I'm trying to think if writers ever have/had this problem: What’s in a surname? The female artists lost to history because they got married. Because in the case of writers, they just kept on publishing under the (male/gender neutral or just generally not identifiable to her daytime persona) name whatever their matrimonial or non-matrimonal ups and ( Read more... )

Apparently there is a good deal of furore going on about the recently unveiled Mary Wollstonecraft Memorial in Stoke Newington.
Some of us wish to remark that, it may not be spectacular, but there is a memorial of kinds, I guess these days probably a cenotaph, and also probably no longer actually the site upon which Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin ( Read more... )

Sir Richard Evans, worth reading as ever: The history wars: 'The statues erected at the height of imperial power and prejudice do not belong in 21st-century Britain. But toppling monuments will not help us properly understand our past or resolve our present troubles'

Also always worth reading: Vivian Gornick, on the “Forgotten” Wife of Victorian ( Read more... )

For the last few weeks, it has been possible to book Sainsburys slots, no more than 3 days ahead (Waitrose seem to be booked up for weeks in advance) and we have been able to book deliveries for Friday on Tuesday mornings.
There is still a certain tremor of, will this still be so this week?
And now we have the even more exciting addition of Ocado ( Read more... )

Okay, it's still being a bit all statues all the time, but there was a thread, actually I think several, on Twitter about but what statues are not EVIL and a lot of people were posting about statues of sweet harmless animals.

And I was thinking, 'ere, 'ere, I am sure Trim was a very fine cat indeed, and one who has several statues, one solus ( Read more... )

No, seriously, statues do not just gently rise out of the ground to commemorate individuals, they are the produce of choices and decisions and negotiations and political agendas.

Like any feature of the built environment, they may come to feel like natural features of the landscape and the way it's always been, but a) they are not and b) it's ( Read more... )

Seriously? looking at the slavery connections of monuments in London is going to obliterate the city's and 'The Nation's' history? it will never be the same and it's all Sadiq Khan's fault?

Actually it's more about considering them in the light of London being a diverse city.

London is and has been constantly being made and remade and as somebody ( Read more... )

I believe the usual woezers about the encroachments of plitikle krektness and the dreadful impact of 'snowflakes' on their right to 'free speech' - which they are, we note, woezing about in the columns of the press and quite often on the broadcast meedja as well -

- are waxing very agitato about the de-plinthing and sending swimming in the ( Read more... )

In the stilly watches of the night - there was that thing where I wake up from a perfectly sound sleep and then take some while to get back to sleep - I was thinking about that panic reaction that Some People have that if you add New Names to Literary Canons or the Historical Record or give them Commemorative Statues this means that the existing ( Read more... )

But I only just discovered that, on the forecourt of Euston Station - in the middle of the outdoors food-courty bit - there is a memorial to Matthew Flinders, the circumnavigator of Australia -
- with his cat Trim.*
Aaawwwwwww.
But considering it's been there since 2014 (bicentary of his death, that is, Flinders, not Trim), I am a really ( Read more... )