All articles in Entertainment
25th September, 2018 in Entertainment, Local & Family History
Gustav Holst and ‘The Planets’
Written between 1914 and 1916, The Planets is a seven-movement orchestral suite by English composer Gustav Holst. It received its orchestral premiere 100 years ago on 29 September 1918 in the Queen’s Hall, London conducted by Holst’s friend, Adrian Boult, before an invited audien…
4th May, 2018 in Entertainment
Solo’s run: The legacy of Han Solo
In the month Watching Skies finally lands its mothership in a Californian forest of Star Wars and Spielberg nostalgia, author Mark O’Connell looks at the onscreen legacy of a space scoundrel and childhood icon. “Han Solo!” rejoices a hundred-year-old pirate queen upon glimpsing s…
17th April, 2018 in Biography & Memoir, Entertainment
Orson Welles on Churchill
In late autumn 1968, Dorian Bond was tasked with travelling to Yugoslavia to deliver cigars and film stock to the legendary Hollywood director Orson Welles. The pair soon struck up an unlikely friendship as they travelled across Europe and reminisced about Winston Churchill and F…
16th April, 2018 in Entertainment, Society & Culture
Americans in Rome after World War II
By the end of the Second World War, Rome may have been brought to its knees, but in its recovery it became a Mecca for wealthy Americans, attracted by the cheap costs of living, the lively nightlife and the flourishing movie industry. While Rome’s citizens still struggled with fi…
12th January, 2018 in Entertainment, Local & Family History
Did Van Morrison’s ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ come from Derrygonnelly in County Fermanagh?
‘That’s it!’ I said firmly, ‘we’ve drawn a blank. I’ll have to go streetwalking!’ George (my husband) groaned. He hates it when I wander around streets asking what he refers to as ‘innocent strangers fool questions’ about local history. He trails me, ready to come to my defence i…
6th December, 2017 in Entertainment, Society & Culture
Inventors and artists: The Lumière Brothers
Brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière are credited with developing the first commercially successful movie projection system, paving the way for today’s cinema experience. They pioneered filmmaking techniques in over 1,400 moving pictures, showing everything from a train rushing int…
6th December, 2017 in Entertainment
Early Beatles gigs expressed in posters
Artist Tony Booth worked in Liverpool during the early 1960s, just around the corner from The Cavern Club and close to The Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein’s office in Whitechapel. Booth’s work caught Epstein’s eye, and he would go on to produce posters, printed leaflets and a wide…
6th December, 2017 in Entertainment
Have A Butcher’s: Making Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
When Guy Ritchie and Mathew Vaughn decided to make the film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels I bet they never envisioned the success that was to come from it. They never thought that it would become one of the most successful British Crime Movies ever, that it would launch the…
6th December, 2017 in Biography & Memoir, Entertainment
At the Oscars with producer Michael Deeley
It is the night of the Oscars, 9 April 1979, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. Inimitable master of ceremonies Johnny Carson announces the presenter of the last and most important award category, Best Picture – and the audience is astonishe…
27th September, 2017 in Entertainment
50 years of Radio 1
A few minutes before 07:00am on Saturday 30 September 1967 and a 24-year old DJ named Tony was poised ready to place the needle onto the record Flowers in the Rain by The Move. That young DJ was Tony Blackburn, and this marked the arrival of BBC Radio 1. The government had recent…
10th August, 2017 in Entertainment
Radio Caroline: Teenage music memories
A tenement, a dirty streetWalked and worn by shoeless feet,Inside it’s long and so completeWatched by a shivering sun.Old eyes in a small child’s face,Watching as the shadows raceThrough walls and cracks that leave no traceAnd daylight’s brightness shuns (The Days of Pearly Spenc…
7th August, 2017 in Biography & Memoir, Entertainment, Women in History
Dorothy Squires’ love: Roger Moore
When letters, written in Italian landed on Dorothy Squires’ doormat, it signalled that her life was about to change forever. Her then husband, Roger Moore of ‘007’ fame, had been filming in Rome but unbeknown to Dorothy filming had finished and he was back in the country. Dot had…