Lydia Manch

London

Writer at Londonist

Writer at The Arbuturian

Contributor at Londonist: Time Machine

@londonist mostly. IG @lydiamanch

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Articles

Five... classic cocktails born in London

1 week ago | londonist.substack.com | Lydia Manch

Hi and welcome to your weekend newsletter… This edition’s an homage to the classic cocktails invented in London, of which there are far more than I realised. You might not have heard of Gilberto Preti, the barman thought to have created the Vesper, but you'll almost certainly know the crisp, sharp take on a martini’s most famous fictional drinker. Preti was working at DUKES Bar in the early 1950s when he invented the drink, for author Ian Fleming.
Five... historic London gardens you can explore

1 month ago | londonist.substack.com | Lydia Manch

Hi and welcome to your weekend newsletter… This edition’s a handful of historic London gardens opening their doors to the public next month as part of Open Gardens 2025. Running 7th-8th June 2025, it’s a chance to explore behind the scenes at more than 100 London gardens across the city — a lot of them private, that otherwise don’t have regular public access.
Five... great animal escapes in London's history

1 month ago | londonist.substack.com | Lydia Manch

Hi and welcome to your weekend newsletter… This edition’s a handful of the great escapes effected by London’s animal population across the centuries.
Five... pieces of Canadian history in London

2 months ago | londonist.substack.com | Lydia Manch

Hi and welcome to your bank holiday weekend newsletter… 🍁 As I’m holidaying this weekend, this edition’s a reshare and update of a newsletter from a year ago. As we’ve more than doubled in subscribers since then, hopefully there are plenty of readers this’ll be new to… And with the Canadian elections coming up next week, it feels like nice timing to revisit some of the many pieces of Canadian history from over the centuries that you can still visit in London.
Five... historic London ceremonies

2 months ago | londonist.substack.com | Lydia Manch

Hi and welcome to your belated weekend newsletter… This edition’s a handful of rituals and ceremonies bound up in the history of London — some of them are traditions that would sound elaborately strange enough even if they’d been left behind in whatever century and circumstances birthed them. Some of them are all the stranger for being relatively new. All of them you can still partake in today. And there are a lot that didn’t make the list.
Five... artworks from the history of the London Underground

2 months ago | londonisturbanpalette.substack.com | Lydia Manch

This is a guest post by Lydia Manch, originally published on our sister newsletter Londonist: Time Machine. Make sure you’re subscribed to receive weekly articles about the city’s history from unusual angles, and join thousands of other London history enthusiasts.
Five... historic London benches

Mar 23, 2025 | londonist.substack.com | Lydia Manch |Matthew Brown

Hi and welcome to your weekend newsletter… This edition’s a handful of historic benches around London, from ancient perches to poetic memorials to Grade II-listed, repurposed chunks of Victorian London. Bench-lovers will also find an amazing resource in this notable London benches collection from , meticulously grouped into important bench categories including Arty Benches, Animal Benches, and Benches That Look Like Erections.
Five... artworks from the history of the London Underground

Mar 16, 2025 | londonist.substack.com | Lydia Manch

Hi and welcome to your weekend newsletter… This edition’s a handful of moments from the history of Art on the Underground — specifically, artworks that first saw the light of day (or the fluorescent non-daylight of a tunnel deep below the streets of the city) on London’s public transport network. The programme, originally called Platform for Art when it started in 2000, was renamed Art on the Underground in 2008 in acknowledgement of the way it had expanded beyond its first remit.
Five London Women Of The Second World War

Mar 10, 2025 | londonist.com | Lydia Manch

By Lydia Manch Last Updated 07 March 2025 Lydia Manch Five London Women Of The Second World War This feature first appeared in March 2024 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here. The statue in Bloomsbury honouring Noor Inayat Khan.
Five... London statues of extraordinary women

Feb 17, 2025 | londonist.substack.com | Lydia Manch

Hi and welcome to your (belated) weekend newsletter… I’ve been in Montreal this weekend, during the biggest snowstorms the city’s seen since records began in 1941 (and this is a city that regularly Sees Some Snowfall and doesn’t throw the word blizzard around lightly) — which led to my spending yesterday snowed-in1 and temporarily separated from my laptop by a few kilometres of impassable streets.