I've driven past this remarkable relief hundreds of times, but spotted it only today when I happened to walk by (strolling to work for the first time this year).

It shows the martyrdom of St Pancras - a Roman teenager beheaded for his faith in about 304. It later became the fashion to show him amid a menagerie. And as you can see, in this version he succumbs to a pre-modern Hound of the Baskervilles.

Can anyone - without Googling and otherwise seeking digital assistance - locate this over-stylised piece of Victorian religious melodrama?

It's almost half-a-century since what was in its day by far the biggest institution in British local government bit the dust.

The London County Council was established in 1889, and abolished in 1965 when the London boroughs were reorganised. (It was replaced by the still bigger Greater London Council, which bit the dust when Mrs Thatcher took against it in the 1980s).

Today on Hampstead Heath I came across a cruious remnant of the LCC - a boundary stone. This was where inner London (the LCC territory) met outer London. Still a boundary of sorts.

Sometimes you can go months without coming across any really great political pamphlets - and then you strike gold. Twice.

I've blogged below about the treasures I came across last weekend ... when I was also was able to buy an early (1890) copy of the Yiddish newspaper 'Der Arbeter Fraint' (The Worker's Friend), and even more spectacular, a copy of Henry Seymour's 'The Anarchist' from 1886.

Today at Walden Books in Chalk Farm, I picked up a handful of much more recent gems - of which this is my favourite.

This is the first - perhaps the only - issue of 'Underground', dating it seems from 1966. Here's what the editorial comment says:

underground's first aim is to print the work of young authors or poets, whether published previously or not, alongside that of older writers whose influence justifies their inclusion in a magazine aimed primarily at the young. Secondly we hope to provide a forum for libertarian ideas without consenting to follow any exclusive party line.

It was published by a group of Oxford students - the editorial board (and forgive me, i don't recognise any of the names) consisted of: Tony Allan, Kris Jastrzebski, Rick Blake, John Edge, Peter Whewell, Barbra Norden and Penelope Cloutte. Anyone able to tell me any more about the editors or the journal?

The cover, of course, caught my attention - very 1960s. I suspect it was designed by Humphrey Weightman. And the contents are also really interesting. Most of the first half of the journal is given over to a republication of Sir Herbert Read's (surely he was the only anarchist ever to accept a knighthood) 'Anarchism in the Affluent Society'. The poems that follow include two by Adrian Mitchell - I've posted one of these below (the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh attended the Canada Centennial in the summer of 1966, which probably provided the cocasion for Adrian Mitchell's verse).

It's amazing what you can find in an Islington pub. When I popped in to the Red Lion recently - just a short hop from The Angel - there was no sign of anyone writing, or reading, anything that might be regarded as a radical classic. But the times have changed ... just a little!

Handbills are among the most ephemeral, and at the same time telling, evocations of past political movements and moments. It was very nice at the Radical Book Fair at Conway Hall today to pick up two very fine handbills. the one above is from the Pankhursts' Women's Social and Political Union and dates from the turbulent year of 1911, promising 'the greatest procession of women ever witnessed'.- and it was indeed regarded as the biggest suffrage march ever seen in London until that date, with 40,000 women processing along what had been the Coronation route.

This handbill is even older - dating to William Morris's Socialist League of the late 1880s. 1889 was the year of the 'new unions' - unions of the semi-skilled and unskilled, which rose to prominence with the  Dock Strike of that year. The meeting advertised seems to have been on a similar theme.

Humberstone Gate is in Leicester - and there is also a Vine Street in the city, (though there was also a radical club on Vine Street in central London).

I sadly know nothing of Councillor W. Sanders of Walsall, who describes himself as 'the first Socialist ever elected in England on a Town Council' and a 'Member of the Knights of Labour' who had 'suffered imprisonment several times for the cause of the workers'.

Anyone know any more about him?

Yes, I was watching 'The Village' last night. And yes, it did put me in mind of the memorial in our local village, Highgate village. It stands at the top of Swains Lane, though you easily walk past the plaque without spotting it. And as you can see, some of the names are already undecipherable and in a few years all will have been weathered into anonymity.

You can find out a little about the memorial at what was once Highgate Camp here - the names are slightly more legible on the photo on this site. I do hope someone has taken the trouble to set down the inscription before it started to wear away. This is what I make out the names to be, with some of those on the right-hand column rather less then certain transcriptions:

    RAYMOND C. BRICE                        CYRIL P. MADDAX
    ERNEST JOHN DODD                      CHAS BERNARD MILLER
    EDWARD E. GRIMWADE                  ALFRED MOORE
    HERBERT HEAVINGHAM                  HENRY MORLEY
    FRANK J. HOCKING, D.C.M.             KENNETH H. RE...
    ALAN J. HOPKINS                             JOHN WOODWA...
    FELIX E. JONES, M.C.                      J.D. YOUNG   

The memorial is on a gate, and opposite is a tablet which has survived the decades slightly better. There's more about James Dawbarn Young here.

Regent's Park and around has many attractions - zoo, mosque, boating lake, beuatiful gardens, open air cafes, and lots of open space for a kick around. Nice to see several generations joining in this game of soccer this afternoon. Quite a spectacle!

Around the lakes, the herons were as brave and brassy eyed as ever - at one spot, there was a bust up among a troupe of herons competing for what seemed to be chicken luncheon meat being provided by a - it would seem - regular heron tamer.

For most of the thousands sauntering around, the delight was the trees in blossom and the flowers in bloom, and weather which allowed you to take it all in. London in the spring!

Every day, just by the bus stop on Great Portland Street where I catch the C2 home, I gaze down on an old sign inlaid into the pavement. And every day, I mean to find out more about Coppen, Allan & Co. Today I finally did just that.

Coppen, Allan were a top end motor dealer and engineers - dating from the days between the wars when the north end of Great Portland Street was London's "Motor Row". It has home to more than thirty car showrooms.

Coopen, Allan were once, it seems, a household name. The advert above dates from 1920. Seven years later, the partnership at the heart of the comapny was dissolved - though it may have remained as a trading name. Coppen, Allan has left a very slight digital footprint, and to my surprise this last emblem of its onetime grandeur doesn't seem to have attracted a lot of attention.

Well, it attracted my attention - and now yours. Just what blogs are for.

You know how it is when you think you know a place, and then you're taken by surprise  ...

Well, I always thought that I knew the Jericho locality of Oxford fairly well. I spent a few weeks in the summer of, gulp, 1977 doing a project for the Oxfordshire Museum about working class housing there. Yesterday, I was back in Jericho - a very occasional visitor there in recent decades. I  popped in at the spell-binding St Barnabas, took a stroll across Port Meadow, and walking down Walton Street on my way back, stumbled across the entrance to St Sepuchre's cemetery. I don't recall ever noticing it before.

It's one of three Oxford cemeteries opened in the 1840s or thereabouts, as the church graveyards become congested beyond redemption. St Sepulchre's has its own Wikipedia entry, and a very impressive website (as befits north Oxford). It's now hemmed in on all sides, largely by modern buildings fronting on Waltonwell Road. Among the gravestones, one stands out - featuring a racing car heading in to the sunset.

The story of Frankie Tayler's life and death have captured the attention of other bloggers - here's one.  And it is a remarkable, and tragic tale. Frankie, a machenic on the MG racing team, died in 1934 at the age of 28 - his widow Phyllis, whose ashes are also interred here, lived another 66 years. And there's also another memorial plaque, I suppose also an internment of ashes, from 2009 - of Margaret Knight, aged 96, who I imagine was Frankie's sister.

The story of Frankie Tayler's death on the Isle of Man is told on the board by the entrance to the cemetery - and I've posted that below.

Kaye Don (Kaye Ernest Donsky) lived until 1981, and was quite a celebrity as a car and speedboat racer and later set up Ambassador motorcycles. His entry in Wikipedia gives a detailed account of the accident on the Isle of Man, for which he was sentenced to four months in jail for manslaughter. He was released early on health grounds.

One of the happier consequences of this blog has been the bringing together of two distant wings of a large and scattered family. It's quite a story.

Some time ago I wrote about Dorothy 'Dorf' Bonarjee, an Indian-born poet and artist, who studied at London and Aberystwyth, won an award at an Eisteddfod, eloped with a French artist, and made her life in southern France. Her niece Sheela Bonarjee, who lives in north London, is a friend - and has on her wall a wonderful painting of her aunt which I can't resist posting again at the foot of this article. She also has the enchanting painting above, which I saw for the first time today.

That initial blog of mine captured the attention of Quentin Surtel, the grandson of Paul Surtel. Paul and Dorf were together for seventeen years. Paul married again (to Quentin's grandmother) and there was a breach between the two wings of the family. Quentin is now trying to trace details of his grandfather's early life, details which Paul was reluctant to share with his immediate family for fear of annoying his second wife. This morning, at Sheela's place, I had the pleasure to meet Quentin, and see some of the hugely evocative family photos he has brought with him.

The mesmerising photo on the right is dated July 1922, and it shows Dorf with her and Paul's son, Denis, who died in infancy. They also had a daughter, Claire Aruna Surtel, who was a journalist in Marseilles. The photo on the left is undated, clearly later, and shows Dorf in Indian dress, as she is in the portrait below. It raises all sorts of questions in my mind about identity - a woman from an elite Indian family, educated in Britain, living in bohemian style in France, and making a point of wearing a very smart sari.

Dorf didn't marry again after the break-up of her marriage to Paul - now a much sought after artist. Aruna never really knew her half brothers. Paul Surtel died in 1985, in his early nineties. By the time Quentin traced the other side of his grandfather's family, Aruna was a few months dead. But the barrier between Paul Surtel's two families has now been overcome.

I also met this morning Dominique Baron-Bonarjee, Sheela's niece (and so Dorf's grand niece), and a London-based performance and installation artist who, as with her great aunt, has associations with France, India and the UK. 'Dorf was a rebellious woman', she says, 'and so am I'. She's also pursuing the family history - and the Bonarjees have quite a tale attached to them - and has used some of that story in her art. (If you click here, the first two images on the carousel feature photos of Dorf, and others in the family).

And that uncompleted portrait of Dorf - it's unsigned, and while the assumption is that Paul Surtel was the artist, that's not absolutely clear. It is bewitching. See for yourself.