In Edinburgh to conduct at the annual music festival, peppery old (70) Sir Thomas Beecham struck a sonorous chord: "It is an honor and a privilege for the festival for me to come." But when someone mentioned the Festival of Britain, planned for 1951 as a mammoth cultural fair, he sounded a brassy note: "A monumental piece of imbecility and iniquity...We are going to celebrate 50 years of the most abominable misgovernment by having an exhibition and festival at the expense of U.S. money...We are brokeĀunderline that three times. The country has gone...
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