The Ivanhoe Line west of Coalville is disappearing fast: Here's what's left

Ever since I was a councillor in the Eighties, the reopening to passengers of the line from Leicester to Coalville, Ashby and Burton upon Trent has been high on the agenda of transport campaigners in the East Midlands.

Which makes this video following the line between Coalville and Burton concerning. No train has run west of Coalville for a couple of years and, as a result, that section of the line is rapidly being reclaimed by nature.

This is doubly worrying because, though what people in Coalville want is a train to Leicester, it is this section between Coalville and Burton that the authorities now talk about reopening.

Anyway, thanks to Our History Underfoot. Like and subscribe. my children. Like and subscribe.

St George finishes behind Robin Hood and King Arthur – and I'm not surprised

Fortean Times reports the findings of the 2026 National Folklore Survey for England and it's bad news for St George as he only gets the bronze medal:

The figure gaining highest recognition was not King Arthur or St George, as many might have expected, but Robin Hood, who almost 90 per cent of the people in the poll sample had heard of. Arthur came second, recognised by 84 per cent, while St George trailed in third place, with around two thirds of respondents recognising him.

It's no surprise that Robin Hood is in our minds when British society is becoming so unequal, but I wouldn't have expected St George to come any better than third in that company. As I blogged back 2008:

The idea of celebrating our national saint's day is a new one for most of us English. I can remember the St George's Day parade being a big deal when I was in the Cubs, but beyond that I have never taken much notice of it.

My impression that the idea of celebrating 23 April is a new one was strengthened when the Leicester Mercury published this on that day in 2014:

So. This was the plan. We'd dig out a spiffy old photo of St George's Day in Leicester, bash out a few bruised lines wondering why it isn't a bank holiday in England, then slink off early to the pub. Job's a good 'un. Well, a passable one, at least. 

But here's the thing. We couldn't find many old pics of St George's Day. And none that we muster much enthusiasm for showing you.

There have been more St George's Day events in recent years. As this is in line with the splendid Leicester approach to multiculturalism, which celebrates every festival going rather than ignoring them for fear of offending someone, I am pleased. And, lurking in the background somewhere, there's also the fear that if people of good will don't celebrate it then the far right will.

But when I've been to these events, there's generally been a shortage of ideas about what to do beyond having lots of morris dancers along. Because, mercifully, the English have never taken up the idea of stabbing iguanas with a toasting fork.

New light on the Mods and Rockers

I've just got back from an event at Leicester Central Library:

High Flying Around: Memories of the 1960s Leicester Arts and Music Scene

Join Leicester author and curator Shaun Knapp, author, curator and graphic designer Joe Nixon, musician Kenny Wilson, and the University of Leicester’s Colin Hyde for a discussion on the arts and music scene in Leicester during the 1960s.

I talk to Kenny Wilson sometimes in my favourite coffee shop in Market Harborough and Shaun Knapp turned out to be a member of Gypsy (who were called Legay earlier in their career), a Leicester band of the late Sixties and early Seventies who some rate higher than the more celebrated Family.

At one point discussion turned to the Mods and Rockers. We are used to reading of pitched battles between them, but Kenny Wilson cast new light on their relationship for me.

The Rockers were older than the Mods. Because they had done National Service they were also much harder. So conflict between the two tribes tended to consist, not of fighting, but of the Mods annoying the Rockers and then running away.

You can read more about such matters on Kenny Wilson's blog.

Coalville: Railway ghosts of the town built on coal

In this episode of Lost Railway Towns, we travel to Coalville, Leicestershire – a town built on coal and railways. Once thriving when coal was king, Coalville was at the heart of Leicestershire’s industrial revolution, its collieries and railway lines powering Britain’s factories and furnaces.

We uncover the story of Coalville’s lost railways, the lines that once linked the town to Leicester, Ashby and beyond – and explore what remains today. Despite decades of talk about restoring passenger services, Coalville’s station remains closed, a ghost of a once-busy transport hub.

Joined by Steve, a lifelong resident of Coalville, we hear his memories of life in a town shaped by coal. I also revisit my own memories of Coalville railway open days – a nostalgic look back at the engines, exhibits, and excitement that inspired my love of railway history.

So says the YouTube blurb from Wobbly Runner Exploring – like and subscribe, my children.

