London History, Up Close

If you look up at the building to the right of Soho’s Original Adult Store on Walker’s Court, you can still make out the old sign built into the brickwork: “the world’s greatest names in Strip Tease.” It is all that remains of the Raymond Revuebar, which from 1958 to 2004 operated at this address under its self-proclaimed title of “The World Centre of Erotic Entertainment.” The Revuebar was many things – ludicrous, audacious,...

Everyone calls it the Eros statue. It is not Eros. It never was. The winged figure at the centre of Piccadilly Circus is Anteros: Eros’s brother, a symbol of selfless and mature love rather than reckless passion. The mix-up has persisted for over 130 years, and at this point nobody is correcting it. London looked at a statue of measured, reflective affection and decided it was the god of getting off with people. Not What You Think The Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain went up on 29...

Soho Square sits at the northern end of Soho, a small public garden ringed by Georgian and Victorian buildings. Number 31 is hard to find today. It should be in the square’s South West corner, but there’s a gap – or rather a road: Frith Street – between 32 and 30, the NHS building that was formerly the home of celebrated Victorian actress Fanny Kemble. 31 was the abode of another Victorian actress. The actress Nelly Moore lived there in the 1860s. Beautiful and talented,...

Soho in 1960 At some point in the late 1950s, officers from Special Branch began making regular visits to a coffee house on Carlisle Street, a narrow turning off Soho Square. They would sit down, order a drink, and play chess. They were listening. The conversations happening at number 7 were considered worth monitoring at the highest levels of the British state. The place was called the Partisan Coffee House. It was open from half past ten in the morning until midnight, it served famously...

Ravens at the Tower of London. The raven enclosure sits within the Tower of London’s inner ward, a short walk from the White Tower. Six ravens live here at any given time, tended by a keeper with the title of Ravenmaster. Tourists photograph them. Tour guides invoke them. The legend is everywhere: if the ravens ever leave the Tower, both the fortress and the kingdom will fall. King Charles II was so alarmed by the prophecy that he ordered the birds protected, even at the expense of his...

Number 29 Soho Square sits on the north side of the square, a few minutes’ walk from the noise and colour of Oxford Street. These days it’s an NHS walk in centre, and has been in the medical game for a while. A large engraving on the top of the building reads ‘The Hospital For Women, Supported By Voluntary Contributions‘. Before that part of its history though, this site housed a woman whose own voluntary contributions provided a form of support to a large...

At the northern end of the Palace of Westminster, the Elizabeth Tower rises above the Thames and the rooftops of Westminster to a height of 96 metres. Most people call it Big Ben, though technically that name belongs only to the great bell inside. Stand at its base on a clear day and you can hear the chimes carry across the river. In homes and offices across the world, those same chimes have marked the hour on BBC broadcasts for nearly a century. On 1 April 1980, the BBC announced they were...

Inside the Beauchamp Tower, scratched low into the stone at knee height, is a single name: JANE. Someone carved it during the winter of 1553-54, probably Guildford Dudley, Jane Grey’s teenage husband, imprisoned here after his wife’s nine-day reign collapsed. It is not an inscription that announces itself. You have to know to look for it. The Tower of London is full of such traces – moments of desperation preserved in stone by people who had run out of other options. Few...

The memorial in Trinity Gardens on Tower Hill sits on the approximate site of the old scaffold. Bronze plaques set into the ground record 27 names – politicians, nobles, rebels, and traitors who died here publicly, in front of crowds that sometimes numbered in the thousands. A central plaque notes that more than 125 people lost their lives on this spot “for the sake of their faith, country or ideals.” The 27 names represent only a fraction. Most who died here went...

Herbert Mason’s famous photo of St Paul’s in the Blitz. The south face of St Paul’s Cathedral looks out over St Paul’s Churchyard, the pedestrianised square that wraps around the building’s base. Christopher Wren’s dome rises above it. Look up at the triangular pediment on this side of the building and you’ll find a carved phoenix, wings spread, rising from flames. Beneath it, a single Latin word: Resurgam. I shall rise again. It...