Daily News Gems is my personal blog in which I comment, every now and again, on topics of particular interest to me, namely, newspaper history, baseball, American politics, and a selection of other burning issues of the day. -- Bill Lucey
A hearty round of applause goes to Julian Fellowes who knocked one out of the park, yet again.
The second movie spinoff of Downton Abbey hit the theaters a few weeks ago and is being met with mostly favorable reviews.
As of June 17, 2022, “Downton Abbey: A New Era” has grossed $41.6 million in the United States and Canada and $45.5 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $87.1 million
Many passionate Downton followers, including myself, think “Downton Abbey: A New Era” was a better written, more entertaining, offering then the last motion picture.
And as an added bonus, in this second Downton Abbey movie, viewers feast their eyes on a French villa in the south of France. It was Villa Roccabella located about an hour from Saint-Tropez, which features extensive gardens, a heated outdoor pool, yoga deck and a private beach (used in the swimming scene with Tom and Lucy Branson). It was designed in the late 19th century by Hans-Georg Tersling, a Danish architect
I found it remarkable how Fellowes, the creator of Downton Abbey and the award-winning script writer, weaved its characters so meticulously into a tapestry of compelling subplots, twists and turns all in two hours and five minutes, culminating with Lady Mary Crawley (Michelle Dockery) assuming the titular head of the Downton estate.
The movie takes place in 1928.
Two topics, in particular, are covered in the movie, which reflects accurately what was taking place in Britain on the brink of the Great Depression: the emergence of talkie films and British societies icy intolerance of homosexuality. In an age of massive fact-checking, viewers of this movie can rest assured “Downton Abbey: A New Era” did get its facts correct. The film, according to historians, was meticulously researched to the point that everything represented in it is grounded in factual events, including its people and technology.
Lady Mary’s (Michelle Dockery) voice is used in order for the production company to transition from a silent film to a talkie.
Photo Credit: BEN BLACKALL/FOCUS FEATURES
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In “Downton Abbey: A New Era,” a production company makes a hefty financial offer to use the Downton estate as a location for a new movie, titled The Gambler. After some trepidation, but knowing they have to repair a leaky roof to the Downton estate, Lady Mary Talbot agrees to the generous financial arrangement. The film, as was customary at the time, was intended as a silent film.
Almost halfway through the filming, the producer and director, Jack Barber (played by Hugh Dancy) gets word from studio execs that the film has to be scratched, because silent films are no longer profitable. After some deft maneuvering, clever strategy, and discussion, Lady Mary Talbot and the director decide to flow with the tide and make the film a talkie so they won’t have to cancel production after all.
The phasing out of silent films in favor of talkies was in fact taking place in Britain in 1928.
According to Laraine Porter, Reader in Cinema History at De Montfort University (Leicester), “1928 was significant for British cinema as it saw the implementation of the 1927 Cinematograph (Quota) Act which obliged cinemas to show a proportion of British-made films in the face of Hollywood's almost total domination.”
The British film industry hit an all-time low in 1926 when only 5 % of films screened in British cinemas were British. American films dominated the market. Films that started silent in Britain and ended as talkies was common around this time. They were referred to as “Goat Gland” films.
Since the British film industry was mired in such weak financial standing in 1928, and now were forced to invest vast amounts of money into talking technology, many of the smaller producers (who invested heavily on silent film technology) went bankrupt.
In 1927, the American produced “The Jazz Singer” represented the first motion picture which featured isolated talking scenes and synchronized dialogue, thanks to sound-on-disc technology.
The big breakthrough in Britain came in November, 1928, when the motion picture, "The Terror" reached British cinemas.
Britain’s transition to talking films came a year after the United States studios. Laraine Porter explained to me that “Britain had an established culture of popular theatre, particularly the Aldwych Farces, and a popular literary heritage which offered ready source material for the new talkies.” “These sources,” Porter explained, “had specific domestic appeal to audiences who also wanted to see and hear their favorite music-hall and Variety stars - like Gracie Fields - in film.”
In addition, Britain had heaps of engineers and technicians from the BBC to draw from who were proficient in helping studios make the transition from silent to talking films.
Laraine Porter contends that there was “a massive urban working-class ready-made audience who supported early British talkies.”
The Terror, a murder mystery set in an English country house represented the first continuous “all-talkie” to premiere in Europe. It was released by Warner Bros, their second all talkie film. The first was “Lights of New York” also released in 1928.
Actor Guy Dexter (Dominic West) invites head butler, Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier), to come live with him in America.
Photo Credit: BEN BLACKALL/FOCUS FEATURES
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Another hot-button issue which “Downton Abbey: A New Era” nibbles around the edges at is the topic of same-sex relationships in Britain in 1928.
The dashing Thomas Barrow (played by Robert James-Collier), the head butler at the Downtown Estate, who is gay, develops an attraction to one of the actors filming a movie at the Downton estate, Guy Dexter (played wonderfully by Dominic West). Dexter offers Barrow a chance to live with him in America as his personal assistant and social secretary; a role that is described in the film as a “dresser.” The idea that this would mark the beginning of a romantic relationship between the two is gently intimated in the film. When Barrow agrees and turns in his notice to Lady Mary, she shares his happiness and says, “I wish you all the happiness this cruel world can afford.”
The “cruel world’’ which Lady Mary refers to, is, of course, gays being treated as social outcasts in Britain in the 1920s.
Back in the 16th century, Britain considered homosexuality a criminal act.
The Buggery Act of 1533, passed by Parliament during the reign of Henry VIII targeted homosexuality for persecution. Sex between men was punishable by death in the United Kingdom. The law, strangely, never affected females.
Not until 1861 was the Offences Against the Person Act passed, which eliminated the death penalty for homosexual acts and replaced it with 10-years of imprisonment.
Things didn’t improve for the gay community in 1885. The Criminal Law Amendment Act not only made male homosexual acts illegal, they could also be prosecuted whether or not a witness was present; meaning, private acts were subject to prosecution. Usually, a handwritten letter suggesting intimacy between two men was all the court needed to prosecute. It was this ambiguously written law that Irish poet and playwright, Oscar Wilde, fell victim to in 1895.
