Tying some threads together

 My long-awaited copy of Christina Lane's Phantom Lady, her biography of Joan Harrison, arrived from Waterstone's last week and did not disappoint. Harrison was a close associate of Alfred Hitchcock, his wife Alma Reville and their daughter Patricia. She was a writer, script editor and eventually a Hollywood producer in her own right. Her major achievement was probably what is now termed "showrunner" for Alfred Hitchcock Presents which ran for eight years on various networks in the US and was taken up by ITV in the UK. 

Ms Lane's thorough research fills in a lot of gaps in the sketch of Sarett Rudley logged here four years ago. She has turned up a couple of marriages which I missed, for one thing. Sarett (described by Lane as "a ball of fire") worked on the Hitchcock TV series and also on Journey to the Unknown a Harrison series produced in Britain jointly with Hammer after Harrison had moved back to Europe with husband Eric Ambler. Harrison had had a number of affairs with prominent men in Hollywood. It was quite a surprise when she appeared to opt for domesticity with Ambler. There was clearly affection on both sides - the marriage lasted until Harrison's death in 1994 - but Ambler once remarked that "the only person Joan really loved was a woman". Christina Lane proposes that the woman was Sarett Tobias. There is good evidence. Sarett was in a relationship with Richard Mason's first wife when she became his second, and the honeymoon appears to have become a threesome. I would still dearly love to see a photo from when the Masons set up their farm in Wales. Surely some mid-Wales newspaper archive has a photo of the famous author and his attractive wife attending a show?

The other thread was that of Norman Lloyd, socialist and veteran of the Federal Theater Project, an offshoot of FDR's "New Deal". He was an obvious candidate for the Hollywood blacklist and had to retreat from cinema and TV to the New York stage to make a living. Though he had long been a friend of Hitchcock, it was at Joan Harrison's insistence that Lloyd came back to work in TV, on the Hitchcock series, overcoming network reservations. It was not just because Lloyd was a favourite tennis partner; Harrison hated the blacklist and managed to bring many writers and actors back in from the cold. Lloyd was later an executive producer on Journey to the Unknown, which sadly lasted only one season in spite of good critical reviews. There is more on Norman Lloyd, who died last year, on IMDb.

I thoroughly recommend Phantom Lady.

Tories stick with dishonesty and corruption

 There will be a reckoning on the 23rd.

The monarchy, looking back and forward

 In the middle of the long weekend of diamond jubilee celebrations, I do not suppose I am the only one of my generation in trying to recall the moment when the news of the death of George VI broke. The truth is that I cannot recall what should have been a flashbulb memory. It must have occurred in the brief time between evacuation of service families from Egypt and my father's re-posting to Benghazi. The celebration of the coronation by the army school there I certainly remember. The swiftly-produced colour film featuring William Walton's stirring Orb and Sceptre was shown to us pupils. But of the accession itself I have only a dim memory of a black-and-white photo of the new queen and her consort with a bewildered-looking Prince Charles and Princess Anne. 

In searching the Web for that photo I came across this story which features (second image) the new queen descending the stairs from her British Overseas Airways plane home to be met by the great and good. (Nerdy point: the plane was an Argonaut, BOAC's name for the Merlin-engined development of the Douglas DC-4 by Canadair.) The welcoming party included Winston Churchill, her prime minister, Clement Attlee, previous prime minister and probably the future prime minister Anthony Eden, then foreign secretary.  

The brooch that features in that story dates from a 1947 visit by the then Princess Elizabeth and Duke of Edinburgh to apartheid South Africa and Southern Rhodesia whose colonial administration was hardly less racist. Does her majesty's attachment to that brooch betray nostalgia for those days when the sun never set on the British Empire? I prefer to think that she treasures it only as a beautiful object. Certainly, when she was active as head of the Commonwealth she was clearly at ease with the other heads of state, whatever their origin or skin colour.

That is less true of her future successor as Commonwealth head who seems to have absorbed his father's prejudices. The other members may well have second thoughts after a year or so of his chairmanship. At home, Charles (or whatever other regnal name he chooses) may well be forced to preside over a transition to an elected (or appointed) head of state. It is, however, important that any president has no greater powers that royalty has at present.  We do not want to repeat the stresses and strains of such executive presidencies as France and the United States. Germany and Ireland must be the models.

