view down a tunnel on the mail rail with a green train being serviced

All Aboard! the splendid ‘Mail Rail’

28/02/2026 donbrown 0

Down into another tunnel for a trip on one of the capital’s less well known bits of the transport network – the Postal Museum’s ‘Mail […]

Unpersuaded: the Jane Austen Experience

28/02/2026 donbrown 0

To the opening of the new London version of the Jane Austen Experience at 11 John Princes Street, just round the corner from Oxford Circus. […]

Wernher von Braun and the V2 missile

21/02/2026 donbrown 0

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about the V2 (Vergeltungswaffe, or ‘vengeance weapon’) that stands in the atrium of the Imperial War […]

clapham south deep level shelter

‘Hidden London’ beneath Clapham South

17/02/2026 donbrown 0

In the 30 years or so that I’ve been living in this part of Battersea I must have passed through Clapham south tube (my nearest […]

London Pubs: the Seven Stars in Carey Street

07/02/2026 donbrown 0

To “find yourself in Carey Street” used to mean you were broke, because this is where the main Bankruptcy Courts were based in the late […]

Death victorious – the Nightingale Monument in Westminster Abbey

06/02/2026 donbrown 0

Westminster Abbey can be seen as many things. It’s a Royal Chapel, the place of coronations, weddings, funerals and burials; a National Church, where services […]

Book Review: Old London Bridge by Patricia Pierce

28/01/2026 donbrown 0

Standing for more than 600 years, old London Bridge was the longest inhabited stone bridge in Europe, a high street, a processional route, a gateway […]

What’s the story behind ‘London Bridge Is Falling Down’?

21/01/2026 donbrown 0

You know the nursery rhyme, but do you know – or do you just think you know – the origin of the verse. Here are some of the theories.

The ‘Southwark Needle’ and the Grisly History of London Bridge

12/01/2026 donbrown 0

Why the great long stone spike at the Southwark end of London Bridge might not mean what you think it does.

ribbons on a red metal gate. The shard in the background

Cross Bones Graveyard and the Outcast Dead

09/01/2026 donbrown 0

Across Southwark Street, a few hundred metres from the insanely busy Borough Market, is a little oasis of calm and mortality called the Crossbones Graveyard. […]