‘With your bodies between your knees’

Eager to sample the recently unveiled Spectator archive, which is cheeringly welcoming to all (pro tem), not skulking behind the palings of some pay wall, I came across this chorus of Floreat Etona in an article published in the summer of 1875. Entitled Parliament and the Eton Boys, it speaks across the centuries, both for… Continue reading ‘With your bodies between your knees’

Light Up the Sky Like a Flame

Few Londoners know how close they once came to losing Leicester Square. Without  Baron Albert Grant it would have been ‘Farewell Leicester Square’ in 1874, when the private gardens that we know as the square were earmarked to build a department store. The square had been plunging downmarket since the previous century, when the likes… Continue reading Light Up the Sky Like a Flame

If I ruled the World

The talk these days is about caliphates and demagogues whose aspiration is to stage a bizarre rerun of the Crusades. My book An Infinite Deal of Nothing, coming out in August, is the untold story about two of the most outrageous attempts at international financial fraud across the 19th century. Stick with me here, this… Continue reading If I ruled the World

Ice cold in Bloomsbury

“The profession’s overcrowded and the struggle’s pretty tough…” Noel Coward’s advice to stage mother Mrs Worthington on thespian ambition for her young Mam’selle applies equally to getting work published. There are just too many books these days. And if there is any justice in this life, a number of published authors have totted up more… Continue reading Ice cold in Bloomsbury

Hey son, would you mind risking your life?

In 1886, when photographic pioneer Henry Hamilton Bennett wanted an action shot to demonstrate his new camera shutter truly captured fast action motion, he got his son Ashley to do this. These days he’d be arrested for child endangerment, but you sort of feel that Ashley loved it too. You wonder what Mrs Bennett had… Continue reading Hey son, would you mind risking your life?