Saturday, 30 April 2016
The Durrells | ITV
The Durrells is a six-part ITV drama television series based on Gerald Durrell's three autobiographical books about his family's four years on Corfu 1935-1939, which began airing on 3 April 2016. The series is written by Simon Nye, directed by Steve Barron and Roger Goldby, produced by Christopher Hall and Executive Production is by Lee Morris and Sally Woodward Gentle.
The series begins in
1935, when Louisa Durrell suddenly announces that she and her four
children will move from Bournemouth to the Greek island of Corfu. Her
husband has died some years earlier and the family is experiencing
financial problems. A Homeric battle ensues as the family adapts to
life on the island which, despite a lack of electricity, is cheap and
an earthly paradise.
The Durrells proves a rollicking delight for ITV
Series
based on Gerald Durrell’s Corfu trilogy meets need for hit Sunday
night drama to fill void left by Downton Abbey
Jane Martinson and
John Plunkett
Friday 29 April 2016
17.50 BST
The old adage of
never working with children and animals is being tested by ITV with
its main Sunday night drama. But The Durrells, a fun mix of gorgeous
locations, four badly behaved kidults and an odd menagerie of
animals, is proving a success for the broadcaster which has been
searching for a Sunday night hit since Downton Abbey came to an end
in December.
Based on Gerald
Durrell’s Corfu trilogy, the drama starring Keeley Hawes as the
whimsical widow fleeing a prewar Britain for the sunny Mediterranean
is attracting an average audience of 5.9 million viewers on a Sunday
night, nearly 2 million more than the channel’s average.
The series has also
been a boon for sales of the the naturalist’s books. Waterstones
said sales of My Family and Other Animals, the first of the Corfu
trilogy, had more than tripled, while sales of the trilogy had
increased eight-fold.
Publisher Penguin
Random House said it had seen an “incredible uplift” across all
three editions of My Family and Other Animals.
“In our
experience, successful book adaptations for TV and cinema often lead
to a renewed interest in the original book,” said Richard
Humphreys, Waterstones’ non-fiction buyer. “It is an amazing
result and a testament to the brilliance and longevity of Durrell’s
writing.”
Shown in a
pre-watershed slot of 8pm, the combination of romance and rollicking
children has won over entire families. The Durrells is the highest
rated new drama series on ITV since Cilla in 2014 and was
recommissioned after just two episodes.
Sally Woodward
Gentle, the executive producer, said the idea of turning Durrell’s
three books into a long-running series came about because of the
commercial broadcaster’s demand for a family-friendly hit on the
biggest night of the week.
“We wanted
sunshine and escapism, and not anything too slight or sweet or
patronising,” she said. “We don’t want to be too sickly sweet
about it. Anything that feels a bit cute we will try to undercut it.
At the same time, it has to be something that’s incredibly
pleasurable and a joy to watch.”
The appeal was
ageless, she said, because the show contained “quite naughty
children who are allowed to run wild and lots of animals. For the
adults, the wit and characters are amazing”.
Conceived as a
long-running series, minor characters such as Sven and the part-time
prisoner Costi are made much larger while the central character of
Louise is given a possibly more modern spin. “She’s a single
parent, feisty and bolshie, and does this extremely brave thing by
taking the children off to Corfu,” said Woodward Gentle.
There have been
comparisons to the the Larkin family in the early 1990s hit Darling
Buds of May, which Woodward Gentle welcomes. “I loved it,” she
said. “It was slightly naughty and all about how lush nature is.”
Critics, often less
enamoured of ITV drama than they are of BBC adaptations, have been
generally positive, although there was also criticism of a plot twist
dubbed the “gay switch scandal”.
Sven, who is gay in
the book, becomes Louisa’s main love interest on ITV, prompting
charges of “straightwashing”.
ITV would not be
drawn on how the storyline between the two plays out, with the
penultimate of six episodes to be broadcast this Sunday.
Woodward Gentle said
the show was very loosely based on the original books, and Durrell’s
widow, Lee, had been very supportive.
Neither the original
memoirs nor the writings of Durrell’s older brother about the
family’s time on Corfu was entirely accurate, Woodward Gentle
said.. “Gerald and Lawrence Durrell didn’t tell the truth either
… They didn’t let truth stand in the way of a good story.”
Written by Simon
Nye, whose credits include Men Behaving Badly, the series hopes to
stay true to the humour of the books.
They covered a
four-year period before the onset of the second world war made the
real-life Durrells return to the UK. With filming of the next series
set to start this summer for the next series, Woodward Gentle said
she would “love it to go on and on”.
