Britannia rules the waves ... The Royal Yatch Britannia

The Royal Yacht Britannia is one of the world's most famous ships. Launched at John Brown's Shipyard in Clydebank in 1953, the Royal Yacht proudly served Queen and country for 44 years. During that time Britannia carried The Queen and the Royal Family on 968 official voyages, from the remotest regions of the South Seas to the deepest divides of Antarctica.
As 83rd in a long line of Royal Yachts that stretches back to 1660 and the reign of Charles II, Britannia holds a proud place in British maritime history. On 16 April 1953, Her Majesty's Yacht Britannia rolled down the slipway at John Brown's Clydebank Shipyard, on the start of her long and illustrious career. Commissioned for service in January 1954, Britannia sailed the oceans for 43 years and 334 days. She travelled a total of 1,087,623 nautical miles, calling at over 600 ports in 135 countries.
In June 1994, the Government announced that Her Majesty's Yacht Britannia would be taken out of service. At the beginning of January 1997, Britannia set sail from Portsmouth to Hong Kong on her last and longest voyage. On 11 December 1997 Britannia was decommissioned at Portsmouth Naval Base in the presence of The Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh and 12 senior members of the Royal Family. Some 2,200 Royal Yacht Officers and Yachtsmen, together with their families, came to witness the ceremony.
Four months later, after intense competition from cities around the UK, the Government announced that Edinburgh had been successful in its bid to become her new home. She is now owned by The Royal Britannia Trust, a charitable organisation whose sole remit is the maintenance of Britannia in keeping with her former role. Britannia is now permanently moored in Edinburgh's historic port of Leith and visitors can discover what life was like on board the ship for the Royal Family and crew.


Royal residence
Plans to build a new Royal Yacht to replace Victoria and Albert III began during the reign of King George VI. But The King died in 1952, four months before the keel of the Yacht was laid. His daughter, Princess Elizabeth succeeded him to the throne and the new Queen together with her husband, Prince Philip, took a guiding hand in the design of the Yacht, personally approving plans prepared by Sir Hugh Casson, Consultant Architect, and selecting furniture, fabrics and paintings.
No matter where Britannia was in the world, however exotic or remote a location, stepping on to the deck of the Royal Yacht was always a home-coming for The Queen. Furnished to her personal taste, each room was filled with photographs of her children, treasured family heirlooms, much-loved personal possessions and gifts from across the globe. This was the ship that, even with its full complement of around 300 Royal Yachtsmen and Royal Household staff, The Queen named as the one place where she could truly relax.

An ambassador abroad
The Royal Yacht Britannia has helped to make The Queen the most travelled monarch the world has ever known. Not only has The Queen and her family travelled the world on Britannia, but the world - its statesmen and leaders - has visited them on board. From Sydney to Samoa, The Queen's guests have been entertained just as they would be at a royal palace on British soil.
For a state visit some five tonnes of luggage, including everything from The Queen's jewels to the famous bottles of Malvern water for Her Majesty's tea, would be brought on board. With The Queen came up to 45 members of the Royal Household, who together with Britannia's Officers and Yachtsmen ensured that each visit ran like clockwork and that no detail was overlooked.
As well as hosting royal banquets and receptions, Britannia was an ambassador for British business, promoting trade and industry around the globe. Indeed the Overseas Trade Board estimates that £3 billion has been made for the Exchequer as a result of commercial days on Britannia between 1991 and 1995.

A romantic retreat
For four royal couples, Britannia was to provide a honeymoon sanctuary before the onset of married life in the world's most photographed family. Princess Margaret and Anthony Armstrong-Jones were the first royal honeymooners to enjoy Britannia's inimitable star treatment when, in 1960, the Yacht took them on a 6,000 mile voyage to the Caribbean. Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips were next to honeymoon on Britannia cruising the West Indies in 1973. In 1981 the Prince and Princess of Wales flew to Gibraltar to meet Britannia at the start of their sixteen-day honeymoon voyage in the Mediterranean. Five years later Britannia hosted her final honeymoon for the Duke and Duchess of York who spent five days aboard the Yacht cruising around the Azores.


Facts & figures
Laid down June 1952 at John Brown & Co. Ltd, Clydebank
Designer / Builder: Sir Victor Shepheard, Director of Naval Construction; and John Brown & Co. Ltd
Launched: 16th April 1953 by HM Queen Elizabeth II
Commissioned: At sea, 11th January 1954
Length overall: 125.65m or 412ft 3in
Length on waterline: 115.82m or 380ft
Length between perpendiculars: 109.73m or 360ft
Maximum breadth moulded: 16.76m or 55ft
Breadth at upper deck moulded: 16.61m or 54ft 6in
Depth moulded to upper deck: 45ft abaft midships: 9.90m or 32ft 6in
Depth moulded to upper deck at fore perpendicular: 12.29m or 40ft 4in
Depth moulded to upper deck at after perpendicular: 10.31m or 33ft 10in
Load displacement: 4,715 tons
Mean draft at load displacement: 5.2m or 15ft 7in
Gross tonnage: 5,862 tons
Shaft horsepower: 12,000
Speed: 22.5 knots maximum 21 knots continuous
Engines: Two geared steam turbines, developing a total of 12,000 shaft horse power. Two main boilers, and an auxiliary boiler for harbour requirements by Foster Wheeler
Range: 2,196 miles at 20 knots (burning diesel fuel)
2,553 miles at 18 knots (burning diesel fuel)
Main Mast Height: 42.44m or 139ft 3in - Royal Standard
Fore Mast Height: 40.54m or 133ft - Lord Admiral's Flag
Mizzen Mast Height: 36.22m or 118ft 10in - Union Flag
Fuel & Water: 330 tons of fuel oil providing a range of 2,000 miles at 20 knots. 120 tons of fresh water. Additional tanks can increase fuel capacity to 490 tons and fresh water capacity to 195 tons
Propeller Diameter: 3.12m or 10ft 3ins
Pitch: 2.74m or 9ft
Developed blade area: 5.17m2 or 55.7ft2
Tip clearance from hull: 0.84m or 2ft 9in
Maximum rudder torque: 125 tons ft at 14 knots astern and 30.5° angle
Rudder Torque at 22 knots: 69 tons ft at 35° angle
Rudder Torque at 15 knots: 33 tons ft at 35° angle
Maximum normal rudder force: 63.5 tons at 22 knots ahead, and 25.5 tons at 14 knots astern



