Hello to all of you. I am not a pilot and I really ought to be getting down to my work. However I was looking for recent postings about Alex when I discovered your bulletin board. I sincerely hope that you will all excuse my landlubberdness (there's a new word..only a couple of hundred behind Shakespeare
) and allow me to share some information with you, which I hope will gladden the hearts of all of you as we come to terms with the passing of a Fine Fine Englishman.
I was with Alex for lunch on Wednesday last week. That meeting was to be the last in a number of meetings, the memory of each one I shall treasure for all my days.
Before I continue, let me first of all give you the news. Those of you who have suggested that there ought to be a film, will be delighted to know that
"THE FLIGHT OF THE MEW GULL" THE MOVIE. Is now in the pre production financing and planning stages. What follows is how this has come about. For those of you who are interested, please read on and I would love to hear from you all.
For some time I have been working towards a major television project. The story of Birmingham's amazing wartime effort is one that is largely unknown outside of the City. As Alex tells those of you unfamiliar with our City's past, due to a D notice imposed on the City. Like a lot of Baby boomers I grew up with the war being spoon fed to us along the lines of "What we did for you lot!". To most of us as small children in the '50s, it was a world utterly remote from our own and as such all but a few of us learned the lessons we ought to about the darkest period in our country's long and glorious history. My research at first for personal instruction, blossomed to outrage when I discovered the size of the (as I said) unknown destruction rained on my City by Goering and co, yet they still carried on collared to it ( as Carl Chinn a local prof of history points out) and turned out everything that was needed for the front line and the home front.
My research began to form as an idea for a dramatised documentary and then into a full blown drama series. These are important lessons for all of us in these reckless careless and self centred times we live in. Books will be read by those closely interested in a particular topic. Docu dramas collect more than books, but a full on drama works best as an instructional tool, because it entertains. I thus conceived the idea of A MIDLANDS TOWN. This is to be a 6 part television drama series on not just Birmingham(though largely so) but the entire country's Home front experience. It is being planned to have many of the visual and visceral effects of "Band of Brothers", "Saving private Ryan" and "Enemy at the gate". I want the series when it eventually reaches the production stages to be as powerful a document as all of those films. The concept born then, I as a jobbing a ctor had to set about realising my goal.
The nucleus of "A MIDLANDS TOWN" is tThe Castle Bromwich Aeroplane Factory. I have chosen this as the central focus from which a wide range of stories can be told, for several reasons. Firstly, it is one of the few buildings left from the period, that weren't either destroyed by The Luftwaffe or Our vandalistic 60s planners. Secondly, because both I, My father ( ex Lord Mayor of Brum Ken Barton) and my uncle Roland all worked there, at Fishers as it is known locally even now. Thirdly,because of that small area of Birmingham 24, that will forever be linked with that most potent icon of freedom, THE SPITFIRE.
I became a sponge soaking up whatever I could. In answer to an earlier question. Daniel Scott-Davies, Alex curator at the Hendon museum, is happy to accomodate visitors by prior appointment. I spent an enthralling time with Alex log books notes and mementos and an utterly awe struck time standing in front of the three trophy cabinets chock full of his trophys ( with more to come). I knew that I had to meet this man. I wrote to him via Daniel and thought " That's the last I'll hear of that". I could not have been more wrong however. He wrote two days later to say that he was so very pleased that someone in my profession was at last taking an interest in the plight of the people of Birmingham at war. He invited me for lunch and that was the start of an all too brief but highly productive friendship. Despite knowing him for such a short time ( about a year) the effect that he has had on me has been one of complete transformation.
At our first meeting Alex presented me with a signed copy of Mew Gull with no more than the observation " I think you'll enjoy that". How shrewd a judge of character he was. I read it at a single sitting, it is as you all know "unputdownable". At our next meeting we (now a growing film company) asked his permission to make The book into a feature film. In his typically self deprecating way he simply told us to "Get on with it". He then went on to tell me and reminded me constantly that it was his beloved Barbara's greatest wish that it be made into a film.
It had been my original intention to make the series about Brum first and follow it up with the feature film. However getting a serialised TV drama into production is no small task. The pitfalls are even more treacherous than descending on Cannock Chase with one cord on your parachute ( well perhaps not but the sharks are very viscious). Alex agreed with us, that it will make far better commercial sense to make the movie first. It is much easier (though still tough) to finance and secure marketing deals for a feature film, than it is for the telly. The film will cement our profile as a production company and will give us instant credibility. It is after all the last and by far the best of the GOLDEN AGE storys to be told. Alex agreed last Wednesday that it should take the form of a retrospective on his utterly remarkable life, so it will take in a look back from the "Sigh for A Merlin Day" at the BBMF shortly before Alex lost his lifetime pal Jeffrey Quill and the love of his life Barbara.
I have promised Alex that the film will be accurate to both "Gull" and "Merlin", why I should need to embelish what is already unbeleivable I don't know, but that is my pledge and it was repeated in a very sad conversation of condolence with his son. I repeat it now to those of you who are his fans.
Thanks for reading this and please feel free to contact me. I should like to pay a special thanks to Snapshot and to the Castle Vale ATC for placing that wonderful tribute at Tolkiens memorial to the Spit.
Below my contribution to the pictures of the most wonderful Englishman I have ever known. He is not dead, simply off flying again. He loves it so much that none of us shall ever see him again. But die? Never.
http://www.carvery.zoomshare.com [email protected]
John Barton ( known as Jon Carver actor se FlyPast magazine news April edition)