NEWSLETTER Nº24 . SEPTEMBER 2024 |
|
 |
INTRODUCTION
|
Dear Member, Please find below our latest newsletter. This is a special issue to commemorate the launching of a new web site that makes available online all copies of the Anglo-Portuguese News (APN), which was published between 1937 and 2004. The website, https://www.angloportuguesenews.pt/, is fully searchable and text from the issues of the APN can be downloaded easily. We are confident that it will provide an invaluable tool for researchers wishing to understand more about the British in Portugal during that period. We are grateful for this initiative to Filipe Lowndes Marques, grandson of Luiz Marques and Susan Lowndes Marques who ran the paper for much of its life. Members should have already received an invitation to attend the formal launch of the website on 26 September at St. Julian’s School and I look forward to seeing many of you there. Non-members are also welcome but please confirm your participation to the email given in the link above. Our first main article, by Council member Andrew Shepherd, provides a detailed history of the APN. This is accompanied by a reproduction of an article by Susan Lowndes Marques, written to celebrate the paper’s Golden Jubilee in 1987. The newsletter also provides a brief biography of Susan as well as descriptions of some other British people who contributed to the paper. We have just completed an excellent visit to Urgeiriça and Belmonte. A link to the report is provided in the newsletter. The Society has several more interesting events in the months leading up to Christmas, both in Lisbon and Porto. You will find more information in the newsletter. Best wishes, Edward Godfrey Chairman |
EVENTS
|
see more Events here |
NOVEMBER 30, 2024
Forthcoming events
Brief description of events planned by the Society and its partners in the coming months
READ MORE
OCTOBER 18, 2024
Talk by Dr Mark S. Thompson on ‘Telegraphs on the Lines of Torres Vedras’
Dr Thompson is an acclaimed author on the Peninsular War
READ MORE
SEPTEMBER 22, 2024
Report on talk in Porto by Richard Mayson on the “Music of the Revolution”
Porto 12 September 2024
READ MORE
SEPTEMBER 21, 2024
Report on trip to Belmonte, Urgeiriça, Gouveia and Conímbriga, September 2024
13-15 September 2024
READ MORE
|
ARTICLES
|
see more Articles here |
|
It was all hard work but the greatest fun. The Anglo-Portuguese News, 1937-87
Author: Susan Lowndes Marques
Report:
Page:
Year: 2024
Subject Matter: British in Portugal
READ MORE
|
|
The Anglo-Portuguese News (1937–2004)
Author: Andrew Shepherd
Report:
Page:
Year: 2024
Subject Matter: British in Portugal
READ MORE
|
|
The British in Portugal
Susan Lowndes Marques (1907-1993), was the daughter of the prolific novelist Marie Belloc Lowndes and of Frederick Lowndes of The Times. She was the granddaughter of the writer and women’s rights activist, Bessie Rayner Parkes Belloc, and niece of the poet, Hilaire Belloc. A great, great-grandfather was the British scientist, Joseph Priestley, who was credited with the discovery of oxygen. She rejected her father’s suggestion that she go to Oxford University, expecting that her future would be determined by the man she chose for a husband. Instead, she did voluntary social work, running, with her sister, a club for working girls at Fulham, and was also heavily involved with activities of the Catholic Church. For a time she seriously considered becoming a nun. In 1936, she opened an antique shop in London, specialising in Queen Anne furniture. Susan was introduced to Luiz Marques, already editor of the Anglo-Portuguese News (APN), in Estoril in August 1938 and they were married in Westminster Cathedral that December. They had three children: Paulo Lowndes Marques, lawyer, politician, and former Chairman of the BHSP, Ana Vicente, who wrote Arcádia about the couple, and Antónia Marques Leitão. Together with her husband, Susan Lowndes edited and later owned the APN. During the Second World War both worked for the British Embassy. They also gave support in Lisbon to the many refugees who passed through Portugal. After the War, they moved to Monte Estoril, where their house, full of books, was always open to family, friends and acquaintances. They kept up friendships with various friends of Susan’s family who came to Portugal, including Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley, Evelyn Waugh, Cyril Connolly, Rose Macaulay, Angus Wilson and Sachaverell Sitwell. They were also very friendly with the poet Roy Campbell and his wife Mary, both devoted Catholics, who lived in Portugal. Susan published hundreds of articles in the APN on the most varied subjects. Many were on religious topics including several on the Fátima Sanctuary. She also wrote two books on Portugal, jointly authoring The Selective Traveller in Portugal with Ann Bridge, which became a classic travel book on the country, and writing Travellers´ Guide to Portugal, which went through three editions. Her other publications included A Practical Guide to Fátima and Good Food from Spain and Portugal. She was also responsible for updating the Fodor’s Guide to Portugal on several occasions and, for Fodor, contributed a chapter on Portugal in the Woman’s Guide to Europe. She also edited her mother’s diaries, together with her elder sister, Elizabeth, Countess of Iddesleigh, which Susan published as Diaries and Letters of Marie Belloc Lowndes, which received excellent reviews. She was an admirer of art and architecture and, together with Alice Berkeley, wrote English Art in Portugal, which was published after her death. As her son Paulo wrote in the obituary published in the APN, she was “undoubtedly the English person who knew most about Portuguese art”. She was correspondent in Portugal for the London-based Catholic Herald, the US Catholic News Service, and The Rosary in New York, as well as a contributor to other publications, such as The Tablet. Despite the Estado Novo censorship she sent out thousands of pieces of news, reporting on Catholic life and other matters in Portugal, often using a pseudonym. She continued this work until a couple of weeks before her death. Few other people would have much energy left after running, writing and editing a newspaper, writing several books, and being an international correspondent but Susan always found time to help the British community in Portugal. She worked voluntarily in various institutions such as the British Hospital, St. Julian’s School, the British Retirement Home, which she established, the Charitable Fund, the Anglo-Portuguese Society in London, the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service, and others. Susan Lowndes was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1975 for her work for the British Community in Portugal. In 2007, her name was given to a street in Estoril. The Portuguese writer and art specialist, Francisco Hipolito Raposo referred to her as being a “luxurious Portuguese person”, in an obituary titled Goodbye, Mrs Lowndes. Main source: Who was Susan Lowndes and what was she doing in Portugal? by Ana Vicente.
