Film director Ken Russell who died last night had many Bournemouth connections.
He visited from his home in Southampton as a child but many who hear his name will think of his 1977 film Valentino being shot at the Russell-Cotes Museum and The Grand cinema in Westbourne.
A number of local people can recall being an extra. The stars were Rudolf Nureyev and Leslie Caron.
Today’s Times has an obituary of Fleetwood Mac founder Bob Brunning who wrote The Blues: The British Connection reference book. This follows obituaries in The Independent and The Guardian.
Bob Brunning grew up in Bournemouth where he played in Tony Blackburn’s band. Bob’s 1959 Fender Precision bass was bought in a Bournemouth music shop.
He died in Lambeth where his funeral took place.
The two were at college together.
a band
I have just fallen on a new book about the Meyrick family.
It delves so far back that we are talking about Sir Peter Mews who bought the Christchurch manor (embracing future Bournemouth) in 1708. ‘Meyrick’ was added to the family name later after some twists and turns.
Dorothy Turcotte has written Strange Affairs at Christchurch: Sir Peter Mews – knave or knight? She comes up with new information after years of research.
Mews was a mysterious fellow and facts about him have been muddled by earlier historians. Indeed Mews seems to have laid false trails himself.
It is fascinating to find that the ‘Gervis’ in Sir George Tapps-Gervis-Meyrick is derived from Peter Mews’ wife Lydia Jarvis who came from an Islington family. This earlier spelling may explain why older Bournemouth residents pronounce ‘Gervis’ as ‘Jarvis’ when referring to Gervis Place at the end of Westover Road.
Strange Affairs at Christchurch is published by Natula (£7.95).
A new theory about the identity of Jack the Ripper suggests it was Frederick Abberline.
The details are found in a new book published in Spain and called Jack the Ripper: The Most Intelligent Murderer in History by Jose Luis Abad.
The Mail on Sunday has the story.
Recently there was much praise for architect Elisabeth Scott who as a young woman designed the 1932 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre building at Stratford-upon-Avon.
In March this year the Queen, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, officially re-opened the theatre, now called the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, following a programme of refurbishment and updating.
Elisabeth Scott was the first woman to win a major architectural competition.
In January BBC Radio 3 broadcast a profile.
In later life she returned to work in her home town of Bournemouth. Her last major work was its 800-seat Pier Theatre opened in 1960 with a performance of Carry on Laughing.
Now after half a century Openwide International, which manages Bournemouth Pier, has applied to the Council to turn the theatre into an indoor surfing attraction.
The National Piers Society has raised concerns about this news which has been extensively reported in The Stage.
It is a pleasant surprise to find work by Nina Somerset reproduced on the New Liturgical Movement website.
These are altar cards at St Silas, Kentish Town, in London.
Nina Somerset (1893-1983) lived in Charminster Road and attended nearby St Francis. Her stations of the cross are found in St Stephen’s.
See page 143.
The St Stephen’s Church May Festival is to feature the Song of Bournemouth “by popular request”.
Last year the festival included Percy Whitlock’s long forgotten song to mark the town’s bi-centenary. The audience joined in and there was a huge ovation afterwards.
This year the Song of Bournemouth will be the climax of the Choral Concert on Sunday 1 May. The orchestral parts by Whitlock have recently been found in the BSO archives so on May Day a soloist will sing the verses and the audience will join in the refrain:
Bournemouth, Pride of the South, we sing in praise of thee, /Of giant pines and shady pines, fair garden by the sea. /We glory in the beauties, we breathe thy fragrant air /Bournemouth, Pride of the South, our home so wondrous fair.
The concert, in the presence of the Mayor, is at 7pm on Sunday 1 May at St Stephen’s Church; ticket £12.
This weekend Talbot Heath School celebrated its 125th anniversary.
The foundation date is taken as 1886 when Mary Broad relaunched Cranleigh Ladies School in Bradburne Road as her own. She bought the school in 1885 but it had been started some time before in Old Christchurch Road so Talbot Heath could claim to be even older.
On the other hand Miss Broad’s school, which she soon moved to a site near West Station, was known as Bournemouth High School. The present name was only adopted in 1935 so you could say that Talbot Heath is only 76 years old.
But this is certainly a time to remember its many famous pupils including Church Times editor Rosamund Essex, film critic Dilys Powell, pioneer TV cook Fanny Cradock and reformer Baroness Faithful.
The living include politician Shirley Williams, who has just been back for the celebrations and novelist Lexi Revellian.
The Talbot Heath website has old pictures and an interesting map.
See pages 33, 43, 60, 63 and 122.
When Terence Rattigan died in 1977 he had two plays running in London’s West End and both were set in Bournemouth.
One was Separate Tables which he had written in 1954. The second was his new and last play Cause Celebre which he had written in Bermuda.
Now Cause Celebre has been revived this year at The Old Vic in London for the centenary of Rattigan’s birth.
The play is based on the murder of architect Francis Rattenbury which took place in Manor Road in 1934 and made national headlines. A sensational trial of his young wife Alma and the chauffeur at the Old Bailey the following year was followed days later by the news that the acquitted wife had committed suicide at Christchurch.
The chauffeur George Stoner was sentenced to death but this was changed to prison after Almer’s death and he later returned to Bournemouth.
Rattigan contemplated a play about this case in the 1930s but did not do so until asked to write a radio play twenty years later.
The new production at the Old Vic, just yards from the Bournemouth trains at Waterloo, is full of references to the town with even a mention of the ‘Bournemouth Echo’. The telephone box outside the house gets a mention.
There is a cast of twenty-one with Anne-Marie Duff giving a fine performance as Alma as she has to switch from court room anguish back to her drunken flirtatious behaviour on the murder night.
The two and a half hour play, including interval, is fast moving with just the highlights of the court exchanges to maintain interest.
Pictures in the programme include one of the Rattenbury family on the beach at Bournemouth with the nanny and another shows the queue for the public gallery at the trial.
It would be good if this play could transfer to The Pavilion where Rattigan’s work has been staged before.
See page 126 for the Rattenbury and Rattigan entries.
The first statue of Mary Wollstonecraft is being planned in London.
The author, first feminist and mother of Mary Shelley is buried in St Peter’s Churchyard in Bournemouth thanks to her grandson son Sir Percy Shelley.
Last week a green Islington Council plaque to Mary Wollstonecraft was unveiled outside Newington Green School near where a school was co-founded by Mary. It’s here that the statue will be placed in 2013 if funds can be found.
Supporting the idea is Tobias Ellwood MP whose constituency includes Boscombe Manor in Shelley Park.
There is also a plaque on 45 Dolben Street Southwark marking the approximate site of her home when planning her book A Vindication of the Rights of Women.
See page 172.
