2021, and we thought we would be coming out of Lockdown but life remained restricted.
Litter Art made from sea plastic I’ve collected
Walking the Solent Way – in search of plastic pollution washed up on the shore
Winter walks along the coast litter-picking
Becoming a Patron of the charity ‘Covid Reflections’
Speaking on BBC Radio Cumbria’s Saturday morning Breakfast Show
Appearing on BBC Antiques Roadshow with ‘Swallows and Amazons’ movie memorabilia including a hazel bow and arrow.
Marc Allum and Sophie Neville on BBC Antiques Roadshow
Taking Part in School Readers ‘Race for Reading’ challenge 2021, collecting litter on a section of the Welsh coastline
Collecting sea plastic whilst walking along the south coast of England
Writing articles for The Herald to encourage people to beach-clean
Representing Litter Pickers of the New Forest
Interviewed by JJ Walsh in Japan for a podcast on beach cleaning and meeting the head of Eco-Bricks UK who took some of my fishing net finds for a talk.
Having my unpublished novels placed in a number of literary awards:
Two historical novels Long-listed by Retreat West, 2021
Semi-Finalist in ACFW Genesis novel writing contest in the USA, 2021
Page Turner Finalist, 2021
Reaching the finals of the 2021 Eyelands Book Awards for an unpublished historical novel
Long-listed by Roadmap’s Write Start Competition in the USA, 2021
Longlisted for Adventures in Fiction New Voices, Flash 500 first page competition and The Eludia Awards in the USA.
Mounting my sketchbook drawings on Instagram – here’s one that got away (the aspect ratio didn’t fit)
My sketchbook paintings
A few sporting achievements:
Worcestershire Archery Society’s prize for Lady’s Most Hits
First Lady’s Gold at the West Berks Archery Society
Best Lady’s Gold at Meriden
Lady’s Championship Trophy for highest score Worcestershire Archery Society
Celebrating the first wedding after Lockdown lifted
Visiting the Yarmouth and the Needles
Sailing to the Isle of Wight while Lockdown was eased
Giving a talk at ‘The Late Summer Festival of Romantic Books and Writing’
Contributing to a handbook for Christian Writers entitled ‘Write Well’ published by Instant Apostle
Riding across the wild areas of Sicily
Riding up Mouth Etna in Sicily
Writing a Foreword to ‘Boats Yet Sailing’ by Trevor Boult
Finding a bid of £251 on a signed first edition paperback of ‘The Making of Swallows and Amazons’ in an auction in aid of BBC Children in Need
Bringing out a second edition of ‘Funnily Enough’ with added illustrations
Being able to go to restaurants with my family – if only for one birthday lunch
Raising funds for welfare projects in the Waterberg, South Africa
Fighting period poverty in rural South Africa
And helping to rebuild the church that burnt down
Being interviewed about my dog, Flint
I was honoured to be awarded ‘New Forest Litter Picker of the Year’
You can see photos of flotsam on an earlier post here
Very many thanks to all my readers who have reviewed my books
An online book review on the Waterstone’s site
Reviews have appeared on Amazon for ‘The Making of Swallows and Amazons’ and on Goodreads here.
Different editions of ‘The Making of Swallows and Amazons (1974) by Sophie Neville’
You can watch the interview on BBC Antiques Roadshow here:
This is the Solent foreshore within the New Forest National Park in Hampshire where wildfowl gather and ponies wander free. Looking ahead to 2022, I have made a commitment to spend a total of 25 hours clearing this area of plastic pollution as part of Keep Britain Tidy’s Million Mile Mission. They reckon I will be walking nearly 75 miles, whilst collecting litter.
This is not difficult as I live near the Solent shore. It is a beautiful area, part of the Crown Estates, but sadly we have to continually clear it of rubbish washing in on the tide.
Danger, in the form of broken bottles, lies in the mud.
I need to take great care when looking for flotsam with my dog. What of the wild animals – geese, swans and egrets? They need their feet.
We always collect a bucket full of plastic pollution, usually removing 2-4Kgs a day, made up of about 160 pieces, many of which are tiny.
The short pieces of green PVC rope are known as ‘sea-kisses’, the remains of old fishing nets shredded and discarded at sea.
