The lost age of elegance

Jimmy McIlroy - an elegant footballer and an elegant man.

Earlier this week the footballer Jimmy McIlroy died aged 86. He was one of the great players of the 1950s. Unlike today’s sporting superstars he didn’t earn millions or live in gated mansion or own a fleet of high powered supercars. He didn’t sport a silly hairstyle or scream obscenities on the pitch when something went wrong nor did he get into drunken street brawls outside night clubs in the early hours of the morning. When he at last retired from the game he earned a living by taking up bricklaying and reporting on football for his local newspaper. McIlroy was appointed MBE in 2011 for his services to football, and Burnley’s Turf Moor ground, where he watched the team for many years after retiring, has a stand named after him.

 I saw McIlroy play on numerous occasions. He played for most of his career at Burnley, an “unfashionable” team but in those days one of the top teams of the land. He also represented his country - Northern Ireland – throughout his career. I have stood at Turf Moor or at Deepdale -  my team Preston North End’s ground - and watched McIlroy whenever Preston played Burnley and admired his skills. In those far off days to see two of the UK's greatest players and sportsmen – McIlroy and Preston’s Tom Finney -  on the same pitch was a rare privilege. It is unlikely I - or indeed anyone else - will ever have the opportunity again to see two such great talents but above all such great sportsmen and gentlemen on the same field of play. Times, in sport – as in life – have changed, and not always for the better.

In the Guardian’s obituary of McIlroy they described him as an “Elegant inside-forward who was a creative force in the remarkable Northern Ireland side of the 1950s........A perfectly balanced, highly intelligent inside-forward with masterly ball control and an ability to make the telling pass, McIlroy was quick enough on the field when he needed to be. But vulgar haste was anathema to him. He was capable of holding and shielding the ball until the right alternative showed itself, and he could beat his man with elegance and ease.....[He was] an elegant cornerstone of Burnley’s First Division title-winning side of the late 1950s and one of Northern Ireland’s greatest internationals”.

Bobby Moore "Captain extraordinary, Gentleman of all time"

receives the World Cup from the white gloved

 hands of the Queen - 

As I read the obituary, nodding in agreement with the analysis of and tribute to the man and his skills I pondered the use of the word “elegant”.......”an elegant inside forward”......”an elegant cornerstone” – and I reflected how that word seems now largely  defunct in our society, language, discourse and especially sport. According to my dictionary elegance  “is beauty that shows unusual effectiveness and simplicity. It is frequently used as a standard of tastefulness”. My dictionary gives a variety of synonyms: “stylish, graceful, tasteful, discerning, refined, sophisticated, dignified, cultivated, distinguished, classic, smart, aesthetic, lovely”. And, as I read these, I again nodded – yes, these well describe the qualities of McIlroy the footballer.  He was not (to use the described antonyms of elegance) in either his football life or his personal life “brash, coarse, crude, unrefined, vulgar, uncouth, unsophisticated, unpolished, uncultured, uncultivated, or graceless”. No, Jimmy McIlroy was a pleasure to watch, he made the game look so easy and strode the pitch like a gentleman at all times. He could glide past the lunging tackles of some lumbering centre half and seemed to do it all without breaking into sweat. In today’s terms, I suppose, he was the epitome of “cool”, always in control, never rushed. When his team scored there was no vulgar display of the affected tribal triumphalism complete with moronic celebrations that we witness at today's football matches. Nor was there the venom or display of anger, frustration, or shrieked obscenity to the opposition or the referee when something went wrong.  Jimmy McIlroy like my Preston hero Tom Finney, was a gentleman both on the pitch and off it.

