The heyday of real tennis was in the 16th and 17th centuries. I take a look at its physical history, and what there is of a physical present in London.
Nothing to do with fleas, nor even the plague. Instead, I describe another two of those administrative curiosities that London seems to specialise in - the Inner and Middle Temples.
Was he a liberal reformer and the first black Lord mayor of London, a figure to be celebrated, or an imperialist unaware of his own ethnicity? Read on to discover why I don't really answer the question.
Mainly through newspaper reports of the time, I tell the story of a vast canteen for the poor, born of philanthropic zeal at the turn of the 20th century.
