Valuable sculpture sold off for a song by my old school

Thursday's Front Row on Radio 4 had an item on Historic England's forthcoming exhibition Out There: Our Post-War Public Art, which opens at Somerset House on 3 February.

The item runs from 7:38 to 12:32, though the opening one on how Elton John now fits in touring around the school run makes good listening too.

Sarah Gaventa, the curator of the exhibition, talks about some of the lost works she would like to locate (if they have not already been melted down).

I blogged about Historic England and its quest for these lost public artworks in December.

One of the works Sarah mentions in her interview is the sculpture Astonia by Bryan Kneale, which she said was housed at "a Leicestershire school" between 1973 and 2014.

That school was my alma mater - now the Robert Smyth Academy. I remember the sculpture clearly, though I am afraid we never thought much of it.

It was sold two years ago by Gilding's of Market Harborough (frequent stars of TV's Flog It!) from whose website I have borrowed this image.

Astonia fetched £360 but should have made something like £30,000. Its whereabouts are now a mystery.

Leicestershire County Council had acquired it at the end of a mid 20th century era when the authorities believed the people, and children in particular, needed good public art. The wonderful School Prints come from that era too.

I mourn that era's passing, even if Astonia does not appeal to me today either.

Thanks to @RutlandNed for the tip.

Later. @Stephen25367746 tells me Astonia was originally displayed outside Southampton Art Gallery.

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Dame Janet Smith on Jimmy Savile and the BBC

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If the subject matter of Dame Janet Smith's report into Jimmy Savile and the BBC were not so serious, he conclusions would be funny.

Exaro, which has a leaked draft copy of her report, tells us:

In this second package of pieces, Exaro today reveals how Smith's report:

• reveals that Savile carried out far more sexual assaults on BBC premises than previously realised; 

• says that the BBC continued to use Savile to present Jim'll Fix It, a BBC1 programme aimed at children, despite "danger signals" about him; 

• exposes a failure by BBC bosses to notice even public warning signs about Savile's dark side; 

• recounts the damning private views of Savile from several well-known BBC colleagues; 

• shows how a BBC programme by Louis Theroux in 2000 exposed Savile as "deeply unattractive" and even raised the issue of his paedophilia. 

We also publish the key extracts from the Smith report's chapters of perceptions of Savile in the BBC, his sexual activities linked to the broadcaster, awareness within Jim'll Fix It of Savile's predatory behaviour, and the public warning signs that went unheeded.

And what does Dame Janet conclude?

Over to the Guardian:

In her final afterword, Smith insists no senior staff could have been made aware of Savile’s misconduct. 

“There is no evidence that any report of physical sexual misconduct or inappropriate behaviour ever reached the ears or the desk of a senior producer or an executive producer let alone a head of department or other senior executive.”

Many will find that inpossible to believe. But if this is true, it reinforces something I blogged about in October 2012.

Large organsations are too complex and too centralised for the people at the top of the hierarchy to have any idea what is really going on.

And it all those highly paid managers at the BBC have no idea what is going, how much would they be missed?

Do not, incidentally, fall for the argument that Savile was a long time ago and things have changed since then.

Nick Cohen reminds us of what happened to the people who exposed finally Savile on Panorama:

Liz MacKean: Resigned. ‘When the Savile scandal broke,’ she told me, ‘the BBC tried to smear my reputation. They said they had banned the film because Meirion and I had produced shoddy journalism. I stayed to fight them, but I knew they would make me leave in the end. Managers would look through me as if I wasn’t there. I went because I knew I was never going to appear on screen again.’ 

Meirion Jones: Took redundancy after his job on Newsnight mysteriously vanished. ‘People said they won’t sack you after Savile but they will make your life hell,’ he told Press Gazette. ‘Everyone involved on the right side of the Savile argument has been forced out of the BBC.’ 

Panorama: After its admirably rigorous documentary on the BBC’s failings, which did so much to restore the BBC’s reputation, BBC managers shifted Tom Giles, the editor of Panorama, out of news. Peter Horrocks, an executive who insisted throughout the scandal that the BBC must behave ethically, resigned to ‘find new challenges’. Clive Edwards, who as commissioning editor for current affairs oversaw the Panorama documentary, was demoted. 

As for Peter Rippon and all the other managers who parroted the corporate line, well, naturally, not one of them has suffered.

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Barbara Windsor and Murray Melvin talk about Sparrows Can't Sing

Joan Littlewood was a renowned theatre director but made only one feature film. Sparrows Can’t Sing was released in 1962.

Here two of the film's stars, Barbara Windsor and Murray Melvin, talk about the experience of making it.

