British Empire Exhibition

Designed by John William Simpson and Maxwell Ayrton, and built by Sir Robert McAlpine, it could hold 125,000 people, 30,000 of them seated.

[9][14][15][16][17] The only standard gauge locomotive involved in the construction of the Stadium has survived, and still runs on Sir William McAlpine's private Fawley Hill railway near Henley.

[20] Exhibition station opened on 28 April 1923, the day of Wembley Stadium's first FA cup final.

The Exhibition presented a creative challenge, in that its concept required a large number of buildings in a variety of styles.

[29][30] The Exhibition's official aim was "to stimulate trade, strengthen bonds that bind mother Country to her Sister States and Daughters, to bring into closer contact the one with each other, to enable all who owe allegiance to the British flag to meet on common ground and learn to know each other".

It contained displays on the chemical industry, coal, metals, medicinal drugs, sewage disposal, food, drinks, tobacco, clothing, gramophones, gas and Nobel explosives.

The Canada Pavilion contained displays on minerals, farming, forestry, the paper industry, water power and Canada as a holiday destination, as well as, in the dairy industry section, a full sized figure of the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VIII, sculpted in butter and preserved in a refrigerated case.

At the conclusion of the exhibition, the memorial was donated by Major William Howe Greene to the citizens of Newfoundland and displayed in Bowring Park (St. John's).

[35] The Palace of Arts, which was fire-proofed, contained historical room sets, as well as painting and sculpture since the eighteenth century.

It also displayed Queen Mary's Dolls' House, now at Windsor Castle, which contained miniature bottles of Bass beer.

Kiosks, located both inside and outside the pavilions, represented individual companies within the Empire, encouraging commercial opportunities.

Among the exhibits in the Palace of Engineering was the now famous railway locomotive, LNER 4472 Flying Scotsman; this was joined in 1925 by GWR 4079 Pendennis Castle.

[39][40] A Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway-designed Baltic Tank 4-6-4T, number 11114, built by the LMS at Horwich Works new, was also on display and featured in postcards.

The ten beauties were Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Scheherazade, Dante's Beatrice, Elizabeth Woodville, Mary Queen of Scots, Nell Gwyn, Madame de Pompadour, the actress Sarah Siddons and 'Miss 1924'.

[54] and the 'Roadrails' line on which trains were hauled by steam or petrol tractors guided by the rails but with driving wheels running on the ground outside the track.

Visitors could also travel in electric "Railodok" buses (little more than basic railway station luggage trolleys fitted with open-sided bodywork, but exciting nonetheless).

[37] The Stadium itself was used extensively for performances by massed bands and choirs, military and historical displays, an Edinburgh-like tattoo, fireworks, the first Rugby Union match to be played at Wembley, a simulation of an air attack on London (London Defended, see below) and a genuine rodeo which caused some alarm to animal lovers.

The newly appointed Master of the King's Musick, Sir Edward Elgar, composed an "Empire March" for it and the music for a series of songs with words by Alfred Noyes.

One of the Pilots in the display was Flying officer C. W. A. Scott who later became famous for breaking three England-Australia solo flight records and winning the MacRobertson Air Race with co-pilot Tom Campbell Black in 1934.

[57][58] The Exhibition is of philatelic interest, as it was the first occasion for which the British Post Office issued commemorative postage stamps.

Other popular attractions included the Queen's Dolls House, the Wild West Rodeo, the dance pavilions, and the amusement park, but had very little to do with the empire as a whole.

P. G. Wodehouse's fictional Bertie Wooster may have reflected genuine reactions to the Exhibition in preferring the Green Swizzles at the Planters Bar to anything more didactic.

Middlebrow British culture continued to be receptive to the brand of imperial pride the Exhibition sought to incubate.

[67] That said, patience with such direct celebration of the British Empire was wearing thin among parts of the intelligentsia of the period, who were less impressed.

Edward Elgar, who conducted some of his songs at the opening ceremony, remarked that the pomp and self-importance was "vulgar" and overdone.

Punch magazine lampooned the exhibit, the left-leaning New Statesman mostly ignored it, and the Daily Herald condemned it, writing "to this debased spirit we owe many unnecessary wars, the loss of much valuable blood.

"[67] The Exhibition is a key location in the P. G. Wodehouse short story, "The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy", in which Sir Roderick Glossop describes it as "the most supremely absorbing and educational collection of objects, both animate and inanimate, gathered from the four corners of the Empire, that has ever been assembled in England's history."

Bertie Wooster is somewhat less impressed, remarking that "millions of people, no doubt, are so constituted that they scream with joy and excitement at the spectacle of a stuffed porcupine-fish or a glass jar of seeds from Western Australia – but not Bertram" and sneaks off to the Planters' Bar in the West Indian section for a Green Swizzle.

The British Empire Exhibition features in David Lean's 1944 film This Happy Breed, starring Celia Johnson.

[71] In Sir John Betjeman's celebrated Metro-Land (1973) the poet recalls his childhood experience of the exhibition in the "Wembley" segment.