/home/domains/maryevans.com/docs/eNewsletter.php Mary Evans Picture Library - Client Update
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Still open for Business

This newsletter no doubt wings its way to many home offices, kitchen tables and spare rooms around the country. Wherever you are, and however you're working, we hope you are keeping safe, well and sane.

We have been fully operational throughout lockdown, with most of the Mary Evans team working remotely, and one heroic member of staff, manning the pumps at the archive, ensuring any scans are found and whizzed over to clients as efficiently as usual.

As always, do not hesitate to get in touch with us at pictures@maryevans.com if you need help with any picture-related matters.

Celebrity Knocks

We know that many of you find our historical anniversaries page helpful, so we've extended this further by trawling our comprehensive film archives in order to offer you a month-by-month view of celebrity anniversaries.

You can choose to search by surname, or by month, but either way, we hope this calendar of stardom will be useful for planning features in future. Significant birthdays on the horizon include Sean Connery hitting the big 8-0 in August, and baby-faced Matt Damon celebrating his 50th birthday in October. It's also interesting to contemplate that if Marilyn Monroe was alive today, she'd be the same age as the Queen.

Please note we will be continuing to add more birth and death dates to this page over the coming weeks, so check back regularly. Also, because of the nature of these images, you need to be logged in to the site and a registered client, to access the images. If you're not registered, please get in touch.

Spanish Civil War

Our representation of the Marx Memorial Library has been enhanced recently with the addition of 343 photographs from their Spanish Collection, depicting the International Brigade, the Spanish Civil War and the Aid Spain Movement in Britain. It is the most significant photographic collection of its kind in the UK, and includes many contemporary photographs taken in Spain during the Civil War. Notable individuals featured include Ernest Hemmingway, Paul Robeson, Jawaharlal Nehru and Harry Pollitt. The MML's Spanish Collection was established in 1975 with the donation of the archives of the International Brigade Association, an organisation formed by veterans of the British Battalion of the International Brigade on their return from Spain in 1939.

In 1936 a military coup led by General Franco attempted to overthrow Spain's elected Popular Front government. The civil war which followed, set against the backdrop of the rise of fascism in Europe, is widely considered a precursor to the Second World War. Whilst the Soviet Union sold arms to the Spanish Republic, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy openly supported Franco with troops and arms.

In response, over 35,000 individuals from 50 countries, the majority socialists and communists, volunteered to fight on behalf of the Republic in Spain, with more than 2,500 travelling from Britain. The International Brigades were part of a broader Aid Spain Movement in Britain, a grass roots campaign in support of the Spanish Republic. Across the country funds were raised for medical aid, for food ships, and in support of refugees from Spain.

Make Do and Mend

Growing vegetables, baking bread, taking up knitting or woodwork; there are many parallels between how we're keeping busy in lockdown and the wartime home front. How appropriate then, that the latest book based on the archives at Mary Evans drums up that home front spirit through a curated selection of features offering tips and advice taken from magazines in the ILN archive, housed and managed here at the library.

'The Home Front Pocket Manual 1939-45' is published by Casemate, edited by our Head of Sales & Research, Luci, and draws on titles such as The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News and Britannia & Eve to offer a fascinating, and above all, rather useful guide to surviving in 'unprecedented times.' Publication date is next month but the book can be pre-ordered here.

Olympia Motor Show 1970 - Cars and Girls

Although photographer Michael Cole is world-renowned for his tennis photography, his collection with Mary Evans represents his interest in motoring and automobilia. While recently sorting through a number of his old photographs, Michael found a set of images taken at the 1970 Earl's Court Motor Show. With no car left undraped by a scantily-clad lady, the pictures are undeniably an eyebrow-raising slice of seventies kitsch.











29th May 2020