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Lost Empires
One of Priestley's best novels,"Lost Empires" is set in the last years before the Great War, an age that was considered innocent but probably was nothing of the sort. In turn funny, sad, tragic and nostalgic, it is the story of young Richard Herncastle, who travels the old-time music halls during its golden era with his Uncle Nick Ollanton, an illusionist. It is a novel that can be read on many levels, with a delightful parade of characters whose stories tell us much about how life was for a variety performer in those long-forgotten days...indeed, it is essentially an excellent slice of fiction that captures a particular time and place in history --just before the world changed for ever.
320 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
26 people are currently reading
244 people want to read
About the author
J.B. Priestley
470 books288 followersJohn Boynton Priestley was an English writer. He was the son of a schoolmaster, and after schooling he worked for a time in the local wool trade. Following the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, Priestley joined the British Army, and was sent to France - in 1915 taking part in the Battle of Loos. After being wounded in 1917 Priestley returned to England for six months; then, after going back to the Western Front he suffered the consequences of a German gas attack, and, treated at Rouen, he was declared unfit for active service and was transferred to the Entertainers Section of the British Army.
When Priestley left the army he studied at Cambridge University, where he completed a degree in Modern History and Political Science. Subsequently he found work as theatre reviewer with the Daily News, and also contributed to the Spectator, the Challenge and Nineteenth Century. His earliest books included The English Comic Characters (1925), The English Novel (1927), and English Humour (1928). His breakthrough came with the immensely popular novel The Good Companions, published in 1929, and Angel Pavement followed in 1930. He emerged, too, as a successful dramatist with such plays as Dangerous Corner (1932), Time and the Conways (1937), When We Are Married (1938) and An Inspector Calls (1947).
The publication of English Journey in 1934 emphasised Priestley's concern for social problems and the welfare of ordinary people.
During the Second World War Priestley became a popular and influential broadcaster with his famous Postscripts that followed the nine o'clock news BBC Radio on Sunday evenings. Starting on 5th June 1940, Priestley built up such a following that after a few months it was estimated that around 40 per cent of the adult population in Britain was listening to the programme.
Some members of the Conservative Party, including Winston Churchill, expressed concern that Priestley might be expressing left-wing views on the programme, and, to his dismay, Priestley was dropped after his talk on 20th October 1940.
After the war Priestley continued his writing, and his work invariably provoked thought, and his views were always expressed in his blunt Yorkshire style.
His prolific output continued right up to his final years, and to the end he remained the great literary all-rounder. His favourite among his books was for many years the novel Bright Day, though he later said he had come to prefer The Image Men.
It should not be overlooked that Priestley was an outstanding essayist, and many of his short pieces best capture his passions and his great talent and his mastery of the English language. He set a fine example for any would-be author.
When Priestley left the army he studied at Cambridge University, where he completed a degree in Modern History and Political Science. Subsequently he found work as theatre reviewer with the Daily News, and also contributed to the Spectator, the Challenge and Nineteenth Century. His earliest books included The English Comic Characters (1925), The English Novel (1927), and English Humour (1928). His breakthrough came with the immensely popular novel The Good Companions, published in 1929, and Angel Pavement followed in 1930. He emerged, too, as a successful dramatist with such plays as Dangerous Corner (1932), Time and the Conways (1937), When We Are Married (1938) and An Inspector Calls (1947).
The publication of English Journey in 1934 emphasised Priestley's concern for social problems and the welfare of ordinary people.
During the Second World War Priestley became a popular and influential broadcaster with his famous Postscripts that followed the nine o'clock news BBC Radio on Sunday evenings. Starting on 5th June 1940, Priestley built up such a following that after a few months it was estimated that around 40 per cent of the adult population in Britain was listening to the programme.
Some members of the Conservative Party, including Winston Churchill, expressed concern that Priestley might be expressing left-wing views on the programme, and, to his dismay, Priestley was dropped after his talk on 20th October 1940.
After the war Priestley continued his writing, and his work invariably provoked thought, and his views were always expressed in his blunt Yorkshire style.
His prolific output continued right up to his final years, and to the end he remained the great literary all-rounder. His favourite among his books was for many years the novel Bright Day, though he later said he had come to prefer The Image Men.
It should not be overlooked that Priestley was an outstanding essayist, and many of his short pieces best capture his passions and his great talent and his mastery of the English language. He set a fine example for any would-be author.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews
August 19, 2016
After some preliminary gasping and spluttering, when Uncle Nick pretended I wasn’t there still watching him, he moved off, and a minute later he had vanished into the mist and smoke of the late October afternoon. I had three large glasses of champagne inside me; I had just agreed to exchange an office stool and a sensible life in Bruddersford for some unimaginable music-hall hocus-pocus; I was only twenty and had never been away from home...
To locate the 2016 reader right away, the context of Lost Empires is exactly that wherein the blustery Mister Carson, of Downton Abbey, had practiced his talents, as one half of a comic team on the stages of turn-of-the-century England, on the playhouse variety circuit. Before his eventual entry to butler service in a great manor house. Same exact era, same exact shabby, disreputable hearts of gold.
In the United States, it was called vaudeville, or variety; in England, ‘music hall’. In the days before the movies, a live, shaggy dog collection of novelty acts, comedians, sentimental song and a magic act. Possibly an interval with a dancing bear, or acrobats, or jugglers. A populist evening out, for a few pennies a seat, designed to divert and entertain, no message or agenda involved. In Britain (as in the US) there were chains of theatrical venues that sponsored and exhibited these practitioners, called perhaps the World, the Paramount, the Ritz or the Empire. It was, for that era, more or less what we now call “cable television”.
