From a great distance, and in Spanish, but it’s the great man nonetheless:

This film by the Nazi Germany tourist board is unwittingly highly sinister, but gives a hint of just what Owens found himself up against:

From sinister, to profoundly upsetting. Vienna, 1938:

In memory of, and in tribute to, Humphrey Jennings, the great British film maker, some of whose work is excerpted here.

Amongst the psychologically significant events of September 1939, including evacuation and call-up, was the abrupt closure of public sport (alongside cinema and theatre). Government’s later change of heart on this issue have obscured its initial impact. At the time of the ban, no one would have known for sure if any part of the ban would ever be rescinded, let alone under what circumstances.

December 8, 1941, was, of course, the day Sir Geoff Hurst, cricketer and England’s 1966 hat trick hero, came into the world.

Not that very many people knew at the time that it had happened. His mother, his father - assuming war duties allowed him within reach of the good news. Close relatives, friends too perhaps.

That’s the thing with “great events” - it’s relatively unusual for them to be happening right in front of us, and although we’ll remember a date by the momentousness we’d failed to be an eyewitness to, the day we actually lived through and experienced won’t relate to it directly. Great events don’t drill down to us. Not immediately, at any rate.

Geoff Hurst’s parents would have heard the news about Pearl Harbour sooner or later - within 48 hours, depending on young Geoff’s ability to keep them away from radio and newspapers. Even people who had Pearl Harbour forced on their attention - who were living in the city where the first decisions were made in response - found their normal lives flywheeling on regardless of the attack.

By 1941, sound recording technology had long since improved to the point where accidental background noise had to be eliminated, rather than - as with yesterday’s recordings - its pickup being out of the question. As with photography, when background noise does come in, with the passage of time it can assume far greater interest than whatever the microphone-wielder thought their purpose was.

Click here (RealPlayer file) to hear recorded man-in-the-street interviews made on a Washington DC street corner within hours of Geoff Hurst’s birth. The opinions of random people on the street are interesting enough - but listen to the soundscape behind.

A year or two after the 1966 victory - perhaps in 1968, my year, when Hurst was involved in England’s attempt at the European Championship, on the other side of the world, this. It makes me reflect, at any rate, on just how much experience, and of what kind, is possible, not just in a human lifetime, but during and alongside an individual’s human lifetime.

This, after all, is far closer to home for baby Geoff, (UPDATE: perhaps not next door, as he was born in Ashton Under Lyne, Lancashire) and also happened within the year:

A Wednesday, and a hot day for sport: the National Rifle Association meeting at Bisley “sweltered in burning haze” which made accurate shooting on the ranges difficult. Elsewhere, Carthusian won the Newmarket July Handicap by four lengths.

At Old Trafford, Lancashire beat Middlesex by seven wickets, courtesy of a winning stand of 136 from Paul and Yates. One year previously, the laws concerning the number of balls bowled per over had been changed: the four ball over, of time immemorial and Grace’s Gloucestershire childhood, had been changed to one of five. It was a time of change. 1890 is seen by some commentators as the first year in cricket’s “golden age”: it was certainly the first season of the formally-constituted County Cricket Championship.

There was something else that happened on that baking July day that didn’t make the newspapers, let alone the sports pages, but is in its way more interesting. Mr. Graham Hope and Miss Ferguson recorded the chimes of Big Ben on an Edison brown wax cylinder. Here’s what it sounded like.