Dimensions
159 x 240 x 39mm
Music hall was one of the glories of Victorian England. Sentimental, vulgar, class-conscious, but always patriotic and on the side of the underdog, it held a mirror to the audiences' hopes and fears, and sometimes the general absurdity of life.
Vast, smoke-filled auditoriums were packed night after night in nearly every town and city in Britain. The most popular performers, such as Marie Lloyd, Vesta Tilley and George Robey, were among the highest paid and most celebrated figures in the land.
This was the world that John Major's father Tom entered at the age of 21, and in MY OLD MAN, the former prime minister uses his father's story as a springboard for telling the entertaining history of the music hall.
Packed with colourful anecdotes about the great performers of the day, this warm-hearted history conjures up a lost age.