Phil Gillam: Icons captured perfectly at Shrewsbury museum

They're all here, along with Oasis, Sting, Paul Weller and Pete Townshend, Michael Foot and Denis Healey.

There's even a scene from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and there's a terrific picture that speaks of one of Hollywood's greatest true-life love stories – Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor embracing.

And towering above them all at one end of the hall is a giant image of The Beatles, the four lads from Liverpool who conquered the world.

This is quite a show.

Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery is currently staging this exhibition – entitled Living Dangerously; photographs by the amazing Life magazine photo-journalist and World War II fighter pilot Terence Spencer, with additional photographs from Rock Archive.

"Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second," said the photographer Marc Riboud.

And, as you wander around this exhibition, you can see what he meant.

Intensely is the word.

Many of these people are icons, of course, but there's also something else that makes these pictures very special. Sometimes they're unguarded moments (Charles and Diana), sometimes carefully posed (John, Paul, George and Ringo), but the timing is always perfect.

Other lines spring to mind.

On his hit record, Photograph, Ringo Starr (a full decade after appearing in these superb Fab Four images now on show in Shrewsbury) sang: “Every time I see your face it reminds me of the places we used to go".

This reminds us of another great power fine pictures possess, the power to transport us back to other places, other times.

The charming Tim King, Shropshire's tourism boss, has been key to the staging of this brilliant exhibition. At the opening night last Friday, Tim introduced me to guest-of-honour Cara Spencer, the daughter of the great photographer whose work is being celebrated here.

Cara, who lives in Bayston Hill, spoke passionately about her parents and about her dad's legacy and she was clearly thrilled to see this show up and running.

"My father used to say that when everyone else was running the other way, that was the time for a journalist to run towards the danger. That's why this exhibition is called Living Dangerously. Not that he had a death wish or anything!"

Terence, having been a World War II fighter pilot, experiencing incredible danger in combat, later covered as a photo-journalist the wars in The Congo and Vietnam, as well as disasters like Aberfan.

It seems odd that the same man who covered tragedy and horror should also have covered show business subjects, but, clearly, he did both to standards rarely equalled.

As I've said, this show also features a selection of images from Rock Archive, the world's largest collective of rock photograhers. Many of Rock Archive's pictures have recently been on display in the Royal Albert Hall in London, and also toured China in 2012.

This is a real feather in the cap for Shrewsbury – a stunning exhibition (running until August 31 and open daily from 10am to 5pm) and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

• A NOTE ON BESFORD HOUSE: My column recently about Besford House in Belle Vue prompted this response from L. Cox of Severn Meadows: "The house at the very top of Trinity Street was once a children's wear factory run by Miss Hutchinson and Mr Horsley. It was called Buttessa. I worked there in the 1950s. The sewing was done mostly for Harrods and suchlike. Also, when people mention Barker Street it is never mentioned that a blouse factory called Arthur and Fredericks used to be over the printers. The two men were Germans and had come here to escape the war. I started my first job there 65 years ago." Anyone else remember these places?

• You can contact Phil at philoncloudbase@gmail.com while his novel of family life, Shrewsbury Station Just After Six, is now available from Pengwern Books in Fish Street, and Waterstones, Shrewsbury.