Berkeley Square, a Play in Three Acts, by John L Balderston

This is an odd, beguiling time-travel romance first staged in 1926, then later adapted for radio, TV and two films. John L Balderston chiefly wrote it, in collaboration with JC Squire — later the editor of If It Had Happened Otherwise, a book exploring ways in which history might have been different — with the plot suggested by an unfinished novel by Henry James. I find Balderston a fascinating figure — he adapted both Dracula and Frankenstein for the stage, and his versions were then the bases of the Universal movies. He wrote The Bride of Frankenstein and worked on Gone with the Wind and the US film version of Gaslight. 

Yet I’d never heard of Berkeley Square until it got mentioned in passing in an interview (more of which below). Given all the adaptations, it seems to have been very well known for three decades and was then lost to time — which is ironic given what it’s about.

The plot involves young Peter Standish, who has inherited a house in Berkeley Square in London, 1929. As the play opens, his strange behaviour is of concern to his fiancee, who calls in the US ambassador (one of Standish’s friends). Standish then somehow swaps places with his ancestor of the same name who is visiting the same house in 1784. The ancestor Standish is about to be engaged to his cousin Kate Pettigrew but Standish-from-the-future instead falls for Kate’s sister Helen… 

At first, Standish-from-1929 is thrilled by the prospect of being back in the past and the opportunity to explore:

“How would you like to walk the quiet streets of London in the eighteenth century? … And breathe pure air, instead of gasolene? And ride in Sedan-chairs, instead of taxi-cabs. … See Sheridan at the first night of The School for Scandal, or hear Dr Johnson say the things Boswell wrote, or watch Reynolds at work…” (p. 38)

But the real past is a disappointment, such as when Standish meets Dr Johnson:

“Oh, he thundered out a few platitudes. Really, his friends ought to stop him from dribbling food and snuff all over his waistcoat. And he’d be none the worse for a bath.” (pp. 83-4.)

Worse, Johnson has, with Standish’s supposed friend Captain Clinton, paid for a good seat in front of Newgate prison to watch the burning of a woman called Phoebe Harris as punishment for coining. Standish is horrified by the brutality and also knows he can make no difference here: history cannot be changed.

The way Berkeley Square uses time travel is really interesting but some context is needed. Time travel stories weren’t new in 1929. They weren't just reserved for science-fiction either, but were very much in the mainstream. In A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens, Ebeneezer Scrooge journeys back in time with a ghost to observe the formative events that have made him who he is. He then journeys forward in time with another ghost to see where his life and work will lead. This perspective prompts him to change his ways — and effectively change the future.

In A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) by Mark Twain, Hank Morgan travels back in time and across the Atlantic to medieval England, where his knowledge of science is put to good use battling villains and injustice. Time travel again provides some perspective on social issues. That's not the only link between the two stories. From the way A Christmas Carol is told, it’s possible Scrooge dreamt the whole adventure (but his unconscious still prompts him to change his ways), while Morgan may have imagined his journey to Camelot following a bump to the head. That was generally quite common: the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction entry on time travel says that, “until the end of the nineteenth century, dreams were the favoured method.”

The Time Machine (1895) by HG Wells offered something very different. It begins with the unnamed time traveller discussing — with a psychologist, a provincial mayor, a medical man, a very young man, “an argumentative person with red hair” called Filby and the unnamed narrator — the physical principles of travel through time. It’s a scientific debate among a number of learned, sceptical people, positing time travel as a practical enterprise, a mechanical process accomplished with a machine. 

Wells is vague on exactly what this machine comprises. It has “ivory bars”, “nickel bars”, a “brass rail” and “quartz rod”, but the traveller sits on a “saddle” rather than a seat or chair, which has always made me think of a sort of glorified bicycle. When the traveller works the starting lever, the sense is not that the traveller feels any motion. Instead, as he sits there, he watches a woman come into the room and head out through a different door — at unusual speed.

“I suppose it took her a minute or so to traverse the place, but to me she seemed to shoot across the room like a rocket. I pressed the lever over to its extreme position. The night came like the turning out of a lamp, and in another moment came tomorrow.” (Chapter IV)

It’s as if the traveller is perched on a bicycle in front of a cinema screen, working a lever to speed up the film being shown until it passes in a blur.

There are other examples from the period, not least the unfinished novel by Henry James published in 1917 that Berkeley Square draws on. But I think Berkeley Square is situated somewhere between the dreams/subconscious of Dickens and Twain, and the physics of Wells. The play does not feature a time machine or tell us anything about how Peter Standish is able to swap places with his ancestor. But he does tell us quite a lot about the mechanics of time.

“Suppose you’re in a boat, sailing down a winding stream. You watch the banks as they pass you. You went by a grove of maple trees, upstream. But you can't see them now, so you saw them in the past, didn’t you? You’re watching a field of clover now; it’s before your eyes at this moment, in the present. But you don't know yet what’s around the bend in the stream there ahead of you; there may be wonderful things, but you can’t see them until you get around the bend in the future, can you?

Now remember, you’re in the boat. But I’m up in the sky above you, in a plane. I’m looking down on it all. I can see all at once the trees you saw upstream, the field of clover that you see now, and what's waiting for you around the bend ahead. All at once! So the past, present, and future of the man in the boat are all one to the man in the plane. Doesn't that show how all Time must really be one? Real Time with a capital T is nothing but an idea in the mind of God!” (p. 36)

A page later, Peter shares a limerick:

“There was a young lady named Bright


Whose movements were quicker than light


She went out one day, in a relative way


And came back on the previous night.” (p. 37)

These machinations on the behaviour of time don’t feature in James and surely come from Einstein. They’re also achingly new. It’s not just that perspective of time is relative to the observer. We also gain this perspective by using a then-new kind of vehicle — the plane.

