We are very pleased to announce the talented Miss Heather Marie McHale will be performing on Monday 2nd May at the Liverpool Blitz 70 event! Heather Marie is a fantastic vocalist and will be performing well-loved 1940s favourites at 12:30pm and 4:30pm on the Church Street stage.
Growing up in St Helens, Heather first discovered a love of singing in high school and went on to progress this through GCSE and A Level Theatre Studies and singing lessons with Joanne Edwards. Heather decided to go professional in September 2009 and has performed throughout the UK for private functions and national charities such as the RAF and Help for Heroes.
Born and raised in the northwest of England, George Formby was a well loved singer-songwriter and comedian. Remembered fondly for playing the banjo ukulele or banjolele and as a singer of light, comical songs, he became a popular star of stage and screen. Between 1934 and 1945 Formby was widely recognised as the top comedian in British cinema.
Formby endeared himself to his audiences with his cheeky Lancashire humour and folksy northern persona. In film and on stage, he generally adopted the character of an honest, good-hearted but accident-prone innocent using the phrases: “It’s turned out nice again!” as an opening line; “Ooh, mother!” when escaping from trouble; and a timid “Never touched me!” after losing a fistfight.
Formby appeared in the 1937 Royal Variety Performance and entertained troops with Entertainments National Service Association in Europe and North Africa during World War II. He received an OBE in 1946. His most popular film, still regarded as probably his best, is the espionage comedy ‘Let George Do It‘, in which he is a member of a concert party, takes the wrong ship by mistake during a blackout, and finds himself in Norway (mistaking Bergen for Blackpool) as a secret agent. In one dream sequence he punches Hitler on the nose and addresses him as a “windbag“.
We are delighted that local performer, Derek Herbert, will be sharing his “George Formby Story” each day at the Liverpool Blitz 70! event on the Church Street stage.
Derek’s entertaining verbal and musical tribute act to George Formby includes a light-hearted talk on his life, self-accompanied by both ukulele and ukulele-banjo, during which Derek encourages audience participation. An accomplished singer and musician, Derek studied drama and music at the renowned Crane Studios in Liverpool and has a wealth of musical theatre experience.
As part of the 70th Anniversary of the May Blitz celebrations, Punch and Judy will be returning to the city to once again entertain the children (young and old) of Liverpool!
In 1860 Richard Codman, woodcarver, puppet showman and musician, arrived in Liverpool and was awarded a prime site on an open cobbled square known as the “Quadrant” between the market and Lime Street Station. Professor Codman, as he was known, began entertaining the people of Liverpool on a regular basis with his ‘Punch and Judy’ puppet shows.
The shows became very popular and Professor Codman’s Punch and Judy quickly won the hearts of the people of Liverpool!
Richard continued his puppet shows until his death 47 years later when his eldest son, Richard Junior, continued in his father’s footsteps and kept the tradition going in Liverpool. His second son Herbert took the show to North Wales where it enjoyed great success at the seaside!
Back in Liverpool, Richard was equally as successful as his father. In 1922 the Sandon Studios Society, an artistic body in Liverpool, arranged for a subscription committee headed by Mr A Parry, then Chief Librarian, to commission the famous Liverpudlian sulptor H Tyson-Smith to carve a beautiful Punch and Judy booth with figures taken from ‘Punch‘ magazine as a gesture of appreciation.
Sadly, the famous Quadrant site no longer exists. However, through public demand, the show was temporarily housed in St. George’s Hall and occasionally appeared in Williamson Square.
After Richard Junior’s death in 1951, the Liverpool show was continued by his son Richard (third) and on his death in 1985, by his son Ronald Richard. Ronald’s son Robert will succeed his father and continue the tradition as the sixth generation of the Codman dynasty.
To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Blitz, Professor Codman will be performing in Liverpool City Centre once again!
We are very pleased to introduce “Blitz and Peaces” who will be on the streets of Liverpool City Centre entertaining and educating visitors to our great city, leaving them feeling they have had a real opportunity to enjoy the sights and sounds of the home front!
The Blitz and Peaces team are incredibly enthusiastic about what they do and have been busy researching the historic details of Liverpool’s experience during the May Blitz in 1941 in preparation for our anniversary event. Dressed in various full WWII uniforms, they will no doubt capture the imagination of the young and trigger the memories of the old with their songs and stories about life in Britain on the Home Front.
When asked why they do what they do they said, “We all love the sense of triumphant human spirit over almost insurmountable odds to ‘keep the home fires burning’ and we all marvel at the ‘save the string’ and ‘make do and mend’ re-cycling drives that were in operation during the war years. This of course has subsequently come back into sharp focus as people realise the global importance of controlling our own waste and re-cycling used materials.
