Saturday 26 October 2013

The unsung hero of the Battle of Britain

As a young lad, I used to have a vast squadron of Airfix models hanging from my bedroom ceiling, but it was always the iconic Spitfire that took pride of place. This elegant machine designed by R. J. Mitchell has acquired almost mythical status as the hero and saviour of this green and pleasant land during this island's hour of need. Yes, it was fast, and yes, Germans genuinely feared it, and yes, it was a great deal sexier than anything back then that took to the skies; and of course it had a wonderful name. It was, in short, the big brand of its day. Whenever journalists wanted to know about advances in aeronautic technology, the Ministry of Defence would always talk up the capabilities of the Spitfire. And it became romanticized by films like 'The First of the Few' directed and starring the charismatic Leslie Howard.

There can be little doubt that the Spitfire did play an important role during the Battle of Britain, but to say that it played the most effective and important role is in fact questionable. You only have to look at the facts and figures to see that the most prolific fighter plane during the Battle of Britain in terms of the number of German planes shot down, was actually the Hawker Hurricane. 55% of enemy planes shot down during those critical and eventful days were attributed to this remarkable workhorse of a plane.

Designed by Sydney Camm, it was characterised by its rugged workmanlike construction and utter dependability. The Hurricane may not have had the looks, but it was the fighter plane of choice for most pilots. Indeed, Douglas Bader insisted on flying one for the entire duration of the Battle of Britain. And many of the great aces chose the Hurricane over the Spitfire, including the Czech Joseph Frantisek of 303 Squadron who in 1940 alone shot down at least 17 enemy planes.

So what was it about this lesser known fighter plane that made it so potent?

For a start, its machine guns enjoyed a far more stable platform than the Spitfire, which made it far more accurate and controllable when firing at your enemy. Generally speaking, pilots didn't like the guns on a Spitfire which sprayed bullets everywhere like a scattergun.

Once the Hurricane's engine was upgraded to a more powerful Merlin III, it became a formidable force. It may not have been capable of attaining the speed of a Spitfire when flying in a straight line, but what it could do most effectively was climb at speed and dive down at the enemy from the direction of the sun where it couldn't be seen. And when it came to manoeuvrability it was every bit as agile as a Spitfire.

There was one other big advantage it had over the Spitfire, and that was its remarkable robustness. Though much of its body was constructed from stretched canvas, it could take a great deal more punishment than a Spitfire before being downed. And if it did require repairing, it was far easier and quicker to repair holes in cloth than replace the metal plates on a Spitfire. So it stayed in the air longer than its counterpart.


Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds 

Friday 25 October 2013

Britain's greatest eccentric genius

I have long been a keen viewer of 'Dragons’ Den.' It's a reasonably sound formula for watchable television despite the irritating music, studio set-ups and close-up camera angles. But this said, there isn't a single business idea involving a brilliantly inventive creation that I can readily recall this show ever bringing to light. But then, that isn't entirely surprising. Brilliant inventive ideas in the business world are usually confined to the sphere of technology and involve vast teams of technicians and sizable resources.

Ask anyone on the street to name some brilliant inventions created by individuals in the last century and they'll be hard pressed to come up with more than two or three. I can think of two: the wind-up radio by Trevor Baylis and the utterly brilliant Catseye by Percy Shaw.

The Catseye is one of the best examples I can think of that is beautifully simple and profoundly beneficial. And the story behind the man and his idea are worth recounting here.

One of fourteen children, Percy Shaw was born into an impoverished family in 1890. His father, a dyer’s labourer could barely support his large family on his paltry salary of £1 a week. And at the tender age of 13, Percy left school and took a series of odd jobs culminating in running a blacksmith’s forge with his father. He had always been inventive and from a young age had devised several games, and was by this point turning his hand to inventing various items including rubber backed carpet and an ambitious though unsuccessful attempt to design a petrol pump. By the early 1930s, he’d set up a business to repair roads, paths and pavements, and had invented his own means for doing so: a mechanical roller that utilized an old Ford engine and three lorry wheels. And it was during this period that his inventive brain turned to making roads safer for drivers at night. Shaw had already come close to coming off a sharp bend in a country road when returning from the pub in his car one evening, and was only saved from doing so by the reflective eyes of a cat in the middle of the road.

