How to win at the races
The three-month long canter through the English summer, often known as ‘the season’, is eternal. Unchanging. A dance card of around 10 events that opens with the oily, childhood smell of car rugs being unfolded beside the ha-ha at Glyndebourne and furious traffic jams building up around the Chelsea Flower Show, and ends with an efflorescence of fireworks over the harbour at Cowes.
Clarissa Dalloway would have recognised it. So, in its earlier incarnations, would Becky Sharpe or Phineas Finn. The satirist and chronicler of the early 18th-century court, Jonathan Swift, was there at the start. In a way, the season is a palimpsest, a set of modern, highly professional sporting and cultural occasions through which can be glimpsed the fluttering remnants of a world that existed to entertain and perpetuate a ruling class.
I recently spent a summer going to each one of its occasions, for my new book The Season. And it was a fascinating, colourful, eccentric journey through a national institution – and our history.
Queen Anne led the charge – quite literally, as the idea for building Ascot racecourse (1711) came to her while thundering across the Heath with her buckhounds. The Hanovers added a Germanic note of culture and sobriety when George III sanctioned the founding of the Royal Academy in 1768 and its Summer Exhibition a year later. Eleven years later the Earl of Derby dreamt up his eponymous race and luckily won the toss over whose name it was to bear: the other chap, a Sir Charles Bunbury.
Each century, a handful of new events joins the fray: Wimbledon in the 19th, Glyndebourne in the 20th, the Goodwood Revival, it could be argued, in the 21st.
The season survives because it mutates, like a particularly e cient bacterium. Its genius is to look utterly familiar when in fact it is changing all the time. And it has quite an extraordinary history. So if you think you know all about it, look again. You might 1 be surprised.
1 HOW ASCOT PUT BLACK ON THE FASHION MAP
When Cecil Beaton produced his sensational monochrome costumes for the stage show and film of My Fair Lady – remember Audrey yelling her Cockney head off while looking like an Edwardian goddess toting a frilled parasol? – he wasn’t working in isolation. He was inspired by Black Ascot in 1910, just after the death of King Edward VII, when instead of the Royal Meeting being cancelled because of the regal demise, it was decided it would go ahead, but in full mourning. Everyone had to swap their existing toilettes for shades of obsidian, pitch and jet, the Mayfair dressmakers went into overdrive and they all ended up looking a million dollars (or guineas, perhaps) especially when photographed for the new rash of illustrated magazines. The late King would have loved it. And it put black firmly on the fashion map.
2 CROSSING THE LINE: THE ROYAL ACADEMY HANG
There’s not quite blood on the dance floor, but there can be heated discussions among the Royal Academicians in charge of the Summer Exhibition hang. As you stroll past the thousand or so works of art on display, spare a thought for the committee that decides which of up to 12,000 submissions should reach these hallowed walls.
Works are perched on a swivel stool said to have belonged to Sir Joshua Reynolds, the Academy’s first president, before being marked ‘X’ for reject or a ‘D’ for doubtful. The Doubtfuls ascend to the galleries for final judgement. Crucial to it all is ‘the line’. Now imaginary, the line is roughly at eye level, but the concept dates back to the Renaissance.
In earlier galleries it was marked by a dado rail. Artists wanted their work to sit just above or just below it to catch the most attention. Nobody wanted to be ‘skied’ or end up by a skirting board.
Too right – even today.
3 THE STRANGE TALE OF THE COWES CANNON
The castle dominating the headland at West Cowes on the Isle of Wight is a closely guarded fortress – home to the Royal Yacht Squadron, which has a strictly limited number of members – but anyone can stroll around the bottom of its fortifications and admire the fringe of 21 miniature brass cannons bristling out to sea. The cannons are key to the running of the annual regatta known as Cowes Week because they are used as signalling guns for the onshore races. Their loud bangs and mini puffs of smoke are one of the features of the event, causing around 4,000 yachtsmen to lunge for the start line during the week’s numerous races.
But they started life on a scaleddown ship that King William IV – Queen Victoria’s uncle, often known as the Sailor King – used to command on Virginia Water, the lake created in the southeast corner of Windsor Great Park for the amusement of the Georgians.
4 A FAMOUS PUB WITH FORESIGHT: THE DERBY'S WINNING SECRET
The new managers at the Amato pub in Epsom, Surrey – named after a freak Derby winner that came in at 30 to 1 having never raced before (he never raced again, either) – have had a peaceful Derby week, owing to their new phone number. Late every May the pub on Chalk Lane is deluged with calls and emails from across the world, due to the mysterious manifestation of the name of the supposed winner on its well, chalked up during the night the week before the race. It is rumoured (incorrectly) to be right six out of every 10 times and thought to be the work of the horse-savvy Travellers who arrive for the races each year. The Travellers have been setting up their encampment inside the racecourse on Epsom Downs for as long as anyone can remember, originally doing various jobs around the course and horsetrading. Today, families come for a week or two’s holiday and the men spend much time betting ferociously on a game called Spin The Penny – Two-Up, if you’re Aussie – using polished George VI pennies. Betting on horses? You’ve got to be joking. It’s a mug’s game.
