Reminders of the longer history, a little behindhand of Black History Month:
The story of a man who became one of Britain's first black gardeners is being marked with a rose named in his honour.
I’m a fourth-generation black British man. Yet still I’m made to feel I don’t belong. My great-grandparents came here in the 1800s. Too few people realise ( Read more... )

And haven't the Tate given you a particularly spectacular birthday card! To celebrate William Blake's 262nd birthday, Tate is collaborating with St Paul's Cathedral to project the artist's final work, Ancient of Days, on to its dome.

It was always Blake's ambition to have his work displayed on a huge scale. St Paul’s was a key site for Blake: he ( Read more... )

Alan Moore on William Blake - BLOOPER ALERT!!! - pedantick hystorian remarks that Bedlam was nowhere near Lambeth in the eighteenth century, it was north of the river in the vicinity of Moorfields. It did not move to Southwark and what is now the site of the Imperial War Museum until 1815 - at least, building works were going on before that, but ( Read more... )

Paging the shade of Dr Marie Stopes, not for the usual reason, on account of she got a Royal Society grant to go to Japan to study cycads and chase up the Japanese professor she was keen on before she ever got into human reproduction, and wrote a really not at all bad travel book on the episode, A journal from Japan : a daily record of life as seen ( Read more... )

How amateur sleuths finally tracked down the burial place of William Blake.
And here is an eeeuw, or at least, tin-eared, bit of reporting: He is one of the nation’s most celebrated creatives. (Article also describes these dedicated fans 'pouring' through archives - aaaargh!)
Images of the gravestone here.
I do have a little cynical wonder about ( Read more... )

Born on this day, 1757.
How to celebrate?
The weather is perhaps not quite what one would wish for playing Adam and Eve in the garden, as is reputed he did with his wife.
We could wander through the chartered streets, to where the chartered Thames doth flow, and see in every face we meet, marks of weakness, marks of woe.
We could visit Peckham Rye, ( Read more... )

Oh, David Mitchell, I normally like and approve of your columns, but this one?
Our forebears’ unquestioning belief in a higher power gave them a confidence that it’s hard not to envy.
Which made me think of pretty much all societies, 'throughout history', where just because there was a belief in a higher power didn't mean that there wasn't massive ( Read more... )

London garden bridge project collapses in acrimony after £37m spent.
And I can't help wanting to say to Boris J that in Ye Bygone Days when people built follies they did so on their own estates and with their own money (though on reflection this was probably ill-gottens from the Triangle Trade and dodgy dealings in India) and didn't ask the nation ( Read more... )

Perhaps not the dungeon flaming with light, but a glimmer of light at the end of a long dark tunnel?
Anyway, a lot better than my gloomy ponderings in the stilly watches of last night.
(And I can't believe my own postal vote balls-up can have been in the least critical.)
Okay, we're perhaps not quite ready to unleash the chariot of fire (actually, ( Read more... )

Lately saw this somewhere: Christian 'naturism' advocate appointed Bishop of Sherborne.
What this enquiring mind wants to know is, does she cite the tradition of the Ranters? Or Blake playing Adam and Eve in his South London garden?
(I am not sure why the scare quotes round 'naturism' in that headline.) This entry was originally posted at http:// ( Read more... )