19th Century
Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt and the National Theatre
In Matthew Arnold’s essay on ‘The French Theatre’ (1879) he urges on the movement to found a national theatre and fancifully imagines French comediens departing for London and passing ‘along the Strand… I see a fugitive vision of delicate features under a shower of hair and a cloud of lace, and hear the voice of…
Read MoreWalking in the footsteps of ancestors…
I have worked for King’s College for almost twenty years but little did I know that I had another family link to the Strand. This emerged as a result of my deciding to research our family tree for my father’s 80th birthday. He has ancestors, as far back as the late 1700s, who moved from…
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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