It took well into the 20th century, 1957, in fact, when the Wolfenden Report was issued, which recommended that “homosexual behavior between consenting adults in private should be no longer a criminal offence.”
Despite the recommendations from the Wolfenden Report, Parliament took until 1967 to pass the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 in the United Kingdom, which legalized homosexual acts in England and Wales on the condition they were at least 21 years old and the acts were consensual and in private. Penalties were, however, issued for street offenses.
Amazingly, the law was not changed for Scotland until 1980, or for Northern Ireland until 1982.
Despite the severe penalties gays were subject to at the time Downton Abbey, the movie, supposedly takes place, 1928,’’ Patrick Allitt, Professor of American History at Emory College tells me that ‘’we know from lots of literary evidence that [homosexuality] was widespread, particularly among the Bloomsbury Group intellectuals, such as Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, J. M. Keynes, and others.”
The Bloomsbury Group were a group of influential English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists, bold renegades, who opened the Victorian upper classes eyes to the LGBT point of view, a subject never discussed in Britain at the time, unless behind closed doors. Many point to the works of the Bloomsbury Group which sparked a seismic shift in Britain regarding LGBTQ rights.
According Lucy Delap, Professor of Modern British and Gender History at the University of Cambridge, “1928 was an interesting year as far as same sex relationships were concerned, because of the publication and then prosecution for obscenity of Radclyffe Hall’s “The Well of Loneliness” – a Sapphic novel that caused uproar and became iconic for many lesbian readers – but only covertly read of course, in versions smuggled in from France.”
It was in October, 1928, when Virginia Woolf published “Orlando: A Biography,” which today is considered a feminist classic. The book chronicles the escapades of a poet who changes sex from man to woman and lives for centuries, meeting the key figures of English literary history. The novel was inspired by Woolf’s lesbian lover, the poet Vita Sackville-West. Literary scholars point to this novel as one of the first novels about gender uncertainty.
Not until 1960 were the British reading public able to read an uncensored edition of D.H. Lawrence’s novel, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”
Photo Credit: Philip Jackson/Daily Mail/Rex
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Also in 1928, D.H. Lawrence secretly printed (in Italy) his eleventh novel, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” about an upper-class married woman, Constance or Lady Chatterley, who is racked with internal torment when she neglects her paralyzed husband (from a war injury) and falls into the arms of a gatekeeper, a member of the working-class.
Because Lady Chatterley was filled with explicit sex scenes and four-letter words, it was banned in the United Kingdom after its publishers, Penguin, were brought to trial under the Obscene Publications Act. Not until March, 1960, did Penguin win the rights to publish the novel in its entirety. Book stores reportedly all over England sold all 200,000 copies on the first day of publication.
1928 (November 11) was also the year that Thomas Hardy, considered to be the greatest English writer, died at his home in Dorchester. He was 87.
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), a reference book requiring the efforts of 1,300 people for more than 70 years was completed in 1928. The word “Zyxt” was the last word in the final volume of the dictionary.
English poets Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning were consulted about the meaning of words that appeared in their poems. J.R.R. Tolkien, in fact, was an assistant lexicographer for one year, 1919. At least six editors guided the process.
Politically, 1928 ushered in a new era for women’s voting rights.
It too nearly 60 years of campaigning, but on July 6, 1928, all women over 21 years old finally got the right to vote with the passing of the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928. Prior to that, a voting act in 1918 gave the vote to all men over age 21 and all women over age 30, tripling the electorate.
On February 15, 1928, British Liberal Prime Minister from 1908 to 1916, H. H. [Herbert Henry] Asquith, passed away at the age of 75. He resigned as leader of the Liberal Party in October, 1926.
Asquith’s finest achievement was the Parliament Act of 1911,which stripped the Lords of any veto over money bills or public legislation and became a landmark piece of legislation in paving the way for representative democracy in Great Britain.
A major medical breakthrough occurred in Britain in 1928, when Alexander Fleming, a Scottish bacteriologist, working in his laboratory at St Mary's Hospital Paddington, London discovered, by accident, a mold growing on a dish had stopped bacteria from developing. Fleming’s antibacterial effects of penicillin were described as the "single greatest victory ever achieved over disease."
Fleming published his findings in 1929 in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology.
Tragically, 1928 was the year of a major flood in London. The Thames flooded a large swath of central London. The high waters were triggered by a depression in the North Sea which sent a storm surge up the tidal river.
The Houses of Parliament, the Tate Gallery and the Tower of London were all overwhelmed with high waters. The slums on the Westminster side of Lambeth Bridge, suffered the worst of it, where 10 of the 14 victims lost their lives. At one inquest, a man named Alfred Harding identified the bodies of his four daughters - Florence Emily, 18, Lillian Maude, 16, Rosina, six, and Doris Irene, two.
Taken together, the Thames flood left 14 people dead and an estimated 4,000 people homeless across London.
The flood of 1928, together with the disastrous North Sea Flood of 1953, inspired the construction of Thames Barrier in the 1970s.
1928 certainly wasn’t a good time for the working class in general, with high unemployment “especially in old industrial areas of northern England southern Scotland and South Wales. It got worse in the financial crisis of 1929-31,” Professor Patricia Thane, Visiting Professor in History at Birkbeck College, London said.
Politically, Conservatives were in power in the UK from 1924 through 1929, which contributed to the working-class plight of low wages and deteriorating economic conditions. Lucy Delap observed that “a Labour government had been in power as a minority in 1924 (briefly), and were to be voted in again in 1929 – so working-class voters were I think quite aware of the new political landscape and the possibility of change. When the second minority Labour government came in 1929, high hopes were dashed by the economic recession, and the government only lasted until 1931.”
So, the title of the movie: “Downton Abbey: A New Era” might not have been referring to a ‘’new era’’ only as it applies to the Crawley family at the Downton estate. A new era, to be sure, could be witnessed all over Britain in 1928 with social and economic conditions, the political landscape, and most certainly with movies and British literature.
