1951 and all that

The author of this book and I both visited the 1951 Festival of Britain on London’s South Bank as schoolboys.

The author of this book and I both visited the 1951 Festival of Britain on London’s South Bank as schoolboys. He was 13, I was 11. We were both old enough to remember the war. We were both enduring the post-war austerity. Much was still rationed. Everywhere there were bombsites. From his generally commendable account, I know we both had a similar reaction to the Dome of Discovery, the Skylon and all the other attractions: there was a sense of renewal, lightness, colour, modernity and excess, in contrast to the drabness and penny-pinching we were used to.

In 1976, 25 years after the Festival, Mary Banham and I organised an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum to commemorate it. It was opened by the Queen Mother, who had opened the show in 1951 with King George VI.