With the motorcar becoming increasingly popular in the 30s, Shaw knew instinctively that motorists desperately needed some way to see country roads in the dark, and it was the cat’s eyes that had given him the idea of inventing road studs that could work in precisely the same way. He spent the next few years developing his idea in some detail. The studs would have to be bright enough to illuminate the road for motorists at night; able to work effectively in all conceivable weather conditions;  robust enough to withstand heavy traffic going over them; and be completely maintenance free. It was a tough design brief, but Shaw’s eventual design fitted the bill perfectly. He came up with four glass beads embedded within a tough but flexible rubber moulding mounted into a cast iron base. The studs would have to be sunk into the road and fixed in position with asphalt. When vehicles rolled over the rubber studs, they’d simply be pressed into their housings and the glass beads would drop safely and temporarily below the level of the road surface. Ingeniously, Shaw designed a housing that would fill with rain water, so every time a vehicle passed over it the rubber housings would wash dirt and grime from the glass beads in much the same way as the human eyelid regularly washes tears across the surface of the eye.

In 1934, Shaw registered the patent for the Catseye, and the following year he set up a company, Reflecting Roadstuds Ltd with £500 of capital to manufacture his invention. And in 1956 he financed his own experiment, installing fifty catseyes on a particularly dangerous stretch of road just outside Bradford.

As a result, the number of accidents on this stretch of road fell sharply. Impressive though these results were, Shaw was going to have to compete for recognition, because in 1937 the Department of Transport, seeing the need for safer night time driving, launched a national competition to find an effective road reflector.

Shaw’s design eventually won hands down; all other designs either broke during the trial or were deemed ineffective. Nevertheless, his success was short-lived as orders for the road stud simply weren’t forthcoming.

The outbreak of war in 1939 though was to change all that. With government imposed blackouts to thwart German bombers, driving anywhere at night had suddenly become even more perilous, and the Department of Transport’s orders for Shaw’s invention suddenly came flooding in.

After the war the business flourished; Shaw’s factory in Boothbury expanded to occupy over 20 acres with a workforce of 130 and export orders for over a million Catseyes a year. In 1947, Jim Callaghan, then Roads Minister, ordered their introduction nationwide. Eventually there would be 400 on every mile of motorway, and more than 20 million across the country. And in 1965, in recognition of his contribution to road safety, Percy Shaw received an OBE. He was by this stage a multimillionaire.

Despite his vast wealth, Percy Shaw lead a frugal life, refusing to move out of the house he had been brought up in since the age of two. His only luxuries in life were his two Rolls Royces and three television sets which remained perpetually on.

Though a Great British eccentric who never married, he was by no means a lonely man. He enjoyed the company of women and his fellow man, and was often in the habit bringing back friends to his house after the pub had closed to enjoy a few more beers and to watch wrestling on the television.

He died in 1976 at the age of 86 in the same house he had lived virtually his entire life.

Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds 

Sunday 20 October 2013

Who'd pay £1 million for an unplayable violin?

Why is it that artifacts of enormous historic significance and great works of art that were once thought lost to the nation, always show up in suburban attics? 
This was the case when a rather sad piece of history was auctioned last week for the grand sum of £1.1 million (once the buyer's premium had been added). The item in question being a very tatty looking violin that had certainly seen better days, and was almost certainly unplayable.
Its poor owner, one Wallace Hartley had unfortunately been employed by the British shipping company, White Star Line  to play aboard the maiden voyage of its spanking new passenger liner from Southampton to New York. The year was 1912 and the boat was, of course, the ill-fated Titanic. 
The story of Wallace Hartley's band playing the hymn 'Nearer, My God, To Thee' while the great ship went down has passed into Great British folklore and has come to represent that Great British, unflappable spirit in the face of adversity.
Poor Wallace and the other brave members of his ensemble all drowned along with 1,500 other crew members and passengers.
Quite how the violin survived is something of a mystery. It was believed to have been strapped to his chest in a leather bag, but was not officially accounted for in the inventory of items later recovered. It is more than possible that it was initially stolen or went missing and came to light later that year when Wallace Hartley's fiance, a Miss Maria Robinson sent the following telegram to the Provincial Secretary of Nova Scotia: "I would be most grateful if you could convey my heartfelt thanks to all who have made possible the return of my late fiance's violin."

