London Walks

A Hackney boy who talked to imaginary friends grew up to change the sound of theatre. Harold Pinter taught us to listen to the words, the silences, and especially the pauses.

Before the battlefields, there was Finsbury Park. Don McCullin had a Rolleicord, hard streets, hard men and an eye that missed very little. London taught him where to look.

Lock & Co has been putting hats on London heads for 350 years. Princes, politicians, dandies and ordinary Londoners have all passed through its St James’s Street door, and somehow the old firm is still standing, still fitting, still unmistakably itself.

On October 7th, 1851, a staggering 109,915 people poured into Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition’s busiest day. So much silver changed hands that the takings needed two hackney cabs to carry them to the Bank of England.

Jason Lewis was burned out with London and needed a bit of a break. Thirteen years, 46,000 miles, two broken legs, blood poisoning, oceans, rollerblades and a crocodile later, he came home to Greenwich.