Bought in the Marie Curie charity shop, Highbury Corner

"A fascinating tour of London's strangest and most intriguing locations. Ranging from architectural evidence of past incidents and stories of life beneath the city, to anecdotes of magic, mystery and murder, this is a perfect companion for the curious Londoner"

Join UK Bookcrossers at the Newcastle Unconvention from 9th to 11th October 2020

As this book will be going to Kirjakko I am going to add at least one JE prior to finishing.

I’m not entirely convinced that this book has been thoroughly researched and the facts checked. There are a couple of tube anecdotes that are dubious (one not true based on my own experience). The first is that the upper floors of 55 Broadway are still used for archive storage (page 33) which I think was unlikely in 2013 when the book was published, the second that Sonia (p63) is the nickname given by male station staff to all female announcers on the PA. This not true, it was coined by train drivers about the recorded train PAs which drove them mad with their repetition.

South Quays DLR station is erroneously described as an Underground Station (p185)

Also Farringdon is misspelt as Faringdon on p130.

But apart from those minor annoyances it’s an entertaining book so far (I’m on page 161, Boozy London)

I see that the oldest pub is the Hoop and Grapes, Aldgate, which was the scene of the most recent London BookCrossing meet up on the 14th March. Worth a visit. The staff were very nice. I hope they are ok and have been furloughed, not sacked due to lockdown.

There is a list of historic pubs on page 165

Where to find them - Britain’s Best Pub Crawl
The Anchor Bankside, Park Street Southwark*
The Anglesea Arms, Selwood Terrace, SW7
The Black Friar, Queen Victoria Street, EC4*
The Blind Beggar, Whitechapel Road, E1
The French House, Dean Street, W1
The George Inn, Borough High Street, SE1
Glassy Junction, South Road, Southall, UB1
The Grenadier, Wilton Row, Belgravia, SW1
I am the Only Running Footman, Charles Street, Mayfair, W1
The Lamb and Flag, Rose Street, Covent Garden, WC2*
The Mayflower, Rotherhithe Street, SE16*
The Princess Louise, High Holborn, WC1*
The Prospect of Whitby, Wapping Wall, E1*
The Red Lion, Duke of York Street, St James's, W1
The Widow's Son, Devons Road, E3
Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, Fleet Street, EC4
Zeitgeist, Black Prince Toad, SE11

*pubs I have been to.

I wouldn't advise going on this pub crawl, you'd get very drunk and the order makes no sense geographically. I will however try and visit them all over a reasonable timescale (months) once lockdown is over.

Another annoyance on page 209, the lack of inverted comms around "weaker”, in the sentence 'Unfortunately, the Olympics at this time had a rule limiting women, as the weaker sex, to three individual events in track and field events.'

I was, however, happy to read (on the same page) of the three Finnish gymnasts all winning gold in a three way tie for the men's Pommel Horse.

Entertaining and varied.

Off to kirjakko in Finland

Hello!
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Join UK Bookcrossers at the Newcastle Unconvention from 9th to 11th October 2020

Perfect timing, it is my birthday today! Miss London and Brexit Island in general...

Took a glimpse of this book late at night after a day of slaving in our summer cottage (which we are trying to sell), so I pretty soon fell asleep, but not before thinking howcome Brits are nowadays such a nice bunch of people when previously they used to boil, hang and hack off different body parts of each other (Gruesome London)? Is this what evolution is about? Or are they currently only under medication?
Thanks for mentioning the Finns on page 209 as we have a fierce competition on the Finnish forum about who finds Finland / Finns / a Finnish product mentioned in foreign books. We are counting the books...

I have visited the Hunterian Collection at the Royal College of Surgeons and it was an amazing collection of both animal and human anatomy and pathology. I don't recall seeing Elizabeth Brownrigg's skeleton, but there were so many of them that I might just not remember. The thing I do remember that most skeletons before the 20th century seemed to have pathological changes caused by syphilis, no matter why they were set up there in the first place, so it was a really widely spread disease way back then.
The Collection has been under renovation for a few years already, but will re-open in 2021. I highly recommend it and one can easily spend a day there.
I've never been good at maths, but help me out here:
John Straffen was locked up for 55 years which is a UK record. In 1951 he was 21 years old and killed two women. He died in 1977. My maths says he was 47 when he died and had spent 26 years in prison.

