The Guide Spring 2015

GUIDE

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the SPRING 2015

A GUIDE TO BRITAIN FROM BRITAIN’S BEST GUIDES

THE TIME MACHINE KATE WILLIAMS: HISTORIAN, WRITER AND TV PRESENTER

THE HISTORY OF MENSWEAR • REBELLION IN LONDON AND BRIDGES IN BRISTOL • LEGENDS, LIES AND LORE

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Contents 4

News From Bard to Horrible; a new chapter for Oxford’s Bodleian Library; Lotherton Hall’s new fashion galleries; Nottingham’s new museum for video games

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Interview TV Historian Kate Williams tells Sophie Campbell about her fascination with the past

10 Legends, Lies And Lore Fact and fiction from British history

Philippa Owen, Chair to the Guild of Registered Tourist Guides

12 The Way we Wore

A WARM WELCOME TO ‘THE GUIDE’...

Marc Zakian looks at the history of British menswear

20 Tour de Force Two expert guides tell us about their tours – from rebellion in London to bridges in Bristol

26 My Favourite…

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Editor: Marc Zakian T: 020 7403 1115 E: marczakian@blueyonder.co.uk

Publisher: Guild of Registered Tourist Guides ©2015

Editorial Assistance: Mark King

Design and print: MYPEC Tel: 0113 257 9646 W: www.mypec.co.uk

Project Manager: Maggie Barnes-Aoussou

Display advertising: Andy Bettley T: 07846 979625 E: andy@mypec.co.uk

T: 020 7403 1115 E: marketing@blue-badge.org.uk

This magazine is produced by the Guild of Registered Tourist Guides – the national association for Blue Badge Guides (the highest guiding qualification in Britain.)

Email: theguide@blue-badge.org.uk • www.britainsbestguides.org

ENGLAND

LONDON

WALES

NORTHERN IRELAND

SCOTLAND

GREEN BADGE

ISSN: 2053-0439

Front cover photo: Paul Stuart Photography

Blue Badge Guides on puddings, monuments and paintings

Welcome to ‘The Guide’. 2015, my first year as Chair of the Guild of Registered Tourist Guides is a notable year for anniversaries and an opportunity to remember and reassess past events.

King John sealed Magna Carta in 1215. The document established the principle that no-one, monarch or minion, is above the law. In this issue, Ruth Polling gives us a fascinating explanation of how her interest in politics, protest and civil rights inspired her to become a Blue Badge Guide.

In their times, the battles of Agincourt (1415) and Waterloo (1815) determined the balance of power in Europe. I remember watching the World at War series in the 1980s; it begins with the phrase,‘if you want to know a country, you have to know its memories’. Part of the work of Blue Badge guides is to bring those memories to life.

I consider it a blessing that my background has given me a range of perspectives on British history and heritage. Although born in Paris and brought up abroad for much of my early life, I am a Londoner. I live near the south side of the Thames and, when I cross the river into central London, I check the state of the tide. Mudlarking on the banks is a pastime and I nearly always find clay pipe stems, oyster shells and the flotsam and jetsam of the past. It’s only by standing on the riverside that you appreciate the width and majesty of this great ‘dark’ river, as its Celtic name describes.

Rivers are such powerful influences on our great cities. The port of Bristol is on the Avon, and guide Mike Rowland tells us the story of the city’s fabulous bridge and the legendary engineer who built it, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Overlooking the river Thames, London’s Greenwich has been called the gateway to our capital city. In our main interview, TV historian Kate Williams talks about Greenwich’s Painted Hall and the sad story of how poor Emma Hamilton had to queue up with all the other mourners to see her lover, Lord Nelson, lying in state here.

I hope this magazine will inspire you to explore our country further and deeper with the aid of a professional guide.

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NEWS History, Culture and Events f

Annika Hall, Blue Badge Guide Swedish, Portuguese, English

BLUE BADGE TOURIST GUIDES Blue Badge Tourist Guides are the official, professional tourist guides of the United Kingdom – recognised by the local tourist bodies and VisitBritain. The Blue Badge is the UK’s highest guiding qualification, awarded only after extensive training and thorough examination.

There are over 1000 Blue Badge Guides in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – each region has its own badge.

We guide in all the UK’s major tourist attractions, as well as its cities and countryside.

In 2014 Guild guides worked with over 1.5 million UK visitors The Blue Badge is the qualification of excellence in heritage guiding.

The Guild of Registered Tourist Guides is the national association of Britain’s Blue Badge guides. Since its foundation in 1950, the Guild has dedicated itself to raising and maintaining the highest professional standards.

Our guides work in the UK’s museums, galleries, churches and lead walking, cycling and driver-guided tours throughout the country. Our members work in over 30 different languages. If it can be guided, we will guide it.

To find out more or to book: 0207 403 1115 guild@blue-badge.org.uk www.britainsbestguides.org

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From Bard to Horrible The Horrible Histories book and TV series tell the story of British history with laughs.

William Shakespeare is about to get the ‘horrible’ treatment in a feature film opening in UK cinemas on March 27.

Bill is set during the Bard’s ‘lost years’, when the playwright rose from obscurity in Stratford-upon-Avon, to fame as a writer in London. In the story, ‘Bill’ Shakespeare is a hopeless lute player who leaves his family and home behind in an attempt to discover his true calling. He is embroiled in a plot involving a murderous Spanish king, scheming spies and a plan to blow up Queen Elizabeth I.

GAME ON The National Videogame Arcade, the UK’s first permanent space dedicated to videogame culture, opens this March. The new £2.5 million Nottingham venue bills itself as the ‘world’s first cultural centre for

Expect proper and improper jokes, great comedy performances and silly wigs.

