And now to turn to something I love and explore the wonderful history of pickling. Pickled onions, pickled cucumbers, pickled eggs – you name it, I love it. And like many British favourites, it derives from the need to preserve…
Tag: uk
The complex of buildings found at Westminster is a little architecturally confusing. We have Westminster Abbey, clearly old from what you see inside it, Westminster Hall and the Palace of Westminster, which look similar, and Big Ben, which screams Victoriana. These buildings can easily blend together if you don’t look carefully and that blending was indeed the intention of the designers.
I noticed a picture of a baby cage made it into the Metro the other day. It seems that this historical oddity is one that constantly comes in and out of the media and causes incredible public shock and outrage every time. It is amazing how attitudes change, so that something invented in the 1920s to do nothing but good now leaves us struggling to believe it ever happened.
I visited the Churchill War Rooms many years ago and since my memories of it were hazy, I thought I’d check it out and see how it had changed. I remembered looking in on the old rooms and had a…
Everything Stops for Tea is a song written by Maurice Sigler with lyrics by Al Goodheart and American Al Hoffman, for the 1935 musical Come Out Of The Pantry. It is about tea being England’s favourite drink, however both the composer and the musical were…
People have always suffered from bad breath, and there have always been suggested remedies for it, such as wine mouthwashes, charcoal toothpaste and chewing herbs. However at the turn of the century, advertisers seized on the common problem of bad…
On this day in 1778, George Bryan Brummell (known as Beau Brummell) was born in Downing Street London. His father was private secretary to the prime minister, Lord North, and his family was very upwardly mobile, living at The Grove, in Donnington,…
The phrase ‘motley crew’ derives from the eighteenth century. ‘Motley’ is a medieval word meaning mixed in colour and often referred to clothing. The Motley was therefore the court jester due to his multi-coloured costume. The meaning of the word…
Yesterday in 1831, London Bridge was opened. This is a misleading statement because the bridge opened on that day was just one of several bridges referred to as London Bridge over the course of the history of London. Not only…
I visited the Black Country Living Museum last month, which is just outside Dudley near Birmingham. It’s an interesting mix of museum and reconstructed town with actors, reconstructed shops, an old mine and a canal with tunnels. It’s huge and…