[Royal Festival Hall.] Printed brochure: ‘London County Council / Laying of the Foundation Stone of the Concert Hall, Ceremony to be performed by The Right Hon. C. R. Atlee, C.H., M.P., Prime Minister’. [With press release and manuscript notes.]

The present item is rare, and its interest is heightened by the fact that it is accompanied by a press release and has the covers covered in what are clearly notes on how to film the ceremony by a press cameraman. Only three copies on COPAC: at the British Library, Sheffield Hallam and the Bishopsgate Institute. An 8vo stitched pamphlet of twenty unpaginated pages in printed card wraps. Internally very good. With full page artist’s impressions of the front elevation and ‘the concert hall in its setting’; a page with two photographs of ‘The Working Model’; and six pages of ‘Plans at various levels’. The text consists of a five-page report on the details surrounding the building of ‘The Concert Hall’ by Howard Roberts, Clerk of the Council, and a full-page ‘Appreciation’ by Felix Aprahamian. Stapled into the front cover is a duplicated press release (‘For the information of the Press’; 1p, landscape 8vo) by Roberts, regarding ‘The Concert Hall Foundation Stone Ceremony’, dated 10 October 1949. Both covers have a vertical fold down the middle. On the front, in black ink, is a manuscript itinerary (not given elsewhere): ‘10.00 MEMBERS TERRACE / CASKET FILLING / 10.30 CONFERENCE ROOM / MODELS + IMPRESSIONS / 2.20 P. M. speech’. Above this on the front cover, and filling the whole of the back cover, is a twenty-two item numbered sequence of notes regarding the ceremony, clearly made by a press cameraman. One entry reads: ‘interior of middle concert hall (no light)’ and others ‘exterior aerial view concert hall / low angle / ditto different angle’. First entry reads ‘Articles to go into cascet [sic]’, another ‘Mallett [sic] & Trowl [sic]’.