Tag Archives: Hammond Innes

Diary Blog, 14 November 2021, with a few thoughts about writers and films

Angela Merkel retires from public life

[Merkel’s legacy]

A few thoughts on the subject of writers, and filmed books

The writer Wilbur Smith has died.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-59278275;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilbur_Smith

I think that I have only read one or two of his books, long ago, in the 1970s. He sold 140 million copies altogether. When I visited Rhodesia in 1977, I found that the only large (perhaps even, the only) bookshop in Salisbury (now Harare) sold few books from Europe or North America (because of the anti-Rhodesia sanctions imposed, and because of shortage of foreign currency). South African or locally-published books about how to look after your horse, dog, even tropical fish, seemed to be the main stock-in-trade. Those, and Wilbur Smith.

Smith’s huge success as author did not translate well onto film, judging by the two films seen by me (Gold, and Shout at the Devil). Some have thought that the film The Wild Geese was based on a book by Smith, but that is not so [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wild_Geese].

At one time, I thought that the book The Rain Goddess [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rain_Goddess] was one of his, but in fact it was written by another writer, Peter Stiff [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Stiff].

Some writers, some characters, do not translate well onto film, or are hard to film credibly. In my opinion, Raffles has never been brought to life successfully. The same could be said of Chesterton’s Father Brown stories.

One writer usually poorly-represented in the films of his books was Alistair Maclean; at least eleven of whose books were filmed. The best I have seen is probably Where Eagles Dare, though Ice Station Zebra is also not too bad. Some of the films based on Alistair Maclean books are very poor indeed, though, e.g. When Eight Bells Toll [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Eight_Bells_Toll_(film)].

Even much-filmed John le Carre has often not translated well onto screen. The BBC series Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was incomparable, its sequel, Smiley’s People, also very good (and another mini-series, A Perfect Spy, was not bad, lifted by the stellar performance of Peter Egan); le Carre’s stuff is better in such series format, hard to squeeze into the couple of hours of a feature film.

The Tinker, Tailor film released a decade ago was, for me, pretty poor, pedestrian, though it seems that only the more thoughtful critics agreed with me! See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinker_Tailor_Soldier_Spy_(film)#Critical_response.

It may be that the best feature film adaptation of le Carre was the black and white The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, with Richard Burton:

I myself rarely read any kind of fiction now; when young, I did. In the adventure genre, my favourite was Hammond Innes [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammond_Innes]; rather forgotten now, I suppose. Four of his books were filmed, but (in my view) only one quite well, The White South, which was filmed as Hell Below Zero; the film contains historically-valuable, though unpleasant, footage of actual Antarctic whaling.

My favourite Hammond Innes book is The Strange Land, but it was never filmed.

Some writers’ books, which you would think would have made exciting films, never were filmed. Desmond Bagley [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Bagley] comes to mind. Adventure in tropical or other wild parts of the world: espionage, crime, treasure-hunting. I have only read a couple of his books. I recall reading The Vivero Letter about 50 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vivero_Letter_(novel).

[Update, 14 November 2022: since writing the above, I have become aware that The Vivero Letter was later, much later, filmed— in 1998, thirty years after the publication of the book. It seems that two of Bagley’s other books were also filmed, in all three cases unsuccessfully as far as fame is concerned— I had never heard of the films].

Desmond Bagley, like Hammond Innes, can create a credible and quite gripping world out of strange and unusual events.

Another author whose work went largely but not entirely unfilmed was Elleston Trevor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elleston_Trevor. His spy story The Berlin Memorandum, written under the nom de plume “Adam Hall”, was filmed as The Quiller Memorandum, though not very credibly, in my opinion. Somewhat in the Len Deighton area [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Len_Deighton].

Trevor is arguably better known as the writer of the book The Flight of the Phoenix, filmed twice. As usual, the earlier film was the better by far.

Len Deighton himself (he is still around, presently aged 92) has had a number (I think three) of his early books filmed, and quite successfully, perhaps (?) because they are not as reflective and “psychological” as those of le Carre and some others. The IPCRESS File, Funeral in Berlin, Billion Dollar Brain. Indeed, his own later work is more complex.

[title sequence from Billion Dollar Brain; directed by Ken Russell; music by Richard Rodney Bennett]

Tweets seen

This kind of “pile-on” is typical of Twitter, of course. Not that Twitter is of any real importance now. Most of the really interesting accounts have been “suspended” (expelled), including mine!

My own Twitter account was removed in 2018 after a big effort by a pack of Jew extremists. Now we see almost any “dissident” account worth looking at removed. The better-known names include David Icke, Mark Collett, Laura Towler, Alison Chabloz, Katie Hopkins, the London Forum. Many others.

