About Angela Lansbury

I’m Angela Lansbury.

I’m not related to the actress but she does wonderful publicity for our name. I would love to meet her and the other thirteen people who are lucky to share the name.

I live in London and Singapore. I like to think that I am ‘a citizen of the world’.

Skills

DRIVING & NAVIGATING

I travel the world, hiking from a luxury hotel, sitting on a plane or train. I’ve been white water rafting in the USA and New Zealand. I drive a car occasionally, but much prefer to be a passenger. I navigate using maps, satnav, and dresses in shop windows.

Best of all is being collected by a car owned by the hotel. A proper, luxury hotel, where somebody carries your luggage.

TAKING GREAT PHOTOGRAPHS

I take travel photos with a smart phone. You don’t need a luxury camera. It’s lovely to have a camera which takes both videos and still pictures, as my husband does when climbing mountains such as Kilimanjaro. But I can take photos with any camera.

I once went on a ferry trip to France, partly sponsored by Polaroid. I won a camera in the competition with one of my twelve last-minute photos taken the port, of a statue against the sunset. The statue was just a silhouette.

The candidates from the photography magazines looked at it suspiciously. One of them conceded, ‘Contre jour’.

I was a bit worried because I didn’t know the term. I knew contra was against and jour was day - had I done something against the rules of the day?  

No. One of them kindly explained,  “Contre-jour meant taken against the (day)light.”  

EDITING PHOTOS

People who protest, “Don’t photograph me - I don’t photograph well,“ allow me to take a few photos, then later say, “Wow - you  make me look good!”

I photograph them holding something suited to their hobbies or the location, such as reading a newspaper and peering around it, or hugging a distracting dog and wearing sunglasses. The girl wearing sunglasses as well as the dog.

Making Friends

One of my friends told me: "I don't stay in luxury hotels; I doesn’t stay in hotels of any size. I prefer to stay with friends." 

If you can spend less on accommodation, you can spend more on other luxuries.

How Do You Make Friends In New Places?

When I was a teenager I watched a boy circle a room circling clockwise around a room, chatting up all the girls, complete strangers, who transformed, smiling animatedly and gave him their phone numbers, whilst other boys had no success and didn’t fancy anybody. One of the other boys muttered, “How does he do it? What is he saying to them?”

Only one person knew.  I proceeded anti-clockwise around the room until I could confront Casanova. I  asked him, “What’s the secret of your success in conversation with girls?”

He replied, “Everybody has something good. If a girl is hideously ugly, she may be carrying a nice handbag. So I compliment her on her taste in handbags.”

Photographic Experience

When I am photographing, I remember what he said. If my subject has pretty, patterned shoes, but a plain face, I focus on the feet. Their face can be half hidden by a stunning sunhat,  an amusing umbrella, or glass of pink champagne. If you don’t have a handy hat or umbrella, walk  into a department store and try on a hat just long enough to get three shots.

If you don’t have a glass of champagne and can’t afford one, what then? I go into a grand bar and ask for an empty glass or add water, or buy tomato juice.

EDITING SKILL

I edit out their wrinkles, make the pretty girls sharp, and the ugly ones gently out of focus.

FRENCH CONVERSATION

I speak French fluently. (“Oui!) My aim is to learn one language each year, and five minutes a day, learning two more. By the year 2027, I should be fluent in ten languages. 

Ten years after that I shall probably be fluent in twenty, or I shall be dead, of exhaustion. 

I am learning conversational Chinese, German, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Malaysian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian. Spanish, Welsh. I am learning with the aid of Duolingo, Earworms and taxi drivers.

I am a great listener.  

When I was a postgraduate I made friends with a girl who said, “It’s my policy to be friends with everybody.” Good policy.

COLOURFUL, MEMORABLE CHARACTER

I make friends everywhere I go. I don’t generally read novels during my travels. I watch the scenery for interesting photo shots and smiling faces. But I read business cards which people give me with the excitement of an avid reader discovering the denouement to a thriller.

A woman in a jewellery shop in New Zealand remembered me when I returned five years later. I asked, “Do you remember everybody?”

“No,” she replied, “But I remember you!”

Experience

At Grammar school and Sunday school, I studied English grammar, and other subjects useful for a travel writer: French, History, Latin, Hebrew, Religious knowledge,  art appreciation, country dancing, and singing folk songs out of tune.  I picked up enough maths to enable me to count my change, whatever the currency, and to check it twice.

UNIVERSITY

I studied at University College, London. I wish I had studied Swedish.

Postgraduate Training

As a postgraduate, I studied shorthand, typing, and business at a Secretarial College. I learned Pitman’s shorthand, all dots and dashes,  which I promptly forgot.

