This edited article about Charles Dickens originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 705 published on 19 July 1975.

The charismatic novelist, Charles Dickens, gave dramatic readings which captivated his spellbound audiences. Picture by Neville Dear

The fashionably dressed audience applauded enthusiastically as the curtain went up. Most had paid heavily for their seats, some as much as £5, which was a lot of money in 1870. But none regretted it. It was money well spent to hear the great Charles Dickens reading from his own works.

Dickens stood there in the glare of the gas lights, a grey-haired, bearded man in a perfectly tailored evening suit with diamonds gleaming in his shirt front, but looking a good deal older than his 58 years. Then, as the house lights went down, Britain’s greatest living author began to speak. Within a few minutes, no fewer than thirty members of the audience had fainted.

It was not unusual. The medical attendants who set about rendering first aid had known what to expect as soon as they had read the programme. Even veterans of the Crimea were likely to feel distinctly queer when Charles Dickens read one of his bloodthirsty episodes, because he always made it sound even worse than the real thing.

Reading in public from his own work was something that Dickens started quite late in life.

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This edited article about fencing originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 704 published on 12 July 1975.

A bout with the foils

Many fencers call their sport “high speed chess” because you cannot win a proper sword fight without thinking out your moves several steps ahead of your opponent.

The dashing film actor Errol Flynn, who did as much as anybody to popularise fencing with his many exciting swashbuckling roles, once said he felt more like a ballet-dancer than an actor when rehearsing a fight sequence for the screen.

“Every move you make has to be according to a plan,” he said. “It’s worse than remembering lines – that’s why nobody ever speaks in the course of a fight.”

Duelling with swords – outlawed in Britain since the early 19th century – has a very long history. The Ancient Egyptians of over 3,000 years ago made temple carvings of men fencing.

Originally, of course, it was developed as part of the training soldiers needed to remain alive in the heat of battle and set “moves” taught to them were still being used by cavalrymen in training drills in the Victorian era.

No man armed with only a sabre could have hoped to have lived long in the Battle of Waterloo or survived the Charge of the Light Brigade without being so efficient at what is called the “Cut, thrust, parry” of swordsmanship, that he could do it in his sleep.

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This edited article about Emanuel Zacchini originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 702 published on 28 June 1975.

Zacchini was appearing half a century after the great Zazel had performed similar feats as a human cannon-ball for her audience at London’s Royal Aquarium in the 1880s

One Day in 1940, amid a thunderous roll of drums, the ring master stepped before the packed crowds in Madison Square Gardens, New York, U.S.A.

“Ringling Brothers and Barnum and ‘Bailey’s circus proudly presents the most amazing spectacle ever witnessed by human eyes,” he proclaimed proudly.

A lorry trundled into the arena with a great cannon mounted on its back, and the crowd gasped in excitement.

“Mister Emanuel Zacchini’s death-defying feat is about to begin,” he cried. “He is going to be shot from a cannon for the greatest distance ever recorded in the annals of history.”

To a fanfare of trumpets, Zacchini tripped into the ring, bowed to the audience and climbed into the barrel of the cannon.

There was a hushed silence as the audience clung to their seats in anticipation. Suddenly, there was a tremendous roar. Smoke poured from the cannon and in the midst of it was Zacchini, shooting through the air so fast that he looked like a streak of colour.

Before the crowd could recover their breath, he was scrambling to the edge of the net in which he had landed and jumping into the arena.

After consulting with officials who had carefully measured the distance, the ringmaster announced that Zacchini had been shot a distance of 175 feet (53.3 metres) and achieved a world record.

Wherever he appeared after this, crowds flocked to see the world’s greatest human cannon-ball who not only survived to enjoy a quiet retirement, but was succeeded by his daughter Florinda as a star in an exciting profession.

This edited article about William Shakespeare originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 699 published on 7 June 1975.

Shakespeare is caught poaching deer by Ron Embleton

There had been people with the name of Shakespeare in Warwickshire for centuries. Some villages contained several families of that name, so that when John Shakespeare from a village near Stratford married Mary Arden, a girl from neighbouring Wilmcote, nobody took much notice.

They even lost the register in which the couple signed their names, so that no one is certain where the marriage actually took place. John and Mary had four daughters and three sons. Of these, the eldest boy, William alone is remembered.