Touchingly, the violin had in fact been bought by Miss Robinson for her fiance to mark their engagement, and she had gone to the trouble of having it engraved to this effect. What makes this story all the more poignant is the fact that Miss Robinson never did marry, and kept her late fiance's violin in its case until she died in 1939.
It then passed to her sister, Margaret who passed it on to Major Renwick of the Bridlington Salvation Army. Renwick who was fully aware of the instrument's provenance, gave it to one of his members, a violin teacher.
The instrument remained in the Bridlington area until it was finally discovered in the suburban attic seven years ago. A letter with the instrument states: "Major Renwick thought I would be best placed to make use of the violin but I found it virtually unplayable, doubtless due to its eventful life."
It was taken to the government's Forensic Science Service in Chepstow which considered the corrosion deposits "compatible with immersion in sea water." And for the past seven years historians, scientists, forensic experts and Hartley's biographer have all examined it and come to the conclusion that the instrument is authentic "beyond any reasonable doubt." 
The violin was brought to Wallace Hartley's home town of Dewsbury, Yorkshire and auctioned by Andrew Aldridge. Bidding which started at just £50.00 soon became heated and frenetic, and it wasn't long before the price of £350,000 was reached. Thereafter, one could hear a pin drop as the price continued to soar. At £750,000, the battle was between two telephone bidders; the eventual winner being a British collector of Titanic memorabilia.
While it isn't the most expensive violin to be sold at auction (a Stradivarius fetched £8.9 million in 2011), it is undoubtedly the most expensive unplayable violin ever sold, and has set a record price for Titanic memorabilia - the previous record being £220,000 for a 32-foot plan of the Titanic.
Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds 

Saturday 19 October 2013

Hurrah for the Clangers

Those pink knitted, moon dwelling creatures with long snouts - the kind of woollen creations your granny might have knitted when you were a kid - are to grace our television screens after an absence of more than forty years. The BBC has announced that they plan to relaunch 'The Clangers' at a cost of £5 million. But interestingly, in the age of digital technology, the Beeb has stated categorically that the series will be true to the original, which first appeared in 1969. And to this effect, one of its original creators, Peter Firmin, now 84 is to be executive producer, while Daniel Postgate, the son of its original writer, Oliver Postgate, will oversee the scripts. To retain the charm of the original series, stop-frame animation will be employed rather than CGI, and much like their predecessors, these new Clangers will communicate through primitive swanee whistle sound effects. 

It wasn't so long ago that the BBC were investing £15 million in Anne Woods' and speech therapist, Andy Devenport's very peculiar and highly researched 'Teletubbies'. The series was hailed as a huge success (particularly for its creators and the production company 'Ragdoll Productions') having been exported here, there and everywhere. Much was written about Teletubbies at the time; there was a national debate as to whether Tinky Winky was gay; and strangely, the show written originally for two to four-year-olds found a significant audience among university students (who presumably viewed it while smoking marijuana).  

I, for one, am pleased that those adorable whistling pink socks with eyes will be coming back to our television screens. And I don't suppose for one moment that the BBC has any intention of researching the show. 

I wonder if, in forty years from now, someone in the BBC will have the bright idea of reviving Teletubbies? I somehow doubt it, and for the benefit of future generations of kids, I sincerely hope not. 

Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds 

Thursday 11 July 2013

'Why I hope Hitler was right'

The internet is an amazing thing. It allows you to track down pretty much anyone who writes, entertains or blogs, and peruse their latest offerings, innermost thoughts and real life observations to the world at large. This was the case when I recently trawled the net in search of my old English teacher.

Clive Lawton was (and is) no ordinary teacher. For me, he came to represent the John Keating character played by Robin Williams in 'Dead Poets Society' long before the film hit the big screen. To say he was inspirational is something of an understatement. He had this wonderful gift to get his pupils to challenge and question everything, including our fairly dreary GCSE curriculum, and would turn everything on its head in order to make his point. As a result, we would be asked to mark his essays and take part in impromptu class theatre. The point of all this was to instil into his pupils a love of words and an understanding of the power of language.

Since teaching at my old school, he has unsurprisingly achieved much in his professional life. He was headmaster at King David's School, Liverpool, and then went on to jointly found Limmud, the British charity that promotes Jewish learning to anyone in the world who's interested. He is also Governor of the Metropolitan Police Authority and finds time to write and talk all over the world. The other day I inadvertently heard his dulcet tones on the BBC's World Service while in the car.

