Man on a mobile, start of the working day for some. Abbesses Metro entrance, Montmartre, Paris 18e. November 18, 2009.Map of Paris 18 area. With grateful acknowledgement Le Petit Parisien/Editions L’Indispensable, Paris.Steps up to Rue Garreau, Paris 18, November 18, 2009.Two women, Jardin Burq, off Rue Garreau, Paris 18.Three women, Jardin Burq, off Rue Garreau, Paris 18.
I had three cameras with me. A pre-1939 camera for black and white, and two for colour, one of which could be slipped discretely into, and out of, a jacket pocket.
Reading the morning paper, Rue Garreau, Paris 18.Seeing, Rue Garreau, near Place E.Goudeau, Paris 18. Rue Garreau, Paris 18.Not seeing, Rue Garreau, Paris 18.Two women, three pigeons, Place E.Goudeau/Rue Garreau, Paris 18.November leaves, buildings, a woman, Place E.Goudeau, Paris 18Hugging a tree or something more sinister? Place E Goudeau, Paris 18.The morning baguette, Montmartre, Paris 18.
The morning started with the sun peeking through the grey clouds, but then settled down to being overcast, before perking up again in the late afternoon.
Escorted tourist group, rear of Sacre Coeur, Paris 18. November 18, 2009.
As I took this photo I did not notice the gentleman, off camera, to my right. In his sixties. He smiled as he glanced and then took a closer, admiring look at the camera. It was a bashed early 1930s Rolleicord I was holding.
The bashed early 1930s Rolleicord.
“A good camera”, he said, with almost a loving smile, before he continued to guide the tourist group around the sights/sites of Montmartre. Soon the camera was also to be admired in the Place de Torcy fish market.
The back of Sacre Coeur, November 18, 2009.The back of Sacre Coeur, summer, 2000. Amelie on a moped with her young man. Closing sequence from Amelie (Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amelie Poulain). Grateful acknowledgement Canal+, France 3 Cinema, UGC.The wall of Rue de la Bonne and a couple. Can love flourish here? To the rear of Sacre Coeur, Paris 18, November 18, 2009.The wall of Rue de la Bonne, to the rear of Sacre Couer, Paris 18.Tree invaded ruin, near Parc de la Turlure, Paris 18.Federation Anarchiste flyer: “A Bas Toutes Les Religions!” (Down with All Religions) Near Parc de la Turlure, Paris 18. November 18, 2009.Place Jean Gabin, Paris 18.“French actor Jean Gabin as an army deserter in a scene from the film ‘Quai des Brumes’ (US title: Port of Shadows), directed by Marcel Carne for Cine-Alliance. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)” – source imdb.comTop left, Place Jean Gabin. Right, Rue Doudeauville. Grateful acknowledgement Le Petit Parisien/Editions L’Indispensable, Paris.Another morning baguette and a Mum with child in a push chair, and a hint of Autumn. Rue Doudeauville, November 18, Paris 18.Rue Doudeauville travelling east to the junction with Rue Marx Dormoy. The short Rue d’Oran runs patellel to it just to the north. Rue Leon travelling north intersects both. Paris 18.Wake Up, Dude. Rue Doudeauville, Paris 18. November 18, 2009.
As you walk east along Rue Doudeauville toward the junction with Rue Marx Dormoy there is a greater presence of Africans and Arab North Africans, mostly from the former French colonies, such as Algeria (Algérie)
“No Entry”, Rue d’Oran, and a woman. Paris 18.Halal Boucherie Du Rond Point, area of Rue Leon, November 18, 2009. Paris 18.Dar es Salam store, Rue Leon, Paris 18.The Gospel (Jereme Kinzanza) & The Beat (Luckson Padaud, Cote d’Ivorie). Rue Leon area, Paris 18.Restaurant Best Africa, Rue Leon area, Paris 18.Red, White & Blue. Rue Leon area, Paris 18.Rue Doudeauville crossing the tracks of the Gare de Nord approach. Grateful acknowledgement Le Petit Parisien/Editions L’Indispensable.Eurostar, Gare de Nord, Paris . Photo source Unknown.Overhead wires, approach to Gare de Nord, from Rue Doudeauville. Paris 18, November 18, 2009.Rue Doudwauville, looking toward the junction with Rue Marx Dormoy, Paris 18. November 18, 2009.
A group of young gypsy women with long brightly patterned cotton skirts were approaching me as I walked along the left-hand side of the bridge towards the junction with Rue Marx Dormoy. They were relaxed, perhaps moving from one touting/scam spot to another. I have good street radar and I knew instantly something was going to happen. In a blink of an eye I took in that they had no back up, and there was no-one behind me. And then it happened. They were all attractive and almost with a kind of contempt the one in the middle took a look at me and flicked her skirt up. Revealed at the top of her perfect legs was a magnificent triangle of black pubic hair. I instantly responded with a smile and “C’est tres jolie, madame”. There was a snooty flick of her head and they continued walking. No hassle.
A moment or two later, time to focus my Rolleicord: Rue Doudeville looking up towards Rue Marx Dormoy, Paris 18.
Indian Restaurant (right), Rue Marx Dormoy, at the junction with Rue Douudeauville, Paris 18. November 18, 2009. On Google Maps the Indian restaurant was still in business, May, 2019.
I was making my way north east to Place Herbert, where in 1957 the photographer Robert Doiseneau had taken his well known photograph Les Enfants de la Place Hebert.
Les Enfants de la Place Herbert, Robert Doisneau, 1957. Grateful acknowledgement The Estate of Robert Doisneau.Map of Place de Torcy & Place Herbert, Paris 18. Grateful acknowledgement Le Petit Parisien/Edition L’Indispensable.Place Tourcy, circa 1900. A hot day – note the open roof skylight and the clothes drying from the open windows. Liquers & Vins to wet the throat. Source unknown.Place de Tourcy and bus stop, Paris 18. May, 2019. Google Street view. Grateful acknowledgement Google. The Chapel and building to the left is still there. Everything has been demolished and rebuilt to the right.
On my way I came across an open air market in Place de Tourcy with a lot of fresh fish. Those in the market were predominantly Arab and African, buying and selling. From my past Parisian experience this crowded environment was not good for “candid” photos. My experience was that these groups were usually wary or hostile to photos being taken in their vicinity. However,in the happy celebration that was to erupt later that afternoon, wariness went out the window.
Whilst I was mulling over the pros and cons of of taking a photo, unseen to me a man, a white man, in his 80s had come up to me. Like the guide near Sacre Coure he had spotted the Rolleicord hanging around my neck. He was erect and his clothes were pressed. He had a quiet presence. “C’est tres bon”, and realising French wasn’t my native tounge asked me where I came from. “Ah, Scotland. I know Scotland I was there in 1945. I was in Perth. I had been asked to give talks to your Commandos by Tom Johnstone. I was in the French Resistance, you understand. I liked Scotland. Do you know Tom Johnstone?” Tom Johnstone had retired – two months before I was born in July 1945 – from being Secretary of State for Scotland in the wartime British Coalition Government led by Churchill. I said I knew of Tom Johnston. (1). He smiled and nodded, and after a parting fond look at the Rolleicord, we shook hands and went our separate ways.
Tom Johnston, during his time as Secretary of State for Scotland (1941 – 1945). Photo source Unknown.
I decided not to take a photograph in the Place de Tourcy market, but later wished I had taken a photo of the gentleman who had been in the Resistance..
It was a short walk from there, along Rue de l’Evangile, to Place Hebert and Cafe La Piscine. I’d been there two years before, give or take a month…
White mother and children, Cafe de Piscine, Place Herbert, Paris 18. January 8, 2008. This is a side view of the Cafe de Piscine. Part of the front – the entrance – which has a canopy, can be seen to the left.Arab woman and child, Cafe de Piscine, Place Hebert, Paris 18. January 8, 2008.Les Enfants de la Place Hebert, Robert Doisneau, 1947. Grateful acknowledgement The Estate of Robert Doisneau. The “Coiffeur” and the building is no longer there, replaced by a small single story corner shop. The Police Box has also gone.Place Herbert, Paris 18. November 18, 2009. The front canopy of the Cafe de Piscene is clearly seen. The street to its left is Rue de L’Evangile.
I’d had the Plat du Jour when I was there in 2008, and knew the Cafe had a lively and friendly atmosphere. So sitting inside on the Rue de L’Evangile side of the Cafe I enjoyed the craic, surrounded by locals having their mid-day meal, joshing with each other and the cafe staff. Eating my Crème Caramel I heard a quick blast on a trumpet outside, a happy blast. The meal finished, the pichet drunk, I sat outisde under the canopy with a fresh glass. Again there was a burst on a trumpet and a car went past with the player leaning out the window, and the driving grinning, and then beeping his horn. A wedding celebration?
A woman sat down at the table to my left. I noticed there was a head of a little dog peeking out of the top of her shopping bag, as she put it on the floor. She was joined by a male friend. I was checking my cameras, seeing how much film was left in each, and looking at the notes I had made of what I wanted to photograph near Rue de L’Evangile. At some point I looked up and the man gave a jerk of his head with a smiling hint of a frown as if to say “What are you doing?” I explained I was following in the footsteps of where Robert Doisneau, and others, took photos in the area. He kindly corrected my pronunciation of Doisneau – I didn’t realise the “s” wasn’t pronounced. I showed them the photocopies I had of Les Enfants de la Place Herbert, and Rene Jaques’ La Calvare with the gasometers in the background at the eastern end of Rue de l’Evangile. They told me the gasometers were gone. They told me that above the bar inside was a reproduction of Doisneau’s Les Enfants de Place Hebert. I had never noticed. Like nearly all Parisians of their age they knew their Doisneau’s, their Cartier Bresson’s, their Izis and their Willy Ronis’s. Parisians, old and young, queue patiently to see a major exhibition by any of these Masters.
La Calvare de La Rue de l’Evangile. photo Rene Jacques, Estate of Rene Jaques.
I asked if I could take their photo. “Bien sur”. The little camera in my pocket had a fast film loaded for poor light.
Cafe Piscine, Place Herbert, Madam Fouquet and a friend. November 18, 2009.Madame Fouquet and a friend, Cafe Piscine, Place Hebert, Paris 18. November 18, 2009.
I said I would send her the photos if she gave me an address, once they were developed. She gave me the address of the Cafe Piscine. (I sent the photos. Note: photografton no longer exists. See instead petegraftonphotos.com)
Time to move on, but I needed the toilet. Inside I looked up at the photo of Les Enfants de Place Hebert above the bar. La Patron followed my gaze. “Vous etes Le Patron?” – “Oui”. We shook hands and I went down to the squatter toilet in the basement.
Looking at my street map and the time I decided to skip going down to the very end of Rue de l’Evangile and started heading south making my way to Rue Marx Dormoy. As I almost got there, there was excitement down a one-way side street – flares were going off. Flags were being waved. Algerian flags. This was no wedding, it was a party, a celebration.
Algerie 1 – Egypte 0 celebrations, Rue Riquet, Paris 18. November 18, 2009.
Algerie 1 – Egypte 0 celebrations, Rue Riquet, Paris 18. November 18, 2009.
Algeria and Egypt were fierce football rivals. This was a make or break game played in the Sudan to decide which team would go forward to play in the World Cup.
Algerie 1 – Egypte 0 celebrations, Rue Marx Dormoy, Paris 18. November 18, 2009.
Rue Marx Dormoy, Boulevard de la Chappelle & Barbes Rochechouart Metro. Grateful acknowledgement Le Peitit Parisien/Editions l’Indispensable, Paris.Family group on pavement, Algerie – Egypt 0 celebrations, Boulevard de la Chapelle, Paris 18. November 18, 2009.Algerie 1 – Egypte 0 celebration, man in car smiling at the camera with Algerian flag, Boulevard de la Chappelle. Late afternoon, November 18, 2009.
Walking along Boulevard de la Chapelle towards the Barbes Rochechouart Metro area the light was fading and the crowds and the cars were increasing. Up a quiet dark side street on my right I noticed riot police, “at ease, by the side of parked police vehicles, ready, if necessary. (2)
Algerie 1 – Egypte 0 cleberations , police woman on pedestrian control duty near Barbes Rochechouart Metro. November 18, 2009.Looking back to where the police woman was on pedestrian control. Metro train above. Barbes Rochechouart. Small boy holding the Algerian flag with one hand, and with the other an adult. Barbes Rochechouart, November 18, 2009.
Algerie 1 – Egypt 0, crowd control, Barbes Rochechouart, Paris 18. November 18, 2009.Algeria 1 – Egypt, young woman driving car, celebrations at Barbes Rochechouart, Paris 18.Algerian supporters hold a large photo of the Algerian National Football Team for the camera, Barbes Rochechouart, Paris 18. November 18, 2009.Tati “Les Plus Bas Prix” and two woman and a boy in the celebrating crowds, Algerie 1 – Egypte 0. Barbes Rochechouart, Paris 18. November 18, 2009.
As I walked West towards the predominantly white French area around Place des Abbesses the predominantly Algerian crowds thinned. What a day.
A year later…..
A year later, November 25, 2010, an Algerian flag is still on the steelwork of the Barbes Rochochouart Metro.
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Footnotes
Tom Johnson (1881 – 1965) was a Labour MP, and was liked by most MPs, irrespective of their Party loyalties, during his time in the wartime Coalition Government. His invitation to the French Resistance gentleman to talk to Commandos in Scotland (or possibly SOE – Special Operations Executive – staff, rather than Commandoes), may have been stimulated by his concern for the possibility of an active Nazi resistance in the immediate post-war period in Germany. He expressed his concern to Robert Bruce Lockhart, a fellow Scot, and Director-General of the Political Warfare Executive, in a private conversation in the North British Hotel, Edinburgh in April, 1945. see The Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, Volume Two, 1939 – 1965.
As far as I know there were no crowd “disturbances” or riot police used during the evening of November 18, 2009, although there were rumours, unconfirmed rumours.
Posted on 6 June, 2019, the 75th Anniversary of D Day.
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British Army Royal Engineer:
I was in the first wave on D Day. It was supposed to be half past six in the morning, but we was late again! The British Army was late again! Eight o’ clock we got there.
We went from Gosport. We was kept up there for six weeks in the “cages” – a big white camp, all under canvas, and you had all your last minute secret training in there, but no-one knew when it was going to be. They was all over England these camps. The preparation was so strict, and intense, from the time we got to Gosport. You kept doing the same thing over and over again. Once a week we had to all put on our battle order – we had special assault jackets, different to the Army uniform, and we got on the lorries, took us to Gosport harbour. We embarked on our tank landing craft and they took you out into the Channel. Maybe four hours. The next week you thought: hello, what’s going on here. We were away, so we thought. But they brought you back. Back to the routine.
Gosport High Street, circa late 1940s.
In the camp we couldn’t get to the pub. We couldn’t get out because of the perimeter wire – they had guards on it, Redcaps and dogs. As I say, they brought you back, back to the routine. Of course the last time they took us out I thought to myself “We’re out here a fucking long while”. And the blokes are saying “What the hell’s going on today? We want to get back”. Course they came round, the Captain, this naval officer, whatever he was, who was driving the fucking boat, he came round and gave you the word, that this was the real thing. The old Padre came at us – cor fucking hell. “I wish I’d known this, they wouldn’t have got me out”, but you were in the routine, you was taking orders all the time.
On the boat you was all split up into your little groups. They split everybody up into small groups so that in case of casualties – in case a whole lot got wiped out – you still had a unit. There was only me and a Tosh, a mate of mine – us two engineers on that one boat. Then we had an anti-aircraft gun, bren carrier, few infantrymen, few ambulance men – all mixed, so whoever got there, you had something of each.
Benouville Beach, Benouville and Benouville Bridge were in the “Sword” landing area, to the right.
When we were getting near France and I realised this was it I was like a jelly – nerves. I wasn’t no hero. I don’t think nobody was. Well, some were.
“Monday D Day Held Up”, London Daily Mirror, 7 June 1944.Approaching Benouville Beach, France, D Day, June 6, 1944.
Where we landed was a narrow beach and the tide had started to go out. We were supposed to have got the full tide, but as we were late it was on its way out. We were about fifty yards out, but the Captain of the boat said “You’ll be alright, I’ll run you right up to the beach”, which he did. They were all doing that – banging them right up onto the beach. I hung on the barrel of the anti-aircraft gun so I wouldn’t get a wet arse. I wasn’t going into the water for no fucker.
London Daily Mirror front page, 7 June, 1944.
When you landed you had all your colours – gold, red – and your boats went for that. We were getting shells. The Beachmasters landed first – blokes on the beach with flags, waving them in. They were fucking heroes – all them blokes. Them and the MPs I think. They talk about the MPs being bastards, well the Corps of MPs might have been, because they was a different branch, but you had your own MPs attached to your unit, they was alright. They’d stand on point duty, if they was putting in an attack, and the transport had to move up. They’d be standing on point duty on a branch road in the country, and they’d be getting knocked out right, left and centre. About six in one day we got killed. As soon as one got killed, they’d say to another one: You – point duty, and as they were going up there: Bang!
London Daily Mirror, 7 June, 1944.
You had a map reference when you landed, where to go. If you were interested. Course, some went that way, and some went the other way! But where could you desert to? You took a chance whatever way you went. Everybody was on the beach. It was jammed up. They had a casualty clearing station up one end, dug in some cliffs, they was taking the casualties in there. There was a little stone wall – a parapet wall along the front and we was behind that, crouching. All of us. No fucker would move. They was all piling up behind there. It was Bénouville beach we’d landed on. Our objective was Bénouville Bridge. We had to meet up with the 6th Airborne who’d landed in front of us and captured the bridge. But we didn’t know whether they’d captured it or not! No one knew how to get to where they were supposed to go. You’d say “Where you going mate?” You walked, run or got a lift up there. We were like a load of kids on an outing.
As soon as they realised the first attack had gone in and it was serious they started slinging a few shells back. It was everyman for himself.
British radio programmes, D Day, 6 June, 1944. Source Birmingham Evening Despatch.
There was a bit of an opening where the road came down to the beach and they were all making for that. And the first thing I see, laying in the middle of the road was a green beret and a blown up bike. All smoking. Bits of rag. He got a direct hit with a mortar, this commando. They landed with them folding bikes. That was the first one I saw. I thought: Oh no. I didn’t want to know much, so me and my mate Tosh thought: Let’s fuck off and get out of it. We shot up the road into a churchyard. We sat there for a couple of hours. Had a fag. Thought: Fuck it, what are we going to do now? We gradually worked our way up.
British soldiers moving on from Benouville Beach, D Day, 6 June, 1944.
As we were going up they came over and dropped another load of airborne troops. The 6th Airborne went in first – the old Flying Horse Pegasus. They called it Pegasus Bridge afterwards.
“Field ambulance vehicles evacuating 6th Airborne wounded across Benouville Bridge, towards the beaches.” Note the Allied glider on the right.Birmingham Evening Despatch front page, 6.30 pm edition, D Day, 6 June 1944.“Late News” Birmingham Evening Despatch, D Day, 6 June, 1944.
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I was in the forward area all the time. It was a three mile area, which wasn’t very nice because you was getting the short distance shells, and you went up with the infantry.
Some of the infantry wouldn’t move without us, and we wouldn’t move without the infantry – that’s how you used to argue. It’s unbelievable. If they had to go out on a night patrol and they came up against a minefield they’d send back for us. “Fuck you”, we’d say, “We’re not going up there to get shot” – and you’re standing there arguing. That’s how the army was running. The officers would sort it out. A sapper in the RE’s was equal to an infantry lieutenant. When the poor infantry used to quake in their shoes at a lieutenant, we used to tell them to fuck off.
After a couple of days at D Day the next wave landed and they went up to take over from our division, but they ran into a counter-attack. They got there but got knocked back again. They got knocked back to where we were, on the Bénouville Bridge, River Orme, it was. We was stuck there. Our division, our infantry, had to hold on where they were. It was six weeks before we got a break, we got a rest. Our objective was Caen. First thing we had to do was to lay 2000 mines, right across our area. This was all night work. Couldn’t do it by day – they’d see you.
When we did move forwards, you had no time that was your own. You lived from day to night, day to night. Working and sleeping, working and sleeping. Sleeping in holes. I’d be sleeping in my hole and a Corporal or one of your mates would say “Come on Spot, we’ve got a job to do”. They called me “Spot” from the poem, because my name was Thorpe: “Under the Thorpe, There’s a little Town, Half a Hundred Bridges” – Tennyson’s Brook.
They’d say, we’ve got a job to do, a minefield to lay. You’d go back and get your boxes of mines on your lorry – take them as near as you could, then you’d hump them across the fields in the middle of the night. But the thing was, months afterwards, when everyone had moved forwards, you was the only who had a map of the mines, so you had to leave the forward area to come back and clear your minefields. We lost one!
I was a nervous wreck on mine clearing. You had to keep your wits about you. We didn’t use the mine detector for the simple reason that they were useless. For the simple reason, once you put those earphones on you couldn’t hear the shells, so we slung them around our necks. They was cumbersome too, they was big. They issued us with a three foot long steel knitting needle. That’s what we had. Probes they called them. With an ordinary mine you wouldn’t set it off, wouldn’t be enough weight. But they surrounded them with little shoe mines, little wooden box shoe mines. If you touched those – they was away. But you could, if you was clever, get your point in ’em and throw ’em up in the air, and they’d go off! That’s how you got, how we all got. “Get out of the fucking way!”, and they’d sling them and bang, off they’d go. They was catching quite a few with them. A half track or a small vehicle would pull up in a field, the bloke would jump out and step on one of these little shoe mines – Bang! They was all losing ankles, and it used to split your bone up your shin. They used to issue us with wellies! Wellington boots to stop ’em – wellington boots and a long bit of wire. When you found a standard mine, you didn’t know whether to lift it or to drag it. To drag it you had a grappling hook and rope and you’d hook it on the handle and drag ’em.
Royal Engineer John Thorpe, centre, circa 1944. Photo Estate of John Thorpe.
I didn’t get any leave until we was well in Germany, at the Dormund-Ems canal. We were supposed to put a bridge across there, but we was under fire from the other side. It was a rota system – getting leave – one at a time, two weeks. I got to see my wife and kiddies. A lot of blokes on active service was glad to get away from London when they were on leave, they couldn’t stand it, because they hadn’t experienced air-raids, being on army service, and they were getting the doodle-bugs in London. They’d say “I don’t want to know this, I want to get back to my unit”. Same as our infantry used to say to us, if they came back for a rest, they weren’t comfortable, they used to say “We don’t like it here. We want to get back to the front. All we we got to face up there is rifle and machine gun bullets”, they used to say “Back here you get shells and mortars. Up there we can keep our head down, we can dodge them little bullets”.
You see some weird things in a war. Once you get involved in a war, I don’t care who you are, if you’re up in the forward area, where there’s any action, I say everyman turned into an animal. The conversion was gradual. From the time you got there you started living like an animal, you got involved in casualties, in dead bodies and living in holes in the ground , or old bombed houses – you gradually changed, didn’t matter how timid, or what sort of person you was, you became an animal. When you first arrived at D day and you see a couple of bodies blown to bits , it turns you up, and you’re looking to see if you can do anything. Three weeks later bodies are lying there, and you just walk past them. It’s a sensation I can’t explain. After a couple of days you’re starting to get used to it. Someone’s slinging shells at you and it goes Bang, Bang, and you’re diving in holes, it becomes a matter of – like a rabbit, you come out to feed and do something, Every time the noise starts you’re down your hole. I was the fastest one of the lot!
Royal Engineer John Thorpe, right. In Germany, circa 1945. Photo Estate of John Thorpe.
In memory of John Thorpe, workmate in 1973 at Plashet Park, East Ham, London.
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Britain’s black-out, 7 June. Source London Daily Mirror, 7 June 1944.
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John’s experiences are recorded in You, You & You! The People out of Step with World Two. London, 1981. Print copies are usually available on Abebooks and on Amazon.
Bertrand Russell – “A Wild Beast in Philosopher’s Robes”
Betrand Russell, 1951. photo Alfred Eisenstaedt.
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In a weekend spanning the end of June and the beginning of July in Oxford 1951 the philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell gave a talk as part of a British Foreign Office symposium on Communism at Jesus College. Speakers over that week-end also included Isaiah Berlin and the biologist and geneticist C.D. Darlington who was to talk on “Science in the Soviet Union”.
The context was the subjugation by the Russian Soviet Union of the people of eastern Germany, of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Albania and Rumania. Meanwhile the Labour Government of the time had secretly committed millions to developing a British atomic bomb, the American’s were already working on the hydrogen bomb, whilst the Soviet Union exploded their first atomic bomb in 1949. In 1950 North Korea invaded South Korea with the support of the Soviet Union and Communist China. Also attending that weekend was Robert Bruce Lockhart.
The former head of the wartime British Political Warfare Executive and liaison office to the Czechoslovak Government in Exile during the Second World War Robert Bruce Lockhart had already had an interesting past.
The Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, 1939 – 1965, edited by Kenneth Young. Macmillan, London, 1980.
Robert Bruce Lockhart’s Diaries, published in two volumes after his death, give an extraordinarily intimate insight into men and women who were prominent on the world stage from the time of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution through to the immediate post Second World War period. They include writers and dramatists – H.G.Welles, Arnold Bennett, Somerset Maugham, Noel Coward – politicians: Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, Ramsay Macdonald, Oswald Mosley, Nye Bevan, Anthony Eden, the Czech President Tomáš Masaryk, his son Jan Masaryk, Edward Beneš and Klement Gottwald; Bolshevik revolutionaries Lenin and Trotsky, Menshevik exile Kerensky, the newspaper proprietor Beaverbrook, owner of the Daily Express, (the largest selling daily in Britain in the 1930s), Kaiser Wilhelm II in Dutch exile, and many, many others.
He came to prominence when as a young man representing the British Government in revolutionary Bolshevik Russia he was arrested in September 1918 for allegedly being involved in an “Allied Plot” against the Bolshevik Government. His background was Scottish: Highlander and Lowlander and he had a love for many aspects of the Russian character, particularly their gypsy music and heavy drinking. He was clear-sighted about the stupidity of allied intervention and allied support of the White Russians during the Civil War.
Memoirs of a British Agent, Penguin paperback edition, published 1950. Title first published 1932 by Putnam, London.
Imprisoned in Moscow for a month he was released in an exchange deal involving Maxim Litvinov, the unofficial Bolshevik ambassador in London. He was politically insightful, occupying a centre ground. When asked by the British Foreign Office he usually gave startlingly (in hindsight) good summaries of the political situation in the Soviet Union and Central European countries, even though the Foreign Office rarely acted on them. Besides aspects of Russian culture he had a love of Czechs and the Czech nation. He somehow balanced his keen, clear, informed political insights and predictions and his prolific diary writing and work for the London Evening Standard in the 1930s with lunchtimes and evenings of heavy drinking, and was usually in debt. He wrote fourteen books, including a standard work on Scottish Whisky, Scotch, which is still in print. He also loved fly fishing, and wrote My Rod My Comfort. He was sympathetic to the 1940s Scottish Covenant movement for devolution.
1934 film poster for British Agent, loosely based on Bruce Lockhart’s Memoirs of a British Agent. The film was directed by Michael Curtiz who was to make Casablanca in 1942, with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.Actor Leslie Howard and Robert Bruce Lockhart, circa 1934.
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In his Diary for Sunday, 1 July, 1951, Robert Bruce Lockhart wrote:
“…. In the evening about 5.30 p.m. arrived Bertrand Russell by train from London and was taken to his room in Staircase No. XIII where John Richard Green, the historian and writer, and T.E.Lawrence, Jesus’s most famous alumnus, lived.
Jesus College, Oxford.
At 6 p.m I took the chair at his lecture on ‘Democracy’s Defence Against Communism’. All members of the course had expected this to be the highlight and, indeed, I had led them to believe so. The old gentlemen however was not at his brilliant best. He had tried to do something that was not quite in his line; viz. to give a Foreign Office tour d’horizon. He had, too, a script to which he referred occasionally. (Script is perhaps the wrong word; the document was, in fact, two pages of closely typed notes.) Nearly always he had to make an awkward pause before he found his place.
The material was good enough. He was violently, or shall I say strongly, anti-communist: insisted that on our side military strength and rearmament took precedence over all other matters including schemes of world government, etc. He was quite confident that Communism could not and would not last and that things would change in Russian where he believed the regime was more deeply detested than we realised. Made a strong case for anti-Russian sentiment in satellite countries. On our side he said we must do more for the underprivileged and backward races in the East which was fertile ground for communism. We must abandon all imperialism and, above all, we must get rid of the colour bar. He made a strong attack on the policy of the Malan (1) government in South Africa and expressed the hope that South Africa would leave the Commonwealth as soon as possible – the sooner the better, in fact!...(1. Dr.D.F.Malan (1874 – 1959) was Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, South Africa 1948 – 1954. Footnote by Editor Kenneth Young.)
He was fairly, but not very, good in answering questions and was handicapped by the stupidity of some of the questioners, some of whom wanted to know how soon the changes which Russell expected in the U.S.S.R would take place and just what form world government would take and how soon it could be expected. However he stood up fairly well to a long ordeal which began at 6 p.m. and with an hour’s break for dinner, lasted till 10 p.m.
I had two long talks with him alone, and then he was at his best, his eyes twinkling, his huge head resting rather heavily as it seemed on his lean, spare, lithe figure, and his smile lighting up his face. When you ask what is a superior man, the answer is not a Churchill or a Beaverbrook but men like Bertie Russell, Thomas Masaryk and Charles Richet. (2. Charles Richet, French physiologist (1850 – 1935) and Nobel prizewinner. Footnote by editor Kenneth Young.)
Russell very human, had two sherries plus half a pint of beer at dinner, laughed heartily when I asked him what was the secret of his perennial youth. ‘Glands, I suppose, glands. But I hope I’ll live till ninety so that I can say all the wrong things.Shaw had a field day when he was ninety. Ascribed his great age to vegetarianism, teetotalism, non-smoking and goodness knows what other forms of self-discipline. I shall say that I have done everything that doctors think wrong: I’ve drunk, I’ve smoked (he is a great pipe-smoker), I’ve eaten what I liked and I’ve enjoyed myself in every way….’
…… He was also to my surprise anti-Labour – at least he predicted with great assurance that they would be heavily beaten at the next election and seemed to desire this defeat. (The Labour Government called a snap election later that year, in October. They lost the election but were not heavily beaten. They won more individual votes than the Conservative Party but lost parliamentary constituency seats to the Conservatives, who ended up with a majority of 20 seats. Footnote Pete Grafton). Indeed, he wanted to make a bet with me there and then. Told me with great glee how he had won a bet off Culbertson, the U.S. bridge expert who also considered himself an authority on foreign affairs. (3. Ely Culbertson (1891 – 1955) author and pacifist, who created the Culbertson System for bridge in 1930. Footnote by editor Kenneth Younger). Russell bet him early in 1941 that Japan would be in the war before the end of the year and that this would bring the U.S. in. Russell had a narrow squeak – 7 December – but he won.
He was also very interesting on Darlington’s view on Lysenko. (Bruce Lockhart had already written in his diary the previous day about the talk by Darlington: “Lysenko’s theory. Heredity is merely development. enviroment can change development. Therefore environment can change heredity. In Darlington’s opinion Lysenko is a charlatan. His experiments have produced no results. The Russian scientists know this… Under Stalin no room for argument.. The Russian scientists who were prepared to argue have been ‘liquidated’. ) He told me that the whole theory of heredity and that character could be changed by environment (the Lysenko and Stalin theory) was started by Samuel Butler, in hatred of Darwin who he detested. The theory was carried on by Bernard Shaw. (Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright and polemicist, who was an early admirer of the Italian fascist Mussolini, and then the Communist dictator Joseph Stalin. He was an advocate of the cleansing of class enemies, amongst others, suggesting in 1934 a “humane killing gas”. Footnote by Pete Grafton.)
His saddest story was his loneliness after his return from his first visit (probably only visit) to Russia in 1921. He disliked the Communist regime very much after he had seen it. He was then very much to the Left himself, and his comment on his return from the Bolshevik paradise displeased very much his left-wing friends who had not seen Russia and therefore loved it. As during the First World War he had been a pacifist, he not only lost his Cambridge fellowship but also his right-wing and indeed centre friends. After his return from Russia he was, therefore, completely friendless.
Saddest thing of all was when I took him after our longish talk after the lecture to his rooms to go to bed. I knew he had a weak bladder, because I had been forced to take him to the ‘loo’ both before and immediately after his lecture. When I took him to the John Richard Green staircase, I found that his rooms were on the ground floor, that they had no running water and that the nearest ‘loo’ was three floors of steep stairs up, and then along a winding corridor which few young men could have found at night, let alone an octogenarian. (Russell was not in his 80s in June/July 1951, he was 79. Footnote Pete Grafton). He was in quite a fuss and suddenly looked old and tired and I felt sorry for him. He wanted a chamber pot and, above all, a cup of tea first thing in the morning without which he said he was lost. I saw that there was a chamber pot for him and I was lucky enough to catch the head steward by knocking at the locked buttery door and arranged for a cup of tea to be sent to the old boy – tea without sugar or milk!
When I returned from my rounds to see if he was all right, I found him quite quiet, sitting in an easy chair, smoking his pipe and reading his book. He was most grateful.
Later I ran into a member of the course who told me that the room he was occupying belonged to a Communist undergraduate, for the shelves were filled with copies of the Daily Worker and Communist books published by Lawrence and Wishart.
