LEINSTER GARDENS (n.) Bayswater bridleway where numbers 23 and 24 were pulled down to allow room for the construction of the steam stagecoach, and only their fronts replaced.
Dr. Johnson’s London Dictionary for publick consumption in the twenty-first century avail yourself on Twitter @JohnsonsLondon
We challenge our contributors to reply to ten devilishly probing questions about their London and we don’t take “Sorry Gov” for an answer. Everyone sitting in the hot seat they will face the same questions ranging from their favourite way to spend a day out in the capital to their most hated building on London’s skyline to find out what Londoners think about their city. The questions are the same but the answers vary wildly.
Maxine Morse is a born and bred Londoner. Her childhood was spent, clutching a 50p Red Rover pass and exploring every nook and cranny of this great city from the top of a double decker bus. After a fast-paced career in television and e-learning, she is back to doing what she enjoys best, observing, strolling and flaneuring her way round London. She sniffs out new restaurants and watches mixologists juggle and pour from height. Most evenings she is at a West End show or reviewing an opera. She blogs about London life at www.londonology.co.uk.
London is the capital of FREE. Before you go anywhere, or do anything, Google how to do it for cheap or (better still) for free. There’s free food, free museums, free walks, free movies, free art…but know when to tip (generously) and when to splurge. You won’t want to miss an amazing afternoon tea at a luxury hotel or an evening in your finest gear at the Royal Opera House.
My vote goes to the Phoenix Arts Club in the bowels of the Phoenix Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue. Famed for being the dressing rooms for John Gielgud, it is now home to an eclectic mix of entertainment. Here, I met the dazzling jazz piano player Dom Pipkin who makes the Junco Partner Blues sound like five instruments, while playing with one hand and holding a beer in the other.
This sounds a bit bad tempered but its tourists pointing in the street and nearly removing someone’s eye, rummaging for their Oyster card after they’ve arrived at the ticket barrier, stopping suddenly when they are walking along the pavement causing a pile-up or giving me heart failure by stepping over the yellow line on the tube platform train.
Definitely, it is Chiswick House, the 18th Century party house of Lord Burlington. This is a diminutive, perfectly proportioned Neo Palladian Mansion designed by the eccentric, turbaned William Kent and contains the purchases from Lord Burlington’s Grand Tour. You can just imagine costumed guests with powdered wigs arriving by river for his evening soirees. The lead sphinx in the Lower Tribuna epitomise its mystery and decadence.
This is a bit of a toss-up between the Barbican and the Post Office Tower. The Barbican with its ugly Brutalist architecture seems to have been plonked at a ridiculously long distance from the nearest tube which means too much walking for those of a certain age or in challenging footwear! While the Barbican has nil points for architecture, its performances, gardens and bars are superlative. The Post Office Tower used to have a buzz about it in the Swinging Sixties with its revolving restaurant and avant-garde architecture. Now, whenever I see it, I’m surprised that a savvy urban planner hasn’t earmarked it for redevelopment.
The 6th floor café of the Tate Modern, where for a price of a cup of coffee, you can sit on a bar stool and watch the boats on the Thames and the majesty of St Paul’s. And in a similar vein, the view from the Millennium Bridge towards the Shard, the Globe and the Tate Modern is not bad either.
My dad had a Victorian pharmacy at 39 Grosvenor Gardens in Victoria. We spent our childhood there “helping him serve the customers”, rummaging in those small wooden medicine drawers and trying out all the lipstick and perfume testers. He was just round the corner from Buckingham Palace and we often had VIP customers. He was always saying to some suited gent, “Lord X, your prescription will be ready on Wednesday”. We’d look after the shop while he dropped off toiletries, or medicines, for the Queen, Prince Charles or Princess Diana. Sadly, his pharmacy is now a café but the mahogany interior is still intact. As one of only two listed shop interiors in Westminster, it was blessed with a special preservation order.
White Teeth by Zadie Smith (TV series based on the novel) made me howl with laughter…it took me back to my childhood growing up in a North West London suburb sandwiched in between Wembley and Harrow with its multi-cultural diversity, 70s fashions, great music and London accents.
I’m a big fan of Corbin and King restaurants…I love the Delaunay in Aldwych with its Modern European vibe, the grand, monochromatic Wolseley on Piccadilly and the Brasserie Zedel with its good value French bistro set menus. In fact, I love the Brasserie Zedel so much that I cried on my first visit back there after the Covid lockdown.
