Les Geneveys-sur-Coffrane (March 2016) - FELCO extends its product range with the release of two new models of curved pull-stroke saws. Whether they are used in arboriculture, landscaping, parks and gardens or forestry, the new saws from FELCO will make work easier and more effective while sawing green wood. These two models are designed using the best processes, so as to meet the needs of the most demanding users. The global leader of pruning and cutting tools for professional users has just set a new standard for efficient, high-quality, durable and usable tools.
The two new saws both have pull-stroke blades, with different lengths: 270 mm as regards FELCO 640, 330 mm as regards FELCO 630. Perfect and fast sawing, effective removal of sawdust, user comfort and long life are some of the features of the new saws.
- Optimum tooth geometry to remove large quantities of chips, maintaining effectiveness and preventing jamming. The concave shape of the blade keeps the saw from locking when it is used. The blade is made of high-quality corrosion-resistant chromium-plated steel.
- Reinforced tooth tips thanks to pulsed heat treatment. This treatment makes the teeth stronger, harder and sharper, and trebles the life of the blade.
- Ergonomic handle with soft and comfortable coating that make it easy to grasp and keeps it snugly in hand when the conditions are moist and/or cold. The combination of the characteristics of the handle and the shape of the blade allows excellent vibration absorption.
- The stop at the end of the blade stops the saw escaping.
- The saw is securely held in its sheath to offer more safety. With an innovative fastening system, the saw is removed by merely pressing down with the thumb. A strap (supplied) makes it possible to fix the saw to the leg.
"FELCO has developed new curved saws to address the needs of professional users in fields such as arboriculture or maintenance of green spaces, where the speed, quality and efficiency of sawing are essential. These two new saws will also appeal to demanding private users", stresses Stephan Kopietzki, Sales Manager of FELCO.
"Based on discussions in the field and feedback from professionals across the world, the R&D team have optimised the development of FELCO 630 and FELCO 640. Using the most advanced technology and patented new features, these saws will make work easier and offer maximum comfort. What is more, the innovative system for fixing the saw in its sheath makes it safer while moving around" adds Denis Tièche, R&D Director of FELCO, with much enthusiasm.


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WHAT’S NEW? Jul 17, 2017 After plenty of rumors about a new high-performance sedan, it seems the next generation Subaru WRX is not expected until 2024. Subaru went ahead and said the WRX and WRX STI range of cars are standalone models that are not closely related to the Impreza. Because of that, they have their development cycle, and it looks like a new version will be released with the future 2024 Subaru WRX. As expected, the new model is eventually going to be based on Subaru’s latest modular platform, and it will come with the latest bells and whistles.
However, until then the WRX is actually going to remain mostly unchanged. It looks like it may receive a couple of limited edition models by the end of its lifetime. However, this is likely the only thing the car will receive.
IS A NEW MODEL REALLY NEEDED?
At this point, the WRX doesn’t really have a suitable competitor on the market. There are similarly priced hot-hatchbacks, but these do not offer what the WRX has to give. The car is usually better to drive than most of them, and its engine is currently the only one of its kind on the market. However, the car is let down by its interior, and its exterior design is not much better either. To change that the 2024 Subaru WRX is expected to be fully redesigned. Thanks to the revised platform the car will be lighter, more rigid and as a result, much better to drive. In fact, Subaru may get ahead of their rivals in which case we can only expect great things from the future.
2020 SUBARU WRX DESIGN
The upcoming 2024 WRX is more than likely going to be based on the upcoming facelift of the Impreza. Even though Subaru said these are standalone models, we don’t see them change everything about the car. Instead, the WRX will boast a more muscular design than the Impreza. This will be achieved with the help of flared wheel arches, larger wheels, better brakes, possibly a hood-scoop and even a large wing on the trunk. These will allow them to maintain the WRX’s main selling point, its flamboyance. People all over the world prefer it over hatchbacks not just because it is faster but it also looks a lot more unique.
The interior, on the other hand, is expected to be vastly improved over its predecessor. The car is likely going to boast the new dashboard design currently found on the Impreza. However, it should receive more supportive seats, possibly a digital instrument cluster as well as a nicer steering wheel. Over the ongoing model, the new 2024 Subaru WRX should feel like a much more premium product, and that will actually not be that hard to achieve all things considered.
So far the WRX has been powered by a turbocharged engine, and it always had all wheel drive. Luckily it looks like this is not going to change anytime soon. It seems that the revision of the WRX, despite being more than three years away at this point, will stick with a turbocharged flat-four engine. This might be a revised version of the current FA unit, and it will likely remain a 2.0-liter mill. This should be able to deliver closer to 300 horsepower and likely over 270 lb-ft of torque. A 6-speed manual is expected which would be a major step over the old five-speed gearbox. This would allow the new WRX to be not only faster but also more fun to drive. A standard all wheel drive system with a torque vectoring feature will also be offered which should make the WRX one of the fastest cars in its price range.

domain: news


BENGALURU: The Criminal Investigation Department
's (CID) special investigation unit may investigate the case of missing techie Kumar Ajitabh
, the high court said on Monday.
Justice Vineet Kothari
made this observation after the police commissioner indicated in his report that 80 officials deputed to the Special Investigation Team
(SIT), which is probing the case, are needed for other pressing duties, including assembly elections, and investigation can be continued by the special investigation unit.
The judge adjourned the hearing on a petition filed by Ajitabh's father Ashok Kumar Sinha to March 12, while asking police to show progress/result in the case.
Additional Advocate general A G Shivanna said probe is on and there has been no concrete progress as yet. He said no transaction took place on the OLX platform where Ajitabh, 30, had advertised to sell his car. An unknown person called Ajitabh using a sim card which was obtained by submitting a fake ID proof. The card was used only for that call.
Ashok Kumar Sinha claimed that despite registration of two FIRs by Whitefield police on December 20 and December 29, 2017, his son is yet to be traced.


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The Jules & Leopold Plaid Pencil Skirt has a soft-feel with a plaid print in black and shades of grey. It has a long length that gives it a touch of class. Perfect for the office!
Brushed Ponte fabric with plaid print
High waist with metallic back zipper detail
Hits below knee
Fabric - 55% polyester, 41% rayon, 4% spandex

domain: design


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Inside ‘The Art of Unwinding’
the art of unwinding
Aoife is thrilled to be able to offer her new book ‘The Art of Unwinding’ which will soon be available on Amazon.co.uk.
a valuable resource for massage therapists and bodyworkers.
Aoife has condensed her extensive knowledge of various massage therapies and myo-fascia release into this handy resource for anyone wanting to heal their own injuries or pain, or for other healthcare professionals looking to expand their knowledge base. The book moves through different areas of the body, particular pain patterns we might experience, and then advises on strengthening and stretching movements and exercises that may help to relieve pain and recover mobility.
accessible easy to use knowledge for health and well being
‘The Art of Unwinding’ is designed for both healthcare professionals, and for individuals that may be working with pain or injury recovery. Easy to use, designed and organised for all readers, ‘The Art of Unwinding’ can help you to relieve your own pain with simple exercises and movements.

