Cutting - Blonde Spy in Flat (1938)

4th February 1938

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The trial of the Woolwich Arsenal spies and a tale worthy of John Le Carre complete with the mysterious Miss X. The whole story is very nicely written up at this website.  

Random Cutting - Pro-Soviet letter by Sean O'Casey (1939)

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This letter by Irish dramatist Sean O'Casey was published in the Reynold's News dated the 1st October 1939. In August 1939 Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany had signed a non-aggression pact and had divided Poland into Soviet and German regions. The USSR would finally join the Allies against Germany in 1941. Sean O'Casey a life long Socialist seems, with hindsight, to have had a terribly naive view of life under Stalin, although it must be admitted that even those who knew what was going on in Russia turned a blind eye after 1941.

Soyuz 11 Disaster (1971)

Daily Mail dated July 1st 1971

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The three man crew of Soyuz 11 were returning Earth after spending 22 days on the Salyut 1 Space Station, when a valve opened and depressurised the craft killing the crew within seconds. Cosmonauts  Vladislav Volkov, Georgi Dobrovolski, and Viktor Patsayev died. Salyut 1 was deliberately destroyed after 6 months in orbit.

6 Minute War (1979)

Sunday Mirror dated Sunday November 11th 1979

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Those were the days my friends when total annihilation of the human race was just a button push away, or at least some-idiot-not-checking-that-a–training-exercise-could-be-mistaken-for-the-real-thing away. This was just one of at least 4 false alarms during the Cold War.

Random Cutting - Yuri Gagarin killed (1961)

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Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was born in 1934 and died in 1968 when a MiG 15 training jet he was piloting crashed. In 1961 he was the first human to go into Space, when, on his one and only spaceflight, he completed an orbit of the Earth on April 12, 1961.

Sinking of the General Belgrano

Daily Mirror dated Tuesday May 4^th 1982

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A month to the day after Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands (see post), the Argentine light cruiser General Belgrano was sunk by HMS Conqueror using 3 torpedoes. 770 of the Belgrano’s crew were rescued but 323 died.

This was the day the Sun newspaper went with the headline ‘GOTCHA!’ which was changed for the later editions to something a little more appropriate

‘It’s a Knockout’ started in France as ‘Jeux sans Frontier’. Stuart Hall, who has been in the news lately and in the nick for a while yet, hosted the UK version. About 800 people were using the stand when it collapsed and about 60 were taken to Scunthorpe General Hospital.

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A potpourri of Falkland related news. Like the RMS Queen Mary and RMS Queen Elizabeth, it was the QEII’s turn to be used as a troop ship.

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Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev had met in Vienna in 1979. By 1982 Brezhnev was ailing and in November he died. Reagan actually had 5 summit meeting between 1985 and 1988 but with Mikhail Gorbachev.

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The original Mods had died out by the late 1960’s, some having morphed into skinheads or just grown too old. The skinheads in their turn died out, but in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s both subcultures enjoyed revivals and, evident from this article, emulated their cultural forefathers by spending Bank Holidays causing mayhem at seaside resorts.

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To celebrate the 10^th anniversary of Mastermind they held this Champion of Champions contest. Sir David Hunt answered questions on Alexander the Great to get 13 points and increased this to 28 in General Knowledge.

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A warning to those that take what they read on the Web as gospel – several sites including the Oracle, sorry, Wikepedia, state that this experimental 3D broadcast on TV South’s ‘The Real World’  happened in February 1982. I notice that all the sites seem to have cut and pasted the same wording from one another. They also claim that the first full 3D programme – a showing of the 3D western film ‘Fort Ti’ was shown in December 1982. Or November. Or even October.

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This appears to be a fairly early satellite tracking and positioning system probably using the first GPS satellite that had been launched in 1978. I can’t find any reference to the acronym SARGOS anywhere.

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The Advanced Passenger Train or APT was designed to run on existing track at speeds of up to 155mph so had a hydraulic tilting system to keep the train on the track on bends. The first passengers were carried in December 1981 but there were problems from the start and the APTs were withdrawn from service. High Speed Trains with a top speed of 125mph replaced them.

