Prof Pierce Grace outlines a gripping new book that sheds light on the murky and bizarre spy operations of WWII.

In 1943, having defeated the Germans and Italians in North Africa, the Allied commanders considered their next move. From Tunisia, the next logical step was to invade ‘Fortress Europe’ through Sicily and knock Italy out of the war.

The Americans and Canadians would have preferred to attack France, but to minimise casualties Churchill argued for an assault on the ‘soft underbelly’ of the Axis. Unfortunately, the Germans and Italians also realised that Sicily was the obvious next target and set about defending it strongly. Enter the murky world of espionage and spies.

To convince the Germans that Sicily was not the target, a number of elaborate deception plans were put in place. Operation Barclay created a fictitious 12th Army comprising 12 divisions that was going to attack via Greece through the Balkans. Bogus troop movements and all the radio traffic associated with an army were generated and Greek maps and interpreters obtained.

A more macabre ruse was ‘Operation Mincemeat’, which is the subject of this book. Basically, a dead body was dressed in the uniform of a Royal Marines officer and floated ashore from a submarine off the Spanish coast. Attached to the body was an attaché case containing important documents about the invasion of Greece and Sardinia. British Intelligence was certain these would find their way into German hands via ‘neutral’ Spain.

The two men who dreamed up this operation were an RAF officer, Charles Cholmondeley (pronounced ‘Chumly’) and Lt. Cmdr. Ewen Montagu of Naval Intelligence, a member of an immensely rich Jewish banking family. Montagu’s brother, Ivor, was a table tennis champion and a Soviet spy.

Against all the odds, Operation Mincemeat was a huge success and the Germans defended Greece and Sardinia and did not send any reinforcements to Sicily until three days after the Allied invasion had begun. It also ended the German offensive in the east at Kursk, and when the Russians counter-attacked they did not stop until they got to Berlin.

Ben MacIntyre’s book is a magnificent telling of the story and the strange people who inhabited the espionage world during the Second World War. Lots of famous people are here, from Hitler to Churchill and the generals on both sides.

But the most extraordinary group are the absolutely eccentric members of the intelligence world.

A novelist would have difficulty dreaming up the names and exploits of some of these people: Bentley Purchase, the London coroner who forged the death certificate of a Welsh vagrant (Glyndwr Michael) who had committed suicide and then put him in a deep freeze until he was required to reappear as Major William Martin, R.M.; Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the forensic pathologist who advised on the preservation of the body and whose low opinion of Spanish pathologists was that they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between death from drowning or rat poison; Lt Norman Limbury Auchinleck Jewell, a fearless submarine captain who once torpedoed a whale in the mistaken belief that it was a U-boat; a host of British, Spanish and German agents, each one odder than the other; and the women in MI5 who provided love letters and photographs to be planted on ‘Major Martin’ for authenticity. Even Ian Fleming (007) makes a brief appearance in the story.

For the plan to work it was important that the Spanish would hand over the documents in ‘Major Martin’s’ case to the Germans to copy and then hand them back to the British, who could tell whether the papers had been interfered with or not. Unluckily, the Spanish navy, who were very pro-British, got hold of the case first and wanted to return it unopened to the British consul.

After a lot of skullduggery, the Germans did get the documents. When Lt. Col. Alexis Baron von Roenne, Chief of German Military Intelligence and committed anti-Nazi, deemed them genuine, that was enough for Hitler. He moved 18 Germans divisions around his European chessboard in anticipation of an attack, but none of them to Sicily.

The British were discretely following the German dilemma as to whether the papers were real or not through radio intercepts decoded at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire. The Germans, with the exception of Goebbels, completely believed the lie and on July 10, 1943 the Allies stormed ashore on the Sicilian coast to minimal resistance. And the rest is history.

This book is a great read. The story is presented as a straightforward narrative and has copious photographs and notes for the historically minded. The story of Operation Mincemeat has been told many times before but this book must count as one of the best versions yet.

Operation Mincemeat
Ben MacIntyre
Bloomsbury, London 2010
ISBN 978 1 4088 0921 1.
Reviewed by Prof Pierce Grace

Aoife Connors brings you a round-up of the upcoming medically-related programmes on television and radio.

Your life in their hands

For those who want to see what it’s really like to be a junior doctor in a UK casualty room, a new series with the inside story hits BBC 3 screens from Tuesday, February 22, at 9pm for six weeks.

Baptism of fire: junior doctors Andy Kong, Adam Beaney, Lucy Holmes, Katherine Conroy, Keir Shields, Suzi Bachelor and Jon Barclay

Junior Doctors — Your Life in Their Hands follows the working lives of seven recently qualified junior doctors as they hit the wards of the Royal Victoria Infirmary Hospital and the General, Newcastle, after five tough years of study.

As the doctors embark on their new careers, they lay both their professional and private lives bare for the cameras, and the producers say the series will focus on how the doctors cope with juggling their responsibilities with being a young adult.

During the rotation period, the junior doctors will live together for what the programme producers describe as “three emotionally-charged months”, while working in roles that take viewers to the heart of some of the hospitals’ busiest departments; the Emergency Department (ED), gastro, paediatrics and plastic surgery.

Profiled in the six-part factual series will be Adam, Katherine and Lucy, who are in their first foundation year, and Jon, Suzi, Keir and Andy, who are in their second foundation year.

In episode one, Suzi is about to start her first shift under the watchful eye of ED veteran Dr Bas Sen and finds herself thrown in at the deep-end with a cardiac arrest case. It doesn’t get any easier for the training doctor on night duty as she juggles Friday night binge-drinkers, the reality of road traffic accidents and suicide attempts.

Katherine’s first day nerves, meanwhile, are not eased as the realisation hits that she is the only junior doctor on the plastics ward. But luckily Keir comes to her rescue when the workload starts to pile up.

