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    Nostalgia Central
    Home»Television»Kids TV
    Kids TV TV Shows - 1950s 2 Mins Read

    Silver Swan, The

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    1 9 5 2 – 1 9 5 3 (UK)
    6 x 30 minute episodes

    The Silver Swan is thought to be the very first children’s serial written for British television and not adapted from a literary source.

    The central idea of a violin handed down through the generations came from BBC children’s producer John Hunter Blair, and the concept of time travel was used to create the most interesting and different drama idea yet produced for children.

    Lucy (Carole Maybank) visits her aunt, a housekeeper at Gresham Hall and finds the music room fascinating. The walls are decorated with portraits of the Gresham family line and many include the family crest of a silver swan.

    Picking up a violin she finds in the room, she notices it is also decorated with a silver swan and appears in the portrait of Francis, a Gresham family member from the time of Queen Elizabeth I.

    Sitting at the piano she discovers a piece of music called The Silver Swan and is transported back in time to 1558.

    Lucy’s adventures take her through the ages to meet the Gresham lineage, beginning with a tale of Franco-Italian skullduggery at Queen Elizabeth’s court. On her further trips, Lucy meets a Royalist who becomes fiddler to Oliver Cromwell, sees how the violin saved a Gresham from being press-ganged into service on a boat in Bristol, discovers the ‘lost’ violin unearthed in Vienna in 1850, visits Belgium at the time of the Great War, and joins the Resistance in occupied France in 1942.

    The serial – broadcast from the BBC studios at Lime Grove – was designed to educate and inform but doubtless also entertained its audience.

    The small part of Lord Henriques in the first episode was played by a young actor called Peter Cushing.

    Lucy
    Carole Maybank
    Francis Gresham
    Robert Irvine
    Gerald Gresham
    Randal Herley
    Mary Cromwell
    Pat Fryer
    Sir Willoughby Wilkie
    Hamlyn Benson
    Margaret Read
    Lillian Christine
    Lord Henriques
    Peter Cushing
    Giovanni
    David Kossoff
    Housekeeper
    Violet Lamb
    Dick
    Michael Brill
    Oliver Cromwell
    Oliver Burt
    Burrows
    Philip Dale
    Pierre
    George De Warfaz
    Willi Schnitzler
    Dawson France
    Mrs Schnitzler
    Joan Young
    Madeleine
    Olive Gregg
    Franz Wehrli
    John Levitt
    Elsa Gresham
    Peggy Livesey
    Mr Goldschmidt
    Tom McCall
    Jenny Lind
    Elsie Morison
    Stephen
    Victor Platt
    Old Peg
    Gladys Spencer
    Jane Kendall
    Gudrun Ure

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