– from The Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, 1939 – 1965, edited by Kenneth Young, Macmillan, London, 1980.
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George Orwell with his son Richard. London, early 1946. photo Vernon Richards. Richards was a leading member of the editorial group of Freedom, the anarchist newspaper.
The Cotswold Sanatorium, Cranham, Glouceshire, circa late 1940s/early 1950s
Two and a half years before Russel’s talk at Oxford the writer George Orwell was reading his Human Knowledge: It’s Scope and Limits, at the Cotswold Sanatorium in Gloucestershire. Often in poor health he had been diagnosed with tuberculosis at Hairmyers Hospital, East Kilbride in Lanarkshire, in December, 1947. Despite this he was to write Ninety Eighty Four on Jura, in the Inner Hebrides during 1948. His tuberculosis became worse and he had been helped to travel to the Cotswold Sanatorium by his friend Richard Rees, in January, 1949. Richard Rees had encouraged Orwell’s writing since the early 1930s, and was to be his literary executor. Orwell was writing to him in early February, 1949.
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The Cotswold Sanatorium, Cranham, Glos.
4 February 1949
“…. I am reading B.Russell’s latest book, about human knowledge. He quotes Shakespeare, ‘Doubt that the stars are fire, Doubt that the earth doth move’ (it goes on I think ‘Doubt truth be a liar , But never doubt I love.’) But he makes it ‘Doubt that the sun doth move’, and uses this as an instance of S’s ignorance. Is that right? I had an idea it was ‘the earth’. But I haven’t got a Shakespeare here and I can’t even remember where the lines come from (must be one of his comedies I think). I wish you’d verify this for me if you can remember where it comes. I see by the way that the Russian press has just described B.R. as a wolf in a dinner-jacket and a wild beast in philosopher’s robes.”
– Source: The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 4, edited by Sonia Orwell, and Ian Angus. The editors footnote that Russell was right, and that the quotation is from Hamlet.
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It was be a further 38 years of Soviet Communist occupation before Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and East Germany had a freedom that West European countries took for granted. During that time the USSR, directly and then under the umbrella of the “Warsaw Pact” crushed, usually with tanks, all demonstrations against Communist rule. The USSR itself lasted until 1992.
East Germany 1953
In a scenario that even George Orwell hadn’t thought of for his Animal Farm, the Communist dictatorship of East Germany (DDR) demanded in 1953 that the already over-worked and undernourished workers increase production.
East German workers demonstrate for better living conditions, including more bread. Berlin, 16 June, 1953.Russian tanks, Berlin, 17 June 1953. Photo Associated Press“Soviet tanks shot at protestors in Potsdam Square. ” Photo source allliance/akg images.
Poland 1956
Tanks in Poznan, Poland, June 1956.
Hungary 1956
Hungary, October 1956.“Jack Esten was in Budapest when this Russian colonel drew his revolver and endeavoured to deprive him of his camera.” Caption & source Photography Year Book 1958. Photo Jack Esten.
Czechoslovakia 1968.
Protestor confronts Soviet tank, morning of 21 August, 1968, Main Square, Bratislava, Slovakia. photo Ladislav Bielik. The invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 was the largest invasion of a European country since Nazi Germany attacked Poland in September, 1939, which precipitated the Second World War.Czechoslovakia, August, 1968. photo Josef Koudelka
Poland, December, 1970.
Unidentified town, Polish Baltic Coast, either Szczecin, Gdansk, Gdynia or Elblag, December 1970.Photo montage: Shipyard workers in Szczecin/”For wages of Communist Party Leaders to be no more than those of an average worker”. source Polski Radio
Poland, 1980s.
Lenin shipyard, Gdansk, 1980. Solidarity movement demonstration.Queuing for toilet paper, possibly Lodz. On July 30, 1981 an estimated 30,000 – 40,000, mostly women and children demonstrated in Lodz with placards reading ‘We want to eat’, ‘Our Children have No Food’, ‘We have no strength to work.”Poland: The Polish Communist dictatorship declares Martial Law, December 13, 1981.
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Bertrand Russell outlived George Bernard Shaw by 3 years, dying at the age of 97 in February 1970. Robert Bruce Lockhart, curiously, died on the same month and the same year, February 1970 aged 82. George Orwell died from a burst TB lung on 21 January, 1950 at the age of 46. His novel Animal Farm was banned by the Soviet Communists from its 1945 publication until 1988. His Ninety Eighty Four was banned in the USSR from 1950 until 1990. It is not clear if any works of Bertrand Russell were also banned in the USSR.
At present, Marxist Communism still imprisons, in the name of “The People”, the populations of Vietnam, North Korea and China.
Socialist Republic of Vietnam.Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.People’s Republic of China.Lone protestor versus the People’s Republic of China tanks, Tiananmen Square, Beijing, 1989.
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21st century: London, May Day, members of the Communist Party of Great Britain – Marxist Leninist marching with a portrait of Soviet mass killer Joseph Stalin.
21st century: London, May Day, 2019, British Labour Party Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell with banner of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Marxist mass killers Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong.
George Orwell, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, four volumes, London 1968.
Robert Bruce Lockhart, The Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, 1915 – 1938, London, 1973; The Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, 1939 – 1965, London, 1980.
John Wheeler-Bennett and Anthony Nicholls, The Semblance of Peace: The Political Settlement after the Second World War, London, 1972.
Americans holidaying in the south of France, circa 1956. There is a rack of picture postcards by the door; the woman holds a pencil, the gent is displaying what seems to be a tourist guidebook.
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A collection of Kodachrome slides from the Pete Grafton Collection.
Chateau D’If, Tourisme Nautique – Vieux Port, Marseilles, circa 1956.
What follows are Kodachrome slides taken by an American couple on holiday in France circa 1956. The year is a guess, based on clothes and cars. The photos are no later than 1957 as Kodak did not start dating the mounts of their Kodachrome slides (when processed) until 1958. The first group of photos including the two above were taken in the Marseilles, Arles and Avignon area in early Spring.
Extract from Michelin Map France Sud, 1965 revision. With grateful acknowledgment to Michelin.
All these Kodachrome slides were bought on ebay by Pete Grafton in 2008, from a vendor who regularly sold slides on the ebay site.
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It seems the American visitors above took a trip on the Chateau D’If tourist boat around the old port (Vieux Port), besides taking a couple of snaps of local youngsters fishing.
Vieux Port (The Old Port), Marseilles.Vieux Port, Marseille, 1956.Vieux Port, Marseille. 1956.
Both boys have sand/mud on their hands. In 2019 these boys will now be approaching their mid-seventies.The American couple stayed a night or two in a hotel possibly either in or near Arles or Avignon.The American woman with…? A fellow hotel guest, or Le Patron de L’Hotel ? Or…?
The hotel dining room.The view from the hotel dining room. There is a chance the car seen on the left is a car hired by the American couple. There is a glimpse of a similar car in a photo of Le Palais des Papes (Palace of the Popes) in Avignon.Arles.Arles, Roman ruins.Arles, price of entry to Roman ruins and a cat sniffing the sign.Two young girls. Assumed to be Arles or Avignon. Detail.
Church entrance, with daughter, son and father, possibly. Assumed to be either Arles or Avignon. Detail.
Unidentified town square. “Cycles Magaly” and a Gendarme talks to a car passenger. Detail.
Pont d’Avignon (and dog).Avignon and a parked Cadillac, believed to be a Series 62, with a Norwegian plate. A sign to the right of the Banque de France indicates the way to Le Palais des Papes (The Palace of the Popes)Le Palais des Papes, Avignon.Avignon.Monument du Centenaire (detail), Avignon. Someone is looking out of the window above the Creme Eclipse signMonument du Centenaire, Avignon.Theatre Building, Avignon, detail.
Citroen 2CV and Volkswagen Beatle, believed to be in Avignon. (Detail). The country of origin of the all numeral registration plate on the Volkswagen has not, yet, been identified.
Avignon: “Services Touristiques, Provence Voyages“, and a Gendarme. Detail.
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Eh Maintenant?
Marseille, the Old Harbour, circa 1956. Note the washing drying out on the fourth floor.Marseilles, the Old Harbour. Grateful acknowledgement Vichie81/Shutterstock.
Rationing, Schiaparelli, Washboards & No Sex (by order of the Churches)
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Woman was the most successful ever British magazine for women. (1) Edited by Glaswegian Mary Grieve – the first woman, bizarrely, to edit a women’s magazine (before then it was a mans’ job) – she was the editor from 1937 until 1962. Under her tenure and direction the annual sales income of Woman reached £12 million by 1962. The magazine had continual problems with the established churches, particularly the Roman Catholic Church. She was born in Hyndland, Glasgow.
The dust jacket of her 1964 Gollanz published autobiography – Millions Made My Story – reads:
“During the last war, and specially during the post-war years when the British social revolution was being wrought, one of the principle signposts and the most popular mentor of the female population of the United Kingdom was Woman, the magazine that is now read by eleven million people each week, including, rather surprisingly, two and a half million men.”
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Mary Grieve’s letter to readers, December 23, 1950.
Above, a variation of “Make Do and Mend” and below, post-war rationing still in place in 1950. In 1945 Britain was near bankrupt at the end of the Second World War. Bread, which was not rationed during the war was rationed by the Labour Government in the peacetime 1940s. Unknown to the British public, the Labour Prime Minster Major Clement Atlee had secretly started the costly development of the British Atom Bomb, despite being opposed by his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton, on the reasonable grounds that Britain could not afford it. Attlee pushed ahead anyway, excluding Dalton from an inner Cabinet group when the decision was secretly taken. By 1950 £100,000,000 had been spent on developing the British Bomb – in today’s value £3¼ billion. One of the first things that Minister of Food and lapsed Marxist Stafford Cripps did in 1946 was to bring in bread rationing. A case of bombs before bread. Bread rationing stayed in place until 1948. Sweets (‘confectionary”) rationing was ended in early 1953 by the Conservative government.
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Note the washboard in the Pacquins advertisement below, besides the cigarette. Twin tub washing machines were, in the UK, still a few years away. Washboards, boilers and mangles were how clothes were cleaned, and semi-dried in 1950.
Mary Grieve, editor of Woman from 1937 – 1962, highlights in her Millions Made My Story, how careful the magazine had to be about mentioning birth control, and the powerful institutional religious forces against it, and also against other areas of women’s sexual well-being. (On the whole, the same lack of information effected men too). Evelyn Home received hundreds of letters a week, amongst which were a significant number touching on sexual health worries and family planning, and she had to tread carefully (as did Mary Grieve as editor) with what letters were used and how they were answered.
William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, then head of the Church of England
The background to this was partly the social times when the magazine started (although the caution was still being exercised in 1963), but also very much the force of the established churches and obscenity laws. In 1942 the then Church of England Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple had been alarmed by an explanatory article on birth control in Everywoman, a sister Odhams magazine. Temple made representations to the owner of Odhams, Lord Southwood, who as a Labour Party member, Julius Elias, had been bumped up to a Lord, to sit on the Labour seats in the undemocratic House of Lords. Lord Southwood sympathised with Temple’s views. “While we must be up-to-date, and if anything in advance of the times,” Southwood reportedly said, “we must not be too much in advance… When the schools put this subject in their curriculum, it will then be time for us to deal with it in our paper.” (Quoted in Millions Made My Story.) Mary Grieve went on to write, in 1962 (the book was published 1964)
“I don’t know how the schools have got on with the subject since then, but the women’s magazines, with other means of communication, have proceeded with caution. This may seem curious, because family planning has become an accepted factor in many marriages, and the Royal Commission on Population gave a clear recommendation that contraceptive advice should be included in the National Health Service. One would think, therefore, that the women’s presses would feel free now, twenty years after the Everywoman incident, to be frank.” Mary Grieve, Millions Made My Story.
The situation for Woman mentioning, even indirectly, “family planning” with their readership in Eire was forbidden by the Irish State, with it written into the 1937 constitution of the right of the Irish Roman Catholic Church to have a say in all areas of family life: adoption, divorce, contraception, and the seemingly innocent area of introducing clinics for mothers and children (which they successfully opposed in 1951 on the grounds that such a scheme was “anti-family”). Meanwhile, single mothers and their babies were put into the notorious Catholic run Mothers and Babies Homes. The opposition of the Irish Roman Catholic Church led to the resignation of Irish Minister of Health Dr. Nöel Browne, who had tried to introduce the scheme against a background, amongst other concerns, of the high infant deaths in the Irish Republic, 26,000 in 1950 for example.
“…. The reason for the continuing reticence about (family planning) is political. A minority religion here (the UK), the Roman Catholic, has such deeply held convictions against the use of contraceptives that it is hard to see any political party embracing with enthusiasm the cause of family planning by this method.
In Eire the subject is completely taboo. Magazines risk, and have experienced, being banned from the country by ignoring the taboo… Woman’s sale in Eire is very small beer in relation to the total sale of three and a quarter million. But at no time in our fight did I find management willing to sacrifice this sale to keep up with the British Joneses…. We ran, as did other magazines, a special slip page for Eire free of comments or information which could offend. Our human problems page, conducted by Evelyn Home, was our chief source of danger. This is the page that is remade every week for Ireland” – Mary Grieve, Millions Made My Story, 1964.
The British Labour Party has had a close relationship with the Roman Catholic hierarchy on mainland Britain since before 1914, where in areas of high numbers of Roman Catholics with an Irish background they made concessions to get their vote. These included the pledge to build Roman Catholic schools. In Glasgow the cry of the opposition to this was “No Popery on the rates”. Besides Liverpool in England, in Scotland, Ayrshire, Renfrewshire, Lanarkshire, Glasgow, and parts of the Lothians were solid Labour areas because of these concessions and accommodation with the Roman Catholic Church, even were there were also protestant Labour voting Scots in constituencies such as Monklands and Airdrie, and elsewhere. The joke in Scotland was that a prospective non Roman Catholic Labour candidate in some constituencies couldn’t get selected unless he had an overnight conversion to Rome.
The Labour Party Roman Catholic voting electorate had a direct effect on the Labour Party’s attitude to family planning and sexual health. When the Catholic Church was suspicious with mooted ideas about such things Labour Prime Minister (and Presbyterian) Ramsay MacDonald as early as 1924 helped to “diffuse Catholic suspicions by appointing the Clydeside Catholic, John Wheatley, as Minister for Health in which capacity he maintained the ban on the provision of advice on birth control by local authority clinics” – Speak for Britain!: a New History of the Labour Party, Martin Pugh, 2010.
Below, the Evelyn Home page for Christmas, 1950, and beneath it, typical letters that were selected to print.
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Tampax tampon advertisement, Woman, December 23, 1950.
Tampons had been developed in America during the 1930s and were starting to be marketed in Europe in the post-war 1940s. Prior to their introduction bulky sanitary towels were available, and continued to be available. The Irish parliament under pressure and persuaded by the Irish Roman Catholic Church banned their sale in 1947 “lest they cause harm (or sexual pleasure) to women”. The Irish Catholic Church opposition was led by Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, who was to lead the successful pressure on the Irish Government in 1951 over their intended introduction of Clinics for Mothers and Children.
Archbishop McQuaid and Irish President Eamon de Valera. de Valera has been described as “a strong social, cultural and economic conservative“.
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N O T E S
Mary Grieve: This writer can find no online photograph of Mary Grieve, nor is there any online encyclopedic entry about her.
Footnote
In 2018 the best selling women’s weekly magazine in the UK is Take a Break, with nearly half a million print sales.
Copy of Woman magazine December 23, 1950, and cover of Millions Made My Story: Pete Grafton Collection.
Henri Cartier-Bresson…?Edouard Boubat…?Sniper fire, Paris, August 1944. Photo: Robert Doisneau…?Spain, 1950. Photo: Eugene Smith…?Nehru. Photo: Margaret Bourke-White…?Photo by Willy Ronis…?Photo by Izis…?Photo by Robert Capa…?Photo by Robert Frank…?Photo by David Douglas Duncan…?Audrey Hepburn, 1956. Photo by Bert Stern…?
Photos by Bert Hardy, all of them.
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All above photos are by British photographer Bert Hardy, 1913 – 1995. He was almost to the year an exact contemporary of the marvellous French photographer Robert Doisneau, 1912 – 1994. A Channel on You Tube with examples of Robert Doisneau’s work has, at the time of writing, attracted 40,699 views. A Channel on You Tube with examples of Bert Hardy’s photos, posted in 2016, has attracted 111 views at the time of writing.
At present – October 2018 – there are over twenty books listed on Amazon UK of collections of photographs by Robert Doisneau. There is just one book currently in print that features some of Bert Hardy’s work Bert Hardy’s Britain available from Amazon UK. In fact, Bert Hardy’s Britain, published in 2013, is the only book in print available anywhere in the world, that features Bert’s photographs.
STOP PRESS October 19, 2018. Bert Hardy not listed on the Wikipedia entry for the ground-breaking The Family of Man exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1955. He had three photos in the exhibition. See story further down.
