The Slang Guide to London – The Jago

Jonathon Green continues his slang tour of London by venturing into an area just off Bethnal Green Road known as the "worst street in London"... So which was the worst street in London? Marked in the most stygian black (‘lowest class...occasional labourers, street sellers, loafers, criminals and semi-criminals’) on Charles Booth’s ... Read More...

The Slang Guide to London – Piccadilly

Jonathon Green continues his remarkable slang tour of London with a stroll down the Dilly, taking care to avoid a dose of the Piccadilly cramp... I’m Gilbert the Filbert, the knut with a k, The pride of Piccadilly, the blasé  roué. Oh Hades! the Ladies who leave their wooden huts, For Gilbert the Filbert, ... Read More...

The Slang Guide to London: Tyburn

Death-sweats, Paddington spectacles and gallows humour this week, as Jonathon Green continues his slang tour of London with a trip to Tyburn... It is an old place. A crossroads where as we know wicked deeds assemble. It had a marker: Oswulf’s stone, seemingly pre-Roman and which may have been the meeting-place ... Read More...

The Slang Guide to London: Alsatia

Continuing our re-run of his classic Dabbler series, The Slang Guide to London, Jonathon Green is seeking out Alsatia... It’s gone: Water Lane’s gone, not even the name. Mitre Lane’s gone, buried beneath some pile of glass. Ram Alley’s called Hare Court and shelters My Learned Friends. Whitefriars Street, now irony ... Read More...

The Fighting Loamshires

Mr Slang raises a fourth glass of port to the famous Loamshire regiment, heroes of innumerable imaginary battles... ‘All that remains is the orderly –sergeant’s voice reading orders to the new blood in the quiet summer evening in sleepy Loamshire, with its laughing English fields and gay hedgerows spread about the ... Read More...

Oi veh! – Mr Slang’s Guide to Yiddish

‘Adam gave names to all created things; his Yiddish-speaking descendants offer critiques' - here's Jonathon Green's guide to the Jewish language of the put-down... Yiddish, sometimes known as Jüdisch -Deutsch (Jewish-German)  is the dialect of German spoken by the German or Ashkenazi (Hebrew: ‘German’, i.e. European) Jews. It has been recorded ... Read More...