London Trivia No. 1: The Origin Of The Bowler Hat

It’s part of a fantasy London of umbrellas and cockneys, but I have only ever seen a handful of people wearing these, usually ironically. The idea of showing England as a country of bowler-hatted bankers is as absurdly anachronistic as imagining Americans riding through towns on horses – but the image persists. Why?

Well, it wasn’t [...]