New Guardian Feature on 10 of London’s Most Unusual Historical Sites

July 11, 2015
by matthewgreen

I’m excited to report that my recent feature for The Guardian exploring 10 of London’s most unusual historical sites has now been shared over 5,000 times and ratcheted up over 100 comments – some, even, nice. Read the feature here.

London is peppered with portals into lost worlds – you just need to know where to look – and sometimes an extraordinary story lies behind seemingly ordinary locations.

Did you know, for instance, that on the southern end of London Bridge, a svelte stone spike marks the approximate spot where, for 400 years, the heads of traitors were impaled? That the Cat and Mutton Pub in Hackney used to host pig-swinging competitions? Or that a strangely solitary Caffè Nero on Tottenham Court Road marks the site of the last V-2 rocket to fall on central London?

All the sites feature in my new book, London: A Travel Guide Through Time, which uses relics of the past in the present-day city to catapult the reader back in time to experience the sights, sounds, tastes and smells of an alien yet uncannily familiar metropolis, from the Middle Ages to the 1950s.

You can find reviews of the new book here.

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