Places
LGBTQ+ History Month February 2021: do you have a story to share?
Hopefully, if you are reading this, you’ll know that Strandlines is a site dedicated to stories about and from the Strand area: from Trafalgar Square to where the Strand meets Fleet Street; Temple, Embankment and Charing Cross; and into the southern edge of Covent Garden. The editorial team are seeking stories, memories, art, short research…
Read MoreAlienation on the Strand; Solitude in Street Haunting
Woolf’s writing has been a part of my life for so long I no longer know if it taught me to see the world this way or just taught me to notice that I do. – Tracy Seeley There is perhaps no greater comfort nor reward granted by reading than resonance. It is an indescribable…
Read MoreShops on the Strand: women in business in early modern Westminster, 1600-1740
In October I began work in earnest on a new research project, which will illuminate the lives of women in business on the Strand in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. I am particularly looking forward to uncovering all sorts of material on the myriad shops in this location, whether at street level or in…
Read MoreWhy visit the Strand (according to reviews)
With lockdown easing, many Londoners and tourists are beginning to explore the city or return to their places of work. Of course, for some essential workers, the Strand has continued to be a part of daily life. As for me, I’m lucky that my job can be done from home, and I am nervous about…
Read MoreThe Strand as photographed by Anthony Frank Kersting
Anthony Frank Kersting was a prolific (and under-celebrated!) photographer of the 20th century. His collection of thousands of photographic prints and negatives, including glass plates, have been held at the Conway Library at the Courtauld Institute of Art since his death in 2008. The collection is being digitised as part of a huge project that…
Read MoreHeaven Version 2.8
The brick archways drip, flesh drips. The flicker of glitter. Flashes of red and yellow and blue imprint on the back of my eyes. We drip, drip in neon. Hand-shadows on my face, on my body. Foreign hands on my flesh, familiar hands on my skin. No signal. It’s freedom for a night, freedom from…
Read MoreA Dickensian Necropolis, our ‘new normal’ London
As we entered a new decade, little did we know that three months down the line our bustling thoroughfare would come to be haunted by the shadows of London’s Victorian past. Transforming into a flaneur-like figure in the dead of the night to combat his insomnia, Charles Dickens documented his traversing of London in the…
Read More#MyStrand: Justin Sherin, playwright and screenwriter
I often scour Instagram for gorgeous, strange, or mysterious looking photographs of the Strand, historical and contemporary. @WychStreet, an account run by Justin Sherin, is an account I return to again and again, as the photographs – and generous evocative captions – instantly transport me into the past. Justin was kind enough to share some…
Read MorePeople of the Strand: Alice and Kimberley at Two Temple Place
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…
Read MoreThe Strand’s Foggy Past in Conan Doyle’s Work
In the late 19th century, the Strand Magazine propelled Arthur Conan Doyle’s writings to new heights. This meteoric rise brought wider public attention to some of the issues that plagued London in the 1890s. In the Strand Magazine pieces, complex connections between writing by Doyle and the concerns of the Smoke Abatement Society are apparent.…
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