Homeland star, Damian Lewis, appears in the film in an as yet undisclosed cameo role.

Lewis's wife, actress Helen McCrory, plays Queen Elizabeth.

gaming’. Its mission is to promote the cultural, economic, educational and social benefits of gaming. The new centre features three floors of playable exhibitions, specially-commissioned works, education spaces where students can get hands-on experience of game-making, and a performance space. It is also home to the Videogame Archive: 12,000 items that form the UK’s national collection of electronic gaming history.

© Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford

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s from around the UK

Read all about it

Sara Porter © Leeds Museums and Galleries

Photos: Wilkinson Eyre architects

Founded in 1602, Oxford’s Bodleian is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. With 11 million items, it is the second largest library in the UK. Known to generations of Oxford scholars as ‘the Bod’, the newest part of the library was officially opened in 1946. This Grade II listed building has just completed an £80m refurbishment that will see it renamed The Weston Library, after its major funder. The new entrance hall will accommodate public events – such as poetry readings and concerts – and a public exhibition space that will display highlights from the collection.

When the library reopens on the 21 March its first exhibition, Marks of Genius, will include Shakespeare’s First Folio (the first publication of all the writer’s plays, printed in 1623), a unique Jane Austen hand-written manuscript, Felix Mendelssohn’s conducting baton, letters from Einstein and pages from the first draft of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

For a guided tour of Oxford go to www.britainsbestguides.org

GEARING UP Situated between Leeds and York, Lotherton Hall is an Edwardian house and garden. With a deer park, bird garden and collection of fine art, it is one of Yorkshire’s premier cultural attractions. In March, its

refurbished fashion galleries reopened, creating one of the largest display spaces in the north of England for fashion and textiles. The opening exhibition, Age of Glamour: Fashion from the Fifties, will feature

iconic dresses from Dior and Norman Hartnell, as well as ready-to-wear dresses from British designer labels.

The show will explore the post-war period when fashion returned from austerity to elegance.

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Interview: Kate Williams

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TV Historian Kate Williams tells Sophie Campbell about her fascination with the past

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PASSING TIME

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Emma and Nelson

Spare a thought for Kate Williams’ younger brother. As a child, she would entice him into her Time Machine – the box the new washing machine came in, cunningly converted with cling film and foil – and tell him they were going to see the pyramids being built, or the court of Henry VIII in Tudor England. “I used to shake it as if it were moving and he was always desperate to get out and see it all,” she says, “but I never let him. It would have spoiled the story.”

The grown-up Williams is one of a crop of energetic female British historians writing about the past and exploring history on television and radio right now, so she’s about as close as she can get to time travelling for a living. She writes fiction and non-fiction (mainly historical biographies), does ‘telly’, is Director of Life Writing for postgraduates at Royal Holloway College in London, and is co-writing a film script based on her 2012 novel, The Pleasures of Men. She is one of the experts on BBC2’s Restoration Home series and is the resident historian on Frank Skinner’s Radio 4 comedy show, The Rest is History. She must be one of the few people to describe being interviewed by Jeremy Paxman and John Humphrys (she often comments on news items) as ‘brilliant fun.’

This March, the first of her trilogy of novels set in the early 20th century and based on a half-English, half-German family called De Witt comes out in paperback. The second volume, The Storms of War, is published in July. She lives in Camden with her husband and young daughter. Isn’t she exhausted?

“I love it”, she says simply, “I think it’s really engaging. This morning, I’ve done a voiceover for the film I’m making about Wolf Hall for the BBC, I’m talking to you, then I’ll answer students’ emails and then I’ll write. I love the fact that I’m always working in the past, in history, and I feel incredibly privileged to do so.”

She thinks that her interest in history began as a child in Staffordshire, where she lived ‘on a modern estate, very 1980s or 90s, just outside a

quite modern village,’ and the past seemed an entirely different world. She specialised in the 18th century at Somerville College, Oxford, and her PhD examined the reading and letterwriting culture of women around the middle of the century.

“For the first time you heard the voices of women, actresses, writers and so on, who weren’t aristocratic,” she says, “so I was looking at a lot of letters, some quite dull. Then I found a letter from Emma Hamilton to Nelson.” She was electrified by her idiosyncratic style. “Emma wasn’t educated”, she says, ‘”and much of the knowledge she had came from men. Her handwriting is insane and so is her grammar.

She never learned restraint. She tells Nelson she is melting for him; she wants him to come to Naples. I was totally gripped.”

As a result, alongside her PhD and lecturing, she wrote England’s Mistress, her first book, published in 2006 to excellent reviews. She appeared on Richard and Judy to discuss Emma and Nelson. It was live and she loved it. She made a programme about Nelson with Michael Portillo (she’s a big fan) and put her academic career on hold to write books and ‘do TV’. Her second biography, about a youthful Queen Victoria, came out just as The Young Victoria film was in production, so she made a Timewatch Special about the young queen.

Academic history has its limitations. “Historic characters are famous for not telling you what you want to hear,” she says ruefully. “Emma writes about meeting Marie Antoinette, for example, but just mentions it in passing. And you want to know what happened, what she was like. I think that’s what drew me to writing novels. I wanted to know, to get inside peoples’ heads.” She says that, just as you can’t put imaginative flights of fancy into a factual book, you can’t pack too many facts into a historical novel, “because it can kill it dead.”

