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By the Write
Taplow has a new author. Nigel Smales has emerged blinking into the daylight having written and published his first book. When You’re Smiler is a hardback biography of his father Eddy, a much more interesting chap than Nigel for being an accidental pioneer three times over – in feature films, combat filming and television news.
When You’re Smiler gives a personal perspective on the dramatic evolution of factual film and television in the mid-20th Century set against the social, political and military history of the times. It tells an extraordinary story of an ordinary bloke who didn’t make history but was there to film bits of it happening.
There are tales of historic films and The News. From 1936 to 1953, Eddy Smales was behind the camera on classic British black-and-white movies like Whisky Galore, Brighton Rock, The Third Man and The Lavender Hill Mob. While on story-by-story contract with Movietone newsreel (1946-1955) and as one of the original 'on the road' staff cameramen with BBC TV News (1955-1980), he covered royal weddings, wars, politics, personalities, strikes, strife and sieges, riots, robberies, heroes and villains, the end of Empire, The Troubles and national tragedies (when he had to), cricket (when he could) and four famous British 'firsts' – the Comet 4 (the first jet airliner), Concorde, the first motorway and the cross-Channel hovercraft.
In between there was The War. The primary focus of the book is on Eddy’s adventures as Sgt 'Smiler' Smales, one of the original ciné-cameramen in the Army Film & Photographic Unit covering the World War Two campaigns in North Africa (1942-1943) and from Normandy to Berlin (1944-1945). And throughout there were the ups and downs of an ordinary family living through turbulent times – real life behind the headlines.
The story is illustrated with 83 photographs and sprinkled with anecdotes of well-known characters Smiler worked with, such as Alexander Korda, Laurence Harvey, Peter Ustinov, David Niven, Dickie Attenborough, Bernard Montgomery, Reginald Bosanquet, Frederick Forsyth, John Mills, Michael Aspel and many others. Everyone knows these names, but what of the forgotten heroes of the AFPU – people like Smiler who made Desert Victory, perhaps the most famous campaign film of all time? They never get the credit they deserve. When You’re Smiler does its bit to put that right by including a selection of their stories together with an original and most definitive record of the 400-plus men (and two women) who served in or alongside the AFPU in some role at some stage.
An online preview of When You’re Smiler is available at http://www.issuu.com/wordsbydesign and it can be ordered online at http://www.lulu.com/ for £16.99 (plus £2.99 for postage and packaging within the UK). If you don’t do ‘online’, fear not – contact Nigel personally on 01628 661636.
There will be mixed feelings that Nigel hasn’t had his fill. News of his next literary project is on Page XX.