London. The Smoke. The Capital. Heart of the Empire. Best city in the world. The Original. That shithole.
There are many names and epithets given to my homeland's capital city - some less polite than others. There are many Londons in the world as well - my Phillips World Atlas, paperback edition, from 2005, lists 3 others in the USA and Canada, as well as Greater London and the three "London" airports (Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted: Luton, City and Southend have all since been designated as "London" airports despite being nearly as far out of town as Gatwick which is 38.2 miles by road from Parliament Square). There is also Londres (the French translation of London) in, strangely, Argentina where Spanish is spoken.... More current editions may have even more listed, who knows?
But proper London, the one sitting on the Thames in southern England, marking settlements that have existed there since pre-historic times, and recognised as the biggest and most important city in England (and latterly the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) since at least the Roman invasion c.44 B.C. - they named it Londinium - and perhaps still older, is the one I'm familiar with. And writing about here.
Not about all of London, of course - I know it well enough, but not that well. I'm telling stories here about the City of London. It's been the financial centre of London, Britain, and for a long time the entire world, for centuries, and considering its historical might is astonishingly small - hence its long standing nickname: the title of this piece. It remains one of only a very few cities within a city in the world - the only other one that springs to my mind is the Vatican City in Rome (I've worked there too....). Other suggestions would be welcome.
I've spent a big part of my life working there, been to inner and outer city areas to play and watch sports, driven through areas I wouldn't (then) have wanted to walk through. But most of these were in Greater London, the metropolis that grew up into an urban sprawl on the wealth and opportunity offered by the emergence and continued financial genius of the City. Everywhere I've seen the skyline change, as skyscrapers have smothered the lovely old Regency and Victorian and Edwardian blocks that were often born as upmarket residences and morphed over time into office blocks, places of trade like the Stock Exchange (itself now transformed and migrated to a modern tower of glass and concrete and stainless steel cladding). I've seen the transformation of crumbling riverside wharves and warehouses into luxury shopping malls and dining areas, old and dingy markets into designer stores and museums and art galleries. It changes every time I go there. I wouldn't say I exactly love the place, but still after all these years I feel its pull, my connection to it. It still fascinates me.
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In 1970, when I started work as a filing clerk in the back office of a venerable old stockbrokers, to the delight of my working class parents who viewed it as a job for life (I wish....), the office I was based at was in just such an old Victorian block in Finsbury Circus, on Moorgate, within walking distance of the grand old Stock Exchange building, the Bank of England, the Royal Exchange and that maze of little lanes and alleys that still make up a big part of the Square Mile. Salisbury House (for such was its name) was - and still is - a lovely old building, one side of it curved around one quadrant of the circular gardens in the Circus, of 5 floors. The offices and meeting rooms came in all shapes and sizes, linked by a maze of corridors, and all of the rooms, even our long and narrow, scraggy back office with big windows overlooking the gardens, were flock wallpapered and carpeted in the old style with heavy wooden doors and window frames, all dark varnished. No open-plan floors for dear old Grieveson Grant & Co, the sixth biggest broker in the country at that time. The desks were proper wooden desks, the chairs we sat on proper dining room chairs, again dark wood and upholstered, and only the department manager's chair had arms. Every desk was equipped with a couple of wire baskets, (named In and Out), and a big gray metal ashtray (everybody, me included, smoked and it was perfectly acceptable to do so: there was a constant fog in the room). Oh, how times have changed!
The lifts in the building all had somebody operating them: they were open fronted with a concertina door that was opened and closed for you by the operator. The one I used to use, that opened across the corridor from the door to our room, was operated by a little Jewish guy called Lou. He was no more than about five foot five or six tall, balding, wearing tortoiseshell spectacles, and was probably about 60. Despite wearing a very smart dark uniform with epaulettes on the shoulders, a yellow waistcoat, white shirt and black tie, he always had a smouldering cigarette dangling from a corner of his mouth and sometimes another, unlit of course, tucked behind an ear. They were hand rolled, I remember. He never said much: "Morning, Sir" and "Have a good day" about the limit, at least with me - but for a seventeen year old country boy, in his first job, fresh out of school where deference to adults was expected, being called "Sir" by an adult, was something I never really got used to. It was possibly my first real exposure to the class system that was still clinging on, especially in the City.