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Baby Bert, Bert Hardy summer 1913, Priory Buildings, Blackfriars, London. “My Mum with myself at a few months old“. Source Bert Hardy: My Life, London 1985.
Bert Hardy was born in May, 1913 a year and one month after Robert Doisneau. Robert’s Dad died when he was four, and his mother died when he was seven. He was brought up by an unloving aunt in the working class district of Gentilly, just the other side of the Paris city boundary. Bert was the first of seven children that his Mum and Dad had, and the family lived in one room with a scullery in Priory Buildings, Blackfriars, London, a stone’s throw from the Elephant & Castle district on the south side of the Thames.
Leaving school at the age of thirteen in 1926 he got a job at a place called the Central Photo Service, by chance rather than design. His aunt had seen a “Lad Wanted” sign when she was charring (cleaning) in the London Strand area. It turned out his job was to help a young Scottish girl develop and print rolls of film that he was to collect from some Chemists in central London. He and her were the total staff, the owner being elsewhere in the building.
” (Re. the chemists) I went round twice a day, walking or jumping on the back of carts to save my bus fares. In between rounds, the Scottish girl taught me how to develop and print, and also some other interesting activities you can get up to in a darkroom. I was a quick learner.”
He goes on to describe the primitive set-up and equipment in the darkroom, and then describes the photos that he and the Scottish girl processed.
“Apart from the usual ‘happy snaps’, an astonishing number of people sent in naughty pictures. There were one or two chemists in Soho from whom we expected that sort of thing: pictures of prostitutes for their clients, and we adjusted our rates accordingly. But there was a chemist’s at the top of Northumberland Avenue from which we quite regularly collected films sent in by a famous surgeon.
The surgeon’s pictures were always beautifully taken on a quarter-plate camera on roll film, six pictures in a roll. All the pictures were of popsies: beautiful creatures with nothing on doing the most terrible things, but always wearing marvellous hats. And the last picture on each roll of the film was always of the surgeon himself: a stout gentleman with no clothes on, and the tiniest little withered thing between his legs.
I don’t suppose he appreciated what an opportunity for blackmail he gave. Instead, we charged him double and printed up copies for ourselves.”
Working in the darkroom rubbed off on him and he bought in a pawn shop what he described as an old second hand plate camera – which would make it a turn of the century item. The first photograph he made money from, selling to friends and others, was taken of King George V and Queen Mary, resting the camera on the head of one his sister’s to steady it.
King George V and Queen Mary, Blackfriars Road, London. Photo by a teenage Bert Hardy.
He also photographed his family.
“One of my earliest photos taken with flash powder. Bath time at the Priory Buildings”. Photo by a teenage Bert Hardy.
As his self-taught photo skills developed so did his passion for competitive cycle racing. He began to sell photos to The Bicycle for a good rate.
Photo by Bert Hardy mid to late 1930s. Sold to The Bicycle.
Bert left the Central Photo Service in 1939 and started working for a professional photo agency that supplied photos to the national daily press. His camera skills and his eye for a photo story got noticed and he joined the top British photo news weekly Picture Post on 3 March 1940.
The Picture Post cover on the week Bert Hardy joined the magazine. Picture Post, March 9, 1940 from the Pete Grafton Collection.
Bert was straight away involved in covering stories connected to the Second World War from the British perspective, getting front page coverage.
Mono reproduction of Bert Hardy cover for A Trawler in War-Time, Picture Post March 21, 1942. From Bert Hardy: My Story, London 1985.Bert Hardy photo aboard a trawler in heavy seas, Picture Post March 21, 1942. From Bert Hardy: My Life, London, 1985.
Whilst he was working for Picture Post he received his call-up papers in 1943 (war service in the armed services). His editor Tom Hopkinson tried to get him deferred, arguing that he was valuable as a war photographer with Picture Post. No luck. He had to go in the army and was assigned to the Photo Unit, and had the indignity of being taught as a beginner, and was issued with a sub-standard camera for war work.
Somehow during his time in the army he managed to supply photos to Picture Post. At that time British press and news magazine photographers did not get a credit byline next to their work, so his photos being anonymous, he could get away with it In France post-D Day, and still with the army, photographer George Silk of Life and Robert Capa were working as war correspondents.
“I met up with them. They both knew me and told me they liked my work. They stayed in some luxury at the billet obtained by the canny officer in charge of public relations, who was very talented at that sort of thing: but when they invited me to come and have a drink with them, I wasn’t allowed to – the Mess was for commissioned officers and war correspondents only.”
Carl Mydans and left, George Silk. Life magazine war correspondnets. Photo source: Getty, with grateful acknowledgement.Robert Capa, war correspondent. Photo: unknown source.
Bert Hardy in jeep with Wehrmacht prisoners on the bonnet. The prisoners are possibly there to deter enemy snipers or an ambush. Photographer unknown. From Bert Hardy: My Life, London 1985.“My first frightening encounter with the enemy came when we were heavily mortared. I came closer to death, however, when I nearly detonated a land mine in my efforts to seek cover.” Photo Bert Hardy. From Bert Hardy: My Life, London, 1985. Robert Capa was to die stepping on a landmine in French Indo-China (Vietnam) in 1954.
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“…when we came in sight of Notre Dame, there was a sudden flurry in the crowds of people. It took me a little time to understand what was happening: there were German snipers firing…” Photo Bert Hardy. From Bert Hardy: My Life, London, 1985.
Bert saw and photographed atrocities by German forces on Belgium civilians; went in on the first crossings of the Rhine, was at Belsen at the time of its liberation and concluded his time with the army in Europe by taking a photos of the Soviet Marshall Zhukov with Generals Eisenhower and Montgomery near Frankfurt. Although in May, 1945 the war was over in Europe, he was still in the army. He was a sergeant.
He was next posted to the Far East, where he continued taking photographs, including the hanging of Japanese war criminals. It wasn’t until 8 September 1946 that, still a soldier, he arrived back in Liverpool on the troopship Monarch of Bermuda. He then had to travel through the night to Number 77, Military Demobilisation Unit, Guildford, where a £2 ‘mess fee’ was extracted from him. (At the time, about a third to a half of an unskilled workers weekly wage.) As he wrote “By nine o’ clock that morning, fleeced, I was a citizen again, plain Bert Hardy”.
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A few days back in England and Bert got in touch with Tom Hopkinson, the editor of Picture Post, who immediately offered Bert his job back at Picture Post, at £1000 a year. Bert said he wasn’t sure, as the price offered might not cover his expenses. A few days later Tom came back with an offer of £1,500 a year. “It was an offer I couldn’t refuse.. It was good to be back at work for Picture Post at a period when the paper was at its greatest”.
Within a month of working on photo stories in England, Tom Hopkinson sent him out East again, this time working for Picture Post and an assignment in India, covering the opening of the Indian Constituent Assembly after independence from Britain. He and a journalist were granted an interview with the new Prime Minister Jawaharial Nehru.
“Nehru was a fine man for whom I had a tremendous respect, but people’s characters only emerge in their actions, or in certain facial expressions… (as the journalist was talking to Nehru) I was shooting away quietly when Nehru absently-mindedly picked up a rose from the bowl of his desk and sniffed it. I took the picture instantly, it was what I wanted.”
Monochrome reproduction of Picture Post Cover, February 8, 1947, featuring Bert Hardy’s portrait of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharial Nehru.
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In the post-war 1940s and into the 1950s Bert covered everything, to racial tensions in London’s Notting Gate, emerging star Audrey Hepburn, Cardiff’s Tiger Bay area, downtown Liverpool, Tito and his wife in Yugoslavia, the village life and grape harvest in a French village…. He loved working with available light – he was a genius with it and with his darkroom experience he knew how to get the best out of a difficult negative.
Chinese cafe, Liverpool. Photo: Bert Hardy.Couple in a basement room, from the Picture Post story on the Elephant & Castle area, London, late 1948. Photo Bert Hardy.
The photo of the loving couple with the light streaming in, in the Elephant & Castle area of London is one of this writers favourite Bert Hardy photos, and has been for many years. However, reading Bert’s own story about it, in Bert Hardy: My Life, it’s not quite as it seems. Working on the Elephant & Castle story Bert was only a stone’s throw from where he was brought up in Blackfriars. Wandering around with his camera a woman shouted out “‘Ow about taking a picture of me love?” Looking at some run-down buildings he asked her what they were like round the back. “Bleedin’ awful. Come and see for yourself.”
“Following her down a narrow passageway to a tiny yard about ten feet square… I saw, through a window, a young couple half-lying on a sofa just inside. I asked “What’s it like inside?” She said, “Come and have a look”.
I went inside and asked if I could take a few pictures. They seemed totally unconcerned. When I set up my camera and tripod, they watched me blankly, without moving. In the end we discovered the reason: the girl was a prostitute and the man was a Canadian who had been released from prison the day before; they had spent a hard night in bed celebrating his release.”
It turned out that his guide Maisie, who had told Bert to take her picture, was also a prostitute, and she was a great help to Bert and A.L.Lloyd, the Picture Post journalist, whilst working on the story.
The two of them had just returned from doing a feature for Picture Post on the Gorbals slum tenements in Glasgow. One of the photos that Bert took, and is well known for, was also his favourite picture.
Gorbals boys, 1948. Photo Bert Hardy. “My favourite picture: this reminds me of what I was like when I was a kid. In this story I concentrated on the children, and how they kept their spirits up in conditions which were often dreadful.” From Bert Hardy: My Story, London 1985.
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The Pool of London
Just over a year later in December, 1949 he and journalist Robert Kee did a story on the Pool of London. It is reproduced here, from the Pete Grafton Collection, as a representative example of Bert’s work. Picture Post, 3 December, 1949.
Some weeks before the Pool of London story was run by Picture Post its writer Robert Kee had been a Witness at the marriage of George Orwell to Sonia Bronwell in the University College Hospital, London, on October 13, 1949. Orwell was being treated for his damaged TB lungs. Orwell was too weak to stand and sat up in his hospital bed for the ceremony. His novels Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (June, 1949) had highlighted the dangers of totalitarian communism and totalitarian societies dominated by cult personalities, such as Stalin. The post-war 1945 period in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China alarmed him. He died in hospital from a burst lung in January, 1950, aged forty-six.
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Korea, 1950
In August, 1950 Bert Hardy was again sent to the East, this time Korea, with journalist James Cameron.
Inchon landing, Korea, September 1950. “All hell was going on around us when I photographed the actual landing, but my chief worry was to get my pictures before the last light went.” Bert Hardy, from Bert Hardy: My Life, London 1985.
Communist North Korea, backed by the Soviet Union and communist China, had invaded South Korea on 25 June, 1950. The United Nation condemned the invasion and sent UN forces to repel the invaders. The UN troops were not effective at containing the invading communists until UN forces landing at Inchon in September, 1950. Bert Hardy and James Cameron covered the landings.
Bert Hardy in Korea, 1950. Unknown photographer. Copyright, with acknowledgment, Getty.
Political Prisoners
Whilst doing follow up stories in Korea they came across brutal treatment of prisoners taken by South Korean Forces, which Bert said reminded him of some of the scenes he had seen in German at Belsen in 1945. Making enquiries he and James Cameron were told the prisoners were not North Koreans, but political prisoners, people suspected of having ‘the wrong views’. “We wondered how young boys of fourteen could possible be ‘political’ prisoners…… At intervals a batch of them would be separated from the rest and herded into the back of a lorry which then drove off. Our impression was that they were being taken off to be shot. We were appalled, and decided that we must try and to do something about it. We went to the United Nations Office, and they didn’t want to know.”
They went to the Red Cross who referred them back to the United Nations Office, who said what their allies the South Koreans did was not their concern. “Jimmy Cameron and I were horrified by what we saw, and checked very carefully before sending back our story. We knew it would cause trouble, but not that it would also change Picture Post for ever…”
Bound UN political prisoners, Korea, 1950. Photo by Bert Hardy, from Terror in Korea: We appeal to U.N. Text James Cameron, photos Bert Hardy. Supressed by Picture Post owner Edward Hulton.
Their time in Korea over, they returned to London.
“When we reached London we found that Tom (Hopkinson, Picture Post editor) had been holding over our story on the North Korean political prisoners until we returned, just to make sure that everything about the story was quite right, and that we hadn’t distorted or missed out anything. In fact the story about the incident had already appeared in The Times, but Tom was still worried. The combination of Jimmy’s writing and my pictures would really bring what was going on home to people. Because of its implied criticism of the United Nations, it was bound to create controversy. Tom was concerned because Edward Hulton, the proprietor, was known to dislike controversy. He wanted to be absolutely sure about the story before he printed it.”
Bert and A.L.Lloyd (Bert Lloyd) meanwhile were assigned to do a topical piece on the annual British Bonfire Night.
“Bert Lloyd (A.L.Lloyd) and I were wandering around London looking for the best Guy Fawkes we could find… when we heard that Hulton had personally ordered the presses to be stopped at Sun Engraving in Watford, and the issue of Picture Post to be made up again without the story of the political prisoners.
Bert Hardy: “The layout for the story that was never published, for which Tom Hopkinson was sacked.” From Bert Hardy: My Life, Godron Fraser, London, 1985.
… There was talk of mass resignations if this sort of interference in editorial policy happened again….. Tom was sacked for refusing to comply with Hulton’s request… In spite of all the talk of mass resignation, most of the others stayed put. By sacking Tom, Hulton was forced to make him a payment. But anyone who resigned would not get anything except the salary they were owed. Even for Jimmy and me, who had done the story, resignation was not a luxury we could afford. Tom called a meeting and advised us all to stay on. For the photographers particularly there were no other magazines to compare with Picture Post as outlets for their work…. Looking back on it, it seems quite clear that without Tom’s social commitment, Picture Post lost its edge and its popularity. Contrary to the opinion still held in Fleet Street, people aren’t only interested in pictures of pretty girls when they buy magazines.”
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Bert continued to work for Picture Post until it went out of business in 1957, and continued to be the Complete Photographer that he was.
Journalist Katherine Whitehorn, Hyde Park, London, 1956. Photo Bert Hardy.Sunday morning on the Champs Elysees, Paris. Photo Bert Hardy.
In a Picture Post feature he took several photos with a cheap box camera, to show that it was possible to take a good photo without needing an expensive camera. From this feature a photo of two chorus girls on the seafront railings at Blackpool became a well known Bert Hardy photo.
Chorus girls on the front at Blackpool. Photo Bert Hardy. Taken on amatuer Box Brownie camera.Kodak Box Brownie, similar to the one Bert Hardy used on the Blackpool photo. A basic camera but one that had extras such as a push-on close up lens and a yellow filter to bring out the depth of a blue sky and increase contrast.
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STOP PRESS October 19, 2018. Wikipedia wipes out Bert Hardy at the ground-breaking Family of Man photo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1955, curated by Edward Steichen.
Family of Man exhibition book, New York, 1955.Bert Hardy full page in the Family of Man exhibition book, p.124, New York, 1955.Bert Hardy, Elephant & Castle couple , with other selected photos, p.131 Family of Man exhibition book, New York, 1955.
“…Most photographers were represented by a single picture, some had several included; Robert Doisneau…” Wikipedia entry on the Family of Man Exhibition, on-screen shot October 19, 2108. Bert Hardy had threephotographs selected.“The following lists all participating photographers. (see original 1955 MoMA checklist)” – online Wikipedia detail from their Family of Man item. Bert Hardy is not on this Wikipedia list, but is on the MoMA list.
The MoMA online site, under the Family of Man entry lists the three selected Bert Hardy as follows:
Section 28, Religious Expression, No. 368, Burma, Bert Hardy.
The writer hopes to correct the omission of Bert Hardy from the Wikipedia entry on the Family of Man photo exhibition, New York, 1955, shortly.
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Life after Picture Post
When Picture Post folded in 1957 Bert worked freelance for Odhams Press, and found that he was earning more money. Then he had a spell working for the Daily Express as their Paris photographer, and then he branched out very successfully into advertising.
“Advertising jobs began to flood in: when I arrived on the scene advertising photography tended to be rather formal. I introduced the 35mm camera and the inventive story-telling approach which had been so popular in Picture Post, to give a fresher, more candid look.”
One of his images, that he created, was for the 1959 promotion of a new WD & HO Wills cigarette, Strand.
“At about midnight we were on the Albert Bridge, with some final shots of the model leaning against the parapet. Terry (his younger son) was holding a strong torch to get just enough light on the man’s face to make it look like a lamp-light.” Bert Hardy from Bert Hardy: My Life.“The Strand picture above was the first 35 mm photograph to be made into a 48-sheet poster” – Bert Hardy from Bert Hardy: My Life.Michael Caine as Alfie walks across a night-time Waterloo Bridge, Alfie, 1966.