Berkeley Square wasn’t the only work of fiction from this period to draw on Einstein as a dramatic conceit. A year before the play premiered, Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs Dalloway (1925) did something similar. That novel explores all sorts of aspects of time on people's lives and consciousness (and was written under the working title of The Hours). Einstein is name-checked early on in the novel but his ideas about the relativistic effects of travel on our concept of time are demonstrated later on. 

One character, Peter Walsh, returns to London after five years in India and goes to see Clarissa Dalloway. He has been moving while she has been in the same place all that time. The result is marked: 

“And how are you?” said Peter Walsh, positively trembling; taking both her hands; kissing both her hands. She’s grown older, he thought, sitting down. I shan’t tell her anything about it, he thought, for she’s grown older. She’s looking at me, he thought, a sudden embarrassment coming over him, though he had kissed her hands. Putting his hand into his pocket, he took out a large pocketknife and half opened the blade.

Exactly the same, thought Clarissa; the same queer look; the same check suit; a little out of the straight his face is, a little thinner, dryer, perhaps, but he looks awfully well, and just the same.”

Basically, time has passed for Mrs Dalloway but not Peter.

In the case of Berkeley Square, I think Einstein is just bit of the zeitgeist thrown into the mix. The plot also features a Crux ansata — an ankh — to suggest the eternal souls of our star-cross’d lovers, surely drawing on Egytomania sparked by the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922 (Balderston later adapted The Mummy for Universal). 

Or there’s the eye-roll at modern life as the UK follows the US:

“Yes, cocktails, jazz and one universal traffic block—London’s just like New York.” (p. 29) 

I wonder how much the fatalism was of its age, too. The horrors of the past can’t be changed and young lives can’t be saved, in a play staged less than a decade after the end of the First World War. No one here has any agency; the implication is that none of us do. 

This seems to have connected with audiences of the time. According to JP Wearing’s The London Stage 1920-1929 (p. 467), Berkeley Square premiered at St Martin’s Theatre in London on 6 October 1926 and ran for an impressive 179 performances up to 5 March the following year. The cast included sisters Kate and Helen played by Jean Forbes-Robertson and Valerie Taylor. (I know Taylor as Nora in Went the Day Well?, a film made in 1942 but bookended by a character addressing us from the future, after the end of the war.) 

Taylor and some other members of the London cast of Berkeley Square transferred to New York when the play opened at the Lyceum on 4 November 1929 with Leslie Howard in the lead role as Peter Standish. It ran for 229 performances. Theatricalia lists multiple stage versions until 1949.

1937 BBC radio
Berkeley Square,
image from Radio Times

Howard and Taylor were in the 1933 film version available in full on YouTube. Howard was also in a 1937 radio production for the BBC, and the BBC broadcast other radio versions in 1935 (with Peggy Ashcroft as Helen), 1941, 1944 and 1951. That last one coincided with a second film version, now under the title The House in the Square (aka I’ll Never Forget You), with Tyrone Power in the title role (a version of this, with Gregory Peck, failed to get off the ground in 1945). And there were TV versions on the BBC in 1948 and 1959.

And then… Well, nothing. Whatever connection it made with the audience, it’s time has passed.

I’ve a copy of the script published by Longmans, Green and Company (London, New York and  Toronto) in 1929, to coincide with the premiere on Broadway. I bought it because of a chance remark by New Zealand born playwright Jennifer Compton. She told Toby Hadoke for our Looking for David documentary that in 1973, while working on the play that became No Man's Land / Crossfire (in which feminists from different times meet in the same house), her tutor on NIDA's playwriting course advised her to read this old play.

1959 BBC TV
Berkeley Square,
image from Radio Times

That tutor was David Whitaker, the subject of my book. I’m not sure when David discovered the play. He was working on staff in the BBC script department when the 1959 adaptation was made. Whenever he encountered it, I think it had a profound impact on his understanding of time while first story editor of Doctor Who.

For one thing, the speech quoted above about the river and the plane is very like David’s own description of the mechanics of time, which he outlined in a reply to Doctor Who viewer Mr R Adams of Quinton on 1 May 1964 — a copy is held in file T5-649 Viewers Letters 1964 at the BBC’s Written Archives Centre in Caversham. David changes the metaphor a little: instead of a river observed from a plane, time is a winding road which the Doctor can observe from up on a hill. This position gives him perspective of the whole pattern but he cannot change or divert its path.

David wrote this letter on the same day that recording took place on The Temple of Evil (first episode of The Aztecs), in which the Doctor insists to companion Barbara that,

“You can't rewrite history! Not one line! … What you are trying to do is utterly impossible.”

A few months later, in Prisoners of the Conciergie, Barbara again probes what is possible. She has witnessed the young Napoleon Bonaparte in 1794 and later wonders what change she might have enacted with a few quiet words.

DOCTOR WHO:

Well, I can assure you my dear Barbara, Napoleon would never have believed you. 
 

IAN: 

Yes, Doctor but supposing we had written Napoleon a letter telling him, you know, some of the things that were going to happen to him.  


SUSAN: 

It wouldn’t have made any difference, Ian. He'd have forgotten it, or lost it or thought it was written by a maniac. 

BARBARA: 

I suppose if we’d tried to kill him with a gun, the bullet would have missed him. 

This is in a story written by Dennis Spooner, who succeeded David as story editor — and immediately changed the rules. Spooner's next story, The Romans, has the Doctor directly influence the course of history, sparking the Great Fire of Rome. In Spooner’s next self-scripted story, The Time Meddler (1965), we meet a member of the Doctor's own people who can and does change history. David responded; his 1966 novelisation The Crusaders, based on a TV story he wrote for Spooner, begins with the Doctor once again insisting that history is immutable.

