Close to midnight

Marylebone, close to midnight. The air very cold. So much for my determination to be in bed by 11 o’clock each night.

Devonshire Place (leading to Wimpole Street). Notice the security camera attached to the lamp post. All of central London is watched by the police, in a real-life game of Big Brother.

Nothing much of interest in Devonshire Place apart from a very good (but very expensive) gym.

Wimpole Street is chiefly known because of The Barretts Of Wimpole Street, a 1934 film starring Charles Laughton and Maureen O’Sullivan (and the 1957 remake starring John Gielgud and Virginia McKenna). The film is a portrayal of the love affair between the poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. Hardly anyone has read The Ring And The Book these days.

Number thirty-six Wimpole Street was the home of Sir Evelyn Baring, unofficial ruler of Egypt from 1883 to 1907. A blue plaque announces this fact. It was his son (also called Sir Evelyn Baring) who was Governor of Kenya in the 1950s, during the Mau Mau uprising. Autocratic, secretive and financially astute (he knew that modern warfare is fought financially as well as militarily) he crushed the rebellion with a ferocity that seems astonishing considering the liberal attitudes of the post-war era. He was able to get away with this because of his shrewd use of propaganda, and tight control of military expenditure (spending on counter-insurgency operations never grew to a level where it alarmed the Westminster government). He fought terror with terror.