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
Tag: 19th century
‘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’
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…?
The Day They Hanged A Banker
How callous would you have to be to invent a country just to lure paying settlers there? Especially if you told them it was an idyllic paradise for Europeans when it was nothing more than an Equatorial mangrove swamp that actually already belonged to someone else? This con man devised a name for the country,… Continue reading The Day They Hanged A Banker
A million pound lifestyle on a clerk’s wage
Meet Walter Watts. In 1844, aged just 27, he burst onto London society with no visible means of support, but with the trappings of a lottery winner. Inquisitive souls who wanted to know where the money came from were baffled as, one after another, they ruled out gambling, an inheritance or the City. However, if… Continue reading A million pound lifestyle on a clerk’s wage
When bankers saw risk as well as reward
When he was a student at Harvard, Bank of England governor Mark Carney played back-up goalie in the teeth-threatening Canadian pastime of ice hockey. So Carney knows a bit about risk.. On Tuesday May 27 he gave a speech to a conference in London on Inclusive Capitalism. The gab-fest included most of the A-listers of… Continue reading When bankers saw risk as well as reward