The Saturday briefing
IS THERE anything you are desperately yearning to know? Are there any pressing factual disputes you would like us to help resolve? This is the page where we shall do our best to answer any questions you throw at us, whatever the subject.
ON the TV programme Call The Midwife I assume all the babies shown are not real. How has the production team made artificial babies so convincing?
David Ford, West Moseley, Surrey AMAZINGLY enough what you see on TV are real newborn babies. During rehearsals they use silicone models but when it comes to filming, real babies are brought in.
The only part that is then made of silicone is the umbilical cord which the actor playing the mother holds against the baby’s tummy. After recording, the sequence is examined and any gap between cord and baby is corrected using computer graphics. With the addition of stage blood and grape juice it all looks very convincing.
CAN you tell me the significance of the girl with a lion’s head on her head and her arms held high at the start of the American TV show Homeland? She’s also standing in front of what looks like a maze, is that significant?
John White, Rotherham, South Yorkshire GRIPPING: Homeland opening titles THAT part of the opening sequence is based on Greek myth, specifically the story of the Minotaur, which has the body of a man and the head of a bull and was kept trapped inside a labyrinth.
In the case of Homeland the labyrinth symbolises the hidden realms of terrorists and lead character Carrie being shown as a child in a lion mask is both a reference to the man-beast nature of the Minotaur itself and the “cat-and-mouse effect”, as the show’s producers have put it, of the plot of the TV series.
HAD Princess Diana been at William and Kate’s wedding where would she have been seated
for the service in Westminster Abbey? And at the after-wedding feast would she have been on the “top table” with the bride and groom? Gwen Barlow, by email THE short answer is that we shall never know. The traditional seating for a wedding has a bride’s side and a groom’s side of the church but this was not adopted for William and Kate, when members of the Spencer family – relatives of Prince William’s mother Diana – sat with the Middletons.
Friends of the Middleton family sat not with the bride’s family but on the other side of the abbey, separated from the Royal Family. The protocol for such events is clearly not set in stone but can be altered to suit the circumstances. MANY years ago a friend, now deceased, told me the last person to be hanged for sheep stealing in Wales was caught on his land bordering the counties of Denbighshire and Flintshire. Can you tell me when this crime ceased to be a capital offence?
Norman Harvey, Mold, Flintshire SHEEP-STEALING was a capital crime in England and Wales from 1741 until 1832. Despite more than 1,100 convictions during that period only around 150 executions were carried out as there was a general feeling that hanging was too great a punishment for stealing a sheep.
Between 1826 and 1831 only 1.5 per cent of those convicted were executed. I believe the last person hanged for sheep-stealing in England or Wales was John Clarke of Benington, Hertfordshire, on March 19, 1830. by I THINK I can remember reading that Queen Victoria had a half-sister from her mother’s first marriage. There was no mention of her in the recent series about Victoria. Can you tell me is my memory is correct? Mrs J M Dunford, Bebington,
Merseyside YOU’RE absolutely right – and she also had a half-brother. They were Princess Feodora and Prince Carl of Leiningen, whose mother was Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld.
Their father Emich Carl died in 1814 and their mother got remarried in 1818 to Prince Edward Augustus, the fourth son of George III of the UK. George III was succeeded by George IV who in turn was succeeded by his younger brother William IV.
When William IV died with no legitimate offspring, his niece Victoria, Feodora’s half sister, became Queen. Prince Carl of Leiningen, the Queen’s halfbrother, briefly served as prime minister of the German Empire. DURING the recent cold weather the BBC Radio 4 Shipping Forecast referred to “icing” in some sea areas. Does this refer to the sea freezing or to ice building up on a vessel from spray?
David R Ansell, Horsham, Sussex IT’S ice building up on ships when cold temperatures combined with high wind speed result in spray blown from the sea freezing immediately when it makes contact with the ship.
This can be a serious hazard if allowed to build up, even causing the ship to capsize if it becomes too heavy. Icing is mostly a problem in the Arctic and Antarctic but as we have seen recently it can also happen in the North Sea if it is cold enough. WHEN watching films of naval battles in the Second World War I’m puzzled about torpedoes exploding when they miss their THE torpedoes were designed to explode on impact or when they reached the end of their range. In later models the rather vague “end of range” stipulation was replaced by exploding when their fuel ran out.
The trouble was that when the fuel was exhausted a torpedo was buoyant and could remain on the surface as a considerable navigational hazard to any shipping. Under The Hague convention (VIII) of 1907 it was forbidden “to use torpedoes which do not become harmless when they have missed their mark”.
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