The London Journal
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The London Journal
@thelondonjournal.bsky.social
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A journal embracing all aspects of metropolitan society past & present | Published by Taylor & Francis for London Journal Trust | Articles & Special Issue proposals welcome | thelondonjournal.org
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thelondonjournal.bsky.social
And last but not least, the 2024 Curriers Prize winning 'Stories from Smithfield: Markets and the Narration of London', by @jackhanlon.bsky.social: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Abstract Throughout London’s history, marketplaces have not only been integral to its economy but also to how the city was imagined. Drawing on a diverse range of archives and sources—from tabloid journalism and film, through to oral history and photography—this article examines the ‘narration of London’ at one of the city’s most famous market sites, Smithfield. It focuses upon three moments when London’s meat market came to be seen as emblematic of the city’s story: as an ‘anvil’ for modernisation in the mid-nineteenth century; as an ‘insider’s’ account of the commercial empire in the early twentieth century; and as the last remnant of a ‘London lost’ on the eve of a new millennium. This article argues that the narrative power of the marketplace lies in its capacity for temporal rupture and connection—an ideal stage for dramatising the relationship between urban past and present. It shows how starkly and stereotypically gendered representations of Smithfield’s male workforce became one important means of understanding and articulating urban change.
November 28, 2025 at 6:11 PM
thelondonjournal.bsky.social
Our penultimate research article of the issue is 'The Queen Catherine Court Slum Clearance Scheme: A Turning Point in the History of Social Housing in London', by Patricia Coveney Sears: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.....
Abstract Maps provide a valuable resource to historians and genealogists, but the neat rows of compact houses in the courtyard of the Queen Catherine pub in Ratcliff, home to four of my Irish great-great-grandparents, only hint at the living conditions of its occupants. This article draws together evidence from newspapers, archival sources, censuses, and other genealogical records to provide a conjectural reconstruction of Queen Catherine Court. The overdevelopment and overcrowding of the site resulted in it being declared unfit for human habitation in 1888, but owing to decades of laissez-faire ideology and fragmented local government, slum clearance and the provision of social housing in London had been beset by intractable problems. A flagship project of the London County Council, the Queen Catherine Court scheme was finally brought to completion in 1903 by Stepney Borough Council, marking a first in the capital's history of social housing.
November 28, 2025 at 6:08 PM
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Followed by 'A Romani Capital? Romanies and London in the Eighteenth Century', by @jamesepeate.bsky.social: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Abstract The history of Romanies in England during the eighteenth century has been largely neglected by existing historical scholarship. Yet, the Romani experience of and in London had a notable impact on the capital's culture and the ways in which Romanies or ‘Gypsies’ would be portrayed for years to come. This article explores how, in the early part of the century, the Romani settlement at Norwood in south London enabled interaction and integration between Londoners and their Romani neighbours. During the second half of the century, Norwood was enclosed, and interactions between Romanies and south Londoners diminished. What remained was an experience of Romani culture drawn primarily not through interactions with an established Romani population, but from a stereotypical ‘Cultural Gypsy’ that was portrayed in literature and on stage.
November 28, 2025 at 6:05 PM
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First up is 'The Politics of Wardship: A New Perspective on Societal Dissatisfaction and Civic Unrest in Late Fourteenth-Century London', by @dralrs.bsky.social: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Abstract This article uses socio-political research on wardship practices in late fourteenth-century London to provide a fresh perspective on the broader political turmoil of the period. By examining the social politics of key civic figures like John Pecche, a draper and alderman who exploited guardianship for personal gain, the article reveals a clearer picture of societal dissatisfaction. Pecche’s exploited ward, John Costantyn, later aligned with John Northampton, a reformist politician who advocated for transparency and ethical governance. Costantyn’s resentment toward his manipulated guardianship, alongside Northampton’s moral campaign, added fuel to a wave of civic unrest, ultimately leading to Costantyn’s execution. Through these interconnected lives, this article presents the role of civic guardianship as a catalyst in reshaping accountability and transparency, and examines how personal ambition, social responsibility, and political reform converged, ultimately transforming urban governance and the expectations of civic leaders in late medieval London.