It was a strong image, the lone man, never alone with a Strand. People of that generation remember it, even though they didn’t take up the cigarette, which bombed. No smoker of that era wanted to be seen as a lonely person. Perhaps an aspect of the image subliminally entered director Lewis Gilbert’s head when he did one of the final shots in Alfie (1966): Michael Caine alone on the Waterloo Bridge, apart from a dog that befriends him. And crossing the Thames, on the Waterloo Bridge and heading down Waterloo Road he would have come to the Elephant & Castle where he grew up, in poverty, like Bert Hardy. And like Bert’s aunt, Michael Caine’s Mum was also a char (cleaner). And like Bert Hardy he was in Korea, two years later in 1952, in the infantry, a conscript on the front line.
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Bert Hardy earned a tremendous amount doing advertising photographic work, but he wrote that it was no substitute for working for Picture Post. In 1964 he and Sheila, his second wife, bought a farm, and he slowly eased himself out of the very lucrative advertising and promotional photography to retire and run the farm.
Bert Hardy ploughing at his farm. Photo Uncredited. The first time he got on a tractor at his new farm he wrote “I tried my hand at chain harrowing. It was the first time I had driven a tractor since the War when I was doing a story of Land Girls for Picture Post.” From Bert Hardy: My Story.
Retired, he still took the occasional snap, for his own pleasure.
“My two grand-daughters taken in 1978, in the lane leading to my house.” From Bert Hardy: My Life.
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At the time of writing, October, 2018, there is only one book of Bert Hardy photos currently in print: Bert Hardy’s Britain, Bluecoat Press, UK. £19.98.
Bert Hardy’s Britain, Bluecoat Press, UK.
There are two cautionary reviews of the book on Amazon.co.uk
“One of the UK’ s best known photographers and from Blackfriars in South London. As with some photographic books the design and more importantly the layout and repro are poor. The repro of the pictures is poor quality and why designers ever split a picture over two pages I will never know, it kills the original image!
As for the pictures, some are a bit of a mish mash and seem to be added to pad out the book. I don’t think even Bert would be happy with this.”
“This is a laudable effort, but it falls short in limiting the pictures to Britain, unfortunately leaving out some of his best work….
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There are two out of print books of Bert Hardy’s photos available second hand. They compliment each other. Bert Hardy: My Life is his story in his own words, and it’s an extraordinary and fascinating story. It is full of his photos, often with details of how he took the photo. At the back of the book he also lists his favourite cameras and the one he had no time for when issued it by the British Army. The average price second-hand on ebay.co.uk is £24. It runs to 192 pages. Beware of sellers who are either not very bright, or are “at it”, who when listing it describe it as signed by Bert Hardy. There is such a one listed October, 2018 on ebay.co.uk with an asking price of £155. All editions have a printed Bert Hardy signature on the front page.
The second out of print book of Bert Hardy photos is from the Gordon Fraser Photographic Monographs series No.5: Bert Hardy, London 1975. It runs to 72 pages and the reproductions are not always up to the standard that we expect in photographic monographs published in the present decade. A reasonable price to pay on ebay.co.uk is £44 – £45.
All Bert Hardy photos copyright either Getty or the Estate of Bert Hardy. With grateful acknowledge to both copyright holders. All other material: The Pete Grafton Collection.
Unlike Jacques Tati, not all the European film comedy stars of the 1950s and early 1960s crossed boundaries as easily as he did.
FernandelTotòNorman Wisdom
France’s Fernandel had a following in Italy, and Italy’s Totò had a following in France (the two made a film together The Law is the Law in 1958). Whilst Norman Wisdom’s star has faded in Britain, he is still loved in Albania, and his films dubbbed into Hindi are popular on the internet. But it was Jacques Tati who really crossed national boundaries, and still does in the 21st century.
Jacques Tati directing M.Hulot’s Holiday (1953).
In particular it his first two films Jour de Fête (1949) and Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953) that strike a continuing – possibly nostalgic – cord.
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Michelin France Grandes routes, 1973 edition. With grateful acknowledgement to Michelin.
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Jour de Fête (1949)
The Old Lady and her goat in the Place du Marche, Jour de Fete. The film was shot in Sainte Sévère in the Indre department in central France.Sainte Sévère, central France, location of Jour de Fete. Grateful acknowledgement to Michelin. Saint Sévère, location of Jour de Fete. Grateful acknowledgement to Michelin.Jacques Tati and the camera crew setting up, Sainte Sévère, 1949.Showing in the cinema tent the modern methods of La Post en Amerique.
Outside the village bar, Jour de Fete.Jacques Tati and camera crew at Sainte Sévère. Jour de Fete, 1949.The Fair tractor enters the village square along with excited village children. Jour de Fete 1949.
The Pole, Jour de Fete.
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Pour La Poste
Sainte Sévère postcard, circa 1930s. “Vue prise de la Route de Boussac”Sainte Sévère and to the south south east, Boussac on the N 717. Grateful acknowledgement to Michelin.Sainte Sévère postcard, circa 1940s.Sainte Sévère postcard, circa 1970s.Sainte Sévère postcard, circa 1990s.
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Et Maintenant?
Despite a declining population – (1946: 1,135; 2009 (last published figure) 851) – Sainte Sévère still has a post office. The bar in the market square has gone, but there is a restaurant elsewhere in the village that seems to be popular with passing through tourists. Sainte Sévère also has a filling station, a ladies hairdressers, a boulangerie, a butchers and a school. It also now has a little museum dedicated to Jour de Fête and Jacques Tati.
La Poste, Sainte Sévère. Google street view, 2013. Acknowledgement Google
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Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953)
Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot
Jacques Tati lining up a shot on location in Saint-Marc-sur-Mer, location of Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday.Location of Saint-Marc-sur-Mer. 1973 Michelin map. Grateful acknowledgement Michelin.
Nathalie Pascaud with clapperboard, Saint-Marc-sur-Mer, on location for Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday.
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Carte Postale
Saint-Marc-sur-Mer postcard, 1954.Saint-Marc-sur-Mer, 1920.Saint-Marc-sur-Mer, 1930s. Note “X” on the hotel, and middle top window.Greetings from the occupant of the middle upstairs hotel room of the Hotel de la Plage. 1930s.Saint-Marc-sur-Mer, pre-1914.Saint-Marc-sur-Mer, also pre-1914.Saint-Marc-sur-Mer, circa 1950s.Saint-Marc-sur-Mer, 1956.Saint-Marc-sur-Mer, early 1950s.
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Et Maintenant?
The Hotel de la Plage is now the Best Western Hotel de la Plage. The rooms have flat screen TVs, free Wi-Fi and there is a business lounge. The restaurant is now called La Plage M.Hulot.
Positive views amongst UK visitors to the Best Western Hotel de la Plage recorded on the hotel site include
– Could hear the waves as we lay in bed at night
-Location is excellent, right on the beach.
-Architecturally interesting in that the original character has mostly been preserved.
Average 3 star ratings reviewers on Trip Advisor complained that there was no aircon, that there was no hot breakfast, that you couldn’t get a beer at 5 pm, that the exterior needed a paint, that the room was cramped and small, and that the place needed a modern eye to overhaul it.
Eh bien…
Au Revoir, Monsieur Hulot.
Jacques Tati’s grave in Saint-German-en-Laye, near Paris. Sophie was his second daughter. Jacques Tati’s full name was Jacques Tatischeff. Photo, with grateful acknowledgement, Daniel Timothy, 2008. Source findagrave.comSaint-German-en-Laye postcard, posted in 1911. The then modern French aeroplane has been added in the publishers photographic darkroom. Many French postcards of this time had planes added by postcard publishers to empty skies. Jacques Tati was 4 years old when this card was posted in his town.
Windmill Theatre, London, 1950s. Gents being serenaded on a G string as they queue to see the Revudeville show. Note the raincoats. Photo source Daily Express
The first job in a theatre that the actor Kenneth More had was in the Windmill Theatre in London. It was the 1930s and he started there as an Assistant Stage Manager. The Windmill was unusual for a London (and British) theatre in that it had women in its revue shows who revealed their bosoms. This was not the Folies Bergère of Paris, or the pre-1933 Berlin revues that had moving women – the Windmill’s theatrical licence strictly depended on the showgirls not moving. They were rigid on the stage in tableaux set pieces.
Part of Kenneth More’s job as the Assistant Stage Manager was to spot where potential trouble-makers were sitting. They would try by various means – sneezing loudly, for example – to make one of the semi-naked showgirls move, thus causing their breasts to move. This would cause a ripple of pleasure in the all male audience. Whilst many rippled in pleasure, other’s were self-pleasuring.
“We had a little peephole covered by a small piece of dark velvet. I would lift this velvet and look into the auditorium without anyone in the audience knowing I was doing so… Middle-aged men, usually wearing raincoats, would place the Evening News and The Times on their laps… and do the same thing when the tableaux was in progress… This sort of behaviour could be embarrassing to other members of the audience, and also might result in our licence being revoked if anyone complained to the police about it.
I was told to keep a lookout for these undesirable activities and I had a simple code with the front office when I spotted anything. I would pick up the house telephone and say: ‘A4, Wanker, Times. C17, Daily Mail.’
The commissionaire would then stride down the aisle to Seat A4, and then to C17, tap the man on the shoulder, and say, ‘The manager wishes to see you in his office.’
The commissionaire, an old soldier, was under strict instructions not to say ‘Stop wanking’, or some other more forthright comment, in case there had been a misunderstanding, or the client denied the charge. His defence could be, ‘I was just scratching myself’ but always the men concerned realised that they had been rumbled, buttoned up their flies and left quietly.”
– More or Less, Kenneth More, Hodder & Stoughton, 1978.
Kenneth More, publicity photo for Genevieve, 1953, wearing anti-self-pleasuring gloves. It could be worse, they could be boxing gloves.
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UK Sex Under Cover: 1950s and the early 1960s.
Obscenity Laws governed the display or mention of sex in Britain, whether on stage or in print or on film, and had done so since the 1857 Obscene Publications Act. Criminal obscenity was defined as “tending to deprave and corrupt”. Even in the early 1960s Customs & Excise could take off a returning visitor from the continent a pin up magazine bought at a French, German or Danish newsagents if it showed pubic hair. (Most likely the blokes at Customs & Excise were removing the magazine to prevent moral corruption so that they could have a good gander at the contents. And with a cough – “Ahem” – retire to the staff toilet for a quick one.)
One area of erotic interest for gents was the underwear garments section in the Littlewood’s and other Mail Order catalogues, which by the mid 1960s were reproduced in glorious colour. The section on outsize bras and the women modelling them was a well visited page. Incidentally, this mail order catalogue viewing activity was not confined to UK males starved of tit-illating viewing. There were outposts on the Continent as late as 2001.
Lucien (played by Jamel Debbouze), assistant to Collignon the greengrocer, and “Lady Dee” enthusiast.
In the film Amélie (2001) Collignon the greengrocer claims that his assistant Lucien has been sticking photos of the lately deceased “Lady Dee’s” head onto the shoulders of lingerie models in a mail order catalogue.
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Another source of stimulation, this time the printed word, was the weekly magazine Exchange and Mart.
Exchange & Mart magazine. “Physical Culture Equipment” and on the inside “Half Way Inn” (sent under plain cover).
In the section selling cine film and cine film apparatus was a sub-heading where vendors advertised 8 mm films (including the now defunct and almost by then anachronistic French 9.5 mm cine film). Five or ten minute 8mm spools of cine film with suggestive titles such as Halfway Inn were offered, sent “Under Plain Cover”. An assistant bank manager in the London suburb of Gants Hill would probably be sweating blood with the thought of his career downfall, or marital shame if the packet arrived at the family home damaged in a peek-a-boo state so that the saucy title could be read. He’d then go from relief that the contents hadn’t burst out of their confines to fury when, in the back room he set up the projector (the wife gone on the London Underground Central Line for her weekly visit to her friend Maureen in Newbury Park), stared aghast at the images on the viewing screen, and then fury as he watched a five minute travelogue of the Malverns, that in a few shots lingered on a picturesque pub called the Halfway Inn.
Meanwhile, who knows, his wife – on the weekly pretence of visiting Maureen – (real name Maurice, president of the local amateur photography club and salesman in Bri-Nylon goods, including knickers) – was earning some pin money in a Newbury Park front room posing in her nylon “smalls” in front of a cold fireplace.
“Fireside Frills”. UK glamour, the 1950s.
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Other Sources of Titillation
If you lived in London a good source of printed ‘beyond suspicion’ titillation – and a safe respectable street to linger in whilst doing so – was the Charing Cross Road and the windows of the art and cinema book shops.
“Bookshop, Charing Cross Road c.1936.” Photo Wolfgang Suschitzky, reproduced in An Exile’s Eye, the Photography of Wolfgang Suschitzky, National Gallery of Scotland, 2002. (Despite”c.1936″, one book in the window is “Specification for 1938”.)
Titles in the above 1930s Charing Cross bookshop window include Curves & Contrast of the Human Form, Beauty’s Daughters and 28 Studies, 7/6. Not much had changed in Charing Cross art book shop windows in the late 1950s and early 1960s, except the prices. The common feature was an artificial line drawn between aesthetic appreciation (legitimate) and sexual appreciation (not at all legitimate, leading to moral corruption, blindness, nasty diseases, and, criminal court cases if it was a man’s love for a man).
Public Lavatory, 1950s, London. From A Maverick Eye: The Street Photography of John Deakin, editor Robin Muir. Thames & Hudson, 2002.Magazine kiosk, 1950s,Paris. From A Maverick Eye: The Street Photography of John Deakin, editor Robin Muir. Thames & Hudson, 2002.
Just off the Charing Cross Road was Soho, whose saucy reputation was a legend amongst men in the know throughout the British Isles. FA Cup finals at Wembley, rugby games at Twickenham and “chaps” down to see the Oxford – Cambridge boat race would, if they had time before the game or race, head in large groups to the fabled centre of sin. Kenneth More mentions this aspect in his More or Less. However the most erotic experience they would probably encounter in the late 1950s and early 1960s would be glimpsing at nude ladies with rigid permed hairdos and a disappointing erased vagina in British pin-up magazines such as Kamera.
But, and care was still needed, Soho was also home to a community of gay men and women, which included the artist Francis Bacon and the photographer John Deakin. Erotic imagery for homosexuals was even more coded – for men, male body building magazines was one source of sex under cover.
Soho, London, 1954. photo Hans Richard Griebe. From London Town 54: the photos of Hans Richard Griebe. (2)
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With all this Sex under Cover, contemporary readers – that is, 2018 readers born since say the ‘permissive’ 1970s – would perhaps imagine that sex, as practised, was like its depiction in British films spanning the 1930s to early 1960s period. True, the contraception pill, available in Britain from circa 1967, did mean there might have been more uninhabited “coupling” amongst heterosexuals without fear of pregnancy. The difference in the 1930s – 1960s period was that if an unmarried couple had been “doing it” and the woman became pregnant, they usually got married. The exception was the wartime circumstances of the Second World War where there was a marked increase in children born out of wedlock, often to departing Allied soldiers leaving British shores.
For swingers, their activity was not inhibited during the 1930s – 1960s period. One Scottish island had a post Second World War club that became known in island folklore as the “BBC” – the Bare Bottoms Club. The club was accidentally discovered by a village hall janitor when an external door into the village hall he thought was a bit stiff was wedged by a fornicating couple on the other side, whilst simultaneously other wife/husband combinations were also at it. Trades people and professional people were well represented in this island “BBC”.
An early 1960s work-mate of this writer detailed to him the pleasures to be had in the Union Jack Club in wartime Waterloo, London. The workmate was a regular soldier in the 1930s, mostly based in garrisons in India, and then drafted back to the UK to train up the new Second World War conscripts. With his bi-sexual drive, the Union Jack Club was a Mecca. One encounter he fondly remembered was a man and woman duo who swapped sexual roles, with him happily being piggy in the middle. “Oh, it was lovely” he said,”and what a shame for them. The guy really wanted to be a girl, and the girl really wanted to be a guy”.
Kenneth More, in his previously mentioned autobiography More or Less details how he lost his virginity in the early 1930s to a hormonally rampant nurse at her rented flat after a dance in Shrewsbury, a town where he was a young engineering apprentice. At the dance
I put my arm around her in a two-step and she pressed hard against me… At the end of the evening she mentioned casually that she shared a flat but her friend was away… would I care to go home with her?….
At the flat –
We undressed and climbed into a remarkably cold bed, the chill of which was speedily obliterated by her generous warmth. She instructed me in my part of the proceedings – or at least what she hoped my part would be. But my state of nervousness and excitement was such that it was all over before I really began.
