Richard Farmer

Sound the new article klaxon again! My @studiotec_proj piece on the death and afterlife of Denham film studios is now available for FREE in Industrial Archaeology Review. Features a wonderful picture of a pig in a mail coach and my usual erudite musings. tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

Sound the new article klaxon! My latest piece for @studiotec_proj, on detective novels set in interwar British film studios, is now available in the Journal of British Cinema and Television. Come for the murders, stay for the analysis. euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/jb…

Great article by Chris O' Rourke in latest SCREEN on Robert Allen, a fascinating figure who worked at Denham academic.oup.com/screen/issue/6…

An important date in, British studio history. @studiotec_proj

A new article! (not open access but if you can't get it through your library, let me know) 'Reflections in a Golden Eye: Exploring the Photographic Art of Margaret Nolan and Shirley Eaton' 🌟🌟🌟 Really pleased to be part of this great Bond special issue euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.336…

@ReelJoBotting That question is the real riddle of the Sphinx

Hard to believe these guys are both about to head off to university (no. 1 son took a couple of years out of education). Where did the years go?

More @studiotec_proj fabulousness from m'colleague @Eleanor_Halsall! Come for the detailed history of the Tonkreuz, stay for the wonderful illustrations!

I've written about Germany's first dedicated sound film studio, the Tonkreuz as part of our #Studiotec project @stud journal.eahn.org/article/id/104…

@Guedella @ReelJoBotting If you happen across an Edward VIII threepenny, I'd be happy to take it off your hands...

@ReelJoBotting @rg_farmer I think that I might have one or two of these, since I used to collect coins as a kid. Indeed, I'm still looking for a 1936 Edward VIII penny. royalmintmuseum.org.uk/collection/coi…

The new Charles III coins remind me of the Edward VIII 'royal animals' designs proposed to the Mint by Harold Wilson Parker. These were to include stags, swans and sturgeons - all animals associated with the Crown. theguardian.com/uk-news/articl…

The only one of the 'royal animals' design to make it into circulation was the ‘attractive and pert’ wren, which appeared for decades on the farthing.

Some of the designs were eventually rejected as insufficiently British (the eagle was associated with the USA and only the red grouse was unique to Britain), or too political (the dove had strong pacifist connotations).

@KinoQuickies They don't make 'em anymore, duck!

Is it a coincidence that my blog on a film starring animals from London Zoo appears at the same time as Banksy's London Zoo series? Am I Banksy? I'm not saying that I am. But I'm also not saying that I'm not. Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading about Ming the panda's film fame.

I done another blog

@robinalexbaker I read Krumnagel years and years ago. I remember enjoying it at the time, not that I've ever been noted for my literary taste!

@robinalexbaker Oh, and you might also want to have a look at Peter Ustinov's bibliography - I'm pretty sure he wrote a novel or two in his time.

@robinalexbaker You're very welcome. Murder in Make-Up (which I've only been able to access in a library, sadly) is one of a number of 1930s studio-set murder mysteries that I'll be discussing in a forthcoming article. Don't think any of the others were written by former actors though.

@robinalexbaker Charles Ashton was a silent-era actor (tinyurl.com/2p9c3p9t) who knocked out a number of crime novels in the 1930s and 40s, the first of which, the very enjoyable Murder in Make-Up, was set in a film studio.

This sequence from the 1943 film Thursday's Child was shot in the canteen at Welwyn Studios. Might be of interest to @ReelStreets