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Restaging the Past

Historical Pageants, Culture and Society in Modern Britain

Edited by Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Alexander Hutton, and Paul Readman

£45.00

ISBN: 9781787354074

Publication: August 17, 2020

Hardback £45.00 Open Access PDF £0.00 Paperback £25.00

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Restaging the Past is the first edited collection devoted to the study of historical pageants in Britain, ranging from their Edwardian origins to the present day.

Across Britain in the twentieth century, people succumbed to ‘pageant fever’. Thousands dressed up in historical costumes and performed scenes from the history of the places where they lived, and hundreds of thousands more watched them. These pageants were one of the most significant aspects of popular engagement with the past between the 1900s and the 1970s: they took place in large cities, small towns and tiny villages, and engaged a whole range of different organised groups, including Women’s Institutes, political parties, schools, churches and youth organisations.

Pageants were community events, bringing large numbers of people together in a shared celebration and performance of the past; they also involved many prominent novelists, professional historians and other writers, as well as featuring repeatedly in popular and highbrow literature. Although the pageant tradition has largely died out, it deserves to be acknowledged as a key aspect of community history during a period of great social and political change. Indeed, as this book shows, some traces of ‘pageant fever’ remain in evidence today.

Praise for Restaging the Past

'This book makes a valuable contribution to the history of education, encouraging greater consideration of where and how people are educated beyond the parameters of formal educational institutions. The reader is left in no doubt that pageants were an important cultural and educational phenomenon, which impacted on people’s understanding of the past.'

History of Education

'Restaging the Past has an excellent introduction ... there is something for everyone and all [chapters] are well worth reading for the ideas they raise and approaches they adopt.'
The Local Historian

'A wide-ranging study, skilfully stitched together by an impressive introduction and afterword.'

International Journal of Regional and Local History

Angela Bartie is Senior Lecturer in Scottish History at the University of Edinburgh. She was a Co-Investigator on the ‘Redress of the Past’ historical pageants project.

Linda Fleming is Research Associate on the ‘History of British Humanism’ project at the University of Glasgow; she was also a Research Associate on the ‘Redress of the Past’ historical pageants project.

Mark Freeman is Reader in Education and Social History at the UCL Institute of Education. He was a Co-Investigator on the ‘Redress of the Past’ historical pageants project.

Alexander Hutton is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at King’s College London. He was a Research Associate on the ‘Redress of the Past’ historical pageants project.

Paul Readman is Professor of Modern British History at King’s College London. He was Principal Investigator on the ‘Redress of the Past’ historical pageants project.

List of figures and tables

List of contributors

Acknowledgements

1. Introduction

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Alexander Hutton and Paul Readman

2. Historical Pageants in Yorkshire before the First World War

Keith Johnston

3. A National Church Tells its Story: The English Church Pageant of 1909

Arthur Burns

4. The Pomp of Obliteration: G. K. Chesterton and the Edwardian Pageant Revival

Michael Shallcross

5. Historical Pageants, Citizenship and the Performance of Women’s History before Second-Wave Feminism

Zoë Thomas

6. Nobility, Duty and Courage: Propaganda and Inspiration in Interwar Women’s and Girls’ Pageants

Amy Binns

7. Historical Pageants, Neo-Romanticism and the City in Interwar Britain

Tom Hulme

8. ‘A Chorus of Greek Poignancy’: Communism, Class and Pageantry in Interwar South Wales

Daryl Leeworthy

9. The ‘Quite Ordinary Man’ at the Pageant: History, Community and Local Identity in the 1951 Festival of Britain

Alexander Hutton

10. ‘The Scots Pageant’: The Arbroath Abbey Pageants 1947–2005

Linda Fleming

11. After the Show is Over … Souvenirs and Mementos: The Material Culture of Historical Pageants

Ellie Reid

12. ‘The Story of Us’? Kynren and the Uses of the Past

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alexander Hutton and Paul Readman

13. Afterword

Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Alexander Hutton and Paul Readman

Index

History of Education

'Restaging the Past has an excellent introduction ... there is something for everyone and all [chapters] are well worth reading for the ideas they raise and approaches they adopt.'

The Local Historian

'A wide-ranging study, skilfully stitched together by an impressive introduction and afterword.'

International Journal of Regional and Local History

Format: Hardback

Size: 234 × 156 mm

344 Pages

29 B&W illustrations

ISBN: 9781787354074

Publication: August 17, 2020