London’s Lost Department Stores with Tessa Boase
Join us online to hear author Tessa Boase speak about her new book, London’s Lost Department Stores.
Event details
Free
London’s sumptuous Victorian and Edwardian department stores changed the capital – and changed its women. Shoppers of every rank were lavishly wooed, seduced and often undone by the temptations laid out before them in these new ‘cathedrals of desire’.
Starting on Oxford Street’s ‘golden mile’, we’ll set off on a cultural and architectural tour of the capital’s big stores – from snooty Marshall & Snelgrove, to Pontings, ‘House of Value’; from D. H. Evans’ soaring escalator hall, to the live flamingos atop Derry & Toms; from Bodgers of Ilford, to Bon Marché of Brixton. What did it feel like to enter a great store in 1850 – and in 1950? From shoppers to shop girls, publicity stunts to wow factor window dressing, this is a fascinating slice of social history – with wonderful period images.
Journalist and social historian, Tessa Boase loves the detective work involved in resurrecting stories of ordinary people – shop girls, milliners, campaigning housewives, Edwardian shopaholics.
Tessa is the author of The Housekeeper’s Tale: The Women Who Really Ran the English Country House, and Etta Lemon: The Woman Who Saved the Birds (the surprising story of the RSPB’s feminist origins). Her latest book, London’s Lost Department Stores, brings to life the human stories behind the once-familiar names of fifty great emporia, from Gamages to Gorringes, Bearmans to Bodgers. As a former Daily Mail editor she became curious about the great Barkers building and its neighbouring emporia, uncovering a long-past era when Kensington was famed far and wide as ‘London’s Great Shopping Mecca’.