Can you see the glinting shard of green glass (above)? It could easily be missed. I find a lot of tennis balls used by dog walkers despite the lead content being toxic.
cephalopod and palsticopod
It’s no wonder that seabirds die with stomachs full of plastic. You can see they have been pecking this inner sole looking for calcium normally gained from cephalopods.
There is always heavy plastic and glass, often a cap.
This peak may have floated over from France. There are sometimes larger items.
This canvas deck cover was 6 metres long and too heavy for me to carry home. Custom-made, it must be sorely missed and expensive to replace.
I must report this enormous marker buoy. It’s the third I’ve found.
People are naughty. Someone shoved a large metal baking tray smelling of fish under one of these bushes. It was heavy – too big for my bucket.
Odd things like forks are often left on the beach.
I have no idea what distance this crate has floated but Box Pool Solutions are based in Peterhead, north of Aberdeen, about 650 miles from the beach where this ended up.
How far has this bottle floated? It was made in South Korea.
Some of the litter is quite elderly.
This polystyrene beam had been languishing on private land bordering the shore for years.
I reported this to the estate manager but it was not collected and broke into pieces, which are time consuming to collect.
Some of the rubbish has grown into the landscape and is not easy to extract.
Why people keep leaving litter on beaches astounds me. Someone was obviously having a Funki cocktail party on the beach. One of the bottles was half full. The Council bin can’t be missed.
Far more worrying are the florescent light bulbs I keep finding washed up on the shore. Over the years I have come across these four, washed up on the Solent – intact! If broken the toxins within are said to pollute 30,000 litres of water. It’s illegal to throw anything off a ship but I’m told that men are ordered to chuck these off rigs, despite the fact they contain mercury.
How long will it be before we are unable to consume fish from the sea? I’m also finding blobs of sewer fat and palm oil, dangerous to dogs.
White blobs of palm oil and micro plastics found on one beach clean
The important thing is to keep going. Our wildness areas will turn into rubbish dumps if we don’t. If you would like to take action and join Keep Britain Tidy’s Million Mile Mission, please click here.
The Eyelands Book Awards are to be announced on 30th December. I first entered this international writing competition in 2019, when my novel entitled ‘The Man Who Got Out of Japan’ won their prize for the best unpublished historical novel.
I was invited to apply for their Writer’s Residency and arrived on the island of Crete to begin work on the sequel under the title, ‘The Girl Who Escaped from Zanzibar’. This novel, set in Zanzibar in the heady days before the revolution of 1964, reached the finals of their 2020 competition in the category Unpublished Historical Fiction.
provisional cover
After being placed or long-listed in a number of other writing competitions, including the Page Turner Awards, this intricate story was completely rewritten. Transposed from the first person to the third person and re-titled ‘A Girl Called Redemption’ it has become multi-layered and intriguing. This second incarnation was submitted to Eyelands Book Awards in October 2021.
Eyelands Book Awards have now published a list of the authors short-listed for their grand prize. The final results will be announced on 30th December followed by an awards ceremony in Athens in April 2022.
‘A Girl Called Redemption’ is up against stiff competition, including a WWII novel written by an American professor of writing:
Hiroshima Bomb Money / Terry Watada /Canada
Yesteryear / Stephen G. Eoannou /USA
The Swimmer /David Tenenbaum/USA
China China / Tong Ge /Canada
A Girl Called Redemption / Sophie Neville /UK
Here is the full line-up of the finalists. Many congratulations for getting this far and best wishes to all!
In November 2021, an anonymous donor bid £251 for a signed first edition of ‘The Making of Swallows and Amazons’. The money raised went directly to BBC Children in Need.
Books listed in the category Auto Biography/Biography
Nearly eight hundred newly published books had been donated to the Children in Read charity auction organised by Paddy Heron, which raised a total of £24,888.
‘Funnily Enough’ an illustrated diary by Sophie Neville
Rare copies of my first edition paperback of ‘The Making of Swallows and Amazons’ are often priced highly on Amazon, but when the bidding went above £75, I promised to include a signed first edition hardback of my memoir ‘Funnily Enough’, which includes a brief section on appearing in the film.
When the bidding went above £101, I promised to add my third illustrated memoir about Swallows and Amazons style adventures in Africa, written in letter form.