|
|
The British in Portugal
The article by Susan Lowndes Marques for the paper’s Golden Jubilee Issue, reproduced in this newsletter, identifies and describes many of those who contributed to the success of the Anglo-Portuguese News. Here we provide additional information about some of those contributors. Ethel Rosenthal, a concert pianist, moved to Portugal from India, where her husband had worked for Indian Railways. While in India she wrote The Story of Indian Music and Its Instruments, first published in 1928 and still available online in various editions. Apart from being one of the earliest collaborators with the APN, Rosenthal worked as a translator into English and there are records in the files of the Secretariado Nacional de Informação (SNI), the Estado Novo’s propaganda body, of her offering her services and receiving payment. The SNI received many such offers but, according to João Cotrim, Rosenthal was one of just three who were employed on a fairly regular basis. Sir Marcus Cheke was independently wealthy. An unsuccessful Liberal Party candidate for the New Forest and Christchurch in 1929, he came to Portugal soon after to be the Honorary Attaché at the British Embassy. Moving to the Brussels Embassy in 1934, he returned to Lisbon to serve as the Press Attaché between 1938 and 1942. In that period, apart from liaising with the APN, one of his jobs was to guide Cecil Beaton around Lisbon, when the latter was asked by the British government to take photographs of leading Portuguese people, including the government. A very popular member of the British community, he and his wife Connie were known for the eccentric parties they gave at their home in Campolide. A prolific writer, Cheke authored several books, including A Life of the Marquis of Pombal and Carlota Joaquina Queen of Portugal (both of which are available in the Society’s library). Appointed as Minister to the Holy See, Cheke died in Rome in 1960, having been visited by the Pope in hospital before his death. Jose Shercliff, born in 1902, left England at 20 and went to Paris, where she became the correspondent for the Daily Herald. In Paris she tracked down the, by then impoverished, Moulin Rouge performer, Jane Avril, made famous by Toulouse-Lautrec, and wrote her biography. In the 1930s she joined the News Chronicle and reported on the Spanish Civil War. After Paris fell to the Germans, she was headed to the US by flying boat via Lisbon, took one look at Lisbon and decided to stay. Resuming her life as a reporter, she also worked for British Special Operations, sending coded information through her news reports. Much of her time in Lisbon during the war was spent working with refugees. Shercliff stayed in Lisbon until her death in 1985, working for the Associated Press and The Times and writing for the APN. Both Aubrey Bell and his wife, Barbara (née Wilkie), contributed to the APN, Barbara as the first gardening correspondent. Bell was born in Muncaster, Cumbria in 1881 and spent much of his childhood in France. An Oxford graduate, from 1909 he began working in Portugal as a correspondent for the Morning Post, which caused problems with the authorities of the Portuguese First Republic, given the Post´s monarchist tendencies. Whether for this, or another reason, he was arrested in 1912 and spent several months in prison. He was the author of numerous works, including biographies of Portuguese people, anthologies, and travel books and translated leading Portuguese authors into English. His travel books included In Portugal.…. and Portugal of the Portuguese. After the start of WW2, the family moved to Canada, feeling they would be safer there, and he died in Victoria, British Columbia in 1950. Bell received an honorary doctorate from the University of Coimbra and was made a Knight of the Military Order of Saint James of the Sword. Ann Bridge (pseudonym of Mary Dolling Sanders - pictured above) was born in Hertfordshire in 1889. She married Owen O’Malley, later Lord O’Malley, and accompanied him to many diplomatic postings, including as ambassador to Portugal from July 1945 to May 1947. From an early age she was an enthusiastic mountain climber and was a close friend of George Mallory, who died on Everest in 1924. Bridge was a prolific and at the time popular novelist, who used the countries she visited as a setting for her novels, most of which are now out of print. As well as contributing to the APN she wrote The Selective Traveler in Portugal together with Susan Lowndes Marques, with the pair of them travelling through most of Portugal to compile the guide. See also, previous articles on Elaine Sanceau and Rose Macaulay.
