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The first one is mentioned here.) I'm part of a team of four on a new book of stories and facts about London, and we completed yesterday. I did the West. All primary MSs delivered. Now it's down to editing, which will be blisteringly quick, as it's scheduled to come out in August (!). So that's another in the bag - and here are a couple of small samples.
There’s an unfinished building on the Strand, but you’ll have to look very hard to find it because it has been “under construction” for 83 years and won’t be completed any time soon.
It’s Bush House, the headquarters of the BBC World Service. It might look finished, but actually the builders have left a bit off – part of the out-facing capitals of one of the Portland stone columns is not yet in place, leaving an obvious gap. And that gap will never be filled, because the architect – an American called Harry Corbett – deliberately wanted the building to be left “imperfect” as a nod to the Islamic idea that the notion of man-made perfection was sinful pride and an affront to God.
As if to make up for this missing carving, the head of a Roman marble statue was found during the preparation of the building’s foundations and is still on display inside. He looks rather cross.
... for some reason Brentford has a particularly bloody history. It is thought to be the place where the invading Roman armies crossed the Thames in their conquest of Britain, meeting on the north bank the armies of the British chieftain Cassibellaun. A key source for this story is the chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth, who is wholly unreliable and invented many stories to lend weight to his claim that London was founded by the Trojan Brutus as “New Troy”, or Trinovantum.
A much better-documented engagement took place in 1016 between another invader, this time King Cnut of Denmark, and the defending forces of Edmund Ironside.
This bloody field – it is now partly in the grounds of Syon House, but otherwise has been built over – was again the scene of armed struggle in 1642, during the Civil War. Parliamentarians defending London against the advancing Royalists fought a small battle there as a delaying action as the bulk of their armies gathered to the east. Meanwhile, the King’s men sacked Brentford, which must have been fun, but harmed their cause as tales of the violence spread through the city. The next day the Roundheads and London’s own defence force halted the advancing army at Turnham Green.
Thousands and thousands of words of that sort of stuff, basically. Not high art, but it was fun to work on.
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