History of the Talkies

"It is unlikely that such a decision would be questioned today. Brooks's face, with its limpid eyes framed by her trademark shiny black bob, has become one of film history's most iconic images - endlessly recycled and referenced on posters, in books and films. Yet if the face is now familiar, relatively few people have actually seen it in its natural habitat - on screen. The camera loves her - as can be seen on page after page of a gorgeous new book by Peter Cowie - but the moving-picture camera loves her even more."

"Baroness Emmuska Orczy was born in Tarna-Ors, Hungary, as the only daughter of Baron Felix Orczy, a noted composer and conductor, and his wife Emma. Her father was a friend of such composers as Wagner, Liszt, and Gounod. Orczy moved with her parents from Budapest to Brussels and then to London, learning to speak English at the age of fifteen. She was educated in convent schools in Brussels and Paris. In London she studied at the West London School of Art. Orczy married in 1894 Montague Barstow, whom she had met while studying at the Heatherby School of Art. Together they started to produce book and magazine illustrations and published an edition of Hungarian folktales."

Title image from Steve Webb.