THE WRITE STUFF

Before e-mail, young readers, there was something just called 'mail' –– letters, written by hand (and later by typewriter) and delivered by personal courier (and later by a government agency). Now, unless you are reasonably old, it may be difficult to believe in such a weird-sounding and obviously antiquated means of communication, but not only did it actually worked and led to the art of letter writing...

Shaun Usher created a marvellous website Letters of Note to share extraordinary, funny, touching and inspiring examples of this arcane craft with the children of the 'e-generation'. Then the website became a book, Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience and I have spent the past week delighting in it's engaging and diverting contents...

Within these covers are a collection of famous (and, occasionally, infamous) Men and Women of Letters – Queens, Presidents, film stars, authors, musicians and artists – writing to their admirers, enemies, lovers, and children and, in so doing, reveal something unique about their famous selves or offer life insights that are more than worthy of consideration...

The letters are not just quoted, almost all are reproduced: elegantly penned, neatly typed or erratically scribbled on hotel, airline or exercise book paper.

I began noting down my favourites but the list just kept growing, however, special gems include...

* Gandhi writing to Hitler pleading with him to avoid a war – intercepted by British intelligence, the letter was never delivered and, days later, Germany invaded Poland...

* Captain Robert Scott's last words home from the frozen wastes of Antarctica 

* Charles Schulz responding to a young reader of his Peanuts strips asking the cartoonist to get rid of a new character, Charlotte Braun, briefly introduced in 1955: "I am taking your suggestion regarding Charlotte Braun and will eventually discard her... Remember, however, that you and your friends will have the death of an innocent child on your conscience. Are you prepared to accept such responsibility?" The accompanying sketch shows Miss Braun literally getting the 'chop'...

* Eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon's letter to the New York Sun asking if it were true – as her school friends had told her – that there was no such person as Santa Claus together with veteran newsman, Frances Pharcellus Church's famous reply beginning: "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus... He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist...."

* A heart-breaking suicide note from Virginia Woolf to her husband, Leonard, on her second, successful, attempt to drown herself...

* Katherine Hepburn writing to Spencer Tracy – 18 years after his death...

* A blistering letter from Kurt Vonnegut to the head teacher of a school where copies of his book Slaughterhouse-Five had been burned in the school furnace...

* A young girl's letter to would-be President Abraham Lincoln suggesting he would stand a better chance of getting elected if he grew whiskers ("...all the ladies like whiskers") and honest Abe's reply: "As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affectation if I were to begin it now?" History shows he, nevertheless, took the advice...

* Mary Stuart writing to King Henry III of France on February 8th, 1587, just six hours before she knelt before her executioner...

*The letter that led to the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot...

* The tragic SOS telegram from the sinking Titanic... 

* Seven-year old Amy who, inspired by Roald Dahl's The BFG, sent the author a bottle containing one of her dreams (a concoction of oil, coloured water and sparkle) and received this perfect reply:

* Mario Puzo begging Marlon Brando to consider the role of Vito Corleone in the film of  The Godfather...

* Alec Guinness writing to a friend and complaining about the rubbish script he was being given as Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars and mentioning co-star, "Tennyson Ford – Ellison – Harrison Ford - ever heard of him?"

* A chilling memo from William Safire to H R Haldeman with the text of the Presidential broadcast in the event of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing ending in disaster with the non-recovery of Armstrong and Aldrin...

* Molecular biologist Francis Crick writing to his twelve-year-old son to explain the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA...

One hundred-and-twenty-five fascinating letters from – among many others – Charles Dickens, Spike Milligan, Bette Davis, Mark Twain, Elvis Presley, E B White, Samuel Barber, Dorothy Parker, Louis Armstrong, Iggy Pop, Groucho Marx, Jack the Ripper and – perhaps most delicious of all – Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II writing to President Dwight D Eisenhower in 1960 to send him her recipe for drop scones as served at Balmoral!

I am also delighted that the book includes a letter I received forty years ago this year in response to a far letter sent to the American Sci-Fi/Fantasy writer, Ray Bradbury, that began a precious friendship that lasted until Ray's death in 2012...

Shaun Usher's Letters of Note is a veritable treasury of wit and wisdom interlaced with deeply moving testimonies to the indomitable human spirit and a book to which you will return again and again. The British edition can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk and the US edition from Amazon.com

CHRISTMAS WITH THE STARS

Recruiting the stars to sell Christmas is nothing new as these vintage advertisements clearly show. The one significant difference is that 'back then' most of them were pushing cigarettes!

