Frank Barnard – author of Blue Man Falling, To Play the Fox, Band of Eagles
Good start to the month of March with a cheque from Oldie magazine;£150 for an article about meeting Stirling Moss when I was a schoolboy
aspiring to be a reporter. I’d hardly opened the envelope than my wife rang from Tenterden to say she’d just spent £148 stocking up at Waitrose.
The mag out now, for those interested…
The Oldie Magazine - Stirling effort
Oldie magazine asked me to review two DVDs marking the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. For my full report see the September issue, out now at all good outlets. However, while Voice From The Battle Of Britain (lst Take £14.95) satisfactorily tells the tale, The Battle Of Britain: 70th Anniversary (Go Entertain £12.99) does not, despite offering three discs to lst Take’s one.
I won’t labour the point here but Go Entertain’s claim that their product is ‘a blow-by-blow account of the close-run conflict’ is precious thin, as are further claims that it is ‘expertly edited’ and ‘the story as never told before.’ Although perhaps the last is nearer the truth. As I concluded my review, between these two offerings there is, as in 1940, a clear winner.
Richard Ingrams did a great job on my Oldie article about Dunkirk giving it a double-page spread and including one of my best shots of two of the veterans (one of those lucky chances). Here’s a taster.
Before I got into fiction writing seriously I was a regular contributor to Richard Ingrams’ Oldie Magazine. I’m pleased to say that they’ll be running my article about the Dunkirk trip in their August issue, on sale 2 July. As before I submitted just under 2,000-words but they plan to include a number of my photographs so asked me to cut the copy by 800. Tall order but somehow I managed it without affecting things too much.
It’s a while since I read Oldie but I thoroughly recommend it as an excellent and broad-ranging read, and not just for oldies either. I never quite understand this sensitivity about being accused of being old, as though it’s some sort of insult. If you’re old you’re old.
In Letters in the current issue of Oldie one reader relates how she took some back issues to her doctor’s surgery and put them on the waiting room table only to be told by one of the assistants:
‘I don’t think that’s funny. We get a lot of old people in here and they wouldn’t think that was very nice.’
