A web log, an æthereal scrap-book if you will, with a somewhat vintage flavour. News items, occurrences, experiences, thoughts and opinions related to Victoriana through to Fifties Americana can all be found here.
Back to Hawker Hurricanes again for this next story, featuring the extraordinary recovery of eight airframes that have been found buried in woodland just outside Kyiv, Ukraine. While the almost-too-good-to-be-true story of Spitfires and Mosquitoes buried in Burma a few years ago turned out to be just that, with no physical evidence of such aircraft being found, this tangible discovery - as first reported back in July 2023 - is far more promising and all the more remarkable since it is occurring in the middle of an active warzone.
Hawker Hurricane II ’11 white’ recreation, on display in ‘Victory Park’, Museum of the Great Patriotic War, Poklonnaya Hill, Moscow, Russia.
That has not deterred the members of the National Aviation Museum of Ukraine who took advantage of an unexploded bomb disposal nearby to locate the remains of the eight aircraft and begin excavations, with the aim to retrieve as many parts as possible in order to hopefully recreate one complete aeroplane. How far they have progressed in the intervening eight months it is not possible to say; the museum is unsurprisingly closed for the duration so I expect work is severely limited but it would be nice to think that the parts could eventually be reassembled into a full-scale display once all the unpleasantness is over.
A Hawker Hurricane Mark IIB, Z5253 'GA-25' of No. 134 Squadron RAF taxies out past Russian sentries at Vaenga, near Murmansk, October 1941. Several British squadrons were originally sent out to train Russian pilots before handing the Hurricanes over to them.
I take my hat off to the museum's volunteers, who must have been working under immense pressure - and probably not a little danger - to get these relics to safety and so begin the job of sorting through the parts needed to create a complete Hurricane. Cleaning, repairing and cataloguing are strenuous undertakings at the best of times but what it must be like with the evils of war hanging over you is almost unimaginable. That these men are driven to rescue these long-abandoned machines, with the desire to return one to period condition in honour of the brave [Ukrainian] pilots who flew them on the Eastern Front during the German invasion of Russia, is more than admirable and I wish them every success in their endeavour (when the situation permits) - stay safe, gentlemen!
A heart-warming story from April 2023 now, featuring remarkable WWII RAF veteran Bernard Gardiner who, for his 101st birthday, took a flight - and what's more after nearly 80 years, the controls! - of the world's only two-seater Hawker Hurricane.
As well as being a well-deserved and very apt gift for Mr Gardiner's milestone this was also something of a "thank you" not only for his admirable service during the war but also his role as a patron of the Hawker Typhoon Preservation Group, a charity set up in 2016 with the aim of returning an example of another of Hawker's famous Second World War aircraft - the Typhoon fighter-bomber - to airworthy status.
The Typhoon, which first flew in February 1940 and entered service in 1941, was intended to be the replacement for the Hurricane and was initially deployed as a pure fighter to counteract the German Focke-Wulf 190 which was outclassing almost everything the Allies could put up against it. Although it proved to be the equal of the Fw190, especially at low level, some early structural design flaws held it back and it was subsequently switched to the roles of low level ground attack and interception. Armed initially with six .303in machine guns, then later four 20mm cannons, the Typhoon was also able to carry up to 2,000lbs in bombs or eight wing-mounted rockets making it a formidable foe against German armour and reinforced positions. The Typhoon continued in this multi-role function for the remainder of the war, finally being retired in October 1945. Prior to that however, in September 1942, it begat the Tempest - a development of the original Typhoon design (indeed early examples were referred to as the Typhoon II) that was intended to be more of a true fighter aircraft than the Typhoon (or "Tiffie" as it was affectionately known). The Tempest would go on to become one of the most powerful piston-engined aircraft of the war - at low level the fastest single-seat propellor-driven aircraft of the time, so fast that it was easily able to deal with V1 flying bombs and even Messerschmitt's jet-powered 262.
Flight Lieutenant Walter Dring, commander of "B" Flight, No. 183 Squadron RAF, with his Typhoon Mark IB, R8884 "HF-L", in a dispersal at Gatwick, Sussex. source - IWM
Unlike the Tempest, of which there is one airworthy survivor (which made its maiden flight only last October following seven years of restoration) and at least three around the world currently undergoing restoration to flying condition, there is currently only one extant (static) example of a Typhoon - MN235, which over the last few years has been on display at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum in Washington D.C., the RAF Museum at Hendon, the Canada Aviation & Space Museum in Ottawa and - at the moment - the RAF Museum London. All that will hopefully change soon, though, thanks to the hard work of Hawker Typhoon Preservation Group which is aiming to restore Typhoon MkIB RB396 to airworthy condition so that people can see this remarkable (and, in relation to the Spitfire or Hurricane, somewhat forgotten) Second World War aeroplane take to the skies again in honour of those, like Bernard Gardiner, who flew them. After a pause of a couple of years due to the pandemic work has restarted and continues apace; with luck and thanks to the HTPG we (and hopefully Mr Gardiner!) may yet see a Tiffie in the air once more.
The last of my backlog of posts from 2021 features another piece of "obsolete" technology that is anything but, especially in Warwickshire it seems - the humble telegram. And no, I don't mean the instant messaging app (about which I know little other than that it is an instant messaging app). Long one of my favourite forms of archaic communication (as an aficionado of analogue machinery and typewriters especially, how could it not be?) reports of the telegram's demise - to paraphrase Mark Twain - have been grossly exaggerated, as I hope this post will go on to show.
While it is true that here in the U.K. British Telecom ceased offering traditional telegrams in the 1980s, as did Western Union in America, there are still several private companies and individuals in both these countries and dozens of others around the world striving to keep alive the romance and connectedness of a simpler age - albeit mainly now in the role of "greetings telegrams".
