Any readers from out of town who are preparing a visit to the capital this summer might like to read these excerpts from The Stranger’s Guide, exposing all the frauds of London, that I found in the ...

In the midst of life I woke to find myself living in an old house beside Brick Lane in the East End of London ...

Now that London is thronging with visitors, let us consider The Tour of Dr Syntax Through the Pleasures & Miseries of London. Written anonymously and published in 1820, this was one of a popular ...

In common with five other shops in Calvert Avenue – leading up to Arnold Circus on the Boundary Estate – Leila’s Shop is being challenged by Tower Hamlets Council with eviction or 300% rent increase ...

For centuries, Caslon was the default typeface in the English language. William Caslon set up his type foundry in Chiswell St in 1737, where it operated without any significant change in the methods ...

Click here to book for my City of London Tour on Sunday 13th July and my Spitalfields Tour on Saturday 19th July Here is a selection of Ron McCormick’s splendid pictures from the seventies when he ...

Piccadilly, c. 1900 In my mind, I live in old London as much as I live in the contemporary London of here and now. Maybe I have spent too much time looking at photographs of old London – such as these ...

Is your purse or wallet like mine, bulging with old trade cards? Do you always take a card from people handing them out in the street, just to be friendly? Do you pick up interesting cards in idle ...

Just fifty yards from Rotherhithe Station is a narrow door through which you can descend into the 1825 shaft via a makeshift staircase. You find yourself inside a huge round cavern, smoke-blackened as ...

The wooden spools that you see hanging in the streets of Spitalfields indicate houses where Huguenots once resided. These symbols were put there in 1985, commemorating the tercentenary of the ...

George Leybourne, Songwriter, Vocalist and Comedian, also known as Champagne Charlie (1842 – 1884) & Albert Chevalier (1861- 1923), Coster Comedian and Actor. Chevalier married Leybourne’s daughter ...