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Yesterday!

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by oldbess (U13929099) on Sunday, 31st May 2009

  hope this is the right board, but I am trying so hard to remember who the commentator was on a programme I think was called 'All our yesterdays'
  It basically covered the 2nd world war, and remember so well my Dad getting our first telly,
  and having us watch this--fine for the boys in the Family, but not so for us girls!!

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by Spruggles (U13892773) on Sunday, 31st May 2009

  Oldbess,
  Was it Brian Inglis?(sorry not sure about the spelling but the phonetic might help)

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  Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Sunday, 31st May 2009

  "All Our Yesterdays" was an ITV-Granada programme that was designed to exploit the Movietone newsreel archive that ITV had acquired. In the days before television the public's main access to current affairs, apart from reading newspapers, would be on a weekly visit to the cinema where they would see a 15-30 minute newsreel produced either by Pathe or Movitone. As it was designed to be entertaining as well as informative there was usually a large slice of sports, entertainment and general silliness included as well as politics (at least before WWII).
  
  The format of the programme was to feature selections from the newsreels of that exact week 25 years earleir. It started in 1960 (thus covering the events of 1935) with an off-screen commentary by the journalist, James Cameron. This mainly appealed to nostalfia buffs but the following year, at the instigation of the producer, Bill Grundy, it became more serious when he invited his friend, the distinguished Anglo-Irish journalist and author and then editor of "The Spectator", Brian Inglis, to front the programme and weave together the newsreel clips with a narrative of his own devising.
  
  The programme went out at 7pm on Monday evenings just before another new programme from the Granada stable that had started at the end of 1960 called "Coronation Street". I was a very young schoolboy at the time but, like you, I swiftly became a fan of the programme as it was like watching the history of the period (which to me at the time seemed like eons before) unroll week by week under Inglis' literate and educative direction. I have been left with an abiding interest in the events and history of the 1930s ever since.
  
  Sadly, after Grundy's departure it was moved around the schedules and ended in 1973 with Inglis' departure. There was a brief revival of the show in 1987-9, when it covered the events of 50 years previously (a sort of "All Our Yesterdays 25 years on), fronted by Bernard Braden but nostalgia was not what it once was.
  
  Brian Inglis wrote a book on the Abdication of Edward VIII partly based on research he had done for the programme which is well worth reading if you can get hold of a copy. Sadly, he died in February 1993 at the age of 76.

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  Posted by oldbess (U13929099) on Monday, 1st June 2009

  Thankyou for that information. His name had escaped me for so long,and in later years I had began to think it may have been someone else--possibly Raymond Baxter,but wasn't it exciting times when we first 'got the 'telly!'

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  Posted by Spruggles (U13892773) on Monday, 1st June 2009

  Oldbess,
  Yes indeed ... that strange glowing object in the darkened room! Do you recall the intervals? And the Epilogue and the National Anthem? All finished at 22.00 hours every night. How very civilised it all was then.
  I remember too an old boy called Bransby Williams who would do monologues towards the end of transmission, a Shakespeare speech or something from Dickens; my Uncle saw him on stage when he was a boy. I have no idea how old Bransby was when he made those appearances but my uncle must have been about fifty!

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• Message 6

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  Posted by oldbess (U13929099) on Monday, 1st June 2009

  God, I hate to say it, but we actually still stood up for the National Anthem.and the only time we got to stay up late, was when The Festival of Remembrance from theRoyal Albert Hall
  was on.
  I expect it was the same for most of us born not long after the war.(Still not sure if this thread is on the right board!)
  Still,the Programme gave even us young girls a sense of the past,and a love of military music!

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