Spooner’s view of time has prevailed in Doctor Who. In fact, it’s given the Doctor a sense of purpose, as protector of the delicate web of time. That explains why the Doctor on some occasions can and on others cannot stand idly by and let things take their course. A classic example is in the 1975 story Pyramids of Mars, in which the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith face a villain in the year 1911.

DOCTOR WHO:


If Sutekh isn’t stopped, he’ll destroy the world. 


SARAH JANE: 

But he didn't, did he? I mean, we know the world didn’t end in 1911. 

DOCTOR WHO:

Do we?

He sets the controls of the TARDIS for Earth in 1980, where they find a desolate wasteland. Sarah acknowledges that they have to go back to stop Sutekh. Change is possible, even necessary. The sense is less of change as of moulding.

DOCTOR WHO:

Not chosen [but] shaped. The actions of the present fashion the future. 

The threat of changing history therefore serves as motivation for the Doctor, and so has dramatic value. Not being able to change history makes the Doctor and the companions mere bystanders, and is so less dramatically satisfying. Yet David Whitaker stuck to his guns anyway - and I think that’s because Berkeley Square suggested the drama of not being able to change history, which is what gets explored in The Aztecs, one of the best acclaimed early stories.

It occurs to me that the series Quantum Leap owes (perhaps by coincidence) something to Berkeley Square in that its hero Sam Beckett swaps places with individuals in history in the same way that Peter Standish swaps with his ancestor. Yet the whole point of Quantum Leap is that Sam is tasked with changing history for the better, guided by his friend Al who can provide him with the odds of success in a probabilistic universe.

Anyway. I think Berkeley Square also influenced the middle section of David’s The Evil of the Daleks (1967). There's something of moral, outspoken Kate, good but timid Helen and their caddish brother Tom in Ruth Maxtible, Victoria Waterfield and Arthur Terrell. The TV story features a portrait of Victoria’s late mother, whereas in the play, the house in 1929 features a painting of Peter Standish by Sir Joshua Reynolds, painted during his trip to the past.

That painting has a bigger role in the play, where Reynolds is haunted by his subject.

REYNOLDS:

Something in your face eludes me … I thought at first it was irony. And yet, I fancy I know irony—and there is a quality in your every look, when I take up my brushes and fasten my eyes on your face, beyond all my experience of human nature. (p. 74)

As in the 2010 Doctor Who episode Vincent and the Doctor, the idea is that artists can see something the rest of us don’t. (The fact the Silents in 2011’s The Impossible Astronaut look so much like the figure in the famous painting The Scream suggest Edvard Munch had the same ability.)

Reading Berkeley Square again this weekend, it strikes me that the modern Peter Standish has a guide to his time in the past — his ancestor's diary. David Whitaker provided the Doctor with a diary when, in The Power of the Daleks (1966), the Second Doctor must take on the mantle of the First. 

And, perhaps fittingly, there's a connection that the authors could never have known as it’s related to their future. David's novelisation of The Crusades includes the detail that the Doctor’s granddaughter has married a man called David Cameron; in the play, there's an important American character called Bill Clinton.

David Whitaker seen on television

In August 1964, Doctor Who's first story editor, David Whitaker, wrote up a CV for his new agent, Beryl Vertue, ahead of leaving his staff job at the BBC to go freelance. That CV is a key source in piecing together David's wide-ranging career. Before becoming a writer, David had been a professional actor and his CV refers to acting work in both radio and TV - but without saying what this involved.

We know David worked for BBC Radio in Belfast while working on stage at the New Theatre at Bangor, 1954-55, but not the productions or roles. In October 1955, he was one of four unnamed sailors in The Voyage of Magellan produced by Rayner Heppenstall.

As per the Radio Times listing, this play was repeated. That may explain why a recording of it survives - made for this repeat and retained in case of further broadcast. As a result, this is one of two known records of David's voice, and although he's part of the ensemble rather than playing a named character, we can identify him in the crowd thanks to the other recording we have of him. I'll come to that in a moment.

Sadly, the BBC's Written Archives Centre (WAC) in Caversham does not hold paperwork relating to The Voyage of Magellan to give us more information, such as whether it was first broadcast live or recorded in advance. Details of this and any other roles David might have had on radio are not included in the "radio contributions" files for David held by WAC, which instead cover writing work he did for television outside his staff job.

As for the TV acting work he did before 1964, no details are known to survive - though I take an educated guess in my biography, David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure in Television. But once he'd left his staff job at the BBC, David made a number of other appearances on TV...

Alys and Alan Hayes alerted me to the fact that, on 30 June 1967, David and his wife June Barry were among the celebrities gathered for the 1,000th episode of BBC Two's arts discussion programme Late Night Line-Up. For this, guests from previous episodes (including David Attenborough, Jonathan Miller, Robert Morley, Nyrie Dawn Porter and Ned Sherin) were entertained by comedians Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, assisted by a pre-Monty Python Terry Jones. This programme survives in the BBC archive. Here are two screenshots:

Terry Jones (standing) serves Peter Cook and (his back to us) Dudley Moore, while John Hopkins (with beard) looks on, David Whitaker and June Barry beside him.

Peter Cook standing over Dudley Moore, while John Hopkins, David Whitaker and June Barry watch.

The bearded man sat next to David is the playwright John Hopkins, with whom David worked and corresponded in the BBC script department while they were both on staff there. Hopkins wrote the screenplay for the James Bond film Thunderball (1965), which originally included a reference to Daleks:

BOND (grunts) The Daleks have taken over! 

