Angela Lansbury

Tweet to @AngelaTheAuthor

NB I am not the actress. She does wonderful publicity for our name. We both have a son called Anthony. LinkedIn has 14 professionals named Angela Lansbury.

I am the author of:
Wedding Speeches and Toasts.
How to be the Best Man.
Plus several more books by mainstream publishers. See Amazon for more.

I have self-published several more books. See Lulu.com

You can also see me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest

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About Angela Lansbury, travel writer

About

About and Contact Details
Who am I?

I am Angela Lansbury - yes, that's my real name. If it sounds familiar to you, that because there's at least one other. Somebody once asked me, Are you THE Angela Lansbury. I replied, as far as I and my family are concerned, yes, I am THE Angela Lansbury. There is another one.

At that time two Angela Lansbury ladies existed, me and the actress. We have more than just the name in common. We both had fathers from the East End of London, but spoke perfect, clear English,  and we both had a son called Anthony. And we both wrote.

I discovered there was a third writer called Angela Lansbury. She wrote fiction and I wrote practical books. My dream was to write fiction, to be a classic author, like Charlotte Bronte.

My latest look at LInkedIn revealed that the numbers of people called Angela Lansbury had risen to thirteen. I wrote earlier about the pleasure and problems and confusion when more than one person has the same name. Equity won't allow it. They don't want payments going to the wrong person. Singapore insisted that you give your NRIC number, and ID number, like a passport number, as proof of identity. In England doctors and banks and insurance companies tend to use your birthday as a second way of ascertaining who is who.

Books
I am a travel writer. I write articles about travel. I have written about twenty books. The first book I wrote was Enquire within Upon Travel and Holidays.

Ten of my books were published by mainstream publishers. I have self published another ten and I always have there or four books not he go.

You can read about me and my books on www.Amazon.com and www.Lulu.com

Contacts
If you want to meet me, I belong to two Toastmasters Speakers Groups in London, (usually your first two or three meetings are free). In Singapore I belong to another club and go to a club every night, speaking, or evaluating speeches or judging competitions.

Messages
If you want to send a message, I am on Facebook and LinkedIn. I am more likely to reply if you can write a sensible, grammatically correct sentence and spell correctly, which is quite likely if you have read this far. If your fist language is not English, I suggest you get the free ad Grammarly which checks both grammar and spelling. That ap includes punctuation.
www.linkedin.com
www.facebook.com
www.grammarly.com

Like most people I prefer praise to blame, though I am always interested in extra information and the polite correction of an occasional error which we hope gets spotted by one person before all the others have seen it.

If there's a place you would like to know about I can research it. If there's a book you would like me to write, please tell me. It's always encouraging to know a book has at least one potential reader.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

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Travel Photo Books

I have thousands of travel photos on my computer (plus many more albums of prints, boxes of prints, and albums of slides, and boxes of ancestors' travel slides}. Even with some of my travel pictures used in travel articles which are framed and displayed not he walls of my home, my own family don't see the majority of the pictures. I want to enjoy them, and to pick out the best to show others. The answer is a photo book.

The cost of a coloured photo book is not cheap. At £20 for printing a paperback and double that for a hardback book, you can hardly make a living when you have to add in postage and double the price.

Lulu
The advantage of Lulu is that I have set it up already for all my other books. I am familiar with the login process, they have my address.

Apple
The advantage of the apple book is that you can ask for help during a one to one lesson if you are on an apple mac laptop and have already paid for a year's lessons.

Here are the results:

Lulu
I ordered a vertical paperback to display my caricatures, paintings and photos. You have a choice of themes. I wanted lots of warm orange or red as background for the front cover and inside.

But when I started making up the book, I discovered that the background colours seemed allocated to the size of the pictures. A large vertical picture with a caption box underneath came out with a green background. Two horizontal pictures with a text box between them had a yellow background.
If you alternated the pages with text boxed you would get two contrasting background colours. For example, green on the left, yellow background on the right.

If you selected all large pictures it would be a book with an orange cover and all green inside. You would have in a 20 page book, 20 large pictures, all double page spreads.

The cover was very good, colourful and striking, with a large space for a picture.

