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Welcome to the home page of the British Guild of Travel Writers – the leading organisation for travel media professionals. We number among our members many of Britain’s most successful travel journalists, guidebook writers, editors, photographers and broadcasters. On this site you can find out about membership, view our events calendar, and buy our Yearbook – which comes with enhanced access to our website allowing you to read even more about our members and review our comprehensive travel industry directory
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Front Page Opinion
Each week we hand the front page of the Guild website to one (or more) of our members to write on a subject about which they feel strongly. The Guild would like to point out that all views expressed in this column are those of the writer and not necessarily those of the organisation.
The Leopard returns
August 20, 2010
Roger Bray, BGTW
 Hands up who hasn't groaned inwardly at the over use of film and television locations as a way of selling tourism, sometimes on the most tenuous premises? PRs propose, newspapers and magazines oblige. So it was interesting, recently, to witness the revival of a movie which might have been tailor made to attract visitors but which was made long before the marketing departments had any such idea.
I received an email invitation to a preview of Visconti's The Leopard, little seen in recent years after suffering scratches and other effects of age and now digitally restored to all its former glory. The invitation came not from any tourist board but from the British Film Institute. Why me, I asked them? Well, you're a travel writer and we thought you might be interested.
They might have been psychic. I had just spent a week in Sicily and had re-read Giuseppe Thomaso di Lampedusa's wonderful, eponymous novel about political and social change which film reflects so faithfully. So I went along and immersed myself in the golden light of Sicilian landscapes, the architectural detail and the rich interiors, all sharply defined again in the wide screen after a restoration which included some 12,000 hours of painstaking manual work. This was not the shortened, dubbed version I saw on its original release but the full, subtitled 3hrs 5mins, in Italian. Burt Lancaster, who took the title role, was apparently third choice after Nicolai Cherkasov, who was Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible and Laurence Olivier. He was contracted behind Visconti's back but it turned out to be an inspired piece of casting.
The film now looks ravishing. Go and see it. But if it inspires you to hop on a jet, don't expect to find precise locations. Which should spare us that other marketing curse, the brown sign welcoming us to “Leopard Country”.
The Leopard (1963) opens to the public on 27 August at the British Film Institute on the Southbank, the Curzon Mayfair, Richmond Filmhouse, Filmhouse Edinburgh, Cambridge Arts Picturehouse and the Irish Film Institute in Dublin.
Previous Front Page Opinions are archived here.
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Photo Gallery: Lisbon by Stuart Forster
I decided to spend some time in the Portuguese capital over the summer of 2010 as the climate is good and I could work from there for my usual clients. It also gave me an opportunity to learn Portuguese on location. I find that the city has much that will appeal to romantics. The winding lanes and small restaurants and cafes of the city mean that I'm constantly confronted with the sensation that I'm experiencing real life rather than just a tourist in a capital city.
Photos ©Stuart Forster
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Robin McKelvie in the Spotlight What's your earliest memory of travel?
My late father used to take me down to Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh to watch the trains rumble by beneath the bridge with the castle hulking above. I loved the big ones to London, which seemed incredibly exotic at the time and in a way still do. I think you still need to retain some of that childish enthusiasm about travel to do the job we do.
What's your most bizarre memory of travel?
To narrow it down from about a 100...
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"In 1992 I was invited to join the inaugural flight of Richard Branson's Vintage Airways, an airline operating holiday flights from Orlando to Key West using two restored Douglas DC3 aircraft offering 1940's style service, livery, uniforms and experience—one of their signature moments was the excited announcement from the flight deck that they had just heard on the radio, news of the Japanese surrender in the Pacific. I remember the thing that surprised me most—besides Japan tenaciously holding on for another 50 years—was having to walk steeply uphill to my seat."
Alastair McKenzie, 'What's Changed In 60 years of Civil Aviation?', The Director, Oct 07
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