Ypres 100km
Friday 18th–Sunday 20th May
Ypres, France

Ensign Polyethyl and seven other worthies from the FANY and the HAC will be marching 100km around Ypres to raise money for military charities, including Coming Home, which helps provide adapted houseing for returning Services personnel. For more details and how to donate to the causes see the News page.

The 1940s Relived
Saturday 19th May
10am–5pm
Brooklands Museum, Brooklands Road, Weybridge, Surrey KT13 0QN
Admission: £11 (£9.90 students and OAPs, £6.05 children)

Celebrating the best of the 1940s against the historic backdrop of Brooklands Museum’s 30-acre site. The Wellington Hangar is a reminder that Brooklands was an important centre of aircraft production during WWII, when both Hawker Hurricane Fighters and Vickers Wellington Bombers were built on the site. Add in a pill box, air raid shelters, the original Clubhouse plus other period features and you have outstanding surroundings for this event. The organiseres are also looking for re-enactors, both military and home front, period vehicles, traders plus of course the music and dancers to help make this family event special and to celebrate all aspects of the 1940s. They are particularly interested in Home Guard re-enactors, as Brooklands had its own HG detachment. Contact: Neil Sinclair neilsinclair@brooklandsmuseum.com 01932 857381 ext. 244.

It's a Wonderful Vintage
Jubilee Jamboree
Saturday 19th May
3.30pm–1am
The Queen's Head, 66 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NB
The Water Rats Theatre, 328 Grays Inn Road, London, WC1X 8BZ
Admission: £15 for both events in advance
Dress: Vintage, perhaps with a regal twist

A Jubilee-themed vintage knees-up, beginning in the afternoon at the Queen's Head pub with vingtage jazz, a piano sing-along, pearly kings and queens and a vintage styling salon. Then from 7.30pm the action moves round the corner to the Water Rats where there will be a vintage fashion show, live bands and DJs, plus music hall style entertainment including comedy, burlesque, magic and more.

Victorian Railway Weekend
Saturday 19th May
10am–5.30pm
The Severn Valley Railway, Kidderminster Station, Comberton Hill, DY10 1QX
Admission: £19

Vintage transport enthusiast the Earl of Waveney is looking to raise a posse to check out this festival of steam. For more details of the tickets and what is happening see here. To see Waveney's Facebook event see here.

Clerkenwell Vintage Fashion Fair
Sunday 20th May
11am–5pm (trade from 10.30am)
The Urdang, The Old Finsbury Town Hall, Rosebery Avenue, London EC1R 4RP
Admission: £4 (£10 trade 10am)

Some 50 stalls offering vintage clothes, shoes, handbags, hats, gloves, textiles and jewellery from the 1800s to the 1980s. There is also a tea room, alterations booth, live music, florist and vintage salon offering hair styling workshops. More details at www.clerkenwellvintagefashionfair.co.uk.

Swing at the Light
Monday 21st May
From 7pm
Upstairs at The Light Restaurant and Bar, 233 Shorditch High Street, London E1
Admission: £8 for class and club, £3 just for the club night after 9pm
Dress: Vintage/retro appreciated

Weekly vintage dance night in a venue with a wooden floor and its own terrace. Beginners classes from 7.30, intermediate classes from 8.15, and "freestyle" from 9pm.

Make Your Own Lipstick
Wednesday 23rd May
7–9pm
Rivival, Kingly Court (off Carnaby Street), London W1B 5PW
Admission: £50 from Eventbrite

An intimate workshop from the Lipstick & Curls girls. Learn how to make lipstick at home using natural bases and pigments, as well as how to create vintage looks, how to match shades with your complexion and how to blend colours the professional way. You'll also go home with four classic colours that you have made.

Cakewalk Café
Wednesday 23rd May
8pm–1am (swing dance classes 7–8pm and 8–9pm)
Passing Clouds, 1 Richmond Road, Dalston, London E8 4AA
Admission: £5 (£3.50 if you’re in 1920s/1930s clobber) or £8 including a dance class, £12 including both

Live swing jazz every Wednesday featuring Nicholas Ball, Ewan Bleach and chums, with optional dance classes from Swing Patol.

Phoenix Dance Club
Friday 25th May
9pm–2am
The Phoenix, 37 Cavendish Street, off Margaret Street, London
Admission: Unclear

A new dance night for Lindy Hoppers and the like, with DJs playing music from the 1920s to the 1940s. Large dance floor and ample seating.

The Candlelight Club:
An English Country Garden
Friday 25th & Saturday 26th May
7.30pm–12am
A secret central London location
Admission: £15.75 in advance
Dress: 1920s dandies and swells, gangsters and molls, degenerate aristos and decadent
aesthetes, corrupt politicians and the Smart Set In the Know

The Candlelight Club is clandestine pop-up cocktail party with a 1920s speakeasy flavour, in a secret London venue completely lit by candles. Each event offers a one-off cocktail menu with special themes, plus live period jazz bands and vintage vinylism from the NSC's own MC Fruity. Despite a speakeasy being a fundamentally American concept, at this time of year—and with the Chelsea Flower Show the following week—it's hard not to feel a nostalgic pride for the Great British Summer and the sort of grand English country gardens that were still viable in the 1920s. Think boaters and blazers, tea on the terrace and croquet with the vicar. Our cocktails will explore the scents and flavours of England outdoors in the summer—cucumber frames, beehives, punnets of strawberries… Anyone for tennis?

Folklore
Saturday 26th May
7.30pm–midnight
Jamboree, 566 Cable Street, London E1W 3HB
Admission: £6 (members/NUS £5)

The Club's own Marmaduke Dando, crooner of morose ballads and frisky jigs, supports Louis Barabbas and the Bedlam Six. More information can be found here.

Swing at the Light
Monday 28th May
From 7pm
Upstairs at The Light Restaurant and Bar, 233 Shorditch High Street, London E1
Admission: £8 for class and club, £3 just for the club night after 9pm
Dress: Vintage/retro appreciated

Weekly vintage dance night in a venue with a wooden floor and its own terrace. Beginners classes from 7.30, intermediate classes from 8.15, and "freestyle" from 9pm.

Cakewalk Café
Wednesday 30th May
8pm–1am (swing dance classes 7–8pm and 8–9pm)
Passing Clouds, 1 Richmond Road, Dalston, London E8 4AA
Admission: £5 (£3.50 if you’re in 1920s/1930s clobber) or £8 including a dance class, £12 including both

Live swing jazz every Wednesday featuring Nicholas Ball, Ewan Bleach and chums, with optional dance classes from Swing Patrol.

The Shadow Formula
Thursday 31st May–Saturday 16th June
7.30–10pm
The Greenwood Theatre, 55 Weston Street, London SE1 3RA
Admission: £10 from www.ticketsource.co.uk/shadowformula

The Club's own Edwin Flay stars in this noir comedy-thriller (with more than a nod to The 39 Steps) about a cynical Great War veteran who finds himself plunged into an international intrigue when his fiancée is murdered and he is blamed for the crime. View the official trailer at www.youtube.com/watch?v=05vKaLY3unc.

A Right Royal Knees Up
Saturday 2nd June
Somewhere in London…
Admission: £25

A Coronation themed Jubilee celebration dinner, brought to you by the London Vintage Kitchen. Don your finest 50s rags and kick-start the Jubilee weekend in vintage style. A period authentic three course meal, with accompanying drinks will be served, followed by singing, dancing and raucous party games, all for £25. Visit the London Vintage Kitchen website for more information and to buy tickets: www.londonvintagekitchen.com.

NSC Club Night
Wednesday 6th June
7pm–11pm (lecture at 8pm)
Upstairs, The Wheatsheaf, 25 Rathbone Place, London W1T 1JB
Members: Free
Non-Members: £2 (first visit free)

Mr David Waller (who previously addressed us on the life of Gertrude Tennant) will dazzle us on the subject of The Perfect Man: The Muscular Life and Times of Eugen Sandow, Victorian Strongman.

Sandow was colossolly famous in his day and possessed what was considered the perfect male body. He rose from obscurity in Prussia to become a music hall sensation in late Victorian London, going on to great success in North America and through the British Empire. He was a friend to Edward VII and was appointed Professor of Physical Culture to George V. So how did he come to lose his fortune and wind up in an unmarked grave in Putney Vale Cemetery?

Détente
Thursday 7th June
7pm till late
The Player, 8 Broadwick Street, London W1F 8HN
Admission: Unclear. Free, I think.
Dress: Strictly mid-century Jet Set/Secret Service

Johnny Vercoutre and Count Indigo form an uneasy alliance to bring you a new club night, shot through with realpolitik and cool soundtrack jazz. "The Cold War just got hot!" The venue is the perfectly styled The Player, where they take their cocktails seriously (thanks to help from cocktail guru Dale DeGroff).

Gatz
Friday 8th June–Sunday 15 July
2.30–10.30pm
Noel Coward Theatre, St Martin's Lane, London, WC2N 4AU
Admission: £27.50–£77.50 from here

An extraordinary theatrical production: it starts in a 1980s office where a worker finds a copy of The Great Gatsby, and turns into a word-for-word dramatised reading of the novel, with the stage and the characters on it gradually shifting back in time. It takes eight hours (with breaks, including a long dinner interval) which sounds like an endurance test but it is by all accounts spellbinding. Just 23 performances are taking place as part of the London International Festival of Theatre.

