South Central Media 2006 - Film| TV | Books

So, Mister Bond, We Meet Your Family At Last…. With the new 007 film out this week, the press has been running tie-in features on Bond and his creator. One aspect of 007's creation still not widely known is that Fleming - and thus James Bond - had local roots down here on the south coast.

‘King Leer’ Gets His Due The figure some regard as the father of crusading journalism in Britain is finally receiving biographical recognition, over two centuries after he died. Locally, he is remembered by some as the man who drove the Prime Minister to seek refuge down here.

From Bournemouth To Bestsellerdom And Back Compared to the Betjeman centenary, the 50th anniversary of Gerald Durrell's autobiographical bestseller My Family And Other Animals has received little media coverage, but remains an anniversary worth noting here for its local interest.

The Betjeman Code A recently published document concerning the poet's private life proves to contain a secret code with a warning for future biographers.

Betjeman Centenary Poet Laureate John Betjeman, whose centenary is being commemorated by various media events, had various local links.

Hardy - The Secret Life? Due to its title, the new Hardy biography has been reviewed as to what to it reveals of the private life of the region’s greatest novelist and poet.

Restoration And Renovation Not many films get made in Bournemouth, but one that did has a link to the town's Gothic past.

Jurassic Coast For The Armchair Traveller A complete traverse of the 95-mile World Heritage Jurassic Coast is now possible for the armchair-traveller, via a new DVD/video series.

Jane Austen 2006 Various media events are being based on Austen's work, including the first film based on her life.

