Blog

The project team produced regular blog posts over the course of the period 2013-2017 (covering the years funded by the first AHRC) grant. These blog posts can be found below.

Meet the Team: Alexander Hutton

by Thulme Sept. 8, 2015 Comments

We are delighted to be welcoming Dr Alexander Hutton to the project from the 1st October. Alexander says...
"I am a cultural historian of twentieth century Britain, with a particular interest in the ways in which the industrial past has been represented and remembered. My doctoral thesis at Darwin College, Cambridge covered a variety of topics including the adult education movement, the history of literary criticism, the Communist Party of Great Britain, and the British ...
Pageants at ICHS 2015

by Thulme Aug. 28, 2015 Comments

Two members of the project team, Mark Freeman and Tom Hulme, are in Jinan, in Shandong province in China, to attend the 22nd International Congress of Historical Sciences. This massive quinquennial event has well over 2,500 delegates, and has caused quite a splash in China. It has attracted the attention of the English-language newspaper China Daily, and the opening ceremony was addressed by vice-premier Liu Yandong.

The ICHS is organised into ‘major themes’, ‘specialised ...
Tullie House Previews a New Exhibition

by Lfleming Aug. 24, 2015 Comments

On Friday 21^st August members of the Redress of the Past team attended the preview of our new exhibition hosted by Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery Trust. Over one hundred invited guests (including many of our interviewees) came along to a reception and to see the exhibition ahead of its opening to the public on Saturday 22^nd. We were also honoured by the attendance of Carlisle’s Mayor, Cllr Steve Layden.
The ...
Tales from the Bury St Edmunds Pageant - (4) Liz Cole

by Thulme Aug. 5, 2015 Comments

Liz Cole (nee Ascott) was born and bred in Sudbury in Suffolk. In 1959 her family became involved with the pageant of Magna Carta in Bury St Edmunds through the Eatanswill Society (the penultimate scene featured the infamous Eatanswill election scene from Dickens's Pickwick Papers, and was supposedly based on the town of Sudbury).

Liz has very kindly allowed us to share some extracts from the interview, which you can listen to in the ...
Historical pageantry in fiction

by Lfleming July 30, 2015 Comments

Some other contributors to the blog have pointed out that pageants turn up as a plot device in many examples of twentieth century novels. Most particularly, Mark Freeman has written that it 'was not unusual for readers in mid-century to encounter pageants' and of course, he's quite right about this. Most of the novels previously mentioned were written during the heyday of pageantry before the 1960s. However, examples that are more recent can be ...
Coming soon in Carlisle!

by Lfleming July 29, 2015 Comments

We are almost into August, although you'd ...
Tales from the Bury St Edmunds Pageant - (3) Mary Brett

by Thulme July 28, 2015 Comments

Next up in our series of blogs on 'Tales from the Pageant' is an interview with Mary Brett (nee Pike), carried out by Tom Hulme on the 16th July 2015 in Horringer, just outside Bury St Edmunds. Mary was born in Bury St Edmunds, the daughter of a well-known butcher in the town, and was 12 years old at the time of the pageant. She was in one of the early crowd scenes - of which ...
Pageants at the IHR local history summer school

by Thulme July 27, 2015 Comments

On 22 July I took part – on behalf of the project team – in the Institute of Historical Research local history summer school. This is an annual event, and the 2015 theme was ‘Local History of the Twentieth Century: Possibilities and Pitfalls’. The organiser was Richard Hoyle, director and general editor of the Victoria County History. As Richard remarked in his opening address to the summer school, the twentieth century is surprisingly under-researched by local historians ...
Tales from the Bury St Edmunds Pageant - (2) Bernard Plume

by Thulme July 27, 2015 Comments

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about our first interview with a pageanteer from Bury St Edmunds. Today's blog features sound clips from an interview Tom Hulme carried out with Bernard Plume on the 15th July 2015.
Bernard was from a family of 'Suffolk people', and lived in Bury St Edmunds. At the time of the pageant he was 8 years old; he played a chorister in the final scene, set in 1914 ...
Dragon in Danger: a pageant in children’s literature (part 2)

by Thulme July 24, 2015 Comments

In my last post I introduced Rosemary Manning’s popular story Dragon in Danger (1959), and left readers on a cliffhanger, with the baddies Mr Bogg and Mr Snarkins resolving to kidnap R. Dragon the dragon, who was living temporarily on an island in the lake at St Aubyns, soon to play the part of the dragon slain by St Aubyn in episode 1 of the forthcoming pageant. I should issue a spoiler alert now ...

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