By The Landlord
“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.” – Samuel Johnson
"London is a modern Babylon … London is a roost for every bird … London – a nation, not a city.” – Benjamin Disraeli
“I don’t know what London’s coming to – the higher the buildings the lower the morals.” – Noël Coward
“A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping,
Dirty and dusty, but as wide as eye
Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping
In sight, then lost amidst the forestry
Of masts; a wilderness of steeples peeping
On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy;
A huge, dun cupola, like a foolscap crown
On a fool’s head – and there is London Town.” – Lord Byron
“You are now
In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow
At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore
Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more
Yet in its depth what treasures!” – P.B. Shelley
“Go where we may—rest where we will,
Eternal London haunts us still.” – Thomas Moore
“The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane.” –Stephen Fry
“London is a cluster of communities, great and small, famous and unsung; a city of contrasts, a congregation of diversity.” – Roy Porter
“London is a labyrinth, half of stone, and half of flesh.” – Peter Ackroyd, London: The Biography
“It might be compared to some organism which sloughs off its old skin, or texture, in order to live again. It is a city which has the ability to dance upon its own ashes.” – Peter Ackroyd, London: The Biography
“London goes beyond any boundary or convention. It contains every wish or word ever spoken, every action or gesture ever made, every harsh or noble statement ever expressed. It is illimitable. It is Infinite London.” ― Peter Ackroyd, London: The Biography
“In London, everyone is different, and that means anyone can fit in.” – Paddington Bear
“At length they all to merry London came,
To merry London, my most kindly nurse,
That to me gave this life's first native source;
Though from another place I take my name,
An house of ancient fame.
There when they came, whereas those bricky towers,
The which on Thames' broad aged back do ride,
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers
There whilom wont the Templar Knights to bide …:
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.” – Edmund Spenser, Prothalamion, 1596
“Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.” – TS Eliot, The Fire Sermon, from The Wasteland, 1922
Its first true muddy built ditch, or wood-pitch ridge
was likely sunk at a Vauxhall Saxon bridge.
But centuries on, first true dominion?
A Roman garrison called Londinium,
attacked, ransacked, a burning barbican
by a famous feisty woman – Boudiccan.
Yet rot it could not, ne'er sit still nor fester
And took the top spot from ... where? Colchester.
From Vikings to Saxons, to Blackfriars and spires,
the year 1212 saw the first of Great Fires.
Built up again? Yes, there's a pattern,
it burns, but then comes back again,
with craft and commerce, grift and glory,
the artful, inventive, with greed and the gory,
dodgy inventory, make hunky-dory,
a city alight with a hell of a story.
So this week it's open – as wide as the Thames,
to mudlark your boots with musical gems.
Songs about landmarks, people and history.
Songs about heroes, villains and mystery.
Songs about strands, and hangmen, and fleets.
Songs about bands, Big Ben and streets.
Gangsters and poets, Krays, Blake and Donne,
London ain’t never done, not in the long run.
Palaces, abbeys, London’s great parks,
Tudors to theatres and Shakespeare in Southwark.
Plagues, then a spark in small Pudding Lane,
brought the great city aflame once again.
It lit up the skyline, toasted the firmament,
bigger than Fawkes’ plot for Houses of Parliament.
Then better builds, less wood, more stone walls,
With Christopher Wren and his towering St Paul’s.
The Great Fire of 1666
Money and crisis are oft intertwined,
careless and commerce so closely aligned.
Industry boomed, but 1850s Great Stink
with Thames thick with shit, made many think
’twas time for improvements, not for more poo-ers,
to set up superior channels of sewers.
How? Hero’s work done that few will regret
by chief engineer Joseph Bazalgette.
The Silent Highwayman of 1858, capturing the Great Stink of 1858
Michael Faraday and the Great Stink …
The solution? Beautiful Crossness Sewage Pumping Station - a wonder of Victorian engineering to behold
Victorian times brought true revolutions,
rich with inventions, though polluting solutions.
Westminster rebuilt, South Bank made sound;
laying first lines of the great Underground.
History’s progress will ebb and then flow,
Bars, clubs, hotels? They come and go.
Good times and bad, blown into bits
by crazes and cholera, Great Smog, and Blitz.
Carnaby, Bond Street? They could be relevant,
but outside the central, spread wider … to Elephant,
Cockfosters, Morden, Dagenham, Ongar?
Go Rotten Row? Ponder’s End longer?
Camden might play out, fitting the bill.
But climb Ally Pally, or Strawberry Hill,
Bleeding Heart Lane? Names funny or vulgar
stand as much chance as squares like Trafalgar.
Take Hackney cabs, climb Epping’s trees.
Walk canal pathways, such as the Lea’s.
Tour Dickens’ alleys, take in strange views.
Sites coloured in London Illustrated News.
Enjoy this great melting pot, British or foreigner,
Cockney or posher, from Speaker’s Corner.
If it’s in London, you cannot go wrong,
Let Thames’ flow and flood out with song.
Two of the many maps of London recreated in musical theme form.
The Handel-Hendrix Museum on Brook Street, central London, where the two greats lived 200 years apart
Music hall superstar Marie Lloyd
And for further inspiration, some entertaining documentary films from the past, about London’s even older past. First up, revered actor James Mason presents The London Nobody Knows (1969) filled with amazing footage, poignant, comic and tragic:
And with a different style, but but no less insightful and amusing and at times eccentric, this documentary by the BBC’s Bernard Falk in 1975 with his Tour of Hidden London:
And on a particularly musical note, here’s Carry On actor and true British eccentric Kenneth Williams doing a tour of the very poor area in which he grew up around Somers Town/St Pancras, decorating the film with few old songs:
Finally, highly recommended, entertaining monthly talks about the history of London can also be found at Salon For the City.
So then, it’s time to let your London ideas flow in and out of the Bar as regularly and with as much regularity as the Thames, overseen by this week’s musical historian and lovely Londoner, MussoliniHeadkick! Place nominations below for deadline at 11pm on Monday UK, for playlists published next week. London is calling …
A tea tray photograph of the mid-century city
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