Authors Electric

Our lockdown viewing has been the overwhelming TV series The World at War first shown on Thames TV in 1973-4. Just stop and have a listen to its opening theme by Carl Davis (looking on the cover of this   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds1xUE7hKzI   which is then explored across 26 hours of utterly gripping viewing. It's actually too big to write about. It took five years to make, cost £900,000 (£11,000,000 in 2019, Wikipedia tells me) was the inspiration of Jeremy Isaacs and is narrated by Laurence Olivier.  I dug out Mark Arnold-Forster's companion volume but somehow that didn't cut it.  The extraordinary thing about the series - as well as the footage, the music, the narration, the statistics, the sheer scale -- is the cast of interviewees. Last week we were listening to Traudl Junge and Martin Linge (Hitler's secretary and valet, both of them there in the bunker at the end) Albert Speer has been attempting to explain the inexplicable throughout, with Anth...

The Snow Goose 1946 In the autumn of 1940 the Saturday Evening Post in America published a short story, 'The Snow Goose' by Paul Gallico (1879-1976). It won the prestigious O. Henry short story prize and in 1941 was expanded into a novella, published in both the US and UK. It was hugely popular. Later it became a Golden Globe-winning film, a spoken word recording, an RCA record with words and music. More recently it's been represented as a touring puppet show and it's an acknowledged influence on Michael Morpurgo’s hugely successful novel War Horse .  For me, as a 1950s child, the story was accepted as truth and the most significant version was the book published in December 1946, with illustrations by Peter Scott. (I'm faintly shocked that there could be any others.) Our copy belonged to my mother but I appropriated it as soon as I could and have always treasured it. I never actually asked her whether she minded me removing it to my shelves -- or indeed how she fe...

“On October 6 th , very suddenly, Beedings, Tunbridge Wells, Daphne, dearly loved younger daughter of Francis and Hazel Winstone-Scott. No letters please.” ( Sevenoaks Chronicle & Kentish Advertiser 12.10.1945). Daphne was my mother’s younger sister. She had gone up to her bedroom, that Saturday evening, and shot herself with their father’s WW1 revolver. It was 1945 and she was just fifteen.  I learn now, from checking old newspapers, (oh, the magic of the internet!) that Daphne had suffered periods of illness from the age of six and had spent eighteen months in bed when she was twelve.  I remember that one of my aunts had  told me long ago that Daphne had suffered from kidney disease and committed suicide because she realised she was going to die anyway.  In fact d ialysis was already entering the development stage by 1945 -- but Daphne didn't know that.   A  Daily Mirror  report dubbed her “the girl who would never grow up.” (8.10.1945)...