Excellent play and production, not very accurately described in the blurb!
Janie and I were both really taken with this play/production. In some ways, not really our type of play. Indeed, had the Hampstead blurb for this production described the play more accurately, we might have chosen not to go, on the basis…
haven’t we seen enough of these Jewish families with grudges plays?…can get all that at home…not another narrator looking back at his family upbringing play…
…which would have been a terrible shame, because this one really is excellent, both as a play and a production. Well drawn characters – you end up caring about all of them – even the old dragon of an alcoholic, mischief-making grandmother.
Suzanne Bertish, Anna Francolini and Ryan Kopel all put in superb performances, ably directed by Josh Seymour.
The house was not full on the Saturday evening we attended. Perhaps the blurb, which made us imagine that the play was about modern art, attracted a smaller audience than a more accurate blurb might have done.
Who knows? In any case, it still has a couple of weeks to run at the time of writing and we would recommend this highly if there are still some tickets available when you read this.
Now 154 New Cavendish Street – formerly 7 Upper Marylebone Street
Thomas Paine really did stay and write at The Rickman’s house between 1791 and 1792. That house is now 154 New Cavendish Street. Following the Thomas Paine Historical Association & English Heritage’s rigorous examination of my previously posted theory, my further research has proved the theory beyond doubt. Here is the story of that further research.
Readers might remember my open letter to the Thomas Paine Historical Association and English Heritage in July 2025:
In late January 2026, Adrian F Tawfik from the Thomas Paine Historical Association (TPHA) placed a comment on the above piece, suggesting that we liaise over this matter. We exchanged correspondence and had an interesting, collegiate-style Zoom.
The upshot was, the TPHA was willing – keen even – to support my bid for an English Heritage Blue Plaque, as long as we could uncover enough evidence to prove my theory categorically. The notion that “the Horwood Plan must contain an error” seemed insufficient to the TPHA without more evidence.
Through my miniscule network of archivists (I’m not a seasoned historian), I was put in touch with the Howard de Walden Estate archive, where I found a warm welcome, plus a cornucopia of interesting documentary evidence from the late 18th century.
Not least, plans drawn up by John White, c1800, for The Portland Estate (subsequently Howard de Walden Estate) as the basis of lease books. The numbering in these “John White Plans” accords with the numbering from the early 20th century (when my family lived at No 4 – the house shaded red and white), including the period in the 1930s when Upper Marylebone Street was absorbed into New Cavendish Street.
Recorded in the archive as 1800 to 1820Recorded in the archive as 1800-1850Richard Horwood’s Plan 1790s – the numbering is “other”
Thomas Clio Rickman’s Publications All Show The Address As “7 Upper Marylebone Street” Or Simply “Upper Marylebone Street”…But…
The mystery started to unravel when I decided to search the British Newspapers Archive for Thomas Clio Rickman’s name and did not restrict the date range to the late 18th century.
I found an article in the Worthing Herald of 26 October 1926, which republished an historical extract from the paper June/July 1791, including:
A Poet’s Advertisement (July 4th 1791), THOMAS CLIO RICKMAN
Takes this method, respectfully to inform his numerous friends, acquaintances and the public that he has entered into business, and to hand them his card…
….No. 4, Upper Marylebone-Street, London, Thomas Clio Rickman, Bookseller and Stationer…
Not No. 7 – No. 4.
Something twigged in my distant memory. I’d seen reference to Clio at No. 4 before. My slightly lazy gene kicked in and I asked Claude (other AI agents are available) to seek out other references to Thomas Clio Rickman at No. 4 Upper Marylebone Street.
ME: Can you find any additional references to Thomas Clio Rickman living at No 4 Upper Marylebone Street for me to delve – I have only found one.
