‘We ought to do something jolly … we need something to give Britain a lift.” So said Herbert Morrison, a key figure in Clement Attlee’s postwar Labour government, selling to the cabinet the idea of a Festival of Britain. It kicked off 75 years ago this weekend with a service of dedication at St Paul’s, lasted for five months and consisted of a nationwide celebration of British achievements in the arts and sciences. But did it succeed, and did it leave any lasting legacy?
I say it was a national event but there is little doubt that much of the focus was on an exhibition on London’s South Bank which reclaimed a huge tract of derelict land and attracted 8.5 million visitors. As an 11-year-old schoolboy, I was one of them, making the pilgrimage from Leamington Spa with my family. I still recall the excitement of the Dome of Discovery which was a vast scallop shell containing segments devoted to earth, sea, sky, the polar regions and outer space. The site was also dominated by the massive cigar-shaped Skylon, described as a kind of “luminous exclamation mark”. After a morning on the South Bank we spent an afternoon at the Battersea Park Pleasure Gardens where there was a funfair, a miniature railway and, best of all, a theatre resurrecting old-time music hall. Returning home, I felt as if I had been to an exhausting but exhilarating party.
