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Today, a bit about Shoreditch, home of the legendary Shoreditch Twat (see above). Shoreditch was once known as the cradle of British drama, because it was the first parish in England to possess a theatre. In 1576 James Burbage built his stage – Shakespeare supposedly minded the horses here – and there’s a plaque that marks [...] More from Peter Jackson’s books of London oddities, in which we try to find out whether there’s anything left of the things he mentions that could once be found in and around the London streets. The books were written over half a century ago, and I thought the chances of locating them were pretty slim [...] For your delectation, a slender book in my possession, priced 2/6d, Peter Jackson’s ‘The London Explorer’ contains more of his wonderful oddities about London from the author of the much-loved ‘London Is Stranger Than Fiction’ column that used to run in the Evening News. Here are Jackson’s remarks on the district of Clerkenwell. Remember, these [...]
How much has London actually changed? These melded photographs form part of a larger set on Yahoo! and forwarded to me by Andrea Yang, which you can see here. I suspect they were created by the team responsible for the cover of ‘Vanishing London’ by Paul Joseph, which mixed old and new Fleet [...] Last night I passed the Marquis of Granby pub in London’s Cambridge Circus. Or rather, I didn’t. Because it has been renamed ‘The Ape & Bird’, which I guess is some kind of pun about neanderthals taking dates there. Admittedly the old name wasn’t much better, but at least there was a historical reason for it. London’s guilds [...] I rarely watch TV except in box-set binges, although I made a huge effort to watch ‘The Killing’, which I thought was fairly boring and overly drawn-out. I’m not very good with TV cop shows, and always forget who’s who. However, I fell in love with ‘The Bridge’. I know there are half a dozen [...] A couple of years ago, one of our Mayor’s henchmen was asked why so many young people poured into London, and he bluntly replied ‘For the sex,’ which was at least honest. But London had always been ‘for the sex’. There were once 107 brothels in the immediate vicinity of Drury Lane alone. Nearly a fifth [...] If you’ve ever wondered any there are so many theatres in London (but no theatre museum – it was sadly closed down due to lack of funding), you have to go back to the King’s, the Rose and the Globe, to Shakespeare’s plays, and the coffee houses of London. The leading wits of the seventeenth [...] On my winding way back home, killing time between Saigon and Bangkok, I checked out the movies available to watch on the flight. Whenever I do this I’m always struck by the way in which the East has no interest at all in the West. While Hollywood tries to open inroads into India and China, [...] In the opening of Bryant & May 12: ‘The Burning Man’, I’ve homaged my favourite quote from Charles Dickens about London, which comes right at the start of ‘Bleak House’. You’ll probably recall (erudite readers all) that he points out that there is so much mud in the streets that it would not be surprising [...] |
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