Nottingham Rebels

A rebellious blog by Tom Jamison

  • Richard Beckinsale (1947 – 1979) – Funny, that…

    Actors are rebels. They pretend to be other people for a living. This, of course, can lead to problems when they forget who they are and where they came from. The sadness of Richard Beckinsale is that he didn’t live long enough to forget.

    Richard Beckinsale is best known for his role in television sitcom, Porridge (written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais) which follows the exploits and small victories of cellmates, Norman Fletcher (Ronnie Barker) and Lennie Godber. Beckinsale plays the naïve youngster, who is ironically mentored by Fletcher in the ways of surviving (and thriving) in a life behind bars. Beckinsale plays the fresh-faced Godber with wide eyes and innocence; the ideal foil for the cynical, ‘seen it all before’ Fletcher, to fabulous comic effect.

    Alongside Porridge, Beckinsale also played Alan Moore in Rising Damp (written by Eric Chappell) opposite Leonard Rossiter’s shabby landlord character, Rigsby, Don Warrington’s Philip Smith and Frances de la Tour’s Ruth Jones, which ran from 1974 – 1978. Beckinsale plays a medical student, again with a naïve character whose innocent observations are brilliantly delivered. Interestingly, he was the only one of the cast not to have been part of the original stage version before it went into production with Yorkshire Television.

    Beckinsale was born in Carlton, Nottinghamshire, and from the age of 15 years old, when he left school, had ambitions to become an actor. Being too young to join a drama school, he took a series of manual jobs for the next year, before he joined Clarendon College (now part of Nottingham College) to take on a drama teaching course for the next two years.

    As if few people from Nottingham consider drama as a viable career, Beckinsale was rebel enough to apply to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) but was unsuccessful. Nevertheless, he applied again and became one of around 30 students chosen from a pool of 12,500.

    Beckinsale had a genuine passion for acting but also writing. A book of poetry With Love was posthumously published in 1980 and promoted by his wife, actress Judy Loe, Ronnie Barker and Richard Briers on the Russell Harty Show.

    It’s difficult not to view Richard Beckinsale without becoming slightly melancholy. When any talent dies at just 31 years old, it’s a sadness, but when they’re arguably at the height of their powers it’s difficult not to consider what they may have gone on to do. 

    Just three days after he passed away, sitcom and Porridge sequel Going Straight, won a BAFTA award, with his co-star, Ronnie Barker, delivering a brief acceptance speech and tribute to Beckinsale. In fact, Beckinsale starred in three sitcoms that won BAFTA Awards three years running: Porridge in 1977, Rising Damp in 1978, and Going Straight in 1979. Also in 1979, the film version of Porridge (dir Dick Clement) was also released. (The Porridge television series ran from 1974 – 1977.)

    A further, more oblique tribute was made more recently in the 2006 film Venus, (dir Roger Michell) when Peter O’Toole’s character, points to a plaque in the actor’s church, St Paul’s in Covent Garden, London, dedicated to Beckinsale as an example of an actor who died too young.

    Once said: “When I decided to become an actor, it wasn’t actually to make money or to make a living. I wanted to be an actor because I wanted to act. I’ve always had this desire to communicate a great kind of beauty to other people, like a vicar or priest does, to transport people to the world where I live. I just appreciate living on Earth at an artistic level. There’s a great deal of satisfaction in living this way. It’s like love, I suppose. There are no words for it, apart from love – to give people love, to teach people love. I think it is probably the main driving force in my life.”

    Brief summary: Beckinsale made acting look easy and loose. Perhaps because his comic delivery and timing looked so natural means that he isn’t always recognised as the outstanding talent he was, especially next to larger-than-life characters played by Ronnie Barker and Leonard Rossiter.

  • Su Pollard – Can I get a ‘Hi-de-Hi!’?

    Comedians are rebels, especially female comedians. They see the world differently, since for the most part, the world is ordered by men, who tend to be very serious. Su Pollard, on the other hand, evidently enjoys absurdity and silliness and simply being happy.

