviour. Predominantly, though, I relied on Waugh’s superb detail.

 

I used his ‘Gallic’ clue to introduce the French ‘r’. I exaggerated his stutter, and fluttered my ‘large, saucy eyes’ with each affected stutter, extending any innocent, unsuspecting word. The challenge was to convince the audience that it was the character who was over the top, and not the actor. Only you can judge.

 

At our first rehearsal, at the Spread Eagle in Thame, Jeremy Irons said, ‘You’re not really going to play it like that, are you?’ Anxiously, I looked to Lindsay-Hogg, who gave me a definitive nod of approval. So I was off, and onto the B-B-Brandy Alexanders…!

 

All progressed swimmingly from April until, suddenly, filming ground to a halt, because of a technicians’ strike. When we started again in November, Lindsay-Hogg reluctantly had to resign, owing to film commitments in the USA. Large chunks of John Mortimer’s script were rejected and, with Granger’s guidance, we restored much of Waugh’s original.

 

Despite the vicissitudes of the strike and the erratic schedule, it was one of the happiest and longest shoots of my life, from April 1979 to August 1981. Et in arcadia eram. When the series was finally broadcast, in October 1981, the reaction was unexpected and overwhelming.

 

I did eventually meet Harold Acton in 1984, when he invited me to his 80th-birthday drinks party at Claridge’s. He was still full of ‘c-creamy English charm’ but not as extrovert as I had hoped. On a postcard to me, he wrote, ‘Enjoy the fruits of your youth whilst ye may!’

 

As for Brian Howard, I received a letter from an elderly lady, Carley Dawson, Howard’s cousin, who invited me to Washington DC. She said, ‘But you’re so much nicer than Brian!’

 

I owe Brideshead a huge debt, and much gratitude to Lindsay-Hogg and Granger for casting me. It transformed my career, leading to an assortment of fascinating roles and unexpected, decadent adventures, some of which I shall reveal in my autobiography, when I am 80 – adhering to Sir John Gielgud’s instructions to me when I was working on his King Lear in 1994, commissioned by the BBC for his 90th birthday.

 

Happy birthday, Brideshead Revisited, and thank you very much!

Brian Howard the real tragical-hysterical failure-hero ... that inspired Waugh for the 'outrageous' Anthony Blanche Character in Brideshead

Brian Christian de Claiborne Howard (13 March 1905 – 15 January 1958) was an English poet, whose work belied a spectacularly precocious start in life; in the end he became more of a journalist, writing for the New Statesman.
He was born to American parents in Hascombe, Surrey, and brought up in London; his father Francis Gassaway Howard was an associate of James Whistler. He was educated at Eton College, where he was one of the Eton Arts Society group including Harold Acton, Oliver Messel, Anthony Powell and Henry Yorke. He entered Christ Church, Oxford in 1923, not without difficulty. He was prominent in the group later known as the Oxford Wits. He was one of the Hypocrites group that included Harold Acton, Lord David Cecil, L. P. Hartley and Evelyn Waugh. It has been suggested that Howard was Waugh's model for Anthony Blanche in Brideshead Revisited.
At this time he had already been published as a poet, in A. R. Orage's The New Age, and the final Sitwell Wheels anthology. He used the pseudonyms Jasper Proude and Charles Orange. His verse also was in Oxford Poetry 1924.
Subsequently he led a very active social life, tried to come to terms with his homosexuality, and published only one substantial poetry collection God Save the King (1930, Hours Press). He was active as a poet during the Spanish Civil War, but did not ultimately invest in his work with seriousness. He drank heavily and used drugs.
During World War II he was part of the little ships armada to Dunkirk and later worked for MI5 and had a low-level post in the Royal Air Force.
He suffered from bad health in the 1950s, and committed suicide after the accidental death of a lover.


Anthony Blanche in Brideshead revisited ...

