PEELER (n.) Not to be confused with citrus fruits the nomenclature for police persons doth derive from the founding father of policing.
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.
Niall Kishtainy is a London-based writer and the author of The Infinite City: Utopian Dreams on the Street of London (2023), a history of London’s utopian visionaries from the 16th century to the present, and A Little History of Economics (2018). He helps budding writers get their projects off the ground at A Desk By The Window. Niall is a former academic, journalist, civil servant and aid worker. He was born in south London and has lived in the city for most of his life. You can find out more about him at niallkishtainy.com.
The tour of the archive at the Postal Museum in Islington is brilliant – a quirky exploration of London’s history through the letters and objects that people have sent over the centuries. Afterwards, you can go for a ride on the old mail rail.
When I was a kid growing up in Wimbledon I once stumbled on an ornate golden building surrounded by woods and water near the common. It’s the Buddhapadipa Temple and you’d never think you’d find such a thing hidden away behind a leafy residential street in south London.
The poor quality, expensive housing. The housing crisis will strangle the city if we don’t get a grip on it.
The 1940s Spa Green Estate in Islington was designed by the Russian architect Berthold Lubetkin. It’s modernism with a human face – sleek and futuristic but warm and welcoming too. It’s a living monument to the dream of social housing and a little fragment of utopia in the heart of the city.
Grandiose and overly extravagant apartment blocks like One Hyde Park in Knightsbridge, status residences are often used as financial assets rather than as the real homes that the city so badly needs.
From the garden of the Horniman Museum in south London, you have central London spread out before you, interestingly juxtaposed in the foreground with Dawson’s Heights, a striking council block designed by Kate Macintosh in the 1960s, which looks like a 20th-century version of some ancient citadel.
The Crystal Palace transmitting station, the tall tapered tower with the red light on top. As a boy, I used to gaze out at it at night from my bedroom window on the other side of south London. Now I live close to it so it tells me when I’m getting home.
I like Mike Leigh’s High Hopes, a bittersweet depiction of a disappearing working-class community around King’s Cross and the emergence of a new moneyed London. There’s a great scene in which one of the main characters, a frustrated working-class socialist, visits Karl Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery and tries to explain Marxist theory to his forbearing girlfriend while Japanese tourists jostle around them. The final scene has the couple and the man’s old mum high on a rooftop looking out awestruck over the railway lines and gasworks down below.
My local Italian, the magnificent, family-run Trattoria Raffaele on Sydenham Road, which has incredible mozzarella-filled dough balls.
A long walk exploring a neighbourhood, maybe one like Silvertown where you see different layers of London history, before ending with a pint at the Prospect of Whitby in Wapping. Alternatively, my kids’ favourite: doing a circuit involving every form of public transport – train, then tube, DLR, cable car, riverboat, bus. Haven’t yet managed to find a way of incorporating the tram!
Do you realise that people die of boredom in London suburbs? It’s the second biggest cause of death amongst the English in general. Sheer boredom . . .
Alexander McCall Smith (b.1948), Friends, Lovers, Chocolate
On 1 October 1868 one of London’s greatest buildings was opened to little fanfare. George Gilbert Scott’s Gothic masterpiece St. Pancras. Years later it took pressure from a group led by poet laureate John Betjeman to save it from demolition. Betjeman, a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture, on the reopening of St Pancras station in 2007, a statue of Betjeman was unveiled.
On 1 October 1985 police in riot gear closed off parts of Peckham in an effort to contain continued outbreaks of violence and vandalism as gangs of youths threw petrol bombs and set shops alight
Robert Peel’s new Metropolitan Police Force nicknamed ‘Blue Devils’ wore blue to avoid confusion with the red coats of the army
St Bartholomew’s Hospital is the oldest hospital in London having been founded in 1123 by a monk named Rahere
Covent Garden is believed to be haunted by the ghost of William Terris who met an untimely death near the station in 1897
In 1966 Russian spy George Blake escaped Wormwood Scrubs and a 42 year stretch by making use of a ladder made of knitting needles
During World War II a branch of the Piccadilly line Holborn/Aldwych was closed and British Museum treasures were stored in the empty spaces
18th century Shepherd Market Mayfair was home to courtesan Kitty Fisher who, insulted by a low value note given for services given, ate it!
West Ham’s I’m forever blowing bubbles was inspired by trialist schoolboy Billy Murray who resembled the boy used to advertise Pears soap
When Paddington Underground Station, as the western terminus of London’s first underground, opened in January 1863 it was called Bishop’s Road
Marc Isambard Brunel came up with his idea on how to dig the Thames’ Tunnel whilst in debtors’ prison watching a shipworm bore through wood
In 1792 Lady Braddock and Mrs Elphinstone duelled Braddock’s hat got shot off and Elphinstone wounded in the arm by a sword – later they had tea
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.
Often as I’ve put the cab up on the Paddington rank, I have watched passengers as they have squabbled about their relative positions in the queue, blithely ignoring the fact that behind me are 100 taxis available for hire. Observing this I’ve just put it down to “Johnny Foreigner” who doesn’t understand the quaint English courtesy of standing in a line and waiting one’s turn.
Apparently though according to a recent survey LINK the English are becoming more impatient; 41 per cent of people refuse to queue longer than two minutes in stores, with two-thirds regularly stomping away in a huff at having to endure a wait for anything. Furthermore, half of us refuse even to enter a shop if there is the sign of a queue.
Six years ago in a previous survey we were prepared to wait patiently for a barely credible five minutes before impatience got the better of us.
I remember visiting Paris in the 50’s and finding a ticket number dispensing machine attached to bus stops, used to establish the order passenger should embark, this at a time when queuing in England was seen as enduring a mild hardship for the common good, if soldiers at Dunkirk could stand in line to board their ship, waiting one’s turn to buy a loaf of bread was what set up apart from those “one the other side of the English Channel”.
We now one company is keeping alive this tradition I discovered recently when I visited the London Eye. On arrival I noted with smug self-satisfaction, the queue stretching into infinity for the attraction. Clutching my “fast track” pre-booked confirmation I joined the queue for the ??? kiosk. After 10 minutes of waiting the assistant informed me as she ad other before me that I was in the wrong queue and directed me to the ticket office. A crowd of us joined the back of the 80ft long queue marked “Pre-booked and Group Bookings” each holding their fast-track confirmation receipts.
When reaching the desk I have to admit dear reader my stiff upper lip was sorely tested when told again that I was in the wrong queue. The sound of protestations from my fellow queuers the desk clerk reluctantly issued that precious official tick.
It then was only a matter of joining yet another 40ft long queue to enjoy the “flight”. Total time flying 40 minutes; total time queuing 40 minutes. Next time I’m going on a foggy day.
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