    Strictly speaking, actress, Su Pollard’s first role was as an angel in a Nativity play aged six, while at the Berridge Road School in Hyson Green. Her break, as such, was appearing on Britain’s Got Talent forerunner, Opportunity Knocks in 1974. Prefiguring her later career, she came second, singing “I Cain’t Say No” from musical Oklahoma! to a man called Harold Gumm, who showcased his singing dog, Jack.

    Happily, Pollard used her talent for appearing to be the most unlikely star in the world to land a role in a 1980 pilot for television comedy, Hi-de-Hi! written by the legendary duo, David Coft (1922 – 2011) and Jimmy Perry (1923 – 2016) about a fictious Butlin’s style holiday camp. As joyful but dowdy cleaning lady, Peggy Ollerenshaw, Pollard became a household name, starring in nine series between 1981 and 1988.

    Rebelling against type, she also got to number two on the UK singles chart with the song ‘Starting Together’ in 1986, and also released an album, Su. 

    Pollard would’ve done well in the age of music hall, since her persona takes much from acts like Gracie Fields (1898 – 1979, see: ‘Wish Me Luck as You Wave Me Goodbye’). Like Fields, perhaps what endears her so much is that the roles she plays are usually plucky ‘underdogs’ who try to succeed against the odds.

    Indeed, underdogs are rebels. They don’t care that their chances of success are limited. Arguably, Pollard is an underdog, with an unconventional look and manner. Perhaps it’s this that makes her successes so joyful to audiences, not least since many of us feel like imposters or underdogs occasionally, and it’s difficult not to root for her.

    Once said: “Someone once said to me ‘Never dismiss how you became famous because if you do, you’re essentially laughing at other people’s memories.’ And I’ve always lived by that rule because so many people have good memories of Hi-de-Hi! I know I do, so I never take it for granted.”

    Brief summary: Su Pollard is irrepressible. Her secret may just be that she’s far more talented and intelligent than most people will ever understand.

  • Eric Coates (1886 – 1957) – Music for all occasions

    Despite strict training, Coates developed a light orchestral style of his very own. His tunes have stood the test of time and resonate with us today, though he was regarded as something of a rebel in his day.

    Eric Coates is best remembered for composing The Dam Busters March. His rousing tune is used as the theme to the 1955 movie of the same name directed by Michael Anderson and starring Richard Todd and Michael Redgrave. The tune has become as iconic as the movie itself and demonstrates that popular music (even though not in the mould of ‘pop’ as we know it, or rock ‘n’ roll, that had recently arrived in the UK from the USA) could be great music.

    Coates didn’t write the march specifically for The Dam Busters film but was approached to write a piece for it. In fact, Coates didn’t like composing for the cinema, nevertheless, he was persuaded that the film was of “national importance” by his publisher, Chappell & Co. Of course, the heroic nature of The Dam Busters March, is somewhat in the style of Edward Elgar (see Pomp and Circumstance March No 1, Land of Hope and Glory by Sir Edward Elgar 1857 – 1934) was perfect for the film.

    Style
    Interestingly, Coates composed the tune in 1954, toward the end of his life and after a period in the 1920’s when critics had all-but ignored him after he had started to develop a style influenced by the new ‘American syncopated idiom’. (Coates is regarded as the first European composer to use it successfully in symphonic compositions).

    His rebellious approach makes Eric Coates one of the outstanding candidates to be considered as ‘the British George Gershwin’. (See Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin 1898 – 1937.)

    Coates’ music is also familiar to us via the enchanting theme tune to long-running radio programme, Desert Island Discs, called By the Sleepy Lagoon. Written in 1930, the seductive, melody immediately conjures imagery of peaceful solitude among palm trees and is a far cry from the urgency of The Dam Busters March.