Duties ranged from ensuring the slope of the royal gangway was never steeper than 12° to arranging the royal flowers; from diving daily to search the seabed beneath the Yacht to polishing the silverware. In temperatures of up to 120°F, they manned Britannia's 'state of the ark' laundry, yet had to appear as pristine as the ship herself at all times.
The junior Yachtsmen had the arduous task of scrubbing the two-inch thick teak decks each day to keep them in pristine condition. But so that the Royal Family were not disturbed, all work near the Royal Apartments had to be carried out in silence and everything had to be completed by 8 o'clock in the morning. If a Yachtsman did encounter a member of the Royal Family, he had to stand still and look straight ahead until they had passed.

Who's who
Programming the activities of the Royal Yacht was a very complicated business. Careful coordination and thorough planning were fundamental to the smooth running of the Yacht. Like all Royal Navy ships, Britannia's crew was organised into departments. The Admiral was in overall charge of his staff of 20 Officers and 220 Yachtsmen. He was supported by his Heads of Department who organised work and delegated duties through the Sub-Departments.

Seaman Department

The Seaman Department comprised:
The Commander (Executive Officer & Second in Command)
1 First Lieutenant (Fo'c'sle Officer)
1 Second Lieutenant (Quarterdeck Officer)
1 Chief Bo's'n's Mate (In charge of Seaman Department Activity)
1 The Coxswain (In charge of Discipline & Administration)
1 The Boatswain (Bo's'n) (In charge of Britannia's boats)
1 The Royal Barge Officer (Also serves as Household Liaison Officer)
The Queen's Coxswain (In charge of the Royal Barge)
1 Waist Petty Officer
1 Fo'c'sle Petty Officer
1 Quarterdeck Petty Officer
1 Chief Quartermaster & Routines Petty Officer
Royal Marine Colour Sergeant (In charge of Royal Marines Detachment)
Physical Training Instructor (Also in charge of between decks)
3 Leading Seamen
1 Fo'c'sle Leading Seaman
1 Quarterdeck (Leading Seaman)
24 Able Seamen
4 Royal Marines (Part of Ship (Royal Deck),also Royal Marines Orderlies & Security Sentries)
Commander's Office Writer (In charge of producing programmes, Daily Orders & Red Hot Notices)

Navigation Department
The Navigation Department comprised:
Commander N (Navigating Commander responsible for Navigation & Communications)
Assistant Navigation & Meteorology Officer
Communications & Royal Cypher Officer
1 CPO Chief Radio Supervisor (In charge of Radio Sub-Department)
1 CPO Chief Communications Yeoman (In charge of Tactical Signalling)
2 PO Radio Supervisors
1 Petty Officer (PO) Communications Yeoman (In charge of Flag Deck & Message Distribution)
2 Leading Radio Operators (Tactical Signalling Sub-Department)
3 Leading Radio Operators (Radio Sub-Department)
4 Radio Operators (Tactical Signalling Sub-Department)
6 Radio Operators (Radio Sub-Department)
1 Navigator's Yeoman
Fleet Chief WEA
Chief Radio Electrician
Chief PO Weapons Electrical Artificer
Leading Radio Electrical Mechanic
Weapons Electrical Mechanic (Radio)

Engineering Department
The Engineering Department comprised:
Commander E (The Engineer Commander & Wardroom Mess Secretary)
Senior Engineer (Deputy to Commander E)
1 Main Machinery Officer (In charge of main machinery )
1 Outside Machinery Officer (In charge of auxiliary machinery, shipwrights & laundry)
1 Electrical Officer (In charge of electrical services)
Warrant Officer (In charge of logistics & personnel)
3 CPO Marine Engineering Mechanics (In charge of Boiler Room)
1 CPO Engineer Artificer (In charge of auxiliary machinery)
2 CPO Engineer Shipwrights
2 CPO Engineer Artificers
1 CPO Electrician
5 Petty Officer Marine Engineer Mechanics (With Part of Ship responsibilities)
1 Petty Officer (In charge of the laundry)
7 Leading Marine Engineer Mechanics (With Part of Ship responsibilities)
24 Marine Engineer Mechanics (With Part of Ship responsibilities)
8 Laundry Crew

Supply Department
The Supply Department comprised:
Commander S (The Supply Officer & Admiral's Secretary)
The Keeper & Steward of the Royal Apartments
Deputy Supply Officer (Deputy to Commander S)
Warrant Officer Writer (In charge of pay & the Admiral's office)
1 CPO Steward (In charge of the Wardroom)
1 CPO Caterer (In charge of catering & menu planning)
2 CPO Stewards (Deputy & Assistant Keepers & Stewards of the Royal Apartments)
1 CPO Cook (In charge of the Royal & Wardroom Galleys)
1 CPO Cook (In charge of the Ship's Galley)
2 PO Stewards (In the Wardroom)
1 PO Naval Stores
1 PO Cook (Wardroom Galley)
1 PO Cook (Ship's Galley)
3 Wardroom Leading Stewards
1 Admiral's Leading Steward
3 Leading Stores Accountants
1 Leading Writer
4 Leading Stewards
1 Leading Airman (Photographer 'Snaps')
2 Wardroom Leading Cooks
2 Ship's Galley Leading Cooks
4 Wardroom Cooks
4 Ship's Galley Cooks
Royal Marine Butcher
8 Wardroom Stewards
2 Writers (Admiral's Office)
8 Royal Stewards

