Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts

Monday, March 30, 2020

Spotlight on novelist Drēma Drudge




Drēma Drudge

Fun facts

I am obsessed with true crime podcasts and TV shows. My show cues are probably frightening to those who don’t know that and happen to see mine! Nearly every morning I listen to Dateline’s podcast, and if they don’t upload one, I get disappointed.

I am terrified of roller coasters – except for Space Mountain in Disneyland, because you’re mostly in the dark on it and can’t see where you’re going. For some reason that makes it not as scary.

My favorite season is summer, to the point where I get irritated at winter as if it’s out to get me.

Virginia Woolf is the writer I love best – I have a bookcase full of her books and books about her. Actually, my second novel (in progress) features her work.

I only live a couple of hours from my dream retirement location, the Indiana Dunes, which is nice because I get to visit it several times a year. (Unless Paris would become a viable option. In that case, my husband and I might have to have two homes.)  

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Victorine

In 1863, Civil War is raging in the United States. Victorine Meurent is posing nude, in Paris, for paintings that will be heralded as the beginning of modern art: 

Manet's Olympia and Picnic on the Grass


However, Victorine's persistent desire is not to be a model but to be a painter herself. In order to live authentically, she finds the strength to flout the expectations of her parents, bourgeois society, and the dominant male artists (whom she knows personally) while never losing her capacity for affection, kindness, and loyalty. Possessing both the incisive mind of a critic and the intuitive and unconventional impulses of an artist, Victorine and her survival instincts are tested in 1870, when the Prussian army lays siege to Paris and rat becomes a culinary delicacy. 

Drema Drudge's powerful first novel Victorine not only gives this determined and gifted artist back to us but also recreates an era of important transition into the modern world.


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About the Author

Drēma Drudge suffers from Stendhal’s Syndrome, the condition in which one becomes overwhelmed in the presence of great art. She attended Spalding University’s MFA in Creative Writing Program where she learned to transform that intensity into fiction.

Drēma has been writing in one capacity or another since she was nine, starting with terrible poems and graduating to melodramatic stories in junior high that her classmates passed around literature class.

She and her husband, musician and writer Barry Drudge, live in Indiana where they record their biweekly podcast, Writing All the Things, when not traveling. Her first novel, Victorine, was literally written in five countries while she and her husband wandered the globe. The pair has two grown children.

In addition to writing fiction, Drema has served as a writing coach, freelance writer, and educator. She’s represented by literary agent Lisa Gallagher of Defiore and Company.
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Where to Buy


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Connect with the author


Tuesday, July 9, 2019

Spotlight on artist Maria Jones-Phillips a.k.a. Little Frieda Mouse


Maria Jones-Phillips

Photographer, artist, and graphic designer
About Maria
I was born in the U.K. although I'm currently based on the East Coast of the United States where I run my art studio and Etsy store, Little Frieda Mouse. The name of my store pays homage to the wonderful Mexican artist, Frida Khalo who is one of 

Fine Art Original Print - Bridge Over the Darro River

$45.50+

Fine Art Original Print - ‘Il Duomo di Firenze’ from the series: Painted Cities by, Little Frieda Mouse - Simulated Pastel Sketch

$40.00+

Premium Throw Pillow/Cushion - 'Daisy Daisy' Collection, by Little Frieda Mouse

$38.00


Hibiscus Flower Print Bath/Beach Towel. Part of the Exclusive ‘Ruby Red' collection

$35.00

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Linda Newberry Art




COLLECT ART

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Landscapes, Seascapes, Skyscapes Gallery
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Florals Gallery
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Other Stuff Gallery
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Still Lifes Gallery

