Music

Acton, Acton, and welcome to this latest Christmas reading.

And I'm heading eastwards for this one. This is from a book called Far East by Cecil Beaton.

Now Cecil Beaton was a fashion photographer, role photographer, bright young things, set designer, Oscar winning set designer.

He also happened to be my next or neighbor when I was a small boy.

We used to see him in his garden of his magnificent house and just beautiful gardens.

I remember him very clearly photographing Bianca Jagger in the gardens, which must have been gosh when I was about five or six, something like that.

But he was also during the war working for the Ministry of Information and was attached to the RF.

And in that capacity went around photographing the front line.

He was also responsible for that very famous photograph of St. Paul's during the blitz with the smoke all around it.

And also of that little girl Eileen Dunn with her teddy bear and her head bandaged, which was such a powerful PR message.

But later in the war he went to the Middle East in 1942 and to the Far East in 1943, 1944.

And this section comes from the very beginning January 1944, so the New Year of 1944, when he goes to the Arakan, which is about to be the scene of the big battle of the Admin box.

So this is early January and he's just come down from the northern Burma front around Tidiman, the Chin Hills down to the Arakan.

Whereas the scenery among the Chin Hill reminds one a little of parts of Scotland or California.

The table lands on the Arakan front are unlike anything one has ever seen except perhaps in the background of Idols and fantasies painted on Chinese fans, screens or porcelain.

Around Morn Door it is as if the compact mountain ranges have erupted and dotted the earth with hundreds of rugged hillocks.

These hillocks are covered by people trees spreading their huge dark leaves and by bamboo's while the February undergrowth is pierced by long white shafts of pompous.

The landscape is pastoral, so lush, silver and peaceful. It's a general aspect in the brilliant Sun or Moonlight that in spite of the intermittent thuds of gunfire, one cannot quite believe that deadly warfare is being carried on nearby.

It became unexpectedly upon a battle. During a picnic lunch and a ruined temple we heard gunfire.

When we climbed a flight of stone steps to discover what was happening, two over-life-sized black satin crows swooped down from the magnolia trees and carried off the remainder of our meal.

So we moved on down a disused road through an overgrown village once bombed, now abandoned and looking like the garden of the sleeping beauty.

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