The problem with the Leicester end of this line, which they discuss at the beginning of the video, it that it meets the Midland main line at Knighton Junction, which is south of Leicester station, pointing south. 

There used to be a curve at Knighton that pointed north, and would have enabled trains to get to Leicester station without reversing, but that has been built on.

I took some photos of Oliver's Crossing – a disused level crossing in the centre of Coalville – when I was there a couple of years ago.

Ken Loach was Kenneth Williams' understudy in a West End revue

In 1961 Sheila Hancock was appearing in the West End revue One Over the Eight. In her memoir The Two of Us: My Life with John Thaw she writes:

The chief joy of One Over the Eight for me was meeting and becoming friends with the writer of the show, Peter Cook, and Kenneth [Williams], the maverick star.

But she didn't feel London was really swinging yet and neither did Kenneth Williams:

One night after the show, when I gave him a lift back to his chaste flat on the back of my Lambretta, he waved his furled umbrella at Eros as we circled Piccadilly Circus crying "Where is it? Where is it all happening? Where are all these orgies? Why haven't we been asked?"

Peter Cook wasn't the only writer who contributed to One Over the Eight: The Stage lists John Mortimer, Lionel Bart, N.F. Simpson and John Bird among the other contributors.

But the reason for this post is that Sheila Hancock reveals that Kenneth Williams' understudy was Ken Loach and so gives us our Trivial Fact of the Day.

In this era, Loach was also involved with Leicester's The Living Theatre. His first screen credits as a director came on television in 1964.

Film of the last days of the Leicester & Swannington Railway

The Leicester & Swannington was one of the first railways of the steam age, built to bring coal to Leicester from the mines in the north west of the county.

This amateur film shows the last days of the line from Leicester West Bridge to Desford Junction. The Wikipedia entry for the Leicester & Swannington reckons it closed in 1966, not 1964 as the commentary says. Passenger trains to Leicester West Bridge had ended as early as 1928.

Mercia rediscovered: The Synod of Gumley and Brixworth church

Reviewing Max Adams's The Mercian Chronicles: King Offa and the Birth of the Anglo-Saxon State AD 630-918 for the London Review of Books, Tom Shippey wrote of the difficulty in recovering the history of the kingdom of Mercia:

Adams’s title is deliberately ironic. There are no ‘Mercian Chronicles’, the fact of which has caused historians headaches for centuries. 

For Northumbria we have Bede’s History of the English Church and People, written in Jarrow and finished in 731. For Wessex we have The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, first compiled under the aegis of King Ælfred in the 890s, but including much earlier information and then kept up in various locations year by year. 

But for the land in between we have nothing: or rather, "no independent narrative", apart from a short interpolation into two manuscripts of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle known as ‘the Mercian Register’ and covering only the years 902-24. For the rest, the historian has to work from often biased, often hostile enemy sources, and from indirect evidence: coins, charters, archaeology and, on occasion, suggestive silences.

For this reason, Mercia does not perhaps enjoy the prominence in our early medieval history that it deserves.

I looked at Adams's book, and its index in particular, in Waterstones and knew I had to buy it. It discusses the Synod of Gumley of 749, held close by that slightly village near Market Harborough, and also the magnificent Saxon church down the road at Brixworth.

Here is Adams on Gumley:

Two years after the second Clofesho council, in 749, Æthelbald convened a further council at a place called Godmundesleach. This time the site can be identified with satisfying precision. 

The small village of Gumley, lying on a back road between Market Harborough and Leicester, is surrounded by once-tilled arable lands now turned over to grazing for sheep and horses. A couple of hundred yards south-west of Gumley's single, house-lined street, in steeply undulating park lies a natural amphitheatre containing a pond known as the "Mot", overlooked by a prominent tree-covered mound. By general acceptance 

This is the site of the council of 749 and to further royal councils held in 772. and 779. Its present obscurity may be misleading: It lay close. to one of the sources of the river Welland, which may have formed a significant Middle Anglian boundary in the eighth century.

The location of Clofesho is not known. Adams favours a location near Hertford, while other candidates include Brixworth in Northamptonshire.

When Adams does get to Brixworth, he says:

the scale and evident expense of the church here strongly implies royal, possibly episcopal patronage: it is public architecture of the highest order.