The Pleasures of Men focused on a young girl in grimy 1840s London, who becomes terrified by a mysterious character, the Man of Crows, who

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Interview: Kate Williams

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“I love the National Maritime Museum and the river, it lives and breathes Nelson and Emma. It’s like a place in a snow globe, it’s so unreal.”

Royal Observatory and National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

preys on women. The idea came to Williams when she was away from home, walking the streets of Paris, which seemed to her to have changed very little since the 19th century. Her trilogy is very different; it’s a huge

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family saga in three parts, covering the years 1914 to 1939, inspired by research she did many years ago, on quite another subject, which turned up ‘some amazing material on a halfEnglish, half-German family living in Hampshire, and it just stuck in my mind.’

She loves family sagas, but was also intrigued by the abrupt switch in Britain’s relations with Germany in the early 20th century. “We forget that for most of the 18th and 19th centuries France was the enemy. We loved Germany and the Germans.

Many of our royals married Germans.

The future Edward VII was going to marry a German princess, but Victoria said she wasn’t pretty enough. We loved their music and culture and we had a large German population, butchers, bakers, tailors and so on.

When war was declared in 1914 they became The Enemy; I wanted to write about how their lives changed overnight.”

When I ask Kate where she would take her Time Machine in Britain, she is silent for a few seconds. Then she says, “It’s got to be Greenwich. I love the National Maritime Museum and the river, it lives and breathes Nelson

and Emma. It’s like a place in a snow globe, it’s so unreal, yet you can see Canary Wharf and modern London right across the river.” She says she always tells visitors to go to Greenwich and if nothing else, they should see the Painted Hall, where Nelson lay in state before his spectacular funeral in January 1806.

Emma, she adds, had to join the line of mourners to see him, just like everybody else, and wasn’t invited to the funeral. “Women didn’t go to funerals, to be fair,” she says, “It was men’s business. A few sneaked in to Nelson’s, but Emma didn’t. She was in their house in Clarges Street in Mayfair entertaining his relatives who ate all her food and drank all her wine. Then they dropped her.”

She’ll have a chance to redress such wrongs over the next year or two. She is working with the National Maritime Museum on an exhibition about Emma – a companion piece, if you like, to the recent comprehensive show about Nelson – to open sometime late in 2016. That should keep her on her toes while waiting for the third part of her trilogy to be published. And for the moment, she’s far too busy to need a Time Machine!

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Painted Hall © ORNC Jigsaw Design & Publishing 2010

Greenwich old and new

Factfile You can order The Storms of War (RRP £7.99) from www.waterstones.com Kate Williams’ website https://sites.google.com/ site/kwilliamsauthor

Painted Hall Ceiling © James Brittain Photography

For a guided visit to Greenwich visit www.britainsbestguides.org

She always tells visitors to go to Greenwich and if nothing else, they should see the Painted Hall, where Nelson lay in state before his spectacular funeral in January 1806

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MALLARD-Y WATER MISTAKE

A i i w

LEGEN

We’re told that when people attacked a castle, the defenders poured boiling oil down on them. This is almost certainly a myth, as oil production was expensive and time-consuming. Every fort had a supply of water and this is what defending soldiers would pour onto attacking troops.

LIE

Fit for Porpoise During the Middle Ages, the church ruled that nobody may eat meat on Fridays, Lent or holy days – only fish was permitted. There were so many non-meat days that people began to protest. So the religious authorities broadened the definition of ‘fish’ to include anything that lived in, or near water. This was bad news for beavers, duck, muskrat, puffin, turtles, frogs and porpoise (whose name derives from the Norman for ‘pig fish’).

AN UNCLEAN SWEEP Victorian Britons who could not afford to pay a sweep would tie a rope to a chicken or goose and pull it up the chimney – its flapping wings dislodged the soot. If you could afford to pay the sweep, his young boy (or girl) apprentice was sent up the chimney to clean it from the inside.

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FACTS AND F

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Anatidaephobia is the irrational fear that one is constantly being watched by a duck.

In 1587, Mary Queen of Scots was executed at Fortheringhay Castle. This was a bizarre affair; it took two blows of the axe to sever her head from her shoulders. When the executioner lifted up her decapitated head, it fell from her wig and rolled onto the ground. Then her body moved, a Skye terrier she had hidden underneath her skirt emerged – Mary had brought her pet dog to her own execution.

ENDS AND

Y R O T IS H H IS IT R B M O FR N IO T IC F D

HAVE YOU HERD? The Invergarry Scottish Games of 1820 featured an event called ‘Twisting the Cow’.

This involved competitors pulling all four legs off a (fortunately) dead cow. The person who did this in the fastest time was awarded a prize of a (probably rather worried looking) sheep. The winner in 1820 took nearly an hour to remove the bovine’s legs.

SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP In 1187, as a symbol of unity between their countries, King Richard I of England spent a night in the same bed as King Philip II of France.

© The Graphics Fairy 2007

IES,

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Images of Walter Raleigh and Oscar Wilde © National Portrait Gallery

FROM THE CODPIECE TO THE THREE PIECE – MARC ZAKIAN LOOKS AT THE HISTORY OF BRITISH MENSWEAR

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THE WAY WE Two thousand years ago, Britain’s men were literally dressed to kill. According to some histories, the Picts – tribal groups who ruled Scotland – covered themselves with blue dye to appear more ferocious in battle.

This is a legend. There is very little evidence about the outward appearance of ancient Britons – no reliable written records, and hardly any clothing survives from that period. So museums have Iron Age metal buckles, but not the belt; Celtic gold fasteners, but not the tunics.

THE MAN MAKETH THE CLOTHES During Anglo-Saxon times all men wore the same type of clothes, regardless of social rank. The main garment was basically a bag with holes in it – two pieces of material

sewn together with openings for the head, legs and arms.