A spot of alturism amongst the commercialism...

And something for when the festivities are over...

THE PRICE OF FAME

John Cleese is selling part of his art collection at Chris Beetles gallery: there's a John Bratby portrait, a couple of Henry Moores, a nice collection of Albert Goodwins, some great cartoons by Rowland Emett, Ronald Searle and Gerald Scarfe as well as a smattering of movie and TV memorabilia – you can view the lots here.

Prices range from £4000-£14000+ but there are one or two cheaper buys, notably a black-and-white publicity photo from the 1970 Walt Disney animated film Artistocats, which, unsigned, is going for a mere £250!

Now the things is, these glossy 8"x10" publicity shots were produced by the zillion, circulated to every movie reviewer and every newspaper and magazine that carried a feature on the film. Gremlin Fire Arts are selling similar items for a mere $75 a still ($109 framed) and at the film mart or boot fare you're talking of prices in single figures.

Now, I've come up with a great wheeze, if Messrs Cleese and Beetles will only go along with it... The thing is I've got boxes of these publicity still and colour front-of-house sets (of the kind we used to look longingly at outside the Odeon and Roxy) several thousand in fact and many of them going back to a time when Walt Disney was still alive including his first animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937.

So, I was thinking, if I 'sold' them to John Cleese then he – acting as a 'fence', as it were – boosted the price by virtue of his fame and association and sold them on, through Beetles Gallery, to his many admirers eager for a slice of Cleese, we could divi up the proceeds and all do very nicely, thank you!

Come to that, in the case of Aristocats, I've actually got a couple of original cel paintings from the film that Mr Cleese (for a consideration) might be willing like to help me shift...

IT'S A MAN THING

Janet Street-Porter was on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs last week and, as you might expect, she was sharply funny, unnervingly self-revelatory and (if you were in the same room, I would imagine) really rather scary!

Four times married (only a very small prize for guessing why), the most quotable quote from the interview was as follows...

"The trouble with MEN is they come
with droppings: the detritus of bloke!"

Still, it was reassuring (possibly) that - when it came to saying which one of her eight records she would take is she were only allowed one - she plumped for the Pet Shop Boys singing 'You Were Always on My Mind' rather than the mad scene from Lucia Di Lammermoor!

The Street-Porter portrait above is the work of the brilliant John Jensen from The Book of British Battleaxes by Christine Hamilton.

Visit John's website and explore his illustrations, cartoons and caricatures via the drop-down menu. And, for the benefit of overseas readers (and juveniles), here's the low-down on the unsinkable Ms Street-Porter from, as it were, the horse's mouth!

Image: © John Jensen 1997

PULLING TEETH

During a BBC interview with Boy George I asked whether the singer had meant it when he had famously said, "I prefer a nice cup of tea to sex."

Thinking, perhaps, that I was extending him an invitation, he naturally replied, "Thanks, two sugars and if you have a Petit Beurre biscuit that would be lovely!" *

I was put mind of that occasion when reading Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies (sorry to be quoting it again) in which the heroine Nina Blount comments à propos of her recent deflowering:

"All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I'd sooner go to my dentist any day."

* Actually I made up that bit about Boy George asking for the Petit Beurre! Must be the influence of holidaying in the land of myths!

HOW VERY TRUE (NOT)

We're in Greece, but from Elsewhere...

More sensational revelations continue to flood in from my tireless e-mail spamsters...

Rowling announces next Harry Potter book

Leonardo Di Caprio caught canoodling
with Blake Lively in NY bar

Paris Hilton tosses Dwarf on the Street

Afghanistan to be 52nd US State

McDonald's Happy Meals in San Francisco
to include Gay Marriage License

Osama Seen Dining at The Paris Ritz

Britney Spears and Michael Jackson
to write Parenting Book

Michael Jackson Auctions Himself on Ebay!

and even better...

Aliens Abducted by Michael Jackson

LIES, DAMNED LIES AND...

...INTERNET SPAM!

We may be on a remote Greek Island, but the spam in still pouring into our e-mail boxes.

The lengths those spamsters will go to to get us to read their e-mails for Viagra or fake Rolexes!

