Writer for the Telegraph. Author of Soho in the Eighties and The Train in Spain.
Joined October 2013
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Shephard Taylor sketched this coal plate in Gerrard Street in 1863. The same pattern is still to be seen in Belgrave Road, London SW1. #opercula No 74
Isn't this one of those labyrinths that take you to the centre despite its roundabout course?
Find your way home
St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 878; Vademecum of Walahfrid Strabo, Abbot of Reichenau; between about 825 CE and 849 CE; Reichenau; p.277
(e-codices.ch/en/list/one/csg…)
Christopher Howse retweeted
A delight for the Dickens Pickwick Club to visit The Spectator yesterday. Christopher Howse, Chloe Smith and bottles of Pol Roger looked after us delightfully well! Good to see the Dickens connections in the archives and sorry to miss Michael Gove. @BeardyHowse @michaelgove
Half a million fine photographs of more than 9,000 rural churches. A magnificent achievement.
Christopher Howse retweeted
Abraham and Sarah offer hospitality to the Holy Trinity disguised as three angels, a Greek icon of 1768, part of a collection of thousands of antiquarian items donated to Blackburn Museum by Robert Hart in 1946. On the wings, St George and St Dimitrius go about their business. 1/3
Christopher Howse retweeted
November is the time when pigs are hungry for acorns. #MedievalCalendar
BL Yates Thompson MS 3; 'The Dunois Hours'; c 1439 CE-c 1450 CE; France (Paris); f.11r @BLMedieval
Christopher Howse retweeted
Pictures of a church - an occasional series.
St Giles, Great Maplestead, Essex.
On a recent late Summer church crawl, I rolled up here on my bike only to find the building locked. Disappointed, I took to exploring the exterior and found it to be a beautiful spot.
THREAD
Christopher Howse retweeted
Finchley Road Station, London, 1910.
A wonderful glimpse of Edwardian London, with a horse-drawn vehicle waiting outside and a huge sign advertising trains to the Japan–British Exhibition at White City.
The station had opened in 1879 and was still part of the Metropolitan Railway. Just four years after this photograph, the frontage would be rebuilt, making this a lovely record of the old station before it disappeared.
#LondonHistory #FinchleyRoad
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The old Shoreditch Station, Brick Lane down the alley. Looking from Code St E1, 1960s
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Amazing 15th century stained glass at Morley, Derbyshire: Legend of the Holy Cross
Highlight from last week's new entries in the Parish Churches app parishchurches.org/parishchu…
Its ten scenes, each with a Latin caption in black letter, run across the lights from the top.
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Hence too the picture we have of great libraries with shelf after shelf of uniform livery bindings, matching the owner/reader, not the publisher/author. Cf the livery picture frame in say Dresden.
I think for the dry biscuity side of survival after the government disaster, marine supplies like these would serve well. Will last 4 years. Just need to keep away rodents.
Christopher Howse retweeted
The publishing history of these uniform French editions is interesting: they’re not really paperbacks; they’re actually unbound. What you would do was buy the book in this form from your bookseller and take it to your bookbinder to be prepared for your library. 1/2
The Government "Be Ready" campaign urges us to stockpile tinned food that doesn’t require heating. Apparently this includes baked beans. But what other tinned food would you like to eat cold? Anchovies? Pineapple? Ham?
It's an interesting cultural aspect of aesthetics. Spanish books, like French ones, used to be issued in paper wrappers. Some were then bound in boards. British books of the same age, before paperbacks came in, were published as hardbacks, which look to us more finished.
This storm's name, Boelo, is the same Germanic word meaning "bold" as the -bald element in Archibald. It's the bit missing in the name Archie, as in the Duke of Sussex’s son Prince Archie.
