Dave Russell

Abiding memories: the community singing movement and English social life in the 1920s

The community singing movement was a distinctive feature of English popular musical life in the mid-1920s. Although initiated by individuals who saw it as essentially educational, it was rapidly appropriated by sections of the press, and especially the Daily Express , as an instrument in the circulation wars of the period. It was typified by a restricted range of music comprising ‘national’ songs, hymns (with the performance of ‘Abide with Me’ at the FA Cup Final singing particularly important), and songs of the First World War. This mixture and the concomitant neglect of modern popular song reflects the rather nostalgic thrust behind activities, with calls for community singing to recreate a ‘Merrie England’ that would heal the deep social divisions of the 1920s. Whether the singers were fully aware of these various musical and socio-political agendas is unclear, but community singing undoubtedly enjoyed a period of considerable popularity, with the music appreciated for allowing displays of individual and collective emotion.

‘Ashes that leave no regrets’. Anglo-Australian cricket and English society, c 1880–1939

While Ashes cricket in the pre-1939 period has a rich literature, discussion of the English context tends to focus on the Bodyline series of 1932–1933 or other landmark events and does not explore what might be termed the quotidian Ashes experience. Drawing mainly, although not exclusively, on local and regional newspapers from within the counties of Lancashire and Yorkshire, this study seeks to place Ashes cricket within both English cricketing and the wider culture. It argues that the Ashes had a highly privileged place within contemporary media coverage and representation, helped maintain and prolong crickets place as ‘national game’ and may have helped connect the game to certain key currents of modern life. Finally, it suggests that Australian cricketers were held in great affection by the English public and that it would be unfortunate if concentration on the events of 1932–1933 led to any sense that conflict dominated popular perceptions of Anglo-Australian cricket. In the words of a cricket-related cigarette advertisement, for the most part these were the ‘Ashes that leave no regrets’.

PROVINCE, METROPOLIS, AND THE LITERARY CAREER OF PHYLLIS BENTLEY IN THE 1930s*

In spite of a welcome and ever growing academic interest in the lives and work of twentieth-century women writers the Yorkshire novelist, Phyllis Bentley, has remained resolutely hidden from view. This article seeks to demonstrate her importance as a ‘middlebrow’ novelist, particularly in the 1930s, and to examine the ways in which her career sheds light on contemporary relationships between the ‘provincial’ and the ‘metropolitan’. Through consideration of both her private papers and her fiction, it analyses Bentleys complex relationship with both her home town of Halifax and the West Riding more widely. It argues that Bentley played a major role in creating a greater space within the national culture for the representation of provincial, especially northern, life, while also displaying a profound ambivalence toward that very life. While in many ways a passionate and articulate interpreter of the region in which she spent virtually all of her adult life, she also clearly felt constricted by her provincial location and cultural setting, especially when in contact with the London-based literary elite; her relationship with Vera Brittain was particularly highly charged in this regard.

‘See, the conquering hero comes! Sound the trumpets, beat the drums’: music and sport in England, 1880–1939

This study provides a broad overview of the key synergies between the fields of music and sport between 1880 and 1939. It demonstrates that sport formed a common topic within commercial popular music, especially the music hall, a reflection both of sports central position within society and the music industrys acute understanding that engagement with it generated a sense of modernity. The presence of sportsmen as popular entertainers also helped cement this relationship. With regard to the role of music in sport, it is shown to have been useful for fund raising and as a vehicle for the entertainment and self-entertainment of spectators and has served as a significant force in the construction and articulation of a variety of self- and collective identities. It is argued that, in comparison with the period from the late twentieth century, the relationship between music and sport was largely natural and unforced and showed relatively little of the self-consciousness that so typifies much recent practice. Sport and music did not so much ‘crossover’ as draw from a common cultural pool.

The Cambridge Companion to Cricket

changes in judging rules now require artistic as well as athletic elements. Both male and female skaters must be well-rounded performers. Not everyone approves – there are criticisms that skating is a sport and should therefore emphasise the values of other sports, such as strength and power, over artistry. Artistic Impressions is a welcome addition to the body of research on the cultural aspects of sport. The literature of figure skating is relatively small and is chiefly populated by instruction manuals, biographies, and a few histories. Scholarly works have come primarily from the sciences and deal with topics such as eating disorders and biomechanics. The few socio-cultural works have a scattergun distribution; they range from the rights of young skaters to judging controversies. Artistic Impressions is an insightful gender study of figure skating that has broad applications. It analyses the predilection of mainstream cultural mores to see society in black and white, either/or: either masculine or feminine, either artistic or athletic, either sport or theatre. Adams is not a dispassionate observer. She wishes for a both/and world, where gender identities extend along a continuum, and behaviours all along that continuum are accepted and appreciated. She hopes that the skating establishment will celebrate the sport’s differences from other athletic endeavours and she advises the skating community to stop worrying about the sport’s macho image and to welcome all skaters, male and female, whether they are attracted by the artistry and sequins or the power and quad jumps. Artistic Impressions will be welcomed by cultural historians.

‘A reporter trying to reach to the heart of what football is’. Arthur Hopcraft's The Football Man

This article examines the origins, content and overall significance of Arthur Hopcrafts The Football Man: People and Passions in Football, published in 1968. Notable for its polished style and laconic humour, and packed with rich detail garnered from the interviews that form much of its research base, the book is acknowledged as a valuable source for the study of the game at a critical moment in its modernization. However, the book is also seen here as underpinned by an often‐romantic master narrative, rooted in both Hopcrafts personal worldview and wider contemporary discourse about the northern English working class, that celebrates football as the ‘peoples game’, understood fully only by its working‐class adherents. Only a modest success commercially, the book was highly acclaimed by critics, although some, notably Brian Glanville, the product of very different cultural context, found it problematic. Despite all potential criticisms, however, it is argued that the book deserves its status as a landmark text, setting a standard for literary excellence among football writers and serving as a source of inspiration for the nascent world of football academia.