I spent a year in Birmingham - 1968/69 - and this is one of my photos from that time. What strikes me is the lengths the architects have gone to in order to achieve straight lines and sharp angles only to have the look compromised by the random curves of concrete staining.

My parents, like so many young couples in the 1930s, were great motorbike enthusiasts. Motorbikes gave them the opportunity to discover the country in a way that had not been available to earlier generations. Here they are, proudly astride their Royal Enfield, in the late 1930s.

Some are watching the world fly by, all flashing lights and candy floss. Some are watching the ones who are watching, all woollen skirts and anoraks. Some are watching the photographers, all questions and no answers.

Thirty years ago, when The Lad was young, most years we would go to Tenby for our holidays. The castle-topped islands and the step-carved rocky tendrils always attracted me, they were like something out of an Enid Blyton book. And the sun always shone .... except for the times it was raining!

There's something slightly odd about this old Victorian Studio Cabinet Card, and it took me a few minutes before I realised what it was. It's almost as though the faces have been pasted on to a stock photo of three bodies or even placed through holes in life-size cardboard cut-outs. Perhaps photo manipulation isn't such … Continue reading 14 March 2024 : Pasty Faced

As far as I can tell, the photograph features my father's Aunt Rose-Ellen (left) and her daughter, Ivy. The elderly couple are Rose-Ellen's parents, Mary and Stephen Lane, and I suspect the location of this wonderful tea party would have been opposite their house in Bradford. It's a perfect treasure of a photograph which deserves … Continue reading 13 March 2024

One image telling two stories. The top half - the banner - reminds us of the fact that there were times when people were proud of political achievements, a time when the welfare state was something to be paraded through the streets as a badge of social honour. The lower part of the picture is … Continue reading One Image, Two Stories

Some people read the paper, some try and understand the meaning of life, George II and Elvis Presley both died there .... and photographers look for shapes and patterns and textures.

It's Mother's Day, so who else but my mother, Gladys. This photograph will have been taken sometime around 1953, just after we had moved to Northowram. I would have been about five at the time. What memories, Mam.