All
Change at Longleat review – there’s nothing like watching poshos
feuding in their natural habitat
This documentary
about the Marquess of Bath’s handover of his £190m estate to his
son Ceawlin had a family on a ‘British ranch’ pumping privilege
instead of oil
All Change at
Longleat
Lucy Mangan
Tuesday 15 September 2015 07.09 BST /
http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/sep/15/all-change-at-longleat-tv-review
You can read about
mad poshos all you want, and I do – Nancy Mitford novels, Evelyn
Waugh, anything with Harold Nicolson – but there’s nothing like
seeing them in their natural habitat. And so to All Change at
Longleat, BBC1’s new documentary about the gradual handover of the
£190m estate by Alexander Thynn, aka Marquess of Bath, aka the one
with the wifelets, coloured waistcoats and worse murals, and long one
of England’s most irritating eccentrics – to his son Ceawlin.
The pair are on
no-speaks, because Ceawlin – pronounced, pleasingly in this tale of
a feuding family on what is basically a British ranch pumping
privilege instead of oil, “Sue Ellen” – has removed as much of
his father’s grotesque artwork as possible from the apartments he
has taken over. Lord Bath now lives in the top flat, visited by
various wifelets, while Lady Bath spends much of her time in France.
I wouldn’t consider that nearly far enough away myself, but the
rich are indeed different.
Though this is not
mentioned in the programme, according to the papers, Sue Ellen is
also on no-speaks with his mother because – he claims, she denies
it – she objected to him marrying Emma, the daughter of a Nigerian
oil tycoon, and adulterating “the bloodline”. As Sue Ellen has no
discernible chin or forehead, I say they should all be grateful for
any new DNA they can get. Otherwise, by 2050, Longleat is going to be
full of giant noses being wheeled round by staff until they realise
they can just tip the family into the lion enclosure and take over
the place themselves. Emma herself has the gimlet eye, composure and
self-confidence that bodes well for her and Longleat’s survival
There are moments
when you almost warm to Sue Ellen. He grew up with his awful father,
the wifelets – his mother was already mostly abroad – and, of
course, those murals. Was it a happy childhood, he is asked. “Y
…aaaah,” he says uncomfortably. “Happy bits … not such happy
bits. It was what it was.” When he was very young, he says, he
envied his friends, who lived in the village. “Two-up, two-down,
ordinary parents?” his questioner suggests. “Yah,” he says,
visibly torn between truth and family loyalty. “It would have been
a very different life.”
A shame, then, that
he has chosen to hike village rents, formerly subsidised by the
estate, to commercial levels, forcing many long-time residents and
farmers out. This has clearly caused more anguish and hostility than
the programme wants, or has been permitted by the family, to
acknowledge. The new liaison officer from the Longleat management
team, Michael, is sent to a village meeting, after relations with the
previous lot broke down. One resident explains that there was a great
lack of communication between the two sides. “Mmm,” says Michael,
uncommunicatively. “Communication.” Another mentions the need for
affordable housing. “Yup,” says Michael, making a note of – you
suspect – precisely nothing on his pad. Because the rents have gone
up so much that the people working on the estate cannot afford to
live there, someone else explains. “Mmm,” says Michael.
Mmm. What is the
point of having one’s own village on one’s own essentially
self-sufficient estate, if one cannot use it to avoid having to do
shitty things to one’s fellow human beings? Is that not the minimum
price to be paid for privilege? If we’re still going to have lords
with tenants-for-life on their land, if we’re still going to have
70% of the country owned by the 160,000 families who found themselves
on the right side of history in 1067 (as we do), then can’t we –
at the very least – keep the noblesse oblige element too? Or must
the Thynn family and their ilk wax ever fatter?
Sex,
feuds, a barmy aristo... how did the Beeb make this so boring? :
CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night's TV
By CHRISTOPHER
STEVENS FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 00:58
GMT, 15 September 2015 /
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3234669/Sex-feuds-barmy-aristo-did-Beeb-make-boring-CHRISTOPHER-STEVENS-reviews-night-s-TV.html
This ought to be a
godsend for any documentary maker. England’s most flamboyant and
eccentric aristocrat invites you into his stately home, the backdrop
for gargantuan feuds and sexual extravaganzas.
He offers access to
the mansion’s most secret corners. His heir co-operates with
enthusiasm, even though father and son are not actually talking.
And if this
extraordinary upper-class soap opera isn’t enthralling enough,
there are lions and hippos outside the window. And Neko, a
53-year-old gorilla, so magnificently disdainful that he deserves a
seat in the Lords himself.
We were hauled into
a Horningsham parish meeting, where villagers were sounding off and
the estates manager was dutifully writing things down in a notebook.
The last ten minutes
were spent dragging round Horningsham fete. Even Lord Bath, slumped
in a deckchair, looked bored out of his skull.
This was dire stuff.
And yet the good material was there, just waiting to be plucked. The
documentary started with a look inside Lord Bath’s ‘penthouse’,
an annexe at the top of Longleat House where the 83-year-old peer
retreats and refuses to emerge when his wife is at home.
He showed off his
office, an antique desk onto which several binbags of paper had
apparently been emptied. ‘This is the urgent section,’ he
explained, indicating a heap of documents under a fruit bowl.
Lord Bath has been
on the frostiest of terms with his son ever since the boy and his new
bride moved back into Longleat and dismantled one of his famous
murals.
It’s hard to blame
Ceawlin: the wall paintings are done in oils, an inch thick, and they
stink — literally and artistically. Many of them are obscene beyond
description, too.
But it’s also hard
to blame the Marquess for feeling so outraged. Ceawlin and Emma have
replaced the murals with shiny gold wallpaper. If once the rooms
looked like a Moroccan drugs den, now they seem to be modelled on an
Indian restaurant in Bromley.
With his taste for
the psychedelic and surreal, Lord Bath would have enjoyed Britain As
Seen On ITV (ITV) which felt like nostalgia on LSD.
Of all the weird
snippets discovered in the telly archives, nothing was stranger than
the sight of a very young Richard Madeley in bow tie and tuxedo,
sashaying down a staircase at a nightclub in Leeds to interview Marc
Almond of Soft Cell about the New Romantic fad for lace and mascara
on boys.
Compilations like
these are dependent on their researchers. An obsession with the
bizarre and a twisted sense of humour are essential, and someone here
has those qualities in sackfuls.
We saw a Sixties
news report about a school for trainee rock ’n’ rollers, run by a
trouper from the music halls, and Swedish guitar teacher Ulf, who had
his own morning show in the Seventies.
There were singing
milkmen, a Wurlitzer organ in a car showroom, and a disco dancing
contest with lotharios in gold lamé.
Mostly culled from
local news, TV reports like these always did feature eccentrics and
oddities. A few decades on, just like Lord Bath, they look even
nuttier.
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