Here are just a few recent subject headings that almost prevented me from hitting the 'Junk' button...

David Beckham seen in LA nightclub
with Kirsten Dunst

Miss America slept with judge

Michael Jordan caught with fraud

Hugh Hefner releases summer orgy pics

Michael J Fox found dead in apartment

Earthquake in California destroys
Schwarzenegger house

And by far the best of the bunch:

Ancient remains of Egyptian mummies
found in Florida

and

Elton John dies in rocket ship

WOW FACTOR

My latest book has 520 pages and yet I have only written 366 words of it!

WOW! 366 is a collection of "Speedy stories in just 366 words" or, as the above-the-title blurb immodestly puts it, "Mini writes from MASSIVE writers"!

Leaving aside the references to my girth, I should explain that the book was conceived for this Leap Year and contains stories each of which - as you've guessed by now - are written in just 366 words.

WOW! 366 is published by Scholastic (price £6.99) and all the authors have donated their stories in order that profits from the volume can go to the NSPCC charity, ChildLine.


The role call of writers is impressive: Roddy Doyle, Terry Jones, Michael Morpurgo, Charlie Higson, Nina Bawden, Raymond Briggs, Michael Bond and many others including Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Tom of McFly!

Writing a short story this short is far from easy (it's always harder to write briefly rather than at length) but it also turned out to be a herculean counting task for the publishers, since computer word-count systems are neither uniform or totally reliable - especially when confronted by hyphenated words or even numbers.

I mention this because to add to the constraints imposed by the original brief, I decided that my story 'The Lucky Guess' (page 84) was going to be about the number 366!

The diversity of subject matter and the inventiveness of approach taken by the authors is really fascinating and as well as providing a lot of enjoyment to bookish kids might also manage to seduce some young non-readers into taking up the habit...

So, whether you know kids who read or kids that don't, this could provide them with a good summer gift that will also be helping a desperately worthwhile cause.

It's also the only way in which you're going to find out how I wrote about the number 366!!

AND YOU ARE-----?

Writing about 'Seyler Disease' the other day put me in mind of a conversation I had some years ago when I was working with the legendary black diva, Elisabeth Welch.

The star who in a sixty year career introduced theatre audiences on both sides of the Atlantic to many enduring songs including 'Charleston' (which launched the dance craze), 'Love for Sale' and 'Stormy Weather'.

John Gielgud once said of her: "You could hear a pin drop while she sang but when she finished, the thunder of applause could be heard in the street."

Towards the end of her life, Miss Welch appeared in a revue which I compiled for the BBC, entitled Hit the Heights, and I had the privilege of looking after her during rehearsals. This enabled me to have several long chats with an actress who had performed with and for the best.

She told me how, some years after her great triumphs in shows like Blackbirds, The New Yorkers, Nymph Errant, Glamorous Night, Tuppence Coloured, Oranges and Lemons and Penny Plain, she was asked by a director - who ought to have known better - to audition!

As she walked on stage, a voice from the darkened auditorium called out: "Miss Welsh?"

First mistake!

His second mistake was to ask: "What are you going to sing for us?"

With great dignity and an appropriate lack of modesty, Elisabeth Welch delivered one of the great put-downs of the theatre.

"Well," she replied, "perhaps, you'd like to hear the first number Cole Porter wrote for me!"

Superb!

And here is the immortal Miss Welch as 'A Goddess' in Derek Jarman's 1979 high-camp film version of Shakespeare's The Tempest, singing - appropriately - the song that became her theme tune...

WHO ARE YOU?

Reflecting on that recent birthday...

One of the anxieties about getting older is an increasingly tendency to suffer from 'Seyler's Disease': a condition which occurs when you are so old that no one in the business in which you notionally work - for me, writing and broadcasting - any longer knows who you are.

In my case it's so bad that I frequently dream that I am, in fact, dead but that no one's got around to burying me yet!

I've named this curious state of affairs (or stage of life) after ATHENE SEYLER, CBE, veteran actress of numerous plays, films and TV appearances and sometime President of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

It is said that Miss Seyler (right) once arrived at the BBC for an interview and was collected from reception by a young secretary who was clearly unaware of the extent of the actress' career.

"So, Miss Seyler," she said, making conversation in the lift, "what else have you done?"