Front cover of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, Penguin edition, 1960
There are three observations on this recollection by Kenneth More. 1. That he would not have written about this in his earlier autobiography Happy Go Lucky (1959). It was a sign of the times that he did in More or Less in 1978. And the sign of the times was legally ushered in by the unsuccessful 1960 Crown Prosecution of Penguin Publishers for their publishing the full version of DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. 2. On the back of this unsuccessful Crown Prosecution, Henry Millers Tropic of Cancer was then published and contemporary authors in the UK and the US were more frank in mentioning, in writing about sexual behaviour, and publishers published. However in the world of film, British or American, it was to be several years after 1960 that films started to be equally frank, and in some sexual thematic areas over 30 years. 3. That the nurse’s hormonal biological imperative was not – in real life – untypical, but, as a theme, continues to be under-played in novels and films, as does the usually earlier age awakening of female sexual drive (when their menstruation starts) compared to boys. It was a curious and un-erotic experience for this writer in 1958 to have a girl take his hand and place it on her blouse/pullovered school breast and rythmatically squash his hand over it.
In the pre-1970s, most nice boys thought that “Sex” was something that boys did to girls, and it was usually nasty boys who did it to girls. There was no awareness that girls liked sex too. And anyway, any girls who did like sex were written off as Bad Girls, and this was clearly inferred in films that started to touch – even fleetingly – on this aspect from the late 1950s onwards.
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The prosecution of Penguins by the Crown for publishing Lady Chatterley’s Lover was thrown out by the jury on 2 November, 1960, having been asked in the opening statement by the Prosecuting Counsel – Mervyn Griffith-Jones- if it was a book they would wish their wife or servants to read. The answer was obviously yes (did servants include Buckingham Palace staff ?) and so did large swathes of the British public who’d never read or heard of DH Lawrence. (1)
Mervin Griffith-Jones.
Between then and 1963 four British films that touched on sexual behaviour were released that Mervyn Griffith-Jones might not have wished his wife or his servants to see:
Saturday Night & Sunday Morning, general release early 1961; Victim, 1961; Greengage Summer 1961 and The Comedy Man 1963.
British Board of Film Censors U certificate. Such a caption would appear at the beginning of a film.
With the exception of the “A” certificate Greengage Summer, the other films were”X” certificated – which in those days “X” = seX. The British Board of Film Censors was a timid self-censoring Trade Body established in 1912, and down the years had had an informal and comfortable relationship with the British Governments of the day. During the 1950 – 1964 period the British Board of Film censors ratings were “U” – suitable for everyone, “A” – children must be accompanied by an adult and “X” – sixteen and over.
Pan edition of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, with Albert Finney on the cover.
However, even they were aware the times were changing, particularly on the back of the Lady Chatterley trial, and a film like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, based on the already published novel by Alan Sillitoe would be difficult to refuse a film certificate without making them look silly.
The film dealt openly with an extra-marital affair, but what was the real salt and pepper was the explicit mention of abortion and the strap of Rachel Robert’s slip on her naked shoulder as she and bachelor Albert Finney share her marital bed. In 1961 it was the third most popular film at the British box office. The Guns of Navarone with Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn was the most popular.
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In 1961, the same year that Saturday Night and Sunday Morning went on general release the ground-breaking film Victim, that dealt with blackmail of male homosexuals was released. It was the first ever English language film in the world that the word “homosexual” was uttered for the first time.
The UK 1961 poster for the Rank Organisation distributed film Victim. Dirk Bogarde as barrister Melville Farr and Sylvia Syms as his wife. Victim, 1961.
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And then in the same year 1961, along came The Greengage Summer. At first sight, with jolly breezy, dependable Kenneth More it might not seem like a groundbreaking film, so much so that aspects of it slipped under the British Film censors prurient nose and they gave it an “A” and not “X” certificate. But it was probably the first film in the world to acknowledge a woman – in fact a 16 year old girl, Joss – was having a period. And on top of that her young brother Wilmouse makes dresses for dolls. And if that’s not enough we have dependable Kenneth More – the sort of dependable chap you could leave your teenage daughter with – finding himself getting the hots for the 16 year old Joss.
Joss (Susannah York) in her bed talking to Eliot (Kenneth More) Joss is unexpectedly marooned in a French country-side hotel with her two younger sisters and little brother. Her mother has been taken ill on the journey and is in a French hospital in a town some way off.
Joss herself is not unaware of her power of attraction to men, like many girls who have started their puberty. (Interestingly the England & Wales Age of Marriage Act 1929 defined the legal age of puberty for boys as 14, but for girls it was defined as 12.).
And then add the jealousy of the hotel owner Madam Zisi (Danielle Darrieux) who quickly realises that Joss’ hormones are lighting up her lovers hormones – the same Kenneth More. But why stop there, let’s keep going: the hotel manager Madam Corbet has a homosexual attachment to Zisi, which Zisi is aware of. And it is ambiguous whether Zisi and Madam Corbet were lovers or still are lovers. Meanwhile, with Joss’s sexual hormones ricocheting off the hotel walls, the porter-cum kitchen hand is also lusting after her. Imagine this film made by Luis Buñuel with Spanish sub-titles. The British censor would slap an X certificate on it as quick as you could say “Foreign Filth”.
It is a very deft scene where it is revealed that Joss is having her period, and period pains, and is under the weather. It is the first day after they arrived at the hotel the night before, and her sister Hester (played by a young Jane Asher) and her little brother have come into her bedroom to ask why she’s not up as it is such a lovely morning. She says she is ill. Her little brother frowns to which she responds “I’m not ill like Mummy”. In a tight close up on younger sister Hester, excluding the brother in the frame she asks, significantly “Is it…?” Also in a tight close up, her little brother not in frame, Joss nods meaningfully.
Susannah York as Joss and Kenneth More as Eliot, The Greengage Summer, 1961.
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Kenneth More had the lead role in the downbeat The Comedy Man 1963. Nudity between male and female went way further in this film than in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. More plays an actor having a mid-life career and mid-life relationship crisis. Early on in the film he and his ex-lover Billie Whitelaw are physically intimate in a fairly extended bed scene.
Kenneth More and Billie Whitelaw in The Comedy Man.Billie Whitelaw and Kenneth More, The Comedy Man.
Dennis Price, who was also in Victim, plays a lecherous heterosexual agent. In his private, non-acting life Dennis was homosexual. And it is in The Comedy Man that we see for the first time ever, that this writer is aware of, two homosexual men dancing together.
Queer sort of world. The Comedy Man, 1963.“Eh?” This girl has just been “excused” me by one of the men who is now dancing with the man she was dancing with, and she is trying to comprehend what it is exactly she is looking at.
The Comedy Man was finished in May 1963, but Rank, the distributors, were at a loss as to what to do with it, and it didn’t get released until 1964. Along with The Greengage Summer it was Kenneth More’s favourite film.
Homosexual practice was still a criminal offence when the film was made. There were various charges that could be brought, including “Lewd behaviour”. In England and Wales the Sexual Offences Act 1967 decriminalised homosexual acts in private between consenting men over the age of 21. It wasn’t until 1980 that a similar act was passed for Scotland; 1982 in Northern Ireland and 1993 in the Republic of Ireland.
By coincidence, when the film The Comedy Man starring Kenneth More was finally released in 1964, the Windmill Theatre in Great Windmill Street closed its doors and then re-opened as the Windmill Cinema.
And life imitated art for Kenneth More. In The Greengage Summer he is strongly attracted to a girl who is 21 years his junior; in The Comedy Man a source of discord between his contemporary Billie Whitelaw and himself is that she tires of him never wanting to grow up and always wanting to be 25. In the film a 21 year old would-be actress parks herself on him. Her film name was “Shrimp”. At the end of The Comedy Man he leaves Shrimp, and his mostly out-of-work London actor friends and takes a taxi for Kings Cross station and a ticket to the north, to try and get back into repertory theatre, leaving behind the empty experience of being a successful TV advertisement personality selling a mouth freshener.
In real life Kenneth More left his second wife who he had married in 1952 for “Shrimp”, actress Angela Douglas. They got married in 1968. She was 26 years younger than More. They remained married until his death from Parkinson’s disease in 1982, aged 67.
Kenneth More Royal Mail 1st class stamp
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Footnote
Mervin Griffith-Jones was also the Prosecuting counsel in the 1963 trial of Stephen Ward at the time of the Profumo scandal.
Peter Sellers, as Fred Kite, the militant shop steward, and Ian Carmichael in the Boulting Brothers “I’m Alright Jack”, based on Alan Hackney’s novel “Private Life”. – Have you been to Russia, Mr Kite? – No, but that’s one place I’d like to go. All them corn fields, and ballet in the evening.
From life in the wartime British Army (Private’s Progress, 1954), through to the New Towns of the 1960s (Let’s Keep Religion Out of This, 1963, filmed as Heavens Above) and the start of package holidays in Spain (Whatever Turns You On Jack, 1972) the novelist Alan Hackney had his finger on the life pulse of Britain.
Peter Sellers, with a Brummie accent, as the idealistic Rev. John Smallwood in Heavens Above, 1963, loosely inspired by Alan Hackney’s novel Let’s Keep Religion Out of This. The Rev. John Smallwood puts into practice the teaching of Christ, and in doing so upsets the local parish landed gentry, and causes panic and consternation in the national Church of England hierarchy.
His books are so spot-on in nailing the social history and the politics of the time – but luckily, also laugh-out-aloud (with the partial exception of Let’s Keep Religion Out of This) – that they should be on any reading list for first year students doing a degree in that social history/politics post war period of Britain. And watching Private’s Progress and I’m Alright Jack would save them tedious hours of skimping through some inadequate books, which partially miss (because they were written by academics – secure in their jobs and financially comfortably off, and some of whom were also influenced by their political leanings, left or right). Important aspects and commentary on what life was like for many were missed. For instance, Arthur Marwick’s British Society Since 1945 does not mention, even in one passing sentence, the desire of many Britons to escape the class stratification of that period and emigrate to Australia on the £10 scheme. Both the Kinks and the Animals touched on this stifling class ceiling in some of their music. And many Britons, encouraged by the Australian government took the boats heading out via South Africa and across the Indian Ocean to a socially freer continent.
Meanwhile, those of us left behind could go to the pictures on a Friday or Saturday night and bust a gut laughing at the films touched with the Hand of Hackney: Private’s Progress (1956), and I’m Alright Jack (1959).
Private’s Progress by Alan Hackney. Victor Gollanz, London, 1954.
Yet Alan Hackney rarely appears when book critics mention the likes of Angus Wilson, Kingsley Amis and William Cooper in the same breath. Still, I doubt that he would have been bothered. Financially he did alright. And the novelist William Cooper rolled around the floor laughing as he read his novels, and Evelyn Waugh did that rare thing (for him) and invited Hackney down to the Waugh home in Somerset, saying how much he admired his work.
Private’s Progress film poster for the United States market. Note “The Film That is Respectfully Dedicated to All Those Who Got Away With It”. This tag line was also used on the UK poster, and was the concluding dedication on the screen in the cinemas.
Not only do his books have a sharp view of what was happening in Britain at the time he wrote them, but they burst with brilliant dialogue, and the vernacular. The vernacular spilled over into film scripts that he contributed to that weren’t based on his novels, such as Two Way Stretch (1960).
Peter Sellers as Dodger Lane in “Two Way Stretch”, – ‘Ere, close that window, there’s a terrible George Raft.“Two Way Stretch”. Peter Sellers to conman Soapy Stevens (Wilfrid Hyde-White), pretending to be a vicar on a prison visit – What evil plan are you hatching in that disease ridden bonce of yours?“Two Way Stretch”, 1960. Left to right, Bernard Cribbins as Lenny the Dip, David Lodge as Jelly Knight and Peter Sellers as Dodger Lane in the Prison Governor’s garden.
The Film Censor giving Two Way Stretch a “U” – suitable for children – certificate didn’t notice that Alan Hackney had slipped in a choice phrase when Peter Sellers as the trustee Dodger Lane tells visiting welfare ladies in the Prison Governor’s garden that the giant marrow they are admiring was “Hand raised, as they say in the Navy”. There would have been an acknowledged titter in cinemas up and down the country, particularly from ex and serving serviceman.
Two Way Stretch UK cinema poster.
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His novels follow the lives of the same characters as they emerge from the war, such as the gormless Stanley, his naturist father, the unscrupulous, suave Brigadier Bertram Tracepurcel (Uncle Bertie), Stanley’s wartime mate Private Cox (Coxey) who after the war re-invents himself as “Mr de Cameron”, and then Fred Kite, Mrs Kite and Cynthia as they adapt, and some do very nicely thank-you, as Britain moves into the 1970s. The shop steward Fred Kite even makes it to the House of Lords in What Ever Turns You On Jack.
Alan Hackney, left, with Richard Attenborough, Peggy Hackney and baby Jane, and Roy Boulting, on the set of Private’s Progress.
In the obituaries for Alan Hackney when he died in 2009, the consensus is that I’m Alright Jack (“Private Life”) was the apex of his work with its merciless laugh-out-aloud dissection of trade unions super-glued to demarcation disputes and tussles with the Bosses and the Bosses looking after No.I whilst hypocritically spouting on about the “National Interest” (whilst lining their own pockets doing arms deals with corrupt Middle Eastern governments) and consciously provoking union militancy – strikes – for their own financial gain.
In fact, all his novels have an equal weight, but if one has to be highlighted besides I’m Alright Jack (“Private Life”), in the view of this writer it should be Private’s Progress.
The Awkward Squad, aka “Absolute Shower”, in their Holding Unit. Front, left to right, Ian Carmichael (Me Old Stan), Richard Attenborough (Coxey) and Kenneth Griffith (Jonesy). Back row centre Victor Maddern and Ian Bannen. Private’s Progress, 1956.
Here’s a novel (1954), and then a film made shortly after (1956) that appears in bookshops and then on cinema screens, wedged in between celebrations of World War Two British courage, and examples of individual daring-do. Films, often based on non-fiction books, such as Reach for The Sky (1956), The Dam Busters (1955) and Above Us the Waves (1955).
Skiver, buck-passer, and Major – Terry-Thomas as Major Hancock
Private’s Progress is a film that shows some Army Brass who are dodging and skiving as much as the soldiers they are commanding, and Army Brass who are involved in high scale looting of Art Works, shipped back to Blighty for private re-sale and their own financial gain.
High-end looter and Brigadier, Betram Tracepurcel (Dennis Price) and collaborator/girlfriend ATS Prudence Greenslade (Jill Adams).
“Shipped back” should perhaps be more accurately called “air-lifted”. There were elements in the RAF Transport Command and the USAAF equivalent who were assisting in flying back high-end loot.
The film’s dedication to “All Those Who Got Away With It” would have included British army soldiers who held Prince Friedrich Ferdinand of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, his family, and their servants at gunpoint in the courtyard of Glücksburg Castle near the border with Denmark in May 1945. They were searching for Heinrich Himmler and looted the castle at the same time. Easily pocketable items with high value such as jewellery disappeared. The British Daily Mail in May 1945 reported that “The Duchess of Mecklenburg had appealed to the King (George VI) for compensation… ‘I wrote to Queen Mary in England who is my aunt, asking her to help me and she replied she would do’.” It’s not clear whether any of the soldiers, which would have included officers were ever detected or disciplined, and most of the jewellery seemingly was never recovered.
Duchess Cecile of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, 1886 – 1954.Prince Friedrich Ferdinand of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg (1913 – 1989)
In the film Private’s Progress Brigadier Tracepurcell and Private Cox and ATS Greenslade don’t get away with it, but in the novel they do, and they do very nicely too. The Boulting Brothers being realistic, knew the British Board of Film Censors would not allow the “culprits” to get away with it, and would refuse a certificate, and the film, therefore, wouldn’t get shown in British cinemas.
Richard Attenborough in The League of Gentlemen, 1960.
It was for the same reason that in the thriller League of Gentlemen, 1960, ex-British Army officers, and a few Other Ranks having mounted a spectacular and successful bank raid – using skills learnt during their army war training – also didn’t get away with it. Talking in 1985, the screenwriter T.E.B Clark (Hue & Cry, 1947, Passport to Pimlico, 1949) stated that in his screenplay for The Lavender Hill Mob, 1951, Alec Guinness also wasn’t able to get away with it. “The censor would not have allowed it”, he said. This wasn’t copping out – it was knowing what was, and was not allowed. The British Board of Film Censors was a self-censoring Trade Body established in 1912, and down the years had had an informal and comfortable relationship with the British Governments of the day.
In the film, every one else in Private’s Progress either does get away with it, or finds dodges and skives to make their boring, drudge-ridden and pointless army life in the Holding Unit a touch easier.
One extraordinary sequence in the film, not commented on by reviewers (and not in the novel) is when Major Hancock (Terry-Thomas) skives off and leaves the Camp, and is seen entering a Picture House in the local town. The banner poster above the Picture House entrance shows that the featured film is In Which We Serve. In Which We Serve was a deeply felt film written and directed by its star Noel Coward, at a time – 1942 – when the tide had yet to turn for the wartime Allies. When Noel Coward was finishing the films’ script in late 1941 British military were having one defeat after another, and the storyline of In Which We Serve was based on the sinking of the destroyer HMS Kelly in the Battle for Crete – a ship commanded by Louis Mountbatten. Recognising a good propaganda film, it was actively helped by the British Government’s Ministry of Information, in providing service men, and promotion. “A classic example of wartime British cinema through its patriotic imagery of national unity and social cohesion within the context of the war” – Wikipedia entry.
