Jonathan Meades

A Lot of Sky

I thought Max Beerbohm’s dictum that premature greyness is the sign of a charlatan was a generalisation born of a particular dislike till I flew by Royal Air Maroc. Now I see that he must have suffered some experience peculiarly precursive of mine on flight 914 B, Tangiers to London. Two dozen or so of us got on to the already crowded plane. I sat at the back beside a septuagenarian cockney called George. He had very little hair, but what he had was impeccably Reaganed, it shone like a prize rook. It was most unlike the hair in the three rows ahead of us. This belonged to twelve or so men travelling together and was strikingly homogeneous – it was the colour of dirty snow and it lay on top of faces not half as old as George’s.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • The mystery of Jack the Ripper's identity has long been agonised over. But what do we know about his victims?… ,
    • A piece of Literary Review history from way back in 1983: John Haffenden talks to the great Iris Murdoch. ,
    • Britain’s only travelling lit fest, the Garden Museum Literary Festival is heading to Houghton Hall, Norfolk, for a… ,
    • 'The 19th-century German sage is not my idea of a pleasant travel companion' goes hiking with Friedr… ,
    • If you want ideas about what to read next, sign up to our free email newsletter, and get book reviews, archive mate… ,
    • 'The heroic male nude could not, I think, be used today to signify civic pride and glory', as Michelangelo’s 'David… ,
    • 'Munch’s later works show us a man liberated from the torments that gave rise to some of the best-known early works… ,
    Follow Us