Here’s a real cure for anyone with a bad case of things-are-getting-worse-itis. Written in 1962 principally for the American market, London Perceived has now been republished over here for the first time in 40 years, which seems staggering. I’ve never read a better summary of London or Londoners.
And it has hardly dated at all. The sombre — and beautiful — black and white photographs are so elegiac that you’re conned into thinking that here is a sombre — and beautiful — but long-vanished city. The differences between London then and London now, though, are surprisingly few.
I suffered a particularly acute bout of things-are-getting-worse-itis when I looked at one photo of a policeman with a stiff handlebar moustache clutching the wrought-iron gates of Smithfield meat market. What a moustache! What gates! But then, soon after, on my way into work through Smithfield, I saw exactly the same gates, if not the same policeman — there was, though, a security guard directing the Dundee abattoir lorries to their unloading bays.
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