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Showing posts from September, 2011
Interesting People From The Past… PORTAL of Hungerford, Marshal of the R.A.F. Viscount; Charles Frederick Portal. He served for a time in the Army in the First World War, and before it ended was a Colonel in the Royal Flying Corps. He commanded the British Forces in Aden from 1934-35, and in April 1940 became A.O.C.-in-C., Bomber Command. In October of the same year he became Chief of Air Staff until 1945. He was born in 1893. Sidney Webb. Lord Passfield, was a Labour politician, Londoner by birth and an expert economist. He helped to found the London School of Economics, and as a Labour politician, he and his wife, Beatrice Webb, took active interest in unemployment and social conditions. He was President of the Board of Trade in 1924; and was Secretary for the Colonies from 1929 until 1931. He wrote several books, and was born in 1859. Auguste Piccard was a Swiss balloonist and scientist, and was the first since Coxwell and Glaisher to make a balloon ascent into the s
Home Thoughts of Enid Stamp Taylor… I stood outside The People’s Palace on The Mile End road, one hot July afternoon in 1980. Somehow standing there I could feel her presence on that wintry evening all those years ago. She would have been hesitant, afraid, and yet thrilled. She would have walked up those few enlightening steps, gripped tightly and disapprovingly by her mother. Herbert Marks would have stood beside the pillared archway, smiling, his face lit to the cold night air… Dear Herbert who’s stomach ulcers in time would become the better of him… was the most sweetest of men. They would have entered this great hall arm in arm and performed with an exacting elegance under chandeliers that sparkled like a thousand tiny gems. Here gowns would have been filled with paraded ladies of charm, whilst men squinted through solitary eyeglasses and ordered waiters and drinks around. In my hand was her silver pendant ,  it gleamed at me from its loneliness.

Interesting People from The Past...

Charles Spencer Chaplin – Dear Charlie Chaplin! Dear Charlie became Sir Charles Chaplin, receiving his knighthood from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace in 1979. His film career had spanned 54 years, and in that time Charlie made a total of 81 films, only 5 were talkies and 67 were completed before his 30 th birthday. Sadly Charlie died at the good age of 88 and on Christmas Day in 1977 at his home in Vevey, Switzerland; at his bedside were Oona his fourth wife, their children, and grandchildren. Hannah Chaplin was Charles Mother and she had spent most of the later years of her life at an institute in England and for her remaining seven years she lived in the little house Charlie had bought for her close to the Pacific Ocean. Sidney Chaplin (Sid) was Charlie’s older brother and manager, he had retired to the South of France after the second world war and visited every summer with Charlie in Switzerland. The first love in Charlie’s

Interesting Movies From The Past...

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Carnival of Souls… Made in 1962 ‘Carnival of Souls’ was shot as a ‘B’ picture in three weeks, and since has become a huge cult film! After a fatal car accident a young woman played by Candace Hilligoss finds herself trapped between this world and the next. The Dead make several attempts to bring her to the world of perpetual darkness… It’s a film of the supernatural played with thought and great feeling, and was made in the US by director Herk Harvey. When I first aired this blog back in 2009 it raised a great deal of interest from many of you, so much so, that I followed it up with my blog on The Saltair Pavilion in Utah, and in turn that created much interest. So here again is the original blog on Carnival of Souls… And I hope you will link it to The Saltair Pavilion in my blog search window… Patrick.
Interesting People From The Past… Thomas Henry Cotton was a Golf champion. He became a professional at Langley Park in 1927. He won the Kent Professional Championship 1926-30; British Open, 1934, 1937; also Italian, German and Czechoslovak Open. He also represented Great Britain v. America in 1929 and 1937. He was born in 1907. David Herbert Lawrence was an English author and poet, best known for his works: The White Peacock (1911) Sons and Lovers (1913) The Rainbow (1915 suppressed by the police) The Plumed Serpent (1926) and Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928 banned in England) He was born in 1885. Virginia Woolf was a writer and critic. In 1912 she married Leonard Woolf an author and publisher, and with him controlled the Hogarth Press, which he founded in 1917. Her works include The Voyage Out (1915) A Room of One’s Own (1929) and The Waves (1931) She was a member of The Bloomsbury Group, and was born in 1882.

Mitchell and Kenyon...

Found in the basement cellar of a shop in Blackburn Lancashire England were over 800 short films of Edwardian life in the North of England. They were made by the partnership of Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon and the films they shot were of local people and events. It is a remarkable glimpse into history. They made the films to be shown at the Music Hall, Town Hall, or Fairgrounds. They were made for commercial reasons with the sole intention of putting ‘bums on seats’ after all, for people to see themselves on a projected screen was something new and quite wonderful! Between 1897 and 1913 Mitchell and Kenyon made hundreds of short films depicting the everyday lives of ordinary people, and when the business closed its doors in the nineteen twenties their original negative film stock was left hidden away in the basement of the shop. Here it lay for years simply collecting dust until 1994 when a building contractor found three large metal drums containing hundreds of Mitche
Interesting Quotes From The Past… We all know that Art is not truth. Art is like a lie that makes us realize truth. Pablo Picasso 1881-1973 Spanish painter. I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about. Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712-78 French philosopher. One would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions. He had money as well. Margaret Thatcher 1925- British stateswoman. Charm… it’s a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don’t need to have anything else; and if you don’t have it, it doesn’t matter what else you have. J.M. Barrie 1860-1937 Scottish writer. The opposite of talking isn’t listening. The opposite of talking is waiting. Fran Lebowitz 1946- American writer. This is the Night Mail crossing the border, bringing the cheque and the postal order, letters for the rich, letters for the poor. The shop at the corner, the girl next door. W.H. Auden 1907-73 English poet.
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Three Generations… Three Generations… This shot taken in 1934 depicts three generations of the Stamp Taylor family… Agnes Stamp Taylor, mother to Enid Stamp Taylor, and Enid’s daughter Robin Anne. The picture was loaned to me from Robin Anne’s own photo collection of her mother and grandmother.