Danny Lawrence

Since retiring from the University of Nottingham, I've written 5 books under the name Danny Lawrence. Prior to that I published as Daniel Lawrence.

THE MAKING OF STAN LAUREL. ECHOES OF A BRITISH BOYHOOD (McFarland 2011).

The great and hugely influential comic actor Stan Laurel, moved with his family to North Shields in 1895. The Jeffersons remained there until 1905, just after Stan's 15th birthday. It was during these formative years in North Shields that Stan developed a passion for the theatre and a determination to spend his life making people laugh. So, whilst the book is a biography of Stan’s life it stands out from the competition in describing his family and boyhood in much greater detail than any previous book and is unique in demonstrating how his boyhood years are so frequently echoed in the hugely successful Laurel and Hardy films he made in the 1920s to 1940s.

SHIELS TO SHIELDS. THE LIFE STORY OF NORTH TYNESIDE TOWN (Carnegie 2016)

North Shields has its roots in the founding of Tynemouth Priory in the 7th century, but its life began with a cluster of riverside shelters for fishermen in the 13th. Subsequently, the towns development was continually thwarted by the domineering tactics of its much bigger neighbour Newcastle upon Tyne. It was not until the 1800s that it was free to develop without restraint. The history of this North Tyneside Town, right up to the recent past, is told not as a parochial local history but as part of the wider history of Britain. The book is also a kind of Who Do You Think You Are? for those with North Shields’ origins. Woven into the history are descriptions of the conditions which their forebears were forced to endure over centuries before working people secure the political, economic, and social rights take for granted today. The text is referenced like any other academic book but is written for the general reader not the specialist. It appeals to those with local connections and an interest Tyneside history but also those interested in British history more generally.

ARTHUR JEFFERSON. MAN OF THE THEATRE AND FATHER OF STAN Laurel (Brewin, 2017)

This is a ground-breaking, first-ever biography of a flamboyant, multi-talented theatrical figure. His contribution to the world of entertainment has been over-shadowed by the stature of his son, Stan Laurel, the creative member of the hugely successful film partnership of Laurel and Hardy, but Arthur was a fine comic actor in his own right as well as a major influence on his son. But acting was just one of Arthur Jefferson’s many talents. He was also a successful dramatist and sketch writer and the first film in which the Laurel and Hardy partnership emerged fully formed in 1927 was based on a comedy sketch which Arthur had written for the theatre in 1906. Stan had acted in it as a teenager and it was Stan who wrote the screenplay for that crucial early Laurel and Hardy film, Duck Soup. Arthur is also an excellent example of the provincial theatre lessees who provided Victorians and Edwardians with their main source of entertainment. In the days before radio, cinema, or television, that was enough to make Arthur a local celebrity, but he added to his reputation with his flair for advertising and marketing, and numerous contributions to the life of the local community.

The book describes the many ups and sometimes tragic downs in Arthur’s life, including his unusual family background; his acting career; the reception given to his plays and sketches; his many years as a theatre lessee; his brief sortie into film-making, and his time as a theatrical agent. It also discusses his two marriages, and the lives of his surviving four children, all of whom followed him into show business. In addition to the accumulation of rich, previously unpublished material, and the dispelling of myths about Arthur, the book contains new material about the whole Jefferson family. When still a theatre lessee, Arthur had to confront the huge challenges to local, live, intimate theatre from global, silent and then sound cinema. Ironically, it was the very success of films like those of Laurel and Hardy which all but destroyed the network of provincial drama theatres which Arthur loved so much. By the time that Arthur died, in obscurity, in 1949, show business had moved on in ways that would have seemed unimaginable to him in his prime. He had once rubbed shoulders with the likes of Charles Dickens and Sir Henry but, sadly, by living so long, his passing went unnoticed by the theatrical world of post-war Britain.

