London’s history is a long, turbulent narrative spanning more than two millennia. Along the way there have been good times (the arrival of the Romans, with their wine, law and order, and road-building skills, the expansion of London as the capital of an empire) and bad times (plagues, the Great Fire of 1666, the Blitz bombing of WWII). But even when on its knees, London has always been able to get up and move on, constantly re-inventing itself.
London was settled by the Romans, and the area, particularly the City of London, has been inhabited continuously ever since. As a result, archaeologists have had to dig deep to discover the city's past, relying more often than not on redevelopment such as the Crossrail high-frequency railway line to allow excavations.
But the Romans were not the first on the block. The Celts had arrived in Britain sometime in the 4th century BC and settled around a ford in the Thames. The river was twice as wide as it is today and probably served as a barrier separating tribal groups.
When the Romans first visited in the 1st century BC, they traded with the Celts. In AD 43, an invasion force led by Emperor Claudius established the port of Londinium, the first real settlement at what is now London, and used it as a springboard to subdue Celtic strongholds. They constructed a wooden bridge across the Thames near today's London Bridge, and this became the focal point for a network of roads fanning out around the region.
The settlement's development as a trading centre was interrupted in AD 60 or 61 when an army led by Boudicca, queen of the Celtic Iceni tribe based in East Anglia, exacted violent retribution on the Romans, who had attacked her kingdom, flogged her and raped her daughters. The Iceni overran Camulodunum (now Colchester in Essex), which had become the capital of Roman Britannia, and then turned on Londinium, massacring its inhabitants and razing the settlement before the Romans defeated them.
The Romans rebuilt Londinium around Cornhill, the highest elevation north of the bridge, between AD 80 and 90. About a century later they wrapped a defensive wall some 2.7m thick and 6m high around it. Towers were added to strengthen it, and the original gates – Aldgate, Ludgate, Newgate and Bishopsgate – are remembered as place names even today in London. By then Londinium, a centre for business and trade but not a fully fledged colonia (settlement), was an imposing city with a massive basilica, an amphitheatre, a forum and a governor's palace.
By the middle of the 3rd century, Londinium was home to some 30,000 people of various ethnic groups, with temples dedicated to a large number of cults. When Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in 312, the fledgling religion became the empire's – and London's – official cult, seeing off its rival, Mithraism.
In the 4th century, the Roman Empire in Britain began to decline, with increasing attacks by the Picts and Scotti in the north, and the Saxons, Germanic tribes originating from north of the Rhine, in the southeast. In 410, when the embattled Emperor Honorius refused them military aid, the Romans abandoned Britain, and Londinium was reduced to a sparsely populated backwater.
What happened to Londinium after the Roman withdrawal is still the subject of much historical debate. While there is no written record of the town from 457 to 604, most historians now think that Romano-Britons continued to live here even as Saxon settlers established farmsteads and small villages in the area.
Lundenwic (or 'London settlement') was established outside the city walls due west of Londinium and around present-day Aldwych and Charing Cross as a Saxon trade settlement. By the early 7th century the Saxons had been converted to Christianity by the pope's emissary Augustine. Lundenwic was an episcopate and the first St Paul’s Cathedral was established at the top of Ludgate Hill.
This infant trading community grew in importance and attracted the attention of the Vikings in Denmark. They attacked in 842 and again nine years later, burning Lundenwic to the ground. Under the leadership of King Alfred the Great of Wessex, the Saxon population fought back, driving the Danes out in 886.
Saxon London grew into a prosperous and well-organised town divided into 20 wards, each with its own alderman, and resident colonies of German merchants and French vintners. But attacks by the Danes continued apace, and the Saxon leadership was weakening; in 1016 Londoners were forced to accept the Danish leader Knut (Canute) as king of England.
With the death of Knut's brutal son Harthacanute in 1042, the throne passed to the Saxon Edward the Confessor, who went on to found an abbey and palace at Westminster. When Edward moved his court to Westminster, a division of the city's labour began that would continue to our day: the port (or City) became the trading and mercantile centre of London, with Westminster its seat of justice and administration.
The year 1066 marks the real birth of England as a unified nation-state. After the death of Edward the Confessor in 1066, a dispute over who would take the English throne spelled disaster for the Saxon kings. Harold Godwinson, the Earl of Wessex, was anointed successor by Edward on his deathbed, but this enraged William, the Duke of Normandy, who claimed that Edward had promised him the throne. William mounted a massive invasion of England from France and on 14 October defeated Harold at the Battle of Hastings, before marching on London to claim his prize. The newly dubbed 'William the Conqueror' was crowned king of England in the new Westminster Abbey on 25 December 1066, ensuring the Norman conquest was complete.
William distrusted the 'vast and fierce populace’ of London, and to overwhelm and intimidate his new subjects (as well as protect himself from them), he built 10 castles within a day’s march of each other, including the White Tower, the core of the Tower of London, and Windsor Castle. Cleverly, he kept the prosperous merchants on side by confirming the City’s independence in exchange for taxes. London, counting 15,000 people, would soon become the principal town of England.
The last of the Norman kings, the ineffectual Stephen, died in 1154, and the throne passed to Henry II of the powerful House of Plantagenet, which would rule England for the next two and a half centuries. Henry's successors were happy to let the City of London keep its independence as long as its merchants continued to finance their wars and building projects. When Richard I (known as ‘the Lionheart’), a king who spent a mere six months of his life in England, needed funds for his crusade to the Holy Land, he recognised the city as a self-governing commune in return for cash.
