[Bell Historians] Great Bells of Britain

[Andrew Wilby]

Ouch!

Well I must hold my hand up to this.

Chris Groome and I purchased the Ringers Diary from Bill Viggars for The 
Ringing World Board back whenever.

Whilst we were given considerable guidance by Bill as part of the 
"goodwill" in the transfer, David's involvement was never mentioned.
I can only apologise for the obvious 25 years of pain inflicted. Had we 
known I'm sure we would have asked him to continue the task, thanked him 
profusely,
....AND sent him a leather bound complimentary copy with his initials on 
every year!

Actually I do not jest, we would have done had we known, so very sorry 
David.

Initially we tried to make as few changes as possible on the basis that, 
development is one thing but, radical change had always been damaging to 
sales.
That was one piece of advice from Bill, epitomised by the change to a 
slim diary that nearly halved sales the following year and was reverse 
by Bill pretty quickly.

Bill told us that the size of the diary had been determined the size of 
a WW2 WRAF Officer's blouse top pocket!
You couldn't make that up could you!

I've always wondered whose famous bossom it was that modeled for this 
momentous specification.

Is there a story here???


Andrew





David Cawley wrote:
> Nothing like being made to feel a "has been". First the CCC scrap-heap 
> and now the Great Bells.
>  
> It became apparent to me in the 1970's that Ernest Morris's original 
> Great Bells was lacking certain entries and I persuaded Bill Viggers 
> to allow me to draw up a new one with corrected weights and dates 
> where necessary, an d also the founders involved. I think the first 
> revised list came out in 1978 and every year until his death Bill 
> Viggers ran the proofs (happy days of  such things) before me to keep 
> them up-to-date to the best of my knowledge. I have a file of 
> correspondence with Whitechapel and Taylors and with a number of Town 
> Clerks and similar folk whicgh makes interesting reading.
>  
> I am pleased that the list is being kept up to date by others but 
> sorry that I have been dropped by the publisher without a word of 
> acknowledgment or intimation.
>  
> DLC