CLAUDE: I have to be candid with you: the online sources are not yielding any additional references to Rickman at No. 4. The searches keep returning the same body of material, and the No. 4 reference appears only in the Barb Jacobson Fitzrovia News article — which is, of course, precisely your problem, since she uses it to argue the wrong conclusion. Your 4 July 1791 advertisement appears to be a genuinely rare primary source with very little online echo.
This was a eureka moment for me. Of course Barb Jacobson’s 2010 article mentions No. 4 Upper Marylebone Street- it was precisely because I was searching for information about No. 4, the house in which my father was born – that I found Barb’s article and started on this Thomas Paine journey of my own. To quote from that Barb Jacobson article:
The mis-identification of 154 New Cavendish may have come about because there is one letter from Rickman published in Joshua Reynold’s correspondence which gives his address as No. 4 Upper Marylebone St, the present 154, one of the three original Georgian terrace houses left. This is, however, the only document among dozens of others which gives Rickman’s address as No 7.
I needed to delve into that Joshua Reynolds reference. A bit of searching and I find the relevant book on the Internet Archive – here’s a link to the reference:
From Thomas Rickman
No. 4 Upper Marylebone Street
July 19 – 1791
Bingo! Both of the No 4 Upper Marylebone Street references were in July 1791. All subsequent written references to the exact address (October 1792 being the earliest) say No 7.
In short, for our purposes, the first page of the Horwood Plan was mapped between October 1790, when Horwood published his prospectus-type small sample – the area around Leicester Square – and June 1792 when he published the first full page of the plan. Part of Upper Marylebone Street is at the very top right hand corner of that first page. Horwood must have done the mapping (including the house numbering) of Upper Marylebone Street during that period.
Not a mistake then, just a diligent record of the state of affairs at a particular date in the very early 1790s. The three un-numbered units on the north-east corner of that street were presumably still under construction. Renumbering will have occurred in the aftermath of that completion.
A visit to the Westminster Archive to examine the rates books for the Parish of St Marylebone confirmed my theory. To summarise:
1788 – Upper Marylebone Street is not listed;
1789 – Upper Marylebone Street is listed but no-one with a Rickman connection is shown;
1790 – No 4. Upper Marylebone Street’s rates are attributed to Sarah Wall, Jane Greetham Rickman (née Wall)’s mother. The first five listed for that street are as follows: No. 1 – John Higgs, No. 2 – Samuel Harper, No. 3- Joseph Kendrick, No. 4 – Sarah Wall, No. 5 – Joanna Boyle…
1792 – Upper Marylebone Street appears on a surcharge page with the following entries: 1- Benjamin Williams, 2 – Joseph Moby, 3 – John Crooks, 56 – John Higgs
1793 & 1794 – Upper Marylebone Street listings show the first three entries with blobs rather than numbers. here is the 1794 extract: * – William Goundry, * – Joseph Mobey, * – John Crooks, No. 1- John Edwards, No. 2 – Thomas Higgs, No. 3 – Joseph Kendrick, No. 4 – Sarah Wall, No. 5 – Joanna Boyle…
1795 – Upper Marylebone Street listings settle into the house numbering system that prevailed until the 1937 change to New Cavendish Street: No. 1 – J. Hickery, No. 2 – John Wingh, No. 3 – John Crooks, No. 4 – John Edwards, No. 5 – Thomas Higgs, No. 6 – Joseph Kendrick, No. 7 – Sarah Wall, No. 8 – Joanna Boyle…
1800, similarly: No. 3 – John Crooks, No. 4 – Richard Quash, No. 5 – Thomas Higgs, No. 6 – Joseph Kendrick, No. 7 – Sarah Wall, No. 8 – Joanna Boyle…
Just in case the reader is baffled by the Sarah Wall connection, here is a link to the Family Search record for Jane – Thomas Clio Rickman’s second wife, who died in 1811. One charming factoid about the Rickman children is that Clio and Jane named each of their children after a well-known radical, revolutionary or anti-slavery campaigner, apart from one later child whom they simply named Thomas:
Maria Jane Paine Rickman, b 1791
Clio Alfred Washington Rickman, b 1793
Eloisa Franklin Rickman, b 1794
Rousseau Loft Rickman, b 1796
Volney Rickman, b 1797
Petrarch Rickman, b 1799
Thomas Rickman, b 1801
Stanhope Rickman, b 1803
Eloisa Rickman, b 1807.
