Make a coffee and grab a cat
I ran across a few mid-20th Century films t'other day, the source being the British Council. The Council is a "nondepartmental government body," that is a public sector organisation playing a part in the function of national government while not part of any governmental department (well, duh!), ostensibly thereby having a degree of autonomy. One might expect the BBC to be such a body, but the category explicitly excludes broadcasting matters, thereby granting (in principle) even more autonomy (that governments then complain about, threatening Auntie's license fee in order to get her back in line). Anyway, the purpose of the British Council is as a channel for British culture to be delivered to the wider world: a kind of benign soft power or PR device.
It's now going to be a very circuitous journey, so maybe make a coffee and grab a cat?
Digression: many years ago, when my wife and I lived in London (pre-1990 and then unmarried), we rented a flat (apartment) in Ladbroke Grove, North Kensington, not far from Notting Hill (Notting Hill being at the southern, uphill and upmarket (upscale) end of the Grove, we being decidedly at the other). Our neighbours in the building were Gabriella, a Portuguese lady, on the floor below us, and Paloma, a Spanish lady, on the ground floor. We got along famously with both of them, our youth gaining their maternal solicitude. Unfortunately, they did not get along with one another (but that's another story).
Gabriella had come to Britain with her husband, and they had worked in service: he as a chauffeur and she as a cook and housekeeper. By the time of our acquaintance, Gabriella was living alone (unfortunately convinced that her flat was haunted) but still active in work. Her then-current employer was Verity Lambert, a well-known television producer in the UK, responsible in her time for creating Doctor Who, producing the gritty but highly entertaining London-based trio of productions Budgie, The Sweeney and Minder, the milestone film for gay acceptance The Naked Civil Servant, John Cleese's film Clockwise, Alan Bleasdale's comedy drama—featuring Michael Palin—GBH, the end-of-cold-war comedy drama Sleepers, and lightweight mystery series Jonathan Creek, as well as many another successful project.
When the time came for our move out of London, Gabriella presented us with a wrapped gift. Gabriella had insisted that we shouldn't open the parcel until we were in our new home, where we discovered it was an etching that I had admired on an occasion when we had been invited to dinner. Its subject was a peasant couple in 19th Century attire, carrying a basket of eggs and other tokens of rustic life. Though I'm certain its creator was a more recent and less famous artist, its flavour and appearance are reminiscent of etchings by Jean-Francois Millet—particularly (for reference) Le Retour des Champs or Le Semeur. I still haven't discovered its provenance, thirty years later, though Gabriella had told us that the print had been given to her as a parting gift from a previous employer: Cubby Broccoli, erstwhile producer of Bond movies, and it had been bought from a dealer in California according to a label on the back of the frame.
Arriving home to our London flat one sunny summer evening before our move, we ran into Paloma, our other Iberian neighbour, luxuriantly draped in silk with long pheasant feathers adorning her silver hair. Of course, we remarked on how elegant she looked, whereupon she told us that she was going to a garden party hosted by John Paul Getty Jr.
I should stress that the partitioned house that we shared was very much at the poor end of the Grove: while Kensington betokens prosperity, North Kensington rather betokens near-poverty. Never-the-less, it's a bustling part of town with a Bohemian vitality evident in activities like the Notting Hill Carnival and the Portobello market. You're never far from a celebrity in London, even if it's only by association.
Slightly edging back towards the eventual point of this tale, another near neighbour of ours at that time was a lady rather older than Paloma and Gabriella. Her name was Alice, apparently frail but actually rather resilient. She was reminiscent of one of the more benign, spinsterly creations of Agatha Christie, of whom she was a fan (Cheryl and I were very popular with elderly ladies: we all thought each other rather charming). Quite self-sufficient, Alice never-the-less had few opportunities for socialising, so we adopted her (or she us, not really sure which). Hence, we might go along to a festival of Welsh male voice choirs at the Palladium (she was very proudly from the Land of Song), or to the cinema at the then-refurbished Whiteley's in Bayswater (originally, London's first department store) to see The Undiscovered Country (Alice was a keen Star Trek Fan), or for some other lunch or theatre appointment. Once, on the occasion of her birthday, we took her to lunch at a smart hotel opposite Kensington Gardens, with a trip to the theatre to follow.
At lunch we described a holiday (vacation) we had spent in Eastbourne, on the south coast, a resort normally associated with retirees and so thought to be sedate and unexciting (some would hold that it's peaceful and perhaps quaint, with easy access to go walking on the South Downs, which is what we did, obtaining a suntan on a day when those remaining down below in town experienced a day of cloud and sea mist).