November 28, 2025 at 6:03 PM
thelondonjournal.bsky.social
Call for papers for our new special issue on 'Nocturnal London', edited by Maurizio Cinquegrani, Yihong Zhu, and @mcmccluskey.bsky.social. Abstracts due in by 31 March 2026.

All submissions and reposts much appreciated.
Nocturnal London: From Torches to Neon Signs in a City After Dark Edited by Maurizio Cinquegrani, Yihong Zhu and Michael McCluskey The editors of this special issue, Maurizio Cinquegrani, Yihong Zhu and Michael McCluskey invite submissions on the theme of London nights. This volume of the London Journal will examine the histories of the city after dark, from its origins in Roman London to the present. Often overlooked, night has long been an essential dimension of urban life: as the city’s appearance change in the lightening of torches, oil lamps, gaslight, incendiary bombs and neon signs, nocturnal imagery, sounds, smells and professions – legal and not legal – emerge from the darkness. For Londoners, the night was never simply the absence of day; it was a time of danger, sociability, and creativity; a theatre of crime and vice, but also of performance, work, and pleasure. The special issue will place particular emphasis on moments when the character of London’s nights was especially contested, including – but not limited to – the Elizabethan, the eighteenth century, the Victorian, the wartime and the postwar city. The Elizabethan period witnessed the emergence of the city’s playhouses, taverns, and nocturnal entertainments, alongside concerns about disorder and moral decline. Eighteenth-century coffee-houses and club meetings reflected the nocturnal city’s uneasy mix of polite sociability and transgressive undercurrents, while pleasure gardens flourished as spaces of spectacle, employment, cross-class mingling, and erotic charge under cover of darkness. In the Victorian era, the introduction of gaslight transformed both the material and imaginative experience of the night, making the city’s streets newly navigable while also exposing poverty, vice, and vulnerability to the gaze of reformers, police, photographers, and journalists. Wartime London, by contrast, was marked by darkness and silence imposed from above: the blackout and the Blitz remade the urban night as a zone of danger, solidarity, and belonging. The postwar decades, and especially the 1960s, brought the era of Swinging London, in which nightlife became emblematic of youth, fashion, music, and cultural revolution. Equally important are the particular districts that have defined London’s reputation after dark, including – but again not limited to – the West End and the East End. The East End has been imagined as a zone of poverty, danger, and cultural resilience, alive with street-level economies that flourished under cover of night. The West End has long been associated with theatres, clubs, and the rituals of fashionable display. Soho, especially in the twentieth century, became a microcosm of cosmopolitanism, transgression, and reinvention, providing a home for migrants, artists, musicians, and London’s gay community, who together redefined the possibilities of nocturnal sociability. Beyond districts and periods, we also invite reflections on the people who navigated, transformed, and reimagined the nocturnal city. The editors are especially keen to foreground questions of diversity and difference. How have London’s nights been inhabited, shaped, and contested by women, by queer citizens, by migrants and racialised communities, and by those whose working lives were tied to the hours of darkness? How was night both policed and celebrated? How did nocturnal spaces serve as arenas of negotiation between surveillance and resistance, authority and anonymity, privilege and precarity? How have representations in literature, theatre, music, art, and film contributed to the cultural meanings of the nocturnal city? We welcome submissions from across the disciplines, including history, literary and cultural studies, art history, archaeology, urban geography, sociology, performance and media studies, as well as ecology, environmental humanities, and architecture and urbanism. Interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged, as are contributions that combine archival research with theoretical or methodological innovation. Abstracts of 300–400 words, accompanied by a short biographical statement, should be submitted by 31 March 2026. Full-length articles will be in the range of 6,000–8,000 words and are due by 31 March 2027. Please send proposals and queries to Maurizio Cinquegrani, Yihong Zhu, and Michael McCluskey (m.cinquegrani@kent.ac.uk, scarlett.zhu24@gmail.com, and m.mccluskey@northeastern.edu) with the subject line Nocturnal London Special Issue.
