Writer for the Telegraph. Author of Soho in the Eighties and The Train in Spain.

Joined October 2013
10,952 Photos and videos
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Shephard Taylor sketched this coal plate in Gerrard Street in 1863. The same pattern is still to be seen in Belgrave Road, London SW1. #opercula No 74
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Corn Square, Leominster, with 15th-century timber-framed buildings on the right and 16th-century on the left of School Lane.
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Christopher Howse retweeted
Star of the show at today's moth morning at Hawkenbury Cemetery - a freshly emerged Elephant Hawk
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A funny block of seats for today's Trooping the Colour, perched amid the creeper of the wartime Citadel. Who sat there? The Grand Old Duke of York looks on from his column.
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Christopher Howse retweeted
Norman Balon, who has died at the age of 99, missed the point when he defined himself as 'London's rudest landlord'. There, I think, he mingled self-publicity and self-defence. People didn't go to the Coach and Horses, Soho, to be shouted at by him; they shouted at each other quite enough. Really he was the actor-manager of a twice-daily claustrophobic, drunken extemporisation in his pub which embodied bohemianism and self-destruction in the last two decades of the 20th century. Remember that 40 years ago the Coach was thick with cigarette smoke, that many customers were drunk daily, at lunchtime, and that no one was fearful of what they said. Things were not then as they are now. ✍️ Christopher Howse Article | spectator.com/article/norman…
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Christopher Howse retweeted
My husband's task was a simple one: to buy a couple of bottles of water from the Morrisons opposite the station in case there was no buffet service on board (which would have made a waterless three-hour journey torture). If the train had left on time, he'd have missed it, but he came puffing up the steps full of talk about a 'meal deal' and proffering some Walkers crisps. Luckily for him he had also bought water, but what caught my eye was the labelling on the crisps: 'Grab bag.'. ✍️ Dot Wordsworth Article | spectator.com/article/grab-b…
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Congrats.
The books are here for the Whitehaven launch. Even though this is my seventh publication I still get the same buzz when the first box of author's copies arrives. I'll be at the Exhibition Space on Queen Street, June 23rd at 12pm. Come and meet me. In association with @moonsbookshop and Richardsons of Whitehaven @gerardfinewine lornahunting.com #authorslife #booklaunch #newbook #histfic
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Mothers' meeting at the cemetery chapel.
The moth trap is set up ready for tomorrow's moth morning at Tunbridge Wells (Hawkenbury) Cemetery. Drop in at the cemetery chapel from 10am to see what we've found.
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Christopher Howse retweeted
I think it's fair to say Raasay has one of the best football pitch views. Next World Cup host maybe?
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Older than it looks: the Grape Vaults, 4 Broad Street, Leominster, an 18th-century exterior over a 17th-century core, with timbers visible inside. Listed Grade II.
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Christopher Howse retweeted
Fond memories of the RFH, the one remaining 1951 Festival of Britain structure to have survived into our anti-Britain age. @DerekTurner1964 @RFHOrgan @RSStGeorge @YesterdaysBrit1 @BeardyHowse @simon_schama @Roger_Scruton
Lovely bit of social history, here. View from the Royal Festival Hall, 1950. This beautiful image was produced by SR Badmin for a set of contemporary postcards celebrating the Festival of Britain. And best of all … (1/2)
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Christopher Howse retweeted
Maudland Junction north of #Preston, with the line to the Fylde Coast off to the left and the West Coast Main Line, right; date, sometime in the mid-1960s. St. Walburge's RC Church, with its 309 foot (34 metre) high spire, dominates the scene. #Lancashire #Railways
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Built as a house, dated 1600, 18 Broad Street, Leominster, has symmetrical timber framing in small panels. The shop front is late 19th century. Listed Grade II.
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Click all squares with Brussels sprouts.
'Seven Brussels Sprouts.' (1955) Delicately painted with meticulous detail, Eliot Hodgkin captures the crisp waxy green beauty of a vegetable that in the year this work was painted was very often boiled to a puree.
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Hi-vis yallow handrails, Chatsworth.
Painted Hall staircase designed and built to impress and it does! Chatsworth House, Derbyshire
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Lovely timber framing at 45 High Street, Leominster, Herefordshire, an early 17th-century listed building (Grade II). But something amiss on the surface of the second floor.
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The Fifth Station of the Cross caught by the afternoon light in Westminster Cathedral today.
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Christopher Howse retweeted
The tiny & scarce mason wasp Microdynerus exilis in Calverley Grounds today
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Constantinopke: East of Chatham.
The cols in the other bit have acanthus leaves round the base in imitation of Constantine's column in Byzantium, suggesting the easterly trajectory of the routes (yea unto Brixton, Nunhead, Bromley South and beyond)
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Railway Corinthian: the iron columns and capitals of Victoria Station for the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, by Sir Charles Langbridge Morgan, I suppose.
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