We love the ‘live for the moment, as who knows what tomorrow will bring’ ethic of people who volunteered to go in to combat in the armed services, and those thrust into danger on the home front from the bombing raids. Men and women putting life and limb at risk by joining fire services, rescue parties and medical teams, in order to pull together as a community and help their friends and neighbours during this time of peril.“
To mark the 70th Anniversary of the May Blitz, the Adelphi Hotel – once considered to be one of the finest hotels in the world – is holding two Blitz-themed Sunday Lunch on the 1st and 2nd of May at 12:30pm. The hotel is generously donating 10% of all ticket sales to our veterans’ charities.
Tickets are on sale now! Call 0151 709 7200 to make your booking.
The world famous Adelphi Hotel was for many years the most popular hotel in Liverpool; recognised amongst the most luxurious in Europe.
The Adelphi plays an integral role in the city’s history; it was Liverpool’s arrival and departure point for passengers traveling on the great liners across the Atlantic to America and beyond. The Sefton Suite is in fact a replica of the first class smoking lounge on the ill fated “Titanic“. If walls could speak, no doubt those in the Adelphi Hotel would have many fascinating tales to tell!
Fortunately the Blitz left the Adelphi Hotel fairly well intact and like most places the Adelphi remained open for business throughout the Blitz, showing a determined spirit of endurance. Sadly many buildings surrounding this grand hotel, such as Lewis’s department store just over the road, were badly damaged by the bombing…
Because of it’s pivotal position at the junction of Scotland road and Stanley road, the Rotunda was an important local landmark since it’s construction in 1860. Sadly the building was completely destroyed during the Blitz. But such was it’s presence that even after the war, those who remembered it would still refer to ‘the Rotunda‘ when giving directions to passers-by in Bootle!
The site at the junction of Scotland road and Stanley road was built in 1860 and was originally a public house. In 1866 the proprietor introduced plans for the re-siting of the entertainment on a more extensive upper floor where a larger stage was constructed at the Scotland Road end of the building. The largely musical fare was then supplemented by sketches.
After further reconstruction with the addition of a gallery, the establishment was opened as the Rotunda Theatre on 23rd November 1869 with a Grand Concert! Two days later on 25th November, a performance by specially engaged first class artists commenced at precisely 7.00pm. On that evening it was reported the exterior of the building was brilliantly illuminated by fireworks, and there was also a grand magnesium balloon ascent prior to the opening.
The Rotunda was destroyed by fire in 1877, but was happily rebuilt in a grander style with principal elevations to Stanley Road and Scotland Road connected by a curved corner, surmounted by a dome at the end nearest Scotland Road. The grand reopening of the new Rotunda Theatre took place on Friday 20th December 1878 and over the next sixty years the various directors of this theatre continued to advance the reputation of the Rotunda as one of the leading centres of melodrama in the provinces.
The Rotunda was destroyed by german bombing on 21st September 1940, but the shell remained standing until 4th May 1941, when fire, bomb blasts and shock waves during the May Blitz caused the walls to finally collapse. This was quite common, frequent stories were reported of people being injured by falling debris whilst returning to their homes following the ‘all clear’.
In the warm, late afternoon sunshine of May 1st 1941, the Heinkel bombers of Hitler’s mighty Luftwaffe took to the skies once more. This time their target was Liverpool. Just hours later at 10:15pm the first bomb fell on Wallasey and the air raid sirens began to wail.
This wasn’t the first time Liverpool had been targeted during the Blitz, but nobody could have foreseen this would be the start of seven days intensive bombing designed to destroy Liverpool’s docks and crush the spirit of her people. What would forever be remembered as the “May Blitz” was about to begin.
By the end of this long week, almost 700 aircraft had dropped nearly 900 tonnes of high explosives and well over 100,000 incendiaries. 1,453 people had been killed in Liverpool, 257 in Bootle, 28 in Birkenhead, 3 in Wallasey and thousands more had been seriously injured. 4,400 houses were destroyed in Liverpool with 16,400 seriously damaged and 45,500 slightly damaged. Approximately 51,000 people had been made homeless in Liverpool and another 25,000 in Bootle where it was estimated only 15% of the local housing stock remained.
Out of all this terror and destruction, the spirit of the blitz emerged. It has gone down in history as a spirit of straightforward stoic courage and endurance: a refusal by the people of Britain to collapse into the hysteria or madness expected by the enemy.
This year marks the 70th anniversary of that terrible week, and so presents an opportunity for us to remember those who lost their lives and also celebrate the enduring morale which kept the British people going during such testing times. All funds raised during the weekend will be shared between two registered veterans’ charities; the Royal British Legion and D-Day Revisited.
Visit us again for frequent updates about the schedule of events which are designed to be fun for all the family. In exactly 100 days we will launch the Liverpool Blitz 70 event which we hope will help to spread awareness about what happened and give the people of Merseyside a jolly good weekend of nostalgic blitz-themed entertainment!
Liverpool Blitz 70! was a whole city event which took place from Saturday 30th April to Monday 2nd May to mark the 70th anniversary of the May Blitz of 1941.
Whilst giving proper respect to those who lost their lives during the bomb raids of the Second World War, the event was intended to be a celebration of the spirit of the Blitz and indeed, the spirit of Liverpool!
About