Prince Albert’s Mega-kitsch Memorial
Of course the damn thing is utterly absurd. Every criticism of high victoriana – over-sentimental, over-decorated, over-elaborate to the point of fussy, over size – […]
architecture
St George’s Bloomsbury: the triumph of “the Devil’s Architect”
Find your way to the High Holborn entrance to the roof terrace of the new ‘Post Building’ (the former Royal Mail West Central District Office), […]
St Mary’s Isn’t in the Way
One of the ways in which the city has been vastly improved over the past few years has been the claiming back of roadways into […]
Duck Island Cottage – Westminster’s Swiss Chalet
It’s somehow absolutely typical of london that some of the closest neighbours to George Gilbert Scott’s huge Italianate Foreign Office building is a pair of […]
Whitehall Court – London on the Loire
Look towards the Eye from St James’s Park (or vice versa), or look upriver from the Golden Jubilee Bridge and there appears to be a […]
The York House Watergate and the 1st Duke of Buckingham
When Joseph Bazalgette created his marvellous (and still used) sewer system the 1860s, he pushed back the banks of the Thames and buried his main […]
Queen Anne’s Gate: Higgledy-Piggledy in SW1
Apparently the expression “higgledy-piggledy” is not much known in the US; my use of the phrase to an American tour group as we passed a […]
Stockwell’s concrete cathedral for buses
Fall asleep on a Go-Ahead bus and you might just be lucky enough to wake up in the depot – the soaring, concrete cathedral that […]
The Chapel of St John the Evangelist
One of the loveliest and most peaceful spaces in London is literally in the centre of one of the busiest. The Tower of London gets […]
The Ascent of W1: the Marble Arch Mound
I actually thought it might be a good idea. It was certainly an idea worth exploring, and perhaps wacky/left field enough to work; plant a […]