Meanwhile on the respiratory ward, the frustration of losing his ‘pen’ provides Adam with the only chance to practice his surgical skills, while viewers will also see Andy join his rotation in paediatrics.

There are ever more trials in store for Lucy on her first day, as patients in the gastroenterology ward become agitated and aggressive. For Jon, every moment of his time is taken up with running between an emergency as part of the hospital’s crash team, playing his rugby or practising with his band for their next gig.

The junior doctors all face the same struggles and rely heavily on the nursing staff, their medical peers and each other to get from shift to shift, particularly throughout their first diagnosis, treatment and recovery experiences.

The second episode the following Tuesday will see how the junior doctors cope with a typical night in the ED, with binge drinking, bad behaviour and brawling the norm. Then, in a well-deserved night off, all of the junior doctors face up to the limits of what they can achieve as doctors when they reveal which superhero power they would like to have to help make people better.

Here to Maternity
Closer to home, the reality of hospital drama continues this month as the excitement and activity that goes on within an Irish maternity ward in the HSE South hits Irish screens with the new series From Here to Maternity on RTÉ One television (Tuesday, February 22, 8.30pm). The programme is part of a six-part observational series exploring the life and goings-on within one of Europe’s busiest and most advanced maternity units.

The programme goes inside the Cork maternity ward, meeting expectant mothers, excited fathers and the busy nursing and obstetrics staff. Viewers can watch as the staff help and prepare patients to face the trials and tribulations of pregnancy and childbirth. In particular, the series will follow the couple’s journey from the joys of their first scan to the birth and beyond as they begin their new lives with the newborn at home.

Pancreatic cancer
Tuning into radio, BBC Radio 4’s Dr Mark Porter continues his Case Notes series with a close-up look at pancreatic cancer. Every year about 8,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and the five-year survival rate remains depressingly low.

Dr Porter will investigate the causes, diagnosis and treatment of the disease on the programme to be broadcast on Tuesday, February 15 at 9pm (it will also be repeated the following day, Wednesday 16, at 4.30pm).

Next week’s investigation promises to be quite simulating radio, if we are to go by some of the most recent shows. In the current series, Dr Porter has looked at ‘End of life care’ (February 1), ‘Glaucoma’ (January 26), and hepatitis C (Jan 18), and most of these past shows are available to podcast via the BBC Radio 4 website.

Jacqueline (middle) and Sally-Anne Marshall with mum Caroline feature in ‘Children’s Hospital’

In her preview of upcoming medical-related TV and radio programmes, Aoife Connors looks forward to a fly-on-the-wall series based in a Manchester Children’s Hospital.

As the TV schedule for winter 2011 gets into full swing, ITV recently launched its factual documentaries list for the season, with some medicine-related programmes and dramas that may be of interest. One that caught my eye was Children’s Hospital, which is the second in the series but will be presented for the first time by Lorraine Kelly.

Speaking about the upcoming documentary, Kelly said: “I met Jack, one of the young patients at the [Manchester] Children’s Hospital, when the first series aired earlier this year and he won my heart. I’m thrilled to be part of the new series – the children and staff at the hospital are truly inspirational, and I’m really looking forward to meeting them.”

Three million viewers
The first series attracted an audience of more than three million people and the producers promise that uplifting and moving scenes will follow in this series, which will be broadcast on ITV1 at 8pm every Friday for nine weeks. Approximately 200,000 children and their families received 24-hour care from more than 1,000 medical staff at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital every year. Almost 3,000 patients — from newborns to 16-year-olds — receive emergency care at the hospital’s 24-hour emergency department.

The documentary promises to be moving, emotive, funny and heart warming, according to its producers, who describe Children’s Hospital as capturing all of the drama, tension, action and excitement that life in a children’s hospital presents.

The new series presents new and familiar faces, ground-breaking surgery and pioneering medicine in the hospital’s research department. A must see, perhaps, for the next head of our National Paediatric Hospital.

Alcohol bans
The first UK ‘Drinking Banning Order’ was handed down to Laura Hall, who hails from Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, England, last year. Hall hit the headlines when she was barred from purchasing or consuming alcohol anywhere in England or Wales. In April 2010, she was given the banning order after more than 40 arrests, 29 convictions, tagging and two custodial sentences, all of which failed to curtail her destructive behaviour.

Going beyond the tabloid headlines, details of Hall’s life and behaviours will be revealed in My Battle with Booze, another of the ‘Dangerous Pleasures Season’ of documentaries on BBC Three (Monday, January 24, 9pm).

150 units
Since her expulsion from school at age 15, Hall achieved no qualifications, but a regular alcohol consumption of 150 units became the norm for the young girl. That was until at the age of 21, when she decided the time had come to combat her six-year drinking binge.

The new documentary focuses on the impact that Hall’s addiction has had on her everyday life, and particularly examines her time in rehab. During the six-month insight into her life, viewers are given a taste of the highs and lows that are part and parcel of her addiction and recovery.

The documentary, like others in the ‘Dangerous Pleasures Series’, follows various young people’s pursuit of pleasure, particularly in a world of increasing excess.

The Scottish paradox
For something a little different, BBC Radio this week features Iain Macwhirter as he explores why Glasgow still records unexpectedly high rates of mortality compared to the low levels of deprivation in the Scottish city.

Presenter Macwhirter has suffered from heart disease and reports that consultants have shrugged their shoulders when asked to discuss the matter, declaring it was a result of being Scottish. However, Macwhiter questions this and wants to know whether his health has been affected.