Athene Seyler looked at the child and replied in a vaguely puzzled tone: "Do you mean this morning?"

I'M SORRY...

HUMPHREY LYTTELTON

(23 May 1921 - 25 April 2008)
affectionately known as
"HUMPH"

"...And so, as the 4x4 of destiny on the level crossing of fate stalls in the path of the speeding freight train of doom, and the signalman of time rushes to fetch his camera..." it is time to say farewell to jazz legend, cartoonist (co-creator, with Wally Fawkes of the wonderful Flook), humorist and incomparable, irreplaceable, chairman of the BBC's "antidote to panel games", I'm Sorry I haven't a Clue...


If you don't know Humph (above centre, with Graeme Garden, Barry Cryer and Tim Booke-Taylor) or have never heard ISIHAC, then there's nothing I can say to convey the brilliance of his dry, deadpan humour and impeccable comic timing or what he meant to millions of listeners to the show... If you do... well, then you don't need me to tell you!

Last Tuesday, the Clue team were due to record the programme at the Pavilion Theatre in Bournemouth but the chairman - who had never signed a long-term contract for the show which began in 1972! - was indisposed. Rob Brydon took the chair and opened with a pre-recorded - and utterly characteristic - message from Lyttelton...

"I'm sorry I can't be with you today as I am in hospital --- I wish I'd thought of this sooner!"

To the very end he made us smile. Thanks for all the laughs, Humph, and the great music.

Here he is, with the Harlem Ramblers, playing 'If I Could Be With You'.

Poor Samantha, what will she do now she can no longer sit on Humph's left hand...?!

You'll find quite a few memorable lines from the wrinkled forehead of radio's greatest quiz show on Wikipedia's entry for I'm Sorry I haven't a Clue. And you can visit Humphrey Lyttelton's web-site and leave your thoughts on its 'Remember Humph' page.

As we journey through life, discarding baggage along the way, we should keep an iron grip, to the very end, on the capacity for silliness. It preserves the soul from dessication.

- Humph

Image (top): The Walter Hanlon Archive

CLIMATE CHANGE

I have just spent three days in hospital in a ward where it was hotter than a Swedish sauna - though, obviously, without the sex! Radiators too scalding to touch were pumping heat into a room that throbbed like the core of nuclear reactor and with the windows pushed open to the maximum-allowed aperture of two inches in a vain attempt to let some of it out into the already overburdened atmosphere.

Now, I'm back home in our refreshingly uncentrally-heated flat and - guess what? - outside its snowing a blizzard!

The world is truly losing its grip! And to make matters worse - very bad news for a Sunday morning, this - I have to tell you---

GOD is DEAD...


...or, at least, His Official Spokesman is silenced


CHARLTON HESTON

1923-2008

***

Of course, Charlton ('Chuck') Heston didn't just represent God, he was also the quintessential Hollywood representation of what it means to be an American.

As PAULINE KAEL, the legendary film critic of The New Yorker once wrote: "With his perfect, lean-hipped, powerful body, Heston is a god-like hero; built for strength, he is an archetype of what makes Americans win. He represents American power - and he has the profile of an eagle."

Read the obituary in today's L A Times

BY A NOSE

Being filmed for a DVD 'extra' the other day - and having been horrified by my resemblance to Quasimodo on my last such appearance - I asked the crew if they could film my 'best side'. Unfortunately, finding the 'best' side was easier said than done!

This embarrassing episode reminded me of a story I read in a recent obituary to David ('Wendy') Watkin, the legendary cinematographer of such films as Help!, Charge of the Light Brigade, The Devils, The Three Musketeers, Robin and Marian and Out of Africa.

Watkin was engaged to film Yentl starring (and directed by) Barbra Streisand. On meeting the star, Watkin daringly tapped Streisand on the Nose and commented: "I can see we're going to have a lot of trouble with THAT!"

Somehow, and rather surprisingly, he got away with it-- and more...

Later in the production - in the middle of a shot - Streisand suddenly yelled: "David, you're shooting me from my bad side!"

To which, Watkin calmly responded: "It's not your bad side, Barbra, it's your other side."

So you see, Barbra and I: two of a kind!

PET LIKES

It's said that when it was suggested to Lillian Bayliss, the founder of The Old Vic, that she ought to be made a Dame of the British Empire she swiftly responded, in her characteristically forthright way, "It'll be none of your Dames for me!"