Medical Department
The Medical Department comprised:
Principal Medical Officer (PMO)
1 Chief Petty Officer (CPO) Medical Assistant (In charge of Sick Bay routine & assistant to PMO)
1 CPO Medical Technician (Physiotherapist)

HM Royal Marines Band Service
The Royal Marines Band comprised:
Director of Music
Colour Sergeant (The Drum Major)
Colour Sergeant (The Bandmaster)
5 Band Colour Sergeants
8 Band Corporals
6 Musicians
4 Buglers


The work of the Trust
Britannia is owned by The Royal Yacht Britannia Trust (registered charity SC028070).
The Trust’s responsibility is to maintain and preserve Britannia in keeping with her former role and to display her to the public as an example of British maritime history. The income generated from running Britannia as a visitor attraction and corporate events venue go towards this very important work.
The Trust is a wholly self funding not-for-profit charitable organisation that does not receive any public sector revenue support. Raising the funds to maintain a ship of such historical importance as Britannia is obviously a tremendous challenge for a small charitable trust to undertake and virtually all of the maintenance work is undertaken by our dedicated in-house maintenance team 7 days a week, 363 days of the year.
In keeping with Britannia's illustrious past, the team that now work on board Britannia are committed to continuing the traditional values that Britannia represented, offering the highest quality hospitality, service and facilities to all visitors.
Britannia is available to visit year round, only closing on Christmas Day and New Year's Day. The tour is fully accessible for wheelchair users and also to international visitors, with our audio tour being available in 21 different languages, including a version for the visually impaired and those with learning difficulties.
Visiting Britannia, hosting an event or purchasing a gift from our shop will all help to preserve this magnificent ship for future generations and we thank you for your support.


Temporary closure in January 2012
From 1 to 31 January 2012 The Royal Yacht Britannia will be closed to the public to enable planned maintenance work to be carried out; this will involve the ship being moved to the neighbouring Imperial Dry Dock within the Port of Leith.
A major part of this work will be painting the area of the hull which is below the waterline. This area is 16 feet, approximately 5 metres, high. Taking Britannia out of the water will allow this part of the hull to be inspected, treated and repainted. It will be the first time since the summer of 1998 that this has been done. Due to the quality of the work previously carried out, the annual underwater surveys have found that it was not necessary for the paintwork below the hull to be redone in 2008 as was originally expected. However, despite there being no evidence to indicate that this work is now required, our insurance company want their marine surveyors to inspect the hull in order that they can give us a clean bill of health, hopefully, for at least the next 20-25 years.
The slow speed of deterioration in the paint surface that is designed to protect the steel hull from corroding may also be due to the fact that Britannia sits in a predominantly fresh water port. Sitting in salt water would have broken down the paint surface and rusted the hull quicker.
Britannia’s three masts and funnel will also be treated and re-painted. Along with this other maintenance work will be carried out to areas on and off the tour route.
The cost of this essential work is entirely self-funded by The Royal Yacht Britannia Trust with revenue raised through admissions, events and our gift shop.
During this period we are relocating our offices to the Britannia Visitor Centre in Ocean Terminal and all phone lines, faxes and emails will be answered as normal.

Clandeboye, County Down, Ulster

The first time I saw this miracle of glorious "shabby chic" and ancestral authenticity was in this, quite old, version of the 'World of Interiors'(1988) compilation by Min Hogg and Wendy Harrop ... placed under the label 'ancestral'...
The Marchioness, herself a Human Monument, 'stroke' me and left me an enduring impression ... Enjoy ... Yours ... Jeeves





Clandeboye by Peter Rankin of the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society.

One of the most extensive examples of Victorian parkland planting in Ulster, this important 800 acre parkland was created out of the core of an earlier 18th century designed landscape. The demesne was founded in the early 17th century, depicted on Raven’s Map of 1625-6. Formerly known as Ballyleidy, there were a number of earlier houses near the site of the present mansion, including a modest late 17th century house and a three-storey gable-endedhouse of ca 1760.


The present house (above) was designed by Robert Woodgate in 1801-04, for James Blackwood, 2nd Baron Dufferin. It is a conventional two-storey Georgian block in ‘Soanic’ style, with two main façades at right angles to one another; the east façade, being the original entrance front, has seven bays with a pedimented Doric portico.

The formal landscape that accompanied the old 18th century house was swept aside in the early 19th century for a good quality, professionally designed landscape park, possibly the work of John Sutherland (1745-1826). In the late 1840s Frederick Temple Blackwood, having succeeded his father as 5th Baron Dufferin in 1841, started to undertake alterations to the house, notably by moving the entrance from the south to the west.

The park was re-modelled and expanded very considerably in size, this being in part the work of James Fraser (1793-1863), the best-known exponent of Picturesque landscaping in Victorian Ireland. Much of the work provided employment in the years after the famine, and involved the closing of the public road, sweeping away surrounding fields and farm buildings and, in their stead, planting new belts, screens and sweeping deciduous woodlands.

Between 1852-62 a number of lakes were dug, notably a great lake with islands to the south and east of the house. On the west side of the demesne a two-and-a-half-mile avenue was created to provide access to the private family railway station at Helen’s Bay to the north, itself built in baronial style and approached via a splendid turreted arch, both built to designs of Benjamin Ferrey.

On a hill in the southern sector of the park William Burn was commissioned in 1848 to design a castellated tower; this was not completed until 1862 and was named Helen’s Tower by Lord Dufferin, in honour of his mother, Helena Selina, a grand-daughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

The 5th Baron, later 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, having become a well-known statesman and diplomat, including Governor-General of Canada and Viceroy of India, had greater ambitions for Clandeboye: notably, he engaged William Henry Lynn from 1865 to build a grand new house in Scottish baronial style, but this project was never undertaken. During his extensive postings abroad, exotic trees were brought back and planted in a Pinetum, mentioned by Lord Headfort in 1932 in Conifers in the Parks and Gardens of Ireland.