Among the subjects they touch on are working with Littlewood, the Kray twins, Stephen Lewis (Blakey from On the Buses, who wrote the play on which the film was based) and Queenie Watts.

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Trevor Eve remembers Shoestring and Robert Banks Stewart

Robert Banks Stewart, creator of Shoestring and much else, died yesterday.

By chance I found this interview a few days ago. In it Trevor Eve remembers Banks Stewart and making the series.

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Diana Rigg talks about The Avengers

Thanks to Keith Frankish for tweeting the link to this.

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John Noakes aboard the Flying Scotsman

They don't make children's television like this any more.

I can remember Christopher Trace, who presented the show from 1958 to 1967. He was dropped in part for bedding a 19-year-old during a Blue Peter summer expedition to Norway. Biddy Baxter did not approve of That Sort of Thing.

Trace was exiled to BBC East in Norwich, which was still broadcasting in black and white as late as 1973.

According to a BBC profile, he was Charlton Heston's body double in Ben Hur.

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Six of the Best 562

There is still crucial work to do on the campaign to reform the pub trade, says Gareth Epps.

"Dickensian would not only be inspired by Dickens’s novels: in its alternating layers of melodrama and comedy, like the ‘streaky bacon’ effect he wrote about in Oliver Twist, its style would also be truly Dickensian." Robert Douglas-Fairhurst is literary adviser to the BBC series.

"The heritage minister, Tracey Crouch, announced that Clouds Hill, the tiny home of T E Lawrence , near Wareham in Dorset has been given Grade II* status," reports David Hencke.

Alwyn Turner introduces us to William Charles Boyden-Mitchell, better known as Bill Mitchell, and better known still as Uncle Bill of British Forces Broadcasting Service.

A Lady in London discovers Eel Pie Island.

"The churches of mostly rural Suffolk ... harbour a curiosity - woodwoses (literally 'wild-men-of-the-woods'), hirsute manimals brandishing clubs." Matt Salusbury on creatures that make Jacks in the Green look tame.

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The opening night of Oliver!

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9 July 1968 - Many belong to a species of stage boy, only related to childhood by their small size. All the other attributes of boyhood - youth, gaiety, innocence - have long since gone. Squat creatures, seemingly weaned on Woodbines, they are the boys who have been in Oliver! Lionel Bart has cut a swathe through the nation's youth like the 1914-18 war. They are the new Lost Generation.
Alan Bennett Writing Home (1994)

There is at present a good documentary from 2002 on the BBC iPlayer about the opening night of Lionel Bart's 'Oliver!' It includes interviews with the late Ron Moody and Tony Robinson, who was one of Fagin's gang.

I suspect a young Robinson is second from left in the photograph above. Holding the cake is Keith Hamshere, the original Oliver, who want on to become one of the leading stills photographers in the film industry.

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Six of the Best 561

"New research from Leeds University into the impacts of permitted heather burning on upland peat bog shows that for the 20% biggest storms, the flow of water over land is higher than in areas where the moorland has not been burnt."  A prophetic post from Upper Calder Valley Plain Speaker back in August.

A little unexpectedly, David Boyle's take on A Christmas Carol appears on Philosophy Football.

Matt Crowley pays tribute to Malcolm in the Middle: "Far from the wistful nostalgia of The Wonder Years or the chummy bickering of Home Improvement, Malcolm In The Middle presents a childhood that basically sucks. Bullies rule the school, teachers are indifferent, and being smart is akin to being radioactive."

There are still 1500 gas street lamps burning in London. Maev Kennedy meets the people who light them.

Sam Roberts chooses his top 10 London ghost signs.

Judging by its place names, the landscape of Medieval Lincolnshire was haunted monstrous creatures, says Caitlin Green.

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Christmas Day television in 1977

Looking forward to BBC1's offerings for Christmas Day evening, 1977.

It looks thin today, but then I have a feeling it may have looked a bit thin at time too.

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Why A Box of Delights was not filmed

Back in November 2009 I got excited by the news that Mike Newell was to direct a film of John Masefield's The Box of Delights with a script by Frank Cottrell Boyce.

But the film never went into production and I have now found an interview with Newell from 2012 that explains why.

Lousia Mellor from Den of Geek asked him about it and got a depressing reply:

Something close to our hearts is your planned adaptation of John Masefield's The Box Of Delights. What's the status of that at the moment? 

The script is there, I would love to make it but I think there is a problem with The Box Of Delights and the problem is that… I don’t know what children expect. 

I know what adult Hollywood producers think they expect and it is that the story should be much more intricate and much more special effect-y and have comedy and [waves hands around] terrible surprises, and to look overegged in general. 