In the programme (BBC Radio 4, Monday, January 24, 11am), Macwhirter tackles the latest statistics suggesting that Glasgow has been overtaken in the health stakes by eastern European cities struggling to shrug off the legacy of communism. The programme, however, highlights how Glasgow is being left behind by Liverpool and Manchester statistics, which show that Glaswegians are dying younger, whatever their wealth.

Macwhirter’s radio documentary promises to investigate exactly why this is happening.

Dr John Wallace looks at the career of Academy Award-winner Greer Garson, star of Random Harvest, Mrs Miniver and the superb Goodbye Mr Chips.
Irish actors are much sought-after in Hollywood these days. Stars like Pierce Brosnan, Liam Neeson, Jonathan Rhys-Myers, Brendan Gleeson and the recent Golden Globe-winning Colin Farrell and Gabriel Byrne are just some of the Irish personalities that have just fought their way through Hollywood.

However, the Irish have played a major role in American cinema since the first silent movies in the early 1900s. These rudimentary, early films were made in primitive barns and studios in New York City.
By the late 1930s, Hollywood, on the west coast, was at the pinnacle of its golden age. Movie sound had now been perfected and the search for English-speaking talent continued, but now worldwide.
Louis B. Mayer, head of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio, always knew what he wanted. And he wanted Irish actress Greer Garson. “Greer, you belong in Hollywood,” the studio mogul insisted, and he was used to having his way. Garson was a reluctant convert from stage to film. However, despite her initial hesitation, she went on to become one of Hollywood’s most enduring stars.
Eileen Greer Garson was born in 1904 in Co Down. While quite young, her father died suddenly and the family moved to London. She later graduated from London and Grenoble Universities.
Subsequently, jobless and broke, she headed back to London where she was be-friended by Laurence Olivier, who launched her stage career.
When she finally, and reluctantly, moved to Hollywood she was left to ‘cool her heels’ while Mayer tried to figure out what to do with her. But director Sam Wood knew immediately what she should do, though her name was not even on the screen-test list.
h4. Goodbye Mr Chips
Goodbye Mr Chips, directed by Wood, made Greer Garson a star. The film is about a shy teacher devoted to school life who only emerges from his shell when he meets Greer Garson, the future Mrs Chips. Though she turned down the part initially, Garson made cinema history by her depiction of a woman who draws out the scholarly title character, played by Robert Donat. She was hailed for her part in this 1939 adaptation of the James Hilton novel. The film earned her the first of seven Oscar nominations.
Her co-star Robert Donat, who played the long-lived Mr Chips, was an English, stage-trained actor of Polish origin. By 1935, he could have been a major international star, better known than Leslie Howard or Laurence Olivier.
However, he suffered from chronic asthma, a stammer and a ‘profound tentativeness’. Though elocution lessons helped him conquer his stammer, illness seriously restricted his acting career. He was preoccupied with doubts and obstacles and his asthma was a perpetual handicap.
In 25 years as a film actor, Donat made just 19 films. He won an Oscar for one in 1939, opposite Greer Garson, for his role in Goodbye, Mr Chips. Robert Donat later starred as a mandarin in The Inn of the Sixth Happiness with Ingrid Bergman, directed by Mark Robson. His part was real enough amid all the sentiment. But he was a dying man as he acted in this impressive film. This was his last part and as he acted, he had oxygen cylinders positioned just off-stage.
h4. Random Harvest
Greer Garson also starred in the highly implausible, but emotionally powerful, Random Harvest opposite Ronald Colman in 1942. Mervyn Le Roy directed.
Ronald Colman played Smithy, a shell-shocked officer suffering from amnesia, who was found in the trenches in WWII. He is subsequently rescued from an asylum by Greer Garson’s character.
His psychiatrist at the hospital is portrayed as impeccably mannered, always in formal evening-wear and, naturally, with a slight Austrian intonation.
Later, knocked down on the street, Colman’s immediate memory of the impoverished Garson vanishes and his old, lost memory of his wealthy pre-war life returns. However, Garson waits patently for his whole memory to return, including his recollection of her. Few women would make such a sacrifice.
The film, also based on a novel by James Hilton, was a huge MGM box-office success. James Hilton, a Cambridge graduate, went on to become a major Hollywood scriptwriter in 1940s. He died, aged 54, in California in 1954.
h4. Romantic hero
Greer Garson’s career had not been inhibited by the advent of colour. Equally, Garson’s co-star in Random Harvest, Ronald Colman, had not been troubled by the coming of sound. In fact, his aura of class gained from it. When he spoke, he revealed himself as urbane and sympathetic. His ‘Englishness’ and his manners cast him perfectly as the amused, romantic hero.
Ronald Colman was not a searching actor, but he learned how important consistent underplaying could be. He did not work as often as other stars. Like Daniel Day-Lewis, he hesitated before accepting parts. Scarcity of film roles added to his ‘gentlemanly distinction’. He was an excellent Sidney Carton at MGM in A Tale of Two Cities in 1935. Ronald Colman won an Oscar for A Double Life directed by George Cuckor in 1947. He retired from acting two years later.
h4. Mrs Miniver
It was as Mrs Miniver, in the film of the same name, that Greer Garson really emerged as the heroic, self-sacrificing icon of WWII. In this 1942 film, she played a brave housewife who holds her family together during the Blitz.
She achieved phenomenal popularity in this idealised version of wartime England, opposite her long-serving leading man, the stolid Walter Pidgeon.
In this film, she mediated between the social classes with an emotional strength that was suited to wartime. She was the epitome of middle-class respectability and the quiet virtues of endurance, self-possession and humility.
Her mature, conservative romance with Pidgeon in the film was elevated by the war. She came across as poised, graceful and self-contained, and her performance won her the Oscar for best actress.
But she was never happy with the dutiful, silently-suffering, dedicated-wife roles. Mayer had to ‘call in the marines’ to get her to do Mrs Miniver. One of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood, she was tired of playing 48-year-old matrons. It was a role she frequently and loudly rebelled against. She really wanted to be Bette Davis, shooting her numerous lovers.
h4. Leading actors
After the war, suitable film parts became rare. Garson had made 25 films before meeting and marrying an oil tycoon. She now preferred to spend her time watching the oil fields, waiting for a gusher to come in.
Regarding her tough early upbringing and subsequent success, asked if she would have had it any other way, she said that, definitely, ‘she would have had it some other way’. Garson had a refined acting style, but also intelligence and ability. She starred opposite the leading actors of her day. Eileen Garson died of heart failure April 6, 1996 in Dallas, Texas, far from her native Co Down.
* Goodbye Mr Chips starring Greer Garson is available on DVD. Emeralds in Tinseltown by S. Brennon and B. O’Neill is published by Appletown Press
* John Wallace is a medical doctor with an interest in biography.

