Documentary to mark the 150th anniversary of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.Documentary to mark the 150th anniversary of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.Documentary to mark the 150th anniversary of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
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Alice Liddell
- Self
- (archive footage)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe documentary contains a major error, as the photo of a naked girl supposed to be Lorina Liddell is actually a photo of an anonymous girl. The original photo is located at Musee Cantini, Marseilles. Lewis Carroll isn't the author of this photograph and the true photographer is unknown.
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Fraudulent picture
Two of the expert contributors on this programme complained to the BBC Trust about this programme and the BBC was censured by its own governing body for lying. The picture, supposedly recently discovered, had been readily accessible on the internet and known to scholars for around 20 years, and was known not to be authentic. The experts on Carroll who appeared on the programme were not told of it and thereby prevented from saying this. The provenance of the photo has no connection with England, let alone Carroll. It was bought from a French dealer one of whose specialities was 19th century French medical photographs, and the photo shows the girl's spine is crooked - a fact that was obscured by the BBC's selective use of the photo. The present owner of the photo, a museum, did not appear in the film, and has never claimed the photo is of Lorina by Carroll (it is only "attributed" based on an anonymous inscription on the back.) In fact the inscription uses the name "Lewis Carroll" which nobody in Carroll's lifetime would have used since he invariably used the name "Dodgson" and kept his identity as "Carroll" secret. AND, when Lorina was a young teen he had not yet achieved fame as "Carroll" anyhow since he had not written "Alice in Wonderland" by then! The photo is also not in the format used by his specially made camera.... This was a disgraceful and dishonest bit of work and it is a pity that when the BBC Trust found that the programme had lied, they did not manage to stop it being sold all over the world. It stands now as an example of what the BBC has unfortunately descended to.
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- jawoolf-07080
- Sep 28, 2018
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