Writer for the Telegraph. Author of Soho in the Eighties and The Train in Spain.
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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
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No kings, no kisses, no lucky breaks, no kicks, no mockery, no fakes, no darkness, no Kraken waking, no blackbirds, no jackdaws, no cakes.
The letter K just flew off my keyboard, took me ages to find it.
Some of you just came very close to reading a book that halfway through suddenly contained no more K's ;)
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Margaret Roper recovering from the jailer the head of her father Sir Thomas More, by Charles Landseer, the elder brother of Edwin Landseer, 1832. Ferens Gallery, Hull.
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Bars and attack-resistant glass in the doors to Boots, Upper Market Square, Hanley, Staffordshire.
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Christopher Howse retweeted
From Kersey, one of Suffolk's prettiest villages, a rather obscure sign to warn motorists of children ahead. The 'Torch of Knowledge' was phased out in 1957
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An impressive wood ant Formica rufa nest at RSPB Broadwater Warren
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Very seaside: mid 19th-century lodge built in square-knapped flint, dressed with pebbles. Fish-scale roof. Fretted bargeboards. Ramsgate Road, Broadstairs, Kent. Listed Grade II.
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Odd, normally the front page ads tell us to read the magazine and weekend sections
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Thomas Crampton, the man who laid the first undersea telegraph cable, across the Channel in 1851, also built this tower at Broadstairs, in 1859. It held 83,000 gallons for domestic supply. But it was in regular use only till 1901.
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A tontine is a scheme whereby a shared fund accrues as the investors die till the survivor takes all. In 1831 a tontine funded a new shambles or butchers' market in Hanley, Staffordshire, now half Waterstones, half Wetherspoons – in Tontine Street.
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I'm sure tontines feature in a few Victorian novels as an incitement to murder.
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Bad day to be a picture frame (which, naturally, doen't get mentioned)
mal día para ser conservador en la Galería Uffizi: la tromba de agua caló hasta el Baco de Caravaggio en Florencia
instagram.com/corrierefioren…
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