1936 On the Continent

a music-hall for refinement? The humour, though low, possibly, is not generally nearly as suggestive as in many a so-called polite play. Most of them run two shows nightly and in them you’ll find, as a rule, good variety shows abounding in knockabout humour rather than wit. After the Palladium comes the Holborn Empire; others are the Victoria Palace and, if you want to share the pleasures of the people, try the Old Collins at Islington, which continues to purvey the fare of thirty years ago, and in the traditional way.
    Names of producers are often a guide to the contents of a show. Cochran, for instance, is a name to follow and, whether it’s a play or a revue, if his name is on it it is almost certain to be worth seeing. Chariot’s shows, light revues as a rule, are consistent in quality and if light entertainment is your choice there is the little Windmill Theatre with a continuous show and frequent changes of programmes.
    Let’s take music next. There’s always plenty of it in London, and sooner or later all the world’s great artists perform in one or another of our concert halls. The Albert Hall is usually reserved (only because of its size,acoustically it’s frightful) for celebrity concerts. The Queen’s Hall in Langham Place is the most likely to have the best orchestral concerts with the best solo artists. Here the great B.B.C. orchestra can often be heard and seen in the flesh, and here too the London Symphony and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestras give their concerts under such conductors as Sir Thomas Beecham, greatest of our English conductors, Dr. Malcolm Sargent, Dr. Adrian Boult, Mr. Albert Coates, Sir Hamilton Harty and others.
Opera and Ballet
    Recitals by solo artists, both unknown and famous, are to be found in the smaller halls, such as the Aeolian, the Wigmore, the Grotrian.
    During the season, that is to say between May and July inclusive, there is usually six weeks’ season or two months of opera at Covent Garden. This is as good as the same thing anywhere else and the repertoire no different. It usually consists of a cycle or two of Wagner’s
Ring
, a little Verdi and Puccini, with occasional Strauss, Mozart and Rossini thrown in. It is often followed by a season of so-called Russian ballet. Covent Garden is well worth a visit. It is a magnificent though rather down-at-heel house, and the opera season brings out Society in all that remains of its pre-war glory, bejewelled and tiara-ed, strictly according to tradition, and those faces which jostle for space in the society weeklies are there to be seen in flesh
en masse
.
Cinemas
    Of cinemas, London has legion with prices from sixpence to twelve and six. They can be roughly divided into four categories: pre-release houses, i.e., those where the newest films make their English debut; news-reel houses with a continuous show of news interest and cartoon features; speciality houses where interest, highbrow or foreign films are to be found, and the great mass of “General Release” houses.
    In the first category the principal ones are the Empire, the Leicester Square, the Carlton, the Regal, the London Pavilion, the Plaza, the Tivoli. In the second the oldest is British Movietone Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue; thereare dozens of others. In the third are the Curzon, the Academy, the Studio One, the Polytechnic, and the Forum. The last category is too numerous to particularise but here again any newspaper is a sure and up-to-date guide.
Skating, Boxing, Wrestling
    What have I left out in London’s after dark amusements? A good deal, I’m afraid. There’s skating, for instance. There are several first-class ice-rinks during the winter, the Westminster Ice Rink, the Empire Pool at Wembley, which becomes a bathing-place in the summer (if any) the Empress Stadium, Earl’s Court, and at some of these and at other places there is Ice Hockey as well.
    Then there are boxing and all-in wrestling at, for instance, the Ring in Blackfriars Road and Lane’s Club off Baker Street. There are dance halls galore, the Astoria in Charing Cross Road, the Paramount Salon de Danse in Tottenham Court Road, and plenty more both in the West End and in the suburbs.
    The Café Royal deserves a special paragraph to itself. In Regent Street, just off Piccadilly Circus, it combines the virtues of a first-class restaurant, with a fine cellar, with a café where one can dine or simply sit and drink. This café part is the most cosmopolitan and bohemian place in