Ratings war
The Durrells has
helped to loosen the BBC’s grip on early Sunday evening viewing,
which is traditionally dominated by Countryfile at 7pm, followed an
hour later by Antiques Roadshow, both on BBC1.
Last Sunday, The
Durrells had 5.5 million viewers from 8pm, just ahead of Antiques
Roadshow with 5.3 million.
ITV’s previous
attempts to find a hit pre-watershed drama on Sunday sank without
trace. Jekyll and Hyde last year and Beowulf earlier this year were
both dropped after ratings fell to 2 million viewers.
Among the other big
Sunday night dramas, BBC1’s Undercover, with an overnight audience
of 4 million viewers at 9pm, has not managed to repeat the success of
The Night Manager, which gripped more than 6 million people in the
same slot. But neither were in the league of the biggest Sunday night
drama hit, BBC1’s Call The Midwife, which at its peak was watched
by 10 million viewers.
Channel 4’s Indian
Summers has been a casualty of the fierce Sunday night ratings war,
with the drama about the birth of modern India axed after two series
after its audience fell as low as 1 million.
Keeley Hawes as
Louisa Durrell
Milo Parker as Gerry
Durrell
Josh O'Connor as
Larry Durrell
Daisy Waterstone as
Margo Durrell
Callum Woodhouse as
Leslie Durrell
Yorgos Karamihos as
Dr. Theo Stephanides
Alexis Georgoulis as
Spiros Hakaiopolous
James Cosmo as
Captain Creech
Maximilian Befort as
Max
Manolis Emmanouel as
Sotos
Andrew Bicknell as
Headmaster
Anna Savva as
Lugaretza
Graham Seed as Mr
Trevitt
Liz Watts as Nancy
Ben Hall as Donald
Hara-Joy Ermidi as
Alexia
Yorgos Tryfonas as
Market Trader
Nick Orestis
Chaniotakis as Monk
Arsenis Grimmas as
Guest House Manager
Spiros Kasfikis as
Durrell's House Owner
Ulric von der Esch
as Sven
Gerald "Gerry" Malcolm Durrell, OBE (7 January 1925 – 30 January 1995) was a British naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter. He founded what are now called the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Durrell Wildlife Park on the Channel Island of Jersey in 1959, but is perhaps best remembered for writing a number of books based on his life as an animal collector and enthusiast. He was the youngest brother of novelist Lawrence Durrell.
Durrell was born in
Jamshedpur, India on 7 January 1925. He was the fourth surviving and
final child of Louisa Florence Dixie and Lawrence Samuel Durrell,
both of whom were born in India of English and Irish descent.
Durrell's father was a British engineer and, as was commonplace and
befitting family status, the infant Durrell spent most of his time in
the company of an ayah (nursemaid). Durrell reportedly recalled his
first visit to a zoo in India and attributed his lifelong love of
animals to that encounter.
The family moved to
Britain after the death of his father in 1928 and settled in the
Upper Norwood-Crystal Palace area of South London. Durrell was
enrolled in Wickwood School, but frequently stayed at home feigning
illness.
Mrs Durrell moved
with her four younger children (Lawrence, Leslie, Margaret, nicknamed
Margo, and Gerald) to the Greek island of Corfu in 1935. It was on
Corfu where Durrell began to collect and keep the local fauna as his
pets.
The family lived on
Corfu until 1939. This interval was later the basis of the book My
Family and Other Animals and its successors, Birds, Beasts, and
Relatives and The Garden of the Gods, plus a few short stories like
"My Donkey Sally". Durrell was home-schooled during this
time by various family friends and private tutors, mostly friends of
his eldest brother Lawrence (later a successful novelist).
Theodore
Stephanides, Greek doctor, scientist, poet and philosopher and a
friend of one of Durrell's tutors, became Durrell's greatest friend
and mentor, and his ideas left a lasting impression on the young
naturalist. Together, they examined Corfu fauna, which Durrell housed
in everything from test tubes to bathtubs. Another major influence
during these formative years, according to Durrell, was the writing
of French naturalist Jean Henri Fabre.
Friday, 29 April 2016
Wednesday, 27 April 2016
VIDEO below / Museum Exhibition /// Reigning Men: Fashion in Menswear, 1715–2015
Reigning Men:
Fashion in Menswear, 1715–2015 explores the history of men’s
fashionable dress from the eighteenth century to the present and
re-examines the all-too-frequent equation of “fashion” with
“femininity.”