The senior historian at English Heritage has been delightfully challenging yet open-minded to all of this. Fascinatingly, the original application for a Blue Plaque, in 1983, was not rejected because of the confusing changes to house numbering in that street, but because the applicant couldn’t provide evidence that Thomas Paine had stayed and written in Upper Marylebone Street at all, nor even that Thomas Clio Rickman had lived there, as they seemed unable to connect the name Wall in the rate books with the Rickman family. On-line genealogy websites had not been invented in 1983.
The Thomas Paine Historical Association had a plethora of references to Thomas Clio Rickman and Thomas Paine at No. 7 Upper Marylebone Street and I was able to add to those. In addition to several mentions in contemporaneous biographies to the fact that Thomas Paine had stayed at that house, one delicious piece of evidence, very much in the public domain, is the self-indicting testimony that Thomas and Jane gave in the famous Old Bailey High Treason Trials of 1794, while Thomas Hardy was in the dock for the first of the trials.
Here is an extract from Jackson’s Oxford Journal of 1 November 1794, reporting on the events of Thursday 30 October:
Both Clio and Jane must have been incredibly brave to give this testimony, although under English law, with no Bill of Rights / Fifth Amendment type protection, silence would have been even more self-incriminating. As we now know, Thomas Erskine‘s smart defence prevailed.
So there you have it – sufficiently evidenced. The house that was briefly No. 4 but soon became No 7. Upper Marylebone Street for nearly 150 years, before becoming 154 New Cavendish Street today, is the very house where:
THOMAS PAINE 1737–1809 Political writer and radical wrote Rights of Man in 1791–92 while lodging with his friends THOMAS ‘CLIO’ RICKMAN 1761–1834 and JANE GREETHAM RICKMAN NÉE WALL 1764-1811, booksellers, publishers, and reformers, who lived there from 1791 and c.1790 respectively, and both died in that house.
That looks more like football than cricket to my tired eyes
Middlesex Double Feature: Men v Surrey & Women v Leicestershire, Sunday 24 May 2026
The end of the men’s game
Janie and I were not going to let a double header of county T20 cricket interrupt our regular schedule of playing tennis (modern) on a Sunday morning, before washing and smartening ourselves up a bit and heading to Lord’s.
The men’s game was scheduled ahead of the women’s game. We figured that seating in the pavilion was not going to be a problem for late arrivals. We were right.
While sprucing, I caught the end of the Middlesex innings of the men’s game and adjudged Middlesex to be many runs short of a competitive target. Indeed I, of little faith, told Janie that I thought we might not make it in time to see the end of the men’s match.
Actually, when we arrived, Middlesex were flattering to deceive…or providing a faint glimmer of misplaced hope…before succumbing to the inevitable before our eyes quite soon after we arrived.
There was a seemingly unnecessary long interval between the men’s match and the women’s match – almost encouraging those less devoted to women’s cricket to depart before seeing the second match.
Janie and I chatted at length with my tennis friend Barry Nathan and his good lady. Barry informed us that the men’s and women’s matches had been switched, timewise, because the TV company couldn’t imagine anyone watching the men’s cricket match at the same time as football play-offs were taking place on other sports channels. It’s all about TV sports scheduling these days – who knew?
It was a blisteringly hot afternoon, but the pavilion forecourt offered shady respite from the worst excesses of the relentless May heatwave sun. Barry recommended the view from the new Allen Stand – what there is of it at this stage – but not the very top, uncovered section, obviously.
I resolved to avoid jokes with phrases such as “Foxy ladies” (for the Leicestershire Foxes Women) or “hot totty” to describe a women’s match on the hottest May day since records began.