Howard, Brian (1905-1958)
As a flamboyant schoolboy aesthete, Brian Howard seemed destined to make his mark, if perhaps a dubious one, in the cultural world of Modernist Britain. But while Howard was most adept at creating personal facades, he failed to produce any lasting work, drifted aimlessly through life, and ended tragically.
As a result, he is notable for being a most extraordinary failure, remembered mostly as an interesting secondary figure among the "Brideshead Generation," the mostly homosexual "Bright Young Things" of Oxford in the 1920s.
Brian Christian de Claibourne Howard was born in Surrey, England, to American émigré parents. Although the truth is uncertain, Howard maintained that his father, Francis Gassaway Howard, was of Jewish origins, and thus Howard was himself frequently assumed to be Jewish, however mistakenly.
What is certain is that his father, an entrepreneur from Washington, D.C., was more absent than present in his son's life, and the boy was raised by his indulgent and socially pretentious mother, a "Southern belle" who had inherited a modest fortune.
The cherubic-looking Howard was sent to Eton, where he soon became known to his classmates as an artistic (if affected) innovator, and as a self-absorbed and precocious rebel to his schoolmasters. While there, he befriended a classmate, Harold Acton, a boy of similar disposition who would later eclipse him in artistic and literary endeavors.
The two founded the Eton Society of Arts, a group whose members included such future literary figures as Cyril Connolly, Anthony Powell, and Henry Greene. Howard also edited a literary magazine, the Eton Candle (1922), which included contributions from many of his contemporaries.
At this point in his life, Howard seemed destined for a brilliant career in the arts, and he planned to carry on his Eton activities on a grander scale with Acton at Oxford. Acton easily passed his entrance examinations, but Howard, an undisciplined student, did not. Although he passed (by cheating) the following year, by the time he arrived at Oxford's Christ Church in 1923, he had been overshadowed by his former protégé.
At Oxford, Howard was mostly known for his socializing and for flaunting his homosexuality. He was, for a time, a friend of Evelyn Waugh, who later based a number of his less attractive homosexual (and Jewish) characters on his erstwhile companion.
Howard left Oxford in 1927, after two attempts to pass his final examinations, and subsequently drifted from one London party to another for a few years. For most of the 1930s, he lived on his mother's money and traveled aimlessly through Europe with a German boyfriend identified only as "Toni" (as did Sebastian Flyte in Waugh's Brideshead Revisited), and he was on the fringes of the Christopher Isherwood-W. H. Auden circle in Berlin.
While his former classmates embarked on notable literary careers, Howard remained unpublished and unproductive. When Toni was detained as a hostile alien in France at the beginning of World War II, Howard returned to England where, amazingly, he was commissioned as an officer in MI5, the British counterintelligence agency. In 1943, he was dismissed from MI5 for numerous indiscretions, and he spent the rest of the war as a low-ranking aircraftsman in the Royal Air Force, frequently in trouble for such infractions as losing his uniform in a public lavatory.
At forty, Howard was a failed artist. Alcoholic, financially dependent on his mother, and in poor health, he had produced no poetry or fiction since his undergraduate years. After the war, he resumed his life of drifting, this time in the company of a muscular young Irishman.
In January 1958, his lover died of asphyxiation from a faulty gas heater. Howard, blaming himself for this accident, committed suicide with an overdose of the sedatives to which he had become addicted, thus bringing a life of unfulfilled promise to an end.
Howard has lived on, however ironically, as the inspiration for any number of grotesque minor characters ("aesthetic buggers," as Waugh put it) in works of the schoolmates who had once admired him.
Patricia Juliana Smith



An Oxford spy in THE MORNING STAR

JOHN BRANSTON discovers that the man who inspired Evelyn Waugh's Anthony Blanche was an anti-nazi propagandist.