domain: medical


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domain: travel


Mizeur Touts Endorsements, Straw Poll Victory
Del. Heather Mizeur (D-Montgomery Co.), a gubernatorial candidate from Maryland seeking to become the first woman governor of the Free State and the first out lesbian governor in the country, won the Progressive Neighbors Straw Poll at the Takoma Park Folk Festival at Takoma Park Middle School on Sunday, and racked up three separate endorsements from elected officials and community leaders in key vote-rich areas.
Mizeur, whose district covers Takoma Park and Silver Spring, won the gubernatorial straw poll on her home turf easily, earning 167 votes, or 82 percent of all votes cast, compared to 23 votes for Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown and 14 votes for Attorney General Doug Gansler. Progressive Neighbors is a grassroots organization of local activists who support progressive causes like universal health care, affordable housing, public transportation, environmental protection, equality and campaign finance reform, meaning most poll respondents would have more liberal leanings on policy issues.
Following her victory in the poll, Mizeur’s campaign touted the result in a press release, saying the candidate "continues to pick up early strength."
The release from Mizeur’s campaign also touted the endorsement of Baltimore City Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke (D-14), the first woman to serve as president of the Baltimore City Council from 1987 to 1995 and a longtime advocate for education and economic fairness. Clarke was the lead sponsor on the nation’s first "Living Wage" law, which was enacted in 1994, and a cosponsor, along with former Councilmember Kweisi Mfume, later a U.S. congressman, of the first Charter amendment aimed at reducing class sizes in Baltimore Public Schools in 1982.
"Thank you Delegate Mizeur for having the courage to get into the race for governor and giving us an exciting choice," Clarke said when announcing her endorsement at a Mizeur campaign "meet-and-greet" event in Baltimore Sunday. "Your leadership and values are exactly what Maryland needs at this time and I’m proud to support you in this race."
Mizeur also won an endorsement from Sonja Sohn, an actress known for her role as Detective Kim Greggs in the HBO show The Wire and the founder and CEO of reWIRED for Change, an outreach program in Baltimore City that seeks to rehabilitate at-risk youth who have been involved in criminal activity.


