Blake & Mortimer: Illustrator needs info on Reading Station, 1919

I came across an interesting appeal on a Blake and Mortimer blog site.

It seems that André Juillard, one of the artists currently working on the series (he drew "The Voronov Plot"), is looking for documentation, including pictures and diagrams, relating to the railway station at Reading, in Berkshire, England, as it was around 1919.

What he needs is stuff that also describes its immediate surroundings, the inside of the station and the platforms, preferably pictures.

If you or anyone you know has such material, then would it be possible to get in touch with either
blake.jacobs.mortimer@gmail.com or
contact@dargaud.fr
and they will pass the information on to Juillard. Scans of such material would be welcome.

Don't worry about translations: I imagine that Dargaud has plenty of English-speaker among its staff.

An interesting quest…!

My guess would be that Lawrence of Arabia/ T.E. Lawrence/ John Hume Ross/ T.E. Shaw/ whatever he was calling himself at the time, must be going to make an appearance in one of Juillard’s books: Reading station, in 1919, is where he famously lost his original manuscript for The Seven Pillars of Wisdom in a briefcase he misplaced while changing trains. He never got it back, didn’t have a copy, and had to re-write the entire thing - it was twice as long the second time he wrote it than the first draft had been…

Interesting assumption.

In fact, doesn't Lawrence strike you as a possible model for Tintin? Blond-haired, dashing, an explorer-adventurer, even a secret agent, who seems to have preferred the company company of men as opposed to women?

Wow, that's rather coincidental as I live in Reading and I know quite a bit on the station! I think a library trip is in order to help Julliard.

And believe it or not, that is what appears to have happened!!!

The latest "Blake and Mortimer" is due to be published in November 2012. It will dwelve on aspects of Blake's past and apparently he was acquainted with Lawrence of Arabia!

The title is "Le Serment des cinq lords" ("The Pledge of the Five Peers"), written by Yves Sente and drawn by André Juillard (also responsible for "The Voronov Plot" and "The Sarcophagi of the Sixth Continent"). As far as I can tell, the plot deals with thefts from museums and Olrik is not due to appear. Juillard says that after so many failures Olrik "is on holiday. He needed it. He'd become cumbersome."

In Belgium, it will be published in the "Le Soir" newspaper in the form of strips, apparently from this week onwards. (I suddenly feel the urge to move to Belgium.)

Yves Sente and André Juillard were in the UK last year for the BD & Comics Passion event. They showed a number of pages from this new book and spoke about it for some time. To my shame I've forgotten the details but they did say they'd been to the Ashmolean in Oxford earlier that week, which ties in with the Museum theme.

George

I've been reading the Blake and Mortimer adventure "The Oath of the Five Lords" and it includes a dedication to Raphael Taylor and the "internauts" for their "valuable help" regarding Reading Station.

Raphael Taylor is the author of "Herge: The Genius of Tintin", a recent biography. I'm wondering if Grey was one of the internauts who helped the authors.