I've just visited the jewellers Richard Ogden, whose shop has been in the Burlington Arcade since the 1950s. Interested in the Arcade’s history, I made an appointment with Robert Ogden, who was practically born there. I don’t go to jewellers much, for fear of temptation, but what happened when I went in?
I found we were already friends without knowing it; our children go to the same school. Indeed, we both belong to an association of dads known, for reasons into which I haven’t enquired, as the Sausage Club. After a moment’s mutual confusion, Robert told some vivid tales of the Arcade’s past.
Proximity to clubland made it a natural haunt of the Victorian demi monde. In the 1860s, Fanny and Stella might have been seen, followed by a bevy of admirers; they were really two boys sons of a judge and a stockbroker who paraded around dressed as women.
They were prosecuted for Oscar Wildean offences. Heaven knows what would have happened if they hadn’t come from good families, but, in those days, background told. They were let off. Besides, the beadles who maintain discipline in the Arcade had other matters to occupy them, such as the by-law against opening umbrellas: enforced even during the Second World War, when half of the Arcade had been bombed.
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Uniquely unique? The Yorkshire grain silos transformed into a home that's a symphony in glass, steel and curvesAmid the beautiful countryside of North Yorkshire, on the edge of the Castle Howard Estate, The Silos is a property for which the word 'house' simply doesn't cut it. And that's not the only way in which it's made us throw out the dictionary.
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Polluting water executives now face up to two years in prison, but will the new laws make much of a difference?The Government has announced that water company executives caught covering up illegal sewage spills could now be imprisoned for two years, under new laws — but many still have their doubts.