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Over the next 10 years ‘Wogan’ ran to 252 editions during which the Irish mumbler interviewed everyone from Eddie the Eagle Edwards to Vincent Price to Roy Orbison via Paul McCartney and Fanny Craddock.

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Wrong. Faye Dunaway didn’t appear in Octopussy, the 4 years younger Maude Adams took the role.

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Wandsworth boy Frank Bruno had his first professional fight in March 1982, which he won along with his next 20 fights. He won the European Boxing Union Heavyweight Title in 1985 and the World Boxing Council Heavyweight Title in 1995.

Cigarette Price Battle

Daily Mirror dated Tuesday September 24^th 1968

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When the front page of a newspaper features a story about a dancing mouse you can rest assured that no wars have broken out, no Popes assassinated, no famous film stars died and no planes have crashed. To a lesser degree the same can be said for a paper that leads with a headline about the price of cigarettes. Combine the two and you have a ‘slow news day’.

I’ve never been a smoker. I tried but nearly choking and watering eyes just didn’t appeal and, as my grey-haired old mother used to point out, I’ve always been ‘as tight as a mackerel’s arse’, so I didn’t see any sense in paying for the displeasure. The prediction that small shops would suffer from supermarkets’ price-cutting was true and still is.

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The Ford factory in Dagenham produced its first vehicle in 1931 and its last in 2002. Some say the Unions ruined the British car industry and some say the Unions were necessary because the employers put profits before people. I lived in Dagenham but never worked at Ford’s or in any other factory so I really couldn't comment. 

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Farmer John Derek James sought refuge in a derelict cottage near Weston-under-Redcastle, Shropshire, after being challenged by the police over the illegal possession of a shotgun. He took a woman hostage and held out against a combined force of police and soldiers for 17 days. The siege ended when the woman took the gun off him while he was asleep. At the subsequent trial he was sent to Broadmoor Mental Hospital.

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Dr Christian (or Christiaan) Barnard had performed the World’s first successful human heart transplant in 1967 on Louis Washkansky, who died 18 days later of pneumonia. I'm sure there is something to say about white South Africans receiving black South Africans' hearts but I'd rather not go there.

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Tony Blackburn and Ed Stewart posing with two young ladies. Let’s hope for the DJs’ sake the ladies are older than they look.

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British Rail and its French equivalent, SNFC, operated the Princess Margaret hovercraft from 1968 until 2000 jointly. The craft was seen in the Bond film ‘Diamonds Are Forever’. 

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These days I imagine that an insurance company setting a 25 mile limit on a driver would constitute a breach of human rights and be earning some lawyers a few bob in The Hague or Strasbourg. 

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In 1968 there were just over 18,000 drink-driving convictions in England and Wales. In 1988 there were over 105,000 but the figure has been stabilised at about 85,000 in recent years. Oddly the number of fatalities due to drink-driving dropped steadily between 1979 at 1640 to 430 in 2006, possibly due to a series of December TV campaigns have informed, cajoled and shocked drivers into not drinking and driving. 

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The General Certificate of Education exams were introduced in 1951 to replace the old School Certificate and Higher School Certificate exams. Results were originally graded 1 – 9 with 1 – 6 being passes, but this was later replaced with A – E for passes and U for fail. In 1988 the GCE’s were replaced by GCSE’s using A – G and U, but recently there has been talk of reverting to a number system of 8 – 1 with 8 being the top grade. Fun isn’t it?

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Jennifer Croxton only appeared in the 1 Avengers episode – she played Special Services agent Lady Diana Forbes-Blakeney in ‘Killer’ a story in the 1968/69 Linda Thorson season.

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Strange how our attitude to words change. The word ‘cripple’ would never appear in a headline these days and is even mildly shocking when seen in print, but in 1968 you, and I, would probably not have even noticed it. At least the policeman was convicted and received a jail sentence, which is surprising.

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This could well have been printed last September following the appallingly wet summer we had in 2012.

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Let me get this straight – printer Edward Wilson forged £1.25million to sell to Argentine rebels and planned to use the proceeds to help the needy in Nigeria, and was talked into this by a ‘total stranger’. Was Jonathan Routh doing ‘Candid Camera’ in 1968?

