Blog Posts

I thought I had found an original and attractive thirties ticket for Greenwood and Gow's play - and I had, but there is a bit more to say about it and the intriguing story of the 'Privilege Ticket Register'. I Have a Ticket for Love on the Dole at the Garrick! (January 1935) – Walter… Continue reading New (Short) Article: I have a ticket for Love on the Dole (Garrick, 1935)

This article revisits the question of what kind of audiences went to see Greenwood and Gow's play in the first few years of its run in London and then its tours round Britain. It looks first at what kind of theatres staged the play, and then at press reports about individual reactions to the play… Continue reading New Article: Who went to See the Play in the Thirties? the Reception of Love on the Dole Revisited

Yesterday, my article on Greenwood and Wragg's collaboration was published in the academic journal Word & Image, with an Open Access license, which means it is available free online. It has some good quality reproductions of Wragg's drawings for Greenwood's stories. See: Full article: ‘The Pictures … Are Even More Stark Than the Prose’ (Sheffield… Continue reading Link to New Article in Word & Image

In December 1937, Greenwood sent Wragg a handwritten short story called 'A Christmas Present'. It was never published and has remained undiscovered among Wragg's papers in the V&A Archive, where I found it on 20/6/2019. This is the first published account of the story, which adds a little more to Greenwood's body of fiction about… Continue reading New Article: Walter Greenwood’s Christmas Present for Arthur Wragg (1937)

There were many newspaper reports about Bernard Shaw going to see Love on the Dole in 1935, yet they all stressed how impressed he had been by Wendy Hiller's performance as Sally Hardcastle, while saying nothing about what he thought of Greenwood and Gow's play. This article tracks down Bernard Shaw's only known written response… Continue reading New Article: George Bernard Shaw, Wendy Hiller, and Walter Greenwood