It wasn’t the cut or style that indicated your wealth, but the quality and colour of the garment.

The I4th century has been called the first era of ‘British fashion’. During this period, men’s clothes changed more than any period before or since. The first professional tailors started working, so instead of hanging like limp curtains, clothes were cut to reveal and enhance the shape of the body.

Fashions were set by the king. What the monarch wore the nobles copied; and within a year of the sovereign sporting a new outfit, cheaper versions of the aristocratic trends were adopted across the realm.

King Edward III’s wardrobe included an outfit of green velvet embroidered with pearls, a padded jacket covered in vermillion and decorated with parrots, and a scarlet mantle garnished with silk and gold and decorated with

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WE WORE birds on branches. Fashions that, to the modern eye, are more King Elvis than medieval Edward.

The 1330s saw the invention of the button. This humble appendage changed people’s dress; the tunic could now open at the front, and taper around a man’s stomach. This was bad news for fat people, whose paunches were no longer concealed (some started wearing corsets) and hated by members of the clergy, who raged against the button and its unfastening of the road to vanity.

As the century progressed, the button haters’ fears were confirmed. In 1370 one observer commented: ‘tunics have grown so short, you can see the outlines of men’s bottoms’. The short doublet became known as the ‘court piece’, a jacket which hung some two-inches below the belt, allowing a gentlemen to show off the bulge at the front of his tights and the shape of his buttocks.

A the same time, the mode for longer shoes grew until some men were wearing 20 inch points that had to be tied to their garters so they didn’t trip.

The long sleeve was also in vogue, with some almost reaching the ground. By the end of the 1300s, with their pointy shoes and baggy sleeves, men must have looked more like circus clowns than medieval knights.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU WEAR For the working people aristocratic clothes were impractical and unaffordable. And for the middle classes sumptuary laws – rules about what colours and materials you could wear – prohibited anybody from dressing above their station.

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In 1336 it was decreed that: ‘no knight under the estate of a lord, esquire or gentleman, nor any other person, shall wear any shoes or boots having spikes or points which exceed the length of two inches, under the forfeiture of forty pence’.

From 1337, only those with an annual income of over £100 a year were allowed to wear fur, and an act of 1463 put restrictions on coat length to prevent men from acting as if they were from a higher class.

The sumptuary acts were devised to stop the upper and middle classes from advancing beyond their status.

The lower classes could never aspire to wearing silks and furs, and were only mentioned to complete the social hierarchy.

In 1663 Samuel Pepys adopted the new fashion of the periwig

A COCKY KING

© National Trust Images/Derrick E Witty

The defining image of the early 16th century shows a man staring you square in the face, legs apart, fur-lined hat at a cocky angle, his bloated cloak making him as broad as he is tall.

Then there’s his codpiece, the unmissable statement of pimped masculinity that erupts from under the king’s bejewelled doublet. This is Henry VIII in 1536, power dressed and painted by Hans Holbein in a portrait that is all about political spin – the king as he wants you to see and fear him.

Tudor clothes reflected the growing confidence of England. Bulky layers puffed out to increase a man’s presence, huge shoulders, broad chests and, of course, the codpiece – which reached its peak during Henry’s reign. Tailors would stuff the pieces to flatter their clients. Henry VIII’s fighting armour features a metal codpiece that would have shocked and awed the enemy before battle even commenced.

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ONE MISTRESS AND NO MASTER

With Elizabeth I in charge, men’s codpieces were pricked. Simply by being a woman the queen altered men’s fashions – no courtier dared parade his masculine power in front of Queen Bess. But her majesty’s weakness for men’s thighs meant that carefully revealing hose might gain favour.

Elizabethan men alternated between rugged wear (long cloaks and high leather hats, sometimes with 15 inch crowns) and the emerging ‘peacock age’ fashions of earrings, pendants, feathers and embroidered suits.

Aristocratic dress was expensive; the cost for materials and tailoring of a court outfit was some £12. A skilled labourer might earn £2 a month, so the working-man’s tailors shop charged around 2s 6d for a cloak, jerkin, hose and a cape.

DARK TIMES

The execution of King Charles I in 1649 ushered in a dark decade for fashion.

Good Puritans wore plain and practical materials in sombre colours, with little or no decoration. Contrary to popular belief, they did not wear black for everyday. The dye was expensive and faded quickly, and black clothing was reserved for the most formal occasions.

Wool and linen were preferred over decadent silks and satins.

In 1660 Charles II restored the throne in a blaze of colour and opulence. The king brought French fashions with him on his return from exile. The kneelength coat replaced the doublet as the main garment in a man’s wardrobe.

Sleeves were wide and turned back, breeches were worn just below the knee, sometimes decorated with bows and ribbon trimmings.

But the ultimate indicator of status was the peruke. The best wigs were made from human hair, cheaper ones from horsehair. An everyday wig cost the equivalent of a week’s pay for an ordinary man. The more money you had, the bigger your wig, and so the term ‘bigwig’ entered the language.

Perukes remained popular because they were practical. Head lice were everywhere, and

The word pocket comes from the Norman French word for little bag. Pockets were first added to men’s trousers in the 1780s. In Tudor times men wore a purse; a leather bag slung around their neck to hold their valuables – so pickpockets used to be called cutpurses.

