ABSTRACT
105The Festival of Britain was held in 1951, exactly a century after the Great Exhibition, for which the magnificent Crystal Palace was built. The 1951 Festival, while not nearly so revolutionary as its predecessor, was described as a ‘tonic to the nation’ following the battering Britain had received during the Second World War. These were times of liberal optimism, when the post-war Labour government dreamed of creating a ‘Socialist Commonwealth of Britain’ – a dream that would sadly remain unfulfilled due to the crippling debts that the country faced in the aftermath of war.
