Quick Curtain

"Quick Curtain" by Alan Melville is another Golden Age detective novel republished by the British Library. Alan Melville was better known as a broadcaster (including on Call My Bluff) and playwright, but he also wrote a number of novels including some crime stories in the 1930s. 

As might be apt for someone who wrote a number of plays, the theatre is where this book is set, the murder taking place during a performance where the fake bullet in a stage shooting is switched for a real one.

Inspector Wilson is set to solve the case with the help of his adventurous and frequently scolded son. The book is a witty delight, not to be taken too seriously as a crime novel but works much better when you accept this is more a satire on showbusiness.

That is not to say the book hasn't got a decent plot and some interesting sleuthing. Credulity is stretched a bit far though but you don't mind because of the enjoyable way the story has been put together.

The Pigeon House

Monks Risborough is a lovely village in Buckinghamshire near to Princes Risborough. It is at the foot of the Chilterns and has been in existence since pre-Norman times. Not quite as old as that but still very interesting is a building near the church of St Dunstan (originally between the church and a farmhouse) that dates from the 16th century.

This is the Pigeon House which now stands in a recreation ground. Pigeons were bred for food in the house though later the house was used by the nearby farm as a cattle shelter. One curiosity of the building is a door on the northern side of the house which does not match the rest of the architecture and may have been originally part of another building.

Rupert the Bear Annual 1979

As a young child i loved Rupert the Bear, well of course why not? I used to get the Rupert annual every year for Christmas, these collected together Rupert stories which had appeared in the newspaper years before. When i got a little older i moved more to the Beano and later 2000AD but my Rupert annuals were not thrown away and i have a good collection of them now which i have fallen in love with again. This is the annual from 1979.

Now, the Rupert stories are typical of the style of British comic stories from the mid-20th century, there arn't any speech bubbles for dialogue or inline boxes driving the narrative but a text box below the images. So, it is more like a children's story with accompanying illustrations.

The stories are of course a delight with the air of a fairy tale. Rupert stories are a mixture of the innocent and the surreal. Rupert, himself, is an anthropomorphic bear who wears clothes, a red jumper and yellow trousers with a yellow scarf in winter. The other characters are a mixture of other animals in clothes, a few humans including wizards and mages but also elves and pixies and other enchanted folk!

The book starts with Rupert and the Penguins where Rupert following a mysterious pipe leads him into an adventure where he must find some suitable presents for the King of the Penguins! The other stories have the same whimsical and nostalgic feel. It really is great.

Luftwaffe Emergency Fighters

An interesting book about aircraft which, mostly, never got to fly. It is late in the Second World War and the Luftwaffe are planning for the coming threat of newer Allied bombers, especially the B-29. A new more powerful turbojet is being developed and this will be used to power a second generation of jet fighters...

Well as we all know, the War ended before any of these types could enter service, or even fly. One major reason for this was the Heinkel HeS 011 turbojet. This was a more advanced design but by the time the Nazis were defeated only 19 had been built not the hundreds needed for the new wave of fighters.

The most notable of these fighters, and the one which came closest to actual reality was the Messerschmitt P.1101. A notable feature of this fighter was the swept wing, the geometry of which could be changed before flight. When the war ended the P.1101 was found in an uncompleted state but the design was adapted into the Post-war US experimental aircraft the Bell X-5 which was the first aircraft to have a swing wing.

So, this is a look at what might have been if the war in Europe had continued into 1946. It is to the usual standard of an Osprey book, well written and illustrated.

Reading to Basingstoke

Another in the Middleton Press series detailing the history of a country railway route. This one, as usual written by Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith, is about the Reading to Basingstoke Line. This starts in Reading in Berkshire and ends up in Basingstoke, Hampshire. Along the way it passes through some beautiful countryside but, unlike some of the other Middleton Press books in this series, not that many stations.

We do have the delights of Mortimer though, a very good looking station with it's Brunel designed buildings. We also have Reading West which... isn't that good looking, though does have an interesting history. There is a section on a Ministry of Defence depot near Bramley too, this has now closed as a depot though is still used as an Army training site.

The book is the usual high standard from these authors and is crammed with interesting history and details of the railways in the area.

Reading

Reading West

Mortimer

Basingstoke

Gary Glitter Annual 1976

Everyone who was everyone had an annual released about them in the 1970s, including disgraced former pop star sex offender Gary Glitter. This book is a glimpse from back when it wasn't weird at all to leave a middle aged man alone with children.

The annual is darkly unintentionally humorous in many ways, and contains a huge amount of cheese. The annual includes the usual features of such a book: profile information, child pics (of him i should add!), his influences et cetera. There are also photo features of Gary in the kitchen, Gary's driving lessons and Gary on stage. It is all the Gary Glitter you could ever want (which is quite likely not a huge amount these days).

The funniest thing in the annual is a comic strip detailing how Glitter nearly gave it all after a low point early in his career (oh if only he knew!) The comic version of Glitter looks nothing like him of course and is curiously low energy. It was probably drawn by someone who had met him.

So, a very odd collection of nonsense indeed about a very awful man.