The Beatles Afternoon at the British Library

The Beatles at Stowe School, Piggott Theatre, British Library, London, Saturday 4 April 2026
By Julian Walker (Bruce House 1971)

I heard about this event on New Year’s Day 2026 and immediately bought a ticket. Just as well as the event sold out very quickly indeed. The theatre has 255 seats, and there was an extra row of chairs added to the front row, so on the day there must have been about 270 people attending.

The event was hosted by the journalist Samira Ahmed, who had played a part in bringing to light the audience recording of the concert made by John Bloomfield, in 2023. I recognised John Bloomfield (Temple 64) straight away as he was wearing an Old Stoic tie! The third speaker was the renowned Beatles scholar Mark Lewisohn. The main purpose of the afternoon was the playback of John’s recording of the concert on that historic afternoon, Thursday 4th April 1963. The British Library event was held exactly 63 years to the day of that concert. The original reel to reel tape was donated to the British Library by John Bloomfield, as was his Butoba MT 5 reel to reel tape recorder. The keeper of Music at the British Library appeared on stage with the tape, contained in an archive box (please see the Photo). John Bloomfield produced his Butoba recorder and this sat on a table with a single spotlight on it during the presentation. In the interval I got a photo of John holding this tape recorder (please see the photo).

Mark Lewisohn then told the story of how his research in 1981 for all The Beatles live performances lead him to get in touch with David Moores (Grenville 64), the Liverpool boy at Stowe who wrote to Brian Epstein at the beginning of 1963 for them to play at the Roxburgh Hall. The contract was for The Beatles to perform two 30 minute sets, but they arrived late and so went straight on stage and played one set of just over 60 minutes. Mark had prepared a superb visual timeline which was projected onto the screen of the events in 1963 leading up to the Stowe concert, to put everything into context. John Bloomfield then told the story of how he set up a microphone on a stand at the front of the stage, and hooked up his reel to reel tape recorder. He managed to capture nearly all the concert, but the tape only lasted just over 60 minutes so is missing the last two songs.

At the British Library, the actual concert was split into 4 parts when played to everyone in the theatre.  At the end of the concert playback the two daughters of the tuck shop manager where afterwards the 4 band members went for a roast chicken supper joined the stage to talk about their memories of the day. Incredibly their father had hidden a microphone inside a vase of flowers and the band members were recorded talking about the length of their concerts, but when in Hamburg they had to play for 8 hours. Finally, two schoolfriends of John Bloomfield, Dave Remington (Grenville 65) and Mike Lawford (Bruce 63) joined him on stage. Mike Lawford told the story of how he got all four Beatles autographs in his autograph book, and then with a flourish pulled out this book from his jacket pocket, to great amusement and cheers from the audience!

All in all it was a very memorable and emotional afternoon, and yet another reason why I am so proud to have gone to Stowe (just three years later than the concert unfortunately), and the lifelong bond that we all have for the school and the friends that we made there.

This was the first (almost) complete recording of a Beatles UK concert so an historic document.