Congrats 🙌

Having seen the outcome of your labours last night at Phoenix Arts Club fundraiser glad to see it worked out ok in the end. Great turn #gottahaveagimmick

Music Hall & Variety Day 2026 is on its way — and this year's theme is #Seaside.
Saturday 16th May. Save the date.
#MusicHallVarietyDay #MHVD2026 #BritishMusicHallSociety

What a wonderful afternoon! 🎭 Our members were treated to a fascinating and informative tour of the magnificent Hackney Empire, a resplendent Frank Matcham palace and one of London's finest surviving variety theatres. Huge thanks to the team at @hackneyempire.bsky.social for welcoming us so warmly

Looking forward to #HardStreets event tomorrow (Thurs 9 April) @ fab Cinema Museum (the old Lambeth workhouse). Doors open 6pm, Q&A + 1959 home movie of Chaplin visiting his childhood haunts in Lambeth & Southwark @ 7pm tix £5 tube 🐘 & 🏰 @profilebooks.bsky.social
cinemamuseum.org.uk/scheduled/bo...

Fascinating 😳

Faded digitisation of an 1895 newspaper advert from the British Newspaper Archive. It says: TALKING PARROT, a Beautiful Grey, Would suit a Public House. Anyone being particular about the language don't apply, as some of the sentences could not be termed parliamentary. Cross, Liverpool.

An advert from The Era, published March 1895.

'TALKING PARROT, a Beautiful Grey. Would suit a Public House. Anyone being particular about the language don't apply, as some of the sentences could not be termed parliamentary.'

Hope they went to a fitting establishment!

🤬🦜😆

Song sheet cover from the British Music Hall Society archive. Fancy lithographic lettering of the song title and composers. Published by Reynolds & Co.

#SongSheetSaturday 🎶
Wot Cher! Knock'd 'em in the Old Kent Road (1891)
Born #OTD in 1861, Albert Chevalier was the self-styled "coster laureate" of #music hall and this gloriously daft cockney singalong about a man who inherits a donkey and cart is one of his most enduring hits

#MusicHallMonday 📢 The Call for Papers for the 3rd BMHS Conference is now LIVE! buff.ly/zmJr3VX
"Catering for People's Desires and Needs in the Music Hall" 🍺 🍷 🎟️ 🫦
We hope you can join us at The Cinema Museum in November.

A blue door with a man and a woman painted on it

A blue door with four portraits in the panels

I was very taken by these paintings on the doorway of the derelict Regent in Deal - former music pavilion, cinema, wrestling venue and bingo hall, now shuttered.

Nice Ian Dury link 😃

Setting up for our ‘archive on show’ afternoon… #womenshistorymonth #musichall

A small brown suitcase with contents (jewellery, make up brushes, mirrors, purse) on display at Blackpool's Showtown Museum, with mannequin head alongside with black velvet hat with diamanté, all possessions of music hall performer, Florrie Forde. Resting on yellow plinth.

Image of Florrie Forde with big hat with very big decorative feather. From BMHS Archive.

🎶 #MusicHallMonday
From the BMHS Archive - now on display at Showtown in Blackpool - this small brown case once belonged to music hall legend Florrie Forde.
Born Flora Flannagan in Melbourne, she arrived in London in 1897 & quickly became a star, famed as “The World’s Greatest Chorus Singer.”

Red background with black and white figure of a variety of women circus performers, for example on an aerial rope and horse. Text reads: Women in Circus Symposium, Call for papers, Monday 23 March, University of Sheffield

Call for papers now OPEN! 📣

Join The National Fairground and Circus Archive in a one-day symposium to celebrate the role of women in circus through history 🎪

Want to present your research at @sheffielduni.bsky.social? Keep reading 👇

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It's Monday, it's Music Hall! 🎭 #MusicHallMonday
The legendary boots of Little Tich — whose Big-Boot Dance influenced everyone from Chaplin to Tati — are on loan from our #archive to Blackpool's Showtown Museum. Go and see them!

To mark Women's History Month, we're opening our doors for a hands-on afternoon with our archive. Explore original posters, programmes, costumes, scrapbooks & more — with a special focus on women in music hall & variety.
📅 Thursday 12th March | 🕐 2–4pm | 📍 Lambeth Archives

Thank you for a very interesting talk/conversation this evening. I look forward to reading the book .

Last November, I gave a talk at The London Archives' Symposium on Music Hall, covering a tragic 'unrideable mule' incident that began on-stage at the Clapham Grand in 1906, now adapted as a blog post here 👇️
musichallalice.wordpress.com/2026/02/18/a...

The 2026 Women's Prize for Non-Fiction longlist YouTube video by Women's Prize

It’s time to reveal the 2026 #WomensPrize for Non-Fiction longlist! A hopeful list, these are 16 books that reflect the belief that every woman’s voice has the power to elicit and inspire change: youtu.be/ScHiI1saMCY

J.W. Cragg with two of his sons, each wearing an opera hat (collapsible top hat) and evening tail suit - the starting costume for their acrobatic act.

Thrilled to have found a new photo of the Marvellous Craggs, from 1885 when the family was touring America with Haverly’s Minstrels.

'Travel Underground to the Theatres', Drury Lane (commission for Underground Electric Railway Company Ltd, 1930) by Herbert Ashwin Budd

(Private collection)

Things spotted on my way to the Co-op today…WHAT is the story here?!

Check out our next 'Archives on Show' event at Lambeth Archives. To coincide with Women's History Month there will be an emphasis on women in #musichall & #variety. Book here:

Nicholas Till: First-Class Evening Entertainments: Spectacle and Social Control in a mid-Victorian Music Hall Programme Join us for an evening lecture delivered by Nicholas Till on Hoxton Hall's programme of entertainment

Looks interesting...
courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/nic...

Henry Lamb's portrait (1909) is of Edie McNeill and perfectly epitomises the period in which it was painted: Edie is dressed as if auditioning for Eliza Doolittle, or waiting in the wings of an Edwardian music-hall ready to sing
'Boiled Beef and Carrots.'

'Leaving His Majesty's Theatre' (c.1907) by Yoshio Markino

Collage of photographs and postcards of Daisy Dormer, music hall performer dating approx 1900-1925.

My great great aunt, Daisy Dormer, #musichall performer was born #otd 16 January 1883 in Portsmouth. Here's a few images of her from my collection.

'The Cinema', Warren Street (1920) by William Patrick Roberts

(Tate Britain)

Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller

May Belfort from Portraits of Actors and Actresses: Thirteen Lithographs (Portraits d'Acteurs & Actrices: Treize Lithographies)

Hard Streets | A Talk by Jacqueline Riding - Southwark Cathedral Join acclaimed historian Jacqueline Riding in conversation with Lucy Worsley.

Join me & fab @lucyworsley.bsky.social 19 Feb for Q&A in the ❤️ of Charlie Chaplin’s London. We’ll explore these Victorian #HardStreets in the company of political reformer William Cuffay, Polly Carr Queen of the 40 Thieves & Charlie himself. Tix here! cathedral.southwark.anglican.org/whats-on/har...