Known for muck and brass, the grim north of England was formerly a hotbed of the Industrial Revolution, rich in sweat, resources, enterprise and plutocrats. Nowadays synonymous with grim decline, my wife and I have [more…]
Before George Stephenson’s name ended up on everything, a colliery manager from Newburn settled the one argument that decided whether railways would ever work. He won it with a hand-cranked cart, two iron engines, and [more…]
Part One can be read here: The Scrapbook of Sherlock Holmes, 6/6: The Giant Rat of Sumatra. Part 1 of 2 The following afternoon, replete with Mrs Hudson’s game pie and gooseberry fool, we found [more…]
Born in the same village as George Stephenson, 5 years earlier. The man who saved the Stockton and Darlington when the engines kept breaking down. The man who built Russia’s first locomotive… and then vanished [more…]
Part One can be read here: The Scrapbook of Sherlock Holmes, 5/6: The Wolf Man of Mayfair. Part 1 of 2 It was fortunate for us that George lived only a few minutes’ brisk trot [more…]
The ‘Grim up north’ trope reminds of Northern England’s story of endless decline. In reality, the region produced immense wealth through the likes of textiles, steel, coal and shipbuilding. Influential industrialists’ fortunes rivalled those in [more…]
Everyone knows George Stephenson. The self-taught genius who invented railways. Except he didn’t, really. George was the visionary, the man who saw what steam could do. But the man who actually designed the engines, surveyed [more…]
In a record of one of our previous cases, to which I gave the somewhat lurid title ‘The Sussex Vampire’, my friend described the episode of the so-called Giant Rat of Sumatra as something ‘for [more…]
It was a sunny spring morning, and even amid the noise from busy Baker Street the open window admitted the song of a blackbird. Holmes laid down the News Chronicle to address himself to a [more…]
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