Isle of Wight - Notable Media References

Notable Media References

• The 1980s pop group Level 42 is from the Isle of Wight.
• The Northumbrian scholar, Bede, recorded the arrival of Christianity on the Isle of Wight in the year 686, when the population was massacred and replaced by Christians.
• The Beatles' song "When I'm Sixty-Four", written by Paul McCartney, refers to renting a cottage on the Isle of Wight (if it's not too dear).
• The Isle of Wight is called The Island in some editions of Thomas Hardy's novels in his fictional Wessex.
• There is a running joke in radio sitcom The Navy Lark involving Sub-Lieutenant Phillips inability to navigate and subsequently tail "the Isle of Wight ferry".
• The Isle of Wight is the setting of Julian Barnes's novel England, England.
• That'll Be the Day is a 1973 British film starring David Essex and Ringo Starr, written by Ray Connolly and directed by Claude Whatham. It is set in the late '50s/early '60s and was partially filmed on the Isle of Wight
• The island also features in John Wyndham's novel The Day of the Triffids and Simon Clark's sequel to it, The Night of the Triffids.
• In the radio series Nebulous, the Isle of Wight has been accidentally disintegrated by Professor Nebulous while he was trying to move it slightly to the left to give it more sunlight, on Janril 57, 2069.
• Bob Dylan recorded the songs "Like a Rolling Stone", "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)", "Minstrel Boy", and "She Belongs to Me" for the album Self Portrait live on the Isle of Wight.
• The 1980 dramatization of Dennis Potter's work Blade on the Feather was filmed on the Island.
• The Isle of Wight is the setting in D.H. Lawrence's book The Trespasser, filmed for TV in 1981 on location.
• In the 1966 novel Colossus, the entire island is selected for the development of a new base by the supercomputer, Colossus.
• The Isle of Wight is the setting of Graham Masterton's book Prey.
• Parts of Frágiles (Fragile: A Ghost Story), a 2005 movie starring Calista Flockhart, were filmed on the island.
• Mrs. Brown - 1997 - with Dame Judi Dench and Billy Connolly was filmed at Osborne and Chale.
• The film That'll be the Day - 1973 - with David Essex was filmed on the island including scenes shot in Ryde and Shanklin.
• Something to Hide - 1972 - (US title Shattered) starring Peter Finch was filmed near Cowes. There is also a scene on the Red Funnel ferry.
• Karl Marx visited the Isle of Wight on numerous occasions while he was writing the Communist Manifesto.
• The Commodore 64 game 'Spirit of the Stones' by John Worsley was set on the Isle of Wight.
• In the radio panel game Genius, someone proposed that to increase Isle of Wight tourism, it should be made symmetrical, even though it would involve destroying Ventnor.
• In the Blackadder II episode "Potato", Blackadder's plot to sail to France is thwarted when it turns out that the captain of his ship is completely incompetent at navigation. Because of this, every expedition the captain had organised so far had been limited to "sailing around the Isle of Wight until everyone gets dizzy", and then sailing back home to Southampton.
• The song "Island in the Rain", by The Men They Couldn't Hang is about the Isle of Wight.
• In S.M. Stirling's novel The Protector's War, in which all high energy technology ceased to function, the Isle of Wight became the refuge of the British monarchy and government. After the holocaust that followed, the island was the base for re-population of England and the European mainland whose populations had perished except for cannibals and savages.
• Setting of Jane Feather's novel, "The Least Likely Bride."
• The island is featured as the location of Vectis Abbey in Glenn Cooper's novels Library of the Dead and Book of Souls.
• In the film "Shaun of the Dead", Philip (played by Bill Nighy), suffering from the initial symptoms of the zombie transformation, explains to his wife that he had received his inoculations prior to a trip to the Isle of Wight.