‘Ride the Wings of Morning’ by Sophie Neville
However, £251 is so very generous that I am off to my archive store to see if I can find a hand-painted map to include in the package.
Map showing the film locations around Windermere
I drew three different maps showing our film locations in the Lake District and reproduced them in different colour-ways, using one on the cover of my original ebook entitled ‘The Secrets of Filming Swallows and Amazons (1974)’, which is still available on Kindle and any of the ebook outlets.
Christmas Day 2021 marked the 50th Anniversary of the first BBC adaptation of Laurie Lee’s evocative book ‘Cider With Rosie‘, a story that tells of growing up in rural Gloucestershire before the combustion engine destroyed rural life as it had been led for centuries.
Sophie Neville playing Eileen Brown
First published in 1969, the memoir sold six million copies. The 1971 BBC play was screened in the UK, France, West Germany and Japan, becoming regarded as an avant garde, ground-breaking drama that received four BAFTA nominations – Best Script: Hugh Whitemore Best Actress: Rosemary Leach, who played Mrs Lee Best Design: Eileen Diss Best Drama Production: Claude Whatham
And I was in it, as a girl, playing the part of an urchin who could play the piano called Miss Eileen Brown. We were able to use the original village school in Slad as the location for both the classrooms and parochial Christmas concert. I can almost smell the chalk and dusty books mixed with hairspray used by the crew to limit unwanted reflections or dirty-up anything that looked smart and new.
As we ran out into the school yard, which was tiny, the director, Claude Whatham asked if any of us knew any skipping chants. No one said anything. I had been to a village school nearby and knew loads but was too shy to chant them. What a regret.
We used Laurie Lee’s village school in Slad as a location
It was June 1971. We had glorious weather. Prolific wildflowers made the drama special. I remember a bunch of buttercups standing in a classroom window. My scenes were set in 1925, when Laurie Lee was aged about eleven. I was used to having my hair tied in bunches but not up in hair ribbons. It felt strange. I wasn’t very happy about my dress, which was itchy and didn’t fit well. The costume designer assured me that Eileen would have only possessed one dress in real life. I was well aware that it would have been a hand-me-down, as were the boots.
Sophie Neville with Claude Whatham in Slad, 1971
The classroom scenes demanded little of me, I simply sat next to ‘Laurie Lee’ and reacted to the violence exhibited by the teacher. My challenge was that I had to play the accompaniment to ‘Oh Danny Boy’ on the piano. Laurie Lee had to play the violin but the boy playing him was given a double. I had to practice six hours a day, for three days, to get it right. In the end the director said, “Do you think you could play a little faster?”
“These are crotchets,” I said. “They don’t go any faster.”
The result is agonizing but authentic and brought tears to Rosemary Leach’s eyes. The author, Laurie Lee, who still had a cottage in Slad at the time, told my mother that Eileen Brown was the first girl he fell in love with, which was daunting but all this entailed was having to smile.
Sophie Neville with Philip Hawkes as Laurie Lee
My mother appeared in dream sequence, aged 34, looking beautiful in a neatly starched uniform, playing a housemaid when Mrs Lee remembered working with lovely things in a great house. Laurie Lee appeared as himself wearing tweeds – right at the end.
Two years later, in 1973, Claude cast Sten Grendon, who played Little Laurie Lee, as Roger Walker in the Theatre Projects/EMI movie ‘Swallows & Amazons’. He chose me to play his elder sister, Titty.
Sten Grendon with Claude Whatham
The actors John Franklyn-Robbins and Mike Pratt also appeared in both dramas. I didn’t remember this until I looked up the credits on IMDb years later. In 1983, I worked with Rosemary Leach in Norfolk on the BBC adaptation of ‘Coot Club’, when she played Mrs Barrable. I met up with the designer Michael Howells who had a small part as one of Laurie Lee’s elder half-brothers. Both have sadly died. All these amazing actors have sadly passed away, but were captured on film at their most vital.
The film score of Swallows and Amazons (1974) was composed by Wilfred Josephs who also wrote the haunting theme music for Cider with Rosie (1971). You can listen to it here:
This item presented by Paul Martin includes a clip of a black and white BBC documentary made with Lauri Lee in 1960 outside the school where we shot the drama. According to his biographer, he said of Rosie, ‘She was someone, she was no one, she was anyone.’
