2013-04-20
post/48395977415
brief guide to canals and waterways by maraid on Flickr.
Great subtitle: “brief, pithy, and what you really want to know”.
2012-11-24
post/36448058829
Back when I was a teenager and travelling in and out of Piccadilly Station, there was a very definite sense of their being a Northern culture and sensibility, taking in everything from The Smiths to Boys from the Blackstuff and all points in between. Hell, I was proud to come from the North, even if they wouldn’t let me belong there.
But where is that now? I can’t seem to discover its like anywhere. Eighty years after its supposed heyday, Deep England has finally triumphed. We all think like southerners, act like southerners and see like southerners. And thus a whole swathe of Britain and its history has been made invisible.
”2012-05-08
post/22644625000
party outings 1964 front cover by smallritual on Flickr:
‘party’ here means a group of people. this is a book of suggestions for day trips to tourist destinations
2012-05-07
post/22603397069
Proposed flag designs for a “Great Britain” in the early 1600s, when James became king of both still-independent countries, as covered in BBC Radio 4’s The Flag That Failed, part of the Shakespeare’s Restless World season.
Handily, there’s a transcript available:
Looking at our flag designs, you can see the intractable politics of union being played out in graphic form. All the designs stumble on the one key problem facing James’s project: how do you combine two kingdoms, but allow each to retain equal status? Crudely put, which national cross gets to be on top, St George or St Andrew’s, and does size matter?
If you’ve never seen a Union Jack, it is surprisingly difficult to come up with an even-handed solution to this particular problem.
The programme page has a zoomable image of the designs. As it was, in 1606 a recognisable Union Flag that has evolved into the current design was used, although England and Scotland were not formally joined as a single country until 1707, after the failure of the Darien Scheme (as covered by CP Grey in one of his informative videos).
2012-03-04
post/18722076339
Zeppelin by San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives on Flickr:
Haworth, England—the German Graf Zeppelin recently arrived in England and landed a humber of passengers from Germany at Haworth Airport, is seen surrounded by the dense crowd immediately upon her arrival on British soil. Shortly after this picture was taken, the craft, with a new complement of passengers, started on a twenty-four-hour air cruise of Britain.
2011-06-22
post/6792435338
Vorticist journal ‘Blast No. 1: Review of the Great English Vortex’, p. 11, June 20, 1914. Courtesy The Poetry Collection, State University of New York at Buffalo. (via BLAST! The radical Vorticist Manifesto.)
2011-02-14
post/3281992577
The man! The map! The cat! How could I resist? Roger Moore in North Sea Hijack (by Chris Heathcote).
2011-01-19
post/2831931027
Stargazing in Exmoor, from the Guardian’s Eyewitness series:
The starry night sky over a tree in Exmoor National Park, home to some of the darkest skies in the country.
Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA.
.svg){kind=link}