This edited article about the Duchess of Bedford originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 703 published on 5 July 1975.

A picture history of Woburn Abbey, home of the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, showing the flying Duchess, (bottom, right of centre)

Supposing your grandmother, or the grandmother of one of your friends, suddenly announced that she was going to learn to fly.

Think of the surprise and the raised eyebrows, and the exclamations of “Grandma, don’t be so silly” there would be. Much as we take airplanes for granted nowadays very few of us, let alone elderly ladies, ever learn to be pilots.

So you can imagine what a fuss there was nearly fifty years ago when, at the age of sixty, the Duchess of Bedford, grandmother of the present Duke of Bedford, took up flying. And the even greater fuss there was some years later when she took off in her de Havilland Gypsy plane one day, disappeared, and was never seen again.

Back in the 1920s, airplanes were not the smooth-travelling, streamlined affairs that they are today. Flying them was still an adventure. It was the age of pilots who set off across the world in tiny planes with cans of extra petrol stacked behind them, and little more than hope in their hearts and determination in their minds, to guarantee that they would land safely somewhere on the other side – in India, in Australia, in America.

It was the age of the pioneers and the trailblazers. Colonel Lindbergh became one of the world’s heroes by making the first solo flight across the Atlantic from New York to Paris in 1927; Amy Johnson was the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia in 1930.

Flights like these helped to pave the way for the airliners of the future. The men and women who made them were dedicated to flying, to proving that there was no part of the world which could not be reached by air.

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This edited article about the man in the iron mask originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 701 published on 21 June 1975.

An English rebel, a French royal prince or a minor Italian nobleman – who was the man in the iron mask? Picture by Neville Dear

One bleak November evening in 1703 a prisoner lay dying in the famous Bastille fortress in Paris. Breathing erratically, he struggled with the responses to the prayers of the chaplain, kneeling with the prison major and the doctor at his bedside. Suddenly he stopped breathing altogether.

The doctor rose quietly and folded the man’s arms across his breast. Then all three left the room. They had just witnessed the death of the most famous prisoner of all time, the Man in the Iron Mask.

The identity of the Man in the Iron Mask is one of the best kept secrets of history. His story has been the subject of books, plays and films, but this glamorizing of his curious life has served only to plunge his real identity deeper into obscurity.

Who was this man? Why did he spend most of his adult life in prison, and why did he wear an iron mask?

To begin with, the mask was not made of iron, but consisted of a whalebone cage covered with tough black velvet. This much we know from a diary kept by one of the lieutenants of the Bastille during the prisoner’s confinement, a soldier called De Jonca. This diary is an important source of evidence for dispelling some of the more fantastic suggestions as to who the prisoner was.

The best known but least credible theory is the one dramatized by Alexandre Dumas in his famous novel, The Man In The Iron Mask.

Louis the Thirteenth, King of France, having despaired of ever being presented with an heir to the throne by his queen, Anne, was discussing the succession problem with his ministers when a messenger hurried into the room and whispered a few words into his ear. The king set off at once to an adjoining room, and returned a little while later with a newly-born boy wrapped in a shawl. His queen had at last provided him with a son, and the Council rejoiced heartily.

A few hours later the king was again asked to come to the queen’s bedroom where, to his dismay, he found that she had just given birth to the second of twin children – another boy.

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This edited article about Marshal Ney originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 693 published on 26 April 1975.

Marshal Ney prepares to face the firing squad by Ken Petts

On the morning of December 7th, 1815, a carriage came to a halt in the Luxembourg Gardens, and from it stepped Michel Ney, a Marshal of France, whose flamboyant courage during the retreat from Moscow had caused the Emperor Napoleon to refer to him as ‘the bravest of the brave.’ But all that was in the past. Today, the veteran soldiers who had been waiting for the Marshal since 5 a.m., were not there to pay him honour, but to execute him as a traitor for his part in trying to restore Napoleon to power after his escape from Elba.

Calmly, Ney took his place against the wall. An officer advanced towards him with a bandage, only to be waved back. “Are you ignorant of the fact,” Ney said reprovingly, “that for twenty years I have been accustomed to face both cannon balls and bullets?” The officer then stepped back, and Ney addressed the picket. “My brave comrades. When I place my hand on my breast, fire.” Removing his hat and striking his heart, he cried “Soldiers, straight to the heart – fire!” A volley crashed out and Ney fell to the ground.

