BUSINESS & PLEASURE
BUSINESS & PLEASURE
GLOSSARY
basilica Building used for public administration in ancient Rome that became the prototype for early Christian churches with the incorporation of a nave, side aisles, transept and apse.
bay window A window protruding from the façade of a building, creating an alcove internally with oblique views of the street.
City of London A city and county of Britain governed by the City of London Corporation covering a geographic area broadly defined by the walls of the Roman settlement, also referred to as the Square Mile.
Modernism Artistic movement that flourished in the mid-twentieth century motivated by a rejection of tradition and the pursuit of modern ideas and theories.
Norman Conquest The conquest of Britain in 1066 by Duke William II of Normandy, later known as William the Conqueror, who defeated King Harold at the Battle of Hastings.
the Restoration The restoration of the English monarchy in 1660 under Charles II following the English Civil War, and often referring to his entire reign up to 1685.
Restoration comedy Form of comedy renowned for its lewd style and plot lines that flourished after the prohibition of theatrical performances during the Commonwealth era and remained popular throughout the Restoration.
Royal Mint The 1,100-year-old institution licensed to design and manufacture Britain’s coins.
Savile Row Street in the district of Mayfair, central London, made famous by its high-quality bespoke tailors and clothiers.
South Bank An area of central London on the southern bank of the River Thames once occupied by the temporary Festival of Britain (1951), which now comprises the entertainment and commercial district that extends from Westminster Bridge to the National Theatre.
Square Mile The area of London broadly defined by the old Roman settlement and its wall and today administered by the City of London Corporation.
university boat race Annual boat race held on the River Thames since 1856 between the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
PARKS, GARDENS & OPEN SPACES
the 30-second tour
When you are in the thick of the city it seems hard to believe that London ranks as the world’s third greenest city, behind Singapore and Sydney. Yet when idling on the slopes of Hampstead Heath or even in some of the more secluded pastures of Hyde Park, it is equally hard to believe you are in a city at all. An amazing 38.4 per cent of London is public green space. This is made up of 122 heaths, commons and greens (Richmond Park being the largest); 600 municipal public parks (Finsbury Circus being the oldest, dating from the seventeenth century); 1,500 playing fields and 125 recreation grounds (including Hackney Marshes, which has 77 football pitches, the largest concentration in the world), plus dozens of garden squares, cemeteries and churchyards. And that does not include private gardens and no fewer than 108 golf courses. Londoners have been fighting to preserve open spaces since villagers outside the city walls started to hedge in the fields between Moorgate and Islington in the sixteenth century. The Victorians fought off developers with a series of Acts of Parliament and protection orders. Remember these doughty campaigners when you next lie down on the grass with the sounds of the city humming beyond the trees.
3-SECOND SURVEY
Amid all the buildings and bustle, over a third of London’s land mass is taken up by green space that remains accessible to the public.
3-MINUTE OVERVIEW
Several of London’s parks originated as playgrounds for kings, queens and their aristocratic friends. Hyde Park was originally a hunting ground for Henry VIII. In the early nineteenth century Regent’s Park was designed as a private park for the wealthy residents of villas and terraces built around its perimeter. Finally local authorities started to lay out parks for the people, starting with Victoria Park, Hackney, in 1845, and Battersea Park in 1858.
3-SECOND BIOGRAPHIES
JOHN RUSKIN
1819–1900
London writer and critic, who said ‘the measure of a city’s greatness is to be found in the quality of its public spaces, parks and squares’
GEORGE LANSBURY
1859–1940
Socialist MP who tore down fences and opened up London’s parks for the benefit of working men and women
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Simon Inglis
London boasts many magnificent public parks, such as Hyde Park and Regent’s Park.
EXHIBITIONS
the 30-second tour
The Great Exhibition of the Arts and Industries of all Nations of 1851, housed in Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace, was a money-spinner that London’s exhibition organizers have tried to emulate ever since. Its artistically more interesting successor of 1862, however, was a commercial flop. In 1908 the Franco-British Exhibition launched the White City, used for further shows before 1914, and best remembered for its funfair. In 1924–25, the British Empire Exhibition, a government-sponsored show with a trade mission masked by much patriotic and colonialist flummery, opened at Wembley in new classical-style concrete buildings, including the hilltop Stadium. The South Bank was the core of the 1951 Festival of Britain, with modestly Modernist pavilions, fountains and landscaping, a successful ‘Tonic to the Nation’ proclaiming liberal values and a new vision of nationhood at ease with modernity. The last big show to date was the Millennium Experience of 2000 on Greenwich Peninsula, imbued with a rather bossy and charmless populism typical of Tony Blair’s New Labour party. Other major exhibition centres include Olympia and ExCel, providing homes for the many trade shows that London attracts.