A wonderful look at the life and times, ups and downs, and byways and highways of Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, is beautifully chronicled by Sally Bedell Smith, a superb American historian, who has previously turned out biographies on Princess Diana, Queen Elizabeth II, John and Jacqueline Kennedy, and Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Smith’s latest offering is ``Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life.”
Any serious talk of the eldest child and heir apparent of Queen Elizabeth II, must embrace the young prince’s misguided marriage to Diana Frances Spencer, a marriage that was doomed before it even began.
As much as Charles wanted to do the right thing and marry a young beautiful woman with roots of British nobility, his heart was still very much tethered to Camilla Parker Bowles (his first real love) when he married Diana in 1981 at St. Paul’s Cathedral in a spectacular ceremony before an estimated 750 million television viewers spanning the globe.
The ruptures in the marriage of the world’s most photographed couple came thick and fast. Diana was always suspicious of her husband’s infatuation with his former lover; her suspicion became an obsession, leading her to confront Camilla and even, if some stories are to do be believed, stalked Ms. Bowles, who was also married.
Diana quickly found herself in a loveless marriage with a partner, due primarily to his sheltered upbringing, who was incapable of displaying affection.
After Harry, their second son, was born in 1984, Diana and Charles’ marriage was essentially over. They both opted for separate bedrooms.
The royal couple separated in 1992 and divorced on August 26, 1996.
Smith deftly documents the mounting hate that developed between Diana and Charles that erupted before the public when they both tried to win over the minds and hearts of public opinion by baring their soul in two exclusive interviews. In those highly watched television interviews, both admitted to a worldwide audience that they had been unfaithful in their marriage.
The rehabilitation of Prince Charles wouldn’t blossom until after Princess Diana’s tragic death in 1997. It was only then that the public began to appreciate what a loving and attentive father he was after William and Harry were left motherless at ages 15 and 12 respectively.
One of the prince’s staunchest defenders was his eldest son, referring to his father as a role model and heaping praise on him for maintaining a positive attitude. “I just wish that people would give him a break,” William once said.
The public additionally began to appreciate how passionate the Prince of Wales was about international affairs, the deterioration (in his mind) of the London landscape, and his profound concerns about the environment and global warming. Smith notes besides being defender of the faith, Charles always wanted to be known as the defender of nature.
Another important slice of his rehabilitation was the public coming to accept his ongoing relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles (his soul mate) and their subsequent marriage in 2005. A union that eventually came to be accepted by the two closest and dearest to him: his two sons.
A recurring theme running through Smith’s well researched, splendidly written biography, deals with Charles waiting and waiting and waiting some more to ascend to the throne.
Queen Elizabeth II at 91 years of age, is still very much alive and kicking with no signs of slowing down. In 2015, she surpassed Queen Victoria as the longest reigning United Kingdom monarch.
If and when Charles, 68, becomes king, he will be the oldest person in British history to assume the throne, older than King William IV, who was crowned at age 64 in 1830.
Far from a hagiography, Smith presents a well-balanced treatment of Prince Charles, stretching back to his youth, when he was a pampered and sheltered child, afraid to get too close to anyone; but slowly, with many bumps along the way, began to develop a more compassionate persona and a mission with bigger and more profound interests than the trifles of the British monarchy, welcoming dignitaries, and attending State dinners.
Prince Charles, William (right) and Harry view floral tributes to the Princess of Wales at Kensington Palace after her death in 1997.
Photo Credit: Rebecca Naden/PA
August 31, just a few days from now, will mark the 20-year anniversary when Diana, Princess of Wales, was tragically killed in a car crash.
She was 36.
Diana’s romantic companion, Dodi Fayed, the son of Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed, along with Henri Paul, also died in the crash when their Mercedes S-280 vehicle crashed into a pillar after racing through the Pont de l'Alma tunnel that lies next to the River Seine in Paris on August 31, 1997.
Mr. Paul, her driver, was trying to escape a mad flock of paparazzi chasing them in cars after they left the Ritz Hotel (owned by the Al-Fayed family) where they were dining that evening.
Diana's bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, though badly injured, was the only survivor of the crash.
The princess reportedly went into cardiac arrest at about 2:10 a.m. and was pronounced dead at 4 a.m. at Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital in Paris.
Diana’s sons, Prince William, then 15, and Prince Harry, then 12, were staying at Balmoral (in Scotland) with the Queen and other members of the royal family when the tragic accident took place.
Soon after her death, British Prime Minister Tony Blair addressed the nation from outside St Mary Magdalene Church in Trimdon, saying, "She [Diana] was the people’s princess and that’s how she will stay, how she will remain in our hearts and in our memories forever."
Approximately, three million people swarmed the streets of London for her funeral at Westminster Abbey on September 6, 1997. The service was attended by 2,000 people, 32.10 million people watched the service in the UK and an estimated 2.5 billion people watched it worldwide.
Her brother, Charles Spencer (9th Earl Spencer), delivered a tender, wistful eulogy, describing Diana as "a very British girl who transcended nationality. Someone with a natural nobility who was classless and who proved in the last year that she needed no royal title to continue to generate her particular brand of magic."
After the ceremony, Diana was laid to rest at the Spencer family home, at the Althorp Estate in northern England.
The final verdict of the inquest, 11 years later (2008), found that at the time of the deadly crash, Mr. Paul, the driver, was guilty of “gross negligence,’’ having been drunk and on anti-depressants when he lost control of the Mercedes.
Paparazzi photographers, the jury decided, who pursued Diana, Princess of Wales across Paris were also guilty for her "unlawful killing."
The investigation additionally noted that Princess Diana and Dodi may survived if they had worn seat belts.
To gain a better appreciation of just how frantic the world was on that fatal night, I asked some writers and journalists where they were and how they responded to the shocking news that the young princess was killed.