But my main memory of working in Salisbury House had nothing to do with the work, nor the people I worked with (although I have clear and fond memories of both), nor even the fabric and decor above, but something incredibly trivial. From my window I looked down on the gardens, and on the corner of the road that led in from Moorgate to the Circus and outside one of the doors of our building was one of the old red pillar boxes where in pre-internet times we used to post letters. It was one of the double sized ones, with two doors (one for UK mail and another for Foreign mail) and stood perhaps five feet high. There was nothing special about it at all. One day, there was a stir of muted excitement in the room, and people started lining up and looking out at the letter box so of course I took a look too. You could only see the base, the first foot perhaps, of the structure, the rest of it was completely hidden by a melee of people, men and women, all young and clinging onto each other grimly, the whole pack wobbling precariously. They were surrounded by a crowd of other people, some of them holding clipboards and cameras, and everyone cheering and clapping enthusiastically. At which point, the people on the post box started separating and dropping down to the pavement to much back slapping and hugging. Show over, we all simply got back to work. It turned out (we saw in the tabloid papers the next day) that the people were students from - if memory serves - the London School of Economics who had just set a Guinness World Record for the Most People Standing On A British Post Box - I can't remember how many it was: certainly more than 30, a ridiculous number anyway - that stood for years. It might even still be in there, because I can't see that many people would want to have a go at breaking it.
I went back there last summer, on one of my family visits, and the building was unchanged, at least outwardly, as was the post box, as you can see in the picture above. It quite made my day.
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Salisbury House wasn't unique. At that time the City was still full of low-level Regency-looking blocks, typically no more than five or six floors high. Many were fronted by a variety of shops - stationary stores, newsagents, and clothes shops (pinstriped suits and camel hair overcoats, brogues and bowler hats the most common items on sale). There was also a huge selection of sandwich bars where the food was prepared for each individual customer using fresh ingredients while you waited in the queue. There were no cellophane wrappers, no "sell by date" stamped stickers, and no lists of ingredients with nutritional values: you got a simple sandwich according to what you asked for, wrapped in plain white paper in a simple white paper bag (the bigger shops had their names printed on this). And to me at least they looked and tasted infinitely better than anything on offer nowadays at Pret a Manger, Subway or any other of today's chain outlets - and way WAY better than anything in Boots the Chemist or WH Smith. Only a few of the sarnie bars (as we used to call them) also did coffee, and then it was a simple black coffee or with milk (sugar was help yourself with a teaspoon - not a skinny wooden stick - from a china bowl) and none of this skinny latte or oatmeal milk or even semi-skimmed nonsense. Proper tea and coffee and plain, filling grub. I miss it.
Some of the buildings, Salisbury House included, had cafeterias in the basement. Ours (and I assume the others were little different) were scruffy with peeling paint and the ever-present tobacco fog, long formica topped tables and stainless steel and wood chairs, and self-service. I used to go there most days because the value-for-money was ridiculous. I could (and usually did) have two beefburgers (not in a bun with salad and stuff as in today's McDonalds, just simply fried and greasy), a couple of sausages, a big helping of chips fresh from the fryer, a spoonful of peas or baked beans, the whole topped off by a couple of fried eggs. To wash it down, a mug of tea. The whole meal cost me no more than about five shillings (25p) - in today's value that's about five pounds. And I could offset that with a luncheon voucher (the only employment benefit I received then) for 15p. So call it about two quid a day in today's money. Not bad.....and not that healthy, either, probably, but it was filling and set me up for the afternoon's work (afternoons were invariably busier than mornings) and the commute home.
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Ah, yes....the commute.
Edenbridge, my home town, was on the border with Kent and Sussex, and thus about 30 miles as the train clattered, from there to London Bridge Station (the closest terminus to Salisbury House). The line, which extended south from Edenbridge Town station, a ten minute walk from my council house home, as far as Uckfield in Sussex, was not a main line, so there were very few fast - i.e. limited stops - trains and no express - non stop - at all. Most trains stopped at every station (there were seven after mine) as far as East Croydon, then ran fast through the south London suburbs to the destination. Most trains went to Victoria, but one an hour ran to London Bridge. Coming home it was a bit worse: the last direct service left London Bridge at about 6:15 so if you were a bit late (overtime or the pub) you had to make your way across town to Victoria to catch the one evening train an hour, which was divided at Oxted - half going to East Grinstead, the rest to Uckfield : a longer trip all round.
The trains weren't fast at all: they comprised two, sometimes three, three-car diesel units that were cold, drafty, loud and slow. The morning run took just under an hour, the home run a little longer (if you went from Victoria a good bit longer, factoring in the time it took to divide at Oxted). They were also very crowded, and most mornings by the time the train reached Oxted - so two stops up from Edenbridge Town - it was standing room only. What made things worse was the majority of commuters, at least on the services I had to use, worked like me in the City of London or the Victoria/Westminster area and were thus stockbrokers or insurance workers, or civil servants, which meant they read a newspaper on the journey (remember this was over 50 years ago, long before the internet put everything on-line to read on your mobile). And because of their work and it has to be said the traditions surrounding it, reading The Times or the Daily Telegraph (and occasionally The Guardian) was expected, the papers of choice: broadsheets, not a tabloid. It added to your education: how to fold up your newspaper so as to be able to read it without knocking the elbow of your seat neighbour (who was doing likewise). It was an art form not unlike origami that I never mastered. I used to read books, paperbacks I could stuff in my coat pocket or (later, when I started using one) brief case. And that I have continued to do ever since - it's turned me into a voracious reader but rarely of newspapers. I never travel on train, plane or bus without one.
Sadly, physical newspapers are a rarity nowadays, having moved online like everything else. It's a shame: in my later working life I used to buy (or pick up at the aircraft door) my Monday copy of, usually, the Telegraph (that's before it went totally downhill, becoming rampantly Right wing and deranged) with its Sports, Entertainment and Culture supplements, and it would usually keep me going for the entire week away. I spent many an hour sitting in the sunshine at a pavement cafe somewhere, enjoying a coffee or two, perhaps a cold beer, and a pastry of some kind, and reading the paper.
I remember one lady, very well spoken and smartly dressed, who used to travel to Victoria with three gentlemen - they all boarded one stop further out, I think, at Hever (as in the Castle). They would sit on the same four seats together, two facing two, on the off-side of the train so they weren't disturbed by other people getting on. They would then carefully fold their papers (all of them took the Times) to the page carrying the daily crossword puzzle, and then at the count of three start a competition to see who would finish first (or in the rare event of none of them doing so, who had the most clues completed). The lady, I remember, always donned a pair of white cotton gloves to avoid smudging the ink on the paper's pages, and would complain bitterly about having to do so. They were probably the happiest people on the train, in their own world, like characters out of a P.G.Wodehouse story.
Alas, something else the internet and smart phones seems to have killed off....
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A final recollection: how different everything looked. Yes, yes, I know it's half a century ago, so of course everything looks different. But on this last trip it struck me even more than usual, probably because I was trying to explain it all to My Beloved.
For a start, the people I saw every day, at work and walking across London Bridge to and from the office, all looked by and large the same. The majority - the vast majority! - of us tramping across London Bridge (and all the other bridges that served the Square Mile) were white Caucasian males. There were very few dark skinned people, whether Afro-Caribbean or of Indian extraction, amongst the teeming crowds: there were for sure plenty living in Greater London but not many, at least that I can recall, actually worked in the City. There were certainly none at all working at Grievesons in any capacity. As far as I am aware, this was not because of any anti-immigrant bias by the firm's management, simply that none had at that time been employed. It didn't strike me as being in any way odd: I'm not sure I had ever seen a dark face, anywhere, in my life at that point. It was just....normal.
Most of the men wore dark pin-striped suits generally with a waistcoat, white (or perhaps with a blue-striped pattern) shirt and a dark tie. Sometimes cufflinks and tie pins were worn, and there was a decent number of regimental or Old School ties, even the odd MCC striped one (especially in the summer and on Test Match days). In the winter a dark or camel-hair overcoat or raincoat would be added, and a tightly rolled umbrella with a bamboo cane handgrip. Many of the men also wore at all times a neatly brushed black bowler hat: it identified the bearer as a senior manager or partner at one of the many stock- and insurance-brokerage firms that made the City's wealth. Brief cases were invariably of dark brown leather and expensively finished with shining brass catches and locks: these carried the daily paper and, I assume, Important Investment Papers and Reports. Possibly cheese sandwiches too - who knows?
This was a way of identifying their importance. The hat would of course be removed in the office, but donned whenever the bearer left the office to head to the Stock Exchange (or, for insurance brokers, the Lloyds of London) Floor itself to do some business. But there was one exception to this rule: the Government Broker. At this time (and it may have varied from administration to administration) he was the senior partner in the firm of Mullens & Co. But whichever the firm, his job was to buy and sell shares and UK Gilts (government securities) as instructed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer for and on behalf of the Government of the day. As an unmistakable means of identification, when he went to the Floor to do this, he would replace his bowler hat with a black top hat. I remember watching from the Visitor's Gallery once the frisson of excitement when he strode purposefully onto the floor and began a circuit of the Jobbers' boxes to place his orders (which were never executed and were confidential between he and the jobbers used until he had left the Floor to return to his office). I apologise for the terminology I've had to use there: I will have to pen another short essay to define it and explain how the business was done then (now of course it's all automated and online - the more's the pity!)
Anyway, we plebs, the back office wallahs, would dress similarly, but our ensembles were clearly of a cheaper and off-the-shelf variety rather than tailor made, from a chain store like Hepworth's or Burton's, and our umbrella would be less tightly furled (another trick of the trade I never really mastered) with a mock leather handle not bamboo. We never wore hats: that was definitely a Bad Show, unless you were of an older age group and wore a grey trilby. Similarly our briefcases - at least for those of us pose-y enough to carry them - were typically a bit frayed round the edges from hard use at school and again of a lower chain-store make.
The women I recall (and there were relatively few, mostly secretaries, receptionists and shorthand typists) were dressed smartly: invariably, it seemed to me, in floral dresses or swishy blue or grey pleated skirts (VERY rarely black pencil tight ones!), tights (I assume: but maybe a smattering of stockings and garter belts too....) and sensible shoes, which is to say black or brown, slip on, low heel: not a stiletto in sight. Nor for that matter a pair of trousers (sorry: slacks). In spring and summer a thigh length light jacket or fine-knit cardigan would cover the white blouse and in winter this was replaced by a variety of longer, mid-calf affairs (some like macs, some trench coats and some like the men's overcoats). And of course their jackets and coats always, but always, had the buttons on the opposite side to us men. Why is that? I've never been able to work that one out! Any ideas?
What we very rarely encountered as we tramped across London Bridge to the office (and I'm sure it was the same for everyone coming into Fenchurch and Liverpool Street stations from Essex and East Anglia, and the various Tube stations) were tourists. In those days, the City was a busy working place, with very few tourist sights to see: St. Paul's Cathedral was just beyond the City limits, the Tower of London and the Monument (to the Great Fire) were deep within, and that was about it. HMS Belfast hadn't been moored up across from the Tower yet, and Tower Bridge was a proper working bridge, without a museum, bookshop or expensive pub under the south Tower, as today. Of course at that time too tourism was not really A Thing - package tours to European destinations were just taking off (if you'll forgive the pun) and Citybreaks, so popular now, I don't think had even been thought of. The only people likely to visit the City of London were there either to Do Business, or schoolkids on a day trip to visit the Stock Exchange, the Royal Exchange or Lloyds of London as part of their school Commerce or Economics courses. I had done that myself a couple of years before, and never for a moment thought it would lead to a career that, one way or another, kept me (and my families) in beer and bread for fifty years.
The hordes of Chinese, Japanese, Malaysian, American - let's be honest, the United Nations! - of excited people snapping away with their smartphones at everything while munching on Pret sandwiches or slurping Starbuck's finest, blocking the footpaths and shouting gibberish (to us Brits, anyway) just did not exist in 1970.
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But the skyline: oh, my word, how different is that! When I started there, on my first excited tramp across London Bridge, looking this way and that as I tried to take it all in, Adelaide House at the northernmost point of the Bridge was the tallest I could see at I think seven or eight storeys. It's still there, swathed in tarpaulin and developer's advertisements as it undergoes a complete refurbishment. Beyond that, where King William Street (leading off the Bridge) meets Gracechurch Street was another fine old building, about the same height, with I recall a dome at the top. The address, 42 Gracechurch Street, was one of the main City branches of, from memory, Midland Bank, but Google Maps now only lists it as The Folly, an expensive looking eatery. To the left, the view was dominated by the dome of the Central Criminal Court (a.k.a. The Old Bailey) and slightly closer its bigger and bolder cousin at St.Paul's Cathedral. To the right lay the Tower of London and Tower Bridge itself, and Custom House on the north bank between the two bridges. Looking beyond Tower Bridge, there was nothing but grubby looking semi-derelict wharf buildings on both banks of the river: the futuristic Wall Street On The Water business district of Canary Wharf was still twenty years or more away (thank you to the Divine Saint Margaret of Grantham for that...).
Closer at hand, again on the right (Tower Bridge) side, The Queens Walk linking London and Tower Bridges and thence along as far as Blackfriars and the new Millenium Footbridge didn't exist, and the various wharves and warehouses, including Hay's Wharf and Cottons Wharf, were semi-derelict, crumbling and deserted. Now they have been totally redeveloped into a selection of tastefully modernised offices and high-end shopping malls and food courts. And, my word, is it an improvement!
In The City itself (remember, it lies on the North Bank of the Thames, so the developments I've just described aren't truthfully part of it - merely its southern gateway), the change has been if anything bigger. I don't recall seeing skyscrapers at all in those early days. The Barbican Centre, a few minutes stroll from Salisbury House, was still in the first stage of its construction: a low rise development of shops and a redeveloped (and still excellent) City Library, theatres, concert halls, galleries and cinemas and some outlying service buildings for the Stock Exchange. The adjoining Barbican Estate, comprising some fourteen housing blocks of half a dozen floors each, surrounding a lake and parkland, was built as "social housing" - but a bit better than the council house I grew up in! Next to that was a further luxury development comprising four towers (the first opening in 1971) that rise to 42 floors and 123m (in old money that's just over 400ft). Not bad for 1970s London, and still among the tallest in the country.
But look now at the photo above. As you can see, the buildings I remember are still there along Lower Thames Street, between the two bridges, but now the view is dominated by a series of new - some unfinished - offices that match, often exceed, the height of the Barbican Estate that has now disappeared from view, at least from the riverbank viewpoint. Behind these waterfront blocks, and again obscured, are some of the older skyscrapers like Angel Court, just behind the Bank of England, where I spent an unhappy six month spell with a bunch of American sharks - the view from my 16th floor window towards Liverpool Street Station was probably the best part of my time there.
Close to that stands the NatWest Tower, headquarters of the National Westminster Bank, and built to resemble from above (not that most people would ever see that view) the bank logo's symbolic triangular shape with rounded corners of slightly different heights. It remains an iconic building, and won awards when new. Then on St. Mary Axe, close to Fenchurch Street, you have the Gherkin, a circular black tower that narrows at the summit to give it its nickname. I stands on the site of an older tower that formerly held the Baltic Exchange but was severely damaged by a terrorist bomb in 1992. The old block was pulled down and replaced by the current 180m (that's 592ft) 41 floor tower. It's unmissable, and in my view one of the more innovative buildings - some of the new ones, like the Cheese Grater at 122 Leadenhall Street (228m/738ft, 48 floors), or the Fenchurch Building (a.k.a. The Walkie Talkie because of its shape) at 20 Fenchurch Street - relatively short at 160m/525ft and 37 floors, but topped by a three storey observation deck called the Sky Garden: a spectacular space apparently) to my eyes at least merely look a bit gimmicky. But then I'm old school.
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To be sure, the City of London has changed immeasurably since my debut there 56 years ago, but under the surface retains some of its old charm. Many of the pubs and restaurants I used to use are still in business, little changed inside and out and often serving the same food menu and range of beers: why change a good thing, after all? There is still a buzz about the place, people dashing hither and thither, to work, to lunch, to a business meeting, even if they now increasingly wear jeans and trainers and tee-shirts rather than three piece suits, shirts and ties. To be honest, that makes me very pleased: it always seemed to me that the important, crucial ingredient was the person inside the outfit, their knowledge and skills and attitude and simply not the Armani suits and Gucci loafers. Sharing that view often got me into trouble...
Culture changes, the same as everything else; it doesn't always work but clearly it has in the City, still a leading financial centre despite the nation's problems (that are rife and made worse by political mismanagement over the last twenty years...).
The little lanes and alleys are still there, and look the same as I remember, even if the brass name plates by the doors have different names now. And the grand old buildings, the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange, across from each other on Threadneedle Street, right above Bank Station on the underground, are outwardly unchanged, solid grey granite monuments to Empire, with their pillared steps and oaken doorways, statues and gargoyles. The Royal Exchange isn't an exchange any more, since 99% of the city's business went online, but remains home to a number of financial companies including the Bank of Italy, but the BoE remains what it's always been: the nation's lender of last resort, it's central bank - no tenants there. And quite right, too!
Even the traffic, always appalling, has lightened now. In my early days there was a non-stop procession of black cabs, red double decker buses (the classic Routemasters with an open platform at the back that allowed you to jump on and off at traffic lights or simply when the vehicle was stationary in a traffic jam), single deck coaches, delivery vans - you name it. Upper and Lower Thames Streets, running along the north bank of the Thames from Westminster and out to Blackwall Tunnel and Docklands, was like a race track, especially around the turn of this century, when commuter coaches formed a viable alternative way for workers from Kent and Essex to get to and from work. The whole length of the road was crammed with a fleet of multi coloured coaches of competing companies racing each other, and diving through gaps to the side of the road to pick up or drop off passengers, horns blaring and lights flashing - great fun for their passengers, less so for other drivers. Now the inside lane, where the coach stops were (at least through the City) has been converted to a paved cycle lane and closed to all motorised traffic and when I was there not a coach in sight.
Many of the roads in and through the City have also been narrowed with specific bus and cycle lanes, and a new one-way system introduced, and this has reduced the amount of traffic too. And of course there are now expensive (and unpopular) charges for all road users (buses and taxis excepted) who use the system to reduce the amount of traffic and hence vehicle emissions pollution - too little too late in terms of fighting global warming perhaps, but from a worker's or visitor's perspective probably making the place safer to navigate on foot and maybe more pleasant? It seemed so to me, at any rate.
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But for all the changes I've described, the City of London is still a unique place, not only in Britain but I would suggest the world. I can understand (though not particularly like) the change in focus inevitably resulting from increased tourism, and decry and laud in equal measure the physical changes I've written about. But it remains a business centre, and for all the trans-Atlantic bluster from the Wall Street crowd, or the claims from other important European centres like Frankfurt and Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels, or global outliers like Singapore and Tokyo and Beijing, there is absolutely nowhere quite like it in either value and importance or, for want of a better term, vibe, on the planet. I'm not sure I'd want to work there now, nor spend more than the odd day there, retracing my ancient footsteps, to scribble about in essays like this.
But it seems to me a year without doing so at least once is a wasted year. The Square Mile gets you like that.