Friday, June 5, 2015

Two thousand year old Mercury figurine found in Yorkshire

Ancient Origins


A metal detector enthusiast has discovered a 2000-year old figurine depicting the Roman god Mercury in a field near Selby, Yorkshire, UK.
It is the 1,000th officially recorded archaeological find of the year so far in Yorkshire. The artifact was registered by Dave Cooper of the York and District Metal Detecting Club on May 15th, ironically the date of the Roman festival that once honored the god himself.
Rebecca Griffiths, the Finds Liaison Officer for the Portable Antiquities Scheme at the York Museums Trust told Culture24 said that the registration of the artifact on the day of the ancient Mercuralia was “pure coincidence – but a very happy one.”
Rebecca Griffiths of York Museums Trust with the copper alloy figurine of Mercury.
Rebecca Griffiths of York Museums Trust with the copper alloy figurine of Mercury. Photographs: Richard McDougall
The Mercuralia, or ‘Festival of Mercury’ honoured the Roman god of messengers, who was known as Hermes to the Greeks. There are separate Roman myths concerning Mercury which do not have any equivalents in Greek myth, however in both cultures the god was believed to be a god of traders and commerce. The Roman name ‘Mercury’ is related to the latin words merx, mercari and merces, meaning merchandise, trade and wages respectively. May 15th was also believed to be Mercury’s birthday, also called the ‘Ides of May’. Merchants in Rome celebrated the festival by sprinkling their merchandise, ships and their heads with water from a fountain at Porta Capena called the ‘aqua Mercurii’. They carried the water in laurel boughs and prayed to the god for forgiveness, profit and the ability to cheat on customers.
The Porta Capena was a gateway in the Servian Wall on the south side of Rome. Its stones were supposed to have been stained green by water leaking from the Aqua Marcia aqueduct that towered above it. Samuel Ball Platner mentions the fountain in his 1911 book The Topography and Monuments of Ancient Rome in which he writes:
Aqua Mercurii…a spring which is thought to be one of those now flowing in the gardens of the villa Mattei Its waters were conducted in an artificial channel through the valley of the Circus Maximus to the Cloaca Maxima
The Porta Carpena, Rome. Copperplate engraving by Luigi Rossini
The Porta Carpena, Rome. Copperplate engraving by Luigi Rossini (oldimprints.com)
According to Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide by Amanda Claridge, Judith Toms and Tony Cubberley, the source of the aqua Mercurii was a small wood in which there was a sacred grove dedicated to the goddess Egeria. Mercury himself was venerated in a temple on the Aventine Hill. Although he is usually depicted as wearing a winged cap or winged sandals and carrying a caduceus, attributes borrowed from Hermes, he is also represented as carrying a purse, the symbol of the merchants he protected.
Statue of Mercury by Charles Meynier. Mercury is depicted wearing a winged cap and is carrying the caduceus in one hand and a purse in the other.
Statue of Mercury by Charles Meynier. Mercury is depicted wearing a winged cap and is carrying the caduceus in one hand and a purse in the other. (Wikimedia Commons)
Mercury’s Greek counterpart, Hermes, was believed to be the son of Zeus, the king of the gods, and his queen, Maia. He was believed to be swift on his feet, thereby being able to move quickly between the worlds of gods and men. Both Hermes and Mercury were believed to be protectors of thieves and athletes, as well as of merchants. Hermes also performed the role of escorting the souls of the dying to the underworld and the afterlife. The Greeks believed that when Hermes was young, he jumped from his crib and went off to steal the cattle kept by the sun-god, Apollo, who appeared before Zeus and complained. However, Zeus simply laughed in his face. Hermes apologised to Apollo by giving him the lyre he had just made.
Hermes appears in a number of Greek myths, including that of the hero Odysseus, the Odyssey. Hermes commanded the hero to chew the leaves of a magic herb so that he could avoid the gaze of Circe which had turned Odysseus’s companions into animals. The god also appears in the story of Pandora in which he gave her the ability to lie and seduce men.
Hermes / Mercury carrying away Pandora by Jean Alaux
Hermes / Mercury carrying away Pandora by Jean Alaux (Wikimedia Commons)
The Mercury figurine found in Yorkshire is made of copper alloy. Although it depicts the god wearing a cap, this garment has lost its famous wings. It is just one of many similar figures that have been found across the UK, according to the Yorkshire Post.
The York Museums Trust regularly receives artifacts found by the general public. Such items have previously included the Bedale Hoard, the Escrick Ring and the boar badge of Richard III.
“Every year thousands of archaeological objects are discovered,” says Rebecca Griffiths. “While the majority of these come from metal-detector users, we also see many finds from people field-walking, gardening, renovating houses and even those out walking particularly inquisitive dogs.”
Ms Griffiths added that every year, she and her team of volunteers add more than 2,000 items to the museum’s collection, ranging from Roman coins to medieval buckles, to stone tools and post-medieval toys.
Featured image: ‘The Elevation of the Great Elector into Olympus’. Ceiling painting (detail: Mercury), City Palace, Potsdam (Wikimedia Commons).


Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Da Vinci Discovered: Art Sleuthing Reveals Leonardo Engraving

Live Science

This engraving, created by Marcantonio Raimondi around 1505, may show Leonardo da Vinci playing an instrument called a lira da braccio.
This engraving, created by Marcantonio Raimondi around 1505, may show Leonardo da Vinci playing an instrument called a lira da braccio. The man in the engraving was thought to be Orpheus, a musician in Greek mythology.
Credit: Image courtesy Cleveland Museum of Art, 21.4 x 17.3 cm. Dudley P. Allen Fund 1930.579

A 500-year-old engraving may show Leonardo da Vinci playing a musical instrument called a lira da braccio. If verified, the engraving would represent just the third contemporary depiction of da Vinci (created while he was alive) still in existence.
An artist named Marcantonio Raimondi created the engraving in 1505. But only recently did Ross Duffin, a music professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, identify the man in the engraving as Leonardo da Vinci, publishing the findings in the magazine Cleveland Art.
"This is serious and stands some chance of being right," said Martin Kemp, an emeritus professor of art history at Oxford University who has written extensively about da Vinci, but who was not involved in the new research. [5 Surprising Facts About Leonardo da Vinci's Life]

Is this Leonardo?
When the engraving entered the Cleveland Museum of Art's collection in 1930, scholars thought the man in it was Orpheus, a musician in Greek mythology who was said to be so talented he could charm animals with his music. As such, the engraving was dubbed "Orpheus Charming the Animals."
However, Duffin said he came to realize the man was unlikely to be Orpheus and more likely to be da Vinci taking on the role of Orpheus. During the Renaissance, "one thing that is extremely consistent is that Orpheus is shown as a clean-shaven youth, the young husband of the tragic Eurydice," wrote Duffin in the article.
The man depicted in the engraving is in his "late middle age, with a beard and centrally partedhair with long curls," wrote Duffin, adding that da Vinci would've been in his early 50s when Marcantonio Raimondi created the image.
A portrait of Leonardo da Vinci created by Francesco Melzi during Leonardo’s lifetime.
A portrait of Leonardo da Vinci created by Francesco Melzi during Leonardo’s lifetime.
Credit: Image in public domain, courtesy Wikimedia
Duffin compared the engraving with a portrait of da Vinci drawn by Francesco Melzi, "who joined the 54-year-old Leonardo's household as an assistant in 1506 and eventually became his principal heir," Duffin wrote.
"Melzi's portrait shows a man with a beard and long curls, and the very slight bump in his nose and the ridge above the brow are an excellent match for the long-haired, bearded [man] in the Marcantonio engraving."
Most telling is the instrument the man in the engraving is playing. Duffin identified it as a lira da braccio, a bowed string instrument that da Vinci is known to have played.
In 1550, a few decades after da Vinci's death, a historian named Giorgio Vasari wrote of da Vinci's great musical skill. In 1494, "Leonardo was led in great repute to the Duke of Milan, who took much delight in the sound of the lira, so that he might play it," Vasari wrote in his 1550 book "Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori" (translated).
"And Leonardo brought with him that instrument which he had made with his own hands, in great part of silver, in order that the harmony might be of greater volume and more sonorous in tone, with which he surpassed all the musicians who had come together there to play," Vasari wrote. "Besides this, he was the best improviser in verse of his day."
Problem with identification
If the engraving does indeed portray da Vinci, the question becomes how Marcantonio Raimondi met him.
"The problems are of time and place," Kemp wrote in the email. "Marcantonio was working in Bologna at this early stage of his career, and there is no obvious way they would have met."
At this stage, I would say that it is temptingly possible but unproven," Kemp added.
However, Duffin said the two men might have met in Milan in 1506-1507 during a production of "Orfeo,"an opera on the Orpheus myth. If this is the case, then Leonardo himself could have been playing Orpheus in the opera, Duffin said. Another possibility is that the two artists met in 1509, when Leonardo visited Florence. Or perhaps the two never met, and Marcantonio Raimondi used a portrait as a reference when engraving da Vinci's features, Duffin added.
"We do not know for certain whether Marcantonio crossed paths with Leonardo, but his engraving of 'Orpheus Charming the Animals' seems clearly to be an homage, intended to honor the musical skill of Leonardo da Vinci by depicting him with the instrument he was known to play incomparably, and which he shared with the greatest of all musicians."

