WRITER & HISTORIAN
Director J Lee Thompson had made Ice Cold in Alex the previous year. He would go on to make both Guns of Navarone and Cape Fear in the next couple of years before his career went into decline. He would end up helming a couple of films in the first Planet of the Apes series... Continue Reading →
Released in 1948, this is an adaptation of Norman Collins’ sprawling sub-Dickensian novel of London life, published just three years earlier. The novel teems with stories, and much has had to be trimmed to create a workable film (the book’s current Penguin edition runs to 750-odd pages of small type), but there is still plenty... Continue Reading →
Also known by its US title, Sidewalks of London, St Martin’s Lane is the story of a pickpocket, played by Vivien Leigh, who is befriended by a seasoned street performer (Charles Laughton). He discovers she has a lovely singing voice and incorporates her into his act, falling in love with her as he does so.... Continue Reading →
A gripping and beautifully shot 1951 film noir from Ealing Studios, Pool of London follows two merchant seamen on shore leave who get sucked into a world of petty crime which quickly escalates out of their control. Its principal claim to fame these days is that it features an inter-racial love story – the superb... Continue Reading →
The bridge in question is Tower Bridge, where the boy, played by nine-year-old Iain Maclaine, flees after he sees – or believes he sees – his drunken father get arrested for murder. At heart, this is a rather tender film, as Maclaine’s character works resourcefully to live hidden away in one of the towers, with... Continue Reading →
Unarguably the finest British film noir ever made, Night and the City was directed by American Jules Dassin. Its strikingly dark tone may not be unrelated to the fact that Dassin took the project because studio head Darryl F Zanuck had told him he was about to be blacklisted by the McCarthyite House Un-American Activities... Continue Reading →
What do you think of when you think of London films? For most people, myself included, it is probably Ealing films such as Passport to Pimlico and The Ladykillers. I asked friends on Twitter and got responses ranging from Escape the Block and Long Good Friday to Shakespeare in Love. Bit cheeky the last one... Continue Reading →
Otto von Bismarck was once asked to identify the pre-eminent fact in modern world history. That America spoke English, he replied. In Emigrants, James Evans attempts to explain how and why that happened. For much of the 17th century, England was something of a failed state. In mid-century it collapsed into a brutal and protracted... Continue Reading →
So High A Blood explores in detail the life of Margaret, Countess of Lennox, a Tudor princess without whom, perhaps, there would have been no Stewart succession and no subsequent union between England and Scotland. Born in 1515, Margaret was the daughter of Margaret Tudor, the eldest daughter of Henry VII, by her second husband... Continue Reading →
I know what you’re thinking. What does Debbie McGee, diminutive relict of the late pint-sized prestidigitator Paul Daniels, have to do with anything? And, more specifically, what does she have to do with me? Just a few weeks ago, I’d have wondered the same thing. And then she turned up at the auction of my... Continue Reading →
I want to think of it like this: that learning to live with death is the last gift our parents have for us. When we were spring, they were already summer. Now their year is over we can see the full extent of life's horizon before us for the first time. We have a chance... Continue Reading →
This article first appeared in the January 2016 issue of History Today. What does it mean to write history today? What claims can historians make about their work? These are just two of the questions that sprang to mind after listening to Niall Ferguson tussle with the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jane Smiley on Radio 4’s Start... Continue Reading →
This piece first appeared in the September 2015 issue of History Today. I discussed the issues it raised with Catherine Fletcher in a related podcast which can be heard here. Catherine wrote a THE blog in response to my article and the disagreements it aroused, which can be read here. Supporters of the status quo... Continue Reading →
The world might be forgiven for rolling its eyes at the prospect of another book on Shakespeare. Does Shakespeare in London, the latest addition to the Bloomsbury Arden list, have anything new to say? The answer is a confident yes. Shakespeare in London is a short book with big ambitions. It weaves together various narratives... Continue Reading →
Alessandro de’ Medici reigned from 1532 to 1537 as the first duke of one of Italy’s greatest city-states. Yet just as he lived in obscurity until his teens in the late 1520s, he has largely been returned to that obscurity by historians ever since. Why then, asks Catherine Fletcher, has her subject been so ill-served... Continue Reading →
This article first appeared in the November 2015 London Historians newsletter. Since I wrote it, the abbey has been sealed away behind high metal fencing, as if to confirm the purposeful neglect of its current owners. I grew up in Kingsbury, North West London. I now live in Ealing. Between those two places lies a... Continue Reading →
My father died on May 22, three days after his 90th birthday. I'm sure I will write more about him and his passing, but in the meantime, here is the obituary David Hencke wrote for The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/14/john-lyons-obituary
My father is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. He will be 90 this year. He grew up close by the docks in Beckton, East London, which are now long gone. He remembers seeing the first wave of German bombers flying over London on September 7, 1940. He was stationed in the Pacific when he... Continue Reading →
Earlier this year I talked with writer and reviewer Rachel Stirling about the writing and reading of poetry. The conversation appeared on Rachel's blog in June, so I'm reposting here now on mine. RACHEL: When did you know that you wanted to write? MATHEW: Quite early on I think. I can’t really remember a time... Continue Reading →
June 3rd was a strange day on Twitter. For most of it, a living poet was trending. Unfortunately for Craig Raine, the poet in question, he was trending because a long poem of his entitled ‘Gatwick’ had appeared in the LRB and Twitter didn’t like it. Most comments ranged from amused contempt to, well, just... Continue Reading →
Mathew Lyons 