Lally and Birmingham

Description:

Gwen Lally thought of herself as a ‘Warwickshire woman’ (though born in London, she had grown up in the countryside), and she was liked and respected by the Birmingham public. On her arrival to the city a large banner with the words ‘Gwen Lally is Here’ was hung on the wall of the Pageant Headquarters at the former Baskerville printing works in Cambridge Street. At one of the first meetings at the council house Lally described her vision; ‘there would be humour . . . representations of prehistoric man and beasts, and the whole thing would be worked out on a great scale of grandeur, splendour and gorgeousness’. She later declared that ‘the Birmingham Pageant is going to be the greatest and most successful of all the pageants I have produced’.

A column in the Birmingham Weekly Post titled ‘The Looker-On’ noted that Aston and Erdington residents had met with Lally in May 1938 and would be in no doubt as to her strict nature; ‘the Pageant Master, although of kindly disposition, is unrivalled as a disciplinarian. At the sound of her whistle the most unruly relapsed into silence, and woe betide anyone who, even during a performance, should commit a blunder which threatens to spoil an episode’.