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Of colonial photographs and cultural resources: The photographic archive of the Sarawak Museum
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The photographic archive of the Sarawak Museum was established in the early 1950s in Sarawak, a Malaysian state under British colonial administration on the island of Borneo. Together with his staff, the curator Tom Harrisson documented the work of the museum through photographs taken in the various indigenous communities in the region. Over time, the archive developed into an extensive collection containing thousands of images. Before becoming the curator, Harrisson had been involved in a research project called Mass-Observation, which he and two other researchers launched in the late 1930s in order to investigate the views and habits of British citizens.
In this article, I draw parallels between Harrisson’s work at the Sarawak Museum and his previous projects. I explore the background of the photographs, including the ways in which the material differs from other contemporary collections, the theories and aims that informed its creation, the museum staff who created the images, and the communities they show. From 2010 to 2012, I circulated a number of photographs from the museum in these source communities, aiming to test if Harrisson’s methodological claims about potential uses of material he collected applied to the Sarawak Museum archive.
There has been significant debate about the role of government archives, among them those containing photographic material, in societies under colonial administration. As Appadurai and others have pointed out, ethnographic photographs from the period tended to reinforce social and cultural stereotypes that supported the unequal power relationships between local communities and the colonial administration (Appadurai, 1997; Hight and Sampson, 2002; Poole, 2005). Used in the process of “differentiating, ordering, and controlling the various peoples and landscapes under western occupation” (Hight and Sampson, 2002, p. 7), the images supported the frameworks of governance and provided the knowledge that colonial governments used to organize their administration. The tendency to produce images focusing on specific racial “types” (Poole, 2005; Banks, 2003) extended to commercial photography, particularly in the case of images of indigenous peoples, which were often represented through “primitivist” clichés (Prins, 2002).
More recently, researchers have been reconsidering such colonial documents. An increasingly nuanced approach to them has uncovered complex relationships at the source of ethnographic and colonial photography, which has led to a reevaluation of the colonial archive (Edwards and Morton, 2009; Banks and Vokes, 2010; Buckley, 2005). The context of the creation of each image and the subsequent trajectory of the material objects, or, as Elizabeth Edwards puts it, the “social biographies” of colonial photographs, have become relevant for the discussion of this material (Edwards, 2002, 2004; Edwards and Hart, 2002). Through their “random inclusiveness” (Morton and Edwards, 2009; Morton, 2009) and their detailed reproduction of the elements in a scene that ultimately cannot be controlled, alternative interpretations of photographs become possible. The technology situates the photographic subject in a “potentially democratic visual public sphere” (Appadurai, 1997, p. 5). Because of these processes, photographs have been rediscovered as “contested sites of encounter and cultural exchange even within asymmetrical power relations” (Edwards and Morton, 2009).
The critical appraisal of colonial archives has also called into question the proprietary and moral rights to the material. In the past decade and half, the debate over ownership of colonial and ethnographic photographs has sparked the repatriation of visual archives and the discussion of such images with source communities (Edwards, 2001; Binney and Chaplin, 2003; Peers and Brown, 2009; Bell, 2008; Smith, 2008).
From 2010 to 2012, I returned scanned and printed copies of some fifteen hundred photographs from the Sarawak Museum archive to the source communities along the Baram River and its tributaries in the north of Sarawak. The museum holds one of only a few collections of historical photographs from the region, and the people in the source communities showed great interest in the material. They searched the images for pictures of their own families and friends, and in response to what they saw, they recounted oral histories and re-created elements of their cultural heritage. The institutional background of the images and their role in the ethnographic description of the communities for foreign audiences—for example, when the photographs accompanied academic publications of anthropological research conducted in the villages—were rarely acknowledged. Instead, the discussions in the source communities focused on the content of the images and the capacity of the material to create a visual traditional heritage.
My analysis of the material critically reflects on theories of colonial archives by suggesting that a closer examination of the Sarawak Museum archive is necessary to provide the context to its material. This article focuses on the parallels between Harrisson’s work with Mass-Observation and his projects at the Sarawak Museum. I argue that Harrisson applied the methods established during Mass-Observation to his later work: a wide, open-ended approach to the subject matter, an attempt to present subjective rather than objective viewpoints of observers and collaborators, and a reluctance to submit the material to analysis through documentation and description. I discuss the collection of the Sarawak Museum in the context of other collections at the time, pointing toward the differences in modes of production, subject matter, and textual description. I then describe how the photographs were discussed among members of the source communities.
‘The science of living with ourselves’: Tom Harrisson and Mass-Observation
Mass-Observation was the result of the collaboration, beginning in 1937, among Tom Harrisson, the surrealist poet Charles Madge, and the budding documentary filmmaker Humphrey Jennings. Their goal was to document the opinions and life experiences of British citizens—to conduct what they termed “anthropology at home” (Hubble, 2006). Harrisson never completed a university degree but he had a keen interest in the natural sciences. His primary interest was ornithology. During his first trip to Borneo, in 1932, and a subsequent two-year expedition to the New Hebrides, his focus shifted to anthropology.
When Harrisson returned to England, he realized that he knew little about the views and habits of the people living in his home country. “It was gradually borne in upon me that the things I was doing, at great expense, in these difficult jungles, had not been done in the wilds of Lancashire and East Anglia,” he wrote in 1943. “While studiously tabulating the primitive, we had practically no objective anthropology of ourselves” (Harrisson, 1943, p. 5).
Harrisson came to the conclusion that this situation ought to be addressed: “We needed to study our own anthropology, or wider than that, the science of living with ourselves” (Spender and Harrisson, 1975, p. 1). Public opinion was, Harrisson believed, “endlessly misinterpreted” in the press (Spender and Harrisson, 1975, p. 1), and this could be detrimental to the functioning of democracy (Harrisson, 1943; Hinton, 2013). At the time, opinion polling was emerging as a social and political interest, and methods for sampling public opinion were still being established. Mass-Observation projects were based on questionnaires, interviews, participant observation, and audience participation through which researchers assessed public opinion regarding a variety of subjects. Harrisson, Jennings, and Madge’s aim was to create a democratic form of social science “free of academic trappings” and built on the participation of its subject communities to ensure accurate representation of people’s lives, interests, and views (Sheridan, 1984, p. 42).
The research conducted by Mass-Observation was to be carried out by participants from the group under investigation, who were also the proposed audience—mainly members of the lower or working class. The people among whom the research had been conducted would be able to benefit from the outcomes of the projects more than would a small group of academics: “Mass-Observation does not believe that social science can effectively operate only at the academic level,” states a Mass-Observation publication in 1943. “Its job is to study real life; and the people it studies are people who can be interested immediately in the results, which often directly concern their everyday lives” (Mass-Observation, 1943, p. vi). When criticized for the absence of methodology and lack of academic focus, Harrisson and Madge were unfazed. Compliance with academic standards had not been their goal; instead they intended to “inform the British people about their own behaviour” (MacClancy, 2001).
Mass-Observation research had a wide focus and covered a range of topics, from the patterns of discarded tram tickets on the pavement to female cyclists; other suggested topics were the “Behaviour of people at war memorials, Shouts and gestures of motorists, The aspidistra cult, Anthropology of football pools” (Calder and Sheridan, 1984, p. 4; see also Hinton, 2013; MacClancy, 2001). This diverse selection of research engagements was due in part to Madge’s surrealist affinities; more important, however, Harrisson believed it was impossible to foresee what would be of interest to researchers and that therefore a maximum amount of detail should be recorded (MacClancy, 2001). “It is the trivial of the present day that may prove significant tomorrow,” Harrisson wrote later. “The observer or photographer must shed the preconceptions about what is good to observe and what is bad to observe; and shed all habitual frames of reference which may inhibit fresh observation and obscure the unexpected” (Spender and Harrisson, 1975, pp. 3–4).
Informants and participants in Mass-Observation’s research were thought of as subjective witnesses whose personal views on their topic of research were reflected in their reports. Although the lack of academic training of Mass-Observation’s contributors was criticized as unprofessional (Mass-Observation, 1938), Harrisson, Madge, and Jennings saw this fact as an important part of what the project was about: “Mass-Observation has always assumed that its untrained Observers would be subjective cameras, each with his or her own distortion,” they wrote in a first-year report, published in 1938. “They tell us not what society is like but what it looks like to them” (Mass-Observation, 1938, quoted in Calder and Sheridan, 1984, pp. 5 and 6).
Likening observers and their reports to “the cameras with which we are trying to photograph contemporary life” (Mass-Observation, 1937, quoted in Mass Observation, 1938), Harrisson and his colleagues based their research on the observations recorded by participants who were neither trained nor briefed to be impartial. Rather than suggesting that an objective approach was possible, Mass-Observation’s masterminds insisted that the personal bias of the material was part of its relevance (Mass-Observation, 1938).
Critical of their own methods, however, Harrisson, Madge, and Jennings recognized that interviews and questionnaires could lead to inaccurate results. They suspected that respondents would not communicate in the same way with their investigators as they would with friends and family, and put emphasis on observation as a more accurate method (Hubble, 2006). Harrisson in particular, with his background in the observation of the natural world, felt that words could be misleading to the point of suggesting that observers wear earplugs (Hinton, 2013). Photographs and artwork were therefore deemed worthwhile media for observations: “It was because we distrusted the value of mere words,” Harrisson wrote in 1975, “that we were so keen to employ artists and writers, and photographers” (Spender and Harrisson, 1975, p. 3).
Mass-Observation has been criticized not just for lack of methodology and academic rigor, but also for a tendency to rely on well-educated middle-class participants instead of the working-class informants they had sought to engage and for the lack of experience of its investigators (Hinton, 2013; Sheridan, 1984; Mass-Observation, 1938). Nevertheless, sociologists, historians, and other researchers have made considerable use of the Mass-Observation material, since 1970 located at Sussex University.
