James Robertson

James Robertson (photographer)

James Robertson (1813 — 1888) was an English photographer and gem and coin engraver who worked in the Mediterranean region, the Crimea and possibly India. He was one of the first war photographers.

Robertson was born in Middlesex in 1813. He trained as an engraver under Wyon (probably William Wyon) and in 1843 he began work as an engraver at the Imperial Ottoman Mint in Constantinople. It is believed that Robertson became interested in photography while in the Ottoman Empire in the 1840s.

In 1853 he began photographing with British photographer Felice Beato and the two formed a partnership called Robertson & Beato either in that year or in 1854 when Robertson opened a photographic studio in Pera, Constantinople. Robertson and Beato were joined by Beato's brother, Antonio on photographic expeditions to Malta in 1854 or 1856 and to Greece and Jerusalem in 1857. A number of the firm's photographs produced in the 1850s are signed Robertson, Beato and Co. and it is believed that "and Co." refers to Antonio.

In late 1854 or early 1855 Robertson married the Beato brothers' sister, Leonilda Maria Matilda Beato. They had three daughters, Catherine Grace (born in 1856), Edith Marcon Vergence (born in 1859) and Helen Beatruc (born in 1861).

In 1855 Robertson and Felice Beato travelled to Balaklava, Crimea where they took over reportage of the Crimean War from Roger Fenton. They photographed the fall of Sevastopol in September 1855.

Some sources have suggested that in 1857 both Robertson and Felice Beato went to India to photograph the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion, but it is more probable that Beato travelled there alone. Around this time Robertson did photograph in Palestine, Syria, Malta, and Cairo with either or both of the Beato brothers.

In 1860, after Felice Beato left for China to photograph the Second Opium War and Antonio Beato went to Egypt, Robertson briefly teamed up with Charles Shepherd back in Constantinople. The firm of Robertson & Beato was dissolved in 1867, having produced images - including remarkable multiple-print panoramas - of Malta, Greece, Turkey, Damascus, Jerusalem, Egypt, the Crimea and India. Robertson possibly gave up photography in the 1860s; he returned to work as an engraver at the Imperial Ottoman Mint until his retirement in 1881. In that year he left for Yokohama, Japan, arriving in January 1882. He died there in April 1888.

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James Robertson (monk)

Dom James Robertson OSB (1758 – 1820) Scottish Benedictine Monk & British Napoleonic War Intelligence Agent.

Educated at Dinant and Regensburg, took solemn vows as a monk in 1778 and ordained in 1782. He published the first Catholic version of the New Testament to be printed in Scotland in 1792.

In 1808, disguised as a cigar merchant, made secret contact with the Spanish general, Marqués de la Romana and a plan was worked out by which his 10,000 soldiers were secretly removed from Danish territory by the Royal Navy and returned to Spain to join the war against Napoleon. He subsequently published his own account of this mission: Narrative of a Secret Mission to the Danish Islands in 1808.

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James Robertson Justice

James Robertson Justice (15 June 1907 - 2 July 1975 ) was a popular Anglo-Scottish character actor in British films of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.

The son of an Aberdeen-born geologist who was named after his father, James Justice was born in Lee, a suburb of Lewisham in South London, in 1907. Educated at Marlborough College in Wiltshire, Justice studied science at University College, London, but left after a year and became a geology student at the University of Bonn, where he again left after just a year. He spoke many languages (possibly up to 20) including French, Greek, Danish, Russian, German, Italian, Dutch, and Gaelic.

Justice returned to the UK in 1927, and became a journalist with Reuters in London, alongside the later James Bond writer Ian Fleming. After a year he emigrated to Canada, serving as an insurance salesman, taught English at a boys' school, became a lumberjack and mined for gold. He came back to England penniless, working his passage on a Dutch Freighter.

On return to Britain he served as secretary of the British Ice Hockey Association in the early 1930s and managed the national team at the 1932 European Championships in Berlin to a seventh place finish. He combined his administrative duties in 1931–32 with a season as goaltender with the London Lions.

After a single trial as a racing driver at Brooklands, he left Britain again to become a policeman for the League of Nations in the Saarland area of Germany. After the Nazis came to power, he fought in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side. On return to Britain, he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, but after sustaining an injury in 1943 (thought to be shrapnel from a German shell), he was pensioned off.

He married nurse Dilys Hayden in Chelsea in 1941, who gave birth to his son James. On his return from the war he reinvented himself with more Scottish roots. Feeling strongly about his Scottish ancestry, he claimed his birth place as under a distillery on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, in 1905. He unsuccessfully contested the North Angus and Mearns (UK Parliament constituency) for the Labour Party in the 1950 general election.

Justice took up acting after joining the Players' Club in London. The club, under the chairmanship of Leonard Sachs who latterly created BBC's television's The Good Old Days, would stage Victorian music hall nights. Standing in for Sachs one night, he was recommended for the film For Those In Peril in the summer of 1944.

As an actor, with his domineering personality, bulky physique, and rich, booming voice, he soon established himself as a major supporting player in British comedy films. His first leading role was as headmaster in the film Vice Versa, written and directed by Peter Ustinov, who cast him partly because he'd been "a collaborator of my father's at Reuters." Justice came to his fore in the "Doctor" series of the 1950s and 1960s, beginning with Doctor in the House in 1954 playing the demanding Sir Lancelot Spratt. In his films he was sometimes credited as Seamus Mòr na Feusag (Scottish Gaelic, translation: Big James with the Beard), James R. Justice, James Robertson or James Robertson-Justice.

On 31 August 1957, James helped launch the TV station Scottish Television, hosting the channel's first show, This is Scotland. From 1957 to 1960, and again from 1963 to 1966, he was Rector of the University of Edinburgh.

Perhaps his best-known role came in the 1961 war film The Guns of Navarone, Robertson having a co-starring role as well as narrating the story.

After a series of affairs and the drowning of his son in 1949 at his watermill home in Hampshire, Justice separated from his wife; she eventually divorced him in 1968. He met actress Irina von Meyendorff on the set of The Ambassadress in 1960 and they remained together until his death. He suffered a series of strokes in his later life, which left him unable to work, and he died penniless in 1975.

A biography called James Robertson Justice — What's The Bleeding-Time? (named after a joke in the first Doctor film) was published by Tomahawk Press on 3 March 2008.(ISBN 0953192679). It was written by James Hogg and Robert Sellers.

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James Robertson (grocer)

James Robertson was a grocer in Paisley, Scotland, who was persuaded to buy a barrel of bitter oranges. When sales were slow, James' wife Marion made the oranges into a batch of marmalade and 'Golden Shred' was born. In 1864 'Robertson's' was founded. Marmalade was originally produced at the back of the shop, but soon a factory was set up to meet increased demand, and jam and mincemeat were added to the catalogue. Robertson's has had a Royal Warrant since 1933, this means the British royal family use the products.

Robertson's is a leading brand of jam and marmalade in the UK. The brand's most famous product is 'Golden Shred Marmalade'. Known as the 'The World's best marmalade', Golden Shred is the fastest-selling preserve in the UK.

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