Category: history

Visualising the spread of cities throughout time

As I’m really busy with my tours this week and don’t have a great deal of time to do a lot of writing, instead I found neat little video that I found that conveys a fascinating subject.  The creation and the spread of cities and hence the spread of civilisation. Even from the graphic below… Continue reading Visualising the spread of cities throughout time

More photos from the old and the new

Today I finish my series of three posts looking at how particular locations have changed in appearance between some old photos that I found and which date from the 1880’s and 1890’s and how they look today using Google Steet view. Originally I was just interested to see if I could find the locations for… Continue reading More photos from the old and the new

The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace – Benedictus

Do you ever have a situation where you hear a piece of music and don’t know what it is?  Perhaps you hear a new song on the radio that you like the sound of but miss the introduction at the beginning or annoyingly the presenter doesn’t credit it at the end. It’s hard enough when… Continue reading The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace – Benedictus

Why does the Queen have 2 birthdays?

Today  Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her 90th birthday.   Reaching 90 years of age is reason enough to celebrate for any of us but this is the second time the Queen has reached 90 as she also had a birthday back on 21st April which was the day she was actually born. In… Continue reading Why does the Queen have 2 birthdays?

The more things change – Photos of then and now

Following from my popular post earlier in the week  Then and now – How sights have changed in 130 years I have collated some more of the old colour photographs from the 1890s cataloging interesting sights around England and then using Google Streetview, attempted to replicate these views to see how things have changed. The first… Continue reading The more things change – Photos of then and now

Then and now – How sights have changed in 130 years

Last week the Daily Telegraph newspaper printed some old photos from across England and taken in the 1890’s but rare because they were in colour. The photos were created using the Photochrom technique pioneered by Photoglob Zürich AG, which sees colour manually added to black-and-white negatives. I thought it would be fun to see if… Continue reading Then and now – How sights have changed in 130 years

The Battle of Jutland

Today marks the centenary anniversary of the single most important naval battle of WW1 and as I have been doing for the last few years, I thought I would write a dedicated post taken from extracts of my WW1 history book, Lest We Forget, published by Endeavour Press of London. For centuries, the Royal Navy… Continue reading The Battle of Jutland

Friday the 13th – Why is 13 the unlucky number?

The fear of the number 13 or even Friday the 13th even has a name, Paraskevidekatriaphobia – from the Greek words paraskeví (meaning ‘Friday’), and dekatreís (meaning ‘thirteen’). The fear of the number 13 itself is called Triskaidekaphobia. Partly this is due to the number 12 being seen as being a good number; a number of… Continue reading Friday the 13th – Why is 13 the unlucky number?

Thomas Coram and The Foundling Hospital

Whilst researching for a new book which I am writing on ‘Things To Do In London’, I came across a park which piqued my curiosity.  The park is called Coram’s Fields and remarkably it is only open to children with adults only being able to enter if they are accompanying young children themselves. I thought for… Continue reading Thomas Coram and The Foundling Hospital