SALON NO. 5: (M)APPING LONDON

6.30pm May 30th 2013

Westminster Arts Library

35 St Martins Street

London WC1

Admission:
£4/6 in advance from WeGotTickets

THE EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT

Maps and history may be the means by which we make best sense of and navigate the city but aren't both part fact and part fable? London's long life has often been mapped, and, more recently 'apped' but even the most geographically accurate of these representations are only a snapshot of a particular time or a particular viewpoint. Salon No 5:(M)apping London brings together two London writers Rachel Litchenstein and Matt Brown to present their own unique picture-memory-stories of the capital.

The evening will feature a special Geographical cocktail designed for the evening by Alchemist Dreams

A soundtrack for the city will be provided by The Clerkenwell Kid.


Many of the London place names we use today, including Wembley, Kennington, Stepney, Brixton and Wimbledon are named after Anglo-Saxon farmers and chieftans whose biographies are utterly unknown. Matt Brown has created and will present the only known map of "Lundenwic" and what we now know as "Greater London" as it was in Anglo-Saxon times. It shows the various rivers, roads, hills, forests and settlements present 1,000 years ago and the way we can still trace them.

Skipping forward in time, Matt will then introduce and tell some of the tales of his V2 rocket map of the city. During the final days of WWII, the capital was pummelled by German V2 rockets. Plotted from archive sources and enriched by contributions from Londonist readers, the map uses Google satellite views to identify the scars of 70-year-old explosions from a circular depression in Hackney marshes to 1950s housing estates built in the bomb footprint but still surrounded by the Victorian housing stock that survived.

Then, in a special London-at-the-Library exclusive, writer and psycho-geographer Rachel Litchenstein will introduce her new location based app "Diamond Street". Using content from her book "Diamond Street – the Secret History of Hatton Garden" along with specially developed media, soundscapes and interactive features, the app will take the smart-phone equipped wanderer on a virtual or actual guided tour through London's historic jewellry district.

Here we meet sewer flushers, artists, goldsmiths, Hasidic diamond dealers, geologists and visionaries as Rachel gathers a cast of local characters to help uncover the history, secrets and stories that bring this Clerkenwell district to life.

Matt Brown is the editor of Londonist, London's pre-eminent city guide. An obsessive historian and archivist of the culture of the capital,he has written over 5,000 articles about all aspects of London life. He  hosts regular meetings of the London Historians and a variety of London events in venues including the Royal Institution, the Hunterian, Boxpark, Leicester Square Theatre and the Emirates Stadium. 

Rachel Litchenstein is a writer, artist, archivist and historian. Her first book, "Rodinsky’s Room", co-written with Iain Sinclair, began as a personal quest and evolved into a compelling psycho-geographical adventure. "Diamond Street: The Hidden World of Hatton Garden" is the second in a trilogy of non-fiction works exploring different London streets.

LONDON AT THE LIBRARY is an ANTIQUE BEAT production sponsored by HENDRICKS

SALON NUMBER 4: DRESSING LONDON - STITCHES IN TIME

6.30pm April 25th 2013

Westminster Arts Library

35 St Martins Street

London WC1

Admission:
£4/6 in advance from WeGotTickets

£8 on the door (please note: previous Salons have sold out in advance)

Following London Bone's wonderful excavations beneath the city's flesh, Salon No.4 "Dressing London" returns to the surface as Amber Jane Butchart and Susie Ralph tell how London's dress sense has always been influenced by celebrity, the dramatic arts and the stars of stage and screen and of how the city's pre-eminence in the world of fashion has its roots in the costumes of the world of entertainment.

A soundtrack for the city will be provided by The Clerkenwell Kid.

Susie Ralph begins with the fascinating story of early product placement in turn of the century London theatre.

1894 saw the arrival on the stage of a new genre: the “fashion musical". The chief attraction of these productions was their elaborate display of contemporary fashion modelled by the shows’ stars and a corps of beautiful Gaiety Girls "clothed .. with the very latest and most extreme modes of the moment". As the Gaiety Girl became synonymous with the last word in glamour and desirability, the musicals themselves dispensed with any serious attempt at plot in favour of the shameless promotion of the city's couturiers and department stores.

Amber Jane then fast forwards us to the gloom and poverty of 1930s London as the dominance of the Old World cultures is fading.  She describes the re-glamourising effect Hollywood costumes and the film star that wore them had on the city's fashion sense - helping to set it apart from its great rival Paris.

Taking in contemporary film and fashion press, she tells the particular story of Joan Crawford’s dress for the 1932 film ‘Letty Lynton’ and the radical effect it had in London through both high fashion publications such as British Vogue and popular 'fan' magazines like Film Pictorial.

Susie Ralph is a fashion designer, historian and researcher and is expert on the French couturière Jeanne Margaine-Lacroix.  She is particularly interested in the relationship between celebrity, fashion and the stage and is curator of the upcoming exhibition "Margaine-Lacroix and the dresses that Shocked Paris" at Chelsea Library
 
Amber Jane Butchart is a writer, broadcaster and fashion historian.  Her blog, Theatre of Fashion, tracks current trends and reveals "the secrets of our sartorial past".  She is the red-haired half of the Sony-nominated Broken Hearts DJ duo with whom she co-hosts a weekly radio show on Jazz FM and graces stages across the world.

