Pageants 13

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  1. The Dover Pageant
    Dover’s staging of a historical folk-play in 1908 was a nationally important and spectacular example of an Edwardian town gripped by ‘pageantitis’. Directed by the original master himself, Louis Na...

  2. The Harrow Historical Pageant
    The Harrow Historical Pageant was one of the first of the inter-war pageants to return to the traditional civic style of the pre-1914 movement (see also the entry for the Reading Historical Pageant...

  3. The Greenwich Night Pageant
    Taking place against the backdrop of economic depression, the Greenwich Night Pageant partly aimed to stimulate the new ‘important industries’ that had sprung up along the Thames, and, during the r...

  4. Warwickshire Coronation Pageant
    The Coronation of Elizabeth II on 2 June 1953 heralded a ‘new Elizabethan Age’, evidenced by the music of Benjamin Britten (whose opera Gloriana was unfortunately a failure), the photography of Cec...

  5. The Grand Historical Pageant of Gloucester
    The Grand Historical Pageant of Gloucester took place in the summer of 1930 and was the top billed event of a fundraiser for the Gloucestershire Royal Infirmary—which was trying to raise £20000 for...

  6. The Pageant of London
    The Pageant of London was the main attraction of the Festival of Empire at Crystal Palace in 1911. Undoubtedly the largest and most ambitious pageant of the Edwardian period, if not the whole twent...

  7. The Three Towns Pageants
    The Festival of Britain 1951 was the key cultural event of the period.3 Nationwide, a programme of events was skilfully planned with the aim of embracing modernist influences on British culture whi...

  8. Pageant of Farnham
    The Pageant of Farnham was the first of many pageants devised by Neville Lovett (the future Bishop of Salisbury and Portsmouth). It was held to repay some of the debts on the Church House (now Vine...

  9. Oxford Historical Pageant
    The Oxford Historical Pageant of 1907 was a major civic event, and took place in the grounds of Magdalen College. Despite being wholly a part of the initial outburst of pageant fever, it was one of...

  10. The Milford-on-Sea Pageant & Fete
    On Bank Holiday Monday in early August 1930, a pageant and fete was held in the grounds of Newlands Manor, home of the Sir John Power, MP for Wimbledon. The event was put on in aid of the Milford-o...

  11. A Pageant of Hampton
    A Pageant of Hampton was the second of three large pageants in Southampton in the interwar period, following the Mayflower Pageant of 1920. Unlike that event, and the Silver Jubilee Pageant that fo...

  12. The Pageant of England
    If one were in search of England in the 1930s, as so many contemporaries from H.V. Morton to J.B. Priestley to George Orwell seemed to be, one could do worse than head to Slough. The army had set u...

  13. A Pageant of Monarchy
    This was one of the many pageants in Surrey produced by David Clarke, who had worked with Christopher Ede on the Guildford pageant of 1957, and had himself produced the 1968 Guildford pageant. Like...