A city built on trade and commerce, London would always guard its independence fiercely, as Richard’s successor, King John, learned the hard way. In 1215 John was forced to cede power to his barons, and to curb his arbitrary demands for pay-offs from the City. Among those pressing him to put his seal to the landmark Magna Carta, which effectively diluted royal power, was the by-then powerful lord mayor of the City of London; the first holder of this office, Henry Fitz Aylwin, had taken office just a quarter-century before.
Fire was a constant hazard in the cramped and narrow houses and lanes of 14th-century London, but disease caused by unsanitary living conditions and impure drinking water from the Thames was the greatest threat. In 1348 rats on ships from Europe brought the Black Death, a bubonic plague that wiped out almost half the population of about 80,000 over the next year and a half.
With their numbers down, there was growing unrest among labourers, for whom violence became a way of life, and rioting was commonplace. In 1381, miscalculating – or just disregarding – the mood of the nation, the young Richard II tried to impose a poll tax on everyone in the realm. Tens of thousands of peasants, led by the soldier Wat Tyler and the prelates Jack Straw and John Ball, marched in protest on London. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury, was dragged from the Tower and beheaded, several ministers were murdered and many buildings were razed before the Peasants’ Revolt ran its course and its leaders executed.
London gained wealth and stature under the Houses of Lancaster and York in the 15th century, but their struggle for ascendancy led to the catastrophic Wars of the Roses. The century’s greatest episode of political intrigue occurred during this time: in 1483 the 12-year-old Edward V of the House of York reigned for only two months before vanishing with his younger brother into the Tower of London, never to be seen again. Whether or not their uncle, Richard III – who became the next king – murdered the boys has been the subject of much conjecture over the centuries (Shakespeare would have us believe he did the evil deed). In 1674, workers found a chest containing the skeletons of two children near the White Tower, which were assumed to be the princes’ remains, and they were reburied in Westminster Abbey.
Richard III didn’t have long to enjoy the hot seat: he was killed in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth by Henry Tudor, who as Henry VII became the first monarch of the Tudor Dynasty. In September 2012, Richard's remains, confirmed by rigorous DNA tests, were excavated beneath a car park in central Leicester. They were ceremonially laid to rest in that city's cathedral in March 2015.
Though the House of Tudor lasted less than 120 years and three generations, it is the best-known English dynasty. London became one of the largest and most important cities in Europe under its kings and queens, the Americas were discovered and colonised, and world trade thrived.
Henry’s son and successor, Henry VIII, was the most extravagant of the clan, instructing new palaces to be built at Whitehall and St James’s, and bullying his lord chancellor, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, into giving him Hampton Court.
Henry's life was dominated by the need to produce a male heir, which indirectly led to his split with the Roman Catholic Church. This occurred in 1534 after the Pope refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, who had borne him only a daughter after 24 years of marriage. Turning his back on Rome, he made himself the supreme head of the church in England and married Anne Boleyn, the second of his six wives. He ‘dissolved’ (abolished) London’s monasteries, seized the church’s vast wealth and property, and smashed ecclesiastical culture. Many of the religious houses disappeared, leaving only their names in such areas as Whitefriars, Blackfriars and Greyfriars (after the colour of the robes worn by Carmelite, Dominican and Franciscan monks).
Despite his penchant for settling differences with the axe (two of his six wives and Wolsey’s replacement as lord chancellor, Thomas More, were beheaded, along with 32 other leaders and up to 72,000 others) and his persecution of both Catholics and fellow Protestants who didn’t toe the line, Henry VIII remained a popular monarch until his death in 1547. The reign of Mary I, his daughter with Catherine of Aragon, saw a brief return to Catholicism, during which time the queen sanctioned the burning to death of 200 Protestants at Smithfield and earned herself the nickname ‘Bloody Mary'. By the time Elizabeth I, Henry VIII’s daughter by Anne Boleyn, took the throne, Catholicism was a waning force, and hundreds of people who dared to suggest otherwise were carted off to the gallows at Tyburn near today's Marble Arch.
What's in the Name?
Many of London's street names, especially in the City, recall the goods that were traded there: Poultry, Cornhill, Sea Coal Lane, Milk and Bread Sts and the more cryptic Friday St, where you bought fish for that day of fasting. Other meanings are not so obvious. The '-wich' or '-wych' ending in names like Greenwich, Aldwych and Dulwich come from the Saxon word wic, meaning 'settlement'. Ea or ey is an old word for 'island' or 'marsh'; thus Chelsea (Island of Shale), Bermondsey (Bermond's Island), Battersea (Peter's Island) and Hackney (Haca's Marsh). In Old English ceap meant 'market'; hence Eastcheap is where the common people shopped, while Cheapside (originally Westcheap) was reserved for the royal household. 'Borough' comes from burg, Old English for 'fort' or 'town'. And the odd names East Ham and West Ham come from the Old English hamm or 'hem'; they were just bigger enclosed (or 'hemmed-in') settlements than the more standard hamlets.
The 45-year reign (1558–1603) of Elizabeth I is still looked upon as a 'golden age' of English history, and it was just as significant for London. During these four and a half decades, English literature reached new and still unbeaten heights, and religious tolerance gradually became accepted doctrine, although Catholics and some Protestants still faced persecution. England became a naval superpower, having defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588, and the city established itself as the premier world trade market with the opening of the Royal Exchange by Elizabeth in 1571.
London was blooming economically and physically: in the second half of the 16th century the population doubled to 200,000. The first recorded map of London was published in 1558, and John Stow produced A Survey of London, the first history of the city, in 1598.
This was also the golden era of English drama, and the works of William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson packed new playhouses, such as the Rose (built in 1587) and the Globe (1599). Both were in Southwark, a notoriously ribald place at the time, teeming with 'stews' (vapour baths but brothels in reality) and bawdy taverns. Most importantly, they were outside the jurisdiction of the City, which frowned upon such pursuits and even banned theatre.
