Brolly good show, 007!
QUESTION
Which actors were considered for the role of James Bond before Sean Connery was cast in Dr No?
THERE were four contenders to play the first film version of James Bond, all of whom had found fame in TV action roles: Patrick Macnee of The Avengers, Patrick McGoohan of Danger Man, Roger Moore (who was about to start playing Simon Templar in The Saint), and Robert Shaw, dashing Dan Tempest in The Buccaneers.
Macnee, who was a friend of Bond author Ian Fleming, turned down the role as he was repulsed by the brutish way 007 went about his business. He was proud of the fact his spy character, John Steed in The Avengers, never carried a gun and used his ever-present brolly, wits and ‘mitts’ to see off his adversaries.
He had seen enough killings during his World War II Royal Navy service to put him off guns forever.
However, he did go on to play MI6 operative Sir Godfrey Tibbett in the 1985 Bond film A View To A Kill and narrated the 2000 documentary Ian Fleming: 007’s Creator.
Patrick McGoohan’s portrayal of Danger Man’s secret agent John Blake was the closest to Bond’s character of any of the Sixties TV spies, but due to his strong Catholic principles, he turned down the role on moral grounds.
He was also earning more from Danger Man; Sean Connery’s meagre pay packet of $17,000 for Dr No wasn’t much more than an extra would have earned for six weeks’ work on the film.
Though passed over in favour of Connery, Robert Shaw ended up as Bond’s adversary, assassin Donald Grant, in the second 007 film, From Russia With Love.
Other James Bond contenders were Cary Grant, Trevor Howard, Stanley Baker, Rex Harrison, Richard Todd, Ian Hendry and David Niven.
George Lazenby was the second Bond, in the 1969 film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Roger Moore was the third Bond, playing the role in seven films in the Seventies and Eighties. Some critics say Moore was too ultra-smooth for the part following Connery’s ‘animalistic’ approach to the role.
Later, there were strange applicants such as Peter Purvis from BBC children’s TV show Blue Peter.
Danny Darcy, Reading, Berkshire.
QUESTION
When was the first Ordnance Survey undertaken in Ireland and when were place names first Anglicised here?
THE Ordnance Survey office was set up in Dublin in 1824 and began its work the following year. Within the next 20 years, it had completed its task of mapping the whole country.
The cost of the venture was colossal, about €92.5million in today’s money.
Created to update land valuations for taxation purposes, the Ordnance Survey turned into a much more complicated operation that recorded many aspects of Ireland’s history and culture.
The man in charge of running the Ordnance Survey was Major General Tom Colby, a stickler for accuracy and perfection in the mapping work being undertaken.
Many inventions were perfected to improve the accuracy of the maps.
Limelight was developed, placing a block of lime in a hot hydrogen/oxygen fire to produce a very bright light that could be seen from long distances. This type of light also came to be used in the theatre; hence the phrase, ‘in the limelight’.
The triangulation posts that were built on top of many mountains to add to the mapping process can still be seen today.
As a result of all this immensely accurate mapping, maps were produced of the whole country, on a scale of six inches to the mile.
In urban areas, especially in Dublin, the scale of the maps was even greater, giving even more detail.
All these old maps are available today, in digitised form, and they have a wealth of information about what Ireland was like nearly 200 years ago.
When the mapping work started, it was all done by men who had been seconded from the British army, and local people had to be content with secondary roles.
That military connection lasted until the 1970s, as it wasn’t until then that civilians began to be recruited to the present Ordnance Survey of Ireland.
But within a year or two of the mapping work starting, some highly regarded Irish scholars started collecting material on local customs, the economy, populations, history, buildings and archaeology.
The Ordnance Survey Memoirs, as they were called, collected all this material, but such was the cost of publishing them that only two were actually put into print: one for Derry, the other for Templemore, Co. Tipperary.
But all the material was carefully collected and archived and can be seen today at the Royal Irish Academy, a wonderful source of information on life in early 19thcentury Ireland.
Alongside all these collectors, a team of renowned Irish cultural scholars, including Eugene O’Curry and George Petrie, worked tirelessly to collect the correct versions of the 63,000 townland names in Ireland.
They determined the correct spelling and pronunciation and devised appropriate Anglicisations. The records of all these townland names were kept in the O’Donovan Name Books, named after one of the collectors, John O’Donovan. He also wrote copious letters on the subject, and these too have all been preserved, forming an important record of the ancient lore of Ireland.
The work of mapping the whole of Ireland was completed by 1846 and it meant that this country was the first in the world to have such detailed maps of its territory.
The Ordnance Survey had been started in Mountjoy House, built in 1728 in the Phoenix Park, and it and the surrounding buildings are still the headquarters of the organisation.
The present-day work of keeping the database of Irish language place names up to date and doing new Irish language mapping continues today, under the aegis of the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.
The methods used for making maps have changed immeasurably in recent decades, with the advent of computerisation, but the accuracy of the first Ordnance Survey maps, all compiled and drawn by hand, still can’t be beaten.
IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Irish Daily Mail, Embassy House, Herbert Park Lane, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. You can also fax them to 0044 1952 510906 or you can email them to charles.legge@dailymail.ie. A selection will be published but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.