Kristine Hughes – Page 274 – Number One London

We've Won the Vetcy Award!

Huzza! Previously, Number One London had won the Vetcy Award for Blog Excellence in the Historical Category. This blog, along with three others in various categories, then vied for the place of overall blog winner and we are now pleased to announce that we’ve won the Grand Prize.

Of course, none of this would have happened without your support and votes over the past month and we once again offer a hearty `thank you’ to Patty Suchy, who brought us to the attention of the Vetcy Award judges.

Upstairs, Downstairs – The Remake

PBS and BBC will be offering what PBS is calling a “new production” of “Upstairs Downstairs” for debut in 2011 as part of the 40th anniversary season of “Masterpiece Theatre.” Winning seven Emmys, the 1970’s series was a landmark event that defined excellence in dramatic story telling on television. Dame Eileen Atkins (at right in a scene from Cranford), one of the creators of the orginal version, will star this time around, along with Jean Marsh, who will be reprising her role as Rose, the parlor maid/now housekeeper, in the new series. Marsh won an Emmy as best actress for her work in the original version. The new series will again be set in the house at 165 Eaton Place, this time in 1936 on the eve of World War II and will follow a different family, the Hollands, now living in the house. The house has been inherited by the wealthy Sir Hallam Holland, a young and well-connected diplomat, following the unexpected death of his Baronet father.

Holland is played by 35-year-old Ed Stoppard, the son of playwright Sir Tom, and takes up residence with his wife and his imposing mother Lady Maud, a free-thinking intellectual played by Dame Eileen who keeps a pet monkey called Solomon.

The series will see two new 90 minute scripts penned by writer Heidi Thomas (Cranford, Madame Bovary, Ballet Shoes). Actress Keeley Hawes will play Lady Agnes Holland and you can follow her blog here. Actress Claire Foy will appear as her temptress sister, Lady Persie.

Art Malik, Anne Reid, Ed Stoppard, Adrian Scarborough, Ellie Kendrick and Nico Mirallegro are also part of the cast. BBC is planning to screen the drama as early as autumn and it will be broadcast on Masterpiece in the US shortly after it makes its British debut. They hope to find similar success to the original, which was broadcast in more than 70 countries to an audience of more than a billion.

Writer Heidi Thomas, who also scripted the successful BBC’s drama Cranford, said: ‘The series will be shot through with sensuality. This is a drama very much about warm-blooded human beings. In a house like Eaton Place, there is a limit to what you can keep behind closed doors. The place is a pressure cooker and the tensions continue to rise and rise until they boil over. Whether the characters are upstairs or downstairs they are living in close proximity to each other and these are the dramas that will engage viewers.’

Oh, joy!

By the way, the setting for Upstairs, Downstairs, 165 Eaton Place, is in actuality the house standing at 65 Eaton Place (above). For the new series, a full-scale replica of Eaton Place has been built at studios in Cardiff, where filming began in August.

The Room by Emma Donoghue

Victoria here, lucky enough to have attended a recent reading and signing by Emma Donoghue at the Next Chapter Book Store in the Milwaukee suburb of Mequon. She read from her latest novel The Room, which has been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, Britain’s most prestigious literary award.

She read from the first chapter of the book, in the unusual point of view of the five-year-old boy who has lived in the room alone except for his mother. I was almost unable to put the book down once I started reading it. I found it entirely gripping and extremely well written.

You can find more about Ms. Donoghue and her novel here. It was recently reviewed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review Sunday, September 19, read it here. Although you will be unable to avoid some description of the story, try not to find out anything about it beyond the basic premise. No spoilers, please!

Following her reading, Ms. Donoghue answered many questions about the novel, it’s voice, it’s inspiration, and her newly found prominence. In all humility, she said, while talking of her attempts to work on her next novel, “Being famous is very exhausting.” She spoke about her children, a son and a daughter, and how her relationships with them fed into the novel. She was born in Ireland and now lives in Canada.

I first read Donoghue’s 2004 novel Life Mask, set in London in the 1790’s. Major characters include Elizabeth Farren, an actress; the Earl of Derby, her devoted admirer; and Anne Damer, a sculptress and society widow. It was well-researched and I found it fascinating that she has not returned to this period to investigate further interesting characters of the time. But she disclosed her next project will be set in mid-19th century California. Wow!

Best of luck to you, Emma Donoghue. May you follow in the footsteps of Hilary Mantel (see my post of 9/5/10) and win the Man Booker!

22nd Wellington Lecture – October 27th 2010

Imagining Wellington: From “Punch” to Pantheon

Southampton University, which holds the Wellington Papers in their collections, is hosting the 22nd Wellington Lecture with Dr. David Howarth on October 27th. Established in 1989, from an endowment from the Spanish Ambassador, the Wellington Lecture is given each year on aspects of the life and times of the first Duke of Wellington.

Over the years, the University of Southampton has welcomed a host of distinguished speakers to present the lecture. This year they’ve selected Dr David Howarth, Head of History of Art at the University of Edinburgh, who will present his lecture entitled ‘Imagining Wellington: From “Punch” to Pantheon.’

Refreshments will be served from 5:30 p.m. before the lecture begins at 6:00pm. This event is open to the public and free to attend. More information is available here.

