Wedding Bells and Chimney Sweeps

By Bruce Montague

Wedding Bells and Chimney Sweeps is a wideranging, highly readable collection of information about marriage, a miscellany of facts, lore, statistics, old wives' tales, historical snippets, anecdotes, quotations, myths and superstitions.From the origin of the reading of banns to marriages conducted by ships' captains, the significance to a bride of the wooden spoon to the tradition of tossing her garter, the red tape required before a marriage can take place to Amish weddings and wedlock in literature, here is a book in which readers, married, soon-to-be-married, or determinedly single, are bound to find something to interest, amuse, astonish or, sometimes, appal them.Whether read or dipped into by anxious fiancé, nervous bride, doubtful father-in-law, doting aunt, beaming bridesmaid or melancholy former lover - or simply someone with a passing interest in some of our oldest traditions, religious and pagan - this is a book to delight even the least romantically minded reader.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Metro
• Release date: Apr 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781784180423

Bruce Montague

After National Service attached to 656 Squadron, RAF, in Malaya, Bruce Montague trained at the RADA. In his early twenties, he joined the Old Vic where he appeared in several plays with Vivien Leigh. He has acted in over 300 TV productions but is probably best known for his five-year run in the popular BBC sitcom Butterflies as Wendy Craig’s would-be lover, Leonard. More recently he returned to the theatre in musicals such as Fiddler on the Roof with Topol at the Palladium, Oliver! (as Mr Brownlow – three years at the Palladium), and Phantom of the Opera (two years at Her Majesty’s). His latest TV appearance was as a guest star in New Tricks, and he will play Flo Ziegfeld in the West End production of Funny Girl, the first revival of the musical for fifty years. He has written several plays for the theatre and a number of scripts for the BBC, as well as screenplays, and he has written the lyrics and libretto for new musical, The Mistress, based on the scandalous affair between Admiral Lord Nelson and Emma, Lady Hamilton. His other books (all published by John Blake) include Wedding Bells and Chimney Sweeps, Birds, Bees and Educated Fleas, and The Book of Royal Useless Information, which he co-wrote with the late Noel Botham. He lives in Hove and has been married for fifty-three years to the actress Barbara Latham.