Never Mind the Jubilee
It's the NSC Summer Party!
Saturday 16th June
7pm–12am
The Tea House Theatre, 139 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HL (020 7207 4585)
Admission: Free for Members, £5 for guests

Whether you want to celebrate Her Majesty's glorious 60 years on the throne or toast the forthcoming inevitable revolution, the New Sheridan Club invites you to join its summer party—the theme is simply "Jubilee", and you may interpret that in any way you wish! As usual there will be silly games and entertainments, plus our Snuff Bar, an array of pomades and moustache waxes in the bathrooms plus our famous Grand Raffle—to which entry is free, but only to Members of the NSC, including anyone who signs up on the night. More details to follow…

Herr Kettner's Kabaret
Friday 22nd June
7pm–1am
Kettner's, 29 Romilly Street, Soho, London W1D 5HP
Admission: Dining tickets £85, non-dining tickets £25. Telephone 020 7292 0529 or email Helga@HerrKettnersKabaret.com to book tickets
Dress: 1920s glamour, moustachioed dandies, dizzy flappers, monocled counts, decadent aesthetes, firebrand radicals, apoplectic Teutonic military officers, predatory cross-dressers, black or white tie

A Weimar cabaret themed event spread across two floors of Herr Kettner's decadently beautiful house. As the fragile government crumbles and the economy collapses, seek solace in the world of the cabaret, where Champagne flows and swing music lifts the ancient rafters, where monocled aristocrats share tables with revolutionaries and women dressed as men. In the Ballroom there will be live music from the Boomtown Swingalings, playing all the latest, most degenerate "jazz" music from America, plus vintage DJing and complimenary dance lessons from mercurial dancing master Paul Crook. In the Kabaret Lounge there will be comic song and burlesque; a magician will wander the house amazing and delighting with his sleight of hand. At the Absinthe Fountain enjoy a masterclass and free sample of the decadent drink known as the Green Fairy.

Everyone gets a free welcome cocktail and there is a bar food menu of toothsome delights. There will also be full dining tickets: dinner is at 8pm and includes three courses plus half a bottle of wine (and a special Death in the Afternoon absinthe sorbet), as well as exclusive cabaret performances for diners.

More information at www.HerrKettnersKabaret.com. Telephone 020 7292 0529 or email Helga@HerrKettnersKabaret.com to book tickets

Hedna's Vintage Night Club
Saturday 23rd June
8.45pm
The Stables, Stockwell Lane, Wavendon, Milton Keynes MK17 8LU
Admission: £10 until 3rd March, after which prices rise. Advance bookings may be made in person at the box office or by phone (01908 280800), by email to boxoffice@stables.org or online (though these last three incur a booking fee)
Dress: Vintage

Vintage Sweethearts Harry and Edna offer an immersive 1930s and 1940s night, this time featuring a full stand-up set from Viv the Spiv. More about Hedna's here.

NSC Club Night
Wednesday 4th July
7pm–11pm (lecture at 8pm)
Upstairs, The Wheatsheaf, 25 Rathbone Place, London W1T 1JB
Members: Free
Non-Members: £2 (first visit free)

The Earl of Essex will entrance us on the subject of The Life and Scandulous Times of Sir Henry "Chips" Channon MP.

NSC Club Night
Wednesday 1st August
7pm–11pm (lecture at 8pm)
Upstairs, The Wheatsheaf, 25 Rathbone Place, London W1T 1JB
Members: Free
Non-Members: £2 (first visit free)

Lord Finsbury Windermere Compton-Bassett will set us straight on A Brief History of the Metropolitan Police & Special Constabulary.

NSC Club Night
Wednesday 5th September
7pm–11pm (lecture at 8pm)
Upstairs, The Wheatsheaf, 25 Rathbone Place, London W1T 1JB
Members: Free
Non-Members: £2 (first visit free)

Dorian Loveday will thrill us with "The Irish Giant": Tom Crean, Greatest Polar Explorer of Them All. "Think of Antarctic exploration and names such as Scott and Shackleton normally spring to mind," he observes. "But one man served with both of them, and was regarded by both as one of the most valuable members of their team—an unassuming sailor called Tom Crean, who went on to win three Polar Medals and in Shackleton's terms, was 'worth trumps'. This talk will relive the thrilling adventures of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration through his eyes."

NSC Club Night
Wednesday 3rd October
7pm–11pm (lecture at 8pm)
Upstairs, The Wheatsheaf, 25 Rathbone Place, London W1T 1JB
Members: Free
Non-Members: £2 (first visit free)

Dr Timothy Eyre will be addressing us on The City-State of Macau,
notorious for gambling and vice, and which "combines a long history with
astonishing vulgarity". For reasons which I'm sure he will explain, Dr Eyre spent two weeks there last year.


NSC Club Night
Wednesday 7th November
7pm–11pm (lecture at 8pm)
Upstairs, The Wheatsheaf, 25 Rathbone Place, London W1T 1JB
Members: Free
Non-Members: £2 (first visit free)

Mrs Pandora Harrison will doubtless hold our attention with a discourse on corsets.