Entertainment | Yesterday Remembered

No building in Brighton evokes more affectionate memories than the one time Regent Ballroom near the Clock Tower. Many an invitation to dance on the beautifully sprung floor resulted in wedding bells. Dancing really took off in the town during the 1920s and 1930s, and the Regent was created in 1923 to cater for the […]

The Regent Ballroom Brighton

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Bells have long held a place in the traditions of Christmas, for a joyous peal of church bells was always used to herald good news. And hand-bells, an attractive smaller substitute, are still often used as a pleasing accompaniment to human voices at Christmas. In Heaven the Bells are Ringing, the Christmas carol tells […]

RINGING OUT FOR CHRISTMAS DAY

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Tales of ‘Daring Do’

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The sounds of summer

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Five minutes of fame

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THERE GOES THAT SONG AGAIN

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The Warwickshire Elvis

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By the 1950s, the Palace Theatre was the only theatre left in Reading. Despite heated protests it was demolished a decade later and replaced by a new theatre. With one stroke of the architect’s pen, pantomime as we knew it died. The new theatre had a round stage, which did not lend itself to pantomime. […]

Palace of varieties

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The ’forgettable’ Miles Malleson

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Putting on the glitz

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The Forties’ bug

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The magic of the theatre

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I feel very privileged to have been a child of the 1950s, even though that decade is now acknowledged as one of austerity. I’ll try to explain why growing up was fun in those days, and why I’m glad I was around to see them. • The excitement of travelling on trolleybuses, trams, steam trains […]

GROWING UP IN THE 1950s

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Willenhall, a small West Midlands town sandwiched between its relatively well-known neighbours Wolverhampton and Walsall, might not have had a football team to match Walsall, nor the illustrious Wolves (during the period in question) but it did have its own right to fame, even if it wasn’t appreciated as much as it could have been. […]

Willenhall – no longer Humpshire!

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High Wycombe as I knew it in the 1930s was a country market town with no theatre but four flourishing cinemas, the smallest of which was the Grand. Despite its name, the Grand had become a flea-pit in the wrong part of town, and although jettisoning its ancient projectors and installing the latest models, it […]

Get Your Coat on, Son. We’re going to the Majestic!

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Here Comes the Fair!

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‘Spies’ on the top deck

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In the late 1920s and early 1930s we were, statistically speaking, lower middle and working class families living in the southeast London district of Catford. By present-day standards we lived in poverty, although we certainly didn’t feel so. We and all our friends and families were in the same boat, and few of us had […]

Ere Goes Coal!

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Magic at the British Empire

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Let’s go to the pictures!

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