Dickensian London in A Muppet Christmas Carol – Lee Jackson
Tourists have reimagined and reinvented the landmarks, streets, and alleys of Dickens’s London for more than 150 years. Take, for example, A Muppet Christmas…
Victorian history
A Dickensland Extract: The Haunted Bridge
From vanishing coaching inns and submerged riverside stairs to hidden burial grounds and apocryphal shops… In his new book Dickensland, Lee Jackson traces the…
Palaces of Pleasure- Q&A with Lee Jackson
The Victorians invented mass entertainment. As the nineteenth century’s growing industrialised class acquired the funds and the free time to pursue leisure activities, their…
‘Working Mothers’ – An extract from Bread Winner by Emma Griffin
Escape Into Art, Look Through the Lens of History, Seek Certainty in Science … To help us all keep on reading over the coming…
The Secret Poisoner: Interview with Linda Stratmann
The Secret Poisoner: A Century of Murder by Linda Stratmann – a BBC Radio 2 Book Club choice – is a dark and splendid social…
The Secret Poisoner: An Extract
The Secret Poisoner: A Century of Murder by Linda Stratmann – a BBC Radio 2 Book Club choice – is a dark and splendid social…
The Secret Poisoner: An Introduction
Linda Stratmann‘s latest book – and BBC Radio 2 Book Club’s recent choice – The Secret Poisoner: A Century of Murder is a dark and splendid…
Dirty Old London: 30 Days of Filth: Day 29
‘Many myths and ‘factoids’ appear on the web and in print. They are often incorrect…’ Throughout this month, Lee Jackson reveals the background to Dirty…
Dirty Old London: 30 Days of Filth: Day 11
‘Mud, I fear is immortal. Mud was, mud is, and mud will be. Dig what sewers we may, hollow what gutters we may, the…
Dirty Old London: 30 Days of Filth: Day 10
‘Though the dustmen may come regularly once a week and empty the dustbin, if it is carelessly filled with wet, decaying and putrefying things,…
Dirty Old London: 30 Days of Filth: Day 6
‘Few working men could afford the luxury of a bathing costume. Most (in)famously, the Serpentine was ‘obscene with bathers’ at dusk and dawn. Flustered…
Dirty Old London: 30 Days of Filth: Day 3
‘The great cholera epidemic of 1831/32 would offer the first proof of the disastrous consequences of mixing water and sewage – and worse would…