contemporary
Rapid and joyous bells
‘Oranges and lemons Say the bells of St Clements’ …is or used to be well-known as the first couplet of a nursery rhyme which featured seven churches close to the City of London. The bells of St Clement Danes ring out the tune every day. The Danes built a church at Aldwych, hence the name…
Read More‘March in February’ 2018
The Strand has been home to innumerable protests over the years, with the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, led by Wat Tyler, creating perhaps the most enduring folk memory. Strandlines could encompass the Stop the War march of 2003 which was variously estimated to be between one and three million people, still the largest political demonstration in…
Read MoreA Canadian girl on her way to work on the Strand
In Street Haunting, Virginia Woolf describes the streets of London as having “buses strung on a chain. People fight and struggle. Knocking each other off the pavement.” On all my visits to London riding the tube in the morning to visit one art gallery or another, I would look longingly at the stylish women in…
Read MoreThe changing face of (academic) retail
I worked at King’s College London for seven years, and I was a student there a long time before that. I have many memories of interesting projects at the College, but this post is about one in particular—in 2009 I helped to build a new retail space for the university on the corner of Surrey…
Read MoreSouvenirs on the Strand
A recent walk along the Strand in search of fidget spinners led me to start thinking about souvenirs. Sadly the Strand doesn’t feature in London-themed merchandise – it’s not as cool as the other big streets. A couple of years ago I asked a souvenir seller why he didn’t have items with the Strand? He…
Read MoreMoving Past Present: Digitally Reanimating the Gaiety Girls
In the 1890s the Strand’s Gaiety theatre became famous as the home of a new genre: the musical comedy. The brainchild of Irish impressario George Edwardes, musical comedies like A Gaiety Girl, The Shop Girl, The Quaker Girl, A Runaway Girl and The Circus Girl beguiled audiences with a mixture of songs, spectacle, romance, daring…
Read MoreLord Nelson and the Strand
On a bright, cold afternoon at the end of January 2003 I made my way down the Strand towards Trafalgar Square in the company of American audio artist and playwright Gregory Whitehead and BBC radio producer Neil McCarthy. Ahead of us, high up on the column in Trafalgar Square and silhouetted against a clear blue…
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 More170 Strand with reflections of Bush House
Morning light, early autumn. Before becoming part of King’s College London, this building was known as Aldwych Chambers; this floor was occupied at one time by the stamp merchant Bridger & Kay—the fixing-points for the letters of their name can be seen along the architrave at the top of the photo. It’s a good balcony…
Read MoreChildhood days in Embankment Gardens
This is my sister, Kate, eating ice cream (or is it yoghurt?) on a September day in 1982. This was a few years before I was born, but it’s evocative of my own childhood memories of the Strand. We grew up in Kent, but our parents’ roots are further North, so we would often pass…
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