It's one of those great photographs that have become legend - GIs erecting the stars and stripes on battle-torn Iwo-Jima on this day in 1945. Dear old Clint Eastwood in his recent film has blown the gaffe on this incident. and if you've seen the sequence of stills taken just before and after that one, they're very average, In the first one, the GIs are having difficulty lifting the flag in the high wind. In the later ones, job done, they're standing around having a fag! Eastwood revealed that the actual scene took place when there were no cameras around so it had to be re-staged for the Press later.
Darn!
In other news ...
Next time you're in the West End, find a quiet little Mews near Hyde Park called Cato Street. At one end of it, there's a house which was once a stable. It was here, on this day in 1820 that the revolutionary Arthur Thistlewood and his co-conspirators were caught making grenades before going to Lord Harrowby's house in nearby Grosvenor Square to blow up the entire Cabinet who were having dinner there.
The whole plot had been rumbled weeks earlier and the conspirators were arrested in the hayloft by the Bow Street Runners (precursors of Mrs Carpenter-Maxwell's profession) in which one of them was killed.
Had it come off, it would have been the boldest and most devastating political coup in British history. Except that Arthur Thistlewood was probably mad as a tree and seems to have had no real plan as to what to do had the plot worked.
If you fancy finding out more about this least known English revolution - although possibly Home Rule for Leighford, an early attempt by Mrs Troubridge to kickstart her attempt on world domination is even less well known - visit the mighty Amazon and search Cato Street in books to find the only modern retelling of the sorry tale by redoubtable author MJ Trow. I'm sure more confident men would put what is apparently known as a 'link' but surely you know me better than that!