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The Larks, drawn by Jack Dunkley lasted from 1957 until 1985. I liked it because the father character looked just like my brother-in-law did at the time. Its demise can be added to the list of crimes committed by Robert Maxwell who took over the Daily Mirror in 1984.

I can’t find out anything about ‘The Flutters’ but I thought I’d give it an airing.

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The great Roy Kinnear who did everything from Shakespeare, Hammer Horror, ‘The Avengers, ‘That Was The Week That Was’, Sherlock Holmes, The Beatles’ ‘Help!’, Dickens, ‘Sparrow Can’t Sing’ and ‘Jackanory’ to ‘The Return of the Musketeers’ in 1988 during the filming of which he fell from a horse and died in hospital the next day. His son Rory Kinnear was in the recent Bond films ‘Quantum of Solace’ and ‘Skyfall’.

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In August 1968 the Soviet Union had invaded the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic because the Communist government of Alexander Dubček was contemplating liberal reforms. When there is nothing else you can do humour can help.

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The Queen’s sister Princess Margaret Rose had married the society photographer Anthony (or is it Antony?) Armstrong-Jones in 1960. They were divorced in 1978. 

Wikipedia calls him  ‘Antony’, the BBC ‘Anthony’, the Telegraph ‘Antony’, Pathe News ‘Anthony’.  All together now - “You say Antony, I say Anthony, You say Christian, I say Christiaan, Let’s call the whole thing off.”

Nixon meets Brezhnev

Daily Mirror dated Tuesday May 23^rd 1972

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Richard Nixon has gone down in history as a liar and a disgraced President but this Summit meeting in 1972 between Nixon and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev did a great deal to thaw the Cold War and produced the SALT 1 (Strategic Arms Limitation) and  ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaties that may well have saved mankind from destroying itself.

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Nine days after this protest march by 500 women of Derry (aka Londonderry) the Official IRA declared a cease-fire, although the Provisional IRA continued their armed campaign off and on up to 2005.

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After 133 years as British colonial Ceylon and 24 years as the Dominion of Ceylon within the British Commonwealth, the island finally tore itself free from our influence and became the Republic of Sri Lanka; and the Daily Mirror gave the news less than 1 column inch on page 2. 

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The Vietnam War had been going on in one form or another since 1950. US combat troops had been active since 1965 and it was to go on until 1975. The cost of the War was about 637000 military dead and at least 250000 civilian dead.

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One of the frustrating things about doing this blog is finding an interesting story like this and not being able to find out what happened next. I can’t afford to subscribe to an online archive or travel to the British Library every time I want to check on something.

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Margaret Rutherford started professional acting in 1925 with the Old Vic Theatre Company and was 41 when she first appeared in a West-End production in 1933. She appeared in her first film in 1936 and will be remembered for her 4 outings as Agatha Christie’s Miss Marples, but she also appeared as Miss Quickly in Orson Welles Shakespeare adaptation ‘Chimes at Midnight’, in Wilde’s ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ and Noel Coward’s ‘Blithe Spirit’ in a role specifically written for her. 

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Who can forget ‘The Young New Mexican Puppeteer’ by Tom Jones? Or should it be ‘remember’? A zero answer on ‘Pointless if ever I saw one. Don McLean’s Vincent pops in at number 18 and was destined for the top spot.

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Traffic Wardens (now known as Civil Enforcement Officers) first appeared on UK streets as far back as 1960. A weekly income of £23.10p was about half of the average salary in 1972.

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Harland Sanders started the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise business in 1952 and in 1964 he sold the US business for $2million but kept the Canadian franchises. He died in 1980.

By the way, in 1970 he appeared as himself in a film called ‘The Phynx’ which is well worth looking up (if you’re a film fan) on the IMDB.com as it has the most amazing cast of ‘as themselves’ people ever.

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Poet and author Cecil Day-Lewis, the father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis, was the Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death. He wrote 20 crime novels under the name Nicholas Blake as well as 3 literary novels under his own name.

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George Best had been with Manchester United since 1963 but by 1972 was becoming unreliable and in December of that year was put on the list of players available for transfer. He left Manchester United in 1974 and retired from professional football in 1983. He died in 2005.

