London is a photogenic city to capture given iconic buildings like the Houses of Parliament, St Paul’s Cathedral and the Tower of London. I am by no means a professional photographer, but when it’s sunny I enjoy heading down to the Thames to take snaps of structures – […]
When I was in New York last year and stopped at Trinity Church – just a stone’s throw from Wall Street – most visitors only seemed to have one thing they wanted to see. It wasn’t inside the building itself, but a grave at side of the churchyard […]
When the temperatures sore in the summer months, the Kent, Essex and Sussex seaside resorts within an hour or two of the capital are a popular places for Londoners to enjoy a fun-filled day out. Unfortunately the sun doesn’t always shine in Britain however and a day on […]
An abandoned terraced house in south London seems a fitting setting for such dark a story. Amongst the peeling walls and bare floorboards of this crumbling Peckham property, unfolds the tragic events of the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 1572 when Catholic mobs attacked protestants, known as Huguenots, […]
“I want us to disrupt this street,” Rupert Murdoch says after his purchase of the Sun in 1969. The young Australian sheep farmer, turned newspaper proprietor wanted big things from the ailing broadsheet founded five years earlier, which under his watch would be re-born as a lively tabloid. […]
When I take the rubbish out to the bin store outside my block of flats, I try to perform this necessary task as quickly as possible. Lift the lid, throw the bags in and make my getaway before the smell becomes overpowering. One thing I don’t tend to […]
Jack the Ripper stares you in the face as you emerge from Tower Hill Underground station. He’s not there in person of course, but in the form of advertising boards for nightly tours that charge around the East End sites associated with the infamous murderer and his victims. […]
“Last Thursday they were turned out of their lodgings into the streets because they were in arrears with their rent,” reported the Illustrated Police News in 1900. “She had seven children….“ London has, in years gone by, been a trying place for many to live as a result […]
Watching archaeologists at work on construction sites in London over the years, I’ve often wondered what happens to all the artefacts they unearth. The major finds often soon end up on show to the public in special museum exhibitions, but what about the mere fragments that – to […]
At kitchen tables and offices across Britain right now many are likely to be engaged in an annual festive conversation: “How many Christmas cards should we send and who should they go to? That’s if they are to send any printed cards at all……” In an age where […]
Past In The Present 