"On the evening of Saturday August 30, I returned to my home in Washington, D.C. after taking my daughter to Princeton University, where she was beginning her freshman year. I was feeling somewhat melancholy, so I went to bed early and didn't tune in the TV or listen to the radio. When I awoke early on the 31st, I turned on my computer and saw the headline that Diana, Princess of Wales had died. I initially thought it was a hoax, but learned the truth when I flipped on the TV, which I watched obsessively like everybody else.
On Tuesday, the president of Times Books at Random House called to ask if I would consider writing a biography of Diana. I said I didn't know, but that all hell was breaking loose on the streets of London and I needed to get there as soon as possible. I arrived on Friday at the gate of Kensington Palace about a half hour after Princes Charles, William, and Harry returned from Scotland. I spoke to many inconsolable people wandering through the city's parks, as well as my English friends who knew Charles and Diana. Everyone was equally stunned about the car crash and bewildered by the public outpouring of emotion.
A friend at NBC got me into the network's headquarters in a bank building across the street from Westminster Abbey, where I observed the funeral from a window ledge on the third floor. It was a cloudless and warm day, and a surreal sight: the parks filled with people as far as the eye could see, and huge crowds lining Whitehall. Since all traffic had been diverted from the center of London, and no airplanes were overhead, there was an almost eerie silence.
As the funeral cortège turned into Parliament Square, the first sound was the clip clop of the six horses pulling the coffin borne on a gun carriage. Then the line of five men and boys hove into view--Charles, William, and Harry, the Earl Spencer, and the Duke of Edinburgh--followed by some 500 representatives of Diana's charities. It was unspeakably sad and riveting: an indelible moment.”
--Sally Bedell Smith, author of "Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life," "Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch," and "Diana in Search of Herself: Portrait of a Troubled Princess"
"I was in Washington DC, feeling bemused at the extraordinary attention being given to this sad death of an unhappily-married young woman and the outlandish reaction it provoked. It made me think that after two decades as a foreign correspondent I no longer understood my own country, and that I had greatly under-estimated the emotional power of the tabloid media."
--Martin Walker, who spent 25 years as a journalist with Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, including tours of duty as bureau chief in Moscow and the US, as European Editor and Assistant Editor. Mr. Walker, author of the popular Bruno detective series set in the Périgord region of France is a member of A.T. Kearney's Global Business Policy Council.
"I was then the London bureau chief of The New York Times, and specifically I was in bed in my London flat and was awoken by the Foreign Desk of The New York Times around 2 a.m. or so to be told that there had been a crash in Paris involving the Princess and that I should start writing the obituary in case she were to die. We ended up printing a 750- word obit in the Aug. 31 paper accompanying the coverage from Paris, and I was to expand it to 2300 words for the paper of Sept. 1 (“Diana: Shy Girl Who Became ‘Queen of People’s Hearts’ “ ) and to write a London-datelined story for the Sept. 1 paper headlined “Charles Accompanies Diana Back Home to a Grieving Britain” . In the ten days following I wrote thousands and thousands of words about the aftermath in Britain, about what the event told us about what had become of Britain and its feelings about the royal family, and of course the funeral and burial.”
--Warren Hoge, who worked for more than three decades at The New York Times in a variety of capacities, including London Bureau Chief, is now Senior Adviser for External Relations at the International Peace Institute.
"I was in London, with a six-month old baby! And we kind of mobilized as a bureau, dividing up all the coverage. Warren Hoge, the bureau chief, did the main news stories for the next bit of time and I did a lot of the features and state of the nation stories. And of course a big part of the story was how the media responded in the UK, and the symbiotic relationship between the public and the press just then - each fueling the other. "
--Sarah Lyall, New York Times writer at large, based in New York. Lyall was London correspondent for the Times for 18 years.
"I was on holiday on a Hebridean Island, my then wife (who was a newspaper editor) had to bugger off back to London, leaving me with the kids, and I remember not being in the least surprised or shocked, as I believe Diana had a self-destructive streak as well as a destructive streak. I sided with Prince Charles throughout."
--Niall Ferguson, a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford, and the Center for European Studies, Harvard, has written 14 books, including, "Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World"
"Death was on my mind in the summer of 1997 as my beloved father had died earlier in the year and, on the Sunday morning when Diana’s death was announced, I was at a car boot sale trying to clear out some of the accumulated objects which no one in the family wanted to see again.
But I was also excited as my biography of Mother Teresa, who had become a controversial figure by then, was due for publication at the end of the week. After four years work I was enjoying the blissful hiatus when the book is not only written but printed and before any reviewers have had a chance to criticize. In addition, The Times had bought three days of serialization, which my agent assured me would be a fantastic boost.
The links between Diana and Mother Teresa, forged over several years, became much stronger in death. Mother Teresa’s comments that she had been very close to Diana, made immediately after her death, were given good play. Apparently, Diana had hoped to send Prince William to volunteer at a Missionaries of Charity home in Calcutta. Other reports claimed that Diana was thinking of converting to Catholicism and was buried with a rosary that Mother Teresa had given her. Pictures of the tall and elegant Princess in a white suit greeting the diminutive nun were splashed all over the papers - again.
It was a crazy week which showed me how fickle newspapers can be in their loyalties. But the editors were mourning not only Diana herself but the gift she had given them of selling thousands more copies if a picture of her graced their front pages.''
--Anne Sebba is an award-winning British biographer, writer, lecturer, journalist, and author of a number of books, including “Jennie Churchill: Winston's American Mother,” and “Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died under the Nazi Occupation.”
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BREAKING NEWS! First BBC News Flash
AP Urgent Bulletin announcing Diana had been seriously injured in a car crash moved at 20:11:06 (8:11 p.m. and six seconds) EST on Saturday, Aug. 30, 1997.
BC-France-Diana-Crash
URGENT
Princess of Wales injured in car crash: report
¶ PARIS (AP) _ Diana, Princess of Wales, was seriously injured in a car crash in Paris early Sunday, and one person was killed in the accident, French radio reported.
¶ The crash occurred in a tunnel along the Seine river at the Pont de l'Alma bridge, while paparazzi on motorcycles were following along her car, France Info radio.
