As such, there are many wonderful images of London out there but its increasingly rare to be suprised by a new perspective on the city. I like this picture by Alex Holland because it does take me by surprise as it compares and contrasts an old and a new London icon

It not only eloquently captures one of those moments of juxtaposition that London throws at you on a regular basis but does so with a sly sense of humour. Whilst The Tower of London remains steadfast and in surprisingly good nick, the Gherkin seems to be gurning in the background like a drunk guest spoiling a wedding photo. I like it a lot.

The picture was taken by Alex Holland who like most London artists comes from somewhere else, in Alex’s place Yorkshire. He favours photographing coasts and capital cities and by the look of his website his love of capitals extends to letters as every word on the site is capitalised. You can see more of his work and buy Alex Holland artwork here. 

* There is an exhibition of Camille Silvy’s photographs at the National Portrait Gallery until October 24th 2010. I strongly recommend it for anybody with even a passing interest in the past, photography or people. Its fascinating to see both the photographer and the subjects coming to grips with the new medium 150 years ago.

The Borribles are strange feral youths that exist in and are loyal to the old working class neighbourhoods of central(ish) London including Battersea, Wandsworth, Hoxton and Hackney in which they live. Borribles aren’t born but are made. They start out as normal children but turn into Borribles after a “bad start” in life leads to them becoming “unmanageable” in normal society. So they exist in the margins of life, squatting in the derelict buildings that were still plentiful in the 1970’s, stealing from street markets to feed themsleves and living in tribal and fiercely territorial gangs. Over time the kids sprout pointed ears – the key charcteristic of a Borrible – and whilst their ears are pointed they never grow up. If that sounds a bit twee and Peter Pan-like, their foul language and tendency to take on and kill their enemies, including the police, with steel catapults marks them down as more like characters out of a Richard Allen book such as Skinhead or Suedehead. Certainly the Borribles occupy the same sort of harsh unsentimental London that those skinheads did. If the police get hold of them they clip the Borribles’ ears ( a clip round the earhole!) and that turns them back into children who proceed to age and fade into adulthood.

De Larrabeiti wrote three Borribles adventures which achieved some critical success in the UK, US and in Germany (see the sleeve above). The first of the books was published in 1976 and describes a London that feels very different to how it is now. People have less. Anger is in the air. Punk rock is not a million miles away. Sinister rag and bone men still ride round on horses and carts. Battersea is a rough and ready neighbourhood. The first book opens with the Borribles under attack from strange creatures called the Rumbles of Rumbledon who are plummy voiced representations of the dreadful middle class intent on gentrifying the Borribles beloved Battersea and then pushing further into working class London. The Borribles respond by sending an elite task force to the home of the Rumbles to cause critical and brutal damage to their adversaries. The first book is the story of that adventure.

You might have guessed that the Rumbles are a thinly veiled reference to the Wombles of Wimbledon Common. The Rumbles can’t pronounce their “r’s” properly; they come out as “w’s”, hence Rumble sounds like Wumble; Rumbledon becomes Wumbledon. Whereas Borribles are rough and ready, Rumbles are posh and arrogant and talk using old fashioned phrases like “old bean” and “spiffing”. Clearly De Larrabeiti took extreme offense at the Wombles – and the middle classes that they represent – because the violence that he has  The Borribles inflict upon the poor Rumbles is truly blood-curdling.

I loved the books because their stories take place on the streets where I now live and I can recognise some of the pubs and churches. Even a shop or two remain from those days. The overall nature of the area however has changed beyond compare. Contrary to what happens in the books however, in truth it is the Rumbles (& not the Borribles) who won because most of the formerly working-class “cockney” areas that are described are now full of private prep schools, 4×4’s driven by yummy mummies and Starbucks coffe shops. What is interesting is how these books strip back that veneer of gentrification to show how the areas used to be and suggest something of their essential nature.

I was genuinely astonished out how bloody and exciting the tales were. The set piece battles are gory and the morality of the characters is harsh and pays no lip service to political correctness. These stories feel as though they are taking place in a real and uncompromising world despite the conceits of the Rumbles, who are like huge rats that walk on hind legs, and the Borribles’ ears. In this mix of fantasy and reality they share something with the books of Philip Pullman. I suspect Pullman has read and digested them. The Gobblers of His Dark Materials are related to the Borrible abductors Dewdrop and Ernie.

Although the first book in the trilogy received critical success it did not sell in huge quantities and from my limited research has been largely forgotten, at least in the locality in which it was created. It may well be because of the violent subject matter.  This first book was followed by two more: The Borribles Go for Broke (1981) and Across the Dark Metropolis (1986). Both books refused to tone down their contents and their continuing anti-police message jarred with the mainstream world of children’s books and were particularly out of step following the riots in Brixton and Tottenham. De Larrabeiti struggled to find a publisher for the third book after Collins, the original publisher withdrew from publication at the last moment. He never wrote about the Borribles again.

You can follow people purporting to be The Borribles on twitter. How very modern….

I found these pictures on Flickr. They were taken by Katarina 2353 (real name Katarina Stefanović) and are stunning. I’ve tried to get in touch with her to send her a note of appreciation, but have had no luck. 

