History - Latest news and reviews

A note about an event that needs booking tickets for as the British Library is hosting a special preview screening of the first episode of series 3 of the TV series, The Tudors. This season sees Henry VIII increasingly in…

I wandered along to a lecture this evening which was due to discuss the relationship between two of the great Diarists of the English Restoration period, being Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn. It was billed as Supper and a Lecture,…

Somehow missed this, but the DLR has published A Brief History of Time the Docklands as a station by station guide. The booklet, some 28 pages long gives 2-3 paragraphs to the history of the area which each station is…

Over the past few weeks, my Sunday evenings have been delighted by the presence of Jeremy Paxman presenting a TV series on The Victorians, looking at the history of that era through the art it inspired. Wonderful stuff and more…

Another in my periodic series on how to get into places which are not obviously open to the public. This time, I am talking about a venue which is very open to the public, being a major tourist attraction –…

This morning, roughly 500 members of the King’s Army of the English Civil War Society marched through Whitehall – in the footsteps of King Charles I in commemoration of ‘His Majestie’s Horrid Murder’ at the hands of the Parliament in…

Off to the Linnaean Society last night for a cup of tea - and a talk about tea, in their plush Piccadilly home. The talk was being given by John Griffiths FLS, who coincidentally has written a book on the subject.

Long term readers may recall that I am slowly researching the history of the Waterloo and Whitehall Railway – a short lived attempt to build a pneumatic railway in an iron tube running under the River Thames between Great Scotland…

A few months ago, when collecting leaflets in the (now closed) tourist board centre in Greenwich, I purchased a book of Docklands history, published by The Island History Trust – mainly as it had two maps which really caught my…

If you ever want a giggle, check out the House of Commons Early Day Motions for a laugh. Most are sensible, but quite often a howler is lodged and this morning I found the following EDM proposed by Ian Gibson…