Mass-Observation flourished until the outbreak of World War II, at which point the organization worked on several projects for the British Ministry of Information. Madge, who opposed the collaboration, in 1940 pulled out from Mass-Observation (Sheridan, 1984). Earlier that year, Jennings had left to join the Crown Film Unit (Richards and Sheridan, 1987). In 1944 Harrisson returned to Borneo, which was occupied by Japanese forces. He entered Sarawak, as part of a military mission, by parachuting behind Japanese lines and into the interior of the Fourth Division in the north, with a team of soldiers to consolidate local resistance against the Japanese military. He returned to Britain in 1946 but soon set off again for Borneo to take the position of curator at the Sarawak Museum.
‘Measuring change in a way which cannot be preconceived’: Tom Harrisson’s Work at the Sarawak Museum
The Sarawak Museum was established in 1888 by Charles Brooke, the second in a dynasty of “White Rajahs” who ruled the region from 1841 to 1946. The collection and research work of the museum focused on local flora and fauna and the diverse ethnic groups of the area. The staff and curators conducted research and traveled throughout the region to acquire specimens and heritage artifacts for the collection, and also assisted foreign researchers in their projects. Starting in 1911, scientific papers were published in the Sarawak Museum Journal. After the Japanese occupation, the third Rajah Brooke ceded Sarawak to Great Britain and it became part of the British Empire. Tom Harrisson worked as curator of the museum from 1947 to 1966. During his tenure, he published more than a hundred and fifty articles in the journal. He extended the museum’s scope of research to include archaeology, and introduced documentation techniques such as audio recording and film.
Harrisson’s legacy, however, was not all positive. According to his biographer, his volatile personality alienated those around him, and because of a perceived lack of professionalism, some of his projects were discredited by the academic community (Heimann 1998). Nevertheless, much of his work at the museum resulted in original research that is still relevant.
Harrisson’s interest in photography led to the increased use of the medium to record and document research work and conservation projects. In the early 1950s, Harrisson created the position of staff photographer and promoted former museum driver Junaidi Bolhassan to fill it. The collection grew to contain portraits of museum staff, pictures of museum buildings, photographs of indigenous artists working at the museum, and images of functions and events. The material also documented museum work, such as archaeological digs; the arrangement of exhibition displays; and the objects of the museum collection. A large number of pictures were taken by museum staff during research, collection, and conservation trips. Many of these photographs focused on life in the villages: images of local people and their environment, buildings, landscapes, arts, crafts, practices, and rituals.
Harrisson himself, whose favorite method of conducting research was observation (Hinton, 2013), contributed copious amounts of material. “During the year the Curator of the Museum made another visit to the Kelabit country,” noted the annual report of the British colonial administration in 1949. “The main [objectives] of this expedition were . . . to take photographs of the lesser-known tribes. . . . More than a thousand photographs were taken” (Sarawak Annual Report, 1949, p. 95).
The archive grew in size and importance, and more resources and facilities were added. When Harrisson and other museum staff returned from their trips with exposed film, Bolhassan, who was both photographer and archivist, dated, classified, and indexed the images and stored them for future use. Harrisson and other authors used the photographs to illustrate their publications in the Sarawak Museum Journal. Researchers, journalists, and members of the public could order prints from the archive for a small fee. Museum staff also used material from the archive for exhibition displays and showcases.
Although much of the initial material was produced by Harrisson, other members of museum staff contributed to the archive. “Before Junaidi there were all sorts of people all working at the museum, they were all photographers, they were all working in the field and they would bring along a camera,” said former museum director Datuk Lucas Chin in a 2011 interview. “I myself carried a camera when I went to the field, when Junaidi was not around to help me. When all these films were taken, back at the museum they were passed on to Junaidi to develop them.” Current Sarawak Museum Director Ipoi Datan confirms this: “Different sections had their own cameras, and we knew how to use them,” he says. “And if you are going to be out for a while, maybe one month, then you can’t bring the photographer along, you have to do it on your own.”
To facilitate travel and communications, Kuching-based museum staff took part in fieldwork and research projects involving their own ethnic communities. According to Ipoi Datan, “[The curators of the Sarawak Museum] tried to recruit as many staff as possible from different communities. Malay, Chinese, Iban, we have Orang Ulu, Bisayah, Kelabit, Bidayuh, I think they tried to make sure that the museum is owned by the locals. . . . [Y]ou go to the Iban areas, so you bring one of the staff that is Iban, there will be no problem with translation or understanding. Likewise, you go to Bidayuh areas, you bring along the Bidayuh staff.”
Harrisson had moved on from his work with Mass-Observation, but some of the same methods and objectives were evident in the way material was collected at the photo archive. For Mass-Observation projects, the organization had tried to enlist collaborators from the working-class communities that were to be investigated. In Sarawak, Harrisson relied on local collaborators from the different ethnic groups to conduct the museum’s projects under his leadership. The wide scope of the content of the photographs likewise indicates that Harrisson applied the principles he had established for his “anthropology at home” to the investigation of the people he was now invested to represent at the Sarawak Museum. Throughout his work with Mass-Observation, Harrisson had insisted on recording as much detailed information as possible, without concern for redundancies. In his new research environment, he similarly believed it was necessary to collect as much material as possible, “without fear of ‘being swamped in trivial data.’ ’’ In his view, “for an investigator to be afraid of being ‘overwhelmed by fact’ is about as idiotic as for a Kelabit [one of the ethnic groups with which Harrisson worked] cutting down a tree for fear of being crushed by his own work” (Harrisson’s personal notebooks, quoted in Heimann, 1998, p. 156).
In his work with Mass-Observation and during his time at the Sarawak Museum, Harrisson had been criticized for the lack of a theoretical framework or working hypotheses for his projects. This approach was deliberate, suggests his biographer Judith Heimann; instead of setting out with a specific focus, Harrisson preferred to let the issues emerge from a wealth of data and information he had collected: “[A]s with Mass-Observation, Tom wanted to collect more and more data rather than try prematurely to draw out underlying principles and patterns” (Heimann, 1998, p. 257). As a result, the collection at the museum’s archive became a repository of diverse material awaiting future analysis.
Harrisson noted that the methods he had established during Mass-Observation had prepared him for the observation and investigation of indigenous peoples in which he was now involved (Heimann, 1998, p. 256). Likewise, his methods for the accumulation of data were informed by the same strict guidelines for empirical investigations used in Mass-Observation. In Harrisson’s view, one of the great shortcomings of anthropological research was that its projects were rarely subject to reevaluation in the field after the results had been published (Heimann, 1998, p. 258). It was Harrisson’s conviction that the material collected in sociological or anthropological research needed to provide a comprehensive record to enable future researchers to compare and substantiate the data.
This is why, for his Mass-Observation data, he wanted to provide material that could be revisited: “The record must be clear, factually precise, and stated in such a way that it can be understood by anyone at a later date, years or even centuries later,” he wrote in 1975 (Spender and Harrisson, 1975, p. 3). The Mass-Observation archive was meant to provide material that researchers could investigate for social, cultural, and economic change with the advantage of historical hindsight. “Ideally,” he wrote, “it should be possible for another observer to go back to the same place at the same time on the same day of the year, years later, and repeat the same observation, whether in words or film, thus measuring change in a way which cannot be theorised about or preconceived” (Spender and Harrisson, 1975, pp. 3–4).
Harrisson did not explicitly mention the material from the Sarawak Museum when he articulated his hopes for the future uses of the Mass-Observation material. However, he created the museum archive according to the objectives he had formulated during his time with Mass-Observation. The archive resembles that of Mass-Observation in the substantial amount of detailed material, its variety of subject matter, and the ways in which the material was assembled. The visual repatriation project with the museum collection was meant to explore whether Harrisson’s hopes for the eventual uses of the material could be realized in Sarawak.
‘Iban girls splash and play like otters’: The Sarawak Museum Archive and Other Sarawak Collections
The archive of the Sarawak Museum probably contains the largest collection of images from the state’s colonial period, but other photographers worked in the region at the same time, and sometimes in collaboration. The museum occasionally used the services of the Anna Photo Studio, in Kuching, to develop and print photographs. The proprietor, K. F. Wong, was acquainted with museum staff photographer Junaidi Bolhassan and had helped Bolhassan hone his photographic-processing skills after being promoted from driver. Wong, who was a professional photographer, assembled his own extensive collection from around the state in his private archive and also contributed to that of the Sarawak Museum. He published a number of his pictures in books with titles such as Pagan Innocence (1960), Borneo Scene (1979), and Vanishing World (1972). Vanishing World was produced in collaboration with other photographers, among them Hedda Morrison, who spent almost twenty years in Sarawak with her husband, Alastair, a British colonial government servant.
During her years in Sarawak, Morrison assembled a collection of beautiful and expressive images taken throughout the state. She also published photographs taken in the state in two other books, Sarawak (1957) and Life in a Longhouse (1962), and her photographs appeared in numerous other publications. Whether Morrison also collaborated with the museum is not clear. Alastair, whom Morrison accompanied in his postings throughout the state, strongly disliked Tom Harrisson (Heimann, 1998). In his memoir, Alastair describes Harrisson as having “a vicious temper and an unbridled tongue and by nature he was intensely jealous. I never knew a man with such a capacity for quarreling” (Morrison, 1993, p. 99).
The collections of Wong, Morrison, and the Sarawak Museum show distinct differences in their subject matter, the way in which the photographs were taken, the audiences of their publications, and how they were contextualized. Wong’s photographs were created for the commercial market, and thus provide picturesque compositions of good-looking people in serene surroundings. His publications represented indigenous communities in what Prins (2002, p. 60) has called a “primitivist” genre: The photographs, through their arrangement and accompanying descriptions and captions, glorify the traditional indigenous lifestyle, at the same time suggesting that its extinction through the influence of development and modernization was both unavoidable and desirable. Wong’s approach to his subject was directed by his commercial interest in photography. Focusing on representations of local indigenous groups he presumed to be of interest to tourists and foreigners, his photographs, captions, and the introduction to publications such as Pagan Innocence reflect a view that objectified his subjects as primitive others, presenting a version of “bare-breasted native beauties” and “legendary tough, sword-wielding head-hunters” (Wong, 1960, p. 18). The captions accompanying Wong’s work also suggest a stereotypical, simplistic, and idealized representation of indigenous culture—for example, his description of a photograph of several Iban women bathing in a river: “Iban girls splash and play like otters at one of the many waterfalls in the upper reaches of rivers” (Wong, 1960, p. 50).