Beginning with the
18th century, the male aristocrat wore a three-piece suit conspicuous
in make and style, and equally as lavish as the opulent dress of his
female counterpart. The 19th-century “dandy” made famous a more
refined brand of expensive elegance which became the hallmark of
Savile Row. The mid-twentieth-century “mod” relished in the
colorful and modern styles of Carnaby Street, and the 21st century
man—in an ultra-chic “skinny suit” by day and a flowered tuxedo
by night—redefines today’s concept of masculinity.
Drawing primarily
from LACMA’s renowned collection, Reigning Men makes illuminating
connections between history and high fashion. The exhibition traces
cultural influences over the centuries, examines how elements of the
uniform have profoundly shaped fashionable dress, and reveals how
cinching and padding the body was, and is, not exclusive to women.
The exhibition features 200 looks, and celebrates a rich history of
restraint and resplendence in menswear.
On VIEW:
PDF:
Monday, 25 April 2016
Sunday, 24 April 2016
Behind the scenes of ITV's documentary Our Queen at 90, in pictures
How
the Queen's horses reveal more about her than her family: CHRISTOPHER
STEVENS on last night's TV
By CHRISTOPHER
STEVENS FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 23:58
GMT, 27 March 2016
Her Majesty the
Queen will never give an interview. She has come close, notably
providing commentary to a TV documentary in 1992 about her reign,
otherwise we are left with her annual Christmas broadcasts, the
speeches and the rare glimpses of her in conversation with family and
friends on film.
She has the most
familiar voice in the world. Yet Elizabeth II has never sat in front
of a camera, or even a radio mike, and answered questions.
The heir to the
throne, Prince Charles, has done so on many occasions. He was still a
novice at it in 1981, when he tied himself in knots sitting beside
his shy fiancee as they talked to interviewer Anthony Carthew, when
the Prince revealed he wasn’t sure what ‘love’ meant.
It’s horses that
hold Her Majesty's dearest affection, and the scene in Our Queen at
90 that summed up her unaffected kindness and, at the same time, her
regal charm was filmed at the Sandringham stables
It’s horses that
hold Her Majesty's dearest affection, and the scene in Our Queen at
90 that summed up her unaffected kindness and, at the same time, her
regal charm was filmed at the Sandringham stables
He’s more relaxed
now. Our Queen At 90 (ITV) saw him joshing and raising an arch
eyebrow as he chatted about his mother. Asked to define the
highlights of her reign, he quipped: ‘She put up with all of us and
that’s quite an achievement.’
Charles seemed so at
ease as a talking-head that it’s possible to imagine him doing
so-called ‘filler TV’, waffling about Britain’s favourite 50
sitcoms or wacky fashions of the Seventies.
The rest of the
Royals were equally comfortable, though they were careful not to say
anything that might be construed as a headline.
The Duchess of
Cambridge confided that she’d been racked with nerves during her
first Christmas at Sandringham. That’s not a surprise: any girl
visiting her boyfriend’s folks will be apprehensive, and it really
can’t help if his grandma is Queen of England.
She gave Her Majesty
a jar of home-made chutney. Next morning, it was on the Queen’s
breakfast table. That broke the ice.
The Duchess of
Cambridge confided that she’d been racked with nerves during her
first Christmas at Sandringham. That’s not a surprise: any girl
visiting her boyfriend’s folks will be apprehensive, and it really
can’t help if his grandma is Queen of England
Her husband’s
insights were less telling: his granny was ‘someone who’s been
there, done it, got the T-shirt’. If that’s how he usually talks,
nobody will be rushing to finish the Christmas washing-up and get the
telly on at 3pm when he’s King William V.
Sophie, the Countess
of Wessex and wife of the Queen’s youngest son, seemed the least
accustomed to the camera. Her tone of voice betrayed her when she
described Balmoral as lovely, ‘apart from the midges’, the way
you might say Hell was super, ‘apart from the flames’.
To have so many
senior royals sounding forth was a great coup, but the real triumph
of this film, celebrating the Queen not only as a monarch but also as
a private person, was its glimpses of her off-duty. Few women of 89
could trot on a horse with such enthusiasm, though we overheard her
protesting: ‘I’m rather a fairweather rider — I don’t like
getting cold and wet!’
Her husband’s
insights were less telling: his granny was ‘someone who’s been
there, done it, got the T-shirt
The documentary was
packed with expertly chosen clips from the archive, including one
marvellous moment of the Queen as a girl, with her father and an
alsatian pup that was frolicking with a giant panda cub. As pets go,
that beats a hamster.
