Tag Archives: Peter Pan

Poppies, Fairies and Not Much Else

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I’m struggling for inspiration tonight, having made several attempts at sparkling wit which have all fallen short.

We opened the shop to find we had made two sales overnight, for a total of just under £20, but fortunately. as nature abhors a vacuum, this was compensated for by a steady trickle of customers who all left with less money than they started with. In the end we did quite well.

It’s that medal time of year again and people are starting to remember that they will need them for Remembrance Day. I’ve already done three in the last week and there will be more as people suddenly remember they have a Platinum Jubilee Medal that needs adding to their others. I don’t want to be cynical, but I’m fairly sure the proliferation of medals will continue in the near future with a Coronation medal for the incoming King.

I’ve also been loading coin sets onto eBay. We bought a large collection a few weeks ago and are starting to put it out now. The previous owner had to sell to provide a deposit for his son to buy a house. He had been planning on selling it when he retired and going on a world cruise, and was not the happiest of men.

This, of course, raises the question of what I’m going to do with my collection. I could keep accumulating stuff, which I then leave to Julia and the kids to sort out. Or I could sort it out and organise, which would make it easier for them. Or I could even sell it myself and go on a world cruise with Julia.

Her face is a lot better, by the way, after a few days of little improvement it suddenly went down a lot, though it’s still a bit sore.

Pictures are of some sterling silver 50 pence coins from the big collection. One is from a Royal British Legion Commemorative set. The other is from a Peter Pan set. They are special versions of the cupro-nickel circulation coins with added colour. They aren’t proper coins but they look nice and people like to collect them, so I will keep my opinion to myself.

Tinker Bell – J M Barrie worked in Nottingham as a journalist for a while and later left his Peter Pan copyright to Great Ormond Street Hospital to help with fundraising.

Strange Meetings

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In 1932 a Mrs Reginald Hargreaves, then aged 80, met a man called Peter Llewellyn Davies in a bookshop. I was intrigued by it when I found out, and John Logan actually wrote a play about it.

Mrs Hargreaves was, you see, better known to history as Alice Liddell and young Llewellyn Davies was the inspiration behind Peter Pan.

I’ve always been interested in such things, though I suppose some of them aren’t as surprising as I think. When Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen they were both in the Army, and both tortured poetic souls so I don’t suppose it’s too surprising they met at Craiglockhart. There’s a play about that too, and a book.

Sassoon also knew Robert Graves, though that’s well known. It’s also well known that they fell out. What I didn’t know was that they met again in the 1950s when taking their sons to Oundle School. I’ve often driven through Oundle, but had never known that.

Clark Gable and Jimmy Stewart both flew combat missions from England during the war, once meeting up for a photo-opportunity. Gable flew from Polebrook and Molesworth, neither of which are too far from Oundle. I’m struggling to find a reference for the meeting, but you can find a photo here, where Pacific Paratrooper comes up trumps. This shows you don’t need the internet when you have bloggers.

I suppose the chances of two Hollywood stars being photographed together when serving overseas is quite high.

Same goes for the chances of two academics with literary leanings joining the same literary society, as J. J. R. Tolkien  and C. S. Lewis did with The Inklings. It’s a small pool, so the chances were probably good.

There’s a good article on probability and coincidence here. I’ve actually been in a room with around 75 people and done the birthday one – we had three matches.

 

 

 

 

Book Review: Famous 1914-18

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Famous – 1914 – 18

by Richard van Emden and Victor Piuk

Pen & Sword Military (2009)

Paperback 352 pp  £10.99

ISBN-10: 1848841973

ISBN-13: 978-1848841970

Sorry it’s another Great War book, I’ll try something lighter for the next review, I promise.

It’s a slightly misleading title, as the people in the book weren’t really famous between 1914 and 1918. With two exception they were famous after the war, and this is what they did in the years of the war. The exceptions are Ned Parfett (the newspaper boy from the Titanic picture – who was famous in 1912) and Peter Llewelyn Davies, known as the boy who inspired the character of Peter Pan. Davies, after the death of his parents was brought up by four guardians, including J M Barrie and Guy du Maurier (see previous review).

I have to admit I was also thrown by the name Tom Denning, before it clicked that this meant Lord Denning, one time Master of the Rolls. I’m not really sure how famous he is these days, though he was hardly out of the news at one time. That’s the problem with this sort of book, where do you draw the line?

The subjects need to have been reasonably famous after the war, but quite a few people with post-war fame have been left out. That’s because they need to have left information about their wartime exploits – there’s not been a great deal of digging out original material here. So, post-war fame and memoirs seem to be the requirements.

That means Jack Warner has been left out, as has Victor McLaglen and Victor Silvester. I suppose they just aren’t famous enough, despite interesting wartime careers. To be honest, I didn’t realise how much Silvester had packed in until I just checked the reference. I knew he’d participated in a firing squad, which was why I looked him up: the rest was all new to me.

To be fair, I don’t want necessarily want a lot of original research, I’m happy with an entertaining book, and that’s what I got.

It also helped me out with a question hanging over A A Milne, who was criticised for his unsoldierly manner in a book of war poetry I was reading recently.  It left me feeling he’d been a bit of a slacker, but it’s clear from Famous 1914 – 18 that he did his share, and did it well.

It’s not a fault of the book, but if like me you were interested in reading more about John Laurie (who served in the Honourable Artillery Company during the war) you will, like me, be disappointed. He isn’t in, despite the write-up in the Amazon blurb. I wrote to tell them, using the button for reporting inaccurate content but so far it’s still there.

So, as long as you don’t want information on John Laurie, it’s a good read, and, because of the length of the chapters, easy to dip in and out. For the Dad’s Army fans out there, Arnold Ridley and his service in two World Wars is covered.

Amongst others it covers C S Lewis, J R R Tolkein, Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce (next to each other in the book as they were in the post-war Holmes films) and Christie of Rillington Place fame.  I won’t give you a list of all the names, as it will spoil the surprise…