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The Red Telephone Box: A London icon
Courtesy of Wikipidia. A red telephone box in front of St Paul's Cathedral, London, United Kingdom. Image by Christoph BraunLong before it became one of London’s most photographed symbols, the red telephone box began with a challenge. In the early 1920s, the General...
Ian Fleming: The London Life Behind 007
Image courtesy of Wikipedia. Photo of Ian Fleming used for the dust jacket of the first US edition of The Diamond Smugglers. Cropped photo to match crop as published on dustjacket. Dust jacket photo was credited to American photographer Erich Hartmann and carried no...
Piccadilly Circus – a brief history
Piccadilly Circus is one of London’s best-known landmarks, recognised today for its bright advertising screens, busy streets and central location. But its story begins far more modestly than that. The name Piccadilly comes from “piccadills,” the stiff, frilled...
The Soho Street Where Television Began
Soho has always been the kind of London neighbourhood where new ideas turn up early and tucked away on one of its most historic streets about 100 years ago, a quiet technological revolution began. In the mid-1920s, John Logie Baird, the Scottish inventor best known as...
Queen Anne’s Footstool
A charming oddity this. Smith’s Square Hall, located near Westminster is best known today as a performance and events space. Its origins, however, lie in the early 18th century, and its history reflects both London’s architectural ambition and its ability to adapt...
Lord Mountbatten – a flawed hero
Meet Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma - statesman, naval officer and esteemed member of the British Royal Family. And if you think that’s quite a mouthful you should know that he was actually born Prince Louis...
When Dr Johnson met James Boswell
The first meeting between Samuel Johnson and James Boswell has become one of those moments in literary history that feels almost theatrical in its timing and setting. It was May 16th, 1763, inside Davies’s bookshop on Russell Street in Covent Garden, a bustling hub of...
Blackfriars Bridge and the watermen
When Blackfriars Bridge first spanned the Thames in the 18th century, it wasn’t universally welcomed. In fact, some of London’s most skilled river workers actively opposed its construction: the watermen. For centuries before bridges became common, watermen were...
Madame Tussauds: wax, history and revolution
Madame Tussauds London is best known today as a major tourist attraction, but its origins lie in the turbulent political and social history of late eighteenth-century Europe. Long before the museum became associated with celebrities and popular culture, it was shaped...