This month marks the centenary of the birth of Brian Howard, the brightest of the "bright young things," incontestably the most brilliant wit of his generation.
He was an Etonian aesthete and "new symbolist" poet, who was also a colossal snob who toadied up to peers of the realm, as well as a drunkard and cocaine addict.
So, you may ask, how was such an indiscreet individual recruited into Britain's secret intelligence service?
After all, Howard, the notorious, louche, dandified teenage protege of Edith Sitwell and disciple of Gertrude Stein, is remembered more today for providing the model for Anthony Blanche, the social butterfly in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, than for his far more sombre role as a spy in MI5 during World War II.
Yet, in Howard's dedicated social climbing at Oxford, his exclusive pursuit of the university's younger peerage, lies the secret of his value as a spy in the highest echelons of the British Establishment.
"Put your trust in the Lords" was the ironic motto on a banner in his Oxford undergraduate rooms.
So why did Howard later spy on his own crowd of aristocratic swells?
Well, judged by his spymasters, within his glittering smart set, a number of crypto-nazis and collaborationists had yet to be "outed."
As the writer Maurice Richardson remarked, "Howard saw, long before most of his contemporaries, the dangers of fascism and was one of the first to denounce Hitler's nazism as organised barbarism of the vilest kind. In the early 1930s, he showed great personal courage."
In 1931, in Germany, Howard had become influenced by novelist Thomas Mann's loathing for Hitler and he filed anti-Hitler articles to the British press.
Specifically, as a Jew - he was bullied at Eton for his Jewishness - and due to his wider confraternity with Germany's persecuted Jews, Howard was granted deeper insights into the nazis' national ideology than many journalists of his time.
Howard's shrewd understanding of the German psyche sprang, ironically, from a long period of psychoanalysis in Germany in the late 1920s, at the behest of his powerful mother who hoped to "cure" her son's "homosexualism."
In Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, when Anthony Blanche is "debagged" by Oxford athletic "hearties," he quips: "If you knew anything of sexual psychology, you would know that nothing would give me keener pleasure than to be manhandled by you meaty boys."
Despite such flippancy parodied here, Howard's acute political prescience is revealed in his journalism of the 1930s.
His first scoop was an interview in 1932 with Hitler's press chief Dr Hanfstaengl.
Howard: "Why this hatred of Jews?"
"Jews! Jews! Because they made the English and American theatres into sewers. Ours, too. Look at Reinhardt. Shit," came the reply, referring to Max Reinhardt, the Austrian theatrical entrepreneur who was of Jewish descent.
Later, in 1939, Howard assisted the release of a number of anti-nazi Germans imprisoned in France.
In 1940, Howard was recruited into MI5 as an undercover "outside contact" to report on pro-nazi personalities.
His political acumen must have been respected by MI5 because, in the early years of the war, Howard's dark apprehensions from the 1930s were reflected in a series of astonishingly sophisticated anti-nazi propaganda scripts that he wrote for BBC radio.
These scripts were some of the earliest to broadcast the facts of the genocidal "eugenics programme" of the Third Reich.
During this time, he renewed his acquaintance with the spy Guy Burgess, a fellow Old Etonian and also a BBC correspondent.
Burgess, one of the Soviet Union's "Cambridge Five" spy ring, had studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and he and Oxonian Howard knew each other in 1937 in Germany.
It's highly likely that Burgess was feeding additional classified material to Howard when this improbable dramatist and MI5 snoop was commissioned to write scripts for the Black Gallery BBC propaganda broadcasts.
What is odd is the stark contrast between the maturity of Howard's calculated vilification of nazi ideologues in his early broadcasts and the flipside of his shrill campery which echoed that of the "Homintern," so called by Cyril Connolly for an international network of influential homosexuals whose bias he defined as "homo-communism."
There is satire which seems to verge on self-excoriation when Howard parodies nazi anti-semitic propaganda in his radio scripts.
His Goebbels-like rabble-rouser declaims: "Conscience is a Jewish invention. Like circumcision, it mutilates man."
Howard's propagandising was cleverly conceived as character assassination calculated to defame. Such a BBC script was entitled "Baldur von Schirach," broadcast in 1942.
In 1933, von Schirach was appointed leader of the Hitler Youth movement, destined to number eight million members.
In 1940, Hitler appointed him governor of Vienna. During his rule, 185,000 Jews were deported to Polish ghettos, a deed described by von Schirach as a "contribution to European culture."
Thus, we can apprehend Howard's deep abiding compassion and the full force of his fury, when, in his radio documentary, he has the anguished voice of one of von Schirach's victims, a small child, cry out: "I am dead. A state doctor killed me in a little shed. It was called the Hitler room. I don't think he can know about it. Do you, Herr State Youth Leader?"
The radio narrator continues his attack on von Schirach.
"You got back into favour with Hitler. You set the Hitler Youth to burning the synagogues and knocking down Jews in the street."
Howard also exposes Hitler's state programme of enforced sterilisation, expressed through the poignant words of a young German mother.
"I am one of the young women who was sterilised by the state. My child died before it was even conceived. For Hitler."
This BBC broadcast also includes references to the de-Christianising of Germany.
Von Schirach wrote national prayers in praise of Hitler, so we can understand the intent of other radio voices in an exchange between a German schoolmistress and her indoctrinated pupils.
"Who, children, is it that most reminds us of Jesus?" Answer: "The Fuehrer!" Question: "And who most reminds us of the disciples?" Answer: "General Goering, Doctor Goebbels and Captain Roehm!"
This catechism of the Trinity reflects the statement by the Reich Minister for Church Affairs Hanns Kerrl, delivered in 1937.
"There has now risen a new authority as to what Christ and Christianity is. This new authority is Adolph Hitler."
Howard's broadcast contained highly precise data - addresses of von Schirach's private residences and details of his close relationship to Hitler.
In Howard's scripts, we recognise a most bizarre conjunction of two ex-Etonians who, for a brief span, were bound together in a common cause.
In this unusual alliance, further ironies abound.
When Burgess escaped to the Soviet Union, a newspaper manhunt was launched and, by the strangest of coincidences which made world headlines, it was the Oxford spy Howard, while staying in Asolo in Italy, who was mistaken for the missing Cambridge spy.
Perhaps our last thought of this odd couple of espionage should be the memory of these two alcoholic counter-propagandists propping up the basement bar below the Ritz in wartime.
We can imagine them listening to the nasal drawl of their opposition, the fascistic propagandist Lord Haw-Haw, broadcasting from Germany.
The sandbagged Ritz bar was one of Haw-Haw's favourite targets for attack, sneering that only plutocrats could enjoy such luxuries.
Two extraordinarily flamboyant ex-Etonians, a revolutionary and an anti-fascist, each wearing a private smile and each raising a glass in secret salute to his next devious scheme and to his own infinite guile.
John Branston's father served in the British army throughout WWII and was an interpreter during the interrogation of nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg Trials. He was a colleague of Max Reinhardt, mentioned in this article.





Mad, bad and dangerous to know’ is how Evelyn Waugh once described Brian Howard, but he was more complicated than that. He was incontestably the wittiest man of his generation. He could be cruel and compassionate by turn. He bulged with talent, but achieved very little. A paradox at every turn: he was an American at Eton, where he produced The Eton Candle and met Edith Sitwell, who encouraged him as a poet. At Oxford he was the leading light of the most extravagant social set and an aesthete who hunted. In the twenties he was the impresario of the wildest parties and pulled off the craziest practical jokes. Nevertheless, he became a passionate anti- Nazi in the thirties, after having been sent to Germany to be analysed, and later an inspired literary critic. In the Second World War he joined up and must have been the oddest aircraftman since T. E. Shaw.
After the War he became increasingly drunk, quarrelsome and dependent, and finally, after the death of his last lover, Sam, killed himself.
Throughout his life he was surrounded by the most brilliant men and women of the age, who envied his talents, who adored him and who were exasperated by him. Their names alone constitute an anthology of the most exciting people on the English scene between the two wars.
This biography is both an unusual document of that period and a study of its most brilliant failure.

My secret life as a model: ‘High fashion loved me most when I was visibly bony’ / Fashion experts raise concern about return to ‘extremely thin models’ / Why Ultrathin Is In.