Today the demesne is a successful and maintained amalgam of woodland, farm and golf course. The ornamental planting is mainly to the north-east and south-east of the house in the form of different compartments begun at different times. An 1890s formal terraced garden at the house, incorporating steps, balustrated and terra-cotta vases, is now grassed over; but the 20th century additions are still maintained. These include The Conservatory Garden, which is an enclosed garden near the house of 1938; Brenda’s Garden – an informal planting in a woodland glen begun in the 1930s and now extending east; and an arboretum that was begun in the 1960s to the north-east of the house.

The former Bear Garden, close to the house, provides the setting for a formal Bee Garden created in the 1980s as the setting for a Bee House which was donated by Colonel Greeves of Altona House. More recently, in 1990, the Sheridan Garden was created, in memory of the 5th and last Marquess, in a previously laurel-infested woodland setting. The walled garden is used by Conservation Volunteers and modern glasshouses outside are in use for the house.

Other demesne buildings include the Gothic-Revival private chapel of ca.1890 by Henry Lynn; the gas-works, built ca.1870; classical limestone pedestal memorial at Campo Santo in Tomb Wood to the south-east of the house, ca.1820. The seven gate lodges, of which six still survive, are: Early Lodge c.1830; Inner Lodge c.1845; Cloister Lodge c.1845; Belfast or Ava Lodge by Ferrey 1855; Bridge Lodge, possibly by Lanyon, c.1875; and South or Newtownards Lodge c.1890.

Following the death of the 5th Marquess in 1988, a number of environmental projects and charities at Clandeboye were begun, including the Prince’s Trust and the NI branch of the Woodland Trust, established in 1998 in partnership with the Dufferin Foundation and a link with Kew Gardens. In the courtyard is Dendron Lodge, the ‘Clandeboye Environmental Centre’ used by the Conservation Volunteers Northern Ireland for meetings, workshops and accommodation.

The Blackwoods are of Scottish settler stock. The family had established themselves in County Down by the early 17th century, and over the next two centuries they steadily increased their landed property and social and political influence. Among their marriages were a late 17th and a mid-18th alliance with the Hamilton family of Killyleagh Castle, County Down, formerly Viscounts Claneboye, alias Clandeboye, and Earls of Clanbrassil from whom they inherited considerable property.

By the late 18th century they were a prominent, though far from dominant, landed family in the county. Up to the mid-1820s the Blackwoods, even though a peerage family, in reality belonged to the provincial gentry, overshadowed in their own county by the more cosmopolitan and much richer Marquesses of Downshire and Londonderry. For a fuller history of the family, the Dufferin Papers are held at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.

The 4th Marquess, who married Maureen Guinness, grand-daughter of 1st Earl of Iveagh, was said to have been a gifted young man of extraordinary charm. Like his grandfather, the 1st Marquess, he combined intellectual, literary and artistic gifts with ambitions in public life. His death in 1945 while on active service in Burma was a bitter blow to family and friends, including the future Poet Laureate, John Betjeman.

The 5th and last Marquess thus succeeded to the title aged six. He married his cousin Belinda (Lindy) Guinness at Westminster Abbey in 1964. The 5th Marquess is survived by one of his sisters, Lady Perdita Blackwood, who lives at Cavallo Farm, near Clandeboye.

The 5th and last Marquess died in 1988 and, since there was no issue, the estate passed to his widow, the Most Honourable Serena Belinda (Lindy) Rosemary Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava. The marquessate itself is now, sadly, extinct. Lindy Lady Dufferin inherited a considerable fortune at the time, not least due to the Guinness connection. She also inherited Clandeboye Estate and a London home in Holland Park. Clandeboye Estate comprises about two thousand acres of prime Ulster woodland and gardens.

Lady Dufferin has a continuing interest in the Arts and is a keen painter. She is also interested in conservation matters.



The Marchioness
A member of the fabled and complicated Guinness family by birth and marriage, Lindy, the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, presides over Clandeboye, an astounding 2,000-acre estate in Northern Ireland.
By James Reginato ( in WMagazine)
Photographs by Simon Watson
February 2009
On a meadow deep within Clandeboye, her magnificent 2,000-acre estate in Northern Ireland, a tempest has just lashed her mass of curly hair and splattered mud about her, but Lindy, the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, doesn’t so much as ask for a brush when it’s time to take her portrait. Instead, the sprightly Lady Dufferin frets about her 130 heifers, some of which are also due to be photographed. “I’ve ordered the cows to be washed,” she explains. “Where’s Willow?” she asks a gamekeeper somewhat nervously. “Is she ready?”

Willow, it turns out, is the bovine Miss Universe—Ireland’s Supreme Champion, Cow of the Year, and the undisputed star of the Clandeboye Herd, voted No. 1 in all of the UK in 2007.

Dufferin, 67, has traditionally guarded her privacy and never fully opened her home, or herself, to the press. But cow pride—and perhaps some newfound business savvy—seems to have softened her reserve. “Tears,” she says, when asked of her reaction to the top herd honor. On the heels of this award, she has just launched Clandeboye Estate Yoghurt from the milk of these fine beasts, an artisanal product that the UK’s leading supermarkets, Sainsbury’s and Tesco, vied for the honor of carrying first. When asked which one she was likely to choose, Dufferin confessed to a reporter that she “[hadn’t] a clue,” because she’d never been to a supermarket, prompting the British press to make predictable fun of her. Still, the very p.c. New Statesman admitted that the “hideous unfairness” of the class system had nonetheless produced “some wonderful eccentrics,” namely Dufferin.

Her lack of familiarity with the pantry aside, Dufferin has labored valiantly throughout four decades to keep Clandeboye—one of Ireland’s largest and oldest estates—intact. During the course of her often tumultuous life, the property has served as an anchor and a refuge—a subject she broaches once we escape the inclement weather following Willow’s portrait (a difficult sitting, as the 1,700-pound Holstein, like most beauty queens, proves temperamental).