In Private’s Progress the on-screen credits boast that the Producers had help from “Absolutely No-One“. Richard Attenborough was in both films. (1).
Richard Attenborough in his first screen role in In Which We Serve, 1942. Victor Maddern who’s a dodging private in Private’s Progress served in the British Merchant Navy, joining in 1943 at the age of 15. It would have been no picnic. Somewhere in England: In Which We Serve at the local Picture House. “A Stirring Tale of War Heroism.” Private’s Progress.Major Hancock has a sly shufti to spot he’s not being observed before he slips into the matinée at the Picture House. Private’s Progress.Major Hancock being guided down the cinema aisle. Private’s Progress.Major Hancock settles into his cinema seat. A stirring newsreel commentator is heard on the sound-track. Private’s Progress.Turning to his right Major Hancock happens to alight on… Private’s Progress.… Private Ian Bannen and his current girlfriend snogging, and in front, Jonesy and Victor Maddern. They are unimpressed by the stirring voice and words of the unseen newsreel: “The British soldier today is highly skilled and highly trained“. Private’s Progress.Turning to his right Major Hancock spots two more dodgers. Private’s Progress.Spotted, Stanley (Me Old Stan) gives the nod to a half- dozing Coxey. Privates Progress.Stanley and Cox try to make themselves invisible, as, despite the bored audience, the newsreel commentator soldiers on. Private’s Progress.
The following day Major Hancock has them on a forced route march, with full kit. Sweating as they march they are brought to attention by the Company Sergeant Major. Major Hancock addresses them. “You’re an absolute shower. Practically every man in that cinema was from this company.” Cox mutters “Including you, cock.”
Terry-Thomas is rightly associated with the “Absolute shower”expression, but it was Alan Hackney who used it, having first heard it from an irate Commanding Officer in India during the war.
Review quotes of Private’s Progress. (From the front pages of Alan Hackney’s third novel Private Life,1958 aka I’m Alright Jack.)Coxey (Richard Attenborough) mis-appropriating the ABCA class to explain to his fellow squaddies the various ways of dodging railway fares.
ABCA stood for Army Bureau of Current Affairs set up during the Second World War to “educate and raise morale” amongst servicemen and servicewomen. The railway dodges outlined by Coxey included the ATS dodge, that Fusilier Walter Morrison describes in detail, along with others not mentioned by Coxey, in Pete Grafton’s You, You & You: The People Out of Step with World War Two. (2)
In the three Boulting Brothers films based on Alan Hackney’s novels there are omissions, and, the other way around, narratives that are not in the novels.
Catherine introducing Stanley to one of her friends. Private’s Progress.
In the novel Private’s Progress there is a section where the Stanley character is posted to India, mirroring Alan Hackney’s wartime experience. The novel also fleshes out what is only briefly touched on in the film: the London wartime world of Catherine, Stanley’s sister – a world of artists pre-occupied with producing art that is “plastic”, a stressed female vegan, a hardened squaddie who swings both ways, a Quentin Crisp type character who can’t bear the thought of having to wear “that dreadful khaki” and two dodgy art dealers, one of whom manages to “disappear” following the confusion at Dunkirk. This strand is an important – and witty – narrative element throughout the novel.
The “disappearing” of soldiers – “posted missing – presumed dead” – following Dunkirk is also mentioned in the Afterword to You, You & You.
Both the films and the novels they are based on are equally good standing alone by themselves. Alan Hackney was closely involved in the films Private’s Progress and I’m Alright Jack, even though the screen credits are perfunctory. “From a story by Alan Hackney” does not convey that it is a novel.
Alan Hackney’s novels, in order – left to right – that they were published.
His Gollanz published novels have been out of print for years, though most copies – second-hand – are available at reasonable prices on abebooks. Faber and Faber in their Faber Finds series currently list Private’s Progress.
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The same happens with Marcello Mastroianni appearing in a film that features another film he starred in: He’s the central character in Germi’s Divorce Italian Style (1961), and is shown making his way to the Picture House in his Sicilian home town where Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960) is playing, playing to a packed house despite a pulpit condemnation from the town priest. They’ve seen the film poster featuring Anita Ekberg and heard that the film is full of orgies.
Christmas 1946,Clydebank and Hogmanay 1946 Loch Lomond youth hostel
Bird’s Christmas Custard advertisement, December 1946. Pete Grafton Collection
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This material adapted from Len:Our Ownest Darling Girl – Letters between Mother and Daughter 1939 – 1950. Mother was Helen Bryers, Dad was Harry Bryers and their daughter was Helen (“Len’) Bryers.
Mum and Dad Bryers, 1930s.
Mum and Dad Bryers lived in a rented house in Coldingham Avenue, Yoker, near Clydebank. Dad was an engineer and Mum had been a seamstress.
Helen (‘Len’) Bryers, Photo taken in Victory Studios, Argyle Street, Glasgow, 31 October, 1944.
Their only child, Helen, known as “Len” to family and friends, had worked in the latter stages of the Second World War as a shorthand typist for the Ministry of Supply at the Royal Ordnance Factory at nearby Dalmuir. Still working for the Ministry of Supply she transferred to a similar post in Cairo in November 1945. She was almost 20. At the time there was strong Arab anti- British feeling in Egypt, and contempt for the king, Farouk. Occasional demonstrations and targeted explosions at British associated Cairo buildings were occasional irritants. Otherwise Helen (‘Len’) was living in the land of milk and honey- no food or clothing rationing for her. Back in post-war Britain Mum and Dad and millions of others were experiencing rationing harsher than it had been during the war. Bread, freely available during the war, was rationed starting in July, 1946. There was also an acute shortage of houses. The weather wasn’t that brilliant, either.
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Christmas Eve in ye old Home, 24 December, 1946.
I just couldn’t let this night pass without letting you know you are in our thoughts as always, our darling.
Christmas card from Mum and Dad to Len (Helen) their daughter.
Here’s the latest re. hoose.
“New Houses” Abbey National advertisment, Picture Post, August 5, 1944. Pete Grafton Collection.
I called at the B.S. (building society) yesterday to pay the surveyor’s fee and the under manager told me he’d just been getting a letter typed to ask us to call for an interview with the manager, so I made an appointment there & then for 3 p.m. today. Just as we were getting ready to go out, Mrs Rae from next door called for a loan of a pudding basin as they were just about to put their plum pudd. on to steam when the basin broke. I think ours must be what is termed “a well appointed” house for I was able to produce a selection of basins for her choice.
At last we got away in a ghastly thick fog and frozen roads. We saw the B.S. manager – very efficient & polite – who phoned up their solicitor for an appointment for us and we are to see him at 11 a.m. on Thurs. They evidently got a very favourable report from the surveyor. The surveyor reported that, with vacant possession the house would easily sell for £1,750 or £2,000, so you see honey, if we can get it in the region of £500 to £800 it w’d mean a profit for us anytime we sold whilst the present housing shortage lasts & that looks like being for many many years. (The housing shortage was anticipated during the latter stages of the war by the British Wartime Coalition Government – much housing had been lost in the Blitzes, and the V1 and V2 raids – and the first prefabricated home (prefab) was erected and occupied in London in the Spring of 1945. It is reported that by January 1947, a few weeks on from Mum writing this letter, 100,000 prefabs had been built. However, there was still a housing shortage, particularly in the bomb damaged cities of Britain, most of which also had crowded slum areas.)
Dad & self then went shopping and went into Masseys. (Glasgow wide provisions stores of the time.)
Interior of Massey’s Union Street branch, central Glasgow, circa 1951. Photo source Glasgow Evening Times.A.Massey & Sons shopfront, the 1930s. Somewhere in the Glasgow suburbs.Massey’s shop staff, Shettleston Road branch, Glasgow, circa 1932.
There was a huge pile of mince pies on the counter & Dad asked about them & the guy serving said they were only for registered customers & I said “He (Dad) doesn’t understand all about the difficulties of shopping, ha! ha! But I’m going on holiday and he’ll get to know.”
Dad said “Yes, she is going to the land of milk & honey”, and the fella said “Where is that” & I said “Cairo, Egypt” & that started it – he was recently demobbed and said if he hadn’t been married he’d have rejoined again so as to spend another 6 months in Cairo, which he says is a most exciting city & he liked it very much. Well, we jawed & jawed & he said “Oh! I must give you some of these mince pies as you are old Egyptian friends.” He made up six lovely mince pies for us! – so you see, honey, ‘agaun fit is aye gettin’. (‘A moving foot is always gaining things’.)
We hear on the radio tonight that a bomb exploded in the Anglo-Egyptian Club but no one hurt, thank goodness. Must stop now, my sweetie pie, hope Santa puts something nice in your stocking. It’s raining cats and dogs tonight, the weather is terrible.
Boxing Day. 26.12.46.
Just look at the day it is and we never got this away to you – yesterday just seemed to go in wee bits of cooking, cleaning and shopping. (Shopping on Christmas Day: Christmas Day in Scotland historically was not as significant as it was in England. As late as 1967 it was not a holiday for blue collar and shop workers in Scotland.)
We are just off to the solicitors to make arrangements re. his getting in touch with Mrs Mac’s chap – I guess she’ll throw a pink fit when she hears our offer in the region of £500 – £800! (Mrs Mac was the owner of their home, her name fore-shortened by Mum.) It was such impudence of her solicitor to try to stampede us into £1,200.
Our kitten, Hope, is really a pet and is growing like anything, he is creamy ginger colour & so clean and dainty. How do you like his name? It had to be something beginning with “H” as is our tradition & I thought “Hope” so nice & cheerful.
There’s cards in for you from Mrs Holt and Bob Getchel, I’ll forward them in separate envelopes. (Mrs Holt was a former pre-war neighbour from Dagenham, Essex and Bob Getchel was a U.S. serviceman the family had got to know during the war.) The mantlepiece is decorated with over 20 Xmas Cards we got.
Mum extreme right with her daughter looking up at her, front room, Coldingham Avenue, Yoker, Christmas 1944.
We got a most lovely aluminium teapot and silver jam spoon from Aunt Ena – they are really beautiful and just what we wanted. I got a tin of Bath Salts & tin of talcum from Joan Brandley, very sweet of her to send them. (Joan Brandley was a close friend of Helen’s and family friend) We intend to go to L.L.Y.H. at New Year – what am I to do with Hope? I’ll be running up here every few hours. (L.L.Y.H: Loch Lomond Youth Hostel. The distance between the youth hostel and the family home in Yoker was 3 miles.)
“Och! The sound of it!” Dewars White Label whisky advertisment, Picture Post, December 7, 1946. Pete Grafton Collection.
The day before Hogmanay. (Have been busy making up your parcel – slacks & bra. etc and am now dashing off with it to the G.P.O.)
Dearest and Best,
We are all well and happy, but busy, boy! I’ll say we’re busy! I’m writing this in the middle of a mouthful of lunch. I note all the splendid tips in your letter re. filling in my forms and shall act accordingly, after New Year my thoughts and deeds will be dedicated mostly to arranging my trip. (Mum was planning to visit her daughter in Egypt.) The days just now are so brief and meals so many.
We are going to L.L.Y.H tomorrow – both Jack and Dad stop at 12 so we shall be off soon after. (LLYH: Loch Lomond Youth Hostel. Jack was a young lodger.) Jack is thrilled to bits at the idea of the hostels and I’m going to get a membership card for him in town today – that is to be his New Year gift from Dad & self. Jack is really a lonely soul and has not much young company so he is enthusiastic re. visiting L.L. and yesterday put on the outfit he proposes putting on for the trip so that we c’d O.K. it – or otherwise; he has a camera and films so will try to get some snaps.
We’ll be thinking of you on New Year’s Eve and wishing you all that’s Merry. May all your dreams & wishes come true in 1947.
Your own ever loving Mum and Dad.
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3 January, 1947.
The beginning of the year 1947 in The Old Home.
Our Darling Own One,
This is the very first letter of the year and the first one we received this year was from you – we are so happy you had such a wizard time at Christmas. We just got back from Loch Lomond Y.H. last night and oh! boy – what a time we had! It was one of merriment and fun from the time we got there on Hogmanay till we left last night.
“Group at Auchendrennan (Loch Lomond youth hostel) New Year’s Day, 1947. Mrs Mac is in Centre with Henry Lindsay at her back – that’s Henry’s brother in kilt next to me. The piper appeared playing a tune, he had walked all the way from Tarbert after playing all night!” Mum’s annotation on back of photo. Mum is on the left and Dad is second right.
Loch Lomond (Auchendrennan) youth hostel, circa early 1950s.
Jack was overcome by the Membership card we gave him and some of his Norwegian Pals propose coming over to Scotland for a tour during the summer and he is to get a bike in April so he will be able to make good use of the card.
Like ourselves, he thinks Auchendrennan is wonderful and quite admires Joan MacDonald and thinks she is so pretty “like a doll” as he says, she is certainly a bonnie lassie and as sweet as she is pretty, as I told him, however Jack is so shy, he just remained tongue tied.
Before the clock struck midnight we all (about 85) of us trooped out and Henry Lindsay listened for the Chimes (this was because a piper was playing loudly) then we all trooped upstairs where Mr. & Mrs, Mac (the wardens, surname fore-shortened by Mum, as she has done with the owner of the house in Coldingham Avenue) received us with ginger wine and cake, then we had dancing & singing then Dad, Jack & self were invited into the kitchen where the fun was terrific & later Mrs. Mac. invited us all up to their own flat, it is very nice and, my! what a party – Daddy kept saying it was the best for years, it was hilarious – even riotous with fun and singing and ended up with several prostrate forms lying around, a true Scottish New Year.
At the hostel (but not at the party) there was a party of students from the International Club. Mostly Indians and EGYPTIANS (Mum’s capital letters)) and, as is my wont, I made hay while the sun shone by talking to the nicest Egyptian I could see.
Our festivities were broadcast by the B.B.C. at 8 till 8.20 on New Year and this E. I spoke to was one of two picked to ‘say a few words‘ over the mike, and I found his name is Doctor (it sounds like this) “Kiellally” – however, I’m going to invite him & his girl friend down some night – she is studying social science at the University and lives at Danes Drive, Scotstoun. The doc. is awfully interested in my trip and we talked Egypt for hours and he says what a pity I can’t wait till June to go out as he is going then and would be delighted to travel with me. I bet he knows the ropes re. that journey. He says I could go via France without bothering with Cooks and there’s a regular service of ships once a week from Toulon to Alex or P.S. It w’d be exciting to go like that, the only snag being baggage and customs, but I guess I c’d manage. Cooks make one feel so helpless, it makes me mad.
Now what I want you to do pronto is to give me your views re. travelling via France, free from any agency, I know I don’t need a visa to get into France but if I travel on my own how shall I get a visa to get into Egypt? And what about inoculations?
Re. the house, Dad & I saw the solicitor as arranged and he suggested offering £750. He further said not to worry in any case as the house (with the present legislation) is ours anyway, but that it w’d be nice to buy as one’s own house.
I have the most ghastly feverish cold, the first in years so I sh’dn’t complain – but I do!
Keep well and happy own darling, we are loving you all the time. All the best in the world in 1947.
Cheers and love, Dad & Mum. xx
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“Len” with her Mum, Cairo.. Taken by a Cairo street photographer, July 1947.
Adapted From Part Two, Chapter One “Fresh and Innocent” of Len:Our Ownest Darling Girl
Part 8: The Cairngorms, Perth to Glasgow and a day and night hitch back to London.
The Story so Far…. Walking Aonach Eagach. The Warden’s husband with a penchant for blokes. A Tiger in his Tank at Fort William and at Glenelg an old woman with rags for shoes and a hat for a pixie. Trouble brewing with the first Sabbath sailing to Kyleakin. Four free-wheeling young wardens in the Kyle of Lochalsh and Kishorn area. Fresh baked bread at Lochcarron. A bumpy ride to Inverness. Aviemore under construction and a Rank “Road Inn” at Loch Morlich.
To Come: Walking the Lairig Ghru Pass. Expensive mince and tourists in Braemar. All at sea Civil Defence on the start to Glen Doll. A street upset in Perth. Glasgow again and day and night hitching back to London, with a Freddie and the Dreamers look-a-like driving madly over Shap. The brand new automatic service ‘Transport Cafe’ at Forton Services, and a better one at the dead of night at the Blue Boar Services, Watford Gap. Trudging around London’s North Circular at dawn. Home.
The nice but maniac Freddie Garrity look-alike lorry driver. Photo of Freddie Garrity in America Stanley Bielecki.
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June 4. Friday. Inverey YH, evening.