Morrison’s images show a greater range of subject matter and a more ethnographic approach. Portraits and photographs of arts and crafts, the agricultural cycle, and the longhouse environment as well as festivals and ceremonies feature prominently in her publications. They provide a varied and in-depth view of the different ethnic groups in Sarawak, the result of the access she was granted in the service of the British colonial government. Her descriptions provide detailed information she had gathered during years of working there. The captions in Life in a Longhouse, which contains photographs taken in Iban communities, are indicative of her attempts at inclusiveness. The texts accompanying the images are written in the four most widely spoken languages in Sarawak: that is, English, Malay, Iban, and Chinese.
Nevertheless, Morrison was later criticized for failing to acknowledge in her work that Sarawak society at the time was deeply ambiguous about the British colonial administration and its efforts at modernization. Another point of critique was that her work positioned traditional culture as backward and inferior and suggested “Western” development as the only possible and desirable outcome (Walker, 1994). In spite of this criticism, however, Morrison’s images have become important historical documents for the communities in which they were taken (Bala, 2000).
In contrast to those taken by Wong and by Morrison, the photographs produced for the archive at the Sarawak Museum were not aimed at a commercial audience. Most of them were taken to document museum work and to provide images with which researchers could illustrate their academic publications or for use in museum exhibitions. The archive was not the product of a single photographer; rather, it was assembled by a range of contributors. Under Harrisson’s direction, museum workers from different communities produced material and brought their own understanding of local culture to bear on the images they created. Through the contributions of staff working throughout Sarawak, the museum’s collection grew to contain many more images than those either Wong or Morrison published or otherwise made available, and as part of a public museum the collection is still accessible to the public.
During the time in which I was working with the images, the archive was not open to the general public but it was opened on request to individuals and researchers, not only academics but also secondary school students working on assignments and people from the villages looking for images of their families or friends. Some persistent visitors browsing the thick document folders had recognized the locations and subject matter and left handwritten notes alongside the contact prints. The primary limitation on the use of the material was the lack of information it, as there was little or no documentation about the content of the photographs available at the archive apart from these scattered handwritten remarks. The photographs were stored without an index, which made it difficult to look for specific content, dates, or locations.
Despite being a unique and extensive public resource, the Sarawak Museum photo archive has remained largely unexplored by sociologists and historians and by source communities. In 1963, the merger among Malaya, Sarawak and Sabah, in the north of Borneo, created the federation of Malaysia.. Harrisson continued as museum curator until 1966. Subsequent curators continued to use photography as a means of documenting the work of the museum and the communities in which they carried out acquisition or conservation activities along with archaeological projects and other research. Museum photographer Junaidi Bolhassan retired in 1985, after more than thirty years. Successive photographers and other members of the staff contributed material to the archive using a range of media and techniques. The archive of the Sarawak Museum grew to contain thousands of negatives, prints, and color slides.
‘Classificatory, taxonomic, penal, and somatic’: The Colonial Archive
In contrast to the material at the Mass-Observation archive, the photographs at the Sarawak Museum receive little outside attention. Part of the reason may be that colonial museum archives have been interpreted as repositories of the kind of knowledge and detailed information the colonial administrations used to govern local populations and thus have been considered tools of foreign dominance. In addition, ethnographic photographs from the period were criticized for reinforcing social and cultural stereotypes that supported colonial control, and were described as “decidedly classificatory, taxonomic, penal, and somatic” (Appadurai, 1997; see also Peers and Brown, 2003; Maxwell, 2010; and Pinney, 2012).
Theorists argue that colonial administrations attempted “to establish and stabilize the statistical and classificatory categories” of local populations in the colonies through such images (Poole, 2005, p. 46). Rather than focusing on the individual personalities of the people who were shown, these photographs were intended to illustrate traits and types thought to characterize local peoples and to underpin theories of cultural hierarchy (Maxwell, 2013; Banks, 2003; Hight and Sampson, 2002). Ethnographic photographs created for the consumption of the population back in Britain were usually described and synthesized by specialists from the museum or academe (Pinney, 2011; Peers and Brown, 2003) and rarely found their way back to the source communities. New nations and newly independent territories, coming to terms with their colonial past, often paid little attention to archives bearing witness to a period of foreign control (Buckley, 2005).
More recently, however, colonial photo archives and their content have been used to investigate counter-narratives inherent in the material, which incorporates traces of the complex interactions between photographer and subject (Pels, 1997; Maxwell, 2010; Eileraas, 2003; and Mathur, 2000). Most theorists agree that, as Roland Barthes put it, photographs are “polysemous” (Barthes, 1981, p. 274); they can be interpreted with a focus on the traces of colonial governance or as ethnographic studies, cultural heritage, or family portraits. Photographs contain a “visual excess,” a “random inclusiveness” (Edwards and Morton, 2009) that cannot be controlled by the photographer and which allows for a reassessment of colonial archives for traces of the subtler interactions among its actors.
These traces are visible in the photographs from the Sarawak Museum. The collaborations between museum staff and local artisans, the presence of a Western researcher in a local religious ceremony, the staged performances of traditional dances, passing snapshots of women preparing food and people performing their daily tasks: Many of these images contain hints of the interaction between photographer and subject, an “excess” of elements and details, clues to the interpretation of the images. Moreover, the principles that informed Harrisson’s establishment of the archive and the way the photographs were created resulted in images in which the agency of different actors can be traced; the images act as “contested sites of encounter and cultural exchange” (Morton and Edwards, 2009, p. 4).
Although the Sarawak Museum was part of and collaborated with the colonial administration—Harrisson also held the position of government ethnologist—these are the reasons why the museum cannot be easily subsumed among the institutions that supported colonial administrative power. The interpretation of the museum’s material informed by postcolonial criticism is possible, but it limits the capacity for other meanings and interpretations.
‘These things are part of our heritage’: Colonial Photographs and Source Communities
Since the late 1980s, museum theorists have looked more critically at ethnographic collections and the way in which they were obtained, and this has led to projects of repatriation of artifacts and closer collaborations between museums and source communities (Clapperton, 2010; Phillips, 2003; Clifford, 1999). Several such projects involved the return of photographic material to the indigenous communities where it had been created, which has been termed “visual repatriation” (Peers and Brown, 2003, 2009; Binney and Chaplin, 2003; Bell, 2008; Edwards, 2001; Smith, 2008).
In 2010 I digitized a part of the Sarawak Museum collection for a research project whose goal was to describe and contextualize the photographs in collaboration with source communities. Using fifteen hundred images from several indigenous ethnic groups, my intention was to investigate how people interpreted the images: Had they become evidence of the changes that had occurred in the last fifty years, as Harrisson suggested? Did they enable a reevaluation of the research he and others had carried out? Would the photographs be understood as cultural heritage or as the ethnographic endeavors of a colonial government institution? Included in the research were fifteen communities along the Baram River, in the north of Sarawak, and its tributary, the Tinjar, where photographs had been taken by museum staff on two trips, the first in 1956 and the second in 1968.
The region is home to a variety of small but distinct ethnic groups referred to as Orang Ulu, Malay for “People from Upriver.” In each village I discussed the photographs with members of the community. These talks were conducted both as dialogues and in group conversations in which everybody in the village could take part. The group discussions often lasted for several hours, as people came to have a look and went to get others they thought might be interested. Through these discussions, the people, places, and events in the photographs were identified. Participants described the objects and scenes in the images, and explained their cultural context. If some issues remained unclear, I was referred to people participants thought of as knowledgeable on specific topics. Village headmen and other community members then helped to set up interviews with these specialists. I visited the communities a number of times over several months between 2010 and 2012. Separate interviews with members of the communities were also held in Sarawak’s main cities, Kuching and Miri.
In the conversations with members of the source communities, we discussed the photographs from a variety of perspectives. They were family photographs, and at the same time they were historical documents that provided evidence of the cultural heritage as well as social and cultural changes. Some images showed community leaders and important events; others depicted longhouses that had burned down or had been abandoned or relocated. I came to see the photographs as “cultural resources,” or, as Joshua Bell has called them, “cultural property” (Bell, 2008, p. 124), because of the sense of ownership with which people from the villages spoke about them. I realized that although the photographs belonged to the Sarawak Museum archive, those people I discussed them with felt they also belonged to the communities that had participated in creating the pictures and whose members were the subjects.
The photos, taken according to Mass-Observation’s principle of documenting a maximum amount of detail, evident in the grand scope of subject matter, show different aspects of daily life. The museum photographer and other members of the staff contributing to the collection had provided the “subjective cameras” Mass-Observation had wanted to enlist. They used an undirected approach; the range of subjects reveal their broad interest in—as well as knowledge about—many aspects of the local environment they encountered. Their work resulted in large numbers of photographs showing all sorts of things they considered of interest during field trips.
