Welcome to the Website of Alan Burnett: writer, blogger, collector of old photographs, and devotee of all things pointless and inconsequential.
In Halifax
I’m pretty certain that this photograph – taken well over 50 years ago – was taken somewhere in Halifax. It has all the necessary ingredients: an overgrown, stone-cobbled lane rising up a steep hillside to meet a soot-blackened wall of monumental proportions. It’s probably so obviously Halifax that, at no time over the last half century, have I ever got around to reminding myself exactly where I was on that day. Let’s just say I was in Halifax.
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A 1916 Girl
On the back of this sepia portrait of an unknown girl is a studio stamp that states: “W Buckley, Portrait Specialist, 28 August 1916, Regent Square, Blackpool.” There is something quite beautiful…
A Heated Basin
We are living through record heatwaves here in the UK at the moment, experiencing temperatures that make you want to find a cool stretch of water and take the plunge. I took…
A 1907 Poke
A “Facebook Poke” is defined as “a digital nudge or virtual greeting used to get a friend’s attention.” The equivalent 120 years ago was a postcard – sent, as it happens, to…
The Swinging Sixties
The summers of my youth, when the most avant-garde experience might have been listening to a trad-jazz combo in the park. And if the sun was shining, they might even…
Bridge Art
There should be a special category of art for the work displayed on the metal panels that line endless railway bridges and other lumps of transport infrastructure in this country.…
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