Longform

The forgotten history of the British Space Programme

In Get Them on the Blower we looked at the fascinating history of London's forgotten Pneumatic tubes, which carried messages throughout the capital. Now, over on our London-transport-focused sister site...

Pneumatic messaging blows cylindrical carriers in tubes, carrying messages and small items in closed systems, which were pioneered and developed in London in the 1850's, ironically to support a new electric...

As some readers may know (or indeed have spotted on here), TV history is one of my particular areas of interest. I'm lucky enough to be one of the feature writers at Cult TV Times which allows me to indulge...

Look around Endell Street in Holborn today and you could be forgiven for thinking it just an average London street. But one hundred years ago this year, this non-descript spot just off of Shaftesbury avenue...

Trincomalee, Ceylon (Sri Linka). 13518 miles to go The British, Ford decided, were a very strange race. On the one hand they had welcomed both him and his crew to this little, battered, corner of their...

Auckland, 14th December 1941 Since arriving at Auckland a week earlier, Bob Ford had settled into a regular morning routine. Every day he would wake early and eat breakfast. He would then stroll over to the...

The morning of 6th January 1942 was a going to be a cold one. Not that this was unusual for New York, mused the controller manning LaGuardia’s airport’s tower, but it meant he’d have to remember to wrap...

Over the next couple of years the Royal Mint are releasing a number of commemorative coins to mark the anniversary of WW1. Hearteningly it seems that within the first batch is a coin marking the life of Walter...

In 1944 Group Captain James Stagg was given an almost impossible task by General Dwight D Eisenhower. He was asked to determine the right conditions for D-Day and to predict a day on which they’d exist.