He also says that the stone for the bulk of the church originated from quarries near Leicester, implying that it was indeed repurposed after being taken from the ruins of Roman Leicester.

Reader, I bought the book. You can see my photos of Gumley and above and All Saints', Brixworth, below.

Mysterious blue glow traced to Flying Banana

BBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award with this tale of mysterious Lincolnshire:

Is it a UFO? Is it the Northern Lights? No, it's the "Flying Banana".

A blue glow that has lit up Lincolnshire's night sky in recent weeks has been traced to an unlikely source: a bright yellow train.

Network Rail said the mysterious light comes from its new measurement train – nicknamed the Flying Banana – which looks for faults on the line for engineers to repair.

The company said on hazy nights, equipment from the yellow train can create a blue glow "that looks like something from the X-Files" as it tests overhead lines.

My photo shows the Flying Banana at Leicester station some years ago.

Sign language was used in a Leicester Cathedral wedding in 1576

Leicester Cathedral held a service on Sunday to commemorate the 450th anniversary of a wedding there in which sign language was employed. 

A document found in the Leicestershire Record Office shows that the language was used in a marriage ceremony at St Martin's Church – now Leicester Cathedral – on 6 February 1576.

The BBC News report helpfully transcribes part of it:

Thomas Tillsye and Ursula Russel were marryed: and because the sayde Thomas was and is naturally deafe and also dumbe, so that the order of the forme of marriage used usually amongst others which can heare and speake could not for his parte be observed… the sayde Thomas, for the expression of his minde instead of words, of his own accorde used these signs…

First he embraced her with his armes, and took her by the hande, putt a ring upon her finger and layde his hande upon her harte, and held his hands towards heaven; and to show his continuance to dwell with her to his lyves ende he did it by closing of his eyes with his hands and digging out of the earthe with his foote, and pulling as though he would ring a bell with divers other signs approved.

In Sunday's service readings and prayers were made in British Sign Language and songs were sung by a deaf choir from the Church of the Good Shepherd – a ministry for deaf and hard of hearing people based in Leicester.

St Martin's Church became a cathedral when Leicester regained its city status in 1919. Leicester was a city under the Romans and was treated as one by the Domesday Book, but lost the title in the 13th century.

For Central Bylines: The discovery of Richard III enriched Leicester in every way

I've written another article for Central Bylines. This one celebrates the discovery of Richard III beneath Leicester's most famous car park, and also defends the city against Yorkists and archaeology against Steve Coogan:

Having lived in both cities, I know that, in terms of pub and street names, Richard has always had a greater presence in Leicester than York. You will even find a King Richard III Infant and Nursery School in Leicester – Ofsted rates it as “Good”, but would you send your nephews there?

Michael Elwyn talks about appearing in Joe Orton's Loot

I once went to an event in Leicester to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Joe Orton's play Loot. It doesn't feel like it, but it was almost 10 years ago.

In the post I wrote about the event, I described meeting Braham Murray and Michael Elwyn there. They had, respectively, directed and appeared in a Manchester production of Loot that established its reputation after its first staging in London had been a failure.

I recently found this video of Michael Elwyn, which may well have been recorded that day – we were all given the badge he is wearing. In it he talks about meeting Orton and his experience of appearing in the play.

Gypsy: Changes Coming

The two best bands to emerge from Leicester in the Sixties were Family and Gypsy. Family are the more celebrated today, but I've been told by someone who was on the scene in those days that there was a view in Leicester that Gypsy were the better band live. We've already hear Gypsy on this blog under their earlier name Legay.

Changes Coming was released as a single in August 1971 and the band appeared on Top of the Pops. But the song was then removed from BBC playlists because some suit decided it was too political, with the result that it wasn't a hit.

The song's writer, Robin Pizer, says today it was merely "a loose commentary on current events during those years of global demonstrations".

I'm told that after this Gypsy turned more to a country rock sound - in fact, there's already a Neil Young flavour to Changes Coming.

It's hard to discover much about Gypsy online, perhaps because of confusion with an American band with the same name. The best article I have come across is one on Jazz Rock Soul.

And as I said in the Legay post, Robin Pizer, who was the band's singer, is still writing songs. Here he is on the discovery of Richard III.