Rosamunde Pilcher Country Starts … Here
The filming of TV dramas in an area often boosts tourism. It's ironic that the series that draws the most tourists to southwestern England is the least known locally. During the past two decades, dozens of TV adaptations of the romantic novels of Rosamunde Pilcher OBE have been filmed in Dorset, Devon and Cornwall. This fact remains relatively unknown no doubt partly because these are foreign-language adaptations, and partly because TV romance-dramas do not attract critical notices, except of the derisory kind. But Pilcher, who is originally from Cornwall, remains less well-known in Britain than in Europe even as a novelist. (Her breakthrough novel, after three decades of obscurity, was her 1987 The Shell Seekers, which was filmed in Cornwall in 1989 and again this year.)
A few of the TV productions (Nancherrow, Coming Home etc.) were filmed for British and US TV, largely on location in Cornwall, but most of these TV dramas have been made by Frankfurter Filmproduktion for ZDF (German state TV), who used British company Steamship Films to handle much of the location work. The International Movie Database listing has over 60 German/Austrian and UK TV productions, stretching back to 1993. The ZDF productions are now a staple of Sunday-night German TV, viewed by up to ten million people. These are feature-length single dramas apparently filmed entirely on location, with locations in Dorset, Devon and Cornwall sometimes representing actual named locations and sometimes fictional 'generic' ones. Often directed by Rolf von Sydow (son of Max, the famous Swedish actor), they use German actors speaking German, with the odd English word such as 'cheerio' thrown in for local colour. (The approach is reminiscent of those WWII films where German officers when alone speak English to each other - though of course with a German accent.)
There are now German guidebooks to, and calendars of, "Rosamunde Pilcher's Cornwall," and German tour companies run week-long coach-trip packages around southwest England on the strength of the TV versions. This phenomenon is known as 'The Pilcher Factor' and it's said that even the author is at a loss to explain it. The tourism potential however is evident enough when you watch a few of the TV episodes. It lies in the fact the stories are romances of the 'heart-warming' sort, with family reunions as well as male-female romantic entanglements. For example, in the 2002 Morgen Träumen Wir Gemeinsam (literally "Tomorrow We Dream Together", also given as Let's Think About Tomorrow), taken from the second part of a Pilcher story called A Home For A Day, an attractive thirty-something mother visits Dorset (Bournemouth, the Purbecks, Milton Abbas, etc.). There, as well as being reunited with an old flame, she is reunited with her long-lost teenage daughter (who we see practising archery at a country college).
Everyone in these TV versions (except for the odd gardener) seems to be well-bred and well-groomed, dressed in expensive knitwear from the Marks & Spencer catalogue, and drives expensive sporty cars around an England with no litter, no lager louts. The English country types seen often own horses, which they ride along the clifftops for scenic effect. The skies are usually sunny (ZDF seem to have been luckier than many with their production schedule), except where the script calls for a climactic storm of the Thomas Hardy sort, which knocks trees down, trapping characters in their cars or giving the heroine a chance to show off her horse-riding skills. It's a romantic fantasy of an England of white cliffs and cream teas. Local authorities like Poole are actually now in effect paying to have Pilcher films shot in their areas, brokering deals to offer the filmmakers free accommodation etc worth tens of thousands of pounds, as the 'Pilcher factor' has brought in an estimated £14 million in tourist revenues to Cornwall.
As usual, the south-central region doesn't get proper recognition here, with the tourism focus on Cornwall and Devon. This is despite the fact the film company is fond of using Old Harry Rocks or Corfe Castle as a gateway-to-Pilcher-Country aerial opening shot even if the drama is set much farther down the coast, as with Flamme der Liebe (2003). Frankfurter FP New Media GmbH (as they now are) actually shot two productions back-to-back (a practice they've followed before) here this summer. One is called Die Liebe ihres Lebens ('The love of her life'), (from her story “The Happy Feeling”). I haven't been able to confirm the other title yet (it may be Wo die Liebe begann - Where Love Began). For the former (shown on ZDF in October), the production filmed scenes at Old Harry peninsula, Studland (Manor, Church and village), Corfe Castle [pictured], Clavel Tower and the Purbeck Coast Path, the inn at Plush, Cerne Abbas village, Salisbury (Cathedral and street), Minterne Magna house and estate, Bournemouth (Dean Park cricket pavilion), Poole, and Stonehenge [pictured - hover your mouse over the Corfe image].