Are you looking for a special Birthday or Christmas present for someone who happens to love the original film of ‘Swallows and Amazons'(1974)?
Author Sophie Neville
Paddy Heron of Children in Read has a huge number of amazing books listed in a charity auction being held to raise funds for BBC Children in Need. Nearly £21,000 has already been pledged, which is amazing. We have 3 days left to bid, so you have time to chat to the family!
‘The Making of Swallows and Amazons (1974)’ is listed as Lot 298, in the section ‘Film & Television’ above Nigella Lawson’s book ‘Coot, eat, repeat’.
and scroll down until you see the image of the book you would like to bid on, then click on the price button and you can enter a bid when the large image pops up. You don’t pay until you win on the final day. I will pay the postage within the UK and inscribe the copy to whom you wish.
What the bidding page looks like
We now have another bid for £101. Copies on Amazon.UK – where is it has 47 reviews, are now listed as costing about £76. I promised that if the bidding went higher than £78 I would personally inscribe this large paperback edition and include a signed first edition hardback copy of my autobiographical book ‘Funnily Enough’, worth £15, which includes a few pages about filming ‘Swallows and Amazons’ in the Lake District.
‘Funnily Enough’, Sophie Neville’s illustrated diary
I said that the bidding goes any higher than £101, I will include a copy of ‘Ride the Wings of Morning’, my memoir about leading a Swallows and Amazons style life camping in Africa:
Ride the Wings of Morning by Sophie Neville
To read about taking part in the same auction last year, please click here
If you need to know more about the auction, please contact Paddy Heron at Children in Read: childreninread@yahoo.com
I received an interesting series of emails recently from a stone mason called Philip Chatfield:
“Hi Sophie, I was watching ‘Swallows and Amazons’, the old classic, on Talking Pictures TV… great channel. Curiously, I have, hanging in my cottage ceiling timbers, the lantern you used for the Lighthouse on Wild Cat Island !!!!!!”
The lighthouse tree lantern today
‘Lanterns like this pattern are not common, so I presume it must be the one used in your 1974 film. I like to think so. There is a hole in the top of my lantern which has been plugged up and holes in the base too. If you use the lantern with candles, which is what I always do. then you cannot have a hole in the top of the lantern. Heat goes up and out of it and the rope or wooden handle may catch fire! It is stopped up with a small bolt with a flat rounded top.’
The holes would have been made to insert an electric light behind the candle so that it would show up on film.
Sten Grendon (Roger), Suzanna Hamilton (Susan) and Sophie Neville (Titty) at the lighthouse tree in the 1974 movie of Arthur Ransome’s book ‘Swallows and Amazons’
It certainly looks like the lantern we used, which I knew well at the time. A hurricane lamp is used in the book Swallows and Amazons. John, ‘tied the other end round the oil box at the bottom of the lantern’, although candle lanterns were used to mark Secret Harbour.
You can see the lantern lying near Swallow’s mast
The black lantern was packed into Swallow on the voyage to the island, visible when the Walker children narrowly miss the Tern. You can see it lying in the shallow basket.
Film stills taken by Albert Clarke in 1973
It was rather uncomfortable to lean over when handing Roger the telescope.
Swallow nearly collides with MV Tern
The basket was taken out of Swallow at the landing place and Titty moves it up the beach ‘for fear of tidal waves.’ See if you can take some screen shots of it hanging from the lighthouse tree.
The same lantern was used in the movie ‘Far From the Madding Crowd'(1967) starring Alan Bates, Peter Finch, Terence Stamp and Julie Christie.
Terrence Stamp with the lantern
You can also see it hanging from a farm cart.
The same lantern
Philip says, ‘Clearly all the props went back to the Turk Phoenix shed near Teddington after shooting.’
Mike Turk’s warehouse full of film props
‘I never thought about it before but I used to work on a sailing ship called Grand Turk, which was owned by Mile Turk of Turk Phoenix who did a lot of film work.’
SV Grand Turk with Philip Chatfield firing a live shot on the Solent. “That would have given Captain Flint’s houseboat a shaking up!”
‘The Grand Turk played the HMS Indefatigable in ‘Hornblower’ with Ioan Griffiths and co. While I was on board (as Third Mate and Gun Captain) I needed more props for the gunnery dept. The lantern was one of the props we had on board. It came from Turk Phoenix who still had one of the boats used in your wonderful film.’
