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Art Deco Collecting

By Hortoris on January 14, 2010 in Books & Literary Work, Yorkshire Sport and Pastimes

Art Deco is back in vogue with new twists or as collectables and memorabilia. Art deco was a design and art style from 1910’s until the 1930s taking over from Art Nouveau. As well as all the visual arts, it encompassed buildings and architecture plus interior design. Some iconic buildings still stand out like Odeon Cinemas the Chrysler Building in New York and the Midland Hotel Morecambe.

Art Deco is eminently collectible in may forms and a bit of know-how from the following books may help you to make sound investments whilst owning a piece of Art Deco art. Normally I would recommend you shop at Redbrick Mill in Batley or the Antique galleries in Harrogate but I am sure you will find your own favourite supplier.

Art Deco Architecture: Design, Decoration and Detail from the Twenties and Thirties by Patricia Bayer

Art Deco Interiors: Decoration and Design Classics of the 1920s and 1930s by Patricia Bayer
By the time of the Paris exhibition of 1925 from which Art Deco took its name, the idea that an interior and its furnishings should form a complete design – a “total look” – dominated the thinking of both designers and their clients

Art Deco Ceramics: in Britain by Andrew Casey Distinctive designers Charlotte Rhead, Clarise Cliff and Susie Cooper three great British potters.

Art Deco Jewellery and Accessories: A New Style for a New World by Cornelie Holzach Look out for the jewellery produced by Jakob Bengel it portrayed incredible creativity and an awareness of the new woman of the 1930s.

Art Deco: The Golden Age of Graphic Art and Illustration by Michael Robinson and Rosalind Ormiston. Posters and film promotion was all the rage and print media rose to the challenge.

Industrial Design Art Deco and British Car Design Barry Down In addition to cars there are many other industrial designs that reflect the era including radios.

Art Deco Textiles by Charlotte Samuels and 133 Art Deco Patterns The most innovative and vibrant periods of textile design, when sophisticated and exotic prints dazzled the world.

Art Deco Fashion by Pepin Press Contains more than 1000 fashion plates including designs from famous 1920′s Art Deco Designers and a CD-ROM with some 30 Art Deco Textile Patterns.

Art Deco Furniture at Midland Hotel

Art Deco The World’s Greatest Art

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Humour In Yorkshire

By Hortoris on January 2, 2010 in Books & Literary Work, Our Yorkshire, Wit and Humour

Yorkshire Humour by Ian McMillan (Author), Tony Husband (Illustrator).

Example of the Humour
‘Now Willie you mustn’t be selfish you should let your brother have the sledge half the time’.
‘I do Mum, I have it coming down and he has it going up’.
I dare say Willies brother can have the sledge all through summer as well. This is the sort of humour in the new book which highlights the dry side of Yorkshire folk.

Tony Husband has a string of joke books to his credit but is better known as a gifted cartoonist. In Private Eye his ‘Yobs and Yobettes’ strip satirises Chav culture with a sledge hammer. Ian McMillan is a poet with a string of job titles including Yorkshire Planetarium’s Poet in Space, Poet in residence Barnsley FC and Bard of Barnsley. For the 12 Yorkshire days of Christmas he gave us this :
On the first day of Yorkshire Christmas my true love gave to me
A tinsel muffler to put round me tree
On the second
2 racing pigeons
3 nippy whippets
4 flat caps
5 Dickie Birds
6 Grandmas grumbling
7 Grandads snoring
8 Banghra Dancers
9 parkin makers
10 Bowls full of Yorkshire pudding batter
11. Football teams struggling in the lower divisions
12 Michael Parkinson Blow Up Dolls

The book is well worth a read, have you heard the one about the old men of a Dales village chatting over the death of an old friend. Along comes a newcomer to express his sorrow at the passing of the man.
“It is sad when an old native of the village dies,” says the new resident. “Nay lad, he wasn’t a native, ‘e was a come-er-in-a,” says one of the old men. “’E only lived here 70 year.”

More humourous slogans

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Rylstone Walks, Boulders and Calendars

By Hortoris on December 2, 2009 in Books & Literary Work, Our Yorkshire, Yorkshire Trips and Places

St Peter’s church in Rylstone stands above the village made famous in recent times by the Alternative Womens Institute calendar. As the church and graveyard can testify there has been a vibrant community in the locality for many centuries. The duck pond was looking a bit forlorn when I visited this week but the area is well kept and feels homely.

A quirky look at the village can be observed from several convex mirrors designed to help motorists.

