Rudyard Kipling and H Rider Haggard were great friends – my family and I, on more than one occasion have visited Kipling’s house ‘Batemans’ in Sussex and I remember the guide showing us round on one occasion and when we went into Kipling’s study she said that Rider Haggard often visited and he would sit and chat for long periods in that same room.

I felt a shiver of excitement to think that I was actually standing where these two colossal figures had often been together exchanging notes no doubt because in terms of story telling these two are in a class of their own.

Two giants of Literature and this book which I have just acquired, details the film and television adaptations of their stories

King Solomons Mines

‘King Solomons Mines’ – a big and impressive picture – . Looking even further into this, it appears that most of the African location filming for King Solomons Mines was done by February of 1950 –

‘King Solomons Mines’ proved a massive hit at the Box Office for MGM

Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr were top billed – Elizabeth Curtis (Deborah Kerr) is missing her husband, who departed on a quest to find King Solomon’s lost diamond mines.  She meets and hires a disenchanted safari guide – Allan Quatermain (Stewart Granger) to lead a search party to find him.

Along the way they are besieged with several challenges, including a tremendous animal stampede which even today makes one wonder how it was filmed – and this was way before the days of CGI special effects.

 Even now this must rank as one of the best stampede scenes ever done.

‘King Solomons Mines has a strong storyline loosely based on H Rider Haggard’s magnificent novel –

I remember someone quite famous saying that he loved H Rider Haggard’s books and he used to encourage his children to read them – this is in quite recent times. He made a deal with them to read the first 50 pages of any one of his novels – and he said he knew that after that they would not be able to put the book down.

H Rider Haggard’s remains one of the greatest adventure story tellers in English Literature of all time

In the very early days of Television – when there was only ONE channel – the BBC – this young lady appeared very regularly on screen

Shirley Abicair with a zither, 1961.

Shirley Abicair, who has died aged 96, introduced British audiences in the 1950s to new sounds and songs from around the world. She played the zither, a stringed instrument with its origins in Austria and Bavaria, and her repertoire included folk songs not only from her native Australia but also from France, Italy, Ireland, the US and Asia. A great storyteller, she became a regular fixture on British TV variety shows and children’s programmes.

She was around at about the same time as another artist who also seemed a regular – namely Elton Hayes

She appeared with Norman Wisdom in the film ‘One Good Turn’ along with Joan Rice

She arrived almost penniless in London from Australia in 1952 – after stops in Singapore and Karachi to play at nightclubs to pay for her onward journey – and her career took off almost instantly. A newspaper photo of Abicair arriving at Heathrow was seen by a BBC radio producer looking for Commonwealth artists to appear in a radio programme. The band leader Geraldo heard her and booked her for a concert and a further audition, after which she appeared for the first time on the BBC TV programme The Centre Show, on 20 January 1953. Within a few weeks she had her own series with her zither and “a rhythm quartet”, and later that year released her first 78rpm single, an orchestra-and-zither treatment of Careless Love, once recorded by Bessie Smith.

She went on to appear alongside Norman Wisdom in the film One Good Turn (1955) and in the same year made the first of her appearances on the children’s TV show Crackerjack.

Her skills as a children’s entertainer were further demonstrated by her appearances on the TV programmes Studio E and Children’s Hour, which she hosted with her puppet “friends”, Tea Cup and Clothespeg. The BBC request programme Children’s Favourites regularly featured her recording of Little Boy Fishin’ (1956), written by the Australian Bill Lovelock.

Shewas Roy Plomley’s castaway on Desert Island Discs in 1956, and chose music by Bach, Fats Waller and Burl Ives, and, for her luxury item, a “case of avocado pears”.

, she worked with the producer George Martin, of Beatles fame, on the theme song for the 1956 film Smiley, set in a small country town in Australia, and praised Martin’s “warm, silent understanding and musicianship”.

