A Collection of Edwardian Postcards

I'm quite glad I don't have the collecting old postcards gene. I imagine it's like Pringles (as in, you just can't stop...). Even curtailing yourself to a very small 'manageable' area, postcards of one town say, will lead to misery/frustration when you realise that it would still be impossible to 'collect them all'.

Anyway, Withnail Books has a collection 94 of mostly Edwardian postcards currently on eBay, and here they are... Mostly comic, with a few WW1 ones, a few foreign ones, and a few frankly rather politically incorrect ones...

Withnail & I is the 13th Best Film Of All Time, According to a Bunch of Thespians

Recently Time Out New York published yet another one of those '100 Best Movies Ever' lists, but this time with an interesting twist: it was compiled from top ten lists sent in exclusively by 'dozens' of actors. Withnail and I came in at number 13.

It's perhaps not surprising that a film about a couple of turns is beloved by actors. (It's no surprise either that another film about an actor, Tootsie, came first.)

Time Out also printed the lists from the various celebs, so I looked up who had voted for Withnail...

First up, Patrick Kennedy. He's been in Atonement, War Horse and Mr. Holmes, though it's as Richard Carstone in that brilliant BBC adaptation of Bleak House (the one with Gillian Anderson) that I remember him. He supplied his top ten alphabetically rather than in order of preference, but Withnail was one of them.

John Bradley, best known as Samwell Tarly in Game of Thrones, had Withnail at number 4 in his top ten, beaten only by Being There, The Long Good Friday (admittedly a bloody brilliant film, also a HandMade production, like Withnail) and Raining Stones.

John Gallagher Jr., the Tony Award-winning American thesp best known for playing Jim Harper in Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom, had Withnail at number 2. For some reason, he prefers Ron Howard's OK-but-not-classic The Paper, which was his number 1.

No messing for son-of-Edward, brother-of-Emilia, star-of-Cucumber Freddie Fox though: Withnail & I was his number 1 film. Top Italian film directors would no doubt approve!

Discovered: Is This The Original Publication Of What Became The Folk Song The Horn Of The Hunter?

In Cumbria, "D'ye ken John Peel?" is not a question about your knowledge of the late bearded DJ.

This John Peel was a huntsman from Caldbeck, who died in 1854, and passed into legend as the subject of several local folk songs. The most famous of these is called 'D'ye ken John Peel', with words by his friend, John Woodcock Graves. In the years after Peel's death, many 'imperfect' versions of the song lyrics made their way into print, but its first 'official' publication came in 1866's The Songs and Ballads of Cumbria, a first edition copy of which has just arrived in the Little Shop...

Another song about John Peel is 'The Horn of the Hunter', attributed to his contemporary Jackson Gillbanks, of Whitefield. Like 'D'ye ken John Peel', and indeed most traditional folk songs, various versions of the lyrics are in circulation. Here's one of the best known recordings of it, sung by a pre-Steeleye Span Maddie Prior and Tim Hart.

Tucked into the aforementioned copy of The Songs and Ballads of Cumbria was a small newspaper clipping, credited to 'J G' and dated January 1st, 1863. It's titled 'Lines in Memory of the Late John Peel', and it's the lyrics to 'The Horn of the Hunter', but a variation of those lyrics different to the version Maddie and Tim sing, and indeed different to any of the others I can find online. Is this the first published version, the 'urtext' that all the subtle variances sprang from? Some of the differences are minor (presumably later tweaks made the lines easier to sing), but there are a few entirely different lines, including in the penultimate verse: 'the heart-stirring scream of old Peel' indeed! 

You can read more about the history of the song, and the more commonly known version of the lyrics, here. Below is the newspaper clipping, with the alternate (and earlier?) words:

It's not possible to tell from the clipping which newspaper it's from. On the back are marriage notices mentioning 'this city', which would perhaps suggest a Carlisle paper. In chapter four of his book Foxhunting on the Lakeland Fells, Richard Clapham includes a short pen-portrait of Peel by Gillbanks, and mentions that he was also author of a poem printed in the Wigton Advertiser (he doesn't mention a date). He then quotes the poem, and it's 'Horn of the Hunter' alright, but it's not the same version as on this newspaper clipping... So, until I'm told otherwise, I'm plumping for this clipping as the first publication!

224 Year-Old News From London's General Evening Post

Back in June 1791, William III was King (as in Madness of...), and William Pitt the Younger was PM. Leafing through a recent arrival in the Little Shop, a rather well-preserved copy of the London newspaper The General Evening Post, gives a fascinating glimpse into the past.

