Kensington High Street: The Golden Age of Shopping.
For over 100 years Kensington High Street was a prestigious shopping street. It leaves a legacy today of the soaring Barkes and Derry and Toms department store buildings, along with a great array of other architectural styles.
It grew from an unpromising windy Georgian street lined with domestic trades, albeit a main west road passing a royal place. Then John Barker came along - his business created the longest shop front in the UK, ground breaking department store displays and exotic roof gardens - the first of their kind in the country.
Richard tells the story of the rise of the Street with some fabulous buildings, larger than life characters including one "Big Cheese" and not forgetting a number of smaller Georgian and Victorian shops and later 60s and 70s fashion hubs.
Radical Works, Turbulent Lives: Great Kensington Writers.
.Kensington has a rich bohemian history, with many great writers and artists having been attracted to the area. Richard’s tour includes a number of its historic writers: including those who wrote radical, epoch-making work while in Kensington, as well as works of widely-loved popular fame. He looks into their lives whilst in the area: writers who sometimes scandalized society, but also experienced personal tragedy.
Plotting a course from High Street Kensington up into the area to the north of the High Street, he includes Kenneth Grahame, James Joyce and GK Chesterton. And on the course of the tour, Richard outlines some of the history of its development as it’s such a lovely area of diverse striking eighteenth and nineteenth century buildings, and finds one very direct link between that development and its literary life.
Note: It will not be necessary to have read any of the works which Richard will talk about, and he will not divulge any spoilers for those wishing to follow up on those books.