Nowadays English parish churches are quaint, underused decorative motifs for period costume dramas and Kodak moments — but it seems that they weren’t always that way. Fascinating research that is at a very early stage of data gathering seems to point to a completely different role for the medieval church. The middle class Georgians and… Continue reading Graffiti in church
‘And you try and tell the young people of today that… they won’t believe you’
PriceWaterhouseCoopers the accounting firm with corporate offices in every major city in the world, has mercifully begun calling itself PwC. It has had a bit of a track record with name changes as it swallowed more rivals over the years than the greenery in Little Shop of Horrors. But if you wanted to deal with… Continue reading ‘And you try and tell the young people of today that… they won’t believe you’
Local newspapers have a death wish
On British local newspapers, traditionally that time-honoured apprenticeship of newsgathering, ill-fitted Fleet Street tricks are being aped. You can see this for yourself in headline language used to “big up” a story. “Council boss hits out over bins horror”, “Attendance at village fete plunges”, “Pensioner anguish over dead squirrel”, “Government cuts threaten charity panto”; you… Continue reading Local newspapers have a death wish
You Talkin’ to Me…?
The message that the past really is another country for which you have got nothing but a visitor’s visa is rammed home when you read this. (Click on the image). Crimes of passion have been happening since the Neanderthals. Domestic disputes boil over on a hot night when someone takes a knife from the… Continue reading You Talkin’ to Me…?
If you build it, they won’t necessarily come
Almost everyone has heard of the Crystal Palace. The better informed would tell you that it was the inspiration of Victoria’s German husband, Prince Albert, as a place designed to hold the Great Exhibition of 1851. They would maybe add that it was later moved to Sydenham in south east London to a site on… Continue reading If you build it, they won’t necessarily come
There should be a name for…
Shakespeare made up words. Now it’s your turn. There ought to be a name for… The tuft of hair that sticks from the back of a baseball cap The diablo of pleasure, then mild boredom, trounced by guilty remorse that occurs between the first spoonful of ice cream and the last scrape from the bottom… Continue reading There should be a name for…
‘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
Some have greatness thrust upon them
To become a fixture in history is a luck lottery. Some have it; most don’t. Fame comes in many guises. Captain Scott and General Custer were famous for just one episode – dying. Heroically? Probably not in either case, as it happens. The mood of the times buoyed up their exploits and carried them forward.… Continue reading Some have greatness thrust upon them
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