I suppose the last sportsmen (and I choose my word carefully here to include all sports not only football whose brashness, vulgarity and crudity we see splashed weekly in our newspapers and on our TV sets) that I could describe as elegant and  gentlemanly were Bobby Charlton, Bobby Moore and Argentina & Tottenham Hotspur player Osvaldo Ardiles. No one else comes even close. When England last won the World Cup in 1966 it was at the end of that Final that one of the great and gracious moments of football and sporting history occurred - and which gave an insight into the persona of England’s captain Bobby Moore. And it didn’t occur on the pitch. In the heady excitement of the victory, with a hundred thousand people in the stadium and millions throughout the world shouting and cheering, Moore, like every other player in the pitch, was exhausted and on a high. He climbed the Wembley steps leading his team to receive the Cup – the greatest footballing trophy in the world and approached the Queen.  He held out his hands to receive the Cup but then stopped momentarily. He noticed that the Queen was wearing white gloves – immediately, he bent down and wiped his muddy hands on the table cloth so that he did not dirty her gloves. Such was the man – the perfect embodiment of Rudyard Kipling’s “If”: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs..........If you can walk with kings and not lose the common touch......” That in a nutshell is elegant: stylish, refined, tasteful! What a far cry from the obscenities, anger, scowling faces and mindlessness that occurs on Premiership pitches today. Moore’s action fits well with any definition of “elegance” both in the way he played and the way he behaved. On the plinth under the statue of Bobby Moore at Wembley stadium are inscribed the words: “Finest legend of West Ham United. National Treasure. Master of Wembley. Lord of the game. Captain extraordinary. Gentleman of all time."  I do not see any player today being described as “Gentleman of all time” - nor do I think I will ever. When, over twenty years ago  Moore died, struck down  so young by cancer, the Guardian sports writer Hugh McIlvanney said of him “Amid the coarsening of spirit that has been manifest in this country over the past couple of decades the wider world not just the world of football grieved, for everyone knew that we had lost more than just a footballer. We had lost a great human being, a gentleman - someone who had all the human qualities: integrity, elegance, endeavour  that  we would all like our own sons and daughters to have”. Amen to that.

Basil D'Oliveira - graceful, gracious and a cricketer

who displayed "gentlemanly elegance"

How we have changed both on the sporting fields and off it. Today, we live – as Hugh McIlvanney said in his memoir of Moore -  in an age of increasing coarseness. I would find it impossible to describe any sportsman today as being “elegant” – modern sportsmen might be supreme athletes, hugely talented, strong, competitive and satisfy many other adjectives – but I fear elegance is not one. Today the Wimbledon tennis courts echo to the grunts, power, aggression and win at all costs competitiveness of muscle rippling men and women – not the elegance and court craft of someone like the supreme Rod Laver of a bygone age. Our cricket fields are populated by the big hitters, the obscene and unsportsmanlike sledging in the slips designed to put the batsman off his concentration so that the intimidating bowling can have maximum effect - its purpose to destroy the wicket and, if not, the batsman. Last week England cricket “star” Ben Stokes narrowly escaped punishment in the court following a drunken brawl outside a night club in the early hours where, it was agreed, he had “lost control” having been drinking heavily. A far cry this from fifty years ago this week in August 1968 when Basil D’Oliveira scored 158 at the Oval against Australia and became a national hero beloved, for his graceful  batting, his golden-armed seam bowling, his geniality, his bearing and, as the Guardian described him at the time, “his gentlemanly elegance”.

Sport is, and always has been, a metaphor for life and a reflection of the society that it inhabits. Look at old films of the vast crowds that went to football matches half a century and more ago and two things strike you. Firstly, everyone is dressed in ordinary clothes – suits, ties, hats. There are no immature, alcohol fuelled “men-children” that we see in the country’s stadia today, each, child like, wearing the shirt of their team and sporting the name of their favourite player. And secondly, the crowd are disciplined not today’s often alcohol fuelled and unpredictable mobs –- needing to be constantly monitored by police video cameras because of the undercurrent of violence and potentially volatile behaviour. Yes, in former days the crowd cheered and enjoyed the spectacle but in a mature manner not as you see today where these “men-children” lose control at the least thing, working themselves up into  a frenzy when a player scores or when an opposition player is guilty of some misdemeanour. And of course the players play to the baying mob who are watching them by developing their own on pitch celebrations and behaviour. And the crowd, so besotted by the occasion and so immature in character do not realise how they are being manipulated by their “heroes”.  Watch the crowd at a big cricket game now and we see what is called “the Barmy Army” – “supporters” wearing fancy dress costumes (why?) to attend what used to be the most graceful of all games. We live in an inelegant and increasingly vulgar world.

