THE late, great humourist Miles Kington had a list of things in Britain no one ever says a bad word about-steam engines, Morecambe and Wise, the Settle-Carlisle Railway among them. Were he around today, Kington would surely have added the names Wallace and Gromit to his list. The hapless Plasticine heroes are so universal it surprised nobody when The Queen told schoolchildren that the cheese-fixated duo are her husband's 'favourite people in the world'.
'Wallace and Gromit have been around all my life, they give everyone a lovely warm, nostalgic feeling,' enthuses Emma StirlingMiddleton, the curator of an exhibition at the Cartoon Museum, London W1, devoted to the dynamic duo's second screen outing, The Wrong Trousers. Regarded by critics as one of the pinnacles of British cinema, the film is celebrating its 30th birthday. A huge slice of Wensleydale is surely in order.
'We have original sketches, scripts, the equipment used to make the film, sets, equipment, props, the whole spectrum,' Ms Stirling-Middleton adds. 'We even have the Oscar the film won in 1994.' And, of course, there are the stars of the show: Wallace, Gromit and their would-be nemesis, Feathers McGraw, a sinister penguin jewel-thief, who disguises himself as a hen by wearing a rubber glove as a hat. 'I love penguins,' creator Nick Park explains, but I wanted to cast one against type. A penguin is a very unlikely villain.'
That Feathers McGraw is widely acknowledged to be one of the most evil baddies in cinematic history is largely down to the work of Steve Box, the only animator apart from Mr Park who worked on the 30-minute epic.
Drawing on influences such as Mrs Danvers from Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 screen adaptation of Rebecca, Mr Box created a figure that's menacing, silent and achieves a lot despite doing very little.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 13, 2023 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 13, 2023 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