THE MAKING OF LAUREL AND HARDY (Ayton House 2020)

Earlier books on the comedy partnership of Laurel and Hardy are vague on how they became a partnership. I remedy that in The Making of Laurel and Hardy. It begins with accounts of Oliver’s and Stan’s solo careers. Oliver’s began in 1914, aged 22, and though he moved between film studios it was a virtually unbroken for the subsequent 12 years. In that time he notched up hundreds of varying roles. Stan’s professional debut was on the stage in 1907, aged 16. His first appearance in a film did not follow until 1917. Between then and 1926, his time on film sets was sporadic. He may have starred in most of his early films but, afterwards, had to return to the gruelling life of vaudeville touring. By the time he joined the Hal Roach Studio as a writer and director in 1925, he had all but given up hope of becoming an established comic actor. But, not long after being pressured back in front of the camera to meet an emergency in the studio, he wrote a screenplay in what was effectively a last-ditch attempt to be a starring comic actor. He adapted a theatrical sketch, Home from the Honeymoon, which his father had written 20 years earlier, and he had appeared in when just 17. It was not an obvious thing to do. His father’s sketch contained witty dialogue, yet Stan was screenplay was for a silent film. Despite that, he followed the sketch quite closely. He cast himself not as the star of the film but as one half of a comic partnership. He initially envisaged playing alongside the English comic, Syd Crossley. He seems not to have been available and the role went to Oliver Hardy. Until they arrived on the set of the film in 1926, they had occasionally been on screen together but never as a partnership. Despite that, when the film was released in 1927, Laurel and Hardy has already emerged as the comic duo that soon became adored around the world. Thanks to Arthur Jefferson’s sketch; Stan’s writing; his and Oliver’s comic talents and the natural empathy between them, they were soon to become feted international stars. No copy of the original film exists and the variations between those created from the incomplete surviving versions created are analysed in detail.

GROWING UP WITH GAS. A HISTORY OF THE GAS INDUSTRY (Brewin, 2023) with Helen Lawrence

The book begins with the origins of the industry 200 years ago manufacturing coal gas, through its transformation in the 1970s to distributing natural gas, to the current energy crisis and the anticipated future of the gas industry distributing the clean gas hydrogen in a country aiming for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Growing up with Gas is a national history of the industry but because for most of its long life it was local companies which manufactured and distributed coal gas, over half the book is an illustrative historical case study in one town, from its earliest days through to the demolition of its final gas holder in 2017. The image on the front page is that of the Minton Lane gasworks in North Shields, the fourth gas plant in the town, which was designed to be ‘state of the art’ by George Livesey, the leading gas engineer of the time.

The book reveals the key significance of local issues in the way the industry developed e.g. the numerous clashes between private gas companies and local councils, rivalry with neighbouring companies and competition from the developing local electricity industry. Around the time of its 100th anniversary, the local gas industry had to cope with the difficult and lasting consequences of WWI; the mass unemployment of the inter-war depression and being taken over by the Newcastle and Gateshead Gas Company which was to the advantage of the directors and shareholder but not the work force or town. The book includes many other aspects of labour relations, national and local, including the unusually demanding working conditions; accidents (some fatal); resistance to unionisation; the transition from a 12-hour to 8-hour day; redundancies and job insecurity following takeovers. In addition to numerous documentary sources, the book draws on first-hand accounts of life in the gas works from an employee who kept a detailed journal, two of the manager’s children who lived in the gasworks house, and a vivid description of the gas yard by the famous N-E children’s author Rober Westall, whose father was a foreman fitter at the works.

Following the horrors of WW2 (during which the Minton Lane gas works was bombed three times) the over a thousand separate gas undertakings were taken into public ownership so that the fragmented industry could be rationalised. The culmination of this period was the huge engineering achievement of converting all gas appliances from coal gas to natural gas. However, in the 1980s, the industry was privatised by a government committed to selling off state-owned assets. The gas industry has since become globalised, taking it as far from its original local beginnings as can be imagined.

Unusually in a book like this, it includes many elements of human interest, affecting gas employees, the families who lived in the on-site gasworks’ house at Minton Lane, and consumers as well as directors and shareholders.