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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