Jillian Chantal

I adore, adore, adore Basil Rathbone. He was the ubiquitious Sherlock Holmes. I loved those old movies and used to stay up until 3 am to catch them on television in the days before VHS tapes.  He was a great actor. He played a lot of villains in his career as well. He was a master fencer and that skill was used in a lot of his films. The funny thing about that was since he was usually the bad guy, he lost the on screen duel. In fact, he only won one on film. He won when he played Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet.

In real life, he was the son of a British man and woman and they lived in South Africa until Basil’s father was chased out of the country as a British spy during the Boer War. This is truly amazing because during WWI, Basil was an intelligence officer; perhaps following in dear old dad’s footsteps. Basil had a knack for disguises (not unlike the Sherlock Holmes character he’d play in the future). On on occasion, he disguised himself as a tree (!) and brought back some good information as well as some prisoners. This was an unusual mission as it occurred in daylight hours.  A very brave man indeed.  He was awarded the Military Cross- an award for gallantry during active operations against the enemy.   I like that- gallantry! This man was quite gallant.

Sir Basil Rathbone

Military Cross for gallantry during actions against enemies