When the curate at Trinity Church, heard that this week’s National Trust lecture was about John Creemer Clarke, he suggested that they move the lecture into the main church so that they could see the window dedicated to John Creemer Clarke by his children in 1906.

The National Trust lectures were at the Abbey Hall (the modern part of the Guildhall) before that building was closed for redevelopment and then moth-balled to save money.

This week’s lecture is ‘Violence and shenanigans: A look at Abingdon’s politics through the eyes of John Creemer Clarke’ and is on at Tuesday, 23 January 2018 – 2:30pm.’

The What’s On section of the Abingdon Town Council web site says “an important benefactor of the Town, Creemer Clarke ran an important clothing business and helped found Trinity Church and the Cottage Hospital, and is represented on the mural in the Town.   He was involved in many aspects of Abingdon’s political life by becoming its MP at a time when elections seem to have been much more lively with a great deal of audience participation at local meetings. It was always a relief when there was no actual violence.

The speaker, Silvia Joinson, is “a retired history teacher and a witty presenter on Abingdon’s turbulent past.”

For anybody following this blog, the second meeting about the Guildhall, for those who could not squeeze into the first, was moved to the larger building of St Helen’s Church earlier this evening.

The Unicorn Cinema has taken a break after its first successful run. In the meantime the ABCD Film Society have a film every Thursday evening at the Health and Wellbeing Centre, Audlett Drive.

Upcoming films can be seen at http://abfilms.org.uk/.

Doctor Strangelove was last week. This week is Force Majeure, a Swedish film that examines some of the angst of family life. On January 18 is Truffaut’s Les Quatre Cent Coups (The 400 Blows), possibly the best known French film of the post-war era. It will be introduced by Ann Miller, and is pictured above. Then on 25th January Taxi Tehran (made by Jafar Panahi) films people talking about life in Iran from the back of a Taxi.

Meanwhile, The Unicorn Theatre will be used for Aladdin, by the Abingdon Drama Club starting this Friday.

Then the Unicorn Cinema will be back with more films at the Unicorn from 22nd January.

I enjoyed how the staff dressed for the occasion. This was Paddington II, which I really enjoyed. It was even better than Paddington I.

The first film, shown to an invited audience at the Unicorn Theatre, was Murder on the Orient Express (2017). The experts behind bringing the cinematic experience to the Unicorn were the Regal Evesham team who were all dressed the part. They even had a couple of monks. The sound and pictures were as good as any cinema. The Abingdon people who helped make this happen were Iain Littlejohn, pictured in the background in this picture,

and Friends of Abingdon Civic Society chairman Bryan Brown who gave a speech.

Here are some of the audience who enjoyed this first viewing.

For more information see https://theunicorn.ac/

Murder on the Orient Express Official Trailer 20th Century FOX from Haris Zambarloukos on Vimeo.