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een the It is possible that a dispute betw ry live ners Skin and Merchant Taylors ase phr the ise ular pop ed companies help e trad two The ns’. seve ‘at sixes and year, associations, founded in the same 1484, argued the order of precedence. In g, the erin after more than a century of bick once a that ded Lord Mayor of London deci een betw p swa ld year the companies wou e. sixth and seventh plac

Medieval shoes made no distinction between the left and right. But in the 14th century, the Cordwainers, craftsmen who made the best shoes from the finest leather, began to shape separate shoes for each foot.

Edward VIII

nitpicking was painful and time consuming. Lice stopped infesting people’s hair – which had to be shaved for the wig to fit – and lived in the wig instead. You’d send the dirty headpiece to a wigmaker, who would boil the wig and remove the nits.

The wig finally went out of fashion in the 1760s when King George III was seen wearing his own hair – albeit arranged to look like a wig.

TOP OF THE FOPS

The 1770s saw the final flicker of flamboyant male fashions. The term ‘macaroni’ or fop had been coined for young men who adopted fussy foreign dress. It was used to describe young men who had returned from their Grand Tour in Italy. The Beau Brummell

macaronis wore extreme versions of the current fashion; giant, tottering conical wigs, sometimes with tails, striped breeches and peacock colours. All this would be swept away by the influence of Britain’s greatest ever male fashion icon.

FINE AND DANDY

George ‘Beau’ Brummell was the arbiter of fashion in Regency Britain.

The country’s first ‘celebrity’, who became famous for the way he dressed. Brummell’s key to success was his friendship with the Prince Regent, and the patronage and influence that came with royal connections.

Brummell turned the Englishman away from the foppish fashions of the late 18th century, and established a look based on dark coats, full-length trousers (rather than knee breeches) and a knotted cravat. He is credited with inventing the man’s suit.

The Fop had given way to the Dandy. Dandies spent hours putting on their shirts and tying their cravats. Brummell himself claimed he took five hours a day to dress, and recommended that boots be polished with champagne.

SUITS YOU

The suit developed through the 1800s. The jacket became shorter and more practical. During the 1800s, the top hat, cravat and pantaloons were reserved for formal occasions, replaced by the bowler hat and the tie for day wear. In 1922, one fashion critic declared that the lounge suit had become the ‘universal utility dress for men’.

By 1936, the suits that the fleeting fashion icon King Edward VIII wore were the same – though more expensively tailored – as the ones worn by the rest of the country’s men. But the trends set by the king – loose cuffs for eveningwear, the Fair Isle sweater the ‘Windsor’ tie knot – were accessible to everyone.

The suit was now the uniform of the people; from City boys to Teddy Boys, from Carnaby Street to the High Street, from hippies to hipsters, there is suit that suits everyone.

In 1571, a law was passed to help boost the English wool trade. It ordered everyone over the age of six to wear a woollen cap on Sundays and holidays – everyone, except Upper Classes.

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Henry Poole Savile Row circa 1890

A CUT ABOVE

The English gentleman ‘look’ is recognised throughout the world. Its inspiration comes from the streets around London’s Mayfair and St James’, the home of bespoke menswear – where tailors, shoemakers and craftsmen have been suiting and booting British men for hundreds of years.

The Savile Row suit is a symbol of English style. Tailors started doing business in the area in the late 18th century – since then, generations of English kings, dukes, prime ministers, soldiers and celebrities have been measured for suits cut and sewn on the Row. When the explorer David Livingstone met Henry Stanley on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, he was wearing a Gieves suit; Stanley was dressed in a Henry Poole. Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter wore Norton & Sons tweeds when they broke through into Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922.

Huntsman has probably made clothes for more famous stars than any other house on the Row. Hollywood’s golden age icons Gregory

Peck, Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable were tailored here, as were English actors Larry Olivier and Dirk Bogarde.

In the late 60s, Tommy Nutter brought fashion to Savile Row. The ‘Rebel in the Row’ dressed Mick Jagger, Elton John and the Beatles, with three of the band on the iconic front cover of Abbey Road wearing Nutter outfits.

TV and film productions regularly call on the world’s most famous sartorial street. When actor Hugh Bonneville, playing the Earl of Grantham in Downton Abbey, was unhappy with the outfit provided by the production, he asked Huntsman to fit him in period white-and-blacktie attire.

A bespoke suit (the word comes from the verb ‘bespeak’, to order) is cut from a personal pattern, pieced together in-house and fitted until the cutter and client decide it is perfect – a process that takes around 50 hours.

Today, there are 44 tailoring and clothing businesses on and around Savile Row, employing several hundred tailors in their workshops. It takes a full 10 years to become a Master Tailor, longer than it takes to train as a GP!

Inside Savile Row Tailors

HENRY POOLE

can trace its history back to 1806. They opened on the Row in 1846 and – as the oldest established tailor in the area – they are regarded as the ‘Founders of Savile Row’. Their client list includes Winston Churchill, Charles Dickens and General de Gaulle.

Founder Henry Poole was a celebrity dandy tailor who made suits and livery for the royal family. In 1865, the Prince of Wales wanted something less formal than white tie and tails for Sandringham country-house dinners.

Poole removed the tails from the formal jacket, designing and creating what has become known as the dinner jacket or ‘tuxedo’.

Simon Cundey is the seventh generation of the family to run the business. He believes that: “A tailor is as important to a man as his doctor or dentist. He lives and breathes with you the whole span of your life – from your university gown, to your suit for your first job interview, to your wedding”.

The company only offers bespoke.

Clients are measured for a suit upstairs, choosing from one of the 4,000 different fabrics, the job then passes to one of the 30 tailors who

DARK TIMES 16

“It is impossible to be well-dressed in cheap shoes” Hardy Amies

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Henry Poole Royal Livery Uniform

work in the basement of the shop. As one of the largest tailors in the Row, the company works hard to train a new generation, and their apprentices spend five years learning their craft under the supervision of a Master Tailor.

