Blog Posts

New Article: Walter Greenwood’s People’s War Manifesto (August 1941)

On 7 August 1941 the sister papers the Sunday Mirror and the Sunday Pictorial each published an identical article by Greenwood in which he argued that the War was being fought not just to defeat Nazi Germany but also to defeat the 'social evils' of the nineteen-thirties and to bring into being a more equal… Continue reading New Article: Walter Greenwood’s People’s War Manifesto (August 1941)

New Article: Walter Greenwood’s Workhouse Memories (1933-1967)

The English Workhouse system dated back in a recognisable form to the seventeenth century, but is probably most associated with the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries, including through Dickens' critical portrayal in Oliver Twist (serial 1837-8, novel 1839). However, though modified the workhouse system in many respects was still in being during the first three decades of… Continue reading New Article: Walter Greenwood’s Workhouse Memories (1933-1967)

New Article: One of Our Portraits is Missing: Drusilla Wills as Mrs Jike, by James Ardern Grant (1938)

Sadly, this painting is currently AWOL, but we can reconstruct a great deal about it from press-coverage and contemporary interest in the work of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, as well as theatre reviews of Drusilla Wills' forty-five year career as a specialist 'character actor'. See: One of Our Portraits is Missing: Drusilla Wills… Continue reading New Article: One of Our Portraits is Missing: Drusilla Wills as Mrs Jike, by James Ardern Grant (1938)

New Article: Love on the Dole and a Case of Theatrical Fraud: Feltham Police Court and the Old Bailey, November 1935 – February 1936.

A story of a man, Mr Arthur Brookes, who offered an investor, Mr John Evered, a chance to make substantial money from funding a production of Love on the Dole at the Lyceum Theatre London. Evered handed over £2050, and even got engaged to Brookes' daughter Joan (or was she?) before discovering that there was… Continue reading New Article: Love on the Dole and a Case of Theatrical Fraud: Feltham Police Court and the Old Bailey, November 1935 – February 1936.

New Article: William Alwyn’s ‘The Cure for Love Waltz’ in Robert Donat & Walter Greenwood’s film The Cure for Love (1949/50)

I have been looking for about a decade for the sheet-music for William Alwyn's waltz which he composed for Donat and Greenwood's postwar film about Jack Hardacre, a sergeant in the Eighth Army who returns home to Lancaster for his first home leave in three years. Hardacre knows very well that he has left some… Continue reading New Article: William Alwyn’s ‘The Cure for Love Waltz’ in Robert Donat & Walter Greenwood’s film The Cure for Love (1949/50)