Will Llandod have a mini-jubilee celebration in October?

 

[Original photo by David Luther Thomas]

This stone is set into the down platform of Llandrindod Wells station. One hopes it will look somewhat brighter come Llandrindod Wells' own platinum anniversary later this year. 

Back to pre-Clegg days in local government

 Mark Pack, president of the federal Liberal Democrat party, has posted;

Over the last couple of weeks, new Liberal Democrat council leaders have been taking up their posts all across the country, with the number of Lib Dem majority councils now back to where it was before the 2010 coalition.

I’ve covered many of these on social media, but in particular it’s worth highlighting the two new unitary authorities of Westmorland & Furness and Somerset.

The Conservative Party’s enthusiasm for large new unitary councils has always seemed to be fuelled in part by a political calculation – that larger councils, with larger wards and less frequent elections will benefit them compared to parties such as the Lib Dems. However, in both north west and south west England this May, that proved to be spectacularly wrong.

This resurgence is echoed in Wales, though patchily. There is clearly still resentment at Clegg's U-turn on the social security budget which hit post-industrial Wales more than most.

The E-sleazabethan age

 That is my best attempt at a Sun-style headline, but one that the Sun will never use.

The growth of dubious large money movements through the City of London began not long after Elizabeth came to the throne. According to Ian Bullough in his series for Radio 4, How to Steal a Trillion, the seeds were sown in the mid-1950s when the Midland Bank (later to be taken over by the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank) did a deal with Moscow Narodny Bank. The Russian bank's London branch was sitting on millions of dollars which it did not want to come under the jurisdiction of the USA. This was the time of the Cold War and there was mutual suspicion between the USA and USSR. The Midland offered to borrow the money, which it could then lend out and both banks would make money at a time when formal exchange controls were making large bank profits difficult. Thus was the Eurodollar market born.

Tuesday's episode showed how London banks literally moved money off-shore, avoiding tax as well as regulation, by opening branches in British overseas territories. A point that Bullough missed out of his presentation that UK government deliberately turned a blind eye since allowing poor island nations like the Cayman Islands to make money from a financial regime favourable to money-launderers avoided having to subsidise them.

Yesterday stressed the need for enforcement of company regulation in the UK, a theme which is to be expanded on today.

Overdue recognition for Bradford

Although there is a twinge of sorrow that Wrexham did not gain the jam of City of Culture 2025 on top of the cream of city status, I am delighted that Bradford has at last been recognised. When the Museum of Cinema and Photography was set up in the 1980s it was truly ground-breaking. One of the highlights of a time spent contracting in Leeds was a day-trip to Bradford to take in the Museum and I was not disappointed. To some extent, other attractions have caught up, but I see from their Web pages that the now National Science and Media Museum has continued to develop.

 

The "let them eat brioches" brigade are countered

 The Office for National Statistics has responded to the excellent Jack Monroe's charge that the official cost of living index does not reflect the spending of the least well-off. On Monday, they published the results of a survey which does indeed show price rises over the last twelve months for a basket of 30 everyday items. While potatoes and cheese have become slightly cheaper, less perishable supermarket own-label standbys like pasta and rice have risen. In all only 6 of the items in the basket have seen a fall.

There is a belief in comfortably-off circles that the poor have only themselves to blame for getting into debt. One recalls the suggestion by Lee Anderson MP  that there would be no need for food-banks if everybody knew how to cook properly. Well, this pensioner has had to cook for himself for at least the last couple of decades. Katharine Whitehorn's "Cooking in a Bed-Sitter" and Bee Nilsson's Penguin cookery book have been my friends for many years. But "getting by" has been replaced by "struggling" these last few months. Yes, more young people should be taught cookery, but clearly there must be many people badly off in spite of basic cookery skills.

Moreover, Jack Monroe has been lucky - or canny - enough to be within striking distance of an Asda supermarket. So, although Asda had raised the cost of basic items, they would not have been as expensive as those in convenience stores or corner shops. Many pensioners and even young families without their own transport have access only to the latter, and not to supermarket items. (This is no criticism of convenience store owners, by the way. They have proportionately higher overheads than the supermarkets, without the benefit of volume of sales.) The ONS survey concentrated on supermarket goods. It will undoubtedly be more costly to arrange, but there ought to be a supplementary survey visiting only corner shops.