Best of Recent Blogs #26

Patient: “Doctor, doctor my arm hurts when I do this!” Medic “Well stop doing it, you fool” by Georgian Gentleman LONDON’S BURIAL GROUNDS: THE CRUSADE OF ‘GRAVEYARD’ WALKER by Kith & Kin Research Facadism by Caroline’s Miscellany Bradshaw, Railway Pioneer by Caroline’s Miscellany St Martin’s Gardens by London Cemeteries Soho and the Fall of the [...]

Read Full Post »

Bath: We Venture West

We have quite a few members in Bath, Bristol, Somerset, Devon and Dorset. Some months ago during some banter on Twitter,  it was suggested by this coterie that we hold an event in the South West. And so we did. Last Thursday. And what a wonderful day out it was. The whole shindig was organised [...]

Read Full Post »

Recommend You See The Doctor

The Cartoon Museum has mounted some extraordinary exhibitions over the past year, that’s for sure. We’ve had wonderful shows celebrating Fougasse (Kenneth Bird) and Ronald Searle. More recently, I only just managed to make it to the Steve Bell retrospective before it finished: it was a pure delight. And now we celebrate the artists and writers who [...]

Read Full Post »

On The List: Remembering Leslie Green

Yesterday, English Heritage announced that 16 Underground stations have been given Grade II listing and a further three exiting Grade II stations have been upgraded to Grade II*. The 16 are: Aldwych, Belsize Park, Brent Cross, Caledonian Road, Chalk Farm, Chesham, Covent Garden, Hendon Central, Oxford Circus (counts as two), Perivale, Redbridge, Russell Square, St John’s [...]

Read Full Post »

Mr Punch in London Town II

Today being the anniversary of the death of Henry Mayhew in 1887, it is appropriate to feature some more excellent early 20th Century cartoons from Punch, which Mayhew co-founded in 1841. As featured in Mr Punch In London Town from the New Punch Library. These artists were phenomenally talented, I love in particular their drawings [...]

Read Full Post »

Southwark and the Bible

Near the conglomeration of rail viaducts, tube and mainline train complexes at London Bridge can be found this plaque: This, presumably, is a reference to Coverdale’s Great Bible, ordered by Henry VIII and supervised by Thomas Cromwell. It borrowed the approved bits and edited the unapproved ones from  Tyndale (who had recently been burned for [...]

Read Full Post »

Best of Recent Blogs #25

London’s First Buses, the Lewisham Connection by Caroline’s Miscellany The First Lady of Fleet Street by Virtual Victorian (excellent: required reading!) At the Rag Fair in Houndsditch by Spitalfields Life Swan Upping on the Thames by Spitalfields Life Unseen Images of Tower Bridge Under Construction Part 1 and Part 2 by Discovering London (more to [...]

Read Full Post »

Understanding Early Terrace Housing

Uniform terraced town houses emerged in London immediately after the Great Fire. The government recognised both the urgency of regeneration for the thousands of now-homeless families, but also the requirement that this activity needed to be strictly regulated to eliminate the factors which contributed to the Fire in the first place. The Rebuilding Act of [...]

Read Full Post »

Mr Punch In London Town I

First in an occasional series from The New Punch Library, Volume 15 being Mr Punch in London Town. No publishing date, but definitely 1930s. The collection comprises essays and cartoons from 1899 onwards.

Read Full Post »

The OTT Coronation of George IV

190 years ago today, our most extravagant and self-indulgent monarch, George IV, celebrated his coronation. He was determined that it should be more lavish, more spectacular than Napoleon’s Imperial coronation of 1804. Such were the preparations, it took a full 18 months to organise following his accession and cost £243,000, funded from the public purse [...]

Read Full Post »