It's London in wartime, in the blackout before the Blitz and the streets of Soho are full of characters straight…
Based on his published letters,1940 was a busy year for T.S.Eliot. He was based in London and working at Faber…
Norman Pearson returned towards the end of January, after an absence in Spain and Portugal, bearing two bananas, two oranges…
A recent NYTimes Cooking newsletter from Melissa Clark drew my attention to the article about Raghavan Iyer by Kim Severson …
In Our Flag Stays Red (1948) Phil Piratin - the Communist Party MP for Mile End - wrote an account…
A novel by Kate Atkinson is always something to look forward to and I've just finished reading her latest -…
It's all a long time ago now but I spent the summer of 1969 playing. With a shiny new degree…
The sun shining ... just there in the sky like a force-ripe orange That striking image is from Samuel Selvon's…
A musical backdrop to Unreal City: the London of the Lonely Londoners When the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury in…
Six stops on the Hammersmith and City from Euston Square to Westbourne Park, up the stairs, along the bridge over…
A friend is reading Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science,…
George Orwell had an interesting chance encounter with a blasé conspiracy theorist at the Café Royal in 1940. (See left). The young…
Novelists and film makers often struggle to find the right period details to anchor their work in a particular era.…
The sandwich was no comfort, it was a pale limp thing a long way from the déjeuner sur l'herbe of her…
I began this post in 2017. The original focus was Louis MacNeice's's poem "Brother Fire". MacNeice was a fire-watcher during…