About twenty years ago the morning the front door bell rang. At the time I was living in a Brunswick Road barrel fronted Regency... »
The Fourth Conductor – Sir Henry Wood
There is a fourth conductor that David would have added to this list that of Sir Henry J. Wood. In his teens and until he was called up to serve in the British Army David joined the audience at London’s Queens Hall for the Henry Wood Promenade concerts each summer. It was a musical... »
Southern Railway, from 1948 to 1952
“…my uncle Laurie found that there was a small unit of four people making documentary and training films in the nether regions of Waterloo Station, well beneath the notice of a trade union. My father set up his Blickensderfer (the oldest typewriter in the world) on our dining-room table and dashed off a letter... »
Account Book, 1962 to 1976
Surviving in David’s papers was this account book which gives a detailed list of the feature films and TV commercials he worked on after leaving Transport until the height of his early career in 1976 and Joseph Andrews. It contains only one reference to London Transport, in 1962 , undoubtedly acting as a freelance. Share/Save »
The Long Night Haul, 1957 for BTF
Although the film isn’t mentioned in David’s two memoirs, The Long Night Haul (19 minutes) is an ambitious and complex film celebrating the foundation of the British Road Service’s general haulage truck service. Sometimes perhaps David shot a film which was without any notable anecdotes and thus passes without notice in his canon of... »
The Travolators, 1961 for BTF
This a short, nine minute film to commemorate the construction of the Travolator between the Bank and Waterloo stations in London to supplement the long walk required of City commuters and nicknamed The Drain. The otherwise exemplary box of DVDs, The British Transport Film Collection does not identify any credits. For the only... »
The England of Elizabeth, 1957 for BTF
“Edgar promised Ritchie, who was getting restless, a break to direct and so I took over The England of Elizabeth with John Taylor again. It is nice to have one’s name on the same picture as Vaughan Williams although on the only occasion when I should have met the great man I was sent... »
Care of St.Christophers, 1959 for BTF
“Happily I was now able in small measure to repay some of my debt to Jimmy Ritchie. The next film for me after THE ENGLAND OF ELIZABETH was his first picture as a director, and it turned out to be a very charming one. It was about a railway orphanage in Derby run by... »
Mademoiselle, 1966 for Woodfall
“My first picture with Tony was made in France with an entirely French crew, apart from myself and an editor I didn’t like. Oscar Lewenstein had uncovered a screen-play by Jean Genet written many years before, to while away one of his sojourns inside a French prison, that Genet himself had forgotten about….... »
Snowdrift at Bleath Gill, 1955 for BFT
Snowdrift at Bleak Gill, 1955, directed by Kenneth Fairburn, edited by John Legard and photographed by Bob Paynter. David Watkin was an unacknowledged assistant on this film. The film is 10minutes, largely devoted to the single task of freeing a goods engine and carriages from snowdrifts using a mechanised snow plough and gangs of... »
Blue Pullman, 1960 for BTF
Blue Pullman, 1960 was directed and written by Jimmie Ritchie and photographed by David Watkin and Jack West. It was edited by Hugh Raggett with music by Clifton Parker. The film was shot in colour and lasts almost 23 minutes, exploring the intensive testing of the new 90mph diesel-electric Midland Pullman, and its maiden... »
Light and Vermeer
“I think it is terribly pretentious for people who are cinematographers to go around and say they looked at a painting by such and such a bod. Nothing irritated me more than, when I was doing Catch-22, Mike Nichols said I want it to look like Andrew Wyeth, that sort of thing is a... »
Reflected Light/Direct Light
David first used the technique of reflected light rather than direct lighting on a documentary film he was doing about London Transport buses (All That Mighty Heart 1962). “And it had a scene in Welwyn Garden City. In some house there was a housewife tidying up and vacuuming before getting on a Green Line bus.... »
Pianos at the Mews (from “Clara”)
“A friend had bought a square piano in Bonham’s saleroom with the intention of having it restored as a present for me. Nothing had ever been done and I decided to see to it. Morleys came, looked, and went away to quote. Then by a happy chance there was a commercial at a house... »
The Pigeon
The phone rang on Sunday at its usual Watkin time, around 10.00am. Retreating to the study I arranged myself at the desk for a serious gossip. “Can you come over, dear?” It was ominous. He didn’t start with “My Dear Chris, How are you?…” Some affair of the heart needing my wise counsel? An urgent reading... »
Holleyman and Treacher, and how I met Mister Watkin
In 1989 when I first came to Brighton from antiquarian Norwich I little expected to find an equivalent to Thomas Crowe, or the Scientific Anglian. But to have the shops of Colin Page and Holleyman and Treacher within a minute’s walk of each other was exhilarating. Rather than join my Art School colleagues in... »
Collecting Books
David Watkin was a dedicated collector of books. He bought carefully but knowledgeably from the main dealers in Britain and the US, in person or by catalogue. Even when he feared poverty in his later years (never with much conviction) I saw him contemplating catalogue items such as the Complete Plays of Vanbrugh for... »
David Watkin’s Library
For a man who earned his living through images, David Watkin was astonishingly confident with the written word, reading and writing and declaiming. At various stages of our friendship I remember his completing Thomas Mallory, Proust and The Faerie Queen. He took particular delight in Shakespeare’s plays and mined deeply within the two volume... »
Keith and Vivienne, the Classical Longplayer
David’s regular perambulations through the streets of Brighton were clearly ritualistic. 1. Walking into town. 2. Specialist newsagent for Gay Magazine. 3. Packets of Coffee and Tea from Robert’s shop. 4. Cds at Keith and Vivienne’s – The Classical Longplayer 5. Books at Colin Page, then Holleyman and Treacher, both in Duke Street. Over the years, his favourite shops were... »
Conductors Great and Small
His Gods were his Gods. No arguments allowed. His Villains, either through imagined incompetence or banality, were to be universally condemned by me, my family, and by any friends I could ask. Any photographs of the Villains going about their legitimate business on the podium were to be held aloft for general merriment. Herbert von... »
Listening to Music with David
He got the greatest pleasure having you share a new piece of music, a recently discovered interpretation, a revived antique recording. As a listening companion, it was made clear from the beginning that my responses could only run parallel to his, that I was there to share, and not to ask for further explanation... »
