Bad mouth
We’ll start with a quiz: 1920s OR 1990s+? Are the following song lyrics from the 1920s or 1990s onwards? Make your guesses then scroll down for the answers. I took […]
Prices and places
Skip to: Prices (Decimalisation)Places (Postcodes) Prices: Decimalisation BRITONS GET 100-CENT HEADACHEA STORM of controversy was blowing up last night over plans published earlier for switching Britain to a Continental-style decimal […]
Number, please?
In the 100+ years of the telephone there’s been a number of changes to phone numbers and the way we dial them. These changes have enabled direct calling, increased capacity […]
More than meets the eye
On blogs scattered across the Internet there are tales told of the plucky and resourceful Victorian women who would fight off the unwanted attentions of ‘mashers’ with their hatpins. While […]
Taking the Mickey
The Hopi are considered to be the oldest tribe of America’s Four Corners Region (SW States). The current Hopi Reservation a little way east from the Grand Canyon, in Northen […]
Jive, study Jive
In 1938, Cab Calloway published a dictionary of words and phrases that one could hear in the music halls and on the streets of Harlem. The Hepster’s Dictionary was so […]
Codebreakers
Women of Britain – Come into the factories. So declared the 1941 recruitment poster which would help to take hundreds of thousands of women into the workplace during Would War […]
Heirs v. Museums
In The Vanished Collection the struggle between heirs and museums to claim artwork looted by the Nazis was focused on. Here we look at the views for and against restitution.
Finders keepers?
Imagine standing in the grandeur of the National Gallery, looking at a multi-million-pound Monet on the wall that should be your inheritance. Having your bike nicked and spotting it a […]
His mother’s possessions
Drawers full of chargers for old phones, broken pens, shop business cards. Old newspapers. A broken thermometer. A garlic press, a grater, and a – what’s it called? – we […]