Published in Windlesora 18 (2000)
© WLHG
Too often promotional videos are anodyne productions which airbrush the warts from the product. Windsor: a Journey Through Time, has skilfully avoided this trap. This 50-minute video presents no picture postcard view of the town – although Windsor’s infinite variety is evident in every scene – but tells its story, warts and all, through words and pictures. Paintings, maps, stills, and film footage old and new, combined with a tactful and illuminating commentary, create a fascinating picture of the town through the centuries.
Hester Davenport’s script moves with commendable crispness and confidence through all levels of the town’s history – political, social, commercial and cultural – with many an intriguing anecdote. Above all, it shows Windsor is much more than its castle; that its citizens, both notable and obscure, are as important as its monarchs. As always it is the old pictures that enthral, particularly those of George M Henton, an amateur photographer whose street scenes of Windsor in the 1890s capture a landscape both familiar and strange, a fancy dress version of Windsor with bootblacks by the castle, and bonneted nannies clutching babies.
Also riveting is the footage of the 1947 floods which reveals better than words the devastation caused in the town and the cheery resourcefulness of its people. Modern film shows a lively (and much improved) town centre, although 20th century tourists seem less attractive than 19th century bootblacks.
If I have any criticism it is for the background music which did little to enhance the pictures and occasionally seemed inappropriate (choral music illustrating brass bands).
I have no such complaints about the juxtaposition of words and pictures which combine seamlessly and sometimes wittily – for example, the understated narrative is pithily reinforced by film of the 1960s eyesore that is Ward Royal. A video of which Windsor should be proud and, incidentally an ideal Christmas present.
Alison Haymonds
‘Windsor: A Journey through Time’. Video by Design; Script: Hester Davenport; Picture Research: Beryl Hedges; Price £12.99; Released November 1998.
Windsor Local History Group 