Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Boy of 8 shot dead at mall
‘Sexism was v.v. bad in film versions of Bridget Jones’
BRIDGET Jones author Helen Fielding says she was shocked to see the sexism depicted when she rewatched the movie version made in 2001.
Fielding, 62, co-wrote screenplays for the film and two sequels as well as Bridget Jones’s Diary novels, published in 1996 and 1999.
But she tells Radio Four’s Desert Island Discs today: “I took my kids to see a screening of the
Helen Fielding movie... and I was staggered. You couldn’t write that now. The level of sexism that Bridget was dealing with, the hand on the bum in so many of the scenes. Richard Finch (Bridget’s boss)... ‘Let’s have a shot of the boobs’.”
“It was quite shocking for me to see how things have changed.” She also refuted rumours that Bridget’s love interest Mark Darcy was based on Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer – like Darcy, a reserved lawyer.
A BOY of eight shopping with his family has been shot dead after getting caught in crossfire in a gun attack at a busy mall.
Royta Giles Jr was hit in the head when at least one gunman started shooting in Hoover, Alabama, USA, on Friday afternoon.
A girl and two adults were injured in the attack and in hospital last night.
No one was arrested but Police Chief Nick Derzis said that they were working on some “promising leads” last night.
HANDS on hips, cigarette in hand, Squadron Leader Brian Lane has a weary look after yet another dance with death in the skies over England.
It is September 1940 – two months into the Battle of Britain, which saw the likes of Lane repel Hitler’s Luftwaffe.
With his silk scarf and tousled hair, Lane was dubbed the “finest of The Few”.
Yet few, if you’ll pardon the pun, knew then or now that he was the man behind a war diary which lifted the spirits of morale-sapped Britons.
Lane penned Spitfire! The Experiences of a Fighter Pilot – a tome which took readers into the cockpit, giving a firsthand account of our RAF gladiators and their feats of derring-do.
But the book was published under the pseudonym BJ Ellan and for years no one outside of the war effort had even heard of Lane, who was nicknamed Sandy.
He was shot down over Holland in December 1942 and what little was known of him faded into obscurity.
But now, in the week marking the 80th anniversary of the start of the Battle of Britain, Lane’s story of heroism, journalism and ultimate tragedy can finally be told in full.
The battle for supremacy of the skies raged from July 10 to October 31, 1940. Lane had turned 23 in June that year.
TRIUMPH
AUTHOR
He was in the thick of the action – and grabbed rare quiet moments to put pen to paper. Lane chronicled lifeand-death struggles, the lighter moments, dark comedy, tragedy
lives”.THE and triumph that would define the Battle of Britain.
His book, published in 1942, captivated a public ravenous for heroics on the Home Front.
Lane’s compelling entries gave a pilot’s-eye view of war in the sky.
He tells how, in chaotic combat, Spitfires and Messerschmitts flash across his windshield, German bombers on fire dive into clouds, and in his ears there is “a crackle of voices as fellow pilots fight for their
Lane talks of the exertion of combat – adrenaline pumping, soaked in sweat, oxygen mask stuck to his face.
And then, he writes, silence – the fighters making their way home, pilots alone with their thoughts before they one of my flight, perhaps me gliding land and share cigarettes and stories home with a dud engine and finish me about their narrow escapes and “kills”. off. I wondered if he would feel the same
Lane also reveals his despair at seeing way I did, if some Nazi doctrine had the scale of death around him. killed his decent feelings. Somehow I
In one entry, he encounters a damaged hoped it hadn’t. And yet if I had ammunition Messerschmitt 110 fighter bomber, left I couldn’t have missed him and limping back from England to France. I would have shot him down. ‘Cold meat!’
Lane slips behind the German, ready “And I would have done it, not because to fire a lethal burst from eight machineguns I hated the German – but because I – but he is out of ammunition. wanted to and got a kick out of it. The
Concerned the German thinks he is playing a cruel game of cat and mouse, Lane barrel rolls over the Messerschmitt, rocks his wings and flies off – a “good luck” signal to his adversary.
Lane writes: “All the way back I pondered. Why should I have felt sorry for that German?
“War is war, no quarter to be expected or given and yet, once the heat of the moment was over, I felt almost glad I had been forced to give him that quarter. How contrary is human nature! Tomorrow, perhaps, he would be on another raid and might shoot down one of our chaps, perhaps
Hurricanes on Battle of Britain flight