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Ambiguously positioned between education, trade, imperialism and commercialism, exhibitions held in London seem to encapsulate the values of successive periods.
3-MINUTE OVERVIEW
Exhibitions have been agents of urban development, from South Kensington’s ‘Albertopolis’ quarter of education and culture, through to Wembley’s continuing use as a sporting venue in the suburbs. The South Bank had long been seen as a lost opportunity for central London, until the 1951 Festival started its reinvention as another cultural centre and open space. Finally, the Greenwich Peninsula was a heavily polluted ex-industrial site linked to central London for 2000 by the Jubilee Underground line.
3-SECOND BIOGRAPHIES
PRINCE ALBERT
1819–61
Royal consort to Queen Victoria. His lasting legacy was the cohabitation of arts and sciences in South Kensington
IMRE KIRALFY
1845–1919
Hungarian child prodigy who became master-showman of illusionistic spectacles at Earls Court and White City, the latter his creation
SIR GERALD BARRY
1898–1968
Newspaper editor and political idealist, the spirit behind the Festival of Britain
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Alan Powers
Over the years several exhibitions have left a permanent mark on London’s architecture.
MARKETS
the 30-second tour
London’s markets are its citadels of commerce. For two millennia, markets have been the key nodes in a network of trade that grew to span the globe. The city’s first market – the Forum – was part of the Roman basilica, one of the largest structures in Europe, sprawling over 2 hectares (5 acres) on the site of present-day Leadenhall Market. Its remains can still be seen in the basement of a local barber’s shop. The origins of London’s existing markets can be traced to the twelfth century, when the city regained its title as Britain’s most important trading hub after the Norman Conquest. Trade fairs were established in the new settlement of Westminster and outside the old Roman walls at Smithfield, where meat has been continuously traded for over 800 years. In the thirteenth century coal, iron, wine, corn, salt and fish were sold in Billingsgate Market, which by the sixteenth century traded exclusively in fish and continues to do so today, though it was removed from the City in 1982. London’s expansion in the seventeenth century presaged new fruit and vegetable markets in the East End at Spitalfields and in the emerging West End at Covent Garden, which lowered the tone of London’s first Italianate piazza. Today, New Covent Garden Market, in Vauxhall, is the largest fruit, vegetable and flower market in Britain.
3-SECOND SURVEY
Markets are synonymous with many of London’s most cherished landmarks and tourist destinations: Bermondsey, Borough, Camden, Haymarket, Spitalfields, Smithfield and Covent Garden.
3-MINUTE OVERVIEW
The City of London has long been a stronghold of trade, its street names echoing its early markets: Wood Street, Milk Street, Bread Street, Poultry Lane and Cheapside (‘ceap’ is Saxon for market). Livery companies – drapers, haberdashers, jewellers, mercers, skinners, saddlers – fiercely protected their trades. In 1327 the City’s market rights were protected by Royal Charter, prohibiting any market within 6.6 miles of the City – the furthest distance someone could walk to and from market in a day to sell their wares.
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Edward Denison
London’s markets have always thrived on the tension between high-society’s pretensions and the public’s subsistence.
MONEY, MONEY, MONEY
the 30-second tour
Since Roman times, the City has been London’s beating heart and money its lifeblood, nourishing its financial and commercial institutions and imbuing every fibre in the fabric of its society. Manufacturing of money in London began in the seventh century, and between 1279 and 1810 the Royal Mint was housed in the Tower of London, but today money’s impact is far more noticeable in its intangible rather than its tangible form. Until Canary Wharf was developed from the 1980s, London’s financial district was confined to the Square Mile, an area broadly defined by the old Roman Wall. Standing proudly in the centre of the City at the convergence of six major roads is the Bank of England, the nation’s principal financial institution. Founded in 1694, the Bank of England moved to its present location on Threadneedle Street in 1734 opposite the city’s centre of commerce, the Royal Exchange, and Mansion House, the Lord Mayor of London’s home. Later expansion led to the ‘Old Lady of Threadneedle Street’ occupying a 1.2-hectare (3-acre) plot and the building of plush additions designed by Sir John Soane, whose extraordinary impenetrable curtain wall still skirts the Bank’s ground floor. The keys to the Bank’s vault are nearly a metre (1 yard) long.
3-SECOND SURVEY
If it is true that money makes the world go round, then London must be the centre of the world.