Dr Stephen McWilliams plots the links between literary figures and detective novels — some with a strong medical influence — and investigates the possibility of writing his own sleuthing novel.
If the shelves of my local bookshop are to be believed, most 19th-century literary figures were super-sleuths in their time. Indeed, any prominent child of the Victorian era was seemingly a nonentity if they hadn’t solved a murder or two.

Oscar Wilde, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Sandor Ferenczi, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr – the list goes on. They were all at it, busily making astute observations as they examined clues that had otherwise confounded the local constabulary.
h4. The Candlelight Murders
A perfect example is Gyles Brandreth’s Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders, in which the discovery of a 16-year-old boy lying dead in an upstairs room entices the famous 19th-century writer to become a super-sleuth, albeit temporarily. Wilde teams up with a slightly-more-believable accomplice in the shape of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and, between them, they set out to solve the murder, Wilde using his singular genius and sharp wit, and Doyle his astute powers of observation.
Set in 1889, the story sees Wilde use his unique access to all levels of late-Victorian society — from the drawing rooms of the rich and powerful to the backstreets of the criminal underclass, thus allowing him to effectively investigate a string of bizarre and inexplicable killings.
But it is more in Julian Barnes’s novel Arthur and George that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle puts his powers of deduction to the test. Based on true events, the story initially contrasts the circumstances of its two heroes, Doyle – the son of an alcoholic from a run-down area of Edinburgh – and George Edalji – the son of the Indian-born vicar of a small Staffordshire village called Great Wyrley. Doyle, as we know, grows up to become a doctor and one of the most famous writers of his time, while his counterpart becomes an obscure Birmingham-based solicitor, specialising in the intricacies of railway law.
The paths of these two men cross in 1907, when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle intervenes in a miscarriage of justice. George Edalji has been wrongly accused of the ‘Great Wyrley Outrages’, a curious set of true events in which numerous horses and livestock were slashed and maimed.
When Doyle comes to his aid, his efforts eventually culminate in the establishment of the Court of Appeal in English law. Alas, the story is one that might easily have been written for Doyle’s most famous creation – the logical, precise and cocaine-addicted Sherlock Holmes.
h4. Medical background
Doyle originally wrote short stories to supplement his income. Business at his eye practice was reputedly not brisk, and writing helped to fill the lull periods between infrequent consultations. His stories were certainly influenced by his medical background, as in the case of, for example, The War in South Africa, which was based on his experiences as a senior physician during the Boer War.
Sherlock Holmes is, however, the hero for whom Doyle will always be remembered. First introduced to the public in 1887 in A Study in Scarlet, the fictional detective was famously modelled in part on the author’s old university professor, Joseph Bell, to some degree on Edgar Allen Poe’s detective Dupin, and finally on a former criminal named Eugene Francois Vidoq. The latter, of course, became the first chief of the Surete in Paris — on the principle that it takes a thief to catch a thief.
Oscar Wilde and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are not the only literary and historical figures to be portrayed as fictional detectives, however, as we can see in Matthew Pearl’s The Dante Club. The story centres around a number of brutal and bizarre killings, including that of State Supreme Court Justice Healey, who is badly assaulted and then left in his garden to be eaten alive by strategically-placed maggots.
Meanwhile, a minister – Elisha Talbot – is discovered buried upside-down with his feet set on fire, while a third victim, Phinneas Jennison, is found sliced open exactly down the middle. Gruesome stuff.
When members of the Dante Club – a small group of poets who are in the process of translating The Divine Comedy from Italian to English – notice similarities between these murders and the various punishments dealt out in Dante’s Inferno, they set out to solve the crimes in an effort to salvage Dante’s reputation.
h4. Sleuthing skills
Thus the unlikely sleuthing skills of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr, and James Russell Lowell are put to the test. But, when it comes to real-life historical figures solving fictional crimes, it is Jed Rubenfeld’s The Interpretation of Murder that ices the cake. Set in New York in 1909, the novel begins with Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Sandor Ferenczi arriving to deliver a series of lectures on the controversial subject of psychoanalysis.
Within hours, they become involved in trying to crack the case of a brutal attack upon the 17-year-old daughter of a couple of high-society Manhattan denizens. The assault is seemingly so sadistic that the young girl is left with amnesia for the event and an inability to speak. Thus Freud agrees to supervise his host, Dr Stratham Younger, as he analyses the young girl in an effort to trace the perpetrator.
h4. Too implausible?
So, why have so many writers chosen real-life literary and historical figures as their protagonists? Isn’t it all, with the exception of the true story of Arthur and George, just a little too implausible? Possibly so, but as we may be witnessing the inception of a new sub-genre (the marriage of biography and popular crime fiction), it becomes more credible when we note that most of the authors in this emerging trend are, in fact, scholars of the literary and historical figures about whom they write.
h4. A glamorous genre
And isn’t any fictionalised account of celebrity super-sleuthing infinitely more exciting than a simple biography? Crime is a glamorous genre after all, and if the boring old Victorians can be put to work solving murders, all the better for the reader.
Presumably we haven’t seen the last of it, not least because Brandreth’s sequel – Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death – is apparently in the pipeline. In the meantime, I may try my own hand at such a novel – perhaps Emily Brontë and Napoleon III teaming up to solve a spate of highway robberies in 1840s South County Dublin! It just might work.