When Elizabeth died without an heir in 1603, she was succeeded by her second cousin, who was crowned James I. Although the son of the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots (not to be confused with Elizabeth's half-sister Mary), whom Elizabeth had actually put to death for supposedly plotting against her, James was slow to improve conditions for England’s Catholics and drew their wrath. He narrowly escaped death when the alleged plot by Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators to blow up the Houses of Parliament on 5 November 1605 was uncovered. The discovery of the audacious plan is commemorated on this date each year with bonfires and fireworks.
When James I’s son, Charles I, came to the throne in 1625, his intransigent personality and total belief in the ‘divine right of kings’ set the monarchy on a collision course with an increasingly confident parliament at Westminster and a City of London tiring of extortionate taxes. The crunch came when Charles tried to arrest five antagonistic members of parliament, who fled to the City. By 1642 the country had slid into civil war.
The Puritans (extremist Protestants) and the city’s expanding merchant class threw their support behind Oliver Cromwell, leader of the Parliamentarians (or Roundheads), who battled the Royalist troops (the Cavaliers). London firmly backed the Roundheads, and Charles I was defeated in 1646, although a Second Civil War (1648–49) and a Third Civil War (1649–51) continued to wreak havoc on what had been a stable and prosperous nation.
Charles I was beheaded for treason outside Banqueting House in Whitehall on 30 January 1649, famously asking for a second shirt on the cold morning of his execution so as not to shiver and appear cowardly. Cromwell ruled the country as a quasi-republic for 11 years, during which time Charles’ son, Charles II, continued fighting for the restoration of the monarchy. During this period Cromwell banned theatre, dancing, Christmas and just about anything remotely fun.
After Cromwell's death in 1658, parliament decided that the royals weren’t so bad after all, refused to recognise the authority of Cromwell's successor, his son Richard, and restored the exiled Charles II to the throne in 1660.
Crowded, filthy London had suffered from recurrent outbreaks of bubonic plague since the 14th century, but nothing had prepared it for the Great Plague of 1665, which dwarfed all previous outbreaks.
As the plague spread, families affected were forced to stay inside for 40 days' quarantine, until the victim had either recovered or died. Previously crowded streets were deserted, churches and markets were closed, and an eerie silence descended. To make matters worse, the mayor believed that dogs and cats were the spreaders of the plague and ordered them all killed, thus ridding the disease-carrying rats of their natural predators. By the time the winter cold arrested the epidemic, an estimated 100,000 people had perished, their corpses collected and thrown into vast ‘plague pits’.
The plague finally began to wane in November 1665. But Londoners scarcely had a year to recover before another disaster struck. The city had for centuries been prone to fire, as nearly all buildings were constructed from wood and roofed with thatch, but the mother of all blazes broke out on 2 September 1666 in a bakery in Pudding Lane near London Bridge.
It didn’t seem like much to begin with – the mayor himself dismissed it as ‘something a woman might piss out’ before going back to bed – but the unusual autumn heat combined with rising winds meant the fire raged out of control for four days, reducing 80% of London to ash. Only eight people died (officially at least), but most of medieval London was obliterated. The fire finally stopped at Pye Corner in Smithfield, on the very edge of London, not before destroying 89 churches, including St Paul's Cathedral, and more than 13,000 houses, leaving tens of thousands of people homeless.
The inferno created a blank canvas upon which master architect Christopher Wren could build his 51 magnificent new churches and a cathedral. Wren’s plan for rebuilding the entire city – much of it on a grid pattern – was deemed too expensive, and many landlords opposed it; the familiar pattern of streets that had grown up over the centuries since the time of the Romans quickly reappeared. However, new laws stipulated that brick and stone designs should replace the old timber-framed, overhanging Tudor houses and that many roads be widened. The fire accelerated the movement of the wealthy away from the City and into what is now the West End.
By way of memorialising the blaze – and rebuilding of London – the Monument, designed by Wren, was erected in 1677 near the site of the fire’s outbreak. At the time, the 61m-tall column was by far the highest structure in the city, visible from everywhere in the capital.
In 1685 some 1500 Huguenot (Protestant) refugees arrived in London, fleeing persecution in Catholic France; another 3500 would follow. Mainly artisans, many began manufacturing luxury goods such as silks and silverware in and around Spitalfields and Clerkenwell, which were already populated with Irish, Jewish and Italian immigrants and artisans. London was fast becoming one of the world’s most cosmopolitan places.
The Glorious – ie bloodless – Revolution in 1688 brought the Dutch King William of Orange to the English throne after the Catholic James II had fled to France. King William III and Queen Mary II, who ruled jointly, relocated from Whitehall Palace to a new palace in Kensington Gardens and, in order to raise finances for the war with France, established the Bank of England in 1694.
London’s growth continued unabated, and by 1700 it was Europe’s largest city, with some 600,000 people. The influx of foreign workers brought expansion to the east and south, while those who could afford it headed to the more salubrious environs of the north and west.
The crowning glory of the ‘Great Rebuilding’, Wren’s St Paul’s Cathedral opened in 1711 during the reign of the last Stuart monarch, Queen Anne. A masterpiece of English baroque architecture, it remains one of the city’s most prominent and beautiful landmarks.
Queen Anne died in 1714 without leaving an heir (despite 17 conceptions). Although there were some 50 Catholic relatives with stronger claims to the throne, a search was immediately launched to find a Protestant relative, since the 1701 Act of Settlement forbade Roman Catholics becoming monarch. Eventually George of Hanover, a great-grandson of James I, arrived from Germany and was crowned King of England, though he never learned to speak English.
Robert Walpole’s Whig Party controlled parliament during much of George I’s reign and, as 'First Lord of the Treasury', effectively became Britain’s first prime minister. He was presented with 10 Downing St, which remains the official residence of the prime minister today.
London grew at a phenomenal pace during this time, and measures were taken to make the city more accessible. The Roman wall surrounding the City of London was torn down, and a second span over the Thames, Westminster Bridge, opened in 1750.
Georgian London saw a great creative surge in music, art and architecture. Court composer George Frederick Handel wrote Water Music (1717) and Messiah (1741) after settling here at age 27, and in 1755 Dr Johnson published the first English-language dictionary. William Hogarth, Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds produced some of their finest paintings and engravings, and many of London’s most elegant buildings, streets and squares were erected or laid out by architects such as John Soane, his pupil Robert Smirke, and the prolific John Nash.
All the while, though, London was becoming ever more segregated and lawless. Indeed, King George II himself was relieved of ‘purse, watch and buckles’ during a stroll through Kensington Gardens. This was Hogarth’s London, in which the wealthy built fine mansions in attractive squares and gathered in fashionable new coffee houses while the poor huddled together in appalling slums and drowned their sorrows with cheap gin. To curb rising crime, two magistrates, including the writer Henry Fielding, established the Bow Street Runners in 1749. This voluntary group was effectively a forerunner to the Metropolitan Police Force, which would be established in 1829.
In 1780 parliament proposed to lift the law preventing Catholics buying or inheriting property. One MP, Lord George Gordon, led a ‘No Popery’ demonstration that turned into the so-called Gordon Riots. A mob of 30,000 went on a rampage, attacking Irish labourers and burning prisons, ‘Papishe dens’ (chapels) and several law courts. As many as 850 people died during five days of rioting.
As George III, forever remembered as the king who lost the American colonies, slid into dementia towards the end of the 18th century, his son, the Prince Regent (the future George IV), set up an alternative and considerably more fashionable court at Carlton House in Pall Mall. By this time London’s population had mushroomed to just under a million.
In 1837 George IV's 18-year-old niece, Victoria, ascended the throne. During her long reign London would become the nerve centre of the largest and richest empire the world had ever known, covering a quarter of the globe's surface and ruling over more than 500 million people.
New docks in East London were built to facilitate the booming trade with the colonies, and railways began to fan out from the capital. The world’s first underground railway opened between Paddington and Farringdon in 1863 and was such a success that other lines quickly followed. Many of London’s most famous buildings and landmarks were built at this time, including what is now officially named Elizabeth Tower but popularly known as Big Ben (1859), the Royal Albert Hall (1871) and the iconic Tower Bridge (1894).
The city, however, heaved under the burden of its vast size, and in 1858 London was in the grip of the ‘Great Stink’, when the population explosion so overtook the city’s sanitation facilities that raw sewage seeped in through the floorboards of wealthy merchants’ houses and the Houses of Parliament were draped with sheets soaked in lime chloride to allay the stench from the river. Leading engineer Joseph Bazalgette tackled the problem by creating an underground network of sewers in the late 1850s.
At the same time, intellectual achievement in the arts and sciences was enormous. The greatest chronicler of the Victorian age was Charles Dickens, whose Oliver Twist (1837) and other works explored the themes of poverty, hopelessness and squalor among the working classes. In 1859 Charles Darwin published his seminal and immensely controversial On the Origin of Species here, in which he outlined the theory of evolution.
Some of Britain's most capable prime ministers served during Victoria's 64-year reign, most notably William Gladstone (four terms between 1868 and 1894) and Benjamin Disraeli (who served in 1868 and again from 1874 to 1880). And with the creation of the London County Council (LCC) in 1889, the capital had its first-ever directly elected government.
Waves of immigrants, from Irish and Jews to Chinese and Indian sepoys, arrived in London during the 19th century, when the population exploded from one million to well over six million people. This breakneck expansion was not beneficial to all – inner-city slums housed the poor in atrocious conditions of disease and overcrowding, while the affluent expanded to leafy suburbs.
Queen Victoria (of 'We are not amused' fame) is often seen as a dour, humourless old curmudgeon, but was in reality an intelligent, progressive and passionate woman. While her beloved husband and consort, Prince Albert, died prematurely of typhoid in 1861, she lived on to celebrate her Diamond Jubilee in 1897 and died four years later at the age of 81. Her reign is considered the climax of British world supremacy.
Victoria’s self-indulgent son Edward, the Prince of Wales, was already 60 by the time he was crowned Edward VII in 1901. London’s belle époque was marked with the introduction of the first motorised double-decker buses in 1904 on the Peckham to Oxford Circus route, which replaced the horse-drawn versions that had plodded their trade since 1829. And a touch of glamour came in the form of luxury hotels, such as the Ritz in 1906, and department stores, such as Selfridges, in 1909. The first London Olympics were held at White City Stadium in 1908.
What became known as the Great War (or WWI) broke out in August 1914, and the first German bombs fell from zeppelins near the Guildhall a year later, killing 39 people. In all, some 670 Londoners were killed by bombs (half the national total of civilian casualties) and another 2000 were wounded.
After the war ended in 1918, London's population continued to rise, reaching nearly 7.5 million in 1921. The LCC busied itself clearing slums and building new housing estates, while the suburbs spread further into the countryside.
Unemployment rose steadily, and in May 1926 a wage dispute in the coal industry escalated into a nine-day general strike, in which so many workers downed tools that London virtually ground to a halt. The army was called in to maintain order and to keep the buses and the Underground running, but the stage was set for more than half a century of industrial strife.