3-MINUTE OVERVIEW
The language of money is embedded in London’s colourful culture. Terms such as ‘wonga’ (coal) arrived with the Romany gypsies, but London’s native fiscal tongue comes from Cockney rhyming slang. ‘Dough’ (money) derives from ‘bread’, the abridged version of ‘bread and honey’ (money). A pound was once called a ‘saucepan’ through the rhyming of ‘saucepan lid’ and ‘quid’ (an informal seventeenth-century term for pound), or ‘nicker’, which presented the obvious if cheeky pun for two pounds: ‘pair of knickers’.
3-SECOND BIOGRAPHY
ISAAC NEWTON
1643–1727
Appointed Warden of the Royal Mint in 1696 and Master in 1699, a position he held until his death
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Edward Denison
With over £3 trillion a day flowing through its banks, exchanges, insurance companies and other financial institutions, London is the world’s leading financial centre.
ARENAS
the 30-second tour
Londoners love a spectacle. In the twelfth century William Fitzstephen described ball games and horse races on the Smooth Field (now Smithfield). In the sixteenth century thousands attended jousting matches in Whitehall. By the eighteenth century the big draw was cricket at the Artillery Garden (still in use, on City Road). London’s first attempt at an Olympic revival was in 1866. The gymnastics were staged in the German Gymnasium (still extant, by St Pancras Station). Next to the old BBC Media Village in White City you can see the location of the finishing line of the 1908 Olympic Marathon. Wembley Stadium hosted another Olympics in 1948. Rebuilt since then with a giant arch, Wembley is London’s largest arena, holding 90,000. Most cities manage with one major multi-functional stadium. Not London. In addition to Wembley there is Twickenham (capacity 82,000), the home of rugby union; the 2012 Olympic Stadium at Stratford (60,000); and the Emirates Stadium (60,000), home of Arsenal – one of 14 professional football clubs in the city (more than any other apart from Buenos Aires). Similarly, not content with a single arena for Test cricket (like every other city), London has two: Lord’s and the Oval. Wimbledon, meanwhile, hosts the world’s only remaining Grand Slam tennis tournament still played on grass.
3-SECOND SURVEY
London possesses more international sporting arenas in a wider range of sports than any other world city, including for football, rugby, cricket, athletics and tennis.
3-MINUTE OVERVIEW
There are around 780,000 seats spread amongst London’s numerous sporting arenas, 22 of which hold more than 10,000 spectators. This compares with 146,000 seats in cinemas and theatres. Yet the most popular single event is the annual university boat race, held since 1829 between crews from Oxford and Cambridge. This draws crowds of up to a quarter of a million, standing, often precariously, along the banks of the River Thames or perched on bridges.
3-SECOND BIOGRAPHIES
THOMAS LORD
1755–1832
Wine merchant and professional cricketer who established Lord’s Cricket Ground in Marylebone
ARCHIBALD LEITCH
1865–1939
Engineer who designed many British football grounds, for clubs including Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham. His best preserved grandstand, built in 1905, is at Fulham’s Craven Cottage on the banks of the Thames
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Simon Inglis
London’s sporting heritage has spawned world-famous names including Wimbledon and Wembley.
CLUBS
the 30-second tour
England is exceptional for its membership organizations serving a multitude of benevolent, cranky or self-advancing purposes. London’s traditional clubs cluster in the West End, with the more socially exclusive in St James’s Street or Carlton House Terrace, and the more architecturally magnificent in Pall Mall. Many still reflect their historic roots in politics or professions. They offer a ‘home from home’, with food and drink, libraries and other facilities. High Society clubs include Annabel’s (1963), beneath the Clermont Club (gentlemanly gambling) in Berkeley Square. Visual arts clubs include the Langham and London Sketch Clubs (1838), the Art Workers’ Guild (1884) in Bloomsbury and the Chelsea Arts Club (1890). Musical performances have flourished in club format. The Royal Philharmonic Society (1813) commissioned Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in 1827. Nightclubs, usually with dance bands, circumvented licensing laws. The Gargoyle Club in Dean Street, Soho (1925), displayed a major Matisse painting and, in 1979, it gave birth to the Comedy Store. Ronnie Scott founded his eponymous jazz club in Soho in 1959, while Heaven, a gay club underneath Charing Cross Station, was founded in 1979. The Ministry of Sound, opened in 1991 at Elephant and Castle, was London’s first club dedicated to house music.
3-SECOND SURVEY
Hidden in plain sight, some in magnificent palaces, some behind unmarked street doors – clubs serve as London’s complex power structure and sources of pleasure, both innocent and guilty.
3-MINUTE OVERVIEW
Club membership usually depends on recommendation by two existing members, and a voting process either by committee or by the membership body. Historically, this was done with black and white balls placed in a polling box, hence ‘black-balled’ applicants deemed unsuitable. Women are still excluded from membership of several, mainly older, clubs, but women-only clubs have existed since the 1890s and have grown in number, with an emphasis on exercise facilities and cultural programmes.
