The Fenella and Marty mystery
QUESTION
A film history book I have states that Marty Feldman and Fenella Fielding are brother and sister. Is this true? NO, IT is not. Marty Feldman is not even a very distant cousin. Fenella, born Fenella Feldman, has an elder brother, Basil Feldman, a Conservative life peer, but no other siblings. I am her first cousin; my mother was their father’s younger sister.
Mrs Evelyn Jacobs, Bognor Regis, W. Sussex. THE idea that Fielding and Feldman are related is because both had the same surname, Feldman, were born in London to Jewish parents and earned their living as actors. But they aren’t related.
Marty Feldman was born Martin Alan Feldman in Canning Town, London E16, on July 8, 1934, to Ukrainian Jews. He did have a sister, but she was called Pamela.
He was known for his distinctive features: his nose was mangled in a boxing match when he was young, and his protruding eyes were the result of a hyperactive thyroid and a botched operation after a car accident in 1963.
One of the big stars of British comedy, Marty appeared in The Army Game, Bootsie And Snudge and Round The Horne in the Sixties, co-wrote the Four Yorkshire Men skit associated with Monty Python and appeared in several films. His bestloved role was that of Igor in Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein (1974).
He died of a heart attack caused by shellfish food poisoning while filming Yellowbeard (1983) in Mexico City, on December 2, 1982, aged just 48.
Fenella Fielding was born in 1927 as Fenella M. Feldman of Romanian/Russian Jewish descent. She appeared in two Carry On films and three of the Doctor films, Doctor In Love (1960), Doctor In Distress (1963) and Doctor In Clover (1966).
She also appeared in plays by Ibsen, Shakespeare and Henry James and, in 1965, Memoirs Of A Chaise Longue, co-written by her friend, Marty Feldman.
Madeline Pierce, Ashfield, Notts.
QUESTION
Who invented ice cream? FEW foods have more legends of discovery than ice cream. Some historians have traced it back as far as ancient China.
King Tang of Shang (1675-1646BC) is said to have had a small army of ‘ice men’ who made ice cream from buffalo milk.
Alexander the Great apparently ate snow flavoured with honey, and Emperor Nero was said to have sent people up to the mountains to collect snow and ice, which would then be flavoured with juice and fruit. Ice cream’s modern history begins in Europe after Marco Polo is said to have brought it to Italy from China in 1254.
By then the Chinese had mastered a process whereby they could freeze ice cream, using salt and saltpetre (nitre) to lower the freezing point of ice.
According to a widespread, but probably apocryphal story, ice cream was spread to Europe following the marriage in 1533 of Catherine de Medici from Florence and the future monarch Henry II of France.
She is said to have taken her dessert chef Ruggerio with her, and he is accredited with having served a different flavoured ice every day to the guests during the month-long wedding celebrations.
The first substantial piece of writing on ice cream was an anonymous 84-page manuscript entitled L’Art De Faire Des Glaces, dated to about 1700. It has detailed instructions for the preparation of such delights as apricot, violet, rose, chocolate, and caramel ice creams and water ices.
The first published English recipe was by Mrs Mary Eales (1718), described as ‘a pioneer with few followers’. Several 18thcentury British cookbooks contain ice cream formulas, the best known being Mrs Hannah Glasse’s The Art Of Cookery Made Plain And Easy (1747).
It contains the following recipe: ‘To make ice cream. Take two pewter basins, one larger than the other; the inward one must have a close cover, into which you are to put your cream, and mix it with raspberries, or whatever you like best, to give it a flavour and a colour.
‘Sweeten it to your palate; then cover it close, and set it into the larger basin. Fill it with ice, and a handful of salt: let it stand in this ice three-quarters of an hour, then uncover it, and stir the cream well together: cover it close again, and let it stand half an hour longer, after that turn it into your plate. These things are made at the pewterers.’ Simon Begg, Cleethorpes, Lincs.
QUESTION
NELSON BUNKER HUNT (1926-2014) was the son of Texas oil billionaire H. L. Hunt Jr (1889-1974), said to be the inspiration for J. R. Ewing on the TV series Dallas. A larger-than-life character who owned a world-famous art and coin collection, and more than 1,000 racehorses, together with his brother, William Herbert Hunt, Nelson attempted, unsuccessfully, to corner the global commodity market for silver during the late Seventies.
The collapse of this venture drove the brothers into bankruptcy and they were forced into a humiliating ‘fire sale’ of their prized collections.
In a series of New York auctions by Sotheby’s in 1990 and 1991, some of the rarest and finest classical coins ever seen were put on sale.
Among the lots was a bronze Sestertius coin of Hadrian Britannicus. On the obverse was a pristine portrait of the Emperor Hadrian, attributed to a die and gemstone engraver known in numismatics as the Alphaeus Master.
On the reverse, Pax, the personification of peace, cradled a cornucopia while gracefully extending an olive branch.
Except for slight pitting in front of Hadrian’s forehead, the coin was in almost mint condition, far superior to four other known examples. It sold to a private bidder for £150,000. This coin was again put up for auction at coin specialist Numismatica Genevensis, in Geneva, on December 2 and 3, 2008.
In total, 200 coins, sold in 53 lots, raised about 14 million Swiss francs (£7million). The Hadrian Sestertius alone went for a staggering two million Swiss francs (£1 million at the time) despite its estimate of just 400,000 Swiss francs, a world record for a classical coin.
Another record-breaking lot was an Athens gold stater (407/406BC) which realised 950,000 Swiss francs — almost half-a-million pounds.
Alison Bambridge, Malvern, Worcs.
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