John Wallace looks at the recently restored film Help! starring The Beatles
What impressed John Lennon about Paul McCartney when they first met in 1957, was that the 16-year-old McCartney could tune his own guitar. Lennon could not. Paul could also play When the Saints Come Marching In on the trumpet.
So, he had no choice but to let McCartney join The Quarry Men, a skiffle band led by Lennon. Soon George Harrison, aged just 14, also joined up. Stuart Sutcliffe joined the group in 1960. He brought an air of ‘bohemian cool’ to the band, before he died of a brain hemorrhage, aged 21, in 1962.

The group had long periods without bookings as Rock & Roll was not tolerated in the Cavern Club in Liverpool. Fortunately, the ‘Silver Beatles’ got a series of engagements in Hamburg — provided that they got a drummer.
In came Pete Best. Playing six-hour stints, they got better by the week. The band appealed to drunken sailors, good-time girls, tough bouncers and the occasional aberrant medical student. They were, however, soon deported for being underage and for committing other ‘misdemeanours’.
When the new, toughened and streamlined Beatles reappeared back in Liverpool they had a major impact. Record shop manager Brian Epstein first saw them in 1961 and was impressed. He promised them a record deal, but only if they wore suits.
h4. Led to their break-up
Epstein proved a calm presence. However, in August 1967, aged just 32, he was found dead in his London home having accidentally taken extra barbiturate tablets. The band’s failure to find a suitable replacement for him as manager would eventually lead to their break-up.
Though the Decca label initially rejected them, by 1962 the Beatles’ tapes reached record producer George Martin at the EMI label Parlophone. A failed classical pianist, Martin quickly became, according to Paul McCartney, ‘part of the magic’. He was flexible, skilful and imaginative. Martin took on The Beatles but insisted that drummer Pete Best was replaced by Ringo Starr who, at the time, was playing at Butlin’s.
In September 1962 the band recorded Love Me Do. It peaked in the charts at number 17 and their national reputation quietly began to escalate.
h4. Please Please Me
The Beatles kick-started 1963 with their second single, Please Please Me. It went to number one in the NME charts, while they were still touring with Helen Shapiro. Their intense, swift rise to stardom was due to a combination of collective good humour and total professionalism.
Their third single, From Me to You, appeared in April. When She Loves You appeared in August, Brien Epstein began booking them into theatres, as opposed to clubs or ballrooms.
The screaming fans had parents (and sociologists) scratching their heads. She Loves You was number one all Autumn, to be replaced by I Want to Hold Your Hand in December.
Britain and Ireland had succumbed to the band; now it was the turn of the rest of the world. While the Parisians naturally preferred Trini Lopez, in the USA 73 million people watched the Beatles appear on The Ed Sullivan Show.
h4. A Hard Day’s Night
The title song wrote itself, according to the film’s director, Richard Lester. Eartha Kitt had recorded an obscure song in 1963 called ‘I Had A Hard Day Last Night’. However, the Beatles’ tune got its title from an actual Ringo saying. Filmed in just eight weeks, it was shot in black-and-white in order to save money.
Liverpool playwright Alun Owen worked with the group on the script and Irish actor Wilfred Brambell, of Steptoe and Son, starred. The film was a hit world-wide and generated $14 million in its first run. A Hard Day’s Night had caught the spirit of the time.
h4. Help!
In February 1965, the Beatles began filming Eight Arms to Hold You, also called Beatles II. The band was not creatively involved in the film, beyond providing the songs. The Beatles preferred not to produce an up-market, colour version of their first film. Director Richard Lester did not want another fictionalised documentary of the band member’s lives. Two days before filming the title sequence, John and Paul sat at the studio piano and composed the title tune, with McCartney providing the counter melody on the backing vocals.
Help! was recorded next day, April 13, at the EMI studio, Abbey Road, with Lennon playing acoustic rhythm guitar.
When I was young and
So much younger than today.
I never needed anybody’s
help in any way.
The title track was Lennon’s most autobiographical song to date and remained a personal and emotional favourite for him.
h4. Ticket To Ride
The film Help!, produced by Walter Shenson, with a screenplay by Marc Behm, was released August 5, 1965. Director Richard Lester wanted an element of holiday about the film and also a concentration on Ringo. The ‘Ringo-in-peril tale’ is a story of ‘transcontinental capers’ with actor Leo McKern in charge of the ring-seeking sect.
The band members were passive recipients of an outsider plot that revolves around Ringo’s possession of a sacrificial ring. In the witty script, the band is chased by cult members from London to the Austrian Alps and then the Bahamas.
The 11-week shoot began in February 1965 with most screen time focused on Ringo, ‘the least screen-resistant’ of the group. At £600,000, the film had a budget three times that of A Hard Day’s Night.
It features seven classic Beatles’ tracks including Help!, You’re Going To Lose That Girl, You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away, Ticket To Ride, The Night Before, I Need You, and Another Girl.
Bob Dylan had urged the band to take their lyrics seriously and Help! was John Lennon’s most autobiographical piece to date with Ticket To Ride perhaps the most intense song.
The Ticket To Ride skiing scene was inspired — as was the brilliantly-lit studio recording of You’re Going To Lose That Girl.
h4. Joie de Vivre
Lester took the movie at a tremendous pace, reflecting the band’s joie de vivre. Indeed, the Beatles chose Richard Lester for their films because of his work with radio comedians, The Goons.
Lester was a musician and television presenter who moved from Philadelphia to London in 1955. A friend of Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan, his films were always light and playful.
The director said that Help! was a comic-strip adventure, a pop-art fantasy filmed in innocent, pre-Vietnam times. It portrays an image of joyful collaboration and the movie influenced a number of television series such as Batman and The Monkees.
h4. A long-vanished world
The restoration of the film was a long process and has just been completed recently. The restoration was supervised by Laura Gross at the Triage Motion Picture Service.
The newly restored film package includes an appreciation by director Martin Scorsese. He says that, for him, the mention of the word ‘Beatles’ brings back an entire world, now long-vanished.
But now those days have gone
And I’m not so self-assured
Now I find I’ve changed my
mind
And opened up the doors.
* The restored version of Help! is now available on DVD, courtesy of EMI. The Beatles by Chris Ingham is published by Rough Guides, London.
* John Wallace is medical doctor with an interest in biography.