Origins of the Alternative Womens Institute Calendar

John Richard Baker a National Park Officer for the Yorkshire Dales, died in July 1998 at the age of 54 as a result of Leukaemia. His wife Angela Baker and her friends from Rylstone local WI, had the idea of the “Alternative WI calendar” to raise funds for Leukaemia & Lymphoma research. This idea provided much mirth and entertainment for her husband throughout the later part of his illness but regrettably he did not live to see the calendar and the great success that followed.

To donate to Leukaemia Research

Barden Moor and Fell with the twin skyline landmarks of Rylstone Cross and Cracoe Pinnacle from the church. The drystone walls were in excellent order and the late afternoon winter light made the whole area glow.
Rylstone ridge near Skipton is one of the most scenic Yorkshire grit crags, with fine views across Barden Moor, Wharfedale and the Malham hills. It is well known amongst boulderers for it’s quiet location. There are several good walks from Rylstone including one that takes you along Rylstone edge to Cracoe or along the railway track that was closed in 1962.

To the south is Norton Tower a 16th Century square tower built by Richard Norton but damage in 1569 and now sadly just a ruin.

There are several good eating places and hostelries in the near by villages and Rylstone is worth a trip if you are feeling like a bit of exercise.

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Ripper Sutcliffe’s Victims

By Hortoris on November 9, 2009 in Books & Literary Work, Yorkshire History and Heritage

This book examines the detail behind each of 13 murders by the Yorkshire Ripper and the resulting police investigations. There is less said about the seven attempted murders but it does highlight the possibility of several other unsolved cases including 2 male deaths that could be attributed to Sutcliffe. Michael Bilton in ‘Beyond Belief’ focuses also on the victims and their lives, rather than glossing over them to focus on the criminal Peter Sutcliffe. Much of the newspaper reporting in 1981 covered Sutcliffe’s time from being a Grave digger at Bingley in the 1960′s until his arrest in Sheffield and sentencing at the Old Bailey in May 1981

‘This book is different as it tells the story in some detail of the effects on the son of the victim, his family neighbours and friends. It really is an eye opener and reminds us all and especially those responsible for investigating crime and those responsible for the future of the villain to consider much more fully the effects the murderer has on those bereaved and their well being. Very well written and though detailed is not ” Heavy”. It is to this sons credit that he came through his trauma eventually and a credit to the author for sensitivity and thorough research.’ with thanks for Amazon review by Rev. J Cooper.

Anna Rogulsky was attacked in Keighley in July 1975 and Wilma McCann and Joan Harrison were murdered later that year. Emilly Jackson, Marcella Claxton, Jayne McDonald, Marilyn Moore, Marguerite Walls, Upadhya Bandara, Jacqueline Hill and Irene Richardson were all found dead in Leeds during the 5 years of horror perpetrated by Sutcliffe. Murders also took place in Halifax, Huddersfield, Bradford and of Vera Millward in Manchester.

On 2 January 1981 Olivia Reivers was getting into a car when the police stopped to talk to the driver. He asked to go relieve himself in some bushes where he stowed a knife and Ball Pein Hammer. Meanwhile police realised the number plates were false and took Sutcliffe, then calling himself Peter Williams, into Hammerton Road police station before transferring him to Dewsbury. Another knife was discovered in the toilets at the police station and eventually Sutcliffe confessed he was ‘The Ripper’.

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Dales Barns Survival

By Hortoris on September 12, 2009 in Books & Literary Work, Yorkshire Dales

Not all the wonderful barns of the Yorkshire Dales have been converted in to holiday lets or cottage homes. These distinctive, rustic almost run-down but utilitarian structures still abound. Originally erected in 18th and 19th centuries many of these barns were built, to store hay near the point of use and were called Laithes, or as Hogg Houses (Hoggs are young sheep) to overwinter the sheep. Tudor Tythe barns still exist at Riddlesden Hall Keighley and Botton Abbey.

The Yorkshire National Park Authority’s Planning Committee have approved the temporary use of a free-standing ‘eco-pod’ inside an isolated barn on the Bolton Abbey estate near Skipton. Yorkshire Forward are supporting this and other conservation measures to protect the 2000 odd barns that are suffering from dereliction.
The National Trust owns Town Head Barn Malham and this 18th century barn has been restored it to its original condition when it would have been used to house overwintering cattle and hay to feed them. It is located on the edge of the village next to its farm and is therefore a rare survival. Most village barns in the Dales have been sold off for house conversions.

Book Cover

Barns of the Yorkshire Dales by Andy Singleton & David Joy is prefaced by Bill Bryson “‘Many of the best of England’s barns are in the Dales. So it is wonderful to see a book celebrating, with wit and affection and penetrating historical insight, the Dales barn in all its undersung glory. This truly is a delightful and valuable book – almost as good, in fact, as the barns themselves.’ ”

Mark Banks Dales Barn series
Main photograph at hardwick House looking towards Nesfield and Beamsley Beacon.