But it’s horses
that hold her dearest affection, and the scene that summed up her
unaffected kindness and, at the same time, her regal charm was filmed
at the Sandringham stables. Her Majesty spoke of every animal as a
friend, and knew its quirks. ‘This one’s a prima donna,’ she
joked, pointing to a mare with a My Little Pony mane.
The Queen appears to
be, quite simply, happy and glorious
At her elbow, a
member of the Royal Household attended with a crisp paper bag of
carrots. The Queen plucked one and offered it to La Prima Donna...
who spat it out. Her Majesty laughed and looked down at the ground
meaningfully: after a moment, the flunkey leapt to retrieve the
carrot.
The treat was
proffered again, and the horse spat it out once more. The Queen
shrugged, as if to say ‘suit yourself’ and walked on. She doesn’t
take nonsense from anyone, even cheeky mares. No wonder every one of
her Prime Ministers, even Margaret Thatcher, has been rather in awe
of her.
Her whole life has
proved her dedication to duty. What this remarkable programme showed
was the converse, her knack for taking nothing too seriously. The
Queen appears to be, quite simply, happy and glorious.
Saturday, 23 April 2016
Tuesday, 19 April 2016
Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild
Walter Rothschild
was born in London as the eldest son and heir of Nathan Rothschild,
1st Baron Rothschild, an immensely-wealthy financier of the
international Rothschild financial dynasty and the first Jewish peer
in England.
The eldest of three
children, Walter was deemed to have delicate health and was educated
at home. As a young man, he traveled in Europe, attending the
university at Bonn for a year before entering Magdalene College at
Cambridge. In 1889, leaving Cambridge after two years, he was
required to go into the family banking business to study finance.
At the age of seven,
he declared that he would run a zoological museum. As a child, he
collected insects, butterflies, and other animals. Among his pets at
the family home in Tring Park were kangaroos and exotic birds. As a
boy, Rothschild was once dragged off his horse and assaulted by
workmen while on a hunting ride near Tring, an experience that he
personally attributed to Anti-Semitism.
At 21, he
reluctantly went to work at the family bank, N M Rothschild &
Sons in London. He worked there from 1889 to 1908. Нe evidently
lacked any interest or ability in the financial profession, but it
was not until 1908 that he was finally allowed to give it up.
However, his parents established a zoological museum as a
compensation, and footed the bill for expeditions all over the world
to seek out animals.
Rothschild was 6' 3"
tall, suffered from a speech impediment and was very shy, but he had
his photograph taken riding on a giant tortoise, and drove a carriage
harnessed to six zebras to Buckingham Palace to prove that zebras
could be tamed.
Though he never
married, Rothschild had two mistresses, one of whom bore him a
daughter.
Rothschild studied
zoology at Magdalene College, Cambridge. Meeting Albert Günther
sparked his interest in the taxonomy of birds and butterflies.
Although Rothschild
himself travelled and collected in Europe and North Africa for many
years, his work and health concerns limited his range, and beginning
while at Cambridge he employed others - explorers, professional
collectors, and residents - to collect for him in remote and
little-known parts of the world. He also hired taxidermists, a
librarian, and, most importantly, professional scientists to work
with him to curate and write up the resulting collections: Ernst
Hartert, for birds, from 1892 until his retirement at the age of 70
in 1930; and Karl Jordan for entomology, from 1893 until Rothschild's
death in 1937.
At its largest,
Rothschild's collection included 300,000 bird skins, 200,000 birds'
eggs, 2,250,000 butterflies, and 30,000 beetles, as well as thousands
of specimens of mammals, reptiles, and fishes. They formed the
largest zoological collection ever amassed by a private individual.
The Rothschild
giraffe (Giraffa camelopardis rothschildi), a subspecies with five
horns instead of two, was named after him. Another 153 insects, 58
birds, 17 mammals, three fish, three spiders, two reptiles, one
millipede, and one worm also carry his name.
Rothschild opened
his private museum in 1892. It housed one of the largest natural
history collections in the world, and was open to the public. In 1932
he was forced to sell the vast majority of his bird collection to the
American Museum of Natural History after being blackmailed by a
former mistress. On his death in 1937, the museum and all its
contents were given in his will to the British Museum (of which the
Natural History Museum, London was then a part), the greatest
accession which that institution has ever received. The Walter
Rothschild Zoological Museum at Tring is now a division of the
Natural History Museum.