Street art in Oviedo, Spain celebrating the

town's proud history

Today’s  penchant for grossness, gracelessness and inelegance, sadly, however, goes far beyond the sports field. Nowhere is this lack of elegance and gracelessness more prevalent than in the media and especially so in social media. Read the posts on things like Facebook or other media platforms and one soon realises that expletives, vulgarity and tastelessness are endemic in modern everyday life and the contemporary mindset. Spend a few minutes flicking through the threads on any newspaper’s chat sites - even those of the "quality" broadsheets such as the Times, Telegraph or (for me) sadly the Guardian - and I guarantee that you will soon be disillusioned. Here people can, and do, show off their true persona in expletive and hate filled posts. People might, on the surface, appear to be respectable, decent and gracious but sadly, I believe, there is too often a darker side displayed within the anonymity of social media. It is often said that a "driver" for social media is that the contributor can "be anyone they want", they can be a different, more exciting person than they are in real life. I don't doubt this analysis but must also conclude that too often that manufactured persona is in fact the real embodiment of that contributor; social media  simply allows their darker side to show through. Before I retired I acted as admissions officer for young graduates applying for a place on a teacher training course. When a new application arrived in my inbox I usually scanned the internet and especially social media sites to see what I could find out about the applicant and if it fitted in with the application form in front of me. Often it did – too often it didn’t. All too often I discovered a side to the applicant's personality and lifestyle that forced me to question what I had read on their application form. The sad and worrying thing I felt was that these people clearly had no qualms about displaying to the world the seemier side of their life - their casual use of expletives, sexual innuendo or worse, aggressive/hateful comments made to anyone who angered them or disputed their posts. It didn’t necessarily stop them getting an interview but it did raise questions about their personal judgement and indeed their suitability for the teaching profession; in the end, issues of taste, graciousness, elegance are all about the personal decisions that we make in regard to both ourselves and others.

Pamplona, Spain - celebrating the town's famous

annual bull run.

The other day we went to Bath for the day. We had a wonderful day in a beautiful city that was once the most fashionable place in England – a place where the great and good of the nation (and further afield) came to take the spa waters and to see and be seen. It is a place of some of the finest architecture in the whole of the United Kingdom and a World Heritage Site – its magnificent Abbey, the Roman Baths, the Assembly and Pump Rooms and superb Georgian residences are quite unforgettable. As I sat watching the world go by in this elegant and graceful place I imagined the people who must have walked the streets before me and pondered their modern equivalents – overweight people displaying huge amounts of tattooed flesh, a man pushing a stolen supermarket trolley filled with toilet rolls each sheet decorated with the face of Donald Trump. And as he walked up and down he called out “When you need a dump s—t on Trump”.  What have we become? Is common decency like elegance also becoming in short supply in the modern world?

It seems to me that people like Jimmy McIlroy, Basil D’Oliveira, Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton had another quality that fed into their elegance at their respective sports – and that quality was a personal pride – pride in what they did, how they did it and pride in themselves. I see this in short supply today. A walk around any of our major cities (and towns and villages) will soon confirm that people no longer take a pride either in themselves or their environment. We might talk a lot about being “green” and protecting the environment – the everyday reality is different. Being environmentally friendly is not only about not using polythene bags – it’s about taking a pride in one’s environment and part of that is a pride in ourselves. Last month Pat and I spent three weeks touring northern Spain and France. Throughout that time we were again both struck by the obvious sense of personal and civic pride and respect shown by the inhabitants  for their towns and villages. Towns and cities were clean and largely litter free; walk down the street and people talked in subdued tones not the cacophony of noise that fills our own streets and public transport. Walk down any street in contemporary Britain and one can witness at first hand the lack of personal pride that people have in their appearance – anything goes, as long as it  is “comfortable” – the fact that it might be inappropriate, scruffy, lacking in taste or whatever is it seems irrelevant. I read  a few months ago that head teachers were having to send letters to parents asking them not to turn up at school in their pyjamas when bringing their children to school in the morning. Sadly,  social media was awash with posters decrying the schools for trying to insist on some measure of appropriate parental dress. 

