Pageants 20

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  1. ‘Flame of Freedom’
    Religious pageants, both by Anglican and nonconformist churches, reached their heyday in the interwar period. Paradoxically, this development accompanied a major stagnation in overall religious obs...

  2. The Grand Empire Pageant 1909
    The Grand Empire Pageant of 1909 programme was one of several imperial-themed pageants held before 1914, designed to instil patriotism and military values among participants and spectators (see Bat...

  3. Hinchingbrooke Pageant
    Hinchingbrooke was a country house a mile or so to the west of Huntingdon, which was, until 1974 (when the county as a whole was assimilated into Cambridgeshire), the county town of Huntingdonshire...

  4. St Albans Millenary Pageant
    The Millenary Pageant of 1948 was the second time a historical pageant had been staged in St Albans. The first was in 1907, during the wave of ‘pageant fever’ that swept Britain before the First Wo...

  5. Cranfold Pageant
    When we think of pageants as early twentieth-century affairs, it is a little incongruous to read the following in a pageant programme: ‘Please switch off mobile phones and pagers and kindly refrain...

  6. Nottingham Quincentenary Pageant
    The Nottingham Quincentenary Pageant was a key attraction of city-wide anniversary celebrations of the 1449 charter granted by King Henry VI. It took place in the Nottingham Ice Stadium, an indoor ...

  7. 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...

  8. Rotherhithe Church Pageant
    The Rotherhithe Church Pageant, held at St. Mary’s, Rotherhithe, was a highly anticipated event, not only in the community—where ‘humble workers’ in the district made their own costumes under the s...

  9. Caer Caledon: Dramatic Scenes from the History of Kirkcaldy
    Although historical processions and artistic tableaux vivants had been held in Scotland within the Edwardian period, and although 1911 was a coronation year during which many historical parades too...

  10. The Pageant of Parliament
    The Pageant of Parliament, also advertised as ‘Parliament and the People’, was a major pageant-play that took place in the Royal Albert Hall in 1934. It had an extensive run of 24 performances, a c...

  11. Ripley in Olden Days, a Historical Pageant Play
    As preparations for the pageant got underway in early 1930, the Yorkshire Evening Post remarked that ‘Few villages in Yorkshire are better known than Ripley. As it is to-day, so it was yesterday, a...

  12. Guiseley Historical Pageant
    Whilst Virginia Woolf’s notable literary depiction of a pageant in her novel Between the Acts features an annual pageant, these were in fact quite rare. The level of organisation and time commitmen...

  13. Scenes from Old Walden
    Did Saffron Walden possess the material with which to make a successful Pageant? The London Daily News was equivocal on the subject, remarking that ‘Few towns possess a more interesting history tha...

  14. St Paul’s Steps
    How much did spectators actually get out of pageants? Did people in the cheapest seats at the pageant, who most likely did not buy a programme or book of words, particularly those whose grip on his...

  15. Pageant of Church History
    The Pageant of Church History was an unashamed fundraiser and was part of a larger initiative to raise money for those perennial problems of bishops the world over—namely, stopping the church roof ...

  16. Army Pageant
    The Army Pageant, London, was a major and ambitious spectacle, performed 21 times in the summer of 1910. It was a leviathan effort in all respects, but did not seem to make a profit—and was, as suc...

  17. Historical Pageant of Huntingdonshire
    Huntingdon had not held a pageant since the wildly successful pageant at Hinchingbrooke in 1912, though there had been further pageants in the county (e.g., Buckden, 1932). Hinchingbrooke House.1 T...

  18. The Pageant of Empire
    The Pageant of Empire took place over the course of a wet six weeks in July and August 1924 in the huge newly-constructed concrete Wembley Stadium. It was just one attraction of the monumental Brit...

  19. The Pageant of Ayrshire: The Story of Scotland's Struggle for Independence
    From the outset of planning for this event in 1932, there was no shortage of ambition to make the pageant of Ayrshire a success. Despite the unpromising venue selected, the uncertainty of the weath...

  20. Bristol Civic Pageant
    This pageant was first mooted in February 1946 as part of the town’s celebrations of the first anniversary of VJ (Victory over Japan) Day in July. It was also a key part of Bristol’s first post-war...