'One of the finest shows'

Description:

So well-liked was Gwen Lally that six of the men playing Crecy knights acted as her ‘bodyguards’, who ‘night after night at the close of the pageant, would “chair” [her] on their shoulders, round and round the arena among the cheering pageanteers’. Later, the Birmingham Post expressed its gratitude to Lally and her team, for giving the city ‘one of the finest shows ever produced in Birmingham’.

Gwen Lally died in 1963. In addition to the obituary in The Times, she was remembered fondly in the Post for her modesty, enthusiasm and determination. She was clearly also physically striking and was described in the Birmingham News’s Centenary Supplement as ‘tall, virile, with a perfectly classical silhouette, a shock of well-dressed white hair; she affects masculine modes, and has a perfect genius for infecting other people with her own vast enthusiasm’.

Two years before the Birmingham Pageant, Lally had participated in an Exhibition of Women’s Progress in London. When asked for the secrets of her success in production, she replied that it was due to ‘her own perseverance’. Her advice to young women was that ‘the possibilities are enormous, and a great chance awaits the woman who will devote her time enthusiastically and intelligently to this great and wonderful work’.