The Tragical Death Of An Apple Pie
The time in the year for apple pie has arrived again. So I take this opportunity to present The Tragical Death of an Apple Pie, an alphabet rhyme first published in 1671, in a version produced by Jemmy Catnach in the eighteen-twenties.
Poet, compositor and publisher, Catnach moved to London from Newcastle in 1812 and set up Seven Dials Press in Monmouth Court, producing more than four thousand chapbooks and broadsides in the next quarter century. Anointed as the high priest of street literature and eager to feed a seemingly-endless appetite for cheap printed novelties in the capital, Catnach put forth a multifarious list of titles, from lurid crime and political satire to juvenile rhymes and comic ballads, priced famously at a ‘farden.’
A An Apple Pie
B Bit it
C Cut it
D Dealt it
E Did eat it
F Fought for it
G Got it
H Had it
J Join’d for it
K Kept it
L Long’d for it
M Mourned for it
N Nodded at it
O Open’d it
P Peeped into it
Q Quartered it
R Ran for it
S Stole it
T Took it
V View’d it
W Wanted it
XYZ and & all wished for a piece in hand
Dame Dumpling who made the Apple Pie
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At Chiswick House
I decided to take advantage of the November sunshine by enjoying an excursion to Chiswick House. I have to confess that it is thirty years since I visited, in the footsteps of the writer Denton Welch who came here in the thirties with a picnic including a hardboiled egg and a piece of fruitcake. Yet it was a great consolation to encounter these gardens again, like a old friend that has not been changed by the years.
William Kent’s garden was inspired by the paintings of Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin, and seeing it illuminated by the perfectly crystalline autumn sunlight this week, I could not resist the feeling I was exploring an eternal landscape that was outside time. I half expected to turn a corner of a box hedge and discover Denton with his blanket spread out upon the grass, waiting for me with a picnic for two of hardboiled eggs and fruitcake.
I can think of no better place to lose an afternoon in London than these gardens, why did I take thirty years to go back?
The Doric Column with Venus on the top at the centre of the Rosary
Sculpture of a lioness by Pieter Scheemakers, 1733
The Ionic Temple and Obelisk, 1722
In the Excedra
Herm in the Excedra
A Sphinx beneath the Lebanon Cedar
Classical villa designed by Richard Boyle, third Earl of Burlington
Designed by Inigo Jones for Beaufort House in Chelsea in 1621, this gateway was acquired by Lord Burlington in 1738 from his friend Hans Sloan
Bust of Caesar Augustus
The Corinthian capitals on the portico were carved by John Boson
Andreas Palladio by by John Michael Rysbrack
Inigo Jones by John Michael Rysbrack
In the Italian Garden
The Conservatory was designed by Samuel Ware and completed in 1813
Geraniums overwintering
The Classic Bridge, attributed to James Wyatt, was built for the 5th Duke of Devonshire in 1774
The Ionic Temple
Bust of Napoleon in the Rustic House designed by Lord Burlington about 1719
The Eye Catcher installed in 1970
The Cascade by William Kent
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The Launch For ‘On Christmas Day’
I am thrilled to announce that Jonathan Pryce will read my short story ‘On Christmas Day’ at the launch at Burley Fisher Books in Haggerston on Thursday 23rd November at 6:30pm.
CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS
The Gentle Author picks up the threads of Christmas fiction from Charles Dickens, Dylan Thomas and George Mackay Brown to weave a compelling tale of family conflicts ignited and resolved in the festive season.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER A SIGNED COPY FOR £10
“Over successive Christmases, as I was growing up, I witnessed the disintegration of my family until today I am the lone survivor of the entire clan, the custodian, charged with carrying the legacy of all their stories. Where once I was the innocent child in the midst of a family drama unknown to me, now I am a sober adult haunted by equivocal memories of a conflict that only met its resolution in death. Yet in spite of this, whenever I examine the piles of old photographs of happy, smiling people which are now the slim evidence of the existence of those generations which precede me, I cannot resist tender feelings towards them all.”
A limited edition of 1000 copies as a slim volume of thirty-two pages, co-published with Burley Fisher Books, illustrated with wood engravings by Reynolds Stone. Book design by David Pearson, printed by Aldgate Press on paper supplied by Fenner Paper.
At The Eagle
It was my great delight to come across this precious scrapbook of playbills from the Eagle Theatre & Pleasure Gardens in the City Rd at the Bishopsgate Institute.
Old playbills have a charisma all their own, combining bravura typography with hyperbolic promises designed to send your imagination racing. Once you start envisaging the reality of these extraordinary shows you are spellbound.
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
Save Liverpool St Station
Please come to our SAVE LIVERPOOL ST STATION campaign event at 7pm tonight, Tuesday 7th November at Hanbury Hall, 22 Hanbury St, E1 6QR. Speakers include Griff Rhys Jones, Eric Reynolds and Robert Thorne.
CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS
Courtesy Sellar/Herzog & de Meuron
We invite readers to SAVE LIVERPOOL ST STATION by objecting to the redevelopment by writing a personal letter to the City of London Corporation as soon as possible before 23rd November.
We understand City of London Planning Officers are recommending APPROVAL of the appalling scheme so we need as many objections as possible to stop it.
HOW TO OBJECT EFFECTIVELY
Anyone can object wherever they live. Members of one household can each write separately. You must include your postal address.
Please write in your own words and head it OBJECTION.
Quote Planning Application 23/00453/FULEIA
Email your objection to PLNComments@cityoflondon.gov.uk and copy it to Shravan.Joshi@cityoflondon.gov.uk (Chair of Planning & Transportation Committee)
Or send it by post to:
The Department of the Built Environment,
City of London,
PO Box 270,
Guildhall,
London,
EC2P 2EJ
IMPORTANT POINTS OF OBJECTION
Here are the four material points of objection that carry most legal weight. Please include these in your own words along with any other reasons for objection of your own.
- SUBSTANTIAL HARM TO THE GRADE II LISTED STATION through the demolition of the roof of the existing concourse and replacement with a new structure, compromising the setting of the surviving 19th century train shed over the platforms.
- SUBSTANTIAL HARM TO THE GRADE II* LISTED HOTEL through adding a 16-storey tower cantilevered over the existing building, plus internal alterations to historic fabric to create new entrances to the station concourse, and the change of use from hotel to office use, resulting in the loss of the last continually-functioning nineteenth century hotel in the City.
- SUBSTANTIAL HARM TO THE BISHOPSGATE CONSERVATION AREA through imposing a tall building in an area characterised by low and medium scale buildings.
- HARM TO THE GRADE I LISTED ST PAUL’S CATHEDRAL through the proposed tower which will disrupt views protected under the London Views Management Framework.
QUOTE NATIONAL PLANNING POLICY FRAMEWORK otherwise your objection may be dismissed. Paragraph NPPF 200 states: “Any harm to, or loss of, the significance of a designated heritage asset (from its alteration or destruction, or from development within its setting) should require clear and convincing justification.
Liverpool St before Courtesy Sellar/Herzog & de Meuron
Liverpool St after Courtesy Sellar/Herzog & de Meuron
Liverpool St before Courtesy Sellar/Herzog & de Meuron
Liverpool St after Courtesy Sellar/Herzog & de Meuron
The proposed new entrance to Liverpool St Station Courtesy Sellar/Herzog & de Meuron
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Liverpool St Station In The 20th Century & Beyond
John Betjeman on Liverpool St Station, c1961, photograph by David Sim
Please come to our SAVE LIVERPOOL ST STATION campaign event at 7pm on Tuesday 7th November at Hanbury Hall, 22 Hanbury St, E1 6QR. Speakers include Griff Rhys Jones, Eric Reynolds and Robert Thorne.
CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS
This is the Liverpool St Station of living memory – the station as I first knew it – recorded in these splendid photographs from the collection of the Bishopsgate Institute.
A vital transport hub through two world wars and, most significantly, the point of arrival for the Kindertransport, children fleeing nazi Germany, this is the station that John Betjeman fought to save, winning a landmark conservation battle which gave us the sensitively restored station of recent years.
At the end of this post, I append my photographs of the beautiful station as we know it today with its luminous marble floor refracting the morning light from the lancet windows high above.
Glass was removed from the roof in World War II
Photograph by Malcolm Tremain
Photograph by David Johnston
Photograph by David Johnston
Photograph by David Johnston
Photograph by David Johnston
Photograph by The Gentle Author
Photograph by The Gentle Author
Photograph by The Gentle Author
Photograph by The Gentle Author
Photographs courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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In Old Liverpool St Station
I am delighted to announce publication of my short story ‘On Christmas Day’ in collaboration with Burley Fisher Books
CLICK HERE TO ORDER A SIGNED COPY FOR £10
The Gentle Author picks up the threads of Christmas fiction from Charles Dickens, Dylan Thomas and George Mackay Brown to weave a compelling tale of family conflicts ignited and resolved in the festive season.
Please come to our SAVE LIVERPOOL ST STATION campaign event at 7pm on Tuesday 7th November at Hanbury Hall, 22 Hanbury St, E1 6QR. Speakers include Griff Rhys Jones, Eric Reynolds and Robert Thorne.
CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS
Let us take a stroll through old Liverpool St Station as it was in the nineteenth century, courtesy of this magnificent gallery of photographs from the Bishopsgate Institute collection. Like a journey through the stomach of whale that swallows humans by the score, did the wondrous behemoth ever appear as awe-inspiringly labyrinthine and majestic as it did then? Tomorrow, I will publish pictures from the twentieth century.
Photographs courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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