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Six Million Tonnes of What Were They Thinking
What if Trafalgar Square didn’t have Nelson’s Column at all, but a full-scale Great Pyramid instead? Not a model. Not a metaphor. Six million tonnes …
8 months, 1 week ago
Ice in Their Veins – The Serpentine Christmas Swim and London’s Wildest Tradition
Every Christmas morning since 1864 (with only one modern break), a hardy band of swimmers has plunged into the icy Serpentine in Hyde Park for a 100-…
8 months, 1 week ago
She Taught the World to Dream on Tiptoe
Maria Taglioni changed ballet forever. In the early nineteenth century she reinvented the art form, dancing en pointe not as a trick but as poetry, c…
8 months, 1 week ago
Out of the Blue – London’s Small, Perfect Surprises
A short walk in London is like a wine tasting. Initial impressions give way to lingering flavours, and just when you think you know the city, it surp…
8 months, 1 week ago
The Day George Eliot Left the Room
On December 22, 1880, George Eliot died quietly in her house on Cheyne Row in Chelsea, brought down not by drama but by a winter cold caught at a Lon…
8 months, 2 weeks ago
Bloomsbury – The Day Pain Ended
At one o’clock on a this day in 1846, a man lay on a table in Bloomsbury, a surgeon raised a knife, and pain was about to be switched off for the fir…
8 months, 2 weeks ago
In Praise of Saturday
Saturday stands slightly apart from the rest of the week. It has ancient roots, a planetary name, and a modern reputation as the day when time loosen…
8 months, 2 weeks ago
The Man Who Could Be Everyone
Charles Mathews was Dickens’ favourite actor, a one-man phenomenon who turned London into a cast of characters. This podcast explores his world, his …
8 months, 2 weeks ago
The Night Poetry Turned Violent
On December 18, 1679, England’s leading poet, John Dryden, was attacked and beaten in a dark Covent Garden alley outside the Lamb, the area’s oldest …
8 months, 2 weeks ago
A Christmas Carol – the Walk & the Book
Published on December 17, 1843, A Christmas Carol emerged from Dickens’s London of fog, gaslight and inequality. This podcast is about the little boo…
8 months, 2 weeks ago