As with other popular entertainments, the more interesting story happens backstage, underneath the family-friendly veneer of matinee-ready clowns and tap-dancers. But author Priestley finds his subject as much in the color and atmosphere of Edwardian England as he does in the Music Hall milieu or any of the individual participants. And what makes it all so interesting is just that—a predictable behind-the-footlights drama is transformed by virtue of its also being a time machine, one that bears us to a distant world that even our grandparents have forgotten. We’re carried back to just before the Great War, when the ‘motorcar’ is a futuristic conveyance, and the footlights run on gas.
Briefly, the outline of the story is the tale of an apprentice Illusionist, taken under the dark wing of his master-magician Uncle Nick. And yes, all the names in the story will have a vaguely allusive ring. Priestley frames the narrative as a present-day [early-sixties] reminiscence gazing back fondly to the lost world of 1913, gently sentimental but still-- avoiding none of the garish and gauche appointments we may expect in the circus world of music hall. The memoir here is a road movie—our narrator and his peculiar band of artificers make their way throughout the length and breadth of the England of the day, plying their wares on the industrial north as well as the seaside mainstays of the theater chain. What goes on backstage may change with the venue, and as the venues blur into one, the little company of players and stagehands become their own family mash-up, unpredictable and well, colorful.
When the unlikely bonds (and absolutely show-bizziest cliché moments) fuse the company into a working group of diverse humanity, the tour and the novel hit their stride; our wing-and-a-prayer career choice finds its groove, as does our reluctant apprentice sorcerer:
... we were all rising with the tide of packed houses and enthusiastic appreciation. Of course we were not like a theatrical company, which comes to an audience as one unit. We were so many entirely separate and independent acts, but because we were touring together, forming the greater part of one continuing bill, we could respond together to a heart-warming week like this. So for the first time, as far as my very limited experience went, dressing-room doors were left open, except when people were actually dressing, and congratulatory visits were exchanged, together with some drink, or there were smiling encounters along the corridors. There was almost a party atmosphere...
Soap opera and internal power politics aside (though there is much of both)—what Lost Empires has as card up its sleeve is that central connection to Illusionism. When the paper moons and painted backdrops are just about wearing thin, something or other allows our protagonists to engage their trick imaginations on the real world, offering what becomes the other major point of interest for the reader. In the course of these extra-curricular proceedings, the predictability of the two-houses-per-night is splintered and refocused. (In any theatrical memoir, it is always this clash of cultures & sensibilities, the outside world barging in through the stage door –that seems to be the catalyst. Truffaut’s Day For Night, and a million other backstage romances, come to mind immediately.)
The fixed points in the music hall constellation were the promenade and pier houses at the seaside. After the grim winter months touring the north, we land at what is the natural home base, the environs of Blackpool:
Anything that could claim a few pennies or trap a sixpence was in full swing. From the rowdy-dowdy South Shore to the more genteel North Shore, the holiday money of the innocents was cascading, down into the shows, eating houses, shops that sold nothing worth having, the wine lodges and pubs, into the outstretched hands of pierrots and buskers, photographers, fake auctioneers, hoarse vendors of peppermint and pineapple blackpool rock and ice cream and candy floss, fortune-tellers, dealers in comic hats, false noses, miniature walking sticks, water pistols, balloons, and the things that rolled out as you blew and made rude noises. And there were mornings when nothing seemed real except the children hurrying with their buckets and spades, and the wind blowing from the sea...
Priestly builds to –surprise—a murder in the theater, amongst the travelling company, to create his final set-piece for the book. If it weren’t such an obvious ‘coda’ and closing segment, it would be much more successful, and I’d argue that it could have been its own little mystery; where Priestley has it right, though, is that you’d never have such terrific exposition and character development, in any short mystery, as is already provided in the first two thirds of Lost Empires.
If this reader were to be completely honest, this is probably a very appealing four star novel; but there is something inexplicably dazzling to the eye and the imagination here, something maybe of an illusion-- that prompts five twinkly, period perfect silver-foil stars.
To locate the 2016 reader right away, the context of Lost Empires is exactly that wherein the blustery Mister Carson, of Downton Abbey, had practiced his talents, as one half of a comic team on the stages of turn-of-the-century England, on the playhouse variety circuit. Before his eventual entry to butler service in a great manor house. Same exact era, same exact shabby, disreputable hearts of gold.
In the United States, it was called vaudeville, or variety; in England, ‘music hall’. In the days before the movies, a live, shaggy dog collection of novelty acts, comedians, sentimental song and a magic act. Possibly an interval with a dancing bear, or acrobats, or jugglers. A populist evening out, for a few pennies a seat, designed to divert and entertain, no message or agenda involved. In Britain (as in the US) there were chains of theatrical venues that sponsored and exhibited these practitioners, called perhaps the World, the Paramount, the Ritz or the Empire. It was, for that era, more or less what we now call “cable television”.
As with other popular entertainments, the more interesting story happens backstage, underneath the family-friendly veneer of matinee-ready clowns and tap-dancers. But author Priestley finds his subject as much in the color and atmosphere of Edwardian England as he does in the Music Hall milieu or any of the individual participants. And what makes it all so interesting is just that—a predictable behind-the-footlights drama is transformed by virtue of its also being a time machine, one that bears us to a distant world that even our grandparents have forgotten. We’re carried back to just before the Great War, when the ‘motorcar’ is a futuristic conveyance, and the footlights run on gas.
