A book I've been meaning to get hold of for the last 4 years has finally come my way thanks to the massive online jumble-sale that is ebay. 'Rudyard Kipling and Sir Henry Rider Haggard on Screen, Stage, Radio and Television' by Philip Leibfried is a wonderfully researched tome of incredible detail, and very worthwhile. It took me a while to get round to reading the acknowledgements at the front, but was pretty surprised to see my name listed. When Philip was researching the book I do remember a couple of emails back and forth regarding film versions of Haggard's 'She', and in particular a search for the elusive Alice Delysia who played Ayesha in the 1916 version, but it certainly wasn't enough to deserve a credit (as pleased as I am!). What a jolly nice thing to do though.

I am a particular fan of 'The Man Who Would Be King' based on Kipling's short story, and just think it one of the best adventure films made. And I still retain my interest in filmed versions of 'She'. At the moment I'm rather intrigued by the throne used in the 1935 RKO version starring Helen Gahagan, I was convinced it must have been designed by the wonderful Kay Nielsen by the look of it, but the IMDB reveals it was Alex Hall. Even the massive statues in the main hall of the set have a look of Nielsen, being very reminiscent of his concept sketches for Disney's Fantasia. The whole set is really something to behold (they re-used the huge gates from 'King Kong'), and echoes another great lost world film of the 1930's, 'Lost Horizon'.