ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO The 1923 English Nationals
TALK about competitive! Still on its way back after WWI, the fancy in 1923 embarked on an internecine slog over which event could claim to be The National. And Cage Birds was anything but impartial: we favoured the Olympia version and wrote it up with due gravity. Its main rival dubbed itself The Great International Open Cage Bird Show, took place at Alexandra Palace and actually pulled in a bigger entry – and yet our coverage presented it as a bit of a laugh (see “The Ally Pally alternative”, below).
To cap that, a THIRD candidate surfaced, with the announcement of a “National Challenge Show” to be held at Crystal Palace later the same season. It was all quite undignified –
