Page 7 - Colditz Castle News Today

This week we take a trip through memory lane to look at the history of a beloved toy that ignited childrens creativity and gave parents some…

Five Czech airmen died when their RAF Wellington bomber was shot down over the Netherlands.

BBC News Published image copyrightGetty Images image captionTwo of the Czechoslovak crew shown here - Karel Valach (1st left) and Vilem Konstacky (4th from left) - died in the June raid Dutch salvage workers have found some bone fragments and scraps of airmens clothing in the debris of an RAF Wellington bomber shot down over the Netherlands in June 1941. The Wellington had a six-man Czech crew, five of whom died. It was downed by a German night fighter, crashing at Nieuwe Niedorp, a village abo...

Strong start to the festival. Review by Veronica Lee

A LEADING comedian is thrilled to be getting back on stage for the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Arthur Smith, who lives in Balham, will be back in front of audiences at the Warren in Marlborough Place as part of the Brighton Fringe. The show, entitled SYD, will include stories about Arthur’s father Syd Smith. Arthur will tell tales of when Syd was a prisoner of war at Colditz Castle in Germany and from the time he was a policeman patrolling London’s South Bank...

For most of their lives, the sensitive heir and the Queen's brash consort were locked in an uneasy, complicated relationship. But while their personalities were dissimilar, the two began to see eye to eye a lot more as they grew older.

IT’S one of those stories that you just couldn’t make up and, even if you did, no one would really believe you. It might read a bit like an idea for a TV drama, but the difference, on this occasion at least, is it is all absolutely true. For me the events start at the altar of the ancient parish church of St Mary the Virgin, Burnham-on-Crouch. Picture the scene. It is Saturday, June 22, 1946, and the vicar, the Rev Williams, is conducting one of a number of post-war wedding ceremoni...

Syd Smith was a POW in WW2 and worked as a police officer in London in the 1950s Smith is also making a Radio 4 stand-up special, and has recorded a podcast pilot with Miriam Margolyes Arthur Smith is turning his late fathers life story into a Radio 4 special and book, British Comedy Guide can exclusively reveal. Both the half-hour stand-up show and the book, which has the working title That in turn was inspired by his fathers own memoirs, which he wrote down for his family in 2004, shortly be...

What’s on TV this weekend: David Attenborough returns to the BBC with A Perfect Planet The i 1/1/2021 Gerard Gilbert Friday 9pm, BBC One A new year and a new real-crime drama. This immaculately designed eight-part thriller follows the hunt for Charles Sobhraj, a conman and serial killer who preyed on young backpackers on the South East Asian “hippy trail” during the mid-1970s. We first meet Sobhraj (played with suitably chilling menace by Tahar Rahim) posing as a gem sal...

As a child, David Walliams’s favourite movie was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the 1968 musical fantasy about a flying car, its eccentric inventor Caractacus Potts and the brilliantly scary Child Catcher. But the thing that really captured David’s imagination was when Chitty took to the air.  ‘Those scenes were absolutely magical,’ recalls BGT judge David, ‘I really thought that car was flying.’ In reality, Chitty never got off the ground. Weighing a whopping two tons, the specially bui...