This is the great "world city". It's the fount - the wellspring - of so much of our culture and history, of who we are and why we are what we are. So I thought it might be fun to chart a daily course through a London year. Needless to say it's going to be a work in progress - I think we might be looking at 2009 or so before I've got all 365 days down and dusted - but I'm game if you are. So let's roll dem days: here's your daily dose of London history...

April 16th

Well, I could talk about what happened in Walworth in south London on April 16, 1889. Charlie Chaplin being born and all that.

Could. And just did.

But there's more. Let's push the envelope a little bit. Give you one you might not be across. It's April 16, 1689. A 49-year-old lady named Aphr Behn has just breathed her last. And who was AB? She was this country's first lady novelist. The only woman writer to be buried in Westminster Abbey. An atheist.

 

You went, girl.

 

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