The London Daily Newsletter Thursday 15 June

On 15 June 1919, Captain John Alcock (pilot) and Lt. Arthur W. Browne (navigator) successfully completed the first, non-stop, transatlantic, aeroplane flight. They flew from Newfoundland to Clifden, Ireland in 16 hours 12 minutes and won the prize offered by the London Daily Mail. Their aircraft was a Vickers Vimy (which was originally designed as a bomber to be used during WW I.) They faced many problems. Their radio broke down shortly after take off. Fog and drizzle prevented the fliers from seeing anything for much of the journey. They aimed to land in a green field but instead it turned out to be a bog. The plane suffered some damage when it hit the ground and sank into the bog. Both Alcock and Brown came away unhurt.

Toynbee Hall
Toynbee Hall is a building which is the home of a charity of the same name.

It works to bridge the gap between people of all social and financial backgrounds, with a focus on working towards a future without poverty. It was the first university-affiliated institution of the worldwide Settlement movement; a reformist social agenda that strove to get the rich and poor to live more closely together in an interdependent community. Founded by Canon Samuel Barnett and his wife Henrietta in 1884 on Commercial Street, it was named in memory of their friend and fellow reformer, Oxford historian Arnold Toynbee, who had died the previous year. Built specifically for the charity as a centre for social reform, it remains just as active today.

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.

‘Piccadilly Circus, London’ (1960)

L.S. Lowry

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