Janie and I gave that a try, until we realised that the middle tier, shady though it was, and excellent view though it provided, effectively had a radiator above it, in the form of the depopulated uncovered top section.
We retreated back to the pavilion, but not before I was accosted by a young man whose face looked vaguely familiar. He greeted me like an old friend and told his mate in slightly inebriated terms that he’d met me in the locker room and that I was an expert on tennis and cricket history. I waxed briefly about 1875 And All That, in the style of a minor celebrity who feels that he has to perform in his show-biz demeanour, while bemoaning the fact that my history expertise was not doing a great job of remembering this young man, nor whether he was tennis, squash or in the locker room for some other reason. I guessed tennis and probably showed the requisite amount of remembering to get a bare pass at recent history.
The “meeja” action unfolded right before our eyes…as did the “mill around until the other team bats” action
We left a few overs in to the Leicestershire innings and caught the end of that match on the stream when we got home. Much like the men’s match, Middlesex flattered to deceive for a while but came second in the end.
Tournament-wise, the men’s team are doing their normal thing of barely winning a game, whereas the Middlesex women (albeit Division Two) have only lost the one game out of five so far as I write – it just happened to be the one that we attended.
Still, an enjoyable, albeit swealtering, afternoon at Lord’s.
England v New Zealand Test Match: 4 to 7 June 2026
Day Four With Daisy
I attended days one, two & four of this match. Good pick – day three was a near washout.
Days one and two I attended alone, having arranged to play some tennis as well as watch cricket on both days.
I try to book slots on the test match days that do not coincide with the intervals in play. This is not to avoid watching cricket, but more to try leaving the pre-match, lunchtime and post-match slots to players whose tennis performances have more “showtime” potential than the tennis I play.
Unfortunately, as the weather had turned shoddy for this test match, our lowly 12:00 fixture on day one coincided imperfectly with a rain interval. The viewing gallery filled up with people. Hecklers from our own real tennis cohort in the inner part of the dedans gallery. Bemused patrons in the dedans gallery bar, who had come to Lord’s in search of international standard elite sport, yet were, instead, faced with four keen but aging gents “having a go” as best we could. Hopefully, come the third or fourth glass of fizz, visitors could barely tell the difference between international cricket and amateur tennis.
This 1 min carefully selected sample from the MCC Club Weekend tournament at Lord’s in January 2026
I played again at 5:00pm, a slightly more high falutin’ game than the 12:00 bout, mercifully without a crowd for the tennis, as New Zealand were starting their innings. I played rather well, and was delighted to hear several huge cheers from the crowd beyond, as I landed a few rare winners during a good 10 minute period. I was a little deflated to learn later that the authorities weren’t showing my winners on the big screens – it was Ollie Robinson taking three wickets in an over on the cricket pitch.
The bit of cricket I saw on day one I mostly watched from the pavilion.
I got to see far more of the cricket on day two, after playing tennis at 11:00. The weather was better and I took up one of my more regular positions near Old Father Time at the despised end of the Tavern Stand. It is the least crowded members and friends area and therefore the easiest place for nomadic members, like me, who like to wander a bit more than most. After tea, I took to the pavilion sundeck, which was pretty crowded but a good place to just mingle and watch on a bit, before sitting again in the Tavern Stand for a chunk of the last hour.
Day four was supposed to be a day at Lord’s with Janie, but we knew before the start of play that it would probably only be an hour or two. Janie is always happy with that. In any case we take a modest picnic if it is just the two of us and Janie is always happy to get a chunk of such a day back, having taken in the Lord’s atmosphere and enjoyed some action. Seeing the end of a match has a certain form of satisfaction to it, which some MCC afficionados consider to be quite unneccessary; perhaps even a bit common.