Dr. Howarth’s first book was a study of the pioneer collector in England, Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel (1585-1646): Lord Arundel and his Circle (Yale, 1985), published in conjunction with an exhibition on Arundel held at the Ashmolean Museum Oxford which Howarth co-curated with Nicholas Penny: Howarth’s Images of Rule (London and Berkeley, 1997), provided an overview of the relationship of art and politics in early modern Britain and it has become established as a standard work on the cultural history of Renaissance Britain. Complemntary to this publication was his editorship of Art and Patronage in Caroline England. More recently, Howarth has specialized in cultural relations between Great Britain and Iberia. Following the publication of his book, The Invention of Spain, he was Chief Guest Curator for the National Galleries of Scotland Edinburgh Festival exhibition for 2009, The Discovery of Spain. He is currently writing a biography of Rubens, commissioned by Oxford University Press.

There is no shortage of caricatures featuring the Duke of Wellington. Below are just a sampling of the prints that were published during his lifetime.

In an interesting side note – and one redolent of 18th and 19th century aristocratic eccentricity – Sir Edward Du Cann, an MP and former Conservative Party chairman, has the largest privately owned collection of Wellington caricatures known to exist and has pulished a book on the subject.

The book blurb states that: “From his collection of more than 230 caricatures of the great Duke of Wellington, Sir Edward has selected 105 for publication. He has written a short introductory piece regarding the significance of caricature as a reflectionof popular opinion at the time of Wellington’s entry into domestic politics after his return to England from the Continent following his defeatof the tyrant Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. This was the golden age of English caricature and the selection includes examples of the work of Cruikshank, John Doyle, W. Heath, Sharpshooter and others,including some in the collection which are not listed in the British Museum catalogue. There has been no previous publication of caricatures of the Duke of Wellington on this scale. Thus as a popular viewpoint of the history of the times, the book offers a unique account. Each caricature is accompanied by a short note about the artist and publisher.”

But back to the subject of aristocratic finances – it seems that Sir Edward has had on again, off again fiscal troubles since the 1980’s. His bad debts were even aired in the House of Commons. In April 1989, Dale Campbell-Savours, the Labour MP for Workington, tabled an Early Day Motion asking the House to note a summons against Sir Edward by a London firm of lawyers, Boodle Hatfield.The motion said that clients of Boodle Hatfield had received a cheque for pounds 25,000 from Sir Edward which had bounced. The debt was later settled. Later that decade, Sir Edward, whose home is at 15th-century home, Cothay Manor, faced bankruptcy and the loss of his nearby property, Tremlett Hall Farm, which surrounds the hamlet of Greenham on the Somerset-Devon border. As well as the farmhouse there is a bungalow and a staff cottage in the village. The buildings are considered exceptional for a farm of its size. Sir Edward attempted to buy the property back from the bank. At the time, Lady du Cann said the publicity surrounding the debts was obscuring the great deal of good work her husband had done – ‘This whole thing is becoming absurd. Look in Who’s Who and see what he has achieved. There is masses of it.’

Cothay Manor

She felt that difficulties over debts were a normal part of business life. ‘If you are in business then you are going to have arguments with people,’ she said. ‘An awful lot of what is published is wrong, but he ignores it.

‘We have had difficulties with Tremlett Farm because somebody has been foul with us and not paid up. There is a knock-on effect. My husband is a private person. He is not an MP or the chairman of any company and he has retired. He is nearly 70 and I really think enough is enough.’

Let us hope that Sir Edward’s passion for collecting Wellington caricatures is not at the heart of his financial troubles, although I for one can well understand the temptation.

For more the subject of Wellington and caricature, I recommend The Duke of Wellington and His Political Career After Waterloo – A Caricaturist’s View by Edward Du Cann and The Duke of Wellington in Caricature by John Physick.

Do You Need a London fix?

Victoria here. Unexpectedly the other night, without any Netflix on hand, I found myself looking through the tv listings — 700 channels and nothing to watch — but WAIT!!! What about a good evening in London?

There it was — Notting Hill. I saw it long ago (released in 1999), and was disappointed because Julia was SO beautifully Julia and Hugh was SO stutteringly Hugh. But this time, expecting nothing but watching London on my screen, I really enjoyed it. The reverse Cinderella story I guess. But I’d rather run a bookshop on Portobello Road than be an actress!

Now I am looking forward to some other movies set in London that are fun to watch just because of the scenery. How about Last Chance Harvey (2008)? That one was a little below par too, but just to see them walking along the Thames — well, this time I’d probably love it.

A movie I’ve seen several times and would again any evening is A Fish Called Wanda. What a cast! What a setting!! I want that apartment on the river. I always laugh until I ache.

Now that I think about it, there are quite a few relatively recent movies that give a nice London fix: Love Actually, the Bridget Jones movies…what are your favorites when you want to pretend you are right there approaching Trafalgar Square?

I also love the WWII movies — Mrs. Miniver, etc. and the Judi Dench film, Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005) which goes through the war. Though it isn’t London, The Enchanted Cottage (1945) is a terrific tear-jerker set in England. As is Brief Encounter (1945), with the wonderful Rachmaninoff concerto.

Or, to cap it off, how about a rousing chorus from My Fair Lady? I know that Emma Thompson wants to do it all over again — and I do think ET is a stellar actress, producer and writer. Yet I love that technicolor version with Audrey Hepburn, from 1964. Sorry, Emma.

Or, for a lovely evening at least partially set in London, how about 84 Charing Cross Road (1987)? Another winner.