Thought for the Day

Mothering Sunday

Soft spots

More leopardskin - a look for the weekend...

Swash my buckle

This year sees the centenary of Britain's very own big-screen swashbuckler and matinee idol, Mr Stewart Granger.

Facts about the man:

• Stewart Granger was the uncle of Antiques Roadshow's Bunny Campione.
• He changed his name when he entered the movie world as there was already a James Stewart in Hollywood
• During filming of Scaramouche, Granger was chasing Jose Ferrer over the backs of the seats of a theatre when he slipped and fell, twisting his knee. As he lay semi-conscious, thinking he was dead the director George Sidney uttered, "What the hell are we going to do? The film's only half finished."
• Before he married his fourth wife Jean Simmons, he had a torrid affair with Deborah Kerr.
• While doing a book-signing for his autobiography, he apparently recognised a frail elderly woman waiting in the queue - it was his former glamorous co-star Ava Gardner.

Stewart Granger (born James Leblanche Stewart, 6th May 1913 – 16th August 1993)

Now strip!

Skype, 1918 style

Glamour went with her, and so did I

Famous for his bold, dramatic styles, Gilbert Adrian became MGM Studios' top designer during the 30s aand 40s. He caused a fashion frenzy by the introduction of shoulder pads, and created the most glamorous clothes in the world for the likes of Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, Jean Harlow and Norma Shearer. He also designed the legendary ruby slippers Dorothy wore in The Wizard Of Oz. His favourite "model", however, was Greta Garbo.







Adrian left the "studio system" in 1941 to set up his own independent fashion house, saying:

"It was because of Garbo that I left MGM. In her last picture they wanted to make her a sweater girl, a real American type. I said, 'When the glamour ends for Garbo, it also ends for me. She has created a type. If you destroy that illusion, you destroy her.' When Garbo walked out of the studio, glamour went with her, and so did I."

Gilbert Adrian (Adrian Adolph Greenberg, 3rd March 1903 — 13th September 1959)

On the Jukebox this Weekend at Dolores Delargo Towers

Buggers in love with womanisers

Strachey and Virginia Woolf


Portrait by Nicolas Clerihew Bentley


Strachey and Ralph Partridge

When Lytton Strachey was asked by the tribunal challenging his "conciencious objection" during the First World War: "What would you do if a German soldier were raping your sister?"

"I should attempt to come between them." was his camp response.

A very strange man, Mr Strachey.

Intellectual, historical biographer and author, pacifist and member of the Bloomsbury Set, he not only had a passion for John Maynard Keynes (cerebrally and physically) and Duncan Grant, he inveigled his friend Dora Carrington into marrying his occasional lover, the ostensibly heterosexual Ralph Partridge in order to maintain a secret veneer of respectability.

And, as his recently-published letters revealed, he was also quite a kinky brain-box, with a penchant for spanking...

“A writer’s promise is like a tiger’s smile”

"Discretion is not the better part of biography."

"Ladies in love with buggers, and buggers in love with womanisers, and the price of coal going up too. Where will it all end?"

Giles Lytton Strachey (1st March 1880 – 21st January 1932)