* Our family was unusual in buying a television not for the Coronation but in order to view the Cup Final at Wembley one month earlier, on 2 May 1953, when Blackpool beat Bolton Wanderers 4–3 in a thrilling match that finally gave the most famous English player of the day, Stanley Matthews, a cup-winner’s medal at the age of thirty-eight. Most of the people on the street, it seemed, crowded into the small living room of our terraced house in Oldham to watch the match.