Britain says "Farewell" to Tom Karen its 20th century Giant of Industrial Design and Gentle Genius Toymaker

Tom, who has died at the age of ninety-six, will best be remembered for the work he red and undertook as Managing Director and Chief Designer of 'Ogle Design' from 1962 until 1999. It was here that he oversaw design of the Bush Radio TR130 radio, the Bond Bug and Reliant Scimitar GTE cars, the kid's Raleigh Chopper bike and a series of lorry cabs for Leyland. 

It was, however, for his 'Marble Run' toy, sold by Kiddicraft, that he himself was most proud and would have liked to have been remembered. Certainly his description of its creation provides us with the insight into the workings of his richly creative mind. Although the toy did not make a lot of money for the company, Tom said :  'I think I may be more proud of this product than of any car I’ve designed.'

Tom steered Ogle towards toymaking in the late 1960s and said : 'Back then, in the late 1960s, design organisations never touched toys. They left them to the specialist toymakers. Yet the tide was turning: in December 1967 the Design Centre held a small ‘Under Fives’ exhibition showing innovative designs for toys and nursery furniture'.

His first toy was a wooden Lotus 49 car : 'With big back wheels and rubber tyres, and transfers that gave it the look of a real car. Part of the beauty of this toy lay in its fidelity to the original: I remembered from my childhood how much I had valued the accuracy of toys such as my Water Line ships, or my beautiful wooden Lysander (aircraft) '. 'Children do appreciate toys that are beautifully formed – or so I believed'. In 1970 he made the wooden F1 racing car with real rubber wheels, big at the back, small in front.

With his own young family growing up, Tom said : 'I would make countless playthings for my own children : not just the usual theatrical props, I made many swords, but unique creations which filled them with delight, such as a lovely little wooden desk that I made for Eugenie, with little holes for her yoghurt-pot pen-holders'. 

Tom confessed : 'The truth was, I liked making playthings because I still liked playing myself : I often used to unwind in the evenings assembling little plastic Airfix models of aircraft. Who could be better qualified to explore new toy ideas with a child’s perspective in mind?'

In 2020, at the age of ninety-four and in his autobiography, 'Toymaker', Tom had written : 'My Marble Run means so much to me that I can call every detail of it to mind without reference to a physical example. It is one of my most perfectly resolved designs. What I love about it is that it came from nothing – or almost nothing. It met a hitherto unidentified need; it was beautifully executed; and, as a result, it was spectacularly successful'. 

Giving the reader a glimpse inside his wonderfully creative mind he said : 'Like many of the best ideas, it began with an everyday observation. My sister had given our children a traditional wooden marble run toy. It was a simple wooden device, a bit like an empty picture frame, with three sloping sticks of wood zig-zagging across the space within it, each with a track through which a marble could roll. You dropped a marble in the top and watched it roll down : zig, zag, zig, "clatter". . . That was all'. (link)

Tom said : 'I began to think about how the toy might be improved. Could a more imaginative development of the core concept create a better experience? If so, how? Such questions are the essence of design. I mulled it over. Every now and then, I would make an exploratory drawing, to free my mind to consider the next step.' 'Wouldn’t it be better, I asked myself, if the marble zigged and zagged in a more interesting way? What if you could vary the route? What if there was some element of challenge and reward?'

It was at this point Tom said :  'Suddenly, the answer came to me. What would really transform the game would be to let children build the run themselves. They could build it in different ways, depending on how ambitious or impatient they were feeling. They could still enjoy the sounds and the sights of the marbles rolling down the run, but that would be only part of a much richer satisfaction. I knew at once that this was a winning idea. I also knew that it would only work if the whole thing was thought through to the tiniest detail'. 'At every level, in each possible configuration, it needed to work. In a sense, it was as ambitious as anything I had attempted. At least with a car you only have to design one configuration at a time. But for that very reason I was confident that, if I got it right, my Marble Run would be a brilliant toy'. 

Tom said : 'I wanted with just three kinds of part : bridges, spacers for adding height and hoppers, in which marbles could collect, which were mainly for the start and finish but could also be used in between. Players could construct from them any kind of structure they wanted, weaving and winding in three dimensions like mad plumbing systems. And then they could watch the ‘runs’ they had envisioned being turned into reality by rolling marbles – a set of which would also be included in the game'. 