    Among the greats
    Eric Coates was born in Hucknall, ironically, near Hucknall Aerodrome, which saw action as an RAF base during the Second World War. Coates went to London and won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music as a viola player and composer. He was
    principal viola of the Queen’s Hall Orchestra under Sir Henry Wood and also played under some of the other greats, including Elgar, German, Delius, Holst, Strauss and Debussy. It was neuritis (nerve damage) that eventually steered him towards concentrating on composition exclusively.

    Coates wrote several pieces, that just as By the Sleepy Lagoon had, became well known through use as theme tunes to radio and television programmes. Knightsbridge, from his London Suite was used by BBC Radio’s In Town Tonight. Calling All Workers was the theme to Music While You Work, while Halcyon Days (Elizabeth Tudor) from The Three Elizabeths Suite became the theme to BBC television series, The Forsyte Saga.

    Once said: “Wrong attitudes towards the best light music were fostering an insidious form of musical snobbery among listeners, teaching them to despise melody.”

    Brief summary: Although Coates’ tunes are associated with nostalgia, it’s difficult to think of certain films or broadcasts without them. I wouldn’t be the first to consider Coates the ‘King of light orchestral music.’

  • Richard Whitehead – It’s a marathon, not a sprint

    Double amputees don’t usually become elite athletes, but then, Richard Whitehead has always believed in living a “life without limits”.

    Richard Whitehead is definitely unconventional and rebellious. The way he runs is certainly unlike any other elite athlete.

    Sprinters will tell you that the start is the crucial element of a race. To get away cleanly on the gun is clearly important but then it’s a question of who can get into their optimum sprinting position first, since realistically, the race is won by the athlete with the highest average top speed. Whitehead, however, doesn’t even use a block start technique that other athletes utilise to launch themselves, instead, his standing start relies on flapping of elbows to get going before he can start to swing his pelvis and prosthetic running ‘blades’.

    Look again at the T42 men’s 200m final at the London 2012 Paralympics. Of the nine athletes in the final, Whitehead is one of only two, with two prosthetic legs and is the only one with what might be described as a lateral running style, while others pump their legs in a more traditional up and down method.

    At the halfway point, Whitehead is in second to last place but has just hit top speed and finishes the race ten metres in front of the other athletes, setting a new World Record of 24.39 seconds leaving the old record of 24.93 very much in the past. Not only is it a fine piece of physical athleticism, it also clearly demonstrates the mental strength of a person who has been doing things differently his whole life, as a disabled person.

    The disability journey is one that takes problem solving to the extreme. Disabled people are very often rebels. How frequently do they hear the phrase: “No you can’t”?

    Endurance
    What also underlines Whitehead as a rebel is that sprinting is not even his first choice event. Whitehead is a marathon runner.

    Richard Whitehead became a marathon runner to raise money for sarcoma research, after the loss of a close friend to bone cancer. He’d also been inspired by the well-known amputee, Terry Fox, and although he’d never even run a mile previously, he applied to enter the New York Marathon. Furthermore, he was using sports cups, since he didn’t at that time have any prosthetic legs, and intended to effectively run the marathon on his knees – a very painful and arduous undertaking indeed. In the end, a sports equipment manufacturer supplied him with running blades and he completed his first marathon on those.

    In 2010 Whitehead broke his previous World Record for athletes with lower-limb amputations, with a time of 2:42:5 at the Chicago Marathon but sadly, the forthcoming London Paralympics in 2012 had no lower leg amputee classification for the marathon discipline and the International Paralympic Committee denied him the opportunity to compete against athletes with different classifications. In rebellious style, Whitehead began the qualification journey towards the T42 200m.

    Whitehead was born in Nottingham and has a double through-knee congenital amputation. Also worth mentioning is that he represented ParalympicsGB at sledge hockey in the Winter Games in Turin in 2006 as a 20-year-old. By the time he crossed the finish line at London 2012 he was 36 years old.

    Fundraising
    In 2013, he started a fundraising campaign, Richard Whitehead Runs Britain, running from John O’Groats to Land’s End, raising money for Sarcoma UK and Scope and in 2011 he launched The Richard Whitehead Foundation.