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Billy Liar RIP

By Hortoris on September 6, 2009 in Books & Literary Work, Wit and Humour, Yorkshire Folk

Charades will not be the same after the death of Billy Liar the author of ‘Keith Waterhouse. Is it a book, a film or a play? Yes! mimes the reply.

Still fresh after 50 years, Billy Liars’s novel about a compulsive dissembler who can’t handle reality is funny, sweet, and heartbreakingly sad. Set at the tail end of 1950s, the story is told by Keith Waterhouse, who lives with his parents in the fictional Yorkshire town of Stradhoughton. Keith can’t cope with his tedious clerking job at a local funeral parlor, living at home, or really anything about his life, and so, spends a great deal of time escaping into fantasy world in his head called Ambrosia. When he’s not imagining life as prime minister of his make-believe country, he’s spinning mostly purposeless lies to almost everyone he meets. Sometimes he’s lying to cover up real misdeeds, such as his small-time embezzling, other times, his lies are completely pointless, such as telling a friend’s mother about his fictional sister.

Billy grew up in Leeds, and like Waterhouse, worked as a clerk in an undertakers. 50 years since he wrote Keith Waterhouse, which began life as a book before becoming a hit West End play and film. Billy remembers there was a storm of complaints when it first appeared in the theatre because it had the word “bloody” in it. Fifteen times, apparently. Billy describes the word as “innocuous” and wonders what all the fuss was about. So how does the Mail spell it in the headline for the piece on Saturday? “B****y”. Bloody marvellous! says Media Monkey

Billy Liar Quotations.

“To my mind, 90 per cent of the unpleasant things that happen to us are in the name of rationalisation. Counties lose their names, trains lose their livery, ginger snaps lose their flavour and mint humbugs their sharp corners … under my derationalisation programme, Yorkshire would get back its Ridings, the red telephone box would be a preserved species, there would be Pullman cars called Edna, a teashop in every high street and a proper card index in the public library.”

“Should not the Society of Indexers be known as Indexers, Society of, The?”

“I wake up with views the way some people wake up with hangovers. Sometimes I wake up with both, when the confederation of clowns presiding over our destinies had better tread carefully.”"I never drink when I’m writing, but I sometimes write when I drink.”

Billy’s record in Who’s Who lists his hobby as ‘Lunch’, he created Clogthorpe Council and was also the founder of The Association for the Abolition of the Aberrant Apostrophe 9before Trusses’).

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A Yorkshire Woman of Substance

By Hortoris on August 29, 2009 in Books & Literary Work, Yorkshire Folk

After selling over 80,000,000 books the Leeds born Barbara Taylor Bradford must certainly be a woman of real substance, even though she now spends most of her money living in the USA. It is 30 years since the 1200 page block buster ‘Woman of Substance’ was released in British book shops and there has been a prolific output of another 24 books, films and TV spinoffs. Not a bad output for a former cub reporter with the Yorkshire Post.

Marrying a Yank (at least he had a Yorkshire surname) Barbara kept her maiden name Taylor but added the alliterative Bradford. After 46 years marriage they still work together “I refer to him as the General,” she says, “and he calls me Napoleon!” Robert Bradford produces all of her mini-series and films, structures her contracts and spearheads all of the activities of ‘the industry that is Barbara Taylor Bradford’. The Napoleon reference is said to be linked to the expat Yorkshire traits of Barbara’s strong will and blunt straight talking, although I never saw Napoleon as a Yorkshire man.

Barbara’s 25th book is ‘Breaking the Rules’ and ia available from the 3rd September 2009

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The Yorkshire Pudding Club

By Hortoris on August 20, 2009 in Books & Literary Work

The time was when if someone said they were in t’club it was not unusual to ask ‘Christmas, Pudding or Workingmen’s?’ Who would have answered the Book Club but that would be more appropriate for Milly Johnsons ‘literary’ offering. From what I know I doubt Milly would want to be termed a Chick for her lit or other reasons, nor may she want to be a Lass but that will have to do.

You can’t have too many Yorkshire Puddings

From the Inside Flap of The Yorkshire Pudding Club
‘Three South Yorkshire friends, all on the cusp of 40, fall pregnant at the same time following a visit to an ancient fertility symbol.
For Helen, it’s a dream come true, although her husband is not as thrilled about it as she had hoped. Not only wrestling with painful ghosts of the past, Helen has to deal with the fact that her outwardly perfect marriage is crumbling before her eyes.
For Janey, it is an unmitigated disaster as she has just been offered the career break of a life-time. And she has no idea either how it could possibly have happened, seeing as she and her ecstatic husband George were always so careful over contraception.
For Elizabeth, it is mind-numbing, because she knows people like her shouldn’t have children. Damaged by her dysfunctional childhood and emotionally lost, she not only has to contend with carrying a child she doubts she can ever love, but she also has to deal with the return to her life of a man whose love she must deny herself.
Heart-warming, up-lifting, tear-jerking and lovely, The Yorkshire Pudding Club is the story of how three women find themselves empowered by unexpected pregnancy. How it revitalises one woman’s tired marriage, strengthens another’s belief in herself and brings love and warmth to a cold and empty life.’

