I do not at all like that city . . . Whatever evil or malicious thing that can be found in any part of the world, you will find in that one city . . . if you do not want to dwell with evildoers, do not live in London.
Richard of Devizes (c.1150-c.1200)
On 30 October 1957, the Government unveiled plans to reform the House of Lords which included admitting women for the first time. Under the scheme, male and female life peerages were created ensuring ‘a balanced representation of the different political parties’.
On 30 October 1959 Ronnie Scott’s jazz club opened at 39 Gerrard Street, Soho
During the 1860s, London’s most notorious prison, Newgate, became a kind of theatre, visitors could tour the prison being briefly locked in a windowless cell was one of the highlights
On Blackfriars Bridge the side facing out to sea is decorated with marine birds, the inland side is adorned with freshwater birds
Poet Edmund Spenser’s Westminster Abbey tomb may contain unpublished work by Shakespeare who threw manuscripts into his grave to honour him
The City of London has never been under the authority of the monarch. The Queen may only enter the Square Mile of the City if she is given permission by the Lord Mayor
The bronze statue of Peter Pan was erected in Kensington Gardens in 1912. It marks the spot where J M Barrie first met Jack Llewellyn Davies, the boy who was the inspiration for Peter
By 1870 there were 20,000 public houses and beer shops in London, today according to the Campaign for Real Ale at least 10 are closing every week
The Oval held a particular attraction for the United States billionaire philanthropist, J. Paul Getty II, who built a replica of the ground at his estate at Wormsley Park in Buckinghamshire
London Heathrow Airport is the world’s busiest airports by international passenger traffic, and the third for total traffic
Over 800 members of staff are based at Buckingham Palace, some of the more unusual jobs include fendersmith, clockmaker and flagman
South Kensington is still sometimes referred to as ‘Little Paris’ the area is not only known for its Francophile bookshops but also its French doctors and dentists
Trivial Matter: London in 140 characters is taken from the daily Twitter feed @cabbieblog.
A guide to the symbols used here and source material can be found on the Trivial Matter page.
For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.
Sitting in my garret chewing the end of my proverbial pencil composing this post, for your erudition, it occurred to me that electric ink has empowered all us, wannabee authors.
With the passing of the brilliant columnist and author Keith Waterhouse recently, who rejected all electronic devices to write and used a trusty manual typewriter, it’s time to look at the digital revolution which has enabled amateurs to publish their work.
A blog (a contraction of the term “weblog”) is credited as being started by Bruce Ableson who launched Open Diary in October 1998, which soon grew to thousands of online diaries. Open Diary was innovative, inventing the first blog community where readers could add comments to other writers’ blog entries.
I’ve started reading Claire Tomalin’s Samuel Pepys The Unequalled Self a biography of the great diarist who wrote with astounding candour and perceptiveness in the 10 years from 1660 at a time when England was undergoing momentous changes.
Do you fancy yourself as a 21st century Samuel Pepys and want to start writing or are you happy to be one of the 98 per cent of web surfers who are just voyeurs and not publishers?
If you want to join the Band of Bloggers I recommend Matthew Stibbe’s Bad Language to get you started with some sound advice and Neil Patel who is so prolific a writer on all things blogging I wonder if he ever sleeps.
Oh! And thanks for taking the time to read CabbieBlog.
The fact that the dollar now buys you twice the number of Chinese made Big Ben snow globes than it did this time last year (and tax free shopping is now back for tourists), means that US tourists ‘are flocking to our shores’ and will probably continue to do so right up to the King’s Coronation sometime next year – incidentally they should announce the date to give hotels time to jack up prices. This means we’ll probably continue to see even more luxury hotels going up in the West End over the next few years, and more heritage parts of London destroyed, which ironically is why the Americans visit the Motherland.
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