November 20, 2025 at 11:18 AM
thelondonjournal.bsky.social
New research article: 'Capital Entertainment: The London Pantomimes of Nelson Lee, c.1830–1870', by Stephen Ridgwell: www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...
Abstract Throughout the nineteenth century, pantomimes were a much-loved source of winter amusement in London. Capable of generating large amounts of revenue, they also played a major role in the capital’s theatrical economy. From the most fashionable West End houses to the less prestigious neighbourhood establishments, pantomimes were a colourful highlight of the festive season. Over the course of four decades, from the last years of the Regency to the mid-Victorian, no-one wrote more pantomimes for Londoners than Nelson Lee: a showman turned actor and theatre manager who defined the period’s spirit of bustling commercial enterprise. Deeply implicated in the moment of their creation, pantomimes were simultaneously critique, celebration, and reflection of their time and place. To have an appreciation of Lee’s remarkable work in this field is thus to better understand the society (and city) that produced and consumed it.
November 20, 2025 at 11:04 AM
thelondonjournal.bsky.social
We’re going to be starting with @johannagerwin.bsky.social’s article ‘The Persistence and Revival of Cockney: Language and Identity in Twenty-First-Century London’: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Abstract Over the past two centuries, London's Cockneys have endured perceptions of obsolescence, their dialect and culture often marginalised or deemed outdated. However, the 'London Talks' project at Queen Mary University of London unveils a vibrant, contemporary embracing of Cockney identity among Londoners. In sixty-two interviews conducted between 2021 and 2023, the project reveals a resilient connection to Cockney heritage. Contrary to previous assumptions of decline, Cockney identity, encompassing language and traditions, remains cherished and relevant, symbolising familial values, inclusivity, and local pride. Both self-identified Cockneys and others view this identity positively. Initiatives like 'Cockney Cultures' advocate for the recognition of Cockney heritage, marking a departure from past social stigmas. This evolving attitude signifies a newfound appreciation and acceptance of Cockney roots among Londoners, representing a significant shift from earlier perceptions.
September 26, 2025 at 5:44 PM
thelondonjournal.bsky.social
New article, now available to read online: '‘To prevent the great influx of poor people into this parish’: Local Responses to the Rate Problem in the Suburbs of Early Stuart London', by Aaron Columbus: www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...
Abstract While arrears in the poor rate was a distinctive feature of Westminster and London’s more immediate suburban parishes in the first half of the seventeenth century, it has not been discussed in great detail by historians. This article shows that it was a worsening problem exacerbated by plague. Understanding the rate problem helps elucidate the growth of urban inequality and the resultant variegated perceptions of belonging and communal obligations in London’s suburbs. The article explores the dimensions of the problem and the response of parish vestries to rate refusal, which includes the ways in which plague and poverty intersected. Problems with the collection of rates impacted the available resources of parishes to manage the poor and plague, which influenced hardening perceptions of belonging. The article also considers the increasing preoccupation of suburban vestries with those taking accommodation in the parish without recognised residency and the landlords who provided that accommodation.
September 4, 2025 at 2:34 PM
thelondonjournal.bsky.social
We will be threading about each of these individual selections, starting today with @drdiongeorgiou.bsky.social's choice, which is Johann Andersson, ‘East End Localism and Urban Decay: Shoreditch's Re-Emerging Gay Scene’, from 2009: www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...
Abstract This paper explores the recent re-emergence of a gay scene in Shoreditch and argues that its reappraisal of British pub culture and appropriated versions of East End localism can be considered as a countercultural response to the marketed cosmopolitanism of Soho's gay village in the early 1990s. The original marketing of Soho as cosmopolitan was built around the rejection of the public house in favour of more 'continental' bars, signalling a move towards Europeanised consumption habits. In contrast, Shoreditch's gay scene evokes local working-class themes and the area's decaying urban aesthetics in attempts to market itself as an 'authentic' alternative to the 'artificial' West End. This paper begins by discussing a number of reoccurring themes in literary and media representations of East London before analysing specifically how some of these themes have been appropriated on Shoreditch's gay scene.
