Gaumont-British Instructional

In Australia, five children pursue horse thieves through the mountains.

A brisk visual summary of the changing faces of the English town throughout the ages, from the ancients and their hill-forts to the Second World War -- enlivened by the appearance of ghostly denizens to defend their eras against the narrator's various strictures!

A dramatization to promote the Territorial Army.

A schoolboy almost misses the school sports day when he is wrongly punished for cruelty to a dog.

A film based on a story by Leo Tolstoy about a cabinet maker, his wife and an angel punished by God.

Time-travel to a 1940s classroom with this exemplary educational film.

A Secrets of Life short about waterfowl.

Story of how two youngsters round up crooks planning to blow up the British fleet off Gibraltar.

Poetic tribute to Mrs Turner's vegetable growing prowess, plus the delights of "wartime steaks".

Short nature documentary by Mary Field and F. Percy Smith.

A Secrets of Life documentary about bathing time at the zoo. The film was registered on the Board of Trade's official list under Section 6 of the Films Act as 883ft long (roughly 9 minutes if projected at 24 frames per second) It is a remake, or update, of the short "Bath Time at the Zoo" from Secrets of Nature.

A Secrets of Life short.

"A study of how plants obtain the elements necessary for their existence."

A wildlife film with a difference: it has A Message for any humans in the house. "The squirrel in the tree, the fox below, the birds, insects, all know that a time of plenty will not last forever". Austerity-stricken wartime viewers can learn from their economical feeding habits. An entertaining hybrid of public information and natural history from the makers of wildlife series Secrets of Life. Released in the BFI boxset Ration Books and Rabbit Pies: Films from the Home Front.

A Secrets of Life short to which the BFI gave this description: "The film falls into two related sections: the first part shows, by fast motion... the germination, growth-characteristic and fertilisation of the wild cabbage; the second part shows how the varied forms of cultivated cabbage - Savoys, Brussels sprouts, cauliflowers, sprouting broccoli - are related to the wild form, by illustrating the particular feature of the wild form that is present to an exaggerated degree in the cultivated variety... A very good example of how to deal with familiar gardening knowledge in an interesting manner, while at the same time using everyday facts to bring home the scientific lessons that can be drawn therefrom... Perhaps the most striking portions of the whole film are the sections showing which parts of the wild form have been greatly developed to produce the Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, or the Savoy cabbage."

King Penguins are first seen in their natural habitat, the Antarctic, after which we see them in the Edinburgh Zoo. With slow-motion pictures we see how they swim with the use of their flippers and feet. Their mating and incubating of their eggs and later, the hatching of them; the rearing of the young at various stages of their growth are also shown.

Claustrophobic train-set comedy-thriller (produced by H.G. Wells son) with an ace reporter coming up against crooks intent on stealing a gold shipment on the Scotland to London express. A scatterbrained scientist, a gun-toting dame with revenge on her mind and a pair of eccentric spinster crime novelists – who steal the film – round out the motley band of passengers who cross the path of our intrepid hero as he tries to get his big scoop.

Adventures on a fishing boat as told by two young boys who experience what it takes to be a fisherman at sea.

In this dramatized warning to young women of the risks of venereal disease, Betty, a shop girl, pays a severe price for just one 'slip'.

Go with the flow: to gentle but spellbinding effect this innovative natural history film glimpses marine life astride rising tides at Millport on the Isle of Cumbrae. Urchins, lugworm, weaver-fish and crabs are the shy-but-elegant stars coaxed onto the screen (with the assistance of Millport’s local research station) for this archetypal edition of Gaumont-British Instructional’s 1930s cinema series Secrets of Life.