Let´s see if and when we can travel again after this corona pandemy, but when in Mayfair next, I ought to check out the most haunted house in London, William Kent townhouse on the west side of Berkeley Square.
Didn´t see Lord Nelson when visiting Somerset House and its courtyard a year ago. There were some interesting graves under the house, though.

Pic: Somerset House and courtyard. No Nelson.

I've never travelled as far as Morden on the Northern Line as it sounds like a place out of Tolkien's books and it is also announced like it had a curse on it. Perhaps I ought to go and see the one bedroom flint tower on Phipps Bridge Road?
The writer of this book sounds like a new age journalist rather one of the oldies who basically knew how to write and avoid the most common pitfalls, like saying that three dead queens are buried in the garden of Wren Church. One seldom buries people alive, let alone queens.

I’m going to chip in here. I used to manage the stations at the South end of the Northern line including Morden. It’s a station which confuses the passengers. It can be difficult to know which is the first train out. To change platforms can involve running up and down stairs to get to the platform for the first train. Lots of train drivers are based at Morden. They weren’t used to women managers or staff. I used to get stared at a lot when I first worked there. Things have changed a lot since then.

Hello, Poodlesister! Fancy you being around, but thanks for the tip, I won't travel to Morden as I often get lost if there is the slightest chance.
Came back to comment on John Soane's House Museum which I fell in love with. If somebody had time for one museum only in London I would recommend this little jewel. It is small, it is crammed and it is definately one of a kind. It is beyond imagination. I would have loved to know Sir John who dragged back all those things from his travels and used to show them to his pupils, budding architects. What kind of a person places a sarcophagus in his own home? What did his wife say? Did his sons like to grow up in a museum, where they allowed to touch anything? The museum also has free entry, but how can they re-open it as it is so crammed you can't keep your social corona distance there? Just around the corner to Soane's House is Dickens Old Curiosity Shop which is nowadays a barber shop.
Hunterian museum is mentioned also and the writer claimed it having London's tallest human skeleton. They have the skeleton of the world's tallest man who I think was an irishman [goes checking]. Hmm, for a long time the tallest man was Patrick Cotter O'Brian (246 cm) from Co. Cork, but according to Wikipedia only his hand is at the Royal College of Surgeons. I wonder whose skeleton they have? The tallest man ever was an American (272 cm) and he was buried in the US, so they can't have him either in London.
I've yet to see the Anaesthesia Museum in Portland Place, W1 and the Royal London Hospital Museum, Whitechapel Road, E1. I've been to Grant Museum of Zoology which was a bit of a disappointment, it was like big school zoology classroom. I've also seen the Florence Nightingale Museum and The Old Operating Theatre, not mentioned here.
I am a bit worried that I seem to know more London facts than this guy... Erno Goldfinger was a much-hated and debated Hungarian-jewish architect and even if his monstrous Trellick Tower lies in North Kensington he didn't have "a lovely house overlooking leafy Hampstead Heath", not if you asked his neighbours who protested his modern house to be built among the Georgian houses of Hampstead. They went to court and Erno won, but one Ian Fleming was his neighbour and Golfinger will be remembered as the villain for evermore, thanks to James Bond movies.

Pic: Half a cat in formaldehyde in Grant Museum of Zoology.

Sight-seeing in Helsinki. There are two registered Little Free Libraries in Helsinki, one quite close to my temporary flat and this one "in the middle of nowhere". Luckily I had a navigator and found it. An guess what? There was a BC-book in it, released five years ago in Lapua!

I like old cemeteris, but I have't been to any "real" ones in London - I don't count small parks where you suddenly find old headstones. Note to self: Kensal Green is the Belgravia of Death. Would like to see W.S.Smith's tomb which is a massive stone book.
Think that General James Barry had to die first before they realized he was a she (in 1865). Wouldn't have happen in Finland where sauna tells who is who. Or who is what.
My brother's godmother lives in London and now I realize she was just practical as she scattered her late husband's ashes in Hampstead Heath. I thought that somehow romantic, but if modern graveyards are somewhere far far away, so by scattering the ashes in Hampstead she could always feel near him, especially when she moved to Hampstead (from their big house in Golders Green, but they took their Sunday walks to Hampstead which they both loved).

Pic from St George's Gardens, Camden. An 18th century graveyard turned into a park.