The purge on Twitter continues: only a week ago, the account of thinker Nick Kollerstrom was removed. Why? Usual (((suspects))), of course…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Kollerstrom

I repost tweets on the blog as a quick and easy way of making points or illustrating matters, but in fact Twitter has little real political influence. I have blogged in the past about this. I am always seeing accounts with, supposedly, thousands of “followers” yet only a handful of “likes” or retweets on any given tweet. Some accounts do get hundreds and even thousands of likes/retweets, but then you look at the profile and find that those accounts (mostly of the “famous”) have hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of Twitter followers.

As I have blogged previously, it says much about the self-describing “Left” that their big idea is to “deplatform” this or that person or organization. Nothing to say about society or how to form a better one; just negativity. That is why such people rarely get anywhere politically. Their lives revolve around Twitter. Many of the Zionist Jew cabal on Twitter are like that. They even have a word for themselves, “J-Twitter”.

As for the campaign of propaganda (not only “Covid” passports etc but the whole racemixing campaign), I was alerting the people to that years ago. Now, many are waking up.

However, that propaganda campaign is not aimed at people like me (65-y-o), nor indeed at those in their fifties or forties, nor even at those in their thirties and twenties. This is propaganda, and subliminal propaganda, aimed mainly at children, whose critical faculties are at an early stage of development.

The idea is to normalize the multikulti society, the society composed of various and very different races and ethnic groups, which society will then form the mixed-race mass promoted by Coudenhove-Kalergi.

See: https://www.westernspring.co.uk/the-coudenhove-kalergi-plan-the-genocide-of-the-peoples-of-europe/; and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_von_Coudenhove-Kalergi.

TV ads and “soaps” are an important part of this propaganda campaign: see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2018/12/10/tv-ads-and-soaps-are-the-propaganda-preferred-by-the-system-in-the-uk/. Written by me in December 2018, and even more pertinent today.

More tweets

The ignorance of the police about the very laws they are supposed to enforce is one of the most alarming things today. They often seem to have a completely wrong idea about what the law actually is. This became apparent during the stupid “lockdown” shutdown.

Man proposes, God disposes…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10194941/Gurapareet-Bains-claimed-invent-worlds-healthiest-meal-dies-heart-attack-aged-43.html

Afternoon music

After the earlier discussion of writers, books, films, and film music, here is the full suite from Billion Dollar Brain, music written by Richard Rodney Bennett [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rodney_Bennett]

John Bean— obituary

https://counter-currents.com/2021/11/remembering-john-bean/

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bean_(politician).

General Donkey speaks

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/nov/14/uk-must-be-ready-for-war-with-russia-says-armed-forces-chief

Actually, I love donkeys, but not those carrying the rank of general officer.

Imagine a real war between NATO (i.e. the USA, i.e., in reality, NWO/ZOG) and Russia. It would quite likely turn nuclear. Britain is still the USA’s “unsinkable aircraft carrier” in the words, I believe of Roosevelt. You could say goodbye to the UK and most of the British people, were the UK to be attacked; we are just too small, geographically, and have too many people (and too many key targets) in far too small a space. Britain could do a lot of damage to Russia, but not destroy Russia. Russia, however, could destroy the UK, in effect.

Why is Britain still being the poodle of the American NWO cabals? It’s madness. Better to join with Russia, against both NWO/ZOG and, if necessary, China, and certainly against both Zionism and Islamism.

More tweets

Marr is of course compromized, in general terms: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2200493/Andrew-Marr-caught-kissing-groping-mystery-woman-outside-Soho-nightclub.html; not in a position to be too censorious as to the sexual aspect, though of course the facts in his case were very different, in that no misuse of public funds occurred.

A video worth watching

Late tweets

Denison’s Island. I have been there, in 1967, aged 10, with my school class. There was no-one else there at the time except the custodians. Strange place, quite small inside (the walls are over 12 ft thick in places), with a small area of lawn and a few old cannon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Denison. 54 years ago. Hard to believe.

The constant and seemingly neverending push for vengeance (not “justice”) against Germany and German people by the international Jew-Zionist lobby is, quite exactly, “a kind of distasteful Old Testament thing“, akin to the behaviour exhibited by the Israelites thousands of years ago.

For true European people, the idea of carrying on persecution of individuals, or a state, or country, for decades or even hundreds of years (will the Zionists stop whining and/or bullying in 2045?), for alleged crimes which are not continuing, is indeed distasteful.

The Japanese, or many of them, treated Allied prisoners abominably during WW2. We, meaning the British, after the war ended, hanged or shot a relatively few and clearly proven war criminals, persons who had cruelly or brutally transgressed the accepted rules of war. The rest were released.

Now, nearly 80 years later, we do not seek out Japanese who were 18-y-o typists or even sentries, and put them on trial in a grotesque parody of courtroom “justice”, which is actually (in the case of of 90 or 100 year old SS men or German female ex-typists) a deliberately-contrived ordeal because of the defendants’ age and medical condition.