The title page had no picture, not even a tiny box for a publisher's logo (if you wanted to have a publisher's name and a logo, or for several types of books, two logo, such as one for adults' books, such as a city or country landmark, a drawing or photo of your home, or a postage stamp size picture of the author/photographer, another for children's books, such as a baby, your child for whom you had made a record of their childhood birthdays or holidays, or a children's swing.

Inside you could increase the number of pictures. If you chose on every page, four pictures on an orange background. The set of four took up the whole page and had no caption/ text box. My first attempt was to use the text box on the adjoining page. Then you had to decide how to make a consistent set of captions through the book. Would I caption the pictures 'Left to right top row, left to right lower row'.

When I was a sub-editor on Woman's Realm on IPC magazines, we were instructed to use the words upper and lower, not top and bottom which sounded rude and distracted the reader.

An alternative wording would be: Clockwise from upper left. This take up space of four words.

The other difficulty with a caption on a different page occurs when you move the pages. The Lulu option enables you to change the order of the pages. This is handy if you want to group two pictures of the same location or person. Or you could re-arrange your photos or paintings in date order. Fore example, our first trip / honeymoon to Paris, our anniversary in Paris, or Paris in the 1900s, our / our parents' trip(s) to Paris in the Fifties, our / their / your trip(s) to Paris in the Sixties.

The advantage of Lulu is that you have the choice of marketing your books to the public, or making them available for family and fiends to download through the system.

However, it seems odd to have nothing on the back cover, no photo or text box. A wasted space.

Apple
Apple is more designed for you to run off one or two copies for your own use and distribution.

However, as a display book of the sort of paintings, photos, caricatures, you can offer as a service for charity or as paying business, the Apple book enabled me to add text and photos on the the back cover. I inserted the text Caricatures by Angela from £5 to £500.

When I showed the family my Lulu book, they were delighted and impressed. When they saw the Apple book, they were even more impressed by the professional quality

Wonderful Wines For Weddings, Romance & Surprise Novelties: Icewine For Valentine's Day, Wedding Wines, Cork Showing Klee; label with Dirdl

1 Squashed Wine Bottles Displaying Business Cards
The Austrian wine show at the Institute of Directors in Pall Mall, London showed Austria's latest wines and wine related gifts. Business address cards were displayed on a flattened bottle. You can buy these bottles and use them to serve cheese and biscuits with wine.

For a special occasion such as a wedding, anniversary, Valentine's Day, birthday, or birth of a baby, you can have your wine or champagne bottle flattened afterwards as a souvenir. I found flat-bottles.co.uk . Their charge in Feb 2014 from the website was £12+£9 postage for a bottle without label. (You remove your label and save it and stick it back afterwards.)  With labels £18 plus postage. They also do champagne and beer bottles. Other sellers offer bottles as olive trays or spoon rests, with a wine quote (old wine like old friends  better with age) and personalised. The bottle in my picture was at the Austrian wine trade show in London and was made for Weingut Hellmer by an Austrian company. I thought it was flattened by www.mth.com.at but I haven't yet found the website. The bottle itself is from Weingut Hellmer, www.winzer-hellmer.at office email office@winzer-helmmer.at tel:+43 (0)2738/3149

2 Ice Wine In Icicle Thin Bottles
I loved the ultra sweet ice wines which have to be picked at night when the weather is icy, sold in a bottle slim as an icicle. I first found this delicious wine in New Zealand, then in Canada, and did not realise it was closer to home in Europe, from Austria. My favourite eisweins were by Lang; and by Zantho whose bottle labels feature the winery's local lizard.

 Lizard Logos On Bottles Of Sweet wine - how sweet!

For the lizard logo on bottles of ice wine www.zantho.com

3 Dirndl Dress On Labels
Wandering through the show was a girl wearing a wonderful iridescent skirt. The same outfit, a folk fashion of Eastern Austria, is worn by the girl pictured on bottles of wine. The Dirndl dress has a laced corset-style bodice, a full circular skirt, and often a white puff sleeve blouse, skirt lengths varying from knee length to ankle length. You can buy these dresses in various colours for girls of all ages from babies to brides up to grannies, and co-ordinating lederhosen for boys and granddads too.

This wine with its wonderful label is brand new, so they are looking for importers to the UK. If you want to buy a dirndl dress, google dirndl or Salzburger dirndl. The pretty dirndl dress featured in the film Sound of Music so many little girls would love to have one. I met Bianca, above, the daughter-in-law of the people who run the winery.