5 ONE LITTLE PONY: AND WHY WIMBLEDON SWITCHED TO TENNIS
One of the prize exhibits on any tour of the All England Lawn Tennis Club at Wimbledon is a charming, if puzzling, lawn roller. In the days when the club was all about croquet, this was pulled by a pony wearing rubber boots and it was used to keep the grass flat. This was so that people could smack each other’s croquet balls to kingdom come with deadly accuracy. When tennis became fashionable in the last quarter of the 19th century and the club expanded, the roller broke under the strain and one of the club’s regular donors suggested having a tennis tournament to raise money for its repair. The winner of the first Men’s Singles title was a modest, 27-year-old former Harrovian racquets player, who was sure the game would never catch on.
The Season: A Summer Whirl Through The English Social Season by Sophie Campbell (Aurum Press, £20).
Until 25 August. Near Lewes, East Sussex: 01273- 815000, www.glyndebourne.com
ROYAL ACADEMY SUMMER EXHIBITION
10 June to 18 August. Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1: 020-7300 8000, www.royalacademy.org.uk
ROYAL ASCOT
18 to 22 June. Ascot Racecourse, Berkshire: 0844-346 3000, www.ascot.co.uk
THE CHAMPIONSHIPS WIMBLEDON
24 June to 7 July. Merton, Surrey: 020-8971 2473, www.wimbledon.com/championships
HENLEY ROYAL REGATTA
3 to 7 July. Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire: 01491-572153, www.hrr.co.uk
AUDI INTERNATIONAL POLO
28 July. Guards Polo Club, Smiths Lawn, Windsor Great Park, Egham, Surrey: 01784-437797, www.guardspoloclub.com
GLORIOUS GOODWOOD
30 July to 3 August. West Sussex: 01243- 755055, www.goodwood.co.uk
COWES WEEK
3 to 10 August. Isle of Wight: 01983- 295744, www.aamcowesweek.co.uk
BURGHLEY HORSE TRIALS
5 to 8 September. Stamford, Lincolnshire: 01780- 752131, www.burghley-horse.co.uk
Clarissa Dalloway would have recognised it. So, in its earlier incarnations, would Becky Sharpe or Phineas Finn. The satirist and chronicler of the early 18th-century court, Jonathan Swift, was there at the start. In a way, the season is a palimpsest, a set of modern, highly professional sporting and cultural occasions through which can be glimpsed the fluttering remnants of a world that existed to entertain and perpetuate a ruling class.
I recently spent a summer going to each one of its occasions, for my new book The Season. And it was a fascinating, colourful, eccentric journey through a national institution – and our history.
Queen Anne led the charge – quite literally, as the idea for building Ascot racecourse (1711) came to her while thundering across the Heath with her buckhounds. The Hanovers added a Germanic note of culture and sobriety when George III sanctioned the founding of the Royal Academy in 1768 and its Summer Exhibition a year later. Eleven years later the Earl of Derby dreamt up his eponymous race and luckily won the toss over whose name it was to bear: the other chap, a Sir Charles Bunbury.
Each century, a handful of new events joins the fray: Wimbledon in the 19th, Glyndebourne in the 20th, the Goodwood Revival, it could be argued, in the 21st.
The season survives because it mutates, like a particularly e cient bacterium. Its genius is to look utterly familiar when in fact it is changing all the time. And it has quite an extraordinary history. So if you think you know all about it, look again. You might 1 be surprised.
1 HOW ASCOT PUT BLACK ON THE FASHION MAP
When Cecil Beaton produced his sensational monochrome costumes for the stage show and film of My Fair Lady – remember Audrey yelling her Cockney head off while looking like an Edwardian goddess toting a frilled parasol? – he wasn’t working in isolation. He was inspired by Black Ascot in 1910, just after the death of King Edward VII, when instead of the Royal Meeting being cancelled because of the regal demise, it was decided it would go ahead, but in full mourning. Everyone had to swap their existing toilettes for shades of obsidian, pitch and jet, the Mayfair dressmakers went into overdrive and they all ended up looking a million dollars (or guineas, perhaps) especially when photographed for the new rash of illustrated magazines. The late King would have loved it. And it put black firmly on the fashion map.
