-
6 days ago | 
londonist.substack.com | Matthew Brown
Welcome to Londonist: Time Machine’s Friday edition for paying subscribers, with a toothsome teaser for everyone else. No History Radar again this week… I’m still supposedly on Easter holidays. It shall return next Friday. Greater London and the 32 London Boroughs are 60 years old this month (April 2025). To mark the occasion, I’ve put together an historical curiosity for ever one of the the boroughs, spread over four newsletters.
-
1 week 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.
-
2 weeks ago | 
londonist.substack.com | Matthew Brown
Welcome to Londonist: Time Machine, the newsletter of London history. It’s the Easter school holidays here in London. I’ll be spending much of my time with the kids over the next two week — 6 and 9, and both budding historians. I like to use these opportunities to give voice to a few other writers on Londonist: Time Machine, and this week I’ve got a treat. David C.
-
2 weeks ago | 
londonist.substack.com | Will Noble
Hi and welcome to your weekend newsletter… This edition’s a guest post from Will Noble, author of the outstanding Croydonopolis. It’s adapted from an article originally published last year on — our sister newsletter, now edited by East Croydon Cool, and covering the best of the borough.
-
2 weeks ago | 
londonist.substack.com | Matthew Brown
Welcome to Londonist: Time Machine’s Friday edition for paying subscribers, with a wholesome, nourishing teaser for everyone else. Jesus, Mary, a clutch of disciples and a saintly martyrdom; these are the sacred images we expect to find on stained-glass windows. But a church in Southwark revels in its city-gazing glazing. This is Christ Church off Blackfriars Road, and its delightful windows include a double-decker bus, local landmarks and a downtrodden secretary. Let’s take a look inside.
-
3 weeks ago | 
londonist.substack.com | Tabish Khan
Hi and welcome to your weekend newsletter… This edition’s a guest post from Tabish Khan, and was originally published on — our sister newsletter, covering London’s massive, and massively varied, visual arts scene — as part of his Artists Inspired by London series. Subscribe to Londonist: Urban Palette for weekly reviews, interviews, gallery news, slices of London’s art history and more.
-
4 weeks ago | 
londonist.substack.com | Matthew Brown
Welcome to Londonist: Time Machine, the newsletter about London history. I have an absolute treat this week. A keen reader of the newsletter — who wishes to remain anonymous — has kindly sent me a selection of aerial photographs from 1984. He or she took these rare images at a pivotal moment in the history of London. They show the abandoned quaysides, decaying sheds and moribund power stations of Canary Wharf and the wider Docklands.
-
1 month ago | 
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.
-
1 month ago | 
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.
-
1 month ago | 
londonist.substack.com | Matthew Brown
Welcome to Londonist: Time Machine, a newsletter about London history. “My favourite object? It would have to be the clock,” confesses Cindi Sughrue, outgoing Director of the Charles Dickens Museum. I’ve asked her the question because she’s about to leave the museum after a full decade at the helm. Through all that time, the hallway clock has marked the hours, the comings and goings, the good times and the hard times. The same clock was ticking away for Dickens 160 years ago.