EVERY decade has its place to be for the rich and famous and the 1920s was no exception. Harry Preston's Brighton hotels, the Royal York and The Albion were a honeypot for society's London elite, and especially Fleet Street.

From Prime Ministers to Royalty; and stars of stage and screen to writers; millionaire bankers, sportsmen, new aviators and the inventors, they flocked to the hospitality of this rough, tough, no nonsense former East End pugilist's growing entertainment empire on the South Coast of England.

Philanthropist Harry became Mr Boxing and the friend of kings. He staged fights for the Greats of The Ring — Jack Dempsey, Georges Carpentier, Bombardier Billy Wells, Boy McCormack and Billy Wilde.

It was here that Prince Edward, the Duke of York, Lord Beaverbrook, Harmsworth and Cabinet Ministers rubbed shoulders with gangster millionaires and their own star sports writers. Fortunes were made and gambled away, business deals done, and jobs given in this vast gentleman's club where the drink flowed, and mistresses often waited in rooms for the boxing matches to end. Even twice-married Harry had his own “beautiful Lily tucked” away in her own home.

Sadly, for Harry however, his successful vision didn't last and things came to a head at the Battle of Lewes Road, between police and strikers under the black clouds of the General Strike. Not long after, Fleet Street largely turned its back on him because he was becoming unpopular in the eyes of the newspaper-buying British public. And even Beaverbrook wouldn't help him.



In 1926, Harry, pictured, friend of the town's dignitaries and police chiefs was enlisted as a volunteer mounted special policeman at the height of the Strike. On May 11, a crowd of 4,000 people, strikers, sympathisers, and onlookers, had gathered at the tram depot in Brighton's Lewes Road.

Chief Constable, Charles Griffin, told the crowd to disperse, but when they refused, he sent in 300-booted police and 50 mounted specials who advanced in wedge formation into them. The mounted specials were led by Sergeant Harry Preston with his personal bodyguard. More than 100 people were injured in the violent and bloody incident.

Harry never confirmed his involvement in the clash in either of his two books and refers to it only as "ugly doings at the Tram Depot". But it appears his reputation took a heavy knock, and his popularity with the public never really recovered. Too risky for the patronage of newspapers. Strikers were their buyers.

Harry had been particularly close to Beaverbrook and Harmsworth who went to his Big Fight Nights with W.G. Grace, and were his VIP guests when the 5ft 1in tall millionaire promoter, brought World Champion boxer Jack Dempsey, one of the all-time Greats, from America, to fight in a charity event at Brighton Dome in 1925.

It was dollar millionaire Dempsey's only ever appearance in the UK and he did it free of charge. Just a room for the night. Harry was knighted shortly after.

Harry had a chequered past. In 1884 the Amateur Boxing Association introduced the first bantamweight competition and he fought his way through to the finals but he had to give up serious boxing because his father died and he took over the family debts, moving to Bournemouth to manage hotels.

The key to his later success came at the local Woodbury Hill Fair where he took on a heavyweight fighter with a big reputation, to win a prize. He survived by fancy footwork and a bribe to a black timekeeper who called 'time' at critical moments when he was about to be slaughtered. The fight was talked about for days afterwards and Harry became part of the local folklore. Soon he was promoting backstreet fights illegally. Next came Brighton.

He arrived there in 1900 and sank most of his funds into rescuing the flagging fortunes of two hotels The Royal York and the Albion, a snip at just £13,000. It originally had a sales price of £30,000. But he promised town councillors to make two hotels the centre of culture and entertainment for the resort. He did.

But when the Daily Mail published an unflattering piece about the town, calling it an "unenterprising, unattractive and outdated holiday resort", furious Harry took the train to London and turned up at the Mail offices. After much table thumping and a large dollop of Harry charm, a much more favourable article appeared the following day, and Brighton's reputation soared.

This was the beginning of the Edwardian era and morals were low. From 1898 until his death as Edward VII, in 1910, the king openly carried on an affair with his mistress, Alice Keppel, who had previously married into money and had already conceived two children by two other rich lovers.

Society went from one lavish ball or function to another where unmarried men were kept chaste, as marriage prospects, but married men like Harry and Beaverbrook, swapped partners frequently. Edward, of course, was following in the footsteps of his great-uncle George IV, who as Prince of Wales had built the Royal Pavilion at Brighton to honour his illicit Catholic mistress. Brighton and London were the sex centres of the new society, in London alone, there were 80,000 prostitutes at this time.