Telegrams Online is the oldest of the three such entities known to the author here in the U.K. (not including the chap in this lead article, to whom we shall come later), emerging out of the ashes of British Telecom's operation. Although BT stopped providing standard telegraphy services in the Eighties, it continued to offer "telemessaging" - the ability to dictate a message to an operator over the 'phone, which was then transcribed and sent as a regular telegram - right up until 2003. Only then did BT finally pull the plug, with Telegrams Online manfully (and womanfully) stepping up to fill the void. Their website is delightfully old-school, looking like it hasn't been updated in those twenty years, but still appears fully functional (although I haven't gone through the whole process, so cannot speak authoritatively on that point - nor can I confirm the prices). In any event, I am delighted to see that they still exist and hope that Telegrams Online will continue to provide telegrams to those who require them for the next 20 years and beyond.
Going for almost as long as Telegrams Online, Imperial Telegrams has to my knowledge been in business since at least 2006. Originally running their own website they have more recently moved under the Not On The High Street umbrella but this does not seem to have affected the quality of their offerings, which are very much of the "special occasion" variety and by far the most authentically vintage of those I have encountered. For Imperial Telegrams go to the extra effort of printing the words on to individual strips of paper before sticking them to the telegram, just as would have been the case in its heyday (such as this 1962 message to scientist Francis Crick, above), as well as using genuine pre-decimal stamps on the hand-written envelope! Quite the personalised service and very reasonable for what it is, considering the price of some generic greetings cards these days.
The last of the UK-based "online" telegram providers that I am aware of is The Telegram Office, a relative new-comer to the scene having only been established in 2015. Operating in a similar vein to Imperial Telegrams, The Telegram Office provides a selection of different templates for one to personalise albeit not to the same extent. Nevertheless the effect is still a realistic one and the price is even more affordable although perhaps reflective of the more limited options available.
Official telegram services still exist in North America, I understand, provided by the company which took over from Western Union following its bankruptcy in 1991 - iTelegram. Trading also as Telegrams Canada it offers a similar facility in that country and, indeed, to over 180 other countries around the world. Very much the more traditional, basic telegram, it is still heartening to see that such an old-fashioned means of communication continues to have an important place in the world.
There is, of course, one other way you can send telegrams for a fraction of the cost of the aforementioned options - you can create one yourself! It is far easier and less onerous than you might imagine, ironically thanks in part to its modern usurper - the Internet. This admittedly wonderful invention has allowed like-minded individuals to upload various templates of different telegram designs that can be printed and in some cases edited on one's computer.
Chief among these, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, are fans of American science fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft. In particular it seems they enjoy role-playing and table-top games around the subject of his Cthulhu mythos; because of the period in which the stories were written/set, telegrams play an important part - hence why the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society and the Mount Cthulhu gaming site provide excellent examples of telegram papers from both sides of the Atlantic. Fully downloadable and in some cases editable they provide the perfect starting point for the creation of your own telegrams! If Lovecraft is a bit too esoteric for your tastes, templates can also be found throughout t'web on various creative commons sites like Wikimedia and Open Clipart. To add the finishing touch websites like 1001 Free Fonts offer a smorgasbord of suitable fonts in their Typewriter and Retro sections, in addition to those on the Lovecraft sites.
You need not bother with the latter however if, like me, you own one (or more!) actual working typewriters - in which case what's stopping you from just printing off a template and tapping out a message in the approved manner?! This is clearly what occurred to Russell Peake of Warwickshire in the height of lockdown when, inspired by original telegrams kept by his own family and with everyone needing just that little extra bit of personal contact, he acquired a typewriter and a bicycle to start Spa Telegram. As the newspaper reports of the time explain, the venture was set up partly to provide a still-important social interaction for the people of Warwick and Leamington Spa but also to raise money for Guide Dogs for the Blind. Both laudable aims for which I congratulate Mr Peake and am very happy to see are continuing nearly three years later - for Spa Telegrams is still going strong. By the look of things typewritten and hand-delivered telegrams are even now flying around the Warwickshire area (and on request by post further afield) - a testament to the enduring appeal of this personal, unpretentious form of communication in an otherwise digital world.
***Have you sent or received a telegram recently? Do you know of any other providers that I have missed? Let me know in the comments!***
We stay with Talking Pictures TV for this next post (indeed one could easily base an entire blog around that splendid channel, such is the appeal of their excellent vintage-centric output, but perhaps that is a project for another time and place...) as their schedules also recently included an obscure 1950s British B-movie that really appealed to me and which - suitably in the run-up to Hallowe'en - starred one of the greatest horror film stars of the 1930s and '40s, Boris Karloff.
This little gem amongst gems is Colonel March Investigates, an 80-minute feature made in 1953 with Karloff in a rare non-villainous role as the titular Colonel March, the debonair head of Section D.3 of Scotland Yard - otherwise known as the Department of Queer Complaints (and one of the things that hasn't aged so well of course, these days sounding more like the name of a Channel 4 medical documentary(!). I keep mistakenly calling it the Department of Queer Goings-On, which at least sounds slightly better to my mind).
Colonel March Investigates was in fact a series of three pilot episodes of a new TV series, Colonel March of Scotland Yard, commissioned with an eye for the then soon-to-be-launched British commercial channel ITV, spliced together into a feature-length film (with extra mid-story scenes of Karloff added in to link the stories together) that was also shown in cinemas. In each case, Colonel March sets out to solve a set of seemingly impossible mysteries - Hot Money sees him investigate a bank robbery where the money disappears after the thief is seen entering a solicitor's office; Death in the Dressing Room involves the strange murder of a Javanese nightclub dancer and The New Invisible Man sees murder committed by a pair of disembodied gloves!
