Simon Jones

Hans Tisdall (Aufseeser) 1910-1997 In his 1937 publication British Textile Designers Today H G Hayes Marshall described Hans Aufseeser (later Tisdall) as a designer ‘whose careful attention to detail and his real ability to d…

Source of the above image:
festivalofpattern.wordpress.com/2018/03/16/h...

The chances are you are familiar with a Hans Tisdall book jacket without knowing it. Born Hans John Knox Aufseeser, his mother was Anglo-Irish, his father was German Jewish. He left Germany for Britain in 1930 and took the name of his wife, the designer Isabel Tisdall.

Deer crossing this afternoon, a stag brings up the rear.

Book with dust jacket Private Angelo by Eric Linklater.

I wanted to read this and found a first edition cheaper than most of the paperback reprints. The jacket is the work of Hans Tisdall.

From T Bridges, ALARMS AND EXCURSIONS, 1938. A sister came in and peered gravely at me. I wondered if I looked as bad as I felt. She leant over me. Was this indeed to be the last woman I should see on earth? She should have been young, lovely and romantic but alas! in the dim light she had a face rather like a horse. What business had she here anyway, so near the front? "Is there anything you would like done?" she asked, "just in case ... ?" "Things don't go all right?" I suggested. "Yes." Tactless female! She expected me to say, "Give this ring to my mother." Instead I beckoned her to come closer. "What do you do with all the legs you cut off?" She looked shocked but said, "Burn them." "Well," I said, "don't burn mine. Give it to the lion mascot of the 19th Division. He hasn't had meat to-day and he'll know what to do with it. This is my last will and testament and if you don't I shall come back and haunt you!" And so to the "pictures" in an E.P. tent. "Oh Lord!" I thought as I passed out, "if I come out of this jam alive I shall write about it all some day." And that was just twenty years ago to a month. So I take up the pen to-day, none too willingly perhaps,

Here's when General Tom Bridges told a military nurse to feed his amputated leg to a lion, the divisional mascot (Ypres, 1917).

#OTD 1913 • An explosion at the Universal Colliery, Senghenydd, killed 439 miners and one rescuer ⛏️

www.library.wales/discover-lea...

#Wales #History

This thread helps explain it. He wasn't tried for a capital offence and so couldn't have been sentenced to death. bsky.app/profile/gene...

I have a basic alteration to propose in our tax laws which I will call, so that it looks properly portentous on the statute books, the Quantum of Solace Clause. Briefly, this will allow tax relief to those who, as judged by an independent tribunal, have given the maximum amount of pleasure to their fellow citizens. Most beneficiaries will, of course, come from the creative arts acting, writing, painting, music, etc. - but they will also come from sport, politics and medicine. Such a clause would, I believe, have the blessing of the general public, it would greatly encourage the arts, and it would serve to keep creative ability within our shores (copy to the Inland Revenue for action!). (from Thrilling Cities, 1963)

Ian Fleming proposed tax relief for the bringing of pleasure through the creative arts. He called it the Quantum of Solace Clause.

Homepage - Women's Land Army The Women’s Land Army was first set up in January 1917 and re-formed in June 1939. It employed over 200,000 women during the First and Second World Wars.

This is a marvellous website on the Women's Land Army created by @cherishwatton.bsky.social www.womenslandarmy.co.uk

Newspaper cartoon showing four women on pavement in various forms of trousered uniform or outfit. Caption reads: ‘Many war workers have discarded skirts when on duty: now they want to discard them in their hours of ease. Here are some suggested trouser costumes for the unfrocked brigade.’ (Weekly Despatch, 3/9/1916, p. 2.)

Newscutting: The only really happy people I have seen are the women in uniform. For the first time in their lives they have been able to face rain without the horror of bedraggled skirts and soppy furbelows. The new experience has obviously been thrilling. I saw eleven land girls in Regent-street. They were booted, breeched, cloaked, and merrily in-different to the rain. Their skirted sisters, huddling in shop doors waiting for the taxi that would not come, gazed at them with undisguised envy. (Daily Express, Beachcomber, 2/8/1917, p. 2.)

I've been reading in the papers about Land Girls during the First World War enjoying the practicality of their uniforms in the British weather (Beachcomber in the Daily Express agreed with them), but there were fears that they would want to wear such clothes all the time.

Here's what actually happened:
bsky.app/profile/gene...

Thank you, that's fascinating and clears up the 'death sentence' issue.

I'm saying that no one called Shearer was sentenced to death, and so it could not have been commuted. The lists in the National Archives include those sentenced to death whose sentences were commuted.

I'm sorry to say there is no one named Shearer listed as sentenced to death in the British Army during the First World War. The list I have was published in 1998 and I'm not sure what was due to be released in 2017. The files on soldiers whose death sentences were commuted were not preserved.

Photo of a paper airplane on fire with text that reads "I am under no obligation to disclose anything and the papers belong to me. If I wanted to I could take them into the yard and have a bonfire with them" South Yorkshire Chief Constable Med Hughes. Credit for photo of on fire airplane is Aron Yigin via Unsplash

Why aren’t Police Records in England & Wales covered by the Public Records Act? We've been campaigning on this since 2012 - blog for more info:
www.campaignforrecords.org/blog/why-arent-police-records-covered-by-the-public-records-act
#publicaccountability
of interest @andyburnham.bsky.social ?

There is a simple question that all interviewers should ask when people say this: do you think the statue of Jimmy Savile in Glasgow should have remained in place after details of his crimes were released? If they say 'yes' then at least they have a consistent position. But of course they won't.

Frauds👎
Riot Women👍👍

On this day nurse #EdithCavell and #PhilipeBaucq were shot at dawn for helping allied soldiers to escape Belgium during the First World War. This is a letter from one of those soldiers.

That's basically how I have to write, due to a lack of short-term memory, and the slow, painful process of making thoughts into coherent sentences.

He went on his way.

three planes are flying in a row in a cloudy sky ALT: three planes are flying in a row in a cloudy sky

Modellers - the call you have been waiting all your lives for...!

Does anyone have any models of #WW2 aircraft they could drop by a school in Newbury tomorrow?

A group of students wants to film a scene - presumably with them going "Pew! Pew! Nerrrrr!"

Please share 🙏

At the local watering hole.

Page of typescript which has been very heavily amended in manuscript.

It's always reassuring to discover that extremely successful writers are as desperately plodding and uncertain as you are.
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/o...

On a misty day in autumn, a group of mainly women follow a tractor to gather potatoes. The figures are hunched over and you can almost feel the back pain.

“Farm workers follow where the spinner has passed and collect the potatoes in shallow baskets.
Picking up potatoes is back-aching work”
Writer: EL Grant Watson
Artist: CF Tunnicliffe

The motivation means peace is unlikely.

Thank you for your service to flapjack understanding.

Model of stretcher bearers in a trench wearing greatcoats and steel helmets carrying a prostrate man down steps into a dugout.

Another of Jean Larrivé's models at the French Army Medical Museum at Val-de-Grâce, Paris. This one shows bearers carrying a wounded man into an underground trench dressing station.

The swans have flown. All six cygnets made it.

Deer in parkland, sun low.

Windsor this evening.

Shocking plot twist.