Follow me using RSS
Facebook
Categories
-
-
Recently on no more wriggling…
- Talking crime – on why we love a good murder mystery….
- Let’s focus on the words: Peter, Tony, and a Portrait of Keats
- Why Mrs T should have left the room quietly, closing the door behind her….
- ‘In relation to’ what? On ‘Talking Books’ and chewing words….
- ‘Talking Books’…On trying to become Somerset’s answer to Mariella Frostrup
Tags
anxiety autumn blogging Books breast cancer childhood Christmas depression family Family History Food gallery health history holidays John Keats Keats Kids Lake District London love memory mental health Mood motherhood Music NaNoWriMo nostalgia parenting personality photography Photos Poetry politics procrastination Rain reading relationships research sisters Suffolk Teens Victorian women's issues writing
Tag Archives: London
The mystery of the missing grandmother – or ‘O Bessie. Where Art Thou?’
I wrote this post last year and although I have recently discovered a little more about the strange dynamic of the Hardiman family I still cannot trace my Grandma. There are hints that as ‘Bessie’ she might be the daughter of her … Continue reading
Sir Robert Peel, riots & the role of the police. Why ‘zero tolerance’ shouldn’t be tolerated…
I have thus far resisted the temptation to rant about the riots and the response of both politicians and the press. As a Londoner by birth I was deeply depressed at the site of many of my old North and … Continue reading
The poetry of London: Wilfred Owen and the Ghost of Shadwell Stair
Wilfred Owen is, for many (including myself) the greatest poet of the First World War. Memorable works such Dulce et Decorum Est and Anthem for Doomed Youth are part of the GCSE syllabus; Owen himself features in Pat Barker’s Regeneration … Continue reading
Posted in History, Keats, Poetry, Writing
Tagged Dockland, First World War, John Keats, London, Poetry, Shadwell, War poets, Wilfred Owen, writing
1 Comment
Wordsworth, Whistler and a Waterloo Sunset – the beauty of London Bridges
The Thames is a river that takes me on imaginative journeys, some of them reflecting my real life and others a dream world that I have inhabited regularly since I left London in the late 1980s. From the Oxfordshire … Continue reading
Keats at Guy’s Hospital part 2 – An education in horror
Looking at the National Health Service today, it is clear that despite economic constraints it offers a standard of care that renders incomprehensible to us the dreadful conditions under which people of all classes were treated in the early 19th … Continue reading
Posted in History, Keats, Poetry
Tagged body snatching, Doctors, Guy's Hospital, John Keats, Keats, London, medicine, Poetry
2 Comments
The Clerkenwell Outrage of 1867 – Irish Republicanism in London
In 1868 Queen Victoria wrote a disturbing note to the then Home Secretary. She was deeply unhappy ” to see the failure of the evidence against all but one of the Clerkenwell criminals… it seems dreadful for these people to … Continue reading
Posted in History
Tagged Clerkenwell, Fenian, history, Independence, IRB, Ireland, London, Republicanism, Victorian
4 Comments
‘This enormous Babel of a place’ – On learning of London before the Victorians
I have recently been looking into the history of London between 1810 and 1830 to add some context to my blog posts on the poet John Keats. It is a period in the history of the metropolis that I have … Continue reading
Keats at Guys Hospital Pt 1 – Life in a ‘jumbled heap’ of ‘murky buildings’
Whilst researching for a longer post about John Keats and his medical studies, I had the opportunity to read some accounts of the student accommodation he shared during the time he spent at Guy’s Hospital, in London. They are fascinating, … Continue reading
Posted in History, Keats, Poetry
Tagged Guy's Hospita, history, John Keats, Keats, King's Bench Prison, London, Marshalsea, Photos, research, Southwark
5 Comments
‘Keep it in the family’ – can a family history ever reveal the truth of tragedy ?
I have written before on the subject of my Great Uncle Alf Hardiman (see ‘An Unsound Mind’) and had an article published in Family Tree magazine (A Shadowy Past) relating his story and linking it to a family history of … Continue reading
Posted in Family History, History, Mental health, Writing
Tagged depression, family, history, London, relationships, writing
8 Comments
Keats House, Hampstead: an architectural and artistic re-build
From my late teens onwards I have made regular trips to Keats House in Hampstead, London NW3. I was born and brought up in North London and the relatively short journey to Keats Grove, close to the beautiful heath became … Continue reading
Posted in Art, History, Keats, Writing
Tagged buildings, Eliza Jane Chester, Hampstead, heritage, history, John Keats, Keats, Keats House, London, Wentworth Place
3 Comments
