Adrian Bell

Adrian Bell (4 October 1901–1980) was an English ruralist journalist and farmer, and the first compiler of The Times crossword.

Life

The son of a newspaper editor, Bell was born in London and educated at Uppingham School in Rutland. At the age of 19 he ventured into the countryside in Hundon, Suffolk, to learn about agriculture, and he farmed in various locations over the next sixty years, including the rebuilding of a near-derelict 89-acre (36 ha) smallholding at Redisham, near Beccles.

Out of his early experiences of farming at Bradfield St. George, in Suffolk, came the book Corduroy, published in 1930. Bell's friend, the author and poet Edmund Blunden, advised him and helped secure his first publishing deal. Corduroy was an immediate best-seller and was followed by two more books on the countryside, Silver Ley in 1931 and The Cherry Tree in 1932, the three books forming a ruralist farm trilogy. The popularity of literary back-to-the-land writing in England in the 1930s can be put in the context of, for example, Vita Sackville-West's long narrative poem The Land. The Penguin Books paperback edition of Corduroy came out in 1940 and was much prized by soldiers serving during the Second World War.

List of EastEnders characters (1992)

The following is a list of characters that first appeared in the BBC soap opera EastEnders in 1992, by order of first appearance.

Christine Hewitt

Christine Hewitt, played by Elizabeth Power, is introduced in 1992 as a lonely divorcée who becomes besotted with married Arthur Fowler (Bill Treacher) while he tends her garden. She leaves in 1993 once her affair with Arthur is discovered by his wife Pauline (Wendy Richard). Liz Power was offered the role by one of the programme's producers, Leonard Lewis, for whom she'd worked with previously on Juliet Bravo and Softly, Softly. She has commented "I got a call out of the blue asking if I could go up to the BBC at Elstree to meet him. Mrs Hewitt was going to be in five episodes and I thought, 'wonderful'." Mrs Hewitt makes her first appearance on-screen in February 1992, as a lonely divorcee who employs the long-running character, Arthur Fowler, to tend to her garden—used as a plot device to rebuild Arthur's relationship with his son Mark Fowler (Todd Carty), while they work together on Christine's garden. Power filmed her scenes for the five episodes and thought that would be the end of it; however, she was subsequently contacted by Leonard Lewis and asked to reprise the role. Power commented "It was all I could do to stop myself screeching down the phone. They didn't tell me which direction the story was going to take. I got on so well with [Bill Treacher] from the word go. We really liked each other." Mrs Hewitt is reintroduced in a storyline that sees her become Arthur Fowler's mistress, but when the affair ended Power left the series, making her final appearance on-screen in October 1993.