He continued : 'I have heard from countless adults who played with my Marble Run as children and kept it for their own children. In some cases, the toy is already being enjoyed by a third generation. How many toys can boast that kind of classic status? One of its secrets, I think, is the fact that, like other successful products I have designed for children, including the Chopper, it respects the user. Millions of children around the world have enjoyed playing with the Marble Run. What more can one hope for? Many toys today often seem to be designed with the adults who will pay for them in mind rather than the children who will play with them. It’s all about profit and packaging . No one is thinking about how much lasting satisfaction the child will get from it'.

'The best toys aren’t necessarily those that make the biggest profits, they’re the ones that are also used with love, the kind of thing you’d select if you were woken in the night and told to choose one favourite toy to take with you before fleeing for your life with your family. I like to think that, for many people, the Marble Run has been that kind of toy. It is a gift that keeps on giving. And that means far more to me than the fact that we should have negotiated a more lucrative contract'.  

When Tom referred to one 'favourite toy', he  was reflecting what had happened to him when he was thirteen, in Czechoslovakia, in 1939 and grabbed a few of his die-cast Waterline Warships before he and his family fled the country in fear of their lives with Hitler's invasion and experienced two traumatic years as refugees before achieving sanctuary in Britain.

Tom said : "Our family name was Kohn, which is a Jewish name. Both my parents were totally irreligious but with that name we didn't stand a chance". His father, seen here with his mother, was arrested and : "Somehow, after three days, my father’s release was arranged. The Gestapo kept his passport, but he quickly made arrangements with contacts in the Czechoslovak Air Force to have a new one made. He then escaped to Poland on foot, before flying first to Sweden and then to the UK. There were no goodbyes. One day he was with us; the next, he wasn’t". 

Tom, his mother and brother and sister got to Belgium and then went to the south of France and said : 'We had periods of being hungry and at some stage we were staying in a dreadful unhygienic place' but they got visa permission to travel from Spain to Portugal and then Britain. In 2020, ay the age of ninety-four, Tom said : “I feel so sorry for every kind of refugee. I know what it is like but they have it much worse than I ever did. It is terrible that families and children are drowning in the Channel. It is just appalling”.

The experience of three years as an itinerant refugee in Europe left an indelible mark on him, to the extent that and in 2020 he said : "The British establishment, ridiculously class-bound and traditionalist, had taken me, a maverick designer, to its heart and had made me very happy by doing so. Perhaps it seems odd that, after so much success, I should still have felt the need for the reassurance of an official accolade. But that’s what happens when you’ve been a refugee. You never quite feel safe enough to relax. I know that, no matter what comforts and luxuries I possess today, they can all be taken away from me tomorrow". 

Tom took a series of jobs, before realising he wanted to become a commercial designer and retraining at Central St Martins in London. At the age of thirty in 1956, he provided an interesting insight into his character when, at that time, when he and his Mauritian born, future wife, Nicole, went to see John Osborne’s 'Look Back in Anger' at the Royal Court, starring Kenneth Haigh as Jimmy Porter, which made a deep impression on him. 

He recalled : 'The play had opened more than a year earlier, but the waves of its initial impact had failed to reach Dagenham. Now it hit me with all the explosive power that had scandalised the theatre-going public at its premiere. This incoherent cry of a young man’s rage at establishment complacency felt as though it had been written with me in mind. I saw it repeatedly, and sometimes I felt like standing up and punching the air in support. Life had treated me kindly, compared with what millions had suffered in wartime. Britain had treated me kindly. I had been extremely lucky in material terms. I had made a good start on a career path that made use of my talents. I had a home I liked, and I was even learning to form friendly relationships. What did I have to complain about?' (link)

He continued : 'Yet I was restless, even so. I had, and still have a deep-seated instinct that tells me that things could be better. This makes me hostile to the establishment’s default idea that things are fine as they are. I am always looking for better ways of doing things. Often, in terms of design, at least, I find them, but that’s only half the battle. A good idea needs a receptive audience, otherwise, it risks being lost and forgotten. I hated the thought of that happening'.

'One of the most popular playthings I have created recently consists of  

little more than big blocks of wood. I call them Big Brix. They’re about six inches long with the same proportions as ordinary bricks, but of course they’re wooden: I went to a local wood yard to buy some big lengths to cut down. The idea is that you see how big a tower you can make with the Brix, and part of the fun is the horrendous racket they make when the tower collapses. They’re always the first thing the younger grandchildren run to. I’d like to market Big Brix commercially, as I think they’d be a huge success. I still think about designs for adults too, but the adults I have in mind are basically today’s children'.(link)

Tom's drive to create pleasurable and challenging toys for children and his joy at embracing their company, as seen here with his grandchildren, can be traced back to his own lonely and neglected childhood in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s where he said : 'We lived in Hlinky, a broad, curving, tree-lined avenue in the south-west of the city, far from most of the industry. Locals called it ‘millionnaires’ row’. Our house, known as the 'Kohn Villa', was one of its larger buildings. I was born Thomas Joseph Derrick Paul Kohn. We weren’t a very happy family, but we were rich'.