Highgate cemetery will be worth a visit, too. Would be nice to see a grave which is done in the form of a four-poster bed (family Maples)! If I remember correctly, one of the modern day inmates is the Russian spy Litvinenko, who was killed in London with radioactive polonium and thus his grave has to have some additional insulation for the security of the living.

Pic: More graves from St George's Gardens. Never trust a smiling gardener!

Note to self: I've promised this book to dotdot, who collects books and postcards of London. But when will I finish it, when we have a gorgeous early summer weather and I happen to currently live on the Island of Happy People, where nature looks like this?!

...and this...

...and this...

...not forgetting this...

My evening walk lasted almost 4,5 h yesterday, this morning it was exactly 4,5 hours. I did have my tablet camera and a book I had taken just in case and doggie dearest, of course, but mostly I was just enjoying the sea view.

I've read that Freddie Mercury's memorial plaque is in Kensal Green under his real name, Farouk Bulsara, but some of his ashes are in Brookwood Cemetery, which should be in London Town but wasn't mentioned here.
Funeral parlours must have been busy this spring with Corona pandemy, I wonder if mass graves were used for those who could not afford a grave or a funeral?

Brookwood Cemetery is in Surrey even though it was built for London dead. I used to go through the station and pass the Cemetery on my way to visit a friend from University who lived in Fleet.

I learned that the original Winnie-The-Pooh was bought from Harrods! Somehow it does not sound appropriate. Makes me a bit sad.
Winnie got his name after a brown bear living in Regent's Park Zoo. It was donated by a Canadian who named it after Winipeg, Winnie for short.

No mention of this tobacconist having a Royal Warrant, but either Dad or Grandad must have been shopping on Old Bond Street when in London. I think Dad was in London only once and probably before he married Mom in 1953, though I'm not sure. In that case the cigarette case must have been Grandad's who did business with Brits before WW2.
The cigarette case states: Benson & Hedges, by appointment tobacconists of His Majesty the King. Probably the last king, the case cannot be older than that.

I’m watching The Most Scenic Railway Journeys in the World and this episode features beautiful Finland. Thinking of all my Finnish BookCrossing friends.

I was following a guide-book walk in London a few years ago when came across Purdey and if somebody had predicted that I would spend a long time in a gun shop I would have laughed out loud. But it was a lovely shop and I should set my webs there to catch a wealthy gentleman with a Labrador Retriever and a manor house with a good library. There was indeed a man there who bought a rifle for 18 000£, must have been from their layman's collection.

Shop from the outside, Christmas approaching. There was artificial snow on the ground and the wheels of the train were on the outside, the train inside. Very cleverly done, but Brits are masters of window decoration.

There was also a museum in the shop. This pocket picnic set was used by King George V and a gift to the Purdey-in-charge of that time.

Queen Victoria and Prince Edward in a skirt. No rifle yet.

The boring bits have been saved towards the end,but I´ll try to finish this tonight so that dotdot will get this book soon. Just learned that Spitfire flyer Robert Cowell became Roberta in 1951 in the first British sex-change operation. Any relation to Simon Cowell, I wonder. What I also wonder is that why those men who want to undergo the hormone treatments and finally the op often want to date women afterwards. Would it not be easier to date women as a man and save the trouble instead of changing sex and becoming a lesbian? I`m clearly missing a point here.

Finally finished the book last night but was too tired to comment. In the chapter Ceremonial London I thought St Clements Danes in the Strand sounded familiar, but I had to Google it to make sure as the writer hadn't bothered to say it was the RAF's church as well. Found it by accident last year; it's full of air force stuff and thus not just another church. Took quite a few photos there as one of our clients is a female pilot who used to live in London while still working as a stewardess for BA. She was thrilled seeing the photos and said she will visit the church when next in London.

Pic: Australian Air Force's prayer cushion saying "Strike first". Not very holy...

St Clement Danes in the Strand - from the outside nothing out of the ordinary.

The RAF reminds you that you are visiting their church and better not forget it.

Off to dotdot next. Enjoy!

Pic: On my so far last visit to the UK in March 2019 I enjoyed the Fawlty Towers Dining Experience...

Thank you fro a wish list book! I was just reorganizing my London book collection in a bookshelf when you came and brought new books to be added to the collection :)