Sunday 13 January 2013

Princess Margaret Wedding

Daily Sketch dated Saturday May 7th 1960
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In 1953 the new Queen Elizabeth’s younger sister, Margaret Rose, accepted a proposal of marriage from RAF Group Captain Peter Townsend. Unfortunately Townsend was divorced and with Margaret now 4th in line to the throne, the Queen, the Church of England and the British Government all opposed the union. After a couple of years Margaret finally gave in and announced that she would not marry Townsend. In 1960 she decided to get hitched to society photographer Anthony Armstrong-Jones (later Lord Snowdon). Their very stormy marriage lasted until 1978 when they finally divorced.

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The Queen not smiling at a State occasion, well there's a surprise.

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I think there is some photographic trickery going on here – I can definitely see a join across the middle. If only they had had Photoshop.

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Taxi driver Thomas Leslie Harvey decided to decorate his mother’s house as a surprise while she was in hospital. He opened a cupboard door at the top of the stairs and found a mummified body.
His mother, Sarah Harvey, had always told him that the cupboard contained some leftover items belonging to former wartime tenants.
64 year-old Sarah was questioned by the police and eventually identified the body as that of a former tenant Mrs Frances Knight, who was estranged from her husband. One night in 1940 Sarah found Mrs Knight dead and instead of reporting the death she put the body in the cupboard. Over the following years she carried on collecting Mrs Knight £2 weekly allowance from the Post Office.
In the subsequent trial Mrs Harvey was cleared of murder but was found guilty of obtaining money by deception and was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment.

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As mentioned before in this post, the Pop comic strip is one of my favourites. I must admit I didn’t realise it lasted so long, although this is obviously a different artist to the 1933 example. In fact I have just consulted the oracle and find that Pop’s creator John Millar Watt left the strip in 1949. It ended in this year of 1960.

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This small piece heralded one of the most famous spying incidents of the Cold War when CIA pilot Gary Powers was flying a U2 high altitude jet over Russia and was shot down on May 1st by a ground-to-air missile. Powers was tried, found guilty of espionage and sentenced to 10 years but was exchanged for a Russian KGB spy in 1962.
Back in the USA Powers was criticised for not using the self-destruct on the plane before ejecting and therefore letting the Soviets investigate the wreckage.
He was a civilian test pilot until 1970 and then became a helicopter pilot for TV companies. He was killed in a helicopter crash in 1977.

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In 1955 Peter O’Donnell (also creator of Modesty Blaise) and Alfred Sindall created the cartoon strip ‘Tug Transom’. It featured the adventures of a cargo boat captain (wow! move over James Bond) and lasted in the Sketch until the paper closed down in 1971.

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Lots of goodies here – ‘Ivanhoe’ starring Roger Moore, ‘Sea Hunt’ with Lloyd Bridges (father of Jeff and Beau), ‘M Squad’ with Lee Marvin, ‘77 Sunset Strip’, ‘The Four Just Men’ with one or more of Richard Conte, Dan Dailey, Jack Hawkins or Vittorio De Sica, ‘Colonel March of Scotland Yard’ with Boris Karloff sporting an eye-patch, ‘Dial 999’ with Robert Beatty and ‘Robin Hood’ played by Richard Greene.

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About 700 of the Fairthorpe Electron Minor kit cars were produced between 1957 and 1973. A partially restored 1960 Electron Minor would set you back about £9000 today. Ugly little thing, isn't it?

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The 1960 FA Cup Final was between Blackburn Rovers and Wolverhampton Wanderers. Wolves won with a 3–0 victory that included a Blackburn own goal.







1 comment:

  1. Thanks to your clipping of TUG TRANSOMN´s strip, I can now start putting in place chronologically many of the episodes. I appreciate your sharing it. Carlos A. Altgelt
    caltgelt@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete