There are several videos that may be of interest to viewers of this internet site that are available at britishpathe.com - Previews of the videos and vidcaps are available free but are watermarked. A proportion of money British citizens pay when buying lottery tickets is used for charitable and worthy causes and the Pathe film library was digitized and made available with money from this fund. English schools are allowed free access to the high quality videos.

Most of the boy sopranos or trebles at Pathe are those that were accustomed to singing on stage (in cabaret and the music hall) and don't necessarily reflect Cathedral Choir singing. Some sound like girls!! In general, cameras were not allowed into churches in England before the second world war so there is a shortage of footage of trebles during this period. There are videos - such as the one shot in Peterborough Cathedral which show that there were treble soloists singing in a similar way to that which they do today.

Other British Choirs featured with treble solos are the London Boy Players, The Firth Secondary School Boys' Choir and Steffani and his sixteen singing scholars.

Non-English boychoirs featured at Pathe include two clips of the Regensburger Domspatzen, two of the St Charles Boys Choir, Waverley, Australia, two, possibly three, of the Petit Chanteurs a la Croix de Bois and unidentified clips of an American Boychoir and a German choir from the Thomas School in Leipzig.

Two other Kewl clips to look out for are the Harmony Imps and a video where a young boy serenades musical comedy star Dorothy Ward.

The easiest way to locate the videos at British Pathe Films is to go to the advanced search and feed in the films ID number which is given here.