Your Favourite Docu-Drama

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Not sure! Isn't that a 'dramatised documentary' ?

Nor am I - but I thought that "dramatised documentaries" were those like the Robert Bartlett series, where the speaking expert stands outside a castle explaining a bit about Henry II's difficulties with his wife and kids, then his voice continues over a scene "mimed" by actors gazing intently at each other in tights and false beards. (ie no spoken dialogue from the actors in the dramatised bits.)


(8thOb is right - the Ginger Baker film is terrific and terrifying in turns.)

[Serial_Apologist]

I'm not sure if David Olusoga's 2-part documentary Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners qualifies for discussion under this thread, but having just completed watching the second part I have to say this is one of the very best factual historical documentaries I have ever seen. One learned so much about how much our country's place, banking and state institutions, and position in the world, remains built on the wealth British slave owners sweated and bled from the enslaved, and possibly more than previously about how distorted historical perspectives and racist attitudes and practices are perpetuated to this day. The uncomfortable truth remains that had it not been for the massive compensation afforded the slave owners after abolition in 1834 for the loss of their "property" Britain would not have become the dominant industrial and trading nation it became in the Victorian and Edwardian ages. The Glasgow team responsible for collating the evidence, showing just how widespread and in fact deeply embedded slave ownership was, are to be congratulated, along with Olusoga.

I guess my attitudes are as much affected by my fears as to what could become of broadcasting as the fact of having always taken that this was what one took the BBC to represent in terms of an agency of enlightenment for granted.

[umslopogaas]

Hornspieler #12 if that is a sample of your memories, PLEASE give us the rest. I am only sixty-six years old and cannot remember the War - I was born in 1949 - , but I can remember growing up in the 1950s, in its shadow. I can, and have, put down on paper such memories as I have of the Refuge Room and the gas masks in the home of my childhood. For us, this is still a part of our lives, but for most of our viewers, it is history. I am not a musician, my career was in biology and plant protection, but it seems we both had a childhood in the nineteen fifties when much that was then obvious is now lost. There was an air raid siren in the school up the road from where we lived, I was well used to the sound of it, though I was told by my parents it was only a trial when it sounded. But I can say for sure, you wouldnt have ignored it, it was VERY loud.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I'm not sure if David Olusoga's 2-part documentary Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners qualifies for discussion under this thread

Not really, S_A: History documentary unsullied by costumes and acting. Nevertheless, as you say

but having just completed watching the second part I have to say this is one of the very best factual historical documentaries I have ever seen.

- for all the reasons you give. Still available on the i-Player, I cannot recommend highly enough to anyone who hasn't seen it. (Not given even a fraction of the publicity for Lucy Worsley's latest, but far, far more important.)

[eighthobstruction]

Not really, S_A: History documentary unsullied by costumes and acting. Nevertheless, as you say


- for all the reasons you give. Still available on the i-Player, I cannot recommend highly enough to anyone who hasn't seen it. (Not given even a fraction of the publicity for Lucy Worsley's latest, but far, far more important.)

Neither/Nor is it a programme which would be done on any other channel with such gravitas.... (on another possibly presented by Lenny Henry)....Tories beware!! (Yeah, Tories just beware....whatever)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Neither/Nor is it a programme which would be done on any other channel with such gravitas.... (on another possibly presented by Lenny Henry)....Tories beware!! (Yeah, Tories just beware....whatever)

- yes, "gravitas", and dignity - but without pomposity. Superb presentation whose understatement made the horrific truths speak for themselves.

[Hornspieler]

Hornspieler #12 if that is a sample of your memories, PLEASE give us the rest. I am only sixty-six years old and cannot remember the War - I was born in 1949 - , but I can remember growing up in the 1950s, in its shadow. I can, and have, put down on paper such memories as I have of the Refuge Room and the gas masks in the home of my childhood. For us, this is still a part of our lives, but for most of our viewers, it is history. I am not a musician, my career was in biology and plant protection, but it seems we both had a childhood in the nineteen fifties when much that was then obvious is now lost. There was an air raid siren in the school up the road from where we lived, I was well used to the sound of it, though I was told by my parents it was only a trial when it sounded. But I can say for sure, you wouldnt have ignored it, it was VERY loud.

