More on the mysterious East Finchley archer, carved by one Eric Aumonier:
There was another link with Eric Aumonier. This occurred in 1946 at Denham Film Studios of the Powell and Pressburger film ‘A Matter of Life and Death’. On a giant moving stairway David Niven fights for his life and happiness, hovering between this world and the next. Eric was responsible for work on the statues of various famous people, which stand on pedestals at intervals beside the staircase. The film production company was called, believe it or not, ‘The Archers’!

Garden Suburbs of Tomorrow

In true Pygmalion fashion, due to housesitting commitments this blog shall be leaving its usual slum conditions be resident for much of the next few weeks in Metroland. Specifically, dispatches will be made from the area around East Finchley (the terrific Holden station of which is the provenance of the above Archer) and Hampstead Garden Suburb, a fantastically Wrong attempt at adapting Ebeneezer Howard's ideas to North London, laid out in the 1900s by Raymond Unwin, and originally sponsored by various Fabian types, such as future Stalinist lickspittles Beatrice and Sydney Webb.



Which reminds me. One forgotten, if blindingly obvious entry into the historically significant worlds fairs and expos discussion earlier is the 1937 World's Fair. The Second World War acted out in advance by the juxtaposition of Albert Speer and Boris Iofan's pavilions, competing for which could be more imposing. Oh, and a fair bit of appropriately Stalinist rewriting has been done on the Pro-Associational Post, particularly on the vexed question of the veil, topicality fans. An intriguing comment there by Padraig as well.