These initial episodes were originally shot in 1952 following Karloff's return to England from Hollywood earlier that year, his horror film heyday behind him. At 65 and beginning to suffer from emphysema as a result of a heavy smoking habit Karloff was looking for an interesting yet undemanding project, plus the chance to settle back in his home country, and was attracted to the role and the opportunity to work for a London-based TV studio. It can be seen from his on-form performance that he clearly relished playing the part of the be-tweeded, eyepatch-wearing (for which no reason is ever given) Colonel - Karloff is a joy to watch, mixing his trademark levels of subtle menace and sinisterness with a wonderful degree of enthusiasm, mysticality, decency and gallantry. Despite his advancing years and health problems Karloff still enters into the spirit of things with aplomb - there are several incidences of what for the time could easily be termed action sequences and Colonel March even carries a swordstick umbrella such as another later TV hero sports! Indeed in many ways Colonel March of Scotland Yard could be seen as a sort of forerunner to The Avengers, with in both cases our debonair protagonists investigating strange and outlandish occurrences.
Cecil Street, Carr's inspiration for the character of Colonel March
The character of Colonel March was the creation of the American mystery writer John Dickson Carr who wrote The Department of Queer Complaints in 1940 under the nom-de-plume of Carter Dickson, one of several pseudonyms he used for the many different detective stories he would write between 1930 and 1971. Generally regarded as one of the best of the "Golden Age" detective novelists and the master of the "locked room mystery", the Anglophile Carr set most of his stories in England and based some of his creations on real-life acquaintances or other contemporary crime characters (Dr Gideon Fell, for example, was directly influenced by G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown). The character of Colonel March was inspired by Carr's friend, former Army officer and fellow mystery writer Cecil Street (who also wrote under the aliases of John Rhode, Miles Burton and Cecil Wayne among others). Regrettably much of both Carr's and Street's work has now been long out of print and is therefore difficult (and therefore expensive!) to come by, which is a great pity especially as I have now a desire to read The Department of Queer Complaints and maybe a few others. Both authors have however had a couple of their stories reprinted recently as part of the British Library's excellent Crime Classics series, which includes Street's 1930 offering The Secret of High Eldersham (which I have read) and 1936's Death in the Tunnel (which I haven't) along with the first three of Carr's novels - It Walks By Night, The Lost Gallows and Castle Skull. Some more reading material to be on the lookout for then, at any rate!
Although the first three pilots of Colonel March of Scotland Yard were made in July 1952 it was not until a year later in 1953 that the series was finally given the green light by ITV executives, with Karloff again returning to England from America where he had been continuing to appear on TV, film and radio. Even so it was only in September 1955 that the series finally premiered on British television following the launch of ITV that year - and then just in the London area where it was first available. Later broadcasts followed when ITV Midlands began in February 1956 - the same time that U.S. broadcasts started - and even B.B.C. viewers were not left out, with the feature-length Colonel March Investigates being shown in September of that year.
Sadly only one 26-episode series of Colonel March of Scotland Yard was made; on release it garnered largely negative reviews (perhaps somewhat coloured by the general antagonism many people had at the time towards the new-fangled "commercial" television channel) with only Karloff's stand-out performance receiving any positive comment. Today it seems rightly regarded as something of a [forgotten] cult classic, with good reviews on the likes of IMDb. As well as having Boris Karloff in the lead role many episodes feature the great and the good of British, American & Canadian TV and film from the 1950s and beyond including Christopher Lee, Dana Wynter, Joan Sims, John Laurie, Richard Wattis, Patrick Barr, Patricia Owens and Hugh Griffith. Karloff is also ably supported by Ewan Roberts as the sceptical, put-upon Scottish Inspector Ames and Eric Pohlmann as March's opposite number Goron of the French Sûreté. The three episodes that form Investigates were also directed by Cy Endfield, who would later go on to do Hell Drivers and Zulu in the 1960s.
Certainly I have been thoroughly enjoying both the film and any episodes I have been able to lay my hands on. I'm told all 26 are on Amazon Prime, if that's your sort of thing, but for now I am happily making do with the nine episodes that are currently available on YouTube. I can heartily recommend it to anyone who enjoys a bit of Fifties TV mystery drama in the mould of The Twilight Zone and now have another new hero in the form of Colonel March, head of Department D.3, Scotland Yard - the Department of Queer Complaints!
***Colonel March Investigates is available to buy on DVD and will be shown again on TPTV weekly from Saturday 7th November 2020 at 5pm (and which they previously ran daily at 7:30pm a few years ago). Coincidentally a new illustrated reference book - Colonel March of Scotland Yard: The Series - has also recently been published and seems to be well worth a look.***
The excellent nostalgia TV channel Talking Pictures TV, about which I blogged previously on the occasion of its 5th birthday, very often as mentioned shows short archive documentary films and amateur cinefilm - usually between 10 and 30 minutes' duration - in association with the likes of the Imperial War Museum and the British Film Institute. Recently it has started broadcasting some quaint motoring-related shorts from the 1940s and '50s, some linked to the forthcoming 100th anniversary of the original Austin 7 motor car which was first introduced in 1922 (and which I can hardly believe will shortly be celebrating its centenary, having also blogged about it on the occasion of its 90th birthday). One that particularly caught my fancy and which has [partly, along with Mim's recent review of a TPTV-aired feature 80,000 Suspects over on Crinoline Robot] inspired this post is the captivating and entertaining (in more ways than one) road safety film from 1947 entitled It Happened Today.
While in places it hasn't dated well (especially Patrick Holt's narration, which has suffered somewhat from 70 years of change and the many pastiches from the likes of comedians such as Harry Enfield) this just adds to its overall charm in my book and it remains a fascinating early example of its type. One particularly interesting area it focuses on is the then still-new concept of the unsignalised pedestrian crossing, complete with Belisha beacons but yet to feature the now-familiar black-and-white stripes that gave rise to its more common alternative name - the zebra crossing.