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Charles I's portrait painter gets first exhibition

The Guardian

National Portrait Gallery display of Cornelius Johnson’s 17th-century work will include rarely seen portraits of royal children

 
The future King Charles II, by Cornelius Johnson. Photograph: /National Portrait Gallery
 
A largely forgotten portrait painter who was commissioned by the elite of early 17th-century England, including Charles I, is finally to get his moment in the sun.
The National Portrait Gallery in London has announced it is to stage the first display of works by the court painter Cornelius Johnson.
Few people will be aware of Johnson. “But he really does deserve to be better known on so many different counts,” said curator Karen Hearn. “His paintings are really sympathetic, there is a delicacy about them.”
In his day Johnson was a star and he became Charles I’s official “picture-drawer” in 1632. The NPG display will include rarely seen portraits of the royal children who became Charles II, James II and Mary, Princess of Orange – all of them pale, doe-eyed and rather miserable.
“They do look weighed down by their fine clothes and the expectations placed on them,” said Hearn “They have these lives of exile and disorder ahead of them. They are tiny figures in these settings.”
The portrait of Mary shows her aged about seven or eight; two years later she was married to 14-year-old William, later William II, Prince of Orange.
Mary, Princess of Orange
Mary, Princess of Orange, by Cornelius Johnson. Photograph: National Portrait Gallery
Johnson was a prolific and highly successful portrait painter, and his works hang in a number of country houses, often owned by the descendants of the original sitters. British public collections are stuffed full of his works, but mostly they are in the stores, not on the walls.
One big reason for that is his bad luck to be around at the same time as Anthony van Dyck. He arrived in England in 1632 to work for the king and overshadowed all his contemporaries. His dynamism and glamour meant later generations have not looked far beyond his dominating brilliance.
Hearn believes that is a shame. “One reason why Johnson deserves more attention is that he is very good,” she said. “He is painting people as they are, so they are rather quiet. When you look at a Johnson picture you benefit from looking at it for a while and drawing out the personality of the sitter.”
Hearn said Johnson was particularly good in the details of dress – the textiles, embroidery and lace. He was also one of the first British painters to sign and date his paintings, a godsend for dress historians who can trace and date the fashions of the day.
Capel family by Cornelius Johnson
The Capel family, by Cornelius Johnson. Photograph: National Portrait Gallery
The civil war curtailed Johnson’s career in England but he was resourceful, and at 50 he emigrated to the Netherlands where he reinvented himself as a Dutch portraitist.
“Until I really started delving I hadn’t realised how successful he was in Holland,” said Hearn. “He was painting mayors and the aristocracy. There had been this idea of ‘poor old Johnson’ going off to the Netherlands and doing a bit of painting. But he died a wealthy man.”
The NPG display will have eight painted portraits and six prints from the NPG collections and three paintings from Tate, all of them hardly ever seen publicly.
“He has been so long in the shadows of art history,” said Hearn. “At last Cornelius Johnson’s time has come.”
Cornelius Johnson: Charles I’s Forgotten Painter, is a free display in Room 6 of the NPG, London, from 15 April to 13 September.

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Van Gogh landscape to be shown for first time in 100 years

 
 Van Gogh’s Moulin d’Alphonse was painted in Arles in southern France. The artist used paper as he wished to save his canvas to paint with his friend Paul Gauguin who was due to visit.

