Category: London

Standing in the footsteps of Walt Disney

In some quarters it is almost sacrilgeous to say so but I’ve never watched a classic Walt Disney animated film. When other children were doing so, I was much more interested in live action and often rather bloody history and war films. In fact the only Disney production I saw was Black Hole which is… Continue reading Standing in the footsteps of Walt Disney

The Statue of King Alfred The Great that isn’t all it might appear.

Every where you go in London, it is hard to move without bumping into statues and the politics behind who is worthy of a statue, where it should be and how high a status it has in comparison to other figures especially in statue-dense areas are things that get the proponents and opponents quite worked… Continue reading The Statue of King Alfred The Great that isn’t all it might appear.

Coronavirus Diary 84 – Deserted icons of London in Winter

A few days ago I took two lovely people around some of the most famous sights in London. Normally even in January there would be crowds of people everywhere but as you can see out of millions of people, we use about had the whole place to ourselves. If you’ve never thought how people are… Continue reading Coronavirus Diary 84 – Deserted icons of London in Winter

London’s Biggest Explosion. Silvertown 1917

Tomorrow will see the 105th anniversary of the biggest explosion that London has ever seen and considering all of the industry, terrorism and world wars then that is saying something. However as is often the way with these things, to a great extent it was an entirely avoidable disaster albeit with the mitigating circumstances of… Continue reading London’s Biggest Explosion. Silvertown 1917

Lady Florence Norman – The Scooter riding Suffragette

In London and many other cities, they are the either a much needed liberating ‘last-mile’ mode of transport or the latest bane on urban life. Scooters, particularly those standing e-scooters are loved by riders and seemingly hated by many others in equal measures. They seemed to appear almost overnight in 2019 or 2020 as if… Continue reading Lady Florence Norman – The Scooter riding Suffragette

My Project for 2022

I hop everyone has had a Happy New Year and festive period. I can’t believe this is 2022 and yet I can so clearly remember 1982! The summer of 2022 will see my 10 year anniversary of writing this blog and as I write this there have been 912,000 visitors to my blog which seems… Continue reading My Project for 2022

Wooden Spools of times past outside a beautiful old Spitalfields House

I’ve written countless posts over the years about Spitalfields, Whitechapel and Aldgate and many of them have been on less than savoury subjects but recently when I was out and about walking through the area I decided to revisit one of the more upmarket districts. Of course at one point the whole area was very… Continue reading Wooden Spools of times past outside a beautiful old Spitalfields House

Snooping around a Charnel House (House of the dead) in Spitalfields, London.

Whilst I was out looking for my beigel a few weeks ago in Spitalfields, I decided to do a bit of a detour to look for an old ruin which if not quite in plain sight then is at least walked over by thousands of people every day without their ever really knowing. I’ve written… Continue reading Snooping around a Charnel House (House of the dead) in Spitalfields, London.

Theodora Grahn – The heavy drinking, transgendered celebrity of Regency London

Whatever else Regency London has going for it (and there was a lot), breaking the gender stereotypes was not one of them. Much more than race was ever an issue in London, people from the LGBT community such as it was had it particularly hard. Homosexuality was illegal and brought the risk of capital punishment… Continue reading Theodora Grahn – The heavy drinking, transgendered celebrity of Regency London