¶ (cb)
This AP News Alert moved at 23:44:06 p.m. (11:44 p.m. and six seconds) EST on Sat. Aug. 30, 1997
^BC-APNewsAlert<
¶ Press Association says Princess Diana has died, according to unnamed British sources
Newspapers Reflect on Princess Diana’s Life and Legacy
“There, in a dark, concrete underpass, lie the tangled remains of a Mercedes limousine. That so glamorous a life should be ended in such a mundane place is the greatest of ironies. Yet it was here, beneath the streets of Paris, that a light to millions around the world was extinguished. Diana, Princess of Wales, was just 36.”
--Jack Gee and John Coles, The Express, September 1, 1997
"The death of Princess Diana, at age 36 in a Paris car crash early today, brought a sudden, brutal end to a life torn with contradictions...The death of Diana, arguably the most photographed woman in the world, casts still another pall on the future of a British crown that one day may grace the head of her eldest son, Prince William, or even his younger brother, Prince Harry.''
--Eric Malnic and Carla Hall, Los Angeles Times, August 31, 1997
"In life, Princess Diana gave up the chance to be a queen. In death, she may help prop up the wobbly throne of the dysfunctional British royals."
-Richard Johnson, New York Post, September 1, 1997.
"Later, in the middle of a soft evening, families walked in silence, with the only sound that of a baby's cry, onto the parched unlit lawns in front of Kensington Palace, where Di and her prince lived when they took their first steps in what was supposed to be a fairy tale...I sat on a bench in the darkness and a woman next to me said, softly, "We shouldn't be here. None of us should be here. She should be here."
--Jimmy Breslin, Newsday, September 2, 1997
"In the wake of Princess Diana's death, a nation famous for its stiff upper lip has gone weepy. The celebrated English reserve, symbolized this week by the silent and withdrawn royal family, has been washed away by a tidal wave of tears and flowers from the tens of thousands of ordinary people mourning the loss of their princess."
--Dan Balz, Washington Post, September 4, 1997
"To be deified, then devoured: That is the fate awaiting the famous in an era that has substituted celebrities for heroes, and that is the fate met by a young kindergarten teacher who would become known to the world as Princess Diana...Diana seemed the exception to one iron rule of celebrity, which is that the public will applaud your fall from the pedestal as lustily as they cheered your climb. Through her divorce from Prince Charles and her battles with Britain's royal family, the public remained solidly on her side. "
--Don Aucoin, Boston Globe, September 1, 1997
"It is unbearably sad to imagine Diana, bloody and mangled and gesticulating, being descended upon in a tunnel by omnivorous paparazzi. But it is also sad to see the image of Diana, sparkling and shy and smiling being served up in death through as many news cycles as the omnivorous market will bear...God rest her soul, because the journalists won't. Big-name journalists leaped on the tragedy, immortalizing their own five minutes, or five hours, with the fallen goddess."
--Maureen Dowd, New York Times, September 3, 1997
"She [Princess Diana] was neither the complete saint painted by her hagiographers, nor the scheming witch portrayed by her stuffier enemies. But she had elements of both in her nature, and we all responded to both...Yet by her peculiar genius for affecting multitudes, she demonstrated, in the best moments of her life, what a royal family could be. And those moments were very good indeed."
--A.N. Wilson, The Evening Standard, September 1, 1997
"She had been, I think, the most remarkable member of the Royal Family since Queen Victoria. She was sad, she needed to be helped, she was entertaining, she was loveable; but she was certainly not an ineffective figure in our national history. At the time of her death, she was still maturing, and gaining in her understanding of the world; that we have lost for good, and it is a great deal."
--William Rees-Mogg, The Times (London, England) September 1, 1997
"Diana will be deified in death, the fairy-tale princess always denied the happy ending of the storybooks. Whatever her faults and those will now be overlooked, no-one would deny that her short life was suffused with as much sadness as glamour. It matters not whether, in her marriage to the heir to the throne, she was victim or, in part at least, villain. She was in Tony Blair's words, the people's princess."
--Philip Stephens, The Financial Times, September 1, 1997
"It would be heartwarming to believe that her death will change things. But I suspect the best we can hope for is that she can now be remembered, in the way she longed to be, as the princess who became queen of all our hearts in a fairy story which has no ending."
--Christopher Hudson, The Evening Standard, September 1, 1997
"She was our greatest royal personality since Queen Victoria. She could have been the most valuable. Properly helped and guided, Diana's extraordinary combination of gifts could have transformed the relationship between royalty and the public, deepening and strengthening it and making it almost invulnerable...Her death, far from being meaningless, was full of meaning even symbolic. She was a martyr to a combination of evils: the coldness of royalty, the prurience of the public in demanding even the most intimate secrets of her heart, and the cruelty of the media in supplying them."
--Paul Johnson, Daily Mail, September 1, 1997
"As Diana metamorphosed from innocent nursery nurse to revered princess and mother, to wronged, vengeful woman and, more recently, to confident campaigner, the one constant was her determination to be seen as Queen of the people hearts, her image as both a victim and as a benefactor of love."
--Jojo Moyes, The Independent, September 1, 1997
"The monarchy itself was too snooty, too dim, too stiff and unattractive to survive the scrutiny in the satellite age. What saved it as a source of interest and discourse was Diana who-in life-became a combination film star and faith healer, the magic mix of flesh and spirit."
--David Aaronovitch, The Independent
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Biographical Sketch of Diana, Princess of Wales
Born: Diana Frances Spencer, July 1, 1961 in Park House, Sandringham, Norfolk.
Her Spencer forbearers had been sheep farmers in Warwickshire, who settled in Althrop, Northamptonshire in 1506.
The Princess's father had been an officer of the British royal household to King George VI and to the present Queen.
Both her grandmothers, the Countess Spencer, and Ruth Lady Fermoy, were close members of the court of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, including four Spencer great-aunts.
Diana's paternal ancestors were representative of the Whig oligarchy of the 18th century.
Diana also descended through several lines through the Stuart Kings: Charles II and James II.
