Many thanks, Brian, for the tip-off to this fascinating book. It has already destroyed my other afternoon plans. The part about the Tyne Bridge brought back memories for me, even though I was being brought up in Toronto at the time. About 1933 - I'm guessing here, because I don't think I had started school yet - my mother's younger sister, her husband, and her three children returned to Sunderland after some years in Yokohama. They chose to do so via Toronto - a major family event. I don't now remember how they crammed into our small house. For some reason my uncle took it into his head to buy a handsome gramophone (which now serves my eldest daughter as a liquor cabinet) and a pile of records, mainly G & S, Master Lough, and Frank Crumit. But there was also a record of the King opening the Tyne Bridge. The e-book mentions his speech, but not that the King took a minor coughing fit in the middle, to the great delight of my daft uncle and my dad. The pair of them used to play that record over and over so as to join His Majesty in a coughing trio, in which they egged the kids on to join. At length my aunt caused the record to disappear until after she had left. Apart from my dad's comparison with the Sydney Harbour bridge, that was the sum of my knowledge of the Tyne Bridge till I saw it first in 1951. Thanks again