There’s something wonderful about looking at Christmas Day menus during wartime - a moment to pause the horror and find some magic.
First off the 42nd signals division. 1940
1943 Christmas with 175 Wing RAF in India

You voted to hear more about Hammersmith’s King Street. So, did you know it isn’t in fact named after a king - but is named after John King, Bishop of London, who gave land to the poor of Fulham in 1620. This is what King Street looked like on a map in 1839. It’s roughly 1 and a half miles long, and used to have several posting-houses, as it was the road to Windsor. These were houses or inns where horses were kept and could be rented or changed out.

UK Christmas cards used to feature oddly aggressive cats & dogs (a short 🧵) as well as … Sinister santas

In the early 20th century, the Bavarian Enclave experienced a societal shift. Their loyal
Kätze-Mädchen, hired as young girls, were growing old. Many passed away, leading to a shortage of care-workers, lowering living standards as one-to-one care became one-to-three. Their old way of life was becoming unsustainable. They experimented with Katzenjungen but after close observation decided that boys were not capable of displaying the same level of feline devotion as their female counterparts.

It is March 1898. A young reporter Edward Le Breton-Martin, with Pearson’s Magazine, goes out onto the streets of London with a photographer & writes an article about the way people hold their hands as they walk along. Here for your delectation is a thread on London hands. Edward first observes the hands of a labourer, with a rolling gait and a firm dogged fist - as if to say ‘just you keep out of my path’. Edward did and carried on with his hand quest (a thread)

On March 10th 1914 at the National Gallery, a pale woman, early thirties, took out a small hatchet and attacked 'Venus' by Valasquez. Suffragette Mary Richardson said "I have tried to destroy the painting...as a protest against the government destroying Mrs Pankhurst.'

https://twitter.com/XRebellionUK/status/1584491767662989312

May 23rd 1914, suffragette Annie Wheeler entered the Egyptian Room at The British Museum, took out a small axe to attack a glass mummy case. The museum announced women would only be admitted to the galleries by ticket with a 'satisfactory recommendation'. She was imprisoned.

MPs at the 1922 committee meeting aren’t pulling their punches. “Funereal, horrendous” (1/4) “It’s clear panic has set in.”

Queue-Anon. A thread about historical queues in London.
In February 1952, enduring icy winds, hundreds of thousands of people queued to pay homage at the lying-in-state of the Queen's father, King George V1. In the fourth week of the second world war, 1939, over 100,000 people had queued at the Passport Office in London to apply for a permit to leave the country.

Portobello Road - share your memories here. I will share photographs in this thread. It’s a wonderful street. Milletts toy shop on the Portobello

Can all of you amplify this story by Charlotte in Hampton. Please RT to reach London media.

https://twitter.com/cbezzant/status/1481927966837940226

@DrAmirKhanGP please RT

Happy Easter! Over a 100 years ago this is how you might have celebrated - sending a card featuring giant eggs and women. Across Europe this was a thing. With slight differences between countries. First off the much loved hatching woman (A thread) In Germany the hatching woman was normally less erotic and more upright - more like a serving hatch or kiosk. ‘Frohe Ostern! kann ich Ihnen helfen?’

The perfect parade of shops in Harlesden, circa 1900. And how it is today. I’ve been thinking about what we’ve lost from our high streets, our local communities and why we often choose to shop online. Here’s a thread but I really want to hear what you all think and feel about it. To breathe life back into local high streets, councils must place a higher value on how they look, how they invite us to walk, linger and spend money. Art critic Ruskin talked about the ‘bounding line’, the continuation of an edge that the eye follows on the entire structure.

The extraordinary ornate structures in the White City exhibitions drew millions of people to visit in the early twentieth century. So how were they built? Read on... These White City attractions structures were made from white washed fibrous plaster. Specialist builders draped lengths of plaster-soaked cloth over wire, wood and metal frames. These pictures show that process in Shepherds Bush in 1908.