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MEMBERS of the public are being asked to vote on which of Knowsley's famous sons and daughters should be celebrated with a heritage plaque.
A shortlist of 20 candidates has been drawn up following earlier nominations in a scheme similar to English Heritage's Blue Plaque project.
Residents are now being asked to choose their favourite from the list which includes celebrities from the worlds of sport, academia, music and politics.
Writer Alan Bleasdale is on the list, along with actor Sir Rex Harrison, Brookside creator Phil Redmond, Liverpool captain Stephen Gerrard and former Prime Minister and Huyton MP Sir Harold Wilson.
Sir Joseph Beecham, a medicine manufacturer who created Beecham's pills and the 19th century poet Robert Atherton are also on the shortlist.
Vote online by December 31. The final 12 will be announced early 2010 with details of the permanent plaques or features.
TOM SLEMEN has provided the Pool of Life blog with two of his favourite Liverpool ghost stories. Tales from his best-selling Haunted Liverpool books are being brought to life in his a series of dramatic readings at St George's Hall next week.
Here is the first story. I'll post the second one tomorrow.
THE GHOSTLY DUELLISTS
IN THE 1880s, there lived a solitary man with no face at a house on Huskisson Street. No one knew his identity, but there were rumours he was John Henry Kingsley, a wealthy gentleman who had vanished from society many years before.
THE Bluecoat is currently running an exhibition about the Wirral-born author Malcolm Lowry, who is celebrated worldwide despite barely being remembered here in Merseyside.
His life-story is really fascinating - he drank too much and lived as a hermit for a while in Canada as well as spending some time in Mexico, where his one successful book Under the Volcano is set. It also includes references to Wirral.
While I was writing a feature about the exhibition and the Bluecoat's new book about Lowry, I discovered a local blogger who has become an unofficial expert on the author.
I RECENTLY interviewed Alison Steadman about her memories of acting in Liverpool before she left at the age of 16 to seek her fortune in London.
Here it is...
ALISON STEADMAN doesn't sound like herself. Or at least she doesn't sound like Beverly Moss, from Abigail's Party, or Pride and Prejudice's Mrs Bennet, or any of the other Alison Steadmans we know.
She is posher than Pam in Gavin and Stacey, and for that matter than Wendy in Life is Sweet, the film she will be answering questions about during a special screening at FACT next week.
Being different to the characters she plays is something Liverpool-born Steadman cherishes.
"I like it when people meet me and say 'you're so different to what I expected'," she reveals.
"I have never found it fun playing a version of myself."
The 63-year-old actress chose Life is Sweet to be screened in aid of Liverpool-based youth film project Clapperboard for two reasons - she had good memories of of shooting the 1991 Mike Leigh-directed hit, and she couldn't get hold of Nuts in May.
"I've done a few films and I'm not very proud of any of them really," she announces.
NO THE title of this blog is not a joke, nor does it refer to a seance held in the Tudor mansion but to a story I heard when writing a feature on the new Whistler: The Gentle Art of Making Etchings exhibition at the Lady Lever.
The show opens on Friday (July 3) and features an etching of Speke Hall, where the painter regularly stayed to create portraits of his patron (Liverpool ship owner and art collector Frederick Richards Leyland) and his family, who were renting the house at the time.
My story (told to me by my Dad) is this... My grandfather, a house painter, was completing a job at Speke Hall when he heard Whistler was working in the grounds. As he like to paint pictures as well as mansion houses, he went to see if he could get a look at the great artist at work.
He found him but unfortunately could not get a glimpse as Whistler was surrounded by screens, with just a small gap to allow him a view of his subject!
JULIAN and Cynthia Lennon were in Liverpool last week to launch a new exhibition at the Beatles Story about life with John.
It's a very intimate look at what sharing your husband/father with millions of fans must be like. On one occasion Cynthia was left behind at Euston Station when she was caught up in the crowd and John got the train back to Lime Street without her.
I went to the press conference and was surprised by how candid Julian was prepared to be about the way he felt/feels about his dad.
Here's my interview...
Children chase after the Lord Mayor's state coach as leaves Liverpool Cathedral with a mounted police escort after an annual service on May 29, 1949. Code: tmc290549lookback.jpg
To order this or any other Photo of the Week, call 0151 472 2549, quoting the relevant picture code, or click here to buy online.
WHICH Merseyside figures do you think should be featured in an iconic art work that will stand in the new Museum of Liverpool?
I'm currently carrying out a survey to select whose photographs will be included in the Liverpool Map sculpture - the results will be passed to the artists who are creating it out of numerous layers of very thin glass.
MY COLLEAGUE Peter Elson has written a really interesting interview with Lord David Alton, which covers his upbringing by an ordinary English-Irish family in Essex and his life in Liverpool.
He was Britain's youngest city councillor when elected as a Liberal on Liverpool City Council.
Read it here.
And here are some photos from his career:
HERE'S the second in my new fortnightly series of links on local figures. If you have any good links of your own, please share them in the comments section below.
This week the subject is philathropists:
Dr William Henry Duncan: Liverpool John Moores University's history pages; The Athenaeum on one of its most prestigious members; reference in the Journal of Medical Biography.
Profile
Laura Davis - Laura Davis is the Liverpool Daily Post's Arts Editor and 02 Digital Journalist of the Year 2009, which is in a large part due to this blog. She has a long-standing interest in local history and is keen to learn more about your own memories or discoveries about the history of Liverpool and the surrounding area.
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