LONDON AT THE LIBRARY is an ANTIQUE BEAT production sponsored by HENDRICKS

SALON NUMBER 3: PODCASTS

SALON NO 3: "LONDON BONE" featuring the Museum of London's curator of Osteology Jelena Bekvalac and playwright John Constable was an extraordinary glimpse below the surface of time and place into the city's mortal remains. 

You can listen to or download  the podcasts via the widget on the right or here:

PART ONE: JELENA BEKVALAC

PART TWO: JOHN CONSTABLE and the Q+A

Recorded by Crawford Blair,  edited Ляйсан Гильманова, produced by ANTIQUE BEAT

SALON NUMBER 3: LONDON BONE

6.30pm March 28th 2013

Westminster Arts Library

35 St Martins Street

London WC1

Admission:
£4/6 in advance from WeGotTickets  SOLD OUT

£8 on the door (please note: previous Salons have sold out in advance)

Salon No. 3 "London Bone" promises to be thought provoking, possibly rather moving. Has the city's geographical and psycho-geographical landscape been shaped by its burials? The Museum of London's Jelena Bekvalac and playwright, poet and Southwark shaman John Constable discuss the structure beneath the city's flesh.  

A soundtrack for the city will be provided by The Clerkenwell Kid.

Jelena Bekvalac will take us time-travelling back through the city via  an introduction to the vast collection of skeletal remains held in the Museum of London's archive.

How have different ages treated their dead? What do the bones tell us about their London bodies and the version of the city in which they lived? What does the museum do with these remains and why? What happens to the bones that are uncovered by archaeological digs or just by the JCBs of property developers?

Some London bones will be available to handle for the curious.

Excavations by the Museum under a London Underground car park between 1991 and 1998 uncovered an immense amount of infant and adult-female bones revealing its past as a burial ground for prostitutes - the 'Cross Bones graveyard'.

Playwright John Constable will relate how he revived the story of Cross Bones through his cycle of poems and mystery plays "The Southwark Mysteries" And he will show us how he has helped to re-imagine the burial ground into a place of local significance via the Cross Bones Halloween festival: an annual celebration of processions, candles and song.  

John discusses Southwark Body in relation to London Bone - the Southbank's role as the 'shadow' of the City of London, home to brothels, theatres and animal-baiting spectator sports - fleshy activities not permitted within the City itself but nevertheless desired by its inhabitants. 

Jelena Bekvalac is the Curator of Human Osteology at the Museum of London and curator of the museum's current incredible exhibition.  "Dissection and Resurrection Men"

John Constable is a south London writer, educator, poet, performer and 'purveyor of unusual walks'.

LONDON AT THE LIBRARY is an ANTIQUE BEAT production sponsored by HENDRICKS

SALON NUMBER 2: PODCASTS

SALON NO 2: "CROSS RIVER TRAFFIC - LONDON BRIDGING" featuring writers and broadcasters Travis Elborough and Chris Roberts was a real delight. You can listen to or download  the podcasts via the widget on the right or here:

PART ONE: TRAVIS TRAVERSES
PART TWO: CHRIS CROSSES and Q+A

Recorded by Crawford Blair,  edited Ляйсан Гильманова, produced by ANTIQUE BEAT

SALON NUMBER 2: CROSS RIVER TRAFFIC - LONDON BRIDGING

6.30pm February 28th 2013

Westminster Arts Library

35 St Martins Street

London WC1

Admission:

£6 in advance from WeGotTickets  SOLD OUT

£8 on the door (please note: places are very limited)

After the success of sold-out Salon No 1, we return with Salon No.2  featuring Travis Elborough (writer and broadcaster) and Chris Roberts (writer, librarian and London guide)on the strange stories of London's best known bridge.  A soundtrack for the city will be provided by The Clerkenwell Kid

            

Travis Elborough, the author of the forthcoming "London Bridge in America: The Tall-Story of A Transatlantic Crossing" will tell us a tale encompassing 2000 years of history and a journey of 3500 miles. 

Beginning with a history of the bridge in its various incarnations, this is the true story of how the world’s largest antique went to America, to a waterless patch of the Arizonan desert - and why - when a previous incarnation of the bridge was bought by a "fraudster whose greatest trick was to convince the world he ever existed.."

Travis will introduce us to "a cast of Fleet Street shysters, revolutionary radicals, frock-coated industrialists, disneyland designers, Thames dockers, Guinness Book of Records officials, the odd Lord Mayor, bridge-building priests, gun-toting U.S. sheriffs and an Apache Indian.

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Drawing on his remarkable and encyclopaedic knowledge of the city, Chris Roberts author of "Cross River Traffic" - the definitive guide to London's bridges,  will present an interactive presentation on Thames crossings in which the audience select which stories get told.  