|
|
|
Quiz
In which World Ranking relevant to the theme of this newsletter is the UK outranked by Portugal, East Timor, and even Samoa?
|
The answer to the Quiz can be found at the end of the Members' News section
|
50 Years Ago
The edition of 20 July records the resignation of the first Portuguese Prime Minister appointed after 25 April, namely, Professor Adelino de Palma Carlos. Palma Carlos, a distinguished jurist from Coimbra University on whom many political hopes were centered, announced that owing to serious practical difficulties, he had given his resignation to President Spinola on 5 July. On 13 July, the President announced that he had asked Colonel Vasco Gonçalves to form a new government. Note: General Vasco Gonçalves, as he became, resigned in September 1975. A figure with strong leanings towards the Communist Party, he presided over what became known as the PREC- Processo Revolucionario em Curso, a troubled period characterised by controversial policies such as nationalisation of the banks, insurance companies and major companies, together with “agricultural reform” and land occupations in the Alentejo. He was prime minister of four provisional governments during which independence was granted to the Portuguese territories of Angola, Moçambique, Guiné, São Tomé e Príncipe and Cabo Verde. The same edition recorded the creation of the Comando Operacional do Continente, the infamous COPCON, “whose purpose was to ensure the implementation of the programme of the Armed Forces Movement. General Francisco Costa Gomes, Head of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, was its Commander-in -Chief and his assistant was Major Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho who played a leading part in the rising of April. COPCON was designed to act as a shock force, and had a General Staff of its own. In the event of a threat to internal peace, COPCON would have control over all the Armed Forces and militarized units”. Note: COPCON was always associated with the revolutionary left, popular power, the issue of blank arrest warrants, imprisonment without formal charges, and the backing of illegal occupation of land in the Alentejo, houses and commercial establishments. It was dissolved after the failure of the far-left coup of 25 November 1975. The organization was often referred to a POPCORN by English and American school children. Susan Lowndes Marques wrote extensively on “English Art in Portugal” in the edition of 3 August and two subsequent editions. She surveyed the work of English artists as painters, engravers or architects, noting that the first real link was the great abbey church at Batalha whose west front has been compared to that of York Minster. Much of the detail seems to be English, especially the decorated tracery, and it has been suggested that an Englishman, Henry Yevele, who lived from about 1320 to 1400, was responsible for part of the Abbey Church. The annual cricket match for the Kendall Cup, played between teams from Lisbon and Porto, took place at Carcavelos on the weekend of 27/28 July and was won by Lisbon. Oporto batted first and made 91. Lisbon then achieved a record total for this competition reaching 414 for 8 declared. Oporto’s second innings was quite an improvement in that they reached a total of 196.
|
|
Members' News
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Patricia Wilson, aged 92, who died peacefully at her home in Cascais on Tuesday 3 September. Patricia was a longstanding member of the Society. Born in 1931, in Bedford, England, Patricia was one of the dwindling number of our members who had received their formative education during the years of the Second World War. Patricia lived for many years in Oporto where she and her second husband, Norman, were in business. She moved to Cascais on his death and soon became an enthusiastic member of the British Community, being active at St. Paul’s Church, and in the WRVS and the British Historical Society. An avid reader, she also enjoyed attending concerts at the Gulbenkian Foundation and was a keen equestrian, at one time keeping two horses at a local stable. A lady of independent mind and spirit, she continued to drive until her final illness. We extend our condolences to Patricia’s family and friends. Ninna Taylor has been to see the exhibition Family Albums: Photographs of the African Diaspora in Greater Lisbon (1975 to Today), at the Padrão dos Descobrimentos in Belém. Her impressions can be read here. The exhibition is open until 30 November. Andrew Shepherd recently visited the Palácio Biester in Sintra, which has been open for two years but still attracts very few visitors compared with neighbouring attractions. He was very impressed with the house and the excellent gardens with views of Sintra and the Castelo dos Mouros, and was inspired to write a Wikipedia article about it. He highly recommends a visit, although people with reduced mobility may experience problems and are advised to contact the property first. A film, The Ninth Gate, was made there in 1999, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Johnny Depp. The only bit of kitsch at the Biester is a cardboard cut-out of Depp so you can take a selfie with it outside the palace, if you are so moved. We regret that, for reasons beyond our control, our Library will not be available between Thursday 26 Sept and Friday 11 October. Answer to the Quiz: In the World Press Freedom Index for 2024, Portugal is seventh, East Timor is 20th, Samoa 22nd and the UK 23rd.
|
We would be delighted to hear about items of news from members, however insignificant they may appear. Of special interest is news about books or articles that have been published by members, or visits to historical sites or exhibitions of interest.
|
|
PRIVACY POLICY AND DISCLAIMER
The privacy policy of the British Historical Society of Portugal can be found on https://www.bhsportugal.org/terms-and-conditions. We use technical and organisational security measures to keep your information secure. This site uses specialist third party services to distribute this newsletter. The British Historical Society of Portugal holds no responsibility for the factual authenticity of the content of this newsletter and has made every effort to respect copyright law and personal privacy.
Carcavelos, September, 2018
|
|