To the Friendship of English Speaking Peoples

February is LGBTQ+ History Month in the UK! Strandlines invites contributions from past and present Strand-dwellers, visitors, and dreamers all year round, however, we launched a call this year for contributions to mark the History Month. The story below was contributed by Tam Lin. Thank you for sharing your own ‘strand’ with us! We are…

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People of the Strand: Alice and Kimberley at Two Temple Place

Featured Image: A beautiful stained glass windows at Two Temple Place, and the 'Unbound' exbition duty managers Alice and Kimberley.

Like many people, I have been enjoying the virtual offerings of museums and galleries during lockdown. For this post, I’m grateful to Two Temple Place for letting Strandlines share excerpts from their blog ‘Voices from Two Temple Place’. I can’t recommend the blog enough, and applaud the blog’s mission to be an ‘inclusive online platform…

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People of the Strand: Jonathan Sisson (1692 – 1749)

Jonathan Sisson established a scientific instrument making business at the corner of Beaufort Buildings in the Strand, London. The attic rooms included an observatory, the exterior visible in a drawing by the freemason, Thomas Sandby.[1] Sandby was the architect of the first Freemasons’ Hall on Great Queen Street, which was completed in 1766. For many…

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Introducing Motherland to Fatherland

Editor’s Note: Motherland to Fatherland, an exhibition, is set to open at the India Club at 143, Strand, on the 29th March 2020, 5pm to 9pm. Strandlines invited the project’s creator, Shrutika Jain, to explain how the project came about, and to give an insight into the stories the exhibition will explore. What is Motherland…

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Monet’s Pied-à-terre

Monet Waterloo Bridge

“I find London lovelier to paint each day” – Claude Monet. Monet’s link to London Monet fell in love with London in 1870-71, while in exile from France, during the Franco-Prussian war. After his return to France he vowed to revisit London, which he did in 1899, 1900 and 1901. In each of these three…

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Fruity Wordplay and Weird Forests: Now Play This 2019

The Now Play This festival of experimental game design returned to Somerset House this weekend, bringing another smorgasbord of games and playful artworks, digital and otherwise, to the Strand. This year the theme is community. In many cases, this means works designed to spur competition and collaboration – works like Patrick LeMieux’s Octopad, in which…

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The Mineral Shop at 149 Strand

Stanley Gibbons’s stamp shop was not the only mecca for nineteenth-century collectors, as Dr Adelene Buckland (English Department, King’s College London) demonstrated at the ‘Shows of London’ seminar series last Monday night at King’s. On the opposite side of the street to Gibbons’s establishment, at 149 Strand, was a mineral shop from 1804-1881. Dr Buckland told us…

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The shoes of London Fashion Week 2010

On the Strand this week the big glass window of Coutts the bankers has been hung with large white balls. Glamorous fashion photographs adorn its window and the window of Topshop. It’s been London Fashion Week – or five days, a size zero version of a week – and beautiful creatures have been drifting down…

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