Night life, it has to be said, was limited in Eastbourne. We tried the town's Devonshire Park Theatre (Eastbourne is in Sussex, not Devon, so the entertainment palace is probably named after a park that's named in turn after a Duke of Devonshire, whose seat is in... Derbyshire. Confusing, no?). Conforming to the town's perceived character, the play on show was a rather creaky thriller guaranteed to appeal to the lavender-scented townsfolk and entitled The Man (a play Immortalised on celluloid as 1952's Beware, My Lovely, starring Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan). The iteration playing at the Devonshire Park starred Pat Phoenix and Anthony Booth, names that probably mean little to anyone outside the UK, or indeed anyone inside the UK if they're much under fifty years old. Ms Phoenix was famous from years in the country's longest-running TV soap opera Coronation Street, playing a popular, middle-aged, somewhat meretricious character. Booth was famous from his rôle as the liberal Scouse son-in-law of bigoted monster Alf Garnett in the TV sitcom Till Death Us Do Part (model for CBS television's All in the Family). Sherlock's Una Stubbs played Garnett's daughter, just as an aside to this aside's aside. Phoenix and Booth were rather like a low-rent version of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in British media, known for their on/off romance. Booth later married Phoenix on her death bed, which had the papers in a froth and the soap fans in tears.
Anyway, back to the drama playing in Eastbourne.
Spoilers: at the end of the play, Booth's character (an insane serial killer) is upstairs in the house, unbeknown to Phoenix's character. Phoenix, thinking that the dangerous Booth has left and gone on his way, shuts off the lights and "heads up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire". At this point there were audible gasps from the mainly elderly audience, while one querulous voice called in alarm: "Oh! Don't go up those stairs!" At her curtain call, Phoenix charmingly thanked the audience member who had shouted the warning.
We recounted this tale to Alice over her birthday lunch. "Oh, how priceless, dear!" she said, amused by the excitable audience reaction.
Lunch over, we made our way to the theatre where we were taking Alice to see the popular ghost story The Woman in Black (later filmed by Channel 4 for British TV and later still by the revamped [if you'll pardon the expression] Hammer Films with Daniel Radcliffe in the lead). Having seen this show three times in various company, I forget the theatre and cast on this specific occasion, but spoilers: there is a scene where the protagonist, a young solicitor (lawyer), is alone in an isolated house formerly owned by a recently-deceased widow, whose estate he is administrating. There have been many abnormal occurrences, including troubling noises from a locked room at the end of a passage. The solicitor gathers himself and makes his way to the passageway. The noises cease and the door is now slightly ajar... The solicitor approaches the door... Whereupon our lovely Alice called out "Oh! Don't open that door!" It was a delightful moment.
Well, the digression's mostly over. All the aforegoing came to mind from the mention of the British Council as, in her young working years, Alice had been employed by the Council.
So, at last, to the recently-seen wartime or just-post-war films of the British Council!
The first is The Story of English Inns, from 1944, which is (as all these films are) highly evocative of a time and place, of a culture and the perception of a culture.
I was struck by the continued use of horse power at the time. It was still possible to see horses about, in work, as I grew up in the 'Sixties, but it was increasingly rare and no longer really evident in farming.
The first pub to feature, at about thirty seconds in, is Ye Old(e) Fighting Cocks in nearby St Albans, a contender for the title of "oldest pub in England," though it is the building that's old and not its license to sell alcoholic refreshment.
By the way, St Albans Abbey features not long into the feature, an example of the Medieval church of a monastic establishment escaping the destruction of the Reformation, even if the rest of the abbey copped it. St Albans has the longest nave, I believe, of any church building in Britain. St Albans was a significant Roman settlement, the first town on the northbound Roman road (Watling Street) from London (Londinium), and there are remains to be seen in the locality, including town walls and a theatre, though often reduced to not much more than their ground plan. St Albans was known to the Romans as Verulamium, derived from a Brittonic form translating as "the settlement of the broad hand."
A quite handsome contemporary pub is shown toward the end of the film. I don't know it, but it must also be a local hostelry, as it is clearly marked as a Benskins house, the name of the former Watford brewery whose colour scheme remains in vestige on local street furniture. That pub's sign is remarkable, an elaborately carved pillar, reminiscent of a native American totem pole, dated 1936 and surmounted by the model of an aircraft. It's a guess, but that may be connected to the location, at that time, of the famous De Havilland aircraft manufacturers (makers of the Mosquito, star of the wartime film 633 Squadron, and post-war Sea Vixen fighter and the Trident and Comet airliners) near St Albans. Now long gone, there is at least a small museum dedicated to the 'plane builder at or near the site.
The historic, galleried London pub, The George, is featured. Pub names associated with historical religious reference are mentioned (with particular reference to The Bull), as well as gates, topped with bull's-eye lanterns, at a level crossing, where road meets rail.
