The return of the Young Fogey

At a recent lunch where I was sitting next to A.N. Wilson I couldn’t help but take a good look at his suit. After all, this was the man often described as the original Young Fogey. He was dressed perfectly well in an austere two-piece, though while I (ever the try-hard) was sporting a pocket square, he was without one. On another occasion, chatting to Charles Moore in the colonial surrounds of the Foreign Office’s Durbar Court, the Lord was indistinguishable in dress from the other mandarins and journalistic bigwigs there. In bygone days, a Young Fogey such as he would have donned a seersucker suit and shantung silk tie for the occasion. The Young Fogeys’ flamboyance of dress evident in their heyday is gone. Though thank heavens that the marvellous Simon Heffer’s portliness enables him to still pull off a pocket watch.

This all got me thinking: 40 years on from the publication of The Young Fogey Handbook (1985), is the persona dead? Harry Mount, writing in these pages in 2003, thought so: he had ‘pedalled off into the sunset on his sit-up-and-beg butcher’s bike, broad-brim fedora firmly on head’. But I am not so sure.

The term Young Fogey was popularised by Alan Watkins in a Spectator diary in 1984. Attempting to put his finger on this curious breed that he encountered at the Spectator offices and among most of his friends, he mused that it was a conservative type defined by his politics (‘libertarian but not liberal’), but also by his aesthetic and interests:

He is a scholar of Evelyn Waugh. He tends to be coolly religious, either RC or C of E. He dislikes modern architecture. He makes a great fuss about the old Prayer Book, grammar, syntax and punctuation. He laments the difficulty of purchasing good bread, Cheddar cheese, kippers and sausages – though not beer, because the cause of good beer has been taken over by boring men with beards from the Campaign for Real Ale. He enjoys walking and travelling by train. He thinks the Times is not what it was and prefers the Daily Telegraph.

So does he exist today? Young men’s drift to the political right is well-documented. And that social and cultural conservatism is cultivating what has been described as a ‘right-wing retro revivalism’. Its adherents run popular accounts on X putting out Roger Scruton quotes as daily sustenance, or beautiful film reels of British life in decades past. They decry modern architecture and building regs restricting window size. While they respect the Victorian Society they are more likely to follow Create Streets. The planned razing of M&S’s art deco flagship saddens them; the proliferation of American candy stores maddens them. I christen this new tribe the ‘Trad Lads’. 

The Young Fogey was a traditionalist, holding out against modernity. His heart was not in the city but in the countryside. He cooked on an Aga, or at least wanted to. The Trad Lad is much the same. He wishes he liked sherry, and Gentleman’s Relish. He drinks Ovaltine in the evenings and takes a hot water bottle to bed. And even if he doesn’t, he thinks he jolly well ought to.

He will try, where possible, to still write in fountain pen and doesn’t think pencil sharpeners are redundant. Should he stumble across a drawing compass in his nephew’s pencil case he is likely to want it for himself, and might be prompted into wallowing in nostalgia about his school days. 

He spends time on social media in spite of himself; his iPhone is an ugly intrusion of the modern world but most of his kindred spirit are to be found through X. Clubland still appeals, but one can no longer always rely on bumping into the right sort at the Travellers or the Carlton. Besides, have you seen what the prices jump to when you reach 25?

The Trad Lad is an aesthete who would like to visit National Trust properties at the weekend, but the train fares are too high so he watches the latest video from Great Houses and Estates on Instagram, and campaigns for Restore Trust instead. Like the old Young Fogeys, he likes the idea of great British breaks in lieu of holidaying overseas, though whether out of love for Blighty or a shortage of annual leave it’s not clear.

What does he read, apart from his X feed? The Spectator is of course a stalwart, but he is likely also to peruse the occasional article from the Idler, and wants to know more about Chap magazine. Of what does he dream? Affording the house he’s seen with Inigo estate agents, and covering its walls with Colefax and Fowler. Something in him died when Plain English discontinued their British Standard Cupboards range. He asked for a subscription to World of Interiors for Christmas. ‘Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?’

What of his aesthetic? The original Young Fogeys embraced the Brideshead look. They loved a four-piece in heavy tweed and might have travelled in a Morris Minor. The Trad Lad is more likely to be found in a simple navy two-piece than a westkit. If, as Port magazine has written, the Young Fogey’s utopia was all ‘Laura Ashley dresses and Tricia Guild wallpaper’, the Trad Lad is always on the lookout for second-hand Aquascutum, and a partner who shops at Boden. He is to be found travelling into central to visit Sir John Soane’s museum on the Elizabeth line. A traditional push-bike would be nicked in today’s London, so the Trad Lad must settle for a Lime bike instead. At least they have a basket.

The Trad Lad wishes he liked sherry, and Gentleman’s Relish. He drinks Ovaltine in the evenings and takes a hot water bottle to bed. And even if he doesn’t, he thinks he jolly well ought to

Where have these Trad Lads come from? Plenty of commentators have remarked on young people’s newfound wholesomeness. Hedonism is unfashionable; researching Isa providers is cool. Cigarettes, sex and alcohol are out; in are jigsaws, baking and a quiet night watching Peaky Blinders. Here is sown the pining for a traditional, homespun life that was the Young Fogey’s USP. It is not quite ‘old maids bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist’, but it’s not far off.

It seems to stem more from anxiety than exuberance. Wilson, Moore and their fellow travellers were flashy dressers, if still in a buttoned-up sort of way. But whereas the Young Fogeys sported frockcoats and fasteners, the Trad Lad does not seem to have the same confidence. Instead he shelters from the modern world in a simple, albeit well-structured, jacket.

Disillusioned by modern life, some young men are retreating into a past world. It is not yet a mainstream movement among youngsters; rather still a tribe, a cabal. But it’s growing. Harry Mount suspected that the Young Fogey, croquet mallet in hand, died because there was nothing left to fight for. It was a rebel movement that developed in reaction to bohemianism and to the naked materialism of the early 1980s. Perhaps youngsters once more feel the need to rebel: this time, against wokeism and tracksuit WFH-ism. In their own gentle way, the Trad Lads are readying themselves for the fight.