August 7, 2025 at 3:55 PM
thelondonjournal.bsky.social
And rounding off this section of the journal is '‘Every Description of Domestic Pets Will Here Be Found’: The Rise of the Pet Shop in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century London', by @janehamlett.bsky.social and Rebecca Preston, and available open access: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.....
Abstract By the mid-twentieth century, the pet shop was an established feature of London’s retail landscape. Pet shops presented themselves as modern, hygienic, and compassionate spaces that used the kerb appeal of furry animals to lure consumers onto their premises. This article tracks the boom in pet sales across the capital from the early nineteenth century, through street trade, markets and, increasingly, shops. Animals figured as part of the consumer culture of spectatorship and display promoted by the new department stores. Older sites of pet sale were reconfigured as tourist attractions but were simultaneously criticised by observers who argued that they were problematic for animal welfare. From the early twentieth century, traders recognised the need to counteract these narratives. Shops began to use the word ‘pet’ in their titles and marketed themselves as animal welfare friendly environments with a special appeal for children. Older forms of animal retailing remained popular, however, with markets and stalls clustering in the East End.
July 21, 2025 at 2:43 PM
thelondonjournal.bsky.social
The issue's penultimate research article is 'The Frenchman Who Invented London: Élisée Reclus’s Geographies of the Cité Mondiale, 1860–1879', by Mario Realini: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Abstract The French anarchist geographer Élisée Reclus (1830–1905) dedicated several hundred pages to London. Addressing different audiences and adopting different tones accordingly, he produced travel guides, geographic treatises, and meditations (posthumously published) that recounted contemporary London in various ways. This article examines Reclus’s reflections on the city, serving as both a companion for Anglophone readers exploring Reclus’s work and an invitation to view London through new eyes—that is, those of a foreign traveller whose conflictual, yet affectional, relationship with London may still describe that of many today. As this article shows, globalisation, progress, environment, and social habits are recurrent themes in his accounts: at times they are approached with considerable scientific rigour, and at others, they immersed in a romantic indefiniteness articulated by way of a frenetic expressive tempo.
July 21, 2025 at 2:40 PM
thelondonjournal.bsky.social
Followed by 'Jewish Credit, Debt, and Economic Integration in Eighteenth-Century London', by @awakelam.bsky.social: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.....
Abstract Early modern London’s population explosion was reliant upon the constant arrival of migrants, predominantly from the provinces but joined by a variety of those born overseas. After re-admittance during the Commonwealth in 1656, Jews made up an increasingly large proportion of immigrants. However, centuries of antisemitic distrust did not disappear, and London’s Jews faced unique obstacles to integration in the city, not least in their ability to engage in the credit market that underpinned commerce. Using surviving debt imprisonment records, this article analyses the extent to which Jews were able to overcome sustained prejudice and integrate broadly in London’s commercial environment. It suggests Jews were, by the second half of the century, just as likely to be imprisoned for debts as to imprison others, while the sums owed, the occupational structure, and residential geography of Jewish Londoners suggest that integration was frequently dependent on wealth and class.
July 21, 2025 at 2:38 PM
thelondonjournal.bsky.social
The first research article is 'London, Newcastle’s Coal, and the Weaponisation of Energy in the British Civil Wars, 1642–1646', by Tristan Griffin: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Abstract During the British Civil Wars, London suffered a severe energy shortage. By the mid-seventeenth century, the English capital was highly dependent on supplies of coal from the North-East of England. However, during the civil wars, the predominantly Parliamentarian city’s access to coal was restricted when the Royalists secured control of Newcastle and its coal reserves. The constriction of the coal supply of London caused an energy crisis in the capital, forcing the Parliamentarians to introduce price controls and seek alternative supplies of fuel. This article argues that ‘weaponisation of energy’ and ‘energy policy’ are appropriate terms to describe London’s coal supply in this period, given the clear parallels with modern energy policies and conflict. This article will further argue that the use of this term makes historians engage with the importance of energy even in premodern conflicts, and acknowledge that contemporaries were aware of its paramount strategic importance.