Briefly, the outline of the story is the tale of an apprentice Illusionist, taken under the dark wing of his master-magician Uncle Nick. And yes, all the names in the story will have a vaguely allusive ring. Priestley frames the narrative as a present-day [early-sixties] reminiscence gazing back fondly to the lost world of 1913, gently sentimental but still-- avoiding none of the garish and gauche appointments we may expect in the circus world of music hall. The memoir here is a road movie—our narrator and his peculiar band of artificers make their way throughout the length and breadth of the England of the day, plying their wares on the industrial north as well as the seaside mainstays of the theater chain. What goes on backstage may change with the venue, and as the venues blur into one, the little company of players and stagehands become their own family mash-up, unpredictable and well, colorful.
When the unlikely bonds (and absolutely show-bizziest cliché moments) fuse the company into a working group of diverse humanity, the tour and the novel hit their stride; our wing-and-a-prayer career choice finds its groove, as does our reluctant apprentice sorcerer:
... we were all rising with the tide of packed houses and enthusiastic appreciation. Of course we were not like a theatrical company, which comes to an audience as one unit. We were so many entirely separate and independent acts, but because we were touring together, forming the greater part of one continuing bill, we could respond together to a heart-warming week like this. So for the first time, as far as my very limited experience went, dressing-room doors were left open, except when people were actually dressing, and congratulatory visits were exchanged, together with some drink, or there were smiling encounters along the corridors. There was almost a party atmosphere...
Soap opera and internal power politics aside (though there is much of both)—what Lost Empires has as card up its sleeve is that central connection to Illusionism. When the paper moons and painted backdrops are just about wearing thin, something or other allows our protagonists to engage their trick imaginations on the real world, offering what becomes the other major point of interest for the reader. In the course of these extra-curricular proceedings, the predictability of the two-houses-per-night is splintered and refocused. (In any theatrical memoir, it is always this clash of cultures & sensibilities, the outside world barging in through the stage door –that seems to be the catalyst. Truffaut’s Day For Night, and a million other backstage romances, come to mind immediately.)
The fixed points in the music hall constellation were the promenade and pier houses at the seaside. After the grim winter months touring the north, we land at what is the natural home base, the environs of Blackpool:
Anything that could claim a few pennies or trap a sixpence was in full swing. From the rowdy-dowdy South Shore to the more genteel North Shore, the holiday money of the innocents was cascading, down into the shows, eating houses, shops that sold nothing worth having, the wine lodges and pubs, into the outstretched hands of pierrots and buskers, photographers, fake auctioneers, hoarse vendors of peppermint and pineapple blackpool rock and ice cream and candy floss, fortune-tellers, dealers in comic hats, false noses, miniature walking sticks, water pistols, balloons, and the things that rolled out as you blew and made rude noises. And there were mornings when nothing seemed real except the children hurrying with their buckets and spades, and the wind blowing from the sea...
Priestly builds to –surprise—a murder in the theater, amongst the travelling company, to create his final set-piece for the book. If it weren’t such an obvious ‘coda’ and closing segment, it would be much more successful, and I’d argue that it could have been its own little mystery; where Priestley has it right, though, is that you’d never have such terrific exposition and character development, in any short mystery, as is already provided in the first two thirds of Lost Empires.
If this reader were to be completely honest, this is probably a very appealing four star novel; but there is something inexplicably dazzling to the eye and the imagination here, something maybe of an illusion-- that prompts five twinkly, period perfect silver-foil stars.
January 14, 2025
I love this 1965 J. B. Priestley novel so much I've read it four times. A young man's peep into a smoke-swirling, footlit world as he verges on adulthood, this is classy, intriguing and sad to put down when finished.
In the last months of peace before World War I, ambitious young painter-cum-clerk Richard Herncastle's mother's dies. Not yet of age, he is taken under the wing of his maternal uncle Nick Ollanton, known publicly as 'Ganga Dun, the greatest conjurer on the English stage'.
Leaving his dull office job to join Uncle Nick's act, Richard meets his team and the other touring 'artistes' on the bill, a boozy, nomadic troupe comprised of dancers, comedians, jugglers and so on. They tour Britain performing on the legendary soon-to-vanish Empire variety theatre circuit.
Good looking young Herncastle sees all of life from backstage in music hall variety, just as his uncle has promised. He learns the ropes of stagecraft, falls in love with a depraved beauty, sees a long-lost Britain in a way future generations will only hear about and even becomes privy to an intriguing murder investigation. Richard comes of age in 1914, just as the greatest disappearing act of all is looming: society as it would never again be known.
This fictional old man's fond retelling of his remarkable youth never fails to satisfy, no matter how many times I return to it, if only to flick through and browse my favourite episodes. The haunting smell of greasepaint emanates from the pages of an evocative tale about a special time and profession.
The multi award nominated 1986 miniseries featured Sir Laurence Olivier's penultimate screen performance as brilliant comedian-in-decay Harry Burrard, with an early romantic lead casting of chirpy, fresh faced Colin Firth alongside Pamela Stephenson.
Proud Yorkshire man Priestley famously snubbed the offer of becoming a lord the year Lost Empires was published. He gladly accepted his hometown, the city of Bradford, granting him Freedom of the City in 1973. He was also honoured by the universities of Bradford and Birmingham. Priestley eventually became a member of the Order of Merit in 1977 and served as a British delegate to UNESCO conferences.
I highly recommend this rare literary jewel, especially for lovers of theatre, history, nostalgia, vintage whodunnits or just die-hard J. B. Priestley fans.
In the last months of peace before World War I, ambitious young painter-cum-clerk Richard Herncastle's mother's dies. Not yet of age, he is taken under the wing of his maternal uncle Nick Ollanton, known publicly as 'Ganga Dun, the greatest conjurer on the English stage'.
Leaving his dull office job to join Uncle Nick's act, Richard meets his team and the other touring 'artistes' on the bill, a boozy, nomadic troupe comprised of dancers, comedians, jugglers and so on. They tour Britain performing on the legendary soon-to-vanish Empire variety theatre circuit.
Good looking young Herncastle sees all of life from backstage in music hall variety, just as his uncle has promised. He learns the ropes of stagecraft, falls in love with a depraved beauty, sees a long-lost Britain in a way future generations will only hear about and even becomes privy to an intriguing murder investigation. Richard comes of age in 1914, just as the greatest disappearing act of all is looming: society as it would never again be known.
This fictional old man's fond retelling of his remarkable youth never fails to satisfy, no matter how many times I return to it, if only to flick through and browse my favourite episodes. The haunting smell of greasepaint emanates from the pages of an evocative tale about a special time and profession.
The multi award nominated 1986 miniseries featured Sir Laurence Olivier's penultimate screen performance as brilliant comedian-in-decay Harry Burrard, with an early romantic lead casting of chirpy, fresh faced Colin Firth alongside Pamela Stephenson.
Proud Yorkshire man Priestley famously snubbed the offer of becoming a lord the year Lost Empires was published. He gladly accepted his hometown, the city of Bradford, granting him Freedom of the City in 1973. He was also honoured by the universities of Bradford and Birmingham. Priestley eventually became a member of the Order of Merit in 1977 and served as a British delegate to UNESCO conferences.
I highly recommend this rare literary jewel, especially for lovers of theatre, history, nostalgia, vintage whodunnits or just die-hard J. B. Priestley fans.
did-not-finish
April 10, 2015Ok, I gave this 124 pages and I'm just not enjoying it. So many people love this so don't let me turn you off trying it. I just wasn't feeling a connection to either the characters (who are not very likeable) or the overall feel of the story, which is rather unhappy and coarse.
Also, in case you're wondering, this is more a "slice of life" story than plot driven.
I still have a few other J.B Priestley's to try so let's hope that when I get to them they hit the spot.
CONTENT:
PROFANITY: liberal use of B,H,A,D, as well as coarse words like piss, tits, etc
SEX: Some sleeping around and general immorality (non explicit)
MY RATING: PG-PG13
Also, in case you're wondering, this is more a "slice of life" story than plot driven.
I still have a few other J.B Priestley's to try so let's hope that when I get to them they hit the spot.
CONTENT:
PROFANITY: liberal use of B,H,A,D, as well as coarse words like piss, tits, etc
SEX: Some sleeping around and general immorality (non explicit)
MY RATING: PG-PG13
August 17, 2018
From BBc radio 4 Extra:
JB Priestley - Lost Empires
Episode 1 of 3
Overtures and Beginners
1913: Richard Herncastle leaves his dead-end job to join his Uncle Nick's act in the vulgar world of music halls to experience the glamour, jealousies and romances backstage...
First Night
Episode 2 of 3
It's the year before the Great War, and Richard Herncastle 's music-hall apprenticeship continues.
Richard gets closer to Nancy, but Harry Burrard's fears deepen...
Final Curtain
Episode 3 of 3
The glamour of the music halls begins to fade as Richard Herncastle embarks on a dangerous affair - and tragedy strikes the company.
Meanwhile, war is on the horizon...
Published in 1965, JB Priestley's classic dramatised in three-parts by Bert Coules.
Stars Tom Baker as Nick Ollanton, Freddie 'Parrot Face' Davies as Harry Burrard, Bryan Pringle as Old Richard, Richard Hollick as Young Richard, Steven Frost as Tommy Beamish, Brigit Forsyth as Julie Blane, Deborah McAndrew as Cissie Mapes, Kathryn Hunt as Nancy, Russell Dixon as Jenning, John Lloyd Fillingham as Johnson and Mike Edmunds as Barney.
Music: Chris Monks
Producer: Kate Rowland
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1994.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007...
JB Priestley - Lost Empires
Episode 1 of 3
Overtures and Beginners
1913: Richard Herncastle leaves his dead-end job to join his Uncle Nick's act in the vulgar world of music halls to experience the glamour, jealousies and romances backstage...
First Night
Episode 2 of 3
It's the year before the Great War, and Richard Herncastle 's music-hall apprenticeship continues.
Richard gets closer to Nancy, but Harry Burrard's fears deepen...
Final Curtain
Episode 3 of 3
The glamour of the music halls begins to fade as Richard Herncastle embarks on a dangerous affair - and tragedy strikes the company.
Meanwhile, war is on the horizon...
Published in 1965, JB Priestley's classic dramatised in three-parts by Bert Coules.
Stars Tom Baker as Nick Ollanton, Freddie 'Parrot Face' Davies as Harry Burrard, Bryan Pringle as Old Richard, Richard Hollick as Young Richard, Steven Frost as Tommy Beamish, Brigit Forsyth as Julie Blane, Deborah McAndrew as Cissie Mapes, Kathryn Hunt as Nancy, Russell Dixon as Jenning, John Lloyd Fillingham as Johnson and Mike Edmunds as Barney.
Music: Chris Monks
Producer: Kate Rowland
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1994.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007...
July 16, 2012
"Lost Empires" takes us back into the world of the music hall in England in the early part of this century. Mr. Priestley's gift is characterization and here he takes us on a merry dance around the traps with as fell a cast as ever graced the none-too-genteel provincial stage. It is a book with laughter for itself and for its comic characters and, as always with J. B. Priestley, it has its moments of social satire in which we can all, perhaps, feel we might be at home. Like the longer, sturdier tale, "Good Companions," "Lost Empires" will leave you on a high, having completed a very satisfactory tour of a world long vanished, but whose echoes are still recognizable today. Language and craft, satire and straight-out good fun all abound here. Happily, Mr. Priestley does not leave us dangling for want of more; numerous other works of his are still in print today, which I suppose is the proof of this particular pudding. Not to be overlooked!
July 28, 2010
Brilliant novel, so touching, so endearing. I read it again from time to time, and it never fails to cheer me up
March 24, 2019
J.B Priestley was a wonderful writer and I enjoyed reading this novel once again. The tale is set in 1913/1914 up to the commencement of World War 1. The description of variety artists travelling from town to town each week to play at the various Empires is brilliant. The Monday band call, the train journeys to different places and the theatrical lodgings (both good and bad) paint an accurate picture of life on the variety stage. Although the setting is over a hundred years ago it shows that things were not very different in those days than they are at present. The only difference is that there are not nearly as many theatres now as they were then and the artists in 1913 presented a wide spectrum of different types of performers. By the mid-fifties of the twentieth century it seems that pop idols were the mainstay of "variety".
My next re-read will be "Let the People Sing".
My next re-read will be "Let the People Sing".
March 27, 2012
A novel written as a memoir, this is narrated by Richard Herncastle, the famous English painter. Left poor and on his own at twenty, Richard is surprised to be rescued by the black sheep of the family, his Uncle Nick, a magician on the traveling music hall circuit of 1913. Becoming part of Nick's act, learning about thinking on one's feet and living with the people who made their living moving from stage to stage gives Richard experiences he never would have had in his tiny Northern town.
On the surface, this probably sounds like a book of sweet nostalgia for the days of the Edwardian music halls. The world of acrobats, dog acts and audiences adoring grown women dressed as little girls are remembered, but not with fondness. Richard's dealings with his prickly Uncle Nick, his attractions to women and his growing confidence make up the real plot, but we also get an affair with an older woman, violence and infidelities, a murder and Uncle Nick's treatment of his girlfriend Cissie is the opposite of romantic. Highly recommended.
On the surface, this probably sounds like a book of sweet nostalgia for the days of the Edwardian music halls. The world of acrobats, dog acts and audiences adoring grown women dressed as little girls are remembered, but not with fondness. Richard's dealings with his prickly Uncle Nick, his attractions to women and his growing confidence make up the real plot, but we also get an affair with an older woman, violence and infidelities, a murder and Uncle Nick's treatment of his girlfriend Cissie is the opposite of romantic. Highly recommended.
July 15, 2013
Lost Empires by J B Priestley purports to be an autobiography of Richard, usually Dick Herncastle, an artist, a painter of watercolours. In his foreword to the book, Priestley tells us that what follows, barring an epilogue seen from the perspective of decades in the future, is the text that Richard Herncastle wrote for himself, his incomplete attempt at autobiography. But this is also only a sketch of a life, since it covers only a short period of the artist’s early adult life, a period in which, at the age of twenty in 1913, he left home to work as an assistant to a music hall illusionist. Priestley initially claims that his only contribution has been the ordering of the material, and the adjustment of the occasional word.
The bones of Herncastle’s story assemble into an enthralling beast. At the start he enters a world that feels very much rooted in the nineteenth century. Public entertainment is available largely via live, on-stage performers in the music hall, with most towns of any size having their own theatres. And this is a world at peace. By the book’s end, however, the First World War has begun and Richard Herncastle’s illusionist boss, Nick Ollanton, is already predicting that it will last for years. By the start of the next decade, of course, live theatres were very much in decline, as cinema audiences grew at pace. Thus, at the book’s end, there arises a tremendous sense of impending and inevitable change. Not only young Richard’s life is about to be changed into some new, hardly recognisable form, but the world itself is about to be utterly transformed. Interestingly, from this starting point, we note that Richard himself was born at the end of the nineteenth century, so his character is the very embodiment of that change.
Lost Empires is in effect a coming of age novel, a story of personal transition. When Richard leaves home to join his uncle on tour in theatre land, we have the distinct impression that he has thus far seen very little of life. We learn little of his childhood and adolescence, and even less of his adult life thus far. Being just twenty, of course, he would not in that age have been regarded as an adult, since that label would not have applied for a further year. And it is the months he spends on tour with his uncle’s conjuring act that form the only focus of the book.
The character himself has firmly recognised, albeit some decades hence, just how important this period of his life proved to be. In those months he left behind family life, lived independently, discovered sex and found a wife. His companions were heavy drinking performers, including dwarves and women who wore costumes that showed their bodies, something that could only happen on the stage. He met Americans and Italians, and spent most of his own time on stage impersonating an Indian. His uncle instinctively knew what would work in his act and directed with an iron grip. What might work in life off the stage, however, young Richard had yet to discover.
But there is another layer of comment embedded in this book, and it’s exactly the type of comment on would expect from Priestley writing in the 1960s and thus commenting and offering perspectives on contemporary Britain. The 1960s was the decade, we were told, when the British discovered sex. The view has become mainstream to the extent that great writers can without question present pre-1960s Britain as an era when sex was a difficult subject not to be mentioned. The 1960s was also an age of pop stars, free living, free love and almost free booze, touring bands on the road and adoring audiences, themselves drunk on celebrity. And so in Lost Empires Priestley presents the world of pre-First World War music hall, with its travelling stars, its free-flowing champagne, its astronomical earnings, its celebrities and its own free-flowing sex.
It is the character of Julie Blane who provides much of the action for Richard and for the book as a whole. Julie is an older woman, still beautiful, but scarred by life after her partner walked out. She drinks a lot, and craves sex, at least according to Richard’s acquaintances among the cast. They advise him to beware. He duly ignores them.
In the book’s epilogue, it is Richard’s wife, herself one of the travelling players of yesteryear, who suggests that her husband’s description of his physical relationship with Julie in his memoirs might raise eyebrows but, crucially for Priestley, she does this from the 1960s, at a time when thinking on such issues was apparently already liberated from the shackles of the past. In the book, it is Richard and Julie who are utterly unshackled in 1913. Nay, the author is saying to contemporary assumptions in his no nonsense, Yorkshire tones.
Lost Empires is a world of soon to be closed theatres that happen to be called Empires. Every town had one, or something like it. But, by the time the book was written by its imaginary autobiographer, Britain had also lost another Empire that it had possessed in 1913. By implication, Priestley also suggests that the nation as a whole may also have come of age as a result of the war.
Lost Empires is beautifully written, imaginative and evocative. It can be read as a simple account of a young man’s experiment with show business, but like so much of Priestley’s work, there is comment on history and especially on contemporary society so that the present may be fairly assessed. Lost Empires deserves wide and repeated reading.
The bones of Herncastle’s story assemble into an enthralling beast. At the start he enters a world that feels very much rooted in the nineteenth century. Public entertainment is available largely via live, on-stage performers in the music hall, with most towns of any size having their own theatres. And this is a world at peace. By the book’s end, however, the First World War has begun and Richard Herncastle’s illusionist boss, Nick Ollanton, is already predicting that it will last for years. By the start of the next decade, of course, live theatres were very much in decline, as cinema audiences grew at pace. Thus, at the book’s end, there arises a tremendous sense of impending and inevitable change. Not only young Richard’s life is about to be changed into some new, hardly recognisable form, but the world itself is about to be utterly transformed. Interestingly, from this starting point, we note that Richard himself was born at the end of the nineteenth century, so his character is the very embodiment of that change.
Lost Empires is in effect a coming of age novel, a story of personal transition. When Richard leaves home to join his uncle on tour in theatre land, we have the distinct impression that he has thus far seen very little of life. We learn little of his childhood and adolescence, and even less of his adult life thus far. Being just twenty, of course, he would not in that age have been regarded as an adult, since that label would not have applied for a further year. And it is the months he spends on tour with his uncle’s conjuring act that form the only focus of the book.
The character himself has firmly recognised, albeit some decades hence, just how important this period of his life proved to be. In those months he left behind family life, lived independently, discovered sex and found a wife. His companions were heavy drinking performers, including dwarves and women who wore costumes that showed their bodies, something that could only happen on the stage. He met Americans and Italians, and spent most of his own time on stage impersonating an Indian. His uncle instinctively knew what would work in his act and directed with an iron grip. What might work in life off the stage, however, young Richard had yet to discover.
But there is another layer of comment embedded in this book, and it’s exactly the type of comment on would expect from Priestley writing in the 1960s and thus commenting and offering perspectives on contemporary Britain. The 1960s was the decade, we were told, when the British discovered sex. The view has become mainstream to the extent that great writers can without question present pre-1960s Britain as an era when sex was a difficult subject not to be mentioned. The 1960s was also an age of pop stars, free living, free love and almost free booze, touring bands on the road and adoring audiences, themselves drunk on celebrity. And so in Lost Empires Priestley presents the world of pre-First World War music hall, with its travelling stars, its free-flowing champagne, its astronomical earnings, its celebrities and its own free-flowing sex.
It is the character of Julie Blane who provides much of the action for Richard and for the book as a whole. Julie is an older woman, still beautiful, but scarred by life after her partner walked out. She drinks a lot, and craves sex, at least according to Richard’s acquaintances among the cast. They advise him to beware. He duly ignores them.
In the book’s epilogue, it is Richard’s wife, herself one of the travelling players of yesteryear, who suggests that her husband’s description of his physical relationship with Julie in his memoirs might raise eyebrows but, crucially for Priestley, she does this from the 1960s, at a time when thinking on such issues was apparently already liberated from the shackles of the past. In the book, it is Richard and Julie who are utterly unshackled in 1913. Nay, the author is saying to contemporary assumptions in his no nonsense, Yorkshire tones.
Lost Empires is a world of soon to be closed theatres that happen to be called Empires. Every town had one, or something like it. But, by the time the book was written by its imaginary autobiographer, Britain had also lost another Empire that it had possessed in 1913. By implication, Priestley also suggests that the nation as a whole may also have come of age as a result of the war.
Lost Empires is beautifully written, imaginative and evocative. It can be read as a simple account of a young man’s experiment with show business, but like so much of Priestley’s work, there is comment on history and especially on contemporary society so that the present may be fairly assessed. Lost Empires deserves wide and repeated reading.
February 27, 2023
An entertaining novel with Priestley’s usual array of colourful characters. It lacks the depth of Angel Pavement, being more of a potboiler than a work of great substance, but for sheer enjoyment it can’t be faulted. It follows a group of music hall performers as they tour the country, but focuses on a budding painter, Dick Herncastle, as he accompanies his Uncle Nick in his magical act. The tensions between the characters come to fore as the tour progresses, with dire consequences.
November 4, 2012
Priestly's novels are very much out of fashion, only the Good Companions seems to be in print. Whilst some of his books are straight propaganda and some very odd (e.g. The Shapes of Sleep), he can be a very fine writer. Lost Empires has a touch of Somerset Maughm about it. The plot, which moves along swiftly with plenty of incident and some notable set pieces, is not the book's main virtue. That is its easy and convincing presentation of life pre-WW1, especially the variety theatre. Entertaining throughout - this certainly is a good read.
October 26, 2008
My brother loaned me this book as it is out of print. I'm still not sure if this is a novel made to read like a memoir or a real memoir. In any case, I found it delightful. The writing is very hokey, but is easily forgiven and adds to the experience when you consider it was written in the 60's by an adorable British Bloke.
March 24, 2015
The story of Richard Herncastle, a young lad from the North of England who goes to work for his stage magician uncle as WWI is about to break loose. Not exactly great literature but highly entertaining. This is the second novel I've read by J.B. Priestley. The guy really knows how to tell a story.
September 18, 2019
Not an easy book to read. Like his plays the characters aren't always likeable which makes thing harder in a novel. However I didn't give up and the descriptions of life back stage and front of house during a pre 1914 music hall tour are spot on. The bad comedians, father daughter singing acts, dwarfs and magic. I felt I was there. Oh and there is a murder too.
September 10, 2011
Priestley is great fun to read, very evocative of the bygone era, yet with much smiling sadness that will twist your stomach in a knot. Good, smooth writing, without unnecessary verbiage to mar the fluent narrative.
September 14, 2015
Really enjoyed this book. Superbly written with some fascinating characters.
September 20, 2018
Colourful reconstruction of the travelling music hall shows in the period leading up to the First World War. Lovely, albeit bleak, introduction to Priestley.
October 15, 2020
A dark and disturbing look at sexual relations in England immediately before the first World War. Despite all the positive reviews of the setting in the Music Hall theatre of that time, this seems to have been chosen for the likelihood the young good-looking 'Dick' Herncastle can become entangled with a 'variety' of women before escaping into the war. The implication is that there is something sexually immoral, indeed, criminal about the performing arts. Strangely people these days are not so charmed by Harvey Weinstein who shares the morals of the central character, Dick's uncle Nick.
Priestley wrote this novel in his seventies about a time fifty years earlier. In that time not one world war but two had totally revolutionalised the role women played in society and the way society looked at them. I had to wonder whether Priestley had fully digested what had happened, or whether this novel was an attempt to do so. There was also something off about the prose; despite the obvious historical setting, it didn't seem dated. It wasn't in some self-conscious way a historical fiction, the prose matched the publication date not the date of the story. I think it was to do with the way the characters spoke, they should have sounded like my grandparents, but they didn't. I look forward to reading The Good Companions it is set in a similar mileau, but written forty years earlier. I have my grandfather's copy of this book, he read it in December 1929.
Priestley wrote this novel in his seventies about a time fifty years earlier. In that time not one world war but two had totally revolutionalised the role women played in society and the way society looked at them. I had to wonder whether Priestley had fully digested what had happened, or whether this novel was an attempt to do so. There was also something off about the prose; despite the obvious historical setting, it didn't seem dated. It wasn't in some self-conscious way a historical fiction, the prose matched the publication date not the date of the story. I think it was to do with the way the characters spoke, they should have sounded like my grandparents, but they didn't. I look forward to reading The Good Companions it is set in a similar mileau, but written forty years earlier. I have my grandfather's copy of this book, he read it in December 1929.
July 22, 2025
“Lost Empires” is a story with several layers of nostalgia. It’s set in 1913, but related with hindsight from the 1960s. And from my own memory, the TV series from the 1980s starring the young Colin Firth. These two later eras are also long-vanished, along with the original “Good Old Days.”
The novel concerns a young man, Richard/Dick, who comes under the wing of his sardonic Uncle Nick, one of the Music Hall’s illusionist stars. The world of pre-WW1 Music Hall is brilliantly evoked - the gaudiness, magic and glitter onstage, the dreary railway journeys and boarding houses, the seedy pubs off-stage. And the whole gamut of undercurrents as Dick experiences a rapid education in human nature: jealousy, camaraderie, violence, madness, alcoholism, sexual deviancy - it’s all there.
Priestley is utterly compelling when it comes to people and place. Whether it’s the characterisation of the cynical Uncle Nick with his marvellous turns of phrase, or the description of Blackpool in early summer - it all feels alive and vibrant still.
I did get a little weary of some of plot twists and turns in the final third of the book - it felt rather like a variety bill with a few acts too many squeezed in.
Nevertheless, this is the first Priestley I’ve read (shocking, I know) but it won’t be the last.
The novel concerns a young man, Richard/Dick, who comes under the wing of his sardonic Uncle Nick, one of the Music Hall’s illusionist stars. The world of pre-WW1 Music Hall is brilliantly evoked - the gaudiness, magic and glitter onstage, the dreary railway journeys and boarding houses, the seedy pubs off-stage. And the whole gamut of undercurrents as Dick experiences a rapid education in human nature: jealousy, camaraderie, violence, madness, alcoholism, sexual deviancy - it’s all there.
Priestley is utterly compelling when it comes to people and place. Whether it’s the characterisation of the cynical Uncle Nick with his marvellous turns of phrase, or the description of Blackpool in early summer - it all feels alive and vibrant still.
I did get a little weary of some of plot twists and turns in the final third of the book - it felt rather like a variety bill with a few acts too many squeezed in.
Nevertheless, this is the first Priestley I’ve read (shocking, I know) but it won’t be the last.
May 31, 2017
After finishing The Stand I had a difficult time finding anything that interested me. Priestly certainly caught my attention though. The writing was wonderful and the atmosphere really added to the story. The characters were so realistic and nuanced. It was a perfect follow up to The Stand. The way Priestly crafted his story contrasted with Kings modern subject and the immersive experience of living with those characters for over a thousand pages. I guess I needed something different, something older and this hit the spot. Lost Empires followed one young man through his experiences with the Variety shows of the early 1900's and outlines the uncertain complexities of the people he worked with. Sometimes it felt like Priestly was showing a mirror and you could see a reflection of where things have gone since 1913 and '14, you could see it in the characters and the ailing Variety shows. It kind of reminded me of a mix between Barry Unsworth and E.L Doctorow. Highly recommended.
June 10, 2021
Being very interested in theatre genre of any type it was great to read about the travelling "vaudeville like" shows that toured the English countryside during the time just prior to WWI.
I loved the story of a young man joining his Uncle Nick and his magical mystery act after the death of his mother until he can start his real life as a potential landscape artist. The travels and tribulations along the way, the people he worked with and those he met during their travels. Seems like a very plausible tale of what life may have been like.
This is the third book I have read of his ... first was "An Inspector Calls" which I read after seeing the play based on it ... then "Good Companions" which is also a theatre based story. This author knows how to put words together and tell an enticing story.
I loved the story of a young man joining his Uncle Nick and his magical mystery act after the death of his mother until he can start his real life as a potential landscape artist. The travels and tribulations along the way, the people he worked with and those he met during their travels. Seems like a very plausible tale of what life may have been like.
This is the third book I have read of his ... first was "An Inspector Calls" which I read after seeing the play based on it ... then "Good Companions" which is also a theatre based story. This author knows how to put words together and tell an enticing story.
December 27, 2024
This is a biography centered around the variety theater circuit in the early 1900s. Fascinating people! Be sure to read the prologue - that puts the context around how the topic came to life - and the short epilogue that brings the stories of the people and the relationships current to the 1960s, when the book was written. P.S. Not sure which edition has 1000 pages, but the edition I read had only 309. And, it's not easy to find either. I searched several online and local places before I found it in a quirky bookstore outside of Houston.
December 27, 2019
Enjoyed reading this, as I never read anything about the life behind the theater curtains. The one thing which I did not like was the detailed descriptions of each character - and there was a lot of them. After the third you couldn't remember how they looked like anyway.
Then I found on YouTube 7 episodes from 1984, or 1086? I managed to go through the first, but I did not like it much, despite Colin Firth...
Then I found on YouTube 7 episodes from 1984, or 1086? I managed to go through the first, but I did not like it much, despite Colin Firth...
July 15, 2020
Such a delightful read. It’s a special Priestley book in that it tells a true biography of a chapter of a young likeable,solid and lovely young man. Dick Herncastle joins the world of the variety stage and e follow his adventures and relationships.
It’s fun, interesting and has so much satisfying dialogue. Being inside the world of an illusionist’s show was also special. Well worth reading, particularly if you find of Priestley.
It’s fun, interesting and has so much satisfying dialogue. Being inside the world of an illusionist’s show was also special. Well worth reading, particularly if you find of Priestley.
March 28, 2023
I had not read any J.B. Priestley before. This is a surprisingly fascinating account of the type of variety acts common in Britain before World War 1. Live acts of singers, comedians, acrobats, animal acts and, in this case, a magician and his entourage. The story is told be the nephew of the star magician who takes him on s assistant and protege. It's a difficult, varied life full of personalities, romance, twists and turns, and a murder.
March 31, 2021
Absolutely gripped by this book about the adventures of a company of Variety Theatre performers on tour. In particular it is told in 1st party by a Richard Herncastle, assistant of an Illusionist who happens to be his Uncle.
There was a very good TV adaption. Sir Lawrence Olivier's last part. Richard Herncastle was played by Colin Firth.
There was a very good TV adaption. Sir Lawrence Olivier's last part. Richard Herncastle was played by Colin Firth.
January 29, 2018
Read this yers ago - actually was reading it on the train, left by mistake and got a second copy. Now, years later considering recommending it for myBook Club. Loved the characters as well as the story.
March 15, 2022
Nobody could accuse JB of painting pre war (first war) music hall with nostalgic, roseate brushstrokes. August 1914 was a turning point in world history and culture and a great deal was lost; not all of it was good.
But this novel is. Novelist as storyteller; fiction as a vehicle for truth.
But this novel is. Novelist as storyteller; fiction as a vehicle for truth.
July 24, 2023
I had already read one of the author's delightful novels but this cemented my ambition to read them all. It contained struggles and dark places but also excitement and several exciting parts. It was fascinating to gain an insight into the lost world of variety shows. A thoroughly enjoyable read.
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