No doubt Katarina has used photshop, but she has used it well. You can see all of Katarina’s London photos here.

She also has created some wonderful countryside landscapes which have been highlighted in this Living Design blog.

This picture of St Paul’s Cathedral from the Tate Modern is by Rene Fijten from Holland.  You can find all of Rene Fijten’s Urban sketches here and his blog with more pictures here.

This simple snapshot of an unidentified London bridge is by Barry Jackson, whose website is here.

And this final one of our namesake the London Eye is by Adebanji Alade. His Urban sketches are here. His website is here.

The site is very unpretentious. It focuses on the drawings themslves and makes a real change from photography. A great site which is worth a regular visit to catch up on the progress and whereabouts of the artists.

I saw this play performed in its first run at the Royal Court Theatre in 1987. It was a reaction to the Big Bang in the City of London when the financial markets were signficantly restructured to remove many of the previous restrictive practices. It was one of the steps on the road to twenty five years of increasing affluence in the city and probably a contributing factor to the current problems in the banking sector. People flooded into London from all around the world looking to make their fortune and Serious Money tells the story of the fall out from the Big Bang and the new cultural collisons that were happening as a result.

One American character explains the attarction of London at the time.  

“Now as a place to live England’s swell.

Tokyo treats me like a slave, New York tries to kill me, Hong Kong

I have to turn a blind eye to the suffering I feel wrong.

London, I go to the theatre, I don’t get mugged, I have classy friends,

And I go to see them in the country at weekends”

I have reread the play recently and it remains a very intriguing and well written play. I’d love to see it staged again. Perhaps in 2012 to mark its 25th anniversary and a perfect part of London’s cultural Olympic offering. There can only be one song as soundtrack. The Pet Shop Boys’ Opportunities sums up the mood of the city at the time:

I don’t recall Jeffrey Bernard spending much time south of the river but that was his loss in my experience. I ventured into Tooting on Friday evening, tempted once again by the Indian restaurant Kastoori which is on Upper Tooting Road. It is a classic local gem of a restaurant and a highlight of the “village” of Tooting. The restaurant was opened in 1987 by a family of Indians who arrived in London via Uganda and their cooking is unusual in that it has something of Africa in it as well as the flavours of the sub-continent. It is also vegetarian.

The food is wonderful. I like meat as much as the next carnivore (sorry Morrissey), but I don’t miss meat when I eat at Kastoori. The flavours and textures that they produce are (the word is a cliche, I know, but in this instance, appropriate) sublime. I particularly like the Dahi Puri starter. Graham Snowdon described it perfectly as a “taste bomb” in the Guardian when he recounted his meeting with the restaurant’s chef: 

“Manoj Thanki is fixing me one of his celebrated dahi puris. In one hand he holds a round, crunchy case about the size of a golf ball, like a giant Rice Krispie with a hole in the top. With the fastidiousness of a scientist mixing volatile chemicals in a test tube, he spoons in precise measures of tamarind sauce, dates, jagaree, nuts and yogurt before carefully passing it to me. “What they would do [in India] is dip it in a pani, which means water,” he explains, “then put the whole thing in the mouth, and it just collapses with the taste.”

Not only does it taste delicious, it makes my head spin mildly. “Yes,” he says, matter-of-factly. “Some people have described it as the taste bomb.”

Here is what these delicious  taste bombs look like:

(Thanks to Simon Sharville’s Economy Custard for the image).

My mental image of Soho is packed with different memories and locations; pubs, clubs and eating holes fighting for significance. Tooting has rather fewer connections for me apart from Wolfie Smith. But in Kastoori it has a local restaurant that casts a beneficial glow across the whole of Tooting. I am happy to cross London to visit this place and I am not alone in doing so. On Friday night along with the locals, the restaurant had several visitors from North London and Surrey as well as a couple who had moved to France but always made sure that they visited Tooting at least once when they were back in England. It really is that good.

Its now Sunday afternoon. Two days after my meal at the restaurant. I have a night in planned, with a good movie. I also have a craving. Perhaps one more meal from Kastoori is needed. It will have to be a takeaway tonight but I can’t wait to get in the car and drive over to Tooting village.

Smashing had its roots in the London clubland of the 1980’s (as defined by Leigh Bowery and Taboo). Smashing‘s host was Matthew Glamorre, who in fact played with Leigh Bowery in Minty (they played occassional gigs at Smashing). Matthew remembers this time in an interview with the alissongothz.com.br website, here.  Matthew was the perfect arch and funny host. For a year or two he turned the club into probably the coolest place on earth.

Smashing pre-empted one aspect of the 90’s music scene. It didn’t act as the meeting place of fans of a new type of music as many of the previous great night clubs had done, from the Hacienda in Manchester to Ronnie Scotts in Soho, but was rather a meeting place of fans of all the great music that had come before. The club was for people who were into the club experience and wanted a, well, smashing good old time. They wanted great music, not necessarily new and fashionable music. They were young, skinny, out there and wanted to have fun. They wanted to drink (etc) and to dance. By the 1990’s there was so much great music from the past to explore.

