Londongrip’s readers are invited to take a cruise on the Thames Estuary on Sunday, 27th August. The cruise offers an unusual opportunity to get a closer look at some of the Estuary’s less accessible attractions: the Red Sands Forts, built to protect London during the Second World War; the sunken cargo ship, SS Richard Montgomery and the Thames Sailing barges racing in their annual match.
society
Caroline Maldonado welcomes Cristina Viti’s recent translation of a 1968 poem-cycle by Elsa Morante
It was the Kingdom of Naples that gave Emma the chance to transform herself into an artist, society lady and skilled operator at the court of Queen Maria Carolina, wife of King Ferdinand IV, its reigning monarch.
Three decades after the miners’ strike of 1984, families in northern England are riven because relatives crossed the picket line.
Le Corbusier has mostly gone down in history as a visionary Swiss urban planner. For the thousands forcibly evicted from District Six in Cape Town, he has a more sinister resonance as the proponent of “the surgical method” – as mentioned in the notorious apartheid-era Group Areas Act – of sweeping away what he saw as chaos and disorder.
London has become home to more members of the global super-rich than any other city in the world. Londoners might catch occasional glimpses of their presence when a super yacht moors by HMS Belfast on the Thames or another planning dispute over a basement excavation breaks out in the news.
If you’re a Londoner with time on your hands, take a trip to Rotherhithe and spend an afternoon immersed in centuries of history.
Bernard Green offers another of his distinctive reminiscences about his early life in post-war Surrey. .
“Enjoyment” is a word that well describes Thomas Ovans’ reaction to Alan Brownjohn’s dystopian comedy set in the near future.
Bernard Green has already given London Grip readers his memoir of Alf’s Café: here now is his “prequel” about dramatic incidents in Farnham in the 1940s…
Thomas Ovans investigates a Shoestring anthology edited by Merryn Williams which has received an unusual amount of attention for a poetry book.
Dunkirk has emerged as 2017’s summer blockbuster movie. The director Christopher Nolan has been widely praised for his ability to immerse film-goers in the terrifying experience of soldiers, sailors and airmen involved in the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) by land, sea and air between 26th May and 4th June, 1940.
By Jane McChrystal • film, history, society, year 2017 • Tags: film, history, Jane McChrystal, society