Grub Street has been a synonym for hack journalism (and journalists) for over 300 years. But where would the hacks have been without being published? Ruth Herman looks at two once-famous printers, Grub Street’s unsung early heroes – or possibly villains, depending on whose side you took. We celebrate the British tradition of a free […]
London in 1708: a surprisingly modern city
London in the early 18th century was, David Fairer argues, a surprisingly modern city, with troubles not unlike our own: unreliable news, questionable financial deals, vicious party politics. Yet it’s a period that’s been neglected in historical fiction. His trio of books set in a chocolate house aims to change that. A royal scandal, party […]
Scandal at Dolphin Square: A Notorious History by Daniel Smith and Simon Danczuk
Designed as a city dwelling for the modern age, Dolphin Square opened in London’s Pimlico in 1936. Boasting 1,250 high-tech flats, a swimming pool, restaurant, gardens and shopping arcade, the complex quickly attracted a long list of the affluent and influential. But behind its veneer of respectability, the Square has become one of the country’s […]
The politics of Tutankhamun’s tomb
Nearly a century after the excavations at Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, we are coming to regard the finders, keepers attitude towards ancient objects in countries other than our own as (at least) problematic. No such hesitation troubled Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter at the time, though the discovery would […]
The Partisan, socialist cafe and creative centre
Mary Chamberlain writes about the Partisan Coffee House, the socialist cafe which, in its four-year existence, became a creative centre which transformed the political, intellectual and cultural scene in the 1960s. At a time when espresso bars were the rage, and a new, young clientele had cash to spare, the Partisan Coffee House opened its […]
Bigger than Profumo! ‘The scandal that history forgot’
In the mid-1960s the Conservative Party was still recovering from the Profumo affair when a new scandal was uncovered… and quickly covered up again, with the help of some unexpected allies. Historian Daniel Smith, author of The Peer and the Gangster, tells Historia how the story was quickly and conveniently ‘forgotten’. There was a peer, […]