The Thames Path: Madness, Modernism and an Unruly Princess
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The Thames Path: Madness, Modernism and an Unruly Princess

There cannot be many major rivers in the world that have a proper hiking trail attached to them all the way through, from the source to the spot where they join the sea. The Thames, Britain’s most famous river, is lined by such as a “source-to-sea” footpath – which, with a total length of well…

Battersea Power Station: The Beached Whale Has Come Back to Life
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Battersea Power Station: The Beached Whale Has Come Back to Life

For this post, our last before the holidays, I wanted to fulfill as many Christmas wishes as I possibly could. Which meant that, since I had no idea what anyone of you might want me to write about, there was only a single Christmas wish that I positively knew I could fulfill, which was my…

Regent’s Canal of London : The Bleak and the Beautiful
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Regent’s Canal of London : The Bleak and the Beautiful

Scenic walks in urban environments come in one of two guises: they take you either through a cartoon version of nature that has been carefully designed for the delight of urbanites or through feral landscapes – abandoned “brownfield sites” such as railway lines, port installations and industrial depots – that have been reclaimed by nature….

The London Parkland Walk: Town Or Country – Which Side Are You On?
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The London Parkland Walk: Town Or Country – Which Side Are You On?

There are nature walks and there are town walks, and rarely the twain shall meet: trees, mountains and birdsong for one, historic buildings and traffic fumes for the other. But there are also walks that challenge you to work out which is which: to determine where nature ends and where the “town“ of human culture…

Ghosts of East London: Famous Ships and a Dead Child
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Ghosts of East London: Famous Ships and a Dead Child

London is the great survivor among the world’s cities: whatever opportunities history has come up with over the centuries, London always seized them with both hands. This explains why its skyline may be called dramatic but never picturesque: no painter would ignore the structural imperatives of a central motive quite like this. London’s tradition has…

Street Art in the City of London
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Street Art in the City of London

Street art works best as a visual counterpoint. It needs something it can aggressively challenge, an urban environment that provides some bite into which it can sink its sharp teeth. This is why street art looks best either in organically grown streets of historic buildings or in an architectural setting of geometrically austere glass-and-steel constructions….