Tribute to fellow dame and television star

DAME Joanna Lumley paid tribute to the late actress Dame Patricia Routledge as she opened this year’s Henley Literary Festival.

The star of the Nineties sitcom Keeping up Appearances had died earlier that day at the age of 96.

Speaking with Gyles Brandreth about her new book, My Book of Treasures, at the Fane Arena in Phyllis Court, Lumley recalled being nominated for a Bafta award in the same category as Routledge in 1993.

She said: “I never worked with her and the most excruciatingly thrilling but painful thing was that we were both up for Baftas for the same part, which was a comic performance.

“She was up there for Hyacinth Bucket and I was up there for Patsy [from Absolutely Fabulous]. She was there and somebody was saying ‘are you nervous?’, and I said ‘no, I’m not nervous because there is no chance of me getting it because of her [Routledge]’.

“If anyone should get it it’s Patricia Routledge. So, when they called my name, it was both thrilling but terrifying because I thought she should have got it. Nothing she has done has dated or gone out of fashion, she was extraordinary.”

Brandreth, a chancellor of Chester University which awarded Routledge an honorary degree in 2019, said she was the “most unusual” person and “full of ambition and fire”.

He said: “She was a strong independent remarkable human being and I always think the mark of a good actor is often being a great person.”

He compared her immortalisation of snobby suburban housewife Hyacinth Bucket with Lumley’s embodiment of drunken fashion director Patsy Stone on Absolutely Fabulous.

He said: “You [Lumley] and she share the distinction to have created in one lifetime one character that becomes an iconic figure on its own.”

Lumley went on to read passages from her new book, a collection of writings which she said had either given her “solace, or comfort or energy”, while some had amused her or filled her with “wonder”.

She read a passage from James Bond author Ian Fleming, dedicating it to his niece, Lucy, was in the audience.

She also recalled some famous encounters like working with Leonardo DiCaprio on Wolf of Wall Street and meeting Frank Sinatra at a London party.

When prompted to recount her “greatest encounter”, Lumley recalled meeting poet Ted Hughes who she described as “Heathcliffe-ian”.

She said: “He was astonishing, the Queen Mother was in love with him. He had the most dazzling looks and the most extraordinary direct stare. He looked a bit like a ruffian and he was a brilliant poet.”

The discussion spanned the breadth of Lumley’s varied career, which has her present several travelling shows, star in film and television and act as patron of various charities.

She corrected Brandreth, who had assumed she found riches when she won the starring role in the Seventies spy series The New Avengers.

She said: “I was on a five-year contract, and they told me, the first two years will be a bit slim but after that, your pay goes up, up, up, and by the end of it you could buy a small country, you’ll be so rich you can take your yacht to your small country.

“I thought well that’s marvellous. What I didn’t know was that their plan was only to do the first two years.

“So we were on scrape, it was very, very small. But I can’t resent it, because from it, it was the first time my name stuck. Until I did The New Avengers, I didn’t really have a name of my own.

“Theres no room for resentment, you mustn’t have it, it only eats you up.”

On Saturday, about 150 people gathered at the town hall for environmental charity Greener Henley’s first event in its new partnership with the festival.

The discussion focused on how local communities can lead the change towards a safer future.

The event featured Tony Juniper, environmentalist and author of Just Earth, and Sangeeta Waldron, award-winning communications expert and author of What Will Your Legacy Be?

Juniper, whose book explores how inequality represents a barrier to climate progress, emphasised the need to connect grassroots movements across sectors.

He said: “The emissions keep going up….and the reason that the emissions keep going up is that we’ve not changed the basics of what countries are doing because we haven’t yet convinced enough people.

“Building this grassroots infrastructure, connecting it up, getting it out of its little green silos, joining it up with other social movements linked with health, with poverty, with education, with sport..that’s how we’re going to get change.

“Because once we can do that, this becomes unstoppable. And this is the moment that we must do it.”

Waldron, whose book amplifies voices from NASA scientists to indigenous leaders urging communities to act on the climate crisis, reminded the audience that every small act counts.

She said: “Every action is worthwhile. You might think you’re not making a difference, but you are. All these little actions create a ripple effect, and these ripple effects create a tsunami of change.”

Professor Dame Mary Beard, a world-renowned historian who joined this year’s line-up for the first time, said she has “no emotional connection” with Roman emperors, whom she described as “nasty guys”.

The classicist discussed various aspects of ancient Rome and Greece, drawing insights from her extensive work, including her 2023 book Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient World.

The hour-long discussion and question panel with Harry Mount, editor of The Oldie, covered the Roman Empire’s origins, the nature of its rulers, methods of historical interpretation, daily life, the value of classical studies, and comparisons between ancient and modern societies.

Beard consistently avoided answering the question “Who is your favourite emperor” because of the oversimplification of complex figures.

She made comparisons between Roman emperors like Augustus and Julius Ceaser, and modern rulers like President Donald Trump, believing that a one-man ruler in ancient times became a “necessary evil” to manage the territory, offering a practical solution despite its autocratic nature.

She said: “Rome became brutally successful, conjuring this huge empire which was trying to be governed with the institutions of a parish council. I think that one man rule became a necessary evil, and the parish council couldn’t do it.

“They got a system which, for better or worse, solved some of the problems that they faced as leaders of this vast empire but whether it was for good or not is not for me to say.

“Julis Ceaser was the first person in the west to put his head on a coin. Trump is also very visible in that way, but he doesn’t put his head on the coins.

“You couldn’t escape from Augustus the same way you can’t escape from Tump. You only have to go on any bit of social media, and you’ll find him, it’s part of the playbook of modern imperialism and autocracy.”