Berna Cox sings the praises of her long-awaited mobile broadband connection after spending years wandering around lost in the technology wilderness.
For the last couple of weeks, there’s been a little smile playing around the corners of my mouth at all times. Sometimes, it even spills over into a broad grin accompanied by a whoop or a chuckle.

When I waken in the mornings, I remember the cause of all this smiling and whooping – and I start to smile and whoop all over again. Something has happened that has changed my life. It mightn’t mean much to other people but, for me, it’s salvation. After years of frustration and torture, I have broadband. Wonderful, gorgeous, beautiful, mobile broadband.
A little black box plugged into the side of my laptop has changed my life. I have no idea what the basis of the technology is and I couldn’t care less. It’s working.
I can send and receive my emails at the speed of light and I can surf the net without waiting a million years for a page to load. I am in thrall. I can’t believe my luck. Since I moved to my present abode in reasonably rural Laois about five years ago, I have been trying to get broadband of some description. I didn’t think it would be any big deal.
Whereas I enjoy a rural, tranquil location, I’m only 2.5 miles from the motorway and about seven miles from Portlaoise. Nice and quiet and rustic but not exactly the boonies. But, when it came to broadband, it might as well have been another planet.
h4. Drive you to drink
I was forced to struggle with dial-up which, I swear, is enough to drive a body to drink. The quality of my landline is so poor that I can hear RTÉ Radio One on the phone if it’s raining.
There was a time when I used to communicate regularly with Eircom about it all but I gave up. It only sent my blood pressure soaring. Every so often, I’d visit the website, punch in my landline number and invariably, I’d get the same old, same old…not suitable for broadband.
Then, a year or so ago, the mobile phone providers started advertising mobile broadband. I got a little bit excited and started daydreaming about how wonderful it would be.
I went to a mobile phone shop and had a look at the various deals from the various providers. I looked at the coverage maps and decided that the 3 Network looked as if it operated in our area.
I decided to give it a go. I gave them everything they wanted – bank statements, utility bills, photo ID and all that palaver. They told me to take myself off for a coffee while they sorted out my registration and when I came back, they looked for a €50 deposit. That had never been mentioned before and I was annoyed.
They couldn’t really explain to me why they suddenly wanted it. I must look shifty. But I paid it and dared to hope that my broadband problem was solved.
It wasn’t. It just didn’t perform. If possible, it was worse than dial-up. There was a two-week period for opting out so I opted out – but it took me three months and many phone calls to get my €50 back.
h4. A dummy run
I tried Vodafone as well but at least I didn’t have to go through the pain of buying in and opting out with them. Instead, I hijacked my brother-in-law, who has a Vodafone modem, and dragged him to my rural Laois abode to see how it performed. It didn’t.
Then, the other half announced one day that he’d been looking at the O2 coverage map and our area seemed to be reasonably well-covered.
When we were shopping for mobile broadband last year, the man in the shop said our area wasn’t covered by O2 but we should keep checking it because they were upgrading the network constantly.
The most recent map seemed to include us in its mid-range coverage. Definitely worth a try, we reckoned, but I certainly didn’t get excited. I let himself do all the signing up and organising – I wasn’t prepared to go through all the hassle of opting out again. But there’s no opting out involved.
The little black O2 mobile modem is working a treat. My emails are zipping in and out in the blink of an eye and surfing the net is just a joy. I type in a web address and, hey presto, it’s there.
Instantly. Well – almost instantly. None of this waiting forever for the page to load and then the line most probably dropping the connection. The little O2 blue light blinks and winks at me and whizzes me around the internet. I just love it. Sometimes, it slows up a little but it’s still a zillion times faster than dial-up.
And I’m having a ball with Youtube. I tried to access Youtube on dial-up at one stage and it was impossible. Now, I’m happily reliving the ‘70s downloading ELO, Sparks, Bowie, Cream et al.
h4. Dudley Moore
I’ve also found a great video of Dudley Moore playing the theme of the Bridge Over the River Kwai in the style of a Beethoven sonata and a wonderful version of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus by the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir.
I stick in the speakers, crank up the volume and sing along. When they get to the bit about ‘blessing and honour, glory and power be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne’, I wink back at the little flashing blue O2 light and I sing even louder.