A Belisha Beacon crossing at the corner of Whitehall and Horse Guards Avenue, London, December 1938. source - Flickr / Leonard Bentley
First introduced in 1935, Belishas were the brainchild of - and were named after - Leslie Hore-Belisha, the Minister for Transport from 1934 to 1937 who was a staunch advocate of improved road safety especially after he was nearly run over on Camden High Street shortly after his appointment. Part of his Road Traffic Act 1934, which also included the creation of the 30mph urban speed limit, the first official driving test and a comprehensive updating of the Highway Code, the beacons were added to existing "uncontrolled crossings" that had until that point only been demarked by reflective metal studs set into the road. The distinctive flashing orange globes set atop a black-and-white painted pole, along with the new speed limit and driving test, went a long way to lowering the number of fatalities on Britain's roads from 1934's high of nearly 7,500 (along with 231,000 injuries). It was not until 1949, however, two years after It Happened Today was made, that the matching stripes were first added to the road surface giving rise to the zebra crossing name that they still bear today (and which was allegedly coined by a young James Callaghan - then a junior transport minister - when he viewed an early prototype at the Transport Research Laboratory in Berkshire). Now the next big advance looks to be intelligent light-up crossings with warnings built into the kerb to try to catch the attention of the smartphone-addled.
So well-received were the beacons that, in addition to quickly receiving Belisha's name, such was their novelty value they started something of a craze for related ephemera - including an eponymous card game based along the lines of Rummy. Made by the well-known playing card manufacturer Pepys, the cards feature delightful images of various British landmarks and towns from London to Oban as well as pictures depicting the safe (and not so safe!) use of the road, along with examples of the road signs in use at the time (and which are fully deserving of their own blog post) and different coloured numbers - the idea being to collect sets of either of the latter. As something of a Pepys collector myself, Belisha (my example's on the left) was one of the first of their games I picked up (from eBay a couple of years ago) and it has proved to be a thoroughly enjoyable and popular diversion (see what I did there?). The game was updated in 1955 with the addition of an extra level of cards, updated images and new road signs. Released as Round Britain it nevertheless retains much of the charm of Belisha, although the revised rules and new cards do make it slightly less fun to play (needless to say an example still graces my collection!).
Various road safety films similar to It Happened Today would continue to be made throughout the 1940s and '50s. Then in 1953 came the character of Tufty Fluffytail, an anthropomorphic red squirrel created by one Elsie Mills as a way of imparting road safety advice to young children in an accessible and understandable way. This led to the creation of the Tufty Club in 1961, designed to promulgate road and pedestrian safety among the under-5s through simple books and, later, public information films (narrated by the great Bernard Cribbins). Such was its success that at its peak there were almost 25,000 Tufty Clubs throughout Britain with over 2 million members and the scheme lasted well into the 1980s, outliving several other programmes.
One of those programmes was the "Kerb Drill", which ran concurrently with the likes of the Tufty Club and other road safety policies. Even Batman got in on the act during one of his rare breaks from fighting crime in Gotham City, as this recently-discovered footage from 1966 proves.
The 1970s saw the introduction of arguably the most well-known and long-lived road safety initiative - the Green Cross Code. Featuring noted Bristolian Dave Prowse (who would later go on to greater fame as the body of Darth Vader in Star Wars) as the Green Cross Man this series debuted in 1975 and ran for nearly 20 years until the early 1990s (with a brief revival, complete with a then 80 year old Prowse, in 2014) scaring the bejesus out of a generation of dungaree-wearing kids by suddenly appearing out of nowhere, sometimes accompanied by an unnamed robot sidekick, looking very stern and shouty. While the Green Cross Code Man was eventually retired, the Code itself lives on, although varioussubsequentattempts to instil road sense in youngsters have, erm, perhaps not been quite so successful.
So there we have it then - a brief history of road safety from the 1930s to the 1990s (a bit late period-wise for this blog perhaps, but then all things Nineties are considered "vintage" now apparently) inspired by a splendid piece of 1940s film work. Looking back at these innumerable road safety initiatives and the many dangers still very much inherent on the roads - not helped by modern technology and with 15-19 year olds having among the highest death rates due to traffic accidents - some new safety programmes inspired by the past seem called for. One could easily see another update of Belisha, with current signs and new pictures, being just the thing to teach the youth of today how to stay safe on the roads. Hmmn, maybe another lock-down project...
***It Happened Today is also available to view for free on the BFIplayer***
For part two of my umbrella-themed post we pick up from where we left off in part one with a further fictional proponent of umbrella self-defence, something of a 21st century John Steed in many respects and another welcome practitioner of Bartitsu-inspired moves in film.
This is the character of Harry Hart (Codename: Galahad) from the Kingsman series of films. A slightly more updated take on the gentleman spy genre it nevertheless successfully (in my view) mixes the traditional and modern elements and nowhere is that better illustrated than in the Kingsmen's (and Harry Hart's in particular) dapper style, tailor's shop base of operations and - yes, you've guessed it - wielding of a tightly-furled umbrella. Although quite adept at belabouring gobby villains and megalomaniacs' henchmen with his trusty gamp Galahad's example also has a few more novel tricks up its shaft compared to Steed's hidden rapier, including an electric-shock chain built into the ferrule, the ability to fire both live or rubber bullets and - the pièce de résistance - a bullet-proof canopy.