In Bayliss' time - and for some while afterwards - 'damehoods' (or 'ships'?) were primarily for 'classical' (meaning, chiefly, Shakespearean) actresses such as Sybil Thorndike, Flora Robson and Edith Evans. Today, happily, they are given to a broad range of entertainers and we can rejoice in having not just Dames Maggie and Judi but also Dames Julie and Shirley...

So, how come no one has got around to giving a Damehood to the actress and singer who began her career by being known as "Britain's Shirley Temple"?

I refer, of course, to...


In sixty-six years of performing, Petula Clark has done it all: radio, TV, film, stage and, of course dozens of recordings including many, many hit singles, four of which reached the No 1 top-spot.

Last July, the following story broke...

London, July 8 : Sir Michael Caine, Sir Tim Rice, Susan Hampshire and impresario Bill Kenwright are among celebrity fans of Petula Clark who have lent their support to an online petition on the Downing Street website for making the veteran singer-actress a "Dame".

The celebrities feel that the Petula should be honoured in recognition of her glittering career that has spanned more than 60 years. Petula is the most successful British female solo recording artist to date, and she is still touring and recording at 74. She holds the distinction of having the longest span on the international pop charts of any artist - 51 years - from 1954, when 'The Little Shoemaker' made the UK Top 20, through to 2005.

She started her career during the Second World War as a child singer entertaining the troops, moving into films including The Card, in the late 1940s and 1950s, and hit the height of her career in the 1960s when she became a pop success with songs such as 'Downtown'. Her career has continued in musicals like Sunset Boulevard and Blood Brothers.

"It is a travesty that Petula has not yet been honoured after such a long and distinguished career. The fact that these big names are lending their support shows how much she is regarded among the theatrical community," the Daily Express quoted an insider as saying.

Leo Sayer, lyricist Don Black, songwriter Tony Hatch, and former EastEnders star Wendy Richard are the other celebrities who are among the 500 names on the petition.

"Hopefully the petition will help bring Pet the damehood she so richly deserves," said the insider.

So, no pressure there, then, Gordon...

Anyway, as of today, the PET-ition has 1,102 signatures but could do with a few more before the deadline of 12 March, so if you have fond memories of our Pet in films like Finnian's Rainbow and Goodbye, Mr Chips or if you ever sang along to any of her discs (from the childhood 'They're Changing Guard at Buckingham Palace' to 'The Other Man's Grass', 'I Know a Place', 'Don't Sleep on the Subway' or any one of those other UK/US hits - or even that considerable discography of songs sung in French or German) now is the time to ACT!

So, with only 10 days to go, you should stop reading this and go to the 10 Downing Street Petition site and SIGN!

Then, when you've done that you can come back and watch Pet (on Esther Rantzen's TV show) singing just a handful of those numbers that have made her a much-loved star and, surely, a Dame-in-Waiting...

RICHARDSON REMEMBERED

The arrival, a few days ago, of a new German edition of my book Shadowlands, brought back memories of the late Ian Richardson who, only a few weeks before his death on the 9 February 2007, had completed a reading of the book for BBC Radio.

How swiftly unbridled time gallops away from us; and yet how strong a grip our frail hands keep on the reigns of memory.

The journalist and writer SHARON MAIL became a friend of Ian and his wife, Maroussia, and (as a result of correspondence following the Shadowlands broadcasts) she has since become a friend of mine.

Sharon is currently working on a book in celebration of Ian's life (with contributions from Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Alex Jennings, Donald Sinden, Peter Hall and other luminaries) and, in today's Guest Blog, Sharon offers this tribute to a great - and greatly-loved - actor...

Ian Richardson’s sudden death, a year ago today, came as a terrible shock to all who knew him. And yet, the fact that he died from heart failure should be no surprise. For Ian put his heart and soul into everything he did. As an actor, he gave his all in every performance, be it on stage or screen, in voice recording or recital.

He always did a vast amount of preparation, so that his performances in roles such as Francis Urquhart in House of Cards (left), Dr Joseph Bell in Murder Rooms, Bill Haydon in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Nehru in Mountbatten: The Last Viceroy or Neuheim et al in Private Schulz seemed effortless.