Mary Anne Kenny takes a quick tour around the country to see what’s on offer at some of the festivals being held later this summer – whether the sun makes a guest appearance or not
After the washout that was last summer, Fáilte Ireland, the national tourist board, really has to ‘put the big egg in the window’ this year to convince the poor suckers from overseas that they won’t need an ark to get around this country.

h4. 43 days of rain
It’ll also have to work hard to stem the exodus of Irish people desperate to go anywhere for a bit of sun. Even Iraq’s sunny climes looked rather attractive after last summer’s almost biblical 43 days of straight rain.
We may not have the sunshine, but Ireland has always been fond of hosting festivals. Initially, perhaps, festivals may have been organised just to sanction the heavy drinking that went on in an effort to forget the abysmal weather.
On the other hand, this has given us an excuse to hold festivals celebrating everything under the sun (or not, as the case may be).
The Smithwicks Cat Laughs Comedy Festival in Kilkenny (29 May to 2 June) affords us a chance to laugh at our misfortune.
Although the ‘city’ (yes, those inverted commas are deliberate) gets a bit too jam-packed for comfort over the five-day festival, some of the world’s biggest names in comedy have performed here.
This year, the line-up includes Rich Hall and Dom Irrera from the US and Adam Hill from Australia. The ubiquitous Des Bishop and the original Navan man, Tommy Tiernan, are part of the home-grown contingent.
Whether or not it’s because Cork has such a persecution complex, the capital of the Republic of Cork hosts damn good festivals to try and prove that it’s better than everywhere else.
This year, the first Taste of Cork gourmet festival is running from 27 to 29 June in Cork Gaol, where you can buy taster-sized portions from 12 of the county’s best restaurants (including Ballymaloe House, Jacob’s on the Mall and Isaac’s).
Of course, the Taste of Dublin festival is now in its third year in the other capital (from 12 to 15 June this year in the Iveagh Gardens), so be sure to let Corkonians know that.
These outdoor foodie festivals are a great day out if you get the weather, but if the sun gods go AWOL, you can always comfort-eat taster portions from the Michelin-starred restaurants taking part in the Dublin event (Bon Appetit, Chapter One and l’Ecrivain).
The annual Rose of Tralee Festival has to get a mention (22 to 26 August). In fairness, the town comes alive during this festival, so there’s much more to do than just watch the Parade of Lovely Girls/Roses (who all seem to ‘major in psychology’ for some reason, so you’d think they’d know better).
Also down in that neck of the woods is Listowel, which hosts the town’s Writers’ Week from 28 May to 2 June. This poetry and writing festival is a real celebration of the works of great local, national and international literary figures. Perhaps they’d welcome some of the medical world’s scribes who are in need of a creative boost.
If your soul needs a little soothing, then County Galway is the place to be for the Celtic Spirit Culture Week on Inismor, the largest of the Aran Islands (14 to 21 July).
The programme includes set dancing, traditional singing and storytelling and even basket-making and archaeological walks.
h4. Giant creations
While you’re over in the west, and especially if the kids are in tow, head to the Macnas Festival Parade in Galway City on 20 July.
Kids love these giant creations and you can re-live the papier-mâché experimentation of your schooldays (no, I never inhaled) and wish you had listened more closely during art class.

Dr John Wallace takes a nostalgic look back at the histories and the rock ‘n’ roll craziness behind some of the well-known artists that are coming to our shores to perform this summer.
An impressive range of musical acts are due to perform in Ireland in the coming months. They include Neil Young, formerly of Buffalo Springfield; Eric Clapton, previously of Cream; Lou Reed of Velvet Underground; and the artist formerly known as Prince.

