Gavin Scott |
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Gavin Scott

09 Mar

George Martin & Nellie the Elephant & Me

I was a fan of George Martin long before I was a fan of the Beatles – though I didn’t know it until just now, when I read Mark Lewinsohn’s extraordinary Tune In, the first of his projected three volume biography of the band. What I learnt there was that in his role as head of the EMI record label Parlophone, George had produced some of the records I’d adored as a child in the 1950’s – including Nellie the Elephant (Off she went with a trumpety trump, trump, trump...

17:54 / Pop Culture
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09 Mar

An important form to fill in about your Aunts

Britain in 1946 was awash with official forms, many a hangover from wartime regulations, others brought in by the new Labour government. H.F. Ellis,who wrote for Punch, felt there needed to be yet another one, about Aunts. Coming soon:Part Two: How Many Aunts Must I have in order to make a claim?       PS IF THIS AMUSES YOU, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO SHARE IT WITH PEOPLE YOU THINK MIGHT LIKE IT TOO!      ...

09:36 / Blog Post
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08 Mar

Restoring a sculpture

When I'm not writing I make sculptures using old toys and games as my medium, and I've just finished restoring and adding LEDs to a sculpture I call Uptown Saturday Night. Here it is by day and by night. PS IF THIS AMUSES YOU, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO SHARE IT WITH PEOPLE YOU THINK MIGHT LIKE IT TOO! THE SHARE BUTTON IS AT THE TOP ...

10:35 / Art / Blog Post
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07 Mar

The Beauty of Pan Paperbacks

When I was growing up Penguin books were ubiquitous, elegantly presented and cheap. But also a little bit austere and even - for the under ten set -forbidding. For sheer excitement, on the other hand, Penguin's rival Pan went all out to make their books irresistable on the bookstand, and I still take great delight in their cover art to this day. Even if - perhaps even because - some of the draughtsmanship is rather gloriously bad. Here are three from my collection of Pan books dealing with World War Two adventures, of which there were...

09:46 / Artifacts / Blog Post / Books / Pop Culture
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05 Mar

A quiet place to work

Great Replies of Our Time Volume One: My very talented Production Designer daughter Rebecca Facebooked a picture of the eerie shrine she has just made for a murder show she's working on, and one of her fans asked "Is this something you're building for the TV show?" "No," replied Rebecca within seconds, "I was just looking for a quiet place to work." ...

10:58 / Blog Post
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04 Mar

A Train called Thomas

Among the cultural event of 1946 we must not forget the appearance of a small blue railway engine. Duncan Forrester did not buy the first in the series, a book called Three Railway Engines by the Reverend Wilbert Vere Awdry, when it was published in 1945: at that moment he was driving a stolen German motor cycle along a mountain road in Bavaria. But he was back in England for the publication of the Rev. Awdry’s second book, Thomas the Tank Engine, in 1946, and saw it in Brown’s Book Shop,...

09:53 / Blog Post / Books / Pop Culture
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02 Mar

I Know Where I’m Going

I've been giving some thought to the movies which might have been seen in 1946 by Duncan Forrester, the hero of The Age of Treachery, the detective thriller set in that year which Titan Books and Random House are publishing next month. One of the first he saw, had in fact been released in 1945, but he was still able to catch up with it in early 1946 at the Astoria cinema on Holderness Road in Hull, where his mother lived. The film was I Know Where I'm Going, written...

10:50 / Blog Post / Books / Pop Culture
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01 Mar

The Punch of 1946

The venerable British humorous magazine Punch, which began life in 1841, was still going strong in 1946, the year my novel The Age of Treachery takes place. I've been able to get hold of one of the bound editions of the magazine from that year, and from time to time I'll post things you might find interesting. Nothing, I think, gives a better feel of a period than the things people might have been reading in trains, planes or in taxis, on their way to meet friends and enemies, chuckling gently at the gentle...

09:04 / Blog Post / Books
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