 

My secret life as a model: ‘High fashion loved me most when I was visibly bony’

 

It is a world of 13-hour days, stressful castings and size 6 figures. Here is what it is like to navigate the big opportunities – and impossible demands

 

Inès Le Gousse

Thu 20 Mar 2025 05.00 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2025/mar/20/my-secret-life-as-a-model-high-fashion-loved-me-most-when-i-was-visibly-bony

 

‘She was sitting at the kitchen table, eating raw cauliflower. For dinner.” It’s September 2024 in London and my friend is reflecting on her time sharing an apartment with fellow models in Paris the previous year. I am grimly amused, but unsurprised. This is the type of story models are always telling.

 

I would know, because I became a model at 21 – quite late, by industry standards – and have walked in several London shows, as well as fittings, showrooms, campaigns, editorials, lookbooks and e-commerce for brands such as Moncler, Lacoste and Toni & Guy. Since I started, I have tried to build a thick skin to protect myself against rejections from castings and call-backs, as well as the ubiquitous skinny body standard. But when I get selected for a show, there is always the underlying fear that perhaps I took it too far – that I lost too much weight again. Because an overwhelming proportion of models are, as they have always been, very thin.

 

I was scouted on a walk through Covent Garden in 2021, just after I had graduated from the University of Warwick. I made my debut at the subsequent London fashion week, at the Victoria Beckham show.

 

In the fashion industry, the extremely skinny look is still valued – you just can’t make it obvious

 

The expression “baptism of fire” doesn’t begin to cover it. I had done only a quick walking practice at my agency beforehand, not expecting anything to come from my first casting. Within a couple of hours, I was booked on the spot for three days of fittings in a room packed with stylists, creative directors, sewers and photographers, all running on the frenetic energy of fashion week. In the run-up to the show, I was working 13-hour days.

 

My agency steered me towards a high-fashion market, so I moved to Milan for a month, and then back to my home town of Paris, to pursue my career more seriously.

 

Over the past couple of years in the fashion industry, my weight has fluctuated a lot, but I have always remained, by non-fashion standards, slim. Even at my biggest, I was smaller than a UK size 8. High fashion loved me the most at my skinniest, when I was visibly very bony (it was obvious that I had a problematic BMI). During my debut season, I overheard a famous stylist talking about me (it is normal to be spoken about while you are in the room). “She’s too skinny to be used in the show, but she’s perfect for the fittings,” she said, voicing what I came to understand was the underlying mantra of the industry: the extremely skinny look is still valued – you just can’t make it obvious.

 

When I reached what was deemed a healthy size, it was my hips that became my achilles heel – and I am far from curvy. During a couture week fitting, I wasn’t able to fit the wedding gown – the prestigious highlight of the collection – over my hips. The gown was quickly taken away and handed to a 17-year-old model, whose narrow build didn’t fight the fabric. The irony? Couture is designed – and destined – for women with very big bank balances, not girls.

 

For models, conversation about weight and dieting is common. It’s a nonchalant, casual, day-to-day topic that comes up as easily as the weather. It’s not about sharing dieting tips, but rather anecdotes about a nasty casting, or a comment about skipping dessert because fashion week is not far off. One model recounted that she had cut out all sugar, carbs and junk food and had been intensively exercising for three months leading up to the shows. Other models asked me what my measurements were, followed by an encouraging: “That should be fine, don’t worry.” When I started modelling, I was struck by the candour of it, the shared reality of living with the pressure to be a certain size. I knew I had shared the same thoughts and concerns – and hadn’t missed a day at the gym all week.

 

I think it’s fair to say that models don’t intentionally promote or perpetuate the desire for a certain physique; instead, they comply with the “industry standard”, knowing that it’s a component of success, or at least of securing work. That industry standard varies, but tends to be around 34-24-34in (bust-waist-hips), or equivalent to a dress size 6. The need to be a certain size to book jobs can tip models’ behaviour into the unhealthy.

 

In 2023, I was in Madrid working a job. After lunch – a 4pm matcha – a model friend said she was not hungry for dinner. In any other circumstances, her behaviour would have been cause for concern. But here, there was no sense that she might be judged for skipping a meal, certainly not by me – I too have a complicated relationship with food.

 

Measurements remain a very real component of fashion week; up-to-date bikini pictures are still required by potential clients. It does vary a little by location. London displays more of a variety of models in casting queues – from size 2 to size 18. But the same cannot be said of Paris, and even less so Milan, where I was measured every time I went to my agency. I have spent hours in queues made up exclusively of ultra-thin models, to be measured at the door and asked to put on an unforgiving skintight bodysuit to ensure that nothing is concealed behind fabric. Every curve and dip of your body is exposed for evaluation.

 

There is a new narrative, however, which has its roots in the late 2010s, when Ashley Graham was on the cover of Vogue and catwalks showcased plus-sized bodies for the first time. In 2023, Paloma Elsesser won model of the year, highlighting the apparent acceptance and rise of plus-size models. The new narrative told us that strict ultra-skinny measurements, negative body image discourse and a lack of inclusivity were no longer a problem in fashion. It sounds like progress, but it is simply not true. It says it all that Elsesser, who was the only curvier model in the lineup of nominees, faced an immediate backlash about her weight on social media.

 

From my experience, the public celebration of body inclusivity feels performative. No matter how many shows use plus-size models, or how often magazines use larger models, the skinny body ideal remains ever-present. The wording might be more delicate – it’s no longer about “size 0” – and a few token moments have made it seem like things are shifting, but the skinny orthodoxy is still dominant, perhaps increasingly so.

