Sean Connery has Died

 

He wasn't just Bond, of course. 

He starred in some of my favourite films, including Robin and Marion, The Name of the Rose, and The Man Who Would be King with Michael Caine. 

He was Spanish in Highlander, Irish-American in The Untouchables, and Russian in The Hunt for Red October (and he'd been Russian before, in Anna Karenina for the BBC).    

He was Indiana Jones' dad. 

He sang in Darby O'Gill and the Little People. 

He wore high boots and a red loincloth (and not a lot else) in Zardoz.

He had a fight on the roof of a steam train carriage in The First Great Train Robbery.

He was a cop in space in Outland, a prisoner in a military prison in The Hill, and a truck driver in The Hell Drivers.

That's quite a range for an actor who will mostly be remembered as James Bond.

Jill Paton Walsh has Died

 I first knew about Jill Paton Walsh through her children's books, especially A Parcel of Patterns, which is about the village of Eyam that sealed itself off to stop the spread of the plague (quite a topical subject now).  Another I enjoyed was Fireweed, set during the Second World War.

She also wrote detective novels with the main character of Imogen Quy, so she had experience in the detective fiction genre when she came to continue the Lord Peter Wimsey series of novels, from the notes that Dorothy L Sayers had left.  Opinion in Sayers fandom is divided on these, but I enjoyed them, even if some people do see them as a form of fan fiction.

She was 83.

Raffles, starring David Niven

 I first encountered Raffles through the 1970s series starring Anthony Valentine, who I adored in the role, and which led me to reading all of Hornung's original short stories.

But I was unaware that there was a film of Raffles, starring David Niven, until recently.

When I looked it up, I found that the co-star was Olivia de Havilland - two of my favourite Hollywood actors, so why had I never heard of it?

I sent off for a VHS video.

I can see why I'd never heard of it before - it's a pretty low budget production, and Olivia de Havilland and David Niven are the only actors I've heard of in it.  The plot updates the original 1890s stories to 1939, and most of the action is set over one country house weekend, where Raffles plays cricket by day and tries to steal his hostess's necklace by night.

Bunny Manders is sidelined in favour of his sister Gwen (Olivia de Havilland), who puts the clues together to work out who the Amateur Cracksman is.  This Raffles seems kinder than the original, too - showing concern for the kitten he uses in a jewellery shop break in, arranging for a retired actress he admired to collect reward money for a stolen painting, and planning to steal the necklace to help out Bunny, who has money problems.  But the film does stop rather abruptly, leaving the police inspector waiting for a rendezvous out in the rain, and no clear conclusion as to what will happen to Raffles next.

Still, it's always worth watching David Niven and Olivia de Havilland in anything.

I understand now that there is an earlier film starring Ronald Colman - and John Barrymore was in a silent version in 1917!

The Avengers - The Hour that Never Was

 I remembered this episode as soon as they got to the abandoned airfield - it's the one with the milk float and Roy Kinnear as a tramp.  There's also a bonus Gerald Harper as Steed's old friend at the airbase.

The Man-Eater of Surrey Green and Silent Dust

 In honour of Dame Diana Rigg's death, I brought out my complete box set of The Avengers again.  I've been watching it a bit at a time, in order, and by chance I had reached Series 4, Disc 4, and a couple of delightful Emma Peel episodes.

In The Man-Eater of Surrey Green, Steed and Mrs Peel are up against an alien plant that can control minds, which gives a lovely excuse for Emma to fight Steed.  A plot twist is that the plant cannot control deaf people, so there are three deaf people in the episode.  The first is a horticulturalist, and boyfriend of one of the mind-controlled scientists.  The second is a fertiliser merchant who Emma meets in the local pub, and the third is an elderly lady scientist who is brought in to analyse the alien plant specimen.  To protect themselves from the mind control, Emma and Steed wear hearing aids to get close to the control room where the growth of the plant is being regulated.

Fertiliser is also involved in the next episode, Silent Dust, but this time the formula went wrong and produced a pesticide that wipes out everything it touches.  The bad guy in this episode is William Franklyn, most famous for the "Shh - You Know Who" Schwepps adverts - here he's a keen country sportsman, and very involved in the local hunt when he's not trying to hold the government to ransom by poisoning the whole of Dorset.  I found it interesting that hunt protestors carrying placards were shown in 1965.  Also, Steed gets shot with no blood or marks on his jacket whatsoever - but it does lead to a very funny hallucination scene.

Tonight I'll be finishing off the disc with The Hour that Never Was, which I have no memory of whatsoever, and Castle De'ath, which is one of my favourites.

Dame Diana Rigg has Died

 

This is how I best remember her, as Emma Peel in the Avengers.  I wanted to be like her, when I was six.

But she was a brilliant actress in so many roles - the only Bond girl to marry Bond (just a pity it was George Lazenby - and that she died just after the wedding), a nun in In This House of Brede, and Mrs Bradley in The Mrs Bradley Mysteries, for instance.

More recently, she played the villain in the Doctor Who episode The Crimson Horror, which had been specially written for her and her daughter Rachel Stirling by Mark Gatiss, and of course she was the Queen of Thorns, Oleanna Tyrell, in Game of Thrones.

She did Shakespeare, and the Morecambe and Wise Show, and she will shortly be seen in the new series of All Creatures Great and Small (returning to her native Yorkshire) and as another nun, Mother Dorothea, in Black Narcissus.

I was lucky enough to hear her rehearsing, once.  I was on a coach tour in Scotland with my gran, and we were looking round the Church of the Holy Rude in Stirling.  Diana Rigg was in the pulpit, rehearsing a speech - there was no mistaking the voice.  I was thrilled, and wanted to stay to listen, but my gran wasn't terribly sure who Diana Rigg was, and wanted to go and have a cup of tea before we had to get back to the coach.  I see from her Wikipedia page that she had an honorary degree from the University of Stirling, where she was also Chancellor for a time.

She also collected a book of theatrical reviews called No Turn Unstoned.

I know what I'll be watching later this evening....

Spider Woman's Daughter by Anne Hillerman

 I've read a few of the Tony Hillerman mysteries set around the Navajo Nation.  When I read a mystery novel, I'm less interested in the whodunnit aspect, and more interested in the background details, especially if the setting is a place or way of life I'm unfamiliar with.  Reading about the Navajo Nation from the point of view of two Navajo police officers has been fascinating, even though Tony Hillerman was not Navajo himself.

When Tony Hillerman died, his daughter wrote a new novel in the Lt. Leaphorn and Officer Chee series, so I was interested to see how she carried on the story.  Anne Hillerman was already a journalist, but this was her first novel.

Well, the first thing she did was almost kill off one of her dad's main characters!  Retired Lt. Leaphorn is shot, and Sergeant Chee and his wife, Officer Bernie Manuelito, have to solve the mystery.  So this story is from Bernie's point of view.

As an ex-archaeologist, I was very interested in all the details about Navajo pottery and the various archaeological sites in the plot, and as someone with an interest in fibre arts I was interested in the details about Navajo rugs.  Bernie's mother was a weaver of Navajo rugs, so that's one meaning of the title.

Anne Hillerman continued the series, and is now on her sixth novel - I'll be interested to read more of them.