Gueuleton

In their popular video series on YouTube and TikTok, Vincent Bernard-Comparat, 36, and Arthur Edange, 34, the founders of Gueuleton, can seem like a spoof of a French tourism ad: over a soundtrack of upbeat tuba, the self-described bons vivants don black berets and dig into duck confit and pâté en croûte, laughing into the camera with a glass of wine in one hand and a cigar in the other. A tricolor flag is sewn into their aprons.

It was in Bordeaux that they met: three bon vivants who became friends on the banks of the Garonne, in a city that promotes the French art of living throughout the world. At the beginning of Gueuleton, there was a Gersois, a Vosgiens and a Lot-et-Garonnais, all three united by the same passion for gastronomy and the terroir.

They turned their common passion into a common adventure and this is how Gueuleton was born, a project of friends with one ambition: to share the love for gastronomy with as many people as possible.

So, they threw themselves headlong in and opened the first Gueuleton in 2013, in Agen. On the menu: wine, charcuterie and cheese, aperitif classics that are now part of Gueuleton's DNA.

The Gueuleton project with many more restaurants, bars, a distillery, a magazine, their own breeding program of Black gascon Pigs and even berets!

Savy with social media the project grew exponentially.  

Rambo @ Warburtons

 

Sylvester Stallone's stars in the Warburtons Bread commercial, premiered during the Britain's Got Talent show on 11th April 2015.

Bread Berets

 

Charles Clinton Parry (1840-83) was part of a highly artistic family, which included his brother Hubert, the composer best known today for the hymn Jerusalem. 

From an early age, Clinton displayed signs of instability. This later turned to alcoholism and mental illness, alienating him from his wife and four children. After a time working in South Africa and New Zealand, he died, separated from his family, in Australia.

No Guarantee...

I'd like to think otherwise, but no, wearing a beret is not necessarily a guarantee for intelligence.

Daniil Orain is a Russian YouTuber, posting videos of "everyday Russians" about (sensitive) subjects.

One of these subjects, the Holodomor, the starvation of millions of Ukrainians in 1932–33 as a result of deliberate Soviet policies, gets some interesting points of view in this video:

And Vasillly may be a good boinero, well-informed he is not. 

Thanks, Frans

Jim Henderson

Pro-Palestinian marches have been taking place across the UK to urge an end to Israeli attacks in Gaza.

Poppy selling army veteran Jim Henderson, ex Royal Corps of Signals, 32 Signal Regiment in Northern Ireland and boinero, was attacked as he tried to leave Waverley Station in Edinburgh as hundreds of protesters filled the station on November 4 in a demo against the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza.

Henderson said he was punched and kicked as he tried to pack up his poppy stall at Waverley Station

Don Lanphere

Donald Gale Lanphere (1928 –2003) was an American jazz tenor and soprano saxophonist, known for his 1940s and 1950s work, and recordings with Fats Navarro (in 1948), Woody Herman (1949), Claude Thornhill, Sonny Dunham, Billy May, and Charlie Barnet.

He was born in Wenatchee, Washington. Lanphere moved to New York City as a member of Johnny Bothwell's group to become part of the bebop jazz scene. In New York, Lanphere was in a relationship with Chan Richardson, who later married Charlie Parker.

In 1951, Lanphere was arrested and charged with heroin possession in New York City. After his release from jail, he worked in his family's music store in Wenatchee. He began performing in the Seattle area after becoming a born again Christian in 1969, at which time he also stopped using drugs and alcohol.

Hugh McConnell

Hugh McConnell was a member of the British Racing Drivers' Club (BRDC); an exclusive invitation-only members club for racecar drivers who are judged to have achieved success in the upper levels of motor sport for a number of seasons. Except under exceptional circumstances, members must have been born in the United Kingdom or Commonwealth.

Pictured here with an Austin 20/6 Landaulette at Brooklands in 1931. Hugh McConnell died during WW2.

The Donzère-Mondragon Dam

The Donzère-Mondragon Dam (or André-Blondel dam), located in the French commune of Bollène-Écluse) is a hydroelectric dam and lock built in 1952 at the southern end of the Donzère-Mondragon canal, in the Vaucluse department in France. It was registered in the list of historic monuments in France in 1992.

Umberto Bratti, a Donzere-Mondragon canal and power worker, 1952

The Donzère-Mondragon Dam is one of the largest hydroelectric dams in France, with a total installed capacity of 450 MW. The dam has a height of 58 meters and a length of 5.8 kilometers, and it consists of five turbines that generate electricity from the flow of water through the dam.

Elizabeth Adela Forbes

Elizabeth Adela Forbes (née Armstrong; 1859 –1912) was a Canadian painter who was primarily active in the UK.

In 1909 she pursued cures and restorative periods for cancer in France and London, but died in 1912. 

Pictured "A Shepherd of the Pyrenees". 

The Raiders

South African soldiers listen to their orders for the dangerous raid through the enemy lines to El Daba on 3 November, 1942. 

This was during the Second Battle of El Alamein (23 October-11 November 1942). 

From The Eighth Army Archive [His Majestys Stationery Office, London, 1944].

Abdullas

Abdullas Book of Beauty. From Punch, or the London Charivari, March 6, 1935.

As fresh as dewy cowslips but newly brought to Town

So soon will she be radiant in tulle or satin gown;

This season sees her dancing into the London morn

Whilst wildfowl call and flutter across the lake at dawn.

 

No walks with Scamp and Ginger – no homely schoolroom tea-

No giggles over Wodehouse beneath the cedar tree,

How cool the great walled-garden, the woodland-rides how green!...

