Glasgow: A new history
What makes this is a welcome addition to the not inconsiderable number of histories of Glasgow, is that Moffat knows how to tell a good story. The book is of interest because it extends back to prehistory and up to…
urban history
Greyfriars, Blackfriars, and Deep-fat Fryers! 850 years of Glasgow’s High Street
This volume was occasioned by the anniversary of the foundation charter of the burgh of Glasgow in 1175. The tongue- in-cheek title obscures the serious intent to recount the history of Glasgow through an examination of its central throughfare, which…
Students reading decline
A sign that Sherds saw in a bookshop recently claimed that ‘reading is cheaper than therapy’, but universities in the UK are reporting the opposite: that students suffer stress when asked to read.
Ancient Egypt Letters 152
Your opportunity to comment on articles in the magazine or on any Egyptological subject that interests you. Email the Editor peter@ancientegyptmagazine.com with your thoughts.
Making accommodations: How 19th-century housing helped launch women’s independence
Following on from CA’s review of the golden age of the chain store (CA 426), Chris Catling looks this month at the accommodation built in the Victorian and Edwardian eras for single working women: hostels, houses, and chambers that were designed to protect their morals but also gave a first taste of freedom and independence to the growing class of businesswomen and ‘bachelor girls’.
‘Cathedrals of commerce’ : A guide through the Golden Age of the British High Street
In her new book about High Street heritage, Kathryn Morrison takes us on a trip down memory lane and reminds us that design quality was once a proud part of a retailer’s branding and public appeal, shaping our shopping experiences and the appearance of our historic town centres. Some claim that the High Street is in decline, but the best shops from the past provide a legacy on which to build a bright future, as Chris Catling reports.
Saint Petersburg: sacrifice and redemption in the city that defied Hitler
REVIEW BY CALUM HENDERSON St Petersburg has an immensely dark history. Built largely by slave labour on the orders of Peter the Great in the early 1700s, it has endured more than its fair share of assassination, revolution, flooding, and…
Secrets of the Thames: Mudlarking London’s lost treasures
A new exhibition showcasing hundreds of artefacts recovered from the banks of the River Thames sheds illuminating light on London’s long history. Carly Hilts visited the displays at London Museum Docklands.
‘A neat and beautiful theatre’: Tracing the surprising story of Bury St Edmunds Market Cross
Bury St Edmunds’ neoclassical Market Cross recently celebrated its 250th anniversary – but the structure has a much longer tale to tell. Former County Archaeologist Adrian Tindall explores the Suffolk landmark’s colourful past, including its role as a playhouse and its place in the story of the National Anthem.
The Donkey And The Boat: Reinterpreting the Mediterranean Economy, 950-1180
REVIEW BY ROBERT PORTASS It is not every day that one encounters a book that aims to overturn a paradigm and establish in its place the foundations of a new one; rarer still is it to find that the author…
London’s Waterfront and Its World, 1666-1800
REVIEW BY KK With additional contributions by I M Betts, Lyn Blackmore, Julian Bowsher, Jacqui Pearce, and Alan Pipe, this latest book on London by John Schofield and Stephen Freeth offers a comprehensive assessment of life on the Thames during…
The Corbett Society
Harold James Dyos, late Professor of Urban History at the University of Leicester, wrote that London underwent three distinct periods of growth: an increasingly dense build-up of the population in the centre, its spill-over into the outer districts of London,…
‘Not so much a residence as a tradition’: the evolution of St James’s Palace from leper hospital to royal court
Buckingham Palace has been the main London residence of the British monarch since 1837, when Queen Victoria chose it as her base, but St James’s Palace remains the official seat of the sovereign, as it has since 1698. Newly appointed ambassadors, therefore, are accredited to ‘the Court of St James’s’, and it is from there that the public proclamation of a new sovereign is first read. Despite this, a comprehensive account of the 800-year history of this royal palace has only just been published, as Chris Catling reports.
This week: Public executions
These days in Britain, we like to think of public executions as belonging to a distant and more barbaric age – one far removed from the modern world in which we now live. It is sobering, therefore, to reflect that…
City of Gallows: tracing the human stories behind London’s history of public executions
A new exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands provides poignant and powerful insights into the seven centuries when London hosted more public executions that anywhere else in Britain. Carly Hilts reports.
Shadowlands: a journey through lost Britain
Review by HB. Shadowlands is a moving and at times personal tour of Britain’s lost villages and urban spaces. The author pointedly excludes the historical remains of ‘urban success’ found in places like Bath and St Albans, choosing instead to…
Jubilee listings and haunted homes
Woodchester Mansion is considered to be one of the UK’s most haunted buildings, and people pay large sums to spend the night in the freezing cold mansion with their ghost-detecting cameras and radar equipment.
Muldlark’d: hidden histories from the River Thames
Review by HB. This lavishly produced volume offers an introduction to Thames ‘mudlarking’ – the practice of searching the river’s foreshore (with a permit!) for historical objects and other items of interest. The book is not so much a practical…
Victorian architecture
There is a growing realisation that the solution to the climate emergency is to retrofit existing buildings, with all their embodied carbon and energy, rather than to build new ‘environmentally sustainable’ structures in place of old.
Shops ‘of the plainest kind’? The architecture of England’s co-operative movement
Planners predict that our historic town and city centres will be transformed over the next decade as online shops take over from bricks-and-mortar retail outlets. But change in the High Street is nothing new. Chris Catling is reminded how we used to shop by Lynn Pearson’s recently published book on the architecture of England’s co-operative movement, winner of the Association for Industrial Archaeology’s Peter Neaverson Award for Outstanding Scholarship 2021.
A Mighty Capital Under Threat: the environmental history of London, 1800-2000
The London we know today traces its roots directly back to the modest settlement developed on the banks of the Thames in the late 9th century, in the time of the Saxon king Alfred the Great. In spite of fires,…
New details of Bristol’s 17th-century plague hospital revealed
Across the country, plague victims were lodged in basic pesthouses constructed during earlier outbreaks.
Listed and lost: Cultural World Heritage sites in the UK
This summer, the UK gained a new World Heritage site in the form of the Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales, but also saw Liverpool demoted from this status. CA considers these recent changes, and takes a tour of other UNESCO-protected sites within the UK.
Rome in the 8th Century: A History in Art
What do we imagine the city of Rome to have been like in the 8th century AD? With the supremacy of Constantinople as the political and administrative centre of the empire, the Rome of this period – its buildings falling…
Beatles landmarks
Christopher Catling highlights threats to Fab Four-related buildings in their home city of Liverpool
Adventures close to home
Many of us have developed a stronger appreciation of the natural and cultural heritage in our own back yards.
Nooks, Corners, and Cloister Cafés
The Cloister Cafe at London’s St Bartholomew the Great (used as a location for Four Weddings and a Funeral, Shakespeare in Love, Sherlock Holmes, and Muppets: Most Wanted) is described as ‘an extraordinary cafe for an extraordinary church.