THE shoppers who crowd into Oxford Street every day might not come in search of history, but they can’t escape it. This celebrated thoroughfare first came into existence as a suburban section of the Roman road network. If you were travelling from London to the Midlands in the Roman period— or for centuries later—you would take the straight line of Holborn out of the City, deviate around Bloomsbury to avoid a marshy patch, then resume the line along the present course of Oxford Street until you came to what is now Marble Arch. From there, you would swing sharp right up Edgware Road, ancient Watling Street.
The Tyburn Turnpike replaced the infamous gallows. Oxford Street extends beyond
Until the 18th century, this thoroughfare had a notoriously unpleasant association: at the present Marble Arch junction stood Tyburn Tree, the gallows, established by at least 1196, that came to serve as London’s chief place of execution. The frequent hangings became popular festivals. Crowds followed the carts of condemned on the long march from Newgate, sharing in the ritual last drink by St Giles in the Fields and getting drunker all the way. Order was usually maintained on the outward journey, but after the event there was a great release of emotion and often a destructive rampage.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
