3 posts tagged with history by Paul Slade.
Displaying 1 through 3 of 3.
Scorned by every other graveyard? Welcome to Cross Bones
Today I published PlenetSlade's third paperback book (Amazon link), and it's an updated version of my 2013 e-book telling the tale of South London's Cross Bones Graveyard. This tiny patch of unconsecrated ground just south of the Thames has sheltered the remains of London's most despised citizens for over 400 years. Today, it's a shrine to our own era's outcast dead, where thousands of people a year attend the monthly vigils created by a shamanic local writer and attach their own heartfelt offerings to the site's gates. It's one of the most fascinating graveyards in London, and a vivid lesson in what the poor of this city have always had to endure. [more inside]
London is Stranger than Fiction
… was a 1950s newspaper cartoon strip by the artist and historian Peter Jackson (not that one). Appearing weekly in London’s Evening News and modelled closely on Ripley’s Believe it or Not, Jackson’s strips recounted the true stories and fascinating trivia of London’s bizarre past. They’re as eye-opening today as ever, and still an excellent guide for anyone with a sense of curiosity about the city. In one 1950 strip alone, Jackson covers London’s earthquake panic of 1750, the reinforced hats worn by Billingsgate fish porters, a remarkable tomb in Bunhill Fields and where to find the West End’s clock in a barrel. Elsewhere in his career, he succeeded the great Frank Bellamy on Eagle’s Marco Polo strip and painted dozens of historic scenes for the British educational comic Look and Learn. You can see a handful of my own favourite LISTF strips in this Twitter thread and read my full PlanetSlade essay about the series and Jackson’s other work here. [more inside]
The First Great Radio Hoax: London, January 16, 1926
Twelve years BEFORE Orson Welles’ infamous War of the Worlds hoax, BBC radio put out a fake news programme of its own. Ronald Knox’s Broadcasting the Barricades convinced thousands of British listeners that London had been attacked by Communist rioters, Big Ben flattened by mortars, the Savoy Hotel bombed to rubble and a Government minister lynched in the street. The BBC was flooded with anxious calls, provincial mayors dusted off their own cities’ emergency plans and the Royal Navy was told to dispatch a battleship up the Thames. The New York Times had a jolly good laugh at the Brits’ foolish gullability, smugly heading its own report: “We are safe from such jesting”. Oh, really?
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