Vanity Fair Returns to Chiswick

Reese Witherspoon spotted on the Mall and at Chiswick House as new production starts filming

Chiswick has gone back in time this week to become the setting for scenes in a production of William Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair”.

Thackeray’s tome nicknamed “a novel without a hero” opens with a scene in Chiswick Mall : “While the present century was in its teens, and on one sunshiny morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton’s academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall."

He goes on to describe the “score of young heads were seen peering out of the narrow windows of the stately old brick house."

Lavish Chinese pagodas and exquisitely elegant shell boats have been constructed in Chiswick House Grounds and hundreds of actors and actresses can be seen milling around in beautifully tailored 19th century costumes. Filmed by VF Productions, this latest version of Vanity Fair will be aired in the Autumn of 2004.

For the benefit of any celebrity watchers, only Reese Witherspoon’s famous face stood out from the crowd. However, there was one memorable, finely dressed gentleman who was discovered, emerging from the bushes zipping up his breeches. One can only assume that he was getting into character or he deemed that the toilet facilities in the grounds were either inadequate or had been neglected since Thackeray’s day!

July 15, 2003

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