Jonathan Cohen's photos with the keyword: Charles Dickens

One of the oldest pubs in London, the Lamb & Flag was once known as the Bucket of Blood, thanks to the bare-knuckle fights held here. It was a favourite watering hole of Charles Dickens. As you step inside the narrow pub which habitually bursts at the seams with hoards of local workers and shoppers – it’s easy to imagine a time when this place was filled with London’s rowdy residents jostling for space at the bar or packing out the ancient settles. A noticeable lack of chairs and tables downstairs results in drinkers thronging in front of the bar or squeezing into nooks and crannies much like they would have done when it was first opened. If you want a bit of space, fight your way through and wind your way up the creaking staircase to a larger roomier upstairs bar named the Dryden Bar, after the poet, John Dryden, who was allegedly "nearly done to death" in the alleyway next to the pub. The incident happened late at night on 18 December, 1679 when Dryden was returning from Will’s Coffee House in Bow Street to his lodgings in long Acre. As today, Rose Street was a dark and secluded place. It is thought that the assault by three men was paid for by the earl of Rochester, who believed that Dryden had satirized him in a recent publication. However, a painted plaque in the narrow passageway next to the Lamb and Flag suggests that the instigator of the attack was the duchess of Portsmouth. Be that as it may, the culprits were never caught, despite the offer of a £50 reward (a considerable sum in those days).

St Marylebone Parish Church is an Anglican church on the Marylebone Road in London. It was built to the designs of Thomas Hardwick in 1813–17. The present site is the third used by the parish for its church. The first was further south, near Oxford Street. The church there was demolished in 1400 and a new one erected further north. This was completely rebuilt in 1740–42, and converted into a chapel-of-ease when Hardwick’s church was constructed. A local resident was Charles Dickens (1812–1870), in Devonshire Terrace, whose son was baptized in this church (a ceremony fictionalized in "Dombey and Son"). Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett were married in this phase of the church in 1846 (their marriage certificate is preserved in the church archives). The church was also used in location filming for the 1957 film recounting their story, The Barretts of Wimpole Street.

The Music Concourse, a landscaped basin between the California Academy of Sciences and the de Young Museum, is a vital civic and cultural space within Golden Gate Park, hosting free concerts on Sundays during the summer and serving as a respite and picnic spot year-round for visitors to nearby cultural facilities. The concourse’s grove of pollarded (severely pruned) trees are primarily London plane trees and Wych elms, with some maples and walnuts. (In case you were wondering, the Oxford English Dictionary defines "pollarded" as referring originally to an animal of a kind naturally horned, such as an ox or a stag, which has cast or lost its horns; or to an ox, sheep, or goat of a hornless variety. In his novel, Little Dorritt, Charles Dickens borrowed the word to describe bald-headed old men.) It’s not clear when the present trees were planted. Original drawings and photos of the concourse show fewer trees.