    At the 2016 Rio Paralympics, Whitehead won gold and broke his own World Record in the T42 200 metres and also took silver in the T42 100 metres, which he shared with Daniel Wagner of Denmark, when they finished in a dead heat. Among other highlights, Whitehead has won four IPC World Championship titles, and three European Championship titles. In 2013, he was awarded an MBE for services to athletics.

    Once said: “It’s not all been rosy; I’ve had difficult situations where I’ve failed. But when you fail you learn a lot about yourself and come back stronger. The message is: life need not have limits. Having an opportunity in life is important but what defines you is what you do with that opportunity.”

    Brief summary: Richard Whitehead is an astonishing athlete with incredible reserves of mental and physical endurance. It’s difficult to resolve his life and achievements with the word ‘disabled’.

  • Mary Earps – Safe Hands

    There is a saying that ‘goalkeepers are crazy’, however, Earps is the exception. She’s a superb footballer, a savvy operator, and a rebel.

    All goalkeepers are rebels. They’re the footballers who, arguably, can’t play football; though that doesn’t diminish their skills, or supremely vital role in a football team. They’re the coxswain who operates the whole team from the very back, steering and encouraging.

    Mary Earps is a winner. She’s collected a winner’s medal in the UEFA Women’s Euro 22 competition and was named in the ‘Team of the Tournament’, she was awarded the Golden Glove for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup tournament in 2023, after England’s defeat by Spain in the final, while earlier that year, she saved a penalty in a shootout against Brazil, helping England to triumph in the inaugural Women’s Finalissima, an intercontinental cup competition, organised by CONMEBOL and UEFA and contested between the winners of the Copa América Femenina and UEFA Women’s Championship.

    Advocate
    Away from the pitch, she’s also become seen as a persuasive advocate and role model for women’s sport. For instance, during the build-up to the World Cup, Earps publicly complained that there was no replica shirt with her name on it, taking on Nike, the most influential sports brand in the world, in the process.

    Earps heard about the kit problem in April 2023, months before the World Cup but after much “fighting behind closed doors”, including a proposal to pay for the production of the kits herself, Nike relented and committed to making replica shirts for girls and women. Even so, and despite support from the Football Association (FA), Nike was only moved to do so after the World Cup and Earps’ enormous success. Earps produced her own limited edition T-shirts for fans to wear weeks earlier, during the tournament.

    Later in 2023, Earps was announced as the winner of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award and presented with an MBE in the 2024 New Year Honours for services to football.

    Born in Nottingham, Earps signed briefly for Leicester City before moving to Nottingham Forest and making just four appearances for the club in the 2010 – 2011 season. Nevertheless, she progressed at several other clubs and between 2019 and 2024 appeared over 100 times for Manchester United, before moving to her current club, Paris Saint-Germain. Earps has also represented England at U17, U19 and U23 level, making her senior debut in 2017. She played every minute of England’s successful 2022 Euros campaign and likewise in all seven games during the 2023 World Cup and was named England Women’s Player of the Year for the 2022–23 season.

    Change
    Football has changed, and Nottingham has changed. Football was once a male, working class preserve but has now expanded to become far more diverse. It’s a good thing that rainbow scarves are now on sale at The City Ground but if there is a downside of this success, it is perhaps that the game, once rooted in working class culture, may well have left other parts of the community behind. It’s well known that The City Ground is a ‘cashless’ environment – and let’s be realistic, those are generally places for people who don’t need to know how far into their overdraft they are. But that’s really for another blog, concerning class and the cost of living.

    Anyway, one day, very soon, women’s footballers won’t be regarded as rebels. That’s what’s known as an ‘endgame’ – a very rare and rebellious thing indeed. Earps has played an important part in that rebellious journey.

    Once said: “Keep going, you can achieve anything you set your mind to. Sometimes success looks like this, collecting trophies, sometimes it’s just waking up and putting one step in front of the other. There’s only one of you in the world, and that’s more than enough. Be unapologetically yourself.”

