Viva LichVegas!
LichVegas T-shirt featuring Dr Samuel Johnson and James Boswell
Here’s a shout out to my colleagues on our splendid hyperlocal news site, The Lichfield Blog, who have teamed up with satirical T-shirt co-operative Sabcat Printing to produce a host of tongue-in-cheek designs (all of them celebrating the city of Lichfield) under the moniker Viva LichVegas. We liked the Georgian flava of this one: Johnson trips along the street, arm-in-arm with Boswell, accompanied by the quote ‘He who aspires to be a hero / must drink brandy’ and the heading: LichVegas: The Landlocked Seaside Resort. As the makers point out, it’s the perfect accompaniment to ‘a night out in any of Lichfield’s fine watering holes’ and very much in the spirit of Johnsonian wit (after all, Johnson spoke fondly of a time ‘when all the decent people in Lichfield got drunk every night, and were not the worse thought of’). T-shirts are £10 each (including UK delivery) and half of the proceeds go towards sustaining The Lichfield Blog during the toughest climate for local news in many a long year.
I live in the English cathedral city of Lichfield, which, despite having a population of fewer than 5,000 during the Georgian period, was home to many important artists and intellectuals including Samuel Johnson, David Garrick and Erasmus Darwin. I generally blog about the short 18th century (1715-1789), feisty Georgian ladies and Lichfield’s 18th-century heritage. If you have any comments, feel free to email me at woffington [at] gmail [dot] com. You can also