So it was with some relish that I discovered some of his talks on youtube. One such talk given to a Limmud gathering in Montreal was provocatively titled: 'Why I hope Hitler was right.' And I suspect that only someone of the Jewish faith would be able to get away with such bare-faced audacity, such chutzpah.

Though he now sports white hair, the strident voice, wit and delivery haven't changed one bit. The talk is riveting and in a relatively short space manages to convey the beliefs of the Nazis and the real feelings of Adolf Hitler as expressed in 'Mein Kampf'.

"Many people," says Lawton, "believe that Nazism and Hitler thought the Jews to be the worst kind of people, but they didn't. The Nazi world view was that the world was stratified into top and bottom human beings. This mock science based on something vaguely Darwinian revolved around the survival of the fittest and the natural order of things."

He goes on to describe the concept of the Master Race and how other lower creeds within the system had their uses. Black people who sat at the bottom of the pile, for instance, were very useful. But Jews were different. They didn't fit into the system, because according to Hitler, they weren't even human. They were some kind of virus or cancer that works on the system in order to stop it working. And by disrupting the system and destabilising it, they would ultimately take it over.

At this point Lawton makes the point that ironically, anyone who's close to the Jewish community anywhere in the world will know that Jews are incapable of organising a piss-up in a brewery. He also tells a rather good Jewish Joke along the following lines: Two Jews in Nazi Germany are sitting next to each other reading. One is engrossed in the Yiddish local paper and the other is reading a Nazi propoganda magazine. "Why are you reading that rubbish?" asks the Yiddish newspaper reader. In response his neighbour shrugs: "I'm fed up reading about how miserable, pathetic and hopeless we have all become. I read this and I hear how we're running the factories, the theatres and the newspapers, and I feel a lot better."

"In the Third Reich," continues Lawton, "might is right. The top dogs can do what they like. There is no morality or ethic other than power." Then he says something I hadn't heard before, probably because I haven't read 'Mein Kampf'. He makes the interesting point that Hitler believed conscience to be a Jewish invention. And of course, there could be no room in the Third Reich for such dangerous sentimentality. Jews, gays, gypsies and those of unsound mind or mental capacity had to be disposed of as a matter of course because they didn't fit into the system. But only the Jews were deemed a threat so huge to deserve a 'final solution' of their own. So although others were killed or allowed to die in concentration camps, by and large it was only the Jews who were sent to the death camps and herded into the gas chambers.

As for conscience being a Jewish invention, Lawton looks incredulous. "Wouldn't that be something to be really proud of if that were true? Just imagine a Jewish lad in his bedroom with a poster carrying the headline: 'Conscience is a Jewish invention - Adolf Hitler'".

The silence in the room is almost palpable.

"The only reason I can only say that I hope Hitler was right, is that I'm not convinced that he was. I've seen far too many Jews say racist things about non-Jews; I've heard too much crap said about muslims; experienced too much misogyny; and too much exclusion of the gay community. So it might not be true that Hitler was right. It may be that Hitler believed in the Jews more than the Jews believe in themselves. And that would be a massive tragedy. One only we Jews can resolve ourselves."

Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds 


Thursday 8 November 2012

Discovering sediment


When it comes to the noble grape, I'm neither a connoisseur nor an utter philistine. I quite like the odd drop of the stuff and can, I think, tell the difference between a decent, quaffable wine and paint stripper. I have also, over the years, managed to perfect the art of concealing one's feelings when discovering the latter in polite company. My father-in-law, one of the most charming individuals one could wish to encounter in life, has an unfortunate propensity to serve wine that is, how shall I put it, well past its sell-by date. To make matters worse, there is always a preamble to the pouring. This will usually entail a colourful anecdote or two regarding the acquisition of said bottle from a particularly remote chateaux located well off the beaten track. 

Anyway, I digress. The purpose of this post is to draw the reader's attention to a rather good blog that I stumbled upon by chance. Entitled Sediment it has been crafted by two delightful if slightly Edwardian characters who go by the monikers: CJ and PK. The pair wouldn't be out of place in Jerome K Jerome's famous boat. While CJ has a penchant for anything vaguely crimson and is in constant search of that elusive  bargain from the likes of Lidl or Waitrose, PK aspires to far greater things. But the point about this blog isn't the fact that it's informative, which it undoubtedly is, so much as its entertainment value. Indeed, you don't have to be a wine buff to appreciate the musings of this droll double-act.