Intellectually the 1920s were the heyday of the Bloomsbury Group, which counted writers Virginia Woolf and EM Forster and the economist John Maynard Keynes in its ranks. The spotlight shifted westwards to Fitzrovia in the following decade, when George Orwell and Dylan Thomas raised glasses with contemporaries at the Fitzroy Tavern on Charlotte St. Cinema, TV and radio arrived: the BBC aired its first radio broadcast from the roof of Marconi House on the Strand in 1922, and the first TV program from Alexandra Palace 14 years later.
The monarchy took a knock when Edward VIII abdicated in 1936 to marry a woman who was not only twice divorced but – egad! – an American. The same year Oswald Mosley attempted to lead the black-shirted British Union of Fascists on an anti-Jewish march through the East End but was repelled by a mob of around half a million at the famous Battle of Cable St.
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasing Adolf Hitler during the 1930s eventually proved misguided as the Führer’s appetite for expansion appeared insatiable. When Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, Britain declared war, having signed a mutual-assistance pact with that nation a few days before. WWII had begun.
The first year of the war was one of anxious waiting for London. Some 600,000 women and children had been evacuated to the countryside from London and the Battle of Britain raged elsewhere, primarily around Royal Air Force bases in England, but no bombs fell to disturb the blackout in the capital. On 7 September 1940 that all came to a devastating end when the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, dropped hundreds of bombs on the East End, killing 430 people.
The Blitz (from the German ‘Blitzkrieg’ or ‘lightning war’) lasted for 57 nights, and then continued intermittently until mid-May 1941. Some Underground stations were turned into giant bomb shelters, although one bomb rolled down the escalator at Bank station and exploded on the platform, killing more than 100 people. Londoners responded with resilience and stoicism. To the great admiration and respect of the people, the King and Queen refused to leave London during the bombing (their daughters Elizabeth and Margaret remained at Windsor). Buckingham Palace took a direct hit during a bombing raid early in the campaign, famously prompting Queen Elizabeth (the present monarch’s late mother) to pronounce that ‘Now I can look the East End in the face’. Winston Churchill, prime minister from 1940, orchestrated much of Britain’s war strategy from the subterranean Cabinet War Rooms at Whitehall, and it was from here that he made several of his stirring wartime speeches.
London’s spirit was tested again in June 1944, when Germany launched pilotless V-1 bombers (known as doodlebugs) over East London. By the time Nazi Germany capitulated in May 1945, up to a third of the East End and the City had been flattened, almost 30,000 Londoners killed and a further 50,000 seriously wounded.
Once the Victory in Europe (VE) celebrations had come to a close, the nation began to assess the war’s appalling toll and to rebuild. The years of austerity had begun, with rationing of essential items and the building of high-rise residences on bomb sites in areas like Pimlico and the East End to solve the chronic housing problem. To help boost morale, London hosted the 1948 Olympics (dubbed 'the austerity Games') and the Festival of Britain in 1951.
The gloom returned, quite literally, on 6 December 1952 in the form of the Great Smog. A lethal blend of fog, smoke and pollution descended, and some 4000 people died of respiratory disorders. This prompted the promulgation of the Clean Air Act of 1956, which introduced zones to central London where only smokeless fuels could be burned.
The current queen was crowned Elizabeth II in 1953 following the death of her much-loved father King George VI the year before. Rationing of most goods ended in 1954, 14 years after it had begun.
Immigrants from around the world – particularly from the former colonies – flocked to London, where a dwindling population had led to labour shortages. However, despite being officially encouraged to come, new immigrants weren’t always welcomed on the streets, as was proved in the Notting Hill race riots of 1958.
Some economic prosperity returned in the late 1950s, and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan told Britons they’d ‘never had it so good’. London became the place to be during the 1960s, when the bottled-up creative energy of the postwar era was spectacularly uncorked. London found itself the epicentre of cool in fashion and music: the streets were awash with colour and vitality, the iconic Mini car (1959) and skirt became British icons, and the Jaguar E-type (1961) was launched to adoring crowds.
Social norms underwent a revolution: the introduction of the contraceptive pill, the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality, and the popularisation of drugs such as marijuana and LSD through the hippy movement created an unprecedented permissive and liberal climate. Popular music in the mid-to-late 1960s became increasingly linked with drug use, political activism and a counter-cultural mindset. The Beatles recording at Abbey Road and the Rolling Stones performing free in front of half a million people in Hyde Park were seminal moments. Carnaby St and the King's Rd were the most fashionable places on earth, and pop-culture figures from Twiggy and David Bailey to Marianne Faithfull and Christine Keeler became the faces of the new era.
London returned to the doldrums in the harsh economic climate of the 1970s. The city's once-important docks never recovered from the loss of empire, the changing needs of modern container ships and poor labour relations, and disappeared altogether between 1968 and 1981. Shipping moved 25 miles east to Tilbury, and the Docklands declined to a point of decay, until they were rediscovered by property developers a decade later. In 1973 a bomb went off at the Old Bailey (the Central Criminal Court), signalling the arrival of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in London and its campaign for a united Ireland.
Post-1960s music became more formulaic as glam rock ruled, despite the blossoming of London legends Marc Bolan and David Bowie. Economic stagnation, cynicism and the superficial limits of disco and glam rock spawned a novel London aesthetic: punk. Largely white, energetic, abrasive and fast, punk transformed popular music and fashion in one stroke as teenagers traded in denim bell-bottoms for black drainpipes, and long hair for spiked Mohicans. The late 1970s were exhilarating times for London youth as punk opened the door for new wave, a punchy mod revival and the indulgent new romantics.
Meanwhile, torpor had set into Britain’s body politic. Seen as weak and in thrall to the all-powerful trade unions, the brief and unremarkable Labour premiership of James Callaghan (1976–79) was marked by crippling strikes in the late 1970s, most significantly the ‘Winter of Discontent’ of 1978–79 when Leicester Sq became a rubbish tip after waste-collection workers walked off the job.
