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Rob Baker

@robnitm.bsky.social
1.6K followers 1.1K following 244 posts

Author of two London history books - 'Beautiful Idiots and Brilliant Lunatics' and 'High Buildings, Low Morals' - I'm currently doing up a 18th Century cottage in the Brecon Beacons which seems to be taking an inordinate amount of time.

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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Lee Miller's Torso being cast by Paul Hamann and assistant, London, 1939 by Roland Penrose. Hall and sideboard, Farleys House, Farleys House & Gallery by Tony Tree.
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Traffic warden Mrs Ives crashes an Ossie Clark/Michael Rainey photoshoot on the Fulham Road in September 1967. The models Elisa Ngai and Bill Chenail (Elisa’s Ossi dress sold for 6gns, bill's Kaftan 9gns).
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davyh @davyh.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Brilliantly written about by @robnitm.bsky.social
flashbak.com
The Death of Cass Elliot and Keith Moon at Harry Nilsson's Macabre Mayfair Flat - Flashbak
Marianne Faithfull pointed at a pale man sitting next to her and told a reporter, rather optimistically, that Oliver Musker, the twenty-seven-year- old Old Etonian she was seeing at the time and who h...
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Pauline Boty died #OTD sixty years ago in 1966. She's one of my absolute heroes and I once wrote about her, and her involvement in the Anti-Uglies... flashbak.com/the-artist-p...
flashbak.com
The Tragic Story of the Artist Pauline Boty - Flashbak
"A blonde, vivacious girl, filled with joie de vivre. She was stunning" - Lewis Morley
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Benny Hill in his kichen at his flat at 1-2 Queensgate, May 1969.
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Fleet Street in February, 1971. What sort of food did an Old Kentucky restaurant sell?
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Ladbroke Grove in 1988 - photo by Peter Marshall
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
1954: The Lollard Adventure playground, just off Lambeth Walk. You can just see the Palace of Westminster in the distance, not much more than half a mile away.
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
A wee lamb a bit late to the party. An early morning view over the Senni Valley, 30 mins walk from my house in Heol Senni.
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Sink in an Earls Court hotel room in 1977. There’s an electric coin meter connected to the hot water tap, a vintage car waste bin, and to cope with it all there’s a glass of Teachers whisky on the tv.
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Sue McGregor & Charles Stokes, BBC reporters for "World At One" try and fry an egg at Piccadilly Circus in 1968. The temperature reached 32 degrees on July 1st.
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Lovecraft on Tottenham Court Road in 1971.
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
A nine year old Ian Dury and his mum Peggy at the Festival of Britain in 1951. Ian had contracted Polio two years previously, most likely, he believed, from a swimming pool at Southend-on-Sea during the 1949 polio epidemic.
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Victoria in 1962
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
Vauxhall in 1985
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
Alexis Korner with @PPArnold1 at a CND rally near St Paul's Cathedral, 15th April 1968.
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 02/01/2026
Bankside and its surroundings, January 1947- the old Bankside power station on the left - St Paul's cathedral just visible through the mist.
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
Is Jim Rockford using Cockney rhyming slang?
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
London Fish Dinner at 275, Strand in 1884 (Opposite W.H. Smith & Son’s)
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
Joan Crawford asks her assistant to bite off a loose thread from her dress at the Dorchester Hotel, London, July 1956 - photograph by Thurston Hopkins.
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Paul Whitelaw @paulwhitelaw.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
I've never seen this before, it's lovely - Michael Nesmith performing Propinquity on The David Frost Show in 1971.
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
Rupert Street Market in Soho, 1965 - photographer unknown
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
Menu at Veeraswamy’s, 99 Regent Street from November 1945. It included a Theatre Service and a weather forecast.
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Baltimore Beat @baltimorebeat.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
‘Rye Lane’ is an underseen rom-com gem baltimorebeat.com/rye-lane-is-...
baltimorebeat.com
‘Rye Lane’ is an underseen rom-com gem
Modern romantic comedies, rare as they have become, have a tendency to feel fixated on the main couple and not the world that they live in. Think back to the famous “I’ll have what she’s having”…
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
Veeraswamy's menu from March 1944
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Backstage at Lindsay Kemp. 1974. Patrick Cargill, Larry Parnes, Lindsay, Danny La Rue, Peter Wyngarde. Photo by Mick Rock
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
"More Champagne"! - Francis Bacon in the Toucan Club, 1980. Can anyone tell me anything about the club on Gerrard Street?
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
1972
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
The Amalgamated Union of Engineering & Foundry Workers take on mini-skirts in 1968. The foundry section alone had approximately 72,000 members.
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
Legalise Freedom? St Agnes Place, Vauxhall, 1984 - photo by Peter Marshall.
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
The Gerrard Street Telephone Exchange building was built in 1906-1907 to the designs of Leonard Stokes, who happened to be married to the daughter of the General Manager of the National Telephone Company. The building at 32-35 Gerrard Street was replaced in the mid-1930s
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 20/12/2025
Peter Ustinov, Christopher Fry and Kenneth Tynan drinking in the Nag’s Head pub in Covent Garden, 1955
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 22/12/2025
Terence Rattigan in his apartment at Albany, Piccadilly in 1948. His ‘Playbill' opened at the Phoenix Theatre, London, on 8 September that year.
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Jonathan Calder @lordbonkers.bsky.social · 18/01/2026
Liberal England... Nora Brown and Stephanie Coleman: The Very Day I'm Gone
liberalengland.blogspot.com
Nora Brown and Stephanie Coleman: The Very Day I'm Gone
BBC Radio 3's Late Junction is a treasure, so of course the station's controllers can't stop cutting it. It once ran for two hours, three ti...
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 17/01/2026
Golly’s Garage on the corner of the Earl’s Court Road and Cromwell Road c. 1935
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
Horse Guards Parade, 1971
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
Frank Auerbach at the LCC Open Air Exhibition, July 1948, Embankment Gardens, London. Photo - Dan Farson.
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
Snow in Oxford Street, 1941
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 03/01/2026
Paul Robeson, Anna May Wong and Peking opera artist Mei Lanfang, outside Claridges in 1935.
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 03/01/2026
Anna May Wong, who was born on this day in 1905, in her London flat in 1928
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 03/01/2026
Views of Pen y Fan and Corn Du on a walk from my house yesterday
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 02/01/2026
Bankside and its surroundings, January 1947- the old Bankside power station on the left - St Paul's cathedral just visible through the mist.
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Anne Margaret Daniel 🌻 @annemargaretdaniel.bsky.social · 01/01/2026
2025 was a horrible year. I'm so very glad to see the end of it. Happy New Year from Samuel Beckett and me. Go be kind x
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 01/01/2026
90 years ago, this was the menu at the Trocadero's Arctic Night New Year's Eve party, 1935-36
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 31/12/2025
Peter Cook at the Establishment Club, 18 Greek Street in 1962
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 29/12/2025
Dancing at the Sunset Club, a jazz and calypso club, situated at 50 Carnaby Street - December 1951
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 28/12/2025
Brigitte Bardot in the Coach and Horses on Bruton Lane, photos by Ray Bellisario in 1968
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Rob Baker @robnitm.bsky.social · 26/12/2025
My late stepfather was evacuated from Folkestone to Merthyr Tydfil during WW2. Here’s a page from his diary in December 1940. “Went out to dig up incendiary bombs” as you do.
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