CHRISTOPHER MONCKTON on Bowler hats

With a marvellous tale at the end that reveals the quality of the man




Yesterday in my St James’s Street club (a gentleman never says which), a suspiciously new-looking bowler hat was hanging from one of the solid, Victorian brass coat-hooks polished daily by our devoted family of servants.

To test the hat, I gave the crown a good thump. It caved in, leaving an embarrassing dent, which I hastily bashed out from the inside while no one was looking.

I wondered whether this was one of the bowlers that Austin Reed, out­fitters to all and sundry, have just announced they are introducing as part of their range of Cool Britannia fashion accessories for the man about town. I hoped not. For this was not a proper bowler.

It was in the Seventies that I started wearing a bowler, when I was a ­­newspaper reporter in Leeds. They were a common sight among ­businessmen in the wool trade.

And as the last man in London to wear one regularly, I know the crown should be hardened so that the wearer will come to no harm if he falls off his thoroughbred hunter in the field.

I wear my bowler more often when bicycling than when hunting. It has saved my life more than once.

The wife of the Greater London Council’s leader once opened her car door in front of me as I was cycling along Whitehall to Downing Street, where I worked in the policy unit, to write a speech for ­Margaret Thatcher.

The front wheel of the bike was stove in, but when my head struck the kerb-stones, the hat hit them first and neither it nor I was dented. The Prime Minister got her speech.

One day I was mugged by a thief in Covent Garden, but his cosh, aimed at my head and wielded with enough strength to knock out the wearer of a lesser hat, bounced harmlessly off my hardened bowler. The tea-leaf ran off looking puzzled and I walked away dazed but unhurt.

It is intriguing, but not surprising, that what some had sneeringly but wrongly regarded as a symbol of upper-class twittery is back, and that I am once again at the cutting edge of ­fashion. Jude Law, Tito Jackson, ­Madness — all are following where Monckton has long led.

And, it is the bowler’s new-found ­popularity that has encouraged Austin Reed to stock it for the first time in 12 years.

These days, the ladies are ­wearing the bowler, too. Britney Spears, Peaches Geldof, Mischa Barton, Miley Cyrus — I am in ­glittering company.

Perhaps Lady Gaga will soon be seen in a bowler ­surmounting a dress made entirely of butchers’ tax returns sewn together with red tape. You heard it here first.

Why does the bowler work? It’s all in the design. In the 1840s, Edward Coke, the brother of the second Earl of Leicester, had a problem. His gamekeeper’s head had to be protected from low-hanging branches when he rode around the estate catching poachers.

Coke gave Lock’s, the hatters of St James’s Street in London, a clear design brief. The hat must be rounded, so that it would stay on even in a gale. It must fit the wearer’s head exactly, so that it would not be dislodged in a fall. It must be black, so that it would not make the wearer too ­visible on horseback. It must be stylish. And it must be affordable.

Lock’s passed on the brief to the hatmakers William and Thomas Bowler. And the rest is history. From the Earl of Leicester’s estate in ­Norfolk, the bowler spread throughout Britain, and then the world.

It was worn by everyone from Prime Ministers via Cambridge College servants to Billingsgate fish-porters. Within decades of its invention, the bowler was the most popular men’s hat in America in the 19th century, worn by sheriffs, station masters and outlaws like Billy the Kid and Butch Cassidy.

Overseas, the bowler has always been popular. I recently saw ­bowlers being worn with pride in southern India. The native women of the Andes also wear the bowler.

A distant relative of mine was described by her biographer as being ‘famous from the Indies to the Andes for her undies’. The bowler now enjoys the same fame.

When everyone wore bowlers, they cost just 25p each. Today, though, Lock’s charge £295. But, whatever the cost, they’re worth every penny — and not just because my bowler saved my life.

A lot of trouble goes into making a good bowler. The first step is to visit Lock’s to have one’s bonce measured up. One sits in a ­creaking, Victorian chair and an instrument of torture — the conformateur — is lowered on to the head.

Needles at temple height point inward in an alarming, tightly-packed circle. The hatter then murmurs the most terrifying words in the English language: ‘This won’t hurt a bit.’ Then the needles are pressed inward from all directions, taking a precise profile of the head at the point where the hat-band will be.

Actually, it doesn’t hurt. Next, ­off-stage, there is much banging and hammering and hissing, and a slightly steaming bowler hat is brought in and tried on for size.

After any necessary adjustments, the hatter — in my case, Janet ­Taylor, who has been with Lock’s for 19 years, says: ‘All done now, sir: but we must wait for the shellac to harden.’ (Shellac, a resin secreted by Asian insects, is the key ­ingredient — it dries as hard as nails and a good bowler should withstand your weight if you stand on it.)

One of the many advantages of the bowler is that it ­conveys an instant air of superiority — but only if you have the right face for it. Jude Law, for instance, will never look convincing in a bowler. It really doesn’t work for him.

I often wear my bowler on overseas trips. Once, on a journey to what was then East Germany with a parliamentary group, I was ­wearing my bowler and was flanked by two other members of the ­group as we strode along Potsdam High Street.

A Soviet general coming the other way with his two minders immediately mistook me for a high-ranking Kommissar and gave me a ­spectacular, medal-clanking salute.

Just across the road from Lock’s the Hatters is St James’s Palace. Walk past it wearing a bowler and carrying a furled umbrella and the sentries on duty will crisply stand to attention and salute, just in case you are an officer.

The bowler shares one priceless advantage with every other titfer. Doffing one’s hat is the only way to make a polite gesture at a distance. Rude gestures are easy, hat or no hat. But nothing indicates a polite and friendly greeting more clearly or more stylishly than raising one’s hat. The ladies love it.

I once forestalled a riot in Whitehall by doffing my hat at just the right moment. During the miners’ strike of 1982-3, Arthur Scargill decreed that the miners should descend on Parliament Square in force to lobby members of the House of Commons. At the time I was working at my desk in No 10.

Oliver Letwin, now a Tory MP and Cabinet Office minister but who was then in the Downing Street policy unit and would go on to invent the poll tax, came dashing into my room with a look of terror on his face.

‘The miners are rioting in Parliament Square,’ he cried. ‘They’re pressing against the barriers at the end of Downing Street and the police are looking nervous. What do we do if they invade the ­building? It’s so unEnglish!’

‘Nonsense,’ I said (for I have always had a soft spot for the ­miners, the heroes of labour). ‘This is what they do every Friday night when the pubs tip out in Leeds or Barnsley. I’ll go and talk to them.’ And I reached for my hat. ‘B-b-but you’re not going to wear that silly Charlie Chaplin/­Laurel-and-Hardy hat, are you? You’ll be lynched!’

‘Fear not,’ I said. ‘These people have bad leaders, but they are good men.’ And I went out through the big black door into Downing Street.

At the sight of a chinless, pinstripe-suited fop emerging from the Prime Minister’s house, the miners jeered. I had expected that. As I walked towards them, I raised my hat to them and smiled. The ­jeering instantly turned to cheering — loud, long and happy.

Remembering my St John Ambulance training about how to calm crowds, I stopped 10ft from the miners, looked one of them in the eye and said (very quietly, so that they all had to listen): ‘You have something to say to the Prime ­Minister. I’ll pass on whatever you say to me. You’ve come a long way, so would you like a drink in the pub across the road?’

They would. Like schoolchildren with their teacher, they filed ­amiably across Whitehall to the pub, where I bought them pints of ale and made a careful note of what they said. The riot was over — and all thanks to Edward Coke and his gamekeeper.

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