Closing Time

With a final grand burst of pomp and ceremony, the summer-long Festival of Britain came to an end. On the final day, a crowd of 64,853 jammed the 27-acre South Bank Exhibition site. The Archbishop of Canterbury led a service of thanksgiving. A brigade of Guards staged a military parade. As a lone spotlight followed the Union Jack slowly down its flagstaff, massed military bands played the national anthem and thousands of sentimental fairgoers joined in singing Auld Lang Syne.

Like disapproving elders watching their young relatives plan an extravagant party, many Britons last year had clucked and tut-tutted at the government's plan to spend millions on a national binge in the midst of the hardest times Britain had known in centuries. They humphed at Labor's assertion that the fair would be a lodestone for foreign visitors and a shot in the arm for those at home. But when the fairy city of weird and wonderful lights and strange forms arose last May from the mud and rubble-strewn flats on Thamesside, even the sourest of the disapprovers felt a glow of pride.

The exposition came nowhere near paying for itself. Expositions seldom do. There was a $14 million gap between the gate receipts and the cost ($18.2 million). But more than 8,000,000 Britons, starved for diversion after twelve dreary years of austerity, had passed through the turnstiles. So had half a million overseas visitors. And best of all, the bright lights and soaring architecture of the fairground and the floodlights illuminating the city's great monuments had made war-torn London seem cheerful once again. "For four bob," said one fairgoer last week, "you could dance to the best bands, see the lights, and have a drink, all in the open air. Seems a cryin' shame to tear it all down."

As the lights were doused last week to save precious fuel for the winter, most Britons were sincerely sorry that the party was over.

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