The music was pulled from all over. Alix Sharkey described it as “Bowie’s ‘Queen Bitch’; the Beastie Boys’ rap cacophony; the Barbarella theme song; the Happy Mondays’ narcoleptic white funk; or the Smiths’ ‘Panic’, dissolving into throbbing acid house. What kind of music do they play? The only kind. Indy rock? James Last? Grunge? Sammy Davis Jnr? Sixties soundtracks? Si, si, senor. Glam? Punk? New Wave? Disco? Pinky and Perky? Tick them all off, and anything else that comes to mind. Do your bowels clench at the sound of Weller’s warble? Mine, too. But don’t worry, a good record will be along faster than you can say: ‘Sham 69? Puh-leese.’”

By adding the ultra-cool London  night club mentality to this magpie plundering of the musical past, Smashing was a breeding ground and blueprint for Britpop, which itself raided the past for its look and its soundtrack. And the club became the favourite haunt of the young Suede and Blur and Pulp as they began to break through into the charts.  

Pulp filmed their Disco 2000 video at Smashing. It gives you a flavour of what the place was like. By this time, late 1995, the club had just about run its course. In 1996 the club closed, the scene was over and Britpop London split in a snowstorm of cocaine, ego and money. 1997 saw both the opening of the The Met Bar (where Gallaghers mixed with Page 3 girls) and New Labour’s Cool Britannia. The silly fun of Smashing had mutated into bloated self-importance of that is recorded in John Niven’s excellent novel Kill Your Friends.

What a great dance floor! And that handsome young man in the video? He’s my brother. He was a Smashing regular and DJ’d occassionally.

You can read all of Alix Sharkey’s The Times article on Smashing here.

Secret Affair were rather naff, to be honest. They took themselves a bit too seriously and weren’t as confident about their music as they claimed to be. They were the mod revivalist’s mod revivalists and as such were more copyist than explorer. They had one other hit sized record which was called My World. The promo video was filmed on top of Primrose Hill & other locations in 1980. London looks a bit grim in 1980. I spotted Centrepoint, Regents Park Canal (one of my favourite London locations), the Natural History Museum (the Manchester United big Daddy of London museums) and the Barbican in the following video.

Here it is:

Ian Page was the lead singer. Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker may well have based part of his look on this Page suit. (Personal aside. I once danced to Time For Action at the 1990’s club Smashing. Jarvis Cocker shared the very small dancefloor with me. He may well have worn a red tie that night).  

Time For Action is here. I bet you cant help but tap your toes to this old beaut of a song:

The film is narrated by an unnamed character (voiced by Paul Scofield) who follows his friend, the unseen Robinson around London. Robinson is apparently involved with research into the “problem of London”. The film was made 13 years into a long period of Tory rule (from 1979 and 1997) and Keiller is clearly not a card carrying Conservative. The narrator records a city that is being badly let down and wearied by Thatcherism and its successors.

Here is an example from the film.

You can watch the full film here.

James Bridle has taken on the task of recreating the 1992 film scene by scene by filming the same shots as Keiller used in the original. Its now 13 years since Labour came to power and London has been reshaped in the intervening years. It feels an appropriate time to be comparing how London was with how London is.

James is writing about his progress on this website, shortermemoryloss.com.

There’s a new exhibition of Henry Moore’s work at Tate Britain which runs from February 24th to August 8th, 2010.

It includes some of the most famous pictures of London during the Second World War, including this one Women and Children in the Tube, which did much to cement Moore’s reputation as a globally significant artist.

Waldemar Januszczak looked at their origin in an article in The Sunday Times last weekend. In it he recalls the often told tale of how Moore claims to have come to create his London underground pictures after travelling home from a dinner party on the tube during the blitz:

“On the way home, the train stopped at every station. At each new platform, more and more frightened Londoners flocked into the tunnels to spend the night on the platforms: burying themselves in the dark to keep safe. Shocked, moved, inspired, Moore claimed he immediately began the great series of doomy underground scenes that were to endear him so fully to the British public and which seemed to put such a vivid face to a moment of national darkness.”

Look closely at the Moore picture above and particularly at the lady in the lower half of the painting in the middle. Then compare it to this photo of Caroline Wright and her son Harry shot by Bert Hardy for the Picture Post in 1940.

It looks clear that Moore copied this image – and Januszczak believes that further Picture Post pictures were the template for some of the other great Moore London Underground images. This undermines Moore’s claims to have created these works spontaneously in response to what he saw when travelling on the tube.

Although fascinating to pick over the bones of how stuff gets made, I’m not sure that any of this matters. I don’t think its very important where inspiration comes from; ultimately, all art lives and dies upon how that inspiration is channelled and the images that are created as a consequence. No doubt the story of how these pieces were conceived adds to their mythology – rather like how the story of Jack Kerouac having typed out On The Road in a few frenzied days on the back of rolls of wallpaper helped his myth making (in fact he’d been working on the book for years) – and so adds to their significance and saleability. The fact that the story may be part “tall tale” doesn’t detract from the power of the pictures. And hey, guess what…it’s got us all talking about Henry Moore again.

The full Sunday Time article is here