A call to preserve memories of London Financial Times
26.06.09
There aren’t many pictures of my childhood London. To get a glimpse of the world I grew up in, I have to give microscopic attention to the backgrounds of English movies made between 1945 and 1955 in the hope of seeing the ruined South Bank in Hue and Cry or the remains of Wapping in Night and the City . If I’m willing to sit through hours of cockney stereotypes, I might occasionally catch a few metres of library footage shot through the windows of a tram with Sid James’s head in the way. My London is fleeting, mysterious, torn down or buried.
London was different up to 1940. In illustrated books, it often seems tranquil and quaint, full of lost churchyards and hidden courts. There were always places where the traffic noise dropped away and you could enjoy a bit of peace. That was before the firestorms blasted the East End into blazing fragments of people and buildings, when so much of that quaint tranquillity became heaps of rubble, tottering walls, fire-blasted windows, cut-aways of people’s private lives, their bathrooms and bedrooms, everything they’d valued, exposed to the hasty curiosity of the survivors.
Its portfolio ranges from modest retirement dwellings, like Hilary Englefield's flat, to luxury penthouses in St George Wharf on the banks of the Thames where owners include Chelsea Clinton and Sir John Major. The income they generate has helped and more »
Christopher Middleton salutes the houseboat set Thames Sailing Barge, £350000 Boatshed (020 7870 1105; london.boatshed.com) This 80ft-long, 14-berth barge is said to be made with wood from Darwin's HMS Beagle and is moored at Wapping.
Her election manifesto was sparse, but included introducing cruises on the Ganges River “in line with River Thames of London” and converting Bengal's tea-growing Darjeeling district into the “Switzerland of the East”. She also plans to revamp a famous and more »
DeHavilland (press release) (subscription) - May 13, 2011
I have the privilege to be leader of a local authority, the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. It is in many ways a comfortable authority, where some of the issues set out in this report might seem less pressing than they are elsewhere. and more »
JP Morgan's hunt for Afghan goldHannam and another top JP Morgan executive held clandestine meetings with two Dow Chemical executives at the Compleat Angler, a luxury hotel on the bank of the Thames. In 2008, Hannam was passed over for the top job at Cazenove in favor of an outsider. and more »
