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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.
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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.
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1 month ago | 
londonist.substack.com | Matthew Brown
Welcome to Londonist: Time Machine’s Friday newsletter for paying subscribers, with a wholesome extended teaser for everyone else. A friend once said to me, “Matt, you’re such a pedantic.” To which I, of course, replied: “No, I’m a pedant”. But I’m not the only one. Most of us enjoy a bit of nitpicking or minor point-scoring, especially when it comes to language and grammar. In today’s newsletter, I pedant the heck out of London’s history.
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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.
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1 month ago | 
londonist.substack.com | Matthew Brown
Welcome to Londonist: Time Machine’s Friday newsletter for paying subscribers, with a chunky, nourishing teaser for everyone else. Today, I’m finishing off my series on the 32 London boroughs, which coincides with the 60th anniversary of their creation. You can read parts one, two and three in the archive. First up, the History Radar and a few recent links…Upcoming events for those who enjoy London history.
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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.
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2 months 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.
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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.
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2 months 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.
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2 months 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.