“I’m not remotely interested in being posh or chic,” announces Dufferin, sitting down to tea and just-baked crumpets in Clandeboye House’s vast library, a richly paneled and gilded room. Yet she then proceeds to rave about Nicky Haslam’s much chronicled ball two nights earlier in London, where she danced until four, primarily with Picasso biographer and old friend John Richardson. According to several stunned observers, the pair flung themselves about with ferocity.

A tall woman who seems constantly energized, Dufferin is a product of Ireland’s fabled Guinness family twice over. Her father, Loel Guinness, a dashing sportsman, came from the so-called banking branch of the clan, and in 1964 she married a distant cousin from the brewing side, Sheridan Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, the Fifth Marquess of Dufferin and Ava.

Edward Ardizzone's Sammy's Story Shop - Little Tim And the brave sea captain

Edward Ardizzone

Ardizzone was born at Haiphong, Tonkin, French Indo-China, where his Algerian-born Italian father was on overseas government service. Ardizzone's English mother returned to England with her three eldest children in 1905. The children were brought up in Suffolk, largely by their maternal grandmother, whilst their mother returned to join her husband in the Far East. Ardizzone was educated first at Ipswich School and then at Clayesmore School - where he was encouraged by his art teacher. (see: The Young Ardizzone: an Autobiographical Fragment (London 1970))
He worked as an official war artist in World War II: his early experiences between Arras and Boulogne are illustrated and described in his book Baggage to the Enemy (London 1941). An extensive collection of his war pictures, as well as his wartime diaries, can be seen at The Imperial War Museum.
His best known work is the Tim series, featuring the maritime adventures of the eponymous young hero. The first book, Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain, was published in 1936. The most famous of the books, Tim All Alone, won the British Library Association's Kate Greenaway Medal for illustration in 1956. The series is often thought to have ended in 1972 with Tim's Last Voyage but that was, in fact, followed in 1977 by Ships Cook Ginger. His Sarah and Simon and No Red Paint was issued in an edition by Doubleday in 1966.
As well as writing and illustrating his own books, Ardizzone also illustrated books written by others, including the novels of Anthony Trollope. His 1939 characterization of H.E. Bates's My Uncle Silas was inimitable. Among his happiest collaborations was that with Eleanor Farjeon, especially The Little Bookroom.
He illustrated the Nurse Matilda series of children's books written by his cousin, author Christianna Brand. Both cousins heard the stories from the same grandmother - who had, in her turn, heard them from her father. He also famously illustrated A Ring of Bells, John Betjeman's abridged version for children of his Summoned by Bells autobiographical poem. He worked on C. Day Lewis's children's novel The Otterbury Incident, as well as some novels by the American author Eleanor Estes, including The Alley, Miranda the Great, Pinky Pye, The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode and The Witch Family.
He is also particularly noted for having not just illustrated the covers and contents of books but inking the title text and author's name in his own hand, giving the books a distinctive look on shelves. An example is Clive King's Stig of the Dump.
Ardizzone illustrated a series of books for young children by Graham Greene including The Little Fire Engine, The Little Horse Bus,The Little Train and The Little Steamroller. He also illustrated a re-telling of the Don Quixote story for children by James Reeves. His illustrations for the The Land of Green Ginger by Noel Langley are classics in their own right.
Ardizzone also illustrated several telegrams for the Post Office in the 1950s and 1960s, many of which are considered collector's items.
His style is naturalistic but subdued, featuring gentle lines and delicate watercolours, but with great attention to particular details.
He was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 1970, and appointed CBE in 1971. The British Library published an illustrated bibliography of his works in 2003.
Ardizzone died of a heart attack in 1979.

Instroduction to the catalogue for the retrospective exhibition which ran from December 1973 to January 1974 at the Victoria and Albert Museum and was directed by


Gabriel White

Edward Ardizzone, who was born in Haiphong in 1900, is very much an English artist in spite of his Italian name and partly Italian ancestry. Though an admirer of the drawings of Constantin Guys, one can discern little or no foreign influence in his work, which belongs to the long tradition of illustrators of this country including such names as Cruikshank, Charles Keene and Caldecott. Any artistic family background came from the side of his English mother. She had been a watercolour painter, as were so many young ladies of that period, but she, more than most, had studied in Paris and worked in Colarossi's studio in the 188os. Further back, there was an almost legendary descent from a Joshua Kirby, who was a Suffolk man and an artist friend of Gainsborough.

Ardizzone's artistic education was a part-time training, but it was forceful and enduring. He worked for a number of years at the Westminster Art School - alas, no more – in Bernard Meninsky's evening life classes, coming under the spell of a man who was not only a born teacher and a brilliant draughtsman of the human form but one who could inspire enthusiasm in his pupils and possessed a vast store of knowledge, which he was always ready to impart to those whom he favoured. In 1927 Ardizzone left the City firm where he had been working and decided to take up art as a career.


He celebrated his newly won freedom with a tour abroad. Foreign scenes however left little impression upon him and the first inspiration in Ardizzone's work was the part of London in which he had lived since early manhood, Maida Vale, where raffishness verging almost on the sinister jostled closely against a respectable population with a slightly foreign and artistic flavour. Architecturally it is a district divided by wide avenues flanked with trees, and it could boast then of possessing some of London's most rewarding "locals", whether for the company found in them, both racy and seedy, or for the interior decor. This ranged from thChristmas Eve at the Warrington- Christmas e palatial resplendence of "The Warrington", with its lordly staircase leading to the billiard room above, which figures so frequently in the artist's drawings and paintings, to the cosy frowstiness of little bars tucked away in some quiet back alley. It is these which provide the milieu for so many of Ardizzone's intimate scenes of London life. There, also, were to be found the dingy "bed-sitters" and the sparsely furnished studios, which enshrine so many resplendent female nudes.

