Britain Had Talent: A History of British Variety Theatre by Oliver Double, and: My Old Man: A Personal History of Music Hall by John Major (review)

As Oliver Double points out in the introduction to Britain Had Talent, although “books about nineteenthcentury music hall are many and varied and have been published for over a hundred years … there has been almost no academic writing on variety whatsoever” (2). Double’s aim to “fill the gap in the literature” (2) has been achieved with considerable success and palpable enthusiasm for the subject. Britain Had Talent offers significantly more than the history of British variety theatre to which its subtitle refers.

John Major’s affection for variety’s Victorian and Edwardian antecedent is equally clear and, up to a point, he too has been successful in realising the intentions that inspired My Old Man. The subtitle to this book is also rather misleading. This is not a “personal history of music hall”. Major’s “overall priority” (xiii) was to tell the story of music hall and he has recounted this familiar tale with its cavalcade of well-known characters in an easy and engaging manner. His narrative intentions have, however, prevented him from capitalising on his uncommon connection to the halls. Major’s father, Tom Major (born Ball), earned a living in Edwardian music hall, performing “circus-style acrobatics, baton-twirling, patter, comic duets and comedy sketches” (298) as one half of a double act called Drum + Major. Major’s half-brother, variously known by stage names including Signor Meneghini and Signor Bassani, also briefly made a living in the halls as a tenor before succumbing to alcoholism. The life and work of successful yet lesser-known artists such as these have been largely ignored by the theatre historian and Major’s account of their personal and professional hardships is one of the more interesting and valuable aspects of the book. It is however also the most frustrating as both stories are confined to a solitary chapter and as such are subsumed within the abundance of well-known detail.

A similar criticism cannot be levelled at Britain Had Talent. Gracie Fields, Vera Lynn, the Beverly Sisters, Tommy Trinder, Max Miller and all the other stars of variety are necessarily included here. Yet Double delights in introducing the reader to the “wines and spirits” of the unfamiliar acts including, inter alia, El Granadas and Peter, Dawn White and her Glamazons and The Three Aberdonians. While these may never have climbed much higher than the bottom of the bill, they inform the thesis which Double develops in the second of the book’s three sections as much as the celebrities do. Having perceptively analysed recordings of the performers at work and compared these with published descriptions and critiques of the performances as well as anecdotes gleaned from interviews conducted with the artists themselves, Double proposes that there were four “defining features of variety performance – personality, participation, skill, novelty” (2). The rigorous exploration of each of these characteristics demonstrates persuasively what the performers did and how and why it was done. As such Double builds upon the most notable aspect of the book’s opening section which explains the structure of a variety bill. While previous efforts to achieve this have outlined a hypothetical programme, Double not only describes and contextualises in engaging and often humorous detail each of the thirteen acts that performed at the Lewisham Hippodrome in the week commencing Monday 8 April 1946, but also explains the order in which these acts appeared.

The methodology of variety performance has never before been subjected to analysis as detailed and insightful as this. The historical research that informs both the introductory and concluding sections of the book in which variety’s history and its legacy are explored respectively is equally thorough. Each of these differing points of focus is used as a...