In 1979 the Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher became the UK's first female prime minister. In power for all of the 1980s and embarking on an unprecedented program of privatisation, Margaret Thatcher – aka the ‘Iron Lady’ – is arguably the most significant of Britain’s postwar leaders. While her critics decry her approach to social justice and the large gulf that developed between the haves and have nots during her time in power, her defenders point to the massive modernisation of Britain’s infrastructure (until then in the grip of trade unions) and the vast wealth creation her policies generated.
In the beginning, her monetarist policy sent unemployment skyrocketing; an inquiry following the Brixton riots of 1981 found that an astonishing 55% of men aged under 19 in that part of London were jobless. Meanwhile the Greater London Council (GLC), under the leadership of ‘Red’ Ken Livingstone, proved to be a thorn in Thatcher’s side. County Hall, which faces the Houses of Parliament across the Thames, was hung with a giant banner recording the number of unemployed in the capital and goading the prime minister to do something about it. Thatcher responded in 1986 by abolishing the GLC, leaving London the only European capital without a unified central government.
While poorer Londoners suffered under Thatcher’s significant trimming back of the welfare state, things had rarely looked better for the business community. Riding a wave of confidence partly engendered by the deregulation of the stock exchange in 1986 (the so-called Big Bang), London underwent explosive economic growth. Property developers proved to be only marginally more discriminating than the Luftwaffe, though some outstanding modern structures, including the Lloyd’s of London building, went up.
Like previous booms, the one of the late 1980s proved unsustainable. As unemployment started to rise again and people found themselves living in houses worth much less than they had paid for them, Thatcher introduced a flat-rate poll tax. Protests around the country culminated in a 1990 march on Trafalgar Sq that ended in a fully fledged riot. Thatcher’s subsequent resignation after losing a confidence vote in Parliament brought to an end this divisive era. Her successor, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, John Major, employed a far more collective form of government.
In 1992, to the amazement of most Londoners, the Conservatives were elected for a fourth successive term in government, without the inspiring leadership of Thatcher. The economy went into a tailspin shortly after, and the IRA detonated two huge bombs, one in the City in 1992 and another in the Docklands four years later. The writing was on the wall for the Conservatives, as the Labour Party re-emerged with a new face.
Desperate to return to power after almost two decades in opposition, the Labour Party selected the telegenic Tony Blair to lead it. The May 1997 general election overwhelmingly returned a Labour government to power, but it was a much changed 'New Labour' party, one that had shed most of its socialist credo and supported a market economy, privatisation and integration with Europe.
Most importantly for London, Labour recognised the legitimate demand the city had for local government, and created the London Assembly and the post of mayor. Former leader of the GLC Ken Livingstone stood as an independent candidate and won handily. Livingstone introduced a successful congestion charge to limit road traffic in central London and sought to bring London’s backward public transport network into the 21st century.
London’s resurgence as a great world city seemed to be going from strength to strength, culminating in its selection in July 2005 to host the Olympic Games in 2012. London’s buoyant mood was, however, shattered the very next morning when extremist Muslim terrorists detonated a series of bombs on the city’s public transport network, killing 52 people. Triumph turned to terror, followed quickly by anger and then defiance. Just two weeks later the attempted detonation of several more bombs on London’s public transport system sent the city into a state of severe unease, which culminated in the tragic shooting by the Metropolitan Police of an innocent Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de Menezes, mistaken for one of the failed bombers.
Ken Livingstone’s campaign to get a third term as London mayor in 2008 was fatally undermined when the Conservative Party fielded maverick MP and popular TV personality Boris Johnson as its candidate. Even more of a populist than Livingstone, Eton-educated Johnson, portrayed by the media as a gaffe-prone toff, actually proved to be a deft political operator and surprised everyone by sailing past Livingstone to become the first Conservative mayor ever of London.
Johnson was popularised in the media as an almost eccentric, oddball figure, with his wild mop of blond hair, shapeless suits and in-your-face eagerness. It was a persona Londoners warmed to. He disagreed with Livingstone on many issues, but continued to support several of his predecessor’s policies, including the congestion charge and the expansion of bicycle lanes. A keen cyclist himself, Boris is forever associated with the bicycle-hire scheme sponsored by Barclays, now underwritten by Santander Bank and nicknamed 'Boris Bikes' (though Livingstone proposed it first). Johnson pledged to replace Livingstone’s unloved ‘bendy buses’ with remodelled Routemasters, which were introduced on some routes in 2012.
Johnson’s first mayoral term coincided with London’s transformation for the 2012 Olympic Games. Neglected areas of the recession-hit city were showered with investment and a vast building program in East London took shape. The era also saw a transferral of government power from the lacklustre Labour Party under Gordon Brown’s leadership to a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government with fellow Etonian David Cameron as prime minister and Nick Clegg as deputy prime minister.
The year 2012 promised to be London's year, and few people – at home or abroad – were disappointed.
A four-day holiday in June marked the Queen's Diamond Jubilee – the 60th anniversary of her ascension to the throne. As celebratory and joyous as the Jubilee was, it was but a prelude to the London event of the year: the all-singin’, all-dancin’ Olympics and Paralympics that welcomed some 15,000 athletes competing in almost 50 sports for 800 medals. Over the course of 29 days there were many expected highs (Britain took 65 Olympic and 120 Paralympic medals, to rank third in each games) and some surprising ones (London's transport system did not just cope but excelled).
