C a r o l y n D a u g h t e r s

Four years ago on Seething Lane I stood by the stone lychgate, the dramatic entryway to the churchyard, three large stone skulls above the archway by way of greeting, spikes of iron crowning stone. “Death is my gain” reads the quote in Latin below the skulls.

St. Olave’s is just past the Walrus and the Carpenter, past modern buildings of glass and stone, past the Custom House and All Hallows by the Tower.

Samuel Pepys is buried in the churchyard. Mother Goose too. And Mary Ramsey, the woman believed to have brought … Continue Reading

A Dickens Dream, Robert William Buss

It’s the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth, people. He was born at midnight on February 7, 1812.

In a recent Time article, Radhika Jones says when Dickens, “began writing his first novel—in 1836, the year before Victoria took the throne—the literacy rate in England was less than 50 percent. By the end of her reign, in 1901, it was 97 percent. … Dickens helped close that gap. He did it by publishing stories that … Continue Reading