 

The fashion-industry media observed a tangible decrease in body diversity at recent shows. Vogue Business noted that plus-size representation made up just 0.3% of the looks in autumn/winter 2025 shows, with 97.7% of the models being “straight-size”, the industry term for the skinny norm – equivalent to a dress size 4 or XS in the UK. This matches what I observed in casting queues last season.

 

The shift towards smaller silhouettes extended beyond catwalk models to the front row, coinciding with the rise of weight-loss drugs and signalling a broader cultural shift to thinness.

 

Comment sections on TikTok videos now border on obsessive when it comes to celebrities’ weight loss; the Wicked press tour was overshadowed by remarks about the cast’s noticeably slim silhouettes. Such widespread outrage at what is clearly a deeply personal subject reveals the hypocrisy surrounding women’s bodies. Which women are required to embody “healthiness” and which are meant to have the high-fashion body that society glamorises? Both of the main stars of Wicked, Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, look the same size as many models I have worked with. There is a high-fashion blind spot that allows extreme thinness to go unchallenged, while the rest of society – even within the confines of Hollywood – is held to different standards.

 

A scroll through TikTok reveals an array of negative experiences from models that do conform to this type, with Bentley Mescall, for example, exposing the landscape in New York. She posts screenshots of messages from her agent: “Bread has to go, rice has to go, pasta has to go – this has to be a choice that you make.” Her experience is not an exception. It’s still the deeply entrenched reality of the modelling world, whatever the so-called plus-size revolution has told us.

 

On a month-long working trip to Greece last summer, my flatmate and fellow model was told by our agent that she would get more bookings if she lost a couple of centimetres off her hips. In Milan last year, a friend was shamed in a room full of agents for having gained slightly in size over the summer holidays. Another was sent home after a visit to her Milan-based agency during which she had her belly grabbed and shaken. A similar experience occurred in Japan, where the model was booked a ticket home on the spot. Each incident happened within the last two years and, for what it’s worth, all of these women are around a size 6.

 

No matter how many shows use plus-size models, the skinny ideal remains ever-present

 

To reiterate, the problem lies with the industry, not the models. Most models are professional, kind and compassionate individuals. Most of us are naturally slim and don’t follow a raw cauliflower diet.

 

“Agencies have a duty of care,” says Tom Quinn, the director of external affairs at the eating disorder charity Beat, who urges them “to stop encouraging models to adopt harmful behaviours and pressuring them to fit a certain body ideal”. A person’s appearance should never be prioritised over their mental and physical wellbeing, he says.

 

Luckily for me, the London-based agency that I have been with since I started out has shown concern for my welfare, even encouraging me to gain weight when I was excessively thin. But they are in a tricky position: they have to ensure models’ health isn’t compromised, but they must also please clients and book their talent. The reality is that fashion brands, particularly high-fashion ones, demand this body type.

 

Somewhere, amid the extreme demands and performative inclinations of the industry, there may be a middle ground where agencies do not have to protect models from toxic requirements, or coerce them into complying. Some brands have shown a genuine desire to hire healthy-looking models. The Vogue Business report pointed to Ester Manas, Rick Owens, Sunnei, Boss and Bach Mai as some of the fashion houses promoting a more comprehensive lineup this past season.

 

I also remember how delighted the editor of a French magazine was when she saw me with a “fuller shape” (size 8) after I had worked with them previously. She told me that she didn’t like working with super-skinny models, that it didn’t feel right. You do meet people within the industry who empathise with the strict requirements we have to adhere to and perpetuate; it’s just a question of normalising this concern at a wider industry level.

 

I look back to the modelling era of the 1990s with envy. Growing up, I remember being captivated by Cindy Crawford, who has said size 10 was normal for models at the time. It would be noteworthy to find a single size 10 model in most casting queues in the past decade.

 

Despite all of this, I do and will continue to work in high fashion. The profession, despite its challenges, has offered me amazing experiences and friendships. My trajectory has fostered connections and cultivated resilience. But the industry has a long way to go. Adding a few curvy models to catwalks isn’t nearly enough. I long for a day when my hips, and those of many different-sized women, fit into couture dresses – for the sake of the models, but also young women everywhere.

 

 In the UK, Beat can be contacted on 0808-801-0677. In the US, help is available at nationaleatingdisorders.org or by calling ANAD’s eating disorders hotline at 800-375-7767. In Australia, the Butterfly Foundation is at 1800 33 4673. Other international helplines can be found at Eating Disorder Hope

This article is more than 5 months old

Fashion experts raise concern about return to ‘extremely thin models’

This article is more than 5 months old

Data shows reverse in trend towards inclusivity, with 95% of looks in 208 recent shows modelled by size-zero women

 

Chloe Mac Donnell

Fri 11 Oct 2024 12.51 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2024/oct/11/fashion-experts-raise-concern-about-return-to-using-extremely-thin-models

 

Fashion insiders have expressed concerns that previous progress made towards size inclusivity in the industry is being curtailed.

 

Vogue Business released its spring/summer ‘25 size inclusivity report on Tuesday and said: “We are facing a worrying return to using extremely thin models” with “a plateau in size inclusivity efforts across New York, London, Milan and Paris”.

 

Of the 8,763 looks presented across 208 shows in the womenswear collections earlier this month, 94.9% were shown on straight-size models who measure between a US size 0-4 (the equivalent of a UK 4-8). Only 0.8% of models were plus-size, also known as curve (UK 18+), and 4.3% were mid-size (UK 10-16). In Milan, 98% of looks were shown on straight-size models, and Vogue Business said some mid-size figures were skewed by co-ed brands that featured menswear looks modelled by muscular men.