The Box Of Delights is a story from the 1930s about a boy who has wished on him something that is almost a curse, which is a box that can allow him to do certain things, and is being struggled over by two powerful figures from the past. 

And you know, I’m from a certain generation, and I am the age I am and for me, it’s partly an answer to your thing about why didn’t you juice up Great Expectations. For me, the story of that book, just the way it is with the story of Great Expectations, is sufficient. 

It’s a really good story, it has a really strong human sense of good and evil and exploration and peril and all sorts of wonderful things but I think it’s in trouble because it isn’t Transformers.

A sad conclusion, but at least we have the BBC adaptation to watch.

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Six of the Best 558

Labour moderates don't need a new party, they need new ideas and new purpose, argues Jonathan Todd.

Mike Smithson says that if you want the opinion polls to tell you who will win the next election you should look at the ratings of the leaders not the parties.

"Gideon Haigh summed it up in The Australian. 'The West Indies used to be baaaaaaad. Now they’re simply bad'." Peter Miller on the decline of a great test power.

Steve Galloway celebrates the restoration of Walmgate Bar and the east end of York Minster.

Inside the Box has an audio interview with Jonathan Stephens, who played Chubby Joe ("Going home for the holidays, ha ha what?") in the TV adaptation of A Box of Delights.

"Malcolm ... travelled the length and breadth of the country knocking them for six with his comedic performances as 'The Woman Who Knows', Nell Gwyn, Boudica, and the epitome of femininity the fabled 'Gibson Girl'. Flashbak on the unexpected career of the brother of Scott of the Antartic.

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Six of the Best 555

"The key to reducing the risk of more floods like those in Carlisle is to realise that conventional 'flood defence' can never provide security against the ever more extreme weather events that global warming will bring. We must embrace natural solutions to holding back flood waters: more trees; and bring back the beavers!" Oliver Tickell is right.

Dawud Islam looks at the lessons of Oldham West: "All of us from Tim downwards need to hasten the roll out of our new direction and messages. Only when we finally give people something to vote for will the strains of the ‘lost deposits’ songs start to fade into the distance."

Ben Schiller explains how Finland's basic income scheme will work.

"To understand the complexities of the ongoing eurozone crisis, we need to analyze culture, since culture and history shape how policies are accepted, rejected, or modified," says Séamus Power looking at Ireland.

The inventor of Blue Peter has been forgotten because of the glorious, if tyrannical reign of Biddy Baxter. Andrew Martin introduces us to John Hunter Blair.

A London Inheritance goes in search of Park Row - a lost Knightsbridge street.

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Six of the Best 554

Photo: Andreas Trepte

"The real case against the party leader, that most Labour MPs know in their hearts but dare not say openly, is not that a Corbyn government is unlikely, but that a Corbyn government would be disastrous." Peter Kellner gets it right on Labour and Jeremy Corbyn.

Ian Cummins endorses a study suggesting that Work Capability Assessments are linked with an increase in suicides.

"It is no coincidence that the notion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights is spreading globally at the exact moment that old boundaries are collapsing in the era of the digital revolution, mass migration, and international commodity markets." Mark Gevisser explains why repressive states are losing the battle against sexual freedom.

Dr Anna Arrowsmith says we are using the term 'mansplaining' incorrectly.

Dan Brown tells us about the status of the curlew in the UK and the work that needs to be done to safeguard the future of this wonderful bird.

The trap streets mentioned in Doctor Who the other week really are a thing. Londonist will tell you all about them.

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John McDonnell: "Put that light out, Napoleon"

Thanks to whoever it was who pointed out the resemblance on Twitter a while back.

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Lord Bonkers' Diary: Mary Berry is unmasked

Marry Berry is unmasked

There was outrage at the identity of the finalists of the Great British Bake Off and, though it was an ugly affair, I am pleased that Mary Berry was finally unmasked as the left-wing troublemaker she has always been.

For, I can exclusively reveal, ‘Red Mary’ has been behind every politically motivated strike, every violent demonstration and every act of industrial sabotage in Britain for decades. And who do people imagine baked the macaroons for the Angry Brigade?

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10.

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary

• We are not downhearted
• How the Lib Dems won Loch Ness
• Freddie, Fiona and four-cornered liberalism

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Why Alastair Cook is the new Anton du Beke

Characteristically wise words from Vic Marks, the Sage of Middle Chinnock:

Alastair Cook ... in recent years has had almost as many partners of various shapes and sizes as Anton du Beke. Too many of them have displayed the same sense of timing as Ann Widdecombe.

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