Other paternal forebears, include: the Great Duke of Marlborough, Sir Robert Walpole, the Marquess of Anglesey, and the Earl of Lucan.
Father: Edward John Viscount Althorp, the only son of the 7th Earl Spencer.
Mother: Frances Ruth Burke Roche, the youngest daughter of the 4th Baron Fermoy.
Siblings: Three: Sarah, Jane, and Charles. Her infant brother, John, died shortly after his birth one year before Diana was born.
Diana was seven years-old when her parents divorced.
After her father inherited the title of Earl Spencer in 1975, Diana became known as Lady Diana Spencer.
Education: Riddlesworth Hall in Norfolk, West Heath (Boarding School) in Kent; a finishing school--the Institut Alpin Videmanette at Rougemont in Switzerland (six weeks).
Employment: Nanny, babysitter, skivvy (household tasks), student teacher at Miss Vacani's dance studios; teacher assistant at the Young England Kindergarten in Pimlico.
Marriage: Charles. Prince of Wales, and Diana married on July 29, 1981 at London's St Paul's Cathedral, three weeks after her 20th birthday.
Children: Prince William Arthur Phillip Louis, born: June 21, 1982 and Prince Henry Charles Albert David, born: September 15, 1984.
Divorced: August 28, 1996. Diana kept the title of Diana, Princess of Wales. She lost Her Royal Highness title.
Death: August 31, 1997, after suffering fatal injuries in a car crash in the Pont de l’Alma road tunnel in Paris.
Buried: Althorp Estate – a stately home in the town of Northampton, U.K., located about 70 miles from London.
Charities Diana supported included: Barnardo's, The Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, Centerpoint English National Ballet, RADA, the Royal Academy of Music, the Leprosy Mission, the National AIDS Trust, the Royal Marsden Hospital, Help the Aged, National Meningitis Trust.
Source: The Times (London England), The Independent
NOTE: A special thank you to all those editors, news researchers, and archivists, who dug up clippings and PDF'S from 1997, including Rick Mastroianni (Newseum), Lisa Tuite (Boston Globe), Laura Harris (New York Post), Dorothy Levin (Newsday), Lauren Easton (Associated Press), Colin Crawford (Los Angeles Times), Eddy Palanzo (Washington Post), Rogan Dixon (The Independent and London Evening Standard), Rose Wild (The Times, London, England), Charles Garside (Daily Mail), and Wendy Parsons (Daily Star).
"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
― Winston S. Churchill, speech to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom; June 4, 1940
***
Thanks to English-American film director, producer, and screenwriter, Christopher Nolan's motion picture "Dunkirk," the defense and courageous evacuation of British soldiers across the North Sea to England during World War II is still being remembered with thunderous applause, 77 years later.
The motion picture premiered in the United States on July 21 in IMAX, 70 mm and 35 mm film.
The most recent box office figures show that Dunkirk grossed $314 million worldwide; the film was additionally greeted with glowing reviews by critics, some calling it Nolan's best film so far and "one of the greatest war films ever made."
Dunkirk is in the north of France, on the shores of the North Sea near the Belgian-French border.
In late May 1940, 250,000 men of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) were pinned against the English Channel near the port of Dunkirk (Dunkerque), facing annihilation or capture by Nazi forces.
The best that could be achieved, many thought, was the rescue of 20,000 men.
So, began Operation Dynamo, when the British sent across the English Channel all they could muster, including civilian craft, to assist in the evacuation. The operation was severely hampered by the lack of Royal Air Force (RAF) fighters who were not available in sufficient numbers to provide adequate air cover, resulting in the vessels suffering a merciless pounding from the Luftwaffe, the German air force.
From May 26 through June 4, the Royal Navy—assisted by civilian craft and some vessels from other nations—evacuated 364,628 men from Dunkirk; 224,686 of which were members of the BEF.
By the time the evacuation was completed, 68,000 soldiers of BEF were killed, captured, or wounded, including at least 2,000 during Dynamo.
To gain a sharper understanding of this heroic evacuation, I reached out to some writers and scholars to ask if there was something about the Battle of Dunkirk that many might not be aware of.
Here are some responses that whistled back to my in-box.
"For every seven British soldiers who escaped from Dunkirk, one was left behind as a prisoner of war."
--Sean Longden, author and historian who specializes in British social history during World War II.
"The key point that most accounts ignore concerns the shift in German emphasis from crushing the British and French forces that had been cut off there in order to make the push south and penetrate the new French front being created and developed there. This step, started by the German commander von Rundstedt and supported by Hitler needs to be understood, as it rarely is, as a result of German experience in 1914. They had advanced rapidly then only to be held before a new front and tied down into the trench warfare that characterized the front in the West thereafter. Rundstedt and Hitler wanted to make sure that this did not happen again. Their decision indeed prevented such a development while simultaneously making it possible for the British and French soldiers to be evacuated in the famous events associated with the name of Dunkirk."
--Gerhard Weinberg, Professor Emeritus at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an authority on Nazi Germany and the origins and course of World War II.
"It may be important to understand the role of the French troops in holding the "perimeter" as the rescue/evacuation happened on the beaches. The film's opening sequence makes it clear that the French are manning a defensive post so that the British soldiers can get through to the beach. But the film gives an almost wholly "BEF" story."
"Interesting contemporary accounts from the other side of the Channel (from those "waiting" in England) show how little the general public knew about what was happening in France after May 10th, once the Germans started their westward sweep. One can only imagine how anxious the soldiers' families must have been. George Orwell (1984, Animal Farm) was in London at that time; he went to Waterloo Station in London to look for his brother in law among the returning troops, and he comments on the fact that many soldiers' uniforms looked water and salt stained. He never found his brother in law, an Army Medic, who had been killed on the beach at Dunkirk. "
--Rosemary Haskell, Professor of English at Elon University (North Carolina). Born and raised in England, Haskell's father was rescued at Dunkirk.
"Of the 56 Allied destroyers that took part in the operation, 9 were sunk and 19 damaged; of the 38 minesweepers, 5 were sunk and 7 damaged; of the 230 trawlers, 23 were sunk and 2 damaged; of the 45 ferries, 9 were sunk and 8 damaged. Of the eight hospital ships - each of which was emblazoned with large Red Cross markings easily visible to the Luftwaffe - one was sunk and five damaged. It was quite untrue – as the BBC was to allege in 2004 – that the British civilians who sailed to Dunkirk to save the B.E.F. did it ‘because they were paid’.
Of course, they were indeed paid for their service, as was the entire BEF for theirs, but there were far easier ways of earning a living during those nine days in May 1940."
--Andrew Roberts, British historian, journalist and broadcaster, from his book, "THE STORM OF WAR"
"I'm afraid I don't share the current enthusiasm for Dunkirk. It was the result of a military disaster but is too often remembered as some kind of heroic victory. It seems to me to be a classic Brexit film, Britain managing to escape from Europe, so the timing is most unfortunate. The British must come to terms with Dunkirk. The French, understandably, see it very differently - rats leaving a sinking ship.''
--Richard Overy, professor of history at the University of Exeter (South West England), who has published extensively on the history of World War II and the Third Reich.
"What most people don't know, I think, is that the Germans did not actually have an edge in armor or aircraft, and that their original plan of battle for the attack in the west would have played into the hands of the allies. The final plan, however, conceived after the original plans were thought to have fallen into Allied hands, made use of concentrated armor and cut off the Allies from their supply bases. As for Dunkirk, the main folly was [Hermann] Goering's promise that he could eliminate the Allies from the air. He made similar promises, this time to supply encircled German forces from the air, in the Demyansk Pocket near Leningrad and of course in Stalingrad."
--Omer Bartov, an Israel born scholar, especially noted for his studies of the German Army in World War II, is a professor of European History and German Studies at Brown University.
"What most people would not know or appreciate is that just as Dunkirk began was the first time Royal Air Force Spitfires (a British single-seat fighter aircraft) met the Me109 fighters (German World War II fighter aircraft). Until then, Air Chief Marshal Hugh Caswall Tremenheere Dowding (an officer in the Royal Air Force) did not allow Spitfires to operate in France, only Hurricanes. Both Spits and Hurricanes were designed as defensive fighters, so having to operate over and inland of the French coast was something very new. Training had been built around engaging German bombers coming to Britain across the North Sea."
"In consequence RAF fighters had only limited time in the combat areas. Operating in just squadron strengths, they soon found themselves outnumbered, so flying in 'wing' formations was tried. However, with no training in this, three squadrons might fly out to the French coast, but as they could not speak to each other, they quickly split up! As the squadrons could also be led in the air by their senior pilots, it often happened that the 'wing' could be led by Flying Officer, while the other squadrons had a flight or squadron commander leading their men, so this did not go down well."
"As in the film, the RAF fighters flew in sections of three and it took time to adopt sections of four, such as the German fighters used. With fours it was easier and safer to break into two pairs for protection, rather than a leader looking for enemy aircraft while the two wingmen kept a close eye on their leader so as to avoid a collision."
--Norman Franks, an English militaria writer, who specializes in aviation topics with a special focus on the pilots and squadrons of World Wars I and II.
Dunkirk By the Numbers
338,226 troops were evacuated from Dunkirk between May 27 and June 4, 1940.
933 ships took part in Operation Dynamo, of which 236 were lost and 61 put out of action.
40,000 French troops were taken into captivity when Dunkirk fell.
The French lost 22 of their 71 field divisions, 6 of their 7 motorized divisions, 2 of their 5 fortress divisions and 8 of 20 armored battalions.
126 merchant seamen died during the evacuation.
1,000 Dunkirk citizens died during air raids on May 27.
50,000 British troops were unable to escape the Continent; of these, 11,000 were killed and the bulk of the remainder were made prisoners of war.
RAF Fighter Command lost 106 aircraft and 80 pilots, and Bomber Command lost an additional 76 aircraft.
Other nations lost 17 of 168 vessels taking part.
BEF equipment abandoned in France included 120,000 vehicles, 600 tanks, 1,000 field guns, 500 antiaircraft guns, 850 antitank guns, 8,000 Bren guns, 90,000 rifles, and 500,000 tons of stores and ammunition.
Source:The Gale Virtual Reference Library, Encyclopedia Britannica; BBC.
Last month, it was confirmed that The Crown, the 10-part biographical drama television series, created and written by Peter Morgan and produced by Left Bank Pictures and Sony Pictures Television for Netflix has been commissioned for a second season.
Filming, in fact, has already begun.
The epic drama focuses on the early reign of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, the longest remaining monarch in British history, from 1947, and her marriage to Philip Mountbatten, her bitter clash with her younger sister Princess Margaret, through Winston Churchill’s resignation in 1955 as Prime Minister, when the ‘’British Bulldog’’ was forced from 10 Downing Street due to failing health.
The series has largely been met with rave reviews.
And why wouldn’t it?
The cast is absolutely packed with star-studded talent, beginning with award winning actor John Lithgow as the grumpy old man, Sir Winston Churchill, English actress Claire Foy (who previously played Anne Boleyn for the BBC series Wolf Hall) as the young Queen, Matt Smith as Prince Phillip Duke of Edinburgh, and Jared Harris (who might best be remembered as Lane Pryce from the AMC drama series Mad Men) who packs a mighty punch portraying King George VI before his untimely death in 1952.
The sterling cast is matched by a spectacular budget. The Crown reportedly cost a record $130 million, making it the most expensive television production ever by Netflix. The recreation of Queen Elizabeth’s wedding dress alone, worn by Foy in the premiere episode, cost roughly $35,000, according to The Telegraph.
In all, there were reportedly 20,000 costumes worn in Season 1, 293 speaking parts (up to 600 extras), and about 500 production crew hired across the UK, South Africa, and Kenya.
So why the need for yet another British period piece?
Some, like James Vernon, Professor of History at the University of California Berkeley, cast a skeptical eye.