Poole has held a Royal Warrant to produce livery for the Royal household since 1869. These meticulously crafted uniforms, embroidered with gold thread, cost around £5000. The outfits are in service for at least half a century – Poole’s tailors have just replaced a footman’s uniform they first made during the reign of George V.

EXTRAORDINARY FEET

The eponymous John Lobb was a lame Cornish farmboy, who walked to London to find his fortune. His mastery of last and awl turned him into a bootmaker to King Edward VII. Lobb opened his St James’ Street shop in 1866, since then the company’s shoes have graced the feet of monarchs, politicians and Hollywood royalty – from Frank Sinatra to Dean Martin.

John Hunter Lobb, great-grandson of the founder, now runs the family business.“We have turned our face

against machines and stuck to making shoes by hand,” he says.“The craftsmanship and tools are the same as they were in my grandfather’s day. I sometimes think that if he walked in here tomorrow, little would have changed from his time”.

A Gothic Temple, built in 1741 to a design by the architect James Gibbs

“Well-tied tie is the first serious step in life” Oscar Wilde

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There are nine stages in the crafting of a pair of Lobb’s shoes. The customer is carefully measured and a last-maker sculpts a maple-wood copy of their feet. Patterns are made, and a clicker selects and cuts the leather according to these shapes; those sections go to the closer, who sews the upper together with hand-wound thread; the heels are attached; then a polisher buffs the shoe until it shines like a royal guardsman’s boot. John Hunter Lobb inspects every shoe before it leaves the building.

The last is kept for at least 20 years, so that customers may order more shoes easily. Lobb’s basement is a ‘museum of feet’, containing the lasts of Enrico Caruso, Jackie Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, Laurence Olivier, Duke Ellington, Edward Heath and Fred Astaire. Their shoes were for life, their soles will last forever.

Though a pair of bespoke Lobb’s will cost you 50 times the cost of massmanufactured shoes, properly maintained they will last you through your entire adult life. Next time you see a picture of Prince Charles, take a look at his feet, he may well be sporting a pair of 40-year-old Lobb’s.

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OFF THE CUFF

Turnbull & Asser was founded in 1885 by salesman Ernest Asser and Reginald Turnbull, a hosier.

Gentlemen’s hose (stockings) had disappeared in Beau Brummell’s early 19th century fashion revolution, and the company became known for a First World War military raincoat that doubled as a sleeping bag.

But there was little demand for war garments in peacetime. In the 1920s, as men’s dress became less formal, shirts became more prominent.

Turnbull & Asser responded by focusing on bespoke shirt-making – with an eye for the clientele from gentlemen’s clubs in their St James’ neighbourhood.

They became the shirt-tailor of choice, with a client list that includes Winston Churchill and Prince Charles.

But they are best known as provider of shirts to James Bond. His creator, Ian Fleming, was a customer, and when the film franchise was launched with Dr No in 1962, the film’s star Sean Connery was dispatched to Turnbull & Asser.

Legend has it that the director instructed Connery to sleep in his

tailored garments – including his shirts – so that he’d feel ‘more at ease’ in them. Since then, 007 has always ‘shopped’ at Turnbull & Asser.

AHEAD OF THE GAME

Hat maker Lock & Co was founded in 1676. James Lock’s descendants still own and run the company from the St James’ Street shop they have occupied since 1765.

That icon of English hats, the bowler, was created by Lock’s. In 1849, the aristocratic landowner Edward Coke requested a hat to solve the problem of gamekeepers’ headgear – traditional top hats were too fragile to be worn by countryside workers.

Lock’s commissioned William and Thomas Bowler to design the new hat.

Legend has it that when Coke returned to see the design, he dropped it on the floor and stamped on it twice to test its strength before leaving satisfied.

“ The truly fashionable are beyond fashion ” Cecil Beaton

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Tour de force

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Ruth Polling tells us stories of rebellion and dissent from her London neighbourhood

Words and pictures: Marc Zakian

THE RADICAL HISTORY TOUR 20

Ruth Polling was destined to be involved with politics. As a teenager she campaigned outside voting booths alongside her siblings, earning her nickname the ‘polling sister’. Her first job was as secretary to MP Ed Davey (now Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change).

When she moved from what she calls ‘glamorous Penge, the place you end up in if you fall asleep on the 176 bus’ to Islington in North London, Ruth joined the local Liberal Democrat Party. In 2006, aged just 25, she was elected to Islington Council.

“Most people want to change the world,” she explains.

“But I wanted to change the place I lived in. My ward was Bunhill, a former working-class industrial area that sits right next to the City of London. I was responsible for local leisure services, and one of my proudest achievements was restoring Ironmonger Row Baths, a 1930s public washroom and steam bath”.

So what took Ruth from a fast-rising political career to

Blue Badge Guide? “I was studying part-time for a history degree, and was fascinated by the history of my local area – particularly the struggle for people’s rights.

So when I completed my Blue Badge in 2014, I combined these interests, and devised a tour of my neighbourhood called ‘Radicals and Rebels’.

“We start at St Paul’s. The magnificent City cathedral is just a short walk from areas that were once beyond the control of authority – far away enough that dissenters could feel safe to express their opinions, but close enough that people might listen.

“We’re familiar with The Old Bailey, England’s central criminal court. This was once the site of the notorious Newgate Prison. Dissenters were regularly imprisoned here, a short walk from the execution scaffold where England’s last public hanging took place in 1868 – Michael Barrett, an Irish Republican, sentenced for his part in a bomb attack.