Experts expect Le Moulin d’Alphonse to fetch around $10m after research tying it directly to the artist via the records of his sister-in-law Johanna

A landscape by Vincent van Gogh is to be exhibited for the first time in more than 100 years following the discovery of crucial evidence that firmly traces back its history directly to the artist.
The significance of two handwritten numbers scribbled almost imperceptibly on the back had been overlooked until now. They have been found to correspond precisely with those on two separate lists of Van Gogh’s works drawn up by Johanna, wife of the artist’s brother, Theo.
Johanna, who was widowed in 1891 – months after Vincent’s death – singlehandedly generated interest in his art. She brought it to the attention of critics and dealers, organising exhibitions, although she obviously could never have envisaged the millions that his works would fetch today.
Le Moulin d’Alphonse Daudet à Fontvieille, which depicts vivid green grapevines leading up to a windmill with broken wings in the distance, is a work on paper that he created with graphite, reed pen and ink and watercolour shortly after he reached Arles, in the south of France.
It dates from 1888, two years before his untimely death. Windmills and vines were among his most beloved subjects.
Van Gogh, one of the greatest figures in Post-Impressionist painting, worked on paper as he excitedly awaited the arrival of his artist-friend, Paul Gauguin. He wrote to Theo that he wanted “canvas in reserve for the time when Gauguin comes”.
Research into Le Moulin d’Alphonse was conducted by James Roundell and Simon Dickinson, British art dealers, in collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
They will be unveiling it at TEFAF Maastricht, arguably the world’s most prestigious art fair, opening in the Netherlands on Friday. They have set the price “in the region of $10m (£6.6m)”, which tallies with the figure fetched by a comparable work sold by Sotheby’s a decade ago. The vast majority are in public collections.
Roundell is a former head of Impressionist and Modern Pictures at Christie’s, whose sales of masterpieces have included Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, which broke the then record for a work of art when it sold in 1987 for nearly £25m.
Commenting on Le Moulin d’Alphonse, he said that the number “5”, in Johanna’s hand, relates to her 1902 list, while another number corresponds to her 1912 list. “So you’re getting a double reinforcement of lists that come direct from Johanna … I’m excited that we’re able to bring to light information about a drawing which really wasn’t known.”
He added: “Johanna was left with the life’s work of this artist, her brother-in-law who, in theory, she had mixed emotions about. But she set about trying to build … a legacy for him. She could have just burned the lot because, at that point, Van Gogh had no real market.”
Since its last exhibition in 1910 in Germany, the drawing – which measures 30.2 x 49 cm – has been hidden away in private European collections.
The dealers’ catalogue notes that Van Gogh arrived in Arles in 1888, exhausted and battling illness, writing to his sister that “I cannot prosper with either my work or my health in the winter”. He was immediately struck by the brilliant colours of the landscape, writing to a friend of “pale orange” sunsets, “which makes the fields appear blue”.
Most significantly, it was in Arles that Van Gogh developed as a draughtsman, producing some of his most exquisite works. In 1888, he wrote to his brother: “As for landscapes, I’m beginning to find that some, done more quickly than ever, are among the best things I do.”

Sunday, May 18, 2014

US airmen flew to save Europe; now the race is on to rescue their artwork

As D-day's 70th anniversary draws near, a new project is seeking out lost airbase art left behind by US bomber groups

