Additional notes

A recent ‘blog of note’ flagged by blogger is the excellent site Letters of Note, which is just marvellous and I recommend that you click here immediately and read everything on it (not as time-consuming as you might think as it’s been going for a month, although it’s certainly updated much more often than listingslightly...). Scanned copies and transcripts of interesting letters, memos etc, recent and not so, make for exactly the kind of blog I like to wander about in.
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On Friday night I watched North by Northwest, which I feel I have seen many times, but in fact I think I’ve seen the whole thing about twice, and bits of it many times. Regular readers (hello, both) will know of my love for Cary Grant, and this is him at his classy best, being pursued and drawn into dark dealings in a fabulous suit (and note how gorgeous his shirt is also), and with the very lovely Eva Marie Saint.
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I’ve been rummaging about in some shoe boxes and turning up various interesting bits of paper that have accumulated over the last 12 years or so. In June 1999 I was finishing my second year at university. I’m sure that there were all sorts of exciting things happening with the internet, but I was mostly unaware of them. In those days when interesting snippets of information seemed a bit more special, a bit harder to track down, but when we were just starting to realise the possibilities of email, a lovely friend sent me a list of all Alfred Hitchcock’s cameo appearances. I was interested enough to forward it from my university email to my home email, and then, a month later, to print it off to save, and have been moving it around with me ever since (9 house moves in 10 years). Now, of course, Wikipedia does the work for you. But this is a marvellous site, which not only lists the cameos, but also has fantastic stills with Sir Alfred highlighted.