He said that he and his brother and sister : 'Had everything money could buy and we could not possibly have been considered deprived in any material sense, but normal children would have ridden their bicycle in the park with friends. We had no friends. Our cycling was restricted to circuits of the path around our garden'. The fact that in later life Tom was never happier that when he was surrounded by children as seen in here, with him surrounded by his grandchildren. With children in mind his 'A Little Look at Bottoms' was published in 2004. (link)

Tom said : 'Looking back I can see my childhood was very lonely. At the time I hardly realised'. He failed to get on with his elder brother Felix who wouldn't let him play with his Bugatti Type 35 pedal car and his sister was too young to be a companion. He said that when he looked at the portrait his grandfather had painted of him when he was twelve : 'I am surprised how cheerful I look. Perhaps that is why I don't recognise myself'.

In addition, his mother and father's marriage was loveless and : 'There was no conversation at family meals, just relentless oversight of our manners. I spent long hours detained at the dining table until I had finished my last vegetables'. There were no questions about what he had done at school : 'It really wouldn't have taken much effort to work out that my talents and interests related to shapes and appearances of things. When I was two I could recognise twelve different makes of cars. I was never taken to galleries or museums or encouraged to draw, or given any kind of creative start in life'. 

Despite his brilliant and successful career as a designer, Tom never lost that feeling of being the outsider and said he : 'Felt somewhat shunned by the design establishment. In the 1970s and 1980s, London’s big design names tended to rub shoulders at the same fashionable parties, associations and clubs. I was rarely asked to join them, and sometimes I felt that I was specifically excluded. During my time at Ogle, the RSA gave more than 50 designers its Special Honour, the 'Royal Designer for Industry' award, but it never gave one to me. As far as I am aware, neither the Design Museum nor the V&A has ever shown any of my work'. It wasn't until he was ninety-two in 2019, that he finally collected his OBE for 'Services to Design' at Buckingham Palace.

Tom said : 

'Children are born with an urge to build and create. Toys that allow them to explore this urge fascinate them'.

and 

'Deep down, in some sense, I have never fully grown up. I find it easy to relate to children because I think like a child. That’s why I enjoy my grandchildren’s company so much: we see the world in much the same way'.

'Designing things was a doddle. It was everything else that was difficult.'

Britain says "Farewell" to Film Director Mike Hodges ever to be remembered for his movie masterpiece : 'Get Carter'

Mike, who has died at the age of ninety had a long and varied career in the media as a screenwriter, television director, playwright and novelist, but it was, at the age of thirty-nine in 1971, as the director of the big screen movie, 'Get Carter', that he will best be remembered. (link) The creation of the film was coloured by his life-changing experience of two years National Service in the Royal Navy which left him highly critical of the corruption in 1970's Britain and and its execution, by the skills and working methods Mike had gained from his earlier career in television.

* * * * * * 

Mike was born in Bristol in the summer of 1932 and grew up in a middle class, semi-detached house in a cul de sac, the son and only child of Norah and Graham who worked for the Will's Tobacco Company as a commercial traveler. As a result of the itinerant nature of Graham's work, the family moved to Yeolvil and then to Salisbury and it in that cathedral city that Mike spent his formative years. Norah was a devout catholic and as there was no catholic school in Salisbury, at the age of seven Mike began to attend Prior Park College as a boarder, twelve miles away in Bath.

It was here that Mike first became smitten by the movies and recalled : "In the winter and autumn months, there was one film every fortnight, which was an absolutely magical  experience. The first one was 'Top Hat' with Fred Astaire". "You got enamored. It seemed so magical". He was five years old and still in school in Salisbury when the movie directors Powell and Pressburger came to film scenes for 'The Return of the Scarlet Pimpernel' at Prior Park School. In later life Mike saw fit to add this to his own 'fascination with the movies' mythology when he said : "I didn't know who they were. Even so I cut some classes and got into terrible trouble, so I could watch what was going on". They obviously chose the school for location because of its Georgian grandeur. As time went on, when at home in Salisbury, he said he secretly sneaked out to watch films at the ABC Regal or Gaumont two or three times a week. In addition, he got involved in school amateur dramatics.

