Posts by Hope Wolf
Covent Garden Project 2013
Between May and July 2013 the Centre for Life-Writing Research collaborated with Westminster Archives and the Covent Garden Community Association on a Lottery Heritage Fund project, ‘Gentlemen We’ve Had Enough: the Story of the Battle to Save Covent Garden.’ The project aimed to tell the stories of Covent Garden residents who campaigned to prevent GLC…
Read More"I sing of a world reshaped": editing your local area; editing your story
This was my second session leading the creative writing group at the Connection at St Martins. The previous week I met Judith Chernaik, who, with poets, has selected poems for display on London’s Underground. Over 300 poems have been displayed on the Tube since the ‘Poems on the Underground’ programme was launched in 1986. Judith…
Read MoreHandel in the Strand
‘Handel in the Strand’ by Percy Grainger was originally composed in 1911-12 ‘for piano and two or more strings, or for massed pianos and string orchestra’; it was arranged for piano solo in 1930. The Kennedy Centre tells me that this piece of music was written as a clog dance; Percy Grainger offered a brief…
Read MoreA memory of the Strand
This story has been kindly contributed by Gerald Collins. The Strand is the gateway to Temple Bar and the City boundary. Originally lined with palaces and mansions, the only reminder of these old estates today are the street names i.e. Essex Street, Villiers Street. As a child in the early 1950’s my parents would take…
Read MoreAldwych 1910
This photograph of the Aldwych, before the building of Bush House, was found on the Partleton ‘In their Shoes’ website.
Read More'Heart Surgeon urges women to join her at cutting edge!'
King’s College Archives (Ref: K/PC6/22), 28 October 1993, The Times, ‘Heart Surgeon urges women to join her at cutting edge!’ colour photograph of Elaine Griffiths, former King’s College London alumna, operating in theatre. © King’s College London Archives
Read MoreParish Office, St Martin-in-the-Fields
Knitting Under Blackfriars Bridge/Making a Knitted Nativity Scene for a Lawyer at Temple
‘Charlie’ leads Sockmob walking tours around London. I have written about these tours for the Strandlines blog. ‘Charlie’ used to be homeless, and slept around the Strand, Covent Garden, Waterloo and Blackfriars Bridge. She describes here how she knitted and sold toys as an alternative to begging. [missing audio]
Read MoreSockmob Walking Tour
On Wednesday last week I was given a new perspective on the Strand area. Certainly I had walked its lines before: I had been to Temple tube station, the arches under the Adelphi, Embankment Park, the Cole Hole, and Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Yet, I shall now look these familiar places and spaces differently: they have…
Read MorePanoramas, Dress Circles and Tubes
In 1787 Robert Barker put a patent on a way of seeing: ‘panorama’. It is said that he came upon the term when surveying the city of Edinburgh from the top of Calton Hill. Moving to London, Barker reconstructed 360 degree views in a Leicester Square art gallery; an initiative mimicked by his son on…
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