If you want to view any of these ZDF 90-minute Pilcher TV adaptations, most are now on video and DVD (in German, not subtitled), and you can order these from ZDF's own online shop page. (Unlike France, Germany is on the same electronic standard as Britain.) The recent Die Liebe ihres Lebens isn't listed yet, but the Dorset-filmed Morgen Träumen Wir Gemeinsam (plot summarised above) is. Another locally-shot production was Der Preis der Liebe (The Price Of Love) (1997), which reportedly (haven't seen it myself) used Corfe Castle, Bournemouth Arcade, Bournemouth Airport, and Somerley House outside Ringwood. There is also Und Plotzlich War Es Liebe (roughly, "And Suddenly There Was Love") adapted from her 1958 novel Family Affair, which uses the Purbeck cliffs, Wimborne Minster (Cornmarket, Minster Books, etc), Studland, Swanage Pier, and Old Harry rocks (for an evening picnic scene).
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So, Mister Bond, We Meet Your Family At Last….
With the new 007 film out this week, the press has been running tie-in features, the keynote being that with this film version of the very first Bond novel, the film series is finally getting away from the flippant playboy routines and back to the roots of the character as Ian Fleming created him. In Casino Royale, we get a Bond who bleeds, who is human in ways we have not seen before. One aspect of 007's creation however that is still not widely known is that Fleming - and thus James Bond - had local roots down here on the south coast.
After his father died in WWI, his mother packed young Ian and his older brother Peter (who became a travel writer) off to a boarding school outside Swanage, called Durnford. Fleming's biographer John Pearson says it was the most unusual prep school in England, encouraging boys to roam the Purbeck hills, carry knives, and go on 'raids'. Young Ian went in something of a mummy's boy (his letters home survive), but there he was able to cultivate a sense of boyish adventure. The headmaster had created the rock-cut swimming pool at Dancing Ledge where the boys swam naked. Young Ian became interested in swimming and snorkeling, something that would feature in the 007 novels, with their regular underwater scenes. (Ian himself would go on to become a school sports champion at Eton.)
The name of Fleming's hero may have suggested itself at this time. His own explanation that he chose the name for its plainness, taking it from an American author of a book on birds seems, from a lifelong snob like Fleming, more a cover story. The Purbeck hills where young Ian roamed were also home to one of England's grandest families: the Bonds of Bond Street in London. In On Her Majesty's Secret Service, 007 researches his family tree for a case, and is told he may be related to them. He adopts the old family motto, taken from the Roman writer Juvenal's epithet for Alexander the Great: Unus pellaeo iuveni non sufficit orbis - 'For a young fellow, the world is not enough.' It could easily have been Fleming's own credo for his fictional hero, and was used as the title for a later 007 film.
There were also local sources of literary inspiration. The headmaster, whose daughter became a novelist (Hester Chapman) encouraged the boys to read adventure novels. In the evenings the headmaster's wife would read aloud to the boys while one of them massaged her feet. The choice of reading matter went from the locally-set smuggling adventure Moonfleet to Bulldog Drummond, who Fleming would later name as his literary inspiration for 007. (Drummond was an ex WWI officer who conducted vigilante operations against 'subversive' groups.) Young Ian still had to 'report' to his disapproving mother (who always regarded him as a disappointment), and who he addressed as 'M'.
Fleming was also encouraged by the novelist Phyllis Bottome (1882-1963), who grew up partly in Bournemouth, where her father served as curate at St Peter's downtown. Fleming met her later, when to "finish" him, his mother sent him to a language school in Kitzbuhel run by her and her husband Forbes-Dennis. She herself was a successful novelist (50 novels, 4 filmed), and unlike his real mother, offered him maternal encouragement to develop his interests. It was for her the 19-year old Ian wrote his very first story. She was a follower, and later biographer of the psychologist Adler. As therapy for his inferiority complex (he was always overshadowed by older brother Peter), she encouraged him to create gothic adventures with fantastic villains. She maintained her maternal interest in his work, keeping up a lifelong correspondence. There in the Alps, Fleming also took up skiing, driving fast cars, womanising, and so was born the playboy side of Fleming that James Bond 007 would cater to as a fantasy alter ego….
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'King Leer' Finally Gets His Due Detail from etching 'John Wilkes Esqr.' by William Hogarth, 1763