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The Old Bailey

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Tour de force

Charterhouse

“A hanging represented a good day out for the Londoners. In 1862, 20,000 people turned up see the last public execution of a woman – a serial-killer nurse who bumped off her patients for financial gain. It’s extraordinary to think that people could have taken the recently opened underground to see a hanging.

Smithfield market stands on the border of the City of London. Before the Victorian meat market was built here, it was a large open area – in medieval times a good place for public demonstrations of justice. Smithfield was known for entertainment, jousting, public archery, freshly slaughtered livestock… and freshly executed humans.

“In 1305, thousands gathered at Smithfield to see William Wallace hung, drawn and quartered. The Scottish hero was immortalised in the film Braveheart, but even Hollywood baulked at showing the visceral brutality of this form of execution.

“Wallace was drawn through the streets on a cart, with enraged Londoners throwing rocks at the condemned man. He was hung by a doctor who made sure the condemned man didn’t die, slit open from the groin, emasculated, and his quarters sent throughout the country as a warning. With no body left to be buried, a plaque at Smithfield commemorates the Scot.

“Below the surface of Smithfield are clues to more agonising deaths. By tradition, when they dug down to build the meat market, there was a layer of ash below ground – the charred remains of Protestants burned here during the 1550s.

“Bloody Mary, the Catholic Queen, wanted to return the country to her

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faith. Her reign of terror saw the burning of some 40 Protestants at Smithfield. Legend has it that the queen herself came here to watch, sitting on the gatehouse where she ‘ate chicken and drunk red wine’”.

“Smithfield was once home to several monasteries. Charterhouse was founded in the 14th century, but during the reformation, Henry VIII expelled the monks. The Carthusians made a stand against Henry, so in a show of royal power, the head prior was hung, drawn and quartered and his dismembered arm pinned to the monastery gate.

“During the 1700s, what is now Islington was a spa area – a history preserved in names such as Sadler’s Wells and Clerkenwell. In 1816 – a time of mass unemployment and revolutionary ideas – Spa Fields was an open area where protesters rallied for change.

“They signed a petition for voting rights and took it to the Prince Regent, who refused to listen. They met again, most hoping that a further petition would work. But a hard core laid siege to the Bank of England and marched to the Tower of London where they encouraged the garrisoned soldiers to join their cause. The troops were not interested, so the protestors went home. This was a very British rebellion; lots of petitions and shouting, somewhat similar to my experience of modern politics.

“Near Spa Fields is a grand Victorian school building. It is on the site of a former prison. The original jail was known as a Bridewell – a place where petty criminals, beggars, homeless children and prostitutes were held. It was rebuilt in the 1840s as Clerkenwell House of Detention and in 1867 an

Irish Republican gun runner was locked up here.

“There was an attempt to break him out, so the authorities moved him to the back of the prison. The Republicans returned with a 500lb barrel of gunpowder and blew up the front of the prison, where they believed their compatriot was held.

The explosion killed five and injured 17 innocent people, but the Fenians didn’t come close to releasing anybody. Only one of the bombers was convicted, Michael Barrett, the man who was executed outside The Old Bailey in 1868.

“Clerkenwell Green is the home of radical thought in London. This is where Lenin, who was in exile in London in 1903, published his revolutionary newspaper – from the building which is now the Marx Memorial Library.

“By the late 1800s Britain had become the place where foreign revolutionaries found safe exile. The UK prized and respected free speech, so figures like Lenin could come to this part of the city without fear of arrest.

“The Green has been a focal point for protest for over two centuries; from Chartists seeking democratic voting rights, to anti Corn Law rallies. It was the site for the first ever May Day workers march in the world. The rally went from Clerkenwell to Trafalgar Square, a tradition that continues to this day.

“As a Blue Badge guide, former political campaigner and local resident, the area’s history reminds us that the rights we have today were won by the protests of the past”.

For a tour with Ruth contact her at: ruth@ruthpolling.co.uk

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Mike Rowland tells us about an extraordinary legacy of railways, ships and bridges

A BRIDGE TO THE PAST

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Tour de force

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and the young engineer was snatched from the rising water seconds before he drowned. Brunel’s father – who ran the family engineering business – sent his son to Bristol to ‘convalesce’.

“Bristol was one of the great trading cities. Sugar, rum and tea were flowing through its port. A local merchant left money for the construction of a bridge from residential Clifton across the gorge into Somerset. This would mean the genteel Cliftonians – whose only way out of town was via the port – could avoid contact with the ‘dirty dockers’ and local brothels.

“A competition was held. The judge was Britain’s national bridge-building champion, Thomas Telford. He dismissed all the entries – including Brunel’s radical single-span plan – submitted his own more traditional scheme, and declared himself the winner.

“The embarrassed committee quietly dropped both project and judge. When it was revived the following year, Brunel resubmitted, but lost again. Brunel was adamant that ss Great Britain Photo: David Norton

On a January morning in 1970, Mike Rowland left Bath Police Station for his inaugural day as a bobby on the beat.

The first person he met was an American asking directions to the ‘ancient bathrooms’.“I pointed him towards the Roman Baths,” Mike recalls,“and realised that a big part of policing would be helping tourists.”

One place he regularly gave directions to was Bath railway station.“I was intrigued by the gabled building, with its bridge skewing across the river into the station; all designed by a man who became something of a hero of mine: Isambard Kingdom Brunel.”

Mike’s growing interest in history led him to qualify as a Blue Badge Guide. In 2000 he left the constabulary and took a job as visitor-centre manager at Clifton Suspension Bridge – bringing him into daily contact with the bridge’s engineer and designer: Brunel.

