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Professional Reciter Queen Victoria died in 1901, and the 63 years of her reign are known as the Victorian era. In 1937, Irene Mawer (then aged 44) described herself as having been ‘that Victorian phenomena – a professional reciter’. Miss Mawer was born in 1893, thereby just sliding it at
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Honourable Traditions By the time the Ginner-Mawer School reached 21 years of existence, Stanley Baldwin had been British Prime Minister three times. Irene Mawer quoted Earl Baldwin, who I presume is the same person. I have tried to find where the quotation was used by Baldwin, but have failed, however,
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Constant, Faithful and Loyal What does steadfast mean? Being a native English speaker, I automatically think that I know what ‘steadfast’ means. But Irene Mawer said that one of the biggest compliments ever paid to her was when Edward Gordon Craig referred to Mawer and Ginner as being ‘steadfast’. Given
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The Confutation of Wisdom This one act play seems to have been popular in the 1930s; The Stage newspaper printed a calendar of productions and performers and on 4th April 1936 it lists Irene Mawer as being a member of the costume design team for a production of The Confutation
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Was he, or wasn’t he? That is the question. Was Leslie French trained at Ginner-Mawer, or wasn’t he? According to his obituaries, he wasn’t (or at least they don’t mention Ginner-Mawer), but then again the two obituaries that I have looked at also give different dates for various moments in
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