On 19 December 1984, in the Hall of the People in Beijing, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang signed an agreement committing Britain to return Hong Kong to China in 1997 in return for terms guaranteeing a 50-year extension of its capitalist system.
Hong Kong, a small peninsula and group of islands jutting out from China’s Kwangtung province, was leased by China to Great Britain in 1898 for 99 years.
Romford
Romford is the administrative centre of the London Borough of Havering and one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan.
Romford was originally a market town in Essex. The town developed on the main road to London with Romford Market was established in 1247.
The railway station open in 1839 which was key to the development of the Star Brewery. The Eastern Counties Railway services operated between Mile End and Romford, with extensions to Brentwood and to Shoreditch in 1840. A second station was opened in 1892 by the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway, giving Romford a rail connection to Tilbury Docks. The two stations were combined in 1934.
There was a shift from agriculture to light industry during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and then to retail and commerce.
In the 20th century, Romford significantly expanded, becoming a municipal borough in 1937 and part of Greater London since 1965 when the area was transferred from Essex.
TUM Book Club: Old Covent Garden
The magic of the old Covent Garden Market is evoked through Clive Boursnell’s photographs, taken over the course of numerous visits to Covent Garden in the 1960s and 1970s.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s Clive Boursnell, then a young photographer, shot thousands of photographs of the old Covent Garden, documenting the end of an era before the markets moved out of central London. Boursnell captured these last days of the market over a period of six years, from 1968 until the market’s closure, in a series of beautiful portraits of the feisty life of a city institution.
Fox Hill, Upper Norwood by Camille Pissarro (1830-1903)
Camille Pissarro was born in St Thomas (then a Danish possession) in the West Indies but lived and worked mainly in the Paris area. He was an Impressionist and mainly painted landscapes.
He visited London in 1870-71 and painted London views.
National Gallery, London
Video: Flying into LCY
A simulated flight into LCY courtesy of Google Earth Studio.
TUM Dine With Me: Duke of Cornwall
The Duke of Cornwall pub morphed into the uber-trendy “The Ledbury” restaurant.
The Duke Of Cornwall was situated at 127 Ledbury Road. This former Courage pub adopted the name of the Ledbury Arms following the closure of a pub of the same name at 40 Ledbury Road and closed c. 2005.
The Ledbury restaurant opened on the site in 2005, under head chef Brett Graham. As such, it has been featured in S.Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants. It is the sister restaurant of The Square, a two Michelin star restaurant in Mayfair, with the same backers investing in both restaurants.
Ideas:
TUM Dine With Me:fineart:TUM Books