Planning officials today would tell you exactly where to go if you offered them a rose as payment for building a footbridge across a public road without permission. But that’s exactly what was imposed when in 1381 Mrs Knollys was rebuked for creating a structure to connect her […]
Today it is one of the poorest parts of London with residents struggling to get by on low incomes, many shops look shabby, 70s tower blocks are ridden with crime and street drinking is an all too apparent problem. So it may surprise some that Deptford High Street […]
What is a museum? The answer to this may at first be obvious – surely it is simply a place where objects and artefacts from the past are preserved and put on show for the public to see. Originating from the Greek Mouseion, which denoted a place or […]
Travelling on packed Tubes on weekday mornings when you are squashed in to small spaces against closing doors, it is hard to imagine a time when clever marketing was needed to persuade people to get on board. But turn the clock back a few decades and you have […]
High streets across the UK are struggling: footfall is collapsing and consumers’ spend is going down. Across the UK, there are countless examples of parades of boarded-up shops in what were once-thriving market towns and busy city centres. Several long-established businesses such as Peacocks and Blacks have been […]
For history fans, a trip to Istanbul takes some beating. Here visitors can discover two great cities for the price of one, with both Byzantine Constantinople and Ottoman Istanbul waiting to be explored. To walk the streets of Turkey’s commercial capital today is to take a stroll through […]
Five years ago I vividly recall sitting in my car in a supermarket car park on the outskirts of Hull and talking on the phone to a friend who was moving out to Dubai. It was pouring down with rain and I couldn’t face getting soaked from walking […]
Congratulations to Channel 4 for four fantastic new programmes this week challenging key episodes in British history as part of its Bloody Foreigners season. This theme may sound xenophobic but the hour long docu-dramas in fact, in my opinion, showed the positive contributions that immigrants have made to […]
FOR years people have been saying that the British seaside holiday is dead and buried. Those advocating this view have pointed to the growth of cheap flights abroad through the Nineties and Naughties. Why would you want to holiday in a British resort where you would be served […]
Reading an article in the Times today (www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7087627.ece) about Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) workers being paid a “hardship” allowance in certain countries really made me laugh. That’s because Dubai, the emirate with better living conditions that we enjoy in Britain, was included on the list. The FCO […]
Past In The Present 