Sporting my pillbox
I had received plenty of positive feedback throughout the match on my new choice of headgear – the pillbox cap rather than the peaked cap. Pillbox caps were all the rage until peaked caps became fashionable for sports from the last quarter of the 19th century.
Robert Allan Fitzgerald sporting an MCC pillbox cap. Drawing not all totally to scale.
I have now ordered another pillbox cap that looks even more like MCC colours. I’m going to start lobbying the MCC shop to start producing and selling proper MCC ones. The pillbox cap feels like a fashion whose time should come once again.
Anyway, Janie and I saw more than 90 minutes of cricket and I got half of Janie’s ticket money back!
Not a classic test match but still, as pretty much always, enjoyable times at Lord’s.
Some Sort Of MCC Cricket Day At Lord’s With Michael Mainelli, 11 June 2026
Michael has visited Lord’s with me many times, for both domestic and international cricket. Apart from the odd rain delay, we have never previously experienced a washout.
But this day was well and truly a washout and was destined to be so for several days in the build up.
Never mind. There are worse places to be than Lord’s. I showed Michael the library where I am doing a lot of my research, then we watched the last set-and-a-half of a good in-house tournament tennis match, which went down to the wire. Then we retired to the Long Room Bar / Old Library for luncheon after taking a stroll around in what, by now, was just persistent drizzle, which prevented mopping up after the torrential rain of the mid-to-late morning, ensuring no cricket play at all that day.
Michael presented me with a fridge magnet, in honour of Ogblog, emblazoned thus:
Whatever can Michael mean? You can absolutely rely on me to report matters faithfully from my point of view on Ogblog.
After Michael departed, I spent a couple of hours at Tennis Committee and then a further couple of hours at a town hall meeting in Pelhams Restaurant to discuss gender diversity in the MCC.
I even went back the next morning for another very enjoyable game of tennis.
I do now have my own locker at Lord’s – perhaps I should consider keeping a sleeping bag there as well.
The above is a very relevant early example of my “work”, not least because Victoria (whose father I was spoofing in that lyric) directed and appeared in It’s A Funny New Game.
Anyway, I took the very slight detour from my regular routes twixt W2 and NW8 to revisit the Canal Café Theatre and see friends Mark Keegan and John Random in their football-oriented comedy show, It’s A Funny New Game.
The show is timed to coincide with the advent of a football world cup and much of the comedy is thus topical. What else would you expect from former Newsrevue stalwarts?
It was lovely to meet up with some of the old Newsrevue crowd the night I attended: Barry Grossman, Graham Robertson and even a special guest appearance from Harriet Quirk, which was a lovely surprise.
The show is bound to be funnier to people who understand the football jokes than it was to me. But some of the humour is universal, as are the characters. Egotist Barry Mousetrap – a theatrical football manager who struggles to separate compering a show with managing a football team. The god-fearing, temperance-touting Victorian referee played by John Random, who also excelled as a 120-year-old Uruguayan retired footballer, who recalls being chased by adoring female fans in the style of Pete & Dud: “Calm down girls, back off, form a orderly queue”…or words to that effect.
I enjoyed the video fillers that enabled some costume changes and provided some relief from the on-stage mayhem. The Sense & Sensibility spoof particularly pleased me (I’m partial to a bit of Jane Austen) although the football puns in that one were all wasted on me as I couldn’t contextualise them.
I could contextualise the Mastermind sketch, in which the England goalkeeper takes “inadvertently naming each member of England 2026 World Cup squad” as his specialist subject. This worked so well because, even if you didn’t know the names that were yet to come, you sort-of know that some of the names are going to be quite difficult to dovetail into a simple question and answer. Bellingham made me laugh out loud.
It was a game of one half, this show, as the whole show lasts about the length of one half of a football match. I think that’s about the right length for such a show.
But if you were not sated by my write up or by seeing the show, there is a book, linked below, available through that link or through other reputable and disreputable outlets.
Well done lads. Top performances. Now it’s time for your ice bath.