A garish plastic robin inelegantly "celebrates" Nottingham's

proud history of Robin Hood

This is not an issue about being “posh” or wearing a tie – it’s about taste, grace and personal pride. My dad was a humble man; a long distance lorry driver all his life. He never passed an exam of any kind but my memories of him from my childhood till the day he died spoke volumes. He wasn’t posh, learnéd and he certainly wouldn’t have considered himself to be elegant. He felt very uncomfortable in situations such as going into restaurant where a knowledge of which knife and fork to use was required. But he did take a huge pride in his world and himself. Each Sunday his two pairs of overalls would be washed and he would stand and iron them ready for the week ahead. Each night his work boots would be polished to a gleaming shine. In my childhood we had no bathroom or running hot water – it all had to be boiled in a  kettle so the last thing he did before going to bed each and every night was to have a good wash and a shave – ready for the morning when the one sink and one tap in the house would be needed for others to wash in before going off to work and school. In the morning he would have a quick wash in cold water and put on his neatly knotted tie before pulling on his bright green overalls and he would be off just after 6 a.m. looking smart and ready for the day. It maybe didn’t make him a better lorry driver, but I think it did make him feel better about himself in his humble job – and still today I can hear him telling me as he did so often “You can tell what sort of a person is by looking at the shine on their shoes”. He was not wrong.  To the day he died, whenever I went to visit him and no matter how ill he was, he would always be washed, shaved, a smart crease in his trousers, tie on and polished shoes on his feet - it was a personal dignity and I suspect how he wanted me to perceive him. In short, it was a form of elegance.  We have become a very inelegant people.

Dreadful cheap plastic owls in Bath rub shoulders with 

some of the world's finest buildings

Here in Nottingham we have “brightened up” our ancient city by erecting tasteless brightly coloured plastic birds as a kind of populist street art. In Spain and other places we see wonderful, elegant works of art reflecting the city’s heritage and civic pride. Even in Bath – a place filled with some of the world’s greatest architecture the local council have seen fit to fill their streets, like Nottingham, with brightly coloured plastic owls to remind the populace of the Roman Goddess Minerva, the Goddess of wisdom and the Goddess associated with the Roman Baths in the town. But in contemporary Bath and wider Britain cheap, garish, graceless plastic birds are the memorial of choice  not something in keeping with the ancient architecture of the place. As I looked at these monstrosities against the back drop of the other elegant buildings of Bath I wondered if they comply with the “World Heritage Site” award that the city is rightly so proud of? Our modern propensity in what Shakespeare called “this sceptered isle” is to plumb the depths of tastelessness and is both spectacular and worrying.

Gracelessness and lack of elegance manifests itself in so many areas of contemporary life. I read this week a report in the New Statesman magazine in which the Washington correspondent of that magazine complained bitterly that it is virtually impossible in Washington or New York to find a restaurant in which one can eat without being bombarded by unacceptable levels of noise so loudly do people talk. I could relate to that; on Friday my wife and visited one of our local restaurants - The Dorset Arms - for a meal. We like the restaurant and love the menu but all too often the meal is ruined (as it was this week) by the loud conversation from the adjacent bar area – people with no awareness of the noise that they are making. Still on the restaurant front can I be the only person in the world who finds the huge cups of coffee served at places like Starbucks and Costa vulgar? What a pleasure it is to enjoy a coffee on the continent where it is served quietly and politely in small cups. Today’s world it seems works on the maxim “never mind the quality feel the width!” Today it is the size that matters not the tastefulness or graciousness - whether it is on the sports field or in our everyday discourse.

1952 - Preston Guild. My dad as he looked every day when he went to work. He stands proudly 2nd from the left in his green overalls, his tie and brightly shining work boots. His lorry in the picture carried part of the Canberra bomber which his company, English Electric, manufactured. He drove the lorry in the Guild procession celebrating the town's industry. 