Only adored Abdullas will speak of what has been. 

At the Scrapyard in 1963

Scrapyard worker, Rotherham, South Yorkshire, 1963. 

Photo shows a scrapyard worker beside a set of Linderman Alista cutting jaws which were used to reduce scrap before being baled and sent for melting at the Edgar Allen Steel Cos scrap facility in Rotherham.

Winifred Buller

Winifred Buller was a British aviation pioneer who served with the American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps in WW1.

Mrs Buller was the first woman to fly professionally in 1914. Mrs Buller became a professional pilot with Caudron and Co.

Inset is a portrait of British aviator John Alcock (1892-1919), one of the first men, together with his navigator, Arthur Whitten Brown, to fly non-stop across the Atlantic, a feat they achieved in 1919.

Brooklyn, NY

From the Historica Graphica Collection:

A woman from Harlem buys a pair of shoes for her child, New York, c1920s-c1930s.

Charles Lloyd

Charles Lloyd (1938) is an American jazz musician. Though he primarily plays tenor saxophone and flute, he has occasionally recorded on other reed instruments, including alto saxophone and the Hungarian tárogató.

Charles Lloyd was born and grew up in Memphis, Tennessee and was exposed to blues, gospel and jazz. He is of African, Cherokee, Mongolian, and Irish ancestry. He was given his first saxophone at the age of nine and was riveted by 1940s radio broadcasts by Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington.

Lloyd celebrated his 75th birthday in 2013 with concerts in the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Kennedy Center Concert Hall in Washington, D.C. In 2016, Lloyd was inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame.

MG 18 / 80

The MG 18/80 is a car which was produced by MG Cars from 1928 to 1931 as a successor to the types 14/28 and 14/40.

The cars were equipped with six-cylinder inline engines with chain-driven overhead camshafts. They were of 2468 cc displacement and had a double carburetor with only one float chamber. The power was about 60 bhp (45 kW), giving a top speed of 80 mph (130 km/h), as indicated by the '80' in the product designation 18/80.

Pictured here the MG driven by Mrs. R. Gouch at the Brighton Motor Rally of July 1930.

Bulee "Slim" Gaillard

Bulee "Slim" Gaillard (1911 –1991), also known as McVouty, was an American jazz singer and songwriter who played piano, guitar, vibraphone, and tenor saxophone.

Gaillard was noted for his comedic vocalese singing and word play in his own constructed language called "Vout-o-Reenee", for which he wrote a dictionary. In addition to English, he spoke five languages (Spanish, German, Greek, Arabic, and Armenian) with varying degrees of fluency. 

He rose to prominence in the late 1930s with hits such as "Flat Foot Floogie (with a Floy Floy)" and "Cement Mixer (Put-Ti-Put-Ti)" after forming Slim and Slam with Leroy Eliot "Slam" Stewart. During World War II, Gaillard served as a bomber pilot in the Pacific. In 1944, he resumed his music career and performed with such notable jazz musicians as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Dodo Marmarosa.

In the 1960s and 1970s, he acted in films—sometimes as himself—and appeared in bit parts in television series such as Roots: The Next Generations.

In the 1980s, Gaillard resumed touring the circuit of European jazz festivals. He followed Dizzy Gillespie's advice to move to Europe and, in 1983, settled in London, where he died of cancer on February 26, 1991, after a long career in music, film and television, spanning nearly six decades.

Horstman 1496 cc

The Horstman was one of the really popular cars of the early 'twenties, and had a great reputation for good work­manship and reliability. Although very few actual sports cars were built, those that were sold performed extremely well. From the earliest days the Horstman sponsors were interested in track- racing, and W. D. Hawkes' single-seater was one of the few cars that could meet, and often beat, the speedy Hillmans and A.C.s.

Pictured a Horstman 1496cc with driver W.D. Hawkes (with beret). He finished 5th in the 1500cc class at the Brooklands 200 mile race in 1921. 

Homage to Jean-Claude Pertuzé

Regular visitors of The Beret Project need no introduction to Jean-Claude Pertuzé and his work. In April next year it will be 4 years without his physical presence in this world (and I dare say, not many days go by without a thought of Jean-Claude).

I am incredibly glad with the initiative of a group of friends, fellow Lectourois, colleagues, admirers and relatives who formed a committee organizing various events to remember and honour Jean-Claude.

A regularly updated Facebook page "Hommage à Pertuzé - Lectoure mai 2024" has just gone live and I am honoured to see "Le magicien du béret" (the Beret Wizard) opening the site.   

Many thanks to Michel Salanié and the many others for their great work. 

Henry Taylor

Sir Henry Taylor KCMG (1800 –1886) was an English dramatist and poet, Colonial Office official, and man of letters.

Taylor was highly esteemed as a poet and dramatist. Modern literary historians, however, tend to overlook Taylor's accomplishments in verse and drama and emphasize his importance as a literary critic, pointing out that he was a strong advocate for stylistic simplicity, subject matter rooted in common life, and intellectual discipline in poetic composition, placing special importance on clear and reasoned structure.

Sir Henry Taylor as Rembrandt. By Julia Margaret Cameron

Taylor published his Autobiography in 1885, which contains portraits of Wordsworth, Southey, Tennyson and Walter Scott. In it, on his own account, he gave Richard Whately's opinion of him as a "resuscitated Bacon", who had better things to do than write verse (which could be left to women).

Five Berets

Andriy Markiv: Gabrielle Caunesil

 

Susan Broemmelsiek: Christine 1975-77

Vladiy Zart: Irina Obrez

Claude Weisbuch, 1973

Eva.Strauss-Rosen: Portrait Robert Altman