Bringing you t
WE may only just be fetching our big coats out after a long, glorious summer, but the clocks have gone back, the nights are drawing in and yes, Christmas is less than eight weeks away.
And it’s not a Black Country Christmas without the Bugle Annual, so to get you in the mood, here is a sneak preview of this year’s edition.
As always, we’ve packed its glossy pages with some of our favourite Bugle stories from the previous twelve months, and the hardest part has been deciding what to leave out.
We think we’ve come up with a decent mix of nostalgic nuggets, covering the whole of our area and several generations.
Our front cover this year, courtesy of our friends at Wolverhampton Archives, shows a wonderful scene from 1937, inside Sankey’s in Bilston.
Shop floor workers pose with the tea trolley at the Albert Street site, alongside tea lady Ruth Brown, who would wheel the trolley round the works each morning and afternoon. She worked at Sankey’s for 23 years and left in 1942.
Inside, you can see Black Country flappers and fellers of a ‘Victoria Concert Party’ from 1931; memories of village life in the war years; and revisit the pubs and clubs at the heart of the Midlands’ 1960s Beat Boom.
We’ll take you inside one of the country’s biggest meat factories – not for the faint-hearted – go back to school in the 1950s; go speedway riding on a bombsite, and take a look at life as it used to be, with our columnist Gail Middleton.
Everything you love about the Bugle is here, just as you’ve come to expect.
There’s all this and loads more, and it’s still only £4.99. The Bugle Annual 2019 is on sale now from local retailers, or you can order a copy to be delivered to your door, by calling 0121 234 5434 – Free p&p, UK only.