Writing & research
How A Taste For Pasta Begat Dudes (≈ Hipsters)
The mid-18th Century was what you might call 'peak Grand Tour', when the trend for young British men visiting the continent's most cosmopolitan...
Bureau Of Memories
Through the largest of Bethlem Hospital’s remaining apple orchards, over badger sets, and past a light pole on which kestrels are often seen...
Who Do You Think You Are?
Australia has an unpleasant history when it comes to national identity, and trying to impose one. A white one. Like in 1901, when descendants of the...
Of Multi-Generational Migration Fame
“The first time I ever saw them was in February of 1977. We were walking along a road and it was overcast and nothing was moving. Then all of a...
Pyramid Of Death
In the 1820s, the tallest building in London was St Paul’s Cathedral, at 111 metres high. But architect Thomas Willson had grander plans. In 1829 he...
Petrichor
The natural world is full of gods, goddesses and other mythological creatures, in name, if not spirit. For nomenclature convention draws heavily on...
Hallucinogenic Books
Libraries can expand your mind in more ways than one. A leading London mycologist has claimed that old books, particularly those stored in less than...
Photographic Revolution
Edwin Herbert Land was a visionary scientist and inventor who 70 years ago changed the picture-taking habits of people around the world, the result...
X Marks The Spot
This is a tale of two halves. It begins around the turn of the 20th century, with the establishment of a new private printing press near the banks...
Decoding A Star
"You wouldn't believe how many goths we get posing outside for pictures," says Father Brian Ralph, vicar of the church of St Barnabas at Bethnal...
I Eat Cheese, Therefore I Write
Of course it's slightly more complicated than my play on Rene Descartes' famous philosophical proposition. But in simple terms, the discovery of...
Cousins Across The Centuries
The most famous symbol of human-caused extinction - the dodo - and the ubiquitous pigeon have more in common than you might think. If you had been...
I Like Evolution And I Cannot Lie
When Sir Mix-a-Lot sang about big butts, there was more to it than just aesthetics. Well, maybe not for him. But, what the more...
Law And Order
Though it occupies a site which has been a centre of power since at least the Middle Ages, London’s iconic Palace of Westminster - or Houses of...
Body Building
A company in London does a roaring trade in arms, legs, torsos and various other body parts. Set back from the street in Walthamstow, a newly-hip...