While the cartoon violence and strong language of the Kingsman films may not appeal to everyone's taste I think it is more than offset by the style and panache displayed in both films (although I do prefer the first one over The Golden Circle) and the successfull homage to the '60s spy films and TV series (including The Avengers) that director Matthew Vaughn has gone on record as having been his intention. Fellow fans of the films - and especially of the well-dressed "gentleman spy" æsthetic and "manners maketh man" ethos - will be pleased to know that a third and final sequel featuring Colin Firth's and Taron Egerton's characters is in the works. Even more exciting, though, is the forthcoming prequel The King's Man, set around the First World War and showing the origins of the Kingsman Secret Service. Originally due for release back in February, covid-19 put the kybosh on that and it is now scheduled to be in cinemas early next year (provided things improve, of course). You'll remember when I apologised for raking up the 1998 Avengers film in my previous post by saying that if you still liked the idea of Ralph Fiennes in three-piece suit, bowler hat and topped off with an umbrella then to hold that thought? Well here he is again, nearly 25 years later (and looking quite at home in a variety of dashing ensembles) taking over the Colin Firth role as one of the founding Kingsmen in what is a very exciting-looking trailer (complete with a couple of umbrella action sequences). Personally this is one I can hardly wait for and if it makes it to the cinema (it's already been postponed twice, so I'm not holding my breath) I'll be going, coronavirus or not.
Quite obviously an electrocuting, bullet-proof ballistic brolly would be even more frowned upon by the authorities than a swordstick one (even if it would be equally desirable); of course in this day and age of tie -in movie merchandise it is possible to get an "official" Kingsman umbrella from the likes of Mr Porter and even Briggs themselves, although for the price one would expect them to have all of the aforementioned functionality (sadly they don't). Stick to your standard gamp and keep practising your Bartitsu, is all I can suggest.
Major Digby Tatham-Warter (left) and his umbrella-based exploits immortalised
(as Major Harry Carlyle) in A Bridge Too Far.
One extraordinary chap who clearly thought he had a bullet-proof umbrella was the distinguished Second World War British Army officer Major Digby Tatham-Warter, whose wartime service saw him first taking part in the Western Desert campaign before volunteering for the Parachute Regiment, a decision that would lead him to take part in one of the most famous engagements of the war - Operation Market Garden, or the Battle of Arnhem. Clearly a top fellow and splendidly eccentric, Tatham-Warter would brandish a hunting bugle during the battle and trained his troops to recognise its various calls (as had been common military practice during the Napoleonic Wars) since he was - rightly as it turned out - worried about the unreliability of the battalion's field radios. More pertinently to this article, however, he also carried an umbrella with him as he frequently had difficulty remembering the various passwords he was supposed to use and reasoned that any Allied unit would recognise that "only a bloody fool of an Englishman" would bring a brolly into an active war zone. In the event it did also turn out to have a practical military application - during one engagement Tatham-Warter was able to take out a German armoured car with his parapluie by the simple expedient of shoving it through the vehicle's viewing slit and incapacitating the driver!
As the Battle of Arnhem raged on, Tatham-Warter could continually be seen moving nonchalantly among his men - sometimes in the face of fierce mortar and sniper fire - while still holding his trusty umbrella. At one point he led his men in a bayonet charge across Arnhem Bridge against advancing German infantry - brolly in one hand, pistol in the other and wearing a bowler hat that he had contrived to obtain from somewhere. Steed in battle, more or less! Still later, he observed the company chaplain trapped by enemy mortar fire while trying to get to some injured soldiers. Managing to make it to the chaplain's position, Tatham-Warter uttered the immortal line "Don't worry, I've got an umbrella" and proceeded to successfully escort the chaplain back across the street under the protection of its canopy. Upon returning to the front line while holding the still open gamp, the remark from fellow officer Lieutenant Pat Barnett that "that thing won't do you much good" drew from Tatham-Warter the equally brilliant response - "Oh my goodness Pat, but what if it rains?".
Tatham-Warter's exploits served as the inspiration for the fictional character of Major Harry Carlyle in A Bridge Too Far, Richard Attenborough's famous 1977 retelling of the Battle of Arnhem. In the film Carlyle dies but, perhaps [un]surprisingly, Tatham-Warter survived to be taken prisoner. He promptly escaped (naturally!) and for a time worked with the Dutch Resistance before eventually returning to England. He is certainly fully deserving of - and will one day get - a blog post in his own right but for now we can simply marvel at his brolly-based shenanigans in the face of incredible odds.
Another great bumbershoot-brandishing military eccentric who will also one day get the full Eclectic Ephemera treatment is Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred Daniel Wintle MC (left), whose service covered both world wars (and the period in between - which, to give you some idea of the man, he described as "intensely boring") with some quite amazing - and amusing - incidents occurring throughout his life. A staunch believer in "England and the English way of life" Wintle felt that the umbrella was one of the cornerstones of an English gentleman, a conviction that was established at the tender age of seven when an aunt bought him his first brolly - as he relates in his autobiography The Last Englishman:
"my Aunt Carrie... gave me my first umbrella, purchased at the Army and Navy Stores. This was to be, for many years, the apple of my eye. It made me feel I was well on my way to becoming a complete English gentleman.
I could hardly bear to be parted from my umbrella. I would go off at odd intervals of the day to admire it in the hall-stand and I used to take it to bed with me every night for years. The feel of the leather handle beside me as I fell asleep gave me the comforting sensation that I was already one of the... breed of Englishmen"
If you can find a copy, GET IT - it is one of the best
autobiographies I have ever read but sadly also one
of the rarest, only published once in 1968.
Although Wintle never went so far as to take an umbrella into battle his firm attachment and strong opinion never left him. He would go on to say:
"The Englishman... always takes his umbrella with him, anyway, for the good and simple reason that no gentleman ever leaves the house without it."