More details of the wines from www.schmelzweine.at

info@schmelzweine

t:+43 (2715) 2435. 

4 Klee Paintings on Corks & Labels
Another novelty is a portrait from a Klee painting on a cork. Klee was an Austrian painter. The whole painting is shown on a wine label.

For the klee labels and corks check out wwww.szigeti.at

5 New Baby Bottles With Hearts and Keys For Valentine's Day and Weddings
The same company makes miniature bottles, the smallest bottles in the world, holding just a glassful of wine, 125 cl, with trinkets around the bottle neck as gifts. You can have little hearts or keys. Or anything you want to order. The bottles come in conventional colours or silver.

More Details From:

For the bubbly bomb baby bottles, with Bubbly Bomb Vienna designs, Bubbly Bomb Christmas Designs, Bubbly Bomb Wedding Designs - www.szigeti.at

You can buy the bubble bottles from Selfridges, Conran, the British Library or from the producers' website. They specialise in sparkling wines. The bottles with the hearts and keys cost about £8.99, while the ones with silver bottles and pink ribbon are about £12.99.

www.austrianwine.com

For anybody in the trade some more details:

Szigeti, Am Anger 31, 7122 Gols

T: +43 (2173) 2167 F: +43 173) 2514

E:sektkellerei@szigeti.at

W:www.szigeti.at

Contact: Hans-Peter Hofmann

Importer Grays & Feather Ltd.

Haider & Malloth make little lightweight glassy coloured printed papers to go under glasses (in German Glasuntersetzer) Vol.1.

They also double as circular business cards for their marketing staff:

Christopher Malloth MSc, marketing und Sales, Haider & Malloth OG, Am Schrandlsee 2, 7142 Illmitz, Austria.

www.weingut-haider-malloth.at

tel:+43 1 512 29 90-0

More details from:

Facebook: www.austrianwine.com/facebook

Twitter: www.twitter.com/austrianwine

Austrian Wine Marketing Board

www.austrianwine.com

Visit their Webshop shop.oesterreichwein.at

info@austrianwine.com

Next year I hope to go back to their trade show and taste the other sweet wines I missed by wineries: Fritsch; Haider & Malloth Weinkellerei OG; Etz; and Weubrueder

WINE QUOTATIONS

Finally a few quotations on wine:

A glass of wine and thou.

Drink, drink, drink. (Drinking song.)

In vino veritas.

In victory you deserve it; in defeat you need it. (Napoleon on Champagne.) 

Wine, women and song.

Angela Lansbury is the author of Quick Quotations which you can buy on line from lulu.com

'To Die' Today - How you can correct common errors, pronunciation for public speaking by Angela Lansbury

How do you speak correct English when you are English? How do you speak correct English when you are not English? 

UK
When I was a child in the UK, many schools, especially private schools, offered extra paid for lessons in elocution. Schools and teachers wanted to earn extra money. Parents wanted their children to sound posh and get better jobs. Doting mothers, like mine, wanted their offspring to win certificates in poetry competitions run by Drama schools which awarded certificates at different levels. 
   In those days every child did a party piece when invited to a birthday party. I wanted to recite a poem without the embarrassment of stammering or stuttering over long, puzzling words.

   Recently I met Toastmaster William Brougham, who came to be General Evaluator at Harrovian Speakers' Club. He took a video of me for YouTube in which I explained grammar rules; a viewer suggested that we should produce another video on pronunciation. Before making that video, I thought I should jot down a few thoughts. Whenever I jot down a few thoughts, they expand until I have an article, sometimes a book. For those people who can't watch videos in silent situations, here are some handy notes on pronunciation.

   Start by noticing the silliest errors and most memorable misunderstandings. When you are asked when you are going to the hospital for a check-up, and you want to tell family, friends or colleagues, 'I'm going today', don't shock everybody by saying, 'I'm going to die!' 

Australian & Others
Improving Vowels
Problem with A and I
A and I need to be sounded differently. Lots of people make an A sound like an I. 
For example, here are pairs of words which have different meanings: 
Day. Die.
Way. Why.
Make sure you are not saying the second when you mean the first. 