 

“It feels like we’ve taken 10 steps backwards,” said Anna Shillinglaw, the founder of the model agency Milk Management.

 

Thin models have always dominated the catwalks, but in more recent years a wider range of body types had started to be included. Jill Kortleve made headlines at Chanel in 2000 when she became the first model above a UK 8 to be cast in a decade. In another landmark moment for inclusive casting, British Vogue featured Kortleve alongside the plus-size models Paloma Elsesser and Precious Lee on its April 2023 cover with the headline “The New Supers”.

 

Eighteen months later, however, the fashion industry has pivoted, with several insiders lamenting a new resistance to inclusivity.

 

“I now feel that some of the higher-end designers looked at curvier women more as a fad in fashion rather than something that is real life,” Shillinglaw said, noting that the average dress size in Britain is a 16.

 

Chanel included some mid-size and plus-size models this season, but other luxury brands did not. Instead, it was left to emerging brands, including Karoline Vitto in London and Ester Manas in Paris, to bolster body diversity.

 

Chloe Rosolek, a London-based casting director, said the elimination of bigger-sized bodies from the major brands was baffling: “It’s so strange to just pretend that a whole group of people don’t exist.”

 

There is a wider cultural mainstreaming of thinness because of drugs such as Ozempic, originally developed to treat diabetes, being co-opted for weight loss by Hollywood and beyond. Vogue Business describes it as “the glamorisation of thinness”.

 

As celebrities and influencers shrink, even straight-size models are feeling pressure to maintain their measurements or lose inches. “There’s been a decrease in size across the board and that includes already straight-size models,” Rosolek said. “A lot of models that used to be plus-size are now mid-size.”

 

Kering, the parent company of brands including Gucci and Balenciaga, and LVMH, which includes Louis Vuitton and Dior, joined forces in 2017 with a charter to protect models’ wellbeing. It resulted in a ban on size zero and under-16 models from their shows.

 

Kering raised its minimum age to 18 in 2019, but its main rivals including LVMH have not followed suit. This season in Milan, Sunday Rose Kidman Urban, the 16-year-old daughter of Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, opened the Miu Miu show, while according to the fashion database Models.com, several top-ranking models were under 21 and size zero.

 

Many models are naturally thin and and find themselves being unfairly thin-shamed. But just like ballet’s “Balanchine” body, the model industry has a reputation for creating unrealistic and unhealthy ideals. There are still many ultra-thin and unwell models being booked.

 

Emily McGrail, a 21-year-old model from Manchester, has been sharing her experience of working in Milan, where she attended castings for shows including Prada, on TikTok. After she failed to get any work, she was advised to lose a centimetre from her hips. “I looked around at the other models and I just felt like I didn’t deserve to be there,” she told the Guardian. “In comparison I felt ‘fat’. Technically, for my height and age I would be considered underweight but looking around at these girls I did feel big.”

 

James Scully, a former casting director, said: “We’ve gone back to the way things were 10 years ago. These models are just serving a purpose. They’re not here to bring any kind of character or joy or sell anything. They’re back to being a clothes hanger.”

Critic’s Notebook

Why Ultrathin Is In

 

When it comes to fashion models, the body diversity revolution appears to be at an end.

 

Vanessa Friedman

By Vanessa Friedman

Published March 20, 2025

Updated March 21, 2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/style/ultra-thin-models.html?searchResultPosition=1

 

Earlier this month, I was standing backstage at the Schiaparelli show in Paris talking to the designer Daniel Roseberry about his collection and the way he had used trompe l’oeil — bigger shoulders, neoprene padding at the hips — to create an hourglass figure.

 

“Like this?” I asked, pointing to a model in a gown accessorized with what resembled shelflike hip bones.

 

“Oh, well, not that one,” Mr. Roseberry said. “Those are actually her hips.” Her bones were more than prominent enough, all on their own.

 

Of all the trends at the fall runway shows, including the uptick in fur (or fur-alike) clothing, the rise of clothing with built-in power curves and the preponderance of black leather, the single most ubiquitous one was the worst: the erosion of size inclusivity.

 

Ironically, as fashion embraces (and creates) faux womanly figures by design, the actual bodies inside the clothes are shrinking. After reaching a peak in 2021, when Paloma Elsesser became the first plus-size model to appear on the cover of American Vogue, body diversity has taken a clear downward trajectory, decreasing pretty much every season.

 

“The pendulum went one way, and now it’s swinging full force the other way,” said David Bonnouvrier, a founder of DNA Model Management.

 

According to the Vogue Business fall 2025 size inclusivity report, of 8,703 looks in 198 shows and presentations, only 2 percent were midsize (defined as U.S. size 6 to 12) and only 0.3 percent were plus-size. (Plus-size and midsize models are also known as “curve models.”) This was worse than the representation in the spring shows, which took place in September and October and included 0.8 percent plus-size looks and 4 percent midsize.

 

Indeed, data from Tagwalk, the fashion search engine, reveals that in the last show season, 16 percent fewer collections included even one curve model compared with the preceding season. Of the 20 most viewed shows, only four included three such models: Hermès (out of 61 total looks), Givenchy (out of 52), Coach (45) and Marni (41). Three!

