Richard Grafton and his Chronicle
In 1569, Richard Grafton, an enterprising London printer completed the first attempt to provide a critical history of England. Martin Holmes describes the process.
Martin Holmes
The London That Was Burned
In 1666, writes Martin Holmes, much of the ancient City of London went up in what Samuel Pepys described as a ‘most horrid malicious bloody flame’.
Evil May-Day, 1517: the Story of a Riot
Martin Holmes describes how, when Henry VIII was aged twenty-six, the Easter sermons of 1517 provoked riots in London against the wealth and power of aliens at Court.
Henry III at Westminster: the Building of the Abbey
Seven hundred years ago King Henry III was defeated at Lewes by Simon de Montfort; their abiding joint memorial is Edward the Confessor’s Abbey which Henry III refounded. By Martin Holmes.
Shakespeare’s London
Most of Shakespeare’s working life was spent in or around the City of London. By the time he retired, Greater London – a residential as well as a commercial metropolis – was beginning to spring up beyond its ancient limits.