The figure some regard as the father of crusading journalism in Britain has finally received proper biographical recognition, over two centuries after he died. John Wilkes (1725-97) is probably best remembered today for one example of his political repartee: when the Earl of Sandwich told him, ‘you will die either on the gallows, or of the pox,’ Wilkes replied, ‘That must depend on whether I embrace your lordship’s principles or your mistress.’ Wilkes was a colourful character involved in a remarkable chain of events that had lasting consequences for press and parliamentary freedom. In America, where his writing helped inspire the Bill of Rights, he became such a hero towns were named after him, as were individuals (including Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth), but in England where he lived and worked, he remains relatively unknown. Earlier this year I wrote a feature about him, inspired by the discovery the story had a local connection, which I'd found while working on an earlier feature (Our Forgotten Regency Resort). For in 1763 it was Wilkes's crusading press campaign which virtually drove the PM of the day, Lord Bute, into resigning and fleeing London. Bute moved down here and built the stately home which the present Highcliffe Castle replaced … after both the house and its owner had fallen victim to the collapsing clifftop.
Opinion on John Wilkes's place in history has always been divided, and one can understand the difficulty history might have in writing him up. The Dictionary Of National Biography's entry on Wilkes has recently appeared as one of their featured online lives-of-the-week. These entries (like obits) are written long before they are published, the DNB putting them online if possible when there is some contemporary tie-in. The entry follows a new biography, Arthur H Cash's John Wilkes: The Scandalous Father Of Civil Liberty. The DNB send out copies of their lives-of-the-week entries by daily email to subscribers, with a custom subject-line similar to a news headline; the one sent out last month for Wilkes read: "King Leer." This is no doubt a reference to Wilkes as a scandal-mongering newspaperman akin to today's tabloid editor. For instance, he published, as the Encyclopædia Britannica put it, “libellous innuendos about Bute's relations with George III's mother.”
Wilkes was not only an opportunistic newspaper editor, he was also an opportunistic opposition politician - an MP and later Mayor of London. Some historians suspect he was the inspiration for Dr Johnson's famous quote about patriotism being the last refuge of the scoundrel. We could add to the DNB's rough pun: just like Shakespeare's King Lear, Wilkes made major mis-judgements, outlived his moment in history and ended almost an exile in his own country. Yet his legacy would survive. Another new book, Vic Gatrell's City Of Laughter: Sex And Satire In 18th-Century London details how the age was a time when political cartoonists flourished alongside the newspapermen. This was despite the considerable dangers and difficulties involved, dramatized last week by a two-hour C4 docudrama on Hogarth. Wilkes's own 'King Leer' image was largely a result of Hogarth's caricaturing him [pictured above] as "a foolish grinning man with demonic horns formed by his wig" (to quote the official portrait catalogue description) after the two fell out over a Wilkes exposé. (He had an odd facial appearance, with a squint in one eye and a prognathous jaw.)
As I indicated in my feature, the better-known William Cobbett, often classed as the first modern journalist, was following in Wilkes's footsteps as crusading journalist-turned-MP. (Cobbett got his biographical due last year, courtesy of long-time Private Eye editor Richard Ingrams, who saw contemporary relevance in Cobbett's life.) Despite Wilkes's reputation as an opportunist his achievements were real enough. To quote the DNB: "For two decades Wilkes fought for 'liberty', whether freedom from arbitrary arrest, the rights of voters, or the freedom of the press to criticize government and report parliament. He suffered exile, financial ruin, and imprisonment for his principles, and by a combination of political courage and tactical skill won notable victories over government. … After Wilkes British politics would never be the same again: his career permanently widened the political dimension beyond the closed world of Westminster, Whitehall, and Windsor."