But nothing came close to Danny Boyle’s Olympics Opening Ceremony in which the world was treated to an extravagant potted history of London and the UK, football superstar David Beckham drove the Olympic Torch down the Thames and into the Olympic Park in a high-speed boat, and James Bond (in the form of Daniel Craig) jumped out of a helicopter into the Olympic Stadium accompanied by none other than Her Majesty, 'the Queen’. Dear reader, we’re still laughing and cheering.
Since the Olympics, both the nation and the city have changed leadership (Theresa May replacing David Cameron as prime minister, Sadiq Khan taking over as mayor from Boris Johnson), scores of new high-rise buildings have transformed the London skyline, most notably on the South Bank, and an increase in property rates has seen many independent high-street businesses close. Countless construction sites throughout London have reduced traffic to a crawl and the price of a pint has reached £5. Still, pop-ups of everything from shops selling vintage clothing and restaurants dishing up the most exotic of cuisines continue to open at the speed of summer lightning, the West End opens even more exhilarating shows – both home-grown and imported – each season, much of the Underground now runs all night at weekends, and national museums remain free of charge to one and all. What effect Brexit will have on this great city's future remains to be seen.
TIMELINE
55–54 BC
Roman Emperor Julius Caesar makes a fast-paced and badly planned visit to Britain and returns empty-handed – though the Senate declares a celebration that lasts 20 days.
AD 43
The Romans invade Britain, led by Emperor Claudius; they mix with the local Celtic tribespeople and will stay for almost four centuries.
47–50
A defensive fort at Londinium is built. The name Londinium was probably taken from a Celtic place name (a common Roman practice) but there is no evidence as to what it actually means.
122
Emperor Hadrian pays a visit to Londinium and many impressive municipal buildings are constructed. Roman London reaches its peak, with temples, bathhouses, a fortress and a port.
190–225
London Wall is constructed around Londinium after outsiders breach Hadrian’s Wall to the north. The wall encloses an area of just 132 hectares and is 6m high.
410
Emperor Honorius decrees that the colony of Britannia should take care of its own defences, effectively ending the Roman presence in Londinium.
597
Ethelbert, the first English monarch to convert to Christianity, welcomes St Augustine and his 40 missionaries to Canterbury, ensuring that city’s religious supremacy.
c 600
The Saxon trade settlement of Lundenwic (literally ‘London settlement') is formed to the west of the Roman site of Londinium.
604
The first Christian cathedral dedicated to St Paul is built on Ludgate Hill, the site of the current cathedral; fashioned from wood, it burns down in 675 and is rebuilt in stone a decade later.
842
Vikings attack and burn London to the ground; a period of great struggle between the kingdoms of Wessex and the Danes begins for control of the Thames.
886
King Alfred the Great, first king of all England, reclaims London for the Saxons and founds a new settlement within the walls of the old Roman town.
1016
The Danes return to London and Knut is crowned king of England, ushering in two decades of relative peace.
1066
Following his decisive victory over King Harold at the Battle of Hastings, William, Duke of Normandy (aka William the Conqueror), is crowned king in Westminster Abbey.
1078
William builds 10 castles within a day’s march of London (including the White Tower and Windsor), first in earth and timber and then in stone.
1097
William Rufus, son of William the Conqueror, commences the construction of Westminster Hall. The hall, possibly the largest in Europe at the time, is completed in two years.
1170
Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket, born in Ironmongers Lane and known as Thomas of London in his lifetime, is murdered by four of Henry II’s knights.
1176
London Bridge is built in stone for the first time with a chapel in the centre dedicated to St Thomas Becket, although most people still cross the river by boat.
1215
King John signs the Magna Carta (literally ‘Great Charter’), an agreement with England’s barons forming the basis of constitutional law in England.
1241
Cock Lane in Smithfield effectively becomes London’s first red-light district.
1290
King Edward I issues an edict expelling all Jews from England; the banishment will remain in effect until Oliver Cromwell comes to power more than 360 years later.
1348
Rats on ships from Europe bring the so-called Black Death, a bubonic plague that wipes out half the city's population in a year and returns several times until 1375.
1455
The Wars of the Roses, a series of rebellions and battles between two houses of the Plantagenet Dynasty – Lancaster (red rose) and York (white rose) – erupts and rages for more than three decades.
1476
William Caxton, a prominent merchant from Kent, establishes his press at Westminster, printing more than 90 volumes of works by the likes of Geoffrey Chaucer and the poet John Gower.
1558
The first detailed map of London is commissioned by a group of German merchants; a golden age of peace, art and literature begins as Queen Elizabeth I takes the throne.
1599
The Globe opens in Southwark, alongside other London theatres such as the Rose and the Swan; most of Shakespeare’s plays written after 1599 are staged here, including Macbeth and Hamlet.
1605
A Catholic plot to blow up James I by hiding gunpowder under the House of Commons is foiled; four of the alleged plotters, including Guy Fawkes, are executed the following year.
1613
The Globe theatre catches fire and burns to the ground; it is rebuilt the following year but closed by the Puritans and demolished in 1642.
1649
King Charles I is executed at Whitehall at the height of the English Civil Wars, a series of armed conflicts between Royalists (or Cavaliers) and Parliamentarians (or Roundheads).
1661
Oliver Cromwell’s body is dug up from Westminster Abbey three years after his death and given a posthumous 'execution'; his skull is then stuck on a spike and displayed above Westminster Hall.
1665
The Great Plague ravages London, wiping out a quarter of the population. It was one of Europe’s last outbreaks of the disease.
1666
The Great Fire of London burns for four days, destroying medieval London and leaving 13,200 houses, 460 streets and 89 churches, including St Paul’s Cathedral, in smoking ruins.
1702
The Daily Courant, London’s first daily newspaper, is published in Fleet St, consisting of a single page of news.
