St Mary, Swansea

     St Mary's is a big boned church. Victorian and hefty. Worldly. It stands on an old site in the centre of the city, the mother church of the city.  However the original church has long disappeared, and the current church is the replacement of a replacement, and, to be honest, doesn't move me much. 

     St Mary's is the work of Sir Arthur Blomfield (1829-99) - that prodigious but not exactly top-rank architect whom we have encountered before in Oundle. Alas this church, which dates from 1894-8, is one of his more pedestrian offerings. One can imagine any number of similar churches populating the Victorian suburbs of Britain, cold and dutiful. It replaces a Georgian church design by one of the Woodard brothers (William) who also designed St Anne's Bewdley.  Judging by photograph evidence it was quite rustic structure, with little of the Baroque polish of St Anne's. The eastern chapel - the Herbert Chapel - escaped the fell hand of Woodward and Blomfield only to fall under the fell hand of the Blitz when St Mary's was gutted.  The church was rebuilt (1954-9) by Sir Percy Thomas, Leslie Moore (the son of the great Temple Moore) having already resigned before work began. And Thomas's fell hand can be seen in the replacement for the Hebert Chapel - Gothic nearly stripped of all spirit, and feeling and looking like an electricity substation.

     Happily the interior is altogether of a different order of things, though in much need of repair. Even George Pace who did behaved himself reasonable well at St Mary's - the only really jarring object is the font cover.

     Well, I wrote those words in December 2023 and have only today gone back to St Mary's to take some photographs of the interior.  Sadly, I couldn't get into the rebuilt Herbert Chapel to see the reredos by the artist John Piper - it's all marbled paper rather like the reredos he designed for Newport Cathedral.  Even for a building of this scale the interior architecture is a little on the heavy side, and roof on the thin side a bit like one of those oddly skeletal roofs Pugin designed for his churches.  More heft required.  Alas, none of the furnings are quite up to the scale of the church though there are couple of fine icons.  As I said over a year ago now, all rather worldly.

British Transport Films: Elizabethan Express

At Platform 5, The Elizabethan,

A special express for the holiday season,

Summons its strength.

And the time to depart

Marks an ending for some,

But, for many, a start.

     When I reviewed British Transport Films' production 'Blue Pullman' back in 2021 I mentioned briefly another BTF film, 'Elizabethan Express' of 1954.  And much that I said then about 'Blue Pullman', and indeed 'An Artist looks at Churches' of 1959, could be said of this film.  Apologies in advance, then, if I repeat myself.

     'Elizabethan Express' is a film I've watched many times since I first saw it on C4 - and sometimes, strictly between you and me you understand, with tears in my eyes.  I certainly regard it as a favourite, even if at times it verges on the mawkish.  Whatever its faults, it is, however, a good example of how the BTF could produce a beautifully crafted short film (some 19mins)  'documentary'. I've used inverted commas because this film, like 'Blue Pullman', is really a piece of advertising, of a rather 'Reithian' stripe, making the travelling public aware of a 'new' non-stop express service, 'The Elizabethan', between London King's Cross and Edinburgh Waverley 'over the Tyne'.*  (It was Lord Reith (1887-1971), the first Director General of the BBC,  developed what are often referred to the Reithian Principles - a distillation of the BBC's mission - 'to inform, educate and entertain' the public.  The BTF and the wider Documentary Film Movement in Britain shared those principles, but perhaps not so explicitly.)

     'Elizabethan Express' was also an attempt to show that the newly nationalised rail service had put the War Years behind them - years when the railways were run into the ground by the War effort - eg the barest amount of maintenance and little if any new rolling stock.  Glamour, and comfort, this film announced, had returned. This attempt was made by the use of 'Heroic Materialism' of a much more potent variety than that on display in 'Blue Pullman'; the crossing of the Tweed via the Royal Border Bridge at Berwick is a marvel.  You could say that the train and specifically the engine - a pre-War Class A4 Pacific designed by Sir Nigel Gresley for LNER - is the star.  The narration describes the engine - The Silver Fox - in suitably heroic terms has having 'the speed of a greyhound and strength of a boar'.  Coupled with this celebration of technology is an appeal to the Wartime collective effort of a sort first seen on the big screen in Walter Summers's 'The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands' of 1924.  In 'Elizabethan Express' the narrative of the journey is interspersed with sections describing the work of all those toiling 'behind the scenes' to achieve the feat of what was then the longest non-stop passenger service in the world.  A slightly 'elite' train service as collective endeavor.

     The filming was quite an endeavor of itself, for unlike 'Night Mail' of 18 years earlier which re-constructed the interior of a night mail train in the studio for filming, 'Elizabethan Express' was filmed entirely on location.  Camera man (Billy Williams) and his assistant shared the footplate with driver and fireman.  Those repeated shots of the flank of the train, and (I think) the external shots of the engine in the water trough sequence, were shot just north of Peterborough where the Peterborough-Leicester line runs parallel to the East Coast Mainline for several miles.  But then the documentary film of this form is essentially a fiction of some sort; John Grierson (father of the British documentary film movement) called it 'dramatised reality'.

