Headingley LitFest: Exhibition of historic photos of the wartime hospital.

Sunday, 23 February 2014

Exhibition of historic photos of the wartime hospital.

Richard Wilcocks writes:

Photo by Theo Wilcocks

Photo by Sally Bavage

Thanks to all of you who climbed up the stairs to the Ridge Room in the Headingley Heart Centre yesterday evening. I hope to see you again at one of the LitFest events, soon. The exhibition is there for six weeks, so anybody using that room for a class or a meeting will get a chance to study the photos. Isn't that long 1917 panorama amazing! Have you noticed how nearly all the people in it (about five hundred of them) are either squinting, screwing up their eyes or looking down at their knees because the summer sun came out just as the shutter clicked. And why were five members of the kitchen staff, wearing white linen pancakes on their heads, placed right in front of the high-ups like Lt-Col Harry Littlewood and Matron-in-Chief Euphemia Innes?

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LITERARY HEADINGLEY

Headingley is just the place for it! Don't expect a big circus with marquees, though: we're not at that stage yet. We're all volunteers as well.

Our venues include the HEART Centre on Bennett Road, the New Headingley Club on St Michael's Road, friendly cafés, historic local cinemas, Headingley Library, people's houses and the historic Leeds Library in Commercial Street, city centre.

Headingley's Literary Links

Headingley has strong connections with many writers:

Arthur Ransome was born in Headingley, J R R Tolkien lived at 5 Holly Bank and also at 2 Darnley Road, West Park when he was reader in English Language at the University of Leeds 1920 - 25, Alan Bennett lived over a butcher's shop opposite the Three Horseshoes, now Royale Dry Cleaners.

Lucy Newlyn has published poetry about her early life in Headingley, George Orwell stayed at 21 Estcourt Avenue with his sister Marjorie and her husband Humphrey 'Humpy' Dakin (with whom he visited the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth), T S Eliot used to visit his mother-in-law in Weetwood Lane, William Fryer Harvey was brought up in Spring Bank, Trevor Griffiths lived just off Victoria Road on Winstanley Terrace, Jon Silkin's first office of STAND magazine was his flat at 144 Otley Road, Sir Geoffrey Hill lived in Shire Oak Road, Peter Redgrove lived in Headingley between 1962 and 1965 when he was Gregory Fellow of Poetry at the University of Leeds, and playwright Kay Mellor still lives near The Hollies in Far Headingley.

Wilson Barrett, the charismatic first manager of the Grand Theatre, Leeds (a prolific playwright as well), lived in Beech Grove Terrace, Woodhouse in the 1870s. His house was a meeting place for many writers, artists and visitors to Leeds - such as W. S. Gilbert, George Grossmith and Atkinson Grimshaw.

Headingley LitFest 2020 was the thirteenth. The fourteenth will take place from March 2021 and will be adapted to the rules of the Covid pandemic. We are now a proud part of the annual Leeds Lit Fest.