Mentioned in an earlier blog was Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire UK, and that brings me to some interesting facts. The Grand Union Canal which ran the length of England was opened at Leighton Buzzard, and that Leighton Buzzard Railway Station was the location for part of the film The Great Train Robbery made in 1963. The robbery itself took place just outside the town at Bridego Bridge, and turned Ronnie Biggs into a household name.
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Tagged The Grand Union Canal
Although, I like… When I can… To theme my weblog in times past… I just couldn’t resist shooting this up-to date picture…
Now… I know Parking can be a problem for some people, and this novel parking- lot sign spotted on our recent visit to Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire was simply so uplifting… Sorry about the puns…
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Tagged Parking-Lot
“Marie Lloyd” whose real name was Marie Wood was the most popular comedienne of her time. She made her debut as Bella Delmore in 1885 then later used the name of Marie Lloyd. Her vivacious personality and portrayals in song of the London Cockney won her a very large following among music-hall audiences. She was born in 1870 and died in 1922.
Marie Lohr came to England from Australia and made her London debut in 1901, and soon established herself as a comedienne, though later she did play the stage part of the Empress in Casanova, and made her first film appearance in Aren’t We All. She became manager of The Globe Theatre from 1918 until 1925.
Sarah Bernhardt made her stage debut in Paris at the Comedie Francaise in Racine’s Iphigenie in 1862. She served as an ambulance worker in Paris during the First World War, acted in London and also toured Europe and Australia, and established her own theatre in Paris in 1899. She was born in 1845 and died in 1923.
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Tagged Marie Lloyd, Marie Lohr, Sarah Bernhardt
I think it is something of an importance to include this picture of Enid taken in 1934 whilst she relaxed with those around her that really mattered in her life. The shot was taken in the back garden of her West London home by Enid’s husband Sidney Colton.
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Tagged Enid Stamp Taylor
Bowl fast, bowl faster. When you play Test cricket you don’t give Englishmen an inch. Play it touch, all the way. Grind them into the dust. Don Bradman 1908 – 2001 Australian cricketer.
Never read print, it spoils one’s eye for the ball. W. G. Grace. 1848 – 1915 English cricketer.
It’s more than a game, it’s an institution. Thomas Hughes. 1822 – 96 English writer.
Cricket – a game which the English, not being a spiritual people, have invented in order to give themselves some conception of eternity. Lord Mancroft. 1914 – 87 British politician.
There’s a breathless hush in the close to-night – Ten to make and the match to win – A bumping pitch and a blinding light, An hour to play and the last man in. Henry Newbolt. 1862 – 1938 English writer.
Personally, I have always looked on cricket as organized loafing. William Temple. 1881 – 1944 English theologian.
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Tagged cricket quotes from the past
Baroness Emma Orczy
She was a British novelist and playright of Hungarian noble origin.
Famous for her books that portrayed her character of The Scarlet Pimpernel.
A prolific writer, along with her husband, right up until her death in 1947.
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Tagged Baroness Emma Orczy
Sir Noel Coward wrote his first play The Rat Trap when he was eighteen years old. In 1916 he toured the provinces of England in Charley’s Aunt, and one of his earliest successes was his play The Vortex. Among others were Bitter Sweet, Cavalcade, Blithe Spirit, and Sigh No More.
Edward M. Forster was an author and member of a committee to examine the law relating to deflamatory libel and its possible alteration. In 1937 he was awarded the Benson Medal by the Royal Society of Literature. He wrote many works including the famous Passage to India, A Room with a View, Nordic Twilight, and Virginia Woolf. He was born in 1882.
John Galsworthy was first a lawyer, then found his true bent in writing and issued his early books under the nom-de-plume of John Sinjohn. Later he achieved success, notably with his Forsyte series of novels. His plays included The Silver Box, Strife, and The Skin Game. He was born in 1867 and sadly died in 1933.
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This very rare snapshot is thought to be taken on Hampstead Heath, North London soon after Enid Stamp Taylor’s marriage to diamond merchant Sidney Colton. Left is 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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Tagged Enid Stamp Taylor
The Dark Daughters by Rhys Davis, was first published in 1947 by William Heinemann.
In 1895, wearing a smart frock-coat and an even smarter puce cravat, Mansell Roberts opened his chemist shop at the base of an arboreal North London hill intersected with rows of solid new villas. The wholesome breezes of Hampstead Heath blew down over the hill before losing themselves with a different odour in the clotted lower-class districts far below. Among tasteful scrolls heading the new chemist’s bills – and much more imposing than the actual premises – was an engraving depicting the shop’s exterior with two smart carriages drawn up at the kerb. Mansell had ordered many packages of these bills.
He was by nature adverse to giving credit but he trusted those villas with their horse-shoe drivers, stucco porticoes, flowering urns, and their roomy basements for several domestics. And to make more certain of laying a solid local foundation, he had become a worshipper at decorous St. Mark’s, though again his nature was adverse to the Established Church; he preferred those small dissenting sects catering for the less orderly souls of England.
The opening lines from this compelling story by Rhys Davies… Friends have been able to buy copies of this out of print book at different times from Amazon and on ebay.
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Tagged Rhys Davies, The Dark Daughters
George Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright and author. He was the Son of an Irish civil servant, and was born in Dublin in 1856. He began his working life in a land agent’s office and when he was twenty years old decided, in his own words, to “plunge into London.” There, he began reviewing books for the Pall Mall Gazette, then moved onto being an art critic for the World, and later a dramatic critic for the Saturday Review. His most famous plays included Arms and the Man, Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, and Saint Joan. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1925. He was a vegetarian and teetotaller, and died in 1950.
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Tagged George Bernard Shaw