London is fundamentally a river city and, since the Romans first forded it close to the site of today's London Bridge, the process of crossing from southbank to northbank has taken up a huge quantity of its inhabitants' resources, time and psychology. Chris will tell us why - and how.

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Travis Elborough has been a freelance writer, author and cultural commentator for the last decade. He is a regular contributor to the Guardian, The Times, Sunday Times, New Statesman, the Oldie, Tate etc, and BBC History magazine and frequently appears on BBC Radios 2, 4 and 5 Live. Throughout August 2011, he was the guest historian on Russell Kane's Whistle-Stop Tour, a six-part series for BBC Radio 2. 

Travis is the author of three acclaimed books: "The Bus We Loved", a history of the Routemaster bus; "The Long Player Goodbye", a paean to vinyl; and "Wish You Were Here", a survey of the British beside the sea. 

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Chris Roberts is founder and editor of the 21st Century London penny dreadful "One Eye Grey".  In addition to "Cross River Traffic" he has written "Heavy words, Lightly Thrown" on the history of nursery rhymes and "Football and Voodoo" on soccer and superstition. He writes for Londonist and leads London's acclaimed "Liars' Walking Tours" as well as co-hosting the radio show "Cafe Calcio."

SALON NUMBER 1: PODCASTS

SALON NO 1: "THE EVOLUTION OF CONVIVIALITY" took us from the birth of London's coffee houses  through to the development of its Gentleman's clubs and was, to say the least, stimulating.

The first part of the podcast features Dr Matthew Green of Unreal City Audio relating how caffeine radically transformed the character of the city - and of its citizens. You can listen to / download the podcasts via the widget on the right or here:

PART ONE: DR MATTHEW GREEN

Recorded by Crawford Blair,  edited Ляйсан Гильманова and produced by ANTIQUE BEAT

SALON NUMBER 1: THE EVOLUTION OF CONVIVIALITY - COFFEE TO CLUB

6.30pm November 29th 2012

Westminster Arts Library

35 St Martins Street

London WC1

Admission:

£6 in advance from WeGotTickets SOLD OUT

£8 on the door

Our inaugral evening will feature Dr Matthew Green (writer and guide)on London's 17th century coffee house and Marcus Risdell (archivist of the Garrick Club) on London's Gentlemen's clubs.  A soundtrack for the city will be provided by The Clerkenwell Kid

            

Dr Green’s illustrated, caffeinated talk will take you on a whirlwind tour of London’s original - and best - coffeehouses. Hear the story of how, in 1652, a bitter black drink from Turkey transformed the face of London forever, brought people together, and inspired brilliant ideas that would shape the modern world. Immerse yourself in the cosy, smoky atmosphere of the Georgian coffeehouse and hear tales of all that went on inside: from dolphin dissections to lethal duels over Latin grammar, from inquisitions of insanity to salacious gossip-mongering. Feel a tinge of nostalgia for the lost, candlelit world of flickering conviviality, intellectual enlightenment, and unbridled creativity as our streets are invaded by bland Starbucks clones. Free shots of gritty black coffee, brewed 17th-century style, included.

Marcus Risdell will then describe how the earliest London Clubs met in the Coffee Houses and Inns of 18th century London.
Here, behind closed doors, gentlemen(and they were predominantly gentlemen) could enjoy each others' sociability whilst gaining access to an exclusive network of contacts. The 19th century witnessed an explosion in Club making catering for all classes and occupations. 

There were clubs for authors, for the theatrical profession, for travellers, reformers, soldiers and politicians of all colours: even one for mountaineers.  Quite a few survive today. 

This talk will open a door onto this most private world and offer a peek at London’s unique Clubland.”

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Dr Matthew Green graduated from Oxford University in 2011 with a PhD in the power of the press in 18th-century London. He works as a writer, journalist, broadcaster and tour guide writing historical features for the Guardian, Telegraph, History Today and Tate Etc.

He is co-founder of Unreal City Audio, which produces immersive, critically-acclaimed tours of London with actors, musicians, and shots of 17th-century coffee. 

He is working on a popular history book entitled The Lost World of the London Coffeehouse, a portion of which will be published via the Idler Academy in December 2012.

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Marcus Risdell is curator of the Garrick Club and an art and theatre historian. After graduating from St Andrews and the Courtauld Institute of Art he became a freelance cataloguer and researcher working on digital catalogues and inventories for the Garrick Club and the Mander & Mitchenson Theatre Collection. 

As Curator and Librarian at the Garrick Club he launched on-line catalogues for both the Club’s art collections and library. He is author of "The Young Davy Garrick; Rise of a Superstar" for a book to accompany the Dr Johnson’s House exhibition Behind the Scenes: The Hidden Life of Georgian Theatre, 1737-1784,  

In 2009 he co-curated The Face & Figure of Shakespeare, an exhibition of eighteenth-century sculptures of Shakespeare at Orleans House Gallery, Richmond, London, the catalogue of which was listed for the Berger Prize for British Art History. 

He is co-chair of the Association of Performing Arts Collections (formerly Theatre Information Group) and sits on the Committee of the Society for Theatre Research. 

Marcus is also a mountaineer.