    Brief summary: Earps is right up there with the best of Nottingham’s sporting greats. What’s more, she’s become an important and iconic figure by daring to challenge the status quo.

  • Rowland Emett OBE (1906 – 1990) – A fantastical time machine

    Clockmaking is a serious, scientific business. Rowland Emett’s kinetic sculpture, known as the Emett Clock, is anything but. Its whimsical design has been casting enchantment over the people of Nottingham since 1973.

    Imagination is a type of rebellion. It takes something approaching rebel spirit to envisage things differently and create things that nobody else has ever thought of before. Emett married the art of cartoons with engineering and sculpture.

    Every parent in Nottingham has been pulled on the sleeve by their children to look at what is known as the ‘Emett Clock’. It’s a charming, whimsical and imaginative piece of kinetic sculpture that captivates a promenade audience to its performances every 15-minutes.

    While only some adults, such as Emett, can be described as rebels, all children are rebels. Perhaps that’s why they are so drawn by Emett’s masterpiece, The Aqua Horological Tintinnabulator, (to use its official title) which sits in Nottingham’s Victoria Centre shopping mall. In any case, it provides a few moments of nostalgia for grown-ups who knew the clock in their childhood, and a sense of awe for their children.

    Fantastical
    The ‘water-powered’ clock stands 23 feet tall and features a two-metre diameter cobweb wheel carrying glittering butterflies and frogs, kept in perpetual motion by the flow of water. Meanwhile, three limbs, decorated with fantastical animal scenes also spin relentlessly.

    As if that weren’t enough, every 15 minutes, the clock becomes further animated for just over a minute and reveals a troop of animal shapes from behind metal flower petals, while playing Gigue en Rondeau II (for harpsichord) by Jean Philippe Rameau. (Before 2015 the clock ‘performed’ every 30 minutes.)

    Impulse shopping
    The Aqua Horological Tintinnabulator, was commissioned by property investment company, Capital and Counties in 1970 and took two years to build before being installed inside the main entrance of the Victoria Centre in 1973, presumably to increase ‘impulse buying’ by pulling in shoppers to marvel at it for a few minutes before being drawn by goods in surrounding shop windows. It does seem odd that in 2015 it was reinstalled at the very back of the first floor, on the way to the Victoria Bus Station, where its charm goes somewhat to waste, rather than powering much-needed commercial success.

    Frederick Rowland Emett (known as Rowland – often his name is misspelled as Roland Emmett) was born in New Southgate, London, the son of a businessman and amateur inventor, and the grandson of Queen Victoria’s engraver. He was educated and lived mostly in Birmingham – a city known for silversmithing and jewellery – a likely source of inspiration and indeed, in 1941 he married the daughter of a Birmingham silversmith, who later managed his business interests. Apart from the clock, Emett appears to have no further links with Nottingham.

    Emett was also a talented artist who had a painting exhibited at the Royal Academy and was well known as a cartoonist for Punch Magazine from around 1939 until the 1960s, though his subjects tended to be absurd, rather than political. His artistic and mechanical gifts may well have been refined by time spent as a draughtsman for the Air Ministry during the Second World War.

    You may also have seen several of his ‘inventions’ in the workshop of Caratacus Potts, in the 1968 film, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The eponymous car was co-designed by Emett and Ken Adam (who also worked on the James Bond movies).

    Once said: “They are the direct opposite, I suppose, of the average idea of the implacable, soulless machine, driving relentlessly on, or these frightening electronic proliferations, ready at the drop of a silicone chip to take us all over… My Machines are friendly, they are happy, they crave love, and I really think they get it.”

    Brief summary: Emett designed one of Nottingham’s most wonderful treasures. To have created something so sparkling during the gloom of the early 1970s says much for his imagination and creative genius.

  • Sir Gary Sobers – Six of the Best!

    Cricket is a game of etiquette and gentility. While Gary Sobers played with grace and elegance, he also had guts, determination, nerve and an aggression, that if not new to the game, was certainly unusual. Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club would be a different club without Sobers, and indeed, cricket itself, wouldn’t be what it is today either.