John Shakespeare preferred town life to that of the country. He took his bride to a house he already owned in Stratford-on-Avon. There, he carried on his trade as a glove-maker, but ran a few sidelines in raw hides, wool and leather, corn and malt. He even worked as a butcher, a trade in which his son William, was said to have some skill.

As his business prospered, John Shakespeare also rose in his duties for the town council. He began as the official ale tester in 1556. Ten years later he achieved the top job as bailiff, and applied for the grant of a coat of arms.

It was against this background of a busy market town, of which his father was a leading citizen, that young William Shakespeare grew up. No doubt he was proud of his father’s prosperity and popularity, and enjoyed meeting all sorts of people at the fine house occupied by his family near the town centre.

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This edited article about the Durbar of 1911 originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 697 published on 24 May 1975.

The last great Durbar in June 1911 by Graham Coton

The people of Delhi were no strangers to those great state ceremonies known as Durbars, which had been held in their city from time immemorial. They had seen them held to celebrate the conquests of barbaric Indian princes, and they had seen them held under British rule. Most of them had been impressive affairs indeed, particularly the one that had been held to celebrate the proclamation of Queen Victoria as Empress of India in 1877. But even that particular Durbar had not stirred their imagination as the one that was now about to be held. It had nothing to do with the breathtaking pageantry that had been arranged, or with the fact that every arm of India’s fighting forces would be there to represent India’s military strength. Nor had it anything to do with the fact that the whole twenty five miles of Bawari Plain, just outside the city, was now covered with a sea of tents of every imaginable size and description, including one particular encampment reserved for the Indian princes, which consisted entirely of tents that were so large as to be able to include drawing rooms as comfortable as those to be found in the fine houses of any major capital. All this was familiar stuff, interesting and colourful enough in its own way. But hardly guaranteed to raise the emotional temperature of the city to the state of fever it was now in.

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This edited article about originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 696 published on 17 May 1975.

The young Handel is discovered in the attic playing the harpsichord by his father. Picture by Peter Jackson

Known to millions as the composer of the Hallelujah Chorus and the great oratorio, the Messiah, from which it comes, George Frederic Handel was British by choice, not by birth. Yet his music is part of the British heritage, and he lies buried in Westminster Abbey. What do we know about the little boy from Germany who achieved these things?

Many boys and girls dislike having to practise a musical instrument, even if they have a natural gift for playing it. Parents and teachers have to coax and push them along. With young Handel, however, it was just the opposite. From the time that he could sit on a stool, he loved to get close to a keyboard, and to pick out notes and make up little tunes. And from his earliest years he longed to become a real musician, begging his parents to let him have proper lessons on the harpsichord.

But his father had quite different ideas. A prosperous doctor in the north German town of Halle, he did not intend to let his youngest son lead the irregular and poorly paid life of a musician of those times. No, the boy was to be trained for one of the professions which his father thought respectable, such as that of a lawyer, or perhaps a doctor like himself.

So the small harpsichord in the home of the Handel family was banished to the attic, where George Frederic would not be tempted to waste his time on it. One night, however, his parents were awakened by the sound of soft music stealing down the stairs, long after they had gone to bed. Taking a candle, they went to investigate, and to their amazement found their young son, who was not more than six at the time, seated in his nightshirt in the chilly attic, playing away on the old harpsichord with a skill which was entirely self-taught, and which they had no idea he possessed.

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This edited article about Rossini originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 696 published on 17 May 1975.

Act III, scene iii of Rossini’s opera, William Tell

Gioacchino Antonio Rossini, the great Italian operatic composer, was born on February 29th, 1792 at Pesaro on the Adriatic where his father was the town trumpeter.

Brought up in an atmosphere of music and the theatre, the young Rossini soon showed signs of his musical talents. His father played the horn in the theatre orchestras and his mother was an opera singer.

He studied music at the Conservatoire in Bologna and learned a great deal from the works of Haydn and Mozart.

At the astonishingly early age of 14, Rossini wrote his first opera, La Cambiale di Matrimonio. By the time he was twenty, he was writing four comic operas a year and at once became a most popular composer.

In 1816, came his most famous and best-loved opera, The Barber of Seville although when it was first performed, it was considered a failure.

His other operas which are often performed today, include The Italian Girl in Algiers, Otello, Cinderella and, of course, the famous opera which was produced in 1829, William Tell.