A tragic and shameful end for a man who had once been the idol of France? Not so, according to two diligent American amateur historians who have put forward the theory that Marshal Ney did not die on that cold December morning.

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This edited article about  aviation disasters originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 688 published on 22 March 1975.

The stricken plane was  owned by Imperial Airways and similar to that shown above (bottom) by Wilf Hardy

“Hurry, and get that freight loaded” shouted Lionel Lelue to the men busily loading the Imperial Airways Argosy standing on the tarmac at Brussels. “I’ve got a schedule to keep”. The aeroplane captain was proud of his record for punctual departures and arrivals, a record that not many pilots could equal in 1933 when passenger flights were still in their infancy. Imperial Airways, who had operated a passenger service to and from the continent since 1924, were equally proud of their accident-free record.

Captain Lelue breathed a thankful sigh of relief when the City of Liverpool was at last ready for take-off. The run from Cologne to Brussels had been perfect but now, out on the runway, he looked anxiously at his watch, “12-36, over half an hour behind schedule.”

As the plane neared the coast, the radio operator transmitted a routine signal to Croydon. “Time is 13-20. All instruments functioning normally. We are now over Rouliers.”

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This edited article about the Grand Duchess Anastasia originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 687 published on 15 March 1975.

Anastasia spoke of two soldiers who took pity on her and smuggled her out of Russia by Ken Petts

A frail, grey-haired lady sat in a timbered hut in the depths of a forest waiting for a court to deliver its final verdict. It was a final verdict she had waited more than 40 years to hear.

A verdict which would proclaim to the world either that she really was the Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, daughter of the murdered Czar and heir to a vast fortune – or just a poor peasant woman.

The strange story of this woman which has intrigued the world has its roots in the blood-thirsty morning of July 17, 1918, at Ekaterinburg, now called Sverdlovsk, in Russia. On that day the great Russian revolution was in full swing, and in a wave of blood and violence the Communists overthrew the Russian royal family and gained power.

The Czar and Czarina – the equivalent of a King and Queen – were hiding with their family in one of their country homes, the Villa Ipatyev, just outside the town.

Suddenly on that early morning in Ekaterinburg, revolutionary soldiers, under Commissar Yankel Yurovskiy, burst into their quarters and ordered the Czar and his family to the cellars below.

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This edited article about life originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 686 published on 8 March 1975.

A robot helps to save life by Wilf Hardy

What is life? Most scientists today admit that they do not know the answer to this question, although they know a great deal about the way in which plants, animals and human beings behave.

If a drop of pond water is examined through a microscope, we see things which move around and things which do not move at all. Many of us might assume that the moving things we can see are alive.

For a very long time, the words animate and inanimate were used to distinguish things that were alive from the things that were not. These words come from the Latin verb animare which means “to set into motion” or accelerate. In fact, the word animal has similar origins. Even in the times of the Romans, there was quite a natural association between life and motion.

Yet few of us today would say that things which move must be alive. Things which seem to move of their own accord, like the modern electronic robots which can fly a plane, or the guided missiles which can “home” on to their target, are not alive.

For anything to be alive, it obviously must have other properties beyond the ability to move around.

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This edited article about the Turin Shroud originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 686 published on 8 March 1975.

Christ on the Cross by J James Tissot

Chevalier Pia could hardly believe his eyes as he watched the photographic plate slowly develop. He pinched himself to make sure that he was not dreaming but the pain proved that he was very much awake and he removed the picture from the developer to examine it more closely. “This must be the most remarkable photograph ever taken!” he gasped, as the full significance of his discovery dawned upon him. The portrait in his hands showed a good-looking, bearded man with closed eyes. There was no doubt about it. He was looking at the face of Jesus Christ exactly as he had appeared at the time of his execution almost nineteen hundred years before.

The object that Pia had photographed was a fragment of linen 4 and a half metres long by a little over one metre wide which had been preserved as a holy relic in Turin Cathedral. It was widely believed that this cloth was the shroud in which the body of Jesus had been wrapped after his death. Carefully protected by early Christians in Jerusalem, the bloodstained cloth was taken to Byzantium after the fall of the Roman Empire. In 1204, Otto de la Roche, a French crusader, removed it to France and for the next three hundred years, the Holy Shroud remained hidden in a specially-built chapel at Chamberg. When fire damaged the cloth in 1532, it was repaired by nuns before being taken to Turin Cathedral for safety and there it stayed, carefully guarded, for the next three hundred years.