Milly Johnson is a half Barnsley, half Glaswegian writer of greetings cards, novels and shopping lists featuring gin and buns. A self confessed ‘ disciple of the clutter-clearing experience she says ‘It’s magical, energizing and you really do feel lifted and light after shifting rubbish from your house.’ Mmm I am clearing out a lot of books but I don’t have any ‘Chick Lit’ and dare not ditch my wife’s copy of The Yorkshire Pudding Club.

The follow up book and the 5th published by Milly is called ‘A Summer Fling’ and features some of the same characters.

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Top Yorkshire Fiction

By Hortoris on August 10, 2009 in Books & Literary Work

The Harrowing by Robert Dinsdale – ‘January, 1916, and the rooftops of Leeds creak with the weight of the winter’s snows. William Redmond, soon to join the Chapeltown Rifles, wanders with his younger brother Samuel through the old haunts of their childhood – and, there, at the top of the Moor across which they are forbidden to walk, Samuel, for too long trapped in his brother’s shadow, stoves William’s head in with a stone’ so this book is described. The reviews I have read are very much in favour of this book and I think I will give it a try. Powerful and Atmospheric this is a highly promising first novel ‘Daily Telegraph’ and ‘Slow Start Turns Into An Unputdownable Read’ Amazon

D I Charlie Priest is the sort of Yorkshire detective I like to read. The books have that underlying Yorkshire humour that can be detected by the sledgehammer in the titles of other books in the series such as ‘Grief Encounters’ and ‘Judas Sheep’. There are 8 books so far and the Yorkshire author Stuart Pawson is worth following if you like a bit of escapism close to home in Yorkshire.

I bought Ballad of a One Legged Man at Waterstones remainders sale and I could have saved 99 pence. Set around Leeds at the retirement of a unexceptional ‘Copper’ the story is his reflections of times and friends past. Focusing on the hot summer of 1976 the pressures on a trainee bobby and the situations faced by all our police proves to be an interesting tale. Quick to read there is no plot to speak of and the characters could be drawn more sharply but the book has some simple charm. Also by Colin Campbell are Through the Ruins of Midnight and Darkwater Towers.

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James Herriot of Thirsk and Askrigg

By Hortoris on August 4, 2009 in Books & Literary Work, Villages, Towns and Cities, Yorkshire Trips and Places

Christopher Timothy was one of three actors to play Alf Wight the real James Herriot. This picture was taken in the garden of Alf’s Thirsk house and surgery that is now a gem of a museum and testament to Veterinary surgery and James Herriot memorabilia.

Staffed by several garrulous local ladies my weekend visit was a bigger pleasure than I expected even though the market town was thronged due to the local Thirsk races.

Link to buy the DVD or books from Amazon.

James Herriot books were printed in over 20 languages and spawned feature films and the long running TV series set in the Yorkshire Dales. Filmed largely around Askrigg the real vets practice was in Thirsk but it was the Yorkshire farmers and families that provided the stories that made the series so popular. Alf’s real son Jim Wight has written an affectionate and illuminating biography of his father The Real James Herriot ‘A thoroughly entertaining book, well written by the man who knew “James Herriot” best, his son.It brings to life the man behind the stories and his son has described with love and affection the man who was his father.’ from a review by K E Beckett.

Askrigg in Wensleydale was the home of Skeldale House for theTV series, where vet James Herriot lived. The Kings Arms made many appearances as the Drover’s Arms as did the village’s tall houses and narrow, cobbled streets that are centred around the 13th centuary St Oswald’s Church. Askrigg was noted for hand knitting and clock making and there is an ancient bull-baiting ring still set in the village square next to the market cross and stone pump. Both Thirsk and Askrigg are well worth a trip or weekend away.

Mrs Pumphrey and Tricky Woo from The World of James Herriot.

Lotions and potions from the dispensary at The World of James Herriot in Thirsk.

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Art Deco Collecting

Humour In Yorkshire

Rylstone Walks, Boulders and Calendars

Ripper Sutcliffe’s Victims

Dales Barns Survival

Billy Liar RIP

A Yorkshire Woman of Substance

The Yorkshire Pudding Club

Top Yorkshire Fiction

James Herriot of Thirsk and Askrigg

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