Meet a medieval anchoress, walled into a tiny cell, gazing
dolefully out of her grille at the citizens making merry with their
pagan Yuletide feasts.
Mingle with Bloody Mary as she drinks red wine, eats roast chicken,
and watches Protestants burn like fairy lights decorating
Smithfield.
Visit a frightening, lantern-framed plague pit and hear the
Vintner’s Widow’s account and song of living through the Black
Death.
Gaze up at St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell, as a drunken watchman yells
down at you, his lantern a pinprick of light through the
battlements
Feel what it’s like to walk down an alleyway in Clerkenwell in
the pitch black, the footsteps of a stranger right behind you, the
silhouette of something diabolical ahead.
Hear, crouched beneath a colonnade, torch illuminating his face,
the harrowing memoirs of a London link boy.
Witness Dickens with his pet raven, Grip, coursing through the
streets in creative ecstasy, summoning ideas for Scrooge, our
Christmas anti-hero.
--
Dr Matthew Green has a
doctorate from the University of Oxford in the History of London.
He is the author of London: A Travel Guide Through Time Penguin,
described as 'immersive and all-sensory' — Sunday Times,
'fascinating' —Telegraph and 'easily the best social history of
London for a decade' — Londonist. He runs immersive historical
tours of London each week, including firm favourites The
Coffeehouse Tour and Medieval Wine Tour, a six-part evening course
on the history of London in Pimlico. His new book is Shadowlands: A
Journey Through Lost Britain Faber, a Times Top 10 bestseller,
Waterstones Book of the Year, and praised by Iain Sinclair as 'a
miraculous work of resurrection.’