Alfred George Stapleton was born in 1899 in Finchley. During the First World War he signed up as a boy sailor in April 1915 and began at the training ship HMS Arethusa on the river Thames. He then joined Admiral Beatty’s battle cruiser HMS Princess Royal in May 1916. Alfred quickly found himself in the middle of the conflict when he was on the bridge of Beatty’s flagship at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May to 1 June 1916. This was the largest naval battle of the War when the British Home Fleet took on the German High Seas Fleet off the north coast of Denmark’s Jutland peninsula. The plan was to intercept a sortie by the German Fleet into the North Sea. With help of a captured code book, the British had decoded the German radio messages and left their bases before the Germans put to sea. The fleets engaged and Princess Royal was hit by two shells in the first three minutes. During the battle she received a total of nine hits and 22 men were killed and 81 injured. The British had 3 bat
This is a story from the early days of British film. It is October 1935, and we are in Elstree Studios in Borehamwood Hertfordshire. British International Pictures Studios Douglas Fairbanks, father and son The American actor Douglas Fairbanks, was known as ‘The King of Hollywood’ from his career in the silent era. He was famous for his adventure films such as The Mark of Zorro (1920), The Three Musketeers (1921) and Robin Hood (1922). The Mark of Zorro poster As a means of gaining control over their films, in 1919, he set up United Artists with Charlie Chaplin, the director D.W. Griffiths and Mary Pickford, whom he married the following year. Signing the United Artists contract (1919) From the left: D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks. Fairbanks had been impressed by Alexander Korda’s production of ‘The Private Life of Henry VIII’ (1933), starring Charles Laughton. The film had been funded and distributed by United Artists and was a huge success. Hi