Excellent news for all you audiobook listeners (or would-be listeners) – Trafalgar: The Biography of a Battle was released for the first time as an audiobook on 22nd October, to coincide with the 215th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar (and death of Nelson) that took place on 21st October 1805.
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London’s Great Beer Flood
London, October 1814 – a time of peace. Britain was no longer at war with France, though the war with the United States of America continued. Nobody realised that in early 1815 Europe would be engulfed by turmoil when Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from Elba, which would culminate in the Battle of Waterloo.
Porter popularity
The Horseshoe Brewery, which was named after the public house next door, lay between Tottenham Court Road, Bainbridge Street, New Street and Great Russell Street. This was almost the unmarked boundary between the upmarket West End of London and the notorious slums of St Giles.
The slum tenements of St Giles, London
This brewery was known for its porter, which had grown out of the custom of Londoners drinking a mix of two or three weak and strong beers. In the 1720s one brewer had produced a blend of three beers that was dark brown, almost black, in colour. This strong beer was so popular with market porters that Continue reading
Welcome to Patterns of the Past
Welcome to our blog, ‘Patterns of the Past’. We are historians and archaeologists, and on this blog you can read short features about all sorts of fascinating topics. We write them in the same way as our books, but instead of keeping to a particular theme, we wander wherever we wish, adding pictures here and there. You can choose what to read by going to ARCHIVES or CATEGORIES on the right. Feel free to share with other people.