    Gary Sobers had a friendly arrogance and was arguably, the most gifted of any test cricketer before or since.

    Despite being courted by seven counties, Sobers signed for Notts in 1968. Not only was he the first Black player to play for the county side but he was also the first Black player to captain Notts.

    Sport is always described in moments, and the moment that defines Sobers, certainly as a Notts player, came against Glamorgan, in his first season with the club, when he became the first player in first-class cricket to hit six consecutive sixes in one (six ball) over.

    Watching the grainy monochrome footage back, it’s a great bit of batting with the first two sixes hit cleanly out of the ground over long on. Even as Roger Davis catches the ball off the fifth ball before tumbling over the boundary for another six, Sobers remains entirely calm and doesn’t flinch from hitting the next ball over square leg and “Way down to Swansea” as the commentator puts it. To Sobers, even though the last ball of Malcolm Nash’s fabled over was full and straight, he clearly regarded it a formality. Indeed, few other cricketers could have swivelled so tightly to make the shot possible.

    Cavalier
    That one over changed cricket. Sobers had shown a new cavalier style, so it’s somewhat strange to hear that what has become known as ‘Bazball’ was invented and named after New Zealand cricketer (and England coach) Brendon McCullum, in 2022.

    At the time of his Notts career, Sobers was the holder of the highest ever score in a test match, 365, made against Pakistan in 1958 (aged 21). Surprisingly, it was his maiden test century, showing again his irrepressible willpower and rebellious streak to push on.


    At the time, snobbery among the game’s officialdom (The MCC) meant that the score wasn’t universally accepted as the highest in tests, since only Ashes matches between England and Australia were then regarded as worthwhile competition. Len Hutton’s 364 in the 1938 Ashes match at The Oval was regarded as the finer achievement, even though Sobers had beaten it in an innings of 10 hours (three hours less than Hutton had taken).

    Sobers was certainly the most versatile test player; he batted left-handed and bowled left arm fast-medium, left arm orthodox spin and left arm unorthodox spin (known today as leg spin) and he was a fine close fielder. Sobers defines the potency of the all-rounder.

    Influence
    Sobers’ mark on Notts CCC cannot be ignored. By not only signing a Black player (and making him captain) Notts were making both a statement and club history. The class segregation era (Gentlemen v Players) at Notts was genuinely buried in favour of true meritocracy and Sobers repaid the club, not only in living up to his promise as a player (and responsibility as a role model), but also with six years of loyalty at a time when he could have gone to play anywhere. Since 1968, other non-English players have also had prolific success at the club, not least fellow Barbadian, Franklyn Stephenson, who Sobers reckoned was “really hard done by” by the West Indies selectors after touring apartheid era South Africa.

    Once said: “I enjoyed playing any type of cricket. Didn’t matter what type it was because I did not want to change my game. My game was built on one type of cricket: if there was a ball to hit, you hit it, whether it was Test matches, [or] whatever it was.”

    Brief summary: Gary Sobers is surely the most versatile test cricketer in history. His influence over the pace of cricket today ironically means that there’s unlikely ever to be another quite like him.

  • Sir Paul Smith – Reinventing Colour

    Paul smith is a rebel within an industry concerned mainly with conformity. Fashion is the mainstream by which everyday clothing choices are understood. We live in a somewhat judgmental and intolerant society where what people wear is scrutinised and criticised, often without a care towards individuality or perhaps even, personality. Paul Smith is different.

    For over 50 years, Paul Smith has been at the stylish end of the rag trade. Born in Beeston in 1946, Smith is the youngest sibling of three. (This is important, since the third child is often the family rebel.) Although he had ambitions to take up cycling professionally, a serious accident meant that he was sidelined and became interested in art and fashion. He opened his grand sounding (yet diminutive) shop, Paul Smith Vêtements Pour Homme, on Byard Lane in 1970, where he sold his own handmade designs as well as other labels, part-time, from a premises with a shopfloor of just three square metres.

