Yesterday's London Times

Providing up to 5 million passenger journeys a day, the London Underground is integral to the city's infrastructure. It's impossible to imagine how the city would function without it.But why would something built for purpose become a source of admiration and entertainment? A Transport for London style guide provides powerful evidence: "Every Underground station shoul

At Yesterday’s London Times, we are all about inquiry, questions and stories, particularly stories that are new to us or that we just want to know on a deeper level. We seek out people, places, and facets of history that are lesser known, quirkier, or even downright strange. We also like to shine a spotlight on those who really do - or have done - amazing things, but perhaps have

A little romance?What began as a fluff piece about an eccentric romance novelist turned into a snapshot of a century through the eyes of someone who lived it to the fullest.Meet Barbara Cartland: extravagant, exaggerated, and … pink. As author of 723 books, she remains the most prolific romance novelist of all time. If you’ve ever seen her, you won’t likely forget her, drippi

Bears. Cute. Cuddly. But when we looked at them through the long lens of London history, it got complicated pretty quickly.Join us as we take the ursine plunge, and think about….the bears that roamed Britain 7000 years ago the Tower menagerie,blood sports such a bearbaiting, especially popular during the Elizabethan period,the invention of the stuffed bear and its significance in

It's a Yesterday's London Times tradition - the Boxing Day episode!Relax along with us as we look back at some of the people and places we met on the podcast this year. Half of our episodes sent us time traveling throughout the Sixties in different centuries of British history, and the other episodes were our regular mix of quirky yet thoughtful takes on the city we love.

WELCOME TO OUR 50th EPISODE!In the final stop of our ‘60s YLT Time Machine, we touch down in the 1560’s just in time for a Tudor Christmas. In a deeply divided nation in which religion is politicized, we’ll see how the young Queen Elizabeth finds her own path.The Tudor Christmas was a respite from work and from unrelenting poverty. It was a time of revelry and a loosening of

In our 2021 episode, “Here is Vogue, In Spite of it All!”, we explored how the British edition of the iconic fashion magazine evolved into an outlet for groundbreakingVogue wartime journalism. As we studied the reasons behind that seemingly unlikely transformation, we met some strong, creative, and intellectually brilliant women, among them the complex and multitalented Lee Mil

It’s getting all wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey at YLT as we celebrate a huge milestone in British culture: the 60th anniversary of the iconic Doctor Who!In this episode, we : look at the unlikely-for-the-time trio who launched Doctor Who back in 1963discuss the basic premise of the showexamine its importance as a British cultural phenomenonreflect on the symbolism and deeper message

Let's do the Time Warp... it's the Rocky Horror episode!Though many people have seen the cult classic film, few people know about its origins in a 63 seat London theatre. In this episode, we : delve into the creative team and cast responsible for its deviant mayhem, sharing their back stories and how they all converged in time and place in early '70s London,take a tr

Hop in the YLT time machine, we are on the move once again, but brace yourself: 1666 awaits. How do everyday people survive constant war, devastating plague, and raging destruction all within the span of a very short window of time? In this episode, we examine the perseverance of Medieval Londoners, and explore many themes of life in the 17th century that surprisingly overlap with