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.

Tom & Jerry Annual 1971

Another collection of Tom & Jerry cartoons from the 60s (or earlier) and also some stories from Droopy and a Professor Putter too. If you haven't read one of these Tom & Jerry annuals before you are in for a treat as they are very different to the cartoons, and often enter a quite surreal turn of events.

Stories in this annual include Jerry and Tuffy joining a circus (disguised as baby elephants natch), Tom being terrorised by a toy woodpecker and all three of our friends hitching a ride down south to avoid the winter in a box car.

One of the best stories involves Tom trying to get some maple syrup for his pancakes and being thwarted at every turn by Jerry, Tuffy and a bear. Its all great fun with a sprinkling of hep cat lingo.

The Godwin Sideboard

In more modern days Collins Crime Club novels covered a lot of different cross-genres and crimes solved by the most unlikeliest of detectives. This novel by John Malcolm mixes crime and the antiques business!

Tim Simpson is an antique expert working for an investment firm which advises people who want to invest in art and antiques. Tim also becomes a reluctant amateur detective in trying to discover why his friend was killed while trying to locate an Edward Godwin sideboard.

Tim gets involved in the murky antiques trade which, as we know from the days of Lovejoy, is full of rogues. A young American woman becomes involves with Tim but how exactly is she involved with the crimes?

A highly enjoyable read, you probably don't need to know much about the world of collectable art and antiques to enjoy the story though it might help a bit with some of the more technical details. 

The second in a series of novels about Tim Simpson, there were fifteen in total and we will be exploring more of this series in the days to come.

A Scream of Murder

A crime drama with a touch of the science fiction about it, by the incredibly prolific John Creasy.

After an ear splitting scream which nearly causes a woman to crash her car, a dead body is soon found nearby. As the dead body was someone who the police were very keen to bring in Patrick Dawlish of the Crime Haters, some kind of multi-national elite police unit, is bought in. It appears the man was killed by sound.

A plot involving a mysterious group in an old monastery, a plan to forge British currency and a sound weapon that can kill hundreds is gradually revealed. All pretty entertaining and pulpy it is too, though some of the twists near the end seem to come really out of nowhere.

A lean and undemanding read and this i don't mind, the book gets to the point without endless chapters of padding. It is perfectly acceptable if unexceptional. However, if you didn't like it you can always try one of the author's six hundred other books!

Warfare in the Classical World

Back in my youth, my best friend and i were obsessed with expensive ways of killing people collecting military books (well we still are to be honest). 

The Blue Riband of these books were the large format books published by Salamander which covered all sorts of military topics from the latest warships to the Chinese war machine.

My favourite of the series however covers warfare of a much earlier vintage, Classical Greece and Rome. Warfare in the Classical World by John Warry covers warfare from the heroic semi-mythical Greek age to the last days of Rome (in the West anyway). 

Published in 1980, the book is quite out-of-date nowadays ironically as there have been many new discoveries and interpretations since but i still love this book. 

It is a wonderful book to browse, richly illustrated with photographs and diagrams.

The Ten Teacups

Part of the British Library Crime Classics, this story by Carter Dickson promises to be a classic impossible crime tale. These were common during the Golden Age of crime fiction and included crimes in locked rooms and the like which. at first glance, seem to be impossible though the story later reveals the cunning method used to commit the crime.

Indeed, this story starts with a murder in a locked room and the mysterious clues of antique teacups left in the crime scene. 

So, it starts off with a great impossible crime premise... then the books seems to largely forget about it until the end. Too much time spent with dreary characters, events you wonder what relevance they are, and a themed murder party which seems pretty awful.

When we finally solve the impossible crime itself, the solution is pretty implausible. The dialogue throughout the story is not very good either, though some of the police characters are well sketched out. Not a great book overall. Impossible crime stories can be great but you can't win them all.

Slough to Newbury

Middleton Press have published hundreds of books, most of them written by Vic Mitchell and Keith Smith - including this one, covering the railway routes in this country, and abroad. I have many of them in my collection too, i especially like to get books which cover lines which i have travelled such as the Reading-Newbury Line which i explored last year. Therefore, many of the stations in this book i have visited.

These include the major railway centre of Reading and stops along the way to Newbury including Aldermaston and Midgham. Middleton Press books are always very enjoyable, though i wish they had used page numbers. As someone who spent years wrestling with MHRA references while doing my History masters, the lack of page numbers does hurt me somewhat.

This is a minor niggle though, Middleton Press books are always worthwhile. Well researched and written, often with a little wry humour. Historic photographs and maps make the books a wealth of information.

Some of my photos of stations along the route covered in this book are below.

Aldermaston

Theale

Reading

The Sweeney 3: Regan and the deal of the century

So, let us explore another Sweeney novel. I've skipped #2 in the series as it appeared to be set in New York, and to be honest i want my Sweeney set in good old ultra-violent 1970s London. 

A good part of this book by Ian Kennedy Martin is set in France, however. As with book #1 the Regan in this story is a self-destructive loner who fights against his own colleagues as much as the criminals. Again, this is a shame as it was the bromance with Carter in the TV series which really made the series to me, and the Sergeant hardly appears in this one.