h4. Neil Young
Born in 1945, the son of a well- known sports journalist, this respected Canadian musician came to prominence in 1967 as a member of Buffalo Springfield. The group’s mixture of folk, psychedelia and rock was a critical international success. However, strained relations between group members over ‘artistic differences’ led to the group’s breakup in May 1968.
Two years later, Young formed Crazy Horse with guitarist Danny Whitten. In May 1969 he released one of his most famous songs, Cinnamon Girl. While ill with influenza, he also wrote three hit songs in just one day, including the well-known Down By The River.
Neil Young went on to join Crosby, Stills and Nash in August 1969. After the Goldrush, his third solo album, was released in 1970 and contained his strident condemnation of racism, Southern Man.
Two years later, he released Harvest, recorded with skilled country music session musicians. The record was a massive hit and Heart of Gold went to number one in the US chart. Success, however, was overshadowed by the death, due to overdose, of Whitten after Young had sacked him from the band. The Needle and the Damage Done is a lament for the many gifted music artists who died from opiate misuse.
The release in 1978 of Rust Never Sleeps showed that Neil Young’s talent was enduring. His idiosyncratic vocal delivery and memorable guitar style have won him many fans. They look forward to seeing him play Malahide Castle on 29 June and Cork’s Marquee on 30 June.
h4. Bruce Springsteen
Born in 1949, Bruce Springsteen realized his full potential with Born To Run, recorded in 1975. Next came the sombre but compelling Darkness On The Edge Of Town, followed by The River in 1980. The stark Nebraska was released in 1982. However, it was with the release of the superb Born In The USA that Springsteen was rocketed into mainstream stardom. The album sold 14 million copies worldwide.
Backed by the E Street band, he is without equal, performing live in concerts lasting up to four hours. His Tunnel Of Love album in 1987 had a more intimate approach and he toured with the E Street Band again in 1999. The Boss plays the RDS Dublin on 22, 23 and 25 May.
h4. Leonard Cohen
This columnist last saw Leonard Cohen perform live at the Isle of Wight pop festival in 1970. He appeared, I recall, just after Jimi Hendrix gave a memorable performance, beginning with Voodoo Chile.
Cohen, an acclaimed Canadian poet, first came to public prominence with the all-acoustic Bird On A Wire. This song was much covered, with Cohen, the ‘merchant of melancholy’, reaching out to many self-doubting adolescents.
He was, however, a surprise hit at the Isle of Wight festival despite the perception of his compositions as being somewhat gloomy. Though he has a restricted vocal range, his pop has considerably more depth than average. He mixes pessimism with humour when he writes about his favourite topics, love and religion. Leonard Cohen, sadly, has suffered from depression all his life.
His Songs of Love and Hate was a big hit in Europe while Suzanne and Sisters of Mercy were also popular worldwide. His older followers, and indeed his many new fans, will enjoy his outdoor concert at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham on 13, 14 and 15 June.
h4. Prince
The most controversial rock star since Jimi Hendrix, Prince was the son of a local jazz band leader while his mother was a singer. Although his song I Feel For You was a hit for Chaka Khan, Prince’s breakthrough came in 1982 with Purple Rain. Indeed, he was the first artist since The Beatles to simultaneously have a film, album and a single at number one.
He followed up this major achievement with Little Red Corvette in 1984. This single topped the charts in the US for 24 weeks. His songs were also much covered and Nothing Compares 2 U, sung by Sinead O’Connor, topped the US and UK charts in 1990. 3121, released in 2006, gave him another US number one, proving that he still has huge commercial potential.Prince does not do interviews or promotion and he has made little or no effort to court commercial success. He plays Croke Park Dublin as part of his Earth Tour on Monday 16 June.
h4. Eric Clapton
Cream, formed in 1966, was made up of Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker. Clapton had previously been part of the Yardbirds. Bruce and Baker had known each other for years, but cannot now be considered friends.
In concert they performed extended live versions of their studio recordings, such as Jack Bruce’s White Room or Sunshine of Your Love which Clapton co-wrote. Some saw the protracted drum solos by Ginger Baker as a stunning feature of Cream, while others saw it as overblown self-indulgence.
By 1968 they were one of the world’s top musical attractions. However, Clapton was tired of playing power-rock and refereeing the ongoing disputes between Bruce and Baker. These ‘artistic differences’ often involved dramatic on-stage fights and even damage to each other’s instruments. The band finally decided to call it a day in 1968.
Very much a product of the late ‘60s, the trio’s first three albums are accepted as blues-rock classics. Eric Clapton, formerly of Cream, plays Cork’s Marquee on 20 June and Malahide Castle on 21 June.
h4. Lou Reed
The Velvet Underground was the avant-rock outfit of the late 1960s. Though not commercially successful, they nevertheless produced groundbreaking music. They were off-beat, provocative and challenging. Their lead singer, Lou Reed, attracted both acclaim and distain in equal measure. With Welshman John Cale, Reed composed ‘sing-speak’ narratives that dealt with urban life and despair, while attempting to merge rock music with the avant-garde.
Pop Art guru, Andy Warhol heard the Velvet Underground play I’m Waiting For The Man in Greenwich Village. He liked their free-ranging, chaotic style and decided that he wanted to manage them. He got the band a contract with MGM’s Verve label. He also produced their first album in 1967, though it failed to ignite the expected sales explosion.
Having quickly dispensed with Warhol, the White Light, White Heat album was recorded with the usual musical pandemonium associated with the group. It was strictly for the purists. John Cale was ousted from the band in 1968 in time-honored rock fashion. The group now quickly moved to a quieter, more relaxed commercial style, with the release in 1970 of Loaded. Lou Reed, however, had quit the band just before the release of the album. And the Underground then simply fizzled out.
Reed’s long-term impact however was significant. By 1971, he had influenced the musical development of Mott the Hoople, Roxy Music and even David Bowie. Bowie went on to produce Reed’s major album Transformer in 1972. Lou Reed, formerly of Velvet Underground, plays the Marquee, Cork on Monday, 23 June.
* The Encyclopedia of Rock is edited by Michael Heatley and published by Flame Tree Publishing.
* John Wallace is a medical doctor with an interest in music.

In Bruges is an awful film, not in the way Armageddon or Independence Day were awful, but subtly awful, like the way it goes when you see a beautiful woman from a long way off, but when you meet her she is a homeless man begging for money.
In other words, it’s not unwatchable; it’s even slightly alluring. But once it is over you feel a bit stupid for wasting all that time it took to realise the truth.

For all those stylish trailers and big names, it’s nothing more than a mix of worn-out genres set in your typical nobody’s-been-here-before-because-it’s-so-dull setting, the kindergarten irony of sightseeing (or any polite pursuit) and violence, and predictable and abrupt leaps from menace to quirk to sentimentality. In short, it is a half-dozen bad movies, all of them exceedingly obvious.
And when the dwarf appears dressed as a schoolboy, your worst fear is that the film will end in the clumsiest and most obvious way imaginable, and that fear is, though by the end you’d expect nothing less, confirmed.
Much has been said of the acting. While Brendan Gleeson could act his way out of a bad role while hurtling through the earth’s atmopshere, and Ralph Fiennes was refreshing, Colin Farrell alternated inexplicably between overacting and underacting, and between personalities as well — sometimes Lennie Small, sometimes Arthur Fonzarelli, but always excruciatingly sentimental.
I am overcriticising the film — it does not deserve this kind of unprovoked scrutiny; there are lots of awful films. And I even had a nice night – a hot dinner date with identical twins in Chinatown (Parnell St), and by identical twins I mean just one girl, cinema in the Savoy, and drinks after.
It was only when I mentioned to a handful of people that the film was essentially crap that I understood the extent to which such an opinion was deemed culturally irresponsible.
Was it – I don’t know – that I am not allowed, in Ireland, to slate a film starring Brendan Gleeson? Has he become the Irish Pacino? If I admit that his abilities are massive, can I at least say that his lines were sh*t?
Then I began to read reviews, and learn of international film festival accolades, and it hit me: the dark-humour/sentimental genre, to which In Bruges religiously belongs, has become the intellectual gold standard for people who don’t read but dress like they do.
— G.B.