Dispatches from the front line of the internet


Amazing colour footage of London in the 1920s

"They built an arch of marble, and called it Marble Arch."

Photograph: BFI/Vimeo

From the minute the lush green landscape panned to reveal the Tower of London sitting in the middle of it, not a skyscraper in sight, I knew this would be good. Uploaded three years ago, but brought to my attention by Jason Kottke, this colour footage of London in the 1920s is astonishing:

London in 1927 from Tim Sparke on Vimeo.

"The entrance to London's lung", reads the caption as the camera tucks into Hyde Park and films the "hunting ground for Cupid and other young things". And then, a painful reminder of a different time: footage of "how London takes care of its sparrows". There aren't many of them left in the capital.

Shot by "an early British pioneer of film named Claude Frisse-Greene", the video is capped off with a visit to Petticoat lane market, a tremendously unencumbered cricket match at the Oval, a walk down the Embankment and a final slow pan of the Houses of Parliament.

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