This is the bronze head of the Roman emperor Augustus with eyes of glass and stone. An act of vandalism and desecration saved it.
Saved By Decapitation at the British Museum
london
Me, Myself, and Eye: Researching London 2016
I have been in London for the past few weeks updating my Frommer’s guide for the 2016 edition.
The world’s most expensive selfie surfaces after four centuries
It’s Van Dyck’s self-portrait, from the late 1630s. Now the world’s most expensive selfie is one of its oldest.
Highclere Castle, aka Downton, lets me look inside
So I went to Downton Abbey. The people who run it seem to want to call it Highclere Castle. I didn’t see any cannon or dragons or battlements, but if they want to call it a castle, I won’t argue, because they’re rich.
The cupboard under Charles Darwin’s stairs
This is the cupboard under the stairs in Down House where Charles Darwin stored the evidence of his explosive theory for nearly two decades.
Both of my current books are now out!
As of now, my two current Frommer’s guides are officially released! One came out in November, and one is just released. For your health’s sake, I do not recommend writing two entire 256-page books at once.
The Internet is a directory, but a good guidebook guides
Guidebooks as we know them have declined not simply because reading habits are shifting. The product shifted first. Guidebooks became dispensable because guidebooks, as we now know them, do not retain many of the characteristics—concision, opinion, direction—that once made them an important tool for sorting through the chaff. It’s been so long since guidebooks guided that we forgot what it means to do so.
The most brilliant cover for ‘1984’ yet
Spotted in London at Foyles (which is moving into a newly constructed building next door in early 2014): Penguin UK’s brilliant and audacious reissue of Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four.’ It’s designed in the classic orange and white bands as mid-century Penguin paperbacks were, but it’s embossed and redacted. No American publisher would have the courage to… Read more »
The London Eye is raised, fall 1999
From my travel photo files: The 443-foot-tall London Eye is erected in the fall of 1999.
How to see London for $15 a day [WATCH]
Some incredibly useful tips for saving cash on a London vacation — without missing out on what makes London London.