The Joy of Six 1445

"Whether it is the private contractors paid enormous sums of public money to bring prisoners to court failing to bring prisoners to court, or technology procured at vast public expense simply not working, or entire court buildings being shut down because the roof is falling in, the Crown Courts every single day endure absurd, entirely-fixable inefficiencies which contribute significantly to the backlog of work." The Secret Barrister explains that abolishing most jury trials will not touch the main causes of delay in the legal system.

Paul Bernal argues that banning children from social media is a very bad idea: "For the most part, most kids, most of the time, are able to navigate the internet – and in particular social media – in ways that work. Rather than being a cesspit of trolling and misinformation, the internet mostly works. Just like for the grown-ups, the internet is simply part of their lives – how they organise themselves, how they get information, how the socialise, how they do their (home)work, how they find entertainment, how they listen to music and watch television and movies, how they date, how they shop and much more."

"You only have to take a look recent exam papers to see the problem. For example, when my colleague Catherine Gower and I surveyed 219 GCSE, AS and A-level history papers issued in the summer of 2023, we found only 6 per cent of 991 exam questions directed students to discuss women (37 per cent directed students to discuss men)." Natasha R, Hodgson shows that women are largely absent from the questions, sources, and mark schemes that shape how history is taught and assessed in schools in England.

Municipal Dreams reviews Ned Hewitt's Housing the People of Leicester: A History of Social Housing: "Spending cuts and a cross-party emphasis on rehousing slum dwellers (previously excluded from council housing dues to its relatively high rents) from 1930 had their own impact. The North Braunstone Estate, built as a slum clearance estate, is one of many across the country that reflected both these aspects and suffered a resultant social stigma."

National Museums Scotland tells the fascinating story of the Isle of Lewis chessmen and their discovery.

"Living in the Past was a song in five/four time, with jazz flute solos, and grumpy lyrics about how the hippie lifestyle, with protests about war and talk about revolution, wasn’t for Anderson, who was also very staunchly opposed to drug use, and in general found little common cause with the hippies, despite his bearded, long-haired, eccentric appearance." Andrew Hickey on the eccentric single that became Jethro Tull's biggest hit.

After three years online, Leicester Gazette launches a print edition

Leicester Gazette is one of a new generation of local news outlets born out of the collapse of local newspapers and the right-wing bias of most national ones.

It began almost three years ago as a website – Reece Stafferton wrote a guest post for this blog outlining the Gazette's plans a few months before it launched.

Now comes news that the Gazette is to launch a print edition.

An article on the Gazette site says it will have 32 pages and be a unique "half Berliner" size – slightly larger than a magazine but with the feel and look of a traditional newspaper:

Creating a print edition is a new thing for us. Our core team is made up of trained journalists, but we have limited experience in print. If you notice any mistakes, please let us know – and please be gentle with us!

For our inaugural issue, we’ve included a mix of old and new. You'll find striking features from our regulars like Margaret Brecknell and Joseph Herbert, as well as reports from the local democracy reporting service. Our hope is that it gives new readers a taste of what we're all about.

Our first print run is 5,000 copies, with plans to publish quarterly and increase circulation with each issue.

I wish this exciting development well.

The Joy of Six 1443

"Companies that have collaborated with immigration enforcement agencies in various ways to aid Trump’s mass deportation initiative – whether through allowing ICE to raid their parking lots, taking on contracts with DHS, or a variety of other actions – are starting to feel the rumblings of a consumer revolt." Adrian Carrasquillo says a backlash Is brewing against companies that help Trumps's ICE.

Rowena Mason maps the depressing journey of Motability cuts from right-wing social media to Rachel Reeves' budget.

Matt Simon finds that urban farms and gardens ease food insecurity, boost mental health and create communities.

"Getting Franklin’s story right is crucial, because she has become a role model for women going into science. She was up against not just the routine sexism of the day, but also more subtle forms embedded in science – some of which are still present today." Matthew Cobb and Nathaniel Comfort argue that the role of Rosalind Franklin in the discovery of DNA is still misunderstood.

"By the early 1940s, Watson had also become increasingly uncomfortable about the methods used in dairy and egg production, and so began to exclude all animal-based foodstuffs from his diet." Margaret Brecknell introduces us to Leicester's Donald Watson, the founder of the modern vegan movement.

