Not a bad town, this. Given a job to do and a bit of money in our pockets, you and I could live there and be reasonably happy.''

That was how the eminent novelist and playwright JB Priestly summed up Southampton when he arrived in the port back in 1933.

He had been in Southampton many times before, but always to and from on a ship, including one occasion when, among a small group of First World War officers, he left the docks for France.

"Half a dozen of us found ourselves the only English officers in a tall crazy American ship bursting with doughboys, whose bands played ragtime on the top deck,'' wrote the author.

"Since then I had sailed for the Mediterranean and New York from Southampton, and had arrived there from Quebec. But is had no existence in my mind as a real town, where you could buy and sell and bring up children; it existed only as a muddle of railway sidings, level crossings, customs houses and dock sheds: something to have done with as soon as possible.''

But 66 years ago the writer spent a little more time to get to know Southampton and his description paints a fascinating picture of how it used to be.

"The place I rolled into down the London Road was quite different, a real town,'' remembered the author who was to make his home on the Isle of Wight.

"You are still staring at the pleasant Hampshire countryside when you notice that it is beginnng to put itself into some order, and then the next minute you find that it is Southampton Common and that the townsfolk can be seen walking there; and, the minute after, the road is cutting between West Park and East Park and on either side the smaller children of absent pursers and chief stewards are running from sunlight to shadow, and there are pretty frocks glimmering among the trees, and now, in another minute, the town itself is all around you, offering you hats and hams and acrobats at the Palace Theatre.

"This one road, which begins as if it had been lately cut out of the New Forest and ends in the shadow of the great liners, is Southampton's main artery. You walk up and down it, shop in it, eat and drink and entertain yourself in it.

"The pavement on each side was crowded with neat smiling people, mostly women, and the mile of shops seemed to be doing a brisk trade.''

As the writer neared Southampton's waterfront he took a stroll around the historic Town Quay and gazed over to the docks and the great ships that lined the quaysides.

"Here the present was dominating the past, just as these giant liners themselves were dominating sheds and wharves that tried to enclose them but the very town itself,'' wrote Mr Priestly. "Against a porcelain sky of palest blue, their black and crimson and buff funnels were enormous, dazzling.

"It did one's heart good to see them. I longed to go aboard.''

Turning his back on the water he took a walk down the streets of "some very poor quarters'' off the High Street.

"The only thing to be said in favour of these squalid little side-streets of Southampton is that they did not seem as devastatingly dismal as the slums of the big industrial towns,'' said the novelist.

"There was still a sea sparkle in these people's lives. They were noisy and cheerful, nit crushed. "Cheap food and drink and tobacco and gossip were to be had; the men could guffaw round the entrance to the old junk yards; the girls knew how to powder their noses; the children could always wander to water's edge.

"I noticed, too, quite a number of blatant cut-rice shops, their windows crammed with goods, mostly inferior and dubious, and loud with placards so exclamatory that they made one's eyes jump.''

Although JB's overall impression of the place and its people was favourable there was a sting in the tail of his description.

"Southampton has not been able to live up to those great ships it harbours. They are the soul of the place. Their coming and going light it up.

"The citizens are knowledgeable about and proud of these visiting giants, but they have not succeeded yet in building a town or planning a life worthy of such majestic company. What a Southampton that would be!''

Converted for the new archive on 25 January 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.