The Arts

A HELENSBURGH singer was a highly regarded member of the chorus group at the Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden for 30 years.

Born in Adelaide Street in the town in 1920, Daniel McCoshan travelled the world and sang with some of the great names in opera before his death on January 21 2003 at the age of 82.

A VERY well known singer who spent much of her childhood in Helensburgh returned to the burgh for a concert in January 2009 . . . 25 years on from when she won several major prizes as a student.

Soprano Lorna Anderson, who now lives in Somerset with her husband and three daughters, sang in a charity concert in the West Kirk on Thursday January 22 with broadcaster and singer Jamie MacDougall and the Eisenstadt trio.

A SEAT beside a desk in the editorial office of the Helensburgh Advertiser in 1995 was occupied by a young reporter with a talent for finding stories.

A GARELOCHHEAD man was named top director at the 2008 Scottish BAFTAs.

Kenneth Glenaan, better known locally as Kenneth Grant, won the coveted prize for his film Summer, which starred Robert Carlyle, and it also took the Best Film award.

A YOUNG artist from Rhu who now lives and works in America has gained an international reputation, with her paintings selling for as much as 10,000 dollars.

Vicki Hopkinson — who comes home regularly for holidays — is particularly renowned for her paintings of animals.

HELENSBURGH people have long embraced Deborah Kerr as their very own film star, but the time she spent in the town was very short.

Countless newspaper, magazine and website articles say that the Scottish girl who became the archetypal movie ‘perfect English rose’ was born in the burgh.

JEWELLERY owned by Helensburgh film star Deborah Kerr was sold at auction by Bonhams in London on Thursday December 4 2008 — and the prices exceeded all expectations.

Deborah Kerr, who was born in 1921 and died in Suffolk in October 2007, starred in more than 50 films over four decades, most memorably appearing in From Here to Eternity, with Burt Lancaster (1953), The King and I, with Yul Brynner (1956) and An Affair to Remember, with Cary Grant (1957).

ONE of the most commercially successful of the 21st century Helensburgh and district artists was Mary Batchelor, who passed away after a long battle against ill health in October 2027.

Mary’s very colourful works adorn art galleries throughout Britain and fetch high prices at art sales and auctions. She was inspired by Scottish landscapes and she matched its magical presence with vital colour and broad brush work.

A PAINTING by Helensburgh artist Erskine Beveridge, “After Sunset, The Gareloch”, was acquired by the Anderson Trust from the fine art dealer Neil McRea in 2008 — and provides this artist’s interpretation of a familiar view.

It is also a welcome addition to this growing collection of paintings inspired by this area, many by artists who at some time lived and worked here.

AN ATTRACTIVE painting by a Helensburgh artist turned up in the summer of 2008 . . . in a disused mill in Oldham, Lancashire, now used as a secondhand furniture store.

The 28 x 20 inch oil on hardboard painting by Jan Stirling is entitled ‘The Town of Mostar’, and it immediately caught the eye of John Crabbe, from nearby Todmorden.

THE Anderson Trust launched a set of three cards of prints from the Trust collection in October 2008.

Says Trustee Mary-Jane Selwood: “Over the years, visitors to the Anderson Trust exhibitions have asked whether reproductions of any of the paintings were available in card form.

A REMARKABLE relic of Helensburgh of days gone by has been unearthed by James Brown FSA Scot, a historical researcher based in Ayrshire.

It is a manuscript volume dated 1822, containing six poems and several small vignettes which depict sailing and loch scenes. If that was the date the manuscript was prepared, the picture of Helensburgh would be one of the earliest known.