Recognisably “London”

I rashly incorporated the word London into this weblog title, but looking back through past posts, there is more about life in the Home Counties than in the city. I suppose when you are very familiar with a place you tend not to pay much regard to the obvious features around you. Anyway, I’m going to make more of an effort to include scenes that are recognisably “London”.

Natural History Museum in Cromwell Road. This is one of my favourite buildings, designed by the Victorian architect Alfred Waterhouse. I took the picture when I was on my way to the Victoria & Albert Museum on the opposite side of the road.

I say it is one of my favourite buildings, but only in regard to the architecture. I never go round the galleries inside (except the entrance hall where the gothic theme of the architecture is enhanced by monstrous skeletons of dinosaurs, ferocious jaws grinning at the incoming tourists). To tell the truth, I struggle to raise much enthusiasm for anything scientific (I suppose I’m just not very practical).

Biographical note: although I live outside London and the place where I work is located in an industrial suburb, I feel I am a Londoner through and through. I was born in north London, and my father’s family came from the East End where they had lived for hundreds of years. The only reason they moved out of the East End was because of the blitz in 1940 (and three days later the house was hit and completely destroyed). They moved to Mill Hill and never looked back. It was the best thing that could have happened to them. After years of poverty, the war gave them a new start.