Mind you, he was also resolute on another point - "no true gentleman ever unfurls his umbrella". To Wintle, the brolly was a status symbol - the mark of a real English gent - and if it meant getting thoroughly soaked to prove it then so be it. So convinced was he of this theory that, in later years, before tightly furling it up he would insert a note into the canopy of his gamp that read "This umbrella was stolen from Colonel A. D. Wintle" presumably on the basis that any un-English malefactor who dared to pinch his brolly would be instantly undone upon opening it and so promptly nabbed by the constabulary.
While I wouldn't go so far as to never unfurl my umbrella (and therefore, sadly, in the eyes of Colonel Wintle am not a true Englishman) I would at least extol his instruction to take one with you wherever you go, the weather in this country being so unpredictable (especially at this time of year) and the forecasts generally useless (I find looking out of the window of a morn far more instructive). Nor would I recommend it as your sole form of armament should you ever find yourself facing off against a hostile tank, although as Major Tatham-Warter proved it couldn't hurt. If you can take anything away from these posts, be inspired by these chaps both fictional and - however unbelievably - genuine and carry your umbrella with pride whatever the weather.
Finally, to finish on a still lighter note - at the end of the previous post I described Steed's actions with the brolly as "umbrella jousting". I knew I had heard the term somewhere before and it afterwards came back to me. It is of course the sport invented by those sterling coves over at The Chap magazine as part of their annual Chap Olympiad and the perfect way to end this post. Surely it will only be a matter of time before the International Olympic Committee see sense and include umbrella jousting in future Games. Could we see well-dressed participants with tightly-furled brollies and reinforced newspapers charging each other on bicycles in time for Tokyo, perhaps? The Japanese would love it! I leave you with footage of last year's event and let you make up your own mind...
Another favourite subject of mine now; an aircraft from a different war, which has featured on these pages many times before - the Supermarine Spitfire.
In this case it is the fascinating and largely untold story of the secret production lines set up in and around the city of Salisbury in Wiltshire following the bombing of the Supermarine's main factory in Southampton at the height of the Battle of Britain. While that facility recovered from the attentions of the Luftwaffe, nearly a dozen top secret production sites were being hurriedly established in such unlikely locations as motor garages, bus depots, sheds, back gardens - even hotels and bedrooms for a variety of smaller parts. These small-scale assembly lines were nevertheless able take the pressure off the remaining factory in Castle Bromwich in the Midlands and went on to produce over 10,000 Spitfires, a frankly amazing achievement made all the more so by the fact that the majority of the workers were unskilled locals - young women, boys and older men overseen by just a few skilled engineers.
This astounding feat has only really come to light in the last four years - having remained mostly forgotten in the intervening eight decades - thanks to the hard work of a local charity and historians, following the creation of a documentary by a Salisbury-based filmmaker. Featuring interviews with surviving members of the workforce (whose admirably stoic reticence in respecting the secrecy surrounding the work - much like the Bletchley Park codebreakers - meant that even their own family members were unaware of their involvement until the documentary came out) the Secret Spitfires film was a welcome and long-overdue acknowledgement of the incredible efforts and sacrifices made by the people of Salisbury during some of the darkest days of the Second World War.
Inspired by this documentary local residents set up a charity in June 2019 with the aim of creating a lasting memorial to these sterling workers and their hidden accomplishments in the form of a replica Spitfire to be placed at one of the shadow factory's sites, now part of Salisbury Rugby Club. I'm delighted to see that in the intervening year enough money was raised to make it a reality and last month the full-scale fibreglass Spit was completed at the specialist manufacturers in Norfolk. It now awaits its final erection on the site in Castle Street, Salisbury, (when Covid permits) which will also serve as the terminus of a splendid-sounding tourist trail complete with blue plaques at other known locations of the factories in the city area.
Once again this is a welcome example of civic pride and recognition of an important aspect of local [WW2] history and one I am very pleased has come to fruition. It certainly sounds as though it will prove of great interest to both the people of Salisbury, for whom this stirring story of their townsfolks' role in the war effort will be a new and exciting one to them, as well as students of Second World War history (myself included) and I congratulate everyone involved in seeing it through successfully.
This is another blog post I've been keeping back for a while with a view to publishing it when I would be incommunicado in hospital but with things on that front still uncertain and the subject in question of particular interest to the likes of us I feel that now is the time to share it with the rest of the vintage blogosphere.
The two articles featured in this post are equally gratifyingly in-depth studies of an area of our lives that we are all very familiar with - the vintage lifestyles that we all wholeheartedly embrace to one degree or another. I use the word "gratifyingly" as so very often pieces such as these incline at best towards the gently mocking and tend to make my blood boil with their inherent misunderstandings - often implying that we're all a bunch of rabid right-wing leaning Conservatives longing after the return of an imperialist yoke, of women "knowing their place" in the home, of a strict social order and a world that was generally far more hidebound than the one we live in today. It is for this reason that I rarely feature such critiques on here and why the one in the Guardian was an especially pleasant surprise to read, as in my experience they have a habit of scorning anything old-fashioned - with the traditional being an anathema to that particular organ, which is more often keen to try and point out - however tenuously - the negative aspects of the past (as in this recent, rather meandering and largely specious piece on men's suits in [spy] films).
Indeed this frequently pervading attitude that I'm sure we've all encountered - that we're wearing rose-tinted spectacles and desperately trying to live warts-and-all in a past that never truly existed - is something that I have blogged about a couple of times previously (once in 2010 and again in 2011); both of which obviously struck a chord with my readers judging by the number and type of comments I received. I don't intend to repeat everything I said in those posts here again as they remain as valid today as they were ten years ago, although in light of these two recent commentaries I do think it worth revisiting some of the overarching views I expressed at the time.
