John Raven-Hill's Coronation
Friday, February 27, 2009
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Later on I may be recruiting images for a possible book on motor cars. So, keep it to yourselves for the moment, but in the meantime I feel moved to share this fabulous photograph with you. The father of The Mother of My Youngest Children (doesn't it get complicated), the late John Raven-Hill, took his camera to the Coronation in 1953. Judging by his pictures we don't think he was there on the actual day (he'd have been at home in Middlesex pointing with a large briar pipe at an Ekco television or similar), but he appears to have gone round either earlier or later snapping buildings decorated with celebratory flags and heraldry. Marble Arch, the Dorchester, Hawksmoor's frontage on Westminster Abbey. Except what he really did, quite accidentally, was photograph the traffic in front of them. Incredible, never-to-be-repeated, random selections of vehicles. Unconscious, brilliant. So I come to the photograph, and the reason for this post. The background's easy- that's The Sanctuary, just to the side of the western end of the Abbey. Together with a Ministry of Works van, a Ford Prefect and a Bedford Duple coach. But what's the car speeding across the foreground? I'm here to be shot down in flames, but my money's on a Humber Imperial.
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