What strikes Vernon the most about The Crown is its timing, coming so soon after the Brexit vote (Britain’s exit from the European Union). The strength and glory of the British Monarchy, according to Vernon, and its influence over public policy, has long disappeared.
Vernon argues that '' It [The Crown] is obviously part of a long tradition of aristocratic and royal shows (Downton Abbey being the most recent) with the fantasy of an independent nation, (one with an empire still) – only perpetuates and reproduces the nationalist idiocy that led to the Brexit vote. This is the version of Britain they want to recapture.''
That, of course, is a profound political view of The Crown.
Others, like to highlight the show’s majestic, artistic quality.
According to James Sherwood, London-based broadcaster, curator, and author of ``Fashion at Royal Ascot: Three Centuries of Thoroughbred Style,” “the final three episodes did choose to shine too bright a spotlight on the marital difficulties of The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.” “The animosity between The Queen and Princess Margaret,” Sherwood thought, “was also rather overplayed when you consider how close the sisters remained for the rest of their lives. But apart from those two lapses in taste, I think The Crown was a huge success and looked absolutely glorious.”
John Lloyd, contributing editor of the Financial Times, and previously a reporter for London Weekend’s London Programme and producer on London Weekend's Weekend World, thinks The Crown lives up to its grand billing, though, he would one day like to the see the darker side of the monarchy dramatized.
“Like most films, documentary or fiction, on the UK royal family, it's essentially respectful, stressing the Queen's seriousness, responsibility and growing confidence. These are traits which she does seem to have; the allure comes not so much from her but from the glimpses given of royal life, the dramatic and romantic side of it played up.” Lloyd observed. “It's mildly narcotic, but after a while sickly, like too much of something too sweet.” “It would be good,” Lloyd suggests, “to have a radical film maker let loose on a film, illuminating the darker passages, and the still-servile attitude much of British society displays towards the royals. “
Anne Sebba, British biographer, writer, and author of a number of books, including, "That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor," while applauding the show's gripping and entertaining quality, does point out one factual oversight of The Crown.
According to Sebba, "Wallis [who married Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor, which led to his abdication] is too simpering sweet for my taste." "She was angry at her exile", Sebba explained, this along with her humiliation at not being granted Royal status and the sacrifices she felt she had made to live with the Duke. Their bitterness was corrosive and worsened with time. "
"Beyond the compelling entertainment," Sebba said, "it’s good to be reminded of the family dynamics that the public can otherwise only guess at. How Philip has bridled at his perceived straitjacket, how Churchill’s continuation in power made him a frail relic of a bye-gone era, how the loving relationship of Margaret and Elizabeth was complicated and shot through with envy, but above all how the shadow of the Abdication loomed over almost every decision and set the tone for how the Royal Family should behave long after that behavior was appropriate."
Patrick Allitt, born in England, educated at Oxford, and professor of American history of Emory University in Atlanta, gives The Crown two thumbs up, three thumbs up, in fact, if he had another thumb and looks forward to Season 2.
"I think it’s a really brilliant achievement," Allitt told me, "in that it manages to avoid either gushing over, or condemning, the monarchy. The complexity of the characterizations is superb, as is the presentation of awkward dilemmas (like what to do about Princess Margaret). I particularly appreciated the way in which Churchill is shown to be a very troublesome old fellow, not the demi-God we’re sometimes presented with these days. "
Personally, what I found so enlightening about The Crown, aside from the tug and pull of the complicated relationship between the state and crown, amid a rapidly changing world in the mid-twentieth century, was how the liberty and independence of Elizabeth was stripped from her as soon as she ascended to the throne. Soon after her coronation, she quickly realized, at times painfully, that she now had to cling to the office the Crown with its long held British monarchial traditions and practices, however archaic and out of date they may have seemed.
When Elizabeth, for example, first approved of the marriage of her sister Margaret to Group Captain Peter Townsend, a divorced war hero, she is reminded that the monarchy must submit to the Royal Marriages Act 1772, which stipulated that Margaret would have to wait until age 25 to marry a divorcee. In the end, Elizabeth deferred to the office of the Crown rather than grant the wishes of the sister she loved so much, including breaking a promise they once made to their late father, that they would always put each other first no matter what.
Elizabeth's personal liberty is subordinated, once again, when she wants to appoint her personal favorite as her private secretary, when her current secretary to the Sovereign, Tommy Lascelles, announces his retirement. She is soon strongly encouraged to stick to the tradition of the office, by appointing the senior deputy (not one of her own choosing) in keeping with the traditional line of succession.
So, even with all the gilded trappings of the monarchy living as she does in the splendor of Buckingham Palace with wall to wall servants, footmen and drivers, at her beckoning call; in the end, it all comes at a mighty high cost: Elizabeth’s personal freedom.
In an average year, The Queen receives approximately 60,000 pieces of correspondence.
Queen Elizabeth II was Time Magazine's Person of the Year in 1952.
The Queen always writes with a fountain pen that belonged to her father, King George VI.
The only house the Queen is not permitted to enter is the House of Commons, since she is not a commoner.
The Queen is distantly related to George Washington, the first President of the United States and General Robert E. Lee
The Queen has 10 residences at her disposal: Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, St. James Palace, Kensington Palace, Hampton Court Palace, Balmoral, Sandringham, Holyrood Palace, the Tower of London and the Palace of Westminster.
The Queen's middle names are Alexandra Mary. She was known to her grandmother, Queen Mary, as `The Bambino.'
As young girls, Elizabeth and Margaret were educated at home. They were the last royals not to receive a formal education.
Queen Victoria was the first sovereign to take up residence at Buckingham Palace in July 1837 and in June 1838 she was the first British sovereign to leave from Buckingham Palace for a Coronation
Buckingham Palace has 775 rooms. These include 19 State rooms, 52 Royal and guest bedrooms, 188 staff bedrooms, 92 offices and 78 bathrooms.
Source: The Royal Family website; ``The Book of Royal Useless Information: A Funny and Irreverent Look at the British Royal Family Past and Present'' By Noel Botham and Bruce Montague.