July 21, 2025 at 2:35 PM
thelondonjournal.bsky.social
NEW ARTICLE: 'Eyre and Eton in Camden: Uncovering the Colonial Histories of Three North London Housing Estates', by Edanur Yazici, Susannah Cramer-Greenbaum, Michael Keith, @karimmurji.bsky.social, Steve Pile & @baggieyiannis.bsky.social: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.....
Abstract This article analyses the colonial histories of three north London housing estates. A kilometre apart from each other and built under different social policy conditions, Hilgrove, Chalcots, and Alexandra Road Estates all share colonial histories. We trace the role of the slave-holding Eyre Estate in influencing the architecture of Hilgrove Estate; uncover how the Eyre Estate clashed with residents and the London Borough of Camden over Alexandra Road Estate; and consider Eton College’s links to enslavement and its ownership of Chalcots Estate. We tell these histories with the aim of beginning a conversation around how to decolonise the way the city is known, linking the histories of the three estates with the colonialities of property and the welfare state. We do this to reflect on the implications a decolonial approach may have for new approaches to the history of public housing and the struggle for its future.
May 19, 2025 at 4:37 PM
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Followed by 'Layering London’s History: Digital Mapping and Spatial Technologies in Historical Research' by @justincolson.bsky.social: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Abstract The opening decades of the twenty-first century have seen an explosion of spatial approaches to urban history, which have allowed historians to combine analyses to gain new cultural and experiential perspectives on historical cities. New tools and resources have introduced both ways to use historical maps as sources in new light, and new ways to create maps as part of historical research. London has often been at the heart of many of these developments. These approaches have unlocked new ways of understanding the historical city through historical map sources, as well as new ways of conceiving of other kinds of sources through a spatial lens.
May 6, 2025 at 4:48 PM
thelondonjournal.bsky.social
Then comes 'Modalities of London’s Past in Film and Television', by Charlotte Brunsdon: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Abstract London is an old city, a pre-cinematic city, and its oldness, and particularly its Victorian-ness, has formed a persistent strand in its cinematic and televisual embodiments. There are some long histories here that scholarship has addressed in different ways, recruiting past Londons to a range of other analyses. Rather than survey old Londons in film and television, this article uses detailed textual analysis to explore the ways in which the past is presented and speaks to, and from, the present in three generically contrasted audio-visual texts. It investigates the 2023 BBC drama series The Gold, which returns to the much-mythologised Brink’s-Mat gold bullion robbery of 1983; the 1970s and 1980s of Steve McQueen and Josh Rogan’s television documentary Uprising (2021); and William Raban’s commissioned film for the Dickens Museum, The Houseless Shadow (2011), considering the different modalities of their engagement with past Londons. In the contemporary media environment, where past and present Londons jostle together, this article suggests that the modality of the presence of the present in any engagement with the past city may be a productive way to distinguish between contemporary past Londons.
May 6, 2025 at 4:46 PM
thelondonjournal.bsky.social
Our penultimate three articles continue this shift towards considering the representation of London's history in different physical and visual ways. This starts with 'Displaying London’s Past to Contemporary Visitors', by Clare Tonks: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.....
Abstract This article contributes to our understanding of the development of curatorial practices from the nineteenth century to the present day through the analysis of museum collections that were displayed in the nineteenth century and remain open to the London public today. By comparing the management practices of institutions in each period, this article examines how present-day curatorial staff have re-imagined and re-evaluated the ways in which they present historical collections to meet the standards and expectations of contemporary society. As the selected collections were founded or expanded during the nineteenth century, the curatorial practices utilised during this period continue to impact the functioning of these museums today. Reflecting upon these earlier practices contributes to wider discussions currently taking place regarding the role of museums in the twenty-first century.