Travel Recording

Later, I learned Speedwriting which is abbreviated like TextSpeak. It comes in handy when I am taking notes from a recording on an open-top bus on a city tour. Tape recordings don’t work because of the background noise of the engine him and the passing traffic and people behind you talking loudly in other languages over the English.

When I became a journalists and went to work for IPC, it was obligatory to join the National Union of Journalists. I was thrilled. I was sent on a journalism course at London College of Printing where I studied law for journalists. I was a sub-editor on Woman and Woman’s Realm.

Writing For a German Audience

I wrote for encyclopaedias and partworks, notably on a science partwork to be translated from English to German.  I remember researching  bridges of the world. Everything had to be written for a German audience. It was an exercise in diplomacy, long before political correctness. Amazing how copy about the Allies sounds different when the subject of a sentence changes and you are self-censoring.

Freelance Travel Writer

I became a freelance and wrote travel articles for:

• Brides.
• Parents
• Good Motoring.
• Northern Echo.
• And many more.

The walls of my house are full of framed copies of articles I have written. Articles used to get stuck together in filing systems. It’s quicker to find an article by racing up and down the corridor. I call it wallpaper filing.

Books On Travel

I have written twenty books. The earliest was Enquire Within Upon Travel and Holidays.

Researching Jewish Interest

My most recent is a Jewish Travel Guide. It was the result of my being asked to speak about travel on a Jewish travel programme on the radio in London. I thought that there would not be much to say. How many Jewish places are there?

Anne Frank’s House in Amsterdam, The Netherlands,

The Jewish museum in London, and

The Jewish museum in Manchester, and

Schindler’s Factory Museum in Poland near

Auschwitz, and

Jerusalem in Israel, and the

Jewish Museum in Washington DC, and

Singer Island in Florida named after the man who aimed to sell every house a sewing machine.

I found a story in every country and every state which had somebody Jewish connected with it. For example, I went to Niagara Falls. What could I say of Jewish interest? Marilyn Monroe made a film at Niagara Falls. She married Arthur Miller, who was Jewish, and she converted to Judaism.

Niagara also had a museum to Houdini. He  was Jewish.

I remember standing on the USA stand at the world Travel Market and talking to a tourist board rep about Elvis. I eventually admitted, “I’m looking for a story of Jewish interest for a radio programme. I don’t supposed you have a Jewish story connected with Elvis, do you?”

The man grinned, “I sure do. Elvis turned on the cooker on Saturday for a Jewish neighbour. He was a - what do you call it?”

“ A shabbos goy - a non-Jew who helps out on Shabbos, the sabbath.”

To capture and record all the stories because I could not read my handwriting nor co-ordinate my filing, I ended up publishing a book about Jews in every country. To make life easy for me and the reader, I listed the countries alphabetically. Then, of course, I had to search for something to suit every letter of the alphabet.

You might think at first, as I did, that there can’t be that many stories. Yes there can.

But surely there’s nothing to interest people who are not Jewish?

Yes, there is! I was surprised in the Cat Museum in Kuching, Malaysia, the name Kuching means cat. Who do I see in a photo with her cat.  Anne Frank!

Resident of Spain and Singapore

When my family lived in Spain, we travelled all the way down through France and Portugal into Spain, literally with the kitchen sink, bought from Wickes in North Harrow, all the way across Spain to Marbella in the far South.

I lived with the family in the USA and Spain. I taught English in four schools in Singapore.

Having a base in England, still part of Europe, makes it easy to do short trips using RyanAir. The highlight of this year was Romania and Dracula.

What can you do for cheap flights from Singapore? Airmiles. This year’s highlight was Cambodia. A favourite saying you hear often in Singapore is, “I can get it for you cheaper.”

Awards

My best prizes was a trip I won as a postgraduate student to Japan, via Russia, staying with Japanese families and at Japanese youth hostels, such as one at Hiroshima. Afterwards, I stayed on for a night in a luxury hotel in Tokyo before catching the shop and plane home. Dinner was bought by my American boyfriend who was there just for the evening before he flew on. I had travelled on an overnight couchette train to meet up with him.

Later, one of my books was a best seller. Because of my books, I have spoken on the radio all over the world. In addition to winning awards, I have presented awards.

I presented the awards at a Murder Weekend in Wales.

I presented awards at a competition for matchmaking romantic singles in Singapore.

I hope you will quote me. I love quoting famous people. Disraeli said, When I want to read a book, I write one.

I have written or perhaps I should say, edited, two books of quotations>

Quick Quotations

Who Said What When