| [1] [2] Page 1 of 2 | |||||
LondonLondon Pictures
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
“You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.” Samuel Johnson
How to sum up London in a few hundred words? Impossible. But it has inspired some of the greatest artists and painters the world has ever seen, so it can be described through pictures, and we'll take you on a short tour of our collection, which we think is one of the most unusual portfolios of London pictures you can find. One of the greatest cities in the world, ancient or modern, London is also the home of Lord Price - his happy hunting ground. The city and its history are so diverse that they defy straightforward explanation - it's been around for a couple of thousand years and has seen coronations and regicide, revolutions, zeppelins and the blitz, fine architecture and gin-soaked squalor, plague and fire, obscene wealth and abject poverty. The River Thames is the artery of London and features in many of our pictures of London. Starting our tour in East London, the docks lay at the heart of London's prosperity as raw material imports came in from around the Empire by ship, while manufactured goods went out to supply the world. As we go upriver we enter the City of London (the Square Mile), the commercial centre not only of Britain but of the Empire and for centuries the focus of the global capitalist economy. The City included institutions such as the Bank of England and London's great exchanges and markets such as Billingsgate. Its most recognisable feature has to be Tower Bridge, opened in 1894 and so named because of its proximity to the Tower of London, home to the Beefeaters (often incorrectly called Yeomen of the Guard). Further West we find Sir Christopher Wren's masterpiece, St Paul's Cathedral si monumentum requiris, circumspice - if you seek his monument, look around you'. On the Strand we pass the Savoy Hotel (the road outside which is the only two-way street in Britain on which we drive our cars on the right) on our way through Trafalgar Square, with its monument to Admiral Horatio Nelson, the Royal Navy's greatest hero and victor in Napoleonic sea battles, to Westminster Abbey (where monarchs such as Victoria, Edward VII and the Georges were crowned. Next door are the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben (which is actually a bell in the tower, not the tower itself or even the clock). Backtracking towards the City from Parliament we enter the West End, the theatre and entertainment heart of the capital. Going 'up west' is a London phrase for going to town in search of fun, frolics and the opposite gender (with the odd drink knocked back for good measure). This is where Carnaby Street was the fashion centre of the Swinging Sixties. Some of the world's best restaurants are to be found here, along with, of course, a plethora of unique pubs. Keep going West and you'll end up at Heathrow, the world's busiest international airport and home to some of the world's major airlines. Even further upriver you'll get to Oxford, where the River Thames is known, quaintly, as the Isis. We've meandered through the centre of town and would have traveled on that London icon, the red double-decker bus. London is so big that it has many suburbs and they feature in our collection. We're most fond of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, close to where we passed our happy schooldays. “When it's three o'clock in New York, it's still 1938 in London.” Bette Midler | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
