From the archives

25 YEARS AGO Sunday-The prolific and individual talent of French dramatist Jean Anouilh, whose death was announced today, brought him success over five decades, and was a telling response to critics of his ability and political views. A writer with an acute feeling for dialogue in the tradition of the French classical theatre, he was in his last years the most frequently performed playwright in France. François Chalais, drama critic of the daily France Soir described him as “solitary, if not unique, angry yet pathetic, arrogant but humble, solid yet vulnerable.” His wartime masterpiece Antigone, produced in 1944 with bombs falling outside, was regarded as an example to the French resistance battling the Nazi occupation. 50 YEARS AGO About 80 parents of children at Golfhill School, Circus Drive, Glasgow, held a protest meeting last night against Mass being celebrated in the school, and decided to form a Protestant Ratepayers’ Association. A committee of nine were elected to deal with details of a campaign to have the services stopped, and a further protest meeting has been arranged for October 17. One committee member said last night that several people had already received “threatening letters on the subject”, but said they were all determined Mass should not be said in a Protestant school. ty. 100 YEARS AGO At the meeting of Old Kilpatrick Parish School Board yesterday it was reported that a pupil had lost a book, the price of which was 4s 6d, but the parents refused to pay the cost of it. A letter from the father of the pupil was read, stating that the book had been lost in the school, and that the boy had been sufficiently punished through not being taught his geometry for six months. He therefore considered that it had been taken out of him in more ways than one. The Chairman said that the book was the property of the Board, and had to be accounted for. It was agreed that an action be raised against the father unless the loss was made good. 150 YEARS AGO We regret to have to record the total loss of the splendid iron steamer Iona, perhaps the finest that plied on our Western waters, and universally a favourite with visitors to the West Highlands. She had been purchased recently by parties favourable to the Confederate Government, for the purpose of running the blockade, and left this port on Thursday afternoon, either with the intention of proceeding on her outward voyage for some Confederate port the same evening, after adjusting her compasses, or of anchoring in the Firth till the following day. She was not destined, however, to get beyond Gourock Bay, where she and the new screw-steamer Chanticleer came into collision, the result of which was that the Iona sank within half an hour after the collision. 200 YEARS AGO A boy belonging to the Adamant flagship, being on duty on board of one of the detained American ships in the Wet Dock, and having the first watch walking on the pier alongside of the ship, about ten o’clock on Tuesday night, it is supposed, a rope took his foot and he fell over the pier into the water, but had struck the vessel in the fall. The body was got in a few minutes, but his life was gone.