Simon Jenkins

Simon Jenkins - The Guardian 20 November 2009

"I once sat next to a woman at dinner who asked me where I lived. When I replied, London, she frowned and said, how simply ghastly for me. "It's an awful place, absolute hell. I hate going there, the people, the traffic, the tube, the dirt. You must be dying to escape."

"Stung by hearing my beloved home so abused I asked where she lived. Gloucestershire, she replied. "How ghastly," I said, "it is an awful place, absolute hell, I hate going there, the people, the horses, the filthy lanes, the boredom. You must be dying to escape." How extraordinarily rude, she said, and turned away for the rest of the evening.

My London is one that Gloucestershire can never love. I do not spend my time in the city, as most non residents do, enveloped in crowds, shopping and fighting public transport (which is not that bad). I see a city of local streets enlivened by corner shops, bustling pubs, children going to school, parks, squares, museums, theatres. It is a place of calm, if you want it."

Charlotte Street

My version of Charlotte Street runs from Fitzroy Square to Rathbone Place. It includes some great Italian cafes, a good selection of restaurants and a few interesting pubs.

Fitzroy Square was created in 1790 by Charles Fitzroy, the 2nd Duke of Grafton and designed by Robert and James Adam. Some of its famous inhabitants have included Virginia Woolf and George Bernard Shaw, in the same house but not at the same time, as well as the Marquis of Salisbury, the former Prime Minister.

Charlotte Street is named after Charlotte of Macklenburg-Strelitz the wife of George III and is dominated by Saatchi & Saatchi and Arup at the northern end of the street. This is in stark contrast to the bohemian reputation the area had when Augustus John, Anthony Powell, Kevin Nixon and Dylan Thomas drank in the Fitzroy Tavern. Another regular was Alistair Crowley who as legend has it created the Kubla Khan 2 cocktail especially for the pub.

Just off Charlotte Street is a fascinating house at No 4 Percy Street. Apart from being interesting architecturally it is also the former home of Alois Hitler, half brother to the man himself. Adolf visited the house in 1912. I like to think that no one was home.

Rathbone Place includes the Wheatsheaf pub and the excellent Lazarides Gallery, which is always worth a visit.

Frieze Art Fair - Regents Park

Paul McCarthy - Henry Moore Bound To Fail

The annual Frieze Art Fair takes place every October in Regents Park. Just a few minutes walk from the main site is the Sculpture Park, which features the weird and the wonderful, from both established and emerging artists and is installed in the English Garden of Regents Park.

Erwin Wurm - Pumpkin

Louis Bourgeois - The Couple

Remy Markowitsch - Bonsaipotato

The Fourth Plinth to St Margaret's Westminster

Map

The “me, me, me” generation now have its own monument among the great and the good in Trafalgar Square. The empty Fourth Plinth is being used by Anthony Gormley for his ‘One & Other’ exhibition. This excellent idea has been high jacked by the legion of Big Brother devotees who are only interested in fifteen minutes of fame (make that an hour for One & Other) by standing on the plinth and ‘showing off’. Sorry but there is no other word for it. Trafalgar Square is a place where Londoners congregate for political rallies and national celebrations. The plinth now offers a freak show in the name of art.

Perhaps it’s fitting. At the south east corner of the square is Britain’s smallest Police Station located in a lamp post. It is also home to a bronze statue of Charles I, which was ordered to be destroyed by Parliament in 1649 and the metal used for armaments. Instead of melting it down, brazier John Rivett buried it in his garden. The statue was later acquired by Charles II and placed in its present position in 1675. The Royal Stuart Society place a wreath beside it on 30 January each year, the anniversary of Charles I execution.

At the base of Nelsons column are bronze reliefs. They depict scenes from famous Nelson victories and are cast from captured French cannons. I’m all in favour of a little antigallican sentiment but this seems to be “rubbing it in”.

From Trafalgar Square walk down Whitehall to the Women At War Memorial, which was designed by sculpture John Mills and opened by the Queen on 9 July 2005 . It commemorates the contribution made by seven million women during the Second World War. The £1 million, 22 foot high monument depicts uniforms and working clothes worn by women during the war.