Here's Hopkins again later the same year that he sat next to David, having just won an award for his script for Talking to a Stranger (available on YouTube), starring Judi Dench - seen second from the left:

TV Awards, 17 November 1967
Eric Portman, Judi Dench, Sydney Newman, Donald Wilson, Basil Coleman, John Hopkins

In the middle of the picture are (in glasses) Sydney Newman, leaving his job as BBC Head of Drama after five years, and beside him tall Donald Wilson, Newman's former head of serials. These two men created Doctor Who and I'm not aware of any other photograph of them together.

Back to David. On 5 March 1969, he was one of the hosts of the Writers' Guild awards held at the Dorchester Hotel in London. The moment that he announced the plaque for 'Best British Light Entertainment Script' awarded to the writing team behind Marty [Feldman] was captured on film and opens the surviving documentary One Pair Of Eyes: No, But Seriously, first broadcast on 7 June. It's the second surviving example of David's voice and you can currently view this on YouTube, but also here is a screenshot:

David Whitaker and Marius Goring
Writers' Guild Awards, 5 March 1969

Beside David is Marius Goring, the actor who'd played a villain in David's TV serial The Evil of the Daleks (1967) and his film Subterfuge (1968, but not released until 1971).

In 1972, David had a cameo role in The Far Country, his own adaptation of the Nevil Shute novel, produced by Eric Tayler for ABC in Australia and first broadcast on 9 February that year. Sadly, David's appearance is not included in the surviving footage from the serial.

Two years later, David wrote another role for himself in the STW-9 series he originated, The Drifter. Again, sadly, this doesn't survive but David's role was covered in the local listings magazine:

'Photo News' from (Australian) TV Week, 4 May 1974

David kept this page from the listings magazine and was also sent the original photograph, plus another one showing him being made-up for this role.

Laurence Hodge, Norman MacLeod and David Whitaker in The Drifter (1974)

David Whitaker made-up for The Drifter (1974)

Although he lived for another six years, these are the latest dated photographs of David Whitaker.

Black Archive #67 The Edge of Destruction

Another new book by me, and the perfect accompaniment to my biography of David Whitaker, this is a deep dive into 1964 Doctor Who story The Edge of Destruction. 

• Buy The Black Archive #67 The Edge of Destruction

While so much of the early history of Doctor Who is documented in great detail, the BBC's Written Archives Centre holds no production file for this odd little two-part serial. Inspired by a trip to the Large Hadron Collider last year (yes, really), I've tried to establish exactly what we know for certain about the making of this story. Was it really written over a weekend? How would it have been different if - as originally planned - these episodes ended Doctor Who for good? And why does the TARDIS have roundels?

Blurbs as follows:

‘Really, there’s no more time for these absurd theories.’

Doctor Who can go anywhere in time and space, and visit any alien planet or historical figure it pleases – that’s rather the point of the show, after all. But in only the third serial, the production team decided to set a story entirely inside the TARDIS, with no other cast than the regulars.

Simon Guerrier has ten theories relating to this most unexpected of early stories, and one about the readers of this Black Archive…

Pages: 108
ISBN: 9781913456450
Author: Simon Guerrier
Publication Date: October 2023

This is my second title for the Black Archive range; in 2017 I also wrote #11 The Evil of The Daleks.

David Whitaker at 95

David Whitaker
in Australia, early 1970s

On 18 April 1928, 95 years ago today, David Arthur Whitaker was born in Knebworth.

In 1963, David became the first story editor of the new science-fiction series Doctor Who, and oversaw of 53 consecutive episodes. 

(Two of those weren't broadcast: the unbroadcast pilot was rewritten and re-rerecorded as the broadcast An Unearthly Child, and the two episodes Crisis and The Urge to Live were, after they'd been recorded, edited down into a single episode. I'm not counting the re-recording of The Dead Planet in this total because, so far as we know, the production team worked from the same script so it didn't need David's attention.)

(Also, David didn't receive credit on The Edge of Destruction or The Brink of Disaster because he was the credited writer on those. There's no story editor credited on The Powerful Enemy or Desperate Measures, either, and he may well have written these while still employed as story editor. But paperwork suggested his editorial duties concluded with the episode before that, Flashpoint, so that's where I'm stopping this count. Phew.)

David is also the credited writer on 40 episodes of Doctor Who - more than anyone else in the 1960s, the fourth most prolific TV writer of old-skool Doctor Who (after Robert Holmes on 64, Terry Nation on 56 and Malcolm Hulke on 45 if we count his co-written episodes as 0.5).

Of the 97 missing episodes of Doctor Who, David Whitaker was the credited writer on 18. (John Lucarotti was credited on 11, some co-written, Brian Hayles on 9, Ian Stuart Black on 8.)

David also wrote two of the first three Doctor Who novelisations, co-wrote two of the first three Dalek annuals, co-wrote the first Doctor Who related stage play, polished one of the two Dr. Who movies and probably wrote the bulk of the long running Daleks comic strip.

It's the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who this year, so where was David Whitaker on this day in 1963, his 35th birthday? Well, he was in (or just about to go to) New York in an effort to sell a musical he'd written, Model Girl, with composer George Posford.

Excerpt of letter from David Whitaker
to June Barry, 30 April 1963

Going round the various showbiz houses to schlep his play, he was introduced as, "David Whitaker who drinks sherry."

He returned to the UK around 14 May, presenting his fiancee June Barry with an antique phone, a gift for the flat they were in the process of agreeing to rent after their forthcoming wedding on 8 June.

June Barry in the
Daily Mirror, 3 August 1963

Yes, that's the same top (and same flat) as seen in a 1965 photo shoot of June and David conducted for TV World - the Birmingham-region version of TV Times.

David Whitaker and June Barry
at home, c. May 1965

Daily Mirror, 3 July 1963

(Doreen Spooner, the Daily Mirror's 'camera girl', who took the photo of June with the phone, had the previous month made front-page news with this extraordinary scoop, sneakily shot from the door of a pub toilet.)

David died in 1980 aged just 51. He was still working on Doctor Who. This form recently came to light, proof (at last!) that he'd been working on a novelisation of his 1967 TV serial The Evil of the Daleks.

I wrote a book about The Evil of the Daleks. Later this year, I've got a book out about another of David's Doctor Who stories, The Edge of Destruction.

You can learn more about David Whitaker in the documentary I worked on with splendid Chris Chapman and Toby Hadoke, on the Season 2 box-set released last year.

And I'm currently writing a ginormous biography, David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television, to be published by Ten Acre Films later this year. I'll end with this lovely note from David to a young Doctor Who fan in 1964...

Letter from David Whitaker
to Doctor Who fan Ian

David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television

The lovely lot at Ten Acre Films have officially announced my forthcoming biography of David Whitaker, the original story editor of Doctor Who and a whole lot more besides.

David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television will be out in the second half of 2023. More details - a great wealth of more detail - to follow.

The book couldn't have happened without director Chris Chapman employing me as consultant and talking head on the documentary Looking for David, recently released on the Blu-ray collection of Doctor Who's second year of adventures.

I'm also grateful to the team at the official Doctor Who Magazine who've published some of my research into Whitaker and his world. And it all sprang from the research I did for my Black Archive book on The Evil of the Daleks, a 1967 Doctor Who story written by David Whitaker. My book on his 1964 story The Edge of Destruction for the same range will also be out later this year.

Doctor Who Chronicles: 1967

I've a couple of features in the new Doctor Who Chronicles bookazine from the splendid lot that make Doctor Who Magazine. This one is devoted to the year 1967.

In "From the Archives", I trawl through BBC paperwork to reveal "the story of a turbulent year and last-minute changes in the making of Doctor Who."

In "Life on Mars", I examine the life of writer Brian Hayles, whose "most enduring contribution to Doctor Who was the creation of the Ice Warriors, but this was just part of his prolific output."

If this is your sort of thing - and why in heaven wouldn't it be? - you can still buy my book on the 1967 Doctor Who story The Evil of the Daleks. And there's also the issue of Doctor Who Chronicles for 1965, in which I wrote some stuff.

Few Eggs and No Oranges: The Diaries of Vere Hodgson 1940-45

Wartime Britain, which I read last month, referred to these diaries by Winifred Vere Hodgson (1901-79), who lived at 56 Ladbroke Road when war broke out and then moved to a flat at no. 79. This was a few streets from David Whitaker, the Doctor Who writer and story editor whose life I'm currently researching. In September 1939, 11 year-old David was living with his parents and older brother in the lower part of 9 St Ann’s Villas. I hoped these diaries might give me a better sense of his wartime experience.

They certainly do that. Hodgson wrote her diaries to share with family abroad, letting them know about life in London during the Blitz and the welfare of various relatives there and in Birmingham, too. We get to know these people - and feel the loss of those who die. Hodgson also updates us on various neighbours and friends, and keeps up with the latest news. She's got a keen eye for telling detail - about the war, about London, about extraordinary times.

Two things really help in her perspective. First, there's her job at the Sanctuary at 3 Lansdowne Road, run by the spiritualist Greater World Association Trust and doing a lot of good work during the war sorting out money, food and clothing for anyone in need. That gives Hodgson an insider's view of just how much damage was done by the bombing, the lives lived among burned-out buildings, the character of endurance. She skips days in her diary as she throws herself into the annual fund-raising fair, and despite the privations of war there's a sense of the community coming together and helping out. Every year through the war, there's more damage, more rationing, more difficulty - and yet they raise more money each time.

Secondly, Hodgson previously worked as a teacher in Italy - she once shook hands with Mussolini, she tells us, whose daughter was a pupil. As she follows news of allied troops ascending through Italy, she peppers her diary with first-hand knowledge: the landforms, tunnels, buildings and art being fought over, what it all actually signifies.

For my purposes, there's the sense of the nightly lottery as London is attacked. I spent a lot of time checking her reports of bomb damage against a street map, trying to judge - just as she does in her diary - how bad things really are, how close the bombs are to her home, how much danger she might be in. There's a good sense, too, of the over-fatigue that resulted from night after night of Blitz, as described as well by Judith Kerr in Out of the Hitler Time.

There's lots on what ordinary people did to prepare for the Blitz: on 1 July 1940, Hodgson had respirator drill at Kensington Town Hall; the next day she reported on shelters being built all over Kensington and the new orders that people were to continue in their work until they heard gunfire. On 11 July, she had a practice session in a chamber of tear gas and sat through lectures on gas. Four days later, there was a trip to the Gas Cleansing Station at Earls Court, then on the 18th she took a course on Fire-Fighting at the Convent of the Assumption on Kensington Square, in which she had to climb and drop from a 10-foot wall.

Then there's the things she finds surprising: on 14 August 1940, she was amused to hear people took shelter under dining tables in their homes (something she would herself do later). Or, after a night out to a play in Birmingham on 7 September 1941:

“In London theatre-going at night can be a nightmare in these difficult days." (p. 208)

That was not due to the bombs, but the lack of street lighting and buses to get safety home. A year later, on 13 September 1942, she was struck that,

“Nobody dresses in London these days, even at the smartest places.” (p. 315)

On 7 December 1944, she found it remarkable that,

“A [horse-drawn] Hansom cab is seen periodically doing duty round here. I gaze at it with great satisfaction. I never rode in one. They had just gone out when I had money to do such things. We also have to taxis..." (p. 544)

Yet working animals were a familiar sight to her. On 9 July 1944, she says - to show how life was going on as normal - that,

“Our milkman comes round as usual with his white pony.” (p. 494)

And I'm struck by her reference to Shepherds Bush, a shortish walk from where she lived, as,

 “the next village to Notting Hill” (p. 565).

That sense is there in her local shops, all within walking distance: the Polish greengrocer who lets her have an extra orange, the cobbler, the cat-meat seller, the Mercury cafe where she sometimes has lunch alongside ballerinas from the Rambert school at the adjacent theatre. 

As with Wartime Britain, several things here chime with the current pandemic. For example, on 5 July 1944, Hodgson is,

“Very sorry for children who have to take exams in Air Raid Shelters, not able to concentrate after a bad night.” (p. 491)

But I was looking specifically for anything that might echo in David Whitaker's later work on Doctor Who. A few things resonate. On 7 August 1940, Hodgson remarked on the great many refugees now in Kensington, because of "everybody leaving Gibraltar and Malta" (p. 28), and there are later references to  refugees - these ones and more - grubbing along and needing support. That put me in mind of the Doctor and Susan as we first meet them, and also the Thals in the first Dalek story. Then, on 18 April 1943 Hodgson reported that the previous evening, 

“Marie and I went to Petrified Forest. Setting in Arizona. All very exciting." (p. 379)

On 20 August 1944, she remarked of the new plague of V1 pilotless planes that,

“These Robots have changed everything. The Germans can, in the future, in complete secrecy underground, prepare in the years to come, more of such things and launch them on an unprepared world. … Men will perish under the machines that he has made.” (p. 517)

But when a few weeks later there was a lull in the bombing, it was more unnerving, as she reported on 3 September:

“Here we are at with the end in sight - and we are intact. The silence at the moment is / uncanny. After listening to sirens on and off all day and all night for ten weeks, it seems strange without them. Have we finished with them?” (pp. 526-527)

London is eerily silent at the beginning of The Dalek Invasion of Earth... Maybe Whitaker (and Terry Nation) didn't draw on this kind of stuff consciously - or at all - but it's made me think about the tone of the first two Dalek stories, and how much they're grounded in something that feels real, at least compared to third story The Chase, which Whitaker wasn't involved in. I need to think a bit more on this but that's where I am at the moment.

Oh, and then there's this from 30 November 1940 where, as Hodgson and her colleagues at the Sanctuary are busy with their charitable work, they compare notes on the previous night's Blitz: 

“From Mrs Whittaker we heard that part of the roof of the Daily Telegraph had gone. Everything was so hot no one could go near.” (p. 100)

That might just be David's mother.

Doctor Who Magazine #570

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine has lots on the imminent new TV series with lots of exclusive access to cast and crew.

There's also bits from me. Deputy editor Peter Ware read my post here about Alvin Rakoff's new memoir and asked me to interview him about it. There's another Sufficient Data infographic, illustrated by Ben Morris and this time tracking the Sixth Doctor's efforts to pilot the TARDIS to particular destinations. And  I get a name-check in the nice review of the new Blu-ray release of The Evil of the Daleks.

ETA Alan Barnes' feature on the episode Blink also cites my 2017 interview with writer Steven Moffat.

The Dalek Factor

Out on Blu-ray and DVD this week is the new animation recreating The Evil of the Daleks, a seven-episode Doctor Who story from 1967 of which only episode 2 still survives. The wealth of extras include making-of documentary The Dalek Factor produced by Steve Broster. It includes me rabbiting on a bit wild-eyed and excited to be talking to anyone outside my immediate family.

As the caption says, I wrote a book about The Evil of the Daleks for the Black Archive series, which is still available and rather good.

On Countdown

Excitingly (and surreally), I was mentioned on today's edition of TV quiz show Countdown. Some 15 minutes in, host Nick Hewer asks Samira Ahmed - who is in Dictionary Corner this week - about being on the editorial review board of the official Doctor Who Magazine. 

You can watch the clip, but Samira replies:

"The magazine is for fans - and fans of all ages, including a lot of people who grew up watching the original run going back to the 60s. There haven't been that many new episodes over the last year or so, as you can imagine, so a lot of the magazine is doing features on the past. The idea is that you review it to make sure it's appropriate for BBC content and for its audience. What has been fascinating is that there's this whole archaeology of the old episodes. There are all these old episodes that were lost but the scripts survive or floor plans of TV Centre survive with where the cameras were. And there's been this whole thing of features by brilliant writers like Simon Guerrier where they have got together a panel of people who watched the original episode - once - when it was on TV, got them up to get their memories from when they were little children, and then worked out with the maps of the floor plan, surviving bits of scripts, and tele-snaps (which are photos people took off screen) what the plot was and what it looked like. It's like the archaeology of digging up old Anglo-Saxon hoards and reconstructing a ship, but you don't think of doing that with television. But the history of British TV is 70 years-old now or older and I just think it's been remarkable how much social history there is in reconstructing them that way. So it's been a real joy and the magazine has been such a comfort through lockdown for a lot of people. It's that escape into wild adventures in space and time."

As Samira says, I'm just one of an army of DWM archaeologists, many of them more distinguished and erudite. She's referring to the recent series of articles I've co-written with Rhys Williams, attempting to reconstruct the studio sets from a few of the 97 episodes of Doctor Who missing from the archive. The amazing CGI recreations of the are by Gavin Rymill, and so far we've covered:

• The Evil of the Daleks Episode 1 (1967) in DWM Special Edition: Production Design
• The Feast of Steven (1965 Christmas special) in DWM #559
• The Moonbase Episode 3 (1967) in DWM #562

And there is more to come...

• More by me on The Feast of Steven
• More by me on The Evil of the Daleks
• Documentaries I've made with Samira include Victorian Queens of Ancient Egypt

Happy Times and Places

Waaah!

I'm Toby Hadoke's guest on the Happy Times and Places podcast this week. At my bidding, Toby watches / listens to the 1967 Doctor Who story The Evil of the Daleks and shares the ideas inside his brain. These include which actors dated who, and how good director Derek Martinus was in his casting. Toby also has to guess my favourite things from each of the seven episodes.

You may like to now that I wrote a book about The Evil of the Daleks, and we recreated the sets of episode 1 for Doctor Who Magazine's recent production design special.

Doctor Who Magazine 558

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine includes my feature on the role of David Whitaker in developing early Dalek mythology and helping to make them a cultural phenomenon. As story editor on the first year of Doctor Who, Whitaker commissioned the first Dalek story from writer Terry Nation, defended it from BBC management who didn't approve, and then - when the Daleks proved a huge success - worked with Nation to exploit them across various media.

The article coincides with a beautiful new edition of the Dalek comic strips from the mid-1960s that Whitaker probably wrote most of, and the brand new Daleks! animated series that takes many of its cues from that strip.

DWM special on production design

The latest special edition of Doctor Who Magazine is devoted to production design. Among the delights are some things by me:

Dr Who and the Daleks (1965)

Bill Constable was responsible for the look of the original Peter Cushing movie. I spoke to Bill's daughter Dee - who shared some previously unseen artwork from the film - and biographer Olga Sedneva, as well as Dr Fiona Subotsky, whose late husband Milton produced the movie. (Fiona also wrote Dracula for Doctors, which I read last year.)

The Evil of the Daleks (1967)

With the help of original production designer Chris Thompson, Gav Rymill and I have attempted to recreate the sets from the missing first episode of this classic Dalek story.

Michael Pickwoad (2010-2017)

To accompany a "new" interview with the late, great Michael Pickwoad, Sophie Iles and I interviewed his daughter Amy, who worked with him in the art department on Doctor Who.

The Making of OHMSS, by Charles Helfenstein

I've long coveted this huge, exhaustive history of the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), having first heard about it from my mate Samira Ahmed. Helfenstein details the history of the book, the drafts of the script, the day-by-day production on the movie (and pieces together some missing scenes), the release and legacy - including promotion and merchandise.

It is chock full of extraordinary images and insight. I shall be haunted by writer Richard Maibaum's obsession with scenes involving monkeys, which he tried to get into various Bond films and was thwarted each time. The material filming on 2 February 1969 of Lazenby chasing a villain down the Peter's Hill steps with the St Paul's Cathedral behind him echo the invasion by Cybermen, filmed on 8 September the previous year; the conclusion of the chase involving an underground train seem finally to have surfaced in Skyfall (2012).

My baby brother, who kindly bought this for my birthday, described it as the "Andrew Pixley of Bond", and I can think of no higher praise. I think the difference between Helfenstein and Pixley is that the latter rarely interviews cast and crew himself - thank heavens, as otherwise I'd never be asked to do anything. Helfenstein has endeavoured, over years, to speak to everyone involved and the book is a much a record of his friendships with key personnel such as director Peter Hunt. A last spread of images of the author with these people or visiting the locations shows how much this has been an epic labour of love.

If I don't share the author's passion for this particular movie, it's made me want to revisit it. I'm even more covetous of the follow-up volume on The Living Daylights and find myself picking over which title I'd want to subject to such study...

(Since you're asking, You Only Live Twice to cover Connery's dissatisfaction, the volcano-base set and all the stuff happening in '67, which would dovetail with my book on The Evil of the Daleks.)

• Me on the novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963)

Celestial Toyroom 502

Issue 502 of Celestial Toyroom, the journal of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society, features a big interview with the authors of various titles in the Black Archive series of books - which analyse individual Doctor Who stories. I'm one of those spoken to, about my study of 1967 story The Evil of the Daleks.

I've also got my name in issue 548 of the official Doctor Who Magazine - out today - with news of the Big Finish audio series Susan's War, for which I've written an episode. Oh, and writer Sophie Iles, who's been writing for the magazine for the last few months, has been kind enough to tweet that I've been secretly mentoring her.

Black Archive: The Dalek Invasion of Earth, by Jonathan Morris

My friend Jonny's book on 1964 Doctor Who story The Dalek Invasion of Earth is excellent - and not only because its reference to my own book in the same Black Archive series says nice things. 

Jonny's focus is the development of the story - from initial idea, through first and final draft of the script, the changes made when it went before the TV cameras and then its adaptations on the big screen and in print. Thrillingly, he's managed to get hold of Terry Nation's first draft scripts - or copies held in private hands, since the originals are no longer held in the BBC's own archives - and a first draft of the script for the movie. The former is especially interesting, as comparison with the camera scripts (used when the story went in front of the cameras) reveals the extent of work contributed by story editor David Whitaker. The most astonishing insight - to me - is that writers were likely to only produce a single draft which Whitaker would then rewrite himself. No rewrites! It's another world!

It would be a shame to spoil any more of the gems here. It's a compelling, engaging original piece of research. Especially pleasingly, I'd hoped it might provide some context for a thing I'm writing about one of the characters in the story; it has loads.

Grim's Dyke house in Doctor Who and other film and TV

Earlier this year, the Dr took me to stay at Grim's Dyke house – now a hotel – in Harrow Weald, which was used as a location in episodes 3, 4 and 5 of the 1967 Doctor Who story The Evil of the Daleks. What follows is an expanded version of material from my Black Archive book examining that story, plus photos from our visit...

