Books Are Back
Resources and references
Ordinary Jack
The 1997 TV Series of the Phoenix and the Carpet, written by Helen Cresswell, is available on YouTube:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7KZP4TNsxZc
Help! I am a Prisoner in a Toothpaste Factory
There are some truly puzzling posters for The Bed Sitting Room, the film made from the play John Antrobus wrote with Spike Milligan. Check out this page on Marty Feldman’s website:
http://www.theofficialmartyfeldman.com/main/news/the-bed-sitting-room/
A Child’s Christmas in Wales
The description of Swansea by Dylan Thomas is taken from his script for a radio broadcast on Reminiscences of Childhood.
https://www.undermilkwood.net/prose_reminiscences.html
The Ultimate Alphabet
In this episode, Catherine tries to explain anamorphic projection with reference to a famous picture in the National Gallery. You can see Holbein’s The Ambassadors here:
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/hans-holbein-the-younger-the-ambassadors
Auntie Robbo
Catherine couldn't find a lot of information about Ann Scott-Moncrieff until she discovered that she had been the subject of the 2020 George Mackay Brown Memorial Lecture. The lecture that Jean Findlay gave about her grandmother's life can be found here
George Mackay Brown Memorial Lecture 2020 on Vimeo
You can read the whole of the newspaper article that Ann (then Agnes) wrote about flying across the Pentland Firth in Frontiers magazine here
Frontiers Magazine | I Fly the Pentland
The Sword in the Stone
After we published this episode, someone got in touch to tell us that the passage Ursula chose to read aloud about the passage of the seasons was the source material for the title song in the musical Camelot. The musical was based on T H White’s version of the Arthurian stories, and had a good reception in theatres, less so the film. Here is Richard Burton, who played Arthur, singing Camelot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h7E5rtnFH4
Nancy Drew
Much of the information in this episode came from James Keeline’s website about the Stratemeyer Syndicate, which is packed with information about Edward Stratemeyer’s series fiction, plus great pictures of the books.
https://stratemeyer.org
A Necklace of Raindrops
When Catherine was researching this episode, she enjoyed listening to Jan Pienkowski’s selection on Desert Island Discs, which can be heard here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n6x78
You may also hear her describe a cover of a book that made her really want to read it, in fact it’s not the cover - it’s an end paper and can be seen here on the Joan Aiken blog: