Celebrating Leeds

Pictures and Memories of Post-War Leeds

By John Morgan and David Joy

The official book of the Celebrate Leeds festival to mark the 800th Anniversary of Leeds City Charter

Placed within the historical context of Leeds's 800 years as a city, this fascinating book focuses on the post-second world war period: the people; their work; their lives; their interests. It captures perfectly a period of change that is now starting to fade from living memory but which is brought back to life through the personal recollections and anecdotes of John Morgan and striking archive images.

A city is more than just a collection of buildings, businesses, streets and square. Its heartbeat is in the people who live and work within it. Focusing on Leeds in the post-second world war period - a period of social and industrial change - this book looks at the city and its people, the great and the good, the characters and the 'ordinary folk' who have given it its particular character over the years. Through archive images from the Yorkshire Post, Yorkshire Evening Post and Leeds City Council, combined with the personal recollections of the author, John Morgan, it presents a unique insight into an era that is starting to fade from living memory and which in its diversity and colour deserves to be preserved.

No-one is better placed to recall this era than author John Morgan. Brought up in the Bank area Gipton Estate in Leeds, he started his working life, aged 14, as a reporter with the Yorkshire Post and remained with the paper 'til his retirement, aged 70. Initially as a theatre reviewer, then sports reporter and latterly as the writer of the extremely popular and humorous 'Morgan's Yorkshire' column, he has seen all sides of life within the city of Leeds.

Sections in the book cover all aspects of the life and times of Leeds including: key events over the past 800 years; the changing face of Briggate; sports and leisure; culture and entertainment; the industrial past and its impact on the environment; business; communications and transport and of course people, including immigrant groups and how they have integrated into the city.

The book also includes interviews with, and the author's personal recollections of, many of Leeds famous sons and daughters, including:

• Sir Jimmy Savile
• Peter O'Toole
• Frankie Vaughan
• Henry Moore
• John Charles
• Len Hutton
• Fanny Waterman
• Keith Waterhouse
• Mark Knopfler
• Kaiser Chiefs
• and many others.