Both editorials (but the Guardian's in particular), whilst being largely positive about the subject, do touch upon the idea that by engaging in nostalgia and living a vintage lifestyle we are somehow embracing every aspect of our preferred era both good and bad. This is a view that for the life of me I have never been able to understand - a myopic, one-dimensional perspective that insults us by suggesting that we are unable to recognise the reprehensible aspects of our favoured time or are more than happy to include them in our lives. Within this is also the view that we should be grateful for all the changes - both social and technological - that have occurred in the modern age and that by supposedly turning our backs on the present we are somehow denigrating the achievements we have made in the last century or so. (Which we're not, as I've said before - many of us, myself included, just want to take the best of our chosen era and marry it to the best the 21st century has to offer.) This belief has always struck me as a something of a double standard - to accuse us of liking all aspects of a previous era while at the same time insisting that it is in some way unnatural of us not to look forward and embrace all that the present has to offer is in many ways just as deprecating to the memory of the past. I made the case in my 2011 post that in many respects we do appear to have thrown the baby out with the bathwater over the last fifty years or so - a view echoed by at least one of the Guardian interviewees and one that I still stand by. To use a further analogy, how is it seen as "weird" for those of us with a penchant for a certain era to dress in the fashions of that time - fashions that can be æsthetically pleasing, sustainable and sympathetic to all body types - yet perfectly acceptable for middle-aged, overweight men (for example) to wear the artificial, ill-fitting football strip of their favourite team? Where is the difference? Why is one seen as "normal" and the other not?
This attitude is also reflected in the somewhat negative terminology used by these commentators to describe us, both in the Guardian article and elsewhere. "Retromania[cs]" is a particularly derogatory phrase in my book, once again tacitly ascribing the characteristics of a mental illness to our choice of lifestyle. "Refuseniks" is another term that seems to be gaining currency, which continues to suggest that we are being actively obdurate and vehemently opposed to certain aspects of modern life. Here again we see the use of injurious language to describe a group whose perfectly harmless way of living is in some way incomprehensible to those keen to pass judgement. What's wrong with a more unbiased term like "vintagista" - or why not just use existing nonpartisan words such as "vintage enthusiast"?
From my own perspective I am reminded of an ethos that is very appropriate in respect of the above; one I have always striven to live by, given to me by a most unlikely of sources but which has always stood me in good stead and should really be the credo of all right-thinking people:
"While men are decent to me I try to be decent to them, regardless of race, colour, politics, creed or anything else. I've travelled a bit, and taking the world by and large, it's my experience that with a few exceptions there's nothing wrong with the people on it, if only they were left alone to live how they wanted to live." Biggles, from "Biggles Delivers The Goods", 1946
However I am pleased to see that - in line with my own encounters with fellow "living historians" - every single one of the interviewees in each column come across as intelligent, educated individuals who are as keen as we all are to put these misconceptions to bed. I was particularly pleased to see more than one respondent explain - as I did back in 2010 - that many of us like to take the best facets from both worlds and how there is nothing wrong with that.
Indeed let's focus more now on the positive bits of these two news items - and they are many - from the pleasure of a dozen vintage enthusiasts happily discussing their lifestyles and fashion choices to the interesting and in some cases insightful socially scientific theories expounded by the scholars. Although we may not entirely agree with all of the latter it is nevertheless thought-provoking to see them laid out in a largely unbiased fashion for a change and as hypotheses more than as accusations.
Then of course there is the pure enjoyment in seeing well-dressed individuals taking pride in their appearance and embracing the eras of their choice, one or more of which we can appreciate ourselves. Unsurprisingly what especially comes across is the feeling of camaraderie and community that the entire vintage movement fosters - the support, encouragement and almost familial sense of togetherness that often results when a group of like-minded people share a common interest and which is thrown into even starker relief in the face of some of the more negative remarks we have to put up with. It's good to see the benefits of modern technology also highlighted, particularly the positive aspects of social media which allow us to engage with other vintagistas maybe half a world away whom we might never actually meet - something that I have blogged about previously and which I'm sure we're all grateful for. The irony in this is of course that it pours further cold water on the idea that we are all technophobes who use nothing more advanced than a Bakelite telephone (well, sometimes we do I suppose!). And we haven't even touched upon the æsthetic and ecological properties of the clothing, accessories and furnishings that can be intrinsic to the vintage lifestyle, as mentioned in both papers.
To finish on that last point, as this is rapidly turning into another essay and I'm alive to the fact that it links to two other long-read stories, I will just add my own view to those espoused by several of the vintagistas on the subject of "mixing things up" and going for your own style over attempting a specific period-accurate look.
I consider myself to have been a vintage aficionado since my early twenties, so we're talking nearly 15 years now (yikes!), but my wardrobe actually contains precious few items that one would consider properly "vintage" (and in relation to clothing that is quite an elastic term, as we know - I mean some people are calling stuff from the 1990s "vintage" for goodness' sake! - but for the purposes of this discussion let's say anything that's over 50 years old, i.e. pre-1970). Taking that as a basis I in fact have only one piece of clothing that I can definitively date to within that period and that is my 1940s Kaufmann wool overcoat (above) gifted to me by an aunt a few years ago. I have a few jackets, such as a Harris Tweed job from Dunn & Co, that were picked up from vintage fairs over the years but of course that is no guarantee of age these days and I suspect they were probably made after my self-imposed 1970 cut-off.