Anyone who thinks this is all just ancient history without contemporary relevance should take note of this week's report from the organisation Reporters Without Borders. They produce an annual report, the Press Freedom Index, with national rankings. Britain comes only 27th, while the US is now 53rd (having fallen nearly forty places since the post-9/11 clampdowns). For those interested in press-freedom issues, and the legalistic shenanigans government resorts to suppress influential criticism, I've put my feature onsite here:
The 'Tuppenny Press' And The Birth Of The English Newspaper.
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The Betjeman Centenary And The De Harben Code
As the Betjeman Centenary [see entry below] rolls on with its month-long programme of events, a number of literary reviews and TV documentaries claim or imply he was a snob, an issue discussed (and rejected) by a New Statesman essay [4 Sep] which says that JB himself was a lifelong victim of class snobbery by the upper classes, who regarded him as 'common' and later as an upstart who needed to be put in his place - a process which now seems to be extending beyond the grave. The rivalry between pro- and anti-Betjeman biographies has led to an incident that has left Britain's leading biographer looking foolish. At the Edinburgh Book Festival, biographer A. N. Wilson read a taster from his upcoming biography Betjeman which made headlines. "Betjeman Poet, Hero Of Middle England & A Very Bad Boy. The Secret Second Wife! The Gay Affair With A Labour MP!" was the Telegraph's. ("The idea of John Betjeman as the lyricist of Middle England - celebrating old churches, evensong and country tea rooms - suffered a considerable jolt yesterday when an extract from a forthcoming biography of the poet claimed he was "a compulsive philanderer who had a secret 'second wife' and boasted of a gay fling with a top Labour politician".) The scandal of it! Will these Poets Laureate never learn?
The capper to this, 'The De Harben Code,' got the story into the US press. Wilson's forthcoming biography is reported as one of those which 'draws on unpublished letters', and it soon emerged there was a good reason why one of them - supposedly a 'steamy' love-letter from a previously unknown mistress - was unpublished. It was an encoded fake created by Bevis Hillier, whose rival biography Wilson, wearing his literary critic's hat, had trashed. Wilson had also attacked Hiller personally, saying he was a sad case who didn't live in London but in a medieval almshouse in the country (in Winchester), where he no doubt wore a smock like a pathetic old peasant, and so on.
Hillier at first denied, then admitted, the revenge hoax. The Sunday Times was tipped off by a followup letter from the same source, Eve de Harben, which proved to be an anagram for "Ever been had?" The letter said the hoax was to avenge an attack the waspish Wilson had once made on another rival biographer, Humphrey Carpenter (who did biographies on Tolkien etc). Hillier then said it was newspaper reports announcing that Wilson's upcoming bio, done in only a year, will be 'the big one', when he himself had spent 25 years on his 3-volume work. The 'de Harben' letter contained a coded message in the form of an acrostic. That is, if you read the first letter of each sentence, it forms a message, in this case, "AN Wilson is a …" - well, you get the idea - for the rest, see The Sunday Times article or Hillier's own account of his reasons, "You Deserved It, AN Wilson."
The Times has since revealed that Hillier got the assignment of writing the poet's life in the first place by means of an earlier literary hoax, dating back to 1976. When the publishers gave the job to 'some American girl' (actually a young Canadian academic), Hillier wrote a poem called The Biographer lampooning her academic approach, in the style of JB. ('... Miss Grabwitz was there with her notes./"And did you win prizes at Marlborough? And were you the Captain of Boats?"... She fed her notes into computers /And chewed at her Wrigley's gum. '). JB liked the spoof and mischievously forwarded it to the publishers, who took it as a genuine JB poem signalling his dislike of 'Miss Grabwitz', and gave the job to the hoaxer Hillier.
Wilson's biog is now being reprinted without the hoax letter, while the original edition has become an instant collector's item, sold on eBay. (For an American-press take on the matter and London as a "fecund swamp for literary feuds and counterfeuds", see "London Literary Hoax Is Its Own Whodunit" here.) I suspect JB would regard all this as a grand literary prank, and roar with laughter, just as he is depicted on his bronze sculpture and in his official website photo.