But it was not always seamy metropolitan life. There was another vein that can early be found in the artist's work, softer and more idyllic, arising from his frequent descents into the Kentish countryside. First to Eynsford, with its lovely valley which, forty five years ago, was almost as Samuel Palmer knew it, and later to Rodmersham Green near Sittingbourne, with its family connections and where he himself now lives. Its orchards and leafy lanes have constantly inspired him. Illus. from Blackbird and the Lilac - James Reeves 1952
There was yet a third motif which plays a large part in Ardizzone's oeuvre, the sea and shipping. Knowledge and experience of the sea were in his ancestry on both sides of his family. His father's father had been an Italian sea captain, who lived at Bari and was
a ship owner, and one of his mother's grandfathers had been a Captain Kirby, who left behind him a number of logbooks illustrated by himself.

He visited Kingsdown, near Deal, where his brother David had a house beside the shingly beach and where shipping was constantly passing close in-shore. This was to be the inspiration for the first Tim book, Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain, in which the Ardizzone house was Tim's home. Ships, sail and steam, small boats, incidents of life at sea and activity on rivers were again and again to provide fruitful themes.

Such were the subjects of many of Ardizzone's pictures throughout his working life, but early in his artistic career came an opportunity to widen his outlook that provided material of sterner quality with a totally different background. He was appointed official War Artist in 1940. From the period in France up to the fall of Dunkirk, during the early London blitzes and Britain's preparations against invasion, to North Africa and the Western Desert and then on to Sicily, ltaly, Normandy and Germany he poured out a long succession of drawings and paintings. He depicts the hardships of civilian life with the sudden interruptions of peacetime existence, the soldiers' training, the frequent periods of waiting and inactivity and then the almost uninterrupted fast-moving warfare of the latter years. Ardizzone was never far behind the battle, and at times he can produce a grim picture of recent fighting. The total output provides a wide survey of human behaviour in times of war, which for its truthfulness parallels the writings of literary recorders such as Stendhal and Tolstoy.
After the war, Ardizzone's subject matter again widens. Though for a number of years he was to continue his "low life" subjects, a world of greater respectability begins to appear, with house parties and bathing pools in the South of France. Records of foreign travel present a life of greater comfort and affluence. Beer in pubs gives place to wine at the dining table, the imbibers may still have red noses, but they are tasting finer products, which are not cheap. Some bite may have gone out of his work, but the social scene isnow richly attractive. In 1962 he was elected A.R.A. and in 1970 R.A.

As a constant observer of life around him, Ardizzone was ideally suited for book illustration. In a sense all his work is illustrative, but the power to interpret an author's text is a gift which he possesses in a marked degree, both from his sympathetic understanding and vivid imagination. His achievement in this field lies in his ability to create a series of small events. He does not concentrate as much on the individual characters of the story as make a picture from their behaviour in the incidents which he has selected. Apart from the people in his own children's tales, one lays down the book with perhaps no extended knowledge of the hero or of the other protagonists, but with a memory enriched by a number of lively scenes



What would Edward Ardizzone have made of the new editions of his Little Tim books as we approach the centenary of his birth? He would have loved them, his daughter, Christianna Clemence, tells Joanna Carey (The Guardian, Tuesday 4 January 2000)