When interviewed in 1998 Mike said of that the school was run by the Irish Christian Brothers : "Who are pretty renowned religious thugs. So it was a curious education really. I escaped from there at the age of fifteen having got to the age of matriculation with a distinction in 'Mathematics' and a credit in 'French'. I had wanted to get into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts to do the stage management course, but my parents couldn't conceive of me doing anything like that. I mean, I was obsessed by the cinema already. Because I's got this distinction in Mathematics they had decided that I'd be articled to a chartered accountants. That's what I did at fifteen". 

His firm was was the Dickensian sounding 'Fawcett, Brown and Pinniger' and with them until the age of twenty, he had followed a five year correspondence course in accountancy which he said he had "not liked at all" and he qualified at a second take at his exams at the age of twenty-two in 1954. He now had to undertake his two years National Service in the Royal Navy and said : "I  applied to the Navy and got in and to my parents horror turned down a commission as an officer". He did this because that : "I was likely to be stuck in a barracks. So I went on the lower deck which was the most important thing I ever did, probably in my life, because it was a complete revelation to me. A complete education".He served on two mine sweepers, HMS Coquette and Wave and was recognised as an 'Able Seaman' when he left two years later. 

The whole experience had a profound effect on Mike who said : "As a rating, an Ordinary Seamen, I was free to explore every corner of every impoverished fishing port around these Islands. Clad in my bellbottoms, blue collar and white cap, I witnessed scenes of such Hogarthian depravation that I experienced a sort of epiphany. From being a young Tory and recently-qualified Chartered Accountant, I became a passionate Socialist".

It was 1956 and he now went to London and for a time lived off the expenses he got for applying for jobs as a chartered accountant and then got a foot in the door of the new and coming medium of television broadcasting and got a job as a teleprompter using the new American device which came with the advent of commercial and live tv. Mike said : "The advantage was that you worked with every single company - Granada, BBC, ATV. ABC. So you were going round all over the place. It was an immense experience working in a vast studio. Fears fell away. In addition to which you were able to observe so much what was going on. It was an amazing curve for me".

In his spare time he now wrote scripts for TV advertising magazines and made enough money to allow him, after two years, to leave work as a teleprompter. He now became the editor of ATV's 'Sunday Break' which had been designed for a young audience and which he now changed by taking out the music and steering it towards the more serious subjects such as gambling and alcoholism. This was followed by him landing the job as a writer for 'World in Action', the weighty investigative current affairs programme made by Granada Television for ITV and his scripting, at the age of thirty-one, in 1963, 'The British Way of Death'.

Mike made the jump to film director when, in 1969 he directed an episode for 'ITV Playhouse', 'Suspect' in which a proud woman coldly concentrates on keeping up appearances when her 50-year old husband and a young schoolgirl go missing at the same time. The following year came 'Rumour' in which a hard-bitten newspaper reporter is drawn back into the world of sleaze he had hoped to have left behind.

Mike recalled : "In those days there were only three television channels so the audiences were huge. Consequently your profile could, if all went well, be pretty high. Feature producers watched out for any emerging talents. Presumably because they were cheaper than established directors but also because there was a certain kudos to finding new contenders". He was spotted by Michael Klinger who had earlier spotted Roman Polanski who made his first English films, 'Cul-de-sac' and 'Repulsion' with him. Mike said : "When Klinger sent me 'Jack’s Return Home', a novel by Ted Lewis, and asked if I wanted to adapt and direct it as a feature film, I couldn’t resist".  

"It rang all sorts of bells with me because Jack Carter, he's going up North to investigate the dubious death of his brother. The were scenes in pubs and clubs and lots of strange places that I recognised from my days in the Navy. So I knew instinctively the kind of milieu that he was moving in because I was on the lower decks and when you went ashore, all these ports, like Hull and Grimsby, are the kinds of places you ended up in and there was no where that would accept you. So I knew what the man was writing about". Harking back to younger days at sea, when he described himself as a 'passionate socialist', he said : "While not sharing the psychopathology of Jack Carter, I certainly shared his anger".  

 Mike brought the speed with he worked in television to the production and writing the script, casting it, finding the locations and shooting it took only 32 weeks. He said : "Michael Caine's name was never mentioned initially. Once he'd seen the first draft, he quickly came round frankly I was surprised because Carter was such a shit. I mean he's such an unpleasant men that I couldn't conceive a star taking the role". Mike spent four days with Michael Caine and his chauffer driven Cadillac, looking at possible film locations and focused on Newcastle and North Shields and began to fit the novel to Newcastle where he said : "As soon as I saw those huge rust-coloured bridges stretching across the Tyne I knew this was Jack’s manor".  