USAAF: lost artwork from the second world war in pictures

Robin Stummer

Wartime mural at airbade in Norfolk
A wartime mural created at Wendling airbase in Norfolk, which is now a car scrap yard. Photograph: Si Barber
They drew cartoons, graffiti, murals, glamour "pinups", combat scenes, mission records and maps. US servicemen at bomber and fighter bases in central and eastern England between 1942 and 1945 created a huge but largely unrecorded body of wartime artwork, some of which has survived more than 70 years in collapsing and overlooked buildings.
As the 70th anniversary of D-Day approaches, a "last chance" search is under way to find and record the scattered vestiges and fading memories of the largest air armada ever assembled – before decay, demolition and redevelopment remove the final traces.
New research might also offer clues to the fate of the "Sistine chapel" of wartime airbase artwork in Britain – a large mural by the celebrated cartoonist Bruce Bairnsfather, painted at a US base in Northamptonshire in 1944. The 30m mural, in part depicting a ship bringing GIs back to New York, has not been seen since the 1950s.
The US air assault on Europe began on 4 July 1942 with an attack on targets in Holland, two-and-a-half years after the first RAF raids. The buildup to D-Day and its aftermath gave rise to the largest body of combat aircraft assembled on one front – 28,000 Allied bombers, fighters and transports.
Wartime airbase art will be surveyed with surviving military buildings and runways as part of The Eighth in the East, a social history project focused on the region from which the US Eighth Air Force operated – the East Midlands and East Anglia. Small museums devoted to the air war are dotted across East Anglia, but The Eighth in the East is the first time a large-scale study of the effects and legacy of the US military presence has been attempted.
The artworks and graffiti offer a poignant glimpse into the lives of aircrew, mostly aged between 20 and 23, who were unlikely to reach the required 25 completed missions allowing them to return to the US. As the war progressed, the number of completed missions entitling crew to leave combat duties – and gain membership of the Lucky Bastard Club – was raised to 30, then 35. Film stars James Stewart and Walter Matthau served with US bomber crews during the war, flying from Old Buckenham airbase, Norfolk. Stewart became a highly decorated colonel.
The Eighth in the East will explore the sociological and cultural impact of the sudden arrival amid rural communities of hundreds of thousands of US servicemen and women and tens of thousands of aircraft. By D-Day the Eighth Air Force was using 70 airstrips and 200 bases, mainly in Norfolk and Suffolk, flying daylight missions over Europe while the RAF took to the skies by night.
In the runup to the invasion, the Eighth Air Force was joined by the largest airforce ever assembled, the Ninth – 250,000 personnel, 3,500 aircraft – which was based across southern East Anglia and made use of dozens of airbases extending to the outskirts of London itself.
The US air offensive in Europe claimed the lives of 26,000 Eighth Air Force personnel, with 18,000 wounded.
"Second world war archaeology is a fairly new discipline," says Hannah Potter, community archaeologist for The Eighth in the East. "It's a wholly different approach than that for ancient archaeology. We have photographs from the time that can be matched with what's there now. Artworks in the bases will be gone soon. Murals which, when photographed in the 1980s, were brightly coloured, have now gone. The buildings weren't meant to last, so it's a challenge to preserve them. All you can do is record them.
"We're asking for public help with identifying and recording their own local buildings from the war, but a lot are on private land. This is a huge part of our history."
Several hundred unrecorded buildings are thought to survive in East Anglia and the Midlands. Few, if any, will have statutory protection and they are being lost. But the sites of old airbases are attracting a new kind of visitor. "We've been pestered by people interested in ghosts, who want to spend evenings here for the atmosphere, just to listen," says Ian Hancock of the Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation Museum, at the wartime Flixton airbase near Bungay. "But there are so many explanations for noises, the creaking, that you do get. Now a lot of the aviation museums do night-time opening, just for the feel of it."
"We are on the edge of this period becoming history," says Potter. "We're losing so many veterans now, and we're at the limit of what we can do. But we're having a lot of people coming to us who were children at the time. For them, it was a hugely exciting time."
Finding the Bairnsfather mural, though not an aim of The Eighth in the East, would restore a missing chapter in the story of one of Britain's greatest soldier-artists. Bairnsfather's Old Bill character – a stoical, moustachioed old hand of the western front – became a first world war symbol. During the second world war, Bairnsfather served as official cartoonist to US forces. Stationed at Chelveston airbase in Northamptonshire, he created several large artworks there during 1944 and 1945. All have vanished.
"The mural is a great missing piece of his work," says Mark Warby, chairman of the Bairnsfather Society. "It would be fantastic if anything could be discovered."
For the dwindling number of veterans, the old bases stir acute memories. "We were frightened when we were flying – all of the time, all of us," recalls Clarence Rowntree who, as a 20-year-old gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress, was based at Kimbolton airbase in Cambridgeshire. Now 90, he completed 30 missions in a bomber named Mairzy Doats after the 1940s hit song, and thus joined the Lucky Bastard Club. A later crew on the same aircraft were not so lucky when it was lost over the North Sea in August 1944. "But it wasn't that tense on the base, when we weren't flying," says Rowntree. "They used to put on a lot of boxing competitions to keep us busy. But, yes, when we were flying we were frightened."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/17/artwork-yanks-left-behind
 
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