Truth about Avenger Tara
QUESTION What became of Linda Thorson? I was a great fan of hers when she was in The Avengers.
Born Linda robinson in Toronto, Canada, in 1947, Linda moved to London in 1965 to study theatre and dance at London’s royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and her career took a dramatic turn when, aged 20, she was chosen out of more than 200 hopefuls to play Tara King, succeeding Diana rigg’s Emma Peel in the ITV classic The Avengers (1968-9).
But despite her good looks, viewers weren’t ready for a replacement for the ever popular Diana and the show survived for only one more season.
Linda’s career was quiet in the Seventies, but she did an Avengers-style advert for Laurent-Perrier champagne with Patrick Macnee as well as some theatre and supporting film roles, including Valentino (1977) and The Greek Tycoon (1978).
She moved to new York and made a successful Broadway debut in nell Dunn’s female ensemble piece Steaming in 1982. She followed this up with rave reviews for her role as Belinda Blair in Michael Frayn’s farce noises off. Despite her Broadway success she continued to perform for the royal Shakespeare Company and at the old Vic.
Linda appeared on the big screen in films such as Walls of Glass (1985), Sweet Liberty (1986), The other Sister (1999), in the Steven Seagal action movie Half Past Dead (2002) and Straight Into Darkness (2004).
TV credits include guest work on Law & order (1990) and St Elsewhere (1982) and, as a regular cast member, on the series Marblehead Manor (1987), the daytime soap one Life To Live (1968) and The Hoop Life (1999). She has also continued with outstanding stage work in Shirley Valentine (1993), The Sisters rosenzweig (1995), Amy’s View (2000), and Peter Shaffer’s Equus (2007).
In more recent years, Thorson has enjoyed recurring roles in episodic television such as the Canadian series Emily of new Moon (1998-2000) and the long-running British TV series Emmerdale (2006-2007).
She has one son, Trevor, and lives in new York City with her fourth husband, Canadian filmmaker Gavin Mitchell. The Canadian film The Second Time Around, starring Thorson in the lead role, is due to be released later this year.
Abbie Brookes, Bath, Somerset.
QUESTION My grandmother told me her eldest child died from ‘vaccine fever’ aged six. That was in the 1880s. What exactly was this?
IT WAS recognised early on in the vaccination programme that up to 10 per cent of vaccinations (up to 50 per cent in children) would cause what was known as ‘serum sickness’ or ‘vaccine fever’ — a set of symptoms that included fevers, rash, diarrhoea, falling blood pressure, joint pain and breathing difficulties.
These could last for days, for weeks or month and, very occasionally, proved fatal. These types of reactions were particularly prevalent with the administration of diphtheria antitoxin which was introduced by German physiologist Emil von Behring in 1891.
Diphtheria, however, was such a nasty disease that most felt it worth the risk.
Work by the Austro-Hungarian scientists Clemens von Pirquet and Bela Schick in 1906 showed that the symptoms of serum sickness were almost identical to a hypersensitivity (allergic) reaction to food proteins, bee stings, etc.
They noted that the adverse reaction appeared ten to 30 days after the second injection, depending on the person vaccinated, and this resulted in the internationally adopted Schick test, a simple skin test that allowed doctors to distinguish between those with a natural immunity to diphtheria from previous exposure and those who stood to gain protective immunity from vaccination.
other problems with vaccinations surrounded patients’ allergic reactions to additives, particularly carrier gels from boiled animals, mercury-based antifungals and the use of egg in the manufacture of vaccines. Dr Ian Smith, Cambridge.
QUESTION In the Godfather films, non-Italians refer to mafia gangsters as ‘goddam guineas’? Why guinea?
THIS is an outdated racial slur, although used quite accurately in the film.
In pre-u.S. Civil War times, a black person transported to the Americas from Africa’s Guinea Coast was often called a guinea or a guinea man.
In Matthew Gregory Lewis’s Journal of A West India Proprietor (1845), for example: ‘on hearing of this fresh instance of devilism, I asked her mother: “How she came to have so bad a daughter, when all her sons were so mild and good?” “oh massa,” answered she, “the girl’s father was a guinea man.” ’
Even among the slaves there was a hierarchy and newly arrived Africans who couldn’t speak English were often called guinea men.
Italy had a very marked racial and economic north/south divide. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (southern Italy and the Island of Sicily) was occupied in 1860, without a declaration of war, by the northern Piedmontese kingdom of Savoy. The national treasury was plundered and by the time of unification the already poor part of the country was even poorer.
Along with poverty, the heritage of Sicilians also affected their reputation. In AD831 the Moors, dark-skinned Arabs, entered and dominated Palermo, and other major cities on the island, instigating a Moorish reign which lasted 230 years.
During that time there was much racial mixing, and as a result northern Italians tend to regard Sicilians as people of colour.
A poor and illiterate population combined with corrupt officialdom gave rise to La Cosa nostra, or the Mafia, in the mid-19th century, and Sicilians came to be often considered criminals.
Between 1880 and 1920, four million Italians emigrated to America, the vast majority from the poverty-stricken south. Immigrants had to declare how much money they were bringing with them and those without funds were turned away. Many of these attempted to sneak into the country without proper documentation and immigrants ‘without papers’ became known by the initials ‘wop’, which then became a racial slur for an Italian
northern Italians in America appropriated the racial slur of guinea-man in the form of guinea or ginny to differentiate themselves from their Southern Italian compatriots.
Mike Burrows, Canterbury, Kent.
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