After the success of William Tell, Rossini was to live for another forty years, but wrote no more operas. After visiting England in 1823, he later settled in Paris where he lived most of the time until his death in 1868.

Rossini’s music is light and gay and the composer had a great gift for flowing melody while his work is highly characteristic of the Italian tradition. He was a great lover of the orchestral crescendo and was noted in his day for his ‘noisy effects’. However, his great musical gifts and theatrical flair have ensured his lasting success and his best music, like that which can be heard in The Barber of Seville has an unfailing, immortal charm.

This edited article about Somerset Maugham originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 692 published on 19 April 1975.

W. Somerset Maugham

Born in Paris on January 25th, 1874, William Somerset Maugham was to become one of the most famous English writers of the twentieth century.

His father was solicitor at the British Embassy in Paris and young William learned to speak French before he spoke English.

An orphan before he was ten years old, he was brought up by a clergyman-uncle in Whitstable, Kent, and went to school at King’s School, Canterbury.

Maugham then went to continue his education at Heidelberg University in Germany, and returned to England to study medicine in St. Thomas’s Hospital, London, for six years.

Although he spent a long time training to become a doctor, Maugham never practised his profession except as a student in the London slums, and it was from these experiences that he drew material for his novel, Liza of Lambeth, and for Of Human Bondage, which is considered his finest novel.

At first, Maugham was better known as a playwright than a novelist, though it was only after years of effort that he won success with his play Lady Frederick in 1907.

During the First World War, Maugham served with the Intelligence Department which gave him material for his famous spy story, Ashenden.

In 1915, he married a daughter of Dr. Thomas Barnardo, the man who devoted his life to the rescue of orphans and waifs.

Maugham’s fame as a short-story writer, at which he was an acknowledged master, began with The Trembling of a Leaf in 1921. Ten more collections of short stories followed.

His best known novels are The Moon and Sixpence, The Painted Veil, Cakes and Ale, The Razor’s Edge and Catalina.

Maugham was made a Companion of Honour in 1954, and died in 1965.

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

Blondin (Francois Gravelet) pushes a wheelbarrow across a tightrope over Niagara Falls

Thousands of people, stared fascinated at a rope stretched across Niagara Falls on 30th June, 1859. The rope was over a thousand feet long and a hundred and sixty feet above the roaring tumult of the river.

Suddenly the crowd froze with excitement. A man had started to walk along the rope from the American side. Half-way across, he lay down; then he proceeded to do a backwards somersault. He reached the far side and, as the cheers rang out, a band struck up the Marseillaise.

The tightrope walker started back to the American side carrying a chair. When he reached the middle of the rope, he balanced the chair on two legs and sat down on it.

The performer’s name was Blondin, and he was the greatest of all rope-walkers.

Over the centuries, the world of the circus and of acrobats has cast such a spell over so many people that it is surprising how few of its great performers are remembered by name. But there is no danger of Blondin being forgotten because, indoors as well as out, he took spectacular risks which caught the imagination of literally millions of people who never actually saw him perform.

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This edited article about magic originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 681 published on 1 February 1975.

There was a riot at the New Theatre after an elaborate hoax, by C L Doughty

People read the advertisement in the London newspapers with a certain amount of disbelief but resolved to attend the theatre for what promised to be the show of a lifetime. The notice in the paper on that day in January, 1749 promised that “At the New Theatre in the Haymarket on Monday next, the 16th inst., to be seen a person who performs the several most surprising things following: Namely, first he takes a common walking cane from any of the spectators and thereupon plays the music of every instrument now in use, and likewise sings to surprising perfection.

“Secondly, he presents you with a common wine bottle, which any of the spectators may first examine. This bottle is placed on a table in the middle of the stage, and he (without equivocation) goes into it in sight of all the spectators and sings in it. During his stay in the bottle any person may handle it and see plainly that it does not exceed a common tavern bottle.”

Flamboyant advertising and bombastic claims were the stock in trade of the 18th century conjurer and one had to read between the lines to get at the truth. But, imagine! A man who could actually climb into an ordinary wine bottle! It was obviously a sight not to be missed. And when the people heard that this amazing man had performed his fantastic feats before the crowned heads of Africa, Asia, and Europe they immediately decided that they, too must witness this unique spectacle for themselves.

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