· By Tam McDonald
Of all the reasons for locating the new Justice Quarter in Fleet Street, character comes out top. An ambitious construction scheme for the Fleet Street area seemed to have survived its second phase of consultation and, as the new year turned, was on course to deliver a…
Read more →· By Tam McDonald
Too much of the commentary on the purpose of museums is one-dimensional, prosaic, and entirely uninspired by what excites the human imagination. Controversy has been swirling recently over what we now think of as identity politics: how do we define ourselves in terms of what we…
Read more →· By Tam McDonald
Too much focus on the gizmos distracts from the simple truth that the market for Virtual Reality lies in the market, not in the technology Every time there’s a big new thing in the world of consumer technology, the initial breathlessness is invariably followed by a long sigh of…
Read more →· By Tam McDonald
Just as London recovered spectacularly from the plague and fire of the 1660s, so it will from Covid and the economic calamity of this past year. Cradle of English has a role in this. This month sees Cradle of English launching a page on Patreon, a membership platform that…
Read more →· By Tam McDonald
Theatre enabled a shift from “I’m sorry for your loss” to “I feel your pain” and so seeded the ground for the development of Democracy Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public Theatre in New York City, is one of a number of eminences to have pointed out the correlations in…
Read more →· By Tam McDonald
The world is never so dark that it cannot get darker, but the Cradle of English will reveal what one small patch of London ground was able to accomplish in making the world lighter In the short time since the idea for the “Cradle of English” was conceived, a lot has happened in…
Read more →· By Tam McDonald
Although a generation has passed since Fleet Street was a vibrant and still active metonym for the UK’s newspaper industry, the spirit of innovation and creative energy are still there. In fact, those qualities were there long before the newspapers arrived. It is a wonder just…
Read more →· By Tam McDonald
In the shift from oral to written traditions in the evolution of cultures, there is inevitably a trade-off of resonance for reach. Is there a digital bottom line? Dear countrymen, Whate’er is left to us of ancient heritage; Of manners, speech, of humours, polity; The limited…
Read more →· By Tam McDonald
It may be a mistake to claim that the notion of truth is uniquely threatened in these days of populist politics, fake news, media bias, conspiracy theories and so on. Against these modern allegations of malign intent and bad faith, there have always been the fierce determinations…
Read more →· By Tam McDonald
There are four broad areas of the English economy which remain world-leading, now that we neither make nor mine anything much of note. Two with which we are not especially interested within the context of the Cradle of English are armaments and financial services. A third – the…
Read more →