Winchester And The Da Vinci Code
Winchester, historic capital of Wessex and for most people the gateway to the south-central region, has become part of the Da Vinci Code tourist 'trail'. In fact it has a double link with The Da Vinci Code. First, the Cathedral has become a film location. It appeared in two scenes, and "doubled" as Westminster Abbey after Abbey officials changed their mind about allowing filming there.
For a flashback-style scene, the tombs of 19C 'worthies' (Jane Austen is there) were covered with 'fake ancient stonework,' and, as The Guardian reported, 'the glorious medieval building was flooded with special effects mist, through which ranks of armoured Knights Templar assembled to surround the Pope.' The Cathedral was paid a £20,000 facilities fee for this. This represents only about 3 days normal running costs for the Cathedral, and to raise further funds from this new revenue stream, it is appearing in other films. Crowd scenes have already been shot there for director Shekhar Kapur's follow-up to his award-winning 1998 Elizabeth (starring Cate Blanchett), called Elizabeth:The Golden Age. (Recent shcolarship suggests it was scarcely golden, but they obviously can't just call the sequel "Elizabeth II" .) The new film, this time to co-star Clive Owen will star as courtier (and Dorset MP) Sir Walter Raleigh, used hundreds of locals as extras.
The Cathedral has also subsequently been charging visitors a £4 entry fee (instead of a donation, as before), for it is now on 'The Da Vinci Code Trail.' According to a Telegraph article ['Winchester Cashes In On Da Vinci Code Film Fever'], some MPs have criticised this, but Cathedral officials pointed out it is not eligible for lottery funding. It is also using the opportunity presented for some CoE PR, by 'organising a series of event to dispel the myths.' There is an exhibition and a series of lectures by the Bishop and others, 'to seize the chance to address the huge market for the book and film' (i.e. the summer tourist trade), and giving 'a point by point demolition of the book and film.' (This is similar to what has been happening elsewhere, e.g. at London's Temple Church, where another scene was shot, and where the Rector gives weekly talks on TDVC.)
Secondly, the UK publishers of TDVC, Random House, were sued for copyright infringement by Holy Blood Holy Grail co-author Michael Baigent, who has lived there since 1976. He had been ordered to pay massive legal costs for his failed plagiarism suit, but as The Guardian [17-5-06] put it, "Contrary to the gleeful reporting of his defeat, he hasn't had to sell his nice house in Winchester." He and co-author Richard Leigh have not only paid their legal fees but obtained permission to appeal the verdict, since the judge said TDVC did use HBHG material. He will however continue to keep his Winchester address secret. Fundamentalist wrath over the 1982 bestseller led to death and bomb threats against the Holy Blood, Holy Grail co-authors and its publishers, and the book has enjoyed a spectacular increase in sales since the novel (which mentions it) and the international publicity over the trial. (For anyone interested in the legal case, the 'Da Vinci Code Trail', and related matters, these are covered in this blog.)
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Hardy - The Secret Life?
Due to its title, the new Hardy biography, Ralph Pite's Thomas Hardy: The Guarded Life [Picador] has been getting reviewed as to what to it might reveal of the private life of the region's greatest novelist and poet. For some years, there has been speculation of an illicit affair and possible illegitimate child. Hardy wrote his own biography in the third person, as if it were written by A.N.Other. His second wife evidently had a hand in it, and it appeared after his death under her name. Scholars refer to it impersonally as simply 'The Life.' There is some evidence Hardy rewrote private diary entries and letters for consistency with the version he issued for public consumption, but as Mrs H also burnt his papers to prevent posterity poring over them, it has been hard to tell what was what. However according to the Guardian Books review this new biography does not in fact plump for the idea there was a great secret or scandal that made Hardy so secretive. (This was the argument of earlier biographical accounts, by Lois Deacon and others, of a youthful affair with his cousin Tryphena Sparks and an illegitimate child raised by the family as a distant relation.) For further revelations of how Mr H transcended his humble beginnings in a snobbish Victorian age to become the man who put the English novel firmly on the map of England with his larger-than-life 'Wessex', we may have to wait for Claire Tomalin's upcoming Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man
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Restoration And Renovation
There's not that many feature films get made in and around Bournemouth, much less one acquiring a cult reputation in its field. But Freak Out, a 2004 £30K student production became something of a cult item despite its rather limited theatrical release. It has been in the local press lately, as it is being revamped technically and issued on DVD, by Anchor Bay Entertainment. From a team of local filmmakers calling themselves Beyond Therapy, it is of the ultra-low-budget-campy-schlock-horror genre. (Quite a few of these seem to get made in Southampton for some reason, e.g. Sanitarium, 2001, Darkhunters, 2003 and Hellbreeder, 2004). It now has an official website including a QuickTime trailer, here. For background, via a candid interview, on its 'childish, English humour,' see here.
It was written in the late 1990s, and was (as they used to say in Hollywood) five years in the making. It was thus shot on 16mm film (rather than digital video à la Blair Witch Project), using a 2nd-hand BBC news camera the filmmakers bought via a free-ad in The Advertiser. It was filmed in and around Bournemouth, Poole (Sandbanks ferry), Swanage (seafront), and in the New Forest ('a lot of the spooky wood stuff'). For the police station sequence they used Boscombe’s Shelley Manor, which then stood derelict, used as a squat by homeless men.