Frank Collins reviews the 1947 film It Always Rains on Sunday. He says its director, Robert Hamer "seems to have regularly fought a corner for women working in film at Ealing, a studio often criticised for its very male view point of the world, and [Googie] Withers is a strong presence in many of his films.

The long history of Chinese food in Britain

The view that the British subsisted on overcooked vegetables until the Eighties is a tenet of faith for many, but the reality is more nuanced and interesting.

Here's an extract from an article on the Newham Chinese Association website:

The history of Chinese food in Britain is best understood in relation to the history of Chinese immigrants. Historically, the first Chinese eating houses in Britain catered not for local customers, but for Chinese sailors who had settled around the docks in London’s Limehouse and wanted a taste of home. Until the 1940s, the majority of customers in the restaurants were not English but Chinese immigrants.

In the aftermath of World War II Chinese food began to grow in popularity. British servicemen returned from various parts of the Empire and the Far East with a willingness to try different foods and cuisine and a new enthusiasm for Chinese food and restaurants. This in turn saw the rise of the restaurant trade in Soho. Chinese people entered the catering trade because of the downturn in shipping and the closing of laundries, traditional areas of employment.  

In the 1950s and early 1960s there was an influx of Chinese from Hong Kong who provided the necessary workforce. The restaurants served Cantonese food because of Britain’s old colonial links to Hong Kong where most of the chefs came from. The lack of certain authentic ingredients meant having to improvise and also adjust a few dishes to suit the liking of British customers, for example Chop Suey, an old style Chinese cuisine consisting of meat and eggs, cooked quickly with vegetables such as bean-sprouts and a starch-thickened sauce.

With the establishment of the Peoples Republic of China, staff at the Chinese Embassy in London were recalled but the majority chose to stay in the UK and many of them then went on to open Chinese restaurants. Kenneth Lo, a former Chinese diplomat, became a popular and well known author of several Chinese cookery books explaining the intricacies of Chinese cooking to the British public throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s. He went on to become a legendary figure on the capital’s restaurant scene and also the foremost expert in Britain on Chinese food, and played a huge part in popularizing and improving its consumption.

What I find particularly interesting here is the insight that servicemen returned from war in the Pacific with a taste for Asian food. That's a useful corrective to the consensus view that the Fifties took place entirely in black and white.

But being an imperial power had affected our tastes well before then. Tea became the quintessential British drink, and we take it with milk because we learnt to drink it in India.

My only question about the article is whether it takes too London-centric a view. Chinese restaurants soon spread far beyond Soho – the advertisement above dates from 1962, and the headline below relates to an incident at The Painted Fan in Market Harborough in 1966.

The Joy of Six 1437

Sienna Rodgers takes us inside the power struggle at the top of Your Party: "There is talk that the leadership race could feature at least one other candidate; a non-MP perhaps with a 'plague on all your houses' campaign aimed at highlighting the chaos that has emerged under those running the show so far."

"The whole estate shares the same creaking water, electric, sewage and gas systems, most of which are interconnected across the buildings – meaning shutdowns for repair affect the whole estate. According to the official Restoration and Renewal unit, there are 'also hundreds of miles of rusting pipework, obsolete electrical cables and gas pipes, and the giant, inefficient Victorian steam heating, all of which need replacing'." The Palace of Westminster is falling down, reports Simon Wilson.

Tom Chidwick pays tribute to Lord Taverne - Dick Taverne - whose victory in Lincoln in 1973 was, along with the Liberal Party by-elections triumphs of that era, one of the things that got me interested in politics.

"The reason I cannot understand Shakespeare is that I want to find symmetry in all this asymmetry. It seems to me as though his pieces are, as it were, enormous sketches, not paintings; as though they were dashed off by someone who could permit himself anything." William Day seeks to explain Ludwig Wittgenstein's dislike of Shakespeare.

Georgia Poplett emphasises the Leicester roots of Adrian Mole and his creator Sue Townsend: "As a teenager and young adult, the aspirant Leicester Tolstoy moved between jobs, working in retail and at a garage where she spent most of her time reading books on the forecourt. She was sacked from a clothes shop for reading Oscar Wilde in the changing rooms."

"Bitterns are elusive and well camouflaged. They hide in the dense reed beds, popping out to catch eels, fish and amphibians, and quickly darting back under cover. This makes them a secretive bird and extremely hard to spot in their environment with their unique plumage. Typically, it’s their call, the Bittern boom, that announces their hidden presence." Leslie Cater remembers his encounters with Britain's loudest bird.

