Category: Culture
Listed Buildings
Since its inception in 1882, the designation of ‘Listed Building‘ has been applied to all shapes, sizes and types of structure judged […]
Tea on the lawn
The British tend to make the most of the limited number of dry, tranquil summer days and, bearing in mind the many […]
Burials and cremations
In the Christian era, churchyards became the place to bury the dead, with proceedings conducted by the vicar and expectations being that […]
Punch & Judy
A mixture of pantomime, horror and absurdity, the Punch & Judy show in its portable format has been with us for at […]
‘New Musical Express’ and ‘Melody Maker’
The world’s first weekly newspaper entirely devoted to music, ‘Melody Maker‘ (MM), began in 1926 and ended in 2000, when it was […]
The Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace (a.k.a. ‘the Palace of the People’) began as a glass-walled, modular, 3-storey hall-cum-greenhouse in Hyde Park for the 1851 […]
Gretna Green
“We two matched for mating Came, handclasped, at last, Where the blacksmith was waiting To fetter us fast . . .” (Edith […]
The Millennium Dome
Where better to build an enormous structure dedicated to a moment in time than on 0° longitude just 3 miles north of […]
‘Bunty’ and ‘Jackie’
‘Bunty‘ and ‘Jackie‘ magazines were both published weekly by the same company that produced ‘The Beano’ and ‘The Dandy’, namely D.C. Thomson. […]
Literary Festivals
In the land that produced Shakespeare it is unsurprising that many aspire to write their own masterpieces but, this being a solitary […]
The Royal Festival Hall
After the WW2 bombing of London, the County Council decided that a new, up-to-the-minute, airy, Scandinavian-style concert hall was just the thing […]