2 CROSSING THE LINE: THE ROYAL ACADEMY HANG
There’s not quite blood on the dance floor, but there can be heated discussions among the Royal Academicians in charge of the Summer Exhibition hang. As you stroll past the thousand or so works of art on display, spare a thought for the committee that decides which of up to 12,000 submissions should reach these hallowed walls.
Works are perched on a swivel stool said to have belonged to Sir Joshua Reynolds, the Academy’s first president, before being marked ‘X’ for reject or a ‘D’ for doubtful. The Doubtfuls ascend to the galleries for final judgement. Crucial to it all is ‘the line’. Now imaginary, the line is roughly at eye level, but the concept dates back to the Renaissance.
In earlier galleries it was marked by a dado rail. Artists wanted their work to sit just above or just below it to catch the most attention. Nobody wanted to be ‘skied’ or end up by a skirting board.
Too right – even today.
3 THE STRANGE TALE OF THE COWES CANNON
The castle dominating the headland at West Cowes on the Isle of Wight is a closely guarded fortress – home to the Royal Yacht Squadron, which has a strictly limited number of members – but anyone can stroll around the bottom of its fortifications and admire the fringe of 21 miniature brass cannons bristling out to sea. The cannons are key to the running of the annual regatta known as Cowes Week because they are used as signalling guns for the onshore races. Their loud bangs and mini puffs of smoke are one of the features of the event, causing around 4,000 yachtsmen to lunge for the start line during the week’s numerous races.
But they started life on a scaleddown ship that King William IV – Queen Victoria’s uncle, often known as the Sailor King – used to command on Virginia Water, the lake created in the southeast corner of Windsor Great Park for the amusement of the Georgians.
4 A FAMOUS PUB WITH FORESIGHT: THE DERBY'S WINNING SECRET
The new managers at the Amato pub in Epsom, Surrey – named after a freak Derby winner that came in at 30 to 1 having never raced before (he never raced again, either) – have had a peaceful Derby week, owing to their new phone number. Late every May the pub on Chalk Lane is deluged with calls and emails from across the world, due to the mysterious manifestation of the name of the supposed winner on its well, chalked up during the night the week before the race. It is rumoured (incorrectly) to be right six out of every 10 times and thought to be the work of the horse-savvy Travellers who arrive for the races each year. The Travellers have been setting up their encampment inside the racecourse on Epsom Downs for as long as anyone can remember, originally doing various jobs around the course and horsetrading. Today, families come for a week or two’s holiday and the men spend much time betting ferociously on a game called Spin The Penny – Two-Up, if you’re Aussie – using polished George VI pennies. Betting on horses? You’ve got to be joking. It’s a mug’s game.
5 ONE LITTLE PONY: AND WHY WIMBLEDON SWITCHED TO TENNIS
One of the prize exhibits on any tour of the All England Lawn Tennis Club at Wimbledon is a charming, if puzzling, lawn roller. In the days when the club was all about croquet, this was pulled by a pony wearing rubber boots and it was used to keep the grass flat. This was so that people could smack each other’s croquet balls to kingdom come with deadly accuracy. When tennis became fashionable in the last quarter of the 19th century and the club expanded, the roller broke under the strain and one of the club’s regular donors suggested having a tennis tournament to raise money for its repair. The winner of the first Men’s Singles title was a modest, 27-year-old former Harrovian racquets player, who was sure the game would never catch on.
The Season: A Summer Whirl Through The English Social Season by Sophie Campbell (Aurum Press, £20).
DATES FOR THIS YEAR'S DIARY
GLYN DEBOURNE OPERA FESTIVALUntil 25 August. Near Lewes, East Sussex: 01273- 815000, www.glyndebourne.com
ROYAL ACADEMY SUMMER EXHIBITION
10 June to 18 August. Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1: 020-7300 8000, www.royalacademy.org.uk
ROYAL ASCOT
18 to 22 June. Ascot Racecourse, Berkshire: 0844-346 3000, www.ascot.co.uk
THE CHAMPIONSHIPS WIMBLEDON
24 June to 7 July. Merton, Surrey: 020-8971 2473, www.wimbledon.com/championships
HENLEY ROYAL REGATTA
3 to 7 July. Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire: 01491-572153, www.hrr.co.uk
AUDI INTERNATIONAL POLO
28 July. Guards Polo Club, Smiths Lawn, Windsor Great Park, Egham, Surrey: 01784-437797, www.guardspoloclub.com
GLORIOUS GOODWOOD
30 July to 3 August. West Sussex: 01243- 755055, www.goodwood.co.uk
COWES WEEK
3 to 10 August. Isle of Wight: 01983- 295744, www.aamcowesweek.co.uk
BURGHLEY HORSE TRIALS
5 to 8 September. Stamford, Lincolnshire: 01780- 752131, www.burghley-horse.co.uk