If you are the Grammarian at a Toastmasters International speakers' club, note any pronunciation which could be improved.
   When you are asked to evaluate a speech, speak to the person you are evaluating, before the meeting starts and ask what they would like you to notice. If they don't ask about pronunciation, offer to make suggestions. So long as they agree, smile, nod, or even shrug, if you are asked to 'Read out the objectives', you can add, "'Susan/John' asked me to comment on the pronunciation of words and make helpful suggestions for improvement".  That way you appear not to be criticizing, but following their request for help. 

Problem with A and OI
Bay. Boy. (We drove around the boy. Should be 'we drove around the bay'.)
Ray. Roy. (I gave the book to Roy. Should be I gave the book to 'Roy'.) 
Say. Soy. Be careful what you soy. Should be 'Be careful what you say'.)
The listener who hears constant mispronunciations has listen hard to work out which word you mean. 

   Our upper class accents sound as if we are speaking copying courtiers from the time of the Vikings. 

Swedish

A Swedish speaker has perfect, clear upper class vowels like the Queen's Speech. 

French & the UK

A French au pair girl told me she could not understand the chatter on tube trains and in bars, but she could understand HM The Queen. 

Speed and Spaces
   When the queen delivers a speech, she also speaks very slowly. She leaves a gap between each word.
   Not like everyday gabble. (We're gonna 'ave an en' to innit!) 
   If you are a teacher, you often speak to children. If you are a pupil, you want the teacher and class to hear your question.
   If you are a public speaker, your audience includes one person in seven hard of hearing. (I found that statistic in a fundraising leaflet).  If you are retired and speak to local groups of retirees, many more will be hard of hearing and will be helped if you speak loudly, slowly, and clearly.
   If you make a living speaking to businesses, many of them have foreign staff or hold international conferences.

Yiddish - OY VEH!
   The Yiddish expression Oy veh hints that oy is a common sound in Europe, where the Yiddish language combines the local language such as German with Russian and Hebrew. I have also heard a speaker from central Europe, the Czeck Republic, using this intonation.

Australia
   Australians use an oy for an A. If you have trouble understanding Australians, it may help to note which words are likely to sound differently.

Some native English speakers also over-use oy. Here's another example, this time where the mispronounced word has no meaning. 
      What time of doy? (Should be 'What time of day'.)

Solution 1
Find out if you have a problem
   If you use English as a second language, and even if you don't, read aloud a few sentences of your speech. You can make a recording with your smart phone. If you don'g have one - ask somebody else at a big meeting. Ask a friend of acquaintances to tell you if you need to change any pronunciation.  (If you have a problem speaking another language, it's a great conversation opener to ask for help and make a friend.)

   Sometimes you don't know what you are doing wrong. Sometimes you're told but you can't hear the difference. Sometimes you keep trying but you don't know how to make the second sound.

   Can you hear the difference? Use the internet, your own computer, at a school or library, or airport lounge or other public place. Go to a dictionary which has the symbol you can click on to hear the word said aloud.  

Check the position of your lips. Look in the mirror.
Try saying 'boy', pursing your lips as if shouting angrily, or blowing up a balloon.
then say 'bay'. Open your mouth wide, as if the dentist has asked you to open your mouth, and smile.

PHONETIC SPELLINGS 
   Phone means sound, as in the word telephone (distant sound).
   Why is English not phonetic? (Meaning, why do the sounds not always match the spelling?) One reason is that the traditional spelling has been preserved in the dictionary, but speakers have changed the most popular pronunciation. 
   Watch out for words which are not pronounced the way they are written. Just as some people drop the s from yes and say yeah, many words have lost the last letter or an earlier letter because over the centuries the lazier or quicker or easier to say pronunciation has become standard.

Silent Letters
B in the word doubt is silent. The word is pronounced 'dowt'

PLACE NAMES 
   Edinburgh 'Edinbr'
   Leicester 'Lester'

CONSONANTS - WORD ENDING
G - pronounce G at the end of the word
Nothing (not 'nothin').
Sitting (no 'sit in')

How to improve:

Chinese
CONSONANT CONFUSION
Problem:
L and R
   Speakers from oriental countries such as Hong Kong and Thailand often have trouble hearing or saying both consonants. Sometimes they try too hard and over correct making more errors.
The old joke goes that the pilot of your plane wishes you 'a pleasant fright' instead of a pleasant flight. I thought this was a joke. Then I heard airline staff say it.

