The art of public rejoicing
Patrick Skene Catling
FESTIVAL OF BRITAIN edited by Elain Harwood and Alan Powers Twentieth Century Society, £15.00, pp. 176 ISBN 0952975564 AI we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi,' wrote MacNeice in 1937. After the war (the war), everything was going to be better. Immediately afterwards, however, austerity lingered. The Labour government noticed that the natives were restless and needed cheering up. If they could not have more bread, at least they should have a circus.
In 1945, Gerald Barry, the editor of the liberal News Chronicle, with an interest in architecture, wrote an open letter to Sir Stafford Cripps, President of the Board of Trade, proposing a great trade and cultural exhibition to celebrate the centenary of the Great Exhibition of 1851 and to show the world the excellence of British design. Cripps, with his usual enthusiasm, acknowledged that 'perhaps it might be a good idea'. Barry. later knighted for his initiative, was appointed to give the populace a glimpse of Utopia. Herbert Morrison and Clement Attlee himself approved the title Festival of Britain, A Festival Council was established under the chairmanship of General Lord Ismay. and Barry, as DirectorGeneral, with a budget of £11,300,000, brought the Festival into being in 1951.
The 25th anniversary of the Festival was celebrated with an exhibition at the V&A and publication of A Tonic to the Nation (Thames and Hudson, 1976), edited by Bevis Hillier and Mary Banham, Here we go, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the 25th anniversary. the 50th anniversary of the Festival and 150th anniversary of the Great Exhibition with publication of a retrospect of greatness, a paperback with a colourful, laminated cover that curls up only if exposed to the light.
Although 2001 may seem to be the time for a 21st Century Society to promote an inspiring architectural future without the ageing modernity of tower-block slums, looking back on the brave new world of 1951 is still an interesting, cautionary exercise. The Festival of Britain stimulated vitriolic debate between the Beaverbrook press and the good guys. Beaverbrook was against the Festival. Reading the excellent contributions to this new survey by Gavin Stamp, Suzanne Waters, Alan Powers, H. T. Cadbury-Brown, Elain Harwood, Sir Philip Powell, David Robinson, Robert Burstow, Paul Rennie, Mary Schoser, Becky Conekin, Rob Gill, Annie Hollobone, Emmanuelle Morgan and Simon Wartnaby, one concludes that Beaverbrook was wrong.
The emblematic Skylon, like a Brancusi sculpture elevated by Buckminster Fuller, represented what Alan Powers calls 'the upward thrust of the Festival', helping Britain temporarily to rediscover the art of public rejoicing. According to Powers, Barry believed that pleasure was the basis of civilisation. With Hugh Casson's vital collaboration, Barry and the Festival's architects and designers made pleasure their goal. Barry welcomed Oliver Messel's suggestion that the Festival should have Tivoli-style gardens in Battersea Park. Barry sought to give the public 'elegant fun'.
The book is profusely illustrated, in black and white and with 11 pages of not very good colour. They show some vistas and structures reminiscent of the film sets of H. G. Wells's The Shape of Things to Come and anticipate last year's Dome, thus explaining why the public's favourite Festival attraction was Rowland Emett's whimsically oldfashioned Far Twittering and Oyster Creek Railway, and why most Britons today appreciate the cosiness of back-to-back terrace houses and the Rover's Return.
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