The images also show a variety of modes of composition and levels of quality. Some photographs were blurred, over- or underexposed (contributors to the archive were not trained as photographers); others show the backs of groups of people; still others are of scenes obviously staged by the photographer (group photos, for example). The subject matter varied. We see dancers performing for the camera outside the longhouse, artists presenting their sculptures, musicians posing with their instruments. Some photographs show the activities of museum staff in the villages; in one set of images, a woman is presenting her heirloom ceramics to the camera. Here a series of photographs display both the front and the back of a large plate so the photographer could capture the pattern as well as the stamp of the Chinese manufacturer (see figure 6).
Some images show members of the community engaging with the photographer and contributing what they perceived to be relevant for inclusion in the image. In a series of pictures, an artist is demonstrating the process of making a sape, a local string instrument, from a block of wood. In one image in the series a member of the museum staff is holding the rough body of the instrument for the artisan to work on (see figure 7). Another photograph shows a man dressed in traditional loincloth and leopard-skin cap playing the keledi, a traditional instrument made from a hollow gourd and bamboo that has since disappeared from many communities. His pose, costume, and background suggest that the scene has been carefully staged around his skill and role in the community. In a later photograph we see the same man being recorded by someone, presumably a member of the museum staff (see figure 4 and 5).
These photographs are not generic “type” images in which individuals are visualized as representing a specific trait or attribute, as were some ethnographic photographs produced within the colonial setting (Poole, 2005). Rather, they conform to standards of portraiture, as they focus on the character, personality, and expression of an individual.
During the work with the photographs in the communities, many people found pictures of themselves as well as of friends and family members. Because cameras had been scarce in the rural communities in the 1950s and sixties, sometimes no other images of these people existed. Prompted by the photos, some people recalled the original visit of the museum group and the way pictures were staged to demonstrate crafts and customs. One shows women grating tapioca using the thorns of a rotan vine. In Long Loyang, one of the three women in the photograph, Melai Apui, had been called to look at the image by a friend who had discovered her there. Examining the print, she recalled the situation when the picture was taken. The photographer had asked her to pose, she said: “I was excited, and I went to dress up and then asked my friend to borrow her earrings,” referring to the white kebaya top and the brass ornaments she is wearing in her elongated lobes (see figure 19). The picture, which looks like a snapshot, is revealed as a collaboration between photographer and subject, one in which both sides contributed to the staging.
Other photographs portray scenes or objects that were contextualized through the description of local beliefs, myths, and legends. One image showed a jar lodged in the rafters of a longhouse roof. In Daleh Long Pelutan, a group of people were looking through a book of prints when one of them found the photograph. Ceramic jars are among the oldest items of trade in Sarawak, having been imported from China for centuries. The jar looked unexceptional, without any particular glazing or motifs, small and dusty.
“It is a spirit jar,” said Jok Wan Emang. Others, looking over to see what he was studying, agreed. “This picture must be very old,” he said. “We have not had any of those here in a long time.” Showing me the photograph, he went on: “The Tajau Busi [‘spirit jar’ in Kayan] can be found in the jungle by very lucky people. Once somebody finds a spirit jar, he needs to take care of it. . . . The jar can bring good luck when you take care of it, but will bring bad luck if it is neglected.” Jok Wan Emang remembered that his great-grandfather had found such a jar, in Long Miri. “The spirit jar can even breed and produce small jars,” he continued, “but you cannot leave it empty, so you must take care that something is always inside, like a piece of clothing, something simple, anything.”
The photographs illustrate some of the legends and stories that were part of the local oral history. During the group discussions, people contributed their opinions and talked about and sometimes argued about the stories connected to the content of the photographs. Some objects and practices were now rare in the villages but were present in communal memory. Whereas items such as burial poles, carvings, and statues were no longer widely used, they were considered important as part of the villagers’ heritage, things many had seen when they were younger. They were now viewed as part of the local culture rather than as the spiritual tokens of the old religion.
Many people who spoke with me were interested in their heritage but not in preserving it; they were more concerned with development and progress for their community. Others, however, were actively involved in reviving traditional practices. Penghulu Patrick Jelaman, from Long Jegan, planned to rebuild the belawing spirit poles that in the photographs rose from the ground in front of the longhouse apartments of the dayung, or spirit mediums. His mission was to continue one of the unique practices of his people, the Berawan, a small ethnic group. “It is not that we believe in the spiritual aspect of it anymore,” he said, studying images of belawing poles from his village taken in 1956. “It is because these things are part of our cultural heritage.”
This example of how the material from the Sarawak Museum was used suggests that the archive is a valuable resource not only for historians and social scientists but also for members of communities interested in the conservation of their cultural heritage. The archive, although it was established primarily to document museum work and provide visual material for research and exhibitions, now has a wider application: It provides a window into the past to the people from the villages the pictures show, and, as Harrisson had anticipated, documents the social and cultural changes that occurred in their communities. The extent of their value as a cultural resource is indicated by the ongoing uses and collaborations between the source communities and the Sarawak Museum.
‘A past that had not died in individual memories’: The Archive as a Cultural Resource
Critiques of the ideologies and practices of colonial governments’ cultural institutions have achieved some success in reframing long-standing forms of authority and proprietorship and in encouraging more democratic recognition of rights and expertise held by subject communities (Pratt, 1991; Clifford, 2002 and 2004; Cohn, 1996; Clapperton, 2010). The way in which images replicate a real moment and a real scene has enabled researchers to revisit colonial photographs in order to produce subtler evaluations of the circumstances that led to their creation (Banks, 2003; Hight and Sampson, 2002; Morton and Edwards, 2009).
Photographs are relevant for source communities even if they were created by colonial institutions and used by colonial administrations to maintain frameworks of governance. In the rural communities in which historical documents are scarce, the photographs from the Sarawak Museum archive provide points of reference for group as well as individual memory, showing people, places, activities, scenes, and objects linked to their history. For communities in which oral narratives are the dominant means of transmitting knowledge, photographs provide proof and context for their history, for the counter-narratives that concern “a past that had not died in individual memories, but which had been suppressed in the European-recorded historiography” (Binney and Chaplin, 2003, p. 100). Under these circumstances, photographs serve as “visual proof of a community’s account of past events” (Peers and Brown, 2003, p. 6).
The Sarawak Museum, with Harrisson at the helm, collaborated with the colonial authorities through which it was funded and to which it was responsible. The material’s background influences its interpretation today. This includes Harrisson’s employment of the methods and theories he had established during his time with Mass-Observation.
The responses from villagers to the images from the Sarawak Museum archive indicate that the creation of the images and their context within the colonial institution of the museum were secondary considerations for the source communities. Now the images provide detailed and often personal insights into the past. The material of the archive has thus become a cultural resource despite its provenance. The photographs document local cultural heritage in complex detail that can be interpreted only through the individual and communal memory of the participants.
Christine Horn is a PhD. candidate at the Swinburne University Institute of Social Research in Melbourne, Australia. She has worked with the photographs from the Sarawak Museum archive since 2010.
I would like to thank Ian McShane for advice and critique in writing this article. I would also like to thank Ellie Rennie and Helmut Lueckenhausen, and Michaela Callaghan for their feedback and support. The research was funded through a Swinburne University Postgraduate Research Award. Ethics approval was granted by the Swinburne University Human Research Ethics Committee.
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- Pickering, M., and D. Chaney. “Democracy and Communication: Mass Observation 1937–1943.” In Journal of Communication, vol. 36, no. 1, 1986: 41–56.
- Pinney, C. Photography and Anthropology. London: Reaktion, 2011.
- Poole, D. “An Excess of Description: Ethnography, Race, and Visual Technologies.” In Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 34, 2005: 159–79.
- Pratt, M. L. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” In Profession, vol. 91, 1991: 33–40.
- Prins, Harald E. L. “Visual Media and the Primitivist Perplex.” In Ginsburg, Faye D., Lila Abu-Lughod and Brian Larkin (eds.) Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
- Richards, J., and D. Sheridan. Mass Observation at the Movies. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987.
- Sarawak Annual Report, Great Britain Colonial Office. London: H.M.’s Stationery Office, 1949.
- ___. London: H.M.’s Stationery Office, 1958.
- Sheridan, D. “Mass-Observing the British.” In History Today, vol. 34, no. 4, 1984: 42–46.
- ___. “Reviewing Mass-Observation: The Archive and Its Researchers Thirty Years On.” In Forum: Qualitative Social Research, vol. 1, no. 3, 2000.
- Smith, D. A. “From Nunavut to Micronesia—Feedback and Description, Visual Repatriation, and Online Photographs of Indigenous Peoples.” In Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, vol. 3, no. 1, 2008.
- Summerfield, P. “Mass-Observation: Social Research or Social Movement?” In Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 20, no. 3, 1985: 439–52.
- Walker, J. “With One Eye on the Main Game” (book review). In Island, no. 60/61, 1994: 142–47.
- Willcock, H. D. “Mass-Observation.” In American Journal of Sociology, vol. 48, no. 4, 1934: 445–56.
- Wong, K. F. Pagan Innocence. London: Jonathan Cape, 1960.
- ___. Borneo Scene. Kuching, Malaysia: Anna Photo Company, 1979.
- Wright, L. R., H. Morrison, and K. F. Wong. Vanishing World: The Ibans of Borneo. Boston: Weatherhill, 1972.
In the words of one of its early curators, “[T]he task of the museum was from the beginning limited to Borneo, and first of all objects were to be collected which were indicative of Sarawak. ‘Sarawak for the natives,’ such was the motto.” The museum, he noted, focused on the natural sciences as well as on its “rich ethnographic collections” (Mjöberg, 1929, p. 141).
For example, Harrisson and the anthropologist Derek Freeman clashed so dramatically that Freeman suffered a nervous breakdown. He subsequently embarked on an unsuccessful campaign to discredit Harrisson and have him dismissed from the museum (see Caton, 2009; Heimann, 1998).
According to the Sarawak Annual Report of the British colonial government, K. F. Wong donated a series of photographs to the archive in 1956: “The Photographic Archives have been further enriched by gifts from Mr. K. F. Wong, F.R.P.S. . . . which will undoubtedly be of great interest in the future, when much of what they record will be otherwise difficult to visualise or even imagine” (1956, p. 151). Unfortunately, I was unable to locate these images at the archive.