"He drew constantly - always carried a sketchbook, usually a publisher's 'dummy' - but, failing that, he drew on envelopes or the backs of cigarette boxes. Even his letters had drawings all over - I grew up thinking all correspondence was illustrated: when I went away to school I was surprised by the dull letters all the other girls received. Pa was always drawing. We just took it for granted - it was what he did."
Christianna Clemence is talking about her father, Edward Ardizzone. His self-portrait hangs on the wall behind her and bears quite a resemblance to her young grandson, Tom, who's visiting, and who waits patiently as we talk.
Edward Ardizzone (1900-1979) was one of the best-known, best-loved and most influential and important of all 20th century illustrators. Astonishingly prolific, his work includes watercolours, oils, prints, magazine illustrations including those for the Radio Times (which, in its heyday, was a marvellous showcase for illustrators) and, on a larger scale, the famous lithographs for the old J Lyons teashops, posters and even murals for an ocean liner. And, of course, he was a distinguished war artist. He illustrated more than 180 books - from Shakespeare, Dickens, Galsworthy to Walter de la Mare, Eleanor Farjeon and a delightful autobiography - and is perhaps best known for his Little Tim books, which grew from the stories he told Christianna and her brother as children.
They lived in London and Christianna - now 70 and a hugely entertaining storyteller herself - paints a vivid picture of the family home in Maida Vale, whose streets, shops, pubs, parks and raffish local characters are recorded with such affectionate relish in Ardizzone's work. Ardizzone worked at home; he had been a clerk in his father's firm, forever embellishing the accounts with drawings and doodles, and attending life classes at Westminster School of Art in the evenings, but he gave up that job to become a professional artist.
"He started with book jackets," says Christianna, "but money was scarce, so Ma, who was very beautiful and very tall, got a job as a fashion model and Pa looked after us at home while he worked. The house smelled deliciously of turpentine, and he sat at his desk up on a model's throne, on the first floor. With no garden, and a very dark nursery, my brother and I just larked around the studio; mostly he ignored our squabbles and screams, but he'd attend to the odd splinter, and now and again he'd say 'please don't lean out of the window!' or 'please don't climb on the roof'."
And did you obey? "Of course not - we couldn't hear him, anyway, if we were out on the roof. But it was perfectly safe - one of those huge Victorian houses where behind the parapet you could get access to all the different levels," she says briskly (and for a moment I wonder where her grandson has got to). And did he prepare your meals? "Oh, yes, he was a much better cook than our mother! Usually it was semolina and pineapple chunks... and he'd take us out to the park to play, and sometimes I walked down to the framers with him when he had exhibitions at the Leger Gallery. He read to us a lot at bedtime, but we'd always end up asking for "real stories" - ie, the ones he made up himself, and he'd say: 'Well, now ... let's see ... how does it go?' "
So with these exemplary "parenting skills" was he an early version of "new man"? "Absolutely not! Very old-fashioned in his ideas about women... no question of girls going to university - you just had to hope to get married!"
And, indeed, Christianna, as a little girl, had elaborate plans to secure a comfortable future by making friends with rich old gentlemen in Paddington recreation ground where their father took them to play... and that's what inspired the story Lucy Brown and Mr Grimes.
"In his innocence, it didn't occur to Pa that it wasn't a very good example for little girls, and the story had to be somewhat modified.
"Luckily, though, no one objected to the hair-raising situations from which Little Tim makes such heroic escapes - and it's the same benevolent Mr Grimes who so obligingly forks out for the steam yacht Evangeline, in which Tim and Lucy Go To Sea. Reading these stories with my sons was, for me, one of the major delights of parenthood - and the creation of them was clearly very important to Ardizzone.
"He talked about them a lot," says Christianna, "about the simple text, the structure, and the importance of a turning point in the narrative." And although the line and wash drawings, with that vigorous, distinctive hatching and cross-hatching seem so spontaneous, "he'd draw and redraw until he got it exactly right". Lucy and Tim were based on Christianna and her brother, so did they have to sit still to be drawn?
"Oh, no! He didn't draw from life except in formal life classes: he did all his drawing from memory, drawing what he'd seen half-an-hour before. And I have a theory that the speed and fluency of his drawing was partly due to the fact that he had a bit of a stammer - drawing was a much easier form of communication."
And it's that ease of visual communication that allows the pictures to tell so much of the story. Though packed with information, the detail is never fussy or laboured - gestures and facial expressions, however breezily suggested, are marvellously eloquent, the humour is gentle and his perfect understanding of composition, however dramatic, always conveys an overall sense of well-being.
In his illuminating book on Ardizzone, Gabriel White laments the fact that the artist spent so much time on children's books - as opposed to "general illustration" - but really, how lucky that is. Children brought up on these books will never forget the atmospheric vitality of his drawing, will always feel, at any stage of their life, that leap of recognition when they encounter his work - wherever it may be - in books, galleries or at the Imperial War Museum. And anyway, as Christianna points out, her father didn't make much distinction between work for children and work for adults - "he always treated us as equals - he would certainly never talk down or draw down to children." As with Tim and Lucy, whatever happened he simply expected them to rise to the occasion.
Calling to mind Hogarth, Rowlandson, Cruickshank and Daumier, Ardizzone's style has its roots firmly in the traditions of the 18th and 19th centuries; his work spans the greater part of the 20th century; and now, ensuring its accessibility in the new millennium, Scholastic is re-publishing all the Little Tim stories.
In order to create fresh, bright books rather than fusty facsimiles, they've used the latest technology to scan Ardizzone's original colour washes, with the black lines on a separate overlay. Christianna has been involved at every stage of this sensitive operation.
Two of the books are already published, and the rest will appear during 2000 - to celebrate the centenary of Ardizzone's birth. "It's astonishing! It all looks so crisp and lovely - only trouble is the modern scanners are so efficient they picked up all the underdrawing - and you could even see where the cat had walked across the drawing board. Drat that cat! as Pa would say. But they've removed the splodges and the result is wonderful!
"Oh, yes, Pa would have loved it."

Jeremy Hackett Luxury Leader

Jeremy Hackett ... Self created Mr. Classic ...

Jeremy Hackett, Pitti Uomo by The Sartorialist



Hackett: A ‘Heritage’ That’s Oh-So-British

By SUZY MENKES in New York Times
Published: January 11, 2010
arda Tano
Mr. Hackett, now 56, above, created in the stores a blue-chip image for himself.