Hilary Mantel on the finding of Richard III

Here's Hilary Mantel, writing in the London Review of Books, 21 February 2013:

Royal bodies do change after death, and not just as a consequence of the universal post-mortem changes. Now we know the body in the Leicester car park is indeed that of Richard III, we have to concede the curved spine was not Tudor propaganda, but we need not believe the chronicler who claimed Richard was the product of a two-year pregnancy and was born with teeth. 

Why are we all so pleased about digging up a king? Perhaps because the present is paying some of the debt it owes to the past, and science has come to the aid of history. The king stripped by the victors has been reclothed in his true identity. This is the essential process of history, neatly illustrated: loss, retrieval.

For myself I found the archaeology and the cutting-edge science involved in proving Richard's identity fascinating, and was unexpectedly moved by the day of his reburial in Leicester Cathedral:

When the plans for taking Richard's bones around the Bosworth battlefield and the villages associated with it were announced, I wondered if it was a good idea. But it turned out to be an act of genius and I found myself ridiculously moved.

This, I think, had less to do with Richard III and more to do with the community involvement. Councillors, ex-servicemen, Scouts and Brownies... 

What we saw on BBC News and heard on BBC Radio Leicester was the sort of civic England you fear had been lost to modernisation and the turbo-capitalism.

Because the day was not about celebrating Richard III or the monarchy: it was about celebrating our pride in Leicester and Leicestershire. In the end, the day was about ourselves.

And then Richard's return to Leicester in triumph, rather than naked over the back of a horse.

Let no one tell you that history cannot be rewritten.

High Flying Around: Memories of the 1960s Leicester Music Scene Volume II by Shaun Knapp

In Leicester this afternoon, I called in at the launch of Shaun Knapp's book High Flying Around: Memories of the 1960s Leicester Music Scene Vol II.

As the publisher's website says: 

High Flying Around Volume II continues the remarkable story of Leicester’s 1960s arts and music scene via the people who were there. Their memories and reminiscences bring back to life the buildings long since demolished, the groups who packed out the venues and the people who filled the halls and clubs.

Find out how some of the biggest names in music performed in some of Leicester’s smallest and long-lost venues, revisit the 1969 free festival, and discover the incredible stories of Leicester band Gypsy and the 1960s creatives. Discover the importance of the college and university circuit, the arts lab, the city’s underground music, folk and poetry scenes and the music that influenced Leicester playwright Joe Orton.

Leicester women tell their stories about life in the city during the 1960s, while singer/songwriter Ryan Dunn explains how the decade influences his songwriting and fashion.

Dipping into it, I find plenty of new bands to research and the odd anecdote I might share here.

And, yes, my home town gets at least one mention:

The first time we played in Market Harborough was at a place called the Embi Club, on St Mary's Road. The building had a great doorway, which was the entrance, then you went to the back building through a small yard. That was where the club was. The club itself was long and it looked like a few rooms had been knocked into one. It was a very busy venue. Jethro Tull had played there as did Edwin Starr. I later learned the site had been an old cinema. the Oriental, which opened in 1921. The interior decor consisted of Egyptian mummies Chinese dragons, palm trees and pyramids.

The main building had, I think, gone by the time I moved here – the length of it ran behind what is now the House of Art tattoo studio and probably a couple of other vanished buildings – but the exotic domed entrance on St Mary's Road lasted through the Seventies.

A 1959 Monitor feature on Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop

I've struck gold with this 1959 report on Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at Stratford East from the BBC arts programme Monitor.

The first comment on YouTube reckons you can spot Pat Phoenix. James Booth, Dudley Sutton, Yootha Joyce, Richard Harris and Glyn Edwards among the company.

I've long been interested in Stratford East's links with ITV sitcoms: half the cast of On the Buses (Stephen Lewis, Bob Grant, Michael Robbins) came from the Theatre Workshop. I didn't know before seeing this that, through Pat Phoenix, it was also linked with Coronation Street.

Joan Littlewood's remarkable career proved there is an audience for challenging theatre beyond the affluent West End. If you enjoyed this film, see my post on The Living Theatre in early 1960s Leicester too.