Pageants 669
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Sword of Honour
At the start of Evelyn Waugh’s novel Unconditional Surrender (1961), there is a scene where Guy Crouchback, the disillusioned catholic and soldier who had narrowly escaped capture during the occupa... -
The Pageant of Centuries
Buckden Palace was formerly the seat of the Bishops of Lincoln, first constructed sometime in the twelfth century and continually extended, rebuilt and repaired (due to recurring fires) over the ce... -
The Bury St Edmunds Pageant of Magna Carta
The Bury St Edmunds Magna Carta Pageant of 1959 was a major event, with 12 ticketed performances across 10 days. While it picked up on many of the themes of the 1907 pageant the town had held, most... -
The Pageant of Buxton in Light and Sound
The Pageant of Buxton in Light and Sound took place over a month-and-a-half period in the spring of 1958. It was directed by Christopher Ede, the most famous (and active) of the post-war pageant ma... -
Pageant of Birmingham
The Birmingham 1938 Civic Pageant was one of the largest pageants ever held in Britain, designed to eclipse civic and national rivals at Runnymede in 1934 (also directed by Gwen Lally) and Manchest... -
Pageant of the Palace of Bishop’s Waltham
Very little is known about this pageant, but it is interesting as an example of a local pageant staged in conjunction with a political organisation: the Junior Imperial League. Founded in 1906, thi... -
Pageant of Boston
Boston had a tradition of holding pageants, in 1926, 1932 and 1934. However, when the town celebrated its 400th anniversary in May 1945, little was done to celebrate the event, with the Mayor rathe... -
‘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... -
Pageant of Great Women, Bristol
The Pageant of Great Women had premiered at the Scala, London, in 1909. After its phenomenal success there, raising the profile of women’s suffrage groups, it toured many provincial cities, reachin... -
Historical Pageant of Old Barnstaple
Barnstaple was an ancient town, whose ‘Burh’ or borough status dated back to the early tenth century. Despite its importance as a market town (claimed through a lost pre-conquest charter) and later... -
Batley Empire Day Pageant
An Empire Day celebrated on Queen Victoria’s birthday had been suggested by Reginald Brabazon, the seventh Earl of Meath in 1896, ‘to nurture a sense of collective identity and imperial responsibil... -
Grand 1066 Pageant to Commemorate the 900th Anniversary of the Battle of Hastings
The Grand 1066 Pageant to Commemorate the 900th Anniversary of the Battle of Hastings was a pageant almost entirely in name only, which shows how wider national commemoration had shifted away from ... -
Arbroath Abbey Pageant, 1956
Many Arbroath pageant organisers had been reluctant to pursue another pageant in 1956, but they lost the argument to those who felt that the pageant must not lose momentum come what may. Significan... -
The Arbroath Abbey Pageant, 1966
For the twelfth in the series of Arbroath Abbey pageants, the intention seems to have been to put on a performance using all of those elements that had worked so well in the past. There was no chan... -
Adel Church Octocentenary
Adel is a small, semi-rural suburb in the north of Leeds, West Yorkshire, which stretches across the River Wharfe. The name comes from its Saxon settlers, Adel or Adele meaning a ‘dirty muddy place... -
Andover Coronation Celebrations
The 1953 Coronation was an important occasion for historical pageantry in the 1950s. This was one of many relatively small-scale pageants staged across the UK at this time. As is clear from film fo... -
Arbroath Abbey Historical Pageant, 1948
The enthusiasm of the pageant organisers at the 1947 Pageant was, if anything, exceeded for the pageant's second outing in August 1948. Having established an Arbroath Abbey Pageant Committee, and h... -
Dean Village Pageant
The pageant took place alongside a fete. -
The Pageant of Abinger
The Abinger Pageant is probably the most written-about pageant due to the two figures behind its creation, E.M. Forster and Ralph Vaughan Williams. In discussing this pageant, the literature has te... -
The Axbridge Pageant
The Axbridge Pageant of 1990 was the fourth outing for the original performed in 1967, and even bigger and more popular than the previous three (see entries for 1967, 1970, 1980). It followed on fr...