May 6, 2025 at 4:44 PM
thelondonjournal.bsky.social
So too is 'ReOrientalism: Representing London’s Muslim History Through its Adapted Mosques', by Nur Sobers-Khan and Shahed Saleem: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.....
Abstract ‘Three British Mosques’ was co-curated by Shahed Saleem, Christopher Turner, and Ella Kilgallon and exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Pavilion of Applied Arts at the Venice Biennale 2021. The exhibition took three of London’s mosques, each created through the adapted reuse of existing buildings, and re-created 1:1 replicas of architectural elements from each building for display. Lidar digital scans of each building were also displayed alongside filmed interviews with mosque attendees. The adapted mosques were a semi-detached pair of Edwardian houses, a Victorian public house, and a Georgian church then synagogue. The mosques overlayed Islamic architecture and design onto the existing London buildings, resulting in complex cross-cultural architectural palimpsests. This article considers how this exhibition can be understood within the historical context of displaying Islamic architecture in European museums and galleries. We argue that ‘Three British Mosques’ subverted this art history by challenging orientalised and stereotyped representations of Muslim interior spaces, characteristic of the display of Islam in European institutions, by presenting instead the quotidian and intimate details of everyday Muslim life. In this way, this article demonstrates that the exhibition asked the viewer to see Muslim life and experience in London as complex, nuanced, and negotiated.
May 6, 2025 at 4:41 PM
thelondonjournal.bsky.social
Also available open access is 'The Grit in the Oyster: Deptford, Enslavement, and the Challenges of Memorialisation', by Helen Paul: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.....
Abstract London was the first slaving port in Britain, although it was subsequently overshadowed by Bristol and Liverpool. It still lags behind the western ports in its attempts to memorialise Britain’s role in the triangular transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans. Arguably the first Englishman to carry out the triangular voyage was John Hawkins, who set sail from Deptford Strand. Deptford is connected to enslavement and to abolition in many different ways, but there is little official recognition of these linkages. Local community groups, building on the work of academics such as Joan Anim-Addo, have attempted to increase awareness of Deptford’s historical significance, but this has not been without challenges. Deptford has lost much of its built heritage and is not on the standard tourist routes, unlike neighbouring Greenwich. Locals and visitors alike will find little to memorialise Deptford’s key place in the history of enslavement.
May 6, 2025 at 4:38 PM
thelondonjournal.bsky.social
Then comes '(In)human Capital: London and the Legacies of Transatlantic Slavery', by Katie Donington: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.....
Abstract London played a key role in the history of transatlantic slavery: it was an important port in the Atlantic trade, a hub of commercial organisation, a market for slave-produced commodities, and a conduit through which the wealth accumulated from enslavement flowed. The signs and symbols of London’s slaving past can be read in its statues and street names, and in the histories of some of its most familiar institutions. The degree to which these sites have been recognised as the tangible vestiges of the afterlives of slavery has shifted at different moments. The bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade in 2007 brought a temporary reckoning. In 2020, following the Black Lives Matter protests, London’s historical connections to slavery were once again re-examined. This article considers how London’s financial, cultural, and municipal institutions have grappled with the notion of ‘historical repair’ and the degree to which these practices can contribute towards processes of racial justice.
May 6, 2025 at 4:35 PM
thelondonjournal.bsky.social
The next few articles address issues of race in London's history and heritage. First is 'From Historical Fiction to Historical Praxis: Researching Long Eighteenth-Century London’s Black Lives', by Montaz Marché and @jamie-gemmell.bsky.social (also open access): www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Abstract Creative approaches, specifically historical fiction, and scholarship from Black Studies and Slavery Studies, have critically interrogated the relationship between method and the political and ethical stakes of conducting research on Black Lives and Atlantic slavery. This article uses historical fiction—Sara Collins’s Confessions of Frannie Langton (2019) and Paterson Joseph’s Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho (2022)—and the case of Lucy Johnson, an eighteenth-century Londoner frequently referred to as black, to bring this conversation to bear on long eighteenth-century London’s Black residents. It argues that blackness was a pluralistic category connected to the specific contexts of eighteenth-century London society. As such, methods that theorise blackness as a singularity embedded in Atlantic slavery cannot be easily moved into this distinctive London context. Instead, this article suggests how a social historical approach, informed by a critical engagement with the archive and moving between the imagined recoveries of historical fiction and the impossible narratives of Atlantic-oriented scholarship, might prove generative in future research on Black London.