The story is well written but also of its time, casual racism and sexism rather jarring to a modern reader. The plot though is oddly relevant today as it involves a hard up West willing to flog anything they can to the Arabs. The French in this book wanted to sell nuclear technology, these days we've basically sold London to them.

Transatlantic Airships - an Illustrated History

Airships are one of my obsessions and books on them i hungrily consume. Transatlantic Airships is not a general history of airships though does cover a great deal of their heyday and some more recent developments. 

The book concentrates on the airships that crossed the Atlantic Ocean, seen as the great barrier in early aviation. Transatlantic passenger flights were seen in the 1920s as the great commercial opportunity for airships like the famous zeppelin, able to take passengers in comfort and for long distances. This was something the fixed wing aircraft of the time were far away from being able to match.

In his well written and brilliantly illustrated book John Christopher describes the early history of the airship, both rigid and non-rigid and the advances in technology sparked by the First World War, with the German zeppelins gaining longer and longer legs. 

However, the first airship to cross the Atlantic non-stop was British. R34 crossed from east to west in July 1919 but it was not the first aircraft to make it. Alcock and Brown crossed in the other direction in their former Vickers Vimy bomber just two weeks beforehand, though R34 did make the first return crossing by an aircraft. R34's epic journey is covered in great detail as are a number of other crossings, the book throughout is well illustrated with excellent photographs and period graphics and maps.

Despite the British lead (whose interest in airships was finally destroyed in the R101 crash) it was the German zeppelins who made passenger flights across the Atlantic their own, with airships of increasing size and complexity culminating in the Hindenburg. The airship was holding its own in its special niche in the 1930s despite increasing competition by aeroplanes. The level of comfort in the air that could be offered was unmatched until the arrival of the wide-bodied jet airliners of the 1970s (albeit for the rich only). Of course the airship was a lot slower but when you are rich enough to fly in one maybe the time to travel does not matter too much, not as much as having a smoking room or a grand piano, as the Hindenberg had, anyway. The Hindenburg disaster killed off the commercial airship business, though by then it was largely restricted to the zeppelin Atlantic trade.

If the Hindenburg had not blown up on that dreadful day in May 1937 it is interesting to consider for how much longer the zeppelins would have crossed the Atlantic. It is likely they could have continued for a few more years but the disaster and the Second World War killed off the dream. That was not the end of the story however, as the wartime exploits of the US Navy's blimp squadrons (or blimprons), which on occasion crossed the Atlantic to get to their assignments in Europe, are also included. The book ends with a look at recent airship developments including the Zeppelin NT, though airships crossing the Atlantic carrying passengers in decadent comfort is probably a dream that will never live again.

Dreams are something the book covers well. Many futuristic (and outlandish) designs for airships were made either side of the war, even nuclear powered airships being considered at one stage but all of these dreams came to nothing. But it is good to dream after all, even if the dream is ultimately doomed.

The Double Image

How do you like your espionage dramas? Complicated, intricate, realistic and dark? 

Well you are in luck with this story by Helen MacInnes which details the adventures of young archaeologist John Craig who is drawn into a plot involving double agents and ex-Nazis. He is recruited by the professionals to assist them with the search for an ex-SS colonel who is now working for the Soviets...

This is a dense tale, set mostly in Paris and on the Greek island of Mykonos. The story is very slowly bought to the boil as the plan involving many actors (probably too many to be honest) comes to fruition. At times the story is a little too slow but the main characters are well fleshed out, especially John Craig and unwitting Soviet pawn Veronica.

A very enjoyable story.

Miniature Railway Locomotives and Rolling Stock

Railways come in all shapes and sizes, and these ones are pretty small! This lovely book by Royston Morris covers a range of railways from 15 inch gauge down to 3 1/2 inch. Any larger than this and you are in the realm of narrow gauge railways, any smaller and they are not really suitable for carrying passengers. Trains like this can commonly be seen at visitor attractions.

This is a really nice collection of photographs showing dozens of these railways, from all gauges. The custom made locomotives and rolling stock are also well covered. 

I remember at primary school, the caretaker used to build live steam miniature railway locomotives. He had at least two in his workshop. At the end of term a short track was laid down and he used to take the children on little trips behind the locomotives. I wonder what happened to him and those locomotives?

Here are a few examples of miniature railways in the UK.

Southern Electric Album

Whilst most of the railway network stayed with predominantly steam powered trains until the 1950s, the railways of the south of England went for electrification early on. By the 1930s, hundreds of miles of track were electrified using the Southern Railway's electrified third rails and to this day the majority of railways in the south and south-east are powered by this method.

This is a lovely photographic album published in 1977 and written by Alan Williams covering all aspects of the railways of the south from the earliest days through to the present (well mid-1970s anyway). A lot of historical and quite obscure rolling stock is included such as the original Waterloo & City Railway stock (which until the 1990s was part of the national network not London Underground). A great book full of atmospheric shots, though all in black and white.

