On the back of an envelope…
When I was about fifteen – living in Somerset – I discovered penfriends. I can’t remember much about any of them and the long distance relationship was generally very short-lived…. Read more »
Category: Nostalgia
Salad Days
Sir John Evelyn, best known for his diary, was also a vegetarian and a fan of salads and would hopefully have approved of the salad pictured above. His 1699 book… Read more »
Ballad of Bethnal Green
‘Extraordinary how potent cheap music is’ observed Amanda, a character in Noel Coward’s Private Lives. It’s also extraordinary how a piece of music you haven’t thought about for decades suddenly chirrups back into… Read more »
A Taste of India – possibly
When the first dedicated Indian restaurant – the Hindoostanee – was opened in London in 1809 by an enterprising immigrant called Dean Mahomed, it boasted of “Indian dishes, in the highest… Read more »
Blue is the colour….
David Mitchell commented in the Observer on 1 April 2018: ‘I liked the old passports too, though not primarily because of their colour, but because they were bigger and had a… Read more »
Children’s Favourite?
I doubt that many of the Dan Brown fans who visit the Temple Church ever notice the wooden plaque recording the fact that it was here in 1927 that one… Read more »