It's interesting to see the 19th Century toll road gatehouse. There used to be one near my secondary (High) school. It used to be a named fare stage on my bus route from home to school: one asked the driver (conductors had been superseded by then) for a fare to the toll gate or toll bar.
The mention, toward the end of this wartime film, of the Home Guard (formerly the Local Defence Volunteers, the militia formed during WWII composed of those too old or too young for regular armed service) instantly recalls the popular, broad humour BBC sitcom Dad's Army, broadcast from 1968 to 1977 (the elderly cast becoming increasingly frail toward the end of the run). The show remains popular and is still seen in re-runs. So beloved was the show that it was spun off into theatrical and film productions, and a radio transcription and its sequel, all with members of the original cast. Continuous popularity has seen those episodes lost from the archive remounted with a new cast in more recent years, and there has even been a somewhat ill-judged 2016 film with yet another cast of well-known Brit thesps (Toby Jones taking over the central rôle).
That central character, the well-meaning but bumptious and somewhat inept Captain Mainwaring (played originally by Arthur Lowe), is significantly prefigured by that of Captain Waggett (played by Basil Radford) in the enjoyable 1949 Ealing comedy Whisky Galore (an even more ill-judged remake of which was also released in 2016, starring Eddie Izzard as Waggett). While I personally have a soft spot for Dad's Army, I doubt I would recommend it farther afield, where I suspect its appeal would be limited. It was the inspiration of the failed Rear Guard, a US TV pilot from 1976 that wasn't picked up for a series. The original—1949—Whisky Galore I recommend unreservedly.
Last couple of observations from viewing this film:
The RAC sign signifies endorsement by the Royal Automobile Club which, with the rival Automobile Association (AA), were motoring organisations founded to offer guidance and help to motorists. They still exist, mainly as commercial providers of roadside assistance and insurance.
The uniformed figure in a peaked cap could well be a postman (mailman or postal worker). Most agents in public service, like postmen, bus drivers and conductors, railway guards, porters and ticket inspectors, gas board meter readers and the like wore dark (usually either grey or navy blue) serge uniforms of jacket and trousers, with a peaked cap, even into the late 1960s. They were differentiated by their badging and, perhaps, the colour of piping on the soberly dark uniform (red for the postmen, if I recall correctly). The strap across this chap looks like it may be his mail bag. Some occupations still keep uniform, though it's usually a less formal looking affair these days. Posties now wear a red fleece jacket, pale blue shirt and—often—blue shorts. Allegedly, it's the historical colour of postal uniforms which instituted the image of the English robin as a symbol of the season on Christmas cards in the 19th Century. Robins are year-round inhabitants of the country and not migratory, so they have no especial connection to winter. The earliest post carriers, however, were dressed in scarlet jackets and were popularly referred to as "robins." Delivering Christmas cards, as they did during the season, made the birds' pictorial inclusion a visual in-joke.
Another film by the British Council is We of the West Riding (1945), of interest to me because of its setting: the opening craggy vista is reminiscent of Wharncliffe.
Evident in early scenes is gas street lighting, of a kind similar to that still existing on Spout House Lane when I was a very young boy. High Green, my home village-come-suburb-of-Sheffield, is now quite built-up, but my primary school was once surrounded by woodland (that I had the unhappy experience of seeing being grubbed-up in my final year there). Just beyond the wood was Westwood reservoir. The school was just behind an old pub on Packhorse Lane and there was an unmade public footpath beside the school that ran between Packhorse Lane and the reservoir. Here I am, at last at the point of this paragraph: along the length of this path were similarly electrified, previously gas-fuelled, Victorian lamp standards. They went when the wood (or a large chunk of it) went. However, when I was walking through the remains of the wood a couple of years ago, I did see a half-buried, rusted, fluted, fragment of cast iron from one of them.
In Sheffield, some ten-or-so miles away, there are relic gas lamps. I doubt very much that they burn gas of any kind and they may well not function at all. Residents are keen to retain them, all the same, but some are better kept than others. Some were gas destructor lamps: trapped gas from sewers running beneath the roads was admitted into the mechanism to burn along with the normal "town gas", so preventing potentially explosive build-ups (and bad smells). Normally all the lamps were painted "corporation green" or blue.
The "town gas" burned for lighting, both public and domestic, predated the bounty of "natural gas" by many decades and was manufactured as a by-product of processing coal rather than obtained by drilling for petrochemicals. There was, only a few miles away from my home, a coking plant (now gone), that burned off much surplus "town gas" produced in the manufacture of coke for industry. On heavily overcast nights, even at remote Howbrook, the dark could be illuminated by the pulsing glow of those far away flames reflecting from the base of the clouds.
The wool and textile industries shown in the film were dominant farther to the north of my own familiar patch of the West Riding, as steel, coal mining and light-to-heavy engineering were the mainstays closer to me.
