I walk by the Thames I know so well Caught again by a riverine spell I know you well but I know you not An endless flow without a plot…
London
I have been deeply moved by the reaction to my book and as a lot of readers have bought multiple copies to give as presents I thought it might be…
What3Words.com locates any space of 3m square using only three words. As lockdown therapy I hesitantly tried a poem which contains a 3 word location (in the right order!) so…
Poem: The Thames at source I went to a shrine without compare To see a river that wasn’t there We strolled from the station forecourt at Kemble Where walkers, like…
Poem Sancho’s shop in Westminster in the 1760s In Charles Street there used to be a shop Where many a celebrity was won’t to stop To buy sugar, baccy and…
London History – The railway that ran dead on time This is a redundant track from the former Necropolis Railway which ferried dead bodies from Waterloo to Woking. Now that…
Secret London History – The magic of the River Wandle First visible source of the Wandle IF THERE’S ever been magic working on London’s rivers it is surely the Wandle…
Secret London History – The lost past of St James’s Park station The former Niagara panorama and ice rink turned garage It is well known that Petty France, by St…
I have just published – OK self-published – my first book about London. All done in poems, over 80 of them.I was going to write about the process but @DaveHill…
How Sir Robert Cecil’s mansion became the world’s biggest hotel and then Shell Mex House
Hotel Cecil from the Embankment, now Shell Mex House If you walk along the Strand today in the direction of Waterloo Bridge you will probably pass by number 80 (photo…
THE HISTORIC Charnel House in Spitalfields has been much written about by enthusiasts but rarely seen – even by people who live and work in the area. I gave up…
New rivers for old – what to do about the Fleet and the Walbrook
WHEN BORIS Johnson became Mayor of London in June 2007 he said he was going to open up the lost rivers of London. Surprise, surprise, it never happened. The Fleet,…
Statue by Grinling Gibbons of Charles 11, founder of the Royal Hospital IT IS OFTEN said that the nearer you are to something the less likely you are to visit…
A few of the dozens of pineapples on railings in the area around Devonshire Street PINEAPPLES, ever since Christopher Columbus came across them in Guadeloup in 1493, have been a…
You may not have noticed but London’s grape harvest has just finished. And I think, unintentionally, I was the last link in the chain yesterday as I delivered my…