1707
The first-ever sitting of the parliament of the Kingdom of Great Britain occurs in London as the Act of Union brings England and Scotland together under one parliament.
1711
Sir Christopher Wren’s masterpiece St Paul’s Cathedral is officially completed, 45 years after Old St Paul’s Cathedral was gutted by the Great Fire.
1759
The British Museum opens to the public for the first time, housed in Montagu House in Bloomsbury and levying no admission fee to all ‘studious and curious persons’.
1812
Charles Dickens, Victorian England’s greatest novelist, is born in Portsmouth; many of his novels would portray London in all its Victorian squalor.
1829
London’s first regular bus service – the horse-drawn ‘omnibus’ – begins, running from Paddington to Bank. The fare is 1 shilling (now 5p).
1838
The coronation of Queen Victoria at Westminster Abbey ushers in a new era for London; the British capital becomes the economic centre of the world.
1843
Connecting Rotherhithe and Wapping, Marc Isambard Brunel opens his Thames Tunnel, the first tunnel to be constructed under a navigable river.
1851
The Great Exhibition, the brainchild of Victoria's consort, Albert, who would die a decade later, opens to great fanfare in the purpose-built Crystal Palace in Hyde Park.
1878
London’s first electric lights are installed in Billingsgate Fish Market, using 'Yablochkov candles' (arc lamps).
1884
Greenwich Mean Time is established, making Greenwich Observatory the centre of world time, according to which all clocks around the globe are set.
1893
The world’s first outdoor aluminium statue, the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, topped with a statue of the Angel of Christian Charity (better known as Eros), is unveiled in Piccadilly Circus.
1901
Queen Victoria dies after reigning 63 years and 217 days – the longest reign in British history until Elizabeth II broke that record in September 2015.
1908
London hosts its first Olympic Games in the now-demolished White City Stadium; a total of 22 teams take part and the entire budget is £15,000.
1926
London all but closes down for nine days during the General Strike, with little violence and ultimately almost no impact on trade-union activity or industrial relations.
1936
The 'Year of Three Kings': George VI ascends the throne following the death of his father, George V, and abdication of his brother, Edward VIII, who gave up his throne for an American divorcée.
1940–41
London is devastated by the Blitz, although miraculously St Paul’s Cathedral and the Tower of London escape the bombing largely unscathed.
1945
Big Ben is illuminated again in April and full street lighting restored six months after the Blackout is downgraded to a dim-out over London; 'Victory in Europe' is declared in May.
1951
King George VI opens the Festival of Britain, marking the centenary of the Great Exhibition and aiming to lift the national mood after the destruction of WWII.
1952
London is brought to a virtual standstill for four days in December by a thick pea-souper smog that smothers and chokes the city and leaves up to 4000 people dead.
1953
Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation is held at Westminster Abbey, the first major event to be broadcast live around the world on TV.
1956
Red Routemaster double-decker buses make their first appearance in London and soon become a city icon.
1959
The Notting Hill Carnival is launched by Claudia Jones to promote better race relations following the riots of 1958 when white and Afro-Caribbean communities clashed.
1966
England beat Germany to win the World Cup at Wembley – possibly the greatest day in the history of British sport and one seared into the consciousness of every schoolboy.
1979
Margaret Thatcher is elected prime minister. Her policies will transform Britain beyond recognition – part vital modernisation, part radical right-wing social policy.
1981
Brixton sees the worst race riots in London’s history; Lord Scarman, delivering his report on the events, puts the blame squarely on ‘racial disadvantage that is a fact of British life’.
1984
The Thames Barrier, designed to protect London from flooding during high tides and storm surges, is officially opened by the Queen.
1987
A fire, probably started by a dropped match or cigarette, at King’s Cross Underground station causes the deaths of 31 people.
1990
Britain erupts in civil unrest, culminating in the poll tax riots in Trafalgar Sq; the deeply unpopular tax ultimately proves to be Thatcher's undoing and she resigns in November.
1997
Labour sweeps to victory after almost two decades of Conservative government. Tony Blair’s centrist ‘New Labour’ party wins a majority of 179 in the House of Commons.
2000
Ken Livingstone is elected mayor of London as an independent, despite the Labour government’s attempts to shoehorn its own candidate into the job.
2003
London’s congestion charge is introduced by Livingstone, a scheme that sees traffic volume reduced by 10% in its first decade.
2005
A day after London is awarded the 2012 Olympics, 52 people are killed by Islamic terrorists in a series of suicide bombings on London's transport network on 7 July.
2008
Boris Johnson, a Conservative MP and journalist famed for both his gaffes and wonderful turns of phrase, beats Ken Livingstone to become London’s new mayor.
2010
Labour is defeated in the general elections, which results in a hung Parliament and a Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government with David Cameron as prime minister.
2011
A demonstration against alleged police brutality in Tottenham on 6 August turns into a riot and a spree of mass looting that spreads to numerous boroughs and towns across the UK.
2012
Boris Johnson narrowly beats Ken Livingstone to win his second mayoral election; London hosts the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics.
2013
The Shard, at 310m (1016ft) the tallest building in the EU, opens to the public; MPs vote in favour of legalising gay marriage.
2014
The southern half of the Olympic site opens to the public as Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, followed by the Aquatics Centre, Velodrome and ArcelorMittal Orbit.
2015
The Conservatives defeat Labour in the general election, emerging with a narrow majority and abandoning their coalition government with the Liberal Democrats.
2016
Sadiq Khan is elected London's mayor, the first Muslim to hold such a position in a major Western capital; the UK electorate votes 52% to 48% to leave the EU, approving a withdrawal now known as Brexit.
2017
The Conservative Party scrapes home in a closer-than-expected national election and Theresa May forms a new government.