John Dixon-Scott

In the late 1920s, the photographer John Dixon-Scott became concerned at the way the rural and urban environment of Britain was changing. He drove around the country with his camera intending to preserve through his pictures what he saw as a vanishing landscape, in a photographic project that took him years.

Taken from the National Archives UK Flickr on the commons.

Dambustin'

Some handsome and brave men who caught my eye in the National Archives UK Flickr.

Ladies Being Awesome.

Rare colour images of women at work in the 1940's. Not a hair out of place, lipstick applied. Total heroes.

[source]

Oh Captain, My Captain

  'After all, it is the work that counts, not the applause that follows'

11/11

(source)

Lost Photos of Capt. Scott

I feel like I've been waiting for this book to come out for an age and now it has I've totally forgotten to order it. *rushes off to Amazon*

(Source)

Guest Post:: Naomi of Bespoke Home on That Mitford Lot.

As I'm on hols I thought it might be nice to get a couple of chums to do a guest spot on the blog in my absence. 

First up is Naomi of Bespoke Home. Ni lives in a charming wee house in Auckland, New Zealand and her blog is a great documentation of her home and garden adventures. She is responsible for my love of the Mitford sisters, so when I invited her to share something with you all over here on ice floe, it seemed a natural fit for her to offer up some Mitford treats!

The mad, bad Mitfords can tidily be summed up as preposterous. Glamorous, dangerous and captivating, they scandalised England in their time yet are unknown to many today. The six Mitford sisters were born to landed gentry and grew up title-rich but cash-poor (by aristocracy standards). With their eccentricity unwittingly nurtured by parents who were mildly eccentric themselves, they were primed to take the twentieth century by storm.

Of the six sisters, there are four who have gained the most notoriety. Diana, widely considered the beauty of the family, divorced the heir to the Guiness fortune to marry Oswald Mosley, head of the British Fascists, and as a result spent her war years in prison draped in fur coats to keep warm. Nancy was a darling of the Bright Young Things, playing ukulele at parties attended by the likes of Evelyn Waugh. She found fame as a novelist and had a great love affair with a member of the French resistance. Unity and Jessica shared a room as a child, and the invisible line down the centre of the room also signified arguments over political philosophies. Unity grew up to befriend Hitler and came to a grisly end whilst Jessica embraced communism. She later moved to America and became a figure in the civil rights movement and was persecuted by the McCarthy-era government, constantly followed by the FBI.

There are far too many thrilling Mitford tales to even begin to summarise any of them but here is a taste. When Jessica Mitford ran off to Spain to elope with Winston Churchill's nephew and fight in the Spanish Civil War, Churchill sent a submarine after them to bring them home, under pressure from his sister. When the young couple refused to embark the captain tried to tempt Jessica on board with a roast chicken dinner. She very nearly succumbed.

For a great introduction to the Mitford Family I recommend reading Mary S Lovell's The Mitford Girls. 

Proper London

Proper London Town innit.

(images via Museum of London)

London Town

Just discovered the photo archives over at the Museum of London website. This is my favourite -

Colney Hatch Lane in 1870. I lived on this road when I first moved to London. Doesn't look much like this now I can tell you. Interesting fact - its also the street the Pevensie's live on.

(Ok, maybe not that interesting ... unless you like Narnia.)

Dudes.

Sir Ed and Sherpa Tensing Norgay, 1971. [source]

An Antarctic Calamity

Scott's 'Message to the Public' as seen in 'The Colonist' 12 February 1913.

Thanks to Paulie for leading me to discover the National Library of New Zealand's Papers Past service.After reading his blog post obviously the first thing I did was jump on there and look up any records from the Terra Nova's return to New Zealand in February 1913. Its interesting to read it as it was, at the time, to the public.

Well, its interesting if you are me, at least.

You can read it here.

Blitz

Colour photos of London during the Blitz
[view the rest here]

100 Years Ago.

100 Years ago today Apsley Cherry-Garrard, Dr Wilson and Mr Bowers collected 5 Emperor Penguin eggs from Cape Crozier in Antarctica.They had been travelling since 27th June, in the Antarctic Winter. Famously, this involves zero sunlight and epic cold.

These are the men and this is the journey I admire more than anything. They made the journey in the dark. Conditions no one could have expected. Lost their tent. Slept in the snow and ice. Frozen sleeping bags. Found their tent. Frostbite blisters, which then froze. Frozen. Blisters. The liquid inside the blisters. Frozen solid. To collect some eggs, in the fine & noble name of Science.

Cherry wrote of day 100 years ago:
'I have heard tell of an English officer at the Dardanelles who was left, blinded, in No Man's Land between the English and Turkish trenches. Moving only at night, and having no sense to tell him which were his own trenches, he was fired at by Turk and English alike as he groped his ghastly way to and from them. Thus he spent days and nights until, one night, he crawled towards the English trenches, to be fired at as usual. "Oh God! what can I do!" some one heard him say, and he was brought in.
 
Such extremity of suffering cannot be measured: madness or death may give relief. But this I know: we on this journey were already beginning to think of death as a friend. As we groped our way back that night, sleepless, icy, and dog-tired in the dark and the wind and the drift, a crevasse seemed almost a friendly gift.

"Things must improve," said Bill next day, "I think we reached bed-rock last night." We hadn't, by a long way.'

........................ I'm sorry what was that you were saying about your day being rubbish?

 Brothers I salute you.

Happy Online Discovery.

I was just, you know, innocently googling various landmarks in Antarctica and somehow stumbled across this amazing free online version of The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard - which just happens to be the book which has owned my soul for the last few weeks.

The best thing about finding this though is that it includes several of Dr Bill's beautiful watercolours and sketches, which Cherry talks of often throughout the book and I had been dying to know if I would be able to find online at any point. I would love more than anything to see some of these in real life.

The fact that he could produce such beautiful paintings in such conditions and continued to keep sketching right up until the end is totally inspirational. To feel the need to document, document, document, despite the fact that your fingers are freezing off and your tent has blown away.

I will never cease to have admiration for these men.


[The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Worst Journey in the World is HERE]

London Zoo, 1930s

I love this collection of photos from London Zoo in the 1930's. Especially the naughty bear!

[via] [full set HERE]

Hunters.

 

 

I love these images. They remind me of where I'm from and what it means to grow up in New Zealand. You know. Killing things and smoking pipes.

[All images courtesy of the National Library NZ on the Commons.]