On stage, his Frank Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Berowne in Love’s Labour Lost, Richard and Bolingbroke (alternating with Dickie Pasco) in Richard II and Klestakov in The Government Inspector are but a fraction of the parts he played which remain etched in the memories of those who saw them - commanding, daring and consummate on stage and yet often battling with nerves off it.

When you think of Ian Richardson you think of Francis Urquhart, a ruthless, calculating, heartless monster. And yet Ian’s own persona couldn’t have been more different. He was a tremendously giving person - to his fellow actors and all those he worked with, to the fans who wrote to him and approached him outside stage doors, to his friends and to the wife and family he adored.

He was the most thoughtful, kind-hearted - and often funny - person many of us had the privilege to meet. His loss is still keenly felt, but he has left us a tremendous legacy in the shape of his performances over the best part of five decades and fortunately many of his screen and audio recordings remain available today. His final recording, of Brian’s Shadowlands for Radio 2, was a beautiful, moving epitaph.

It will be impossible to forget him.

Ian Richardson
7 April 1934 – 9 February 2007

Tribute and photograph © Sharon Mail, 2008

SMALLS-TALK

So the BBC's much-feared political interviewer and general all-round smartypants, JEREMY PAXMAN, has been getting his knickers in a twist about... well... about his... er... knickers!

In a mysteriously leaked private e-mail to Sir Stuart Rose CEO of the department store chain, Marks & Spencer, Paxo briefly expressed his concerns about an issue that he believes to be a matter of "great concern to the men of Britain":

Like very large numbers of men in this country, I have always bought my socks and pants in Marks and Sparks. I've noticed that something very troubling has happened.

There's no other way to put this. Their pants no longer provide adequate support.

When I've discussed this with friends and acquaintances, it has revealed widespread gusset anxiety.

Well, Mr Paxman, the bottom line is you should ought, without further delay, to invest in a pair of Hugo Boss' latest boxer-briefs which are quite obviously intended for those smart arses who always seem to have eyes in -- as well as sometimes talking out of -- their backsides!


Or, maybe, a pair of these for when he's in the hot seat!!


Image: Cartoon © Gary, The Daily Mail, 2008

TALKING PANTS

Shortly before Christmas, I blogged this picture of David Beckham showing off (among other things) his new Georgio Armani underpants that seemed to win general approval from even the harshest critics among my readers: viz Gill and her friend, The Duchess.

Evidently, this readership was not alone: following the launch of this campaign, the London store, Selfridges, reported a 30% rise in sales of Armani briefs - though whether purchasers achieved the same level of 'rise' as Mr Beckham is not reported!

Armani will doubtless be hoping for a new boost from the latest picture of Becks in his dacks...


And the football-model (who clearly knows which side his buns are buttered) is playing a particularly smart game by acknowledging that he has probably as many gay admirers as female ones, recently telling a BBC Radio 2 interviewer:

I'm very honored to have the tag of gay icon. Maybe it's things like [the fact] I like to look after myself, I like to look smart and presentable most of the time.

I always liked to look good, even when I was a little kid. I was given the option when I was a page boy once of either wearing a suit or wearing knickerbockers and long socks and ballet shoes - and I chose the ballet shoes and knickerbockers. It was a little bit strange at the time and my dad gave me a bit of stick - but I was happy.

Oh, David, darling, pleeeeease!

Meanwhile, here's an alternative approach to underwear advertising from McAlson, makers of 'The World's Most Comfortable Boxer Shorts'...

ROYAL RADAR

After the recent BBC / Annie Leibovitz / HM Queen photo-shoot debacle, it's good to see that the relationship between the media (especially photographers) and the Royal Family is back on an even keel...


Of course, just as we didn't know whether the Queen was coming or going in that TV documentary, it isn't easy to know whether Prince Hal was photoshoped before or after he'd stripped down to his boxers...

You can read an excerpt from Radar's article here.

KEN'S CANDID CAMERA

Where the hell does the time go?

It seems only a few years back (at most a decade or two) that Ken Russell was the enfant terrible of the cinema.

Then, a couple of days ago, he turned 80 and there he was holding court at the Proud Gallery in London's Buckingham Street, where an impressive turn out of the great and the good were in attendance for the launch of a new exhibition of 1950s Russell photographs from the TopFoto archives.

They are, unsurprisingly, compelling!

