Skilton’s London Life
June 20, 2025
Tickets available this Saturday 21st June
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Now that the summer visitors are here and thronging in the capital’s streets and transport systems, I thought I would send you this fine set of postcards published by Charles Skilton, including my special favourites the escapologist and the pavement artist.
Looking at these monochrome images of the threadbare postwar years, you might easily imagine the photographs were earlier – but Margaret Rutherford in ‘Ring Round the Moon’ at The Globe in Shaftesbury Ave in number nine dates them to 1950. Celebrated in his day as publisher of the Billy Bunter stories, Charles Skilton won posthumous notoriety for his underground pornographic publishing empire, Luxor Press.
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I remember Sunday afternoon walks along the embankment with my parents in the 50s and looking at the pavement artists. I’d love to know if another generation of artists are there now.
My favourite is the escapologist .
This I saw opposite the Tower of London with my Mum .
I had never seen a man with so many tattoos on his face and forehead and he was the one to escape .
I pleaded with my Mum to come back there again but she said once was enough .
In later life I met a man who saw a man come to where he lived in London and the market place .
There, through the rapture of his charisma he drew a crowd and then took out of his bag a rat .
He put the rat between two slices of bread and bit his head off .
I am reminded of this story by reading a book by Chris Searle about Isaac Rosenberg who wrote a poem about rats on the trenches in World War One .
In pity I write this for rats alone have had a bad press having been the carriers of bubonic plague and they themselves carried the fly that started it .
The photo of the tugboats and docks is an absolute show stopper. No wonder they say
“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life”.
What a grand history you have — and how fortunate we are that you share it with us every day.
Onward and upward.