The Second Best--in Housing

‘Splendid Display; Pompous Spectacle’: historical pageants in twentieth-century Britain

“…173 Meanwhile, there was some opposition to the 1948 pageant from a 'faction' within Swinson's own Company of Ten theatre group. 174 The pageant also offered local people the chance to complain about the conditions in which they were then living. One resident of St Albans imagined a pageant scene performed in 2048, depicting the early post-war period, in which austerity was the dominant theme:…”