News stories include:

Mr. and Mrs. Bellamy, returning home after 10 o'clock were "stopped by three footpads near Morden turnpike, who robbed them of two gold watches, 90l. in bank notes, &c and used them in the most brutal manner." (I daresay the same thing might well happen in 2015 if you're swanning around in Morden late at night...)

Mr. Henry Phillips' Powder for Destroying Insects back in production, after his "peculiar Misfortunes, well known to the public" had suspended it. I wonder what those Misfortunes were?

The court report is a cracker, not least because you can hear the words of the snooty defence lawyer...

"Useless piece of antiquity" indeed! Good on her for winning. Fifty quid was a decent chunk of cash back then.

There's also good news from China, as the Chinese were evidently happy to pay good money for any old crap the West shipped over there... Heh, the West would never fall for that if the tables were turned, eh?

There are also a few adverts for books coming out that week...

Clara Reeve is well worth a google. Her previous novel, The Old English Baron, was apparently an influence on Frankenstein. She also wrote a well-regarded history of prose fiction, The Progress of Romance. Nothing much Gothic about The School for Widows though. Apparently it 'tells the stories of childhood friends Frances Darnford and Rachel Strictland, both of whom have lived hard lives as the virtuous wives of improvident and immoral husbands, and of another tragic widow Isabella di Soranzo.' There's more on her life here.

Individual copies of newspapers this old which aren't completely knackered are hard to come by. I'm rather pleased to have this one in the shop, until it finds a new owner...

James Bond, eh? 007 Is Out Of Copyright In Canada, And What That Means

Here's an interesting one. In Canada, copyright in a book expires just 50 years after the author's death. Ian Fleming died in 1964. So, as of January 1st 2015, the James Bond books entered the public domain in Canada.

So, if you want to publish your own editions of Fleming's novels, go right ahead. If you want to publish your own Bond stories, feel free. (They have to be based on the Fleming books only mind, you can't include anything created for the films, so Blofeld can't have a white pussy, for example.) And if you want to put on a stage adaptation of Casino Royale, as a mate of mine in Victoria is actually doing next month, the Ian Fleming Estate can't stop you. But only if it's in Canada (or one of the other countries where the term is 50 years). The minute whatever you're doing is available outside those territories, in the UK or Europe for example, where the term is 70 years, or the USA, where it's 95, you can expect some serious Cease and Desisting.

Quite what the Estate will make of the book pictured above, surely just the first of many new 'James Bond, eh?' titles, being advertised on Amazon.ca, a website visible to people outside Canada, who can (presumably) also order it, remains to be seen...

The publisher ChiZine says:

An anthology of collected stories from various Canadian authors, based on Ian Fleming's fourteen published Bond novels, edited by Canadian genre authors Madeline Ashby and David Nickle. To be published in Canada only.

'Published' in Canada only: fair enough. It's not listed on Amazon.com or co.uk. But will Amazon.ca ship copies outside Canada? And even if they won't, if I get my mate to send me a copy, will it be seized by customs?

There's also these fan fiction novels by Mike Sparks. I wonder if the Fleming Estate Powers That Be have had a quiet word about not shipping copies outside the country?

In the meantime, any Canadians who fancy getting all 14 Fleming Bond books on their Kindle can now do so, for very little outlay.

The first Bond novel was re-titled for this first US paperback edition.
Moonraker became 'Too Hot to Handle'!

The Perfect Double Bill? Withnail and An American Werewolf At Somerset House

"You’ll be thankful to be spending a night on the town after this double-bill reveals the dangers of the countryside" says the blurb advertising this upcoming outdoor screening at Somerset House in London on August 8th. Annoyingly it's already sold out, though Londoners in the area on the day might want to check for returns.

An American Werewolf in London makes a great double bill partner for Withnail in my humble opinion. They complement each other beautifully, to the extent that if, when our thespian heroes stumbled into The Crow, a young Rik Mayall looked up from his chess game in the corner, you wouldn't be the least bit surprised...

B.A.P.: The Penrith Swimming Club Jubilee Souvenir 1881-1931

It's been a while since we've had a B.A.P. (Books About Penrith) entry on this blog, so here's a look at an extremely rare, possibly even unique (I can't find another copy anywhere) survivor from 1931: a locally printed, rather grand booklet celebrating the Golden Jubilee of The Penrith Swimming Club, an institution justifiably proud of its then-status as the biggest swimming club in the British Isles. While it may not be able to claim that any longer, it looks like the club is still going: its website is here.

There are some wonderful vintage swimming costumes on display, plus a couple of rather nicely done 'decorations' (above and bottom) by an unnamed artist.

UPDATE: This has now gone to its new owner, which I'm glad to say is... the Penrith Swimming Club.