Invitation card and menu for 'Balaclava' dinner to celebrate the 59th Anniversary of the Battle, 25 October 1913

This was the last annual dinner to be held and was attended by six survivors of the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaklava in 1854. The menu is inscribed with the signatures of three of them: James Mustard (d 1916), 17th Light Dragoons (Lancers), William Henry Pennington (d 1923), 11th Hussars and Henry Wilsden (d 1916), 4th Light Dragoons. The Charge of the Light Brigade, and the Crimean War as a whole, was increasingly slipping beyond living memory.

Donated by Lady Thornton