These photographs of mine showing vintage and preserved Southern electric stock are in colour though!

The Lake District Murder

Theatre director and producer Ernest Elmore wrote thirty detective novels under the name John Bude, of which The Lake District Murder was one of the earliest. It was first published in 1935 and has been republished as part of the British Library Crime Classics series.

The Lake District Murder is the earliest Inspector Meredith story, the Inspector appearing in most of Bude's novels. In this case, Meredith investigates the apparent suicide of the owner of a remote roadside petrol station in the Lake District. As the case progresses we see that it was murder not suicide and wrapped up in a complicated plot involving illegal whisky stills.

As a detective novel The Lake District Murder works very well. Meredith is meticulous and thorough though sometimes the novel goes into a little too much detail. The part of the investigation that involves weights and measures for example could probably have done with a little editing!

For a second novel though it is excellent work. Bude manages to portray the geography of the setting very well. The Lake District becomes one of the principal characters.

Book 3 submitted

I have sent the materials for book 3, on the railway stations of the West Midlands, has been sent to the publisher. Book 2 could come out next April, about a year after i submitted those materials so i guess that third book may come out in August or September next year.

I do have plans for two more books so hopefully the publisher will ask me if i want to proceed with them and my career as an author will continue. So, here are some photographs from West Midlands railway stations, i think they will all be in the book!

Jetliners of the Red Star

The first aircraft i ever flew on was a Tupolev Tu-154 from London to Leningrad when i went to the Soviet Union in the late 1980s for political indoctrination a school trip. Thus, my love of Soviet era airliners was born, and this book by Charles Kennedy on Soviet era airliners is right up my street... or flight path.

A very well illustrated and written book covering Soviet jet airliners from the Tu-104 to the 204 and the other Tupolev, Ilyushin (my return flight was on an Il-62, nice but the Tu-154 was cooler) and Yakovlev types in between. 

Many of these aircraft are no longer in service, especially in Western skies which is a shame as the Airbus-Boeing duopoly can be a bit tedious at times. I did enjoy seeing the regular Bulgarian Tu-154 flight into Birmingham Airport up until a few years ago, and regular Sukhoi Superjet flights in as well (not since the Ukraine War began of course).

Highly recommended.

Tom & Jerry Annual 1972

If you are familiar with the Tom & Jerry cartoons as shown on TV then you will find the annuals (the classic ones anyway) very different. For a start, the characters talk and often the story isn't "Tom trying to catch Jerry" but something often quite surreal as they have adventures both together and against each other... all with dialogue thats all quite hip (or was in say the 1950s).

Some of the stories in this annual for example include Tom as a hairdresser (trying to cut a lion's hair) or trying to take a photo of an elusive snow rabbit. There are also a few comic strips starring Spike and Tyke, a pair of bulldogs.

What i like most about these stories are the ones that take place in Tom's house, especially behind the walls where Jerry lives with his friend Tuffy. The one where Tom forces Jerry and Tuffy do some home improvements for him is a highlight.

Churches of Warwickshire (2) : St Michael, Ufton

Ufton is a village in Warwickshire a few miles to the south east of Leamington Spa. The parish church of St Michael has 13th century origins, most likely a simple nave and chancel.

There were additions to the church made in the next two centuries. The church has a four bay aisled nave and a two bay chancel. A clerestory was added in the 16th century. The west tower has three stages which were added over time though most of it was built in the 14th century, the third stage being added in the 15th century.

The church is built from squared coursed lias and limestone with sandstone dressings.

Murder Underground

The British Library have re-published dozens of Golden Age crime novels, many by authors now largely forgotten. Mavis Doriel Hay wrote three crime novels in the mid-1930s of which this, Murder Underground, was the first.

Like many Golden Age authors her career was cut short by the Second World War and the chaos caused during and after it, she never added to her three novels post-war. Though she did write some non-fiction books in the 1950s and 1970s.

Her first novel Murder Underground, which deals with the investigation (largely by amateurs) of the murder of a woman at Belsize Park tube station, can be best thought of as "promising". The set-up of the story is well done and interesting but unfortunately the story meanders a bit too much with the characters being rather one-dimensional and mostly rather unlikeable.

Towards the end of the book though it really starts to pick up once the story seems to get some direction and the ending is excellent, it is just a shame the earlier two-thirds of the book are a bit lacking.

Overall though a good enough read, and it has a lovely painting of a 1938 Tube Stock train (some photos of a preserved one below) on the cover!

Britain's Buses in the Seventies

Two of my favourite things: old buses and the 1970s in one book, so how can this be anything other than awesome? Actually, it isn't quite as good as it could have been. All of the photographs inside are black and white, which does take a way some of the atmosphere a bit. However, this is a great nostalgic read.

The book, by E.L Cornwell and John Parke in 1976, covers all sorts of bus operations and operators across the country. What i like most with these kinds of books are the details alongside the actual bus. By that i mean the shops, the street scenes, and, yes, even the fashions. All very enjoyable.

As the book has no bus photographs in colour (apart from on the cover), here are a few photographs of preserved buses from that period, and of my 1970s youth.