Likewise, no-one has suggested that those who, at age 18 or 16 were typists or security guards at, say, Los Alamos, should be tried for “facilitating” mass murder of Japanese civilians at Hiroshima. That would be not only unjust but, as said, grotesque.

The same could be said of British people who worked as typists or teenage Home Guard personnel etc at RAF bases from where bombers left to devastate the cities of the Reich in 1941-45, killing between 600,000-800,000 people, mostly civilians, mostly women and children.

The German bombings of the UK killed far fewer, 60,000 or so, but that was still devastation on a wide scale; yet the British do not constantly whine about it now, and did not at the time, or immediately after 1945.

The attitude of many Jews, particularly the hardcore Zionists, is at odds with the culture of Europeans, including British. So why the trials? Because the present German state is still, in a sense, “occupied”…

Late music

Diary Blog, 18 April 2020

Coronavirus— the madness continues

So far, only a minority of clear-thinking people and sceptics has stood up to the brainwashing around the present attempt to place a significant amount of the world population (focussing here on the UK) under a form of house arrest. Here below are a few tweets from leading dissident, Peter Hitchens:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/05/19/peter-hitchens-and-his-views/

In relation to that last of Hitchens’ tweets, how true that is! The BBC is now purely a System/Government/Common Purpose mouthpiece, as demonstrated by some pathetic nonsense on BBC News this morning. A virtual concert in “celebration” of the (not-very-effective) public services, I believe. Some bearded fellow selling rainbow T-shirts (apparently for the NHS) too.

A tweet, and answering tweet, below, too, which both reference Joan Bakewell:

https://www.channel4.com/news/we-will-go-back-to-considerably-worse-than-normal-peter-hitchens-and-joan-bakewell-debate-the-government-lockdown-response

Well, I am only 5 years younger than Peter Hitchens, so I also remember Joan Bakewell, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Bakewell , though from the 1970s, not 1960s. As I saw her, a pursed-lipped busybody type, the sort of woman back then who did well at a State grammar school, attended university (in her case, Cambridge), then joined some “Establishment” body such as MI5 or (in her case) the BBC.

Joan Bakewell has always been System, through and through. Just look at all the appointments and sinecures she has held! She made money on the side too, e.g. in the early 1970s by appearing in Sanderson furnishing ads (magazine photos), under the caption, “Very Joan Bakewell, very Sanderson”. https://www.imogenwhyte.co.uk/very-sanderson-at-the-fashion-textile-museum/ ; https://www.stylelibrary.com/sanderson/

Very Diana Rigg, very Sanderson | Vintage, Diana, Old ads

Vintage Ad #2,090: Very Britt Ekland, Very Sanderson | Vintage ads ...

1970s Uk Sanderson Magazine Advert Stock Photos & 1970s Uk ...

KINGSLEY AMIS ELIZABETH JANE HOWARD AUTHOR WRITER SANDERSON ...

Vintage Original Adverts - House and Home Adverts - General ...

Vintage Adverts: Very Robert Carrier; very Sanderson. – Liz Eggleston

Very Peter Hall, very Sanderson in 2020 | Home, garden, Hall, House

Others who did the same (see above) included Jilly Cooper, Diana Rigg, Petula Clark, the theatre director Peter Hall, Kingsley Amis, and even that excellent adventure writer, Hammond Innes (now rather forgotten, but one of the few non-classic fiction writers that I like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammond_Innes), as well as the once-famous but now equally-forgotten early “celebrity chef”, Robert Carrier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Carrier_(chef). Others too. Sadly, I have been unable to locate Joan Bakewell’s equivalent magazine ad. Or that of Hammond Innes, though I did find this, one of his best books, in my opinion:

The Strange Land by Hammond Innes: Very Good Hardcover (1955 ...

Also found a few minutes of silent film showing the writer at his East Anglian home:

I believe that he lived on or close to the coast of Suffolk. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-hammond-innes-1164546.html

A satirist in the early 1970s suggested that Sanderson might try out a Russian literary giant of the time: “Very Solzhenitsyn, very Sanderson” (unsurprisingly, that never happened). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn

I have to say that Joan Bakewell is so typical of many of the people I have fought all my life, the bien-pensant Hampstead-dwellers (I believe that Joan Bakewell herself lives in nearby Primrose Hill, though I may be mistaken) who think, for example, that the multicultural society is wonderful (because they themselves live in a bubble cossetted by wealth and general privilege), and so on. Plenty like that at the Bar, too.

I don’t really care about mass immigration, neither do I care about Coronavirus lockdown, because I and all my friends live in big houses with nice gardens in Hampstead and Highgate and Primrose Hill and Blackheath.” Bluntly put, but in essence that is more or less the attitude.