I thought the 24 mile walk from Loch Morlich to Inverey, via the Lairig Ghru Pass was going to be difficult, but it was O.K.
Loch Morlich youth hostel to Inverey youth hostel, via the Lairig Ghru Pass. Acknowledgement Esso Map No 7 Northern Scotland, 1962.Loch Morlich youth hostel – Lairig Ghru Pass – Luibeg. Acknowledgement Ordnance Survey One Inch Tourist Map of the Cairngorms, 1964.Lairig Ghru Pass looking south, from direction of Loch Morlich.
Leave YH around 9.30 a.m. Sun’s out but a strong wind and waves are choppy on the loch. Walk along by the loch and take the track making for the Rothiemurchus ski hut. It’s a moderately new track – white crushed stone. Walking along by this characteristic undulating heather area, and then gradually ascend the slope until you reach the hut. Although built in 1951 it’s an awful mess, made of timber and falling to bits. It’s a shabby, jerry built thing. And so the path that brings you onto the Lairig Ghru Pass path. Follows the valley, ascending slowly, sometimes by the burn, sometimes above it and then crossing over by the Sinclair Memorial Hut. Big scree slops on either side, towering up there. I’m going fast, making good time. Pass a party of school boys and their masters, ask the time – one o’ clock. There’s a couple of patches of snow as you get higher, blinded by the sun and the whiteness, one of the few times I wished I had sun glasses. After the snow there are lots of boulders – easy going though, jumping from one to another and unbelievably make the Pass, thinking – this can’t be it, must be further. But it is and there are the Pools of Dee.
Stop by them for a packet of biscuits, a cig and a rest. In front of me the valley descends gradually.
Summit of Lairig Ghru Pass.View from summit of Lairig Ghru Pass.The Pools of Dee, near the summit of the Lairig Ghru Pass
Big sweeping mountain sides coming down to the Dee. Continue after the biscuits, cig and rest. The mountains on my right getting more definite in outline, especially Cairn Toul – snow capped and some interesting, beautiful shaped corries high up at around 4000′.
Cairn Toul, 4241′.
As you start descending from the Pass and look back you see Braeriach and in its corrie what looks like a small landslide, or scree, shifting.
Braeriach, 4248′.
Come to Corrour bothy hut on the other side of the river, and this is where I branch off. following the slope of Carn-a’ Mhaim.
Corrour Bothy and Cairn Toul. Acknowledement Ordnance Survey One Inch Tourist Map of the Cairngorms, 1964.
A party of oldish nice looking, blouses open schoolgirls pass me on the path, we exchange ‘Hellos’. They’re led by ‘Sir’ who gruffly tells me it’s 3 o’ clock when I ask him the time. Onwards now in Glen Luibeg.
Glen Luibeg to Inverey. Acknowledgement Ordnance Survey One Inch Tourist Map of the Cairngorms, 1964.
Looking back it looks like a hanging valley coming out into Glen Dee. Desolate, wild, barren rolling hills around here. Sun’s gone in but it’s still warm. When I come to Luibeg Bridge it is washed away, part of its concrete foundations lying in the boulders of the river bed. There’s a lot of boulders in the river bed – must be quite a torrent during the melts. There’s a new bridge further up the tributary valley but I decide to ford the stream, being told last night by two blokes in Loch Morlich that you couldn’t. They’d done the route from Inverey yesterday. It wasn’t a problem, so not sure what they were on about.
Along the valley until it starts to get wooded on the slopes, and on down to Derry Lodge.
Derry Lodge, a missing bridge and Inverey youth hostel. Acknowledgement Ordnance Survey One Inch Tourist Map of the Cairngorms, 1964.
There’s a big herd of deer, lots of stags, on the other side of the river. They look at me, undecided, move away slowly and as I go past on the other side they move back. Cross the river by the bridge at Derry Lodge and continue walking along the glen, now called Glen Lui, and thinking about Sima and Shula, Israel, and going out to see them and before I know it I’m coming up to the bridge that crosses the river. There’s pine forest on my left. There’s a couple with camera and binoculars and they ask me if I’ve seen any deer – “Yea -two miles down”. “That’s a long way, isn’t it” they say. “Well, that depends”, say I.
Continue until I reach the road near Linn of Dee.
Near Inverey. Pre-1914 picture postcard.
Make for the bridge, some tents pitched on the common, but when I get there it has also been washed away. Cheesed off as I contemplate having to walk right round Muir, but think – blow it. I retrace my steps and cut down to the Dee through the wooded slope. Wander up and down until I find a place I reckon I can ford. This time I need to take off my boots and socks and roll my jeans up above my knees. Socks stuffed in my boots which I’m holding (no room in the rucksack) I wade in. Water’s not as cold as I expected, but the rocks, pebbles and boulders in the river are slippery and hurt my feet. Move slowly across, water up to my knees, strongish current, until I reach the other side. Feel stupidly pleased with myself as I put my socks and boots back on, cut through the wood, make the road, trot down it. Stop by the first cottage, not sure whether it’s the hostel, move along to the next cottage and yes, it’s the hostel.
Enter. The oldish couple with car, the bloke wearing a kilt, who were at Loch Morlich last night are here, and a young couple who were at Glen Nevis on Monday night are also here. Dump ‘sac, go along to the warden’s house and pay my overnight 3/6d fee (17 p), and return to the hostel. Great hostel – must be the smallest in Great Britain – 14 beds. Nant-y-Dernol, Black sail – 16 beds. Beautiful stove – hot oven. Cook pleasant meal for a change. Talk to the young couple – they’re from Croydon, he’s chairman of the Croydon YHA, he gave references for Anne – small world. The girl’s nice, nice and fruity.
The hostel’s on open common ground by the river, there’s trees, big patch of grass and some campers are in tents out there. Two girls barge in – “Is this the key for the bogs?” Tarts. They take it, go in the bog and probably fix themselves up for the night. I eventually go to bed. Outside you can hear people moving around, trying the back door. Fuck ’em. Sleep.
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June 5. Saturday. Braemar YH. Evening.
Woke up this morning and sitting in bed patched my jeans by ingenious method of cutting a piece off one of the back pockets. Jeans patched, arse’ole presentable I emerge and have breakfast, porridge minus milk – haven’t had any fresh milk for three days. Bad. Raining heavily outside.
Leave at 10.30 when the rain had dropped off to a steady drizzle. The young couple from Croydon ahead of me, catch them up, walk together for a bit, then leave them as I cross the bridge over the Dee.
Inverey youth hostel to Braemar. Acknowledgement Ordnance Survey One Inch Tourist Map of The Cairngorms, 1964.Inverey youth hostel to Victoria Bridge over the Dee and Mar Lodge. Acknowledgement Ordnance Survey One Inch Tourist Map The Cairngorms, 1964.
Boring walk through parkland, the drizzle eventually eases up
Mar Lodge, between Inverey and Braemar. Pre 1914 picture postcard.
Eventually come to Invercauld Bridge, which is two miles further on from Braemar, on the north side of the Dee.
Invercauld Bridge, near Braemar.View from Invercauld Bridge. Pre 1914 picture postcard.Invercauld Bridge and Braemar. Acknowledgement Ordnance Survey One Inch Tourist Map The Cairngorms, 1964.
Cross the bridge and walk along back along the road into Braemar, past a vile looking Braemar Castle, open to the public 10 to 6, and it looks about 60 years old.
Braemar Castle. Circa 1920s picture postcard.
Into the craphole that is Braemar – there’s fuck all to it. Mostly Victorian hotels, gift shops and coach loads of old people. There’s nothing else – no beauty to it, no age, so why all these tourists, all these hotels.
Braemar, 1960s. Bristol cigarettes and Capstan. “Fancy Gifts”, and a Post Office Land Rover.
The scenery around here’s OK, but it’s not that great. Withdraw £10 from the P.O. and sent a postcard to the warden at Glasgow YH, after buying some food – including ½lb mince that cost 2/4!!. (11p). Me walking out of the butchers murmuring with great feeling “Robbing bastards”.
Walk a bit out of Braemar, going south, past the awful looking Victorian hostel, along the main road with deer fence each side until I find a tight space to sit down behind a crumbled down stone wall on the roadway, deer fence a foot away and eat wads of bread and jam whilst cars zoom past. Eat too much.
Looking down on Braemar
Guessing that it’s around 4 I walk back to the youth hostel.
Gosport High Street, circa late 1940s.
Benouville Beach, Benouville and Benouville Bridge were in the “Sword” landing area, to the right.
“Monday D Day Held Up”, London Daily Mirror, 7 June 1944.
Approaching Benouville Beach, France, D Day, June 6, 1944.
London Daily Mirror front page, 7 June, 1944.
London Daily Mirror, 7 June, 1944.
British radio programmes, D Day, 6 June, 1944. Source Birmingham Evening Despatch.
British soldiers moving on from Benouville Beach, D Day, 6 June, 1944.
“Field ambulance vehicles evacuating 6th Airborne wounded across Benouville Bridge, towards the beaches.” Note the Allied glider on the right.
Birmingham Evening Despatch front page, 6.30 pm edition, D Day, 6 June 1944.
“Late News” Birmingham Evening Despatch, D Day, 6 June, 1944.
London Daily Mirror, 7 June 1944.
Royal Engineer John Thorpe, centre, circa 1944. Photo Estate of John Thorpe.
Royal Engineer John Thorpe, right. In Germany, circa 1945. Photo Estate of John Thorpe.
Britain’s black-out, 7 June. Source London Daily Mirror, 7 June 1944.
Americans holidaying in the south of France, circa 1956. There is a rack of picture postcards by the door; the woman holds a pencil, the gent is displaying what seems to be a tourist guidebook.
Chateau D’If, Tourisme Nautique – Vieux Port, Marseilles, circa 1956.
Extract from Michelin Map France Sud, 1965 revision. With grateful acknowledgment to Michelin.
Vieux Port (The Old Port), Marseilles.
Vieux Port, Marseille, 1956.
Vieux Port, Marseille. 1956.
Both boys have sand/mud on their hands. In 2019 these boys will now be approaching their mid-seventies.
The American couple stayed a night or two in a hotel possibly either in or near Arles or Avignon.
The American woman with…? A fellow hotel guest, or Le Patron de L’Hotel ? Or…?
The hotel dining room.
The view from the hotel dining room. There is a chance the car seen on the left is a car hired by the American couple. There is a glimpse of a similar car in a photo of Le Palais des Papes (Palace of the Popes) in Avignon.
Arles.
Arles, Roman ruins.
Arles, price of entry to Roman ruins and a cat sniffing the sign.
Two young girls. Assumed to be Arles or Avignon. Detail.
Church entrance, with daughter, son and father, possibly. Assumed to be either Arles or Avignon. Detail.
Unidentified town square. “Cycles Magaly” and a Gendarme talks to a car passenger. Detail.
Pont d’Avignon (and dog).
Avignon and a parked Cadillac, believed to be a Series 62, with a Norwegian plate. A sign to the right of the Banque de France indicates the way to Le Palais des Papes (The Palace of the Popes)
Le Palais des Papes, Avignon.
Avignon.
Monument du Centenaire (detail), Avignon. Someone is looking out of the window above the Creme Eclipse sign
Monument du Centenaire, Avignon.
Theatre Building, Avignon, detail.
Citroen 2CV and Volkswagen Beatle, believed to be in Avignon. (Detail). The country of origin of the all numeral registration plate on the Volkswagen has not, yet, been identified. 
Avignon: “Services Touristiques, Provence Voyages“, and a Gendarme. Detail.
Marseilles, the Old Harbour. Grateful acknowledgement Vichie81/Shutterstock.
Christmas 1950 at British Woman
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Henri Cartier-Bresson…?
Edouard Boubat…?
Sniper fire, Paris, August 1944. Photo: Robert Doisneau…?
Spain, 1950. Photo: Eugene Smith…?
Nehru. Photo: Margaret Bourke-White…?
Photo by Willy Ronis…?
Photo by Izis…?
Photo by Robert Capa…?
Photo by Robert Frank…?
Photo by David Douglas Duncan…?
Audrey Hepburn, 1956. Photo by Bert Stern…?
Baby Bert, Bert Hardy summer 1913, Priory Buildings, Blackfriars, London. “My Mum with myself at a few months old“. Source Bert Hardy: My Life, London 1985.
King George V and Queen Mary, Blackfriars Road, London. Photo by a teenage Bert Hardy.
“One of my earliest photos taken with flash powder. Bath time at the Priory Buildings”. Photo by a teenage Bert Hardy.
Photo by Bert Hardy mid to late 1930s. Sold to The Bicycle.
The Picture Post cover on the week Bert Hardy joined the magazine. Picture Post, March 9, 1940 from the Pete Grafton Collection.
Mono reproduction of Bert Hardy cover for A Trawler in War-Time, Picture Post March 21, 1942. From Bert Hardy: My Story, London 1985.
Bert Hardy photo aboard a trawler in heavy seas, Picture Post March 21, 1942. From Bert Hardy: My Life, London, 1985.Carl Mydans and left, George Silk. Life magazine war correspondnets. Photo source: Getty, with grateful acknowledgement.
Robert Capa, war correspondent. Photo: unknown source.
Bert Hardy in jeep with Wehrmacht prisoners on the bonnet. The prisoners are possibly there to deter enemy snipers or an ambush. Photographer unknown. From Bert Hardy: My Life, London 1985.
“My first frightening encounter with the enemy came when we were heavily mortared. I came closer to death, however, when I nearly detonated a land mine in my efforts to seek cover.” Photo Bert Hardy. From Bert Hardy: My Life, London, 1985. Robert Capa was to die stepping on a landmine in French Indo-China (Vietnam) in 1954.
Monochrome reproduction of Picture Post Cover, February 8, 1947, featuring Bert Hardy’s portrait of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharial Nehru.
Chinese cafe, Liverpool. Photo: Bert Hardy.
Couple in a basement room, from the Picture Post story on the Elephant & Castle area, London, late 1948. Photo Bert Hardy.
Gorbals boys, 1948. Photo Bert Hardy. “My favourite picture: this reminds me of what I was like when I was a kid. In this story I concentrated on the children, and how they kept their spirits up in conditions which were often dreadful.” From Bert Hardy: My Story, London 1985.
Bert Hardy in Korea, 1950. Unknown photographer. Copyright, with acknowledgment, Getty.
Bound UN political prisoners, Korea, 1950. Photo by Bert Hardy, from Terror in Korea: We appeal to U.N. Text James Cameron, photos Bert Hardy. Supressed by Picture Post owner Edward Hulton.
Bert Hardy: “The layout for the story that was never published, for which Tom Hopkinson was sacked.” From Bert Hardy: My Life, Godron Fraser, London, 1985. 
Journalist Katherine Whitehorn, Hyde Park, London, 1956. Photo Bert Hardy.
Sunday morning on the Champs Elysees, Paris. Photo Bert Hardy.
Chorus girls on the front at Blackpool. Photo Bert Hardy. Taken on amatuer Box Brownie camera.
Kodak Box Brownie, similar to the one Bert Hardy used on the Blackpool photo. A basic camera but one that had extras such as a push-on close up lens and a yellow filter to bring out the depth of a blue sky and increase contrast.
Family of Man exhibition book, New York, 1955.
Bert Hardy full page in the Family of Man exhibition book, p.124, New York, 1955.
Bert Hardy, Elephant & Castle couple , with other selected photos, p.131 Family of Man exhibition book, New York, 1955.
“…Most photographers were represented by a single picture, some had several included; Robert Doisneau…” Wikipedia entry on the Family of Man Exhibition, on-screen shot October 19, 2108. Bert Hardy had three photographs selected.
“The following lists all participating photographers. (see original 1955 MoMA checklist)” – online Wikipedia detail from their Family of Man item. Bert Hardy is not on this Wikipedia list, but is on the MoMA list.
“At about midnight we were on the Albert Bridge, with some final shots of the model leaning against the parapet. Terry (his younger son) was holding a strong torch to get just enough light on the man’s face to make it look like a lamp-light.” Bert Hardy from Bert Hardy: My Life.
“The Strand picture above was the first 35 mm photograph to be made into a 48-sheet poster” – Bert Hardy from Bert Hardy: My Life.
Michael Caine as Alfie walks across a night-time Waterloo Bridge, Alfie, 1966.
Bert Hardy ploughing at his farm. Photo Uncredited. The first time he got on a tractor at his new farm he wrote “I tried my hand at chain harrowing. It was the first time I had driven a tractor since the War when I was doing a story of Land Girls for Picture Post.” From Bert Hardy: My Story.
“My two grand-daughters taken in 1978, in the lane leading to my house.” From Bert Hardy: My Life.
Bert Hardy’s Britain, Bluecoat Press, UK.
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Christmas Eve in ye old Home, 24 December, 1946.
The day before Hogmanay. (Have been busy making up your parcel – slacks & bra. etc and am now dashing off with it to the G.P.O.)