Bringing this London style to the Pitti Uomo menswear show, which was to open in Florence on Tuesday, whets the appetite of international buyers — even if the Mayfair gentlemen of the early 1960s now exist only as a romantic memory in the mind of Jeremy Hackett.
Mr. Hackett, the self-styled “Mr. Classic” who has published a book of whimsical comments on the British male’s sartorial habits, is the prime example of the latest trend in menswear: inventing heritage.
“Most people think the business was built by my grandfather or father,” he says. “For heritage, people believe you had to be around for 100 years.”
Hackett, the purveyor of stylish men’s clothes designed not to frighten the horses, upset a boss or alarm a bank manager, was founded in 1983 by Jeremy Hackett and Ashley Lloyd-Jennings, whose day jobs were as salesmen in Savile Row, London’s tailoring mecca.
Together the young entrepreneurs would trawl the Portobello antiques market and second-hand shops, buying up the clothes of a generation whose sons had discarded the classics in favor of the styles of the “swinging ’60s.”
Or as Mr. Hackett puts it, his “profitable weekend hobby” was fueled by the fact that “gentleman from the ’50s to early ’60s changed radically.”
“It all started when we were both in Paris at Clignancourt [flea market] and we met a man who was selling everything British — hunting and shooting — second-hand,” says Mr. Hackett. “And he said, ‘Why don’t you buy stuff for me?”’
When Hackett, the brand, was born in a modest shop “at the wrong end” of hip and happening Kings Road, in London’s Chelsea district, it sold only used clothes. But the eye of the owner, who had been brought up alongside his father’s business in interior decoration fabrics, could winkle out the best of the past.
“In a rail of old suits, I could spot a decent one, handmade in Savile Row, for five pounds,” says Mr. Hackett, referring to the inexpensive vintage pieces that he would sell to another lover of British style, Ralph Lauren.
“I think of us as old England and Ralph as New England — we both draw from an old culture,” says Mr. Hackett, remembering the days when he would give the American designer bin liners, or garbage bags, to fill with old clothes.
In fact, Mr. Hackett knows (and quotes in his book, “Mr. Classic”), as the poet Edward Fitzgerald wrote in 1840, “say as you will, there is not and never was such a country as Old England.”
Yet that dream world of rus-in-urbis, or country meets city, is there on the stand at Pitti or in the townhouse store on Sloane Street — Mr. Hackett’s favorite of the nine London stores, because he can walk there with his two dogs from his home in South London.
The customers for tweedy suits, mildly dandy with four-button cuffs, modest moleskin pants or vivid-colored corduroy trousers and solid sweaters are known by class-conscious Brits as “Sloanes” or “Sloane Rangers.” But Mr. Hackett insists that this local species, with its giveaway posh accents, is not typical of visitors to Hackett’s 61 stores worldwide.
Despite the bowler-and-umbrella logo, Hackett clothes are often more military and sporty than urban. The company’s polo shirts have been worn by Prince William, future heir to the British throne, for the British Army Polo team that Hackett sponsors; and by less desirable football hooligans who then, apparently, moved on to Burberry.
The fact that Hackett could seem comparable to Burberry, with its impeccable 19th-century heritage, is a testament to the savvy implanting of the 1980s brand.
In 1992, the Richemont luxury group embraced Hackett, although it was ultimately sold in 2005 to the Spanish investment company Torreal. Mr. Hackett sees this as having quickened the pace of expansion, even though annual revenues are still small. Turnover for 2009 was approximately €72 million, about $100 million, according to the company’s managing director.
Since 1997, when Hackett launched its wholesale business in Britain, it says its customer base has expanded rapidly. Its stores and outlets today span much of Europe. It has had a presence in Spain since 1994, and it opened a second Paris store on the Boulevard des Capucines last year. The shops focus not just on tailoring but on the upper-crust masculine world of polo and car racing, through Hackett’s Aston Martin sponsorship. America is still considered virgin territory for growth.
What is the appeal of the officer-and-gentleman world that was always a product more of cinema than of reality?
Mr. Hackett believes that men feel most comfortable shopping in a store dedicated just to them, where fathers often bring sons for “first interview” clothes. Although children’s clothes have been offered since 1996, women are not on the Hackett agenda.
“Men on the whole are quite scared of fashion,” says the founder. He is himself quirky-sleek in a green and blue check tweed jacket with narrow rounded cuffs and red stitches on the button, worn with a navy-and-white spotted necktie. His professional search for the perfect English gentleman is also personal. An adopted child, he recently was reunited with his birth mother in Australia and found in her the refined English elegance that he had searched for in his adult life.
Although he left school at 16, with his father’s prophetic warning, “If you don’t pull your socks up you’ll end up working in a shop,” Mr. Hackett, now 56, created in the stores a blue-chip image for himself. There are colored socks “going back to school days and house colors”; the “formal kit” of top hat and tails taken from Eton college; and sports clothes as for the Oxford versus Cambridge boat race that Hackett sponsors. And there are the city suits and bowlers symbolic of London’s financial district before Margaret Thatcher opened it up to international traders.
The secret of success is to walk a fine line between heritage (real or reconstructed) and nostalgia. Loyal clients (who, the owner says, “don’t buy Prada one day and Hackett the next”) also find subtle updates from the seven-member design team lead by American designer Michael Sondag, who joined Hackett from Tommy Hilfiger in 2005.
Yet the brand is essentially Mr. Hackett himself, with his two spaniels who can be seen leaping, panting or faithfully sitting in many of the promotional pictures and whose names, Charley and Browney, are on their owner’s personalized cuffs links.
And with each decade that passes, Hackett becomes increasingly venerable. Or, as the founder puts it: “We are a British brand with a little bit of heritage.”


Mr Classic by Jeremy Hackett, Photographs by Garda Tang
Thames & Hudson, May 2008
200 pages/hardcover/136 photographs
Jeremy Hackett is Mr Classic. Having a clothing label for decades plus writing a column for the U.K.’s The Independent on Sunday are excellent platforms for influencing men’s fashion. But what decidedly earns Hackett this moniker is his talented facility for reviving the proper styles once worn by Britain’s aristocracy with modern practicality. For his book, Mr Classic, London-based photographer Garda Tang shoots Hackett’s models with fitting technique. Every bow tie, every just-so lifted chin neatly accentuates Hackett’s vision of gentlemanly chic. The looks are respectable and refreshing, not stuffy or stagnant.
Mr Classic explains the nods and shakes over every outfit detail from shoe polish and floral prints to wearing “serious” cufflinks. Tang stages athletic, social, business, casual and seasonal occasions. He blends an original mix of old and new in his photographic coverage. A lad playing near a tire rubbish heap wears a navy blue newsboy cap, white button-down shirt and tan cuffed trousers that match both the Band-Aid on his hand and the tips of his slip-on sneakers. The shot is propped with a vintage model racing coupe in red, the color of his suspenders. Among Tang’s black-and-white shots, a swimmer demonstrates how goggles pair nicely with belted shorts and no shirt; a pinstripe-suited businessman in a bus stop shelter wears his bowler smartly tipped while tapping on his laptop.

Tang’s flair for capturing the mood of each topic for Mr Classic is spot-on. When Hackett clarifies that a man’s pajamas are no giggling matter, Tang responds with an appealing interpretation. A yawning man with bedhead revealing a touch of his bare belly, appears perfectly fine in wrinkled PJs made of shirt linen fabric. Shown at his front door, he holds a metal basket with bottled milk and biscuits; opposite, a cat enjoys her morning meal from the window ledge. Cat-in-the-sill lace curtains crown the scene. The photo’s effect is a grin just short of a snigger.


With Mr Classic, Hackett’s amusing narrative and Tang’s spotless photographs seamlessly combine to create a rallying cry for the Sharp Dressed Man. The book eloquently hints that certain attire—such as those pilled, ankle-gathered sweatpants—will no longer do. Don’t be surprised if after undertaking this study, there is a compulsion to dust off the holiday tasseled loafers and go for a stroll. Maybe add a striped shirt for sport.

"Remains of the Day" Early Spring