The London Daily Newsletter Thursday 23 February

On 23 February 1898, Emile Zola was sentenced to prison for writing “J’accuse…!” French writer Zola’s “J’accuse…!” had been printed on 13 January 1898 in L’Aurore. The letter exposed a military cover-up regarding Captain Alfred Dreyfus. Dreyfus, a French army captain, had been accused of espionage in 1894 and sentenced in a secret military court-martial to imprisonment in a South American penal colony. Two years later, evidence of Dreyfus’ innocence surfaced, but the army suppressed the information. Zola charged various high-ranking military officers and, indeed, the War Office itself of concealing the truth in the wrongful conviction of Dreyfus. Zola was prosecuted for libel and and sentenced to one year’s imprisonment. In July 1899, when his appeal appeared certain to fail, he fled to England. In 1899, Dreyfus was pardoned, but for political reasons was not exonerated until 1906. Zola returned to France in June 1900. Zola’s intervention in the controversy helped to undermine anti-Semitism and rabid militarism in France.

Butchers Lane (1923)
Photographed in 1923, this stretch of Butchers Lane would soon become Hendon Central Circus and have Watford Way built along the route of the old lane.

Taken at the junction of Queens Road, this photograph is taken on more or less the same spot as a 1928 photo (though viewing east rather than north).

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.

“Jewin Crescent, London EC1” This 1940 drawing is by Roland Vivian Pitchforth – one of his works for the War Artists Advisory Committee and looks west along Jewin Crescent.

Roland Vivian Pitchforth/Imperial War Museum

Video: Oyster
Getting around London with Oyster