A few weeks ago I read one of the saddest and unpleasantest reports of the decline in our graciousness as a society. It not only saddened me but angered me – both at what was reported and the fact that no-one seemed to raise an eyebrow at it – it was simply accepted unchallenged and not commented upon. It concerned not a humble lorry driver, footballer or the ordinary man or woman in the street but a person at the very top of the nation's social tree – the UK's Foreign Secretary or to give him the correct title “Her Brittanic Majesty’s  Principal Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs” . The holder of this illustrious position – the second most important great office of state after the Prime Minister - was at the time Boris Johnson. The Foreign Secretary is charged with dealing with our relations with other nations it is a position requiring delicacy, decorum and diplomacy to ensure that the nation and its interests are regarded highly in the capital cities of the world. Johnson comes from a wealthy family and attended one of the nation’s great schools – Eton – and from there to Oxford where, we understand, he did well. He is allegedly a clever man – although I think one might distinguish between the cleverness to pass exams and cleverness as a human being. In many ways he might tick all the right boxes as a Foreign Secretary -  a skill with languages, a facility with the art of discussion and all the rest. I suspect he could walk with kings and feel comfortable. Except, except.......that whenever he opens his mouth he displays his crudity and total lack of graciousness.

About a month ago he resigned his position at Foreign Secretary following a disagreement with the Prime Minister about the UK’s current negotiations on Brexit. In his resignation speech explaining his reasons for  resigning he described the various plans that the Prime Minister had to reach agreement over the UK’s exit from Europe as “Like polishing a turd”.

"Her Britannic Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign

 and Commonwealth Affairs the Right Honourable Boris Johnson"

 Sadly he is not "honourable" and now he  is, thankfully no longer 

Foreign Secretary. But the manner of his departure said much

 about this man's lack of decency and his gracelessness.

Now, maybe Johnson thought this was clever or funny. Presumably it is part of his ordinary vocabulary and acceptable within the circles in which he moves. If it is then I for one am ashamed to be British. Does the man have no decency? How can he possibly think it right that someone holding the post that he did as the nation’s representative to the world to use such a crudity? How can he possibly think that it is appropriate that he should utter these words in the nation’s Parliament? And, as  I said above – no one took him to task for this – the newspaper’s printed it on their front pages, social media posts laughed at it, but no one raised an eye brow for such things are now part of the common discourse. I do not believe that if and when Boris Johnson passes away any obituary writer will say of him, what was said about Bobby Moore: "We had lost a great human being, a gentleman - someone who had all the human qualities: integrity, elegance, endeavour that we would all like our own sons and daughters to have".

Such is our world today, when even those born to greatness and having all the advantages of life, as Johnson has had,  and who are awarded the great offices of the land cannot act in a seemly manner and are comfortable in displaying their crass vulgarity and gracelessness to all. Like the man in Bath selling Donald Trump toilet rolls anything, today, goes and neither he nor wider society felt ashamed of it. As a society we in the UK have increasingly lost the capacity to take a pride in ourselves and in what we do, what we say and in how we conduct ourselves. We have lost the capacity to know what is decent and gracious and right. We no longer ask is a thing good or just, or worthy or of good report – we ask only what’s it worth, can I benefit from it, will I enjoy it, is it comfortable, or does it make me look a good bloke down at the pub. Boris Johnson proves the truth of this.

I have absolutely no doubts that my dad, Bobby Charlton, Bobby Moore, Basil D’Oliveira, Osvaldo Ardiles and Jimmy McIlroy would have been mortified to utter Johnson’s words in public and to the world’s media. But that, sadly, is the vulgarity and gracelessness of the age in which we now live - an age where we feel that we can say anything and offend anyone by our words and actions, and where personal pride is at an all time low, immaterial in “the coarsening sprit of the age”. We have lost the capacity to recognise the qualities of elegance as desirable or to think of a sportsman (or, indeed, anyone) as elegant or “a gentleman” for whom “vulgar haste was anathema”.  We are without doubt living in an age of lost elegance.