We begin on High Street Kensington, where two grand department stores – Barkers and Derry & Toms – stand as gleaming monuments to the Art Deco age. From there, it’s off on a journey through one of the most elegant design revolutions of the twentieth century. Art Deco: what it is, where it came from, what to look for. The clean lines, the geometry, the glamour – a “return to order” after the chaos of the Great War. Paris leads the dance, London joins in, and the world never looks quite the same again. There’s a stop in Paris for a feast of Deco at the Louvre – and a little feast of another kind at Le Hangar, my favourite Paris restaurant – before we return home with news of new London Walks, new guides, and Christmas just beginning to sparkle
Read MoreThere’s a lot to be said for a journey into the real Dickens’ London – not the sanitised, stage-managed version you find in theme parks or TV reconstructions, but the city itself. The stones, the mist, the narrow courts where the man himself walked. It’s about how much of Dickens’ world is still here, hidden in plain sight – if you know where to look. The alleys that inspired him, the workhouses that haunted him, the law courts that fed his satire. We separate myth from memory and see how London shaped Dickens, and how Dickens, in turn, helped shape London’s image of itself.
Read MoreIt’s London, 1697 – the city bawling, bustling, brawling its way into the 18th century – and out of Smithfield mud and mischief comes William Hogarth, the man who drew London naked. This episode of London Calling follows the boy from Bartholomew Close who grew up to be the city’s mirror, moralist, and mischief-maker. From A Harlot’s Progress to Gin Lane, Hogarth painted a London of drunks, dreamers, rakes, and rogues – and in doing so, invented the modern comic strip, fought for artists’ rights, and showed us ourselves, warts and all. It’s the story of London’s first true visual journalist: sharp-eyed, streetwise, full of bite and wit. The man who proved a picture really can be worth a thousand sins.
Read MoreAnn’s at it again – prowling through London’s backstreets, history purring at her heels. Her walk, A Cat Tails – A Feline Take on London History, is just what the city ordered: playful, surprising, and full of sharp little claws of insight. Expect stories of moggies and monarchs, ship’s cats and literary felines, from alleyways to palaces. She’ll be teasing out London’s long, tangled relationship with the creatures who’ve ruled our hearths – and sometimes our hearts – for centuries. This is the advancer: a sneak peek before the cat’s out of the bag.
Read MoreIt’s November 8th, 1674. The rain drifts softly over London as the light fades early and a blind old poet slips away in Bunhill Fields. This London Calling podcast follows John Milton – born in Bread Street, schooled under St Paul’s, hunted near St Bartholomew-the-Great, dictating Paradise Lost in Petty France – through the London of his life and death. We meet “the Lady of Christ’s,” the young scholar who became the thunderous voice of English verse; the blind visionary who saw eternity more clearly than most. From the alleys of the City to the stained-glass glow of the Milton Window in St Margaret’s, Westminster, it’s a portrait of the Londoner who gave the world its most magnificent lines.
Read MoreOn Helen Suzman’s birthday, David takes us from apartheid-era South Africa to Hampstead’s Vale of Health – to the very house where Suzman’s actress niece Janet Suzman lived with director Trevor Nunn. It’s a story of courage, art, and a family of difference-makers who refused to take the easy script.
Read MoreMeet the saint who looked after London’s grafters – from blacksmiths to Shakespeare’s mates.
Read MoreFrom Saxon arches to Wren’s soaring spire, from the rebel hanged at its doors to the golden dragon that’s ruled the skyline for three centuries, St Mary-le-Bow has witnessed a thousand years of London life. Its bells gave birth to the Cockneys, its court judged the clergy, and its crypt hides a mystery stretching all the way to Wall Street. Fire, faith, riots and rebirth – this is the story of the church that quite literally defines London.
Read MoreLondon Calling gets ambushed by events – from Dick Cheney’s death to a hawk called Breeze patrolling Lincoln’s Inn. A day of coincidences, literary echoes and London surprises, wrapped up with Francis Beaumont’s poem On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey. Proof, if ever you needed it, that London never stops writing the script.
Read MoreFrom couvre feu to Cockney – how St Mary-le-Bow’s bells became the sound that shaped London’s identity. Once they told Londoners to bank their fires; centuries later, they told Dick Whittington to turn again. These were the curfew bells, the comeback bells, the heartbeat of a city that never stops ringing.
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