Angel Pavement

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When Priestley left the army he studied at Cambridge University, where he completed a degree in Modern History and Political Science. Subsequently he found work as theatre reviewer with the Daily News, and also contributed to the Spectator, the Challenge and Nineteenth Century. His earliest books included The English Comic Characters (1925), The English Novel (1927), and English Humour (1928). His breakthrough came with the immensely popular novel The Good Companions, published in 1929, and Angel Pavement followed in 1930. He emerged, too, as a successful dramatist with such plays as Dangerous Corner (1932), Time and the Conways (1937), When We Are Married (1938) and An Inspector Calls (1947).

New Vaudeville Band, The The 1966 UK #1 single Winchester Cathedral was actually recorded by a group of studio musicians assembled by writer, producer and…Around this time Angel Pavement also amicably parted from their manager Mal Spence. It was agreed that Mal had probably taken the group as far as he could go and they really needed to be with a recognised management agency. So it was that they were signed up by Dave Cullen, a South Yorkshire businessman who amongst other things owned a nightclub in York called The Hypnotique which regularly featured live bands. It was ideal for the band to rehearse in and occasionally perform to try new material. The problem was that Cullen’s connections were in the club world e.g. Pete Stringfellow, who at that time was based in Wakefield and the gigs on offer were increasingly becoming nightclubs – he even tried to persuade them to take a booking at Batley Variety Club! Angel Pavement’s stage act was very much university/dance hall structured so, somewhat disillusioned, they called it a day and played their last gig in York at York Rowing Club on New Years Eve 1970. Lilian Matfield, the typist for the firm of Twigg & Dersingham. Aloof and cold to her fellow workers, she dominates them all, even though she is relatively new to the firm and only in her late twenties. She lives at the Burpenfield Club, a residence for working girls and women. Her relationships with her fellow boarders reveals much about her thinking. Incurably romantic, a dreamer of perfection, she is at first annoyed by Golspie, then fascinated by him. She dates him but refuses to spend a weekend at the coast with him. She later agrees to go, only to be left waiting in Victoria Station as he sails for South America. In 2005, Wooden Hill Records issued Maybe Tomorrow, the first-ever release of nearly two-dozen songs from those long-ago Morgan sessions by Angel Pavement.

Still, comedy requires cruelty and stereotypes. This book appears to Priestley's first attempt at humour, not comedy, and he has a talent for psychological insight, probably from spending his life among actresses. I may still read his first and most famous picaresque comedy, where stereotypes will be thinner and funnier. What do they call this street? Angel Pavement, isn't it? That's a dam' queer name for a street, though I've known queerer names in my time." (Golspie). So that means there must be some sort of process to save the really great stuff from oblivion and let the merely good stuff slide. And the process is that mysterious one whereby some books are bestowed with the title of “classic” and most aren’t. Edna Smeeth, their eighteen-year-old daughter. She lives for films and cannot hold a job because of her inability to resist complaining. Mr. and Mrs. Walter Pearson, friends and neighbors of the Dersinghams. Mr. Pearson is retired from business in Singapore.Miss Verever, Mrs. Dersingham’s mother’s cousin, a forty-five-year-old, acid-tongued professional virgin. After the war Priestley continued his writing, and his work invariably provoked thought, and his views were always expressed in his blunt Yorkshire style. The firm’s owner, Howard Dersingham, unfortunately, is oblivious to looming disaster. When he agrees to Golspie’s request for his commission to be paid before the customers have settled their bills, it is a recipe for the final disaster…yet he then wonders why the firm’s woes are suddenly compounded. “Golspie’s cleared out, he’s done us in,” he cries. “Oh, the rotten swine! God, I was a fool to trust that chap a yard. It’s damnably unfair, Smeeth. We’ve simply been swindled.” He always had his champions (always including himself) and I am pleased to join them. I have a feeling that he squared the circle; that his writing is genuinely great while refusing to pander to the supposed refinements of great literature.