Get the latest tech news

Festival of Britain (1951)

The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition and fair that reached millions of visitors throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951. Labour cabinet member Herbert Morrison was the prime mover; in 1947 he started with the original plan to celebrate the centennial of the Great Exhibition of 1851.[1] However, it was not to be another World Fair, for international themes were absent, as was the British Commonwealth.

The Festival's centrepiece[8] was the South Bank Exhibition, in the Waterloo area of London, which demonstrated the contribution made by British advances in science, technology and industrial design, displayed, in their practical and applied form, against a background representing the living, working world of the day. William Feaver describes the Festival Style as "Braced legs, indoor plants, lily of the valley sprays of lightbulbs, aluminium lattices, Cotswold-type walling with picture windows, flying staircases, blond wood, the thorn, the spike, the molecule. It remains very inexpensive[69] The restoration of Moot Hall, Elstow by Bedfordshire County Council[70] The first performance of Robert McLellan's play Mary Stewart at the Glasgow Citizens Theatre[71] The first performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams's opera The Pilgrim's Progress on 26 April 1951, at the Royal Opera House[72] An exhibition about Sherlock Holmes(part of which is now owned by Westminster Libraries[73] and part by the Sherlock Holmes pub[74]) The William Shakespeare and The Merchant Venturer, two daily excursion trains run by the Western Region of British Railways from London to sites of British history, Stratford upon Avon and Bristol.

Get the Android app