When the Puritan Protectorate ended in 1660, London's sex industry grew wildly public and was linked to both theatres and the underworld. Charles II lifted the Puritan ban on theatre-going, […]
Diamond-polishing, ice-cream selling, pocket-picking, writing memoirs: Migrants to London have done them all while working to make a living. Working-class migrants, often maligned as 'economic migrants', do business, make families, […]
History of Islington youths convicted of theft, jailed in Newgate and condemned to hang -- but instead they were shipped to Australia. From 1821 English courts began to sentence convicted […]
A water-everywhere walk chronicling how the poor lived in an area of gas works, power station, pleasure gardens, boats and street life. Developers now call this rising area Lot’s Village […]
How do we know how poor women lived in the Middle Ages when historians have ignored them? Walk the river and meet 6 medieval working women. Written history records only […]
Primrose Hill was born when navvies dug out the land by hand, bringing grime, racket, hard drinking and what some called Moral Depravity. The neighbourhood radiates brilliant industrial solutions of […]
Bengalis have been arriving in London for centuries. In this novel a young married woman at first housebound emerges empowered. Monica Ali’s Brick Lane recounts the experiences of Nazneen, a […]
East of the Tower old-clothes sellers, sex workers, thieves and sailors' wives held sway both before and after the London Docks were built. Women reigned in Rag Fair, which extended […]
Poor pay, nowhere to meet, forbidden to marry: Loving a Horse Guard was not easy. Meanwhile courtesans beguiled officers in elegant squares. You'll see the ceremonial gate in Hyde Park […]
Richmond is Sir David Attenborough's favourite place on the planet, and the stretch of the river to Twickenham is the very best part. Your fantasy of classic English countryside come […]
From WWII Brixton is a centre for black Britons as well as South London fairies, squatters, poets, Latin American entrepreneurs. An innovating commercial area in the late 19th century, Brixton […]
An 1848 Chartist rally scared government into taking away rights to the common. Now we have a park and pockets of green - is it the same? This walk in […]