The bank holidays and clement conditions of late have put us in something of a party mood here at the Secret Library, so we couldn’t help but get a little distracted while using our Yorkshire Post archives for some research recently. The cause of said distraction was an article by Antony Derville from 30 June…
Category: Entertainment
Famous Last Words
When they decided to stage a production of the historical tragedy Jane Shore in the summer of 1817, no one at the Leeds Theatre suspected that a very real tragedy was about to strike. Here’s a scan of the original playbill – now nearly 200 years old – advertising that dramatic night. It’s one of…
Pablo is Coming!
Marking the end of Black History month this week we are sharing three playbills from our collections featuring Pablo Fanque, Britain’s first black circus owner. Born William Darby on 28th February 1796 in Norwich he joined the circus in 1810 as an apprentice to William Batty who owned a small travelling circus. He was known as…
The Best Night Out in History
Here at the Secret Library, we’re celebrating the fact that it’s nearly the weekend by squeezing into our flares and strapping on our platform shoes ready for a big night out! Well… not really, but we did find an old edition of the Yorkshire Evening Post from 1975 and got rather excited by the groovy…
Read More: Football and History
by Antony Ramm, Information and Research, Central Library. This is an entry in our Read More series. These are ‘long-form’ articles, where staff offer a curated and detailed look at areas of our book collections, usually based around a specific theme or subject. These posts aim to guide the interested reader through to those books that offer a…
Celebrating 150 Years of Rugby in Leeds, 1864-2014
From 1st April to 20th April 2014 in our newly refurbished Arts Space on the 1st floor we hosted an exhibition celebrating the history of Rugby in Leeds. Panels for each decade displayed information and photographs depicting the sport in Leeds. The 1860s started it off with an advert in the Leeds Mercury for “persons…
Lights, Camera, Action…Libraries
You could be forgiven for thinking you’d seen a ghost roaming the corridors of Leeds Central Library today, however the dapper gentlemen in bowler hats and ladies in bustles walking down the stairs were actors filming a new adaptation of Vera Brittain’s ‘Testament of Youth’. This first instalment of Brittain’s memoirs covers the period of…
Early Theatre in Leeds
We have a lot of fantastic theatres and entertainment on offer in Leeds now but how did it all start? From our playbills collection you can get an idea of some of the earliest theatre entertainment. The first theatre was built in Leeds in 1771 prior to which Leeds had relied on travelling companies of…
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