 

“Change starts from the top, and the top is the top 20 most viewed and most searched brands,” said Alexandra Van Houtte, the founder of TagWalk. Where they lead, others follow. And apparently, this time it was backward.

 

Case in point: Nina Ricci, a label that under the designer Harris Reed has been known for its inclusivity, featured only one midsize model — out of 38. By contrast, Mr. Reed’s debut Nina Ricci show, in March 2023, opened with Precious Lee, a plus-size model, and included three more plus-size women in the show.

 

When asked about the change, a spokeswoman for Nina Ricci said that competition for the limited number of curve models meant that the label wasn’t able to book them early enough to allow runway samples to be tailored to their bodies. Nonetheless, she said, size diversity “continues to be an important subject for us.”

 

The issue is not simply that there are fewer curve models on the runway; the thin models seem to be getting thinner. Even in a world that has long prized the idea of bodies as coat hangers, there were more visible rib cages, jutting collarbones and daisy chains of vertebrae than have been seen since the concept of BMI and model health was introduced by the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 2012. Given the documented connection between social media and eating disorders, especially among young people — and the way runway shows have become a mass form of public entertainment — such images have potentially dangerous repercussions.

 

Hillary Taymour, the founder and designer of Collina Strada, one of the few labels in New York to include plus-size as well as midsize models in its shows (having done so since its first show in 2017), blamed Ozempic and other weight-loss drugs for the phenomenon.

 

“All the plus-size girls went to midsize because of Ozempic, and all the midsize girls went to standard size,” Ms. Taymour said. “Everyone’s on it. It’s a drug that has created a skinnier industry and a new trend that skinnier and skinnier is better.”

 

It is true that the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of Wegovy for weight loss in 2021 coincided with the shrinking runway trend. However, Mr. Bonnouvrier of DNA Models said he believed something deeper was going on — that the swing away from body diversity was part of a general swing away from social progressivism.

 

“As much as anything, this is a cultural conversation,” Mr. Bonnouvrier said. With respect to model inclusivity, he said, brands “are walking away because of what is going on in the United States.”

 

Sara Ziff, the founder of the Model Alliance, an organization that champions models’ rights, agreed. Extreme thinness among models is “not really new — this kind of thing is cyclical,” she said. But this time around, she added, “it seems to echo the current political climate.”

 

“It’s frustrating to see the industry take a step back,” Ms. Ziff said. “When those on the creative side of fashion could be using their platform to share progressive values, it seems like many are acquiescing rather than pushing back.”

 

Peer pressure to diversify the runway in the wake of the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements led to a noticeable shift in conceptions of beauty, Mr. Bonnouvrier said. But with D.E.I. now under scrutiny as part of the Trump administration’s war on wokeness, its fashion expression, including diversity of size, is under pressure. A retreat to the most conservative and traditional approach for showcasing clothes means a retreat to old-fashioned stereotypes of beauty. And that generally translates to homogenous, largely white and thin models, despite the fact that such body types are not representative of the fashion-buying population at large.

 

As Ms. Taymour said, there’s a good business case to be made for demonstrating clearly that you “relate to all types of your customer base,” including all sizes. Sarah Burton, the new creative director of Givenchy and the former creative director of Alexander McQueen, said much the same, noting that she wanted Givenchy “to celebrate the multiplicity, beauty and strength of womanhood, free of narrow definitions of how we should look or see ourselves.”

 

Yet the trend continues to move in the opposite direction.

 

Mr. Bonnouvrier does not expect the trend to change anytime soon. “We feel like the door is closing, slowly but surely,” he said.

 

A correction was made on March 21, 2025: An earlier version of this article misidentified the drug that the Food and Drug Administration approved for weight loss in 2021. It is Wegovy, not Ozempic. (The F.D.A. approved Ozempic, another semaglutide injection, as a treatment for Type 2 diabetes in 2017.)

When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more

 

Vanessa Friedman has been the fashion director and chief fashion critic for The Times since 2014. More about Vanessa Friedman

Classic British Cars - Made in Coventry - BBC British Documentary / ALVIS starts at 10:26./ Revived company: Historic British brand Alvis returns with continuation cars.

Revived company

In 2012 Alvis announced it would offer five variants of its cars.These included both 4.3 litre and 3 litre chassis derivatives. In 2019, a sixth model was released to coincide with the agreement for Meiji Sangyo to be the distributor for Asia.

 

In 2021, the firm was featured in the BBC Four documentary Classic British Cars: Made in Coventry and released its Graber Super Coupe continuation car, with a convertible version due out in 2022.

 

Historic British brand Alvis returns with continuation cars

Viknesh Vijayenthiran Viknesh Vijayenthiran July 25, 2019

Historic British brand Alvis, founded in 1919 and at one point the employer of Alec Issigonis, the designer of the original Mini, is back building beauties as part of a continuation series of cars.

https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1124203_historic-british-brand-alvis-returns-with-continuation-cars

 

The original passenger arm of Alvis (there was also production of military vehicles and race cars) ceased production in 1967 and transferred all assets the following year to a company known as Red Triangle, which was started by several former employees and to this day is focused on parts, servicing and restoration of existing Alvis cars.

 

However, Red Triangle in 2009 sold the rights to the Alvis name and some of the intellectual property to a new entity, the Alvis Car Company, which the following year started churning out Alvis continuation cars, in some cases using original chassis and engines stored safely for over 50 years.

