Kirjahaku

Charles Crichton is perhaps best remembered as the director of the unlikely blockbuster hit A Fish Called Wanda, made when he was seventy-seven years old. But the most significant part of his career was spent at Ealing Studios in the 1940s and 1950s, working on such beloved comedies as Hue and Cry, The Lavender Hill Mob and The Titfield Thunderbolt. Nonetheless, as this pioneering study of Crichton’s work reveals, his filmmaking skills extended way beyond comedy to wartime dramas and film noir, and his adaptability served him well when he made the transition into primetime television, working on popular shows such as The Avengers, Space: 1999 and The Adventures of Black Beauty. Featuring first-hand testimony from colleagues ranging from Dame Judi Dench and Petula Clark to John Cleese and Sir Michael Palin, this riveting account of Crichton’s fascinating life in film will appeal to film scholars and general readers alike.

Long before the picturesque village of Little Marlow became a well-known location for filming episodes of popular television crime shows such as Inspector Morse, Miss Marple and Midsomer Murders, the tranquil Thameside hamlet was the site of a real-life murder that would have taxed the imagination of even the most inventive TV screenwriter. In the immediate aftermath of the Great War, Little Marlow was thrown into a state of great excitement by the discovery of the body of a young married woman named Kate Lilian Bailey. The scene of the tragedy was Barn Cottage, a pretty countryside residence; the weapon of choice was poison, and the man accused of the murder was local milkman, George Bailey - Kate's husband. Who was George Arthur Bailey? What drove this seemingly harmless milkman to murder his wife? Who, or what, sealed his fate? Almost a century later, through exhaustive research, author Quentin Falk brings to light the extraordinary and colourful facts of this strangely under-reported crime to reveal not just one astonishing story, but an intriguing crime and compelling weave of several stories. The Musical Milkman Murder paints a vivid picture of rural society in early 20th century England, reveals the grisly tale of a star-crossed couple torn apart by poison - that subsequently lead to an execution and the suicides of a judge and a hangman - and the tragic story of a daughter who would take half a lifetime to discover the terrible truth behind her parentage.