Thursday 20 May 2010

Mind that window! What window? Thud!

A bit of commotion in our office in Waterloo today, when this chap managed to fly into one of the windows (12:20 BST), while being mobbed by a bunch of crows:

Anyone know what it is? He was stunned for a bit, but did eventually fly off, just as one of my colleagues was on the phone to the RSPCA!

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Tuesday 11 May 2010

Not forgotten

Early last year I wrote about past efforts to individually identify people who died in incidents relating to the London Underground during the Second World War, and mentioned that I had arranged for the details of one such person to be passed on to the Commonwealth War Graves Commision, as she was not included in the Register of Civilian War Dead. Today I was informed that Gladys Bessie Benbrook - who died in the bombing of Balham station on 14 October 1940 - has now been accepted as a war-related casualty, and her name included in the Register. This takes the number of identified deaths at Balham to sixty-six, the highest number in a single incident due to direct enemy action.

My thanks go to Howard Benbrook for alerting me to this omission and also supplying Miss Benbrook's death certificate, and to Terry Denham for successfully raising the case for her inclusion with the Commission.

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Monday 3 May 2010

Down Mexico way...

When I first started to actively collect items related to Things to Come, one of the first I failed to secure was one of a set of lobby cards used to promote the film in Mexico in 1947. Over the years, no other copy of the same card turned up, but in the last few months I've been lucky enough to acquire originals of five others, which can now be seen in the Publicity Material Gallery on my website. Each features a relatively high quality production still, framed alongside a stunning illustration by an unknown artist, although to describe it as an exaggeration of what actually appears in the film would be an understatement! I've also added a set of 1970s German lobby cards that I acquired very early on, but have only just got round to scanning, and a nice 1936 cigarette card featuring the film. [Disclaimer: This blog does not endorse smoking!]

I was quite surprised to realise that the last time I did an upload of TTC photographs was almost eleven months ago! I've now added another 25 images to the various sub-galleries. A number are actually the images used on the above-mentioned Mexican and German lobby cards, or otherwise from sources that are not actual original photographic prints, but are significant enough to merit inclusion. In any case, after a bit of study of the relevent UK copyright laws (i.e. until my eyes started bleeding), it's clear that all the photographs from the film are now actually in the public domain, anyway, so really anything goes....

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