Let’s imagine this ideal day (no matter how unrealistic) is in the heat of summer and the sky is blue and cloudless. I would take a Thames Clipper boat from Westminster Bridge and sit at the back, enjoying a gin and tonic with the breeze in my hair. I’d get off at the Tower of London. Even after many visits, I still get a thrill from seeing the armour of Henry VIII and I am overwhelmed with patriotic fervour when I see the Crown Jewels. My love is seriously large gem stones! And if it’s raining, I can be found with my nose pressed to the glass cabinets of the V&A jewellery room.
We saw the fire grow; and, as it grew darker, appeared more and more, and in corners and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the City, in a most horrid malicious bloody flame . . . It made me weep to see it.
Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), Diary 2nd September 1666
On 2 July 1900 one of the defining icons of sartorial elegance in the 20th century was founded. Twenty-seven year old Austin Reed opened a gents outfitters in Fenchurch Street. By 1908 he had three shops, three years later he opened his flagship store in Regent Street. Fashions change and by April 2016 Austin Reed went into administration with the inevitable closure of all its 120 shops. Suit maker to Winston Churchill and The Beatles was no more.
On 2 July 1995 American tennis player Jeff Turango was fined £10,000 by Wimbledon authorities after his wife slapped an umpire
The Blind Beggar on Whitechapel Road was where Ronnie Kray killed George Cornell by shooting him through the eye
Waterstone’s on Piccadilly was the inspiration for Are You Being Served? Writer Jeremy Lloyd worked there when it was Simpsons dept store
In the graveyard of Morden College, Blackheath is buried John Thompson ‘Yeoman of the Mouth’ (food taster) to Charles II and James I
Bethnal Green North East MP Mancherjee Merwanjee Bhownaggree (aka Bow and Agree) was the UK’s first Asian Tory MP from 1895 to 1906
One of the first shopping streets to be lit by electricity was Electric Avenue, Brixton made famous by Eddie Grant’s 1981 Electric Avenue
In The Shakespeare’s Head, Covent Garden the 4th Earl of Sandwich requested bread and meat thus creating the first ever sandwich
West Ham FC was founded in 1895 by workers Thames Ironworks who hammered iron to build ships so named ‘The Hammers’
The world’s first school bus (horse drawn) was set up to run between Newington Academy for Girls and Gracechurch Street Meeting House in 1827
A young Charles Dickens worked as a legal clerk in Gray’s Inn and Lincoln’s Inn where experience led him to call the law ‘an ass’
Maurice Micklewhite changed his name to Michael Caine after seeing a poster in Leicester Square advertising The Caine Mutiny
Trivial Matter: London in 140 characters is taken from the daily Twitter feed @cabbieblog.
A guide to the symbols used here and source material can be found on the Trivial Matter page.
For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.
Was it Samuel Johnson who was alleged by Boswell to have said “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”? He should have prefixed that quote with “phoney” for I don’t know about you, but I’m getting very weary of seeing St. George’s flags being raised to support self-adoring, over-paid footballers, rather than for self-sacrificing, under-paid and under-resourced soldiers doing their very best not to cry over fallen comrades.
I’ve supported this country during many conflicts over these past 25 years; Falklands, Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever our boys (and girls) seek to fight fascism. But now all over London we see evidence of a phoney patriotism. And look how shallow all their football “patriotism” is, Marks & Spencer, that temple to middle class consumerism is like a football flea market, piled high with World Cup tat: flags, plates, kids’ games and yes, mugs. Which rather sums up those who purchase this junk? Walk across the road and the Nationwide Building Society is offering a higher rate of interest on some accounts if England wins this contest, couldn’t they have just paid better rates in the first place?
In America, that place which really likes to wear its heart of its sleeve, there are so many star-spangled banners flying on every lawn and shopping mall that all patriotic impact has been lost. They use Old Glory to support the troops; they use it to sell you a Chrysler. Many of these flags are imported anyway; the year after the 9/11 attack, the United States imported $7.9m of flags from China and some had 53 stars.
Is this mindless support for football “heroes”, a manifestation of a national nostalgia that constantly harks back to a simpler age, when we had decent men prepared to lay down their lives for a cause they believed in, or just an excuse for the indolent males of England to eat twice their own body weight over these three weeks?
The flag we all should be flying is the Union Jack, for tomorrow is Armed Forces Day which quietly acknowledges the work our brave soldiers are doing, in conditions likely to test most of us, and aims to provide a much valued morale boost for the troops and their families.
Our footballers, some of which are as rotten and corrupt as our politicians, might like to support the real men and women of courage, who between them have kept England safe, and an island that lets you dress up in a football shirt, with a flag draped around your shoulders, if you choose to be a plonker.
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