domain: library


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domain: pet


- 2x Vonyx 170.342 12 Inch Active DJ Speaker 600W
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text:
* The BSE index down 0.06 percent and the NSE index down 0.18 percent. * Domestic share weakness comes on the back of weaker Asian shares that fell as investors were cautious ahead of corporate earnings season for the last quarter of 2012 and the European Central Bank's policy meeting later in the week. * Oil companies fell to profit-taking after a recent rally: Hindustan Petroleum Corp down 1.5 percent after adding 13.54 percent in previous four sessions while Bharat Petroleum Corp fell 0.7 percent. * Oil and Natural Gas Corp shares are down 0.7 percent while Oil India Ltd is down 0.6 percent.
Trending On Reuters
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Gold demand slows as China eyes equities; lack of weddings in India weighs Full Article

domain: economics


text:
Emirates, the Dubai-based airline, recently introduced the Arabian Air Pass program. Valid for passengers planning to visit Dubai from outside the Gulf and the Middle East, the pass offers travelers the chance to take additional low-cost flights to destinations like Amman, Bahrain, Beirut, Cairo, Damascus, Dammam, Doha, Kuwait, Muscat, Riyadh, Sana and Tehran. There are no minimum-stay restrictions but the additional trips must all originate from Dubai and must be completed before travelers return to their home destinations.
Sample one-way economy fares include $50 to Doha and Muscat, and $150 to Amman, Beirut, Cairo, Damascus and Tehran. The pass is available to travelers who purchase a round-trip ticket to Dubai that costs at least $500 and must be purchased at the same time as the original ticket. No more than six one-way tickets may be bought with each pass. The offer ends Oct. 31 (www.emirates.com/usa).Continue reading the main story