She also worked with Lovelock to collect what she called “some of the most beautiful folk songs in the world” for her solo albums. It’s Shirley! (1958) included the English traditional Green Willow, which Steeleye Span later recorded as their hit All Around My Hat. The follow-up album Look! It’s Shirley (1959) included Willie the Weeper, a song recorded by Louis Armstrong and now arranged by Humphrey Lyttelton. A Delicate Air (1960) included Walzing Matilda and Spanish Is a Loving Tongue, a song written in the 1920s that became a Bob Dylan favourite.

In 1957 she appeared on the BBC’s first rock-era programme Six-Five Special, alongside Lyttelton and the Vipers skiffle group.

In the 60s she travelled extensively, touring Russia and the US, and entertaining British troops in the far east with the comedian Frankie Howerd. But she continued to work in children’s entertainment, and published a collection of children’s stories about an Indigenous Australian boy, The Tales of Tumbarumba, in 1962. Her final singles included covers of Paul Simon’s Flowers Never Bend With the Rainfall (1966) and the Beatles’ This Girl (1967).

In the 70s, in a move that would have surprised those who remembered her as a family entertainer, she toured the US college circuit with the counterculture writer Ken Kesey (the author of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, known for his drug-induced adventures with the Merry Pranksters), and lived on his farm in Oregon.

Born in Melbourne, Shirley grew up in Adelaide, South Australia, the daughter of an RAAF wing commander and a music-loving mother. Her musical career started when she discovered a zither while looking through the attic of her parent’s home, and taught herself to play. At Sydney University, where she studied philosophy, she supported herself by working as a typist. At night she would sing to friends, and after winning a radio contest she began to sing professionally.

She was followed to Britain in 1952 by her then boyfriend, Murray Sayle, whom she had known since her university days. Both of their careers flourished in the UK – Sayle became a celebrated war reporter and adventurer – but their relationship was less successful.

She spent her final years living in London.

 Shirley Abicair, musician, writer and entertainer, born 25 October 1928; died 27 September 2025

I never realised that there was such an event as this but the pictures appeared in a magazine of 10 July 1952

There was a large film conference arranged by Pathe in the resort and this of course would concentrate very much on British films of the time – ‘Angels One Five’ to name one film was promoted here

It does seem from the pictures below that MGM sort to capitalise on the publicity this conference would get, by promoting their films in the town

Two big films promoted here – ‘Quo Vadis’ and ‘Scaramouche’

The Black Knight ABOVE and BELOW were from ‘Ivanhoe’ and not to be confused with the Alan Ladd film of that was made here in England a couple of years later

Don’t say that The Black Knight is going to confront a very up to date bus of the era

My post back in August concerned David Farrar’s Autobiography ‘ No Royal Road’ which I had then just acquired and now have got down to reading. I am quite a slow reader as opposed to a skim reader, so hopefully I make sure I retain the majority of it – if I don’t then often I re-read a passage.

David Farrar was the youngest child of the family and was born in 1908 in Forest Gate London – or so it says on Wiki. Not sure about this as I can’t find where he actually says this in his book. i maybe think that he was born in Essex and moved to London at a very young age. He had an older brother Albert, a sister and another brother.

David seemed to get on very well with Albert and looked up to and admired him. Albert could and often did play the piano that they had and David started to learn but he does not refer much to his sister or other brother.

David along with his father and Albert often went to the cinema at a weekend – in those silent days – something they all three loved. His father had a love for entertainment particularly the Music Hall.

He describes very clearly the tragedy that befell the famiiy when David was 13 – so 1919 or so.

Albert became unwell and confined to bed at home. Doctors came but he didn’t improve and so he was admitted to hospital where he died some days later. What he died of isn’t made clear but at that time it could well have been the terrible Flu epidemic that ravaged the World.

The family were devastated – the piano was not played as it wrought such painful memories for them – although after some weeks Mrs Farrar realised that this was doing the remaining children no good at all and so playing was then recommenced

What a sad time that would have been for them

On a lighter note, the family always looked forward to their holidays down on the farm in Hainault, Essex owned by relatives of his mother.

There is much more to come from this Autobiography which has been very hard to find – and expensive when you do