Early on in his Brighton career, Harry established a pattern of frequent absence from his home. He was in the habit of visiting London every week for both business and pleasure. So, it was easy for him to do what was established practice amongst many Edwardian men of means at the time; take a lover.

On December 31, 1895, ten years after his first marriage, a baby girl was born in Fulham, London. Her father, Harry, registered the birth of his daughter as Winifred Emily Preston. The mother was the housekeeper of a Bournemouth hotel, named Lily English, but named as Preston, and was  never officially a Preston at all. Harry kept Lily and his other family in Bournemouth all their lives and Lily died in May 1922, aged just 56. Harry died in Brighton aged 76 in May 1936.

*****



Theatre critic Herbert Kretzmer, churned out the hits

I WONDER what it would be like to receive a phone call from someone like the God of Theatre, Cameron Mackintosh, asking for his help? I will never know of course, unless he wants a musical version of Bingo's hit website the Daily Drone. But then there would be others in the queue before me. No names.

But I learned the other day that one man has picked up a call from God on the line. "I'm desperate for help," said Cameron, the theatre impresario with £1.2bn in the bank and hit shows under his money belt such as Cats, Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon and Oliver.

Taking the call was the Daily Express Theatre Critic Herbert Kretzmer, remember him? The well-dressed night owl would often be seen wandering around the Express editorial in the evenings in the 1970s before going to the West End, puffing a cigarette in a holder and wearing an expensive suit from Savile Row.

At the time of the phone call Kretzmer had left us after 16 years to become the Daily Mail's award-winning TV critic. Cheekily, six months earlier he had asked Mackintosh if he would consider reviving a little musical, he had written in 1964 called: Our Man Crichton, based on J M Barrie's play: The Admirable Crichton, about a shipwrecked aristocrat and his big-headed butler.

"No!" said Mackintosh, curtly, at the time, putting the phone down. Then came the new call out of the blue. This time the boot was on the other foot and Mackintosh needed help himself, would you believe.

He had hired the poet James Fenton as lyricist on his new project called Les Misérables. But after a year-and-a-half of work, he realised that Fenton's lyrics, though brilliant, were unsingable in a popular show, and so he rang Kretzmer in a panic, as time was running out to start the production.

A deal was struck and Kretzmer wrote a new prologue, half a dozen new songs (though not the music) and "reconstructed" all the others for a different musical theatre culture.

Apparently, this skill came naturally to him, as he once said: "I was born under a rhyming planet. I had a knack. I didn't question it, I exercised it. I was grateful for it. I tried to play by the rules: no false rhymes and avoid cliches like the plague."

After a slow start the show was an enormous hit and huge moneymaker.

Herbert had known success as a songwriter before. He wrote the funny, now politically incorrect, Goodness Gracious Me for Peter Sellers (as an Indian doctor) and Sophia Loren in the 1960 film The Millionairess; the song was cut from the movie but climbed high in the charts. Though not as high as She, composed with and sung by Charles Aznavour, and written for the 1974 TV series, Seven Faces of Woman. The song shot to No 1 and stayed there for four weeks.

Kretzmer, a South African, whose parents ran a furniture store, died aged 95 in 2020. He made £30 million from Les Misérables alone. Remember him now? He died feeling bitter that his work for Mackintosh was not given the professional acclaim it deserved. He learned to play jazz piano as a sideline

*****

I was reminded of the horror of some of our public swimming pools by an old Christiansen leader column some 70 years ago … and things don't change much it seems.

It said: “Darwen borough council has announced that, at certain sessions at Daiseyfield baths, backstroking swimmers will be asked to desist in order to avoid collisions which could lead to injuries among patrons.”

How sensible. Who, when inching forwards in a weary breaststroke, has not had to take urgent avoiding action to miss some blindly-paddling goggled cruiser whose eyes are fixed on counting the rivets in the municipal ceiling?

Who, when proceeding backwards at a stately pace, has not suffered an elbow in the eye from some lane-hogger with a dodgy action?



Channel swimmer Captain Webb

And who has not suffered from those hairy-chested, small-trunked Captain Webbs* who torpedo face down up the fast lane without a care in the world or a glance to left or right?

One simple remedy for the backstrokers might be a rear view mirror fixed to their chests by a rubber sucker. But the only sure-fire way to cure the problem is to ban swimming from public pools permanently.

*Capt Webb swam from Dover to Calais in less than 22 hours becoming the first man to swim the English Channel in 1875. He always wore skimpy shorts and performed many stunts in public. He died at 35, trying to swim the Niagara Gorge below Niagara Falls, a feat declared impossible.

TERRY MANNERS

15 July 2024