It was production assistant Tim Combe who found the house. "I was living in Richmond when I got married in 1965," he told me. "But we were thinking of moving to north London, and I did quite a lot of looking round houses, going to estate agents and generally just driving around. I think I first saw it then."

The BBC's Written Archive Centre holds six production files for The Evil of the Daleks, and the first of these - file T5/2,531/1 - shows that Combe visited Grim's Dyke again on 6 April 1967 to check its potential for Doctor Who. That was also when he spotted the adjacent field used for the scenes of Kennedy snooping on the Doctor in episode 1; he learned who owned that field by asking in the local pub. On 7 April, Rae Pickthrone, an assistant in the BBC's television finance department, agreed a fee of £120 for the use of Grim's Dyke with Mr Sewell, the engineer and surveyor for the Borough of Harrow, covering the location filming that would take place at Grim's Dyke on 20, 24 and 25 April.

Grim's Dyke was built between 1870 and 1872, designed by architect Norman Shaw for the painter Frederick Goodall. Shaw had already made his name pioneering a particular style of old English house with a Gothic influence – evident in Grim's Dyke, especially in distinctive Gothic arches that can be seen in the photographs above.

After the Goodall family sold the house in 1880, it passed to the banker Robert Herriot and then to the librettist WS Gilbert – of Gilbert and Sullivan fame. He had a boating lake constructed there, in which he swam every day – and in which he died in 1911. His widow lived on at Grim's Dyke until her death in 1936, after which the house was put up for auction.

"Officially, whatever role the house played in the 2nd World War is classified, and not due for release until the 2040s," says the Grim's Dyke hotel website. So, fittingly for Doctor Who, it's a house of secrets. After the war, the house was used as a rehabilitation centre for men suffering from tuberculosis; that centre closed in 1963, and when Tim Combe arrived in 1967 the house was out of use.

That made it perfect for filming; the sources in what follows are IMDB unless otherwise listed. A year after the rehabilitation centre closed, young film-makers Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo used Grim's Dyke as a location in their war film It Happened Here (1965), as detailed on Reel Streets.

In November 1965 it was used for the colour pilot episode of the adventure series The Saint, The Russian Prisoner, broadcast by ATV London and ATV Midlands in October 1966. The same series returned to the house for The Fiction Makers, filmed from the week of 20 May to the week of 17 June 1966 but not broadcast on TV until December 1968 (having failed to secure a release as a movie). [Source: p. 6 of Andrew Pixley's notes for The Saint: Original Soundtrack.]

A month after Doctor Who filmed at Grim's Dyke, The Champions used the house as a location in The Mission, filmed during the weeks of 24 and 31 May 1967 – the first of four episodes filmed there. A month later, during the week of 21 June, the same series filmed The Experiment with Grim's Dyke as one of the locations. In October, Grim's Dyke was used for The Body Snatchers and in January/February 1968, it was used in The Final Countdown. [Source: Michael Richardson's production notes for The Champions DVD, Network, 2006.]

Grim's Dyke was a location used in the horror film The Blood Beast Terror, which began filming on 7 August 1967, and The Devil Rides Out, which began filming on 28 August the same year.

ETA: According to Irene Shubik's book Play for Today: The Evolution of Television Drama (1975), production began in October 1967 on House of Character, an episode of the Wednesday Play broadcast on 10 January 1968. "The filming was done at Grims Dyke Manor (sic) and Ham House in thick fog,” remembered Shubik (p. 91).

Filming began on The Curse of the Crimson Altar on 22 January 1968 [Source: Jonathan Rigby, English Gothic, p. 178.] It's thought that this was the last film that Boris Karloff worked on (though not the last to be released). "During some rain-soaked sequences [while filming at Grim's Dyke]. Karloff contracted pneumonia, which can hardly have helped alleviate the emphysema which, on 2 February 1969, would kill him. " [Rigby, p. 179.]

As well as horror films, Grim's Dyke appears in the Academy award winning drama The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which began filming on 29 April 1968.

On 13 June 1968, a 2nd unit crew from The Avengers shot material for the episode Game at Grim's Dyke. [Source: Michael Richardson's Bowler Hats and Kinky Boots, p. 660.] Also in June 1968, filming took place on But What a Sweet Little Room, an episode of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and that series returned on 12 August to film material for You Can Always Find a Fall Guy.

From 21 October to 7 November 1968, filming took place on The Killing Bottle, an episode of Journey to the Unknown. The series Department S filmed a Grim's Dyke in April 1969 for the episode The Bones of Byrom Blain. [Source: Michael Richardson's production notes on the Department S DVD set.]

Another horror film, Cry of the Banshee filmed from 20 October 1969. The comedy Futtocks End seems to have been at Grim's Dyke later in the year. The murder mystery Endless Night began filming on 7 June 1971, the TV series The Adventurer began filming on The Case of the Poisoned Pawn in autumn 1972, and in November filming was conducted on K is for Killing, an episode of Thriller.

It's worth listing these productions because they almost all use the house in a very different way to Doctor Who. Most are set in the present, though Cry of the Banshee is set in Elizabethan England, The Blood Beast Terror in the 19th century, The Devil Rides Out in the 1920s and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in the 1930s. The house adds grandeur and elegance. Usually, it has been dressed and lit to appear at its best, but looking carefully we can see damage and wear: it's a faded grandeur, suggesting decay and decadence in the horror films, and in both The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Futtocks End that the past – its bricks and its values – struggles to survive in the modern world.

In Doctor Who, the state of the house suggests something ironic. Just as the first episode and half of The Evil of the Daleks has genuine antiques that are nevertheless brand new, something similar is going on with the house. As it appears in the story, it is old and decayed, but – given events are set in 1866 – it ought to be brand new...