 

The modern Alvis has now extended its range of continuation cars. It is offering six body styles based on two chassis, known as the 3-Litre and 4.3-Litre, with the cars built according to original factory blueprints. The chassis names refer to the engines they feature, in both cases naturally aspirated inline-6 units.

 

The cars include both pre- and post-World War II cars, though only the post-war cars feature original chassis. Those based on the 3-Litre chassis include the Park Ward Drop Head, Graber Super Coupe and Graber Super Cabriolet, while those based on the 4.3-Liter chassis include the Vanden Plas Tourer, Bertelli Coupe and Lancefield Concealed Hood. The time it takes to build one of the cars can stretch up to 5,000 hours.

 

“Our models are, literally, what Alvis would have created had it not halted production for over 50 years,” said Alan Stote, owner of the modern Alvis. “The factory had planned to build 150 4.3-Litre chassis in 1938. As the site suffered serious damage by bombing in 1940, only 73 chassis were completed so we will continue that series, with new chassis, built to the original drawings.”

 

We should point out that some changes have been implemented to meet modern emissions and crash safety regulations. Some of the cars can also be ordered with automatic transmissions, power steering, climate control, and audio systems. Buyers can also opt for a three-piece Alvis luggage set lined in Connolly leather.

 

In an interesting twist, Alvis has just signed a deal with Meiji Sangyo for distribution of its continuation cars in Japan. The Tokyo-based company was the same distributor for Alvis cars back in the 1950s.

https://thealviscarcompany.co.uk/

 

The Continuation Series

The Alvis Car Company are manufacturing to special order a limited number of famous Alvis models. They are faithful to the original design and by using our Works Drawings from the period they retain all their traditional character and quality, yet are emission compliant. The cars carry Alvis chassis numbers and engine numbers which follow on from the last in the model sequence, which is why they have been designated the Continuation Series.

 

Meet the Alvis continuation series – a storied name in British motoring history is back

 

The Alvis name is more than a century old yet you can still order a factory-fresh model from its impressive back catalogue, thanks to the survival of its unique archive

 

https://www.wallpaper.com/art/bmw-celebrates-half-a-century-of-its-pioneering-art-car-project-with-exhibitions-and-more

 

‘The Alvis name is known mostly only to car nerds. People under 50 may have heard of it but won’t know much about it,’ concedes Alan Stote, the current custodian of the Alvis name and the man behind its revival. ‘I don’t think that’s a bad thing,’ he adds. ‘People are looking for difference now. They want to be seen to have made an unusual choice.’

 

An Alvis is certainly an unusual choice given modern sensibilities. However, it is more than this fabled difference that explains a readiness to spend upwards of £325,000 on a hand-built ‘modern’ Alvis. The newly revived company – which last built a car in 1967 – has so far made ten, with two under construction and a third on order, enough to keep it busy until sometime in 2026.

 

Established in 1919 by Thomas George John and renamed the Alvis Car and Engineering Company in 1921, the firm evolved from making engines and components to become a luxurious car maker, relying on coachbuilders to create the bodywork for its innovative underpinnings. In its heyday, it was said to rival the other major British luxury carmaker of the time, Rolls-Royce. Among its most famous models in the 1930s were the exotic art seco-era Bertelli Sports Coupe, the Vanden Plas Tourer and the Lancefield Concealed Hood.

 

It was Alvis that invented the first independent front suspension, the first front-wheel drive cars, and the first all-synchromesh gearbox. The flying ace Douglas Bader drove an Alvis, as did Benjamin Britten and the Duke of Edinburgh. And so, more recently, did auto parts entrepreneur and pre-war car collector Stote.

 

After Alvis ceased production in 1967, there remained a small repair and servicing business for its select owners. But what drew Stote to acquire the name 30 years ago was a love of history and a desire to preserve it: remarkably, Alvis’ archive was complete since inception and remained in one place, in Kenilworth, near Coventry. That included not just 25,000 original engineering drawings but a large, mothballed inventory of components, including over 30 complete and unused engines. The rebirth of Alvis was plotted.

 

‘As repair and servicing jobs gradually got harder and more complex [depending on what other mechanics had done to the cars over the years], building a new car was in many ways easier and more predictable, especially when you have all the components,’ Stote explains. ‘Other companies have of course got into the business of completely remodelling vintage cars. I concluded it had to be a better job if it was done by the original OEM.’

 

Stote stresses that the ‘new’ Alvis cars are not rebuilds or replicas but are part of a new kind of 'continuation series', as he calls it. Just don’t expect – like a new Rolls-Royce – the most high-tech of vehicles; some of the new Alvis cars will still be powered by a 4.3 litre in-line six-cylinder engine designed by the company in 1936.

 

Today, buyers can specify one of several continuation models, spanning decades of Alvis’ history. From the 4.3 litre-powered Vanden Plas Tourer to the smooth lines of the 1935 Bertelli Sports Coupe and the Lancefield ‘concealed hood’ model, to the post-war Park Ward Drop Head Coupe and Graber Coupe/Cabriolet, Alvis exists in a distinct and rarefied place, hand-building new cars using the same methods as they used 90 years ago. ‘I’ve been very pleased by the relaunch, but actually Alvis really made it easy for me, because everything was already there,’ says Stote. ‘I just had to take it on.’

 

Josh Sims

Josh Sims is a journalist contributing to the likes of The Times, Esquire and the BBC. He's the author of many books on style, including Retro Watches (Thames & Hudson).