 Mike said that given the deprived nature of the locations they stopped at made him, sitting in luxury in the back of the Cadillac, a little uncomfortable. Without rancour he said that from a total budget of £750,000 : "Michael was paid £100,000 and a big percentage. I got £8,000 for writing and directing and no percentage".

The evidence of social and economic deprivation in the north-east had a profound effect on Mike and he said he : "I found the British very complacent about the state of its community. They were unwilling to face how deep the cancer of the country's class system ran. The corruption that stemmed from such desperate inequality infected society from top-to-bottom; parliamentarians, lawyers, police, media. All had, or wanted to have, their noses, in the money trough. In fact shortly after I'd finished the shoot in Newcastle its mayor and other dignitaries were convicted for taking whopping bribes". 

When it came to the inspired casting of John Osborne, playwright, screenwriter and actor most famous for his 1956 stage play, 'Look Back in Anger' as the gangster Cyril Kinnear Mike said : "My agent at the time was also Osborne’s and, out of the blue, he suggested him.  We met and liked each other.  John’s talent for invective intimated that there was another side to him than the affable playwright. You’re right. Chris Wangler, my brilliant sound recordist, asked for John to project more. I resisted his pleas and simply moved the camera closer. John’s decision to speak quietly was clever. So mundane; so sinister". When it came to playing the card scene he said : "It was the toughest scene I had to shoot. Boxing myself in by setting it in a bay window made it even harder for all concerned. I covered it to the best of my abilities, and being forced to move closer and closer on Kinnear, helped me in the end". (link)

Quotations :

To Eric : "D'you know ? I'd almost forgotten what your eyes look like. They're still the same. Piss holes in the snow".

To Cliff Brumby : "You're a big man, but you're out of shape. With me ? It's a full time job. Now behave yourself".

To Albert : "I know you didn't kill him. I know".

Mike was philosophical about the fate of his greatest film and said : "Soon after its release in 1972, the film was banished to the dark shadows of cult status.  It was, after all, not considered a very nice film here in the UK.  But then most of my films have been more appreciated beyond these shores, particularly in the US and France. That changed when, in 2009, the BFI decided to release it again; albeit in a limited way. This time around I think British audiences found the endemic corruption intimated in its every frame more acceptable. By then their rose-tinted glasses were off. We no longer saw our country as a beacon of propriety, and law and order. Our parliamentarians, police, press, the whole damned edifice, had been found to be wanting. They all had their noses in the money trough. The cancer of greed had reached every organ of British society. Maybe, just maybe, Get Carter had been an accidental augury? " (link)

Mike once said :

"Mordant humour has always attracted me. Being indoctrinated a Roman Catholic at an early age has left me with the “grim reaper” as my constant companion. The only way I can cope is to laugh at him". (link)

Britain in 2022 said "Goodbye" to twenty-three remarkable old men and women, who in life, enriched it by their presence

January 2022

Gary Burgess

Britain says "Goodbye" to the much-loved, brave and remarkable Radio and Television Journalist with a zest for life called Gary Burgess link

Bill Bryden

Britain has lost, but Scotland made that Giant among 20th Century theatre directors,  Bill Bryden link

Wyn Calvin

Britain is a country which has lost, but Wales was the Nation that made Wyn Calvin, its 'Prince of Laughter' link

Francis Jackson 

Britain is no longer a country for and says "Farewell" to Francis Jackson, Giant of 20th Century Organ Recitalists link

February

Beryl Vertue

Britain says "Farewell" to Beryl Vertue, the Visionary Matriarch who worked in a world of film and television production dominated by men link

March 

Shirley Hughes

Britain says "Farewell" to Shirley Hughes, much loved Illustrator and Author, who captivated successive generations of children with her books link

April

Garry Leach

Britain says "Farewell" to its Prince of Comic Strip Illustrators, Garry Leach link

Mick May

Britain says "Good Bye" to one 'honorable' old Etonian called Mick May, who left City banking to rehabilitate ex-cons with work and then faced an early death with nobility  link

Yvonne Blenkinsop

May

Britain says "Farewell" and "Thankyou" to the last of Hull's 'Headscarf Heroes', Yvonne Blenkinsop link

Robert Gilmour

Britain is a country which once made and has now lost and says "Farewell" to its much loved Ornithologist and Prince among Bird Artists, Robert Gillmor link