By way of a taster (no pun intended), here's a line from CJ's recent post: 'So I look at the wine rack in the kitchen the other day, and there is a bottle in it which I have no recollection of purchasing. It's normally pretty easy to see what's in the rack and what's not, because the rack (as a rule) has almost nothing in it on account of me drinking everything before it gets a chance to stop moving, let alone age in a horizontal position.'


And to be even-handed, here's a delicious sample from PK's account of supping wine in the company of His Holiness, the Archbishop of Canterbury: 'You pass through the Palace doorway, and realise you must be in the company of good people, because the cloakroom lacks not only an attendant, but any kind of numbering or security system. Who indeed would steal from the house of an Archbishop? (Apart from a King or two…)'


If, like me, you like a good read and aren't averse to having the funny bone well and truly tickled, immerse yourself in the world of CJ and PK. It could become something of an addictive habit. 


Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds 

Monday 5 November 2012

In praise of the NHS

We blokes tend to to get a little more focused on our health when we pass our half century. And if it's not us, it's invariably our wives, partners or GPs who do the focusing. Two years ago while having my annual check-up with the local doctor, he brought up the dreaded subject of the prostate. Though it wasn't troubling me, I had to admit that my visits to the bathroom during the night had been creeping in an upwards direction. Since I had private medical insurance through my company, it seemed like a simple matter, or so I thought, to get it checked out. 

My GP pointed me in the direction of "the best man in London." Without wanting to name names, the man selected for the job runs a swish private clinic in one of London's smartest locations well known to the private medical fraternity. There followed a succession of consultations culminating in a thoroughly unpleasant procedure dubbed a cystoscopy. This procedure involves an ingenious microscope being passed through the urethra into the bladder under a local anaesthetic. 'The best man in London' who is a thoroughly likeable sort, if a little gung ho, reassured me that this procedure is akin to a "walk in the park." To cut a long story short, I've had many very pleasant walks in the park; but this most certainly wasn't one of them. The upshot was that my condition required surgery to remove a small obstruction caused by the prostate. 

Following further consultations, the consultant recommended green light laser surgery at the Edward VII hospital, an establishment favoured by the Royal Family, no less. The operation went ahead and I was in hospital for three nights. On coming home my condition, if anything, became worse, and as a result, countless consultations were arranged and further tests undergone. Now, I should mention here that private medical insurance is hopeless when it comes to 'day care'. When you're being seen by 'the best man in London' you'll be paying something in the region of £150 to simply exchange pleasantries. Should you need any tests or examinations, this figure will soon escalate. Bearing in mind that policies will only provide around £1,000 of cover per year for day care, you really are woefully underinsured - as indeed I was. To add insult to injury, the fees for surgery were in my consultant's case so high that my insurance policy with AXA didn't even cover the full amount. So besides being out of sorts, I was also out of pocket.

After a year of getting nowhere very fast, I decided to ask 'the best man in London' for a referral to see someone on the NHS. He pointed me towards a colleague at Barnet General. 

Now this bloke wasn't at all gung ho. In fact, he was fairly brusque and to the point. "Well Mr Pearl", he inferred. "Call me old fashioned, but I won't touch green light surgery. In fact, I don't allow it here. Seen too many patients presenting with your kind of symptoms following laser treatment. Doesn't work I'm afraid."

Instead he suggested a cystoscopy to have a good look. When I turned a shade of green, he was perfectly understanding. "Oh don't worry. I don't blame you in the least. I'll arrange for you to have it under general anaesthetic." Until this moment, I hadn't realised that this was even an option - thinking foolishly that general anaesthetics weren't lavished on walks in parks.

The procedure came and went and I was eventually advised to have a conventional bladder neck incision to alleviate my symptoms.

I have just returned from Chase Farm hospital. It's early days and it remains to be seen if the operation has succeeded. But I have to say that my experience on the NHS, though one I wouldn't want to repeat in a hurry, was outstanding in every respect.The nurses were brilliant and the level of care incredibly attentive.

Now, I'm not saying that my private consultant wasn't up to the job. It's more than likely that he genuinely felt that laser treatment was the right way to go. But I can't help wondering whether going on the NHS from the start might have saved me an awful lot of time, trouble and money - not to mention a thoroughly unnecessary and unpleasant  walk in the park.

Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds