The Londoner's England

I must be honest.

It took me a while to fully appreciate why this collection of pictures accompanied by short write ups on each has the title “The Londoner’s England” but I reached that conclusion; eventually. The book takes the reader to eighty-nine locations. Over half of them are in London and the remainder are in what are referred to as the “Home Counties”. That is those counties that border London or border counties that border London. The book was designed as a type of guide to locations accessible by Londoners by car, on public transport or on foot.

I found this book when I was clearing out my parents’ home. It was one of many items that I was working through that I dealt with as dispassionately and decisively as I could. Should it be kept or donated to a charity shop? In some ways this process felt disrespectful to my parents but over sixty years of marriage they had accumulated possessions that meant very little or nothing to the rest of the family. And anyway, my wife and I have been married over thirty years and have accumulated our own extensive inventory of possessions and didn’t want anymore, unless there was a particularly strong emotional attachment to it.

“The Londoner’s England” was something I could not be so decisive or dispassionate about. It was put to one side for further consideration over a mug of coffee. During a break, I sat down amongst the bin liners and boxes with a cup of coffee and flicked through its pages. The paper is thick and soft. There was a quality about the pictures in water colour, charcoal or pen and ink. The page long write ups about each location are informative, friendly and conversational.

As I went through the pages, memories of Sunday walks with Dad came alive.

When I was in my early teens and living in one of the Home Counties my Dad would take me to London on Sundays for a day out. We would arrive at Paddington Station in the west of the city and walk. I would suggest using public transport but no, Dad insisted that we walked. The furthest we walked was into the City of London. Around St Paul’s Cathedral, the monument to the Great Fire of London, Mansion House, the Royal Exchange, The Bank of England, Throgmorton Street, Cheapside, Fleet Street and Holborn. Down narrow alleys which in my memory were either monochrome or sepia. What else would the tones be in the 1960’s twenty years after World War II ended and before stainless steel and glass replaced brick and stonework stained by the ravages of time and pollution?

Not only did we walk to those places, but we walked back to Paddington Station. Along the Embankment past Westminster, through Downing Street and on to Horse Guards Parade, Buckingham Palace, Green Park, Marble Arch and Hyde Par. Only if we were running the risk of being late home for Sunday dinner did Dad allow us the luxury of a bus ride or a journey on the underground.

I realized that despite not being very keen on all the walking we did that I had been extremely lucky to cover all of those miles on foot with my Dad who had taken time away from his garden, decorating or fixing the family car to show me so much of London.

It is thanks to him, and now that I am retired, I do have the time when I am in London or anywhere else, I want to walk and explore. I don’t know how many steps Dad and I did as we did not have the technology then but nowadays, I will think nothing of clocking up twenty thousand plus steps on the health monitor on my phone while walking and exploring.

I have a strong belief that the book was originally owned by my Grandfather. He was a very talented and accomplished artist, especially with pen and ink, who never accumulated the success and recognition he deserved. He was also a frustrated architect as a result of 19th century politics in Eastern Europe but that is another story.

“The Londoner’s England” was just the sort of book he would have bought and enjoyed. I would like to think he spent many an evening going through its pages while enjoying a glass of port and a Cuban cigar. And as he looked at the pictures of buildings in his later years wistfully wondering “What if…..” more than once.

It is thanks to him that I look at buildings and think about their design, their proportions and their history, especially with older buildings. He told me that with older buildings to look above and beyond the ground floors where the fronts are as transient as the length of leases or the economic cycles. Whereas the upper floors can often reveal more building biography.

After saving the book it has taken up residence on my bedside table. Late at night or early in the morning I will go through its pages. Much like Grandfather but without the glass of port and Cuban cigar. I never tire of looking at the pictures as there is always seems to be a new detail to discover. There is also the wistful wondering of what those scenes recorded by different artists in the mid 1940’s, when the book was first published, look like now. If they still exist are, they largely unchanged? Will I be able to find them and stand where the artist stood and see what he saw?

"...when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life for there is in London all that life can afford" Samuel Johnson in a discussion with James Boswell on the 20th September 1777.