5 d. ago 'It's like living in a Victorian slum': Tenant's nightmare in 'rat

Housing Ombudsman ordered Ealing Council to pay compensation to Errol Baptiste over its handling of complaints about his living conditions

Politics

7 d. ago Mailen Design takes cues from Victorian London for Lee Terrace house

Mailen Design takes cues from Victorian London for Lee Terrace house  Dezeen

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1 week ago Carrion Crow by Heather Parry review – body horror with historical bite

The ‘mad woman in the attic’ is an archetypal force to be reckoned with in this gothic tale of metamorphosisYou don’t tend to encounter much body horror in historical fiction. We have our bold innovators, to be sure, but for many the archaic and the genteel remain oddly synonymous. The good news, if that’s you, is that there’s almost no swearing in Heather Parry’s new novel. The bad news is that it’s vile and unspeakable in almost every other way. But don’t let that put you off. Carrion Crow may be set in a fetid late Victorian London and couched in lightly brocaded prose, but what lurks within is unmistakably red in tooth and claw, a creature nearer in kinship to Kathy Acker than to Sarah Waters.The body undergoing the horrors belongs, in this instance, to Marguerite Périgord, the daughter of a French noblewoman in reduced circumstances. When the wayward Marguerite attracts a suitor, a strenuously unromantic solicitor named Mr Lewis, Cécile Périgord isn’t taking any chances. In a s...

Events

2 w. ago A Thousand Blows filming locations with ‘disused car park’ transformed into 19th Century set

A Thousand Blows is ready to transport Disney+ subscribers to the dangerous streets of 1880s Victorian London.

Politics

2 w. ago A Thousand Blows review – the irresistible new boxing drama from the Peaky Blinders creator

Steven Knight’s latest series is a hugely fun journey into the murky world of Victorian bare-knuckle fighting. It’s a ripping yarn full of audacious dialogueSome will come for the boxing. The Peaky Blinders creator, Steven Knight, has set his latest endeavour in the East End of London and the shadowy underworld of late‑Victorian bare-knuckle fighting. The new series is called A Thousand Blows, and this is an understatement. Some will stay away because of the boxing. This would be a mistake, because it is about so much more. It is about all kinds of violence – that perpetrated against children by those supposed to protect them, against the increasingly poor by the increasingly rich, against women by men, against the colonised by colonisers – and what happens when you throw people together in the melting pot of a rapidly industrialising city where only the fittest can survive.There is a lot going on – narratively, thematically and cartilage crunchingly – in Knight’s historically ...

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2 w. ago Lina Stores expands its London empire, its latest outpost a revamped Victorian bank

Lina Stores expands its London empire, its latest outpost a revamped Victorian bank  The Spaces

Politics

3 w. ago ‘Happy Christmas, Ange!’ EastEnders’ 40 most memorable moments – from Dirty Den to Dot Cotton

There were landmark gay kisses, characters who returned from the dead and the biggest earrings ever seen on screen. As the soap turns 40, we round-up Walford’s weirdest, wildest and most heartbreaking scenes‘Cor, stinks in here, dunnit?” At 7pm on 19 February 1985, we heard Simon May’s now-familiar theme tune and watched those wriggly River Thames titles for the first time – followed by that aromatic opening line of dialogue.The BBC’s new soap opera was its attempt to make a mass-market, twice-weekly rival to ITV’s Coronation Street. Co-created by the producer Julia Smith and the writer Tony Holland, the gritty saga was set in a Victorian square in the fictional east London borough of Walford. Working titles for the show included Square Dance, Round the Houses and London Pride. They settled on EastEnders. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago A Thousand Blows on Disney+ review: Erin Doherty shines in an addictively gruesome boxing drama

This vicious drama about Victorian London’s boxing scene is familiar territory for Peaky Blinders showrunner Steven Knight

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