Rothschild was
awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Giessen in 1898,
was elected a Trustee of the British Museum in 1899, and was elected
a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1911.
Walter
Rothschild: The man, the museum and the menagerie
by Miriam
Rothschild, Natural History Museum, UK, 2008. 432 pp. ISBN:
9780565092283 (pbk).
review by Nicholas
Drayson
The first thing many
people think of when they hear the name Rothschild is not museums but
wealth, riches, great sacks of gold. The small bank started in
Frankfurt by Mayer Amschel Bauer in the late eighteenth century (he
changed his name to Rothschild after the 'red shield' that was the
firm's logo) grew over the next hundred years to become the
pre-eminent banking firm throughout Europe. His great-grandson Nathan
Mayer Rothschild (known to family and friends as Natty) eventually
took over the English branch of the firm to become one of the most
influential men in Britain. He continued the family tradition of
banking and philanthropy and in 1885 was created the first Baron
Rothschild — so becoming the first Jew to sit in the House of
Lords.
Natty had great
hopes that his elder son Walter would follow in his footsteps but
Walter was not cut out for banking. From childhood he had been
fascinated by animals. He began collecting insects at an early age,
then birds. He was interested in living animals — accompanying him
to university at Cambridge in 1887 was a small flock of kiwis, and he
had a life-long obsession with giant tortoises — but what he loved
above all was taxonomy. For his 21st birthday his parents gave him
just what he had always wanted: his very own museum, built in the
grounds of the family home at Tring, just north of London. If they
hoped this would assuage their son's ardour for dull taxonomy and
help turn his thoughts towards the heady thrills of banking they were
disappointed. Though Walter tried hard to fulfil his family
obligations — he joined the firm for a while and became the local
member of parliament — he spent more and more time with his
collections. In 1894 he started publishing his own journal, Novitates
Zoologicae, and his collectors scoured the globe for specimens. In
1915 he inherited the title Baron Rothschild from his father. Walter
himself had no children, and the title passed on through his brother
Charles's family. Charles was a much better banker than his brother
but also fascinated by natural history — especially fleas. He in
turn passed on his interest to his daughter Miriam who became one of
the most famous entomologists in England. It is she who decided to
write a book about her Uncle Walter (Miriam died in 2005 — this
book is a reissue of one originally published in 1983).
Though hampered by a
surprising dearth of existing records, Miriam Rothschild has amassed
an impressive collection of facts. Not only do we have a thorough
account of Walter's childhood and the development of the museum, we
meet many of his associates, professional and personal. Though he
never married nor had children, during his adult life Walter had at
least two mistresses. He had a more murky association with a peeress
of the realm who for many years blackmailed him. Although Miriam
Rothschild claims to know the identity of the blackmailer, she does
not reveal it, nor exactly what were the grounds of the blackmail.
She hints that it was something sexual, and that Walter kept paying
up for fear the truth would be revealed to his mother.
Walter's
relationship with his mother was odd — he was always quiet in her
company and lived with her until her death. But then Walter was odd.
He found it difficult to speak, apparently managing only complete
silence or loud bellowing. Though shy and gauche in company, he had a
truly phenomenal memory. He knew the identity and location of each
and every specimen in the museum. Though he found banking impossible
and life outside the museum trying, he managed to fulfil his expected
duties as a member of the Rothschild clan. As well as being the local
MP for many years he was on the boards of various scientific bodies.
As second Baron Rothschild he became de facto head of British Jewry,
and it was to him that the 'Balfour Declaration' outlining British
government support for a Jewish nation in Palestine, was addressed.
The affectionate
portrait that Miriam Rothschild paints of her eccentric uncle is one
of the strengths of the book. From her own memories and those of
family and friends we discover a man who overcame considerable
personal challenges to become one of the greatest collectors and
benefactors in modern zoology. The advantages of her 'personal' touch
are to some extent counterbalanced by a distinct lack of critical
assessment of the man and his work. She pays too little attention to
discussing the value of Walter's idiosyncratic approach to collecting
and describing, and I would have liked a little less one-sided
analysis of his relationship with other museums and institutions. But
as an account of the man and his museum I found the book engrossing.
Though reprinted as a paperback it is well illustrated and well
produced, with an unusually comprehensive index.
When in 1938,
towards the end of his life, Walter donated the museum and its
collections to the nation, it contained over two million insects,
300,000 bird skins, 200,000 eggs and a library of 30,000 scientific
books. A legacy more valuable than gold.
Nicholas Drayson is
a novelist and nature writer.