June

Ireland made, but the World has lost that fearless traveller and much loved writer of travel books, Dervla Murphy link

Tony Mitton

 

Britain says "Farewell" to its Master Craftsman of Poetry for Children, Tony Mitton  link

August

Roy Hackett

Britain is no longer a country for and says "Goodbye" to its fearless Civil Rights Activist, Roy Hackett  link

Raymond Briggs

Britain says "Goodbye" to the wonderfully Irascible Creator of its Most Beloved Children's Books, Raymond Briggs  link

Mike Burrows

Britain says : "Farewell" to Mike Burrows, the unrecognized and unfeted genius, whose bicycle designs changed the world  link

September

Bill Turnbull

Britain says "Goodbye" to its much-loved TV Presenter, Bill Turnbull and asks the question : "Why are so many of its men still, needlessly, dying from prostate cancer ?" link

Mavis Nicholson

Wales made and Britain says "Farewell" to the Grande Dame of Television Celebrity Interviewers, Mavis Nicholson  link

October

Audrey Evans          

Britain made and the USA has lost Audrey Evans, Creator of 'Staging' for kids with cancer and Ronald McDonald Homes for their moms and dads  link

Robbie Coltrane 

Britain has lost, but Scotland made its much-loved Giant of Stage and Screen, Robbie Coltrane  link

May Blood

Britain has lost and Northern Ireland says "Goodbye" to its fearless May Blood, who fought in a male-dominated world to gain rights and improve the lives of its women  link

November

Marcus Sedgwick

Britain made and now, all too soon, has lost its Prince of Children's Authors, Marcus Sedgwick  link

Wilko Johnson

Britain says "Goodbye" to its extraordinary guitarist, Wilko Johnson, who felt elation when he looked death in the face  link

December

Tom Phillips

Did Britain, which has lost and says "Farewell" to its Polymath and Artist, Tom Phillips, give him the recognition he deserved when he was alive ?   link

Britain is a country with a village called Slindon in West Sussex, where old men can visit a cinema showing the old celluloid films of their youth

Joe Cornick, an ardent film lover, is twenty years old and three years ago, in 2019, while studying at school for his A-levels, he undertook a project close to his heart. He wanted to recreate a retro cinema making use of the local village hall 
in Slindon's, 'Coronation Hall', he installed a full 35mm projection facility thanks to a generous donation of equipment from a cinema in Tonbridge that had gone fully digital. Joe said : "I had a big interest in film, and there weren’t any cinemas in the area running 35mm film".

Today, his 'Slindon Cinema' is one of the last cinemas in the world to run only analogue film. Joe said : “It was really quite surprising that there was such a great response from the local community. I think people had become so tired of the multiplex way of doing things – that kind of shuffle in, shuffle out clinical experience of many modern cinemas". 

Apparently, although many audience members were of an older age, keen to reminisce about those cinemas of their youth, Joe found that there are also a significant number of young people who want to experience something different and said : “A lot of my friends and people who know me from the area come to the cinema. We also have students from local universities who come to see the projection box, which is a very rare thing to be able to do. People see the reels and everything and it blows their mind. The rich colours, tones and ‘organic’ feel is something audiences today are still struck by when they see a print projected. For many cinematographers and directors like Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino their passion for keeping physical film running both through their cameras and the projectors is testament to its incomparable quality”.

Joe, who works with two projectionists with nearly 50 years of experience between them, said he and colleagues have tried their best to make the cinema a retro experience in every way. This includes using a haze machine that injects atmosphere into the hall, beaming a light from the projection box, and playing old 'Pearl & Dean' trailers before movies.(link) There is even someone in a dicky bow suit at the front of house to welcome the audience.

Films the cinema has screened include 'The Godfather' and 'Battle of Britain', but Cornick is limited by which 35mm prints he can source, so is mostly confined to borrowing from private collectors and studios. This weekend, the cinema will be screening Christmas classic 'It’s a Wonderful Life', which he hopes will bring joy to the local community at a difficult time. He said : “It’s got so much poignance, it isn’t your average Christmas film. It’s about family and realising what we have, not what we don’t have”.(link)

Joe went on : “We have the old trays that go around the neck, carrying ice-cream and snacks. There’s an interval halfway, which everyone loves because it gives them a chance to talk about the film. We have such a diverse audience that there’s people talking about the first time they saw a film decades ago, alongside people who are watching it for the first time. People come to us for a break from sitting in their homes, on their sofa watching TV or Netflix. They come to experience cinema how it should be”. (link)