Lipreading, a skill learned to overcome the noise of mill working, became part of the schtick of one nationally famous northern comedian: Les Dawson. Dawson had a lugubrious delivery that he developed as a counter to hostile audiences when he was a journeyman stand-up. He was also an accomplished pianist (playing increasingly badly after encouraging his audience to sing along was also part of his act) and, though uneducated, quite the wordsmith and painter of verbal pictures. I don't think his act would travel, either in time or distance, but again, he's fondly remembered by many.
To the pertinent point: during sketches in drag with a fellow comedian, Dawson would affect the persona of a poorly educated, middle aged, working class housewife who would, when referencing delicate or intimate matters conversationally, lapse into the exaggerated silent mouthing of what was to be said. Female mill workers would have recognised the practice straight away, using the same stratagem for conducting intelligible, silent conversations at work under the din of the mill workings. Outside the factories they did as Les did: for sensitive or saucy gossip they would migrate from ordinary, audible conversation to lip-reading the silent pantomime for decorum's sake.
Of course, the mills and the craft working shown in this film are much diminished or gone, now. Most of the factory chimneys are demolished, many of them by Fred Dibnah, as mentioned in earlier messages. Craft skills are obviously the source of family names and are often, now, remembered more in those names than in the skills they formerly described: Wainright, Tranter, Smith, Cooper, Collier, Astronaut etc.
The dry-stone walling, as seen in the film (an example shown above from Wharncliffe), is still a thing. It has to be. Nobody could now replace all those boundaries with modern equivalents. There are miles of them. Many, many miles, and many are really, really old.
Incidentally, Bolton Abbey, seen in this film, is definitely one that my brother and I took a look at (more than once). More properly a priory rather than an abbey, Bolton was an Augustinian foundation on the river Wharfe, an apparently deceptively dangerous stretch of water, tranquil though it may look. Half of its original church building is still in use as the local parish church.
The cultural pastimes alluded to here, pigeon racing, amateur dramatics and operatics, brass bands and the like are all accurately referenced. They may not be quite as popular these days, but they persist in the local culture. AmDram is popular through most social strata but has been strong in the West Riding working class since forever. A modestly prosperous maternal aunt and her husband were members of a local operatic group for many years, until age affected their voices and they could no longer perform publicly to a standard they thought acceptable. Pigeon "fancying" is probably not as indulged as hitherto but, again, it was a sport and a community that remained happily intact well into the 1960s, if not the 1980s. You'll note the ubiquity of the "flat 'at" in this film. The flat hat is such a symbol of the northern working class that it has long been both a joke and a cliché, but they were popularly worn without irony until the 1970s. Pigeon racers, through their proximity to avian debris in their "lofts" often became susceptible to "pigeon fanciers' lung," a disease caused by allergy.
Pastimes—no, passions—not mentioned by the British Council, but historically popular in northern working communities, also included angling and whippet ownership and racing. More obscure leisure activities included ferreting (the "sport" of hunting rabbits in their burrows by the insertion of "tame" ferrets) and arcane games such as clog fighting and "pitch and toss."
I love the line about not paying to watch entertainment! It reminded me of my father, who managed to combine an excellent and mischievous sense of humour with being completely mystified by the concept of stumping up for his fun, particularly if audience participation was called for: "they're paying someone else and entertaining themselves." If that makes him sound like a curmudgeon, I can categorically say he wasn't. But nor was he into paying for fun if he thought the purveyor was underperforming.
Cycling, as featured, dropped out of favour as car ownership increased and "motoring" became a recreation. When motoring became commonplace, it stopped being motoring and became merely driving, and cycling is consequently regaining popularity! The cyclists are singing On Ilkla Moor Bah't 'At. "Bah't 'at" means "without hat," but it would be more correctly expressed as "bar t'at," with "bar," being used in the sense of exclusion (as in the expression "it's all over bar the shouting").
The congregation and chapel seen during the singing of Handel's Messiah gives a good impression as to how prominent Methodism used to be in the industrial north. Such buildings are increasingly being turned over to the warehousing of carpets. The diminution of community that results is regrettable.
Films like this are (as I said) of their time, and intended for particular purposes in terms of conveying ideas of British culture. Paradoxically, they manage to be simultaneously naïve and condescending, portraying happily complacent people who know their place and do as they're told (despite the half-compliments paid to their independence of spirit). Still, they have a core of truth and the images don't lie. Twenty years later, much of what's shown here could still be seen, and some of it can even now, though the modern world differs significantly more.
Finally, How to Behave in Britain (1943) is a non-British Council, US film introduced by veteran American actor Burgess (the Penguin) Meredith that helpfully guides US servicemen in the ways of British customs and life during WWII. Example: the sailor encountered inside the pub is playing shove-ha'penny.