The truth is most of my wardrobe is sourced from modern clothes shops - those found on the high street like Marks & Spencer and Debenhams as well as the various online emporia listed on the top left of this blog. I realise I am fortunate, as a chap, that men's fashion has in essence changed little over the decades (and certainly since my specific era of interest, the interwar years of the 1920s & '30s) so I am able to approximate the period look I crave to my satisfaction without having to resort to purely vintage garments. In other words, just like with so many vintagistas such as those in these articles, I mix and match modern - sometimes "vintage-style" - clothes with the few more valued retro items I own. As an example (and at the risk of frightening the horses), this more recent photo (right) has me sporting what is perhaps my favourite look - a 1930s chappist vibe that is achieved using only one truly "vintage" item. That is the jacket, which is a St Michael (M&S) job - an '80s-does-'30s type, I'd say - that I picked up in a charity shop in Canterbury a couple of years ago. Everything else is modern - the trilby from Village Hats, the bow tie from Tieroom, the shirt from Charles Tyrwhitt, the trousers from BHS (sadly missed) and the shoes (brown Oxfords, unseen) from Clarks. I hope this goes to show that one doesn't need deep pockets, nor have to spend hours trawling the likes of eBay (unless that's your sort of thing, of course, and I own it can be fun and rewarding sometimes), to get a look that will pass muster on the vintage scene. This particular outfit has garnered many a positive comment at various events, if I do say so myself (as well as admiring glances from little old ladies, much to my fiancée's chagrin!) and I hope this positive reaction is encouraging to anyone just starting out on the path to vintage enlightenment; you don't have to go all-out for vintage items straightaway - everything is attainable if you know where to look and how to put various items together. As the Auld Holyrood girls say - there are no rules and nothing wrong with throwing different things together to get a successful look as you work your way towards a fully vintage wardrobe, however long that might take.
The only difficulty in sourcing vintage-style clothing currently is the lamentable state of both high street clothes shops and some online stores - all of which are understandably struggling in these covid times but in the case of some like M&S and Debenhams are not helping themselves by making it unclear what market they're in, trying to go after the youth department in a misguided attempt to appear "relevant" only to alienate their existing [older] customer base and lose sales from both camps. Interestingly there was an article in the Daily Telegraphrecently that suggested M&S should reintroduce the St Michael label (defunct since the late '90s/ early 2000s ) in light of its popularity among the vintage set. It is sadly rare now that I find anything suitable from either of these stores. Unfortunately, as a result of covid hitting sales by encouraging people to work at home in their pyjamas (I mean why, for God's sake?! If only more people would realise the [mental] health benefits of dressing smartly, especially in the middle of a pandemic - something that has also been highlighted in both stories and which has previously been commented on here and elsewhere) we are also seeing the demise or decline of several once-great men's outfitters. Already T.M. Lewin have permanently closed all their physical stores and moved to online only, with Moss Bros. looking to follow suit (no pun intended!), while in America the likes of Brooks Brothers and Jos A. Bank have been teetering on the verge of bankruptcy for the last few months. This kind of thing doesn't bode well for the future of more traditional menswear but I'm still optimistic that there will remain a decent selection of gentlemen's outfitters where one can find the sort of vintage-style clothes that we can employ in achieving the look we desire - it's just that many more of them will be online-only (which brings with it its own set of difficulties - getting the right fit, for example - none of which cannot be overcome however).
That's enough to be going on with for the moment, though, I think. I'm not normally in the habit of doing that many massive posts but something about these articles has again clearly had an effect on me and I hope they have made an impression with you too. If you've made it this far - well done! - and I'd be delighted to read your comments, whether you agree or disagree with what I've written or not, and what you think of both commentaries.
Staying in 1930s Canada for this next post we head 1,700 miles east to Ontario and the frozen wilds north of that province where bush pilots plied their trade delivering mail & supplies, mapping & photographing new areas of land and spotting forest fires (the latter still carried out today by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry's Aviation, Forest Fire and Emergency Services division). Now a link to those early days of wilderness flying in the 1920s and '30s has been created by the son of one of those pioneering bush pilots, who has been busy converting his father's old 8mm cine footage into a series of short, digitised documentaries.
Fairchild 82, similar to one used by Charles R. Robinson/ Starrat Airways
source - Wikipædia
Taking advantage of lock-down Phil Robinson and his son have set about editing family footage of the former's father Charles R. Robinson, who was a bush pilot in Ontario during the 1930s, into a series of fascinating glimpses of life flying around the lakes and settlements in the northwest of that province. Not only is the result a wonderfully preserved personal family archive that the Robinsons can look back on in the years to come but also a valuable document of a unique aspect of Canadian aviation history, featuring one of this author's favourite types of aircraft - the floatplane!
Ideally suited for use on the myriad lakes dotted around northwest Ontario and to the mining communities that were based on their banks the floatplane has long been the backbone of the bush plane service, as can be seen in the Robinsons' footage where we see multiple variants in use - from the heavy Fairchild 82 freighter that features prominently in the 8-minute footage to the lighter Waco ZK-S6 and Noorduyn Norseman types that were also employed regularly on the smaller/ passenger routes (with many of the latter two types still airworthy and in use today), as well as the first Beechcraft 18 to be fitted with floats.
Noordyun Norsemans in Alberta, Canada, ca. 1930s
source - Wikimedia Commons
The concept of bush flying is a thrilling and enthralling one, although the images from the Robinsons' 1930s video (as well as the son's own comments) show just how challenging and physically demanding a job it was (and no doubt still is) - not to mention the dangers that could be encountered such as those that feature in Charles Robinsons' later exploits (still to be shown). It's no wonder that adventure films such as 1947's Bush Pilot proved popular at showing just the sort of experiences that took place in the business of bush flying. Now with the added value of the Robinsons' material the story of those early Canadian bush flying pioneers has been further expanded to the benefit of anyone - be they local/ aviation historians or just those of us with a passing interest - to whom the history of bush flying in Canada appeals. I am glad Mr Robinson and his son were able to find the time to conserve this important film andlook forward to the next instalment of Charles R. Robinson's experiences as a 1930s bush pilot.
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