They were able to use Shelley Manor because it was then leased to the Art College (now the Arts Institute) where the director was a student. Shelley Manor itself seems to be finally about to see its own restoration as a community centre come about after standing empty for over five years, due to a lengthy dispute between the property owner and its Arts-Institute tenant over responsibility for renovations. (The filmmakers in their online interview, above, describe the disgusting condition it was in, saying it was the worst part of the entire five-year shoot.) A local campaign group, the Friends of Shelley Manor, helped get a plan to demolish it set aside. (English Heritage convinced the government in 1999 the Shelley Theatre should be a listed building.) Following the Council's selling it off to a medical trust, the original restoration plan for the Manor was rejected by the Council last summer following various local objections, but a revised plan has now been accepted. Part of it is to be a major medical centre handling 10,500 patients. Starting next March, the Shelley Theatre and Shelley Museum are to be restored, the former as a daytime ‘performance cafe.’ This is to be largely funded by having the rest of it converted into flats, privately sold to generate income.
Shelley Manor has its own connections to the horror genre, being built for Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, who married the poet after his first wife drowned herself. Mary died in 1851, before being able to move here, but the family had her and her Bohemian husband William Godwin's coffins exhumed from their London graves (supervised by a young Thomas Hardy, who was always keen on graveyards). It also had a ghoulish aspect in that the poet's sole surviving son, Sir Percy Florence Shelley (after whom the Boscombe pub is named) set up a shrine inside to his father. It contained the poet's heart inside a casket, in an alcove lit by a red flame, where family and friends could pay their respects. Allegedly the still-damp heart was snatched from his funeral pyre on the beach after they found his drowned corpse, and brought back from Italy, where the Shelley Museum was originally located, in his former home, Casa Magni, before the collection was moved to Boscombe. The family remains are now together in the Shelley-Godwin family tomb in St Peter's Churchyard in central Bournemouth, with Shelley's heart in Mary's coffin. Shelley's marble memorial, showing Mary cradling the drowned poet on the beach, however went to Christchurch Priory when St Peter's refused it, as they didn't want to become a shrine to such a disreputable character as Shelley, who had been expelled from Oxford for co-writing a pamphlet titled 'The Necessity Of Atheism.' (The same thing happened with Mary Shelley's memorial, a blue plaque meant to go on the house where she last lived, in Belgravia. The church authorities held it up for 28 years, 1975-2003, in a dispute over the plaque's text mentioning 'Frankenstein' which they felt inappropriate to have on a house now a vicarage. They wanted it just to say 'Author(ess) and wife of the poet'. In 2003 English Heritage finally got to put up a plaque 'using the dreaded F word', reading "Mary Shelley, 1797-1851, author of Frankenstein, Lived here 1845-1851.")
The latest development here is that Bournemouth-based author Christine Aziz, who won the Richard & Judy Prize for her novel The Olive Readers has written a play about Mary Shelley to help raise funds for the Friends of Shelley Manor, being staged at the De la Salle Theatre in Southbourne the first week August.
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Our Film Production Scene, Ten Years On
Ten years ago, for the British Film Centenary 1996, I wrote a report on the situation regarding the promotion of the Dorset area as a filming location centre since 1990 (when the British Film Commission was first organised). This was also a follow-up to my 1992 24-page brief for the Arts Council's "Towards A National Arts & Media Strategy" public consultation, for which I got a thank-you letter from them, as they had overlooked screen commissions in the list of arts organisations whom they had asked for input. Presumably they thought of these new commissions as purely economic agencies. What effect my solo Arts Council brief had, I have no idea - hopefully it was in gaining recognition for them more generally as agencies in support of the arts.
My 1996 'Dorset On Screen' report or brief was sent out at the time to the relevant local-government officers (both municipal and County), and there was also related publicity in the Echo, as mentioned in the text. I'm reproducing the report now online since in the past ten years I can't say matters have noticeably improved. We still have what the British Film Commission's original head Sir Sydney Samuelson called "black holes" of representation, one of these still being the Dorset area. (I had a letter from him agreeing with me on the importance of local knowledge being used in response to an earlier brief I had written pointing out BTA's The Movie Map was full of errors and oddities.) To me, it's part of the general problem which this website deals with, that the south-central region is squeezed out between the established South West and South-East regions.
Typical was the handling of a related information-database project for Dorset I proposed at the time, which the regional arts officers were keen to see happen. Neither the representative of Southern Arts (covering Bournemouth and East Dorset), or of SW Arts (covering points west) could even meet with me to discuss the idea unless the other was there - because Dorset sprawled between two jurisdictions. A meeting had to be set up where one would drive in from Winchester and the other from Exeter. In the event, one was unable to make the meet and the other had to cancel as she wasn't allowed to meet anyone without her opposite number present. It proved too complicated to set up another meeting, and I just gave up on it at that point. With the report, where necessary for the sake of clarity or greater accuracy, I've added footnotes alongside the original text, otherwise it is reproduced just as it was, except for the addition of film stills of local productions. (Warning: Contains depressing reading.)
[read full report]
Postscript: The BTA's inaccurate Movie Map is now gone - links to the relevant BTA webpage are dead. This is no doubt because so many towns and counties are providing their own information on film locations, which is itself likely to be more accurate. There is some representation of film location resources on local-government websites, but Bournemouth still has no municipal film office, Dorset has no separate screen commission, and the area continues thus to be neglected. At a recent SWFC seminar to teach local authorities how to ensure their jurisdiction is 'film-friendly', only one local-government staff member attended. For an indication of the continuing trend toward 'runaway productions' or lost shoots, see MediaScene blog entries from this year and last.

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