R.I.P. the Kirky Legend

               R.I.P. Kirky Legend - Passed away on 14 July 2013         

This is a rather unusual post for me, in that it is about a man I saw every day (for about thirty years) until about a week ago, Jim Rae.

Jim looked like a man of the road, with his tattered oilskins, large rubber galoshes and a huge backpack.

Whenever I went into the Village he was always there, striding along the road with his peculiar loping gait, or standing at one of the bus stops.

He wasn't homeless though, he apparently lived in a modern appartment near Townhead in Kirkintilloch .

Goodbye Jim, you will be sadly missed.

A Tribute Page has been established on Facebook  at  https://www.facebook.com/pages/RIP-Kirky-Legend/398575646920819?hc_location=stream

Photographs are courtesy of that Page.

Please note that the organiser of the Kirky Legend Facebook page has arranged to have a collector, or collectors at the Kirkintilloch Canal Festival on Saturday 24 August to raise a fund to pay for a monument to Jim Rae.

William Beckford - An Enigma

                                William Beckford 1760-1844     

I first became aware of William Thomas Beckford when I read his Arabian/ Gothic novel  Vathek in the 1960s. Then, as now I had a fascination for the weird and wonderful. Vathek was orignally written by him in French.

 William Beckford,was born on 1 October 1760, the son of William Beckford and Emma Hamilton, and as a young man he was believed to be the richest man in England with a fortune, then, of one million pounds.

His achievements were many, he was a Novelist, a Poet and a Composer, having studied under Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He had an art.collection which included works by Raphael, Bellini, Claude and Caneletto  
He also built Fonthill Abbey and the infamous Lansdown Tower (Beckford's Tower), the tallest structure in England at the time.

The Tower, however was very badly constructed, and had to be rebuilt. He also constructed a pleasure garden,known as Beckfords Ride which he used to walk each day with a dwarf servant and his four dogs.

By the time he died, on 2 May 1844, his fortune had dwindled to £100.000.

Further information about Beckford can be found at   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thomas_Beckford

The Kennedy Clan was Irish - True?

                                                               
                                                     John F Kennedy

                         The Kennedy Clan was Irish - True ?

Wrong, the Kennedy Clan originated in Scotland, and were originally of Pictish/Norse stock, with origins in Scotland's Western Isles. In the 11th and 12th century, their Homeland was in and around Dunduff Castle, near Carrick in Ayrshire.Their later Clan Seat was Culzean Castle near Turnberry. Among their enemies in Scotland was the Bruce Clan led by King Robert the Bruce. They left Scotland in the 12th and 13th centuries to settle around Tipperary in Ireland.

Sartre's Roads to Freedom - The Mystery of the BBC's Lost Tapes.

Just over 43 years ago the BBC first aired a dramatisation of Jean Paul Sartre's Roads to Freedom Trilogy.

The first episode was shown on the 10th of April 1970, and the last episode was shown on 27th December 1970 (my 20th Birthday.

The series starred Michael Bryant as Mathieu Delarue, Daniel Massey as Daniel Sereno, Rosemary Leach as Marcelle, Clifford Rose as Jacques and Simon Ward as Philippe.

It seemed likely that the BBC wiped the tapes, despite the series being nominated for several awards.  

For years the BBC cloaked the existence of recordings in secrecy, leading to the belief that no recordings existed. This year a few hundred people were privileged to see the whole series screened at the British Film Institute in London. It sold out.

Just after, its director James Cellan Jones wrote:
"I directed Roads to Freedom for the BBC in 1970. It had some faults but was one of the best things I've ever done; it was repeated on BBC2 in 1976/7. It was shown at the NFT on May 12th & 13th, 2012 to full houses at both sessions. This was entirely due to Marcus Prince of the BFI who persuaded the BBC to lend them new copies.

I would love to see this show broadcast again and was encouraged by the enthusiasm of the NFT audience who I advised to write to the BBC requesting a retransmission or the publication of of it on DVD."

The series was last shown in 1976/77 and the last episode was shown the week before I bought my first VHS Video Recorder. 

At the moment the fragment  below is all that exists of the series on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CjPeap6Xyo

A Petition to bring back the series can be found at  http://www.gopetition.co.uk/petitions/bbc-s-roads-to-freedom-1970.html

Hitler and Eva Braun Escaped Berlin and died in South America in 1962

A new book claims Adolf Hitler faked his death and escaped from Berlin and travelled to Argentina with Eva Braun in 1945.

Grey Wolf - The Escape of Adolf, by British authors Gerrard Williams and Simon Dunstan says Hitler and Braun had two daughters before Hitler died in 1962 at the age of 73.

"They refute the widely accepted view that the Fuhrer shot himself in his Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945, and Braun committed suicide by taking cyanide," Britain's The Daily Mail reported.
"Instead, they claim, there is 'overwhelming evidence' to suggest that the couple escaped at the end of the Second World War for a new life in a Nazi-controlled enclave in Fascist Argentina."
"The book also claims American intelligence officials were complicit in the escape, in return for access to war technology developed by the Nazis.

"It also says that skull fragments thought to be those of Hitler currently held by the Russians are actually that of a young woman under the age of 40. Hitler was 56 when he died."

A film will be released early next year.

For further information go to http://www.greywolfmedia.com/

Grahamston - Glasgows Lost Village

Grahamston - Glasgows Lost Village.

Until the1870's there existed a village called Grahamston, just outside the (then) City Boundary, this was largely demolished yn the 1870's to allow the building of Glasgow Central Station, and now only two remnants of the village remain above gound level, these are the Grant Arms (near the Heilanman's Umbrella), and the the former Duncans building that is now the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Hotel.

The remainder of Grahamston now lies beneath Central Station and very few photographs exist.

Grahamston/s main street still exists (in part) directly beneath Platform 3 of Central Station.

For further information see  http://www.abandonedcommunities.co.uk/page192.html

Sir Bernard Lovell (obituary)

                     Sir Bernard Lovell   (31 August 1913 – 6 August 2012)

Very sad to hear of the death of Sir Bernard Lovell, former Director of Jodrell Bank Obsevatory in Cheshire.

It is a little known fact that Lovell, and John Logie Baird together with Professor RV Jones ,were the co-inventors of Radar on which they worked at the Telecommunications Research Establishment during WW2.

The credit for radars invention was given (wrongly) to Watson Watt (the Senior Scientific Officer) the leader of the team, although Baird held most of the patents for Radar.
Lovell attempted to continue his studies of cosmic rays with an ex-military radar detector unit, but suffered much background interference from the Electric trams on Manchester's Oxford Road.

He moved his equipment to a more remote location, one which was free from such electrical interference, and where he established the Jodrell Bank Observatory, in Cheshire.
Lovell was knighted in 1961 for his important contributions to the development of Radio Astronomy, having been granted an OBE in 1946 for his work on Radar