Saturday 30 November 2013

A date for the Timeshift Ladybird Books documentary

And in this festival of Ladybird loveliness, I find out when the Ladybird Book documentary is due to be screened.

The date I've just been given is ...
December 22nd.
BBC4.

For old/vintage  Ladybird Book fans out there, this has GOT to be a date for your diary.  I am confident that the programme-maker, Merryn Threadgould, will do a really good job with this documentary - the first decent length recount of the Ladybird story. 

With only a few short weeks to make the programme, Merryn quickly became so absorbed in the material she was gathering that she developed what seemed to be a real enthusiasm for the subject.  She quickly came to appreciate the different perspectives that the subject matter has to offer: social history, nostalgia, humour,  literacy, biography, all tied together in a colourful, crafted, hand-sized box. 

I believe this programme, part of the Timeshift series on BBC4, will take a chronological approach, tracing the phenomenal rise and fall of the small, private company Wills & Hepworth in Leicestershire, picking out in particular the role of Douglas Keen.





Friday 29 November 2013

I SO did not say ...

Just watched today's Celebrity Antiques Road Trip


Be it known ...
I SO did not say that I had the world's largest private collection of Ladybird Books!  They just made that up!

Here's the link to the episode on iPlayer.  The Ladybird Book bit starts 19 minutes in.