The Extraordinary Life of Harry Quiningborough

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Harry Quiningborough lived life to the full. From a rural shoemaker’s cottage in Victorian Lincolnshire to the colonial scene on the shores of the Indian Ocean, his talents as an actor, a singer and, above all, a show-stopping comedian carried him across the world. While he was destined never to return to his homeland, his belongings did and it’s among these that, a century later, a great-nephew discovered the treasure trove of Harry’s photographs. In a beautiful album entitled ‘Sunny Memories’, he’d carefully recorded the names, dates and, most of all, his own impressions of the exotic places he’d visited: Rangoon, Penang, Singapore, Canton, Hong Kong… Richard Guise has re-traced his great-uncle’s journey from the village of Oasby (near Grantham) via Derby, Cardiff and far-away Colombo to the very grave in Calcutta where he was buried by his theatrical pals in 1915. This is the story both of Harry’s extraordinary life and of the quest to bring it to light. With fifty illustrations, many from the ‘Sunny Memories’ album, this remarkable tale brings the days of music hall and of empire back into startling focus.