Despite this view, she does not feel an emotional connection to them, viewing them as subjects of academic interest rather than admiration.

“They’re all horrible”, she said, “People say to me, ‘You must really love the Romans, you’ve spent 50 years working on them’ but you don’t go up to virologists and say you must really love viruses.

“The idea that somehow one has an emotional relationship with these nasty guys, I don’t. The way we have come to think and evaluate these guys is because of a complicated literary tradition which bears almost no relationship to what these blokes did.”

Beard says that, just like modern rulers, you can never trust the anecdotes told in the media, comparing the likes of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to the oil painting of The Roses of Heliogabalus, where the Roman emperor Elagabauls smothered his guests to death with rose petals.

She said: “The anecdotes might not be a message about the truth, but you can get a huge amount of insight into how people thought about emperors and what they believed about them.

“I’m prepared to say that the story is not true because I don’t think it’s possible to smother people under a pile of rose petals, but I think it’s about the fear of imperial power, saying you can’t trust the emperor even when he’s being generous.”

Beard, whose feminist views have remained integral in her life, said the male-centric nature of historical sources makes it difficult to understand women, like Agrippina, independent of male perspectives.

She said: “I am and have been forever a good feminist. I think the problem about doing what a lot of people do, in looking at the early Roman empire, is that we look at the famous women like Livia, Messalina and Agrippina, through male eyes.

“You can see how modern misogyny has inherited the misogynistic cliches of the ancient world.

“One of the things that you see in the historians of the Roman Empire is that the women are dreadful. The woman in their life are used to explain why they made a mess, because they misled them or changed their course of action.

“You can see a really strong link throughout Western culture more broadly, that women are useful to blame to explain why men fuck up.”

While she expressed no desire to live in ancient Rome, particularly as a woman, she would accept a “guaranteed return ticket” for a fleeting visit to experience aspects like gladiatorial combat or baths.

She said: “I’m so grateful that I was born when I was, and I have absolutely no interest in going back. I’m a woman, for a start, so there’s not a particularly great possibility back there.

“But I have spent such a long time studying this stuff and I do occasionally wonder what it would be like at the baths or in the Colosseum for a gladiatorial combat, but if pushed and I had a guaranteed return ticket, I might accept a bit of time travel.”

A FORMER subpostmaster and a victim of the British Post Office Scandal received a standing ovation in the town hall on Wednesday

Jo Hamilton was one of more than 700 subpostmasters who were wrongly prosecuted for theft and false accounting between 2000 and 2014, based on information from the faulty Horizon accounting system, installed by Fujitsu.

A standing ovation was last given in 2021 for Covid scientists Dame Sarah Gilbert and Professor Catherine Green, according to the husband of the festival founder, Jon Ryan.

Mrs Hamilton ran a village post office in South Warnborough, Hampshire, from 2001 to 2006.

She pleaded guilty to a lesser offence of false accounting in 2007, remortgaging her house in order to pay the Post Office £36,000.

She became one of the founding members of the Justice For Subpostmasters Association in 2009, and in April 2021, her conviction was overturned.

She is now debt-free after accepting a financial settlement last year.

Why Are You Here, Mrs Hamilton? Is the title of her book, published in June. The title is derived from the words the judge used in their remarks during sentencing at Winchester Crown Court in February 2008.

It is a first-hand account of how she built a Post Office at the heart of the community and recounts her story of overcoming injustice and persecution.

Mrs Hamilton said the book has helped her find her voice, which she will continue to use to advocate for other victims until all the cases are resolved.

She said: “It’s important that people see my journey because it reflects with hundreds of others, as we all have similar tales of the absolute misery of having no money and being accused of something we didn’t do.

“It’s an important message to tell people not to give up, always be truthful and be kind because everyone was so kind to me.

“There were moments I thought they’d beat us, but you keep going, pick yourself up and go again. No matter the number of doors that get shut in our faces, you have to be a glass-half-full.”

Following an ITV television drama, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, broadcast in January 2024, the UK Parliament passed a law in May 2024, overturning the convictions of subpostmasters.

Mrs Hamilton, who received an OBE at Buckingham Palace in June, said she the good people she has met along the way who allow her to remain positive.

“There are far more good people than bad people”, she said, “I lost my mum and dad, and I didn’t have enough money to pay for mum’s funeral, but Hubby has been a rock.

“He doesn’t get involved in pink fluffy stuff, and he’s strong himself but doesn’t give out emotion very much, but he’s my biggest supporter, and I’ve relied on him staying the same.”

Despite her battle, Mrs Hamilton says she has fond memories of her time with the Post Office, but joked that she would not return to the same position.

She said: “In my community, my old ladies were so lovely. I would help people take their groceries to their house, and I even remember sitting with someone who had their horse put to sleep.

“Sometimes if they were lonely, they would just come down, sit and have a coffee while reading the paper. We even had a couple of ladies who used to do takeaway sausage and bacon baguettes for the boys on the road who had an eye for the men.

“When they redid the church at the same time this was going on, they engraved in glazing a picture of the shop and the church, like two brothers and sisters working together.

“The vicar came to court too and said I was as much a vicar in the village as they were because we always looked out for everybody, but if I wasn’t my age I might consider it [going back].”

The Metropolitan Police has opened an investigation into personnel from the Post Office and Fujitsu. Trials are expected to begin in 2027.

ENDS

251014 2: Former subpostmaster Jo Hamilton being hugged by journalist Leah Boleto as she receives a standing ovation, a first in three years

251014 3: left to right, Leah Boletto, journalist, and Jo Hamilton, victim of the British Post Office Scandal

251015 1: Professor Dame Mary Beard signing books in a marquee after the talk with journalist Harry Mount