Save the Half Moon in Herne Hill

Like she sang… “Sweeties’ Snack Bar, boarded up now And Egles The Tailor and the Shine Boy’s gone Faded out with ragtime blues”

E Pur si Muove

There is something disarmingly strengthening when you hear that innocent piping voice of history whispering from the unencumbered past, ‘excuse me, but I think you are perhaps mistaken…” I am not a climatologist, but… I am certain that the congregation of the pro-warmist faith is probably 99 per cent made up of people just as… Continue reading E Pur si Muove

The other side of Frederick Furnivall: Tiny Teena

Maybe I painted old man Furnivall as too benign and saintly an old chap. He was not without what they might call ‘personal issues’ earlier in life. Firstly, as George Bernard Shaw wrote “He was a good sort, but his quarrels were outrageous…” When he fell out with poet Algernon Swinburne, he used his lexicographical… Continue reading The other side of Frederick Furnivall: Tiny Teena

A little exercise

Why does history sometimes abandon the memory of a great and colourful character? It’s midday on a chilly February Sunday in the year 1910. At Hammersmith, a western suburb of London still countrified, 1,000 people have gathered on the bridge over the Thames. A ripple of applause and cheering breaks out for a thin row… Continue reading A little exercise