© TopFoto and Ken Russell

Introducing myself - immediately after he had been reunited Georgina Hale (one of the Russell Repertory Company regulars) - Uncle Ken did me the great courtesy of acting as if he knew who I was. This civility was greatly appreciated by someone who charts his early obsession with movies by the films of Ken Russell.

I was 13 years old when I saw his groundbreaking film about Elgar (1961) made for the BBC’s TV arts programme, Monitor. Revolutionary, in that it included dramatized scenes with actors, Elgar, scorched itself into the memory with searing black and white images such as that of the young Elgar galloping across the Malvern Hills on a white pony.

KEN RUSSELL! It was the name to watch --- and I watched!

In 1968 I saw Song of Summer, the achingly exquisite portrait of Frederick Delius with Max Adrian as the blind, crippled composer struggling to write his final compositions through the medium of his amanuensis, Eric Fenby (Christopher Gable).

It was a sign of the television times in which we then lived that an elitist art film was viewed by enough of the population to subsequently be the subject of loving spoof on The Benny Hill Show!

With these early programmes, Russell defined a new style in filmmaking that was quickly adopted by others, notably Jonathan Miller, Lindsay Anderson and Stanley Kubrick.

Ken soon moved on from TV to cinema and I followed... watching a string of brilliantly controversial films: his adaptation of D H Lawrence’s Women in Love with Glenda Jackson, Jennie Linden, Oliver Reed and Alan Bates – "Tut, tut!" went the critics in response to male nude wrestling by firelight with shocking full frontal views! – and Glenda again, on this occasion with Richard Chamberlain, in The Music Lovers which caused more tut-tutting, this time about Tchaikovsky’s much-loved music being irredeemably tainted by smutty references to homosexuality!

Next, I ran the gauntlet of local Christians picketing the Astor cinema in Bromley in order to see The Devils: Ken’s shocking take on Aldous Huxley’s book The Devils of Loudoun in which Sister Vanessa Redgrave did unforgivably naughty stuff with a convent candle!

Ken was everything I loved about 'sixties and 'seventies cinema: bold, daring, dangerous and outrageous.

There were fantastic, dazzling flights of high campery with a 'twenties-style Twiggy in The Boyfriend and Roger Daltry, Elton John & Co in the rock folly, Tommy. There were also dynamic explorations of the entanglements of art and passion in Savage Messiah and in the monstrously magnificent Mahler which starred Robert Powell and Georgina Hale and swung hysterically – but unforgettably – from the beautiful to the banal and back again. But then Russell was never afraid to fall or fail, it was all part of the risk of flying to the sun on home-made wings!

Anyway, that – and, of course, much else besides – is the Ken Russell everyone knows; what comes as a revelation is this superb collection of photographs, Ken Russell's Lost London Rediscovered: 1951-1957, on show at the Proud Gallery until 21st August; 11.00-18.00, seven days a week.

Of course, we really shouldn’t be surprised that, during his years before breaking into filmmaking, he was already demonstrating such an exceptional skill in composing and creating memorable imagery. As Russell told the Telegraph: “In a way I was making still films, I suppose…”

© TopFoto and Ken Russell

The stunning photographs, which were originally published in Picture Post and other magazines, are candid glimpses of London life in the 1950s as encountered by Russell in the streets around his then lodgings in Portobello Road such as raggedy children playing amongst rain-drenched, post-war bombsites and four-square housewives in curler-disguising turbans and wrap-around aprons.

There are elderly women sitting in graveyards or playing cellos on the steps of the National Gallery; the forgotten cult of Teddy Girls modelling their modish home-made fashions; middle-aged men confusedly contemplating the inexplicable bizarreness of modern art; and - for good measure and pure whimsical delight - eccentric images of mock duels and expeditions by penny-farthing bicycles.

© TopFoto and Ken Russell

The photographs, all of which are available as signed limited prints, were found amongst a cache of boxes that TopFoto bought from Picture Post 30 years ago, but remained overlooked - until now. Mercifully, they were not in Russell’s thatched house in Lymington when it burned down last year, taking with it all the filmmaker's scripts and papers.

These dynamic pictures are a reminder for my generation (and an introduction to a younger generation) of Ken Russell’s extraordinary and extravagant genius behind the lens of a camera…

© TopFoto and Ken Russell

[Images: Photo of Ken Russell by David Weeks; all photographs from the exhibition © TopFoto and Ken Russell]