David Charters

Obituary: Alys Lancaster

THOSE were the days. The butler’s spy-hole in the machine on the pier provided flickering thrills, kiss-me-quick-hats were high fashion, held down against the bracing breeze, which carried the smells of frying fish down the prom, “poe-shh” landladies liked refined guests, and she was the queen of Britain’s most popular resort.Read

Obituary: Norman Warden Owen

“THEY came away like two pegs from a cribbage board,” he said later. Expressed in mere words, in the old British style, it was always possible for our heroes to accept their acts of almost unimaginable bravery, with a modest shrug.Read

David Charters: Ah, the old problem - Life

"YOUR laughter does not deafen me,” I said, in a peevish tone, as my latest joke seemed to lose its bearings in the humid air humming around my friend and colleague, who was sitting in the desk opposite mine, watching a skin form over the tea cooling in his stained mug. Read

Liverpudlian heroes unnoticed in the crowd

FROM glory to destitution, life was often cruel for Liverpool’s bravest of the brave, as a new book about VCs tells us. David Charters reports.Read

Obituary: Joey Giardello

IT WAS boxing as you remember it from the movies – brimmed hats, wide-striped suits, padded shoulders, corrupt deals, street-corner boys shouting the betting odds, all held in the shades of smoke from fat cigars, while skinny Italians punched bags, hoping one day to be contenders.Read

Obituary: Bill Melendez

THIS son of a Mexican cavalry officer led a strike of animators, which would have stilled Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and all the others, if their creator, Walt Disney, had not allowed his studio staff to join a union.Read

Obituary: Bernard McKenna

HIS opinions were formed by what he saw and his politics rose from the streets. Six of his younger brothers and sisters, born into a desperately poor family, had died in infancy.Read

Obituary: Anita Page

SHE was the last voice of the silent age, when the fingers of pianists danced to the action and the strings in the orchestra pit spoke of sorrow and love, and her beauty stirred the juices of Benito Mussolini, Italy’s Fascist dictator, who sent her doting love letters.Read

Muddling through has always been my highest ambition

IT IS true that, amid all the bumps and balm of life, my highest admiration has been reserved for those, who have squeezed their souls to help us laugh along that auld parade of pantaloons, buffoonaries, fizzing dentures, pork-pie hats, sad eyes, skew-whiff wigs, slow smiles and frozen mirrors.Read

Is this the first of the spiders from Mars?

THE earth-shaking spider has vanished, but does the future hold an even more terrifying surprise? David Charters weaves a storyRead

The woman who won admiration for her kindness to the rich and the poor

She loved to sing herself, as she tended the poor. Now a tune has been dedicated to Liverpool’s Saint of the Slums. David Charters reportsRead

Obituary: Jerry Reed

ELVIS was slim and fit, talking in that slow, southern drawl, which reminded people of old country meeting-houses and honey.Read

A cause worth giving your life for

On returning to his native Liverpool, one of Britain’s greatest trade unionists and a Spanish Civil War veteran revealed his undying passion for humanity. David Charters reportsRead

Union stalwart Jack Jones opens show

THE grand old man of trade unionism has known them all in his time – prime ministers and chancellors, the knights of industry and the lords of inherited wealth.Read

Morris prepares to peel off the layers

God and George Melly are among topics discussed by the Naked Ape man, soon to be seen dressed in Birkenhead, for an exhibition of his paintings. David Charters reportsRead

David Charters: Yes, the Italians are cool, but we are eccentric

"TRULY, it is not possible,” invoked the French logician in the sharp navy shorts and thick-lensed spectacles, designed for the magnification of every human foible, as he joined the meandering queue to the ferry’s ticket-office – his frustration and indignation borne on severely white legs, carpeted by priest-black hairs, which stopped abruptly one and a half inches above his ankles. Read

Obituary: Harold Ackroyd

YOU can almost hear the fanfares, the roar of the lion and the sounding of that great gong when their names are mentioned – the Rivoli, the Empire, the Odeon, the Gaumont, the Coliseum, the Astoria, the Scala, the Regal and Roxy, the Stella, the Ritz, the Plaza, the Grand and so on and on.Read

Obituary: David Hammond

IF YOU could see his face again, white hair fluffing under a woollen cap, an unflinching stare, firm nose and jaw, the quizzically smiling lips, from which some fine ballads of loss and love had broken on those foaming nights, you would know that his country had needed him.Read

Jack Hutton

ALTHOUGH his love was jazz and he could blow his trumpet with gusto and fine style, the man anticipated beat music and was there when the Beatles were rising – being greeted by John Lennon at the 1964 press conference, celebrating their arrival in New York, with words which can’t be published in a family paper.Read

A professional approach to murder

Murders most foul will join microscopes and quills at a conference about how thriller writers and forensic scientists can fight real crime. David Charters reportsRead

David Charters

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