Further down Whitehall is the Cenotaph, London’s memorial to the War dead. The Cenotaph, a word meaning empty tomb, was designed by Edwin Lutyens and built at the end of the First World War. Carved in Portland stone it is decorated with only two simple wreaths and contains no religious motifs whatsoever.

At the end of Whitehall is Parliament Square and St Margaret’s Westminster. The church is so overshadowed by it’s gothic neighbours, the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, that it is almost invisible. Completed in 1523 it is the parish church of Parliament. The stain glass windows to the south of St Margaret’s where designed and replaced by John Piper in 1966 as the original windows had been destroyed by enemy action during the Second World War.

Dara O Briain

"England plays host to London, much like it plays host to the Premier League. It used to be yours, and now it belongs to the world. You want proof of London's international iconic status? In any Hollywood science-fiction movie, when they show that montage of all the alien attacks from around the world, London always gets flattened first. I've lost count of the amount of times I've seen Big Ben flooded, zapped or struck by a meteor. That's how you measure global brand-reach.

If the English were to be glibly summed up as pragmatic but a bit moany, though, then this is the perfect capital city for them. The city is massive, and Londoners negotiate daily a ludicrously complicated transport system, by underground, overground, bus and boat. This gives them endless opportunities to complain, but it also forces them to perform route calculations of astonishing complexity, usually without even looking up, for fear they might make eye-contact, or show weakness, or share a human moment with a fellow commuter, which is not the way things are done in London."

Dara O Briain
Tickling the English

Design Museum to London Bridge

The Design Museum is just to the east of Tower Bridge in South London, an area that was once known as Jacob’s Island. In Oliver Twist, Dickens described it as “ a part of the Thames where the buildings on the banks are dirtiest and the vessels on the river blackest with the dust of colliers and the smoke of close-built low roofed houses, there exists the filthiest, the strangest, the most extraordinary of the many localities that are hidden in London, wholly unknown, even by name, to the great mass of inhabitants… windows guarded by rusty iron bars that time and dirt have almost eaten away, every imaginable sign of desolation and neglect….every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot and garbage….they must have powerful motives for a secret residence, or be reduced to a destitute condition indeed, who seek a refuge in Jacob’s Island.”

The area has changed somewhat and is no longer the disease-ridden slum where Bill Sikes lived. It is now full of desirable apartments and Conran Restaurants such as Pont de la Tour, where back in 1990 Tony Blair dined with Bill Clinton. The Design Museum opened in 1989 as the first museum in the world devoted to the art of design.

Walking west along the river, and under Tower Bridge, brings you to Norman Fosters London Assembly, the home of the elected Mayor of London. Here the buildings are all new and uninteresting but provides great views north, across the river of the Tower of London, old Billingsgate Market and the city of London skyline.

Since 1971 this stretch of the Thames has been home to HMS Belfast, a former Royal Navy cruiser and now a floating museum and conference centre. You will also find Hays Galleria, which is a soulless shopping area built into a former enclosed wharf. The dock was filled in and warehouses closed in 1969. A glass roof has been added to enhance the shopping experience to an area that was once known as “London’s larder” due to the amount of large ships that daily unloaded cargo here. This is the Pool of London the furthest a large ship can sail up the Thames due to the access provided by Tower Bridge and the restriction imposed by the low arches of London Bridge.

The end of this walk ends at St Olaf House. This art deco building was built by the Hay’s Wharf Company in 1932 and is one of London’s architectural treasures.

Hoxton

Hoxton has always been a traditionally working class area but recently became ferociously fashionable. It’s epicentre is the White Cube gallery in Hoxton Square, home to the YBA (Young British Artists, who are not so young any more) such as Tracey Emin, Damien Hurst and the evergreen George & Gilbert. Hoxton was once the home of bare knuckle fighter Lenny MacLean but is now more famous for Nathan Barley and the Hoxton Fin.

Hoxton now has a vibrant arts, restaurant and bar scene frequented by people so appallingly trendy that they leave each other messages on a-boards for the whole world to read but not understand. Nathan Barley again.

The area has an energetic feel and the chance to see a freshly painted Banksy or Eines on any street corner.

Catch the tube to Old Street Station and walk to Hoxton Square, via Great Eastern Street. You are certain to see art and graffitti still wet on the walls.

Map of Hoxton