Listen to me on Place Cloud!
Place Cloud
As an aspiring public historian, I was giddy with excitement when George, the founder of Place Cloud, asked me to get involved. What a phenomenal idea – expert audio on the most outstanding and obscure, ravishing and rank locations in London, and the world. Suddenly, not just landmarks but weary trees and ordinary homes arrest us. Well-known sites get specialist treatment, while lost buildings, forgotten tales, and quiet places roar back to life: medieval impotence trials, eighteenth-century suicidal thoughts, and ‘70s anti-Nazi rock concerts. And these podcasts are all delivered by the scholars themselves: the people who spend hours burrowed into books exhale their love of history, art, and architecture spanning over two thousand years.
Linking these podcasts to locations is the genius. With an interactive immersive map on your phone, you can design your own cultural walk or spontaneously learn something new when you’re out and about. Plus, each audio comes with images: old manuscripts, detailed drawings, or key artefacts. They’re more like immersive ‘geocasts’ than simple podcasts!
What’s more, I’ve found myself amongst stunning company. Researchers providing new answers, authors I’ve read, broadcasters I’ve watched, and historians I look up to. As much as I’m thrilled to make my own, it’s such a joy to learn about periods and places in a whole new way.
I’m starting with coffee. I want to talk about a city that zings, that’s bursting at the seams with political intrigue, financial disruption, and intellectual contests. To begin with, the story of coffee is more than that of a commodity: it’s a melding of Islamic and Christian culture. It harnessed the dramatic changes in the 17th and 18th centuries and ignited revolutions across the social and cultural spectrum. The deeper we get, its story becomes vastly more complicated than simple narratives and much darker than straightforward revolutions. All the while, in the midst of the mess are human stories filled with smells and tastes, anger, love, and loss.
Coffee House Trail ☕
An adventure into the messy world of 17th- and 18th-century London
COMING SOON
Don Saltero’s Coffee House
Tom King’s Coffee House
The Bedford Coffee House
The Cocoa Tree Coffee House
The Royal Bagnio
I’ll be making trails for taverns too, and exploring many more intoxicating places from Chocolate Houses to emporia selling novel goods from across the globe.
You can listen to all of my audio on Place Cloud, while you walk with an interactive map and visuals of contemporary documents, paintings, and objects.
They’re also all on Spotify, iTunes, & GooglePodcasts!
The Jamaica: Spotify, iTunes, & GooglePodcasts 🎙️ // Garraway’s: Spotify, iTunes, & GooglePodcasts 🎧
Jonathan’s: Spotify, iTunes, & GooglePodcasts. 🎙️ // Button’s: Spotify, iTunes, & GooglePodcasts 🎧
Lloyd’s: Spotify, iTunes, & GooglePodcasts. 🎙️
