R.I.P Henry Allingham...

Great War veteran, and the world's oldest man, Henry Allingham has died this morning.

Mr Allingham, one of only two surviving First World War veterans in the UK and the last surviving founder member of the RAF, celebrated his 113th birthday on June 6. He lived at St Dunstan's care home for blind ex-service personnel in Ovingdean, near Brighton.

Eccees... The Story That Just Keeps on Giving...

The sorry tale of MP's expenses rolls ever onwards on what seems like day 238! Today it's the turn of Norwich North MP, Dr Ian Gibson to be caught with his finger in the pie.... the one member I didn't expect to be selling photographs of for involvement in this sorry tale, but there you are, I was wrong. However I've got a front page on the Times and will no doubt be spending the day chasing him around.

Times article here.
License Dr. Gibson photographs here.

The Prime Minister We Never Had?

Former Home, and Education Secretary, Charles Clarke MP has claimed the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair wanted to position him to become a leadership rival to Gordon Brown. Astonishingly the MP for Norwich South, in an interview with the New Statesman, says that Blair wanted to offer him the post of Foreign Secretary to make him a more rounded candidate. According to Clarke, the then Prime Minister made this revelation the day after sacking him from the Home Office in 2006 when it emerged that more than 1,000 foreign prisoners had been released without being considered for deportation. Blair, it is claimed, then invited Clarke and his wife to a private dinner at Chequers.

"He had a great plan, apparently, that he wanted me to be foreign secretary because he thought that if I had been foreign secretary and home secretary I would be a credible opponent to Gordon, as the leader of the party. And this had been his long-standing strategy, and that was what he had been intending to do, and that's what he hoped to do. Which ran against, of course, what I had said to him about feeling I needed to do home secretary for three or four years. I knew nothing about this until after the event, and I said to him if he was nice enough to think I ought to be leader of the party, then he might as well have been courteous enough to tell me this was his plan" said the former Home Secretary.

Following his dismissal from Government, Clarke has be a constant thorn in the side of Gordon Brown, criticising his appointment as Prime Minister; setting up a website with Alan Milburn to put out their vision for the Labour Party, and questioning his mental state, claiming he has phycological issues and is a control freak.

Clarke is currently seen as attempting to eye up the position of Transport Secretary but concedes that he'll never run for leader.

Read the New Statesman interview here.
Licence Charles Clarke photographs here.

Cold Blooded Evil

The murders of six women in Ipswich in 2006 and subsequent 2008 trial of Steve Wright resulted in an enormous amount of media attention on the Suffolk town. Alongside the reporters, photographers and tv crews were a few that didn't quite fit in. They were the crime writers and even a playwright.

The first of these, Cold Blooded Evil, has appeared and uses a number of my images from both the investigation and Crown Court trial.

Buy Cold Blooded Evil here.
Licence Ipswich Prostitute Murders photographs here.

Holding Back the Years....

Sarah Burge, the self-styled Human Barbie has spent over £1/2millon on cosmetic treatments and surgery according to the Daily Express. The mother of three has racked up over 100 treatments in an effort to halt the aging process and now has the rather dubious honour of being a world record holder for cosmetic surgery.

She has admitted that she find going under the knife addictive and claims that she is not unhappy with her looks.

Over the years I have photographed a number of women who have had cosmetic surgery, and have to say that I find the whole thing very odd. Quite why anybody does it is beyond me. I've never seen anybody that looks natural or is entirely happy with the end result. (Stylists that I work with will agree; they have to hide the scars.) Usually there is an underlying unhappiness that they are trying to compensate for with the aid of surgery.

My advice..... don't do it.

Daily Mail article here.
Previous Daily Mail article here.
Licence Sarah Burge photographs here.

From the Archives....

A chance telephone call from the Australian newspaper alerted me to an old set of pictures. One of my pictures from the Pope Paul VI Memorial Lecture, written by Burmese dissident leader, Aung San Suu Kyi and delivered by her husband, Dr Michael Aris in 1997 had been used in a feature by the Daily Mirror. I had placed the pictures in the library of the Independent, where I was working at the time, and forgot about them.

Sadly, Dr Aris died from prostate cancer in 1999, having been unable to visit his wife during his illness. The Burmese junta would not grant him a visa to visit Burma, saying that they did not have the facilities to care for him, and instead urged Aung San Suu Kyi to leave the country to visit him. She was at that time temporarily free from house arrest but was unwilling to depart, fearing that she would be refused re-entry if she left, as she did not trust the junta's assurance that she could return. They last saw each other at Christmas in 1995.

Surprisingly very few photographs on Dr Aris are in circulation and it would appear that the set I shot and forgot about may have been the last time he was photographed in public.

Daily Mirror feature here.
Pope Paul VI lecture here.
Licence Dr Aris photographs here.