Happy Birthday, FRB!

 Just a quick post this week - I'm still busy with Garnet Holme! - to commemorate the birth on November 4th 1858 of Sir Frank Benson.  Still inspiring, all these years later.

Working towards a round unvarnished tale...

Oh, what a rabbit-hole I've dropped through!  And it is all the fault of that dog...

My research to name as many people as possible on the Benjamin Stone 1900 Company photograph  led to identification of Garnet Holme, stage manager and actor, friend of Harcourt Williams and - potentially - owner of THAT DOG.  And then, scratching the surface, I discovered a whole life-story just waiting to be explored - a story that moves from Sussex to Cambridge to Stratford and then to Yale, Berkley, the Yosemite National Park and finally ends with ashes scattered on a hillside in California.  It includes a missing suitcase, stolen costumes, Australian 'Field Ball', a solar eclipse, a best-selling novel about indigenous Americans and outdoor pageantry on a scale which I find difficult to even imagine and a heritage which is still going strong today.  It has led me to the American Newspaper Archive and an exploration through newspapers from across California and then the wider continent.   

I now feel absolutely obliged to follow this one through to the bitter end - and when I have, I promise I will a round, unvarnished tale deliver... (but I still don't know who's dog this is!)