WRITER & HISTORIAN
Gunfights and killings were news in Tombstone, Arizona but not headline news. One town paper had a regular column for such things titled ‘Death’s Doings’; the paper itself was mordantly named The Tombstone Epitaph. Not gallows humour exactly; trigger-finger humour, perhaps. Justice was rough to non-existent in the post-Civil War American south west. A bank... Continue Reading →
The idea came to him while shaving, he said. But it would be five years before American Civil War historian Philip van Doren Stern finished ‘The Greatest Gift’, his sweet, slight fantasy about a man contemplating suicide who get the chance to see what his small-town world would be like if he had never been... Continue Reading →
It’s 1966 and 10-year-old Taeko has failed a maths test. Her mother, washing dishes in the kitchen, asks one of Taeko’s older sisters to help. The sister is horrified. “Is she alright in the head?” she asks. “Normally this is easy.” “But that child’s not normal,” her mother says, just as Taeko comes downstairs into... Continue Reading →
Gone with the Wind, the 1939 film adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s novel – which, to say the least, valorises the antebellum South – was always controversial. When producer David O Selznick announced the production, his decision was widely condemned by civil-rights organisations such as the NAACP. African-American actors who took roles in the film were... Continue Reading →
Guys and Dolls, the musical loosely based on the Broadway stories of Damon Runyon, premiered on Broadway on November 24th 1950. It ran for 1,200 performances and has been frequently revived ever since. The film version, starring Frank Sinatra as Nathan Detroit and Marlon Brando as Sky Masterson, appeared in 1955. Even on the page,... Continue Reading →
Whenever Dominic Cummings makes the headlines, commentators reach for the same word to describe his relationship with the prime minister: he is Boris Johnson’s Svengali, they write. But who was the original Svengali? Svengali is one of those rare literary creations so seemingly archetypal his name becomes short-hand for a kind of behaviour: in this... Continue Reading →
It’s 10 September 1942. The German army is at Stalingrad. Bomber Command is sending 479 planes to bomb Düsseldorf. And Winston Churchill is writing to Brendan Bracken, his Minister of Information, about a British film already in production. “[P]ropose to me the measures necessary to stop this foolish production before it gets any further,” he... Continue Reading →
It’s February 1954 and the Sunday Express has a scoop. Sir Laurence Olivier is learning to dance. More, he is planning to dance with a partner as part of a charity event at the Palladium, organised by Noel Coward. His dancing partner - and teacher - is Jack Buchanan, who the paper finds putting Olivier... Continue Reading →
Underground is the only silent film I’ve included on this list – and it is a corker. Largely shot on location, it is a treasure trove for anyone wanting to know what interwar London looked like – around Chelsea in particular. (Lots Road power station plays a major role – but you’ll have to watch... Continue Reading →
A lesser known Ealing comedy, Run for your Money tells the story of two Welsh miners who come to London having won a prize in a newspaper competition, which they need to collect in person. Some of the humour is more strained than in comparable Ealing films – think Whisky Galore, say – particularly in... Continue Reading →
Set contemporaneously, Waterloo Road expertly taps into the tensions between those called up for military duty and those who remained behind in civilian life. It stars John Mills as a soldier who comes home to south east London on leave to find his wife, played by Joy Shelton, apparently enamoured of local spiv, Ted Purvis.... Continue Reading →
The redoubtable Stanley Holloway leads the ensemble cast in this 1952 comedy set against the opening of the Festival of Britain the previous year. I say “against” advisedly: the premise of the film is that an administrative error, discovered just weeks before the festival is set to open, means that Holloway’s family home and shop... Continue Reading →
Director J Lee Thompson had made Ice Cold in Alex the previous year. He would go on to make both Guns of Navarone and Cape Fear in the next couple of years before his career went into decline. He would end up helming a couple of films in the first Planet of the Apes series... Continue Reading →
Released in 1948, this is an adaptation of Norman Collins’ sprawling sub-Dickensian novel of London life, published just three years earlier. The novel teems with stories, and much has had to be trimmed to create a workable film (the book’s current Penguin edition runs to 750-odd pages of small type), but there is still plenty... Continue Reading →
Also known by its US title, Sidewalks of London, St Martin’s Lane is the story of a pickpocket, played by Vivien Leigh, who is befriended by a seasoned street performer (Charles Laughton). He discovers she has a lovely singing voice and incorporates her into his act, falling in love with her as he does so.... Continue Reading →
A gripping and beautifully shot 1951 film noir from Ealing Studios, Pool of London follows two merchant seamen on shore leave who get sucked into a world of petty crime which quickly escalates out of their control. Its principal claim to fame these days is that it features an inter-racial love story – the superb... Continue Reading →
The bridge in question is Tower Bridge, where the boy, played by nine-year-old Iain Maclaine, flees after he sees – or believes he sees – his drunken father get arrested for murder. At heart, this is a rather tender film, as Maclaine’s character works resourcefully to live hidden away in one of the towers, with... Continue Reading →
Unarguably the finest British film noir ever made, Night and the City was directed by American Jules Dassin. Its strikingly dark tone may not be unrelated to the fact that Dassin took the project because studio head Darryl F Zanuck had told him he was about to be blacklisted by the McCarthyite House Un-American Activities... Continue Reading →
What do you think of when you think of London films? For most people, myself included, it is probably Ealing films such as Passport to Pimlico and The Ladykillers. I asked friends on Twitter and got responses ranging from Escape the Block and Long Good Friday to Shakespeare in Love. Bit cheeky the last one... Continue Reading →
Film-maker Temujin Doran contacted me in the summer of 2010 with the intention of making a film based on The Balloonist’s Tale in my book Impossible Journeys, which recounted the failed 1897 attempt by Salomon August Andrée to reach the North Pole by hot air balloon. In the end, Doran decided to make a different... Continue Reading →
Mathew Lyons 