Robert Shaw’s Dragon Tattoo in 1973’s ‘The Hireling’

If you haven’t seen the 1973 Robert Shaw and Sarah Miles film, The Hireling, then I strongly recommend it. Miles plays Lady Franklin, a distraught upper class widow in Bath in the 1920s who hires Leadbitter (Shaw), a Great War veteran as her chauffeur. Of course there’s an attraction but the harshness of life and fall out from the war on one side and the strictures of class on the other intervene.

Anyway, the reason the film rates a mention on China Rhyming is that at one point we are given a nice close up of Shaw’s forearm with a splendid Chinese dragon tattoo. Ledbetter was stationed in Hong Kong and was regimental boxing champion – as the local Chinese tattooist couldn’t do boxing gloves, he got a dragon instead.

The film is based on the 1957 novel by LP Hartley, though I don’t think the reference to Hong Kong, tattoos and dragons appears in the book.