Christmas past

The media have been reminding me of late that the BBC radio soap opera, The Archers, came to being sixty years ago. Today Emily Bell of The Guardian has something to say about this legendary series...

Less widely noted is the fact that sixty years ago The Eagle was first published. It may have only lasted a decade, but for my generation of Brits it was undoubtedly the formative medium of its day. We thrilled to the adventures of Dan Dare: Pilot Of The Future and were subtly pushed in the direction of the techies so many of us later became.

 

One of the very few totally memorable Christmas gifts I remember from my boyhood was the hardback annual issue of The Eagle. I so very well remember the 'cutaway' illustration below... Mallard was the locomotive which several times hauled the train we took from Scotland to reach the Yorkshire coast for our summer holidays. And in rare fit of self-indulgence in 1999 I bought a scale model of this beautiful engine, big enough to be the single decorative conversation piece in my Munich flat.