BABY ALIVE WET N WIGGLES 11 GIRL DOLL VALUE PACK

A view of the choir of St.-Etienne Cathedral in Toulouse on a postcard posted in Toulouse to an address in High Wycombe on Monday the 26th. April 1909.

The stains on the ceiling suggest that, a hundred or so years ago, the building was not as well looked after as it is now.

So what else happened on the day that the card was posted? Well, on the 26th. April 1909, a baby boy was born who became Sir William Neil Connor, a left-wing journalist for The Daily Mirror who wrote under the pseudonym of Cassandra.

He wrote a regular column for over 30 years between July 1935 and February 1967 with a short intermission for WW2, his column re-starting after the war with: "As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, it is a powerful hard thing to please all of the people all of the time".

He took his pen-name from Cassandra in Greek mythology - she was a tragic character who was given the gift of prophesy by Apollo but was then cursed so that no-one would ever believe her.

His writings, described as "polished-up barrack-room style", were either bitter attacks on people or events, or a personal diary of his everyday life and thoughts. He worked alongside cartoonist Philip Zee at the Daily Mirror, and the pair courted controversy in 1942 with an illustration, captioned by Connor, which Winston Churchill and others saw as an attack on government.

His most famous columns include the claims that P.G. Wodehouse was a Nazi collaborator, and the outing of Liberace for which the paper was sued and lost.

He also attacked the death sentence passed on Ruth Ellis, writing "The one thing that brings stature and dignity to mankind and raises us above the beasts will have been denied her - pity and the hope of ultimate redemption". His comments contributed to an increased antipathy to the death penalty which eventually led to its abolition in the UK.

In the years leading up to his death Connor wrote more humorous columns and was regarded with affection by Mirror readers. Subjects ranged from the time he received wrong number calls intended for the local railway parcels service, to the mysterious person who sent him a fresh goose egg every year.

Sir William Connor died on the 6th. April 1967.