“Brunel came to Bristol in 1828 following a near-fatal accident,” Mike explains.“He was working underground on the first tunnel under the Thames. The riverbed gave way

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In 2000 Mike took a job as visitor-centre manager at Clifton Suspension Bridge – bringing him into daily contact with the bridge’s engineer and designer: Brunel his was the best scheme. He met the judges and berated and harangued them until they changed their minds. Victorian engineering was a dirty business.

“Isambard’s first major project was underway. But in 1831, the Bristol Riots broke out – angry citizens protesting poor social conditions and the lack of rights sacked the city. The project was delayed, investors pulled out and in 1843 the bridge was abandoned.

“But the pocket-genius Brunel (he stood just 5ft 4ins tall) had captivated Bristol and they hired him to sort out the docks. The river has a 13 metre tide – the second highest in the world. In 1809 the Avon had been dammed to create a ‘Floating Harbour’, but as a consequence it regularly silted up. The river was also the local sewer and the silty stink became intolerable. Brunel devised a system to flush out the water at low tide.

“The engineer now turned his hand to the technology that was transforming Britain: the railways. He built a horsedrawn mobile caravan with a couch to sleep on and space for his cigars. Dubbed the ‘flying hearse’, it was his mobile home and office as he surveyed land between London and Bristol ready for the Great Western Railway.

“The plans for the GWR were met with fury. The Kennet and Avon Canal had been finished in 1810 and the financers were just turning a profit. If the four-day barge journey from London became a four-hour railway dash they were out of business. And the double-gauge railway, more comfortable than any ever built, would make the passenger carriage redundant.

“Brunel was cross-examined in parliament for eleven days. The biggest controversy surrounded the building of the Box Tunnel near Bath. One MP claimed that the speed of the train going into the tunnel would ‘compress the passengers to death’. Brunel demolished their objections with engineering science.

“The GWR was the Rolls Royce of railways – known in the West Country as ‘God’s Wonderful Railway’. Brunel

Isambard Kingdom Brunel by the launching chains of the ss Great Eastern

Clifton Suspension Bridge

oversaw every detail, including the stations. The Bristol terminus featured two tracks coming into the station, platform areas for first, second and third class passengers, room for their luggage, space to turn and refuel the engines, ticket offices and restaurants. None of this had ever been accomplished in a single covered space before.

“Two spurs were built on into Wales and Cornwall, opening up the country and changing the way people worked. Fish caught overnight in Cornwall could be on the plates of London restaurants by lunchtime the same day.

The railways led to the development of the Victorian seaside holiday.

“Brunel had conquered land, now he would cross the seas. The engineer wanted to extend the GWR across the Atlantic, with passengers stepping off the railway onto steam boats. In 1843 he launched the ss Great Britain – the first all-iron steam-driven ship in the world, it could reach New York in 14 days.

“The Great Britain was in service for two decades. During its last voyage she was beached following an Atlantic storm, and lay submerged in salt water until 1970 when she was refloated and towed back to Bristol for restoration.

“Isambard’s final project was another boat; the gargantuan SS Great Eastern. His drive to complete her cost him his life; sleeping four hours a night, smoking 40 cigars a day, the exhausted 53 year old collapsed and died.

“His fellow engineers commemorated him by completing the Clifton Bridge. In 1864, some thirty years later than planned, the Clifton Suspension Bridge opened to the public. Last year we celebrated its 150th anniversary. For a century and half, thousands of cars and pedestrians have crossed the bridge. It’s a monument to a time when engineers like Brunel were building the modern world, a symbol of Bristol, and a very important part of my life.”

For a tour of Bristol, Bath or the West Country contact Mike at: www.mike-rowland.co.uk

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MY FAVOURITE

...PAINTING

Blue Badge Guides show you their favourite places around the UK

...TOWN ...is Hebden Bridge. Once a thriving Yorkshire weaving town with a river and canal, in the 1970s it attracted an ‘alternative’ community of artists, writers and musicians. It is now an unusual mix of arts centres, back-to-back stone houses and independent craft shops (where I can always find unusual gifts and gorgeous clothes). There is a good choice of organic, vegetarian and quirky cafés – my favourite is The Blitz with its 1940s wartime theme. There is a great walk along the canal path to the Stubbing Wharf pub that inspired an eponymous poem by Ted Hughes who lived in the town.

Sue Grimditch, Manchester Green Badge Guide sue@specialist.clara.co.uk

...is A Bar at the Folies-Bergère by Edouard Manet. This image of a barmaid in front of an enormous mirror is one of the highlights at London’s Courtauld Gallery. Paris is a hall of mirrors, and the woman floats helplessly, clinging to her bar, but looking straight at us. What is she thinking? Does she like the people she is serving? One of the bottles is English beer; Bass Pale, not the traditional German ale and maybe a symbol of French anti-German feeling following the Franco-Prussian War. This painting’s emotional depth and symbolism never fail to draw me in. It’s an image that just hypnotises the viewer.

Liudmila Harrison-Jones – London Blue Badge Guide lu2mi3la@yahoo.com

...PUDDING ...has to be Banoffi Pie, an indulgent mixture of toffee and banana (hence the name). I remember eating it for the first time at the Hungry Monk restaurant, where chef Ian Dowding devised it. I passed the site of the Monk recently while walking the South Downs Way, but sadly all that's left of the restaurant is a blue plaque. The intriguing story and the original recipe for the sweet is told at iandowding.co.uk.

Edwin Lerner – London Blue Badge Guide diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

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