“Ubique”

The motto of the Royal Artillery, meaning “everywhere”, as in “ubiquitous”. As a former gunner, I’m ashamed to say it has taken me 32 years to heft my sorry butt across town to the Royal Artillery Museum in Woolwich, also known as “Firepower”. Last Tuesday a small group of us were privileged to have the [...]

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Robert Browning, 200 today.

Per my previous post reference the unfortunate Spencer Perceval, another bicentenary this year is that of the birthday of Robert Browning, a Londoner of Note. In fact it is today. Many happy returns to him. I am most tickled by a very early Edison sound recording of Browning, made in 1889. You can listen to [...]

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Max Beerbohm, Florence Nightingale and Commander Daniel: History in the Pub

A brief report and some photos of our event on Tuesday night at the Bell in Spitalfields. Buoyed by the success of our first two efforts at the end of last year (here and here), we decided to be a bit more ambitious by introducing a theme and involving sound clips and video, not just [...]

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London Sound Survey

Last night at our monthly pub meeting, it was a pleasure to meet Ian Rawes who runs a web site called London Sound Survey. I must thank Matt Brown of Londonist who encouraged Ian to join us. I have spent some considerable time at the London Sound Survey site this morning. It is a quite [...]

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Passer Domesticus or The Cockney Sparrow

I from such worlds removed to this sad world Of London we inhabit now together, O Sparrow, often in my loneliness, No other friend remaining, turn to thee… At dawn thy voice is loud a merry voice When other sounds are few and faint. Before The muffled thunders of the Underground Begin to shake the [...]

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EMI: Another One Bites the Dust

Last month saw the demise of yet another of Britain’s former industrial giants. Sony Corporation and Universal Music Group bought the only remaining shiny jewels off the corpse of what was once the mighty EMI Group, for almost 80 years a world leader the fields of music recording and publishing as well as electronic research, [...]

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