Before Mayfair became one of the most expensive districts in central London, this area was simply open countryside: fields and pasture known as Great Brookfield. The River Tyburn, one of Thames’ tributaries, ran through the peaceful meadows undisturbed before finally disappearing beneath the growing metropolis in the second half of the eighteen-century. For centuries, this…
Nineteenth-century London, the proud heart of a vast British Empire, had become a political, cultural, and financial capital admired across the world. Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837 and remained there for the next sixty-four years. Her dignity, decorum, and strict moral standards shaped English society, which tried to follow her puritanical way of…
Kitty Fisher was born in 1741 as Catherine Maria, the impoverished daughter of a corset maker. She caught the eye of Admiral Augustus Keppel, who introduced her to London society. (Other sources suggest General Anthony Martin may have been her first patron.) She began her life in the capital as a humble maid, but the…