     Well, that has dealt with 'inform' and 'educate' and now for the 'entertain'.  This is mainly in the form of the narration written by Paul de Saux in doggerel.  An hommage to 'Nightmail', I presume, which had poetry written for it by W H Auden' no less.  No criticism of the actors who voiced the narration, Alan Wheatley & Howard Marion Crawford, but it is, it has to be said, a hit-and-miss affair.  Sometimes clunky: 'Watch them consistently filling the gaps in their faces with food'.  Sometimes rather affecting: 'The loud hiss of steam as the train seems to slow to the pace of a cloud breaks the afternoon task and disperses the dream'.  A quick nod also to the composer Clifton Parker who wrote the, at times Brittenesque, score.

* 'The Elizabethan' ran during the summer months.  It replaced the 'Capitals Limited' express in 1953, the year of the Coronation of Elizabeth II.  The Capitals Limited express, inaugurated in 1949, was a Post-War restoration(of sorts) of the non-stop 'Flying Scotsman' service which by then had been 'reduced' to a stopping service. According to Wiki, the 'Capitals Limited' made the non-stop journey between London and Edinburgh in 8 hours, 'The Elizabethan' in 6 hours 30 mins.  The service was withdrawn in 1963.

 

 Elizabethan Express

1954

Editor                    Tony Thompson
Cinematography  Billy Williams
Producer               Edgar Anstey

Last year in reading....

    Happy New Year!   The return of something I last did way back in 2016. I cannot believe it was quite so long ago.  Anyway here is (as far as I can remember) my fiction reading from this last year.  Discoveries were: 'Dr Zhivago', 'The Jewel in the Crown', and 'The Secret Agent'.  'Heretics of Dune', by Frank Herbert was, like 'God Emperor of Dune', was a much more impressive piece of fiction than 'Dune'. Only one real disappointment: 'Heat Wave' by Penelope Lively.

Ring out wild bells to the wild sky: In Memoriam 106

St Sylvester, Tuesday 30th December, 2024

In Memoriam 106, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

   The flying cloud, the frosty light:

   The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

 

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

   Ring happy bells across the snow,

   The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

 

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

   For those that here we see no more;

   Ring out the feud between rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

 

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

   And ancient forms of party strife;

   Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

 

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

   The faithless coldness of the times;

   Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes.

And let the fuller minstrel in.

 

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

   The civic slander and the pride;

   Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

 

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

   Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

   Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

 

Ring in the valiant and free,

   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

   Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ who is yet to be.

Mistletoe

 Monday 30th December 2024

Mistletoe by Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)

Sitting under the mistletoe

(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),

One last candle burning low,

All the sleepy dancers gone,

Just one candle burning on,

Shadows lurking everywhere:

Some one came, and kissed me there.

Tired I was; my head would go

Nodding under the mistletoe

(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),

No footsteps came, no voice, but only,

Just as I sat there, sleepy, lonely,

Stooped in the still and shadowy air

Lips unseen—and kissed me there.

     I first heard this the other week on BBC Radio 3 - it was the 'Friday Poem' - when I was struck both by the melancholic atmosphere and the occult sensibility.

The Waits

 29th December, 2024

The Waits, by Margaret Deland (1857-1945)

At the break of Christmas Day,

   Through the frosty starlight ringing,

Faint and sweet and far away,

   Comes the sound of children, singing,

         Chanting, singing,

    “Cease to mourn,

   For Christ is born,

         Peace and joy to all men bringing!”

 

Careless that the chill winds blow,

   Growing stronger, sweeter, clearer,

Noiseless footfalls in the snow,

   Bring the happy voices nearer;

         Hear them singing,

    “Winter’s drear,

   But Christ is here,

         Mirth and gladness with Him bringing.”

 

“Merry Christmas!” hear them say,

   As the East is growing lighter;

“May the joy of Christmas Day

   Make your whole year gladder, brighter!”

         Join their singing,

    “To each home

   Our Christ has come,

         All Love’s treasures with Him bringing!”

Nativity

Holy Innocents, 28th December, 2024

Nativity, by John Donne (1572-1631)

Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,
Now leaves His well-belov’d imprisonment,
There He hath made Himself to His intent
Weak enough, now into the world to come;
But O, for thee, for Him, hath the inn no room?
Yet lay Him in this stall, and from the Orient,
Stars and wise men will travel to prevent
The effect of Herod’s jealous general doom.
Seest thou, my soul, with thy faith’s eyes, how He
Which fills all place, yet none holds Him, doth lie?
Was not His pity towards thee wondrous high,
That would have need to be pitied by thee?
Kiss Him, and with Him into Egypt go,
With His kind mother, who partakes thy woe.