The Guy Fox Blog

#3. Blue Trolley (May 2000) What you see here is our Transportation Department – our battered, beloved blue trolley.  When Kourtney applied for that grant from the Peabody Trust ( Object #2 ), she included a budget. Having never done a funding budget before, there were bound to be some mistakes.   Indeed, that budget wasn’t even a twig compared to the robust, well-researched budgets that we submit in our funding applications now. It guesstimated the various line items and confidently stated: “I will re-work / re-design the project to accommodate the funding which is made available to me.” For Distribution Costs, Kourtney guessed ‘£200 to £300’. After all, how much could it cost to send out 5,000 magazines to 65 primary schools? Well. A lot more than you might expect.  (In fact, distribution is one of our most expensive activities. Often,  SENDING  a Guy Fox book is double the cost of  PRINTING  one! ) As we said, there w...

#1. Drawings of Guy Fox (Autumn 1998) These pen and ink drawings are the very first iterations of the Guy Fox character. As you can see, he's gained a little weight since then – mostly in his nose! These days, we draw him in pencil, add the black lines with an old-fashioned dip pen and ink, and then scan the drawing so that we can colour it in Photoshop.  But back in 1998, when Kourtney Harper created Guy Fox, she and her husband were relocating from Chapel Hill, North Carolina to London and living out of a suitcase – no computer, no scanner, no software. So when inspiration struck, Kourtney popped in to see Mr Poole at Cornelissen .  Mr Poole was one of those living institutions who can only exist in a place like London. Dressed in pinstriped trousers, waistcoat, pocket watch with fob and immaculately-polished shoes, and wielding a walking stick that doubled as a grappling device, Mr Poole sold pen and ink drawing supplies. Nib holders, nibs, brushes and in...

HOW DID THEY BUILD TOWER BRIDGE (PART TWO) First, they built the Towers The steel for the towers was made by William Arrol and Company in Scotland, and it was shipped to London and brought up the river on barges. There wasn't much space to store equipment and materials, so the steel was brought up the river when it was needed. Crews of workers set about 200 rivets per day – by hand. There are two million rivets in Tower Bridge – so you can do the math.The work took a long time! Slowly but surely, the steelwork rose from the Thames like a huge black skeleton. Each tower had four steel pillars. The two pillars on the land-side of the tower would support the suspension chains, while the river-side pillars would support the high level walkways. When the structure was in place, workers built the Walkways. When the pillars were finished, workers started building the high level walkways. They worked 46 metres above the river, without safety nets! Boats would pass below them,...

Smack dab in the centre of the City of London, on Fish Street Hill, you will find one of the world's tallest free-standing stone columns, The Monument . You can visit it any day except Christmas. Just buy yourself a ticket, then hike up 311 steps -- each one EXACTLY six inches high. When you get to the viewing platform, you will see amazing views of the City of London, the Thames River, and beyond. And the view feels extra impressive, because you've earned it! Hiking up The Monument is not for everybody. It's a long, windy stone staircase, which gets narrower towards the top. There's only one way up and down, so while you are ascending, other tourists are walking DOWN the self-same six-inch steps as you. Whatever you do, DON'T look down! (You're tempted now, right?) If you do muster up the courage to look over the handrail, ALL the dizzy way down to the bottom (gulp!), you will see a red-lit chamber underneath the staircase. And THAT's where our sto...