Our last walk of the year, The London Ear, will take place on Remembrance Sunday. It’s a poignant time to think about peace, silence and noise. London experienced a noisy kind of peace on Armistice Day 1918. The social reformer Beatrice Webb wrote in her diary: ‘Peace! London today is a pandemonium of noise and revelry, […]
I was thrilled that our listening walk The London Ear was the theme of last week’s Soundscapes show on BBC Radio Ulster. If you don’t know the show it’s well worth checking out. It’s an eclectic mix of great music that you probably never heard before, along with a weekly featured soundscape. This week that was […]
What does London sound like? How much is thought through and how much is sonic waste? These are some of the ideas behind London A to G, the piece I produced as a follow-up to The London Ear. I was delighted that it was featured on BBC Radio Ulster’s Soundscapes programme in June. It has […]
Remembrance Sunday this year falls on 11 November, exactly 100 years after Armistice Day. To mark the occasion London’s Imperial War Museum has a programme of exhibits and events that look at the moment peace broke out. What comes through strongly is the sonic quality of that moment. On the battlefield, there was an instant silencing of artillery […]
Last Saturday I gained an insight into what London might feel like without cars. As part of the Ride London festival, Waterloo Bridge (pictured) and other roads round the city centre were reserved for cyclists. It was strange to walk along the Strand and hear only the sound of chatter and spinning wheels.For cyclists, the […]
I received this week the best thank you I’ve ever had for a walk: a wonderful poem. It’s called Abecedarian for the future sounds of the city and was written by the poet Sarah Salway who came on The London Ear on Tuesday evening. Sarah penned it afterwards as an example for her students of an ‘Abecedarian’, where the first […]
For most of us, our experience of London most of the time is as a noisy fast place. We arrive at crowded stations, rush to work along busy roads, shop to blaring music, and go for drinks in places where we have to shout to be heard. The challenge of finding a slower side to […]
It’s May, the sun is out and the trees are looking good! As well as their gorgeous spring finery, here are five things to love about London’s trees.London’s trees are as much a part of the capital’s human history as are its buildings. Take the London Plane, which is in fact a cross between the […]
With International Noise Awareness Day coming up on 25 April, it’s a good time to think about noise: what it is, and what we can do about it.According to the government’s Noise Policy Statement, ‘sound only becomes noise (often defined as ‘unwanted sound’) when it exists in the wrong place or at the wrong time’ causing […]
The Monument – the flame-topped Doric column to the north of London Bridge – was once the capital’s tallest building. At 202ft, it’s as high as it is distant from the bakery on Pudding Lane where the Great Fire started in 1666. Visible from all around, it would have reminded anyone who looked up of […]
