Fake or Fortune? (BBC1)
The question divided an empire. When pouring a cuppa, should you put the milk in first, or add it to the tea afterwards?
George Orwell, writing in 1946 when tea was strictly rationed to two ounces a week (about enough for 30 teabags), was adamant. ‘Pour tea into the cup first . . . One is liable to put in too much milk if one does it the other way round.’
But Evelyn Waugh, in a letter nine years later to Nancy Mitford, took the opposite line: ‘All nannies and many governesses, when pouring out tea, put the milk in first. (It is said by tea-fanciers to produce a richer mixture.)’
Clearly, it’s an issue of class. Orwell was the son of a petty official in the Indian civil service, and solidly lower-middle class. Waugh, an inveterate snob and social climber, yearned to be as upper-class as the Mitfords actually were.
And what do you suppose Fiona Bruce is – a milk-in-first toff or an add-to-taste commoner?
The answer was revealed as she wielded a teapot in the tea-rooms of Blenheim Palace on Fake Or Fortune?, at the beginning of an examination of an unsigned oil painting allegedly by Winston Churchill.
Fiona Bruce (right) and painting owner, Barry James (centre) are seen talking to handwriting expert Emma Bache (left) as they inspect whether a painting was really by Winston Churchill
Ms Bruce (right) presents the BBC1 show with art dealer Philip Mould (left) who together analyse the legitimacy and history of artworks
Casually, she poured the tea into a porcelain cup with the milk already in it. Now we know.
Sadly, we never did find out for sure about the Churchill. All the signs were that this picture, painted in the gardens of Herstmonceux castle in Sussex, was the real deal – one of Winston’s earliest, from 1916, with his wife, Clementine, perched on a wall above a cascade of pink roses.
But despite a wealth of corroborating evidence, no expert was willing to risk authenticating it without paperwork. And as the owner, an amateur enthusiast named Barry, had picked it up at an open-air market for £140, it lacked what Fake Or Fortune? fans have learned to call ‘provenance’.
This was glum news for Barry. A kosher Winston could fetch half a million quid. A questionable one is worth perhaps a fifth of that. Still, a tidy little profit on a punt at an art fayre.
As always, the real interest in this show lay in the clues picked out by discerning eyes.
All the signs were that this picture (above), painted in the gardens of Herstmonceux castle in Sussex, was the real deal – one of Winston’s earliest, from 1916, with his wife, Clementine, perched on a wall above a cascade of pink roses
Art dealer Philip Mould pointed out how dabs of blue were smeared onto the green mass of a tree in the background, giving the impression of sky shimmering through the leaves – a trick typical of the British Bulldog himself.
A note on the back of the canvas also attributed it to Churchill. Handwriting expert Emma Bache compared this inscription to various letters and matched it to the pen of Colonel Claude Lowther, an MP who owned Herstmonceux a century ago.
Conclusive, surely.
With mealy-mouthed BBC prissiness, Philip pointed out that, ‘in recent years, Winston Churchill has become a more divisive figure’.
Why’s that? Did he pour his tea in before the milk?