It's a strange thing, and I remarked upon this before when writing about my father's reminiscences of the Gallipoli campaign. Our clearest memories are often those which are furthest away.

I would have been just 4 years old when the Crystal Palace burnt down in December 1936. We used to be able to see the top of the glass dome from our bedroom window in Croydon, four miles away. Then one morning it was gone. I remember sitting at the breakfast table with my father and he was reading about it in his copy of the Daily Mail. I can still see that picture on the front page of the blazing building.

1937: My brother and I used to stand in the garden at night and watch the patterns of the searchlights, practising for a war that was still two years away. It was the year when I tripped on a protruding hydrant on my way back from school and broke my left arm. The local doctor was called and twisted the arm to see if it was broken, which caused me to vomit all over him. Mother was not pleased!

1938: We had to go somewhere to be issued with gas masks and to be shown how to put them on. They came in a small cardboard box with a string to act as a shoulder strap. We were told that we must carry them with us always and it must have been 1943 when that rule was rescinded.

1939: I remember my father taping up the windows and the French doors with strips of sticky brown paper to protect the glass from shattering; on the day that the radio announced that we were at war with Germany.
We were scheduled to be evacuated next day but my mother took us down the road to the house of the local music teacher and she played the piano for us. It was my first encounter with live classical music and I found myself crying with the emotion of hearing it.

When we were evacuated next day, we found ourselves billeted with Mrs Thompson in a large house set in 4 acres of grounds. There was a gardener, who lived in a cottage at the driveway entrance with his wife a small boy (my age)
Grant, the chauffeur, lived over the garage at the back, of the house. There were two maids, Nellie and Annie, and Cook (Nobody ever revealerd her name - she was just "Cook")

Two cockney twins, Brian and Arthur, were also billeted with us and the four of us shared a huge bedroom. They were of Salvation Army background and on one weekend their father came to visit and brought his euphonium.
Once again when I heard the music, I started to cry. I think it must have been at that time that my future was decided - I was determined to play an instrument. (When hearing music makes me cry nowadays it is for an entirely different reason!!!)

1940: The Battle of Britain. We used to stand out in the garden watching that strange diamond formation of the German bombers, shining like jewels in the sunlight high above. Then we would see dark shapes, our spifires and hurricans diving through towards us and gaps appearing in that diamond formation. On one occasion, we actuall saw a spitfire doing a victory roll, right above our heads. The attacks were on the airfields at that period of the war we were spared (except from the wrath of our mother)

1941: The night bombing. I've already referred to this in my message #12. Going to school next morning and picking up the shrapnel on the road; glittering shards of steel in all sorts of weird shapes. We used to vie with each other with our shrapnel collections.

I think I've already mentioned that concert at my brother's school, where I first heard a symphony (The Jupiter) and saw the young Hugh Bean playng the Mendelssohn concerto.
I later learned that there were other future distinguished musicians in that orchestra :
Gerald Gentry (conductor)
Freddie Buxton (viola)
Cyril Mielcrease (flute)

1942: As I mentioned before, we were safely esconced in Salisbury, but there was one occasion when I saw a lone Focke Wulf 190 flying overhead. I could clearly see the black crosses on his wings and a heard that chattering of cannon fire.
Apparently, he had put a couple of shells into a gasometer (gas holder, if you prefer) and had dropped a small bomb which did not explode, on the railway sidings.

The barage balloons, apparently there to protect our lovely cathedral, ascended gracefully into the air five minutes after the intruder had gone.

For weeks afterwards, our local population were talking about "the blitz".

I think that covers the war years as they affected my life.

1943 onwards is well documented and anniversaries of those years have now come and gone.

I can't claim this to be a drama documentary, but perhaps it does fill in a few gaps.

HS