This [below] is what we are not hearing from the hysterical msm, let alone the Government of Fools:

The “flattening of the curve” of the “pandemic” has occurred in both countries with “lockdown” and those without…

Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

In fact, in terms of propaganda method, the UK state has managed to manage the public easily, in a judo-like way, not using blunt force as the primary way of manipulating behaviour, but combining that with the channelling of the fear of the public (fear of the virus) and the inherent British social conformity.

Where the Government itself has fallen down is in the fact that it has painted itself into a corner, and now cannot back down and then re-open or free the economy and society.

There is this idea abroad that there has to be an β€œexit strategy”. Why not just say β€œeverything will be open as of X-day, the last day of X-month”?

Meanwhile, the economic tidal wave is approaching. Debenhams (23,000 jobs) has gone (officially only 7 stores and 400 jobs so far, but I doubt that the rest will last long) and I see that the ground force for aviation, comprising several large enterprises such as Swissport, are saying that they will lay off their thousands of employees this weekend unless government guarantees are given.

It is clear that once the furlough monies made available by the Government end (now extended until end of June), there will be a crashing wave of redundancies. More than that, there will, even as things stand, be millions of people on State benefits, maybe for the first time unable to pay their rents, mortgage payments, and general living expenses.

So far the population has been supine, scarcely willing to think for itself, let alone protest as its most basic everyday civil rights have been taken away. That may change when people start to suffer directly. We shall see.

Actually, the very lack of protest or individual (or group) rebellion is not just stunning in itself. It shows how it is that British people have been almost quiescent as their country has been swamped by migration-invasion for decades.

This is a British people that gets more excited or angry about the result of a TV talent show, or the plot of a “soap”, or about who screws whom in some “Year of the Sex Olympics” TV “reality” show, than when their own rights, jobs, and future are trashed.

Twitter, thank God, is not the whole society, but look at Twitter and you see the willing slaves begging to be enslaved more; none more so than the “liberal” or “socialist” tweeters, the sort of people who, in the 1960s, 1970s, even 1980s, would have been debating, protesting, rebelling against the infringement of rights, liberties and life-chances. Now? Begging for longer and harsher “lockdown”, demanding more active policing, eager to clap en masse and on command, eager to “celebrate” state services which in fact are only just, or not, functioning.

I notice that a few of the more notorious “usual suspects”, such asΒ  Jew-Zionist minor academic Ben Gidley (under one of his surviving aliases, “@BobFromBrockley”) have started to call any people who do not accept the official line(s) put out by the System re. Coronavirus, “denialists”. cf. “holocaust” “denial” (meaning historical revision of WW2 narratives; and the view that all aspects of history can be examined and commented upon freely), climate change “denial” etc.

David Icke tweets

David Icke used to follow my Twitter account before I was expelled from Twitter via Jewish lobby machinations. He only follows a couple of hundred people, so he must have found my tweets interesting. Perhaps he reads my blog.Here are a few of his recent tweets:

[Update, 14 December 2020: David Icke has now been expelled from Twitter —in the Twitter weasel word, “suspended”—Β  as I was (over two years ago)]

Boris-idiot

Many tweets seen asking “where is Boris?” and many answering their own question by saying that he is in hiding until the death-toll reduces. Quite likely, but what did the voters expect when “they voted for” a part-Jew public entertainer as “their” Prime Minister? (I do not forget, though, that only about 4 out of 10 voters did vote for Conservative Party candidates in 2019).

Evening foray

Went out to Waitrose. The usual black-garbed Handmaid’s Tale marshals there, shuffling around outside. No other shoppers waiting, so no need to join a line. I was graciously waved through. Before that, while parked, I saw the local police drive round the car park once. Why? God knows. In case some people were actually talking to each other and needed to be shouted at? Whatever. The police just drove round and out again.

It strikes me that the police have an easy job right now, certainly in rural and quiet coastal areas. Crime down by a third, officially (I suspect far more, half or three-quarters, if we are talking about real crime, not people saying too many truths on the Internet). Many police seem to spend their time at present driving around, checking out (snooping) as to why someone is out of their house arrest etc; or parked, observing.

In the supermarket, bought a scratchcard. A winner again (though only Β£10). Few shoppers. Bought a few necessary items (kefir, bread, butter, milk, water, cat food), and a load of unnecessary ones (ice-creams on sticks, raw prawns at one-third of usual price, curry paste, lime pickle, poppadoms etc). Did not notice what items were unobtainable (except bleach, again all gone). Plenty of bread, eggs, milk etc including those panic-buy staples of loo paper and kitchen roll (I myself had no need of any); lemons, limes, grapes and other fruit all available in quantity. Reasonably good selection of tomato. Looks as if this area, at least, has shopped itself to a standstill except for the apparently insatiable demand for pasta, rice and bleach.

Evening music