I've always preferred the cheaper end of the Monopoly board - Whitechapel High Street and The Angel have much more appeal that Park Lane and Bond Street. To judge from the piece in today's Guardian celebrating the board game's 75th anniversary, the historian Jerry White agrees.
He makes a connection that had escaped me, the 'Water Works' as the New River Head in no-longer-so-cheap Clerkenwell. Well, of course.
And I also discover that the model for Monopoly was 'The Landlord's Game', devised in 1904 by an Illinois-born woman follower of the land taxer Henry George. Those of you who delve into the depths of this site may know that it was Henry George's followers who coined that marvellous political anthem The Land Song.
If I add that The Angel (£100 for the Monopoly player) is the setting for Alexander Baron's novel 'Rosie Hogarth', I've somehow managed to get several of my pet enthusiasms in a single blog.
Happy New Year!
He makes a connection that had escaped me, the 'Water Works' as the New River Head in no-longer-so-cheap Clerkenwell. Well, of course.
And I also discover that the model for Monopoly was 'The Landlord's Game', devised in 1904 by an Illinois-born woman follower of the land taxer Henry George. Those of you who delve into the depths of this site may know that it was Henry George's followers who coined that marvellous political anthem The Land Song.
If I add that The Angel (£100 for the Monopoly player) is the setting for Alexander Baron's novel 'Rosie Hogarth', I've somehow managed to get several of my pet enthusiasms in a single blog.
Happy New Year!
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