3-SECOND BIOGRAPHIES
SIR CHARLES BARRY
1795–1860
Architect of two outstanding club houses in Italian Renaissance palazzo style, the Travellers (1832) and the Reform (1841)
MARK BIRLEY
1930–2007
Founder of Annabel’s (named after his wife) and Mark’s Club
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Alan Powers
London’s clubs cater for every conceivable taste, from the classical finery of Barry’s Reform Club to the neon revelry of Soho’s jazz and strip joints.
SHOPPING
the 30-second tour
If England is a nation of shopkeepers, then London is a suitably fitting capital, with Oxford and Regent Streets as its triumphal avenues. Long the home of markets and a port city with a constant flow of goods for sale, London’s shopkeepers aided the consumer revolution of the eighteenth century, helping to set the fashion for clothing, porcelain or jewellery. The premier shopping street of the day, the Strand, introduced the first bay windows, allowing the shopkeepers’ wares to be put on general display. By the early twentieth century, influenced by American modes of shopping, Harrods and Selfridges department stores had established themselves as destinations, and, with the introduction of public conveniences and cafés, they offered public spaces accessible to women, as well as job opportunities. Today, like most other cities, London is marked by the dominance of large chains, yet it still retains its own mix of luxury shops and shopping areas that still have their traditional character, such as the bespoke tailors of Savile Row. London’s size and geography means that London has escaped the dominance of the shopping mall, despite several developments around the city such as Brent Cross in the 1960s, Bluewater in the 1990s, and the more recent and vast Westfield shopping centres in Shepherd’s Bush and Stratford.
3-SECOND SURVEY
London has always been the place to spend money, and today its famous shopping streets exert a tremendous pull on millions of credit cards.
3-MINUTE OVERVIEW
Shopping as a leisure activity was largely created in the nineteenth century, notably in the impressive department stores. While many of the earliest ones were utilitarian, and existed as much to serve clients through catalogues, a series of innovations, such as lifts and escalators, marketing savvy and ever-changing window displays created institutions that were destinations in themselves.
3-SECOND BIOGRAPHY
HARRY SELFRIDGE
1858–1947
American retailer who opened Selfridges department store in Oxford Street in 1909
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Matthew Shaw
Shoppers love London and few stores epitomise this amorous relationship more than Harrods and Selfridges.
THEATRELAND
the 30-second tour
Theatres are thickly peppered across the zone east of Regent Street, south of Soho and west of Kingsway known as ‘Theatreland’. Its history goes back to the Restoration in 1660, when indoor theatres became popular. The early ones have been rebuilt, often multiple times, but the identities of Drury Lane (1662), Haymarket (1710) and Covent Garden (1732) were continuous. Shaftesbury Avenue, a new street from the 1880s, contains ‘boulevard’ theatres with rich Edwardian decoration. Another cluster sits between St Martin’s Lane and Charing Cross Road. The National Theatre on the South Bank belongs in another cluster with the Old and Young Vic, and the reconstructed Shakespeare’s Globe beyond. Experimental and fringe theatre thrives in cheaper venues further afield. Theatreland supports costumiers and suppliers, and theatres are symbiotic with bars and restaurants for the clientele and the performers. Historically, these were often integrated, as at the Criterion, which was developed by caterers from 1870, while the Savoy Theatre (1881) was joined by its hotel under the same management. Less savoury was the sex trade that often accompanied theatres in Victorian London, either on the streets (Haymarket above all), at stage doors or in the bars of the variety theatres.
3-SECOND SURVEY
London’s heart is in its theatres, even if they survive by staging many musicals-of-the-movie.
3-MINUTE OVERVIEW
London’s theatres have largely survived for live performance owing to protection of their use by special planning laws, even when disused. Many are also listed buildings, and some owners, including Delfont Mackintosh (which owns eight theatres) and Andrew Lloyd-Webber (who owns six), have undertaken much-needed restorations, for example at the Palace Theatre (now sold to Nimax) and Drury Lane. The two opera houses, Covent Garden and the London Coliseum, were extended and modernized for the millennium using public funding.
3-SECOND BIOGRAPHIES
DAVID GARRICK
1717–79
Supreme actor, theatre manager and raiser of theatrical tone
FRANK MATCHAM
1854–1920
Architect of London’s Coliseum and Hippodrome
HUGH ‘BINKIE’ BEAUMONT
1908–73
Co-founder of producers H. M. Tennant, the uncrowned king of West End theatre in his time
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Alan Powers
London’s theatres have been pulling in the crowds for many centuries.
