Scotland's most prolific pageant master
Having worked my way through the tale of Arbroath's past pageant glory, I'm now familiar with the work of the pageant master who was in charge for at least twelve out of the town's eighteen pageants - Frank Thornton. As readers of our web page will know, the Arbroath pageant chiefly celebrated the signing of the Scottish Declaration of Independence in 1320.
I was never in any doubt that Mr Thornton was a nationalist sympathiser, despite the fact that he often tried to deflect negative publicity that accused the Arbroath Abbey pageant of having SNP affiliations. In many years, the Arbroath pageant struggled to survive, but often, thanks to the efforts of Frank Thornton, somehow it kept going. Even in years when the pageant was a financial failure, it was always declared by the press to be an outstanding artistic success. Again, Thornton was greatly responsible for this for he also provided the voiceover narration and was said to give an impressive delivery - especially of the words of the Declaration.
As we have not been able to recover any of the recordings that were made of the pageant before 1970, I often wondered what he sounded like.
But here he is! Sadly, not in full dramatic flow, but speaking to a reporter from Pathe news in 1951 when he became embroiled in the infamous Stone of Destiny theft. My suspicions about his nationalist sympathies appear to have been on the money! And the short piece does give some indication of his skills as an orator. Here's the link to this piece of news coverage: The "Stone" Returns