Swallow at Mike Turk’s warehouse in 2010
‘Mike Turk’s business provided nautical props.’ When Mike reached the end of his life and fell ill, many of these were sold at auction in 2010, including the dinghy that played Swallow in ‘Swallows and Amazons’ (1974), which was purchased by group of film fans now known as SailRansome.
Swallow prepared for auction in 2010
‘Before my time on Grand Turk I spent five years working on a lovely old square rig ship called MARIA ASUMPTA. Back in 1991 we sailed from London’s St Katherine’s Dock to Ipswich. We anchored off Shotley on the Orwell pretty much where the GOBLIN in Ransome’s book ‘We Didn’t Mean To Go to Sea’ book was set. As we hauled up our anchor we brought up a small kedge anchor. I still have it. At the time I was convinced it may have been from the story or even the sailing trip the story was originally based on. Who knows, but it is a lovely anecdote. We had sailed the autumn before to Flushing in Holland and did a tour of the inland waters of Holland.’
Philip Chatfield with a kedge anchor
‘Sadly, Maria Asumpta was lost off Padstow in May 1995 with the loss of three crew. Thankfully I was one of the survivors.’
Maria Asumpta wrecked on a desolate shore
‘You can just see me standing staggering, second from the left, in a state of shock. Three were lost but I was amazed more weren’t, frankly. My friend the bosun Graham is sitting on the stern about to leap off. He survived, just. The ship had been built in Barcelona and launched in 1858.’ By the 1990’s it was the oldest square rigger still sailing.’ A true ship wrecked sailor! What would Titty say?
Philip Chatfield in HMS Victory working on a carving of Lord Nelson in 2008
‘As a stone carver and sculptor I make memorials. A few years ago I was asked to do the memorial for one of my old school teachers and eventually his wife, who now shares his grave in Monmouth. She was Helen Bucknall but her mother was Mrs Henry Clay. The Ransome book ‘We Didn’t Mean To Go To Sea’ is dedicated to Mrs Henry Clay no less. Henry Clay was a friend and colleague of Ransome’s on the Manchester Guardian, also a keen sailor. I think Helen and her family were the inspiration for the story in the book. So Helen has a carving of the yacht they sailed as children on the large Welsh slate memorial in Monmouth cemetery.’
‘The galling thing for my friends, whose mother was Helen, is that they can’t find the original first edition of ‘We Didn’t Mean To Go To Sea’ that Ransome signed. Hope it turns up. At least that charming card exists. Love his little sketch of the dinghy.’
‘Anyway, hope this is of interest… well done for all you do. I have a hard copy of the book on order! Can’t wait. Very best wishes, Philip Chatfield’
The lighthouse tree lantern today
To read more about some of the Swallows and Amazons movie memorabilia, including Swallow’s flag and the fishing rods, please click here
To read more about ‘The Making of Swallows and Amazons (1974)’ – click here
This lovely documentary shows Philip’s recent work on railways:
Stories about making original film of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ are still floating to the surface. The BBC Radio 4 newscaster Alan Smith, wrote to me, saying:
“It’s Alan Smith here – I’ve been through the family archive of photographs and have uncovered two pictures which I’m sure you won’t have:
Brian Doyle, Terry Smith and Graham Ford, with Virginia McKenna, Kit Seymour, Sten Grendon, Simon West, Suzanna Hamilton and Lesley Bennett (photo: Eileen Smith)
“The first picture is fairly obvious – it’s you and the other cast members in the car at Haverthwaite station. This will have been taken by my Mum at the time the ‘official’ photo was taken.” This was on 14th May 1973 when a reporter from the Times came to witness our first day of filming ‘Swallows and Amazons’. The station had only been re-opened two weeks earlier.
The cast of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ (1974) at Haverthwaite Railway Station with Jim Stelfox. Robin Smith is at the window, Alan Smith and John Eccles are standing in the doorway.
“The photo (below) shows (left to right) my brother Robin, me and our friend John Eccles standing in front of a pony & trap. This picture was also taken at Haverthwaite, probably by my mother. John came along with his grandparents Patsy and John, and everyone remarked on how distinguished Mr Eccles senior looked in his boater and blazer!