   Sometimes people misunderstand and ask you to repeat a sentence. Other times, they listen but misunderstand.
   At a Toastmasters meeting I sat through a speech in which the speaker said he worked for the Loyal bank of Scotland. I assumed that, because of the banking crisis, they had wanted to change their name to reassure customers. Or maybe they had split into two branches, one called the Royal Bank, another called the loyal bank. While I was musing on the merits of changing a company name, I missed two or three sentences of the five minute speech. Then I started listening again and heard the speaker make another change to a word in the same sentence. I realised I had been slow to guess it should have been 'Royal' Bank. 

   Some workers are told by colleagues and bosses or customers that they need to improve their pronunciation. They are not upset if you tell them the correct pronunciation. On the contrary, they are very keen to get help. Especially if it's free! 
   A course on pronunciation is sometimes given at centre such as London's City Lit. The courses are often good value given the hours of lessons, but learning one sound each week takes a lot of time. If you need to give a speech at a wedding, you may have a year to prepare. But when giving a funeral speech, doing a job interview, or a presentation in a new job, or answering the phone, you don't have a year to prepare. So, everybody, please take time, when asked, or offer to help, if you are one step ahead of your friend in pronunciation. Watch out for these:

Chinese
T and TH and S and SH
Problem saying 'th'
TH is hard to pronounce for people who speak Mandarin or Cantonese, such as Singaporeans.
I often sit through speeches and am puzzled. I remember the first time a woman said, 'I have tree children.' I assumed 'tree children' was a popular Chinese translation of a word such as tomboy, kids who climb and are sporty. Then she said, 'Two of them are at secondary school, the tird is ...' The turd is!

Ah - she means three and third!

Solution to th
   You can practise a sentence with alternating t and th. Make up your own. For example: The three children climb threes. 
   T - tongue tapping behind top teeth.
   Th - think about poking out your tongue and pulling it back through your teeth stroking under your top teeth. Say teeth, teeth, teeth, moving your tongue from tapping behind to almost gently biting your tongue while breathing out.

S and Sh
   She sells sea shells on the sea shore

   Do email me and tell me your problems or solutions. I and everybody else would be most grateful. And send me or tell me funny mispronunciations and misunderstandings. I would love to hear them.

SUMMARY OF TIPS
Problems to notice: 

• Ay and oi. 
• Missing G or T. 
• L and R
• S and SH.
• T and TH.

Solutions

• Read a newspaper aloud to identify problems. Underline difficult words.
• Check how words sound using online dictionaries.
• Practise tongue twisters.
• Look in the mirror at how you are placing your tongue and opening your mouth.
• Join a Toastmasters Club and ask your evaluator for help with your pronunciation.
• Read a speech aloud. Underline words or highlight letters. Ask a friend to listen and advise.
• Come to my UK club harrovians.org.uk . (I am president until June 31 2013. Then 'Past P'.)
• Go as a guest to any great club such as HOD (Thursdays, 2nd and 4th most months).  I am a member and committee member. Check google Toastmasters International/ Find a club.
• If short of time, go to toastmasters clubs when overseas on business or holiday. I visit several clubs in Singapore.  It has many clubs so you are near one most evenings and weekends.
• Harrovians meets Mondays, usually first third and fifth Mondays (except months with bank holidays), door open at 7 pm. Speeches start at 7.30 prompt. Meeting ends 9.30 prompt. 
• Members receive a magazine and a mentor helps you write and rehearse speeches. Membership is about £79 a year plus £20 for two manuals on speeches and leadership.
• harrovians.org.uk toastmasters.org 
• More about toastmasters
• Go to a pronunciation class or private English tutor.           For grammar rules see YouTube Angela Lansbury author speech grammar / Kensington 25
• For a friendly chat, or one hour lesson in person or skype, my email is on my websites featuring the names: anna london 8 (gmail). No spaces. 

Angela Lansbury is the author of fifteen books including: Quick Quotations For Successful Speeches; Wedding Speeches And Toasts; Poetry Workshop Workbook; Angela's Animals (A-Z of comic poetry plus facts); How To Get Out Of The Mess You're In. See Lulu.com
-ends-
Copyright Angela Lansbury April 24 2013