Category Archives: News

We’re going to the Premiere of Monuments Men in London

By Charles Dixon-Spain | Published: February 9, 2014

Sadie and I are going to London for the event. Meeting Robert Edsel himself beforehand, and hope to meet the cast afterwards. This has led to a flurry of research about Ted from me and I have found an excellent American archive called Folio3. It looks like I can fill in where and what Ted […]

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Monuments Men in the Guardian

By Charles Dixon-Spain | Published: August 17, 2013

Delightful article about the Monuments Men, tying into George Clooney’s film, but really about the last living member of the group, Anne Olivier Bell who turned 97 this summer. Lovely article, and I commented at the end on Ted

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Daniel Craig to play Squadron Leader Dixon-Spain?

By Charles Dixon-Spain | Published: November 10, 2012

Guardian cover the story, but the question is, will Squadron Leader Dixon-Spain be in the movie? Possibly not, given that filming is happening in Germany, and not Ted’s area of operations in Italy. Having said that they have cast Daniel Craig, and we all know how devilishly handsome the men in our family are!!? More […]

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Orders of Merit, Mary, Barbara and Hamish

By Charles Dixon-Spain | Published: June 8, 2011

Today, after yesterday’s resurrection of the Dixon-Spain site, I’ve added the order of Merit awarded to the Rev. Thomas in 1923, the names and birthdates of Ted’s two girls (Mary and Barbara) as well as Hamish, Bridget and Ian’s son — who Dad tells me is still alive.

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The Genealogy Obsession

By Charles Dixon-Spain | Published: October 5, 2009

Just a quick note to say that this research is acting like a drug. The more you do it the more you want to do it. Even infinitessimal progress feels like a breakthough. Just confirming a date of birth feels epochal. And adding a new name to the tree is extraordinary — I find myself […]

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Google Books and Familial Research

By Charles Dixon-Spain | Published: September 20, 2009

Working my way through all the research possibilities that the net offers for free has been an interesting experience. Refining and re-refining searches has been rewarding, if in a limited way. Actually I say that, and the Heckington Spaynes came out of a Google search, as did the marriages of Spains in Lincoln and the […]

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Spains, Spaynes and Plagues

By Charles Dixon-Spain | Published: September 16, 2009

To record or not to record, that is the genealogical question. I’ve just updated the website, making two major leaps of faith to fill in the family in the early to mid-nineteenth century. With only the knowledge that the Rev. Thomas was born in Lincoln, I searched for his father Thomas and came up with […]

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A bug in WPMU creating pages?

By Charles Dixon-Spain | Published: September 10, 2009

Mild mannered genealogical janitor by day, but by night bug-ridden, page overwriting fuey? Could Be! A frustrating half an hour with WPMU overwriting the same page with material for three pages sequentially. I didn’t catch on to begin with having been fooled by Firefox shift-refresh thing, but then I changed to safari, which created a […]

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The Wives of the Reverend Thomas Dixon-Spain

By Charles Dixon-Spain | Published: September 7, 2009

With the help of David Secker I have been piecing together the marital arrangements on the Reverend Thomas. It seems he married Elizabeth Showler first, and with her had two children, Lizzie and Thomas. The latter, according to family legend, was the black sheep of the family and went away to Ohio having dallied with […]

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Ted’s Service Record Now Uploaded

By Charles Dixon-Spain | Published: September 6, 2009

Two sheets of A3 came through the post a few months ago, and I have just scanned them in and put them up on JEDS’s page. Confirmed his time and place of death, his marriage, and Elsie’s surname as well his decorations and postings. Incredibly active career — particularly that bit in WW2 during the […]

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