domain: geography


It’s just past lunchtime on a Friday afternoon and Angela Lansbury opens the cupboard in her compact and modern kitchen. It is stocked with HobNobs and she offers to put some on a plate while explaining why she’s going to resist. About a month ago, she woke up with a mysterious stress fracture in her right hip and now, standing in front of the open fridge, she points to the calcium beverage she’s had to constantly drink.
“I’ve put on weight from all the muscle milk,” she says, sounding alarmed. “I had to drink more than a pint — twice a day!” Whatever weight she’s gained doesn’t show. Her trim figure and lively manner betray that of a woman half her age and as she elegantly moves around her kitchen, dressed in a tailored tweed blazer and black slacks, gold earrings that match a gold brooch, it’s hard to believe that she’s nearly 87.
Lansbury has received numerous lifetime achievement awards and she’s earned them. One of Britain’s most beloved, durable and revered actors is now currently starring on Broadway in Gore Vidal’s The Best Man, eight times a week. Doesn’t she get tired? “I’m the bionic woman,” she giggles, picking up the tray with tea and biscuits and moving us into the living room to chat.
Other shows have required a lot more energy, she says, citing her performance as Madame Arcati in Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit, as an example.
But then, she prefers hard work and it pays off. She won the Tony Award in 2009 for the role and it was her fifth win, having won previously for Mame, Gypsy and Sweeney Todd.
She leans forward in the armchair and pours tea into white china cups.
The flat here in Manhattan is one of three homes. She still has a house in Los Angeles, and a home in Ireland. The condo we’re in now was purchased after the death in 2003 of her husband, Peter Shaw, whose smiling face looks out from a picture frame nearby.
Decorated with a minimalist aesthetic, with furniture in muted colours and a flat-screen television, the apartment is pleasant, contemporary and functional. Hardly ostentatious or glittering with theatricality – there’s nothing that would indicate it belongs to a legendary showbusiness matriarch. For a woman who’s won five Tony Awards, 19 Emmy Awards, and received three Academy Award nominations, there is a noticeable absence of memorabilia. Or maybe it’s just not the sort of place one would expect a Miss Marple to live. Part of what has entrenched Lansbury in the psyche of an audience spanning generations is her ability to disappear into the roles she plays. Whether it’s Miss Eglantine Price from Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Mama Rose from Gypsy or Jessica Fletcher, the bestselling author and amateur detective from the television series Murder, She Wrote.
There have been many surprises in Lansbury’s life, but perhaps the biggest of all is that she has remained current. “It surprises me that I didn’t get left behind,” she says. “I’ve always managed to keep up. In the process of keeping busy, I’ve always stayed relevant. And that is a surprise to me.
“Because they still will allow me to get out there – particularly in the theatre – it’s total illusion. If you can sell that you’re 50, the audience will believe you.” Lansbury made her first film in 1944 when she appeared as the cockney maid in Gaslight with Ingrid Bergman (for which she received one of her Oscar nominations). She has never not been in showbusiness; never not been working. Was there ever a time she felt like giving up?
“Yes, there was a time when I was a young mother when I thought I don’t want to do this because it’s taking me away from my children. I finally arranged my life so that I could bring them with me. They were young.” She takes a sip of tea. “My career has, at times, driven a huge wedge in what I would have liked to have had in my family life. I couldn’t have both.”
Born in London in 1925, Lansbury reflects on her childhood in an undramatic way, painting a picture of someone who never felt young. Angela Brigid Lansbury wasn’t a diligent student, more of a “daydreamer” in school, and learnt from life rather than academia. When the Second World War broke out in 1939, the school she attended in London was evacuated and relocated to the suburbs to avoid the Blitz. Lansbury, then 12, didn’t want to leave her mother alone.
“She let me stay at home and had a tutor come for a year or so,” she says, “before realising I had a talent to imitate and act and take on personalities. She allowed me to try out for a scholarship in London when I was 13. I was very grown up for my age.” Lansbury went to the theatre alone a lot as a child but never imagined herself on the stage. Her paternal grandfather, George Lansbury, was a founder of the Labour Party – and her father, Edgar, was a politician; they were very close. Her childhood, she says, was filled with the arts and politics.
But this happiness didn’t last long. In 1935, Lansbury’s father passed away; she was nine years old. “The loss shaped me in ways I’ve never fully understood,” she says quietly. “How it impacted on my young life? I just went on. And on. But I was depressed. Bored. School was something I had to get over. As a youngster, the greatest thing that happened to me was being allowed to go with my sister to Ireland when I was about 11. I went with her, alone.” She points to a painting on the wall of a cottage by the sea. It’s not the cottage she went to, but reminiscent of it.
“It’s on the West Coast in County Mayo — a wonderfully barren, glorious place.” This was an escape from London and a taste of freedom. Her sister was a student in acting school and they went there together for three years. It was an “eye opener” and she lived to go back. Ireland became a place of refuge for Lansbury; it still is.
As the Second World War approached and air raid sirens sounded, the family hid in the basement of their house in Hampstead. “My sister was panicked,” she says. “We thought bombs would come down then and there.” Her sister was 17 and as she describes the scene, I point out that, despite being five years younger, she depicts herself as the calm one. She nods.“I was a stoic. I don’t know that I had the understanding. Maybe I wasn’t old enough.” In 1940, the family left London and moved to America. It was Lansbury, her mother, Moyna MacGill, who had been a successful West End actress, and Lansbury’s younger twin brothers. Her sister stayed behind and married Peter Ustinov.
They lived in New York for two years and she received a scholarship to study drama at the Lucy Fagan school for dramatic art. Soon her mother got a green card, and they were both able to work.
How she got from there to Gaslight is a leap. She explains her mother went on tour in Canada and instead of taking the train back to New York, where Lansbury was with her brothers, she sent a wire instructing her to give up the flat and come out to Los Angeles. At this point, Lansbury had finished drama school. She was 16 years old when she took the train to California.
“I became someone other than Brigid Lansbury then.” As evacuees from the war, they’d been sponsored by an American family and living on a shoestring; finally, they had some money. It was an exciting time. She was given a contract at MGM and was soon going out to lunch at places like the Brown Derby, “Swooning over the actors I had admired.” She recalls playing Gin Rummy with MGM head Louis B Mayer. “I was so young – 18 – I used to drive myself in the family car to his house for dinner parties and often he would entertain British royalty – that’s why I was invited. It was like a state dinner. I wasn’t into drinking but at one of those dinners there were cocktails, then wine – then I’d be driving myself home…” She trails off. “Now I look back, well, he should have had someone pick me up!”
Lansbury was never wild and has nothing but kind things to say about her co-stars. Ingrid Bergman? “Lovely.” Elizabeth Taylor? “Beautiful.” Despite being what she describes as “an old soul” she was unsophisticated when it came toromance. She married her first husband, Richard Cromwell, when she was 19. He was a handsome leading man — charming, knowledgeable about jazz, and that interested her. He was quite a bit older, too. “I haven’t thought about it because the marriage was so brief,” she says. She tilts her head to one side adding it up. “I think he was 37 at the time.” The marriage ended seven months later, after she came home to find her husband’s car and clothes gone and a note reading, ‘I’m sorry darling, I can’t go on.’ Cromwell was gay — something she wasn’t made aware of until after they separated. “I knew how to act mature but I wasn’t,” she smiles faintly, referring to being in the dark about this. She found out only when it was about to be in the newspapers. A woman from MGM’s press office called to let her know.
She was in love and suitably heartbroken. “It was a terrible shock. I was devastated. But once I got over the shock, I said, ‘all right then, I’m going to take charge of my life and see that I never hurt like this again.’” They divorced and remained friends until Cromwell’s death in 1960. “It made me in a way, a little bit tough,” she says. “I think it did. I know it did.
“I said, ‘all right, I’m going to show everyone’.” A short time after, she met the man who would become her second husband and lifelong companion. Peter Shaw was a British actor and they met through a mutual friend. They hit it off immediately – bonding over being two Brits in Hollywood. “Oh,” she says, still sounding awed, “He was a dazzling looking man. He had come out of the army and was so good looking people said he had to be an actor.” Shaw later became one of the top agents in Hollywood and managed Lansbury’s career. They were together for 54 years. “We were a unit. We didn’t shut out the world but we were almost too self-contained. He totally controlled my career as time went by and made it possible for me to do what I did – we managed it somehow, someway.” They had two children, and went through a terrible period when both of them developed problems with drugs. There was also the house fire in Malibu when their home burnt to the ground. So in 1971, the family packed up and moved to Ireland, staying there for 10 years. “It helped us immeasurably,” she says. Reflecting back on it now, she suspects she could have stayed there permanently.
It has been nine years since Shaw’s death and the grief is still raw. When she speaks of him, tears appear in her eyes. “You never get over it. You put it into a compartment.” She is a bit of a loner and admits she desperately misses having a strong person by her side. “You don’t ever get over that need. But that’s…” She exhales. “Well I was lucky to have had it.” Lansbury has a magnanimous nature and never felt anyone was in competition with her. When she considers why, she chalks it up to the fact that she never felt she was threatening to anyone else because of her looks.
From the beginning of her career, she has played characters much older than herself. She played the mother of Laurence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate who in real life, was only a few years her junior.
She was never obsessed with looking younger and coasted along without being particularly vain.
“I feel about 50,” she says, cheerfully. “I don’t remember ever saying, ‘oh my god, I’m 40’, I just drifted through and never thought about it.” There was a day when it hit her — she didn’t look the way she felt on the inside. “You see yourself and that’s the shocker. I overheard someone say, ‘well she’s an old lady, you can’t expect her to do that’ and I was shocked.” She is for the most part easy-going unless it’s a project in which she has had to take the reins – in which case she won’t let people interfere. The glaring example of this would be Murder, She Wrote, the television show which ran for 12 years, at one point watched by 23 million people a week.
“I felt a strong sense of responsibility for the quality of that show,” she says, with a gentle firmness. “I did put out a strong message that I wanted standards to be extremely high. I wanted it to be something special.” And if something went wrong? It’s not her style to lose her temper on the set. Instead, she would go somewhere private. She lowers her voice and recreates her anger. “For Chrissakes, get that person out of here.” Spoken with controlled authority.
She doesn’t miss playing Jessica Fletcher, perhaps because she did it for so long. The one character she does miss would be Mrs Lovett from Sweeney Todd, a role she originated on Broadway. Although Mame, too, was a favourite – “a golden era for me” – and with an uncharacteristically disapproving tone says she thought Lucille Ball in the movie was “a terrible mistake”. She shakes her head. “They thought she would be a box office success.” When asked if she saw Tim Burton’s film version of Sweeney Todd, she smiles politely. “No comment.” The silence hangs in the air. “It was a different take on the story. I saw it with Stephen [Sondheim] and everybody. We all went.” Again, silence. Then finally, she finds something positive: “I thought Johnny Depp was wonderful.” She pauses for a moment. “I’d love to work with Johnny Depp actually.” As a love interest? She laughs.
Time has passed and the second pot of tea is now empty. After I leave, she’ll have a nap. Then at 5.45pm she’ll head to the theatre for the curtain call at 7pm. In between acts, she’ll read They Were So Young – stories of veterans of the Second World War in her dressing room. Around 10pm she’ll head out for supper with friends after the show. The following day she has two shows to do. And when this job is over she’ll be “on the market again”. She likes to feel there is something coming up. Something to look forward to.
'The Best Man' is at Gerald Schoenfeld Theater, New York until July 22; thebestmanonbroadway.com
This also appeared in SEVEN magazine this Sunday, free with the Sunday Telegraph. Follow SEVEN on Twitter @TelegraphSeven


text:
IDF drops leaflets threatening Syrian army over Golan Heights
Israel warns Syrian soldiers not to cooperate with Hezbollah
The Israeli army dropped leaflets in southern Syria on Wednesday, warning Syrian soldiers not to cooperate with Hezbollah, hours after carrying out strikes on an observation post and a "financial building" near the border town of Quneitra.
The leaflets, written in Arabic and addressed to "soldiers of the Syrian [Arab] army," resemble similar leaflets dropped in Syria in the past.
They feature the silhouette of an eagle, the symbol of the 210th "Bashan" division of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), responsible for defending the border between Israel and Syria on the Golan Heights.
In the pamphlet, the Israeli military appears to take responsibility for Tuesday night's strikes, contrary to its habit of not publicly acknowledging its raids in Syria.
"To the leaders and members of the Syrian army, we have warned you and continue to warn you, we will not stop as long as your cooperation with Hezbollah continues," the leaflet read.
The leaflet also directly names the Hezbollah official who Israel says facilitates relations between the Iranian-backed terror group and the Syrian army: Jawad Hasham, the son of Hajj Hasham, who heads Hezbollah's operations along the Syrian border.
The leaflet states that Syrian soldiers "repeatedly" allowed Jawad Hashem "to enter the Syrian army's infrastructure, including the finance building and the Rwihinah base," where the strikes took place.
"Those who cooperate with Hezbollah are targets," the document warns.

domain: politics