May 6, 2025 at 4:32 PM
thelondonjournal.bsky.social
Then comes 'Teaching London’s Past Today: An Experiential Approach to a Global City', by Sam Waterman and Charlotte Grant (available open access): www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.....
Abstract This article provides an account of teaching London’s cultural history on a semester-long, first-year undergraduate study-abroad course at Northeastern University London (NUL) using a multi-authored, case-study approach. It consists of an extended introduction by the course leader and a course instructor followed by seven contributions from current and former instructors, most of whom are still working at NUL, discussing examples of best practice in experiential learning in the humanities. Its intended audiences are teachers and lecturers of English and visual culture, of London, of pedagogy, and of other kinds of learning with a local, place-bound scope, as well as readers interested generally in transmitting London’s cultural past to learners and citizens in the present.
May 6, 2025 at 4:28 PM
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This is followed by 'The Persistence and Revival of Cockney: Language and Identity in Twenty-First-Century London', by
@johannagerwin.bsky.social: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.....
bstract Over the past two centuries, London’s Cockneys have endured perceptions of obsolescence, their dialect and culture often marginalised or deemed outdated. However, the ‘London Talks’ project at Queen Mary University of London unveils a vibrant, contemporary embracing of Cockney identity among Londoners. In sixty-two interviews conducted between 2021 and 2023, the project reveals a resilient connection to Cockney heritage. Contrary to previous assumptions of decline, Cockney identity, encompassing language and traditions, remains cherished and relevant, symbolising familial values, inclusivity, and local pride. Both self-identified Cockneys and others view this identity positively. Initiatives like ‘Cockney Cultures’ advocate for the recognition of Cockney heritage, marking a departure from past social stigmas. This evolving attitude signifies a newfound appreciation and acceptance of Cockney roots among Londoners, representing a significant shift from earlier perceptions.
May 6, 2025 at 4:26 PM
thelondonjournal.bsky.social
It's here. Our 50th anniversary special issue, on 'London's Past Today', edited by @aidannorrie.bsky.social and Robert Shoemaker: www.tandfonline.com/toc/yldn20/c....
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"The London Journal A Review of Metropolitan Society Past and Present Vol. 1 No. 1 May 1975" Text over red cover based on historical map of London near Thames. "The London Journal A Review of Metropolitan Society Past and Present 50th Anniversary Special Issue: London's Past Today Editors: Aidan Norrie and Robert Shoemaker." Red cover composed of illustration of London on Thames, accompanied by other historical illustrations and photos of London.
May 6, 2025 at 4:08 PM
thelondonjournal.bsky.social
NEW ARTICLE: 'Financing London’s Police, 1820–1865', by Yoko Onodera: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.....
Abstract This article explores funding as a key aspect of police reform as the metropolis was undergoing rapid growth between 1820 and 1865. It focuses on changing roles of parishes in policing when a newly established police force operated in a wider geographical area. The effectiveness of parishes as an administrative unit in the early nineteenth century has been contested. This article demonstrates that while parishes lost control over police administration, they encouraged the police to act effectively on a limited budget as the unit responsible for collecting police rates, the main source of police income. Moreover, this article explores how English police forces created a firm financial base in the age of local autonomy. It argues that the 1856 County and Borough Police Act enabled central government to extend Treasury grants to England and Wales, which helped police forces meet the minimum standards and become more accountable.
March 31, 2025 at 11:56 AM