Eric Fraser mural Roman Britain

I was privileged to work with my father on his mural for the Origins of the People pavilion at the 1951 Festival of Britain. I was 22 at the time, but 60 years on I still remember a number of personal things. The power of the Unions was such that we had to join one in order to be allowed to work on the site. I forget which one I joined, but it was probably the Signwriters'. We used a projector with glass slides to enlarge the details of the drawing on to the wall. I can still hear the sharp crack as the glass slides in the projector shattered. We took some time to discover why they kept breaking. We eventually realised that the shattering of the glass coincided with a workman at the other end of the pavilion hitting a metal beam with a hammer. We concluded that the hammering caused a sound vibration of just the right frequency to break our glass slides so far away. John Woodbridge and I worked together on the mural. We had a competition to see who could grow the better beard by the time the mural was completed. I lost! Geoffrey Fraser
Visit southbankcentre.co.uk/festivalmemories for more info Page 1