Magic at War

In this two-part blog, we hear – in his own words – the wartime story of Danny Varney, an amateur magician and a regular audience member at the Hackney Empire, London.    Built in 1901, during the Second Boer War, the Hackney Empire was one of the top music halls of its day. Located in London Borough of Hackney, in northeast London, it provided the people of Hackney with their mass entertainment, taking them through two World Wars, poverty, economic depression and post-war hardships.    A grand venue the Empire has more recently been described by  The Guardian  newspaper, as  “the most beautiful theatre in London.”  For over a century, the Empire has seen variety, vaudeville, plays, musicals, films, political rallies, bingo, and more on its stage.    Hackney-resident Danny Varney was a regular audience member at the Empire over the years.   Born in the late 1910s, Varney first started visiting the Hackney Empire as a babe ...

Suitcase and teddy bear in hand, wearing labels with their name and age, thousands of British children were taken from their homes and evacuated to the homes of strangers during World War Two.  Civilian  casualties are tragic, but the death of innocent children was considered unacceptable.  Away from the risks of air raids and gas attacks in the cities, millions of kids lived out the war in the relative safety of the country.  Operation Pied Piper, launched in September 1939, was the biggest and most concentrated mass movement of people in Britain’s history. After the fears of bombing weren’t realised, many of the evacuees were returned home, until France fell to Germany in 1940, and bombing campaigns started with a vengeance in Britain. The evacuation plan started again. Some children returned home in the summer of 1941, after the Battle of Britain was won. When V1 rockets began falling on London in June 1944, the evacuee programme kicked in for a third time. Evacue...