France signs Armistice

Sunday Express dated Sunday June 23^rd 1940

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What doesn't show on these scans is that between the top and bottom halves of the front page there are a couple of lines of text missing due to the fold being badly frayed and split. This is what happens when old papers, particurarly broadsheets, are stored folded.

Launched in October 1936, the Scharnhorst battleship was doing a lot of damage to allied shipping in the North Atlantic having sunk the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious on June 8^th. The Scharnhorst survived the attacks described above and was finally sunk on December 26^th 1943 with the loss of over 1900 lives.

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The German Army had marched into Paris on June 14th 1940 and on the 22nd an armistice was signed and France was divided into the Occupied Zone and the so-called Free Zone under the control of Marshal Philippe Pétain. The occupied zone covered most of Northern and Western France, which brought the German Army to within 22 miles of the English coast and a cross-Channel invasion was thought to be inevitable.

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Not as poetic as Henry V’s Agincourt speech but stirring words at a very dark time for Great Britain.

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Ernest Bevin was the Minister for Labour in Churchill’s all-party coalition government from 1940 until 1945. Due to the wartime special powers he had absolute control over the British workforce and he used it to concentrate the labour effort towards supporting the War. 

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The Krupp industrial empire dates back to 1810. Leading up to and during World War II they concentrated on military supplies including Panzer tanks and U-Boats. At the end of the War the company’s executives were put on trial for their use of slave labour in their factories. 

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His Majesty’s Trawler Moonstone was part of the 4^th Anti-Submarine Group in the Mediterranean before moving to Aden where she captured the Italian submarine Galileo Galilei, which was then re-christened HMS X2 and was then used mainly for training.

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Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s USSR had signed a non-aggression treaty in August 1939 but by June 1940 the cracks were beginning to show and twelve months later Germany invaded the USSR.

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Anderson shelters were made out of corrugated steel panels and they had to be buried in the ground and covered with soil to be effective against bomb blast damage. After the War many gardens, my parents’ included, sported sheds made out of dug up shelters. 

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If you want to know whether Hitler would have made a ‘good boss’ or not, read CJ Sansom’s latest novel ‘Dominion’, which uses the idea that Churchill turned down the offer to lead the country in 1940 and consequently Britain surrendered to Nazi Germany.

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I can see why the football and horse-racing stories were suppressed, presumably any mention of the current weather might help the enemy who might be listening in, but what was the problem with the Italian ship story and the, albeit over simplified, account of Churchill becoming Prime Minister. The Duke of Kent may have received a white feather but was actually an active member of the RAF and was subsequently killed in a Short Sunderland flying boat crash on his was to Iceland in 1942.

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In May 1940 Anthony Eden the Secretary of State for War announced the formation of the Local Defence Volunteers and in July 1940 Churchill had them renamed as the Home Guard.

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Somerset Maugham had lived on the French Riviera since 1926 but when the Nazi’s invaded France he sought refuge on a coal barge. It took him 20 harrowing days to get to England. After a short recovery he moved to the USA for the rest of the War.

Mary Borden was an American author and a quick look at Amazon shows only one book currently in print - The Forbidden Zone: A Nurse's Impressions of the First World War. In both World Wars she ran volunteer Ambulance services in combat zones. She died in 1968.

The other, and probably most famous, author to have been trapped in France at this time was P G Wodehouse as a recent TV play and a documentary showed.

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I’m not sure the headline is accurate- the families weren’t lost. They knew where they were – living in the Andes but cut-off from the civilised world, which given the situation at the time, was no bad thing. 

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Canada had its own fascists to worry about so I think the furthest West our internees travelled was to the Isle of Man. Sir Oswald Mosley was held in Brixton and then in a special co-habitation wing of Holloway with his wife, Diana Mitford.

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The Sunday Express showing its right-wing credentials with its choice of quotes about Conscientious Objectors. Unlike in the Great War the C O’s didn’t face automatic imprisonment but were given a choice of non-combat roles and many served as front line medical support and in bomb disposal units as well as essential war work on the Home Front. See the Peace Pledge Union website for historical and current information.