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Forth Bridge by Ian Scott Massie
Reduction Screen Print - Edition of 15
22" x 15" Mounted size - 14.5" x 12" Image size
Available: unframed @ £195
To shop, please click here
22" x 15" Mounted size - 14.5" x 12" Image size
Available: unframed @ £195
To shop, please click here
THE 39 STEPS
I first read The 39 Steps as a teenager having seen the brilliant Alfred Hitchcock movie. John Buchan’s novel is set on the eve of the First World War. The story and subsequent films are a cascade of cliff-hanging scenarios in which the gallant Richard Hannay solves the mystery of the eponymous steps. In the book they are revealed to be are a flight of stairs leading to a landing place from which a foreign agent will make his escape.
Hannay, an ex-patriot Scot, goes on the run for a murder he didn’t commit, leaves London via St Pancras, but In the films which followed, it is from Kings Cross that he escapes. Sending him up the East Coast Main Line gave film-makers the opportunity to use the Forth Bridge for a set piece of drama.
In a brilliant sequence of editing, Hitchcock’s 1935 film shows an engine pulling the Flying Scotsman out of Kings Cross. A little while later, however, the train bursts from a tunnel and the film cuts to a screaming woman - her voice morphing into a steam whistle. Railway buffs were quick to spot that Hannay’s train is now on a different railway altogether - the Great Western at Box Tunnel - and pulled by a different engine. It’s artistic licence in the service of a classic movie moment.
The title of the story has its origins in a set of wooden steps at Broadstairs in Kent. While on a family holiday Buchan’s six-year-old sister had recently mastered counting. She practiced by repeatedly announcing the number of steps.
The 39 Steps is one of many films to feature Kings Cross. Other frequent travellers include the stars of Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, The Imitation Game, Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone, The Woman in Black and Friday the 13th.
Hannay, an ex-patriot Scot, goes on the run for a murder he didn’t commit, leaves London via St Pancras, but In the films which followed, it is from Kings Cross that he escapes. Sending him up the East Coast Main Line gave film-makers the opportunity to use the Forth Bridge for a set piece of drama.
In a brilliant sequence of editing, Hitchcock’s 1935 film shows an engine pulling the Flying Scotsman out of Kings Cross. A little while later, however, the train bursts from a tunnel and the film cuts to a screaming woman - her voice morphing into a steam whistle. Railway buffs were quick to spot that Hannay’s train is now on a different railway altogether - the Great Western at Box Tunnel - and pulled by a different engine. It’s artistic licence in the service of a classic movie moment.
The title of the story has its origins in a set of wooden steps at Broadstairs in Kent. While on a family holiday Buchan’s six-year-old sister had recently mastered counting. She practiced by repeatedly announcing the number of steps.
The 39 Steps is one of many films to feature Kings Cross. Other frequent travellers include the stars of Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, The Imitation Game, Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone, The Woman in Black and Friday the 13th.
How it would look on your wall
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