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Showing posts from October, 2011

The Lady of The Rose...

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The Lady of The Rose… Enid Stamp Taylor was born on Sunday the 12 th of June 1904 in the agreeable, late Victorian, seaside town of Whitley Bay in the North East corner of England. She was the only daughter of Army Major George Stamp Taylor and his wife Agnes. Some years later they had a son and named him Robin Geoffrey. But tragically, he died at the very young age of only ten years whilst away from home and at boarding school. Regretfully, the distraught parents separated in 1918, and Enid and her mother moved to London in order to stay with friends. It was here, that Enid’s interest in the stage began to blossom. She had reluctantly entered a beauty contest and then won the first prize of a part in the chorus line of a top West End show. The quality of her voice and exacting diction soon led her to stage training under Rosina Filippi, and in 1923 she toured in the ‘The Lady of the Rose’. During the thirties and forties, along with her agent Al Parker, sh

Interesting Diary Entries From The Past...

Television in The Home. July 1953. Aerial requirements. The aerial is usually of the dipole type, with a reflector and a special matching feeder cable to connect the aerial to the receiver. Usually a receiver is designed for a feeder having certain electrical characteristics. It is necessary to have the aerial arrangement fixed at a good height, and a suitable place is on the roof of a house. Often this is mounted on the chimney stack. The aerial should point in the direction of the transmitting station, with the reflector behind the aerial. Its erection is a job for the expert and is not one the amateur should undertake lightly. As television sets will in time improve, more and more people will get good results from aerials of low efficiency, but in the meantime, it is safe to assume that a television set is no better than its aerial. In some circumstances it can be found that installations close to the transmitter will receive too strong a signal. A way of dealing

Interesting Movies From The Past...

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Buggleskelly Today… Buggleskelly Today… The year of 1937 began the birth of Buggleskelly, the mythical Irish railway station set on a stretch of disused line near Basingstoke in Hampshire England. The setting was for the film Oh, Mr. Porter starring Will Hay, Moore Marriot, and Graham Moffat… The film was to become a classic! A tumbledown railway station, representing Buggleskelly was built at an old halt, and even during filming the line was being taken up by The Basingstoke and Alton Railway Company. The film itself is one of the funniest of British comedies in the Music Hall tradition of the 1930′s. The location of the run-down mythical Buggleskelly station was very overgrown when we visited there with our cameras in 1996, but it was still possible to make out where the booking office, rail lines, and signal box had once stood. Pictured by Dave Riley.

Interesting Quotes From The Past...

England expects that every man will do his duty. Horatio, Lord Nelson 1758-1805 British admiral. I am I plus my surroundings and if I do not preserve the latter, I do not preserve myself. Jose Ortega y Gasset 1883-1955 Spanish writer . The Parks are the lungs of London. William Pitt 1708-78 British statesman. Every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies. Jane Austen 1775-1817 English novelist. There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. Oscar Wilde 1854-1900 Irish dramatist. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. G.K. Chesterton 1874-1936 English writer.
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Enid… A Rare Moment… This very rare snapshot is thought to be taken on Hampstead Heath, North London soon after actress Enid Stamp Taylor’s marriage to diamond merchant Sidney Colton. Left is Enid’s mother Agnes Stamp Taylor, Enid and Sidney. The car is a Rolls Royce and the picture is seemingly taken by Agnes’s second husband Sidney Stobart around 1930.
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The Aldwych Ghost Station… The Aldwych Subway Station is a ghost station, built in 1907 as The Strand, it closed its doors to passengers for the last time in 1994… Standing now, on its deserted platform deep below London’s busy streets, I can sense the long-forgotten sounds of opening subway train doors and hurried conversations. I can almost feel those desponding souls living here below ground during those dark and distant days of the second world war. Wartime posters still cling to the walls all around me, and I feel any moment that a roar and bustle will emerge from the dark to penetrate my isolation… But then shaking somewhat and with a sudden inexplicaple cold sweat I tread the upward narrow stairway and thrust myself into the cool fresh London air with gulpfuls of thankfulness, my modern-day fears not welcomed in the dark confines of a terrorised wartime England.

Interesting Movies From The Past...

Hobson’s Choice 1953. Hobson’s Choice has got to be one of the most beautiful movies ever made by Director David Lean. Set in Salford Lancashire… I’ve never tired of watching the masterly acting of Charles Laughton. It was written by Harold Brighouse, and is superbly cast in Sir John Mills as the hapless bootmaker’s assistant, and Brenda De Banzie as the forthright woman who takes him in hand, marries him, and turns him into Lancashire’s finest bootmaker. Sadly, Brenda died at the youthful age of 71, however Sir John lived on to the good age of 98. ‘Hobson’s Choice’ is entirely an English conception… As entertaining today as it was when first written! Made by London Films, it’s success was secured by classic English actor Charles Laughton and classic English director David Lean.