History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

                                          Frank Vosper Frank Vosper was born in December 1899, just two weeks before the turn of the century. He was born at 24 Gondar Gardens in West Hampstead – the house where Nobel prize-winning novelist Doris Lessing lived for more than 30 years before her death in 2013.  Vosper’s father Percy was a surgeon at Kings College Hospital, having come from Plympton in Devon to study medicine in London. In 1894, Percy married Blanche Permain, whose father was a fine art dealer and they had moved to Gondar Gardens at the end of 1896.  Frank would have had a comfortable upbringing, yet the story of his premature death at just 36 would have made as good a film as any he might have acted in, with a cast list that included Ernest Hemingway and Miss Great Britain.                  ...

On Easter Sunday, Marianne watched ‘Ben Hur’ for the umpteenth time and among the support actors, she recognised a familiar face - Howard Lang. He was the man beating time – or to give his proper job description, the hortator, on the slave galley that included Ben Hur played by Charlton Heston. The hortator varied the rapidity of his drum strikes – the more beats the faster the rowers had to pull on their oars, with a little encouragement from soldiers who hit them with whips. The fastest tempo was sea battle or ‘ramming’ speed. We had a conversation about Howard Lang. He is probably best-known for another maritime role as Captain Baines in the long-running BBC series ‘The Onedin Line’. This portrayed a fictional shipping company in Liverpool from 1860 to the 1880s. It was compulsory viewing for Marianne but wasn’t a programme that appealed to Dick.     In real life Howard Lang was born in London as Donald Yarranton. At the time of the 1911 census on 2 April, his pare...