london particular .com

So... What's This?

And what's a "London Particular"?

The Particular is a kind of highly abbreviated contents page for London. Or an insane, lonely soul dressed in rags, wearing a beaten-up top hat, screaming nonsense headlines at you from under Waterloo Bridge. Either One.

[We find the best stuff in the fog. Links, images and really short news items about life in London.]

londonparticular // gmail

Who edits this? Lord Rundle.
March 23

What Is A London Particular?

From Brewer’s Britain and Ireland:

Monet's Study of London Fog

London Particular. A Colloquial term used in the 19th and early 20th centuries for a London fog. The sulphurous coal smoke of the period gave London smogs a yellowish tinge (whence the name pea-souper, after soup made from yellow split peas rather than fresh green peas), and it may be that the term was inherited from a variety of Madeira wine of similar colour, so called because it was imported ‘particularly’ for London merchants.

“This is a London particular.’ I had never heard of such a term. ’A fog, miss’, said the young gentleman.”

Charles Dickens: Bleak House (1852)