Stories
Stranded
This is where Samuel Johnson first inspired me Where I discovered the Queen Victoria statue unexpectedly Devoured small tuna sandwiches with cucumber And realized one night, mournfully, I was too old to join the fun at the pub. It’s where I left my laptop at a café while eating lunch one day, Scurrying back to…
Read MoreDan Kirmatzis: Strand series
The Strandlines team periodically check in on photos tagged to the Strand (and surrounding areas) on Instagram and Twitter. We came across Dan Kirmatzis’s work on Instagram. A huge thanks to Dan for so generously sharing his photographs and insights into his inspiration and processes. “Although I take many photos in the street genre…
Read MoreClass of 2020: Graduating From a Distance
A common epithet to describe the coronavirus has been “the invisible enemy”. Not only does the use of the chosen adjective, ‘invisible’, hint at the nature of a biological threat, but it also perpetuates an understanding of the virus as an abstraction, this other-worldly description questions its reality. In a swift four and a half…
Read MoreSensible Stillness
In 1796 Mary Wollstonecraft reflected in print on her travels in Scandinavia. One topic she addressed was quietness. She alludes to the ‘stupid stillness’ of London on a Sunday… which came to mind as I walked along the Strand on a spring morning, 17 March 2020, the day before London lock-down because of coronavirus Covid-19.…
Read MorePeople 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…
Read MoreIntroducing 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…
Read MoreLet’s All Go Down the Strand – For the Age of Brexit
One night half a dozen toffs met together in Westminster A severing from the continent was planned Empathy and sense were summarily banned ‘Let’s inflame irrational nationalism! It won’t hurt us when it backfires’ Decorate a bus in lies Lie some more when they ask why And then dance around the union’s funeral pyre Let’s…
Read MoreStreetkind UK on Southampton Street
‘For several years my sister always came out and gave out little care packages for people sleeping rough’, Ijlal explains, ‘but we had our first outreach in March and then it’s been once a month every month since’. It’s 2:30pm on what, for many visitors to the Strand, is a regular relaxed Sunday. However, for…
Read MoreGreening Aldwych: a walking tour of lost and future green spaces of Aldwych
To mark London History Day 2019, Professor Clare Brant, Director of Strandlines, and Assistant Editor Fran Allfrey put together a tour of past, present, and future green space around Aldwych. We’re excited to release highlights from the tour here for anyone to use. All you need is your phone with data, or connected to The…
Read MoreEighteenth-century lives in Devereux Court
Micah Anne Neale is a 3rd-year PhD student at Royal Holloway, University of London, and volunteered for Layers of London in Summer 2019. Her thesis topic is the musical lives of eighteenth-century domestic servants in Britain, and her research interests include early modern social and cultural history, the history of work and the history of…
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