June 29, 2008

Where Bond seduced his beauties: the backlots of Pinewood Studios

Bond seduced his beauties here, Barbara Windsor lost her bikini – and Keira Knightley got drenched. David James Smith roams the backlots of Pinewood Studios

Here nothing is ever quite what it seems to be. It should come as no surprise that the hand-carved solid oak entrance to the main building of Pinewood film studios is actually an extravagantly grand Elizabethan fireplace, imported seven decades ago from a stately home in Derbyshire. It was set up on plinths to make room for the doors beneath, which are from the RMS Mauretania, an ocean liner decommissioned in the 1930s. Pinewood bought the bulk of its fixtures and fittings at auction.

read online at The Times website
download article (pdf)

NEWS AND EVENTS

Latest News

  • The Sleep Of Reason – The James Bulger Case by David James Smith:
    Faber Finds edition with new preface, available September 15th, 2011.

  • Young Mandela the movie – in development.

    From The Guardian
    Read the article

    In the Diary column of The Independent, April 13th, 2011

    More on my previously unsubstantiated claim that the writer-director Peter Kosminsky, creator of The Promise, is working on a drama about Nelson Mandela. I’ve now learnt that the project is a feature film, in development with Film 4, about the young Mandela. Kosminsky is currently at work on the script and, given the complaints about the anti-Jewish bias of The Promise, it is unlikely to be a standard bland portrait of the former South African president.

Latest Review

    New York Times – J. M. Ledgard
  • Nelson Mandela was circumcised as a 16-year-old boy alongside a flowing river in the Eastern Cape. The ceremony was similar to those of other Bantu peoples. An elder moved through the line making ring-like cuts, and foreskins fell away. The boys could not so much as blink; it was a rite of passage that took you beyond pain. read full review

See David James Smith…

Jon Venables: What Went Wrong
BBC 1, 10.35
Thursday, April 21st, 2011