The Mau Mau Case: Post-Colonial Justice on the Strand

“This is a historic judgement today, which will have repercussions for years to come” – Leigh Day Prosecution team. The Mau Mau insurgency, also known in Britain as the ‘Emergency Period’, was an eight year span of violence in colonial Kenya (1952-60). In 2012, the British High Court of Justice, inside the Royal Courts of…

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Streetkind 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…

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A Smoking Rebellion at the Savoy?

Savoy 'out' sign

The Savoy hotel is a treasure trove of weird and intriguing events over the last century of Strand history. In 1896, per the Fairmont Hotel Group blog, the Duchesse de Clermont-Tonnerre was the first woman to smoke in public and did so at the Savoy. “The Duchesse de Clermont-Tonnerre, the first woman to smoke in…

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A Gondola Party at The Savoy

Gondola Party via AngelSmyth

In 1905, the courtyard of the Savoy hotel was flooded with four feet of water to host the party of American city planner, architect, and millionaire, George Kessler. While probably being one of the most luxurious and ludicrous events to ever occur at a London hotel, and certainly on the Strand, it is rather poorly…

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Notes on the Kingsway Tunnel

Kingsway Tunnel today, looking north.

Editors’ note: The Strandlines editors are always scouring for news and research about the Strand area. Below we’re delighted to be sharing an extract from ‘Here’s everything we learned from this map of London’s defunct tram network’, by Jonn Elledge. You can read the entire article on CityMetric. Anyone who has worked, studied around, or…

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Eighteenth-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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Layers of the Strand

Today, I have been time travelling. I explored the farm around Trafalgar Square. I squeezed into a tiny top room in Devereaux Court to hear Isaac Newton speak. I paid a ferryman tuppence to take me to the floating coffee house on the Thames to look over the water at Somerset House. This is all…

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A Quixotic Ramble along the Strand

The Knight of the Woeful Countenance in the Street of the Sagging Purpose: A Quixotic Ramble along the Strand[1]   by Charles Lock Professor of English Literature, University of Copenhagen   On Strand Green was a windmill…[2] For Clare Brant   A strand is both a thread and a margin, an agent of binding and…

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