Some Fifties Memories

Published in Windlesora 20 (2003)

© WLHG

Through Windsorian Travel I booked hundreds of people from Windsor and Slough to immigrate to Canada. Tourist class cost £50 or it was £130 by air. I remember there were butchers, builders, printers, labourers and a lecturer who took up an appointment at a university.

Food was rationed and we went to Robert Jackson’s on Castle Hill to get tea, cheese, sugar, fats and eggs. Petrol was still rationed until 26th May 1950.

Geraldine McEwan played at Windsor’s Theatre Royal and told me that she would book a ticket round the world as soon as she had aved £500. The theatre had a repertory company with the same actors each week. I sometimes helped behind the scenes and was able to collect autographs.

I watched the funeral of King George VI from a window in the Cloisters at Windsor Castle. The press were taking photographs and developing them there and then. I walked out with a picture. Nobody could believe it. In those days it was unheard of.

The 22-year-old son of a Windsorian coach driver was a prisoner in a Korean prisoner of war camp in 1952.

In 1952 my parents were invited to the Royal Household Dinner at Windsor Castle where the Queen, Prince Philip and Princess Margaret attended. They were entertained by Peter Brough and Archie Andrews, Beryl Reid, Max Bygraves, Harry Secombe and Ronald Chesney. There was dancing to Sydney Lipton’s Orchestra.

For my 21st birthday in 1953 we had a party at the White Hart Hotel. Ninety-two people sat down to dinner and they drank 18 bottles of wine, 15 bottles of Champagne, one bottle of whiskey, one bottle of gin, 12 bottles of sherry, nine bottles of squash and 72 bottles of beer. Including the hire of the band and some food and beer for them, and with gratuities, the cost was £150.19s 6d.

Geoffrey Try