    Stripes
    One of the mainstays of Paul Smith’s designs has been stripes, which have been present since his first collections in the 1970s. Somehow, despite being largely associated with prison uniforms and deckchairs, Paul Smith’s use of stripes has evolved and is a recognisable motif and ‘brand’ within a brand, to the extent where the design that celebrates every imaginable colour is now known as the ‘Signature Stripe’. Elsewhere, of course, his often irregular (near clashing) style of colour combinations has become a trademark, though it’s clear that he’s somehow riffing on his love of cycling jerseys, as well as the French impressionist artist, Henri Matisse (see: ‘L’escargot’ or ‘The Snail’ by Matisse 1869 – 1954).

    Influences
    Smith’s ‘maximal’ designs clearly take influences from an enormous range of objects and ideas. His designs, and to some extent, his shops, reflect an eclectic and nostalgic collection of collections, or cabinet of curiosities approach. He’s a magpie among pigeons, with far more ideas and influences than he can ever explore to the full, resulting in his diverse work radiating energy and enthusiasm.

    Nottingham is a city of design. You need only look at the Emett Clock, (also known as The Aqua Horological Tintinnabulator, designed and created by Rowland Emett, that stands in the Victoria Centre) or consider the grand Victorian architecture of Watson Fotheringham, that adds stylish notes to some very ordinary Nottingham streets, to understand how Paul Smith continues the tradition.

    International
    Don’t count on spotting Sir Paul behind the counter of the beautiful Willoughby House store on Low Pavement, though he has been known to drop by – and presumably it was he who autographed the (NET) Nottingham tram recently named after him – since he could, for instance, be in any one of 60 countries, visiting any of his 130 stores.

    Although it’s the bold colours and designs that catch the eye, it’s arguably in the details where Paul Smith has really had most influence. It’s the colourful, pop of stitching or buttons that turn an ordinary wardrobe staple, like a men’s white shirt, into something far more than the sum of its parts; being serious enough to where to a board meeting, while humorous or witty enough to wear among a gathering of friends.

    Rebel within the detail
    How many navy blue suits has Paul Smith sold because the lining is so attractive? Perhaps this is the twist on the emperor’s new clothes, since although his design touches aren’t invisible, the point is inescapable that often the magic Paul Smith detail is only actually known to the person wearing his designs. Perhaps that’s the whole point. Perhaps that’s the rebel within Smith suggesting that we should only wear what we want to wear, rather than what everyone else expects us to wear.

    Once said: “You can find inspiration in everything. If you can’t, then you’re not looking properly.”

    Brief summary: Sir Paul Smith has all but rebooted how we think about colour and will paint stripes on just about anything.

  • Welcome to Nottingham Rebels

    The city of Nottingham and the surrounding county, Nottinghamshire, have been known for centuries as rebel country.

    Nottingham’s tradition of rebels and rebellion stretches back to before the Norman invasion, to the name that encapsulates it more than any other, Robin Hood, though since then, there’ve been plenty of others.

    With over a thousand years of rebels and rebellion to sift through, we’re bound to kick up more questions and controversies than straightforward answers, and it’s also likely that what we find in Nottingham’s past might just tell us something about today’s city and perhaps even inform on its future.

    Along the way, we’ll analyse what makes a rebel, within the context of their own time, and in the legacy they’ve left on the city and the wider county.

    In each blog, we’ll also discuss whether it’s the rebels that have made Nottingham what it is, or if it’s Nottingham that makes rebels, since that also gives us breadth to talk about rebels who weren’t born in Nottingham but did so much to leave their mark: Laura Knight, Ned Ludd, Gary Sobers and Brian Clough spring immediately to mind.

    Whether Robin Hood was man or myth isn’t really the point, since this blog is also rebellious and doesn’t aim to provide definitive facts, figures or answers. Rather, we intend to discuss how and why Nottingham continues to produce so many rebels – many of whom have become heroes by challenging rules and upsetting the status quo.