Leslie Scase Author

  Living in Shrewsbury, I regularly pass film settings for the George C Scott version of a Christmas Carol. (Cratchetts' house and Scrooge's gravestone featured). There've been many film and TV versions but my favourite is unquestionably the 1951 black and white Alistair Sim version. Most people are familiar with the story but I suggest that not so many have read the book. I was one of them, until this month. I was forced to read Dickens' Great Expectations in school and wasn't keen, so didn't have my own great expectations of A Christmas Carol. I needn't have worried. Wonderfully evocative and superbly written. The story very close to what we see on screen but with the odd thing missed out by film producers (or in ove case, added in). It also explained to me why Marley's ghost had a handkerchief tied around his head in the 1951 version. The most poignant line in the book :- 'This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of the...

  In my childhood, these machines could be found at Barry Island amusement arcade. I doubt they would be considered remotely acceptable nowadays. You put your money in to be treated to an execution, though Madame Guillotine was a poor return. The other two had very clever automated puppet reproductions of the procedures. Finding these at Wookey Hole as part of a collection of vintage amusement machines, I decided to try and find out when they might have been made. 1920s apparently, though on my first search AI insisted on telling me that these types of machine never existed. They were a myth. In my childhood I thought nothing of them, but I really did find the American one (yes, of course I put some money in) particularly macabre.