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This edited article about the curse of the Hope Diamond originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 686 published on 8 March 1975.

Louis XIV was delighted to by the blue diamond which had once been the eye of a Hindu idol

With a wave of his hand the visitor to the Court of King Louis the Fourteenth spread out twenty-five magnificent diamonds on to a spindly-legged table that stood between him and the French King.

The King’s eyes sparkled. Some of the diamonds were the biggest he had ever seen. One was particularly brilliant – a blue diamond that the visitor, whose name was Tavernier, carefully set aside from the rest.

Tavernier had brought back the diamonds from India. King Louis, always prepared to buy great treasures for his palaces, made an offer for them which was accepted.

There was, however, one disturbing point that Tavernier wanted to explain about the diamonds – and about the blue stone in particular: they carried a terrible curse upon them.

Before Tavernier could say any more, the King laughed him to scorn.

“You say . . . ” he exclaimed, with tears of mirth running down his cheeks, “that this – this stone – was once the eye of a Hindu idol? Well, I suppose I can believe that – but to say that it carries a curse . . . !” The King dissolved into laughter again.

“But Your Majesty,” protested Tavernier, “as an experienced traveller and collector, I –”

The King cut him short with a wave of his hand. “Don’t tell me any more, Monsieur Tavernier. I’ll buy these stones and give you a good price for them – but please don’t tell me fairy stories into the bargain. You’ve been in the East too long.”

Louis was as good as his word, and Tavernier soon found himself richer by the equivalent of over £100,000. But as the months slipped by, the nagging fear about the curse on the blue diamond kept returning to his mind.

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This edited article about Louis XVII originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 684 published on 22 February 1975.

A contemporary engraving from 1789 of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette with their family, the Dauphin next to the King

Most people are sufficiently aware of the history of France to know that during the French revolution Louis the Sixteenth, the reigning King, was guillotined. Most people know, too, that the Revolution, when the Bourbon monarchy was restored for a time, in 1814, the King who came to the throne of France was Louis the Eighteenth.

How many people have stopped to think, though, of what happened between Louis the Sixteenth and Louis the Eighteenth? In short, whatever happened to Louis the Seventeenth?

The answer to that intriguing question is one of the great mysteries of French history. For there was a Louis the Seventeenth, although he was never crowned King and was quickly forgotten by his country which, at the time he lived, had too many weighty problems on its hands to bother very much about him.

Louis the Seventeenth was the son of Louis the Sixteenth, and in January, 1793, when his father laid his warm neck on the cold guillotine, young Louis, who was popularly known as the Dauphin, was just eight years old. If you ever go to Madame Tussaud’s waxworks in London you will see a tableau of the French royal family of that time. The Dauphin stands by the knee of his mother, Marie Antoinette, who soon followed her husband to the guillotine. He is a very small lad, with his father’s fullness of face. The innocence of his expression contrasts with the brutal torture which, some people believe, was soon to smother his life.

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This edited article about Richard III originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 683 published on 15 February 1975.

Elizabeth Woodville is persuaded to give up her son, Prince Richard, to her brother-in-law, Richard of Gloucester, later Richard III, by Clive Uptton

The following notice appeared in the memorial column of the “New York Times” one recent August. It read: “Plantagenet – Richard, of York, Duke of Gloucester, King of England, who died 478 years ago today, the 22nd day of August in 1485, in battle at Bosworth Field, betrayed, slandered, his memory destroyed by the Tudors as was his body, a victim of malicious propaganda horrendously immortalized forever by W. Shakespeare . . .”

Stop! Wait!

These are strong words, indeed, to use about the memory of an English king. Strong – because the blunt facts about Richard III in the history books are quite clear. They tell us that he ruthlessly murdered the two sons of his brother, King Edward IV: Edward, Prince of Wales, and Richard, Duke of York. Then, having seized the throne, he was killed fighting on Bosworth Field by the troops of Henry Tudor, afterwards Henry VII.

It was a fitting end, you might say, for a brutal and vicious child-murderer.

The city records of York, however, would disagree with you and the history books. On learning of Richard’s defeat at Bosworth, the Mayor and Aldermen authorized this entry to be made in the records:

“This day was our good King Richard piteously slain and murdered, to the great heaviness of this city.”

Well! What really happened?

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