Robin Smith (6), Alan Smith (9) and John Eccles (7) at Haverthwaite Railway Station with the props lorry in the background
“Please feel free to use these pictures however you’d like – I wonder if they’ll prompt others who were there to unearth similar memories?!”
“We had a lovely two days as extras on the film. I remember there was a casting one Sunday morning at St Anne’s Hall (an old church which is now converted to flats) in Ambleside. This is where anyone who wanted to take part went along to meet the director and wardrobe people. My mother was given instructions re the dress-code for Robin and me, and we were asked to meet in Ambleside town centre a couple of weeks later to board a bus which took us to the first location (Haverthwaite).” This took place about two weeks before the film. Eileen Smith ran the Gale Crescent Guesthouse in Ambleside although none of the crew stayed there. My mother, Daphne Neville, went along to help the wardrobe master, Terry Smith, fit the film extras with costumes.
Alan’s brother, Robin Smith, made it onto a jigsaw puzzle released with the film
Alan couldn’t think why his Dad didn’t come along. It might have been the threat of haircuts. No man in Cumbria under the age of seventy could be persuaded to have a 1929 haircut, apart from Jim Stelfox the station master and my own father, Martin Neville, who appeared in the Rio scenes shot at Bowness.
You can see a quick flash of Alan and his family near the bus in this behind-the-scenes cine clip, shot by my father with a 16mm Bolex borrowed from his company. As he says it’s, “lovely to have all those memories flooding back!”
Behind-the-scenes footage taken by Martin Neville
Alan watched this clip and wrote, “My brother and I are convinced that the boy on the right of the frame at 0’06” is Robin, and the woman standing next to him in the hat with the red band is my mother, Eileen (I appear to have gone in search of ice cream or something, as I’m nowhere to be seen!).
“A couple of seconds earlier at 0’04” I’m almost certain the woman standing in front of the red bus with the large bag is John’s grandmother Patsy Eccles, and the the man in the white blazer, trousers and hat is John Eccles senior, Patsy’s husband. I have very fond memories of Mr & Mrs Eccles – they were a lovely, kind couple who were almost like an extra set of grandparents to Robin and me.
Other children who took part, featured in the local newspaper
“We may only have been extras, but it was so exciting for all of us! The first day’s filming was spent getting on and off the train, followed by what seemed like endless trips up and down the line (this would have been when you and the other actors were in the next carriage filming the early scenes).
Some of the other film extras with Suzanna Hamilton and Sophie Neville
“The second day was a few days later at Bowness Bay. This must have been some feat to achieve as the road was closed to traffic and any clues from the 1970s such as road signs had to be covered up or disguised!
Is Alan fighting with his brother in this shot, top right?
“Both days had a very big effect on me. As a child I’d always been fascinated by radio, film & television, and this brought my imagination to life. It also lit a fuse under my ambitions to do something in broadcasting. The result is I’m now a news presenter on Radio4, doing the news in programmes such as Today, PM and The World at One, so I have a lot to thank Swallows and Amazons for! My work means I now live in Buckinghamshire, but I get back to the Lakes 5 or 6 times a year, and I know that when I hang up my headphones for good, that’s where I’ll live.”
Although born in Edinburgh, Alan’s family moved to Cumbria when he was two years old. He and his brother, Robin, enjoyed an idyllic ‘Swallows and Amazons’ childhood growing up in the Lakes. They didn’t get into sailing but loved hill walking. You can see his BBC profile here
Zena Ashbury and her mother, in front of Brown’s coach returning the film extras to Ambleside at the end of the day’s filming in Bowness.
You can see more photos and read about the adventures everyone had making the original film ‘Swallows and Amazons’ here:
Earlier in the year, I spoke to Helen Millican on BBC Radio Cumbria about making the original film of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ in the Lake District, back in the summer of 1973. We have had an amusing development.
Sophie Neville speaking to Helen Millican on BBC Radio Cumbria
I had been chatting away, telling Helen that people like hearing about all the disasters we had whilst filming on location. One odd thing that went wrong was that one of my milk-teeth fell out in the middle of shooting a scene with Virginia McKenna on Peel Island. At the time, I was somewhat distracted and self-conscious about this but could do no more than try to keep my mouth shut.
Virginia McKenna and Sophie Neville ~ photo: Daphne Neville
However, viewers often spot the fact that my tooth suddenly disappeared. They still talk about it nearly fifty years later. Helen assured me that the tooth fairy was bound to turn up with it, suggesting I could then take the small canine on BBC ‘Antiques Roadshow’, which was being recorded at Windermere Jetty museum in Cumbria at the time.
The tooth that went missing – top right
Amazingly, the missing tooth has been sent to me.
Peter Robb-King, the Make-up Designer on ‘Swallows and Amazons’, rang to say that he had kept it safely in a metal film canister labelled ‘Titty’s tooth’. He promised to send it to me in the post so that I could add it to my bizarre collection of movie memorabilia – valued by Marc Allum at £4,000 to £6,000.
Sophie Neville being made up for the part of Titty by Peter Robb-King in 1973
Helen was delighted to hear that the tooth had materialized after 48 years. “Wow, Sophie what a result, after we made such a joke of it as well! That might just take your valuation up to the next level!”
Peter explained that he took the milk tooth to a dentist in Ambleside to ask if a bridge could be made to temporarily replace it but I remember the director, Claude Whatham, saying that he would ‘have to live with it’ – it being something of a continuity problem as he was yet to shoot earlier scenes of us sailing to the island. As a result, film fans can now work out which sequences were shot right at the end of our time on location even though they come before the scene with Man Friday (played by Virginia McKenna) in the storyline.
My missing tooth, kept since 1973
Peter Robb-King went on to have an amazing career in film, working on ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’, ‘Aliens’, and a number of ‘Indiana Jones’, ‘Batman’ and ‘Star Wars’ movies. He told me that he originally found it difficult to break into Make-Up Design as a man, but managed to win a post as a trainee on ‘The Avengers’ in 1968. ‘Swallows and Amazons’ (1974) was his first job as a Make-Up Supervisor, proving a break-through for him and other members of the film crew. It was the first film made by the producer Richard Pilbrow and David Wood’s first screenplay. Suzanna Hamilton, who played Susan, went on to star in many movies including ‘1984’ with John Hurt and ‘Out of Africa’ opposite Meryl Streep. She has recently had a guest appearance on ‘EastEnders’.
Peter Robb-King can be glimpsed right at the end of this cine clip taken on location
Now retired, Peter and his wife live in Maidenhead but enjoy travelling around. We had a long chat about the green parrot as he later adopted a young one that was rescued while making an Indiana Jones film in Sri Lanka. Stephen Spielberg looked after another parrot from the clutch.
You can read more about the disasters that befell us whilst filming in ‘The Making of Swallows and Amazons’, signed copies of which are available from libraries, The Nancy Blackett Trust book shop and other online distributors.
If you enjoy ebooks, ‘The Secrets of Filming Swallows and Amazons (1974)’ has links to behind-the-scenes cine footage and is very good value at £2.99 – available on Kobo, Smashwords, iTunes and on Kindle here
It took two adults and two small children more than an hour to collect this flotsam washed up along the Solent within the New Forest National Park.
Expert at spotting micro-plastics
The collection ended up weighing about 3 Kgs, despite cellophane and a large number of light, fly-away wrappers. The contents included hundreds of tiny pieces of plastic found in the shingle or blown inland.
A pencil, a washer and a tab from a life jacket
Sorting the colours brought attention to objects that the Marine Conservation Society would classify under ‘sewage’, ‘fishing’ and ‘litter’, thankfully well washed in seawater.
Solent flotsam – including evidence of sewage
Plastic straws and cotton bud stalks have thankfully been banned but plastic pollution remains a huge problem. We need to do what we can to turn the tide.
A plastic straw, a shotgun cartridge, the tip of a boathook and the handle of a brush
What most distresses me are signs that birds are confusing styrofoam with the natural remains of cephalopods that they peck at in search of calcium.
Insulation material and single use styrofoam
I sort out the marine rope and fishing tackle, which is stored for a future project.
Fishing line and shellfish traps
All this, and broken glass, was collected from a beach where children play. There are serviced, wildlife-proof litter bins, and since it is remote, requiring a parking permit, it is never crowded.
For photos of a previous Solent Beach Clean – please click here. You can see which items turn up month after month, such as green ‘sea kisses’ and tampon applicators.
Sophie Neville 